December 2, 2007
A New Patient in The Asylum
I could have sworn I'd mentioned The Asylum, the addictive and affecting web game by German programming team Parapluesch, before. But searching through the archives, I couldn't find anything. Well, better late than never.
I'm probably misremembering a post here because The Asylum is a game I've assigned to several of my classes, both here and back at Pitt. There's a reason for that -- it's easy to pick up for the non-gamer, yet it's deep and surprisingly emotional. It also has an interesting way of playing with narrative(s) within the game structure. As a teacher, gamer, and literary critic, I think it's tremendous fun.
You play as a psychiatrist for abandoned and/or abused "cuddly toys." (That's German for stuffed animals, apparently.) Dr. Kindermann (child-man) is away in Japan on research, leaving you to treat the patients as best you can. If you get stuck, Dr. Kindermann was kind enough to leave you his therapy notes on each patient, which may give you the hints you need to help each of the cuddly toys regain his or her precious sanity.
Joining Lilo, Sly, Kroko, and Dolly, is new patient Dub, a turtle with a compulsive exercise habit. Helping Dub requires a slightly different approach than with any of the other animals. I'm not going to give anything away, but if you need assistance, the helpful readers at JayIsGames have all kinds of hints for you for Dub and the other animals.
Thanks, Jay, for getting the word out on the latest chapter in the Asylum mental health saga!
Posted by reparent at 3:04 PM | Comments (1)
November 3, 2007
It's Singing Saturday!
As promised, here's a post. On Saturday! But it's not just any Saturday... it's SINGING SATURDAY!
But first, a few observations.
- A while back, David noted on his blog, Someone In A Tree, that "There is something primal and therapeutic about letting that sound just rumble up through the body and out into the world. No matter how depressed or lonely or negative I'm feeling, if I start to sing it makes me feel better." I used to sing. A lot. I was in choir and the pop vocal group in high school (yes, I was a choir geek), and then I completed almost all of a BFA in Music Education with a vocal concentration. I was a singing fool. But that was a long time ago, and now I really don't sing at all. Not even to myself. I often wonder what it would be like (and what it would sound like if I just cut loose and belted something out. Probably not pretty, at this point. Sigh.
- Big Bear Butt Blogger Karthas (it's a World of Warcraft Druid thing... and you have a filthy mind!) notes that November is NaBloPoMo, or National Blog Posting Month, for the acronymically-challenged. (Yes, it's also NaNoWriMo, but there ain't no way in hell I'm writing a novel this month.) I can, however, try to post a post each day for the rest of November. (The previous November days don't count because I didn't know about NaBloPoMo.) If you're in to that sort of thing, here's my profile on the NaBloPoMo site. I'm not sure I'm going to do anything with it, as I really don't like the social sites (I know, big surprise), but who can tell what the future will bring? Perhaps I will use this site to torment my blogging friends. Yes, Sster, I'm looking at you!
- So here we go!
First up on SINGING SATURDAY is a lovely rendition of the Flame Wreath chant in a light madrigal style. (You don't need to know anything about Flame Wreath to enjoy this, but I'll explain after the clip.) And for those of you who are now considering skipping this because you a) don't know anything about this "flame wreath" thing; or b) are worried that not knowing anything will dampen your enjoyment, I say: Don't be silly! It's Singing Saturday, so watch the clip and enjoy the pretty harmonies!
For those of you who care, here's what's going on in that chant. Flame Wreath is a spell that one of the big monsters in World of Warcraft casts at players when they try to kill him. It creates a wreath of flame around each of the players in range of the monster, and as long as all of the players in the wreath stand perfectly still, it's not much of a problem. However, if anyone moves through the wreath itself (to run to safety or to attack the monster, all of the players in the wreath get some massive hurt put on them. Hence the raid (the group of players raiding the dungeon) blows up. But even not knowing that, it's nice to hear geeky guys doing neat stuff with harmony.
Next up is one of my guilty cinematic and aural pleasures -- Mortal Kombat. Except that it's Singing Saturday, so you know it'll be fun! (Same rule applies -- watch at least the first minute or so of the clip!)
Now, if you're not familiar with the theme from Mortal Kombat, you're in luck. I'm experimenting with embeddable MP3 players on the blog, so here's the original theme for your entertainment and education!
I think what I like best about these two (and yes, I confess that I rarely make it all the way through the DeCadence video (even though their name is quite clever, that's not quite enough to make up for the fact that a'capella songs shine most brightly when they are able to highlight variation, while techno is quite repetitive) is that these are both examples of really surprising examples of the de-technologizing of essentially technological experiences. That is, it takes no mechanical or digital technology at all to sing, but going up against the Shade of Aran's flame wreath in Warcraft's Karazahn Tower is impossible without a whole mess of technology. Same for the Utah Saints' techno tune, which is the theme to a highly special-effects-dependant movie which is itself based on a series of computer video games.
