James

No, they were more like singles. From what I remember, they have heavily-compressed MP3s on them, plus some odds and ends, which included stuff you like expect, like a JPEG or two, and stuff you wouldn't, like a Word document that, if I remember correctly, looked like it was someone's school project or something. Perhaps they didn't wipe the disk before putting the other stuff on, or perhaps they were being hilarious. I don't have a floppy drive in my current computer, anyway, so this is all from memory. It was only a couple of years ago, though.

OK, I kind of skimmed through this, and I kind of feel like what I'm saying is a lot less clever than the thread's been getting, but here are a couple of short thoughts: I find it quite strange how people can in one breath describe art as subjective, irrelevant, or even non-existent, then berate Ebert quite viciously for having an opinion about it. If it's subjective, is he not as entitled to his opinion as everybody else, and if it's irrelevant or non-existent, what does it even matter? I'm not saying I agree with him, but that kind of inconsistency suggests to me that people are automatically assuming a defensive stance and throwing everything they can at him because what he said was in some respect negative about games. I say "in some respect" because stuff doesn't have to be art to be valid or valuable. I guess the problem is that it can be read as being quite patronizing. Certainly, in some of his comments elsewhere (his Twitter feed, for example), Ebert has been very patronizing and quite childish. The whole "too well-read" thing was ridiculous. But taken on its own merits, I didn't find the article itself especially enraging. Basically, I've found both sides of the argument rather disappointing on the whole. Everyone seems to be flinging shit from the camp they picked way before the start, and for reasons other than the subject matter itself. Then again, perhaps I'm misinterpreting and not giving people enough credit. I think Kingzjester's description of art is an ingeniously clear and concise one, but I think the problem is that it (inevitably) doesn't give a complete demarcation of art from non-art. This is no surprise, of course, and it goes an admirable distance towards doing so, but I think the remaining gap is probably where the promiscuous realism thing comes in. I may be missing the point somewhat, but the example suggested to me several context-sensitive and possibly partially overlapping sets co-existing, which makes complete sense, as the world is not defined in the terms of one particular intellectual domain (a recent favourite subject of mine is the flexibility and arbitrariness of identity). The list itself states that art is sensitive to society and history; this could manifest as several largely independent subclasses of the superclass "art". The purple list could be a meta-description of the superset, I guess. But the definition itself specifies that art is "alchemical", which leaves things quite open, as I see it. There is something about art that endlessly evades definition, and the only way to effectively describe it is with words like that. It's part of its nature, I suppose. Sorry, I'm not saying one clear thing or really making much of a point in general here. I have a habit of doing that. Or failing to do that, more accurately. As for my own opinions, I'm still undecided, and probably never will be. If you take a very permissive anything-that's-creative definition of art, then sure, games are totally art, just like dumb action films and elevator music. If you take a very restrictive classics-only definition of art, then no, games probably aren't, but neither is the majority of film, music, theatre, paintings, and so on. I guess I, like most people, would be more inclined to place it somewhere between the two, but I'm really not sure where. There are certainly artistic elements to the games I play and the films I see and so on, but I'm not sure how many I'd be comfortable calling works of art. Then again, I don't really have the same reservations about music. I guess I'm awful and inconsistent after all. God, what a load of rubbish.

Just to complicate matters further, some have suggested that much of the cognitive process we perceive as decision-making actually takes place after the decision has been made, and is more decision-justifying or decision-explaining than anything else. I don't know how much truth there is to this, but it seems to describe some situations accurately enough. Not sure what the evolutionary purpose would be, but I guess you could say that of a lot of mental activity.

I went to an all-day concert run by some small music label/collective/thing one time, and they had a couple of floppy disks by their bands available for sale, which I obviously bought, because who wouldn't buy music on a floppy disk? If I were a musician I would definitely put out music exclusively on obsolete formats, like floppy disks and minidisks and betamax video tapes and those pre-record cylindrical things and dictaphone tapes and answerphone tapes (which might be the same thing for all I know) AND SO ON.

THE ACE OF SPADES

Amazing.

Hey, that's actually pretty great. I didn't really expect it to add much to the song. But it did! Nice job.

I've been saying the exact same thing for years now. Some people are active on several large communities. I don't know how someone manages to do that and do anything else with their day in order to have something to post about. Perhaps I'm just a slow or obsessive reader or something. Small communities are definitely more to my taste, anyway.

