Also, if the OP is going to local conferences already, does he/she network with people there? Could they also be interested in this tech? A good way to network and save money is to find someone to share a hotel room with. I find that conferences aren't useful for me unless I'm presenting because I'm really shy and it's something that I (and the OP, from the sound of it) need to get over.
My antimatter holo-reactor will only take another 30 years to develop! The first 40 backers at $1000000 or more will get a plush boson that they can squeeze at night as they dream of their grandchildren getting unlimited energy routed to their VR implants and stasis tanks.
Making anything is a craft. His point was that when these products are meant to be interactive and the audience is meant to fulfill a set of predetermined outcomes then any art associated with this is incidental. You could have Shakespeare write the backstories for every piece in a chess game, have a romance between a rook and the enemy queen, and he would have made art based on chess whereas the game itself would still remain chess.
This is why people like us can't have a conversation with an art critic. From my perspective I could have the most exquisite ceramic teapot in the shape of a bird but the fact that I use it to make tea precludes it from being art until I set it back on the shelf. And I think this is where I agree with Ebert -- the moment I start interacting with your game I start thinking of how to beat it and any half-assed dialogue that your characters have on the state of the human condition becomes a distraction. The interactivity is a layer *on top of* whatever non-interactive art may be present in your game.
When I play through the dialogue trees and watching the cut scenes in Grim Fandango I will certainly claim that I'm experiencing art. But when I have to actually interact with the environments and inventory I must come to grips that I'm controlling a very frustrating game.
The TFA is a specific response to Kellee Santiago's TED presentation that "video games are art." After seeing the presentation I think that she's having a lot harder time making her case. Games have always been a consumer product with an eye to a market and they have always attracted skilled and creative craftspeople. At what point does a 'craft' become an 'art'? My Settlers of Catan game isn't art and playing it on my computer doesn't make it art. This is where she starts splitting hairs and this is why Ebert brings out the literature and music angle.
This is also why such a complaint is strange coming from Strauss. In *his* rebels-vs-evil-despots novel the rebels find a insta-cloning machine and in the last four pages of the book make enough copies of themselves to assure total victory. Brilliant use of science and storytelling there.
It's something that should have been set up long ago. If I'm playing an online FPS I can always play with people I know IRL. The friends I have who play WoW are all on different servers; what good is Massive Multiplayer in that case?
I read slate regularly and this guy's headlines have gotten on my nerves. I see three or four of them each week sucking up to the latest features being developed by Google and Facebook. After I read a couple it became clear that not only does he not have an inkling of what goes into the tech to make it successful he never delves into alternatives. It's as though he, and anyone reading his vapid column, has no use for a computer other than as a social networking box. Maybe this is appropriate for a 'culture site' like Slate but I'd rather go there for politics and find my technology analysis elsewhere.
If you've read his books it's clear that DFW knew many methods to "de-map" oneself. The centerpiece of Infinite Jest was a mad genius who exploded his own head in a microwave by cutting through the door with a hacksaw and stuffing the gap between the door and his neck with tinfoil. Maybe that's one the author considered.
What concerns me is that this man clearly knew--had WRITTEN ABOUT--spiritual despair in the American intelligentsia and could not avoid succumbing to it. From his point of view, was this inevitable? Did he lose a battle with his predisposition (clinical depression) or rather with his creative philosophy (post-ironic doom)?
I sort of suspect that the man finally outsmarted himself and it was the former using the latter as self-deception.
Sho' nuff-- I'm in Shanghai right now and I can't access the website. Could someone mail me a CD? And deliver it by swallow, I don't think my carrier pigeons are getting through.
Love the google sponsored link: "Learn How Quantum Physics Can Transform Your Life & Attract True Happiness and Purpose." With even the self-help industry becoming scientifically minded what are these professors fussing about? It's time for them to cash in on ramp-jumping buses.
Slashdot Mirror
But we can still convince Jodi Foster to travel there and check it out for us right?
Also, if the OP is going to local conferences already, does he/she network with people there? Could they also be interested in this tech? A good way to network and save money is to find someone to share a hotel room with. I find that conferences aren't useful for me unless I'm presenting because I'm really shy and it's something that I (and the OP, from the sound of it) need to get over.
I, too, drifted away from my faith when I discovered there were cookies and pizza to be had at graduate seminars.
