Nachimir

I am looking forward to this, though have the same worries as AteBit. Like you, I'm also fascinated by how many lawyers were involved with the bad-anon scene. I bet it was more than there are characters in it.

I know quite a few people who are having to do just that in their twenties. No shame in it, though I understand how awkward it is at home. I once had a parent move in after three years living elsewhere, when I was about 18, and with an intermission of that much growing up at that age, it made the relationship all kinds of awkward. It's just a mark of the recessions/depression we're in, and also of the housing market. Nearly anyone I know wanting to buy their first house in the UK is having to move in with parents to save up the deposit. It's also a fairly clever idea to make a family more resistant to economic shocks. Sometimes, I wish I still had the option.

Voted for Chris. It says people can vote once a day (judged by IP address), so I guess whoever did that awful photoshop thing with the piano has a small army of friends pushing it to the front every day.

I find Banks hit and miss. Use of Weapons and The Player Of Games have always been his best to me. I find Charles Stross very interesting at the moment. Near future science fiction has been very difficult to write, but I very much enjoyed Rule 34. It's basically about backstreet 3D printing operations, nation states, software, and global financial systems.

Did anyone else start to get interested in a game while watching a trailer or playthrough, then become quite bored when it turned to a parade of throat slashing and decapitation? The Last of Us and Dishonored both did that to me.

Watch Dogs looks fairly interesting. I was slightly surprised after thinking "Oh, GTA in Chicago". I watched a video of The Last Of Us with no prior knowledge, and at first thought "Oh great, AAA going for something more nuanced and subtle". But no; mailbox stuffing it is.

This video of it gets really good two minutes in: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=QTZF8cF-fyo

Congrats Synth! *If* you're anything like me and have the tendency to become single-mindedly absorbed in a project, I'd advise doing the opposite of what Rodi says. Apologies if this advice is not quite relevant to you, but I've found it important in the past: It sounds like you'll be living and breathing this outside of work, and that will be tiring and stressful. Take time out to be with your girlfriend. The horrible thing about it is that, by taking time away from work, sooner or later inspiration will strike, and that could be very trying for both of you if, for instance, it happens in the middle of date night. I'd advise carrying a notepad so you can quickly scribble stuff down and get back to it later.

Some random Sunday morning thoughts: How can we do interactive illustration without it becoming as shit as "multimedia" was? Set next to stories where kids disappear into secret worlds in books, paintings, mirrors, etc., I think there's an intersting link with this. Matt Jones talks about it with regard to cities and practical ends, but what about escapism?

D-D-Double post! Did anyone else watch The Mysterious Cities of Gold as a kid? Because there's going to be more of it, and so far it looks pretty faithful to the original: http://www.comicsbeat.com/2012/05/29/mysterious-cities-of-gold-cartoon-sequel-is-actually-happening/

Between that, and this: I really want to see Vampire's Kiss. Have I seen the two best bits already though?

I think that they weren't aware of those themes is quite a big part of the problem. Regardless of whether they're trying to antagonise, or just catering to an audience, they're creating a harmful piece of culture and reinforcing some of the most harmful bits of culture as a whole. I'm not sure if it has a name elsewhere, but in the UK lad culture is an echo chamber, perpetually reinforcing the viewpoint that, in any context, misogyny and rape jokes are "just a laugh". At the core, it's a nihilistic viewpoint that drives people apart and into shallow, selfish lives. Shit like this Hitman trailer feeds it.

Here's an excellent response to the trailer: http://critdamage.blogspot.com.au/2012/05/quit-pretending-there-isnt-Video game.html

There's a strangely non-awful Kotaku article about this today: I've been restraining from saying anything about it on Twitter. As Mike Rose said earlier:

I'd love for this to be an approach to game post-mortems, with video filmed so far in advance. There are designers I know that would definitely be interesting subjects for this, though I also wonder: Running cameras well would probably be a distraction for any of the developers there. Would having someone there dedicated to filming solve that, or would the reality-tv ish nature of that put a damper on it? Maybe if they took a vow of silence, or a vow to just observe rather than direct. Edit: One of the first comparisons I thought of when they outlined their arrangement at the beach house was a ski lodge. I think with a rigourous commitment to non-interference, having the analogue of a chalet-person to do food and filming might really make this work. Hmm. Hmm…

I think a lot of Jon's criticisms of events are spot on. Especially as an event organiser, it's not awkward to read in the way he claims at all, though it might be if I was entrenched in running conferences exactly the way they've always been run. All three of them are interestingly open about the shortcomings of their approach this time too. As they have it, it's rarified: Designers you admire, a collection of games that are pretty far from well known and explored mechanics. I wonder to what extent a typical group of indie developers and games would benefit from anything similar?

