Ghostfire has updated their site with all kinds of stuff about Helix, the game I tested last week in Austin. Simon Says-style dancing with a robot, DDR with your hands, Rez retooled, that’s all probably fair to say. It’s got a bunch of techno music from artists you’ve probably never heard of, too.

Short version: I got to spend an hour playing an unreleased game for the Nintendo Wii developed by a small startup studio in Austin, for the purpose of late-stage fine-tuning. And anyone in the Austin area with an interest and ability to not be a total jerk can, too. Read on for more.

Continue reading I pretended to be a legitimate game tester, and you can too…

Here’s something I didn’t expect four years ago when I posted pictures to go along with my bloody wisdom tooth surgery: being compared to Aliza Shivarts, the Yale student who successfully pranked a huge portion of hifalutin art academia with an “exhibit” supposedly featuring multiple aborted fetuses excreted out the repeatedly poisoned womb of the artist — except that she didn’t really do it, as accurately predicted by Warren Ellis, among others.

Question for further discussion: is there any difference between a woman who chooses to display the results of an abortion and those who choose to display their extracted wisdom teeth? Both procedures are legal, are frequently performed, and are somewhat bloody. What is the difference?

The difference, besides the fact that my teeth were real, and her abortions were apparently latex and Vaseline and a whole lot of hype?

My real teeth took four fucking years to get any goddamned typographical reaction, compared to her fake fetuses.