Intelligent Artifice

Chris Crawford and interactive storytelling March 29, 2005

Well, here is something, by way of Mark Barrett and Robin, that distracts me enough from trying to get to level 40 in World of Warcraft that I’m going to update my blog.

Two years ago, Greg Costikyan wrote a post-GDC entry on his blog that expressed a lot of the frustration that I think many people, or at least me, were feeling (even if I was a bit more optimistic than Greg). It looks like this year that honor may go to Michael Mateas, over at Grand Text Auto.

Michael makes many points that are worth commenting on, and I will do so later. But first a more personal issue.

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Better than WoW? March 23, 2005

Here is an interesting off-line game. It’s multi-player, soloing is not fun. I play it occasionally. It’s not very well balanced, and there is some griefing (though preciously little PK-ing). However, the rewards can be very satisfying.

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Update

I don’t need to post what I’ve been up to anymore, I have people to do that for me.

I forgot that France is a civilized country and hence movies such as Howl’s Moving Castle play in a lot of major cinemas quite soon and nobody considers this exceptional and these movies get into the national top 10. It will probably be out on DVD before it comes into the cinemas here, in an exceptional multi-disc package with no English subtitles.

The expo and the movie were all in one day. At 11 PM I had a gargantuan dinner at Le Vilaret, which included young rabbit compote and pain perdu with truffle ice cream. Not just any old rabbits, mind you. Young rabbits, with big moist eyes and floppy ears. Yum.

The next day I loaded up on viennoiseries at Paul, and, fully savoring the irony, flew back to Vienna, where no good pains aux raisins or pains aux chocolat can be found.

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GDC 2005 March 15, 2005

Even though I wasn’t there, there’s a lot of stuff to comment on regarding GDC 2005.

However, my leatherworking skill is at 169 and when I get to 170 I can make cool new stuff. Also, I need 4g50 to finally increase my skinning skill which has been maxed out for a week now, I have to clean out my quest log, and I need to catch up a few levels because I didn’t play over the weekend.

Please talk amongst yourselves.

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Extending your Xbox March 7, 2005

As a trigger for double entendres, this is like putting your mouth to a fire hose, so I’m just going to report it straight to stop my head from exploding.

I don’t think I saw this on the usual news sites, but then I haven’t been paying that much attention lately. This is a guide on how to wire a vibrator to the rumble function of your Xbox controller (and soon PS2 and GameCube). There.

Favorite quote:

Time for our first test of the vibrator (with no one attached to the other end, unfortunatly. We really gotta work on the whole porn aspect of this site). In dedication to JG Ballard (and to a lesser extend, David Cronenberg), I decided to use Burnout 3 in Crash mode. There’s nothing quite as satisfying as watching a dildo run due to the fact that you just crashed your car into a crowded intersection. Sure enough, the second I hit another car, the vibe took off across the table. It was truly a beautiful sight, and one I’ll hopefully have a movie of here pretty soon.

(Aren’t you glad I’m posting again?)

(Via Warren Ellis.)

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Wow March 1, 2005

Whoa.

Update: So, in case you hadn’t guessed: I have not posted for the last three weeks because I have been playing World of Warcraft pretty much non stop.
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