The website People of Walmart may be old hat to some. I’m sure many Americans witness scenes like these every week (heck, I assure you some of these fine people would look right at home in the UK’s very own Walmart-owned Asda stores) and I’m fully expecting a call from 2009 to ask for it’s website back, but as an immature Englishman who has only just discovered the site, I’m currently finding People of Walmart …
As in “things Japanese people are pissed about.” Rock, Paper, Shotgun ran this and I just have to pass it along. Those are Japanese people holding signs written in Japanese complaining about Japanese roleplaying games and how they’re linear and stuff. Whole image follows.
I went to see the mind bending Inception the other night and came away with the same feeling I had after seeing The Matrix back in 1999. Inception is bold and exciting, and has an intensity only exasperated by Hans Zimmer’s unremitting score which seemed to be going full tilt for the entire duration of the film. The soundtrack is every bit as obnoxious as DiCaprio’s other 2010 film Shutter Island, and I love it.
To my horror, I’ve discovered that I write like the late David Foster Wallace. I do not like David Foster Wallace, but the internet doesn’t lie. I Write Like is a prose analyzer developed by a Russian software engineer. Paste in some of the stuff you’ve written and it humiliates you by telling you that you write like David Foster Wallace. I did get “Kurt Vonnegut” once, and “Douglas Adams” once, but I got David …
If you aren’t aware, the ASCII matrix that is Dwarf Fortress has a reputation of procedurally generating some of the most incredible (and hilarious) strings of events you’re likely to see in a game, and naturally, players have chronicled these events through storytelling. These stories, in many cases, are so nuanced that it beggars belief that they occurred verbatim in a game and not in the mind of some zealous (and slightly deranged) storyteller. Anyway, …
2012 could turn out to be a big year for human kind. As predicted by the Ancient Mayan civilization and depicted by a particularly rubbish movie last year, our time on this planet is due to come to an abrupt end on December 21, 2012. I’m not sure about you, but I won’t waste my time with any plans for Christmas. How the human race will meet its untimely demise is currently unknown, but according …
The IGF article I posted at the beginning of March had a somewhat lengthy preamble which I cut just before publishing. After reading it over again it seems a shame to leave it on the cutting room floor so — after a spot of editing and because I’ve just been given a cup of tea without asking, putting me in a splendid mood, I’ll just quietly post this here and you can make of it …
Beautiful, gripping and powerful. These are all words you wouldn’t associate with Stephen ‘increpare’ Lavelle’s Starfeld, a strange, miniaturised space oddity. I played this a few weeks ago and had a good giggle but after all the talk of RPGs, freedom and linearity here recently it seems only fitting that I throw this one out there now. You Mass Effect players may appreciate the satire here more than I did. I just appreciated the line …
It’s easiest to let the clip do the talking; besides, Mass Effect 2 just decrypted on Steam (speaking of Steam – Psychonauts! $2!) I am a great fan of the Video Games Live concert. I’ve seen it three times and would cheerfully see it another ten, and I’m always recommending that people go and check it out. While I think the cosplay contest is probably ill-advised given that we’re trying to attract a non-Otaku audience …
I think this could be one of the most important games I’ve ever played and it took me completely by surprise. Developed by Paolo Pedercini in six days for the Experimental Gameplay Project, Every Day the Same Dream demonstrates beautifully how interactivity can communicate certain concepts every bit as effectively as linear media, perhaps even more so. I noticed it a few weeks ago but haven’t really had a chance to post about it. So …
Information designer Michael Niggel has a great eye and a lot of time on his hands. He took Journey Under the Sea, the second in the classic and long-running Choose Your Own Adventure book series that those of us who grew up in the eighties loved so much, and mapped out all the possibilities. Turns out that dying horribly is a lot easier than saving the universe. Check it out!
A couple of days ago I posted up a link to Life is Hard, a short satirical flash platformer that had me chuckling away for a good few minutes. My girlfriend was at work when I spotted it so she didn’t get a chance to give it a whirl. Anyway, yesterday while I was at work Hazy popped up on Gmail and I pointed her over here to check out the game (and my first …
I was going to save my first post for something more substantial, something epic but spotted this over at RPS and couldn’t resist sharing it. As Jim Rossignol mentioned it’s not worth explaining simply because it takes less than a minute from start to finish unless you’ve got a crap connection like me in which case about ten. If you liked this then you should go and check out The Gutter and You Only Live …
Follow that title with a squeaked Pika! and the arrival of the Dark Lord in a fighting arena, and you’ve got yourself a Japanese-spawned megafranchise that just happens to be a tool of the Antichrist. Sure, it’s edited for effect, but even if it weren’t it’d be worth a good laugh.
I found this at a blog my novelist brother contributes to, and thought it was amazing. Not, perhaps, as soul-quaking as the 3D Hubble Ultra Deep Field video, but still a nice way to remind us that we are very small indeed, and that even very small things can create beauty. Odd beauty, sometimes, but still.