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29 Mar 02:58

Game designer Jason Rohrer designs a game meant to be played 2,000 years from now, hides it in desert

by Michael McWhertor
firehose

"the sheets of GPS coordinates were collected by GDC volunteers at the door in an attempt to collate the data", defeating the stated purpose and turning it back around to more PR bullshit

By Michael McWhertor on Mar 28, 2013 at 4:50p

The designer of Passage, The Castle Doctrine and Diamond Trust of London, Jason Rohrer, has developed a game designed to be played by people he'll never know. Rohrer hasn't played it himself, he says, and has buried the game — designed to survive thousands of years — in the Nevada desert, making it likely that no one will ever play it.

It's called A Game for Someone. The game was inspired by ancient board games like Mancala, as well as the architects and builders who, over hundreds of years, constructed religious cathedrals that they themselves would never set foot in, never see completed in their lifetimes.

"I wanted to make a game that is not for right now, that I will never play," Rohrer said, "and nobody now living would ever play."

Rohrer's A Game for Someone was presented at the 10th (and final) Game Design Challenge at GDC. This year's challenge was themed "Humanity's Last Game." Rohrer's interpretation of the theme was to craft a game that would never be played by his colleagues and friends, but by some unknown person in the far future.

To accomplish that, Rohrer first built the game in computer form, designing a set of rules that would be playtested not by a human, but by an artificial intelligence. He said he plugged the game's rules into a "black box," letting the AI find imbalances, iterating new rules and repeating. Rohrer showed the video game version of his board game onscreen, but obscured key portions of the board game's layout, so no one in attendance could reverse engineer its mechanics.

Jason_rohrer

Then he set about manufacturing it. Rattling off a list of board game materials that would be unlikely to last the intended passage of time (wood, cardboard, aluminum, glass), Rohrer ultimately decided to make the game from a resilient metal. He machined the 18-inch by 18-inch game board and the pieces future players will use out of 30 pounds of titanium.

Rohrer laid out the game's rules diagrammatically on three pages of archival, acid-free paper, hermetically sealed them inside a Pyrex glass tube — which were then housed inside a titanium baton — and set about burying them in the earth.

The game is now embedded somewhere in the Nevada desert. Rohrer's not exactly sure where, as he plotted out available public land far enough away from roads and populated areas, hoping to find a suitable, desolate location to hide the game. He buried it in the desert himself, he said, turned around and walked away from the game's indistinguishable resting place.

He never showed the full board game, its pieces or its rules during his presentation. No one in attendance is aware of how it plays.

But Rohrer does have the precise GPS location to help find A Game for Someone.

Prior to Rohrer's talk, a few hundred envelopes were placed on the seats in the room. Printed on the envelope: "Please do not open yet." After Rohrer described his game, he asked attendees to open their envelopes. Inside each one is a piece of paper with 900 sets of GPS coordinates. In total, Rohrer gave the audience more than 1 million unique GPS coordinates. He estimates that if one person visits a GPS location each day with a metal detector, the game will be unearthed sometime within the next million days — a little over 2,700 years.

While Rohrer may have intended audience members to hunt down his board game treasure individually, the sheets of GPS coordinates were collected by GDC volunteers at the door in an attempt to collate the data, hopefully leading to the game's earlier discovery.

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29 Mar 02:31

A Clarification Regarding Web Services and Control

Responding to yesterday’s post, a number of people pointed out to me that it sounded weird if one minute I suggest checking out Azure Mobile Services and the next minute tell developers they should take control of their app’s web services.

I meant no contradiction, but I could have explained better.

When creating web services, you should consider high-level systems, low-level systems, and everything in between, and figure out what makes sense for you.

Here are some — not necessarily all — of the things to consider when choosing:

  • Does it support iOS, Android, and browser-based apps? (Knowing that you may — may — want to move beyond just iOS.)

  • Can you create a social component?

  • Can you add additional services — push notifications, feed-polling, sending email, whatever — to the system?

  • Can you get aggregate data and learn how people use your app?

  • Perhaps most importantly: is it possible to migrate to something else (even if takes some work)?

The answer is yes to all of these for Mobile Services. (While the answer is no to all of them for iCloud syncing.)

The answer is also yes if you want to work at a low level — it’s yes if you get a virtual server on Linode and run Ruby on Rails and MySQL.

And it’s also yes if you work at a medium level and deploy apps using services like Heroku, Engine Yard, Amazon, and Google App Engine.

At some point you have to outsource some things, right? You’re not going to build your own server machine that runs your own operating system in a data center you constructed with hammers and saws that you made.

So you choose what makes sense. And if it can be a high-level system, that’s cool — it will probably save you time and be easier to maintain. But you might have good reasons to choose something medium or low level, and that’s cool too.

