http://www.magicalwasteland.com/ en Copyright 2010 Tue, 09 Mar 2010 10:19:29 -0800 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Part I. EVE Online. The BART. Part II. Press pass. Jenova Chen. Part III. The Metreon. Infinity Ward.]]> http://www.magicalwasteland.com/2010/03/the_fantasy_of_control_dispatc.htm http://www.magicalwasteland.com/2010/03/the_fantasy_of_control_dispatc.htm Writings Elsewhere Tue, 09 Mar 2010 10:19:29 -0800 The Tester prepares to make its dramatic PlayStation Network debut, I offer a personal story of entering the game industry through the ranks of Quality Assurance on Edge Online. It is sectioned into four parts. Part One. The call; the journey. Part Two. The people. Part Three. The atmosphere. Part Four. The meaning, or lack thereof. Please enjoy.]]> http://www.magicalwasteland.com/2010/02/in_the_dungeon.htm http://www.magicalwasteland.com/2010/02/in_the_dungeon.htm Writings Elsewhere Fri, 12 Feb 2010 08:49:55 -0800 can games be both ert and fon at the same time? Many further symposiums, blog posts and ert-fon diagrams will be necessary to answer the question definitively.]]> http://www.magicalwasteland.com/2010/02/the_new_debate_on_games_as_ert.htm http://www.magicalwasteland.com/2010/02/the_new_debate_on_games_as_ert.htm Levity Tue, 09 Feb 2010 07:18:34 -0800 Ghost in the Shell and The Matrix, which in turn affected the way we think about computers and the Internet. Though I am not really equipped here to discuss the real implications of the possibility of a brain in a vat, I thought that another interesting area of inquiry might be how some (evil?) demiurge might construct such a mechanism using what we currently know about real-time virtual reality– or, in other words, video games.]]> http://www.magicalwasteland.com/2010/01/coining_the_faceless_wind.htm http://www.magicalwasteland.com/2010/01/coining_the_faceless_wind.htm Commentary Wed, 20 Jan 2010 19:01:08 -0800 der Zweite Weltkrieg can be like experiencing an unsettling alternate reality: all the Nazi symbology and slogans are gone– effaced completely. The vertical crimson banners still hang but are emblazoned with the iron cross or another innocuous symbol in the center, and those dual lightning bolts of the SS, so ubiquitous on your reference material, have been totally scrubbed away.]]> http://www.magicalwasteland.com/2010/01/dont_mention_the_war.htm http://www.magicalwasteland.com/2010/01/dont_mention_the_war.htm Notes in Brief Mon, 04 Jan 2010 09:07:43 -0800 suppose so? Have you ever seen a well-endowed woman’s breasts? I mean in real life, like right in front of you. Not in a porno.” “Sure– now and then.” “Don’t lie. I can tell when you’re lying.” Kazu had the controller in his hands, making the girl crouch over and over. Hiro took his glasses off and rubbed his face. Delineate deformable regions, grab acceleration data from the bone in the torso. “I can implement that, sure. You want it on all of the female characters?” “Put it on the characters that make sense to you. I’ll review it later.” After Kazu had gone Mayuko crept up behind him. “What was that about breasts?” she said conspiratorially.]]> http://www.magicalwasteland.com/2009/12/soft_body_dynamics.htm http://www.magicalwasteland.com/2009/12/soft_body_dynamics.htm Fictions Thu, 10 Dec 2009 19:45:24 -0800 World News with Charles Gibson and declared Nintendo’s Metroid Prime trilogy “the Citizen Kane of video games”. The segment was not particularly persuasive, being a collision of film history, video games, and the evening news– we see quick cuts between Kane’s bold swaths of shadow and three-dimensional laser combat with space aliens, while Thomsen says something about loneliness– but the piece struck a chord in the video game community, which emitted a loud and derisive collective snort. The reaction of Anthony Burch at Destructoid was typical: he wrote “are you fucking kidding me?”]]> http://www.magicalwasteland.com/2009/11/he_was_always_trying_to_prove.htm http://www.magicalwasteland.com/2009/11/he_was_always_trying_to_prove.htm Commentary Thu, 19 Nov 2009 20:57:47 -0800 Planck v.0, the game prototype that a group of talented people and I have been working on over the past several months, has just been submitted to the 2010 Independent Games Festival. A slightly higher (but not high enough) resolution video is available directly on Vimeo.]]> http://www.magicalwasteland.com/2009/11/planck_version_zero.htm http://www.magicalwasteland.com/2009/11/planck_version_zero.htm Notes in Brief Mon, 02 Nov 2009 13:22:33 -0800 Morrowind, one of the observations you make when starting The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is the sheer number of discreet objects in the world. Every shelf is loaded with books and every table set with candles, plates and goblets, each of which can be picked up or taken. It occurs to you to proceed in the normal role-playing game way, gathering everything you can get your hands on, but it quickly becomes apparent that, much like the real world, most items are a burden to carry and basically worthless– certainly not worth the trouble of stealing them and reselling them later. So you spend most of the rest of the game not paying attention to these things, treating them as the background art they seem to be. It is probably only incidental that they can be moved and dropped like other, more important objects.]]