Month: September 2003

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Twins 3, Yankees 1

The Twins won with their fielding, the Yankees lost with their lack of the same, and closer Eddie Guardado treated us to the usual heart attack.

Newsgaming.

September 12 is an interesting and provocative start for an ambitious team of developers, but it really is a one-note song, in line with “traditional printed political cartoons.”

Shooting code.

The really neat thing about these games (for the coders in the audience) is that the bullet patterns are not predetermined, but are instead generated using an engine that reads an XML document.

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance: Sequelicious!

There is a certain pleasure to be gained from seeing an already-great game evolve and improve, and that’s exactly what Square Enix has done with Final Fantasy Tactics Advance.

Dysfunctional Programming.

Ah, yes. Now I remember why I’m trying to get out of software.

Twins clinch playoffs.

Now to see who the opposing team is (probably the Damn Yankees).

P.N. 03 does not have wu-wei.

P.N. 03 could have been a truly great game, a cross between Rez and Space Channel 5, but it ends up being little more than a decent third-person shooter with some great character animation.

Arrrr! Avast, ye landlubbers!

Arrr, matey! It’s International Talk Like a Pirate Day!

Shocks beat Sparks; sportswriters start looking for new puns to make.

The Detroit Shock beat the Los Angeles Sparks, 83-78, to win the WNBA Championship.

Sometimes a joystick is just a joystick.

Now I’m busy unlearning everything that I’ve practiced in the last two weeks as I get used to the stick and the completely different button layout.

Johnny Cash, 1932-2003.

I’m pretty immune to the deaths of celebrities; even Curt Cobain’s suicide left little more than a dull coldness in me. But then I watched Cash’s final music video, for his cover of Nine Inch Nails’s Dirt, and found myself blinking back tears.

A signifier in the desert.

How many MMORPG communities have this kind of conversation going on?

Random thoughts on Soul Calibur II

Listening to jazz while playing a frenetic tournament fighter like this seems incongruous, but the two complement each other surprisingly well.

Agency in games, agency of games.

If Barthes killed the author, games have the opportunity to bring her back to life, but as a partner to the player/reader instead of an opponent.

I apologize for the crappiness of the previous post.

I often wonder how I managed to spend four years at some high-falutin’ college and somehow emerge with absolutely no understanding of how to analyze a text in a coherent manner.

Story, work, and rewards in Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter

Dragon Quarter actually tries harder than most games to make the story a direct reward of the gameplay, as opposed to just an incidental prize acheived for reaching a certain goal.