SL

500ft up, I took a drag thoughtfully, smoke rising in spheres. Foggy vistas far beyond made a rocky line graph of the horizon. Nearby, A man strutted back and forth, waving his arms and rotating his hips on thin air. I floated next to him for a while.
"I can't stop dancing", he said.
Quietly, in the background, Aphex Twin seemed to agree.

Procedural

Goosebumps of excitement wave over me as I consider the monumental impact offered by procedural elements of virtual worlds.

Remember when Will Wright destroyed that entire planet in the GDC demonstration of Spore? That planet was unique - the culmination of an unprecedented formula of fluid choices. There was a history to that spherical nation. Now it is gone.

In the same way physics introduce a piece of infinity to games, as will procedural elements. It is the elimination of a fundamental limitation we are bound to, and as a new starting point for content creation, it is one better based on reality. In the quest for virtual worlds in which every character is the result of a piece of genetic code, where the Sun is a physical entity millions of miles away, and all the accepted facades of gaming melt away, this could be regarded as the important milestone since 3D.

Perhaps gameplay

I feel better. On my left a woman with sandals and a large rimmed hat sits casually, virtuosically plucking a kind of mini harp. On my right, through a doorless opening, visitors discuss the Forest's most recent art installation. Behind me, through the heavy curtain, a free two man play is being staged. I choose to stay here, between it all, soaking in the woody smell and sipping grape juice. "Here's your grape juice, Sam." On the low table beneath this circle of couches - a Japanese to English dictionary, some wilting plants, an unbranded foil of pills. A charcoal coloured church, clearly visible through the cafe's glass front, provides a medieval backdrop, upon which top hatted Fringe performers and loosely clothed frequenters come and leave through the front door.

Perhaps gameplay can be defined in this way - the process of virtual learning, cerebrally and dexterously.

Watching the harpist, her enjoyment of playing comes from a satisfaction - a self recognition of skill. Also from the challenge of exploring the boundaries of that skill.

Good gameplay seems to share those traits. If the learning process involved isn't fun, it is bad gameplay. If the learning process isn't engaging, perhaps because you've learned a similar skill before, or it's too easy, this too is bad gameplay.

Progression through the game must be like the best harp teacher would guide their lessons - Challenging, but forgiving, varied, and with potential for the student to experience rewarding freedom and allowed opportunity for personal expression.

One angle

We are all products of our environment. I think games are generally as clinical and devoid of originality as they are because of the sub-concious influence of the deplorable 60htz portal on which they are born. The concepts of hotkeys, code bases and algorythms are less interesting than directing a film crew on set. Perhaps that's not the best comparison, but obviously the glare of the XP rectangles isn't the most inspiring environment for the creation of art. There's no alternative of course, but it gets me down to think that's how the majority of my time could be conditioned under. Shit, it already is.

That's one angle. Another could be that with a connection, the widest possible library of literature, music and visual art is instantly available. This might be the preferred take of Linden Lab's Philip Rosedale, who boldly stated that did he not think Second Life's players were coming away from the game emotionally richer, better people than they were without the experience, he would quit his job.

The rest of the MMO based panel of the social gaming discussion at EIEF today all seemed to, if not agree, at least place their games (Guild Wars, Habbo Hotel, Xbox Live) as a worthy alternative to prime time TV, that they argued players replaced the latter with. While I'd like to share Rosedale's confidence - which in Second Life, I do kinda - a friend of mine down the road dropped out of school for Wow. Another ended up joining the police following an academic u-turn, again, Azeroth driven. What do they come out with? Fond memories of Ironforge, not much more. Gaming seems less the pure, emerging creative format for cases like these.

Going to Cargo, industry party started an hour ago.

running and jumping

Ian Livingstone doesn't have much to say. For a co-creator of dungeons and dragons, the climax of talk titled 'geek to chic' being the point-and-laugh absurdity of an American hunter who played Deer Hunter in the off-season, was under whelming. Eyes down, he reeled off a jilted history 'of gaming' in sound bite monotones, introducing video montages and documentary sections of a few minutes each. Most felt like Sony marketing videos, others, like the appalling 'booth babes' clip served, in his words, to indicate women's increasing participation in the industry.

