Intelligent Artifice

Spider-Man 3 may be the most expensive movie ever made April 26, 2007

This article in Radar Online discusses the budget of Spider-Man 3. The exact budget is not known, but ‘industry insiders’ claim the production alone cost over $350 million, which with marketing and promotion means the whole movie cost half a billion dollars. Sony, ’still reeling from a flurry of bad press on its PlayStation 3 gaming console’, disputes the $350 million number but won’t say what the correct number is.

Which is all well and good. One little bit made me think of games:
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Kitty Pidgin

Anil Dash has written about a subject I have been pondering lately (the weather’s too nice for my tinfoil hat *sigh*): Cats Can Has Grammar. Or, in other words, the “lolcat Internet meme” (see this site for instance) involves a grammatically consistent subset of English. Technically (I am taking Anil’s word for it) it’s a pidgin.

I find this fascinating, as well as funny. Be sure to read all of Anil’s post, and the comments.

I can’t believe I am late for a business meeting because I wrote this post.

(Via Brent Simmons. Picture created using Gordon McNaughton’s LolCat Builder.)

Update: Massive over-analysis of the phenomenon here (with fancy diagrams).

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Harvey Birdman game from Capcom April 25, 2007

I found out via Eurogamer that Capcom is developing a game based on Adult Swim’s Harvey Birdman, Attorney At Law, one of the funniest cartoons I’ve seen in the last couple of years. Hopefully, it is similar to Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, a game I like a lot. Even more hopefully, it fixes some of the weaknesses of that game (which it covered with oodles of charm). And in a tiny corner of my dark, withered heart I am hoping they actually try to transfer the anarchy that is Harvey Birdman to the interactive form. But hey, that’s madness.

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Game developers change light bulbs April 24, 2007

Greg posts light bulb jokes for game developers. Embarassingly, I think I’ve said something along the line of the producer version at least once in my professional life.

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War on Terror, the board game

War on Terror, the board game. From TerrorBull Games, a UK company - noone does satire like the British. Sounds like fun.

(Via BoingBoing.)

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Tomb Raider Anniversary dated April 22, 2007

Eurogamer says that Tomb Raider Anniversary will come out on May 25th - my birthday! If it’s anywhere near as good as Tomb Raider Legend (the game I bought an Xbox 360 for), I will be very happy.

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More on Aufbaustrategiespiele April 21, 2007

It always surprises me which posts here get commented on and linked to, and which ones don’t (although I am no longer surprised at the amount of traffic I get from people googling ‘everquest porn’ or ‘wow nude patch’).

Greg Costikyan commented on my recent post about the Anno and Settlers franchises. I could write him an email back, but hey, this blog doesn’t write itself. So here is some feedback:
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Guitar Hero II song pack pricing April 20, 2007

DonkeyXote, a lawyer at Microsoft Game Studios has written a blog post explaining why the Guitar Hero II song packs may be priced the way they are. Apparently some people are… shall we say… mildly puzzled about the pricing.

I don’t have Guitar Hero II for the Xbox 360 and my Guitar Hero 1 controller is collecting dust. But it’s interesting to get a glimpse of the dark, arcane world of music licensing, and the strange systems and organizations that are involved.

(Via Kim Pallister.)

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This is why I don’t have a Wii April 19, 2007

It is immoral.
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Haloid

It involves Halo and has several other pet peeves of mine (like the ending), but nevertheless Haloid, by Monty Oum, has some very well-orchestrated action sequences.

(Via Penny Arcade.)

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