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SFZero

Ryan Blitstein has written a terrific article about SFZero in SF Weekly. By the way, SFZero is a "Collaborative Production Game. Players build characters by completing tasks for their groups and increasing their Score. The goals of play include meeting new people, exploring the city, and participating in non-consumer leisure activities. We are still in beta, any and all feedback is appreciated...more about the game". Pretty funky, if you ask me. Pervasive gaming/Alternate reality gaming as its best.

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Can Anybody Save Sony?

First it was The New York Times, now it's the New Yorker's turn. "Can Stringer Save Sony?," asks Mark Singer ("Stringer’s Way. Sony’s C.E.O. and the battle to save a brand," Issue of 2006-06-05). The diagnosis: it does not look good. By the way, the article is not online, you need to get the printed copy. It's worthy.

Meanwhile, Fortune wonders if anybody will be lucky enough to afford the PS3. And there are bad news for Sony as well:

"If those numbers are correct - Sony declines to comment - and if Sony hits its target of shipping four million PS3s by the end of the year, Sony could lose close to $1 billion this year on the hardware alone, adding to huge costs for PS3 development and marketing" (Peter Lewis, Fortune)

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Fallaci, The Agitator

"I visited Fallaci on the day before the Italian election, in which Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was defeated by the center-left candidate, Romano Prodi. Fallaci told me that she had not sent in an absentee ballot. She loved referenda: “Do you want the hunter to go hunting under your window? No! Do you want the Koran in your schools? No!” “No” was something Fallaci was happy to say. But Berlusconi and Prodi were “two fucking idiots,” she said. “Why do the people humiliate themselves by voting? I didn’t vote. No! Because I have dignity. . . . If, at a certain moment, I had closed my nose and voted for one of them, I would spit on my own face.” (Margaret Talbot, The New Yorker )

The New Yorker has a great profile of Oriana Fallaci.  .

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Pixaboy Mundial!

"How can you resist the new PIXABOY Mundial! Even if you have never even kicked a beach ball before, it's now time to put that right; and if you are already a Premiership superstar you will go straight into the Top Ten of our new arcade game, testing yourself against the most difficult combos one by one! Do you have what it takes? Technique is not enough. If you want to excel, test yourself with the PIXABOY world cup quiz and try to predict the matches in Germany 2006: three games in one! "

iMille's new game is finally available! Pixaboy Mundial is the first of a new series of webgames starring Italy's favorite virtual pet. videoludica has more info about the soccer game.

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World Cup: The NYT Blog

...It's actually pretty good. Unlike Italian media, they're actually talking about the imminent World Cup and not about sport scandals and other catastrophes.

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"Loops and bloops", the musical aesthetics of the C64

""Loops and bloops" (february 2006). The Commodore 64 was the greatest-selling home computer system of all time, and still draws a large crowd of retro-gamers. Despite its popularity, the music of C64 games has never before been analysed in any academic articles. Filling this gap in respect to the peculiarities of the Commodore's soundchip, Karen Collins here introduces our readers to the musical aesthetics of the C64."

Amazing piece.

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Will Wright is the Master of the Universe

"Mr. Wright's games are shaped by a lifelong fascination with building things. He was born into an affluent family in Atlanta where his father owned Wright Plastics, a maker of packaging material, then a cutting-edge business. His mother, Beverly Wright, recalls walking into a room to see her son, then about 6, next to her completely disassembled sewing machine.

Mr. Wright started building plastic models of ships and other objects, later moving on to elaborate custom models made of balsa wood. When a friend's uncle sold an office building, Mr. Wright was allowed to strip the place of electrical outlets, wires and other materials, which he used to cobble together home-made robots." (The WSJ)

Fantastic profile of Will Wright that appeared on The Wall Street Journal. The Kotaku guys were kind enough to post the whole article. Power to the people.

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The Booksmith is the best bookstore ever

So, guess who's coming to the Booksmith this month?

DOUGLAS COUPLAND
Thursday, June 8th // 7 pm
- reading & booksigning

Douglas Coupland’s new novel, Jpod (hardcover, $24.95), updates Microserfs for the age of Google. Very evil . . . very funny. A group of geeks with last names starting with J cubicled together in a distant quadrant of a video-game corporation. A lethal joyride into today's new breed of technogeeks. Jpod is Douglas Coupland at the top of his game. Play again? Y/N

ERIK DAVIS
Wednesday, June 21st // 7 pm
- reading & booksigning

With a rich cultural history spanning neopaganism and televangelism to UFO cults and austere Zen Buddhism, it's no surprise that California's spiritual landscape is as diverse as its natural surroundings. The Visionary State (hardcover, $35.00), - by Erik Davis and Michael Rauner - weaves text and image into a compelling narrative of religion, architecture, and consciousness in California.

CHUCK KLOSTERMAN
Wednesday, June 28th // 7 pm
- reading & booksigning

For 6,557 miles, Chuck Klosterman thought about dying. He drove a rental car from New York to Rhode Island to Georgia to Mississippi to Iowa to Minneapolis to Fargo to Seattle, and he chased death and rock 'n' roll all the way. Killing Yourself to Live (softcover, $14.00), attempts to answer the question why the greatest career move any musician can make is to stop breathing . . . and what this means for the rest of us.

We're not worthy! We're not worthy!

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Orson Scott, tu quoque?

Yep, that Orson Scott Card.

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On Sony's Decline

"This hazier image is also showing up in recent consumer surveys. Last month, BP Nikkei Consulting in Tokyo released a survey showing that Sony dropped to Japan's eighth-most admired brand, from the top position last year. The number of consumers saying that Sony showed "conspicuous individuality" dropped to about 25 percent, from about 40 percent the year before, BP Nikkei said" (Martin Fackler, The New York Times)

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