tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-214388962024-03-13T17:58:17.789+00:00BongoLudoA little bit Meh, a little bit Pah, a lil' bit Hmm...BonGobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07358667447248648922noreply@blogger.comBlogger44125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21438896.post-48605042923471977492008-01-08T11:53:00.000+00:002008-01-08T13:34:25.184+00:00A good one, without any feaaaar...And a very thingy new thing to all my reader, all of him. Well and so, <a href="http://www.enemyterritory.com">The Great Matter</a> is done and dusted, mainly home and fairly hosed, and I have my life handed back to me, which is no bad nor small thing. My thanks for all your support, let us prance onwards and upwards. A brief shout out to my compadre Relaxer's fine salon du web: <a href="http://www.neilposts.com">www.neilposts.com</a><br /><br />Various plans for hemispheric annexation and then outright global domination are afoot, but first I have to move flat and set all manner of things in order. Once re-established in opulent luxury, the stuffstream shall flow again, willy nilly, hither and yon, and quite possibly huggermugger also.BonGobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07358667447248648922noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21438896.post-27377647079229951272007-07-25T13:35:00.000+01:002007-07-25T20:46:43.547+01:00Sorry I'm late, a dog ate me...Nearly <span style="font-style:italic;">surgically </span>busy as we approach the vinegar strokes of The Great Matter, no spare neurons to spare, so no brain-sneeze posts, so new posts at all in a long time.<br /><br />Have fallen hard for <a href="http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=558400619">FaceBook</a>, however. Always hated Mice Pace (owner, interface, functionality, the works) but as if borne by ruby slippers, I find myself sucked directly into the shiny, spangled world of the 'Book and bang, back in touch with people I haven't seen in decades. Very odd to have all the written-on-the-back-envelopes and beermats of one's life side by side. More, soon, hopefully, as well as milk, honey, apes, ivory and peacocks.<br /><br />Oh, and Danny Baker has a <a href="http://www.thealldaybreakfastshow.com/">podcast</a>. Perfecter and perfecter...BonGobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07358667447248648922noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21438896.post-7653657717484717222007-05-25T11:23:00.000+01:002007-05-25T14:05:03.631+01:00Betterer Neverer Than LaterStill molar-floatingly busy with The Great Matter, so posts remain far between and few. When I cast my bloodshot eye over previous post drafts, they seem worlds away. Some are have been abandoned so long they've waned and waxed from being vaguely timely to tangentially relevant to sadly irrelevant right through to bafflingly prescient and vitally current. Never mind them though, here's something of no relevance or timeliness whatsoever, but it's the very fact that it's a million miles away from most of my working thoughts, and I just want to type it out and feel the names 'neath my digits. <br /><br />Here's David Denby's <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/cinema/2007/05/28/070528crci_cinema_denby">latest movie review in the New Yorker</a>, which is nearly as good as <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/critics/cinema/articles/070129crci_cinema_denby">this</a>. I'm not usually too keen on reductivist rules of thumb, but "What Does An Actor Want?" seems a fun way of looking at actor's careers, particularly as it's homophonous with the slavish Stanislavksy Method's view of actors' characterisations.<br /><br />I'm not an enormous fan of David Denby's work in the New Yorker. He's by no means a bad writer, it just seems like he could be writing anywhere, and there he is arrayed alongside the likes of Adam Gopnik, Sy Hersch and the frankly godlike Anthony Lane, whose collected reviews <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Nobodys-Perfect-Anthony-Lane/dp/0330419714/ref=sr_1_1/203-5874503-3043962?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1180097058&sr=1-1"><span style="font-style:italic;">Nobody's Perfect</span></a> I have placed on a pedestal plinth as a prize and reward for finishing The Great Matter, should I ever do so.<br /><br />Cooing at Lane's collected goodness reminds me I still have John Bayley's <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Power-Delight-Lifetime-Literature/dp/0715633163/ref=sr_1_12/203-5874503-3043962?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1180089298&sr=1-12"><span style="font-style:italic;">The Power of Delight</span></a> to wade into. I tried before and sort of slid off its glacis - it was clearly very very good, but I had to bring my A-Game, and A-Game I had not. All I can remember of it off the top of my head is a bit about Tolstoy's use of detail, which absolutely nailed for me how great writers use character detail in ways that make the characters and world seem larger in every dimension while poor writers narrow down their characters and their world with every new specific. Oh wait, here it is: <br /><blockquote><span style="font-style:italic;">At their best, Tolstoy’s details strike us neither as selected for a particular purpose nor accumulated at random, but as a sign of a vast organism in progress, like the multiplicity of wrinkles on a moving elephant’s back.</span></blockquote>As the words crystallised into focus on my mind's page, I realised that the page is the wrong size for the book. So I must have read them in James Wood's <a href="http://www.lrb.co.uk/v27/n20/wood02_.html">review in the LRB</a>. Wood is another Must-Read Merchant. I'm still trying to digest Wood's <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Irresponsible-Self-Laughter-Novel/dp/1844130975/ref=sr_1_16/203-5874503-3043962?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1180089655&sr=1-16"><span style="font-style:italic;">The Irresponsible Self: On Laughter and the Novel</span></a>. I've read it through twice and re-dipped heavily to only limited avail, but it's quite possible that I'm just not bright enough to get what he's on about. Oh, and I still haven't touched his novel <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Book-Against-God-James-Wood/dp/0099453576/ref=sr_1_14/203-5874503-3043962?