Uwe Boll rocks!

So there’s an online petition to stop Uwe Boll from making more movies. The goal is to gather one million signatures, as of this moment there are 129 365. Personally, I’ve signed a counter-petition, which currently has 713 signatures. I haven’t seen any of his movies, but I’m really looking forward to Postal.

Project Different Reality

Project Different Reality is the working title of an Unreal Tournament 3 modification that me and a group of classmates are making. It’s a single player experience that takes place part in the 1930s, part in present day. Chester Hunt is a private investigator who slowly realizes something isn’t right with the world he’s living in. He’s got a voice in his head that comments his moves, he’s hearing strange music coming from everywhere and nowhere, he sometimes loses control over himself, and some surfaces are covered in a chequered pattern with a text mentioning missing textures…

Status update… #7

I currently have three game design “projects” in school going simultaneously. The first two are for a course. They are flash games, one made in a group of four people and the other individual. We have plenty of ideas and the ability to conceptualize them, but we aren’t especially good at ActionScript 3.0 - so we’re struggling quite a bit at the moment.

More signs that EA is learning?

I just read this article at Wired. At the DICE Summit, EA’s CEO John Riccitiello said that EA had mismanaged their acquisitions of several companies, including Bullfrog, Westwood and Origin (interestingly, I mentioned exactly this in a comment about a week ago). Said Riccitiello, “We at EA blew it, and to a degree I was involved in these things, so I blew it.”

Prisoner’s Dilemma, continued

So last time I talked about the Prisoner’s Dilemma, I brought up an example regarding gaming consoles: how Microsoft and Sony would save a ton of money if they cooperated and built one single console instead of having one each. My primary reasons for why this would be logical is that they would only need one development team and budget, one marketing campaign, one support structure, and developers would only need to learn one console architecture.

And a happy festivus to the rest of us!

I’m currently in Nynäshamn (just south of Stockholm) visiting my parents and some relatives. Having bought a PS3 from Canada (that uses NTSC rather than the European PAL system), I’m getting a black and white picture on my TV in Karlshamn. I was hoping it’d work on my parent’s TV, but alas, I’m getting a black and white picture here too. I’m getting some cables that will hopefully enable me to connect the PS3 to my computer screen.

Anyway, happy Festivus!

Who wants Christmas ham in November?

Christmas is obviously an event that knows no boundaries. Not even time itself can stop if from popping up whenever it sees fit. Or rather, when the ad makers see fit. I took this picture with my cell phone November 1st. The Lidl store in question is perhaps a kilometer away from where I live. Its text says “We have everything for Christmas!” and displays a wide variety of foods normally associated with Christmas.

Now, one thing that Christians, at least in Sweden, seem to want to emphasize is that they provide a counter-weight to commercialism. While I personally don’t see why we need religion to do that, as we have political ideologies that provide even better counter-weights, Christianity does provide at least something positive in this regard.

Go WGA!

I just wanted to express my deepest sympathies for the members of the Writer’s Guild of America right now. Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski (which I respect and admire, B5 is one of the best science fiction series I have seen) posted a message with his view on the situation, which can be read here (through JMSNews). In Sweden, unions have a comparatively strong position, and collective bargaining is a fundamental part of how wages are set. The parliament doesn’t have to decide minimum wages through legislation, and can focus on other things instead. In any case, the conditions for WGA members have been abysmal. It’s great to see them demand more money for their work - they deserve it (and it’s not like they’re asking for a fortune).

Read more about the strike on Wikipedia and in JMS’s post.

Update: there’s also an excellent podcast by two people who recently moved to Hollywood to pursue writing as a career. In episode 35, they discuss the strike in more detail. Highly recommended.

Yay!

Today’s my birthday. Now I’m nineteen years old. Yay for me.

‘The Last Shot for Freedom’ - one year since release

This post contains spoilers for the Darker Projects audio drama The Last Shot for Freedom, the second episode of their science fiction anthology Dark Matter.

Today marks one year since the release of this second episode of Dark Matter. And if I remember correctly, I wrote this episode almost a year before it was released. It was initially scheduled to be the pilot episode of Darker Project’s science fiction anthology series Dark Matter, but due to the insane amount of delays (accidental stuff like lines being lost) it had to be pushed back, and ended up being episode number two. Listening to it now, a year after its release and a lot more than that since it was written, there are certainly some things in it that make me cringe. This is my attempt at a review of it, having learned a lot about writing in general, and especially writing for audio drama, since I wrote this episode.