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Kanye just played Twitter like a fiddle
Kanye West finally ended his social media hiatus this past weekend, nearly a year after he randomly deleted his Twitter and Instagram accounts. Over the past few days, the producer/rapper/fashion designer has sent out an avalanche of tweets ranging from accusations that Nike copied one of his latest Adidas shoe designs, to sub-Philosophy 101 ruminations on how "hardcore" capitalists don't understand the value of time and friends over money. His return to the site caught fans by surprise, but the timing of it can now be linked to one major reason: West just revealed on Twitter that he has two new albums coming out on June 1st and June 8th.
Here's why 'Too Many Cooks' is tailor-made for the internet
By now, there's a good chance that you've seen or heard about Adult Swim's Too Many Cooks -- an epic, warped internet video that sends up the overly tidy world of '80s and '90s sitcoms. But just why did this video manage to click with so many people? If you ask PBS, it's because the 11-minute clip speaks directly to the heart of online culture. The internet is fond of absurdist humor that highlights the apparently meaningless, repetitive nature of life, PBS argues; Too Many Cooks plays on that love of the ludicrous by dismantling a formulaic, "perfect" TV universe where everything has meaning.
Monster Hunter reaches new heights with bug-shooting pogo stick
To some, each subsequent version in Capcom's Monster Hunter series only adds a few new beasts, weapons and gear while maintaining one core concept: Slaying large, ferocious creatures in lengthy quests. As series producer Ryozo Tsujimoto told Joystiq at E3 last week, "you have to keep the key elements intact but you also want to innovate, you also want to add some freshness." "Freshness" means more than just Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate's four new monsters and weapons (two apiece), but indicates Capcom's drive to improve the ways players explore and interact with the game's environment. "We tend to, on the design side, just think of things that we as players want to do in these worlds but are unable to do in the current state," Tsujimoto said. Looking back at the last game to launch in the west, Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate, the developer opened up the game to underwater sequences, introducing beasts like Gobul to spotlight submerged battles.
Pippin Barr's philosophy of developing 'curious' games
Pippin Barr's doctoral thesis is titled Video Game Values: Play as Human-Computer Interaction, submitted in 2008 to the Victoria University of Wellington as the final stage of his degree, Doctor of Philosophy in Computer Science. In the thesis, Barr highlights the act of playing a computer program rather than simply using one, with case studies in Civilization 3, Fable, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Half-Life 2, and The Sims 2.Schoolwork completed, Barr spends his time teaching at the University of Malta's Institute of Digital Games, and developing small, profound games with an experimental edge. Barr's projects are simple, thoughtful and play with the boundaries of what a "game" can be:The Artist is Present is a game about waiting in line at New York's Museum of Modern Art, complete with real-life museum closing times and hours of standing, doing-nothing excitement. Let's Play: Ancient Greek Punishment is a series of short games about Greek myths – short because they're all unwinnable, with death as a constant outcome looming behind each stark, pixelated scene. Barr's most recent project, the Mumble Indie Bungle, features six games based on popular indie titles as if your grandmother misheard them at the last family dinner, such as World of Glue, Carp Life and Gurney. They're short, minimalistic and frustrating, but they're definitely not all supposed to be "boring," Barr tells me."I want to make games that controvert the standard rules – I spent quite a bit of time on that in my early games – well, maybe all my games," he says. "Games that you can't win, games where you just have to wait for a long time, games where you win but it's not satisfying, games where you're not very important in the world of the game, and so forth. These games can be boring if you're not prepared to embrace a different perspective on things – but if you are prepared to do so, I think they can be quite interesting experiences."Surprisingly, Barr has never been called a hipster.
Storyboard: Moral framework
Every so often, I start a column and it just doesn't come together. So my original plans for this week's article are being changed. I could technically go back and edit last week's piece to erase any evidence that plans had changed, but that would just be wrong. That segues nicely into this week's actual topic: morality. We generally paint morality in broader strokes than is necessarily beneficial, as evidenced by the fact that I just said that something as harmless as editing an old article could be considered wrong. Obviously it's not harming anyone, but because of standards that I impose on myself, I feel as if it's the wrong course of action to take. Pretty much all of your characters have moral codes, and if you're not thinking about them consciously, those codes can easily default to the same ones that you have. I've touched on that idea before, but there's more to it than that. When you get right down to it, your characters need their own codes, some of which you might even find personally repugnant.
