Archive for the ‘Games and Distractions’ Category

Wii Fit

May 22, 2008 - 12:35 pm 2 Comments

I scored my Wii quite unexpectedly last year. I was walking through a Microcenter, looking for something trivial and small when I passed the Wii display, and asked the salesman if they had any in stock. Expecting a ‘no’, I was a little stunned when he said he had one left, and I felt nearly obligated to buy it, given how much whining I had previously done about how hard they are to find.

And thus, now we are Wii-ers. And sure, I live on a golf course, but that doesn’t make me feel guilty about playing Wii golf, instead. I might have to draw the line, however, at Wii Fit.

Women in Games

May 5, 2008 - 6:52 am 1 Comment

My new HP desktop came loaded with game demos, most of which I will never play, but I got curious about them last week and started clicking around, which is when I found Diner Dash, which is the happy story of a woman who was so frazzled by her ordinary office job that she had to run away from corporate life and wait tables for a living.

joesdiner.jpg

That sound you hear is my forehead, hitting my desk.

(more…)

Mashup

January 4, 2008 - 10:26 pm 7 Comments

If Cuteoverload designed games, this would be their game. Philosophical question - when you remove the Chuzzles, are you saving their lives or sending them to their doom? This is the question that pretty much ruined Snood for me.

Its beginning to look a lot like…

November 30, 2007 - 12:16 pm 10 Comments

….that pagan holiday where we consume ceremonial depictions of men, in ginger, to celebrate the tauroctony. I love December 25th! You non-classics majors may have another use for that day.

It doesn’t take a genius (good thing!) to see the heavy-handed marketing aimed at children, who already see 40,000 advertisments a year and have a difficult time differentiating between advertising and media content. Speaking of which, I am a big fan of the Commercial Free Childhood.  Nonetheless, it is heartwarming (dare I say that, since ’tis the season for heartwarming acts?) to know that other people share my abject horreur of the Bratz phenomenon. Best of all, that post lead me to a great op-ed on the Bratz movie, which is really about all movies aimed at pre-teen girls, and how those movies all have the same elements, and virtually interchangeable frames.

 If you think the sexualization of little girls via marketing isn’t really a problem in America, well…can you tell me how the marketing goals of these two images differ?

Best review I have ever seen on itunes

November 26, 2006 - 10:05 pm No Comments

Once, I ate lunch with Satre. I asked him: “What caused Roquentin so much anguish?” I really wanted to confirm what I already know: Roquentin saw the bare existence of life, that which draws back the curtains of absurdity. Sartre looked up at me with one eye, while looking at the diners next to use with the other. He responded in a way that shook me to the very core, in a way that I would never have imagined:…”no, actually, it was that band, Hinder.”

–review of the Hinder Album Extreme Behaviour, by username Aetius.

So…would you buy this album after reading that review?

Link Farm: October 29, 2006

October 30, 2006 - 12:01 am No Comments

1. Funny Farm: Deceptively simple. Kiss the next week of your life goodbye!

That is it. Just one link. The only link you will ever need again.

In the Meantime…

July 16, 2006 - 11:03 am No Comments

I have a big post about design percolating right now, although frankly, it could probably be boiled down to “do something interesting”, but while I work on that, and while I put together the data analysis for my current research project, here are some fun links for you:

Jackson Pollock.org: Everyone is an artist! Make your own Jackson Pollack original, online. [via Bitch, PhD]

Farm: This is what I play when I need a break from what I am doing. Pattern recognition games (Tetris, Bejeweled, et al) are a great way to warm yourself up for pattern recognition in research. At least that is what I tell myself!

You and We: A Collective Art Experiment.  

Kollabor8: Collaborative art.