So...Games For Health is hosting an event right before E3 (May 9th if you’re in the area). They’ve made a promotional video which I think deserves some attention here. You’ve got to admit that this is a brilliant initiative.
I’ve started my own secret campaign here in Bergen! I’m sending e-mails to different departments at the university on different games and topics I think are relevant to them. I very seldom get any response, ofcourse! But what do I have to loose?
Otherwise my Easter has been spent lying on the couch ignoring social circles because ‘I’ve got so much work to do’ and watching tv and letting my eyes wander warily over to my computer with a passionate hatred!
I’ve kinda gotten myself into a sticky situation, which I’m either overthinking or I just need to drop it all together. Let me share it with you! I’m trying to explain the attachment we feel to our virtual assets in MMORPGs and I thought I’d found the perfect example. Now, let me point out that I want to go on to explain the distrust of the coding authorities (excellent word, Castronova!) to rectify such situations. So let me just vent out here:
Madelaine, a player in The Sims Online (TSO) loves to build houses! One time she had spent a lot of time, love and effort on a house which was fabulous! A friend of hers was constantly hassling her with wishes to buy it. Madelaine was flattered and in the end gave in! A few days later Madelaine came to me quite distraught. She had just found out that her friend had copied the house from Alphaville to Blazing Falls (another virtual city in TSO) and was passing it off as her own design. Madelaine was quite distraught, and rightly so in my opinion. So this is where I get into trouble! I don’t understand Intellectual Property Law! I thought this was a perfect example of that, and the more I think about it, the more I think it has to do with copyright.
This is interesting and oh my! how ambitious!
This adventurous WoW’er is going to be liveblogging a Blackwing Lair (nfc) raid on Saturday!
Being a non-WoW’er (I’m still not sure if I’m proud or ashamed of this fact) this could be a great window! I’m looking forward to it!!
Stolen from Clickable Culture, as usual!
Stumbled on to this great HipTech Blog which features this great video!! It’s a demonstration of how a table-top touch-panel and speech recognition could function for Warcraft III! It’s called ‘DiamondTouch’ and it’s by Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratiories – yet another example of how computer games are contributing to innovation, if you ask me!! Enjoy!!
I swear the people in the office next to me must think I’m sort of freak!! I keep howling out with laughter!! Yeah…motivation is quite low when everyone else is on Easter vacation! But I just love this stuff!!!
Lego Counter Strike 1:
Great fun!!!
I suppose deep down inside I knew it was coming, but now that it’s here I’m kinda freaked out!
So my new word for the day: Blogject.
And here’s the Xbox360 Blogject! It’s basically ‘blogging’ your gameplay on the Xbox 360 – gathering your data and putting out a mix of words that really freak me out:
(I am an Xbox 360, and I can talk)
Owner: lil haf dead
4/10/2006
lil haf dead showed up yesterday ready to dominate. Total gamer score stands at 660. That is a gain of 10 points over last time! He played Tiger Woods PGA TOUR06, Perfect Dark Zero gaining 1 achievement, and did it while drooling over my awesome graphics and sound.
Maybe I’m not ready for this type of thing just yet!
I suppose I agree with Clickable Culture really: “The end result is that the Xbox 360 develops a designed personality. While the console currently appears to be rather peppy. I’d rather see an enraged, depressed, or paranoid console”
I suppose I’m more for leaving personality out all together! I mean doesn’t playtime, scores and game preferences speak for themselves? But I suppose if they absolutely HAVE to do this, why oh why does it have to be the chirpiness equivelent to those always enthusiastic hardcore aerobic instructors? Freaks me out really!
So I’ve been rather social the last few days! It was very odd and also extremely weird to talk to people who didn’t know what FPS is or even Wikipedia for that matter (can you imagine?). It’s good to get out every now and then amongst ‘normal’ people, helps me put some things into perspective and also reminds me that there are other things going on in the world that aren’t necessarily ‘connected’!
