Daily Linksplosion: Saturday, May 28, 2011
- giantmecha – Parents upset about adoption in Portal 2"RATED E FOR EVERYBODY EXCEPT FOR ORPHANS"
Archive for Linksplosions
Daily Linksplosion: Wednesday, May 25, 2011
- guardian.co.uk – China used prisoners in lucrative internet gaming work"Labour camp detainees endure hard labour by day, online ‘gold farming’ by night"
- Superlevel – Goldfish – We Come TogetherThis could be the dorkiest video I’ve ever watched, but it has style to spare.
- GameSetWatch – Doctor Who x Doctor Octoroc SNES IntroNew Fun Hypothetical: Modern-day Doctor Who in 16-bit
- Tiny Cartridge – Sunglasses-wearing badassesPaul Robertson makes Squirtles look tough
- Official Portal 2 Website – MusicPortal 2 Soundtrack, Volume I: free to download! Plus, ringtones for iPhone and Android.
- MAKE Magazine – Honduran High Schooler’s Low-Cost Eye-Controlled InterfaceTeen’s electrooculography prototype a low-cost alternative for people with physical disabilities
- Brandonnn – A World Within (by againstbound)Ah! What I would do to have this on my living room wall! But I guess it’s only a T-shirt.
Daily Linksplosion: Monday, May 23, 2011
- Reddit – Against all odds I’ve yet to be banned from City of HeroesHere’s a superhero you should avoid on White Pants Days, ladies! Its creator, longtime City of Heroes player Scott "Sharkey" Sharkey, tweets: "Who has two thumbs and frontpages Reddit with stupid bullshit he posts while drunk at 1AM?" Good lord, Reddit. I mean, really.
Don’t you think Sharkey should put together a whole City of Heroes Field Guide? He could revisit all his old superheroes, too, like Darth Underpants, Disco Fett, Inside-Out Girl, Ground Chuck, Grannyatrix, and Proofreader. This is a thing we would want to see, right?
Daily Linksplosion: Wednesday, May 11, 2011
- Reddit – Port of the Week #51 – PsychonautsThe PC version of ‘Psychonauts,’ flawlessly (?) ported for Mac gamers!
- IndieGames.com – Opinion: The Gods Of GooMichael Rose on ‘World of Goo’: "It’s a belief that keeps me living purposefully, that makes sense of the world, and that gives me hope for the future. But sometimes I wonder if this belief places me squarely in the midst of a cruel game, wherein I am merely a pawn, used for the sadistic purposes of a cruel God."
- Arcade Heroes – Teaser videos for TRON PinballWhoa, hey now! Has Stern been hard at work on a licensed Tron pinball machine? This YouTube video certainly suggests so.
- Digital Tools – CityHero: Real-urban gaming for iPhoneIts developers describe the app as a mix between Foursquare, Sim City, and Monopoly. Hmm!
- The Hairpin – Nine Things to Name Your Oregon Trail FamilyThis is just horrible.
Daily Linksplosion: Thursday, May 05, 2011
- 1UP – 31 Homebrew Games Worth PlayingYep!
- Kotaku – But I Don’t Play Video Games! Don’t Worry. Portal 2 Will Teach You HowSee, James? You can play Portal 2! It’s safe! It’s fine!
Daily Linksplosion: the Art one!!
- Retropoly – The Pit: Super Mario Bros."Das passiert, wenn Mario in einen Abgrund fällt"
- GamOvr – Biker SamusBadass.
- The sketch blog of Mads Herman – Sci Fi Scummin’Fun Hypothetical: Duncan Jones’ ‘Moon’ as a LucasArts game (via Kyozo Kicks)
- Wonderland – World of Geekcraft"Geek meets craft in this fun collection of 25 kooky projects for geeks of any affiliation, from D&D dice earrings, Star Trek pillows, and Super Mario cross-stitch to Star Wars terrariums, a Morse code quilt, and much more!"
