Sponging

I was originally going to call this post "My Reculturification", and acknoweldge that this is both the best word to describe what I'm currently doing, and that it's completely made up.

However, I was discussing this very act with a friend and she referred to it as Sponging. As a hack journalist and admirer of words, I had no problem admitting that Sponging was the more accurate term.

You see, recently I've had both a lot of time on my hands and a renewed attention span. While writing hasn't come easily, I have been interested in augmenting my experiences with new culture I feel I've missed.

In the last couple of years, I've been so focussed on one type of media, the video game, that I ended up mostly shutting out all others. So right now I'm trying to absorb as many new experiences, thoughts and theories as I can lay my hands on.

And as an avid fan of movies, television and books, naturally my focus is there.

It's mostly an attempt to never use the phrase "nah, it's not my thing" ever again.

Which, consequently, means that some of the items on my list may seem out of place. It may be both surprising the movies I've not seen and books I've not read, or even that I've decided they're important enough to view.

But the point of this exercise is to expand my cultural knowledge in all directions, not just what others have deemed 'culturally significant'.

I'm trying, in effect, to remember every suggestion I ignored from friends and family previously and find inspiration for writing in new places.

So, with way too much introduction, here is the list of what I've watched and read in the last month. In future, I hope to continue to finish at least one book and one movie per week and keep track of it on this blog. I may also post my reading and watching lists (future consumption) later on.

Books:
- Slumdob Millionaire
- Eats, Shoots & Leaves
- Bloodletting and other miraculous cures
- The Nanny Diaries (don't judge me)
- Mother Night
- My Booky Wook (Russell Brand's autobiography)
- The Sirens of Titan
- The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
- Dreamseller (Brandon Novak's autobiography)

Movies:
- Raging Bull
- Taxi Driver
- American Movie
- Sneakers
- Tron
- Fletch
- Troll 2
- Annie Hall
- UHF
- Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
- Wall Street
- World's Greatest Dad
- A Few Good Men
- Bruno
- In The Loop
- Date Night

TV Shows:
- Top Chef Seasons 1-3

yes, you can now call this blog neglect

i realize it's been an inhumane amount of time that i've left this blog un-updated.

i apologize if anybody was still reading or subscribing through rss, it's been a busy and rough time.

after leaving my last job i took a bit of a break from writing but i've got a new project that is almost ready to start. it's not huge but will likely be the next place to find my writing online.

when it's ready, i'll put a link to it here.

in the meantime, you can follow me on twitter @jamesspeedy. (although i'm hoping to take over the abandoned @jdspeedy as soon as i get a go ahead from twitter, so if that link no longer works try that).

and maybe, after a while, i'll come back and re-invigorate this blog. i still love it, i just don't love love it right now and with my incredible excitement over doing some more writing now, it should only be a matter or time before this will be absolutely filthy with posts again. that just may not be tomorrow or the near future.

for now,

stay frosty,

JD

oh no! my littlebigplanet!

in all seriousness, this has got me feeling pretty cagey.

littlebigplanet has been delayed. and not a, 'the shipment was slow to canada' kind of delay where you wait one to three days to get a game they're already playing in the states or on illegally modded consoles.

it's delayed as in, you offended a giant portion of the world by including inflammatory passages from the q'ruan in the background music to your game.

that's right, in the background music to the first level of the third world (swinging safari) you can hear two selections from the religious book, something that muslims take as offensive.

according to Nsider's open letter to media molecule (producers' of littlebigplanet) via kotaku, they say that:

We Muslims consider the mixing of music and words from our Holy Quran deeply offending. We hope you would remove that track from the game immediately via an online update, and make sure that all future shipments of the game disk do not contain it.

as someone who's not muslim, far be it for me to weigh in on whether or not they should be reprinted, all i can say, is that as a littlebigplanet beta tester, next week is going to be a long one.

i was planning on making a design document for a few levels that i would start on tuesday but, according to shacknews, i'll be waiting another week after that to finally get my hands on a full version.

i'm sure i'm not the only one who will be sweating the extra week's wait. i just gotta pray that eb doesn't pull their usual nonsense with getting in my pre-ordered games late once the edited disks get shipped.

sadly without sackboy,

JD

interesting...interesting

now i don't quite feel so bad for sucking at halo.

there's always a positive spin you can put on anything...