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1180089677&sr=1-14"><span style="font-style:italic;">The Book Against God</span></a>, although if I'm going to read a critic/writer's novel, I fear I'll just end up re-reading the Olympian James Meek's <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,808713,00.html"><span style="font-style:italic;">The People's Act Of Love</span></a>, or track down his McFarlane Boils The Sea. I love James Meek. I love everything he's written. His Guardian pieces on <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/transport/Story/0,,1183210,00.html">Rail privatisation</a>, <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,808713,00.html">the SA80 debacle</a>, h<a href="http://www.lrb.co.uk/v27/n09/meek01_.html">is LRB review piece on the London Underground</a>. I once, as an exercise, tried to adapt his <a href="http://www.amazon.ca/Children-Albion-Rovers-Kevin-Williamson/dp/0879517751">The Brown Pint of Courage</a>. Utter failure, as I couldn't bring myself to cut a line.<br /><br />Anyway, I'm in love with the notion that the LRB's <a href="http://www.lrb.co.uk/contribhome.php?get=wood02">James Wood</a> is actually one and the same as Smirking Snarlmeister-General actor <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000249/">James Woods</a>, and who cannot picture him dashing off these feuilletons in the breaks between shooting scenes of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0805666/">Shark</a> or, since we're fancifulfilling, Oliver Stone's <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091886/">Salvador</a> or James Carpenter's <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120877/">vampire thingy</a>.BonGobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07358667447248648922noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21438896.post-68698981451303350722007-05-14T12:31:00.000+01:002007-05-15T19:17:28.133+01:00Best/Worst Job EVAHLeaving aside that he travels to work ON a helicopter...<a href="http://www.glumbert.com/media/highpower">what a gig</a>!<br /><span style="font-style:italic;"><br />(stolen straight from BoingBoing, as is most of my headcontents)</span>BonGobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07358667447248648922noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21438896.post-49990193897736762422007-05-14T12:19:00.000+01:002007-05-14T12:22:03.522+01:00Best Bike Safety Experiment EVAR<a href="http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleid=778EF0AB-E7F2-99DF-3594A60E4D9A76B2">My...ahahaha..no, wait...my...ahohohohoho...my Hat's.....hahahah...OFF to him...ahahahaha...you see?...Hat...off.....oh lord.</a>BonGobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07358667447248648922noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21438896.post-75243603074232365022007-05-03T23:59:00.000+01:002007-05-04T00:07:03.557+01:00Right Stuff, We Hardly Knew YeAw man, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-CA-Obit-Schirra.html?_r=1&hp?8dpc&oref=slogin">Wally Schirra has died</a>. Great, great man, not least for uttering the last word about space travel, and mankind's manifest destiny among the stars:<br /><br /><blockquote>"Mostly it's lousy out there," Schirra said in 1981, "It's a hostile environment, and it's trying to kill you."</blockquote><br />Which space captain would you rather have a drink with, Schirra or Kirk? Hell, who else would you rather have a drink with, period?BonGobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07358667447248648922noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21438896.post-21272892899175688522007-04-10T12:28:00.000+01:002007-04-10T12:40:13.957+01:00This just in: I'm a cretin.Not actually News, I grant you but as People of Science, we must test even our most evident axioms. So I finally post a comment on <a href="http://volokh.com/posts/1176064420.shtml">The Volokh Conspiracy</a>, manage to hit send too soon and post a credibility-shredding study in incomprehension. A fairly definitive demonstration of ineptness, almost calculated to disappoint. Had I formed a month-long working party to blacken my name, I could have done little better.<br /><br />Still, was a little disappointed at the previous comments in that thread, just as I am when PZ Meyers or his Squiddies resort to ad hominem over at <a href="http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/">Pharyngula</a> , or any of the <a href="http://www.crookedtimber.org/">Crooked Timber-Wolves</a> get Leftier-Than-Thou. Who'd have thought we'd use the InterTubes to be so Tribal, as virtual stables for our hobbyhorses? Using this revolutionary new form of interactivityu and communication we can...find like-minded people and agree with them. It smacks of the playground to me, something to ignore, most especially when you agree with the general sentiment.BonGobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07358667447248648922noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21438896.post-22668016412932333272007-03-31T13:57:00.000+01:002007-03-31T13:58:01.881+01:00I Spy...<span style="font-family:verdana;">I was vastly tickled to see this - </span><a style="font-family: verdana;" href="http://www.iphotomeasure.com/index.asp">How To Measure Anything With A Camera And Software</a><span style="font-family:verdana;"> (via </span><a style="font-family: verdana;" href="http://jkontherun.blogs.com/jkontherun/2007/02/how_to_measure_.html">this)</a><span style="font-family:verdana;">. Not just because it's a great idea, not just that its such a cunning application of the most basic maths and geometry, but because it reminded me of the "Kennedy Assasination Tool" - a virtual reality/real-life geometry simulator in a fabulous old game called </span><a style="font-family: verdana;" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spycraft:_The_Great_Game">Spycraft</a><span style="font-family:verdana;"> (Activision 1996), which probably isn't as well known as the still largely forgotten </span><a style="font-family: verdana;" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majestic_%28video_game%29">Majestic </a><span style="font-family:verdana;">(EA 2001) - a game so odd it deserves its own post.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Anyhow, Spycraft was an adventure game - you played a CIA rookie who gets pulled into a sprawling, urgent web of espionage, counter-espionage, corruption, assassination and lots of puzzle-solving. All this tool place in a gameworld composed of actual video footage, requiring six of the then-new-fangled CD-ROMs. Moving from scene to scene required a lot of disc-switchery, turning you into a ham-fisted action DJ. That said, the long load times didn't feel too onerous as they were as much a result of your own limited discular dexterity as the game tech, and acceptable load times were measured by the hour in those days). I just checked the min spec: Spycraft required a whopping 8MB of RAM. Lunacy.