Wonderland

The Foreign Policy - "your portal to global politics, economics and ideas" - is not perhaps the dry and fusty place you might first assume it to be...

Ding!

(Via women_dev, thanks)

People have been talking about broadcasting videogames tourneys on TV for a while now; happens a lot in Korea, for instance, so why not the States or Europe or Russia? Ten years ago (omg) people were talking about it, and it's only just beginning to happen. The antithesis of the phrase, to over-estimate the speed of change, and under-estimate its overall impact? We shall see.

DirecTV are going to be broadcasting games from the Championship Gaming Series. Lots of little curiosities going on here: when you put videogamers into little matching outfits, do they somehow lose their charm, or do you suddenly take them seriously?

I think they lose their charm entirely, but I'd be interested in hearing what anyone else thinks.

Meanwhile, when not togged up in faux athlete gear, actual gamer teams are beginning to look more and more like boy-bands. Check out these Swedes - and this is without a touch of makeup or hairspray, which they'd have to suffer though before going on television:

We've already had one completely manufactured gaming group, presumably we can expect more and more of the same, sponsored by technology manufacturers, for sure. The Dell Destroyers. The nVivia nEutralizers. Oh you can see it now...

Slow blogging weekend: it's 31 degrees C in LA! I'm going to the beach today. The water's filthy but I'm British: sun in May must not be wasted.

Sleepy too: some drunk bloke wrapped his car round the lamppost at the end of the street at 2am, and spent 20m trying to reverse off the lamppost (and failing)  with an entirely trashed front end; all evidence gone by this morning. Bet he doesn't get a jail sentence because no-one's ever heard of him, and everyone in LA drives drunk...

But I prattle on. Here's some very lovely Katamari Damacy papercraft; it never ceases to surprise me how Katamari resonates with crafters; also there seems to be a bit of a movement in the craft world towards having a Vox blog (is it because it seems they're so very easy to make beautiful?).

(via Craftblog)

Jones just ruined my Saturday by introducing me to Zwok. OMG. It's a flash game, from Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (who are presumably supposed to be making PS3 games or something. Maybe this is them 'goofing off'.) and it's BRILLIANT.

First, the art is superb. Really, top of the pile stuff. Secondly, it's easy to grok. Thirdly, it's ruthless.

.. and cute, and funny too. It's tactical snowballing without ever leaving the house. Which is now what I'm about to do, all day.

Heh, Microsoft's shiny new gamer keyboard (backlit keys!! hyperventilate! easily impressed!) is called the Reclusa.

What! What are they trying to say?

Cheekily sods. Mm backlit keys.

Perler-bead coasters just got one-upped: here's lostmitten's three dee Mario question mark block!

At ten bucks for all this hard work, she's practically giving it away.

(Thanks L!)

Well this is curious: AOL's teen site RED is offering up multiplayer FPS mayhem right there on the homepage. It's the first tab, before even "Main" or "Games". They've probably spent a fair whack on it, then.

It's called FireChild: Tournament of the Ancients (who the hell comes up with these names? Lord of the Rings: Shadows of Angmar! Vanguard: Saga of Heroes! It's like fantasy buzzword bingo. Life Guard: Saga of Armbands!), and it's built in Virtools. The same Virtools that was used for the Deadwood poker game, so yes, requires a non-standard plugin.

According to this site, the server limit is 800 simultaneous players, but with only a plugin to install, it's not looking bad at all:

That's not far off Quake 2. Not bad for a freebie plugin.

Is Playstation 3's Home live yet, I wonder. An April beta was touted, and there are reports that something went live in Europe just a few days ago. "Second Life killer", people are touting it as. Not sure why. Presumably because it's not an MMO, therefore it's a virtual world, therefore.. er.. a Second Life killer.

The problem is, Home is totally controlled by Sony. There's a little user-generated content - you can upload pictures and such, but only in the privacy of your own Home apartment. I'm not sure how compelling this will be in the long term; the great (and terrifying) thing about Second Life is that you never know what's around the next corner. But in Home, presumably it'll be yet another apartment with yet more pictures of yet more kittens/cars on the walls.

Retro games, pool and chat will hold interest for a while. People will very much like showing off trophies, I'm sure. But when everyone has ten or so trophies, and some Halo wallpaper on their walls, and a picture of their kitten up ... then what?

Back to Second Life for some nookie/crafting, presumably.

Sony Employees talking to each other, realistically.

UPDATE: Yes, closed beta.

Thank GOD. I've finished Fire Emblem: Sacred Stones (what! Only 20 chapters!), and all the Advance Wars, and I've run out of brain-tickling strategy and/or adventure for my crusty old DS. So, thank you British Gaming Blog, for pointing out that Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass is out soonish.

It's WindWaker-y:

Yes it is!

Jolly good!

Did you know that Tomb Raider: Anniversary was a remake of Tomb Raider? I didn't. Eurogamer has some First Impressions up, and they're good. Complimentary. It's exciting! I LOVED Tomb Raider.

Question is: did the keep the music? Either way, I'll definitely be picking this up. Being Lara is so therapeutic after a hard day at the office...

Amazing. Read it here. Digg it here.

And meanwhile, Digg slowly returns to normal...

For posterity, this post, because the pics speak a thousand words.

There is a master key that enables you to decrypt HD-DVD kicking around on the internet at the moment. Folks are sharing this simple key, and of course HD-DVD People are trying to get people to stop sharing this code. People are sharing the code on Digg - but in a rather unexpected move, Digg is shutting down people who post the code. Accounts are going kaput. Deleted. Diggers are being silenced.

So the Diggers are revolting!

And it's even made All-Topics:

The headlines make the story...

Oh yes, Digg took money from HD-DVD for advertising. That's not going down so well. Explanation from Digg here: "we're just doing takedown as per the law". The law doesn't say "ban accounts" though, does it?

Er. What?

MY EYES! MY EEYYYYYYESSSSS!!

There's baby Yoda and baby Leia too, in case you had any sight left.

(Thx Kass!)

One of a kind, by the looks, this cute little Gameboy-styled coin purse.

I love the slightly shaky hand-stitched writing on it, it's what makes this really spesh, rather than something churned out by a machine.

There's a whole series of 'em! Asteroids Keds? I'm off to the shop right now.

Quite like the Centipede Keds too. Ooh, choices, choices.