The key is this: you need control of the data.

iCloud Core Data syncing is, once again, completely opaque and outside your control. It fits none of the criteria listed above.

29 Mar 02:31

Vinyl



Vinyl

29 Mar 02:29

America as seen by an Australian

by get-ready-for-something
firehose

proud to live in president town



America as seen by an Australian

29 Mar 02:28

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29 Mar 02:28

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29 Mar 02:27

A Cinderella Story? How The Koch Brothers Use Florida Gulf Coast University To Promote Their Agenda

by Zack Beauchamp

It’s a great story: the virtually unknown, 15th seeded Florida Gulf Coast University (FGCU), has made it to the Sweet 16 in the NCAA tournament. But there’s something you might not know about FGCU: its economics department is, as a consequence of grants from Randian businessman John Allison and the Charles G. Koch Foundation, a haven for Ayn-Rand Style thinking:

At Florida Gulf Coast University in Fort Myers, every student who majors in economics and finance gets a copy of Ayn Rand’s novel, Atlas Shrugged…FGCU now has a core group of a half dozen economists whose research supports the ideas of free-market capitalism, still an unpopular subject in most faculty lounges. They teach this material to more than 250 economics and finance students (one class is titled “The Moral Foundations of Capitalism”), organize lectures by leading thinkers, publish their research in well-respected journals and hold influential positions in groups that promote free markets.

The ideological transformation of FGCU economics began in 2009, when Allison, a famous devotee of Ayn Rand’s who was then the president of banking giant BB&T, donated $600,000 to FGCU to create the endowed “BB&T Distinguished Professor of Free Enterprise.” Allison now runs the libertarian Cato Institute, a position he gained with the support of Charles and David Koch after some controversy.

The Kochs also supported Allison’s efforts at FGCU, a largely local school with about 11,000 undergradutes. A ThinkProgress review of Charles G. Koch Foundation donations from 2008-2011 found $87,000 in donations to Florida Gulf Coast University. According to an internal BB&T professorship report, the Koch money “provide[s] operational seed funding for the yearly activities and the local BB&T Charitable Foundation sponsors our premier annual event — The BB&T Free Enterprise Lecture Series.” The internal report also included metrics on the program’s operations such as “Atlas Shrugged Distribution — Number of students reached: approximately 120.”

Strange as it may seem that private ideological organizations can support academic departments, it’s not uncommon. A massive Koch donation to Florida State University’s economics program generated significant controversy in 2011 when it came to light that the donation was accompanied by de facto Koch control over some hiring decisions and the ability to review the scholarship generated. As of February 2013, 129 colleges and universities around the country were receiving Koch Family Foundations support.

Whether or not you think these sorts of donations are threats to academic freedom, they do lay bare the somewhat surprising disadvantage progressives face when it comes to getting funding for work on their intellectual traditions. In addition to the Koch direct-donations, organizations like the conservative Intercollegiate Studies Institute and libertarian Institute for Humane Studies help promote their ideas on campus and connect their students with likeminded colleagues and employers. Progressives conspicuously lack any equivalent organizations that connect students with a broader intellectual network, providing a potentially interesting explanation for why conservative ideas seem to have a direct pipeline to Washington while progressive alternatives stay at the margins of the debate.



29 Mar 02:26

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29 Mar 02:25

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29 Mar 02:23

Chinese Designer Guo Pei Creates Fashion That Is Not Fashion

by shien@dancesofvice.com (ShienLee)

There are times that a work of art stuns the viewer to silent awe, where you feel you've come into contact with the divine - and that is certainly my feeling when viewing the fantastical work of Chinese couturière Guo Pei. 

Many of her designs draw inspiration from the mystical splendor of ancient Chinese empires, artifacts from the decadent Ming and Qing Dynasties, and images of nymphs and deities from Chinese fairy tales. They are re-imagined with a futuristic flair, and extravagant in their embellishments. I love this dress, the folds of which remind me of the lotus flower.

As European fashion houses have subtly begun cutting back on handwork due to rising labor costs, Guo Pei takes the opposite approach. One dress, made entirely of golden panels, logged over 50,000 hours in embroidery work. Guo Pei was raised during the time of the Cultural Revolution, when the only fashion being worn was the revolutionary uniform. Now, 40 years later, the Chinese fashion industry is experiencing a revolution of its own, as if to make up for those decades of political dress, and utilitarian fashion.

"I always have a desire to create something that is fashion and is not fashion," says Guo Pei. ‘‘So a dress ends up weighing 50 kilos! Every piece is not fashion anymore. It’s sculpture; it’s painting. I want to put all that into a dress.’’ You can tell from the 1002th Arabian Night runway show that many of the pieces and shoes are extremely difficult to move in, which to me adds to their majesty in a way. I think the models pull it off beautifully, and I am so excited to see what she creates next.