GDC 2013: Dean Hall on the pillars of DayZ's design
Dean Hall talks about DayZ as a scientist would a Petri dish gone grotesque. He knows perhaps what the game's strengths and appeal might be, knows why it hosts over 1.7 million players. Still, he meets the success with some bemusement, especially considering how notoriously difficult the mod is to install. Now Hall is working with Bohemia Interactive on a standalone DayZ title (to be released, he apologizes, "when it's ready"). In Hall's "Designing DayZ" lecture at GDC this week, the focus was on his philosophy in shaping the game.
Massively Exclusive: A closer look at WildStar's Mechari
The Mechari want information. They want to protect the Dominion. They want to ensure that the center of the empire remains whole and unmolested. In WildStar, they serve as the omnipresent arm of the Dominion, the inscrutable Eldan-built enforcers of the government's will. And since they're cool-looking robots, they're naturally the sort of race that pretty much everyone will have plenty of questions about beyond what was revealed in the recent post giving players a chance to meet them. We had a chance to speak with lead narrative designer Chad Moore regarding all three of the Dominion races announced thus far, and the Mechari are the last on deck. This does not mean that they're the least interesting, as you probably guessed. So if you're interested in playing the role of a robot living in an organic world, it would behoove you to find out a few more tidbits about them. And the bright side is that you don't have to ask the Mechari any questions. They like to be the ones asking the questions, after all.
Camelot Unchained plans to bring random back
Mark Jacobs knows the problem with your games: They're too predictable. What MMOs need are some good old-fashioned chaos. What happened to the days when you would turn in a quest for which the reward could be endgame armor or it could be a piece of moldy cheese? Let's bring that back into style! All right, not that far. The latest Camelot Unchained development blog is all about randomness, however, with Jacobs laying out another design principle centering around the need for a strong random element in play. Jacobs sees a need for unpredictable outcomes as one of the core elements of a game, something to keep you playing because the game cannot be expected to run a specific course every time. This extends to both the combat system and the state of the world in general, with the former embracing more factors than simple levels and the latter being a bit more dynamic and unpredictable. If you're interested in reading more on this point, take a look at the full rundown at the official site.
The Nexus Telegraph: Who's afraid of the WildStar Dominion?
From where we are now, it's hard to see a whole lot of good about the Dominion. Everything we've heard about WildStar's other faction thus far has been that it's made up of pure evil, absolutely the antithesis of everything you would ever want to stand for. These are not good people, to the best of our knowledge, and it comes as a bit of a surprise that they make up a playable faction in the game rather than a helpful organization of mooks in need of a good face-punching. Those familiar with my past work will know that I love rooting for the team that looks like the transparent bad guys. Unfortunately, right now we plain don't know enough about the Dominion to be sure of exactly what its deal is. Could be that it's as evil as it looks; could be that we only have half of the picture. So I'm going to go ahead and look at both possibilities.
iOS 6: Talking to Siri about Religion
I had no intention of broaching philosophy with Siri, as earlier today I was trying to get it to recognize "Hail State!", which BulldogsRadio tweeted would connect to University of Georgia Radio. That didn't sound right to me, but I thought a built-in easter egg might lead to sports rankings. It did not. Instead, I found myself drawn into a theology discussion with my iPhone. Apparently, Apple engineers have found that people ask their cell phones a lot of intriguing questions, and provided tactful responses. Screenshots of my conversation follow below. I hope you get a chuckle. %Gallery-166346% Not sure what else you can say to Siri? There's a post to help with that!