And, of course, even though these are both de-technologized adaptations, they were both captured by digital cameras, encoded for digital playback, and then uploaded to YouTube. That is, you could call both of these clips examples of technology displaying technology capturing de-technologizations depicting technology-based entertainments. Pretty cool for a Singing Saturday, n'est pas?
Posted by reparent at 3:01 PM | Comments (1)
September 26, 2007
Not Dead Yet...
Mostly.
In any case, as some of you may know, September 25th, 2007, was the official launch date for Bungie's Halo 3 game. If you're not familiar with the Halo franchise, here's a quick primer.
In Halo, you play as this guy, "Master Chief":
Who runs around killing these things:
On these halo-shaped ring worlds, hence the game's name:
And, there's a story in there about an alien invasion, but mostly people just run around and kill each other in multiplayer deathmatch.
What you may not know is that Halo 3 is only the beginning.
Yes, yes, I know. This is, obviously, derivative of Epic 2014/15, but it's still pretty good.
Posted by reparent at 3:44 PM
August 2, 2007
Of Cats, Rabbits, Students, and Eyes
Wowzers! There sure is a lot going on right now.
First of all, August is Kitties-Go-To-The-Vet-For-Checkups month chez Richard(s). The kitty with serious health issues went today, and her sister will be going on Friday (but don't tell her -- we want to survive until then).
I Can Has Cheezburger, as always, puts it best:
Second, why is it that when you try to be flexible with undergraduates (or with graduate students who need "just a little more time" to finish their seminar paper or the dreaded thesis), they crap all over you? The summer course on Children's Lit was supposed to end on Thursday, July 26th, the last day of classes. I made the final project (an exceedingly modest one, given the scope of this 5-week summer course, mind you) due on Monday, July 30th. I still have not received final projects from a number of students. Some have had the decency to e-mail me with a plausible excuse. Some have not. Grrrrrrrr.....
Third, Xeni Jardin at Boing Boing shows off the coolness that is, and is on, her iPhone, in this post. Sigh. Anyway, this item caught my attention: a music video by UNKLE with Thom Yorke singing "A Rabbit In Your Headlights." It's a disturbing (seriously) video, but the ending is... words fail. "Awesome" has lost too much of its meaning, and "breathtaking" (literally, I gasp) is now too clicheed. There's a story here. Or maybe I'm just compelled to create and/or impose a story because of the images. Of course, in Aspects of the Novel, E.M. Forster argues that I'm not really talking about a story at all, but rather a plot, because I'm drawn to the hints about causation in this video. And I'm convinced that there are hints here. And maybe the disturbing, traumatic elements of the video are needed to allow the ending to work the way that it does. Is there a necessary degree of cruelty in all profound art?
Fourth, and speaking of words failing... your humble blogger has yet to join the next generation proper of gaming hardware. Sure, I've got a Nintendo DS, which is excellent and interesting, and sure to be the source/subject of at least 2 published articles (good ones), but I have yet to acquire a Nintendo Wii (drool), an XBox 360 (sigh... bland yet offering very pretty graphics), or a PS3 (sigh... bland yet offering even prettier graphics). I haven't really considered getting a PS3 because it's just so darn expensive and there really aren't any must-have games out for it yet. (Shame on you, Sony! Shame!) That might be changing, however, with the release of the next-generation EyeToy, the Playstation Eye Peripheral for the PS3. (The EyeToy was the black web-cam that Sony used to bring motion-capture to the PS2.)
The first game released for the Eye is the aptly-named Eye of Judgment, a collectible card game (CCG) like all of the other collectible card games (e.g., Magic: The Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh, Pokemon, World of Warcraft CCG). You have a deck of cards, each of which contributes in some way to your battle against your opponent and her cards. You may find it interesting or instructive to read Tycho's run-down of the way Eye of Judgment's card battles operate. Or you may just want to cut to the chase and read the web-comic about it....
In any case, what makes Eye of Judgment interesting to me is the way Sony has finally started using its processing power to augment reality instead of replacing it, as most games do. Click on the image below to watch the trailer, and make sure you pay attention to the very end:
98% of the trailer is pre-rendered cinematics featuring the battle animations of the various cards. But then, at the very end, we start to see what the PS3's super-duper processor can do when you hook a camera up to it: it can animate the cards in your hand, and let you interact with your deadly little card buddies. And that's just plain cool.
There's more, but this has already dragged on for too long, so the rest will have to wait for another post.
Posted by reparent at 8:27 AM | Comments (0)
July 18, 2007
Machinima Music Madness!
The Ataris recently concluded a contest at Machinima.com that asked the machinima-making-masses to create music videos for three of their songs ("Not Capable of Love," "The Cheyenne Line," and "Connections Are More Dangerous Than Lies") using the World of Warcraft game engine. It's a promo for the new Ataris disc, Welcome the Night, but to facilitate the promo, the band had to give away these three tracks. Since these three songs are, presumably, the tracks slated to be released as singles, that's an odd strategy. (You can still download the three tracks for free here.)
