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Feels great, man. ♫ I wonder how many people will decipher the secret to traveling through time?

In response to one of the previous episodes on the feeling of more artistic inclinations being regarded as a threat to fun, I wonder if James has read Ian Bogost's Unit Operations: An Approach to Video Game Criticism. While it was a short read, and ultimately one I do not hold in very high regard, there was one chapter within called "An Alternative to Fun," whereby Bogost did a criticism of Raph Koster's A Theory of Fun for Game Design (a book I liked far better). He pointed out that despite Koster having written the book on fun, the actual games he was releasing (acting as the creative director for) were not following his own precepts. I forget the exact details, but I believe it was on a Star Wars Galaxies game, whereby a good portion of the gameplay was essentially replicating that of a grindtastic second job. Bogost ultimately supported Koster's practices, as he was able to analyze the gameplay function as a social commentary on the low wage average and high rent living conditions within San Francisco (location of the design studio) at the time of the game's development. You'd understand me when I say, by that point, I had no other response than to simply return the book to the library as quickly as I could. Nonetheless, I'm astounded to hear about what occurred with the Escapist. I wrote for them myself, outside of my handle around here, back in the 200-250 issues. I thought it was a pretty well experience, but since then I've noticed a change. The Escapist back then is not quite the same one as I read today. They're too focused on videos and diversions, and far less on lettered thought. Perhaps it was the dropping of the editorial calendar, or perhaps it was the lack of weekly issues, but it has slowly become, what's the word for it, pablumatic? Mainstream? I don't quite know how to describe it, but I've felt it creeping up, month after month. Perhaps all those years of success have finally got to them? I'm having a harder and harder time wanting to read them. I'm hoping to start up an online magazine myself someday soon (these ideas are a side effect of having too much webspace and bandwidth than one person can use). It likely will not be a for-profit venture, as I don't wish to play monetary games with content and friendships I hold too dearly. I can only hope what happened to the Escapist will not happen to me.

Amazingly, the VA who voiced ivy from SC3 onwards is the same who voiced Lucas in Brawl and Waffle Ryebread in Tail Concerto. Either she's just that good, or VA work is hard to come by. My bet is the person who did motion capture for Ivy is probably just a dude with two water balloons taped to his chest. (The true definition of jiggle physics.)

Who knew Cranky Kong could've forseen so much?

One thing I imagine the modding community will do is make new worldgen properties to make some more fantastical landscapes and climates. There's already plenty of physics within that would allow for it. Right now, we're working on making an ice fantasia by placing watertiles airborne and using admin commands to autogenerate snow. Similar tower structures can be made using lava and drenching it with water from tall heights. Add in a few mossy cobblestones and you'll have something that looks like a long-forgotten civilization with relatively little effort. Another thing I'll bet on is the modded addition of selective floating physics in water. This way, if you add in a steering wheel object and have whatever it's attached to define itself as a floating object, then SMP servers can easily make working pirate ships.

While I see the rationale for wanting to play on vanilla Minecraft servers, my guess is everyone will need to use a mod of some sort for some reason. An example on the Minecraft sever I use: We wanted Minecarts once we heard they were working, but problems arose on days when people had connection issues. We had to use HMod and Craftbook to make the railways have auto-prepel properties so that people wouldn't need to use powered minecarts that - given one moment of lag - would leave your position on the train chain behind. The modding helped us compensate for server issues we couldn't control. ... granted, always going at 200% speed is a little excessive, but eh.

