Link Dumpage for 2010-06-16
Notable links enjoyed today:
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"So here's the big question: Are some games intentionally designed to keep you compulsively playing, even when you're not enjoying it? #5: Putting You in a Skinner Box; #4: Creating Virtual Food Pellets For You To Eat; #3: Making You Press the Lever; #2: Keeping You Pressing It… Forever; #1: Getting You To Call the Skinner Box Home."
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"Speculation about how performance artist Marina Abramovic pees has been growing steadily over the weekend. Permanently seated on the second floor of the MoMA, her performance “The Artist is Present” invites one sitter at a time to stare at her. She never leaves her chair."
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"When a white horse is not a horse, also known as the White Horse Dialogue, is a famous paradox in Chinese philosophy. Gongsun Long wrote this circa 300 BCE dialectic analysis of the question Can it be that a white horse is not a horse? … This dialogue continues with deliberations over colored and colorless horses and whether "white" and "horse" can be separated from "white horse”."
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“For fans and scholars of the silent-film era, the search for a copy of the original version of Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis” has become a sort of holy grail. One of the most celebrated movies in cinema history, “Metropolis” had not been viewed at its full length — roughly two and a half hours — since shortly after its premiere in Berlin in 1927, when it was withdrawn from circulation and about an hour of its footage was amputated and presumed destroyed. But on Friday Film Forum in Manhattan will begin showing what is being billed as “The Complete Metropolis,” with a DVD scheduled to follow later this year, after screenings in theaters around the country."
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"As someone who adamantly prefers to call themselves a "game critic" rather than a "game reviewer," I've been asked by several parties to make some counter-comment to film critic Roger Ebert's recent post. Presumably they were all hoping for some expletive-laden takedown of all Ebert's arguments broken up by comparisons between the man and various historical dictators and farm animals. But the thing is, I like Ebert. I think he's an intelligent guy and well worth listening to, especially when he's got a particularly terrible film in his sights. In my more egotistical moments, I might one day aspire to being his videogaming equivalent."
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"I met Andrea Phillips at this year’s SXSW, where she delivered a smart, wide-ranging talk about the representation of women in ARGs. Andrea is a veteran ARG writer, designer, and player, and is the current chair of the IGDA ARG Special Interest Group. In this interview, Andrea discusses her creative process and the formal and technical limitations (and possibilities) of ARGs and other playful forms of transmedia storytelling."
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"To make your transmedia experience accessible, you need to connect with the audience on their terms, where they already are, with tools that they’re already using, and in ways that they already understand … Now don’t think that this is some rigid thing. It’s completely flexible and can be (should be!) customized to your specific transmedia experience. It may seem that the easiest solution is to throw the experience out onto a popular social networking site or two. You could be right, that might be the best strategy. But don’t lock yourself into that thinking. There are a lot of other options out there and they really depend on your audience."
