Don’t fuck this one up now. Your election is tomorrow, and I’m calling it at +6 for Obama and 328 to 212 in the Electoral College. Voting opens in New Hampshire and Maine in nintey minutes. Prepare yourselves.
media dump
Video games and books. Games first:
SPORE is a beautiful thing – but I don’t know if it’s a good game or not yet. Regardless of the game, however, the tools the game provides for creating content are monumental in both their scope and effectiveness…and, hopefully, their influence. The whole user-created content / mod idea has been trending slooowly towards the mainstream of games. It will be interesting to see how LittleBigPlanet does, and whether these two games form a trend or merely two outliers.
SPECTROMANCER, as recommended by Greenhouse, is like Magic, only designed to be played on the computer. Go try the demo now.
Now, books. I got a MILLION BOOKS for my birthday. Of the subset that I’ve read so far, I can say that Paul Auster’s TRAVELS IN THE SCRIPTORUM is a good, Brian-Aldiss sort of piece of literature…or of science fiction, depending on how you want to look at it. The chief difference between the two is that literature doesn’t tell you how things work. Science fiction, on the other hand, does – and the Harlan Ellision edited DANGEROUS VISIONS is an exceptional collection of sci-fi short stories from the 60s. It dates slightly, and a number of stories suffer from “Gotcha!” syndrome, but it is both a fine collection and an important piece of history.
I also finished with THE ESSENTIAL MCLUHAN, and I can now conclude that Marshall McLuhan was a very intelligent man, with profound insights into our culture…and he was also bit of a nutcase. The less nutcasey bits are, however, very interesting. Oliver Sacks is not a nutcase, but his latest book, MUSICOPHELIA, is very good. It never ceases to amaze me how little we know about our individual brains and our collective culture.
On the comics side, I’ve gone through THE FILTH, by the maddest man in Britain, Grant Morrison…and I must say that, yes, he is STILL MAD. I’m still iffy on Morrison – he’s working with his usual set of zen cultural conspiracies here, and that’s not really my thing. But, at the same time, the series has cursing dolphins, floating city-states, and giant, killer sperm. What’s not to like?
Jon Hickman’s PAX ROMANA, on the other hand, is still lovely. It would be nice, however, if it came out more than once every six months. You hear that, Image?
known exits
I made a set that accidentally is almost all Bedrock. C’est la vie.
1: Wesley Matsell – Infinity Sentinel [Border Community]
2: Panoptic – Suface (Quivver Remix) [Baroque]
3: Lamb – Gabriel [White]
4: Guy J – Geko [Bedrock]
5: Yunus – Let Go [Bedrock]
6: Steiger – Postcard From The Edge [Bedrock]
tdpl23: Robsound – Lime
Tide Pool rides again. Check out our latest little ditty here.
mirrorworks
I’m playing again this coming weekend, on the 26th, at Sunset with the above Kenzie Clarke, from 0130 to 0330. It would be delightful to see you there.
In other music news, some of these are good tracks
Chris Carter & Fine Cut Bodies – Fiddlesticks (Habersham Remix) [Chi]
AMB – Pellet (Anomalies Remix) [Chi]
Wesley Matsell – Bernwerk [Border Community]
Ryan Davis – Clouds Passing By (Eelke Klejin Remix) [Proton]
Davis & May – Positon (Caleb Fox Remix) [Proton]
Christian Smith – Flyertalk [Bedrock]
Christian Smith – Friendly Skies [Bedrock]
The Rollings Stones – You Can’t Always Get What You Want (Soulwax Remix)
got it in one
(Image by Davey B and his mighty Lomo).
Thank you to everyone who came to Hush on Saturday to see me play – you’re all wonderful.
I’m playing with Victoria’s own progressive house / beefcake legend Braeden at Sunset this Friday – it will be a markedly different set, to say the least, but hopefully just as rad. I hope to see you there!
bring the ruckus
“One is an exacting techno & progressive house DJ. One is Victoria’s answer to Fatboy Slim. One plays on two turntables and an electric guitar; the other on four decks, an effects unit, and a Nintendo DS. Their show uses two mixers, hordes of samples, layering and scratching, and lots and lots of rocking out. They are Matt What and Fractal. Sometimes, two wrongs do make a right.”
^^ Please excuse the rather over the top copy from VEMF this year, but please do come out on the 13th to hear us play. Here’s a bit of what we did last time we were at Hush, just in case you’re still on the fence.
boiling point
I’ve not talked about games or game design for a bit due to the byzantine wording of my work contract. Now that I’m not under that part of the contract, let’s talk. This will be a lot of quick thoughts, with more detailed posts to come on some ideas.
