ethan

Katamari Damacy II

Katamari Damacy the best game to come out last year, is coming out with a sequil. You can find screenshots here: http://namco-ch.net/katamari_damacy_ps2/stage/index.php

Thank you Boing Boing

Last one.

I found more.

Kuzz Friday's a holliday. I found a bunch of these and thought I should share. Click on the picture to read it.

Coolest Website

Wow, this is one of the best looking layouts that I've ever seen on a website:

http://www.ghostshrimp.net/index2.htm

How To and How Not To Use Chopsticks:

The State of the Gaming Industry

I don't know who Greg Costikyan is but he has mannaged to put into words my feelings of the gaming industry at the Game Developers' Conference. (found via boing boing) He also states my reasons for not persuing the gaming industry as a place to work. I love games, but I'm incredibly finniky about what games I spend my valuable time playing.

Greg Costikyan: I don't know about you but I could have been a lawyer, or a carpenter. or a sous-chef. How many of you are here because you're after a paycheck? [One bloke raises his hand, audience laughs and crows]. Ahuh. And how many of you are here because you love games? [all hands go up]. Right. So we're being told that everything's going to get bigger. Paychecks. Budgets. Consoles. But is it going to get better? I've been researching old board games and I've spotted a pattern. A new genre: it's called One Hit Game And Its Imitators. One fishing game appears in mid-19C and dozens follow. Games grow through innovations. Creations of new game styles that spawn imitators and whole new markets. The story of the past few decades is not about graphics and processing power, but startling innovation and industry. That's why we love games. BUT IT'S OVER NOW!

As recently as 1992: games cost 200K. Next generation games will cost 20m. Publishers are becoming increasingly risk averse. Today you cannot get an innovative title published unless your last name is Wright or Miyamoto. Who was at the Microsoft keynote? I don't know about you but it made my flesh crawl. [laughter] The HD era? Bigger, louder? Big bucks to be made! Well not by you and me of course. Those budgets and teams ensure the death of innovation. Was your allegiance bought at the price of a television? Then there was the Nintendo keynote. This was the company who established the business model that has crucified the industry today.. Iwata-san has the heart of a gamer, and my question is what poor bastard's chest did he carve it from? [audience falls about]

How often DO they perform human sacrifices at Nintendo?? My friends, we are FUCKED [laughter]. We are well and truly fucked. The bar in terms of graphics and glitz has been raised and raised until we can't afford to do anything at all. 80 hour weeks until our jobs are all outsourced to Asia. but it's ok because the HD era is here right? I say, enough. The time has come for revolution! It may seem to you that what I describe is inevitable forces of history, but no, we have free will! EA could have chosen to focus on innovation, but they did not. Nintendo could make development kits cheaply available to small firms, but they prefer to rely on the creativity on one aging designer. You have choices too: work in a massive sweatshop publisher-run studio with thousands of others making the next racing game with the same gameplay as Pole Position. Or you can riot in the streets of redwood city! Choose another business model, development path, and you can choose to remember why you love games and make sure in a generation's time there are still games to love. You can start today. [standing ovation]

Cool link of the Friday

A heck of a lot of crazy fun: http://castlezzt.net/

Big C little a Vs. Art for Art

Okay, so the WIPO have created a comic explaining Copyright and why it's important. (found via boingboing) Then the people at Alternative Law Forum have remixed it in order to give their viewpoint. Both are worth reading.

I have a perspective I'd like to throw into the mix. I make my living working for a big company who makes money using the copyright law. That makes me a Commercial Artist. Or as my design teach liked to say: "Big C (commercial) little a (art), art for money. Don't pick up a pencil unless you know who's paying you."

My lifedrawing teacher at callge had a very diffrent oppinion, he used to say: "F&*k money, Art for Art."

In collage I had a huge complex about my work. I really wanted to make my own short anmated film but every time I sat down to write a story I found I had too many influences seeping into my work. I kept worring about weather or not my ideas were my own or if I was stealing from someone else. I'd do a drawing and it would look too much like someone elses drawing that I'd stop. It was a huge roadblock for me and it prevented me from maing my own film. Later I learned abut the diffrences between influence and plagerism, but by then it was too late.

The comic made by the WIPO leads you to beleve that without commercial artists there would be no art in the world. But we know that is not true. The comic by the ALF clearly points out that we can build our ideas off of each other. That's what makes a good comunity.

Now I'm not against copyright law. But like the drug laws, I think the punishment has to fit the crime. Right now we're ruining people's lives by allowing large corporations to make examples of collage students. Also we're allowing for too long a time for work to move into public domain. This has to end.

I have no grand illusions, I know that I work for a company and I am not a true artist but a commercial artist, and I'm okay with that. I make my living off of commercial art. But I would like the ability to be a true artist when I want to. Art for Art. And I would like it if Copyright would help me with that as well. Right now it stands in the way.

Anyhoo, they're both good reads, check them out.

Mount St. Helens erupts again.

It looks like St. Helens has decided to erupt again. I remember when I was living in Lake Oswego when St. Helens erupted. the ash was blown north, we didn't get as much as other citys. I remember seeing photage of people shoveling ash off their front lawn like it was snow. But we did get a fair share of ash where we lived. Everything was coated in a thin gray layer. My brother and I went around our house with a mason jar collecting the stuff. I don't know where that jar is today. Also everyone started walking around with masks or handkerchief wrapped around their mouth and nose. So many people did it the banks had to hang a sign asking people to take off their masks before entering the bank.

I don't know if this one will be as bad as all of that.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7132927/

Happy Birthday Bro!

Today is my brother's birthday. Congradulations on making it this far!

Science is Cool!

You won't see this in Mr Wizard. UCLA Professors are teaching monkeys to smoke crack and the Nobel Prize is being awarded to a man investigating homosexual necrophilia in ducks. When Qunn gets around to complaining about taking science classes in high school and asks when she's going to use this stuff in real life, I don't think I'll answer.

http://www.boingboing.net/2005/03/08/ig_nobel_prize_winne.html

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