A joke about, well, something. 
Pop quiz: What do the following two videos have in common?
Video for Frank Black, “Los Angeles”
G4TV interview about Warhammer Online
Answers in essay form only.
A Deus Ex joke.
Jock: Oh my God! J.C.! Obama!
J.C. Denton: Obama!
Jock: It’s remote controlled. Hold on.
J.C. Denton: Get out of there!
Yeah.
Zero Originality – why I’m not shopping at GameStop again
I’m really hoping that my friends at Escapist Magazine will see fit not to jump on this series for shamelessly ripping off Zero Punctuation’s style and look. It makes adequate deference to Yahtzee and while the production values are much poorer by comparison (and not just because ZP’s look and feel is 90 percent stick figures and 5 percent text, and these guys copied it all), the message is nut-crushingly clear, there is no good reason to shop at GameStop ever again.
So I’m sold. Go watch. If you can put up with the mumbling, you’ll learn something and be amused for the experience. (If you actually like watching them as much as I did, you can download the original .mpg files via links here.) And God willing I’ll never spend money at a GameStop again.
I wonder if Austin has a locally-owned store that would sell me a new Rock Band 2 kit when it comes out next month.
EDIT: WhistleBlowerZero’s Youtube account has been suspended! The videos are on GameTrailers, thankfully.
“Most people aren’t level designers”
At about 10:30 in the latest Australian Gamer podcast, guest ranter Yahtzee makes this utterance to criticize games like Spore and LittleBigPlanet that rely on player-created content to work at all.
Which is pretty much what I’ve been telling people a whole lot lately, except one step further: “If people could entertain themselves, there would be no entertainment industry because no one would pay for anyone else’s creations.”
But yeah, that’s the thing now, making the digital equivalent of two rocks, a stick and some dirt, neglecting the historical truth that not everyone tried to make a real game out of those things, and those who tried rarely came up with anything good that anyone else wanted to play.
I suspect this will bear out over the next few years or so, and I will gloat. A lot.
Probably need to make this permanent.
Do not solicit me to post stuff on this blog unless we’re friends who speak regularly. You will be spamfiltered.
The opinions expressed on this blog do not necessarily represent those of my employer that I like a big huggy bunch.
I really couldn’t care less about Warhammer Online.
Heavy Metal in Baghdad
Surely there is no better inspiration for aggressive, angry art than war, destruction, desperation and death.
There was one heavy metal band in Iraq, making them possibly the most brutal metal band in the world. Now they’re running for their lives. This is the start of their story. I saw it tonight. God willing, their story is not yet over.