– A game about game design and running a game studio, styled like the oldschool Koei-styled sim games like AeroBiz. Do you hire more artists? More managers? Do you give your lead programmer a raise? Who do you side with in a crucial branding debate?
– Along those lines, what works better? Design by committee, design by democracy, or design by autocracy? I suspect the best answer is a combination of all three.
– To switch gears to a quick aside MMOs and team games in general: what sort of bonus size would be requried to enforce sophisticaed co-operation between random players?
– A game about politics and political campaings: DEMAGOGUE.
– A game like Final Fantasy Tactics, but in real time. (Is this just WarCraft III? Or would it be different?)
– Moving to some more personal experiences, I’m pretty sure I’m over D20 style randomness. I played in a 3.5 game this summer (we started about a month before 4e dropped), and I can’t describe to how frustrating it was to work out this great plan…and then miss twice, or hit and deal 12 damage out of a possible 30. For me, this ruins the combat side of the both as a power fantasy and as a worthy tactical game.
– A game I was introduced to that I really enjoyed was Bohnaza, a game about…farming beans. Yes, really. Under the ridiculous premise, there’s a very clever resource management system and lots of interplayer politicing. “I’ll give you three Wax Beans for that Green Bean”, and so on.
– Munchkin, which I can’t believe I’ve never played until now, had the same sort of thing going on: the best parts of the game are the debates between players, trying to decide who to save, and who to screw over.
-BoomBlox, moving into the digital realm, has a ton of game modes, but the best is ‘Attack’, which, wait for it, leads to the same debate: Let’s both kill green! I think Penny-Arcade summed it up best here.
– And, of course, we played a few round of late-night Mafia, proving once and for all that if I am ever accused of anything, I will be found guilty. Unsurprisingly, Mafia was invented in the Psych department of Moscow State University. Leave it to the Russians to make a party game about paranoia. Oddly enough, almost all of these games can be won with the “shut up and let other people talk” philosophy that works so well in other free-for-all games.
food is books
Vancouver Restaurant Summer, 2008 Edition:
FINCH’S, Pender & Richards
KADOYA, Davie
GUU, Gastown
CLOVE, Commercial Drive
THE TEMPLETON, Granville
KAPPA, White Rock
THAI AWAY HOME, Davie
KHAI, Seymour & Robson
SIMBA’S, Denman
(I also want to talk about some books and comics and suchlike)
PHONOGRAM is really good, and speaks to the raver / ex-raver in me. Gillien and McKelvie are talking about the heat-death of scene, and when that’s good and when that’s bad. It’s a good comic to read as techno lurches and heaves towards another one of its demises. DARWINIA is so so close to being an amazing sci-fi / alt history novel about religion and science and miracles…and then Robert Charles Wilson goes and pours on the techno-nonsense and it all goes to hell. ANNA MERCURY, by Warren Ellis, is going somewhere, and I’m not sure where, and I like that. Will be following it, probably in trades, like DOKTOR SLEEPLESS. I’ve not been feeling FREAKANGELS as much, but it’s free, so who can complain? Finally, I can’t belive that I’ve not mentioned Jonathan Hickman’s PAX ROMANA yet, because it’s beautiful and amazing. Image have managed to delay the living hell out of it, but #3 claims to be coming in October.
we believe in maximum effect
The summer of hip-hop comes to a triumphant conclusion:
Aesop Rock – None Shall Pass is an oddly indie and suprisingly bad-ass sounding affair, mostly because of Aesop’s ridiculously low voice and never-ending lyrics. Blockhead’s production does no harm, although the album’s eponymus cut is both the catchiest and the biggest depature. Instead of low-slung NYC funk, it’s a melodic, borderline techno sort of jam. I was surprised as you are, but probably substantially more pleased.
RJD2 – Since We Last Spoke isn’t a bad album, but nor is it a good one. The universal response to me telling people that I picked it up used was “oh, you should have got Deadringer” – and I can’t disagree with that statement.
Madvillain – Madvillany gets the award for being the most stoned and most San Francisco album of the summer – it’s also one of the best, with loose, textured production, casual words from MF Doom, and a bit of a (stoned!) sense of humour.
Wu-Tang Clan – Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) ain’t nothin’ to fuck with! Wu-Tang Clan ain’t nothin’ to fuck with! Wu-Tang Clan ain’t nothin’ to fuck with! Now I see why people big up the RZA so much: because the man can write a drum track and drop a sample.
Blackalicious – NIA makes me smile, mostly because of the breadth of topics covered. There’s a typical “rapper makes it big and forgets his friends” tune, given voice by the amazingly annoying Lyrics Born, a ridiculous jam about a magic sword, a delightful big-up track about an archetypal all-mother, and any number of get-down numbers hidden in between.
So the only question now is: what’s next summer?