Duke it out if we authors are not allowed to vote. else {resub("next_month");}

An object-oriented poem. "genesis.mwx" int time = 1; while (time == 1) { create ("light"); if (light.isGood) { divide (light, "light", "darkness", attr brightness); string light.name = "day"; string darkness.name = "night"; time++; } else { destroy (light); } } while (time == 2) { create ("water"); divide (water, "water", "expanse", attr air); string expanse.name = "sky"; time++; } while (time == 3) { divide (water, "water", "land", attr dry); string water.name = "sea"; string land.name = "earth"; if (land.isGood) { land.create ("grass"); land.create ("herbs"); land.create ("trees"); if (land.isGood) { time++; } else { destroy (land); } } else { destroy (land); } } while (time == 4) { while (true) { expanse.create ("sun"); if (expanse.sun.isGood) { light += assign (expanse.sun); break; } else { destroy (expanse.sun); } } while (true) { expanse.create ("moon"); if (expanse.moon.isGood) { darkness += assign (expanse.moon); break; } else { destroy (expanse.moon); } } while (true) { expanse.create ("stars"); if (expanse.stars.isGood) { darkness += assign (expanse.stars); break; } else { destroy (expanse.stars); } } time++; } while (time == 5) { while (true) { create ("fish"); if (fish.isGood) { water += assign (fish); break; } else { destroy (fish); } } while (true) { create ("bird"); if (bird.isGood) { expanse += assign (bird); break; } else { destroy (bird); } } boolean fish.isFruitful = true; boolean bird.isFruitful = true; time++; } while (time == 6) { while (true) { create ("animal"); if (animal.isGood) { break; } else { destroy (animal); } } while (true) { create ("man", modify ("in our image")); divide (man, "male", "female", attr sex); if (man.isGood) { boolean man.isFruitful = true; boolean man.hasDominion = true; break; } else { destroy (man); } } bless (man); time++; } while (time == 7) { rest (); }

It wasn't so strong at first. Maybe if the number of videos made pre-Escapist were as many as they are now, it would've happened then too. Given the manner it occurred, it was probably bound to happen anyway. Now that I give it some thought, I'd have to say the exact point my opinion changed for the worse was the moment James recommended that any indie branch producing games for a bigger company would have all their completed intellectual product given solely to the parent corporation. I understand that's how business works these days, but it's another thing to just be so branzenly uncritical about it. It makes sense for a corporate institution to exclusively own a triple-A product, because often it would be designed by committee, with the creative process widely spread out over a large number of people. This way, even though everyone did work on it, the only own the final product as a collective, not as individuals. This is how, say, Toy Story 3 is considered a "Pixar film" rather than "a film directed Lee Unkrich," like auteur theory would state. Most video games have this given to them, like how a Zelda game is a Nintendo game, not strictly speaking a Miyamoto game. (There have only been a few exceptions to this, like Tim Schafer, Hideo Kojima, and Shigesato Itoi. They're a very small minority, as we can understand.) However, Indie games work oppositely. They're more directly linked to the creative prowress of a smaller group of people, or sometimes even a single person. If a bigger employer is to lay absolute claim to anything the indie group makes during their work period there (even if the product is the result of years worth of experience previous to the employment), the indies would essentially be screwing themselves if they actually bothered to come up with a good idea and work on it themselves, especially if their resources are too limited. Maybe I'm just a n00b here with no industry experience, but I instantly thought that James' idea there wouldn't work because the disincentive from good product is just too strong. I've been looking at these videos more critically ever since. (There's something very odd about gaming this regard as whole. When I first heard about Indie Brawl, it was in the news that Pixel couldn't let them put any Cave Story material in it because it would somehow violate the WiiWare game's contract with Nintendo. Then same thing happened with La-Mulana, and they soon found out that nearly every indie Wii game was off limits, yet somehow XBLA games were still safe. It sounds like Nintendo's been shafting them like crazy. I mean, we all agree that a book is the product of its author and not it's publisher, right? What's the rationale in making video games so different?)

I don't actually find myself agreeing with everything Dan and James say anymore. In fact, there is quite a lot I would protest to. Weirdly enough, I only started having that problem once they moved onto the Escapist.

I've added some accommodations for those using Internet Explorer or have other out of date web browsers. This will not display properly on IE until it hits version 9 or suddenly gains CSS3 support.

Mm. Citrus.

I fully support this remix and eagerly await its completion.

As a TIG lurker, I've been listening to this song for quite some time. It is very good.