kottke.org posts about video games
Steven Johnson on The Long Zoom, “the satellites tracking in on license-plate numbers in the spy movies; the Google maps in which a few clicks take you from a view of an entire region to the roof of your house; the opening shot in ‘Fight Club’ that pulls out from Edward Norton’s synapses all the way to his quivering face as he stares into the muzzle of a revolver; the fractal geometry of chaos theory in which each new scale reveals endless complexity.” And that’s just the introduction to an interview of Will Wright about his new Long Zoom game, Spore.
The London Science Museum will hold a video game exhibition starting in October. Visitors will be able to play vintage video games, including Spacewar, the world’s first computer game.
Todd Deutsch’s photo gallery, Gamers, contains photos of video game enthusiasts and the (non-virtual) world they inhabit.
Geoffrey Chaucer writes on his blog about playing the Exboxe CCCLX video game system. Donkeye-Kynge sounds pretty fun, as does Tyger Woodses Huntinge and Hawkinge. (And I love that the commenters stay in character.) (via rb)
MotherLoad. Sure, it starts off simple enough. Oh, it’s like Dig Dug, cute. Collect the ore, exchange it for money, and ooh, upgrades! There’s platinum down here. Rubies! Wait, it’s almost dinnertime? But we just had lunch. That was 5 hours ago? Oh. No. (This is why I can never, ever play Warcraft. Meg would be widowed for sure. “Jason is survived by his wife, Meg, and was preceded in death by his former self…”)
Stop-motion human Space Invaders. The must-see video game and stop-motion video related link of the day. (thx, janelle)
Update: This looks like the official site.
During the depths of the dot com bust, Julian Dibbell looked online for a job and found one as a commodities trader in the Ultima Online virtual world. During one particularly productive month, he made almost US$4000. Dibbell has a book coming out about the experience, Play Money: Or, How I Quit My Day Job and Made Millions Trading Virtual Loot. In addition to being available at bookstores in meatspace, Play Money will also be on sale in the virtual world of Second Life in the currency of that world (Linden dollars). From the press release:
In-game versions of Play Money designed by Second Life coder/publisher Falk Bergman are available for L$750. These copies can be signed by Dibbell at his in-Second Life interview with journalist Wagner James Au on July 27th. For the Second Life resident who needs something a bit more tactile, L$6250 buys a real-life copy of Play Money, shipped with care to the buyer’s real life address, in addition to the standard in-game version.
(At the time of this press release, Linden dollars are trading at approximately L$300.00 to the US$1.00. Adjusted to US dollars, an online copy costs US$2.50, and the price of a real-life copy bought in-game is around US$20.85.)
Dibbell will be signing his virtual books in Second Life on July 27th. Caterina read Play Money and has some thoughts on its relation to her work/play at Ludicorp. And here’s a preview of Chinese Gold Farmers, a documentary on gold farming sweatshops in China.
Guide for how to win at Pac-Man. “Pac-Man is the game which represents everything that’s good about gaming (any kind of gaming) and nothing that is bad.”
The 10 greatest years in gaming. I’ll always be partial to 1986.
Joe Malia’s privacy scarves provide mobile phone users and portable video game players with privacy, a light/glare-free texting/playing environment, and warm necks. “Users of the wearable mobile phone scarf can venture into public spaces confident that if the need to compose a private text message were to arise the object could be pulled over the face to create an isolated environment.” (via eyeteeth)
Following the examples set by PacManhattan and Nintendo Amusement Park, another popular video game is moving beyond the screen and into the real world. Enthusiasts of EA Sports’ Madden NFL 06 have been spotted in various locations around the United States playing a physical game based on the bestselling title.
DeWayne Coleman of Grand Rapids, Michigan said, “it looked so fun on the screen and we thought, ‘why can’t we go find a flat grassy area to run around, throw the ball, and punt on fourth down?’” Other “football” groups (as they like to be called) have uploaded candid photos of their activity to the Flickr photo-sharing site.
These early amateur efforts bare a crude resemblance to the gameplay in Madden, but a professional league set to begin play this fall in several major US cities will follow Madden NFL 06 much more closely. The National Football League (NFL) will employ athletes that resemble their in-game counterparts that will play for teams named after those in Madden. The teams will go through a full 16-game season, followed by a playoff and a “Super” bowl game to determine the champion. League officials plan to bring in revenue by charging for admission, selling foodstuffs during the games, and memorabilia inspired by the virtual uniforms worn by players in the game. The video game’s namesake, TV personality John Madden, will even colorfully describe the action of the games for simultaneous broadcast on network television.
Madden NFL 06 purists have criticized the NFL’s ambitious efforts, saying that ticket prices are too high and the games aren’t interactive enough. One Madden fan from Phoenix, Arizona summed up the frustrations: “I’m supposed to pay twice as much as I paid for the video game for one lousy live game, not including beer and hot dog costs, and I can’t even control what’s going on in the game? What the hell is so fun about that?”