29 Mar 02:22

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29 Mar 02:22

goodstuffhappenedtoday: Panera Cares Lets Customers Set The...





goodstuffhappenedtoday:

Panera Cares Lets Customers Set The Price

Panera Bread, the nationwide restaurant chain, has opened a new “pay-what-you-can” cafe in downtown Boston, called Panera Cares.

The concept is simple: diners pay what they can afford. So if a meal normally costs $5.00, the customer can pay that price, a little more, or a little less.

Store ambassadors greet customers when they come in to explain how things work, but it can be a little confusing.

“I don’t even know what’s going on. I’m just hungry,” a befuddled customer named Javier said.

Here’s how it works: customers order their food, just like at a regular Panera, but then the cashier tells them the suggested price. Customers can decide how much to pay, and either put their money in a donation box, or tell the cashier how much to charge their credit card.

The Panera Bread Foundation has four other Panera Cares locations in St. Louis, Detroit, Portland, Oregon and Chicago, and the founder Ron Shaich says the system works because the people who can afford to pay more, often do.

“All they have is a responsibility to do the right thing. And you know what’s amazing? So many people do,” Shaich said.

The breakdown of what people pay is about 60-20-20: 60 percent of people pay the suggested price, 20 percent pay less, 20 percent pay more.

Since opening in January, the Panera Cares in Boston has been taking in slightly more than that national average.

Food Insecurity

Panera officials say the chain already donates about $100 million in food and cash a year. But Shaich wanted to become more involved in the issue of food insecurity – the 50 million Americans and one in four children who don’t know where their next meal is coming from.

“This isn’t an issue of simply of homelessness,” Shaich said. “Twenty-five percent of people with food insecurity actually own their own homes, 24 percent are college grads. It’s endemic when you have a country that is 8 to 9 percent unemployment.”

It’s a job requirement that all of the employees at the Boston Panera Cares location understand the issue.

“We’ve all experienced food insecurity one way or another, either personally or we know someone is experiencing it,” said cashier Yetunde Bankole.

Panera Cares workers are also trained to deal with a population that is in need.

29 Mar 02:15

 Super Mario Bros. 3

 
Super Mario Bros. 3

29 Mar 01:01

The Repaircave

by Kent Griswold
firehose

attn: lg. Shed replacement?

Towards the end of the build I realised it needed to be a little more than just my personal hideout. I’m hoping to attract folks who will share the hideout with me, taking their broken stuff to fix, while making a fire inside or outside and having a tea or beer. I’ve added a website too, www.repaircave.com, inspired by the popular ‘Repair Cafes’ (where people go and repair broken things together). It’s in Dutch, but that’s much like English ;)

mobile workshop on the road

The site is about what’s happening in the Cave and through it I try to motivate people to repair and recycle and to use free stuff in a creative way. So far no one has come, but nevermind, it’s still my retreat too. And it’s still fresh, who knows what will come of it.

old trailer

About the Repaircave; It’s built on the frame of an old foldout caravan that a friend of mine gave to me. I had vague plans about mobile things like saunas, forrest bathrooms, workshops, chill-out-zones, pizza ovens. During the build (most of 2012) it turned out to become a combination workshop/studio and retreat, with possibility to accomodate a guest. The ‘dirty’ tools (grinders, welder, etc.) cannot be used inside, the interior has become too nice for that. There was no real plan, but inspiration came from things like old sheep wagons and wooden boats.

building the workshop

The hull is made of relatively cheap pinewood (unfortunately not salvaged) and took shape on the fly. I’m very happy with the final result. Most of the interior is from recycled pallets and leftovers. The woodstove is made from a broken down compressor that was given to me and some second hand bits of stainless steel pipes. The stained glass windows were made by my mother, who started her own glass workshop, also in a wagon, but an original one.

exterior build

The roof is a canvas roof, like they used to have on wooden decks, painted to waterproof with a linseed based paint. The whole thing is still mobile and handles very well when towed. I think it is even street legal(<750kg), but I don’t think I’ll be using it on the road a lot, although friends say I should be taking it to fetivals, selling vegan sandwiches from the pop-out side window. Maybe some other time.

Well I hope you like my design!

Best regards,
Wouter from Groningen, the Netherlands

workshop area

interior view

door

on the road

workshop in the snow

rear of the repaircave

28 Mar 23:17

betype: Channel 4 Anniversary — Mario Hugo











betype:

Channel 4 Anniversary — Mario Hugo

28 Mar 23:17

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28 Mar 23:17

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28 Mar 23:17

tastefullyoffensive: [xkcd]



tastefullyoffensive:

[xkcd]

28 Mar 23:16

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28 Mar 23:03

IGDA apologizes for dancers at GDC party, hopes to reconcile with resigned members

by Samit Sarkar
firehose

some more scorched-earth no-PR-is-bad-PR misogynistic startup bullshit

'The IGDA has come under fire for the party, which it co-hosted with startup accelerator YetiZen, because of the scantily clad female dancers who performed there, as reported by Forbes. In the wake of the report, two IGDA board members, including noted game designer Brenda Romero, and leaders of two other groups affiliated with the organization — the Chicago chapter of the IGDA, and Women in Games Boston — said today that they have cut ties with it.

