Archive for May 11th, 2008
« Previous EntriesWikiU Schools You in Film Making, Home or Otherwise [Video Editing]
Sunday, May 11th, 2008
Most home movies are jammed-together affairs, but anyone can make their videos better with a little schooling in the basics of story-telling. The Wikiversity has a free multi-part "Film School" that focuses on the kinds of tips just as helpful to unofficial wedding videographers as aspiring auteurs. Learn the basics of framing, editing in "L cuts," and when and where to cut a scene. Some of it does get a bit technical for DIY directors, but you'll pick up enough to have real pride in the next set of home-burned DVDs you send out.
The Games My Mother Played [Mother's Day]
Sunday, May 11th, 2008
May 1st 1980 I came home from school to find my mother waiting there for me, a giddy smile on her lips. She always loved birthdays. Back then we were living in an apartment, my younger sister and I sharing one room, my older brother and sister sometimes sharing another, and birthdays were the one time my mother, taking care of four children on child support and a modest income from the dancing school she ran, would really get to splurge on her kids.
Seven year-old me knew this, so I was nearly as excited as she was as she handed over a small wrapped package, my shaking fingers tearing at the colorful paper to reveal the prize beneath. Space Invaders for the Atari 2600! My heart leapt! At that point I had only been exposed to video games at my dad's house or when my brother borrowed a friend's Odyssey 2, but I had already developed the hunger that would one day lead me here. I looked around the room for the missing piece of the present...behind her, in the kitchen, on the glass coffee table my brother would eventually put his foot through in a bout of teenage rebellion, but it was nowhere to be seen.
"Where's the Atari?" I asked, my voice shaking with excitement.
"What Atari?" she replied, looking perplexed.
My heart sank a little, but I ventured onward with my questioning.
"This is a cartridge for the Atari 2600. You need an Atari to play it."
My mother frowned. "Oh. I thought it was one of those handheld games," she replied, even going as far as to mimic playing a portable game with her hands.
I was crushed, completely. Not because I wasn't getting an Atari, but because of that disappointed look on my mother's face as I explained the problem. A very emphatic child, I could almost feel how upset she was about her mistake. Here she was, struggling to raise us and wanting to give me one special day out of the year and she messed it up.
I went into my room and cried for an hour. She didn't stop me.
An hour later my father arrived with my Atari 2600.
The whole incident is the clearest memory I have of my childhood. At first I was a little hurt by her deception, but soon I saw the humor in it, and over time and across many birthdays I would grow to appreciate my mother's little tricks, whether it be hiding my presents under my own bed, knowing that whenever she told me to clean my room I just stuffed everything under there without looking, or the time I came home on May 1st and she told me to clean the bathroom, having hidden a bicycle in the shower, catching me in a lie when I came back out without having bothered to open the curtain.
It was my mother who raised me, along with my stepfather who would come along later to provide a logical balance to her whimsical ways. She taught me to appreciate words, and to see the humor in any situation. She taught me to look beyond situations and see what was happening behind the scenes. She implanted in me a thirst for knowledge as well as a joy of sharing said knowledge. In short, she's the reason you are reading this today.
Or, to put it another way, she's to blame.
Today is the day for celebrating motherhood. Not the biological process, but the artistic one...taking a young mind and shaping it into something that carries over all the best things in you.
I hope I've made her proud.
To all of the mothers out there, especially mine, Happy Mother's Day!
A List of Demands for Grand Theft Auto [Grand Theft Auto IV]
Sunday, May 11th, 2008Not even two weeks since its release and the ingrates at Kombo.com already have eight things they want to see in Grand Theft Auto from now on. Everyone has an ultimate GTA experience list, and I'm betting that GTA IV represents someone's wishful thinking from the Vice City days (the controls represent mine). But some of these have already been introduced.
Co-op play was kindasorta in San Andreas (albeit offline) and everyone shrugged. To fully integrate that into the main game experience seriously disrupts the at-your-own-pace narrative of what is basically a cinematic video game. Multiple cities: also San Andreas — including (technically) Liberty City. Robberies: Vice City, although I agree, I wish they had them in San Andreas and here, too.
How about a Godfather-style intimidation engine? The first two missions for Vlad were laughable — throw a brick through a window? Bump into a van? (I did it with a Blista Compact, too). God damn, those clowns would pay protection money for their seat at the Yankees game if you breathed on them hard.