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Spycraft was almost spookily (no pun intended) ahead of its time. When I played it back in 1996, it seemed odd, sui generis, and unconnected to much else. Now its themes and memes seem more than prescient. It was </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:verdana;" >all about</span><span style="font-family:verdana;"> the rights and wrongs of national security counter-terrorism, the limits of state power, the use and abuse of self-surveillance, the digital fabrication of evidence, the balance of </span><a style="font-family: verdana;" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigint">SigInt</a><span style="font-family:verdana;"> and </span><a style="font-family: verdana;" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humint">HumInt</a><span style="font-family:verdana;"> and not least, the legality and effectiveness of torture.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">(respectful pause for Jane Meyer's </span><a style="font-family: verdana;" href="http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/02/19/070219fa_fact_mayer">brilliant New Yorker piece on 24 Producer Joel Surnow</a><span style="font-family:verdana;">)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">The cultural and emotional terrain has changed, of course. We're not just post-Cold War. We're not even just post-X-Files (which was itself post-Watergate, post-Three Mile Island), we're post-9/11, post-24, post-CSI and still nowhere near being post-Global War On Terror. I really hope developers and publishers can make a game even half as good as Spycraft today.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">But chief of Spycraft's splendours was that it not only had creative input from but </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:verdana;" >actual in-game/on-camera appearances</span><span style="font-family:verdana;"> by the actual former CIA director </span><a style="font-family: verdana;" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Colby" title="William Colby">William Colby</a><span style="font-family:verdana;"> and former KGB Major-General </span><a style="font-family: verdana;" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oleg_Kalugin" title="Oleg Kalugin">Oleg Kalugin</a><span style="font-family:verdana;">. I can't remember Kalugin's bits, but can't shake from my mind the extraordinary scene where you sit in a room while an actor (the marvellous </span><a style="font-family: verdana;" href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0439170/">James Karen</a><span style="font-family:verdana;">, I think) and William freakin' Colby dispense advice on how to find Moles. In stilted, spookish, scripted manner, he describes the various classic Mole profiles, the only one of which I can recall being The Upgrader. "</span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:verdana;" >He's not going to mention </span><a style="font-style: italic; font-family: verdana;" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldrich_Ames">Aldrich Ames</a><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:verdana;" >, is he?</span><span style="font-family:verdana;">" I wondered. "A</span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:verdana;" >mes was an upgrader...</span><span style="font-family:verdana;">" Colby re-assures you, "</span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:verdana;" >...and we got him</span><span style="font-family:verdana;">". Yeah, nine years too late, after he'd Xeroxed the KGB your entire NOC list. What a triumph for the CIA that was.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Oleg Kalunin remained an outspoken critic of the KGB's leadership and by extension - one assumes - Vladimir Putin. In 2002 Kalugin was put on trial in Moscow and found guilty of spying - in absentia, as he had become a naturalised US citizen and currently runs a counter-espionage consultancy in Washington .</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Colby died in mysterious circumstances in 1996. Kalugin is presumably very careful about his </span><a style="font-family: verdana;" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Litvinenko_poisoning">teacups</a><span style="font-family:verdana;">.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Who's the most important person to have appeared as themself in a computer game? And can you imagine any appearance more chilling than a spymaster who talks about spycatching and is then apparently murdered?</span>BonGobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07358667447248648922noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21438896.post-91262762594306552582007-02-02T13:03:00.000+00:002007-02-02T13:39:33.521+00:00Games and Movies, more dreadful truthClearly inspired by my startled shrieking response to Chris Avelone's piece on <a href="http://www.edery.org/2007/01/game-design-research-ala-avellone/">researching game design</a> from (amongst other things) movies, <a href="http://www.kierongillen.com/">Kieron Gillen</a>, author of the definitive screed on games journalism (no, not <a href="http://www.alwaysblack.com/blackbox/ngj.html">that</a>, <a href="http://gillen.cream.org/wordpress_html/?page_id=693">this</a>) delivers yet again with this <a href="http://www.escapistmagazine.com/issue/81/9">heady salad</a>. Every single wordleaf a metaphoric glittery jewel of literal Truth.<br /><br />Although no further evidence for the prosecution is required, let me admit this. A teacher chum in Chicago sometimes forwards me those of her student charges requiring equine-oral quotes for their papers. One of 'em asked me about the games I'd worked on thusly:“<span style="font-style: italic;">Did some of these ideas come from movies that you had seen in the past or from another form of media, and is there some connection in the games to movies?