- Fashionably Geek – Sesame Street FighterOh, my gosh! It’s almost TOO MUCH
- Back of the Cereal Box – Adolescent Wet Dream Gone Wrong: The Video Game‘Drop Rock Hora Hora’ and its misleading box art
Daily Linksplosion: Wednesday, April 06, 2011
- Waxy.org – Metagames: Games About GamesI managed to miss this the first three times I saw the link, but never again! A catalog of games-about-games, enumerated by the Internet’s Andy Baio.
- LA Weekly – A History of TrollfaceAlso titled "Trollface Artist Carlos Ramirez Talks 4chan, Incredible Hulk and Viral Fame," which is great for SEO but not very poetic
- McSweeney’s – April Fools’ Day Pranks to Play On an Unemployed 20-Something Male Who Still Lives at Home With His Parents.Hurr hurr, I laughed at this a whole bunch
- The Daily Nail – The Wind Beneath My Tiny WingsA ‘Tiny Wings’ -inspired manicure! (via the comments at If Style Could Kill)
Daily Linksplosion: Wednesday, March 30, 2011
- Reddit – GamePro, G4TV and VGChartz GamrFeed have been abusing multiple accounts to spam and manipulate /r/gaming for monthsI hope not to alarm you, but plenty of websites employ "power users"—not for actual money, I don’t think, because that would be illegal—to boost articles’ scores on social content sharing networks. But Digg always seemed to ban users just as soon as the site suspected something fishy happening, so it isn’t as if Digg were in on it. So is gaming the system, in the interest of pageviews, really so bad? Because as an ex-community manager, I really struggle to make any judgments here.
Daily Linksplosion: Thursday, March 24, 2011
Zelda Master Key by 8bitclassics
- The Rumpus Interview With Mike RosenthalThe Rumpus talks with one of the makers of the ‘Waiting for Godot’ video game.
- The Bygone Bureau – The Affair to RememberKevin Nguyen saves his files. He compulsively presses command-S. What is he scared of? What is worth holding onto?
- NYTimes.com – Don’t Call Me, I Won’t Call YouWe are all terrified of our own phones.
- Gawker – The Greatest Fake Girlfriend Story Ever ToldUpdates galore! This is so crazy!
- Xiaxue.blogspot.com – On the Internet, nobody knows you’re YOUR OWN IMAGINARY GIRLFRIENDI tweaked the link’s title a little bit, but only because I worry I’ll have to trick you readers (??) into clicking on it. Trust me, it’s worthwhile.
Usually cyberdrama is neither hilarious nor uplifting. But some hot Internet girl I’ve never heard of (sorry?) has turned into a one-woman Smoking Gun. I would not dare mess with her.
And this isn’t games-related, no, but since I’m trying to provide more reading material about gender, identity, avatars, and HILARITY, this passes my test.
Daily Linksplosion: Tuesday, March 15, 2011
- Jude Buffum – Painting with Pixels at GDC 2011Buffum’s installation at GDC.
- The Rumpus Interview With Peter Smith And Charlie Hoey, The Brains Behind The Great Gatsby GameI cannot believe the Rumpus did this…!
- Magical Wasteland – Why We Don’t Have Female Characters"Women are difficult to model because they have—they’re sort of put together—well, let me put it this way: male bone structure is mostly made up of ninety-degree angles. Right? Maybe a couple forty-fives here and there. But it’s simple, and that makes it easy. I guess I shouldn’t say ‘easy,’ but I mean more straightforward."
- The Hairpin – Throw This Party: Game NightThe Hairpin’s Katie Walsh on dragging your friends into an evening of board games, card trysts, and Pictionary.
Daily Linksplosion: Monday, March 07, 2011
- Chungking Espresso – How To Write A Book About GamesThis made me squirm uncomfortably at the specter of my own obviousness. (via Critical Distance)
- The Morning News – Who You Are and Who You Say You AreMore on anonymity and identity’s fluidity, but this time, prettily written.
Daily Linksplosion: Sunday, February 20, 2011
8-Bit Terrariums by Jude Buffum
- The Bygone Bureau – Fear and Gaming: Being and Nothingness and “Minecraft”I almost missed linking to one of these! It’s a good thing I caught myself: I recently told Bureau editor Kevin Nguyen by Tweet that if I missed one, he ought to phone the police, because I must be in trouble. I’m okay, guys! I have a free, 6-month subscription to OnStar!