S-s-s-omething from the inbox. Paul writes regarding the uncanny valley:
Given your recent link re: the uncanny valley, I thought this article about Sun-Maid’s redesigned icon would be worth your time. Photo.
Clearly, she’s selling grapes from a certain valley. Creeeepy.
I love the idea of Uncanny Valley being an actual geographical location (situated in California, I would assume) inhabited by creepy video game characters, digitized actors, and retooled advertising icons.
Imagine the views from neighboring hillsides! (Image courtesy of Google Earth.)
The Stev(ph)ens Dubner and Levitt report on some recent research suggesting that people who are good at things got good at them primarily through practice and not because of innate talent.
Their work, compiled in the “Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance,” a 900-page academic book that will be published next month, makes a rather startling assertion: the trait we commonly call talent is highly overrated. Or, put another way, expert performers — whether in memory or surgery, ballet or computer programming — are nearly always made, not born. And yes, practice does make perfect. These may be the sort of cliches that parents are fond of whispering to their children. But these particular cliches just happen to be true.
The talent myth described here seems to be distinct from that which Malcolm Gladwell talks about in relation to talented people and companies, but I’m sure parallels could be drawn. But back to the original article…I was particularly taken with the concept of “deliberate practice”:
Deliberate practice entails more than simply repeating a task — playing a C-minor scale 100 times, for instance, or hitting tennis serves until your shoulder pops out of its socket. Rather, it involves setting specific goals, obtaining immediate feedback and concentrating as much on technique as on outcome.
“Deliberate practice” reminds me of a video game a bunch of my friends are currently hooked on called Brain Age. Available for the handheld Nintendo DS, Brain Age is based on a Japanese brain training “game” developed by Dr. Ryuta Kawashima. The game measures the “age” of your brain based on your performance of simple tasks like memorizing a list of words or addition of small numbers. As you practice (deliberately), you get faster and more skilled at solving these mini-games and your brain age approaches that of a smarty-pants, twitchy-fingered teenager.
Speaking of talented teenagers, this week’s New Yorker contains an article (not online) on Ivan Lendl’s golfing daughters. In it, Lendl agrees that talent is created, not born:
“Can you create athletes, or do they just happen?” [Lendl] asked me not long ago. “I think you can create them, and I think that Tiger Woods’s father proved that. People will sometimes ask me, ‘How much talent did you have in tennis?’ I say, ‘Well, how do you measure talent?’ Yeah, sure, McEnroe had more feel for the ball. But I knew how to work, and I worked harder than he did. Is that a talent in itself? I think it is.”
Translation: there’s more than one way to be good at something. There’s something very encouraging and American about it, this idea that through hard work, you can become proficient and talented at pretty much anything.
Online TurboTax as a text adventure game. “I should write up a complete walkthrough to solve Tax Return 2006 in as few moves as possible.”
Today I’m starting (and hopefully completing) Operation Empty My Inbox and Operation Close All My Browser Tabs.1 Over the past month and a half, I’ve barely replied to any email I’ve gotten, so if you sent me something during that time period, I hope to get to it today and perhaps send you a reply. I’ve also got about 20 33 tabs open in my browser, waiting to be read, so expect some output from that as well.
Update: Ok! With the exception of 6 messages that need my attention in the next day or after I get back from my trip, my inbox is completely empty. And it only took 5 solid hours of writing, dragging, dropping, applying rules, and eye strain. Still no progress on the browser tabs glut. In fact, the inbox clear-out resulted in 6 or 8 more tabs being opened. One step forward, two steps back.
[1] I’m also starting two smaller projects, Project Learn How To Type Again (jeez, five days of almost no computer use and I’ve completely dogrhottem hiw tp typw) and Project Steal Footnote Technique From John Gruber, Who I Met At SXSW And Is Completely Delightful. Both of these are in lieu of what I really want to be doing right now, Project Save The Princess. Some friends lent us their GameCube with the Legend of Zelda Collector’s Edition, which contains the original Zelda game which is still as fun as ever. Octoroks, Tektites, and Leevers too! ↩
I can’t believe The Legend of Zelda is 20 years old. One of my proudest gaming accomplishments was beating Zelda without dying, using only the wooden sword.
David argues for more variation and serendipity in video games. “…games overcompensate for their lack of variance in game play with over-the-top psychedelic graphics and sound effects. This is not a new problem of course with Pac-man and Super Mario Brothers often held up as classic examples.”
Andy unearths an old video game by Penn and Teller called Smoke and Mirrors, which famously features a game in which you drive a bus for 16 straight hours to score a single point. See also Takeshi no Chousenjou, a similarly challenging Japanese game.
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