Shakespeare
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Not getting up: Ecko's Macbeth game dispatched
Seeing as how the whole "Macbeth with gunz" thing has already been done (see: movie starring Aussie heartthrob Sam Worthington, above), we're ever so curious to learn more about Marc Ecko's canned game concept for a "completely re-imagined Macbeth." Unfortunately, the famed clothing designer -- turned failed game designer -- has his lips sealed. "I don't want to give it away," Ecko told Destructoid, after admitting that the rumored project was at least, in some form, quite real. Sadly, we're left to contemplate what could have been from a single, proposed gameplay mechanic: "cutting people's heads off." Surely, Shakespeare's inclusion of only one, climactic beheading -- and "off stage" at that -- in the accepted original Macbeth was merely a limitation of the special effects of the playwright's day. Just imagine how much more epic Renaissance works could be as video games ... Oh, right.
Robots perform in 'A Midsummer Night's Dream,' said to outdo the cast of New Moon
Shakespeare's plays have a long, long history of being modded to fit the times. We've seen Macbeths do the running man, and Cordelias dressed like Susie Sioux -- and we've also seen Forbidden Planet, so we know that Robby was just a tinned up Ariel. So robots in Shakespeare? Sure, we've seen that before, but what haven't we seen intertwined into bad theatre? Well, Texas A&M's just staged A Midsummer Night's Dream to include robotic cast members. Working with Professor Robin Murphy, who heads up the Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue, director Amy Hopper hacked the script a bit to include an air robot -- which is about the size of a pizza, and has been used in military operations -- playing a fairy, and six small radio controlled helicopters. The robotics team used the opportunity to observe how cast and audience members reacted to the robots, and we're pretty sure the audience warmed to them far more quickly than they would to Christian Bale or Sean Penn.
Buyer's Guide: 33 things you don't need if you have an iPhone
Every time I walk through Warehouse Stationery (New Zealand's equivalent to Office Depot) or Dick Smith's Electronics (pretty much Best Buy), I'm struck by how probably half the products in each store are pretty much useless to me since I've got an iPhone. Thanks to the apps that come pre-packaged with the iPhone and the more than 100,000 third-party offerings now available in the iTunes Store, the iPhone has gained functionality that might have seemed hard to fathom under three years ago when Steve Jobs first announced the device. "A widescreen iPod with touch controls... a revolutionary mobile phone... a breakthrough internet communications device... these are not three separate devices. This is one device." So Steve Jobs told us all back at Macworld Expo 2007. But since then, the iPhone has grown to be much more than just those three concepts. What follows is a sort of anti-buyer's guide, a list of products and devices that you may never need or even want to buy again (or receive as a gift) if you have an iPhone. Some of these are certainly open for debate, but more than a few of them are products that, for all intents and purposes, are completely unnecessary if you have an iPhone. (Items in bold also apply to the iPod touch).
Breakfast Topic: Oh, Trade chat
Trade chat; that wretched hive of scum and villainy, that baying pack of horse thieves and reprobates, that hopelessly addictive ongoing chronicle of server zeitgeist. The stupidity that invariably infests the channel makes it tough to stomach at times, but there's no faster way to get something you need or catch up on the local gossip. I was introduced to WoW Bash the other day and spent an entertaining morning laughing at the various private and trade chat gems chronicled on the site (much of it, just as an FYI, is definitely not safe for work), many of which irresistibly reminded me of my own server's best offerings. I can't help but remember a trade chat conversation that took place at some godawful hour in the morning on a Saturday between several overcaffeinated people, all of whom were playing a sort of "finish the story" game in which a plucky single mother attempted to finance her astrophysics and fishery mangement degree by participating in Ice Road Truckers. Tragedy (hilariously) ensued, but not before players managed to sneak in a Star Trek reference, an allusion to A Winter's Tale ("Exit, pursued by a bear"), and several threats to ignore or report each other. Do you have any particularly fond memories of trade chat, or do you avoid it like the plague?
