www antimodal com

ARGH! – [rants]

Dear Electronic Book Review,

Please make your site usable.

Game Studies – [musings]

This afternoon my attention was caught by an exchange between Julian Raul Kücklich [particle stream] and Markku Eskelinen. The verbal sniping is amusing, though it pales in comparison to a netnews-era flamewar. What I find interesting about this discussion -- and I have made oblique comments about this on grandtextauto -- is that most of the posturing has an implicit assumption: that game studies has a coherent object and is worth pursuit.

Now certainly there are games, and there are people who study games, and so there is something called game studies. The more polemical of the game studies crew have even coined a Latin-esqe term for the field: Ludology. In the sortie above, Eskelinen argues for a game studies/ludology concerned with rules, goals, and more-than-passive player effort, a hard science positioning which may [or may not] be opposed to the soft science approach of narrative and social science. And this is where the debate perpetually lingers: should we discuss games the soft way (story) or the hard way (rules)?

And I am perpetually wondering why we should talk about games at all.

my to-do list – [misc]

Gotta get this thing done.

- campaign game - rally: 1 hour
- campaign game - speech: 3 hours
- campaign game gfx : 2 hours
- campaign game - debate challenge: 4 hours
- campaign game - interview: 15 hours

25 hours to go.

Political Campaign Games – [misc]

A recap of this year's political campaign simulation games, in alphabetical order:

• Frontrunner by Lantern Games -- Released: July 30.
• The Political Machine by Brad Wardell, published by StarDock -- Release date: August 2004
• Power Politics 3 by Randy Chase and Kellogg Creek Software -- Released September 1.
• President Forever by 80soft -- Released ?

I'm posting this partly as self-motivation to finish my own campaign game, Political Icon 2004. Right now my to-do list looks like this:

- campaign game - rally: 4 hours
- campaign game - speech: 8 hours
- campaign game gfx : 2 hours
- campaign game - debate challenge: 4 hours
- campaign game - interview: 16 hours

Videogames on the radio – [misc]

News flash: the 10 September 2004 edition of The World features a segment on videogames, including brief interviews with Gonzalo Frasca and Noah Wardrip-Fruin.

There should be an archive of the story posted in the next day or so.

Twisty Little Passages – [books]

Nick Montfort's book on interactive fiction, Twisty Little Passages, describes itself in two ways. The first description (p. 5) reads:

This book seeks to describe some of the intellectual history of the form and its relationship to other literary and gaming forms, and to computing and other computing programs, while critically examining a representative selection of important works and describing their interrelationships.

The second description (p. 14) reads:

Thus this book considers [interactive fiction] works from the standpoint of the narratives they can generate, the way they function as riddles, and their nature as computer programs.

Thus Montfort has promised to present two equally important perspectives on interactive fiction (IF), the first a critical history of the form's origins, the second a critical analysis of the form's operations, or to put it in even simpler terms, where IF operates and how IF operates. Given the meagre attention previously given to interactive fiction by scholars, it is this first perspective, the critical history, that is most needed, and that takes a more dominant role in the book.

SIGGRAPH 2004 recap – [misc]

Well, SIGGRAPH is done and gone and I should record my thoughts for posterity.

Five days of trekking to the convention center was one day too many, a feeling I get almost every year. I always sense that I've missed something, so I end up at the show just one more time to make sure I got it all in.

i. Exhibition

The exhibition was contained in halls H and J of the ginormous [gigantic/enormous] exhibition hall. A big convention, but small for SIGGRAPH. Digging out an old program from SIGGRAPH 2001, also at the Los Angeles Convention Center, the exhibition occupied the entire exhibition hall, halls G, H, J, and K, with registration in a downstairs hall (a carpeted parking garage) and the Electronic Theater held offsite at the Shrine Auditorium.

This year, the exhibition floor, the registration area, and the electronic theater were all contained in the exhibition hall.

There is some serious shrinkage going on with SIGGRAPH. The exhibition is now dominated by 3D tools for the entertainment industry, whereas previously this industry was one of many dominant forces. Kind of like the sole remaining superpower... hey, I think I've found my metaphor.

sitting on the floor at SIGGRAPH – [musings]

So I'm sitting on the floor near the Emerging Technologies booth at SIGGRAPH, wirelessly connected to the web. Getting wireless working takes a little perseverance, there are plenty of hotspots set up but something, perhaps sunspots or people with Intel laptops or cars with loud stereos, tend to send network connections askew. The most amazing thing about wireless tehcnology is that people are willing to put up with such low reliability with these things -- rather than admit that wired connections are simply a better way to live.

Ban Comic Sans – [MLP]

I recently installed a Windows operating system on a new machine, and one of my first tasks, along with disabling VBScript and removing all those wretched screen savers, was to delete the Comic Sans font.

I guess I'm not alone: Ban Comic Sans website

I'm not just against Comic Sans because it is an ugly font; I am against its painful and inadequate usurpation of comicbook style lettering. Look at that weak 'a', and that meagre 'g'... wait a minute, who the hell uses lowercase comicbook lettering in the first place?

Siggiraffe – [misc]

It looks like it is time for my biennial pilgrimage to the Los Angeles Convention Center, where the tigers and zebras of SIGGRAPH 2004 will be frolicking all week. The conference proper started yesterday, the art gallery opens today, and the exhibiiton begins on Tuesday.

Proof that Videogames are Evil – [MLP]

17 year old boy kills 14 year old friend with a claw hammer after playing Manhunt. [The Sun] (link expired) [BBC News]

This story doesn't seem to be making much news at all. (My unscientific research: a Google News search for "Rockstar Manhunt murder" brings up 5 results.)