</span>”<br /><span style=";font-family:Verdana;color:blue;" ><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"></span></span><o:p></o:p></span> <p class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">My reply condemns me still:</span></span></p><p class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span></span></p><blockquote><p class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">I can’t stress this highly enough: the point of reference is almost <span style="font-style: italic;">always </span>a movie. Even if we can come up with a better idea, we’ll tend to dress it up in a way we’ve seen in movies. Movie production design is a common point of reference for all our players, with lots of implicit ideas and emotional baggage. If we make our soldiers look a bit like the Marines from Aliens, players will be reminded of the brutal cool of that movie, the gruff talk, the sense of imminent violence. We’re trying to suspend the player’s disbelief. If a player feels like they’re looking at a screen, squidging buttons and massaging a mouse, we’ve failed. If they feel that they’re into the game world, running around and shooting things, we’ve got ‘em. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">For many if not most video games, the main influence on their visual design is Cinema. In some game genres, such as Action and First Person Shooter, overwhelmingly so. Do not be distracted by the mere handful of movies that have been based on games: the traffic is almost entirely the other way. Movies have bigger budgets and better facilities for coming up with cool-looking stuff: if something has been made to look and sound cool in a movie, it’ll end up in a game, simple as that. That’s why games lean so heavily on movies – they supply pre-existing norms and a ready-made common visual vocabulary. If your game character is a glowing pink amoeba, it’s not clear what you have to do. If he looks like the chap out of Terminator, you’ve got a pretty good idea.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Although some games have created their own unique visual aesthetics (particularly Japanese ones, although a lot of them lean on Manga<a style="" href="http://www2.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=21438896#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;" ></span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> and Anime<a style="" href="http://www2.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=21438896#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;" ></span></span></span></span></a> conventions), the biggest influences – almost always uncredited and unacknowledged – are movie production designers. It’s production designers who create the look and feel of what we expect in movies, they’re the ones who establish the visual vocabulary we all draw on. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><o:p></o:p></span></span><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Perhaps movies are uniquely usefully to game designers, but it’s not like it’s only game designers who are influenced by movie production designers. The great Ken Adam<a style="" href="http://www2.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=21438896#_ftn3" name="_ftnref3" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;" > </span></span></span></span></a>created all those great Bond villain bases, as well as the President’s War Room in Doctor Strangelove. Adam was told that when Ronald Reagan was elected President, the first thing he asked on moving into the White House was “Where’s the War Room?”, only to be met with polite frowns. I don’t know for sure that the story is 100% true, but it’s undeniable that movies influence everyone – not just games or game designers.</span></span></p></blockquote><p class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"></span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <div style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->There. I am now reduced to quoting myself. Dispensing blowjobs for chump change in bus stations can surelynot follow far behind.<br /></div>BonGobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07358667447248648922noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21438896.post-31130467573632571922007-01-30T14:13:00.000+00:002007-01-30T15:42:19.486+00:00Game Design Research OrgyObsidian's Chris Avellone, guest-posting on David Edery's fine <a href="http://www.edery.org/">Game Tycoon</a>, has some interesting things to say about <a href="http://www.edery.org/2007/01/game-design-research-ala-avellone/">game design research</a>. He gets to research the Alien universe for to make a game thereof, the lucky bugger. Anyhow, I left a huge, rambling comment on it, repeated here just to slow down the IntarWebs:<span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:10;" ><br /></span><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" ><br />This is great stuff, Chris. I’m absolutely in agreement with you about the importance of expanding your frame of reference. There are already enough games made out of bits of other games, TV made from more TV, movies made of elements of movies. My feeling is that most geeks/devs don’t need much encouragement to keep on consuming the media they’re already into, but need as much encouragement as they can get to start checking out new stuff, especially when it’s old stuff: history, literature, visual arts, let alone news coverage, scientific research or, gulp, Real Life.<o:p></o:p></span> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" ><o:p></o:p>You make some excellent points here and your illustrations would drive me mad with envy if they didn’t make me giggle so much, but I’d emphasize the difference between raw data and usable knowledge. For me, it’s part of what separate Pro’s from Paying Punters – Paying Punters point and clap at the puppet show; Pro’s get themselves backstage and work out which string pulls which limb. I don’t think people need much more practice at remembering the Cool Bits from games and movies and TV shows, but almost everyone needs more practice in working out why they’re cool, what it is about that technical solution that made it better than another, how was it put together, and what was so compelling about its presentation: the <i style="">What</i> isn’t as important as the <i style="">Why</i> and <i style="">How</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" ><o:p></o:p>For instance, why did New-Monster-Every-Week one-or-two-episode morality play SciFi TV series like Star Trek and Doctor Who come up with the Transporter beam and the Tardis respectively? To what production problem was that the solution? Why didn’t they go with an expensive but heavily repeated sequence to get their protagonists to and from their weekly new