« February 2008 | Main | April 2008 »
Noodling around Instructables, after David pointed me at his yummy looking mario cakes (green colouring FTW), I find this little video of a Mario sprite built in Lego. The builder is planning to remake the entire level in Lego..!
That's going to take a hell of a lot of stamina ... not to mention a ton of bricks. Impressive.
Whirled, it is real now. I got the mail about it a day or two ago, and there are already 7500 players making 12500 odd spaces!
Seems there's pretty much everything to do in there too: avatars, rooms, pets, games. Photo uploading. Design-your-own-stuff. Sell it / buy it.
Some of the games made me chuckle:
Give it a whirl(ed)!
Hat tip to Amy Jo Kim who coined the phrase in her brilliant presentation of the same title, Putting The Fun in Functional - the gist of which is, sites and services which harness game mechanics to make their experience more fun usually win.
J!nx has cottoned on to the idea, and is launching both gold and xp for customers of their lovely tees:
It is live! The J!NX Gold and Experience Points program is the biggest update to our website since launch. In a nutshell, you earn J!NX Gold for buying stuff, referring customers, and sending in photos. You earn J!NX Experience Points for getting involved with what we're doing (ie. taking our weekly polls, scoring 4+ points in weekly trivia, posting feedback, etc). Make gold and level up. Those two things are like the twin holy grails of geeks/gamers. We will constantly be adding new ways to earn Gold and EXP.
What do you get for levelling up, though?
1 J!nx gold is worth 1c, so 1500 gold gets you a 15-buck teeshirt. Wonder how long it would take to earn 7000 points?
Target's in a very finger-on-the-pulse moment here: t-critic reports that customers can buy videogaming tees and get the same game on a CD with the purchase. Not any old game either, but good, weird games like Tower of Goo!
The hangtag itself is a CD which contains a PC video game which seems to comes from the Experimental Gameplay project. The official site for the clothing is still under construction but it’s called EGP Apparel.
(Thanks Karl!)
Here's a funny: a cheesy spoof movie-trailer of the "MMOvie": a supposed full-length movie of classic movie lines re-enacted in World of Warcraft.
Genius points mere minutes in, the Titantic spoof: "I'm the king of the world... of Warcraft!":
.. closely followed by the excellent Arnie impersonation. "I need yur cloze, yur bootz, and yur epics..".
WoW really was a machinima godsend.
(via my awesome US guildies. Thanks!)
Retro Sabotage takes games we know and love and turns them into funny little stories, like this one, called What Next?
In the amusing mockumentary piece, pac-man is an anti-recession prototype designed to encourage Japanese teens to consume more. Later, where a pac-man version is a game designed by a north Korean dictator, suddenly pac-man plays itself, you have no control at all.
(many thanks, Tof!)
Sims 3. That's been a long time coming, hasn't it? I had almost assumed that the future of The Sims would continue to be a never-ending stream of Sims2 addon packs. I think the latest was exercising. Or stamp-collecting. Or some such. But no - Wired reports that the team was in fact developing a more 3D worldy Sims 3.
The avatars still look like Sims.. they still have dreadful lower-body anatomy (drainpipe legs!) and those weird, iconic Sims faces.
But finally it looks like Sims 3 will have a fully 3D explorable world. This is, of course, taking environment-pr0n to its limit. How long until Sims 3 brings out the Martha Stewart Christmas Decor addon pack, or the Dulux Paint Interiors addon? Or until in-game items click through to real-world purchases?
Maybe never of course, I'm speculating wildly, but as it steps just that bit closer to reality, you can't help but think someone somewhere is considering how to further monetise this very well-worn franchise...
New Realistic Personalities—Every Sim is a unique person, with a distinct personality.
Create realistic Sims with distinctive personalities. Select from dozens of personality traits and combine them in fun ways. The combination of traits you choose—brave, artistic, loner, perfectionist, klepto, romantic, clumsy, paranoid, and much, much more—help shape the behaviour of your Sims and how they interact with other Sims. Your Sims can now rise above their basic set of every day needs. They are complex individuals with unique personalities.New Unlimited Customisation—Everyone can customise everything!
Build your dream house or design the ultimate home. Customise everything from floors to flowers, shirts to sofas, wallpaper to window shades. It’s fun and easy to change colors and patterns giving you endless personalisation options. Or you can populate your Sims’ neighbourhood with pre-designed buildings and furnishings. Which of your Sims will live in high-end mansions, cool bachelor pads, ultimate dream homes or low-cost cottage?
How's this for a lovely storytelling mechanism: googlemaps as a live scrolling .. story.. map. Check it out:
I'm only on Chapter 4, so I can't tell you any more about this, but it's from Six To Start and Penguin, designed by the chaps behind Perplex City, so I expect there's a game of some sort in there at some point.
Off to find out...
"BBC Children’s and the University of Westminster invite you to the first conference in the UK to draw together producers and researchers working on virtual worlds and immersive gaming environments for children aged 7-11 online."
There's quite the lineup too, with many of my ole BBC colleagues up there on the pulpit for this one-day mini-con, and that lovely Aleks Krotoski as well. May 22 is the date.
Best of all? It's FREE!
(Thanks Lizzie!)
Because you should always play with your food.
(Thanks, fipilele!)
Recent Comments