Was it this? http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/books/review/Suellentrop-t.html?ref=review
Yeah, I watch few movies and play even fewer games, but I really found it odd how much I disagreed with Ebert's reasons. (As if movies aren't crassly commercial, where the box office and tie-ins are always mentioned?) It just didn't seem constructive. But then again, maybe there's something inherently ugly and precious about arguing whether something's art, and it'll twist all your arguments. Or maybe I just misread him.
Though it was nice that he linked to that clip from Melies' 1902 "Le voyage dans la lune." Around 6:15 there was a texture of costumes and the castle, which reminds me of some waking dreams I had as a child. I can imagine taking those images (since it's out of copyright) and using them in a game.
Actually, it's refreshing how openly crass startups are. http://techcrunch.com/2009/11/06/zynga-scamville-mark-pinkus-faceboo/
"I knew that i wanted to control my destiny, so I knew I needed
revenues, right, fucking, now. Like I needed revenues now. So I
funded the company myself but I did every horrible thing in the
book to, just to get revenues right away. I mean we gave our users
poker chips if they downloaded this zwinky toolbar which was like,
I dont know, I downloaded it once and couldn’t get rid of
it. *laughs* We did anything possible just to just get revenues so
that we could grow and be a real business… So control your
destiny. So that was a big lesson, controlling your business. So
by the time we raised money we were profitable."
BTW, David Wong argues that people are so willing to live in the Skinner Box because most of our jobs don't offer autonomy, complexity and connection between effort and reward. For this reason, the dullest in-game chores actually add to a sense of accomplishment. What do people do with virtual reality? Work. http://www.cracked.com/article_18461_5-creepy-ways-video-games-are-trying-to-get-you-addicted_p2.html
All the best, Tj
On Mon, Jun 21, 2010 at 1:51 AM, Max Sawicky <sawicky at verizon.net> wrote:
> Off-topic, FYI the Sunday Times book review has a piece on video games.
>
> I started subbing after cancelling the WaPo.
>
>
> On Sat, Jun 19, 2010 at 3:06 AM, <dredmond at efn.org> wrote:
>
>> On Fri, June 18, 2010 11:57 am, Doug Henwood wrote:
>>
>> > [Sometimes you just don't know what to say.]
>> >
>> > Workers Spurn Cash for Virtual Coin to Fund Online-Game Habits
>> > 2010-06-18 04:01:00.11 GMT
>>
>> Nothing terribly new. People used to go to the fairgrounds and win giant
>> stuffed rabbits, now the rabbits are digital -- but they're as real as
>> anything else human beings have constructed. Thing is, you still have to
>> pay real money to get into the carnival.
>>
>> What the article doesn't mention -- this is Bloomberg, after all, the
>> place where, as a friend of mine once put it, America's silicon oligarchs
>> do their thinking -- is that videogame culture is astonishingly resistant
>> to commodification. It's something structural, deep in the
>> military-industrial/silicon-imperial DNA of gaming. Game communities are
>> not product placement ads, they are some of the most fascinating,
>> multicultural, transnational, and democratic communities around. Their
>> power over the aesthetic forces and relations of production keeps
>> increasing, and this scares the hell out of Big Media.
>>
>> -- DRR
>>
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