OK, that’s a kick in the pants. Let’s see if it makes everyone pissed off about Mike Capps and Tim Langdell finally calm the hell down for a little bit.

OK, so I try not to have a hangup about the comments I don’t get on most of my posts here, but why the hell is it that this year-old post with the first of Warren Ellis’ Reuters-commissioned columns about the wretchedness of Second Life is still getting replies?

Is that post linked from some other site? It’s not like I wrote the column, I just linked to it. Is it still important enough to people that they reiterate that it Second Life, despite its innovative approach to letting otherwise normal people revel in their perversion and obsessive button-mashers pretend to be creative geniuses, probably sucks just as much as it ever did?

Do I need to admit to the world that I’ve never actually used (”played” is probably the wrong word) Second Life?

I’m not mad, I just think it’s weird.

Docubloggers is one of several projects by KLRU-TV, Austin’s PBS station, also home to Austin City Limits (the TV series, not the outdoor concert.) They just got around to posting their report on the UT Videogame Archive and the fundraiser at Richard Garriott’s house from back in September.

Wheels are indeed turning, as Uncle Warren stated. My brother, who just happens to be a library scientist, pointed out that they’re already hiring for a librarian/archivist position, though it’s only part time at present. It’ll probably be years before they find a proper physical place to put it all, much less make it available to students or the public in any usable fashion.

Bit by bit.

Edit: Here’s a new interview with Brenda Gunn of UT about the archive.

So the story goes, police go to serve a warrant on a guy for parole violation, find him sleeping in his car, guy bolts, runs across a highway overpass to a workforce center (they teach resume seminars and try to get people jobs,) barges in and is spotted climbing into the false ceiling through the tiles, possibly into the ventilation ducts from there.

Cops take all day to find him and get him out, and tear hell out of the ceiling tiles getting to him.

Edit: Here’s one view of the damage. Nice rotunda inside.

Austin GDC is next week, Sept. 5-8. I’ll be going. Are you going? That’s great.

Here are some things to do in Austin besides aimlessly wander the halls of the Austin Convention Center. Will be updated as I think of or realize other stuff. Not saying anyone should have enough time to do all this within a span of three days already filled to the brim with convention-related events, but I bet you’ll wish you could.

It’ll probably still be hot, and it might rain. The parking isn’t free, either, but the bus service almost is. Have fun, and be safe. Welcome to Texas, the weirdest state in the union, and its especially weird capital.

Continue reading Things to do in Austin, besides AGDC…

Friday night proved that Tre Zieman is a way bigger Ween fan than I am, and so were about 300 or so other hon-yonks crammed into the backlot at Stubb’s for a sold-out show.

I had a good enough time for the price of a ticket, though I left early. Somewhere between standing outside in the August heat an hour before the show, then realizing I didn’t really need to because I didn’t want to stand in the deepest crush of fans nearest the stage, getting hit up by hobos (Stubb’s is a block away from both the Salvation Army mission and the other big downtown homeless shelter in Austin) and about four or five guys with signs asking for extra tickets, which they quite obviously wanted to just turn around and scalp to someone else, sucked out a lot of the fun for me.

No big deal. I saw Stardust, The Bourne Ultimatum and Talk to Me, and got the IGDA Writers SIG newsletter almost ready for the printers. Weekend seized. Save the soul from a bottomless pit, and see what you can make of it.

I’m half tempted to start a running feature here.

I happen to spend a lot of time on the IGDA.org forums, and while a plurality of the posts there are made by people who appear to be genuinely concerned about the craft of making games and the well-being of those who practice this craft, there are exceptions.

Oh boy, are there ever.

I could do at least one post a week featuring the flotsam of this site. I’m not sure how people would take it, however. Might be entertaining, but some people might think it’s sniping. Need to think more on this.

Hope someone out there got to blow something up. I had to work a split shift, so I got a mid-day nap and not much else.

Turns out the Captains of the Chess Team have a blog, now. And the IGDA-Austin site has their own report about the party at Richard Garriott’s house and moving pictures. If you recognize anyone in the “chanbara montage,” don’t tell them about it.

Work has been kicking the ever-loving bejeezus out of my keester this week, and that’s the nicest way I can think of to say it, which should tell you just how much of a pussy I really am.

Got good news in the mail, though. The cousin of mine who I’ve written about before, the one in the Army Reserve and sent to Afghanistan? Well, according to the mail his wife sent out to family, he’s home again. He’s staying in the Army, but his wife is 6.5 months pregnant and he will be home in time for the normal end of the pregnancy.

We’re all hoping for the best. And it’s nice of him to keep his head down and stay safe, so we could have something to be hopeful for.

Booyah. I didn’t pick out the screenshots, but at least someone did. It’d be boring without visuals. I also wrote this almost a month ago, but it took this long to work through Gama’s enormous backlog of features. I’m not complaining — Monday releases are prime time.

Jake Song is probably the least guarded and the most open game studio head I’ve ever met, or at least he seems to be. Made it an easy interview, although his honesty might surprise you. It did me.

Deep background: I went into the interview with two things in mind: one, if your career is defined at least in popular culture by one of the biggest games of all time, where do you go from there; and two, given the “too many cooks in the kitchen” analogy cited in the article, was Jake one of the cooks?

You figure out if I got answers to those.