The contest is over now, and here are the three winners:
First Place: "Frame of Mind" by Sedrin
Second Place: "Connections Are More Dangerous Than Lies" by Baron Soosdon
Third Place: "Connections Are More Dangerious Than Lies" by Dead Workers Party
I'd also like to draw your attention to one of the finalists that didn't make the top 3: Selserene's "To The Fairest"
You can compare Selserene's video with the official (i.e., featuring the band) Ataris video for "Not Capable of Love" at the iTunes Store. (Double-click on the song title to watch a 30-second preview.) I like the Blood Elf version better, I think.
Finally, for something not-completely different, the Level 70 Elite Tauren Chieftain have been confirmed to perform live at Blizzard's annual BlizzCon this year. Here you can sample the heavy metal goodness of "I Am Murloc!" (Warning: this video contains death-metal power chords, thrusting orc hips, and brief superhero-themed homophobic content.)
Anyway, what I'm most interested in with these machinima are the ways they depend (or not) on knowledge of the game for viewers/listeners to enjoy them. (And what should we call the consumers of music video? Listeners? Viewers? Multi-modal-mu-vid-mavens?) Sedrin's "Frame of Mind," for instance, is a critique of the tendency toward excess in the Achiever play-style (mentioned in yesterday's post, and then ably copped-to by Coeurlion in the comments). It's easy in WoW to get caught up in the race to level 70, and in the race to get the most elite weapons and armor. Sedrin shows us his avatar's Buddhist coming-out party, renouncing worldly goods and rediscovering friendship and that the world has color. If you've never yelled at someone for ninjaing loot, or been yelled at yourself for an innocent (we hope) mistake looting, does this video mean anything at all to you? Can it?
Baron Soosdon's video, on the other hand, seems like a pretty straightforward tale of lost love and zombie invasions. However, if you're a WoW player, you might have noticed the cross-faction romances of our main characters (Blood Elves are Horde, the Draenei are Alliance) -- a big no-no. And if you're a lore-junkie, you might have noticed the allusion to Horde Warchief Thrall and Alliance Mega-Mage Jaina Proudmoore, whose own forbidden love has been the subject of long speculation. Obviously, this isn't crucial knowledge needed to make sense of the video, but it does set up a clear dichotomy between what we might call naive and experienced readings of the video.
The Dead Workers Party video also makes use of in-jokes and references, such as the absurdity of playing World of Warcraft on an Atari 2600, itself an in-joke reference to the band's name, The Ataris. The video's concluding in-joke pokes fun at the difficulty in knowing who or what is on the other side of the often attractive avatars on screen.
And the L70ETC song, "I Am Murloc!" may be catchy if you're into that sort of thing, but if you've ever played WoW, it's an instant classic. Murlocs are irritating, little, deadly fish-people who swarm up to you and then make you into their own special fish-food du jour. Horde and Alliance both have quests that require navigating through Murloc-infested areas, and killing many, many Murlocs. Every WoW player knows the sinking feeling of doom when you're trying to get just one Murloc to attack and end up hearing the Murloc sound: "Aaaaaughibbrgubugbugrguburgle!" coming from 3-8 others, all heading your way with murder in their unblinking eyes. Can this song/video have the same impact on non-Wow-ers?
I don't have a conclusion to this ramble. That's usually a good sign that there is (or should be) a paper hiding three or four so-whats down the road. We'll see.
Until then, rock on!
Posted by reparent at 11:05 AM | Comments (0)
July 17, 2007
I Do It All Over. And You?
Over at WoWInsider, Mike Schramm asks what kind of Bartle gamer you are.
The Bartle Test of Gamer Psychology tests the play-style and interests of players of role-playing (primarily) games. It was developed (appropriately enough) by games researcher and designer Dr. Richard Bartle, whose blog, QBlog, is a hoot to read. Looking back at that sentence, it doesn't really come across as a very serious endorsement of Bartle, does it? Hmm... sounds like a topic for a future post.
I am an ESAK. That means that my gameplay interests and skills most closely match the Explorer scale (73.33%), followed by the Socializer scale (66.67%), the Achiever scale (46.67%), and finally the Killer scale (13.33%).
According to the test:
People with high Explorer scores tend to enjoy finding all of the unique areas of the world, often enjoying the immersion of the experience. Finding a place with unique monsters and seeing what those monsters do is usually more fun for an Explorer than defeating the monsters themselves.
And that's actually true for me. In World of Warcraft, I enjoy seeing new zones, taking my low-level alts (alternate avatars) to new places for which they're grossly under-leveled, and picking up new flightpoints. This doesn't help me to level very quickly, but it does keep the game feeling like a fresh series of challenges for me.
