Once thought dead, 'Net neutrality roars back to center stage

Network neutrality has lost some steam, but the boilers have returned to full pressure after two senators ask Congress for an investigation. AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast have only themselves to blame.

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The ReacTable Demo...

The vid is a year old, but it's still really fun to watch. Just thought I'd look back on this after all the recent hype surround table top computers over the summer.



We've been doing this "Minority Report" thing for a while now...

Full list of Rock Band’s licensed songs

IGN has the full list of every song initially available in Rock Band, although there are some as yet unrevealed tracks that can be unlocked and there will be even more through downloadable content. However, while we may not know those tracks, here is the complete licensed track list revealed so far, organized by year.



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GameSpot Interviews Jeronimo Barrera on Manhunt, ESRB

First off, if you haven't seen "This Film is Not Yet Rated" (wiki), I would HIGHly recommend checking it out. It seems to me that the challenges formerly faced by the music industry (leading to explicit lyrics stickers) and the movie industry (leading to the MPAA's ratings board), are now hitting video games. Hard.

What's frustrating is there are ratings for games. The ESRB clearly marks all games. Commercials routinely state the appropriate ages for the game ("E for Everyone" or "T for Teen"). Why isn't anyone paying attention?
I can appreciate that the tech landscape can be a little confusing, nay daunting, but we've already learned this lesson. Why MUST we continue to go through this histrionic cycle every time the landscape of media evolves slightly.

*Disturbing art hasn't ruined America.
*Provocative literature hasn't messed us up.
*Jazz didn't destroy America.
*Radio shock jocks haven't destroyed America.
*Rock-n-roll didn't destroy America
*Rap hasn't destroyed America.
*Violent movies haven't taken us down.

So obviously it'll be the video games that bring us crashing down?

We're again subjected to this mass hysteria of very loud, opportunistic, individuals (making up a very small piece of the population) trying to convince anyone who will listen that, even though we've re-learned these lessons MANY times over, what would be best for the children of this country is to have the government goose-step in and censor content.

This is simply unacceptable.

Anywho, Gamespot has a fantastic interview with Jeronimo Barrera (what a friggin awesome name) regarding the challenges they went through with Manhunt 2 (a game not unlike the SAW movies). Originally it was given an Adults Only (AO) pretty much on strength of reputation (with no notes given on what would help reduce that rating to an "M" or Mature). This is exactly like giving a movie an NC-17, which severely impacts the games distribution.

Of course my favorite part is his description of the audio:

JB: The real star of the game is the audio. Not only
does it play an important part of the gameplay, it sets the tone and
mood for every single experience we throw at the player. We learned so
much from the original Manhunt and knew going into writing the dialogue
what works well in the game. The emphasis [is] on making the
interactions (especially of the Hunters) seem real but so twisted that
we blur the lines and it truly comes off sounding psychotic and at
times very funny. We hope we have surpassed expectations by maintaining
the production quality all Rockstar games have and at the same time
increasing the variety of situations people speak in, which aligned to
improvements in the AI that should lead to a game world that feels more
"alive."

But the PS2 version still has headset functionality! This
really helps to enhance the experience. You'll hear Leo, and you can
use the mic to make sounds that attract the Hunters. On the Wii, we use
the speaker on the Wii-Mote in interesting ways too.

Give the interview a read here!

New iPod Touch Commercial made by Apple Fanboi

Wow!
Usually Apple just steals an ad it likes...

Check out this vid from Nick Haley. It's pretty good, and totally fits in with Apple's advertising aesthetic.



According to the NYTimes He's going to be working with TBWA/Chiat/Day to do a high-def version.
I think it's pretty cool to see. The general perception is that user created ads are garbage, but good content is good content.



Read the NY TIMES article here.

Portal Songwriter Jonathan Coulton on 'Still Alive'

We caught up with the writer and creator of Portal's legendary end-game credit track, geek troubadour extraordinaire Jonathan Coulton, who filled us in on conceptualizing ‘Still Alive,’ what it was like working with Valve, and his fine appreciation of cake.

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"Shapes Using Sound Effects" (AKA Cymatics) @ Meta Cafe

OK, so these videos aren't new, but watching a good Chladni plate demo is always fun...



Shapes Using Sound Effects - The funniest videos are a click away

Gaming Angels Interviews David Sobolov and David Pizzuto

These two guys have been working EXTREMELY hard at getting actors a better deal on video game work, and I'm very proud to say I know them.

Gameangels has the first half of a great interview up. They spoke with David and David at the Game Developer Conference in Austin about some of the challenges facing this industry. It's a great read, and I highly recommend checking it out if you're interested at all in what it takes to get a game made these days.

Read the interview here.

They also touched on briefly, the possible WGA strike, and I think David Pizzuto's thoughts sum it up fine:

Due to legal reasons, they were not able to comment on the impending strike by the Writers Guild of America. However, David P. summed up his personal feelings of strikes in general by saying, "As a performer, it makes people in the town nervous. Even the mention of the "S" word makes people crazy. You see production ramp up and you see a lot of emotional reaction as opposed to appropriate response." Mark concluded, "Consumers don't want that, producers don't want that, actors don't want that. Everybody wants to do business and play games and watch movies and see TV shows. The world's a happy place when that happens."

Well done. Couldnt've said it better myself...

Punctuation lesson for the day: Interrobang (‽)

I want to see more of this little punctuation mark in commercial copy...

The interrobang (/ɪn'tɛrəbæŋ/) (‽) is a rarely used, nonstandard English-language punctuation mark intended to combine the functions of the question mark (also called the interrogative point) and the exclamation mark (known in printers' jargon as the bang). The typographical
character is a superimposition of those two marks. The same effect is
also frequently achieved by placing the exclamation point before or
after the question mark; e.g., "How could you do such a thing!?" or
"How could you do such a thing?!"

Full Wiki HERE ‽‽‽

Everything's Coming up Portal!

No really EVERYTHING. I'm still plugging away on Episode 1, but it's hard not to fire up Portal when Steam comes up...

Anywho if you've been needing to links to any and all Portal content that there could be head on over to geekanerd. They have a mega post up with practically every Portal related content link you could find.

THIS WAS A TRIUMPH...

And just for kicks, here's the first of 3 Youtube videos if you only want GLaDOS' dialog. The other two vids are on the link...all 25 minutes of it...

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