Skip to main content
Why yes, I do like playing Centipede, thankyouverymuch

I was in one of my videogame-playing moods, the other day (for some reason when I don't feel well enough to concentrate on a book or movie I can still play video games), and the thought came to me: I like to destroy stylized things, but I wouldn't like to kill realistic centipedes, space invaders, blue ghosts, or play with realistic concrete blocks. The stylization makes the game experience better for me, it's not just some nostalgia for 80's arcade games. I enjoy when new versions of these games come with cool cartoony graphics, but I don't understand the importance of a realistic environment in gaming. How does it make the gameplay any better? Games are too realistic now. Look at the Sims. I can't even keep a plant alive, but I'm supposed to make sure a virtual person goes to the bathroom? If I wanted to do that, I wouldn't have "forgotten" to have children.

I'm going to start my own MMORPG, The World of Tikktaaktow. It's just like Tic-Tac-Toe, except it's in 3-D, you can play as over 100 mythological creatures, dress them in the costumes of 500 nations and cultures, you have to play in a horde of 100 people for it to be any fun, and you lose immediately for the first 100 hours you play. I'll make millions, I tell you! Millions!

The funny thing is, the other big hot game lately is poker. What could be more stylized than pieces of paper with crudely-drawn pictures of kings and queens on them? Maybe they'll be a new video version of poker where the kings and queens leap off the cards in 3-D form and pummel your opponent's cards when you win a hand.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

TOP TEN LIPSYNCH FOR YOUR LIFE SONGS FOR A DRAG KING EQUIVALENT OF RUPAUL'S DRAG RACE

 The Advocate has suggested that the greatest (i.e. only good) reality show ever, Rupaul's Drag Race , have a drag king contestant.  That's fine, but it would be much more entertaining to have a whole drag king competition. One of the best parts of Drag Race is seeing all the different types of queens compete: beauty queens, funny queens, conceptual queens, androgynous queens, scary queens, singing and dancing queens.  I want to see punk kings, gangsta rap kings, cock-rocking metal kings, panty-dropping R & B kings, country kings, baggy-pants burlesque comic kings, and of course, Elvis. I picked out some songs that make me think of different aspects of masculinity:  swaggering men, heartbroken men, lustful men, romantic men, philosophical men, and suicidally depressed men (interesting fact: I can think of dozens of songs by men about suicide, but only one female one: "Gloomy Sunday". What's up with that?) "That's Life" - Frank Sinatra

STILL HATING ON MONTHLY SUBSCRIPTIONS

Jason had an insightful post on newspapers in the Internet Age on his blog wherein he suggested we donate to keep the watchdogs of the press going. In an aside, he mentioned subscriptions for music: To be honest, it's the same thing with music downloads. I've been screaming for monthly subscriptions for years now, and they're still not here. (At least not on the scale of an iTunes or Amazon.) Of course, I had to respond. Jason: I'm sorry to hear you've been screaming for years--you must be very hoarse. I believe the service you're looking for is called Rhapsody . I don't know what counts as "the same scale", but they have ads on TV. I don't know why anyone would pay $12.99/month to rent music, though. I want to own my music, I don't want some company to be able to take my access away or jack up the price at a whim. Rhapsody's main market must be people who don't own much music, have a lot of electronic devices but no interest in l

TOP MUSIC GENRES FOR YOUR CYBERPUNK GAME

So I guess cyberpunk is hot again. I don't play those newfangled video games, but all this fanfare made me remember my old Cyberpunk 2020 days, when I was Jael Furoshiki, Japanese/Jewish survivor of of a destroyed South China Sea pirate pack trying to make a living in the Minneapolis Red Zone as a bodyguard/food delivery technician (yes, both a pirate and an ninja).  Later she got ported to Interface Zero , which got rid of some of the anachronisms and C2020's crazy-high fatality rate (there used to be a page dedicated to players' favorite deceased characters, sadly now lost to even the Wayback Machine). Anyway, one time I made up musical genres my character would listen to--can't find my old character sheets, but this gives you the idea... TOP MUSIC GENRES FOR YOUR CYBERPUNK GAME: Cambo-Punk Robo-Funk Post-post-post-post-post Punk Really New Wave Black Klezmetal Danish RaiZulu Techno-Jive Country & Western & Gabber Lo-NRG Goan Garage Garage