For instance, when I started playing my first avatar, a druid, I used the druidic power of invisibility to sneak all over the planet. I had a great time, but I was constantly asking myself how classes without invisibility (which is most of the other classes in WoW) could stand having to be seen all the time. Now I know, as I (slowly) advance my two non-invisible alts -- a mage and a warrior. And the challenge of getting my level 33 warrior into and out of the level 51-58 Western Plaguelands to pick up the flightpoint at Chillwind Point (which I did last night) was great fun. Did I kill anything? No way. Anything I would have seen there would have stomped me and used my torso for a planter. Was it a great achievement? Only in my mind. But in my mind, it was pretty darn cool.
Take the test yourself here. I'm curious to know what the rest of the universe finds interesting in role-playing gaming. I'm also curious what those of you who don't game (or who don't game much) would find interesting, in the Bartle schema.
Posted by reparent at 9:34 AM | Comments (2)
August 2, 2006
Summer Nervous Breakdown... er...Hiatus
Between the research I need to do before the semester begins, the new graduate student teacher training I'm leading in August, The Spouse and my massive Luau on the Lake wedding extravaganza, and all of the preparation that needs to happen for the classes I'm teaching this fall, there isn't going to be any posting on this blog until August 28th.
Also, I'm shutting down comments on the blog because I'm getting hammered with comment spam, and I just don't have the time to rip them out 2 or 3 times every day. :-(
In the meantime, I leave you with this to ponder -- Human Video Games!!!
Guillaume Reymond's works of madness or genius recreate classic low-rez video games through the medium of stop-motion animation (and a bunch of people sitting in auditorium seats).
Space Invaders:
Pong:
(Via: Joystiq)
See you on the 28th!
Posted by reparent at 1:43 PM
July 26, 2006
It's Tough Being a Tiger
Here's something entertaining, and perhaps even a little thought-provoking.
For anyone reading this who isn't into MMORPGs in general, or World of Warcraft in particular, you can consider this the end of the post. (Just be sure to think something deep about the way(s) YouTube and GoogleVideo are changing modern communication and cultural literacy on your way out.)
For the rest of you poor blighted souls, this clip has special poignancy for me, because it reminds me a sad, sad dynamic in World of Warcraft (WoW). In WoW, my character is a Night Elf druid. Druids are fascinating blends of warrior, healer, magic-user, and assassin. We can shapeshift into bear form and take lots and lots of damage (without dying, that is). We can shapeshift into cat form and deal out some serious pain. We can shapeshift into cheetah form and run very, very quickly either toward or away from danger (depending on one's play style, I suppose). And we can blast enemies with magic or heal ourselves and others around us in elf form. I've really enjoyed the flexibility that this hybrid class presents.
However, to keep the classes balanced with each other, the makers of WoW have made sure that druids can do all of these skills from other classes, but not quite as well as the other classes. (This avoids the famous "Bullrog Conundrum" from South Park -- Cartman's ninja alter-ego announces that his special power is having all of the other super powers.) Playing druid well takes time, patience, and real strategy to learn how to synergize the various class abilities while minimizing their weaknesses. I'm still learning.
So, a while back I was playing WoW, and while my party was waiting for another player to arrive at the dungeon we were going to invade, another party member challenged me to a duel. (Duels are harmless fun in WoW.) This player was a rogue. Rogues are WoW's assassin class. They're sneaky and fast and do lots and lots and lots of damage. And this rogue was at least 4 levels below my character.
Sigh. The results were much like those in the video. Only it didn't take 3 minutes and 25 seconds for the sneaky, irritating ape-rogue to hand me my noble, majestic tiger-druid butt. Sad sad sad sad sad.
(Via Bitch, Ph.D., who linked to the GoogleVideo version of this. I used the YouTube copy because YouTube allows one to imbed the video in blog posts. GoogleVideo should work on adding this feature. Soon.)
Posted by reparent at 6:16 PM | TrackBack
March 30, 2006
Briefly Noted: When Pretentiousness Met Video Games
More from the Something Awful photoshopping project:
It used to be that video games were mind-numbingly simplistic, consisting solely of crude blocks moving around the screen. Now we have incredibly complex stories, stunning full motion video, and amazing interactivity. It's the complex story end that has led to a great deal of pretentiousness seeping into video games. Now it's not just "move the crude block," it's "move the crude block that killed his wife and is haunted by a demon of his own guilt." This week the Something Awful Forum Goons celebrate the introduction of pretentiousness into video games by making them even more self-absorbed and needlessly intellectual. Grab your thinking cap and enjoy, bucko!
My favorite:
What's yours?
Posted by reparent at 3:59 PM | Comments (2)
November 18, 2005
Foreshadowing from the Kane Club?
I had an interesting "chat" with Shaz from the Jamie Kane fan club today...
