vimes

I'm pretty pumped up by the podcast/book club pushing me back to novels; but will there also be collections of short stories on the menu? There are some styles, authors and themes that only appear and function in that form; so I think it might be worth it.

I've been struggling putting into words how important this game is to me, but so far, the most concise thing I can say is : Journey is perfect and 'the real thing'. Beware, superlatives laden brain dump follows. First, the craft is perfect. Just this is already amazing. It's the first instance of a game in which the 3Cs are actually conveying aesthetic intents completely naturally. As for the rest, every single things converge naturally toward building this thing the game conveys and that word can't really describe. Hence, my second point : it's my unshakable (for now) belief, that what's being carried out in this game couldn't have been embedded or even imagined in any other medium and it feels like the creator has the grammar, the conventions and toolset of the medium so fucking ingrained in his/her creative mind, that their complexity vanished during the creation process. Everything looks effortless. Actually, it's more than that, it feels like whoever did this sat down at a table with a computer and made the game. Just like anybody can sit down and put words on paper. No intermediates. Probably not the case, but I'm amazed how much it feels like that. To draw a comparison : I think Limbo is a perfect game too. But it still feels engineered and designed : even though the creators did a tremendous job at hiding the puzzly structure, you can still feel the sense of gameplay progression as well as growing difficulty and complexity. Similarly, Passage - also perfect in its own way - was built to make a point and the creator conscioulsy picked the mechanics intrinsic to the medium to express best what he wanted to say. Here again, the emotionnal result is great, but feels engineered. It's not bad - those games are damned great - but Journey is in a totally different league : everything is completely natural and organic.; as if it couldn't be any different. As if a creative vision had been splashed on a gaming system just by the power of the mind. And it probably shows, but I've got a hell of a problem bending my mind around how this was possible and how, being in dev myself, I couldn't even fathom this coming out of a well known studio. I'll probably change my mind in the future for a less radical appraisal - when I cool off from the experience - but for now, WOW. PS: if you don't have a partner when you see snow, STOP. Wait for one before continuing.

The Progresscasts opened my appetite for more podcasts, more guests, the book club and any crazy jointed project you guys can tackle. Well done!

Oh, I didn't mean you'd have to do it for every single last copy; only for each that are meaningful to you... I don't know, I wouldn't mind having the last copy of Brazil or In the Mood for Love. Then again, yeah, how expensive are we talking about?

Couldn't they allow for a movie theater to buy that last print?

Shit, I'm coming back to Paris on the 10th. Ah well...

Apparently, this was only sent to the Press, so it might still be 'bargo-ed. As for Psychonauts 2/Episodes, the announcement would make me quite happy, but I'm loving the way DF has been offering new visions every 4 months now... so I'd rather they continue doing that and in similar short format.

So, the timing would hint that the contract with THQ not only left DF as the sole owner of the IP, but also that THQ only held the release rights on any platform for a year, yielding them back to DF after that. If that's the case, that's an interesting approach and a very sweet deal.

I know that institutionalized sexism exists but my female friends manage to overrule it without grueling efforts - as past generation had to - and they never were barred from the education or job they were seeking because they were women. It was sometimes hard, but because what they were trying to reach was intrinsically difficult to obtain and keep : they are working in culture, in finance, in engineering, in animation, in biochemisty, programming or education. That's what I meant earlier : my personal experience goes against the general trend - which is good for my female friends, but not so good for my perception of the issue. Hence, I probably hold the misshaped conception that women don't need men to support them in any other way than just applying equity by default ... and a man labeling himself as feminist or writing a 5 part manifesto about it in 2011, isn't nearly as impactful, meaningful or useful as what it was 30 years ago.

Ah, yes. 17.5% in EU? That's a big thing for me to not know. I knew it existed but I expected it to be around 7% and decreasing. But yeah... comparing wages with friends isn't something I usually do. edit : missing linking words.

It might be a bit divorced from the current debate, but I'm largely uncomfortable around the subject of feminism : it feels like an idea which belongs entirely to women and any man calling himself feminist/pro-feminist today always ends up sounding very patronizing and manipulative to me. Maybe it's because of the etymology of the word itself : I know it really translates to equality between men and women - which is a complete given to me and I'll promote it where it isn't - but it sounds like it's aiming at forging a single vision for woman as a social group... which sounds rubbish, since my female friends don't have a lot in common when it comes to their aspiration; if you exclude the fact that, like any human being, they want to be able to do whatever they want. Maybe it's also because I never witnessed them being victim of any sort of institutionalized sexism and that we were ready to brush off or counter the occasional stupid sexist remark from individuals. In any case, when they needed some kind of moral support in their endeavors, they needed it as one coming from a friend to another, rather than me 'as a man' toward them 'as women'. And writing that, I already feel very patronizing.