locations, like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderbirds_%28TV_series%29">Thunderbirds</a>? The relative production costs of a single special effect shot compared to a three-minute model montage will tell you more than any retro-con backstory explanation. <span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><o:p></o:p>So my addendum to your advice to budding devs is to take all the games, TV shows and movies they love, and see those finished works not as monolithic blocks of Cool, but as a consequence of a series of design, direction and production decisions, decisions that can be analysed and reverse-engineered. Steal from the very best, I say! Just learning a few of the technical terms used by screenwriters, storyboard artists, directors, coders, sound designers, composers, actors and developers will give you more insight than memorizing every line of dialogue in every episode of every season of every franchise of StarTrek. Technical language is a kind of toolkit that lets you build something new, not just repeat something old. Knowing every episode featuring the character Data is just, well…data. <span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><o:p></o:p>Being able to analyse the Cool Bits doesn’t mean you appreciate them less, quite the reverse – it makes the Cool Bits <i>cooler</i>. As an example, take the famous lots-of-short-shots montage technique pioneered by Sergei Eisenstein. Every movie nerd will be able to tell you about the famous Odessa Steps sequence in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Battleship_Potemkin"><i style="">The Battleship Potemkin</i></a>, and most will know that Brian DePalma recreated it almost shot-for-shot for the train station shootout scene in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Untouchables_%281987_film%29"><i style="">The Untouchables</i> </a>(even the Great steal from the Best). The more I read about the critical theory that built up around Eisenstein’s technique, the more I appreciated his achievement, and dug the visual syntax of cinema, and how long and broad a shadow it casts on all subsequent movie and TV editing. But this was as nothing compared to the slack-jawed awe I felt when I found out that it was his work-around for a potentially show-stopping production problem: only very short lengths of filmstock were available at the time, so he invented a way of telling stories with very short shots. That’s not just smart, that’s flaming, strobing genius! Future developers, be inspired!</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:10;" ><o:p></o:p></span></p>BonGobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07358667447248648922noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21438896.post-83506746019130209632007-01-30T12:44:00.000+00:002007-01-30T13:03:22.760+00:00"Fornicate, Using Your Actual Genitals"<a href="http://www.getafirstlife.com/">Unimprovable</a>, as is the <a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://www.boingboing.net/2007/01/21/first_life_sl_parody.html">Increase and Persist</a> letter he was sent by Second Life's lawyers.<br />...<br />OK, it was actually "<span style="font-style: italic;">Proceed and Permitted</span>", but that doesn't scan as well. As ever, the rule of thumb with misquotations is that they have better rhythm and internal rhymes than the actual factual verbatim: e.g. "Me Tarzan, You Jane", "Elementary, My Dear Watson"," Play It Again Sam". If if does not have that swing, it does not mean a thing. Which reminds me of the awesome <a href="http://www.davebarry.com/">Dave Barry</a>'s Rhythmic Test For Political Affiliation: sing and clap along to "Hit The Road, Jack". If the result is "<span style="font-style: italic;">Hit the Clap...Clap</span>" you are a Republican, if "<span style="font-style: italic;">Hit the Road - Clap - Jack - Clap</span>", you are a Democraticperson.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:78%;" >(via BoingBoing, as almost all of my online life seems to be)</span>BonGobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07358667447248648922noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21438896.post-23851027857974701702007-01-28T17:42:00.000+00:002007-01-29T15:15:09.619+00:00There's a reason they're called that<a href="http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/UNMOVEABLE_SLOTH?SITE=PASCR&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT">Sloth: 1 Science: 0</a><br /><br />Edit: As my wretchedly Funnier-Than-Me friend David points out, the story should be titled "<span style="font-style: italic;">Sloth completes groundbreaking three-year study on human persistence</span>..."BonGobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07358667447248648922noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21438896.post-78371742508479855882007-01-28T16:09:00.001+00:002007-01-30T10:51:22.417+00:00Le Blog Bérubé, we hardly knew yeOn of the defining features of this smoking shambling excuse for a blog is a consistent ability to get around to things far, far too late. While tidying my cyber-shelves, I find this draft claiming <span style="font-style: italic;">it's</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">about time I hooted and pointed at <a href="http://www.michaelberube.com/index.php/weblog">Le Blog</a></span><a href="http://www.michaelberube.com/index.php/weblog"> <span style="font-style: italic;">Bérubé</span></a>. So, now, a month after it slipped beneath the waves and the last bubbles popped upon the surface, the time is ripe for me to make grand prancing motions towards it. Obviously "introducing" a <a href="http://wampum.wabanaki.net/vault/2006/04/002603.html">Koufax </a>winner (OK, runner-up) to my non-existent readership is akin to dramatically disclosing the existence of Nelson's Column to Londoners, or the night sky or the tendency of things to fall towards the earth, but that's pretty much the purpose of BongoLudo - tardily re-exposing what everyone already knew with a queeny gasp and antic gestures of profound revelation.<br /><br />Setting aside Bérubé's new opus "<a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/62-0393060373-0"><span style="font-style: italic;">What's Liberal About The Liberal Arts?</span></a>", let me count my debts to him and his "web" "log". Pre-Firstly and leastly, he did me a permanent solid by using the term "The InterNets" (instantly misappropriated and bandied about by me, here and elsewhere), but he provides an enviable Trifecta of webbery.