First Look: Touch Poet lets anyone be a poet
With Valentines Day right around the corner, it would seem that everyone is looking for something to get their loved ones. While most might settle on candy, or other holiday items, would you ever think of writing your special someone a poem? Even if you've never written a sentence in your life, you can easily write a poem with Touch Poet [iTunes link] for iPhone.Touch Poet grabs word snippets from works by Edgar Allen Poe, Shakespeare, and Rudyard Kipling as well as Digg headlines and other news sources. When you tap on the right-pointing arrow in the app, words will be move out from behind the arrow. When you find a word that you want to use, you can drag it up to the top portion. The snippets of paper has a really great physics engine that makes it look as though you are actually touching it. If you don't like a word, or would like to choose a better word, then you can "throw" the piece of paper in the garbage shoot by tossing it towards the bottom right of the screen. If you can't seem to find a word that you like, you can input your own words by double-tapping on the bottom of the screen -- this will allow you to input your own word. If you tap the upward facing arrow you will have several options, namely the ability to select the source of your words. From here you can also Twitter your masterpiece or e-mail it straight to your loved one. You can get your hands on Touch Poet by visiting the iTunes App Store. It is currently on sale for $.99 (US) through Valentines Day; after then, it will go up to $2.99. %Gallery-44364%
Google releases Books browser for iPhone
Despite the fact that the App Store is capturing everybody's attention, old-school (as in, about 8 months ago) mobile web apps are still worth checking out, too -- Andy Ihnatko reports that Google has put their Google Book Search web app in iPhone form, and the result is awesome: 1.5 million public-domain texts in a well-coded and clean reader all for completely free. Classics, you may be a video star, but you can't touch this.Ok, so no it doesn't have Classics' fun little page-turning or bookshelf-browsing graphics, nor Stanza's bookstore and eReader support, nor Bookshelf's linkup to Webscription.net -- but it is awesome, and completely free. To check it out, you just need to visit http://books.google.com/m on your iPhone or iPod touch (and you might as well bookmark it, because you never know when you'll want to read a little Shakespeare or Dickens).Update: Commenters note that you can add Google books to Stanza by entering the URL of the book. Not too shabby. Stanza is free [App Store link].
Shakespeare, Dickens, Twain and more coming to DS
Over the past few years, we've helmed what we think is a pretty effective campaign against books or, as we now call them, "thought prisons." Finally, HarperCollins and Nintendo have had the vision to do away with ratty tree carcasses and make those stuffy old stories really shine in the 100 Classic Book Collection coming to DS.You may think you've read Last of the Mohicans and Hamlet, but you haven't read anything until you've read it with adjustable text size and virtual bookmarks. Right after the break, you can see the full list of stories that you'll be able to take off your bookshelf and burn in a giant fire or, as we now call it, a "narrative liberation."
All the World's a Stage: Center of the universe
All the World's a Stage returns today after a week off due to reasons beyond the comprehension of mortal man. Mysteries abound in World of Warcraft, and roleplayers are there to enjoy them.In roleplaying, one's own character is never the center of the story -- this is true. But from another perspective, your character is always the center of the story -- and this is also true. It seems like a paradox, but it's actually a way of understanding your own relationship to the world.In most stories, the main characters are usually the ones who have the most impact on the world around them: they are the heroes who save the day, fall in love, and make the choices that determine the ultimate outcome of the plot. In a way, the whole story circles around them, like planets around the sun. The structure of Warcraft lore is built with the stories of characters like this, whose choices made the World of Warcraft what it is today: Arthas, Thrall, Jaina Proudmoore and the like.But the roleplaying community of imaginative characters is not such a centralized system. When immature roleplayers fail to understand this, they end up with a chaotic mess where everyone wants to steal the spotlight. But mature roleplaying environments are quite the opposite: they are cooperative rather than competitive, and quite unlike traditional storytelling patterns. Where traditional stories are like a solar system, with main characters around which all the other characters revolve, roleplaying in WoW it is like the expanding universe itself: a web of interconnected stories and characters in which the center appears to be nowhere and everywhere at the same time.