Hahaha That is Oceana. It used to be The Palais. It is basically the biggest, least classy nightclub in Nottingham. The roof in the foreground is the building GameCity have their offices in, where I sometimes work. At those times, my view is the front of Thrik's building. At other times, it's this: Nice and open, but not a patch on Scrobbs'

Thanks. I'd wondered about that as an issue, and feel very unqualified to talk about it. Today, someone pointed me to part 1 of Wrong Cops: https://vimeo.com/42578780 After watching Rubber and now this, I don't think Dupieux is a particularly good film maker, but there are bits of both I find very funny. Rubber pitched headlong into artwank by the end, and Wrong Cops kind of feels like it's threatening to.

Ah, I didn't pick up that your WTF was also enjoyment Speaking of which, after typing that I watched Hit & Miss, in which Chloë Sevigny plays a transsexual hitwoman named Mia. It is pretty good, coupling some quiet and understated film making with a wholly ridiculous premise ( ). It has violence, but not really action; nearly all of the tension is social. It's a very unusual show.

This was the first thing I thought of too, but my reaction the The Great Gatsby: Mad Props; Autotuned Edition is still basically: I think making something culturally relevant and hopping on a trend are very different things. I'm not sure I'll do a good job of making the distinction. In this case, I think the big band music of the 1920s is close enough to what we have, and have had in recent decades, that it can be used to do the kind of percussive decadence portrayed in that part of the trailer. Deadwood's swearing isn't really a fair comparison. Dang and heck were bad language in the real Deadwood, and would sound hilarious today. Similarly, Mad Men tends not to show much print advertising of the era, and when it does, it often seems dissonant with the power games and decisiveness of the characters. I don't think an authentic soundtrack for the Great Gatsby would seem naive in the same the way at all. Also, the CGI cars: Big Edit: I don't think Romeo and Juliet is a very good comparison either. A great many things were updated in that, including the entire setting. Not so for the Great Gatsby. When so much of the design is so firmly back in the 1920s, a contemporary soundtrack sticks out like… like a big fake dong hanging off it. (Sadvertising is very good coinage for Dead Island and Gears of War type trailers).

On disc DLC is going to be around for quite a while, particularly while people are still on podunk rural networks and equally podunk asymmetric copper in cities. After an initial spike of indignation the first time I heard about DLC included on a disc, I thought about it and decided I'm okay with it. If something similar were the case with downloads, I'd feel differently. I don't want things sucking up bandwidth unnecessarily, then squatting on a hard disc goading me to unlock them. On a disc though? Fine. I don't pay for games by the gigabyte, I don't set milestones for the developer, and I don't pay them directly: the publisher does. If [X] is game* and [Y] is DLC, what the fuck difference does it make to me if both are on the disc? If the DLC is developed before the game goes gold, what does that matter? If the publisher are making the developer cut stuff to peddle later as DLC, that's an entirely different issue. *Finally, an answer!

Thunderpeel is almost as sneaky as me, but as we all know, today is his birthday. I'd like to offer him a conciliatory post to celebrate this; let us rejoice in his knowledge of Twin Peaks and TV in general.

There is a Skyfall trailer now: [media=] [/media]The colours will, mostly, displease elmuerte. I was pleased to see the amount of muted tones, browns and almost monochromatic shots. It has a little dubsteppy bit near the end, and my housemate described it as "Wub Wub Seven".

Oh wow. Thanks. In that case, this seems to be perfect and lovely. Attachment limits are low. I'm at 8mb total, which is 1600% of what I'm apparently allowed.

I too rely on new posts/new content to read the forums. The only thing I miss is a "Mark forums read" button, and I had to spelunk a bit to find out how to turn sigs off (User > Settings > Ignore preferences > check box at top). Other than that, IP.Board seems to be great.