Monthly Archives: October 2007

Touch Generations

  • Reading time:13 mins read

by [name redacted]

Originally published by Next Generation, under the title “FEATURE: A Short History of Touch”.

A few years ago, Nintendo launched the DS with a vaguely unsettling catch phrase: “Touching is Good”. Their PR team sent disembodied plastic hands to everyone on their mailing list, in the process creeping out Penny Arcade. As creepy and forward as the campaign was, it had a point. Touching historically has been good, for the game industry.

On a whole, videogames are an awfully lonely set of affairs. They paint an alluring well, then give the player rocks to throw, to see what ripples. From Spacewar! to Pong, you’re always shooting or batting or throwing some kind of projectile, to prod the environment. Even in some of the most exploration-heavy games, like Metroid, the only way to progress is to shoot every surface in sight, with multiple weapons. Little wonder art games like Rez are based on the shooter template: it’s about as basic a videogame as you can get. See things, shoot things, you win. If things touch you, you lose. Except for food or possessions, generally you can only touch by proxy; toss coins into the well; ping things, to see how they respond. To see if they break.

The Crowbar and the Trigger Finger

  • Reading time:10 mins read

by [name redacted]

A somewhat edited version of this was published by Game Career Guide, under the title “Phantom Fingers“; here is the article in full.

We make communication so darned difficult. We create languages, manners, rules, syntax, subtext, irony… We learn to love the language and its artifice – and the more we cherish our tools, the more signal that gets lost in transmission. Soon we get so caught up in what we’re saying that we no longer have any anchor in our surroundings, the foundations give way, and all our facades collapse around us.

The Cosmopolis

  • Reading time:1 mins read

I got some amazing strawberry jam the other day. It’s made with just strawberries and grape juice. And good junipers, I feel like eating it out of the jar.

It always weirds me out when people eat condiment or filling material on its own. Many women seem to just eat peanut butter, with a spoon; something about that just feels revolting. I’ve also known people to eat ketchup or mustard. Or to drink maple syrup. Even eating luncheon meat on its own strikes me as a little bizarre; it’s like eating a fetal sandwich. By eating it on its own, you are preventing a proper sandwich from being made down the line.

But this… this is beauty and love. Which makes everything gross desirable, and excuses all awkwardness.

There’s a big, normal mainstream grocery store on the other side of the lake. I’m gonna go there tomorrow if I get enough written, and see if they have some Ovaltine already. I don’t get this. In San Francisco you can find Ovaltine in any corner shop. In Oakland, zilch. Is it that cosmopolitan a beverage?

I pass the Turning Test

  • Reading time:1 mins read

I just figured out how to flip stuff in a frying pan.

I feel like one of those sushi chefs.

Car-wash-ima

  • Reading time:1 mins read

It’s been over a year since I’ve played Brain Age — actually, more like sixteen months. I played it for two months straight, then got distracted. That, and I felt guilty for the days I had missed — so I as time went on, I grew all the more reluctant to return, lest Dr. Kawashima give me a digital scolding. Considering my vaporous mental state of late, I decided to give it another shot. Result: my head feels like it just did a successful round of sit-ups.

Though, curiously, I’m still getting something around my real age. It just feels like more work, getting there.

Dr. Kawashima claimed not to remember who I was.