Some literary humor for your Saturday in Warcraft
Here's two bits of literary fun for your Saturday afternoon.First, earlier this week, I saw this nice little piece of fan fiction over on WoW Livejournal. I'm not usually a fan of fan fiction, but this one just explains so much. And I really do hate those things, too.And then yesterday, swampers put together this terrific little Shakespearean parody in the World of Warcraft style. "To quit, perchance to /afk" -- that's great. "Out out, brief arena match -- life's but a walking Shadow Priest, a poor player, who struts and QQs while the tank goes down, and then runs OOM."Great stuff. Literary humor is always fun, and mixing it in with WoW makes it even better. Laugh and enjoy.
Thus goeth down the Apple Store
Shall I compare thee to a yellow sticky note? Thou art more foreboding and less indicative of closure. Rough winds do shake retail commerce before May And downtime hath all too short a date. Sometimes too excited the yellow sticky shines And often is his gold complexion dimm'd And sometimes when credit-cards decline By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimm'd; Thy momentary downtime does not fade, Nor lose possession of that fair new product; Nor shall Apple introduce what wander'st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou waitest; So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, Fair 3M's scrap of parchment shall cheer thee. Thanks, verily, to all ye who have sent tidings of this news.
Edward Castronova reveals lessons learned from Arden
As you may recall, Edward Castronova, professor at Indiana University and researcher of virtual world economics, had been developing a Shakespeare-based MMO, only to close it down because, in his words, 'It's no fun. We failed to design a gripping experience.'In the current issue of Wired, Castronova offers his '5 tips for making games that don't suck', based on his experience. To summarize:
Yascombe: Haze's script is over 1,000 pages long
We've all heard quite a bit about Haze, the next big (and easily-swappable) FPS coming exclusively to the PS3 sometime in May, but during a recent tour through Free Radical Studios led by lead writer Rob Yascombe (who is, in fact, a bona fide, bug-eyed madman), it was announced that the script for the nectar-enriched shooter is over 1,000 pages long. As a point of reference, the script for "Gone With The Wind" clocks in at a crisp 650 pages. Probably.Before you linguaphiles begin frothing at the mouth in anticipation of a Bioware-caliber dialogue extravaganza, Yascombe explains that a lot of the script is composed of mid-battle NPC retorts -- some of which, he adds, will be delivered by none other than the Royal Shakespeare Company. We wonder if those dandy artistes will be able to deliver their bullet-riddled screams of agony in iambic pentameter.
Curtain falls on "Shakespeare World"
You may never have heard of Arden, the brain child of Edward Castronova and now you never really will. The project was ambitious, aiming to create a MMORPG that also educated the players in the world and works of someone regarded by many as the greatest wordsmith the English language has ever seen.According to this report in Technology Review, the virtual world failed because whilst it was crammed with educational content, no one went there because "it was no fun" and they forgot to include the puzzles and the monsters and the game-play elements. The work was supported by a $250,000 grant from the MacArthur Foundation's digital learning programme. Whilst this is pretty big money in educational grant terms, particularly in the humanities, it's a drop in the ocean when compared to the millions of dollars that go into creating the online MMORPGs that we normally review.It is a lesson well worth remembering for everyone creating educational games, you need the educational content AND the game content. A hard balance to strike - I speak from personal experience here.
