Oh Internet

I was already annoyed about missing the Hide and Seek festival (because I was too busy, uh, making a game…) and reading this write up by Jane McGonigal isn’t really helping. It sounds like it was great fun!

I have no excuse for this, other than multi-layer parallax scrolling being the first “oh wow, new and shiny” bit of computer game tech I remember as a young ‘un.
So, with that in mind, go to this site and start resizing your browser window.
(And try to ignore the fact that it’s impossible to work out [...]

The first Lionhead video diary has been released, where you can see a bunch of people I work with talking about Fable2. It’s on XBox Live Marketplace, or you can download it directly here.
I leave the decision about whether this is “an exciting new approach to viral marketing” or “a bunch of nerds, typing” entirely [...]

The reason for the quietness around these parts lately has been the build up to, and aftermath of, Fable 2’s appearance at GDC. (Well, that and the usual chronic laziness on my part, of course.)
There are write-ups about the presentation here, here and here. A big video of the thing on Gamespy, a video interview [...]

Bonnie Ruberg is providing a vital Internet service: documenting examples of video game influenced cakes. Yum! (page 1, page 2)
(What can I say? I like cake.)

Every Massively Multiplayer Online Game - once it reaches a certain level of popularity - starts inspiring a certain kind of news article. You know the one I mean, the one where the game’s economy is compared to the Gross Domestic Product of some small country that you wouldn’t be able to point to on [...]

Piano Hero is a low-polish, but potentially much more useful spin on the Guitar Hero idea.
It takes any MIDI file as input and translates it into a GH-esque graphical form for you to play along with on a real MIDI keyboard, even letting you set the speed of the song and practice the left and [...]

Gentlemen, I believe we have just found Lisle’s Xmas present: The workings of a Guitar Hero controller transplanted into an ‘Elmo’s Rock and Roll Guitar‘. (Although, as the guy who created it points out, the toy only has 4 fret buttons, so is only suitable for the ‘Medium’ difficulty setting.)

The picture below apparently shows: “a first of its kind unmanned aerial system (UAS) “cockpit” that revolutionizes operator awareness and efficiency, while providing the ability to control multiple unmanned aircraft, reduce potential accidents, improve training, and decrease costs.”
I think what they mean is that they wanted an excuse for buying a really expensive Flight Simulator [...]

Beware: Serious videogame nerdery ahead. Feel free to defocus your eyes for a couple of minutes before going back to your regularly scheduled web-browsing.
IBM seem to be setting up some crazy Illuminati-style secret society on their own private island in Second Life.
The unexpurgated, slightly scary history of the Gizmondo: High-speed Ferrari wipeouts, the Swedish mafia, [...]

Funny Farm is an infuriatingly addictive word association game.
I realise that “Paul gets addicted to a stupid game” isn’t a new story, but this time it’s collaborative. The game’s more or less impossible to complete on your own, so when you save your game you get a code to send to other people, which they [...]

We need fuzzier, yes!
If anyone needs me in the next couple of weeks, I’ll be off learning how to crochet.

One of the nicer perqs of our company being bought out is that we get free copies of all newly released MS Game Studios titles, and this evening we all trooped off with shiny new copies of Rise of Legends, which was lovely.
What was less lovely was discovering that there was a magnetic security tag [...]

I’ve been playing World of Warcraft very, very slowly since it came out. Most of the reason for the slowness is that I can’t face the thought of joining a guild, which would speed up the levelling process considerably. Why not? Well, largely because of people like this guy. (Funny flash animation applied over the [...]

Tom Baker reading out user-submitted SMS messages. No, I don’t know why either.
A Flash game to promote some Peugeot car. Mildly entertaining for a couple of minutes, but I don’t know why every screen is marked ‘Demo Only’. Maybe you get the full thing if you buy a car?
A high-resolution remake of Another World has [...]