But there’s one thing that always gets me, though! No matter which generation I’m talking to, when I mention that I’m looking at computer games (yeah…I simplify for the ‘normal’ people) I always seem to get the exact same comment: “The thing that gets me about these games is that they’re so violent! Why do they have to be so violent!” – and well, I’ve tried explaining that violence is fun, but I always get apprehensive looks when I go into detail about how fun it is to blast off your guns and see blood splattered all over! The freedom and the glory of torturing pixelated people in the most violent manner you can think of! Of sitting here frantically banging on your keyboard and screaming “Die you MF! DIE!!” followed by an evil laugh as this task has been accomplished!!! Oh the joy!!!
I’d love to spend more time on this, but I have a lot to do today, so I’m gonna try and keep this short and fast!
I pretty much get depressed about marketing through blogging, but this…shall we say, phenomena, is just amazing!!!
Now, from what I can gather there’s a film coming out this summer called Snakes on a Plane, which looks hysterical!! And well…its sorta created a meme! There’s all sorts of stuff going on! Music, trailers, fan art, flash movies, blogs! And ofcourse a wiki! Apparently this is all old news! But it’s news to me!!
I’ll let you have some fun with this now! Have to finish, have to finish!!! Enjoy!!
Yup! Ragnar Tornquist reports that Dreamfall: The Longest Journey is available for preorders now!!
And I’m just kicking myself for actually spending money on having a good time Saturday night!! Why oh why didn’t I save my money for this?!!!!
I’m re-reading Ren Reynold’s “Intellectual Property Rights in Community Based Video Games”
and I had to take a little thinking breather, because I’m trying to get my head around the whole ‘arthor & work’ issue. I’m having a hard time agreeing with the unbelievably smart Mr. Reynolds when he states:
“The alternative position – that of Player as Author, is similarly difficult to sustain. If one is to assert that a player is the Author of a player-character, then under the present codifictaion of Intellectual Property law, the player characters must be a Work.
Player-characters require human endeavour in their creation and development, but while endeavour is a necessary condition of a Work, it is not sufficient. A Work must also be original and recorded in an appropriate form.
But the originality of any player-character is difficult to sustain because while player-characters do have unique elements e.g., their name. Other elements are simply field with a set and finite range of values, such that it is more than likely that for any given character there exists a digital-doppelganger in all but name
Thus there seems no defence in law for the position of a player as the Author of a player-character as player-characters are not Works”
My initial thoughts are “What bollocks!” – but as I’m playing around with the words, history, experience, individuality, story, narrative (still playing around with it actually – so I’ll get back with a good argument soon) – I started thinking about the word ‘digital-doppelganger’. What an odd choice of words for an Englishman, I thought and shared my amusement with Mr. Delicious who responded with a link to Wikipedia which gave me a few minutes of chuckles! Wikipedia is just sooo geekily charming! There are just no limits to what resources can be put into it!
I mean there’s the ‘famous reports of the Doppelgänger phenomenon’ where you can find the useful information that “Abraham Lincoln told his wife, while shaving after his election as president, that he saw an image of himself in the distance fade away while shaving in front of a mirror. He believed this to mean he would be elected to a second term but would not survive’.
And here’s the one that really got me going!! ‘The doppelgänger phenomenon in popular culture’ and there’s a list of literature, film, television, VIDEO GAMES (yay) and other media. I ofcourse had to have a look through this list and some I recognise the piece, but can’t think of doppelgängers and some I’m just REALLY suprised are in here!!!
“Neighbours episode “The Joy Flight”, Janelle briefly sees Dylan’s doppelganger when he is involved in the plane crash”. He he…I remember Neighbours!!
So I guess I’m thinking…should I maybe for the first time ever contribute to Wikipedia starting a list of academic papers mentioning the phenomena?! Or maybe I should start my own definition of what a’ digital-doppelgänger’ is. But that’s kinda hard to do when I don’t believe in them!!
Yeah…I’ll shut up now and get back to work!
Remember What The Dormouse Said 