Raph Koster wants to know why we can't all just get along
Raph Koster, MMO guru and erstwhile creative director of Star Wars Galaxies, has had it up to here with you people and your intolerance of one another. Yes, you, game designers. In a recent blog post, Koster makes shame carrots at those on both sides of the science-versus-humanities schism in the game design community. He states that people on either side of the spectrum can be right and that there's room for both emotional value and scientific fact in games. Too many people, he says, are entrenched in their viewpoints, and that makes progress more difficult for everyone. The result is an abundance of "hipstery, self-indulgent, artsy, self-referential, slight, pretentious work all over the place that people are claiming as the One True Way or the best way to push the boundaries of the field." Koster says that rather than fiercely defend a specific type of game design, designers need to embrace a both/and mentality, in which multiple viewpoints and approaches are accepted as valid and worthwhile. Narrative designers should try making a game with nothing but counters and dice and no story. System designers should try making a game that is about telling a story. While we're at it, the world should really learn how to sing in perfect harmony.
Walden the video game is funded by the NEA, is hypocritical
If your high school English teacher had assigned you to play the game Walden instead of reading Thoreau's writings on living deliberately with nature, Spark Notes may not have evolved into such a booming industry. USC's plan to put abridged study guides out of business, a video game based on Thoreau's Walden, has just received $40,000 from the National Endowment for the Arts (which is like Kickstarter but older, more official and possibly not as lucrative).USC has been crafting Walden for roughly two years, and this funding may be the final step to its completion, lead game designer and USC associate professor Tracy Fullerton told TIME. "Having this support will allow the time we need to really bring the world of Walden to life," Fullterton said. "We anticipate a rich simulation of the woods, filled with the kind of detail that Thoreau so carefully noted in his writings."Hang on. Thoreau's point with Walden was to note the intrinsic benefits of separation from technology in modern society, to slow down and live as one with nature as part of a larger, living world. Putting this experience inside of a video game, running on people's computers in an air-conditioned office, cafe or mother's basement misses the point entirely. However, it may offer a fine lesson in hypocrisy."Of course everyone should spend time in nature, but not all of us are able to set aside our lives for the time it would take to conduct an experiment like Thoreau's," Fullerton said. "The game is not a replacement for direct experience, just as the book is not."Fair enough. Perhaps if you want to stop Thoreau rolling in his grave, play Walden on a tablet in the middle of the forest without an immediate charging station. Or plant some beans or something.
MacTech 2011: What keeps Aaron Hillegass up at night
Big Nerd Ranch founder Aaron Hillegass took the stage at this week's MacTech Conference 2011, and his talk was labeled, simply, "Going Mobile." That's a big topic, so after going through a few reasons why business and individuals might be for and against making mobile apps (all pretty standard discussion in the industry around the App Store), he discussed his concerns about the mobile industry; the things that "keep me up late at night." What followed were a few questions (mostly unanswered) that Hillegass has been thinking about, relevant to IT professionals, developers and really anyone who's used Apple's mobile products. Hillegass' talk was surprisingly honest -- he tackled quite a few issues during the short speech, some of which will likely take a long while for everyone to figure out. He started by asking how developers can benefit from the "power struggles in the industry." So far, Hillegass said, Apple, Google and others have benefited from app developers. Apple has sold a staggering number of iPhones, thanks in part to the hard work of app developers. Of course, Apple has compensated those developers, some very well. But Hillegass wonders if the relationship could go the other way. Instead of making developers work for Apple and then even harder to make their apps compatible on Android and other platforms, is there a way to make that competition between the platform companies work for developers? Hillegass didn't have an answer just yet. He also talked about the death of privacy, pointing out that Apple, developers, and humanity in general are collecting mountains of data all the time. What we all us it for? He suggested first that maybe we just didn't need it -- maybe creating too much data, just like creating trash in real life, would adversely affect our environment in ways we didn't suspect. Hillegass then flipped the other way, and suggested that maybe just agreeing amongst ourselves that privacy was finally dead and actually using that data to make the world a better place would be more helpful than hurtful after all. The relatively tame example he gave was about movie