ENGL 680M: New Media

Book Autopsies

"Totally ubiquitous computing. One of the things our grandchildren will find quaintest about us is that we distinguish the digital from the real, the virtual from the real. In the future, that will become literally impossible. The distinction between cyberspace and that which isn't cyberspace is going to be unimaginable."

I beat Ayiti using the strategy that someone's (I can't recall whose) student came up with - volunteerism.

It should be a bit embarrassing to us that we failed to analyze the author of our "text" and realize their likely message.

Also, I've started reading The Diamond Age again. I'd almost forgotten how amazing that book is.

Finally, take a look at Anda's Game for a really great short story about avatars and gold farming.

So this is a game whose sole purpose in life seems to be mockery of other games... and in the process it really makes some excellent (albeit tongue-in-cheek) points about "real" games.

amazingly, these are not lovesick zombies (that's the title of the game)

This is more a cry for help than anything...

I rolled a character in Second Life over the weekend, since all the cool kids were doing it. (Points at Kristen.)

I'm having huge problems with lag... like soul-crushing, 30-second-delay, hold-on-I'm-going-to-get-a-snack-maybe-a-pita-and-some-hummus lag.

Any SL vets have advice for how to clear the lag up? My ping in other online games is typically around the 65ms mark, so the problem seems local to SL, where my ping hovers around 350, then spikes occasionally up to "pony express". The SL FAQ and forums have been less than helpful.

I've just finished (or decided to stop playing) 3 games:

1.) Half-Life 2: Episode 2
This game runs a fantastic story, with characters that could be strong and emotional moments that could be groundbreaking... if only the moment-to-moment script writing didn't TOTALLY SUCK.

You spend the majority of the game feeling as though you're in kingergarten. Every time you do anything, you get a "nice shot!" or a "great job, Freeman!" from one of the other characters. Annoying.

Long live the era of doing.

I was playing Team Fortress 2 this evening, and our team was losing. A couple of the more skilled players on the team chose to deal with this by openly insulting everyone else on the team, to the point where people were quitting. Finally, I responded with, "Dude, take it easy."

The reply of A**hole #1? "Shut up, b**ch. You're just a chicken-eating n***er."

I don't even have a real commentary on that. Anything I can think of to say seems painfully obvious to rational people.

GamePolitics cites a new study about spatial reasoning and gaming. "While research has consistently shown that the male brain has advantages in spatial skills like geometry, interpreting technical drawings and reading maps, a new study says that playing action-oriented video games can equalize the sexes in that regard."

Link to full article on GamePolitics.

Saw that on a bumper sticker; thought it was profound.

I wish English allowed for the dropping of pronouns as Spanish does.

I struggle to view anything in a single-player setting as true role-playing. Playing a role, to me, requires presenting it to others.