One thing I do not want to see, or wouldn't use anyway, is an in-car view. I am constantly reliant on the elevated perspective of third-person driving, and always thumbing the right stick to peek before taking a corner or passing to the left on a hill. Lowering the POV and holding it inside the car would have you stuck in traffic half of the game.
8 Things We Want to See in GTA [Kombo.com]
Cure Poison Ivy and Jellyfish Stings with Vodka [Clever Uses]
Sunday, May 11th, 2008
Next time you stumble into a patch of poison ivy at a picnic, The Daily Green web site suggests pouring a little vodka on the affected area to cure what ails you. In fact, the article offers a total of 10 unusual uses for the popular beverage, from flower preservation and insect repellent to toothache reliever and jellyfish-sting soother. This is completely unverified, but I've also heard it mixes well and can get you really drunk, so be careful!
Why Achievements are Awesome [Achievements]
Sunday, May 11th, 2008OK, I think I get the gist of this piece. TeamTeaBag takes a look at gaming achievements on the 360, and it's hard for me to assess the tone: Either SmellyGeekyBoy (the writer)
• resents the hell out of all achievements and is parodying achievement whores OR
• knows that cynical motives on behalf of Microsoft and the developers are the reason for game achievements. But he can't help himself from collecting all of them or
• agrees completely with and loves the concept of achievements.
I think it's between 1 and 2. And for myself, I'm between 2 and 3. I look on it this way, when you get a game that you really, really enjoy, the achievements show that you got your money's worth. Hokey, I know, but for those titles that don't have a 100 percent-completion model (and for some that do) the achievements can add another reason to keep on enjoying it.
Why Achievements are Awesome {TeamTeaBag]
Also, you can get that bumper sticker via CafePress
Classical Gaming: A Roman Retrospective [Exegi Monumentum]
Sunday, May 11th, 2008
Rock, Paper, Shotgun linked to this nice retrospective of Roman-themed games over the years, starting with Legionnaire (1982) and ending with Rome: Total War (2004). The series of musings includes wrap ups and discussion, strengths and weaknesses. I began my academic life as a classicist with a knack for lyric poetry — while I hopped ship to history (East Asian at that), I still have many reminders hanging around of those halcyon days spent with Horace and Livy. A nostalgic look back at how and why these classically-themed games have succeeded (or not) is a welcome reminder of many games I played as a youngster:
... SimRomes stick around for a reason. As much as I loved the alien nature of the Egypt in Tilted Mill's Children of the Nile, Rome remains the most accessible ancient city. A century of movies and books have primed us for gladiators, togas, legions on the march...much moreso than, say, Sophoclean drama, chitons and peltasts.
Oh, sure, they're generally wildly historically inaccurate (what else is new?), but panem et circenses, people - who needs realistic class conflict, slavery, and rioting when you've got red-caped legions and chariot racing? The wisdom of Roman satirists still holds true today. Anyways, it's a fun look back at one popular theme if you're a closet (or not) classics geek, or just a fan of some of the titles.
A History of the Ancients Game [Flash of Steel via Rock, Paper, Shotgun]
Banjo Kazooie Screenshots Leak [Banjo Kazooie 3]
Sunday, May 11th, 2008
Lots of sites are posting these, I saw them on British Gaming Blog first. Here's two new screenshots from Banjo Kazooie. This follows rumors that the Xbox's "Newton" Wiimote clone is being built specifically for this title's gameplay.
Looks like some serious Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang action in the first shot. Another after the jump. Click on them for full size.
First Banjo 3 Screenshots [British Gaming Blog]
Gaming Into Adulthood [Growing Up Is Hard To Do]
Sunday, May 11th, 2008
Finally getting to grad school was — in some ways — a rude awakening for me; I still haven't mastered the art of balancing the demands of my work with, uh, everything else, which had never been a problem to this point. My gaming life has been sporadic at best since January, and I spend more time writing about games than actually playing them. But despite my ineptitude, I felt a little hopeful after reading a nice piece over at GameSetWatch that explores the art of growing up and balancing a beloved hobby (gaming) with the demands of adulthood, like parenthood:
In retrospect, it was silly of me to be so worried that being an "adult" meant I wouldn't be able to play videogames. I believe that part of my maturation into what I consider to be real adulthood came in the form of learning to juggle all the new "adult" responsibilities I've taken on with the hobbies I've always held dear, most notably gaming.Thinking back to when I was growing up, my parents kept up with their hobbies just the same as I do now .... I can vividly remember both of them pursuing their favorite pastimes on a daily basis while still keeping up with their parental and familial duties.
