mbf tod@y

The Hunt for Manhunt

Some background info here (Italian) and here (English).

Wednesday 28th July 19.30hrs, London, UK

A STATEMENT FROM ELSPA
(Entertainment & Leisure Software Publishers Association)

"We sympathise enormously with the family and parents of Stefan Pakeerah.

However, we reject any suggestion or association between the tragic events in the Midlands and the sale of the video game Manhunt.

The game in question is classified 18 by the British Board of Film Classification and therefore should not be in the possession of a juvenile. We would also add that simply being in someone's possession does not and should not lead to the conclusion that a game is responsible for these tragic events.

Games are played by all ages of people, from 8 to 80, and all are subjected to strict regulation. There is no evidence to suggest a link with events carried out in everyday life, as many eminent experts have continually concluded.

We would emphasise the need for all parents to be aware of the guidelines and ratings which apply to all games. Whilst we cannot comment on behalf of the publisher of the game in question, the procedures that it adopted were entirely responsible and in line with legal and industry codes of practise.

In conclusion we would add that for the most recent records available, less than one per cent of games sold in the UK are rated 18 plus by the BBFC".

(This statement was originally published here)

'Murder by PlayStation'? Read this.

A brief discussion about the media coverage can be found here.

My previous thoughts on Manhunt are still here.

"Pilots popping the pills remained alert even after 40 hours without sleep"

In its pure form, caffeine, or trimethylxanthine, is a bitter-tasting, white crystalline powder. In the brain, it works by binding to adenosine receptors, preventing adenosine from doing its job, which is to make us feel sleepy.

Amphetamine, or methylphenethylamine, is something of a pharmaceutical sledgehammer, working throughout the brain to boost levels of a range of neurotransmitters. Its broad effect of turning up everything, helped to earn it the name speed.

Provigil, or 2-[(diphenylmethyl)sulfinyl] acetamide, is also a crystalline powder. The precise mechanism by which it works is unknown, leaving medical authorities to describe it vaguely as a central nervous system stimulant.

Here is a fantastic piece by The Guardian on sleep deprivation, drugs, and the military. A must read.

The Stepford People

I've just written a short essay on The Stepford Wives, the dreadful remake by Frank Oz. My main contention is that this, er, update, is not an adaptation of Ira Levin's masterful novel. Rather, it is a (poor) cinematic translation of Will Wright's The Sims. The piece will appear on the next issue of film journal Cineforum, but you can read it here as well (Italian only): Download stepford_wives.pdf.

Italian Game Design update

Today NextGame talks about our Master in Videogame Design. The IED one-year program - which will start in the Fall - features some of the most talented Italian game designers, programmers, and artists. Playing games is fun. Designing games can be even more gratifying.

Spaghetti, Pizza, and Chianti

While I was living in Illinois, I worked as a pizza maker in an Italian-American restaurant (insert your favorite stereotype HERE): that was one of the most entertaining jobs ever. Not as easy or boring as it might sound. You do not need to read Goffman or Palahniuk to know that there is a lot goin' on in the kitchen... This is also why I'm looking foward to playing Restaurant Empire, a game that allows you to create and manage your ideal restaurant. Here's an excerpt from Greg's review:

Restaurant Empire gives you a good sense of managing a restaurant. You hire and fire staff, construct a menu, place tables, decor, and kitchen equipment, and open the doors. Over the course of a day, people wander in and order. As is typical in games of this type, each customer's desires, wants, and reactions are tracked in detail, and you can click on any guest to see what he or she is thinking about (often, about the rudeness of staff or delays in their order). You can also see what peoples' main complaints are, general level of satisfaction, and so on. You try to increase the popularity of your restaurant by upgrading the menu and decor (as profits permit), adding new recipes and deleting less popular ones, learning about businesses that can provide premium ingredients, and so on.

And when you're done playing, you might want to rent this movie.

Nostalgialator

"First there was 'Easy Listening For Armageddon', then Armageddon came and now we're living in the 'Afterfuture', the period of time after Armageddon. In this age, in which the entire future is irrelevant, we need gadgets and machines to help us cope. The Nostalgialator is perfect for this - it was manufactured by a corporation in order to make our lives bearable. Let's assume you're watching TV and the news comes on and you think, 'My God, I can't deal with all that stress. What I really miss is the good old days', then you just sit in the Nostalgialator and press the button. Immediately, the machine dresses you in all your favorite clothes from the 70s, plays your favorite music and sends you back mentally to your version of the perfect life. Of course, it can also screw up, because the machine can also take you back to the reality of the past. You've just got to be careful which button you press." (Mike Ladd)

Mike Ladd's new album is finally available. You can hear some samples right here (some of them, including "How Electricity Really Works" and "Dire Straits Play Nuremberg", were recorded in Italy a couple of years ago). Awesome stuff (best cover artwork of the year, by the way).

Terrorism and New Media

To a large extent, Kepel argues, the Internet has replaced the Arabic satellite channels as a conduit of information and communication. “One can say that this war against the West started on television,” he said, “but, for instance, with the decapitation of the poor hostages in Iraq and Saudi Arabia, those images were propagated via Webcams and the Internet. A jihadi subculture has been created that didn’t exist before 9/11.”

Keep on reading "The Terror Web. Were the Madrid bombings part of a new, far-reaching jihad being plotted on the Internet?" by Lawrence Wright on The New Yorker.

Better than Fahrenheit 9/11?

Another cool bean from John. Gregg and Evan Spiridelli's "This land" aka "Basically everything you need to know about the upcoming Presidential elections"(Grazie, John).

"How to become a perfect Milanese"

...Just ask the Saint Ambrose Institute (requires Windows Media Player). No sweat: you're a click away to "bella li'": Download istituto_santambros.wmv

"In The Penthouse of the Ivory Tower"

"So now I can defend you guys by saying you do some obscure niche-work and write for your own community and it's not necessarily relevant and it's not really useful, but there's a kind of beauty to it anyway and we're probably all better off that at least someone is living the life of the mind, even if it seems like outer space sometimes. But it's punctured all kinds of mythologies I once had about academia as this sublime place."

"I have a moral obligation as a teacher to work against efficiency as best I can," and the idea is not to demean the George Babbitts in gray flannel suits (although that does happen), but to exemplify an alternative. And this is where the dark hollow of anti-academic unrest is laid bare: critics of the academy are not really afraid of explicit political indoctrination, they're afraid of these preserves of communal autonomy. They're afraid of the flowering of the arcane, the unmarketable, the unprofitable. They're afraid that their children will become scruffy bohemian types."

These quotes come from Gideon Lewis-Kraus' sublime piece from The Believer, planet Earth's best literary magazine. It is a "funny yet oddly sad piece on the MLA convention in San Diego", as John describes it. It is also obliquely related to my piece for the IGDA's Ivory Tower (Italian translation coming soon, thanks to the mighty Project Ring team).