I've removed the name of the individual Shaz is talking about (and one other plot-related detail), to prevent spoiling anything important. (The fact that the Fan Club members aren't always the most trusting of people -- except for Saint Jamie, of course -- should come as no surprise to anyone.)
SHAZ: Hmm ...Talkin of weirdozZ (like my bRo), I wanted to pik UR brains 4 a sec.
RICHARD: Go ahead.
SHAZ: It's just that I've got this wierd feelin...a bit like the other day with ur star sign! I fink thers suMMit fishy about [XXX]...
SHAZ: ...last night I had a weird nightmare about [XXX]! we discovered s/he was involved in the plot to kill Jamie and s/he got us all arrested - what dya reck?
RICHARD: Well, [XXX] is an arse, and s/he's in love with [YYY].
SHAZ: Cool. Anyhoo, got2go. [snip] - byeeee!
SHAZ has logged off...
Now, obviously the Shaz-bot (kudos to anyone who can ID that reference from memory) wasn't programmed to parse my response to her. This leads me to believe that the entire purpose of the chat was to drop this little nugget of suspicion.
It's not Dostoevsky, but it is interesting how the various pieces of the Jamie Kane mystery are being laid out, which twists are being foreshadowed, and which complications are being used to obfuscate the solution.
Of course, foreshadowing can only properly be identified in hindsight or through re-reading, because you have to know what does happen to correctly label which signs of that future occurence were included in the narrative. So, it's premature to call this foreshadowing.
From a literary standpoint, this is pretty basic. But from an experiential standpoint (from the inside, as it were), this is really thought-provoking. I'm getting a whole new appreciation for the seductive power of the false lead. I'm not a big mystery reader, but it seems that red herrings all have to feel like foreshadowing to detectives, or else they would never be pursued (and thus proven to be incorrect).
As a detective on the Kane Case, and though I know it's almost certainly not relevant or meaningful, I'm itching to start tracking down Shaz's suspicions...
Posted by reparent at 12:51 PM
November 17, 2005
All Jamie All The Time
So, the Jamie Kane game just keeps on going and going. Here are some preliminary reflections (spoiler-free, of course) on the game so far.
First -- if you're playing the game and one of the fan club members asks you to make international phone calls to further the plot... DON'T DO IT! The game was produced by the BBC, and is strongly Euro-centric. For most of us, cell-phoning Bombay (not a real call destination... so far...) would be prohibitively expensive. Just tell your chat-partner that you can't make the call, and he or she will do it for you and post the results on the message board.
This strikes me as a real problem for the game. The immersive possibilities raised by being able to call these numbers seems great. How much more difficult would it be to set up US-available toll-free numbers to call? The game knows where we're located (via the first chat), so switching the phone numbers based on the locale of the player isn't an impossible task...
Second, we finally got a rundown of suspects. The mystery aspects of this game really started to come together, and in a surprisingly natural way. Instead of a "You're probably wondering why I've brought you all together" scene, we get a much more organic developing list of possible villains. Bravo to the writers!
Third, I don't read a lot of message boards, but those I do read are most definitely *not* populated with people who post like this:
im stil totaly gobsmaked guys!!!!!!! cdnt zzzzzzz a wink coz of piccy. Is it J???????? + if it is who woz the J in Helickopter? was the krash reely an "acksident"?? + now wot r we gona do????????????????????????????? aaaaaaaaaagggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!*
Granted the poster in question is "13," but still.
Fourth, it's a little surprising how many of the "tasks" set for us involve "hacking" into computer systems. I suppose it makes sense -- after all, we're really telecommuting to our virtual Jamie Kane Klub House, so the things we're able to do all have to be tele-present, too. However, I just can't shake the suspicion that I'm really part of a massive teen-girl version of Cory Doctorow's "Anda's Game" (which you should go read if you have not already), and which is itself a teen-girl version of Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game.
Fifth, I kinda like the antagonistic vibe on the message board. So far, I've been visually described variously as...
and as...
I like that. I am a boy wonder (as far as the people on the message board are concerned, I am a m4st3r 1337 h4xx0r**) and I'm also invisible (I'm the only member of the fan club without a picture or member page). Clever.
But what helpful thing have you female Kane-heads been compared to?
More reflections to come.
* Translation: Friends, I am still rather upset [over these recent developments]! I could not sleep a wink after seeing that picture. Is it Jamie? And if it is Jamie, then who was the "Jamie" in the helicopter [which crashed]? Furthermore, was the crash really an "accident"? I am now left even more disturbed and concerned than before! Heavens!
** Translation: an elite master [computer] hacker.
Posted by reparent at 1:45 PM | Comments (1)
November 11, 2005
We (HEART) Jamie (4-EVAH)
Well, the Jamie Kane experiment/experience is going swimmingly.
