mbf tod@y

The usual b.s. about soccer

"Sure, they make their point snarkily. But they're quite right that game design reflects the national soul. Americans are predisposed to enjoy games where the rules encourage lots of scoring. Soccer wasn't architected that way, so Americans don't like it. Baseball, basketball, and football, in contrast, were designed to allow for lots of scoring -- and they are thus huge hits in America, a country obsessed with toting up manichean victories." (Clive Thompson)

Old argument that really does not make much sense. And here's another pointless article.Truth is: Americans do like soccer. It's the American sport journalists that simply don't get it.

Read more.

Milla!

Have I ever mentioned that I'm totally in love with Milla Jovovich? By the way, here's the first still from the upcoming Resident Evil: Extinction, courtesy of IGN.

Everything's Gone Green website live

The poster is awesome. Yep, this movie was written by Douglas Coupland. It's coming out sometime in the Fall (North America).

And here is the website.

New book: The Sack of Rome

The Sack of Rome: How a Beautiful European Country with a Fabled History and a Storied Culture Was Taken Over by a Man Named Silvio Berlusconi
"Starred Review. In this astute analysis of contemporary Italian political culture under Berlusconi, Stille intricately yet seamlessly traces the prime minister's rise from Milan real estate developer to international political phenomenon. "A troubling avant-garde figure, a kind of Citizen Kane on steroids," Berlusconi has and will continue to have an impact that far outreaches his political career, Stille argues. A calculating master of the Italian proverb, "Se non è vero, è ben trovato" ("If it's not true, it's well said"), Berlusconi is a global archetype rather than a particularly Italian anomaly. Stille (Excellent Cadavers: The Mafia and the Death of the First Italian Republic; Benevolence and Betrayal: Five Italian Jewish Families Under Fascism) has exquisitely analyzed not only contemporary Italian political culture but the ominous rise of an international political culture in which figures such as Berlusconi can flourish (though the recent election leaves his political future in doubt). Stille writes with such wit and verve that this book will easily appeal both to close followers of contemporary Italian politics and to those simply interested in a prescient, fascinating portrait of a politician and the international cultural shifts surrounding his ascent. The last chapter in particular solidifies this book as an absorbing tour-de-force". (From Publishers Weekly, June)

Sporadic Thinking

On Monday June 26 I had the chance to attend the presentation/conversation by Will Wright and Brian Eno at the Herbst Theathre in San Francisco, as a part of the Long Now series of lectures, seminars, and talks, and I thought about sharing some comments with the internauts.

- Brian Eno is the inventor of ambient music, that is, music as an aural environment. Ambient is a sonic space whereas conventional music - which Eno calls ‘narrative’ - is comparable to ‘musical stories’. The ambient vs. narrative music dichotomy is helpful in thinking about games as spaces of narrative. Many gamespaces are akin to soundscapes in the sense that they both immerse users in virtual places, rather than leading them through a fixed, predictable path. See also Henry Jenkins’s seminal essay on game design as narrative architecture.

- Having said that, I am really surprised that nobody on stage mentioned the amazing work of multimedia artist/game designer Toshio Iwai. Among other things, he created the underrated “SimTunes” in 1996 and he is the man responsible for the revolutionary "Electroplankton",possibly the most original Nintendo DS non-game on the market, and the fascinating musical instrument Tenori-On. Along with Tetsuya Mizuguchi (the creator of "Rez" and "Lumines"), Toshio Iwai is the most avant-garde game designer working today.

- The buzzword for 2007 is “generative”, which replaces “procedural” – interestingly, the term was chosen by the audience during Will Wright’s presentation at the last GDC (another example of direct, participatory culture). Brian Eno talked about the notion of generative music and his process for “planting seeds” in people's minds, creating music that's “more like a painting than a narrative,” while Wright discussed the notion of “generative games” such as SimCity, The Sims, and the upcoming Spore. Wright also mentioned Generative Art [Vassili Kandinsky, Christopher Alexander, Industrial Deisgn, the Japanese Garden etc.]. In all cases, the users play a decisive role in the creation/consumption of the text, as they generate the content. The so-called author provides a set of tools, and the user/fan does the rest. So the video game, ultimately, becomes a tool of self-expression. Bottom line: Generative replaces emergent, another all time favorite buzzword.

