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Some background: Duke Nukem Forever has been in development for a mind-boggling 14 years, making it a running joke within the industry. But last year Gearbox Software (which took over the project in 2009) boasted a May 2011 release that would be well worth the wait. The fact that they’re forced to delay it again leaves them vulnerable to merciless criticism. Props to them for meeting the issue head-on, with humility and self-aware humor.
An important part of the user experience for software is, what happens when it fails? When I loaded the new Facebook game Dragon Age Legends today, an animated sequence showed an armored warrior struggling to get the game to load on his PC before rising up in a rage and smashing it to pieces. The scene was followed by the message, "We apologize for any inconvenience.Dragon Age Legends is temporarily unavailable. Please try back soon..."
Modder Ben Heck asks the musical question, "What Do You Get When You Cross An Xbox 360 With An Atari 2600?" Here is his answer, complete with lovely faux wood paneling.
People want to believe that illusions could be real; that’s why we go to magic shows. I think the illusion that’s important to us as RPG players is the sense that events in the imagined world have their own independent and pre-existing reality. Even though at one level we know that some of these events are the result of random rolls on a chart, at another level we treat the dice as oracles that reveal this other world. This illusion that both dice rolls and asking “what do I see when I throw a torch into the pit?” are ways of discovering what’s out there in the game-world seems to me vital to what roleplaying is about.
Link from Jeff's Gameblog
From my favorite Pinky & The Brain episode. The Brain -- a superintelligent lab mouse -- schemes continually to conquer the world aided by his deranged sidekick Pinky. This time, he plans to become a country music star named "Bubba Bo Bob Brain" and write a hit song with subliminal messages commanding listeners to obey him.
This is because today begins the National Day of Unplugging, which starts at sundown tonight and ends at sundown tomorrow. During this time, people who've taken the "unplug challenge" will be disconnecting from all the electronic devices that consume a large part of our time and attention: phones, computers, portable media players, game devices, TVs.
You'll need something to do while unplugged, so how about a game of Werewolves? Pandemic? Win, Lose or Banana? If you play Dragon Age, did you know there's a Dragon Age tabletop RPG? TRUE STORY.
If this unplugging deal sounds remarkably like a Shabbat observance...well, yes. It's part of the Sabbath Manifesto from Reboot (which is a client of the PR agency i work for.) But it's not like you have to be Jewish to turn off your iPod for a day, right?
You can download a Check Out app that helps you unplug from all of your social networks and give your friends a heads-up that you won't be accepting their Vampire Wars requests for 24 hours. And you can join the discussion about National Unplugging Day on Twitter via the #unplug hashtag. Before you unplug, naturally.
Those of you who are not getting a goat from us this Christmas can expect to receive this lovely cursed kitchen towel. You're welcome.
Towel by Hippie Chick Boutique, via @wadesmom
Apparently, mine is a story about southern vampires in a beauty pageant held at a canadian high school.
I thought on that one for a bit and replied,
True Blood, Miss Congeniality, and DeGrassi High?
Which was correct!
SO. Here's the game:
- Open your Netflix queue; or whatever video-on-demand service you use in which queuing is employed.
- Look at the first three titles
- If those three movies were one story, what would the story be about?
- Post on your Facebook wall, blog, or whatever: "My video queue is a story about..." and let your friends guess the movies.