I'm not sure you're right with your interpretation of copyright/trademark/IP laws, but I'm not going to debate on that since I'd be channeling Wikipedia and wouldn't know what I'd be talking about. However, I really don't feel that your interpretation is particularly fair : would you say the same thing if the role were reversed and DoubleFine were to defend the Stacked game against a higher profile boardgame involving Russian Dolls ?

Can you please change your avatar to this, then ? This, more so than Hobbes, would help us to read your posts in the appropriate voice.

Not an old game, but a mod project I seem to remember but can't find any trace of : some guy had managed to make a pretty interesting collage of a bunch of unfinished levels for Half-Life (2?) by stitching them together. Anybody remember that ?

So, because the board game looks awful to you, the creator doesn't get to enjoy the same intellectual property laws that also protects DoubleFine's creations? Trenched distribution issues have nothing to do with some individual abusing the trademark system but with Microsoft neglecting one of its publishing duty.

Thanks!

I'll follow in the footsteps of BigJKO and beg for an invit' : my mail is REDACTED

Ah, sorry, 'essay' is a French "false friend"; what I meant was an attempt or an exercise in forgery. I guessed it was fiction but the Menard story could really have been published as a real piece of criticism in a 60s/70s surrealistic literature journal. Nice! It adds yet another layer to the ambiguity

Just finished Portnoy's Complaint; one of those books that are not very enjoyable to read, but that's clearly not the point. The writing is fast and uninterrupted, bordering on stream of consciousness and that makes it very tedious to read... and the content made be very uneasy, but I'm certain that 's the point. Frankly, the book was great at creating grueling characters and then making me recognize in their bigger than life flaws some of mine. It's not a nice feeling at all, but that doesn't mean it's not masterful.On the contrary, I'm glad I went through it because this constant uneasiness is the point. However, the neurotic and self-loathing vibe that goes through the whole story pretty guarantees I'll never pick it up again. Other than that, I'm back into short stories mode - thanks to the Penguin short classic series ... - having gobbled a few from Primo Levi, Nabokov and Jorge Luis Borges last week-end. I'm lucky I picked those three at the same time because they balance each other out pretty well. Levi's short stories are really about pushing a very simple and elegant predicate to some sort of non-sensical or emotional limit, using very light fantastic element in the process (think the Horla). I pretty much loved everything I read from him, but Knall and The Death of Marinese really stood out.I'll probably pick up The Periodic Table next. Nabokov's are still accessible and beautiful on their own, but they also appear to be places for experimentation of styles and structures : The Doorbell and Spring in Fialta are really nice, but I also felt like they could nearly jumped to full novel status, if Nabokov had bothered. And Borges is reaaaallly different - sometimes, too technical for me - he seems completely obsessed with seamlessly mixing fantasy and reality, using a very dry, non-sensationnal style to blur the frontier. Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius and Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote are smart and rigorous essays on forgery that sort of left a bad taste in my mouth because they are too good at passing themselves for what they're not. All in all, for different write styles. Still looking for Cloud Atlas in Singapore, not a lot of luck yet...

I really really like the non humanoid, non sensical, non-organic design of some of the aliens:tup: Not unlike Rez! I'm not so sure about the bigger emphasis on nightly moody environments (the FPS genre features way too many of those it seems to me) and hollywood explosions that this trailer has vs. the suburban quietness of the first one. Also, yeah, the art direction is hugely reminiscent of Bioshock (very similar character design, identical bloom ratio) : which is kind of

I really like the tone of the trailer and what it hints for the gameplay, but the dialogs and intonation-less voice acting really sound terrible... or maybe it's just me ?

Amon Far Cry, Crysis and Crysis 2, I'd say Crysis, since I haven't really played a lot of Warhead.

From what I understand, he's trading time spent on displaying the world for time spent on constructing the world : you'll see less FPS (but it shouldn't be noticeable as long as it's above 60) but you'll see the world be simulated and changed more quickly.

Just finished George Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London - the second part is an interesting exploration of the dreariness and boredom that seems to come from not from being poor and starving , but from, on top of that, having no job and needing to be on the move all the time. Because of the emptiness of this existence, there's less opportunity for good prose, but I guess it serves Orwell's point pretty well. Anyway, apparently Orwell played a bit with the fact during his Paris escapade and his travel back to England; but overall, 'scholars' seem to agree it's a very honest account of his life at that time. There's still something that bugs me though : despite being quite humanist toward the tramps and modern slaves in general, Orwell still has very strong racist bias against Sikh, Jews, Greeks and the book end with a very shallow explanation of why the ratio of tramp woman is low. I'm pretty sure his positions were very progressive at the time, but it's still weird to see a full chapter dedicated to humanizing beggars followed by a small rant about yet aanother Jew pawn shopper not giving enough money for his clothes. That being said, I should probably check the historical background of the period, that's give me a better perspective.