Here's a specific example of generative content - they did not mention this during the talk, it comes from the websites that I have been keeping track of lately. As you might know, Spore will be released for the PC in Spring 07. So far, only a few previews, trailers, and screen shots have been released to the public. There is still much confusion about the actual gameplay. And yet, the proliferation of Spore fan sites has been astounding. The fans are already inventing forms of transformative play of a video game that is not yet on the market. One significant example is the work made by 13-year old Todtenbeinli at Spore Fanatic. In the forum section, Todtenbeinli wrote a post describing his plan to turn Spore into a role playing game.
Posted on 05-05-2006 15:46   

"I'm really bored right now so I figure I'm gonna add a bit more variety to the RPG section... BY ADDING MY OWN! Thats right folks, Todtenbeinli, cookie extradanaire (todtenbeinli is a swiss cookie), is going to create his very own RPG which he will DM. I will not be "playing" but i will control everything that is not played played by a character. I wont start much on anything until we ahve 4 characters, but then people can still join. There is no limit to the ammount of characters we can have. If anyone wants to take over and NPC just ask and it might happen. So here we go with a lil back-story and maybe some sample characters.
World at War!

Time: Medieval Era

Place: Rehpog, a planet dominated by plains and small forests.

Tribes: Players can become members of either tribe:
Scetza: Brutal warriors who have the advantages of large numbers. Very barbararic, and very strong. These people are the epitomy of matter of mind :-). For species info, find the stuff about species X in the thread My Creature. Scetza tech= ancient roman barbarians.

Rodatsiuqnoc: These people spend most of their time reserching new techonology. To learn the extent of their technology, find anything about European Medieval technology. Though this may not seam like much, compared to the technology of the Scetza, its wonderful. The Rodatsiuqnoc are small bipedal lizards, akin to lizardfolk from D&D. These people believe in conquering the world in order to enlighten it.

If you want something changed, just ask. It might happen. Also, if there is little sucess with this, feel free to remove if (i think admins can do that)."

In just a few days, the amount of posts simply skyrocketed. The fans are inventing rules, scenarios, and ideas at a staggering rate, practically designing a mod/conversion of a game that, as of today, does not exist. Other fan sites have hundreds of pages describing the creatures that the players will want to create once the game is released. It is very possible that EA will introduce the creature editor well before the release of the complete product – they did it with The Sims 2 – so that by the time the game is introduced, there will be thousands of creatures on the web. During the talk at the Herbst Theater, Wright mentioned that he embraces the notion of open source culture. I wonder what it would happen if the source code of Spore will be released to the public. When id Software released the Doom source code, it basically revolutionized the game industry (see the chapter of Doom in "The Cathedral and the Bazar' by Eric Raymond)

- Back to the presentation. Here’s a brilliant definition of “culture” by Brian Eno – [disclaimer: this summary does not really pay justice to his amazing stream-of-consciousness-like talk] culture is everything that we do not really need to survive as human beings, but at the same time, it is what we live for. Culture is style, better, stylistics. On an ordinary day, we encounter thousands of stylistics (anything from hair styles to clothing styles) and we consciously/unconsciously project ourselves into other people’s lives, imagining what our live would be in their shoes. In other words, living is a form of simulation. Reality is a giant playground, a possibility space. Culture is the ultimate form of interface. As Robin Hunicke writes, “Style is design is simulation is play is everything that makes us intelligent, human and alive”. During our life, we create a staggering amount of styles - things – ideas. We choose them, we reject them. By “surrendering to objects of culture” in this way, we participate in the meaning of choices, difference, and time itself. [quotes from Robin Hunicke's awesome blog]

UPDATE: the complete conversation in mp3 form.

ScopriDeCarlo

ScopriDeCarlo is a fascinating website/interactive game created by a group of students [Valeria Fabi, Alessandro Falchi, Elio Germani, Lorenzo Giovannini, Sacha Madarena, Raffaele Mariotti, Luisa Villi, Manuel Zanettin, under the supervision of Emanuele Bertoni] of the Multimedia Design school of ABA (Accademia delle Belle Arti), in Urbino. Through a ludic approach to architecture, the website invites the user to rethink his/her relationship to the city of Urbino and to the works of Giancarlo De Carlo. Take a look at the project! (Grazie Emanuele!)

More information about ScopriDeCarlo here

Moscow is expensive (no, really?)

So, Moscow is the most expensive city in the wolrld. San Francisco is way down the list (34) and Milan gets a respectable 13 (even more expensive than Paris, but with much lower average income, go figure!). Interestingly, there are no American cities in the top 10.

