J. Gynoid

A guy from the Observer argues that video games and films should never mix:

At a key moment in Silent Hill, the latest good-looking, badly written schlockbuster to be based on a video game, our heroine is told to memorise a map showing directions to a room which she must reach for reasons that are frankly unmemorable. As actress Radha Mitchell quietly recites her instructions (’right, left, left, right’) one can briefly imagine an enthusiastic gamer, console in hand, navigating their way through the labyrinthine matrix of the film’s highly acclaimed, computer-generated source. The crucial difference, of course, is that the gamer is in control of the story, deciding which way the wanderer should turn, writing each new chapter as it progresses.

Read the rest of the article.

Here’s a lovely introduction to interactive fiction.

My current away message:

Everyone was messaging like it was going out of style

It was just the cynic in me:

“God, I love communicating!

I just hate the shit we’re missing”

– The Dresden Dolls, “Modern Moonlight“

Oooh, irony.

Actually, I suck at basically doing much of anything with my body besides walking and sitting.

Amputee on crutches doing DDR. Don’t read the comments, a lot of them are pretty ignorant.
Now if only we could get Prof Havholm to try it.

We were talking in class about how some things just shouldn’t be computerized or automated (at least the way things stand right now). Well…

Victims Told in Error Ohio Inmates Freed (Dec 30, 2005)

Thousands of Ohio crime victims received calls from a computer notification system on Friday mistakenly telling them inmates had been released, a state prisons spokesman said.

Since Prof Havholm has been talking about the SNL skit where the Trekkies treat Shatner like Capt. Kirk at a convention in our discussion of media and reality, I thought I’d add into our discussion a figure I’ve been seeing a lot of recently, because I am a bit of a Zelda hound. And that’s Tingle.

Tingle is a 35-year-old Hylian (read: human) who thinks he’s a fairy. And he’s really kind of pathetic. “Tingle is a subtle jab at some of the nuts that fell from the Great Deku Tree of fandom,” states an excellent essay at ZeldaUniverse (I suggest you read it in full; it’s not long).

Not everyone is happy with Tingle’s presence in the Zelda games: there’s even an online “Die, Tingle, Die” campaign. This in itself, to me, signals an unhealthy obsession.

I just think it’s really interesting, though, that the makers of the Zelda games decided to put Tingle in. In my mind, Tingle is a signal to players *against* immersing themselves too much in the game, something that we described as a goal of players in class.

Thoughts? Kooloo-limpah.