JD

properly implemented achivements= sales?

this is probably the most interesting video games study i've heard of in a long while. it's not just some slapdash gathering of sales charts that compares microsoft to sony to nintendo made games, trying to figure out if master chief could out arm wrestle mario.

no, this breaks down whether or not the proper implementation of achievement points in a game, that reward the player just enough for their hard earned time and money, and tries to discern how much that affects their sales.

in fact, the study, featured on gamespot, seems to link games where developers spent time and effort developing incremental rewards with over 30 achievements (or trophies, if the ps3 is your bag) with better game sales.

as a rampant consumer of video games I can honestly say that this is not only one of the smarter uses of bar graphs that i've seen used to take apart game sales metrics, but also the most interesting study period.

yes, we know more girls are playing games than ever before, and old people like the wii. but proper implementation of a reward system to foster a relationship with the user and encourage them to not only see all the different aspects to your game, but show them that you appreciate their time. wow. didn't see that coming til i pulled it off my google reader.

bloggin' and loggin',

JD

i don't even know what to think

so grand theft auto has been generally observed as a scapegoat for modern pontiffs of fear news (ie. 'video games are making our children kill/violent/eat human flesh, what can you do about it?').

just today i stumbled across this story on kotaku:

Grand Theft Auto Helps Preteen Save Family's Lives

???

well, that's certainly...good? i don't really know what to think about this one. i mean, great! she saved her families live potentially, but wtf? it's because of GTA? i thought kids weren't supposed to play that game?

maybe if she'd played burnout, she'd just be waiting for the car to reset on the road and reduced boost...

missin' the movies,

JD

downloadable games that don't suck

in the past, i've kind of ignored the downloadable games available to me with my three consoles, unless they're explicitly given to me for free and i test them for a couple days.

i played a couple capcom shooters (1942, wolf of the battlefield, the space one) and was left unimpressed. but recently there's been a spat of actually really good games that i find myself playing more than full disk titles. that is, until the next wave of killer games comes out; force unleashed, nhl 09, etc., etc.

here are a few i'm currently loving and a couple older ones that are great too:

bionic commando: rearmed (XBLA & PSN)


this one came out of left field for me because, admittedly, i'd barely played the NES original (read: never).

the swing mechanic (by which this title would succeed or epically fail) feels perfect and the combo of the incredibly inventive ways to kill the bosses, the upgradable and satisfyingly designed firepower with that perfect swinging makes for a game that feels like it could deserve a stand alone release.

this is a remake that doesn't feel like a remake (like all those frogger incarnations) and outdoes just about any other game on either psn or xbox live arcade right now. it's fun and has a free demo so check it out.

my only gripe= why is this not downloadable to PSP yet?

special note: pick up the PSN version if you have the option because it's much more fun to play with a proper d-pad and not the xbox's failed attempt

castle crashers (XBLA)


this nifty little game is barely out and the buzz around it is huge. it has one of the best multiplayer implementations out there in the arcade games and a tremendously addictive gameplay reminiscent of the old TMNT arcade games and double dragon style beat em ups.

the art style is wicked, there's cutesy blood and gore and really, most important of all, it's fun. it's not so challenging as to scare off new gamers (who don't love frustrating shoot em ups). it's just wacky and weird and violent and cool, it hits all my bases. i look forward to downloading the full version once i get together somewhat of a team to play through the full campaign with.

various boardgames and card games (XBLA)

the only ones i can truly recommend are UNO and carcassonne, and that's because they're fun, easy to pick up and great to play on live.

one thing to note, however, people are really talkative in the UNO rooms and to me, that's a good thing. if it's anything like when the game was available free on live back in last year, carcassonne is just full of people grinding out the 200 achievement points in complete silence. boring.

notable mentions

here are a few that might be worth your time, at least for a few seconds. they're not perfect and won't steal a ton of your time but they're cheap and quite fun, depending on how much you get in to them:

- geometry wars (1 or 2) (XBLA)
- super stardust HD (PSN)
- pain (PSN)
- soul calibur (XBLA)
- kirby's adventure (VC)

arcadin' and lovin' it,

JD