> http://www.magicalwasteland.com/2009/10/the_way_to_a_mans_heart.htm http://www.magicalwasteland.com/2009/10/the_way_to_a_mans_heart.htm Secret Treasures Tue, 27 Oct 2009 12:09:02 -0800 black and white, and before the Internet stole its momentum) there were very few well-trodden paths. Much time and effort was spent simply trying to determine by trial and error what would and wouldn’t work, technically, artistically, and financially. But while the era produced its share of instantly obsolete reference guides, profit-minded shovelware, and other experiments of ambiguous worth, some classics were also born– many of them now sadly forgotten. One of these was If Monks Had Macs, a collection of HyperCard stacks originally released as shareware in 1988, and which grew over time; its most recent incarnation was described by MacWeek magazine as “a 24-piece collection of essays, electronic books, games and music linked together with the very personal touch of author Brian Thomas.”]]> http://www.magicalwasteland.com/2009/10/if_monks_had_macs_meat_and_con.htm http://www.magicalwasteland.com/2009/10/if_monks_had_macs_meat_and_con.htm Secret Treasures Mon, 05 Oct 2009 20:26:00 -0800 posted them here. It was amusing, and made for easy updates, but I’ve decided not to continue doing it. By picking egregiously poor constructions or obvious typos, I shifted the discussion to one about following the rules of spelling and grammar– a component of good writing, to be sure, but certainly not the only one. Writing with no low-level structural flaws whatsoever can still be completely terrible. Additionally, I found that pointing out others’ bad writing gets some people indignant, who’d vengefully comb my own writing for errors (I try my best, but I doubt it could really stand such close attention). I did not want to be the Lynne Truss of game journalism. Even if everyone instantly had the clearest understanding of the difference between composed and comprised, for example, writing about games would not miraculously be better because of it.]]> http://www.magicalwasteland.com/2009/09/come_to_it_any_way_but_lightly.htm http://www.magicalwasteland.com/2009/09/come_to_it_any_way_but_lightly.htm Bad Writing About Games Thu, 24 Sep 2009 16:25:17 -0800 Braid was released was a simple parody– something that, while amusing to write, was ultimately a rather flippant reaction to a work that was clearly the product of a long and often lonely struggle. The game, of course, deserves better.]]> http://www.magicalwasteland.com/2009/09/braid_forever_is_composed_of_n.htm http://www.magicalwasteland.com/2009/09/braid_forever_is_composed_of_n.htm Commentary Sat, 12 Sep 2009 00:09:40 -0800 pizza. ]]> http://www.magicalwasteland.com/2009/09/game_developer_magazine_ask_a.htm http://www.magicalwasteland.com/2009/09/game_developer_magazine_ask_a.htm Writings Elsewhere Mon, 07 Sep 2009 12:17:08 -0800 over. Now, the only people I can cause difficulty for are me and my wife (who is used to that idea). After many years of working on very big games I have decided to try something new. Floating untethered without an idea of exactly where one is headed is an odd sensation, but one that I hope will turn out to have been necessary: the right decision. I am designing and writing, and hopefully all of the game journalists who have held deep in their hearts fiery vendettas against me for lampooning their typos– I’m flattering myself, I know– will see fit to forgive, and look upon my future creations with a benign eye. Magical Wasteland will continue to be a place for my personal thoughts on games, and future updates on the other things will come from more appropriate venues. I’ll conclude this little announcement of a post with a quote that I hope I will not get in trouble for, from the good people of Bungie (whom I all still love dearly, don’t sue me please), occasioned by the studio’s triumphant, nearly miraculous departure from Microsoft on July 7th, 2007. “The road to World Domination,” they wrote, “is twisty, and paved with bumps, potholes and sweet, sweet jumps.”]]> http://www.magicalwasteland.com/2009/08/now_more_magical_than_ever_bef.htm http://www.magicalwasteland.com/2009/08/now_more_magical_than_ever_bef.htm Notes in Brief Thu, 27 Aug 2009 20:10:31 -0800 Fuel is an open-world driving game that takes place in an unimaginative post-apocalyptic future where gasoline is a form of currency. For a title ostensibly about the employ of vehicles to cover distance, the handling and the physics are unaccountably poor (in fact, driving in Fuel feels more like the requisite on-wheels interlude in a major action game than something actually meant to be about driving). But for a few days I was strangely fascinated by Asobo Studios’ deeply flawed attempt at a new racing franchise, solely because of the game’s free driving mode, in which one can explore what its developers claim to be the largest contiguous playable landmass ever created: over five thousand square miles, an incredible scale considering The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion successfully brought to life an epic, free-roaming fantasy in an imaginary space said to measure a tiny-by-comparison sixteen square miles.]]> http://www.magicalwasteland.com/2009/08/fuel_a_tragicomedy_in_two_acts.htm http://www.magicalwasteland.com/2009/08/fuel_a_tragicomedy_in_two_acts.htm Commentary Sun, 16 Aug 2009 09:55:16 -0800