...

"Unfortunately not all content at the party was passed by us," said Edwards, "and [YetiZen] also agreed to follow the IGDA code of conduct." '

By Samit Sarkar on Mar 28, 2013 at 5:29p

The International Game Developers Association apologized today for the female dancers at its Game Developers Conference party last night, and said that it hopes that the IGDA members who resigned will return.

"Both the costumes and activities witnessed at the party — we apologize and agree," said Kate Edwards, IGDA executive director, during the organization's annual meeting today. "It doesn't agree with our core values as an organization."

The IGDA has come under fire for the party, which it co-hosted with startup accelerator YetiZen, because of the scantily clad female dancers who performed there, as reported by Forbes. In the wake of the report, two IGDA board members, including noted game designer Brenda Romero, and leaders of two other groups affiliated with the organization — the Chicago chapter of the IGDA, and Women in Games Boston — said today that they have cut ties with it.

"We regret the reactions they've given us. We do hope they continue to work with the IGDA; we'd hate to lose their participation, but they react how they want to react," Edwards told Polygon in a Q&A following the meeting. "It's their decision but we hope they continue to work with us in the future."

Asked about reconciling with Romero and the other people who have resigned or distanced themselves from the IGDA, Edwards said, "We are open to it. We do need them now more than ever."

"It doesn't agree with our core values as an organization"

Edwards added, "Basically, what we need is participation and dialogue. We would love to have people members of our organization to speak up on our things — speak up, give us advice on these things. We need to know what we can do to do a better job in the future."

Edwards also explained how the event was planned. According to Edwards, YetiZen approached the IGDA to do the party, and she said the IGDA agreed "mainly because we were provided oversight." However, said Edwards, "We did not see the costumes of the stilt walkers during the party; we didn't know any of the performers would be doing anything on the stage or brought on the stage; we didn't even know the models would be at the party, necessarily."

"Unfortunately not all content at the party was passed by us," said Edwards, "and [YetiZen] also agreed to follow the IGDA code of conduct." The IGDA's Code of Ethics can be found on its website.

In the future, said Edwards, the IGDA needs to find sponsors and not co-host with other organizations that may have differing views on what's appropriate for an IGDA event. Edwards added that in this case, "We had a sponsor lined up with a soft commitment that backed out at the last minute and left us in a situation."

"We realize we make mistakes sometimes; we want to make sure all our programs and activities are inclusive and professional."

Alexa Ray Corriea and Megan Farokhmanesh contributed to this report.

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28 Mar 22:51

Carved Wood Batman Coffee Tables

by Justin Page

Batman Coffee Table

Venice, California-based furniture and instrument builder Charles Lushear of Bohemian Workbench has created a powerful collection of carved wood Batman Coffee Tables. The three different table styles shown are the walnut with hairpin legs, walnut with curved legs and classic black with hairpin legs.

Batman Coffee Table

Batman Coffee Table

via Dude I Want That, Geekologie

28 Mar 22:50

The Sheer Radness Of 'Surf's Up, Joker's Under' (1967)

by Chris Sims
firehose

"I don't think there's been a time during my entire life when the Joker could just roll over to the beach without people freaking out and calling in an air strike or something, but here he is."


If you asked a bunch of comic fans what the greatest Joker story of all time was, I imagine you'd get a variety of answers. Some would probably point to Alan Moore and Brian Bolland's The Killing Joke, which raised the bar for the Joker's criminal madness. Others might say Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams's The Joker's Five-Way Revenge, which defined the direction the character would take for the next thirty years. Still others might even point to The Dark Knight and Heath Ledger's incredible, harrowing performance.

Those people are all wrong. As you and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt, the single greatest Joker story of all time is "Surf's Up, Joker's Under," an episode of the Batman '66 TV series in which the Joker attempts to take over Gotham City by defeating Batman in a surfing contest.

I've been thinking about this story a lot lately -- more than usual, I mean. I generally can't go more than a few days without thinking about the Joker wearing surf jams over a thee piece suit and trying to rule the beach -- it's a favorite of mine, and of Trip Fantastic's Derek Charm, who drew the amazing tribute to it at left -- but ever since the announcement that DC was going to revive Batman '66 for a new comic series, it's been on my mind pretty much non-stop, and a lot of that has to do with the fact that it's a perfect representation of how that show worked.