All the World's a Stage: And all the orcs and humans merely players
All the World's a Stage is a new weekly column by David Bowers, investigating the explorative performance art of roleplaying in the World of Warcraft.As you know, WoW is a work of art, and roleplaying is probably the most creative aspect of the WoW experience. There are many reasons why people roleplay, and also many challenges to roleplayers, not the least of which is fitting in with all the other players who may not get why in the world you spend your time this way.To put it most simply, as roleplayers, we view our WoW experience as a creative one. We want to make each other laugh and smile and share stories about our characters. By doing this, we not only have a good time, we get that sense of inspired expression that any artist loves, whether a comics illustrator or a knitting addict. Roleplayers aren't so different from other players -- we want to do quests, dungeons, raids, and fight other players just like everyone else, but we want to do it all in a creative, story-based way.As Shakespeare has so famously put it,All the world's a stage,And all the men and women merely players:They have their exits and their entrances;And one man in his time plays many parts,
Live performance in a virtual world
This piece on Terra Nova got the gears turning in my head again about something I've been thinking about for a while: a live dramatic performance in the virtual world. The article goes a little deeper than that-- basically, it suggests that we're all performers in the virtual world, and all the world (of Warcraft) is a stage for us to perform on. You may not be a roleplayer, but you still play a role in the game, whether it be the stalwart main tank or the ganking PvP moonkin.But I'm talking about something a little more concrete: an actual dramatic production performed inside a virtual world. Unfortunately, my background in drama is tiny (I did some production stuff in high school and college), which is probably why I've never mustered up enough effort to pull it off, but others have, and I'd love to see more of it. The colorful, fantasy world of WoW seems perfect for putting on a production-- can you imagine Hamlet in the corridors of the Stormwind castle, or The Tempest down in the tropics in Stranglethorn Vale? It'd be a lot of work (not to mention a lot of typing) for all those involved, but a finished, complete production created entirely within the world of Azeroth would be incredible to watch.There have been a few groups aiming for something like this (the Synthetic Worlds Initiative even planned an entire online world about Shakespeare, at one point, though I'm not sure what happened to it). And I can't believe this idea is original-- someone has to have performed something in WoW at some point, I'm sure; I just haven't heard of anyone really taking the time to do it professionally (and live). We're already playing our own made-up roles in the virtual world-- the idea of going one step further and recreating fictional characters in that world fascinates me.
Shakespeare: The MMOG
As Civilization is to history, Arden: The World of Shakespeare will be to the Bard of Avon. CNET reports that Associate Professor of Telecommunications at Indiana University, Edward Castranova, is receiving a $240,000 grant to develop an MMOG around Shakespeare's plays.Unlike World of Warcraft or EverQuest, the academic Arden will be not-for-profit. No word yet on how the ambitious project will sustain itself financially beyond the grant.The game will be built around the play Richard III, because of all the conflict during the 16th century War of the Roses. There is no real explanation on how all the other plays will be incorporated into the world. If they can figure how to make one cohesive Shakespearean world, the game might be worth a try and a great educational tool. As long as there is a translator into modern language for those who avoided Shakespeare because of his pesky "smrt" 16th century English.
Japanese hardware sales, 11 September - 17 September: English Sonnet edition
The DS Lite in Japan, a force highatop its mighty throne, which cannot fall,all others can do naught but look and sigh,their sales so impeded by strongest wall. For the Lite and the 'Two, arrows rise, yet the PSP sinks to the abyss,the downward red glare is blinding to eyes, so vastly clear that something's amiss. Wii will do well, if past numbers are true, the people are ready for a new sun to shine, and as Sony stumbles almost on cue,Nintendo steps up and gives us a sign. For the full story, simply check below, though these figures may prompt a languid "so?" - DS Lite: 134,885 21,045 (18.49%) - PS2: 34,189 14,307 (71.96%) - PSP: 26,995 2,146 (7.36%) - GBA SP: 2,330 226 (10.74%) - Game Boy Micro: 1,244 557 (30.93%) - Xbox 360: 928 166 (15.17%) - Gamecube: 630 66 (9.48%) - DS Phat: 478 580 (54.82%) - GBA: 27 14 (107.70%) - Xbox: 7 2 (40.00%) [Source: Media Create]
Robot draws happy face, gets angry
You know, in the future, people will shout from their rooftops: "A robot! A robot! My kingdom for a robot!" Ok, maybe not, but with apologies to our favorite playwright, robots seem to be everywhere these days. We just came across this video of a very child-like Robonova that drops to its knees, wields a mean marker, and draws a crude happy face, and then scratches it out. Not the most useful of robots, but a good first step. Next thing you know, they'll be teething and speaking in complete -- oh, wait. Maybe Robonova and Actroid should get together, producing a robot that would recite our RSS feed and draw the Engadget logo. Now that would be a robot.
Othello - the World of Warcraft Way
OldeSchooleNews brings us this interesting example of fantasy worlds colliding - when they act out an abridged version of Shakespeare's Othello entirely in World of Warcraft. While the voice-work is a bit on the quiet side, the video is well put together. While I've seen quite a few stories told within the framework of WoW machinima, this is the first classic re-set in Azeroth (at least to my knowledge).
