Wonderland

Video Mods

Wired has an article on music video mashups featuring game characters performing along to that pop-u-lar music. I was talking last night with a colleague about games and performance art - stand up comedy to be precise - and musing about the use of stages and venues in persistent worlds. Now that I've transferred to a European SWG server (FarStar, and I landed *naked* and BALD!! but that's a whole other story) it's unlikely I'll ever catch a performance of Cantina Crawl. Jamie was telling me about a theatre troupe in Ultima Online, who tour their show from tavern to tavern...

Shame the cantinas don't have noticeboards about scheduled events - or book artists in for week long residencies. Stand-up routines could work rather well, not to mention an Elvis Chewbacca.. something for the dev team?

Bugs in JPEGs?

Apparently so. Viewing a JPEG can install a trojan. Sigh.

"Safe" internet for kids

..claims VeriSign, the makers of the i-STIK, a fob digital ID that verifies the (original) user's age and gender.

It's fairly watertight - students get a fob via their schools or colleges - but as usual the claims are for "SAFE" and not safer, ignoring the chances of a kid losing, giving away, lending, or forgetting their i-STIK in a place where dodgy Uncle Bob can get at it.

Press release here, found via PopGadget.

Meta gaming pt II

A Sim, playing The Sims, in The Sims 2. Much like a Sim playing Sim City in The Sims, only now with better graphics.
Does your Sim get upset if his Sims are upset because you're making your Sim too busy to have enough time to look after his Sims, which in turn have a hissy fit?

I'll stop there because I think a piece of my brain just fell out of my nose.

Microsoft's PC strategy

.. seems to be more and more focused around the game capability of a PC, or at least that's how this article presents it. So Longhorn'd PCs will be compatible with XBox controllers and XNA:

To that end, Longhorn will natively support the XNA development system, and Longhorn-based PCs will directly benefit from this. "Xbox 2 peripherals will all work on PC," said Lester, clarifying that Xbox controllers, steering wheels, and other console-related peripheral functionality will all be brought into Longhorn's portfolio, as will Xbox Live functionality. For game players, this will make for, if nothing else, an added convenience, since playing a game on a PC or an Xbox will [ideally] come down to little more than unplugging the controller from one and plugging it in to the other.

Intriguing. Via Joystiq.

DiGRA looking good

The Call for Papers for next year's conf is out. If you dig through the rather wordy and academic intro, you get to the "probable" topics list, which are looking verrrrry interesting:

* Research Methodologies and Case Studies: Current and completed projects and proposals in game research, research methods, and interdisciplinary research. What should we focus on and why?

* Game Aesthetics and Storytelling: Audio, visual and narrative dimensions of digital games. Explorations into the game as art form, and the pathbreaking roles of artists and the arts in illuminating possible futures for digital games.

* Identity in Gaming: Roles and role-playing, and re-definitions of 'self' in and through digital games, including especially, issues related to ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality and 'the Other.'

* Learning to Play: Playing to Learn: How we learn in and through game play, what we do/don't learn in playful environments, and extant and projected designs for learning.

Something for everyone there, and that's only the half of it.

No real hockey

.. so G4TechTV in the US is going to run televised videogame hockey instead.

'G4techTV video game hockey highlights will also air on Comcast SportsNet. "We'd rather be televising the live games, but until the real games resume, this presents a fun opportunity to maintain the fans' interest," comments Jack Williams, President and CEO of Comcast SportsNet. "This is a natural and creative extension of G4techTV's video game expertise."'

It doesn't say who's playing, and I'd love to see the audience figures for this after the event. Games as a spectator sport? It's already working in Korea, and in trickles here and there with the World Cyber Games etc, but I think this one's quite a push...

Cripes

The PSTwo is out, and it's dinky! Unlike the PSOne remodelling, which was purely cosmetic, the PSTwo now comes with built-in ethernet port (no addons necessary), and apparently Sony are going to be offering 120 new online-enabled games by the end of the year. That's a game a day until Xmas. So says slashdot, anyway...

Talking of avatars

Javier, he of Cantina Crawl fame, also produces the SWG Guys & Gals avatar calendars.
Oh yes.

Could this get any better?

Would the real SWG players...

...please stand up. RealSWGPlayers.com does what it says on the tin, although amusingly (and predictably) enough, most popular player #1 seems to be a pr0n star. Some people though post both real photos and captures of their avatars - in some cases, the likeness is startling:

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