There is a light at the end of the tunnel! Balance is a hard skill to master, and I'm looking forward to having more time to game in future years when I've nailed down the best way to fit in everything I love to do. It's occasionally painful to come to grips with having to reconfigure well-loved hobbies in sometimes dramatic ways (I've given up much loved hobbies entirely until I get out of grad school, mostly because the time-money conundrum cannot be worked out), but it is nice to 'have it all' when you can make it work.
'All Grown Up: A Gamer Comes to Grips With Adulthood' [GameSetWatch]
Twitterverse Screensaver Visualizes Your Twitter Activity [Mac OS X Tip]
Sunday, May 11th, 2008
An adventurous Flickr user dug up a file in Leopard's example developer documents called Twitterverse, a screensaver that displays your Twitter world in a circle of thumbnailed activity. To use Twitterverse, find the file (a quick Spotlight search for Twitterverse should do the trick), open your Desktop & Screen Saver preference pane, and then simply drag the Twitterverse.qtz file into the preview window of the Screen Saver preference pane. To get it downloading your friends' tweets, click the Options button, enter your username and password, and try it out. I had trouble seeing results (just a blank screen), but if you have more luck, the screensaver is eye-tastic!
The Video Game Music Jukebox [Soundtracks]
Sunday, May 11th, 2008This site is full of win: Game Music Jukebox. You should really give this a look. More than 120 video game soundtracks. Double Dragon. Marathon. Mass Effect. Hitman: Blood Money. Lots of stuff from 8-bit synth to full symphony scores. And not just the title track, but the full score, broken out by tracks.
Maybe not everything, but definitely a lot and certainly something to tickle your nostalgia fancy. Looks like they update it, too, last one was April 29.
I'm listening to the Metroid Theme now, Brinstar to be exact. IMHO, best score for an 8-bit game ever. I want to make it into a ringtone, I just need to pick the right refrain.
Just saw this on Reddit so, the buffering might be a little slow on some of the larger tracks as people go to it.
Reliver Your Favorite Games Through Music [Game Music Jukebox]
The Difficulty of (Games’) Difficulty [En Garde]
Sunday, May 11th, 2008
Kieron Gillen has a nice meditation on difficulty and games over at the Escapist: where do you find it these days? Gillen opines that real difficulty, something "balanced expertly on the precipice between hard and unfair" (like his example of God Hand), is increasingly pushed towards the edges. As the rules of the economic game have changed, many titles are forced to balance challenge with "completability," with the balance being skewed towards easy (or 'easier):
Once upon a time, games were competitors. Now, primarily, they're entertainers. They aimed to beat you. Now, to be beaten. Our language says much, really. While we've talked about difficulty curves forever, the problems now are "difficulty spikes." No one ever critiques a game for a difficulty-trough - because the former stops you getting anywhere and the latter is just something you coast throug
I'm not one of those gamers that particularly enjoys having my ass handed to me to the point where I simply cannot complete a game, though there are plenty of games that have challenged me to (my) max - I'm also the obsessive type, so the pattern of having side quests and optional challenges galore in my games of choice usually means I have more than enough to keep me busy. This question of balancing the commercial needs of AAA titles with what 'real' gamers (however you want to define that) want to see is an increasingly pressing problem — though not one that I expect will be resolved any time soon, other that to push more and more 'styles' of games towards the fringes.
Hard Times: The Future of Difficult Video Games
Niko Bellic’s Backstory [Grand Theft Auto IV]
Sunday, May 11th, 2008
Mr. Juandrful over at Kezins.com has pieced together a backstory on Niko Bellic, in a VH1 "Behind the Music" kind of biography. Counterintuitively, I should put up a spoiler alert here, because although it's all about stuff prior to his arrival in Liberty City, naturally it draws on dialogue and events in the game, which you may not have played yet. Mr. Juandrful also says some of this was built on "inside info" about Niko's past, given to him by Rockstar.
Anyway, spoiler warning, don't click the link if you want to get Niko's backstory through the game for yourself. Otherwise, if you want a quick read that humanizes the character, go for it.
Behind the Game: Niko Bellic Before GTA IV [kezins.com]