Gaming's apparent 'geek to chic' metamorphosis amounts to new consoles doubling as other devices, having wireless controllers, and being backward compatible. Hurrah. Livingstone said 'geek' as if a presenter of gaming TV show, as if as far away from such a term as possible. He tried to coax the audience into admitting to having tried cosplay, as if he wasn't partially responsible for a good deal of its invention.

What really got me was his final point (made through another video clip): how ridiculous it was that this guy would turn to a game when his outdoor hobby was impossible to partake in. What the hell does he think gaming is if not the artful recreation of real life? I used to love skating on the street in the september warmth, until the rain set in when we'd run home to play Tony Hawk instead. If I'm lonely with nothing to do, I may well turn to Second Life - where I can fly into someone's house and discuss virtual joinery, or Linden Labs politics.

His focus on Tomb Raider - a character he created - as an icon that helped move gaming into the public domain was dominated by a unwatchable skit following some moron interviewing four cosplaying Laras at a mini-golf course. Maybe he's just terrified the next game will play as badly as the animation looks.
Or maybe he just hit a nerve of mine, but showing full length Tomb Raider film trailers and irrelevant Angelina Jolie interviews in a games conference just pisses me off. Moron.


I'm now sitting outside the 'Go Play Games' event at the EIEF. From inside come drifts of overly popular pop music from the Dance Dance variant, Far Cry Instinct's piercing M16 fire and the cry of glee from children discovering Donkey Konga. As Hugh Hancock pointed out, it was nice to have the surrounding virtual carnage interrupted by the Machinimation demo kiosk in the middle of the floor, serving ten players at a time the chance to film their Quake 3 characters running and jumping.

I spent most of the day piecing together a homage to Stalker in a dark, granite themed map with Fountainhead's gloriously easy tools. Used a track from some monk chanting album I had on my iRiver as the backbone for some generous use of black, dotted with clips of Quake 3's decadent deathmatch cast walking alone through slimy corridors. Very Tarkovsky. Also had the opportunity to look at Resident Evil 4 again. It is excellent. Well the first half hour is.

Looking forward to the industry stuff, starting tomorrow.

Edinburgh is beautiful.

EIEF

Some of my machinima is going to feature at the Edinburgh Interactive Entertainment Festival, at a lecture given by genre flag-bearing Paul Marino.

Wootage. To the max. Anyone who reads this (3 person(s)) that includes anyone who's going (1 person(s)) and excludes me (0 person(s)), should come down. It's a great line up of events: Philip Rosedale of Linden Labs will be talking, Charles Cecil of the Broken Sword series, seminars and discussions on humour, narrative and social gaming, the Edge awards etc etc etc.

Caffeine

Maddox on a gaming-political issue so absurdly farcical, I get too frustrated even thinking about, let alone commenting on.

I want to shoot people in the face, bang prostitutes, traffic drugs, steal cars, and terrorize police officers without this filthy smut in my game. Frankly, I'm appalled that Rockstar would allow such wholesale corruption of our youth. Years from now when America has become a withered husk of the morality it once stood for, historians will look back at what triggered it all and point to one event: a boolean variable that unlocked a simulated sex scene in a video game.

Read the rest here

Oneida

Best bands seen in New York were

Antony and the Johnsons,
CocoRosie,
The Flesh,
Oneida,
Extra Action Marching Band,
Chris Brokaw.

All had something to offer, particularly CocoRosie, who I'd love to see again. Antony was at the Town Hall, Times Square. He was unbelievable. His voice really is something else. Such a lovely guy too.

The Notekillers did as their name described. They supported Jason Lowenstein who, to a lesser extent, also killed notes.


Random guy at The Flesh. They supported The Dirtbombs, who, irritatingly, I had to miss due to subway works and large travel distances.