January 2006
ASCII by Jason Scott: The Best BBS Movie Ever Made
by bcpbcpThe best dramatic movie about BBSes was created not in the 1980s, but last year, 2005. And it wasn't a movie, it was a TV series. And it wasn't made in the United States - it was made in Japan.
It's called Densha Otoko (Train Man), and in my opinion it is the best dramatization of using a BBS, ever, in a visual medium.
Ten "Most Interesting" people in gaming - International perspective from Guardian Unlimited: Gamesblog
by bcpbcpA few weeks ago, there was a post on GamerGod which listed the 10 most interesting people in games 2005. While some of those who made the cut were arguably admirable, it was a hugely US-biased list
game girl advance: The Five Biggest Trends of 2005
by bcpbcpThe end of the year is upon us, and enough blogs and news sites have already written great articles on the best games of the year. Therefore, instead of being lost amongst the white noise of award features, I'd like to point out a few trends which I felt were especially important during 2005.
jay is games: Best of 2005: Top 20
by bcpbcpThe Best of 2005 is a celebration of the best games reviewed here at Jayisgames over the past year. It is not an exhaustive list of all the best games available since we can only review the games that we come to know about. If you have a game, or are part of a team that produces them, and would like to have your game considered for a future review here, then please use my email address in the sidebar to submit a link.
November 2005
Mind Hacks: Meet the chatbots
by bcpbcp"Mind Hacks already told you about Jabberwacky, the winner of this year's Loebner prize for the chatbot that comes closest to passing the Turing Test (to pass, a judge must be unable to tell whether she's talking to the chatbot or another human)."
Raph’s Website » Blue world
by bcpbcp (via)"Once upon a time there was a world where half of the population couldn’t see the color blue."
Are you serious? from Guardian Unlimited: Gamesblog
by bcpbcp"Last week gamesblog covered Persuasive Games' latest release Airport Insecurity, "a game about inconvenience and the tradeoffs between security and rights in American airports". I grabbed Ian Bogost, one half of the company (and one-half of the blog watercoolergames) to explain exactly what he means by "serious games"."
Micro Persuasion: Ten Blogging Hacks
by bcpbcp & 8 othersSince my last three “hack” posts on bookmarklets, RSS and Technorati were so popular, I thought I would follow up with my ten favorite blogging hacks. Don't ask me why, but I like the number 10. These work on most if not all of the major weblog platforms, including TypePad, Blogger and Wordpress. (This post is in memory of Ben Hammersly's killed book, Blogging Hacks, may it RIP)
TechCrunch » Amazon Tags
by bcpbcp & 1 other"Amazon is integrating user tagging into product pages (see image below)."
10 Most Powerful Women in Blogging » Jack of All Blogs
by bcpbcp (via)Keeping to our policy of being controversial and well just plain silly. We rank the 10 most powerful women in the blogging industry
Only a Game: A Game Design Grammar
by bcpbcp & 1 otherWhat does it mean to talk of a grammar of game design? And does specifying such a grammar give us an insight into the underlying structure of games, or a new method for approaching game design - or both? Because games vary from pure mathematical formalisms (at the ludic extreme) to behavioural descriptions (at the opposite extreme), any formal reductionistic system will either be focused primarily on the former, or require sufficient latitude to express practically infinite diversity. One such approach is to define a categorial grammar of game design.
Terra Nova: Call Me Afraid
by bcpbcp"I was reflecting upon the differences between turn-based and real-time game worlds. In the summer we started this with "Is Love and War Turn-based?". From love to war the claim then was that the meaning to the pauses between turns was different than compared to, say, the moments in a Real-Time Strategy game, or to the half-hours in MMOG grinds. I too think the meaning of fear is different..."
Video Game Media Watch — The Video Game Journalism Review » Interview: Smatbomb Co-Author Heather Chaplin
by bcpbcp“Smartbomb: The Quest for Art, Entertainment, and Big Bucks in the Videogame Revolution“ is the first book from husband-and-wife team Heather Chaplin and Aaron Ruby. Chaplin, a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Fortune and Salon, agreed to answer some questions about the writing process for us.