We're all having a wonderful time getting in touch with our inner teen girl selves. (As the Wikipedia perkily quips, Jamie Kane is "aimed primarily at girls aged 14 years to 18 years.") It's an interesting phenomenon -- previous ARGs like Majestic (about a government conspiracy), I Love Bees (hyping the Halo 2 game for X-Box), and The Beast (Steven Spielberg's A.I. film) were clearly not targeted to teen girls.
This one is, though, and it's because boys don't listen to boy-band music, or somesuch nonsense. (Recent empirical evidence suggests that this is indeed a spurious argument. I recently learned, for instance, how very much the men in my classes know about the many differences between N*Sync, Backstreet Boys, and 98 Degrees. Take that, Wikipedia!)
On the other hand, it does strike me as a little odd that the men on the Jamie Kane fan board all profess to be straight...
In any case, because some of us are a few days behind others, I'm going to hold off posting more about the game until Tuesday. Don't want to give away any of the surprises!
Posted by reparent at 8:59 AM
November 7, 2005
Jamie Kane, Always In Our Thoughts
One of the things that I'm most grateful for is that I have the ability to work all kinds of crazy, off-the-wall materials into my classes. As the web continues to spread and develop, people put all kinds of strange works up there -- many of which I think are quite interesting and worthy of discussion. Hence the eclectic and unconventional mix of works in my syllabi.
Back in August Jay Bibby (of the incomparable JayIsGames blog) posted a brief review of the BBC's new Alternate Reality Game (ARG), Jamie Kane: 1982-2005.
I'd wanted to work ARGs into my classes for some time now, and this one seemed a promising fit: it is short (only about 15 days' worth of content), not explicitly sci-fi (not that I have any problem with that, but I find that students are often inexplicably hostile to SF), it's free, and doesn't seem to require absurd programming skills (like ripping apart the source code of a Flash movie to find a message hidden therein).
This ARG explores the tragic death of former boy-band singer Jamie Kane, whose helicopter crashed into the North Sea while en route to shoot a music video for his second solo album.
The production values in this game are really impressive. The three albums by Kane are all available online with full streaming support for all of the tracks. I'm particularly amused by the songs on the first album, Boy*d Upp's Get Boy*d Upp. The cheesiness is palpable, and yet also completely believable. It's choice.
Your entrance to the game is through a Jamie Kane fan group, "JamieRules," whose members post to a message board (they also post to their own blogs, which are, helpfully enough, linked from the message board). One of the members writes on her blog that:
dont get me rong. im not one of those nutters who think kurt cobain is still alive and living in a 2-bed semi in cheadle.
or that elvis was killed by an exploding cheeseburger planted by north korean assassins (tho 3rd-year frank has some hard evidence to say he was – i know hes off his head most of the time but he has moments of perfect klarity).
in other words im not some sad and pathetic konspiracy theorist.
but ...
BUT ...
sumfings not rite.
i kant shake this feelin that jamie isnt dead. or he was murdered. or sumfing. SUMFING. it just wont leeve me alone.
[. . . .]
+ i am gonna find it if it kills me.
The cult of personality formed around Kane, in other words, is about to get sucked into an investigation of the death of their idol, and you're along for the ride.
Besides the number of sites, the albums and publicity photos for the bands (Boy*d Upp and Kane solo), there are also video clips of press briefings and news reports to be watched.
And if that wasn't enough, the game also incorporates some surprisingly sophisticated chat-bots to make you feel like you're really chatting via IM with the members of the fan group. When you first register for the game with the BBC, you get sent an e-mail from the group's president inviting you to check out the message board and to IM with her using a special (not real) chat interface.
Following some basic Eliza-type "conversation," Jessica asked an interesting follow-up question:
JESSICA> Hmmm, not into action films that much. But I guess they can be pretty exciting. So what is your fave film of all time? Mine is Almost Famous.
RICHARD> Blade Runner. I was hoping Jamie would star in a sequel. He'd rock as an android.
JESSICA> I've not seen it, but Harrison Ford's in it, isn't he? I must get it on deeveedee. You don't know who directed it, do you?
I was trying to scope out the limits of the bot's AI with the android and Jamie Kane references, seeing if she would: 1] make the connection between her idol and the film we were talking about (something like: "OMG, Jamie *would* be great in that!"), or 2] make a self-referential remark about being robotic herself (along the lines of: "androids need love, too!"), but she didn't do either. Instead, she consulted a film database and asked me a follow-up question. I was impressed that she did it, though not really with the substance of the question.
In any case, I am impressed so far. The students in my Digital Composing classes are getting their first tastes of Jamie Kane this week. We'll see how it goes. I'll keep you posted.
Posted by reparent at 12:08 PM | Comments (3)
September 23, 2005
Because I know you're bored...
... and/or easily amused, I give you GOOGLEFIGHT!
