So, it’s finals week here in Thoronia, so we’ve been busy dotting our I’s and crossing our T’s in hopes of getting good scores on Presidential Fitness Exams. Since most of our creativity has been spent on these projects, I figured I’d point you around internet-town instead, and maybe you’ll see something you like:
Steve Gaynor, in his blog Fullbright, applies some of Roland Barthes’ (read the essay I’m thinking of here) idea’s to video games in his essay “Being There”. Oddly, he doesn’t actually mention Barthes, but it does bring some interesting arguments about authorship to the table. Worth reading if you want to picture new world with new video game design. It also brings up an interesting point in reference to Barthes’ idea’s, namely that his thoughts can be applied to any medium. I’ve heard of Barthes being taught in design classes, English, math, philosophy, history and so forth. “The Death of The Author” is one of the most applicable and easy to manipulate pieces of modern criticism, and Gaynor proves it (even if he doesn’t know it).
While we’re on the topic of video games, Brainy Gamer takes on immersion in regards to Fallout 3. He talks about this a few times in several other parts of his blog, all of them worth reading. I’m still waiting for more about his students’ take on Fallout 3 though, as I’m really curious as to how they’ll take it after playing through 1 and 2 His students played through FO 1 and 2, and their reactions to 3 can be found here (and yeah, you read that all right, as far as I can tell he teaches a Game class at a college level, but I’m still not too sure of the title of the course… either way, awesome, and something that I look forward to doing myself someday).
Oh screw it, here’s another video game story from the Escapist. Les Chappell’s article, “The Vintage Game Preservation Society” talks a bit about abandonware and copyright issues. But, more importantly has links to website’s that show how to get Syndicate and System Shock 2 running on OSX (or Windows XP for that matter).
Miles of tunnels beneath London are currently for sale. In what sounds like the beginning of a James Bond movie, London has set the price for its historic tunnels at $7.4 billion. Now, I realize that whoever purchases this will probably use it for good, what with its historical importance and all, but at the same time can’t help but wondering what type of evil, world-taking over plan might be able to be hatched from these tunnels. That being said, the Republic of Thoronia is currently in negotiations to take hold of the tunnels. If all goes well we will be moving in on the 1st of January.
Wall-E was released this last week on DVD, ha-za!
Black Friday has come and gone with “only” a trampling and a shooting. Pundits are pointing to the economy for blame on this, saying that this might not have ever happened if we weren’t in such rough economic times. I would argue that this might not have ever happened if we weren’t so driven by money, consumerism and “deals.” It doesn’t matter that we have no money, it matters that this thing I’ve never heard of until just now is HALF OFF (MSRP that is, it’s actually only $15 cheaper than the normal Wal-Mart Price, just FYI). The worst part is that many of these “deals” that happened on Black Friday were available on the internet, and many of them weren’t actually deals at all. Truth be told, American’s really want to risk their lives and karmic well-being in order to fight over Xbox’s and HDTV’s, which is amazingly sad. It’s always a bit disheartening this time of year when you get to actually see what drives people. I realize it’s the same old thing, the same thing said a million times before, and the same thing I’ll say next year… but every year I’m just blown away by how ludicrous our holiday ideal’s have become. Besides, everyone knows the best HDTV deals come after Christmas and before the Super Bowl. Duh.