Nerd News: Spore is coming to the Mac

At MacWorld '08, EA announced that Spore will be simultaneously released on Mac and PC. That would be great news for me, because the computer I built two years ago (when some folks first thought Spore would come out) is looking less and less capable with the new generation of games that has been released since then.

Unfortunately, they're using Cider to port the game, so it's only going to run on the newer, Intel-based Macs. Which means that the G5 we bought less than two years ago is already obsolete. Oh well, that's why our family has a Mac and a PC. To play games on.

Somebody filmed an extremely short clip of the game running on Macs, but that's not exciting. What is fun to watch is this half-hour video of Will Wright speaking at NASA in January.

SF Zero: a reality game

beautiful photos by BlueberryMascarpone

SF0 is a web-based, collaborative, not-for-profit project. It's like an Alternate Reality Game, except that they're not trying to sell you anything and there's no overarching narrative other than the one you create yourself. It is a game that takes place in the real world and pushes the limits of the possible.

Players participate in "tasks," which are interesting actions you might not normally do. You get a set amount of points for posting your completion, and additional points are awarded in the form of "votes" cast by other players. So a particularly clever proof will gather a higher number of votes, and a correspondingly higher score. Earn enough points and ascend to the next level, where you can sign up for higher-ranking tasks, and continue to move up on the scoreboard.

Those are the mechanics of the game. But what is it really "about?" That's up to each individual player. For me it's community, creativity, imagination, beauty, art. Take a look for yourself. All scores were recently reset to zero for the start of a new Era, so it's the perfect time to join. See you in the Praxis!

Geeky gambling in Las Vegas

pong slot machine, originally uploaded by lokialbertson.

While I was in Las Vegas, I stayed at the Tropicana. It's a little worn down and frayed around the edges, and totally underwhelming from outside compared to the other casinos on the Strip. But when I first walked inside, it was an impressive experience for my first Vegas casino. I didn't do much on that first night except for dinner at the Eiffel Tower, but on day two I walked across the street to the MGM Grand. That place totally blew my mind.

I didn't intend to drop any money in the machines until I saw this post on Kotaku the week before my trip. After that, it was my mission to find the Pong slots. I spotted them while walking through the MGM Grand, sat down, and promptly lost one dollar. It wasn't very fun. I think I was doing it wrong.

On my way back to my room I decided to try again with the Alien machine. Right off the bat, I won 50 cents on a 10 cent bet. I considered cashing in my considerable winnings and celebrating with a drink. Instead, I kept going in an attempt to recoup my full dollar of losses from before, and ended up losing it all.

Custom action figures

Photo swiped & cropped from Wired

A while ago, Wired ran an article on action figure modding. It's an interesting concept but I wasn't blown away by any of the examples in their gallery (except the seriously awesome Skeletor shown above). Then I saw Jin Saotome's Master Chief on Kotaku. I was so impressed by the incredible level of detail on this 8-inch figure, I'd be proud to own it, even though I don't play Halo.

I would love to have a modder selling these at a Craftstravaganza, except the price would probably have to be somewhere on the scale of a customized Blythe doll. Master Chief is on eBay and bidding is already over $300 with four and a half days to go!

Talk Like a Pirate Day

I don't recommend that you actually talk like a pirate, but there are other ways to celebrate this dubious holiday, based on your level of commitment to living the life:

1. Slap on an eyepatch, drink some rum, and perch a parrot on your shoulder. That's real ultimate pirate power!
2. If you're content to play at being a pirate via the magic of videogame entertainment, Sid Meier's Pirates! is a fun facsimile, for a little while. I picked up this game for about a dollar at the local Savers thrift store, and I totally got my money's worth in pirate fun.
3. One level deeper is the online game Puzzle Pirates (which you can try for free), wherein you pretend to be a pirate who pretends to do piratey things as represented by minigames. Avast! It's meta-tastic!
   

I played Puzzle Pirates for a couple of months until I got married. It was very fun. They have added a bunch of puzzles since then, enough so that I'm considering giving it another look, just to try out the new content. As you might imagine, I especially enjoy the distilling game.

An essay on the disparity of gender roles in Harvest Moon

Lately I've been playing Harvest Moon on the Gameboy Advance. There are two versions of this game; one in which the main character is a boy, and one where it's a girl. In Japan these are appended "for boy" and "for girl." This clear distinction is muddied in the import subtitles, which are "Friends of Mineral Town" and "More Friends of Mineral Town," respectively.

As a series, Harvest Moon has been critiqued for sexism, so I was intrigued by this release. A previous game (Back to Nature) was the first to offer a choice of gender for your on-screen avatar, but the girls' version was dumbed-down in comparison, including a premature ending. The game is over when girls get married, whereas boys can continue to play indefinitely--and their wives dutifully stay at home and have a baby one year after the wedding. So, that's awesome.

By contrast, the gameplay in Friends of Mineral Town for Girls is supposed to be almost identical to the one for boys. They even added improvements, instead of taking features away! Progress! Just for fun, I fired up both games on my emulator to look for differences, and I was in for a treat right away. The opening stories are polar opposites of each other.

If you play as a boy, there's a touching tale about befriending an old farmer and fond memories of a rural vacation. After he dies, you inherit his farm. The game begins as you attempt to continue his legacy. That's nice.