Really, though, it's kind of a weird episode, even by Batman '66 standards. It aired during the show's third season, when the popularity that made it a cultural phenomenon was fading a little and things had gotten a little more bizarre as a result. Sets, for instance, had been reduced to sparse sound-stages with just enough furniture to get across an idea of where those skewed scenes were supposed to be happening. It's also worth noting that the two-part cliffhanger format with the breathless narration by Desmond Doomsday (the stage name of show producer William Dozier) wasn't as prevalent, giving us this story, which ran a single episode to make room for my all-time childhood favorite, Batman's three-part trip to Londinium to battle the juvenile delinquents of Lord Ffogg's School for Girls.

Beyond all that, though, this episode is the absolute best example of the Joker just straight up doing weird stuff to mess with Batman, an idea that we've really gotten away from in recent years. Don't get me wrong, I like the Master Planner Joker who wanders around cutting off faces and beating sidekicks to death with a crowbar as much as anybody does, but I still cling to the idea that he's a crazy person who does crazy things for crazy reasons, prompting Batman to respond in kind. I mean, I don't even think the Joker does anything that's actually illegal in this story, but you never know when one of those seemingly inconsequential acts could lead to the absolute destruction of Gotham City, so in all things, evil cannot be allowed to win.

Which is why Batman and the Joker had a surf-off to win the hearts of Gotham City's most radical teens.

Our story opens on a sunny beach, which is our first indication that, as Jeff Parker put it, the part of Gotham City will be played quite obviously by Southern California for the evening. Barbara Gordon is chilling on the beach with her beau, Skip Parker, when the Joker cold rolls up in a hot rod...


... and starts talking into a hot dog:

That's another thing I really miss. Not hot dogs that are actually sophisticated electronics -- although honestly, I think we'd be a lot better off if that was the case -- but that the Joker can just drive around and go places without people losing their minds about it. I don't think there's been a time during my entire life when the Joker could just roll over to the beach without people freaking out and calling in an air strike or something, but here he is.

That said, it is a little weird that this is a complete non-issue here. I mean, the last time the Joker showed up on Batman, he tried to murder Bruce Wayne and assaulted Alfred with a fireplace poker. You'd think he would've gotten more than eight months in prison for that. Although, now that I think of it, the standard sentence for everything short of High Treason seems to be around 90 days in Batman, so that's really equivalent to almost three consecutive life sentences.

Anyway, the person on the other end of the hot dog? The Joker's latest henchwench, the sultry, silver-bikinied Undine:


Please enjoy that shot and marvel at the level of subtext we're working with here.

While Undine provides an entirely understandable distraction, the Joker's goons -- Riptide and Wipe Out -- stuff former surfing great and malt shop proprietor Hot Dog Harrigan into a bag and toss him into a trash can, a fate from which there is no escape. With Harrigan out of the way, the Joker has full run of the malt shop, The Hang Five. He then gets Undine to lure Skip in with the promise of a phone call, and then gasses Skip with a gimmicked payphone by pressing a button on his electronic hot dog.

Now, his plan becomes clear: He's going to abscond with Skip, steal his surfing secrets with a brain-swapping machine, and then "rule the waves."

Seriously. That is his entire plan.

"Me, the Joker! King of the surf and all the surfers! Then, Gotham City! Later: The world!"


Of all the things I love about this story, high on the list is that the Joker having a brain-swapping machine is a given that doesn't even need to be explained, and this is what he's going to do with it.

Back at the beach, Barbara notices that her boyfriend's missing and the Joker's running around, puts two and two together, and phones in a hot tip to her dad. He, in turn, calls up Batman, and in one of the show's most brilliant moments of the good guys being unfailingly thorough in the pursuit of justice, Gordon explains that he "suspects" it's the Joker up to some "brazen buffoonery" because of Barbara's description. He suspects! You'd think the Joker would be pretty easy for someone to identify, what with him being the only green-haired albino who would wear a purple three piece suit to the beach and all, but Gordon wants to make sure that they have all the evidence before he confirms it.

It's enough to get Batman and Robin involved, so after some stock footage of the Batcopter, the Dynamic Duo arrive. They attempt to avoid spooking the civilians by landing away from the scene of the crime and "just walking up the beach like normal people," and they're not the only ones going for a subtle investigation. Chief O'Hara and Commissioner Gordon are also on the scene, investigating undercover as two hodads named Duke and Buzzy:


They blend in effortlessly, and while their suspicions initially fall on a green-haired band that plays a pretty rockin' tune over more surfing stock footage, another tip from Barbara has them eyeing Undine from a booth in the Hang Five.