theater previews and how, because they were usually targeted at the audience in the theater, are often more interesting than TV commercials. But Hillegass hinted at bigger things -- he seemed to suggest that letting go of privacy might open up a lot more doors, even if he himself didn't know yet what those were. The talk got deeper from there. Hillegass wondered if instead of dealing with reality directly, our work with Apple's devices and computers in general was putting us in touch with a sort of "simulacrum" of reality. Instead of meeting with friends and family, we were communicating via Facebook profiles and social networking services. Hillegass wondered if the small rewards of games prevented us from really committing to achieving something great. He shared a story about reading Mrs. Frisby and The Rats of NIMH to his son, and realizing that while he loved the book as a kid, his attention span had shrunk since then -- even he wasn't able to sit through long passages of description without a lot of action. "My attention span is shrinking," said Hillegrass. "I think that's a problem." And with almost a tone of fear and anxiety, Hillegass wondered how humanity will keep its capacity for empathy when, thanks to our vast networks of communication, we can often be surrounded by people who are exactly like us. He pointed out that most of the people in the room here at MacTech looked and acted very much the same, and said that because of the Internet, people could find communities of like-minded individuals more quickly and easily than ever. Is that a good thing necessarily? He didn't know. Finally, Hillegass pointed out that because of how quickly mobile applications and technology are changing and improving, users and developers are involved in what's basically an evolving relationship. He told the story of the cheetah and the gazelle, and why evolution has made both animals faster over the years -- gazelles who aren't fast enough will get eaten by the faster cheetahs, and cheetahs who don't run won't get food they need. In fact, things have moved so far, said Hillegass, that cheetahs can't even eat too much once they do catch a gazelle, because it will slow them down in the future. Users, too, are getting more and more demanding of mobile apps, just as developers are getting better and better tools to make them. When the App Store first started, fart apps were "good enough" to make money, but the bar has risen higher and higher over the years. For all of his questions, Hillegass did end on a positive note -- he told the story of Beethoven the composer, who made some of the greatest musical pieces for piano ever written, and Broadwood, an inventor who improved the piano, expanding its versatility and range even as Beethoven pushed him to do more with his genius. Developers in the room, said Hillegass, were the Broadwoods of the world. And he and they were both working on apps that would then be used by Beethovens to make something really incredible. Apps and the app market are such a growing entity at this point in time that it's hard to see just where they'll end up, even a few years in the future. But for all of his questions, Hillegass was convinced that the progress was worth it. "We are trying to create the piano for the next Beethoven," he said as he finished his talk.
The Secret World's Tornquist talks truth, pain, and non-combat gaming
Rock, Paper Shotgun is back with part two of its interview with The Secret World's Ragnar Tornquist. Part one debuted yesterday and detailed a bit of the history behind the game's development as well as blurbs about factions, puzzles, and ARG thingamajigs. Today's installment talks about everything from Tornquist's recurring real world/hidden world motifs, to the endings of Lost and Dreamfall, to unfulfilled fan expectations. As you might expect, the interview errs heavily on the side of the philosophical rather than delving into gameplay specifics. Everything from the nature of truth, to Funcom's Secret World agenda, to the reticence of the gaming industry to evolve beyond kill-everything-that-moves is up for discussion. On this last point, Tornquist hints at the challenges inherent in designing non-combat gaming experiences. "It's difficult. You can't sacrifice fun. But then of course the idea of fun is ambiguous. Does it always have to be fun? Can't it be painful too?"
The Mog Log: Level Y
Why are you leveling? It's a fair question in Final Fantasy XI and Final Fantasy XIV and really pretty much any MMO, especially because it's one of those questions you don't really ask while you're knee-deep in the game. You're just playing, you see that your level isn't at the level it could be, and you start doing what you have to do in order to make that number go just a little bit higher. By the classic model in Final Fantasy XI, you find a party, and in Final Fantasy XIV, you get some leves and head out to the races. But that doesn't address the question. You know what you're doing, and I know what you're doing -- the question is why you're doing it in the first place. Even in a game without levels, you shouldn't be leveling. The answer to that question should always be confusion not over the reason but over the very concept. So I'll ask again -- why are you leveling?