Now here's the introductory sequence if you play as a girl. You dream of escaping the daily grind for a slow-paced life in the country. In the newspaper, you see a farm for sale and decide to buy it, sight unseen. Only when you arrive on the property do you realize that you have been suckered! The fields are littered with detritus and the buildings are in disrepair. Now you're out whatever money you spent, and since you already sold your apartment, you're stuck here. Stupid girl! To top off this heartwarming scenario, the mayor of the town comes out and laughs at you. Way to go, Harvest Moon. Stay classy.

Mushiking is awesome, extinction is not

Japanese kids love bugs, they love arcade games, and they love them some trading cards. Mushiking combines arcade beetle battles with collectible cards that are dispensed by the machine, and swiped to control the on-screen action.

Although this game is only the latest phenomenon to cash in on the beetle craze, it is being blamed for an increase in illegal importation of endangered bugs from Turkey. According to the Times Online article, "[a] million beetles a year are being imported into Japan, where they are sold for as much as 40,000 yen (£170) each on internet auction sites."

Conservation groups are concerned that the stag beetle Lucanus cervus akbesianus could be wiped out entirely. They're in a serious crisis. Let's get to breeding these beautiful creatures, so that our grandchildren can still run away screaming from giant bugs on their doorsteps.

Video game cross-stitch

Over at Kotaku, there's a post about a dude who recreates scenes from classic videogames... in cross-stitch! May I say, radical. This is a truly excellent example of traditional craft remixed with modern themes.

Another good reason to move to Canada

Residents of our neighbour to the North can win one of six hand-painted Wii consoles. This contest is closed to foreigners. I'm so close, yet so out of luck!

This graffiti-style case by Udon collective member Arnold Tsang is my favourite. Another is done by Gary Taxali, probably the most famous artist on the list. Hoi-An Tang and illScarlett round out the roster of announced artists, and two more are yet to be revealed.

Bird house raising

I picked up a pack of posters by Adam Turman. They look like this (except bigger). When my chores were done for the day, I had an Andrew Jackson burning a hole in my pocket. I saw GTA San Andreas at Target, so I thought about getting that game, and punching imaginary dudes on my PS2. Instead, bought a post at Ace Hardware to hold my bird house up.

Today I learned that:

• Buying hardware piecemeal, in this case, was only somewhat cheaper than a kit.
• The advantage is that I can buy a taller pole.
• The drawback is that it's one solid ten foot pole, instead of several, smaller, pole sections.
• My Saturn coupe is just long enough to fit a ten foot pole inside, going from one corner of the trunk to the opposite corner of the dashboard.
  
• I should deactivate our home security system before I bring the pole into the back yard.
• Corollary: Next time I hear an alarm going off, I will quickly make sure it isn't mine.
  

After talking to our friendly security people, I dug a hole in our lawn. The friendly hardware expert at Ace told me to bury the post at least 18 inches into the ground, but I hit an impasse at one foot deep. I also hit a cable (don't tell my wife OK)! There was a layer of solid rock that prevented me from going any further, so I stuck the pole up and hoped for the best. I think it will be fine, as long as it isn't touched by squirrels, or rain.

Sporegasm: videos from GDC 2007 & SXSW

UPDATE: Incredibly detailed article from Kotaku. Hand-scribed notes from Will Wright's keynote speech at SXSW. This comes almost immediately after the talk, but there's still no good source for the prior presentations (TED and GDC).

UPDATE #2: There's a video from the SXSW presentation. When I view it in Linux, it has to pause every 5 seconds to rebuffer, but it plays like gravy in OS X. Your mileage may vary.

Will Wright's game Spore is possibly coming out in 2007 or 2008, so this could be the start of the last big marketing push. Here's a montage of gameplay videos from the Game Developer's Conference, which wrapped up yesterday. I can't wait to design my own Sui Generis creature.

There were a couple of other presentations by Will Wright and the Spore team recently. It's probably only a matter of time before those videos hit. I'll post them here if they turn up.

Beale Ciphers v. Perplex City

I'd like to expand on the ideas in yesterday's post with a discussion of the Beale Ciphers. There are two documents, published in 1885, that contain encrypted clues for finding buried treasure. Lots of people have spent lots of time trying to figure out the code, but it has yet to be deciphered. The prevailing notion nowadays is that it cannot be broken, because the story, and the documents, are a hoax.

This is all very interesting, and by following the links above you can learn a fair bit about cryptanalysis, ciphers, and marketing scams. It brings me back to my first thought when I originally came across the Perplex City concept: what if there is no Cube? I'm a skeptic by nature, and I wondered how we would know if no one ever found the grand prize object. It was, in fact, devilishly hidden, but it did exist, and it was located.

So, the concept of selling clues to eager treasure hunters is nothing new. The Beale Ciphers were fake, but the publishers made a profit, at the expense of their customers. Perplex City is the real deal: they gave out a prize and stand to make more money by selling another round of products. Their second "season" began this month, and they're even branching out the franchise into board games. Ironically, Mind Candy (the company behind Perplex City) stands to make a lot more money than the perpetrators of the Beale Papers. But will people still be talking about them in a hundred years?