Meanwhile, the Joker's machine has successfully lifted "everything you ever knew or heard about surfing" out of Skip's brain and dropped it right into the Clown Prince of Crime, along with a heaping helping of his youthful energy. No sooner is it done, though, than Undine shows up, telling the Joker that she "didn't dare call you again on my hot dog" (amazing) and alerting him to the fact that she thinks those two aged hodads are "fuzz."

As an afterthought, she mentions that Batman and Robin have shown up. Kinda buried the lead there, Undine.

Still, it's enough to get them prepared, and when the Caped Crusaders crash through a (completely glass-free) window, the Joker and his men stab them in the chest with needles several dozen times:

Of Note: Adam West's perfect real-life :( face.

Said needles are, of course, poison blowfish spines, because what else would they be? Not content to let the poison do all the work, though, we get our first real deathtrap of the episode, when the Joker attempts to cover them in foam that will turn them into surfboards. It actually goes pretty far, but, well, utility belts. You know how it is.

Once they're free, Batman and Robin find Skip locked in a chest of drawers, drained of his surfing prowess. Batman instructs Robin to change back into his secret identity -- Millionaire Bruce Wayne's Youthful Ward Dick Grayson, as a cool teen, has the necessary pull with the Gotham City Surfing Association to get a one-on-one, officially sanctioned contest going for the title of Best Surfer on the Beach. The contestants: Batman and the Joker.

Thus, after donning their baggies over their costumes... which in the Joker's case means putting on a pair of shorts over a pair of purple pinstriped tuxedo pants...


...the S is O.

The surfing battle is basically amazing. Barbara finally re-enters the story and she and Dick stand around offering commentary with hilariously stilted surf lingo while Batman and the Joker alternate between rear-projected closeups and actual footage of stunt doubles surfing in full costume. At one point, a shark shows up, and Batman whips out a can of Shark-Repellant Bat-Spray, because again: of course he does.

In the end, avoiding the shark attack puts Batman over the top in points, soundly trouncing the Joker in their surf-off:


As you might expect, the Joker is not exactly a good loser, and a fight scene breaks out, with Barbara joining in as Batgirl to more thoroughly bash the Joker and his thugs. Thus, evil is defeated, Skip gets his surfing power back, and with one "Cowabunga, begorrah," O'Hara and the Commissioner haul the Joker off to jail.

So let this be a lesson to all of us. While evil may have the seductive, alluring abilities of a master surfer, they are merely stolen. True surfing ability, and the responsibility of using it wisely, belongs to the righteous.

28 Mar 22:46

Fully Funded 'Spider Stories' Kickstarter Reflects Viewers' Desire for African Stories in Animation [Video]

by Andy Khouri

In 2009 the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie gave a TED Talk on the dangers of what she called "The Single Story." Put simply, the Single Story is the conventional understanding of a people, culture or situation that's informed by stereotypes in literature and the media -- stereotypes that aren't necessarily untrue, but that are necessarily incomplete. For example, it was the Single Story of her middle class family's young servant that his family was incredibly poor -- not "incredibly poor and incredibly hard working." It was the Single Story of Africa as a "catastrophe" that prompted Adichie's American roommate in college to remark upon how well Adichie spoke, how impressed she was that Adichie could use appliances like stoves, and how surprising it was that Adichie listened to Mariah Carey instead of "tribal music."

Adichie's remarks struck a chord with indie comics creators John and Charles Agbaje, who observed that one chapter largely missing from the story of Africa in the west was that of the hero -- more specifically, the heroine. To that end, the brothers took to Kickstarter to fund the production of Spider Stories, an 11-minute animated pilot inspired by Nigerian folk tales and modern hero epics like Avatar: The Last Airbender, with a view to selling the project as a proper animated series. With three days remaining to pledge, the Agbaje brothers have already raised the $25,000 needed to produce the short, which I think demonstrates that a western audience is keen to see something new in animation and improve its understanding of the African story.


WHAT IS IT: Spider Stories is an 11-minute animated pilot for a series starring Princess Zahara, the exiled young ruler of a fictional kingdom who, upon meeting a representative from the spirit world, becomes empowered to reclaim her birthright and unify her divided people. The spider in the title refers to the ancient spider spirit, the recorder of history and the source of power for every ruler of the kingdom, including the Princess. Once produced, the pilot will be shopped around in the hopes of graduating it to a fully produced animated series.

HOW MUCH IT WILL COST: $25,000 that's already been raised to pay the animation professionals, sound people and so forth, with approximately $1,500 budgeted for each minute of screen time. The remainder will be used to facilitate the rewards for backers and to cover any unforeseen expenses. Excess funds will go towards improving the quality of the pilot by hiring additional personnel.

