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Where is Zar? Zar is gone.

Classic screenwriting (both film and TV) does take on something of a middle school essay structure, doesn’t it. Tell the audience what you’re going to do, do it, tell the audience what you just did. I guess with a new medium it’s seen as necessary. Then when people get more comfortable with the grammar, you can stop patronizing them and get down to business.

What’s weird about videogames is that mainstream games at least have kind of gone the other way. Now you buy a top-shelf console game, you won’t even be allowed to play it properly for the first half hour. Unless it’s Zelda. Then you might have to wait three or four hours before you get started. Whereas in 1987… plop. There you are. Make sense of it the best you can.

Is there a good reason in there to assume the audience has, on average, grown less sophisticated over the last twenty years? And Wii Fit aside (which is kind of a different issue), is there much evidence that patronizing the audience leads to greater sales? Generally the only people who buy videogames are people who buy videogames (which is where Iwata comes into the discussion, and then leaves by the back door). And generally they only get to play them after they’ve made a purchase.

It’s one thing to make a game accessible. Not to overburden the player with complications right from the start. That’s just good design.
The hand-holding that’s been going on, the last ten years though — that’s something else. Something insidiously banal. It’s not just that the art hasn’t been progressing since 1998; it’s been moving backward.

(September 9th, 2008 @ 12:25pm)



2 responses

Small Pox Blanket

eric-jon: I want to see an over-the-top Oregon Trail movie.
With extended sequences where the man of the wagon goes out and kills 900,000 pounts of meat,
then carries fifty back to the wagon.
And suddenly his infant son dies of syphillis.
Brady: DAD, BISON ARE AN ENDANGERED SPECIES NOW THANKS TO YOU.
eric-jon: But he moves on.

(September 2nd, 2008 @ 7:40pm)



2 responses

Web Utility

eric-jon: Have you been able to nab Chrome yet? Last I looked, it still wasn’t up…
Ah!
Don’t immediately see the need, but I’ve not read the comic.
Up to now, Firefox has basically been The Google Browser.
And, you know. It does everything I want from a browser.
The error messages are fun.
“Sadly, your Mozilla Firefox settings are not available while that browser is running. To import these settings to Google Chrome, save your work and close all Firefox windows. Then click continue.”
So are the immediate help pop-ups. “Search from right here.”
And you’re immediately asked if you want to keep Google as the search engine.
Shepard: “No, I just want your browser, I don’t use your search”
eric-jon: I have actually wondered why the search bar and address bar are different.
Shepard: Poor unborn kids, they’ll be gchatting about their gmail on their gchrome and someone will point out that google can search, too.
I think on recent Firefoxes, if you type in a regular phrase into the address bar, Firefox will make that a google search.
I think the general logic is:
1) Is it a webpage?
2) Can I make it a webpage by appending www. or .com?
3) Google Search.
These days.
eric-jon: Ah.
Whoa, it even imported my bookmark bar from Firefox.
I was just about to go fish for some urls, yet… there they are, where I’m used to them being.
Middle-click scrolling doesn’t work yet.
Shepard: This comic is well put-together and insightful, but it’s kind of pissing me off.
eric-jon: Yeah, that’s Scott McCloud.
Shepard: And I own both of Scott McCloud’s books.
I think it’s just so one-note.
eric-jon: I hate his stuff, sometimes.
I like his first book.
The Understanding Comics.
Shepard: Yeah.
eric-jon: But he quickly becomes a bore.
Shepard: He’s written some brilliant stuff.
eric-jon: I hate his authorial voice.
Eek. It even imported my password settings and stuff from firefox.
I mean, I just clicked in the field, and my username was there. And, uh, okay. Clicked in the other field, and it was filled with asterisks.
I hit enter, and I was logged in.
Shepard: No need to re-enter your password for www.girlswithboobsyoucansee.com!
eric-jon: I never do.
Shepard: Free preview galleries?
eric-jon: That’s not a real website. :(
Suggestion

Try searching on Google:
girls boobs you can see
The “most visited” business on a new tab is interesting, certainly.
Shepard: What’s that?
eric-jon: Oh.
Every time you open a new tab?
The default page is your start page.
Shepard: Mm.
eric-jon: Which has thumbnails of all your most-visited sites.
Shepard: Oh, neat.
eric-jon: And a sort of a feed of all your most recent bookmarks.
And whatnot.
So basically, it’s an immediate resource.
Shepard: Neat!
eric-jon: And it has this thing for turning web pages into… applications.
Basically, giving them unique windows and putting icons wherever you want them — desktop, quicklaunch bar, start bar…
Shepard: Oh, huh.
eric-jon: The example is gmail.
Shepard: The latest Mac OS has something like that, for turning web pages into widgets.
eric-jon: And… yeah, it’s basically equivalent to opening up a mail client.
This is a very maccy program.
Google has always struck me as Apple Gone Right.
They do what Apple and Nintendo try to do.
And Valve… generally succeeds at doing.
There’s something very weirdly no-bullshit about Chrome.
And it does run really really quickly and cleanly.
It’s like opening up a text file in wordpad.
Shepard: That’s a nice feature.
eric-jon: Oh, I like the highlighting…
Yeah, okay
I guess that fits, but.
The whole idea of Chrome
is to make the web browser work like any other simple application.
And to treat webpages like any other file.
Shepard: That is a nice idea.
eric-jon: This is exactly like using Notepad or MS Paint.
Except it’s dealing with web locations.
Even Firefox, great as it is, has a bit of hullabaloo to it.
Window to the Web!
And Chrome just shrugs, and says, ih. They’re tools.
Something almost Windows 3.11 about this.
Somehow.
Meanwhile I understand that the newest IE is getting even more bloaty-floaty all-encompassing.
Shepard: Ha.
That’s… uh, actually impressive.
eric-jon: Whereas you’d expect Microsoft to try to integrate the Web more organically. That’s the (poorly executed) principle behind explorer.
Chrome really demystifies.
Shepard: The company itself is so bloated, it’s not surprising that’s how things turn out.
eric-jon: That’s I guess the best way to put it.
It demystifies the Web.
Shepard: Good tagline!

(September 2nd, 2008 @ 1:11pm)



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