<br /><br />Firstly, Bérubé is a proponent of pointy-headed Literary Theory who actually appears to love books, and literature. This has proved a massive challenge to me, my clothes still shredded and smoking from my escape from the Clutches of Theory, but I hope I'm man enough to not actually change any of my cherished beliefs and admit there might be something to it.<br /><br />Secondly, he's an actual participant in what I don't really want to think of as being the front lines of the culture wars - entering into disputation with various luminaries I don't want to specify, because naming calls, you understand? (said with squinty eyes, like <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0573618/">Kevin McNally</a> in the wretched Pirates Of The Caribbean cash dairy infomercials), thus actually doing what hardly any folks dare do - stop rolling their eyes, roll up their sleeves and actually engage in debate/abuse/parcheesi.<br /><br />And thirdly, lastly, and by no means leastly, as well as the Byzantine politics and back-lit lit crit, he write <a href="http://www.michaelberube.com/index.php/weblog/sadness/">enormously</a> <a href="http://www.michaelberube.com/index.php/weblog/jamies_trip_to_syracuse_part_two/">touching</a> accounts of his life as the proud parent of Jamie, a smashing sounding urchin who has Down's syndrome. Nice to see that his other offspring Nick gets the odd mention <a href="http://www.michaelberube.com/index.php/weblog/talking_to_the_son/">also</a>.<br /><br />The Jamie stuff has me piping my eyes and emitting strange sighs and I can't add anything evey remotely useful. The added piquancy, I guess, is that Bérubé is a fully-fledged Literary Theory Person, a species I'd given up all hopes of being inspired by. I speak from a veritable pedestal of ignorance: my grip on po-mo literary theory is akin to that of a pair of tin sugar tongs on the pelt of a galloping mammoth – it simply affords insufficient purchase for any useful purpose. His blog is the first thing I've read that made my check my headlong flight, if not actually retrace my steps or meekly submit my neck to the yoke again.<br /><br />Anyway, kudos, au revoir and thanks to the Bérubatollah. The web's a duller (if faster) place without ye.BonGobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07358667447248648922noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21438896.post-28625090480479467432007-01-28T14:03:00.000+00:002007-01-28T14:41:32.408+00:00Does not suffice...I can't be the only one viewing the brou, ha and other ha over Blood Diamond and the ice cartel's Chris Morris-esque <a href="http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=109&STORY=/www/story/01-11-2007/0004504731&EDATE=">self-parody</a> and then pointing mutely at The Atlantic's 1982 article <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/198202/diamond"><span style="font-style: italic;">Have You Ever Tried To Sell A Diamond?</span></a> Odd to think of diamonds as semi-precious stones completely unconnected to notions of love or devotion. Surely one of the greatest marketing successes since <a href="http://www.vatican.va/phome_en.htm">St Paul Inc.</a>?<br /><br />T'Atlantic has a roundup of their ice coverage <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200612u/diamond-flashback">here</a>, which leads one to hop skip jump via <a href="http://www.dashes.com/anil/2006/12/01/blood_diamonds">Anil Dash</a> and <a href="http://www.boingboing.net/2006/10/23/warners_stiffs_afric.html">Cory Doctorow</a> to the NY Post's alps-atop-alps horror-beyond-horror story on <a href="http://www.nypost.com/seven/10232006/gossip/pagesix/pagesix.htm">the amputee extras used in the movie being stiffed by Warner Bros</a>. Sometimes I think this is what the internet is <span style="font-style: italic;">for</span>.<span><span class="arttype"><br /></span></span>BonGobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07358667447248648922noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21438896.post-1166488474022151492006-12-19T00:21:00.000+00:002006-12-19T00:34:34.073+00:00Absence and ToonsApologies for another prolonged absence. All manner of stuff going on, hardly any of which fell into conveniently bloggable increments or tropes. But just now, <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6191999.stm">Joseph Barbera dead at 93</a>. Wow, what he lived through, and saw, and made. <span style="font-style: italic;">"Was Scrappy-Doo the Echt Shark-Jumping id-hound?",</span> I hear you ask. And, as Danny Baker often asks, what happened in the Flintstones to the sabre-toothed cat Fred dumps outside, and is then dumped by in the title sequence? "One day Fred will finally win the fight/When he puts that cat out for the night". Baker reckons the cat was in the pilot, but then got greedy, made his agent renegotiate the contract for the rest of the series, and was then cut entirely, but they'd already filmed the title sequence and recorded the music.BonGobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07358667447248648922noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21438896.post-1166487585920245592006-12-19T00:16:00.000+00:002006-12-19T00:19:45.960+00:00Vital News, Affecting All Bipedal LifeformsAnd a verily merrily Grimble to all our reader.<br /><br />2007? That's a Sci-Fi year.BonGobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07358667447248648922noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21438896.post-1162238090759712022006-10-30T19:49:00.000+00:002006-10-30T19:54:50.773+00:00First CompressionsVia the excellent Alex Ross of the The New Yorker, some excellent thoughts (none of them mine) on compression in modern beat combo music. <a href="http://www.austin360.com/music/content/music/stories/xl/2006/09/28cover.html">Everything Louder Than Everything Else</a> is very good, but <a href="http://www.cdmasteringservices.com/dynamicdeath.htm">The Death Of Dynamic Range</a> is just brilliant. Much to over-mull here, but howsabout them waveforms? Exactly the kind of clearly illuminated and illustrated expertise I promise shall never darken the towels of this blog. You have my word on that.BonGobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07358667447248648922noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21438896.post-1162149980807556722006-10-29T19:26:00.000+00:002006-10-29T19:26:20.826+00:00The God Deluge-InThose InterWebs are awash with reviews and reviews of reviews of Dawkins' <span style="font-style: italic;">The God Delusion</span>. I have nothing to add to the melee other