WHAT YOU WILL GET: Pledges between $20-$25 offer rewards like t-shirts, music downloads and Project O comic books previously created by the Agbaje brothers (which can be read online as well). A physical copy of the pilot isn't offered before the $50 tier which doesn't include any of the lower tier rewards but does offer exclusive access to the production as it happens. More economical may be the $75 tier, which comes with the Spider Stories DVD as well as the Agbaje's comic book work. When you jump to $250, you get all the lower tier rewards plus an art book detailing the Spider Stories production. From there on, rewards include things like custom logo design for your company and statues of the Spider Stories characters.



WHEN YOU WILL GET IT: John Agbaje told us via e-mail that the goal is to complete the pilot by January 2014. Backers will have private access to view Spider Stories online while the creators pitch it for a series.

WHY YOU SHOULD CARE: I wasn't aware of Spider Stories until just after it had reached its fundraising goals, but I felt compelled to write about it because of what I think it represents. As Ms. Adichie articulated so well, it's important to our cultural well being to fill in the gaps in our understanding of people, places and things, and one of the best ways that is achieved is through art, literature and media. In the west there is a distinct lack of positive sub-Saharan African culture represented in our lives, and the ascension of online communities has taught us that just because something is not seen doesn't mean that it's not missed. That two independent creators with just a few black and white comics to their names could raise $25,000 to produce Spider Stories tells me that there is a western audience willing to support female heroes in adventure fiction, heroes of color, and to change their understanding of Africa's Single Story.

You can learn more about Spider Stories and its various rewards at the official Kickstarter project page.

28 Mar 22:46

Willie Nelson Supports Same Sex Marriage & Poses with Personalized Pink Equality Signs

by Rusty Blazenhoff

Willie Nelson

“I’ve known straight and gay people all my life. I can’t tell the difference. People are people where I came from.”

Texas Monthly recently interviewed music legend Willie Nelson who voiced his support for same sex marriage. After the interview, he was photographed with personalized pink equality signs designed by Christian Helms of Austin-based design agency Helms Workshop. The signs were printed by East End Ink and sported two very “Willie” images, one showed his famous braids and the other showed two smoking joints (a reference to another issue he supports). The original equality sign is the logo of the LGBQT advocacy group Human Rights Campaign. Both of the sign’s images are available to download for use as Facebook and Twitter avatars. In the interview, Nelson is quoted as saying, “I never thought of marriage as something only for men and women. But I’d never marry a guy I didn’t like.”

Braids

photos by Gary Miller for Texas Monthly

28 Mar 22:40

Japanese Schoolgirls Stage Fake ‘Dragon Ball’ Attacks in Photos

by Rusty Blazenhoff

Dragon Ball

In a series of photos posted on Twitter, schoolgirls in Japan have been staging fake energy sphere attacks (known as the “Kamehameha“) made popular in the manga and anime series, Dragon Ball. Kotaku has more about this trend.

Dragon Ball

Dragon Ball

Dragon Ball

Dragon Ball

Dragon Ball

Dragon Ball

Dragon Ball

images via Grimlockt

via Kotaku

28 Mar 22:40

Diablo 3 Director Jay Wilson: Auction Houses 'really hurt' game

by Mike Schramm
firehose

' "I think we would turn it off if we could," Wilson said during his talk. But the problem is "not as easy as that;" with all of Blizzard's current players, he says the company "has no idea" how many players like the system or hate it.'


Former Diablo 3 Game Director Jay Wilson admitted during a talk at GDC 2013 in San Francisco that both of Diablo 3's Auction Houses (both the real-money and the in-game gold item auction house) "really hurt the game." Wilson said that before Blizzard launched the game, the company had a few assumptions about how the Auction Houses would work: He thought they would help reduce fraud, that they'd provide a wanted service to players, that only a small percentage of players would use it and that the price of items would limit how many were listed and sold.

But he said that once the game went live, Blizzard realized it was completely wrong about those last two points. It turns out that nearly every one of the game's players (of which there are still about 1 million per day, and about 3 million per month, according to Wilson) made use of either house, and that over 50 percent of players used it regularly. That, said Wilson, made money a much higher motivator than the game's original motivation to simply kill Diablo, and "damaged item rewards" in the game. While a lot of the buzz around the game attacked the real money Auction House, "gold does much more damage than the other one does," according to Wilson, because more players use it and prices fluctuate much more.

"I think we would turn it off if we could," Wilson said during his talk. But the problem is "not as easy as that;" with all of Blizzard's current players, he says the company "has no idea" how many players like the system or hate it. Blizzard, Wilson said, doesn't want to remove a feature that lots of players will be unhappy to see go. But he did say that the team is working on a viable solution, without giving any other details about what that would be like.