Sure, Google is great. It's quick, it's gives you zillions of hits for whatever lame, bizarre terms you put in... but does it simulate a deathmatch between competing terms?
Now, through the power of the internets, we can rebuild Google. We have the technology. We have the capability to make the world's first Smackdown Search Engine. Googlefight will be that search engine. Better than Google was before. Better . . . stronger . . . fightier.
I hear you asking, but how does it work, Richard? Well, let's look at an example from real life. There's a student in one of my classes who is troubled by the eons-old conflict between Pirates and Vikings. If a Pirate and a Viking got into a fight, he asks, clearly distraught over the unanswerability of his question, who would win? Given the extremely timely nature of his concern (see here for more on the long and glorious history of the many connections between pirates and blogging), and the revolutionary new Googlefight technology at our disposal, let's see what we can come up with.
Putting "pirate" and "viking" into the Googlefight keyword boxes, we see scenes like this:
Pretty exciting stuff!
Eventually, one stick-figure keyword wins and Googlefight shows you the score:
See, concerned student, thanks to the miracle of modern technology, you need fret no more. The finest scientific minds of our time have concluded that Pirates really do kick Viking butt.
Well, it's certainly been fun solving this age-old mystery once and for all. Join us next time on Digital Digressions, when we'll settle the controversy over who would would you rather have as support staff in your office/Hall-of-Super-Best-Friends: Avenger or Moses?
We'll see you next week!
Posted by reparent at 3:32 PM | Comments (1)
September 16, 2005
To IF or not to IF...
Long story short: check out this online game-version of Hamlet. What follows is a medium-length exploration of some ideas raised in my graduate seminar about the nature of academic literary interpretation and the problems posed by Shakespeare's moody Dane. Eventually, I'll meander my way back to the game. You've been warned.
This week in my graduate seminar on hermeneutics and contemporary narrative (a.k.a.: "Interpretation Theory and the Freaky New Stories That Really Make Us Need That Kind of Theory"), we began discussing N. Katherine Hayles' latest book, Writing Machines. (Her new book, My Mother Was a Computer: Digital Subjects and Literary Texts isn't due out until next month, but what a title!)
In the course of our discussion, we thought about a point Hayles makes about her own scholarly transition from "solving problems" to "investigating problematics." The students were, justifiably, unsure as to what she meant by this, so I brought up a universally-acknowledged problematic text to ground our investigation of problematicity: William Shakespeare's Hamlet.
In the interest of time, we focused on one problematic aspect of the play -- Hamlet's indecision and inability to take action. We proposed a problem-solving approach to this aspect of Hamlet, positing that Shakespeare's lengthy play about equivocation and ambivalence is really a statement of the ultimate futility of life; i.e., Hamlet isn't the only one incapable of making a difference, of righting a wrong -- this is the essence of the human condition in an uncaring and unjust world. In this interpretation, the problem of what to make of Shakespeare's wallowing in Hamlet's paralysis gets resolved quite nicely.
However, the problem with this sort of interpretation is that it shuts down (or tries to, at least) other interpretations. And when these other interpretations muster enough strength and evidence, they tend to discredit this interpretation. It's also rather pat, isn't it?
Against this, we set a different approach, one that explores the dynamics of what makes the play problematic, and that refuses to presume that problems in interpretation are equal to failures or flaws. In the previous model, the problem of Hamlet's ambivalence is, essentially, a flaw in the greatness of the play until it can be rationalized through an interpretive solution.
In this approach, the problematic features of Hamlet make the play more interesting and valuable, not less. With this perspective, Hamlet's failure to exact revenge throughout the play allows us to generate multiple interpretations -- maybe we should think of Hamlet as: a Freudian neurotic, a product of class-based privilege, caught in the midst of an inescapable conflict about gender, sex, and power... the list could go on forever (and does, in Hamlet scholarship).
The conflict between problem-solving and problematics is one that continues to be fought at all levels of literary endeavor. We'd like to think (at least some of the time) that even the most difficult and problematic works can be successfully interpreted, that there's a meaning in there somewhere, and that we could find that meaning. We want that problem to be solved. And even though most of literary work in academia investigates problematics, to get to the dynamics of the problem, the researcher has to embrace the ideology of problem-solving! (After all, we may be open to the possibility that the problem may reveal an entire world of ideas and beliefs, but we have to believe in our own interpretation as being the approach that best opens up that world (i.e., the solution).
It's a tricky game, and one that we're often not aware of playing.
But we can be aware of playing another tricky game, Robin Johnson's The Most Lamentable and Excellent Text Adventure of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Games of this sort are alternately called "text adventures" and "interactive fiction." I grew up playing these games (as you can read in my latest fabulous star-profile) , and I always called them text adventures. However, the move in the academy has been to adopt the more erudite nom de jeu interactive fiction, which gives rise to the initialism "IF," which allows for the malapropic acronymic pun in the title.