than slack-jawed praise for Stephen Tomkins of Ship Of Fools. Now <a href="http://ship-of-fools.com/Features/2006/dawkins.html">THIS </a>is how to review someone you don't agree with. That all such commentary should be as fair-minded.BonGobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07358667447248648922noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21438896.post-1161002083778607802006-10-16T13:19:00.000+01:002006-10-17T20:33:13.333+01:00Nomenclatchoo!Am snivelling with Man-Flu, which can only be a partial excuse for being, once again, last to the feast. Here I am, puffing and chewing and huffing over Leavitt's Freakonomics. I have precisely nothing original to add to the general hooplah, other than "<span style="font-style: italic;">Yes, IntarWebs, I too found it an enjoyable and interesting read</span>". (Be unafraid, gentle reader, that slamming sound you just heard was the presses being stopped and the front page being held.) I particularly like the chapter on baby names, the observations thereon (Jewish/Old Testament monickers get popular with gentile baby-namers, but never the other way round) and the predictions for the future. Observation, Theory, Testable Prediction, that's science, homes!<br /><br />I can't remember who linked to it (my apologies, IntarWebs), but out-check this <a href="http://www.babynamewizard.com/namevoyager/lnv0105.html">Baby Name Graphinator</a> (that may not be the proper term, possibly). It visualises, no, wait, surely we're doing the visualising. It, uh, represents the relative and absolute popularity of American baby names. I particularly like how, as you type successive letters of a name, it shows all the names that stilly apply. Pitifully simple and straightforward to those whose mind works that way, but mine doesn't, and I coo and ooh at it as if it were a kitten in a wellington boot.<br /><br />There's piles of fun to be had tracing names as they wax and wane, but the oddest case of all is "Adolph". It's enormously popular in the 1880's, still a biggun' up until a precipitous drop around 1910 (and isn't it great to be actually looking at a plunging graph line that does actually literally look like a craggy precipice?). The rate of decrease stays pretty steady right through up to the 1930's but then stays stable throughout the 1940's and 50's before dwindling in the 60's to die out in the early 70's. EHHH?<br /><br />I'm struggling to picture an expectant couple, or one newly blessed with issue, in the late 40's or 50's, possibly returned from fighting in Europe, saying to each other "<span style="font-style: italic;">Honey, you remember how back before the war we weren't going to call our children Adolph? Well, I've been thinking...</span>"BonGobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07358667447248648922noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21438896.post-1161000694829678352006-10-16T12:33:00.000+01:002006-10-16T13:11:34.856+01:00Life among the celebritiesSlightly shocked and awed to find that the mighty <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PZ_Meyers">PZ Meyers</a> (he of the fairly compulsory <a href="http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/">Pharyngula </a>blog) was in Bromley, my Place O'Toil. I posted briefly at his place, but have to mutter aloud to myself further on this matter.<br /><br />Bromley is many things to many men. It was H.G Well's childhood home before the railway came through (twice) and suburbanised the place to hell. It is no coincidence that so many of Well's plots involve the lavish destruction of suburbs and all that they contain and entail. And let's not forget, no, do let's, no, don't - let's not forget that Wells was a game designer, what with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floor_Games">Floor Games</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Wars">Little Wars</a>.<br /><br />Anyhoo, back to Bromley's place in The Great Scheme Of Things. I loved <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4422743,00.html"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">this great piece</span></a> in the Guardian about the famous-amongst-themselves <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bromley_Contingent">Bromley Contingent</a>, which raised the pressing question: had there been anything better to do in Bromley, would we have had Punk Rock? I remain apathagnostic (see what I did there?) on the matter. Writers I Normally Trust tell me it was all terribly important and things were awfully awful and needed shaking up, but there does seem to be an air of "You Had To Be There" about it all, and surely for the really good stuff you didn't have to be there, you just have to listen to it. This seems to be true about the effectively-unknown-at-the-time Velvet Underground (as the old saw goes, hardly anyone ever saw them, but everyone who did immediately formed their own band). The first few Velvets albums are just boffo. You don't have to have any personal stake or sentimental attachment to the epoch, they just stand up on their own two feet and compel replaying.<br /><br />Some dreadful Channel 4 talking-head-fest about influential bands and the unexpectedly entertaining <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_McCluskey">Andy McCluskey </a>of Orchestral Manouevres In The Dark made the excellent point that every ten years or so there is a general bewailing about how rock is dying on its corporate arse and live music has lost all its magic, and then someone will re-record the first Velvet Underground album and be acclaimed as the Saviour of the Muse (which obviously allows the accompanying chronicling music journo's to go through the apostolic process of discovery, doubt, witnessing and testamentation). Strokes? White Stripes? I'm looking at you etc.<br /><br />Perhaps the final word on this strangely cataleptic/catalytic Kentish town is Billy Jenkins' brilliantly unhinged opus "<a href="http://www.jazzcds.co.uk/artist_id_94/cd_id_427">Still...Sounds Like Bromley</a>". Whatever altitude my praise for it attains, it sufficeth not.BonGobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07358667447248648922noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21438896.post-1160927168359110422006-10-15T15:59:00.000+01:002006-10-15T16:46:08.376+01:00Cobwebs, dusting, splutteringAway for the longest time, what with work and offline occurrences and what not. I could claim that I was readying for the roll-out of an extraordinary bongoludo 2.0, but it would be a tiny flaming lie.