JoystiqDiablo 3 Director Jay Wilson: Auction Houses 'really hurt' game originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 28 Mar 2013 15:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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28 Mar 22:31

How To Become A Teen Millionaire: Be An Insufferable Startup Brat

firehose

wherein Gawker races to the bottom with the 15-year-old version of a 17-year-old

Nick D'Aloisio is 17 years old and lives with his parents in London. He has a girlfriend. He also just made $30 million—most of it in cash—by selling a dubious app to Yahoo!. Bully for Nick. But what Yahoo! doesn't realize is that they just hired a total pain in the ass.
28 Mar 22:29

The original X-COM was briefly canceled, boosted by X-Files

by Richard Mitchell
The original XCOM was briefly canceled, boosted by XFiles X-COM is a household name among many gamers now, but the 1994 original almost never came to be. During an X-COM postmortem at GDC, creator Julian Gollop revealed that the original X-COM: UFO Defense was actually canceled for a brief period during 1993. At the time, the game's UK publisher, Microprose, had been purchased by Spectrum Holobyte. Looking over Microprose's portolio, Spectrum Holobyte was unimpressed with the in-development X-COM and decided to pull the plug. "They took one look at X-COM and said, 'Nah, we don't like this. Cancel this project,'" said Gollop. "The project was actually officially canceled."

Unbeknownst to Spectrum Holobyte, Microprose allowed development to continue. "What happened was, that in Christmas 1993 Spectrum Holobyte wanted a product from Microprose UK for the end of their financial quarter, which was in March 1994," said Gollop. "And [Microprose publisher] Pete Moreland said, 'Well, you know this project you told us to cancel? Well, we still got it." The final three months of development were grueling, with Julian and his brother Nick working 7 days a week and putting in 12 hour days.

Another interesting tidbit: X-COM was helped by the TV show The X-Files, which began airing in the US in 1993 (It's on Netflix, kids!). "When The X-Files was aired for the first time in September 1993, there was a real benefit for the game because it drew on a lot of the same source material," said Gollop. "So the whole theme of the game had a real hook, and it was just luck, really, that we had the X-Files on TV shortly before the game was launched."

X-COM was a hit, selling 470,000 units worldwide as of 2000, earning Julian and his brother $1.57 million in royalties (and significantly more for Microprose). The game cost $180,000 to develop. After the game achieved such great success, Spectrum Holobyte demanded a sequel within six months.

JoystiqThe original X-COM was briefly canceled, boosted by X-Files originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 28 Mar 2013 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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28 Mar 22:29

Cart Life follow-up, Blood of the Ortolan, sets the table in a few weeks

by Jessica Conditt
Cart Life followup, Blood of the Ortolan, sets the table in a few weeks Cart Life developer Richard Hofmeier wants to launch his follow-up game, Blood of the Ortolan, in the "next few weeks or so" on PC, he told Joystiq during Wednesday's IGF awards. Blood of the Ortolan is, perhaps unsurprisingly, inspired by the humanity behind obtaining, consuming and interacting with food.

"It's about food," Hofmeier said. "It's a food-themed murder mystery in the way that Cart Life is a retail simulation. I haven't said much about it yet because I don't want to over-promise and under-deliver, which I did with Cart Life."

That last part is debatable - at the IGF awards, Cart Life picked up the Seumas McNally Grand Prize, the Nuovo Award for innovation, and the Excellence in Narrative award, for a cash total of $38,000. Blood of the Ortolan streamlines Hofmeier's development approach: It uses only mouse and touch interfaces. Yes, touch, since he has an "explicit interest" in getting Blood of the Ortolan onto mobile devices and consoles. First he'll see if Steam is interested in putting another one of his games on its service.

Blood of the Ortolan, if it flows in Cart Life's vein, will be about food only on the surface, while the true tale unfolds within the interpersonal relationships and emotional, introspective tensions of real life.

"Money is of concern to everyone, much more so than, say, ammunition or military fundamentals or the vocabulary of racing," Hofmeier said. "We all worry about money. Also we all have to eat and we all confront the neuroses of food. It's one of those things that mainly when we're alone we feel that we are especially perverse in our relationship to food and then we find, maybe through catharsis, through art, that other people have these experiences too and maybe we have more in common than we might have thought otherwise."

Don't expect Blood of the Ortolan to take it easy after Cart Life's positive public reception.

"If people put up with Cart Life, I feel like I've gotta try harder to upset them," Hofmeier said.

JoystiqCart Life follow-up, Blood of the Ortolan, sets the table in a few weeks originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 28 Mar 2013 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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28 Mar 22:28

Ouya launches at retail June 4 for $99

by Richard Mitchell
Ouya launches at retail June 4 for $99 Ouya, the diminutive android-powered console, will launch on June 4. The device will be available in the US, Canada and the UK for the asking price of $99. Meanwhile, Ouya's Kickstarter backers should begin receiving their units starting today.

We got a chance to try out an Ouya at GDC. Expect our impressions later today.

JoystiqOuya launches at retail June 4 for $99 originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 28 Mar 2013 17:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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