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15 Minutes of Fame: Azeroth to Westeros with Game of Thrones' Kristian Nairn
From Hollywood celebrities to the guy next door, millions of people have made World of Warcraft a part of their lives. How do you play WoW? We're giving each approach its own 15 Minutes of Fame. If you've read the books behind the spellbinding new HBO series Game of Thrones, you'll instantly recognize the character portrayed by the bearded beast of burden above -- yes, that's Kristian Nairn as Hodor, on the set with young passenger Isaac Hempstead-Wright (as Bran Stark). While you may not recognize Nairn yet if you're new to the gritty fantasy series (he hasn't been onscreen yet), the show itself has been hard to ignore, debuting amidst a deluge of publicity and earning a renewal for a second season after only a single episode. Luckily for us, Nairn's enthusiasm for the World of Warcraft proves to be as capacious as both the series' success and his own 6'10" frame. The Belfast resident, who's also a professional DJ, plays on both US and EU servers (yep, he's that enthusiastic about the game), and once we'd covered the basics by email, he felt there was still so much left to say that we wound up chatting on Skype a few days later. So Hodor -- no, not Hodir, Hodor ... although come to think of it, they're both rather remarkable in stature, and ... awww, heck, set thy nose to the page if you haven't yet read George R.R. Martin's best-selling Song of Ice and Fire series and you don't know who Hodor is. These are characters that'll grab you by the short hairs -- it's the ride of a lifetime. In the meantime, settle in with us for the first of two interviews with Kristian Nairn, from Azeroth to Westeros and back again.
Sony's naysayers, then and now
Pop quiz time, readers. Guess what product a Salon author was referring to in the following quotes: "Whether or not Sony was sincere in its claim that a supply crisis led it to cut its initial shipments ... there's little question that the corporation was successful in the arena of hype marketing. Lines of obsessed PlayStation fans were a news staple ..." "Don't get me wrong; it's definitely the most powerful video-game machine on the planet right now. But that's not enough. ... There's just not much software available that can take advantage of it." "Sony is also under the mistaken impression that including the ability to play ... movies is a huge selling point. ... I'd rather pay less and get a machine that just plays games instead." If you guessed the PS3, you'd be wrong. No, the October 2000 column that the above quotes come from was talking about the then-recent launch of the PlayStation 2. Careful readers might remember the PS2 as the system that went on to sell over 115 million units worldwide and dominate the console market for the better part of the decade. At the time, though, Salon recommended hardcore gamers opt for the cheaper, easier-to-develop-for Dreamcast and wait on the PS2 for the time being.Why are we posting this? Mainly because it's always fun to point out just how different media opinion and popular opinion can be, but also as a way of tempering the gloomy predictions that are still surrounding the PS3 nearly five months after its launch. Remember, Sony has come back from negative media attention before, and there's still a chance it could do it again.[Via Chrominance]
