mbf tod@y

Let Me Play!

"Do you ever skip dinner to finish that "impossible" level? Have you ever tossed your keyboard out the window after losing a game, or swung your controller around because you lost that power up? Would you like to learn a little bit about the underground world of emulation?"

Californian writer Radford Castro - no relation to Fidel, apparently - has written book on videogame playing - Let Me Play: Stories of Gaming and Emulation - that reads like a gamer's diary, and, no, it's not a bad thing... More information about the book can be found here. And here's is what I mean by "gamer's diary"...

Kid #1: “Hit the hooker!”
Kid with gamepad (KWG): “Ok!”
Kid controls antagonist to smack hooker with a right cross
All kids:  (laughing)
KWG: “Hey she’s attacking back.”
Kid #2: “Hit her back”
KWG: “I am but she won’t die”
Kid #3: “Use your rifle and shoot her on the head”
Parent of Kid #3: “Hey don’t say that, that’s not good.”
Kid #3: “You know I’m kidding mom.”
Parent of Kid #3: “I know you’re kidding but I don’t want you learning that ok?”
Kid #3: “Ok. Shoot her dude!”
Parent of Kid #3: “Patrick!”
KWG: “Oh yeah.”
KWG pulls out sniper rifle and shoots the hooker point blank range in the head
All kids: (laughing)
Most parents: (giggling)
Parent #2: “Holy Shit!”
Parent #9: “Wow, I can’t believe that there are sickos out there that produce stuff like this.”
KWG: “Oh no. The police are coming.”
Kid #4: “It’s ok dude, I have the code to give you all the weapons.”
KWG: “What?  How?”
Kid #4: “Give me the controller and I’ll give you all the weapons.”
KWG gives controller to Kid #4 and sets up the code for all weapons
KWG: “That’s cool!”
Kid #4: “Now shoot the police quick!”

More books about videogames in Italian and in English.

Lara Croft: The Book

"Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky’s groundbreaking study examines Lara Croft as a cyber heroine—a female body ubiquitously inhabited by game players, an icon of both female strength and male objectification, and the virtual future of fame. Despite Croft’s prominence there have been few critical inquiries into her bridging of the boundary between virtual and real worlds or the extent to which she reflects and influences the image of women in digital media. First published in German and revised and updated for this English-language edition, this book is an innovative analysis of the multimedia heroine, tracing the top-down marketing strategies and bottom-up frenzy that precipitated the Lara Croft phenomenon."

Here's another interesting book on videogames written by Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky, professor of media studies at Ruhr University Bochum in Germany: Lara Croft: Cyber Heroine. Published by University of Minnesota Press, this book investigates Lara Croft as a pop icon and it is part of the mighty Electric Mediations series. The table of contents is available here. I'm reading it right now, so expect a few comments in the upcoming weeks.

More information can be found here.

More books about videogames: in Italian and in English.

The Digested Read: Johnson

"This book is an old-fashioned work of persuasion that aims to convince you of one thing: that I am one of the most influential social commentators of the 21st century. To this end I have decided to take the generally accepted premise that modern culture is dumbing down and argue the opposite, as this will guarantee me a lot of attention."

Probably the funniest review - "Condensed in the style of the original", as the Guardin puts it - of Steven Johnson's Everything Bad is Good For You ever.

Read more.

Umberto Eco Speaks

"He is one of the fathers of postmodern literary criticism - the general gist of his approach being that it doesn't matter what an author intends to say, readers are entitled to interpret works of literature in any way they choose. He was also a pioneer of semiotics, the study of culture as a web of signs and messages to be decoded for hidden meaning."

The English translation of Eco's new book has just been released.

Read more.

Introducing "videoludica. game culture"

This is going to be fun.

Stay tuned for more.

Yummy!

"Nolan K. Bushnell, the creator of the Pong video game and founder of the Chuck E. Cheese restaurant chain, is innovating again. He is about to open a restaurant where the servers will have novel attributes: triple redundancy and backup batteries. In this case, the servers will not be human waiters but powerful central computers that will record food orders and display video games that customers can play while they eat. (Matt Richtel, The New York Times)"

Bushnell rocks. Read more.

Russian Icons

"A short walk from the Kremlin, the Shchusev State Museum of Architecture is a haunted place. Paint is peeling off the once-elegant neo-Classical facade. An entire wing of the complex of 17th- and 18th-century buildings is partly abandoned -- because they're too expensive to heat during the long Russian winter. Yet the museum contains one of the world's best collections of architectural artifacts: everything from an elaborate model of a palace once planned for Catherine the Great to Ivan Leonidov's mythic drawings for the People's Commissariat of Heavy Industry. (Had the latter been built, it would have towered above Red Square.) In many ways, these archives represent the city's architectural conscience, a treasury of what Moscow lost and what it could have been during one of the more violent centuries in Russian history." (Nicolai Ouroussoff, from The New York Times).

Moscow is an amazing city. Monumental, chaotic, polluted... Always stunning. Its architecture should inspire legions of game designers. Nicolai Ouroussoff wrote a brilliant report on the state of the art in the Russian capital.

Read more.

Game Classic

Mondadori Informatica has just released a new book on classic videogames (in Italian). Aptly titled "Game Classic. Da Arkanoid to Zaxxon", the book describes the history of many seminal titles for legendary micro-computers like the Commodore 64, the Speccy and the Atari 800. Written by Peter D'Hollander, Game Classic is fun and entertaining. Also attached is a CD-Rom that includes a myriad of games - Lords of Midnight, Pong, Need for Eat, Prince of Persia, Manic Miner, Jet Pac,  Arkanoid and more for Windows. At 12 euros, it's a bargain!

More books on videogames in Italian and in English.

Corny is the new cool

"Some games inadvertently embarrass themselves. (Need For Speed: Underground 2, with all of its "hey, bro!" and "get out there, dawg!" faux street lingo comes to mind.) But Devil May Cry 3, in its sweaty, desperate bid for "coolness," seems downright determined to embarrass itself. Trust me, this is one game that's not afraid to dive headfirst into the very cheesiest end of the corny pool. " (Scott Jones, GameCritics.com)

Another great review by GameCritics.com's contributor Scott Jones.

Read it here.

Xbox Reloaded

"From a gaming perspective, Microsoft has the momentum and the clout with developers to beat Sony to what Allard sees as the next era of gaming: hi-def. From a larger viewpoint, Gates and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer are counting on Xbox 360 to help the company beat Sony in the war for control of the broadband home." (Josh McHugh, from Wired)

Lots of good points in Josh McHugh's article on the Xbox 360.

Read more.