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New Media Practices in Japan Part V: Gaming

"Japan is one of the national contexts that has had a vibrant gaming culture that has rivaled that of the US, emerging in the late seventies with arcade culture, and coming of it’s own in the international scene with the spread of the Nintendo systems in the mid eighties. In many ways, Japan is seen as the home base for video gaming culture worldwide, and it is in some circles a source of national pride. Japanese developers have dominated internationally, particularly in the console market of Playstation and Nintendo games. Japanese is also home to unique genres of gaming that do not make it out internationally, particularly dating sims, erotic games, and interactive graphical novels. Arcade game design is also unique in the domestic market, with advanced networked gaming and interfaces that are not found in other parts of the world. Unlike countries where there is a strong culture of PC-based game arcades, Japanese arcades are based on customized and high-end coin-drop arcade systems that are home to vibrant location based gaming communities of urban geeks.As we have seen in the case of other countries, however, there is relatively little research on gaming practice, despite its centrality as an everyday practice. The work that does exist centers on documentation of negative effects from a psychological research perspective. Here we briefly review this dominant research trend before reviewing studies that look at social and cultural dimensions of gaming in the areas of game arcades, online games, and portable gaming." (Future of Learning)

Photo by A Malchik!

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This is part of Mimi Ito's new project. Simply awesome. 

David Lynch TV: "Ideas are like fish"

What is a 'machinima expert'?

"Chances are the entire idea that there are experts of Machinima is new to you, and I think it helps iwe first define exactly what an expert is.

"An expert is someone widely recognized as a reliable source of technique or skill whose faculty for judging or deciding rightly, justly, or wisely is accorded authority and status by their peers or the public in a specific well distinguished domain. Experts are called in for advice on their respective subject, but they do not always agree on the particulars of a field of study. An expert can be, by virtue of training, education, profession, publication or experience, believed to have special knowledge of a subject beyond that of the average person, sufficient that others may officially (and legally) rely upon the individual's opinion" - Source" (Clint Hackleman, Myndflame)

Great post by the always effervescent Clint Hackleman, one of the speakers at the recent Play-Machinima-Law conference at Stanford. So, who are the machinima experts?

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Little Boots - New In Town (file under: pure bliss)

Little Boots - New In Town

Gary Busey - "When Life Gives Me Lemons I Make Lemonade"

This is Water

"I knew Dave Wallace well enough to have responded to the news of his suicide, in September 2008, with overwhelming grief, though I did not know him nearly well enough to have had any knowledge of his decades of depression. In my shock I sought refuge in the only oasis I could find: his work. While I knew no answers would be found there, I hoped that rereading Wallace would provide some vague, analgesic insight into his (then) unfathomable decision. Many others were doing the same, and a number of commentators pointed to a passage in Wallace’s Kenyon College commencement speech, where he discusses “the old cliché about the mind being ‘an excellent servant but a terrible master.’ ” Wallace goes on to say: “It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in: the head. They shoot the terrible master.”" (Tom Bissell, The New York Times)

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Formula One Drive Tour in Google Earth

Publication of JG Ballard's final book cancelled (The Guardian)

"The Dying Fall" by JG Ballard (The Guardian)

Il Divo Opens on May 15 in SF

The fact that a movie like this could be made in Italy, today, is nothing less than a miracle.