<br /><br />Hope all well with you and all of your doings, normal intermittent and patchy service will be resumed anon.<br /><br />Howsabout them Nintendos? Remember when they used to make <a href="http://squirl.info/collection/show/465">these</a>? Not me, nor my feet.<br /><br />And the first thing I've read on Salon in years, a whacking great interviewathon with <a href="http://www.salon.com/books/int/2006/10/13/dawkins/index.html">Richard Dawkins</a>. That is all.BonGobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07358667447248648922noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21438896.post-1153310333263007262006-07-19T12:56:00.000+01:002006-07-19T13:07:35.993+01:00That Pipettes Pip The Feeling FeelingStop Press: the race for my pop heart is wide open again: just saw <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKSdVmYU-fg&search=the%20pipettes">this</a>.<br /><br />And <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rANhuxRSRLY&search=the%20pipettes">here's</a> the Russ Meyer <span style="font-style: italic;">Valley Of The Dolls</span> clip of which it is the splendid ripoff.<span class="down" style="display: block;" id="formatbar_CreateLink" title="Link" onmouseover="ButtonHoverOn(this);" onmouseout="ButtonHoverOff(this);" onmouseup="" onmousedown="CheckFormatting(event);FormatbarButton('richeditorframe', this, 8);ButtonMouseDown(this);"></span>BonGobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07358667447248648922noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21438896.post-1153239629684020292006-07-18T16:05:00.000+01:002006-07-18T18:21:08.063+01:00Feeling The Feeling Walk The TalkI did my best, really I did, but my best clearly isn't good enough, not even hardly, nowhere near. I know I just swore fealty to <a href="http://www.thepipettes.co.uk/">The Pipettes</a> (who despite all the music critics saying they're very good, really are very, very good), but <a href="http://www.thefeeling.co.uk/">The Feeling</a>, oh man, The Feeling. It's like being a teenager again. You know those psych experiments where they wired up the pleasure centre of a rat's brain to a switch and the poor rodenty fucker just Morsed the switch constantly? That's me spamming iTunes for the The Feeling single "Fill My Little World". I'm unsure what else I could possibly demand of a pop group other than the immediate eradication of poverty and Sunny Delight. Giddy-making. These are clear signs of accelerated aging, aren't they? Cardigan time yet?<br /><br />*looks down at own M&S cashmere-clad wrists.<br /><br />Oh.BonGobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07358667447248648922noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21438896.post-1153141825833128192006-07-17T14:05:00.000+01:002006-07-17T14:17:15.200+01:00Mamas, and Brand New BagquisitionOK, obviously, <a href="http://www.thepipettes.co.uk/">The Pipettes</a> have conquered me utterly and forever, but am equally smitten with the wondrous <a href="http://www.onyabags.co.uk/">Onya Bag</a>, which I fear each and every one of my friends and family is about to receive as birthday/Crimble prezzo. Simply splendid, and no doubt the first slither down the slippery slope to outright green-loonery. I shall devote my trouser turn-ups to composting humous. Or at least admit that it's happening, and pretend it's deliberate.BonGobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07358667447248648922noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21438896.post-1152259633571861032006-07-07T08:58:00.000+01:002006-07-07T09:41:17.823+01:00Existential DisclaimersA lot of the confusion about what games are/could be/should be comes from treating games as their plots or backstory. This turns them into texts, which means the world and his wife can swarm over them with their cool, cruel text-deconstructin' irons. This, in my book, tends to be theory about theory. In his actual and excellent book <a href="http://www.theoryoffun.com/">A Theory Of Fun,</a> Raph Koster pointed out that games just <span style="font-style: italic;">aren</span>'t their plots. The brouhaha about killing pedestrians in Carmaggedon was lost on the kids playing it, who realised it was actually Pacman, not a homicidal highway hecatomb - the game was the gameplay, not the backstory.<br /><br />I posted on Clive Thompson's <a href="http://www.collisiondetection.net/">Collision Detection</a> in response to his article on <em><a href="http://www.collisiondetection.net/mt/archives/2005/11/_wired_news_has.html">True Crime: New York City</a>. </em>Oh lord, here I am, quoting myself. Does that qualify me as a sock puppet? Can I attempt astroturfing now?<br /><blockquote><p>I have a quibble with how much we can read into such games - not so much what the paying (hopefully) punters will make of them, that's their affair and rationalising every potential player response is like Casaubon's Key To All Mythologies - endless as a scheme for joining the stars. I'm more concerned with how the developers are arriving at these particular gameplay settings and solutions. Developers are asking themselves purely practical questions: What's going to <i>work</i>? Which Existential Disclaimer Narrative is going to let us put the player in gameplay-worthy situations? What current genres can we dresss the gameplay up as? </p> <p>I don't dispute that games are <i>some</i> sort of barometer for social themes, memes, trends, what have you, but I'm dubious that they directly reflect anything other than developer/publisher pragmatism. Simply put, it's easier for developers to furnish the player with a convincing homicidal monster than a plausible girlfriend. </p> Quotable Superstars like Molyneux and Miyamoto aside, developers and publishers just have to get the damn things made, on time, on budget. I'd suggest that the dictates of production incline gameplay towards a simplistic worldview. Being risk-averse doesn't necessarily reflect social conservatism. It's just so much easier to submerge the player and (more importantly) the hidden menu system of the gamplay in the simplistic moral world of the lone avenger than one where the protagonist has to negotiate, socialise, weigh motivations, navigate ambiguity or ambivalence. Menus can't stand ambivalence - they require valence, great big discrete binary blobs of it</blockquote>Not entirely sure what I was trying to corral together here, but I'm sure there'll be more of it.BonGobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07358667447248648922noreply@blogger.com0