I’ve been enjoying the summer movie blockbusters, more or less, and have been struck by a couple that veer off in a decidedly metaphysical direction. And you won’t be surprised to hear that I’ve spent a while thinking about the last few scenes of one film in particular, which may rewrite or redefine the entire [...]
Filed under: character, geek culture, humour, meme, narrative, old media, storytelling on August 25th, 2010 | 2 Comments »
I’m growing a tache. For charity. September is the month of TACHEBACK, a sponsored grow-a-moustache event organised by Everyman to raise money to fight male cancers. And for the first time since an ill-advised beard in my early 20s, I’m going hirsute to help. This, of course, means I need your sponsorship. You can follow [...]
Filed under: charity, humour, retro on September 1st, 2008 | 1 Comment »
The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen (the Difference Engine no.3 edition) is now available for download exclusively from e23, the digital warehouse of Steve Jackson Games. This is the revised and expanded facsimile version of the game that I’ve been blathering about for the last two years, and which is finally seeing the light of [...]
Filed under: cake, casual games, game design, history of games, humour, magnum opus press, storytelling, tabletop on August 5th, 2008 | 7 Comments »
Update on the new edition of The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen, which is to be released in September:— The first thousand copies of the book will be of the deluxe-format Gentleman’s Edition (black leather-effect cover with gold embossing), suitable for reading, prominent display in your library, and hurling at inattentive pot-boys. The remainder of [...]
Filed under: humour, magnum opus press, munchausen, rpg, storytelling, tabletop on July 25th, 2008 | 12 Comments »
(This entry is the third part of a continuing quasi-scientific investigation into the nature of Azeroth, the world better known as “of Warcraft”. Here we move on from geophysics to study the local ecology. Part 1 and Part 2 of the series are still online.) The ecology of Azeroth is perplexing. In addition to the [...]
Filed under: environment, fantasy, game design, game philosophy, game theology, geophysics, humour, mmorpg, playfulness, science, world of warcraft on July 8th, 2008 | 10 Comments »
If you’ve been commenting to my last few blog posts on the World of Warcraft, or you have a scientific hypothesis of your own about the nature of Azeroth and how it came to be that way, or you have too much time on your hands and enjoy thinking about stuff that doesn’t make sense, [...]
Filed under: fantasy, game design, game philosophy, geek culture, geophysics, google, humour, information use, meme, mmorpg, online games, playfulness, science, storytelling, world of warcraft on July 4th, 2008 | 1 Comment »
(This is a continuation of the essay started here and synopsised on video here.) I note that my previous post has sparked some academic debate in certain circles relating to the validity of my research techniques and data. Therefore before we embark into a new area of discussion, I must address some of the comments [...]
Filed under: Uncategorized, environment, fantasy, fiction, game design, game philosophy, geek culture, geophysics, humour, information use, mmorpg, playfulness, science, space, world of warcraft on July 3rd, 2008 | 26 Comments »
The text that made up my Interesting 08 talk ‘Brave n00b World’ was part of a much longer document that I’ve been working on for a while. I’m not sure it’s ready for primetime—I’m not sure it’s ready for anything—but to catch the tide of interest in the video, here’s the first part of it. This [...]
Filed under: environment, fantasy, game design, game philosophy, geek culture, geophysics, humour, mmorpg, playfulness, real world, science, world of warcraft on June 30th, 2008 | 76 Comments »
Roo Reynolds, the man behind Lego is Full of Win, not only videoed my presentation ‘Brave n00b World’ at Interesting 08 but has Done Computers to it and made it available on the internest. Lo! I was originally going to call it ‘The World of the World of Warcraft’, but the Onion beat me to [...]
Filed under: conference, convention, fantasy, game design, game philosophy, geophysics, humour, mmorpg, playfulness, science, world of warcraft on June 25th, 2008 | 18 Comments »
Just to assure you I’m still alive… Apparently there are only three countries in the world that haven’t officially adopted the metric system: Liberia; Myanmar; and the United States of America. How richly ironic is it that the USA’s way of measuring things is what they call the English system, and the rest of the world calls the Imperial system? (And they can’t even get that right: there are 20 fluid ounces in a pint, not 16. Please, these things are called ‘standards’ for a reason.) In other news: Space Giraffe is a huge disappointment, and I will deliver some thoughts [...]
Filed under: humour, information use, oh for fuck's sake on August 23rd, 2007 | No Comments »