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“Grown?! What bollocks!”

The TARDIS is clearly engineered in the original series (just look at it!)

According to Davies in a DWM column, the TARDIS interior can be “skinned” rather like Winamp — which is probably a function of something like a chameleon circuit, I’ll wager to speculate. Though not ever stated before, this seems at least consistent with the established lore — especially given how easily various Time Lords seem to reconfigure the insides at will.

For the rest of your argument — well, uh. There’s nothing to say there’s no element of engineering in TARDIS construction. If anything, a TARDIS seems largely an artificial construct — one that involves a certain controlled organic development, presumably for the most basic architecture and… “spirit”, if you will. Then things get bolted onto that, taking advantage of more overt Time Lord technology, like the chameleon whatsit and the console controls and whatnot.

I don’t see anything particularly far-fetched for a stage of controlled organic engineering, especially given how far ahead Gallifreyan technology is. If anything, it sort of makes sense, given how complex and seemingly random the darned thing is. The Time Lords never seem to have absolute control over the machines — which probably is due in part to their treating them completely as machines (if partially organic ones), under their will. The Doctor seems relatively unique in having come to terms with the apparent sentience of his TARDIS — though even he often forgets that he’s not always so much in control of the thing as giving it general suggestions.

That his TARDIS is so persnickety — so insolubly “broken” — might, and here I’m wildly speculating, be a result of its will having become much stronger than usual for a TARDIS. It’s too spirited, and doesn’t always obey orders just because they were given by its “owner”. Thus, it’s broken. A flaw in its system. Sounds very Time Lordy to me. There are parallels in many other works of fiction, of course. Popular anime in particular (Ghost in the Shell, Eva) keeps coming to mind.

(July 31st, 2006 @ 1:54am)



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No More E3: Now that’s what I call a duck!

Wow, yes. This is a good thing! Both Tim and I have been arguing for a while that this circus should have been behind us years ago. That it still existed was a symbol of sorts of the whole inward-tuned wankathon that has been the game industry for a number of years. Sort of an embarassment, really. And it’s not the booth babes that were the problem, either.

It seemed clear that the changes this past year were a sign of desperation: either clean things up and change, or the expo will become completely irrelevent. The industry has actually started to move again, the last couple of years, and E3 really didn’t seem necessary anymore in its current form. The basic conclusion, from the people I’ve talked to, is that E3 really wasn’t any different this year. Maybe a little less annoying — and yet without the most ridiculous excess to distract a person, it became clear just how tedious and ill-conceived the whole thing was. It seemed clear that E3 was on its way down.

That they should have pulled out so abruptly is a surprise, though. Not an unwelcome one, mind! I just expected a more gradual, kicking, screaming, choking death until nobody cared anymore. I’m impressed, frankly. This is one of the more heartening things I’ve heard in a while, in regards to the industry in general — not just the “death” of E3; the boldness in simply pulling the plug like this, rather than clinging. The whole change in attitude that this suggests — well. It’s good! I like it!

(July 30th, 2006 @ 12:13pm)



15 responses

James Ferman

The problems one man can cause…

(July 27th, 2006 @ 3:53pm)



3 responses

Extraplocrum

Just to mention, this week’s was originally called “The Crying Game”. And one of my headers was changed; before, it said “Ueda You Know”.

Oh well!

Hey, someone dug up a screencap of Phantasy Star II. I didn’t expect that.

After failing miserably for four days straight at assembling my own DVD, I have instead turned to Oblivion — which, it turns out, not only runs on my newly-refurbalized system; it also runs perfectly well with every effect and setting turned on at maximum power (except a couple fancy ones that my card doesn’t even support), at 800×600. Not bad for a two-year-old, sort-of-good-then graphics card. And people told me this game was a monster.

I’m kind of enjoying it so far. I’m a little annoyed that I can’t seem to wear clothes and armor at the same time, though. What’s the point of clothing, if I’m not allowed to wear it?! And dressing up is half the appeal of an Elder Scrolls game. This needs looking into.

At least mods are ridiculously easy to install. That’s been my primary activity, the last day or so: throwing things together, and seeing what does and doesn’t work. (There are too many nude mods, and most of them aren’t compatible!) At someone’s suggestion I just installed a mod to allow me to more effectively carry and throw around cadavers. This sounds promising.

(July 27th, 2006 @ 6:54am)



10 responses

The Crying Game

by Eric-Jon Rössel Waugh

Part six of my ongoing culture column; originally published by Next Generation under the title “Can Videogames Make You Cry?”.

A few weeks ago, Bowen Research published the results of a survey, on the role of emotion in videogames. Hugh Bowen polled 535 gamers on their own views and history, with the end goal to rough some kind of an objective analysis out of their subjective experiences, and thereby maybe to shed some light on what emotional effect videogames have had in the past. The paper is well, and humbly, written; its conclusions, though, are less than revelatory: the only genre that tends to elicit reasonably complex emotion is RPGs (presumably Japanese ones), while other genres all inspire at least some basic kind of motivational urge in the player – be it rage or fear or what have you. Meanwhile, the paper is full of comments about Aeris, and the profound affect of her death on people who had never played Phantasy Star II.

The problem, I suppose, is in the question being asked: “Can videogames make you cry?”. It’s a binary question about a complex issue, much like asking whether Americans are happy and then concluding “sometimes!” And indeed, Bowen’s answer seems to be “well, yes… probably. In theory.” A second issue is the way Bowen approached the issue as a matter of statistics – and then based his analysis on the subjective responses of a skewed sample. “Gamers”, as with any obsessives, have by nature a peculiar perspective of their medium – a medium which, furthermore, is not yet refined as an expressive platform.

The question should not be whether videogames are capable of eliciting complex emotion – as, given the complex analog weave of our brains, anything can result in an emotional response of any depth and sophistication. Rather, what Bowen might have asked is how innately bound any emotion is to the current fabric of videogames (that is, whether it has anything to do with what the medium is trying to accomplish), how much emotional potential videogames might ideally hold, and – assuming some degree of innate potential – how best to insinuate emotion into the framework or theory of a videogame. Or rather perhaps, how best to cull emotion from that same framework.

( Continue reading )

(July 26th, 2006 @ 3:14pm)



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