Massively's hands-on with Rift: Planes of Telara's dynamic content
Just a few weeks ago, I was invited to attend Trion Worlds' Gamer's Day in San Francisco to get some hands-on time with a couple of the company's upcoming titles, including Rift: Planes of Telara. If Rift seems to have come out of nowhere, that might be due both to the acquisition of EverQuest II veteran Scott Hartsman to head the project as executive producer, and to a clever name change meant to reflect the team's shift in development focus. In fact, that shift in development focus is precisely what I was at Trion's studio to test -- I got to check out the Rifts themselves in all their glory, in the context of the greater dynamic content system that the developers are so excited about. Massively's writers have been able to play and report on character creation and the starting areas of Rift several times over the last year or so, including earlier this summer at E3. But until today's embargo lift (coinciding with the reveal at Gamescom), no one had quite seen the fabled planar invasions and takeovers in action. Now we have.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Two sides to the story
I'm pretty excited for Going Rogue. Part of that is kind of inevitable -- I write a column about City of Heroes, I've tried to make a clear point that I'm a fan of comics in general, and quite honestly right now I'm in a bit of a video game drought and could use something new. But there's more to it than that, and it goes right back to my love of BioWare and the motivation to do speed runs of Silent Hill 2 just to see all of the various endings available. What I'm getting at here is that I'm a big fan of any game that offers me morality or lets the game shift depending on my choices. So when Going Rogue had its two factions explained, I sat up and took notice, because the morals at play are certainly not black and white. No, they're grey and gray -- if not closer to blue and orange -- and that led to the inspiration for what I believe to be two of my most popular columns. And wouldn't you know it, even with both columns written, there's still more to be said.
The Daily Quest: Idle thoughts
Here at WoW.com, we're on a Daily Quest (which we try to do every day, honest) to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere. Vol'jin is obviously thinking about something very important. Maybe he's just analyzing plans for the upcoming liberation of the Echo Isles. Or maybe he's thinking about the sheer joy of punching Garrosh in the snoot. Or maybe he's just pondering which is better, cake or pie. Deep thoughts there, Vol'jin -- let's take a look around and see what everyone else is thinking about: Bible of Dreams is thinking about civility, and how it applies to World of Warcraft. The Pink Pigtail Inn has a lot of good thoughts about jumping in game and why people do it. World of Warcraft Philosophized shares some thoughts on group quests and Kantian ethics. Is there a story out there we ought to link or a blog we should be following? Just leave us a comment, and you may see it here tomorrow! Be sure to check out our WoW Resources Guide for more WoW-related sites.
Official site for Jon Blow's 'The Witness' launches, reveals concept art
The official site for Jonathan Blow's "philosophical, and quiet" next project, The Witness, recently underwent a massive update. While the archaic poetry certainly got our conjecture wheels a-spinning, the renovated site promises more concrete info through continuous updates while the game is developed. The blog's first post reveals a cadre of concept art for the game, as crafted by designer Eric Urquhart. It looks appropriately pretty and mysterious -- what's behind the door? What's with that force field? Who is the sculptor? Is it all just one big allegory for the atomic bomb? (Whoa, sorry -- we got our J. Blow games mixed up.)
Trinkets: Hard to get, and Blizzard likes it that way
Any caster worth their salt can remember the frustration involved in trying to nab the elusive Illustration of the Dragon Soul trinket from Sartharion in the Obsidian Sanctum. We tried everything we could to get it, from creating our own melee-heavy raid groups, to participating only in "3D zerg" runs hoping that participants would be too over-geared to want it, to participating in Less Is More achievement runs just so there would be less competition for it. Towards the end of the Patch 3.2 days, people would run OS25 once a week just to try and get that one trinket. Most weeks, it wouldn't even drop. When it did, you'd have to beat a good twelve or thirteen people in a roll for it. The Illustration was so valuable (1) because it was a darn good trinket with gobs of spell power, and (2) it seemed impossible get it -- or any good trinket, for that matter. You can still head to Dalaran and buy trinkets with emblems, like the Talisman of Resurgence, but their use is painfully specialized and their value is often less than trinkets you can find in lower level heroics. It turns out that good trinkets are hard to find for a reason: Blizzard like it that way. Bornakk at the official World of Warcraft forums wrote today: "Trinkets are really the one item (weapons are to a lesser extent) that we use to try and capture that old slot machine feel from the classic Molten Core days. Yes, completely random loot with huge loot tables can be frustrating but we are pretty far from being completely random these days. Trinkets however are still somewhat random, they can be hard to acquire, and there is often a lot of competition for them."