Anyhoo, IF comes from the dark ages when personal computers were so powerful that they could display text on a screen! That was it, really. The player is given a paragraph or so of text setting the scene, and then is left to type in simple commands to direct the action of the game. At the end of the text provided by the game will be a sideways carrot, like so: > This is the player input line. Type what you want yourself/your character (Hamlet, in this case) to do, and if the game recognizes (parses, in computer lingo) the words you used, it will carry out those actions.
In Hamlet, for instance, after leaving Hamlet's bedroom, you/Hamlet run into Horatio, who tells you about seeing your father's ghost. You, of course, head out into the cold to see this ghost!
Balcony
You are on the palace balcony. Bats are flapping around in the twilight. Miles and miles of crinkly Danish countryside stretch out below you.
A ghost is here.
An exit leads south.
> look at ghost
He looks a little paler and more transparent than you remember him, but this is unmistakably the ghost of your late father. He is dressed in full armour and looks a little bit peeved, just as you would if you were dead.
> talk to ghost
"Hey Dad," you say cheerily. "What's up?"
"Hamlet," says the old man after a sigh, "you remember how I was found mysteriously dead in the orchard a couple of weeks back? Well... it's like this. Your uncle Claudius poisoned me so he could become king and marry your mother. I'd be awfully grateful if you could kill him for me."
"All right," you say, "I'll do it!"
Your life suddenly seems to have purpose.
Now, besides being clever and amusing, it's also an interesting way to play with narratological concepts (such as the implied reader, the narratee, the author, the implied author, and speech acts) and to investigate the multiple rich problems presented in and by the original text.
So, for all of you academic types who made it this far (over 1,000 words! Not exactly an example of Berubean exuberance, but well outside the usual bounds of blog terseness) -- what thinkest thou of problem-solving, problematics, and IF Hamlet?
(Thanks to Boing Boing for spotting this!)
Posted by reparent at 12:09 PM | Comments (1)
September 12, 2005
The Skill of God...?
Coming to us straight from the Infernal Pits of Madness (via Thailand, apparently) is a new Web puzzle game... GODTOWER: THE SKILL OF GOD.
The game is set up very simply -- go to the web page, click Begin, and you're presented with an image. It's your job to figure out what the password is for that image. Type the password in the box at the bottom, and you go to the next level. Simple, right?
Wrong.
GODTOWER is maddeningly difficult, and doubly so because of its occasional (and sometimes intentional, I think) use of Engrish. It is also clearly intended for PC Windows users -- some of the puzzles just won't make sense to Mac people.
When you need help -- and you will need help -- I suggest you check out Jay Is Games first. The comments there are being ruthlessly policed to prevent spoilers from ruining the fun of stuck gamers. Hints are encouraged, passwords are not. You may also want to consult the Nordinho forums and Lazylaces for more hints and/or solutions.
GODTOWER is different from most other web games (The Beast and I Love Bees, for instance) in that it is almost completely lacking in frame narrative. Each of these games featured web pages that required the player to figure out a password or the URL for the next web site (just like GODTOWER), but in The Beast the player was attempting to solve a murder, and in and I Love Bees, the player was attempting to find out more about an apparent rogue AI).
Interestingly, puzzle games usually provide you with these sorts of story elements to encourage the player to continue and to reward her for her progress to date. Elaborate cut-scenes are common, as are expository pages that set up the next puzzle and satisfy a bit of your need to know more.
GODTOWER gives you none of that apparatus. There's a series of puzzles. That's it. The title itself offers the only frame element in the form of allusion and allegory. The allusion is to the Tower of Babel -- a story in chapter 11 of the Book of Genesis. According to Genesis, the people of the Earth united to build a tower to heaven. God was offended (and possibly a bit threatened), and destroyed the tower, scattering the peoples of the earth and giving them all different languages.
The allegory is to the mode of distributed cognition that games like this encourage. I may not know more than a few answers, but if you put me in contact (via message boards or blogs) with 100 other people, each of whom also knows 1-2 answers, we can beat the tower in a matter of days. If you create a community of 100,000 (as happened at the peak of The Beast), the puzzles get solved almost as fast as they can be put up. Like the ante-diluvian, pre-diasporic Babel-builders, we can work together to solve even the most impossible of puzzles. If the allegory holds, though, what punishment awaits us?
Finally, I guess, we come back to the question of narrative and of why we play games. When do we play puzzle games (which almost always are lacking in the button-mashing action we associate with computer games) to get the story promised? When do we play because we're hooked for different reasons?
Hubris, for example, can be a powerful motivator. So, is it enough merely to label a game "The Skill of God" and let our inner Frankensteins demand that we challenge God and prove that we've got mad skillz, too?
(via DerekW at Jay Is Games)
Posted by reparent at 2:43 PM | Comments (7)