My antimatter holo-reactor will only take another 30 years to develop! The first 40 backers at $1000000 or more will get a plush boson that they can squeeze at night as they dream of their grandchildren getting unlimited energy routed to their VR implants and stasis tanks.
Screw beta!
Bad analogy. It's equivalent to having ads for Netflix displayed in the DVD section.
Since I don't have any troll points, here's the sort of 'compromise' that happened with health care reform in the Republican-led finance committee:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Baucus#Opposition_to_single_payer_health_care
Which is worse... the fact that *I* understood this reference or the fact that no one else did?
So what you're really saying is that Democrats have won more wars?
5) Move all your problems to a developing country without these sorts of taxes and restrictions.
(links to article)
http://33jz.sl.pt/
Making anything is a craft. His point was that when these products are meant to be interactive and the audience is meant to fulfill a set of predetermined outcomes then any art associated with this is incidental. You could have Shakespeare write the backstories for every piece in a chess game, have a romance between a rook and the enemy queen, and he would have made art based on chess whereas the game itself would still remain chess.
Good art is subjective. Art itself is not.
This is why people like us can't have a conversation with an art critic. From my perspective I could have the most exquisite ceramic teapot in the shape of a bird but the fact that I use it to make tea precludes it from being art until I set it back on the shelf. And I think this is where I agree with Ebert -- the moment I start interacting with your game I start thinking of how to beat it and any half-assed dialogue that your characters have on the state of the human condition becomes a distraction. The interactivity is a layer *on top of* whatever non-interactive art may be present in your game. When I play through the dialogue trees and watching the cut scenes in Grim Fandango I will certainly claim that I'm experiencing art. But when I have to actually interact with the environments and inventory I must come to grips that I'm controlling a very frustrating game.
The TFA is a specific response to Kellee Santiago's TED presentation that "video games are art." After seeing the presentation I think that she's having a lot harder time making her case. Games have always been a consumer product with an eye to a market and they have always attracted skilled and creative craftspeople. At what point does a 'craft' become an 'art'? My Settlers of Catan game isn't art and playing it on my computer doesn't make it art. This is where she starts splitting hairs and this is why Ebert brings out the literature and music angle.
FTFA: "In the end, did Scientology get me laid? What do you think?" That's why I became Unitarian! Not much screenplay material here oddly enough...
That's when you call Big Jim Slade.
This is also why such a complaint is strange coming from Strauss. In *his* rebels-vs-evil-despots novel the rebels find a insta-cloning machine and in the last four pages of the book make enough copies of themselves to assure total victory. Brilliant use of science and storytelling there.
It's something that should have been set up long ago. If I'm playing an online FPS I can always play with people I know IRL. The friends I have who play WoW are all on different servers; what good is Massive Multiplayer in that case?
"...is the Online Auction Tracking System" previously used to prevent piracy of online FPS titles, software pirates have come to fear Quakers' OATS.
I read slate regularly and this guy's headlines have gotten on my nerves. I see three or four of them each week sucking up to the latest features being developed by Google and Facebook. After I read a couple it became clear that not only does he not have an inkling of what goes into the tech to make it successful he never delves into alternatives. It's as though he, and anyone reading his vapid column, has no use for a computer other than as a social networking box. Maybe this is appropriate for a 'culture site' like Slate but I'd rather go there for politics and find my technology analysis elsewhere.
"No mandatory ISP internet content filtering!!" "When do we want it?" "Before our copies of Quantum of Solace finish downloading!!"
If you've read his books it's clear that DFW knew many methods to "de-map" oneself. The centerpiece of Infinite Jest was a mad genius who exploded his own head in a microwave by cutting through the door with a hacksaw and stuffing the gap between the door and his neck with tinfoil. Maybe that's one the author considered. What concerns me is that this man clearly knew--had WRITTEN ABOUT--spiritual despair in the American intelligentsia and could not avoid succumbing to it. From his point of view, was this inevitable? Did he lose a battle with his predisposition (clinical depression) or rather with his creative philosophy (post-ironic doom)? I sort of suspect that the man finally outsmarted himself and it was the former using the latter as self-deception.
Sho' nuff-- I'm in Shanghai right now and I can't access the website. Could someone mail me a CD? And deliver it by swallow, I don't think my carrier pigeons are getting through.
Love the google sponsored link: "Learn How Quantum Physics Can Transform Your Life & Attract True Happiness and Purpose." With even the self-help industry becoming scientifically minded what are these professors fussing about? It's time for them to cash in on ramp-jumping buses.