If I took one thing away from studying philosophy at university it's that the traditional concept of free will (at least how I understood it) doesn't actually make any sense. Either something has a cause, or it's random (or some combination of the two: it's random, within causally determined bounds, for example). People instinctively find the idea of determinism incompatible with free will, but, if anything, the alternative is even less like it: how is it free will to act at random? That's more like insanity. What is free will even meant to be? If the conscious agent doesn't exist in a causal system, in what context does it exist, and why, and how? The idea seems to deny causation without proposing any alternative. Sometimes stuff like that is troubling to me, but really it's fine. Why should I be so adamant that the source of my decisions somehow lie outside the deterministic universe? Perhaps it's an example of our somewhat arrogant insistence that we must be something more than mere worldly entities. I don't know, I kind of bluffed my way through university with personal musings rather than proper research and work, so this is all probably crap. I'd be interested to read your thing, though, Miffy.

I don't know, I would actually quite like to try it on the PC sometime.

Wasn't Knightmare that kids' gameshow where contestants guided their friend through a green screen mediaeval fantasy computer game? It was like a televised version of a text adventure, but with awkward timing-based action sequences. "JUMP!" Anyway, yes, I guess I do kind of like physical manifestations of the terrifying beasts of some sort of robotic netherworld. If that's nightmarish then SO BE IT.

Yeah, I'm starting to feel like a galactic bastard, but the opportunity was open to me and I had to fight someone eventually.

Yeah, I've been having the same problem. I think I posted about it a while back. the larger fleet's number in the transfer dialogue will go up all the way, but the smaller fleet will stay at one, and the last ship will never transfer. It's caused me great vexation and nearly cost me a battle. It forces you not to fritter the $25 fleet formation fee, but sometimes you need every last ship you can get your hands on. Anyway, I was going to suggest my semi-Thumb friend Danny Boy for the second game, as I think he could be really into this sort of thing, but sadly he doesn't think he has the time at the moment.

Yeah, it's a hilarious paranoia generator.

I don't know what happens when a game ends, but I'd really like a replay feature of some sort with the whole galaxy revealed, and a log of all communications, to see what was going on behind everyone's backs. Then again, I guess you'd have to warn players about that, in case they started getting personal about people in their private messages or something. EDIT: I would also like the ability to merge fleets. I can transfer ships between fleets, but apparently I cannot shift the last one over. For some reason this fleet has to remain active until it's destroyed. That seems daft. For every fleet I create, I'm tying up one ship as well as the $25 it costs to form one.

I believe you can send invitations to PSN friends. It's immediately adjacent to the send-a-message icon, I think. Press the PS button and go all the way to the right and so on. I won't be able to make it for US evening play, unfortunately. You guys have fun!

What if by the time the aliens get here the BigDogs have already won? They will greet the aliens with a beautiful song from their amazing robot mouths. I should mention that I'm also a big fan of the robot mouth. I guess robotics in general has become amazing recently.

I think I saw them support somebody live. I didn't pay them a great deal of attention, but was surprised when somebody when a friend later directed me to a cover they did of Eat it Up Worms Hero by Cardiacs. Sadly I seem to have lost it forever. It was pretty good. DISCLAIMER: I might be mis-remembering the band and the song.

Intense diplomacy is certainly underway. This is pretty dramatic. I'm perpetually nervous.

I might join if I remember to check the thread. it's been ages. Did they ever implement online co-op level creation? That could be pretty fun, but I have a feeling they haven't.

Last night's session was pretty much just right for me. Arena mode seems pretty fun, I didn't play long enough to get annoyed, and I achieved something satisfying: freaking Patters out with some long-distance rockets through the bottom of that hut thing before bursting in and exploding him, leaving me the last man standing. I'm sure it wasn't at all skillful, but it felt quite good. Anyway, I think I like the game best in fairly short sessions.

Hahaha, good to see other people enjoy the "space-" prefix as much as I do. I really want to be able to check up on this at work. I'm considering asking to borrow my colleague's laptop at lunch, but he's usually using it. Perhaps I should bring my netbook in and tether my phone to it…

Are you kidding? Didn't you see how quickly it righted itself on ice?! That thing is the master of being upright. No possible future can escape its onslaught.

Art guy at work has two monitors. From what I've seen, one is for Photoshop and one is for Firefox/OTHER BROWSER OF CHOICE. I guess it depends, though. He's also the web design guy and I guess it's cool to have the code and site visible at the same time without mucking about with tiny windows. I'd kind of like to do a multi-monitor set-up, but I have no legitimate reason for doing it, and my desk is already quite cluttered.

I'm still in. I vote for mid-length or shorter, because who knows who will still be alive by then? I really should practice this at some point. Or I could just be the comic relief buffoon.