1. Moscow

2. Seoul

3. Tokyo

4. Hong Kong

5. London

6. Osaka

7. Geneva

8. Copenhagen

9. Zurich

10. Oslo

Read more.

Der Spiegel: "Italians are parasites" (updated)

"Der italienische Mann, nennen wir in Luigi Forello, ist lässt sich gern fallen. Auch auf dem Fußballplatz. Luigi Forello ist fortgesetzt damit beschäftigt, seine Hilflosigkeit zu zeigen. Das fängt schon beim Namen an. Wer nicht Luigi heißt, hört auf "Andrea" oder "Luca". Luigis vorrangiges Lebensziel ist das Vermeiden von Anstrengung. Dabei hilft ihm "La Mama", seine Erzeugerin, die ihm seine halbseidenen Socken wäscht und jeden Tag Nudeln kocht, mit dick Soße drauf. Wenn er ungefähr 30 Jahre alt ist, wechselt der italienische Mann die Köchin. Er heiratet, um sich fortzupflanzen. Die Folgen sind grausam. Eine ehemals strahlend schöne Italienerin verwandelt sich binnen weniger Monate in eine breithüftige Küchenmaschine - eine neue Mama. Das ist ihm aber egal, denn Luigi ist mit der Teilnahme an einem Autokorso beschäftigt, sofern sein klappriger Fiat es bis dahin schafft. Zum Essen ist er aber wieder da." (Achim Achilles, Der Spiegel)

Achim Achilles, a German journalist for Der Spiegel, apparently did not like how Italians are systematically ripping off other teams in the ongoing World Cup (I wonder why). So he took the opportunity to attack Italian culture as a whole in his latest piece, "Eingeölt und angeschmiert" . According to Achilles, the Italian soccer team - described as a bunch of "parasites", "cheaters" and "whiners", is a metonymy of the quintessential Italian man. Predictably, the Italians got furious. The fact is: Achilles is mostly right - and he is not the only one to believe so (just look at the comments on the New York Times' page regarding the match betwen Italy and Australia). I mean, when you have somebody like Totti the thumbsucker making a fool of himself before millions of people you know that somebody will stand up and say something. I also find interesting that soccer, as a symbolic drama, is able to bring forth old and new socio-cultural rivalries.

Read more (in German)

La Repubblica provides a translation in Italian

On Italian men:  "L'uomo italiano, chiamiamolo Luigi Forello è una forma di vita parassitaria", non può vivere senza un animale ospite "dal quale succhia più che può". "Luigi Forello è perennemente impegnato a mostrare il suo bisogno di aiuto. Se non si chiama Luigi, si chiama Andrea o Luca, ma l'atteggiamento non cambia". Il suo obiettivo primario nella vita è l'ostentazione continua di affaticamento e il suo animale ospite preferito è "La Mama", la sua nutrice tettona che gli lava i calzini e gli cucina ogni giorno la pasta con un bel sugo denso".

On Italian players: "Cammina impettito in giro per ore, per giocare alla fine massimo cinque minuti - scrive Achilles - Salta come un cretino tutt'intorno, sbraita come ha visto fare in tv, preferisce giocare la palla a terra in modo da colpire meglio le ossa degli altri. Quel che è accaduto ieri non è dunque inusuale. Grosso è caduto in area di rigore e sogghignava mentre era ancora in volo. Il non meno viscido Totti ha trasformato il rigore contro l'Australia, poi si è succhiato il pollice. E' andata come sempre. Venerdì saranno gli scalcianti taglialegna dell'Ucraina ad essere oliati e impastoiati. Così, seppur buoni a nulla, gli italiani arriveranno di nuovo fino alla semifinale. Ma poi, cari Luigi, non sarà sempre domenica. Noi abbiamo ancora un paio di conti aperti dall'ultima vacanza italiana".

Beppe Grillo's reply:

"Der Spiegel, taking the image of our footballers and broadening the concept to all Italians, call us forms of parasites, malignant mother lovers who take advantage of women, beach people, vainglorious, slimy, unable to live without an animal guest from which we suck as much as possible, with a primary objective in life that is continuous ostentation to seem tired, and in the case of footballers, preferring to play the ball to the ground so as to have a better chance of hitting the bones of the others.
Der Spiegel concludes by threatening the Italian footballers by declaring that if Germany meets them in the semi-finals, they, the Germans, have still got a couple of accounts open since their last Italian holiday."

