internet rant: about some other ranting about ranting ranter rants

A story made “the cut” at PAreport today, which seems to tie into a bigger social problem I’ve seen rear up repeatedly over the past few months (years?). The problem: the consumer’s sense of entitlement.

Midichlorians: Mysticism as Technobabble (or: Part One of Why Everyone is Wrong About the Prequels?)

I think I’ve now gathered enough nerdy notes to write an epic treatise on why the Prequels are in fact dramatically misunderstood and under-appreciated. Since it is so popular to hate George Lucas instead of thinking for yourself, I think it’d be worth writing something.

Below is one piece of the puzzle: explaining Midichlorians

eReaders and digital books – doomed?

Has anyone seen any good examples of digital comic books? (on eReaders or otherwise) If so, please comment.

I’ve come to think of comic books as my pulpy guilty pleasure. but I can’t stand them in any digital form I’ve seen. Whenever the-inevitable-transition-to-eBooks comes up, i think about comics. I’m sure I’ll enjoy fine literature in an eReader (potentially much easier to look up words, or references, influences, other people’s insights, etc.). But I think this is because some part of me treats reading “great literature” as a form of work. I can’t deny that eReaders offer many advantages as a tool for exploring great literature.

Why Citizen Kane is the shit.

This Wired Post asks readers to ruminate on why Citizen Kane might still be (wisely) considered the best movie of all time. I thought it fun to think about. here’s my quick rant:

Luigi’s Haunted Mansion thoughts

wrote up some thoughts on this game, in response to an analysis on Gamasutra by Josh Bycer (which I felt could have gone further).
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Sleeping Gods: The meaning of “video games” (as computer-driven interaction systems?)

This was initially posted as a response to Tadhg Kelly’s blog post Techthulhu [Games and Future Fantasy] [@ whatGamesAre.com].

I think lack of sleep, yesterday’s ruminations on biometrics, and a few weeks of dissecting the philosophy behind joss whedon’s entertainment efforts all came together for me just now, to make a perfectly crazy ass rant. I started to re-read this and cringed. it might seem to contradict itself from once sentence to the next? is it one of THOSE crazy-as-fuck level rants? … huh. I dunno. but some of it struck me as very interesting. So i’m recording it here in my blog. hopefully revisit later (to either rethink it, or revise it to be easier to read). woof.
:::

Gun Loco …become: Clans of the Alphane Moon?

Read this sad story of Gun Loco’s cancellation over at gamasutra (always sorry to hear the work is being abandoned, and a likely huge team of developers is seeing their baby killed).

First thought was : they should rebrand the game as an adaptation of “Clans of the Alphane Moon“!

User Feedback based design, and Biometrics

I’ve become very interested in “redesigning the game, after I gather mass of data.”
(I guess it’d be neat to change a game on the fly while gathering usage feedback, but since the tools I would use aren’t going to be widespread anytime soon – much more interested in iterating on a game which can end up widely distributed).

The lure/illusion of short time investments (re: game play)

Just commented on Christian Nutt’s feature at gamasutra : The Rise Of Dragon Age II.
I’ve been saying for years that “I’m just not an RPG guy” (though it seems I’ll avidly play every other genre). I think of it as a question of time : when I hear a game has more than 30 hours of gameplay – I hesitate to buy it. Because I know I won’t be experiencing everything it has to offer. (would you buy a DVD/Bluray if you knew some parts of the feature would be omitted?)

copyright: Do copies need to be physical? (duplication vs. translation?)

Reading this “Did Watson Succeed On Jeopardy By Infringing Copyrights?” article got me thinking about copyright again.

Someone commented that OF COURSE google book scanning is copyright infringement. here is my (perhaps naive) reply: