by ·Comments Off on Monday Morning Fuel: The Stanley Parable

Making a habit of coming in late to any party, last week I was clued into The Stanley Parable, a fan made mod for Half Life 2.

Playing this has the potential to redefine what you think of as a game, and its very existence as an entry to the medium makes actual definition of what a game is increasingly difficult.  It’s an exploration into the nature of free will, of fate, of futility, and of the way we are conditioned to respond in certain situations.  At least, that’s what I got out of it.  It’s also grimly rather funny.

There were also moments where I identified that the narrator was starting to sound a lot like I do after GMing for Dungeons and Dragons with a particularly inventive group of players.

The mod can be obtained here.  It is possible to play on Mac and PC through Steam and you require the Source SDK Base 2007 (If you have Half Life 2, you’ll have this).  Further instructions can be found on its download page.

In their words, the game is best if you don’t know anything about it before you play it, so actually, sorry for telling you something about it, but my original post of just a link and a name didn’t seem like enough.

by ·Comments Off on This Week’s Tortoises – 15-21 August 2011

This week we have talked about games, their potential, and I’ve noodled around with trying to learn some new things.

We started the week with  a recommendation for Desktop Dungeons.

I talk about nostalgia attached to arcades and the problems they face in The Death of the Arcade.

I go through the awe inspiring Swordquest and submit a plea for something similar to happen again.

Revisiting a theme that I touched on the other week, we take a look at Steam and Digital Distribution.

The first in the Learn By Doing series, Sick of Ninjas, a silly short film made with lego.

On Friday, it’s not that I had a bad day, but I did have a rant about something that was playing on my mind with Uninspiring Television.

Finally, another Learn By Doing film with Curiosity Killed The World, wherein I learn about poor sound quality.

Hope you’ve had a great week and see you again tomorrow for more gaming, technology and hopefully some more film making.

-Ding

by ·Comments Off on Curiosity Killed The World

As part of my Learn By Doing series of films like my stop motion adventure a few days ago, I did something in live action this time.

Lesson learnt from this video:  You can cover a lot of sins with sound.  I think every one who offers film making advice online says it, but you never really appreciate it until you record something horribly crackly.

There are some out there that might say “well if you’re not 100% happy with it, why publish it?” and to them I say good point, but also I want to share my mistakes to maybe help someone else not make them, or to feel better also making mistakes.

 

 

by ·Comments Off on Uninspiring Television

Nothing gets me more depressed than watching an excessive amount of television.  There is something undeniably soporific about the process but it can easily lead to you watching things that you’ve seen before or things you have absolutely no interest in just for the sake of slumping in front of it for a little longer.

I very rarely come away from a television show, no matter how good it is, with a fired up sense of enthusiasm.  Even a short five minute webisode can instead just leave me wanting to watch more moving images, but no matter how much I get dragged down by television that is actually of a high quality, it’s nothing compared with the way I get dragged down by something that’s trashier and as I often think, if this is happening to me, it must be happening to other people as well.

I can’t help but feel we are being fed poor ideals by the box of flashing lights that sits in our living room.  Cheap to make easy to digest competition shows, such as the box opening non-game No Deal or No Deal, the Weakest Link or Who Wants To Be a Millionaire have all set the tone for what should be desired and sought after and that is money.  I remember watching game shows when I was little where the prizes were somewhat a bonus as opposed to the goal, with any monetary incentives being incredibly small and the prizes taking the form of washing machines and fridges presented on slowly rotating platforms.  It was the actual taking part, being on television and playing a game that was what was important.  I suppose when Countdown starts offering money to its winners, then we know we’re doomed.

The other form of cheaply made easily digested yet simultaneously nauseating show is the reality contest.  Thankfully survival shows like Big Brother seem to be on their way out and really in later years I got the sense that Big Brother was abusing the mentally ill rather than providing solid entertainment, but they have been replaced with the trend for talent shows.  There’s the excruciatingly drawn out X Factor, or Britain’s Got Talent (And Must Be Stopped) or the inexplicably popular Strictly Come Dancing, the show with a title which has never quite made much sense to me.

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For a while now, as you might be able to tell from some of the comments I made about online broadcast technology a couple of weeks ago, I’ve been dying to make a video series of some sort, because I can’t quite work out why I haven’t already.

Today, I have taken a short break from clattering away at my keyboard to try and learn a few video editing skills, using the first few things that I could find near to my desk.  Two of those such things happened to be some LEGO figures, so that goes to explain this stupid little stop motion clip that I’ve created to try and teach myself the basics of video editing.

I found the music on a creative commons royalty free site called incompetech.  Creative commons licenses seem to be a wondrous thing that I’m going to have to learn more about, because it strikes me as the most incredible thing the internet is able to provide right now.

Things I have learnt today:  Stop motion is hard and time consuming and a real art form that I would love to dive a bit further in to and Creative Commons is the future.