Read more

Fabio Parri writes:

"Mah... tutti sti commenti pseudo-razzisti a mio parere lasciano il tempo che trovano... intanto noi siamo stati una delle squadre che ha commesso meno falli in questo mondiale, numeri alla mano ("fatti, non pug...ette", dice il comico). Mi sa proprio che ai tedeschi rodono ancora quei 4 gol che hanno preso da noi, in una partita ineccepibile... Mah... sarà ;)

PS. The article has been withdrawn because the editors considered "it exceeded the borders of the good taste in some passages". That's all there is to say ;)"

Henry Lowood provides a translation of Der Spiegel's apology:

Satire darf giftig sein, muss zuspitzen, übertreiben. Sie darf aber nicht so missverständlich sein, dass sie nur beleidigt. Die Kolumne "Eingeölt und angeschmiert", die SPIEGEL ONLINE am Dienstag veröffentlicht hat, ist solch ein Fall.

Satire is allowed to be poisonous, must be pointed, exaggerated.  It cannot be so badly misunderstood, that it only insults.  The column "oiled and greased up" that Spiegel published on Tuesday, is such a case.

Unser Kolumnist Achim Achilles hat den Auftrag, an der Grenze zur political uncorrectness zu formulieren. Das gelingt fast immer mit Witz und Charme. In diesem Fall nicht. Seine Kolumne überschritt in einigen Passagen die Grenzen des guten Geschmacks, in anderen häufte er Klischees an, die in der Summe zu Missverständnissen und Empörung geführt haben.

Our columnist Achim Achilles has the task of formulating his column right up to the edge of political uncorrectness.  He almost always succeeds with wit and charm.  Not this time.  His column passed in some passages over the boundary of good taste, in others it massed stereotypes that taken together led to misunderstandings and indignation.

Dass der Text unredigiert veröffentlicht wurde, dafür bittet die Chefredaktion von SPIEGEL ONLINE um Verzeihung. Es war und ist nicht unsere Absicht, die Gefühle von Menschen zu verletzen, wie es offenkundig durch diese Kolumne geschehen ist.

The editors of Spiegel apologize for publishing the text without revision.  It was not our intention to wound the feelings of other people, as obviously happened with this column.

Bereits gestern haben wir in einem redaktionellen Zusatz an dem geänderten Artikel auf Deutsch und Italienisch um Entschuldigung gebeten. Heute nun haben wir ihn komplett aus dem Angebot von SPIEGEL ONLINE entfernt.

Already yesterday we asked for your forgiveness in an editorial addition to the altered article both in German and in English.  Today we removed the article entirely from Spiegel online.

Mit freundlichen Grüßen

With friendly greetings.  (hah!)

Technoludic cinema news

"Detto altrimenti, se è pur vero che tra il medium filmico e quello videoludico sussistono numerose affinità, non andrebbero dimenticate le profonde differenze che li separano. Per quanto il survival horror reinterpreti in forma interattiva, i meccanismi del racconto dell'orrore, non è paragonabile a un film horror. Il videogame è un racconto sui generis - si tratta, piuttosto, di uno spazio interattivo in cui un utente può eseguire delle azioni. Per questo motivo, applicare un filtro esclusivamente narratologico nell'analisi di un testo ibrido come il Silent Hill di Gans ci condurrebbe in un vicolo cieco. Tentiamo allora un'altra via." (videoludica)

videoludica has just published a brief essay of mine on Christophe Gans' SIlent Hill, probably the best game-2-movie adaptation so far. Meanwhile, Bloody Disgusting has an update on new technoludic movies such as Castlevania, Dead or Alive and Deathrace 3000. Here's a bit:

"Last but not least a few goodies about Paul W.S. Anderson's Deathrace 3000 remake, which is his next film. We were told that the remake has an entirely new tone, especially with the reality TV aspect, and has been expanded 20 years. He also tells us that the remake will not be as much of a parody as the original from 1975."

Read more

The Rebirth Of The U.S. Arcade?

"If you're familiar with House of the Dead 4 and the graphics that are a part of that, it's now starting to be back to having an appeal, starting to see some of that impact back on the arcade-side where you can't play in front of a 52-inch screen and have all of the very vibrant color and animation that's part of it – you can't just do that at home. Then the socialization of what those game brings as more and more games (Derby Owners Club a few years ago) where it's a social environment and you're playing a horse racing game and you're sitting there and you can have cocktails and food, and really get into this game. It's bringing that social entertainment environment back to the users. " (Clint Manny, GameWorks, via Gamasutra)

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