Have you been reading all these? I keep telling you to. Mr. Gourlay’s approach to games is something I have heard called "experiential," which is a descriptive word that I like but barely understand how to pronounce aloud. I think I’m kidding? Maybe.
Even though I am not a mother, I have watched children play and have felt defensive and nurturing only until I got in on the game myself (at which point I will start shouting, "Boo-yah! No mercy! In your face! ...Sorry"). But there is something sharp and moving—so sharp that as a reader I don’t even see it coming until it’s too late for me—about Mr. Gourlay’s relationship with a game (_Minecraft_) as contrasted with his relationship with his 9-year-old daughter.
- BBC News – Polish game recreates communist shopping hellA new educational board game simulates the stress of shopping—the long lines, the shortages—in 1980s communist Poland.
- Paste – Games: Features – On Videogame CriticismA series of letters between Tom Bissell and Simon Ferrari. (via editor @kirkhamilton on Twitter)
- You Are Not So Smart – DeindividuationOn identities authentic and assumed, the difference between conformity and deindividuation, and the anonymous mob. (via @chmmr)
- CNN.com – ‘Sims’ creator: ‘Games are not the right medium to tell stories’This is one of those things that make me ehhhhhhhhh, because Will Wright is an inarguable visionary and I know what he is saying and how it makes sense, but I just ehhhhhhhhhh.
Still it’s nice to see some discussion of "Bar Karma," Wright’s crowd-scripted TV serial on Current, and anyway we all should embrace conversations about narrativity versus sandboxing with the goal of eventually furthering the form or whatever.
Daily Linksplosion: Thursday, February 17, 2011
- "Infinite Lives" – A CSS ExperimentLookit! An anigif I made for this site’s sidebar in 2006 (I was sitting at my desk avoiding some work) has inspired this CSS web project!
- Wasabi Sunshine – Resident Evil T-Virus Charm NecklacePretty neat!
- New Yorker – The Book Bench – Nintendo Lit: Gatsby and Tom Sawyer"Anyone hoping for a level of fence-whitewashing or a trip through the graveyard will be sorely disappointed. Ultimately, Injun Joe appears, riding the neck of a giant green serpent, and Tom finally rescues Becky, who is imagined, as most women are in Nintendo-world, as a blonde princess in pink."
- The Great Gatsby – For NESUgh, the hype is true, because this is great. 2D class warfare platforming action!
- video game release calendarMy old pal Adam: "I wanted to see release dates for video games in a less noisy, less hype-filled form so in keeping with my new mantra of ‘less complaining, more problem solving through extremely rapid prototyping’ I made my own video game release calendar thing."
Daily Linksplosion: Sunday, February 06, 2011
- MetaFilter – DickwolvesReading the MetaFilter thread—which took me at least a day, because I needed to read very carefully—clarified a lot of concepts. It was, indeed, the conversation no one expected. Measured and moderated in a neutral court, this dialogue did a lot of work for me that I never could have done on my own in any good time.
I know not everyone will be able to do all the necessary reading, or even make total linear sense of the back-and-forth there, because who has the time, and maybe that really has been the issue from the start.
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Daily Linksplosion: The Really Angry One
I get angry, but not that often. Or maybe I am angry a lot. But in my adult life I have always stepped lightly around my own opinions. That timorousness has helped maintain a lot of friendships that might otherwise not have lasted. My best childhood friend and I, for instance, have completely opposite, rabidly passionate beliefs. We have carefully cultivated a friendly and loving political distance. She and I understand the stakes. We know that, if we begin those conversations, we won’t stop, our feelings will be hurt, and no one will win. That is why she is my best friend. I have the same relationship with, you know, my mother.
Maybe nobody needs to know everything I’m thinking at any given moment, or how I feel about health reform or gun laws or Larry Elder (it’s complicated). Maybe there are some fiercely held opinions I’d do just as well to keep under my hat, just as I’d do well not to march up to a friendly acquaintance and scream “I hate you and everything you stand for.” No, I tiptoe, genuinely working hard to not alienate my fellow humankind. There’s no reason, ordinarily, for me to take up arms and get in your face and go THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS.
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