Very well put:
Has humanity ever built a border that can withstand human will?
https://youtu.be/GG-OrbF4Fjs
Very well put:
Has humanity ever built a border that can withstand human will?
Even if a company says it won’t share data with third parties, who says it’ll stay that way? Case in point: Moves changed their privacy policy within ten days of their Facebook acquisition.
A linguistics professor was lecturing to her class one day. “In English,” she said, “A double negative forms a positive. In some languages, though, such as Russian, a double negative is still a negative. However, there is no language wherein a double positive can form a negative.”
A voice from the back of the room piped up, “Yeah . . .right.”
Source: http://www.enginesofmischief.com/makers/evan/humor/doublenegative.html
After reading on arstechnica about a new documentary called Kaz I was psyched to watch it. I’m no console player, but Gran Turismo is a household name by now. 😉 The documentary is about Kazunori Yamauchi the producer of this legendary game series. It promised insight into the thoughts and ambitions of a perfectionist mind funneled though the game making process to produce one of the most acclaimed racing car simulation games out there.
But what I went to see was utterly disappointing!
I expected insight into the process of capturing the “soul” of complex machines–that cars have undeniably become–and how they managed to produce a “piece of art” (in a visual and “feeling of realism” sense) so that they each car they put into the game feels and acts subtly, but recognizably different. I expected something along the lines of creator’s vision, technical process and production anecdotes (very much like the Oral History of Street Fighter 2).
How do you capture the very tactile nature of car racing and delivering it through a gaming console?
How do you deliver the sense of speed and deafening sound into the living room?
How do you make this livable so that people really think they have tasted a drip of the real experience?
Wouldn’t this be interesting to know?
There have been very different but good examples set by companies like Blizzard or id Software when it comes to this. (I’m only counting one-way communication here. so only videos, talks, interviews, etc.)
I loved the battle reports before StarCraft 2 came out or interviews with game director Dustin Browder talking about balance changes and giving insight into their weighing and thinking in the process.
On the other side you have people like John Carmack do after-the-fact (sometimes very technical) analyses of games his company produced on both very specific or very broad game development issues.
I have seen several documentaries that try to capture the fascination of gaming from the players side (e.g. The King of Kong) as well as some that try to show how certain very prominent games were made (e.g. Indie Game, Minecraft).
But this is nothing like any of them. It is a string of sterile interviews, shots in random (“industrial” looking) sceneries, with people (at best) vaguely related to the game, the industry, racing, the film or anything.
The only glimpse of how the game was actually made were in two short scenes: where they show how they digitize tracks and an interview with one of the games’ visual designers working on a track’s scenery.
The interviews with “Kaz” are interesting if it wasn’t for the over-the-top and totally artificial settings. There are also some rather bizarre outdoor shots with him in a forest and in a traditional around-the-corner restaurant. They seem like they were forcefully inserted to create the facade of a “happy” and “balanced” person … which seems odd … having a rough idea of the kind of mindset in both the (Japanese) corporate and the general gaming world.
It seems they were desperate to make one of the biggest game company’s largest and probably most expensive game productions look like a inspiring one-man handcrafted artsy garage project.
They basically failed really hard to portray it like an indie game (in spirit). The blatantly obvious and nonsensical product placements didn’t help either. So for a film trying to capture “feeling” it is a rather “over-engeneered” PR tool. Basically Sony achieved with KAZ what Morgan Spurlock couldn’t with The Greatest Movie Ever Sold.
So thats why I’m angry … there is no feeling, no emotion, no insight in this film … it’s a piece coming out of a soulless marketing machine … sadly …
There are three other things that make programming difficult:
- Fixing things that should not be broken
- No time for learning things
- Bad environment for programming
Let’s look at these things – these are all “time thieves”
Street Fighter II: An Oral History tells the story of how Street Fighter II came to be, though interviews and anecdotes of those involved creating it. It’s a lot of fun to read. 😀
Facebook offers you to pay for likes, which will generally come from people who don’t really like your page, but probably get paid for it. This in turn will drag down engagement on your posts, because now many of your (artificially limited) post views will go to them instead of genuinely interested people. Then Facebook offers you to pay to throttle your posts less so that they reach more people. … See? Win/Win!
https://twitter.com/tyrantasorus/status/430902407271157760
A study shows “users who try to talk about politics on Facebook are often surprised by the political opinions of their acquaintances“.
Because Facebook not only has a low threshold for “friending” another person but also can bridge together many social groups with a single person’s post, it can be a breeding ground for alienation and resentment.
Yay, it’s working. 😀