Tag: video game party

games games gaming games gamer games

The Humble Indie Bundle, a six-game pay-anything collection, hit $1.million, goes open-source, gets extention!

The nitty gritty: as of the time of writing, nearly 116,000 people have donated nearly $1.05 million, nearly 31 percent of which will be going to the Bundle’s selected charities the EFF and children’s hospital focused Child’s Play. Full techie stats are available here, but that amounts to roughly $137,000 to each developer in a week, all of whom had seen sales of their years-old games dwindle.

To celebrate the landmark, the devs are extending the sale for the rest of this week for any latecomers, and are beginning to make good on their GPL-licensed open source promise, beginning with Wolfire’s Lugaru HD. Gish and Penumbra will soon be following suit, and Aquaria has made the surprise announcement that they’re coming on-board with the open source promise, as well.

PORTAL, the clever game of twisty physics couched in black humour, is free for download (with the installation of Steam) until May 24th!

Portal used to cost money. Until May 24th, it’s free. End of story.
Well, technically speaking, there are some strings attached. Fortunately, they’re entirely decorative. We just like the way they look, swaying in the gentle breeze created by a million people simultanously fainting from shock at the news that Portal is free. Now you have no reason not to try Portal.
“I have a reason,” some of you are probably typing into an angry email. “You see, sir, I own a Mac.”
Well guess what: For the first time ever, Portal is also available for the Mac.

the high scores are unbelievable

Lose/Lose by Zach Gage.

Lose/Lose is a video-game with real life consequences. Each alien in the game is created based on a random file on the players computer. If the player kills the alien, the file it is based on is deleted. If the players ship is destroyed, the application itself is deleted.

Although touching aliens will cause the player to lose the game, and killing aliens awards points, the aliens will never actually fire at the player. This calls into question the player’s mission, which is never explicitly stated, only hinted at through classic game mechanics. Is the player supposed to be an aggressor? Or merely an observer, traversing through a dangerous land?

Why do we assume that because we are given a weapon an awarded for using it, that doing so is right?

By way of exploring what it means to kill in a video-game, Lose/Lose broaches bigger questions. As technology grows, our understanding of it diminishes, yet, at the same time, it becomes increasingly important in our lives. At what point does our virtual data become as important to us as physical possessions? If we have reached that point already, what real objects do we value less than our data? What implications does trusting something so important to something we understand so poorly have?

I want to write something real, but I’m far too tired


like those posters from WWII
Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

You know what I realized today? There are no pictures of anyone in hand-cuffs. There are no pictures of me especially in hand-cuffs. This impresses me. Not only did I dance with Avery in hand-cuffs for almost an hour, I was at one point hand-cuffed to a chair. My wrists, in fact, hurt. They are circled with abrasions and badly bruised. That I didn’t notice until many hours into consciousness may be a telling sign toward my level of exhaustion. I managed just over an entire twenty four hours awake on something like four asleep and then proceeded to sleep fitfully for only another three.

Ridiculously, I am awake still and the world is turning in the direction of yet another day. I found an answering machine message on the phone when I got home. Dream Designs has called me back again. I harbor a hope that this means that I’ve landed the job I’ve been crossing my fingers for. I’ve been in for two interviews and though the second was dealt in an impromptu manner, I can’t think why else they would have phoned me a third time.

Translink has finally sent me an in-voice and it bays an ugly cry of two hundred fifty, which is approximately half as loud as I was expecting. Still a blow, but a lighter strike than I imagined. This I should be able to roll with sooner than later, though it hurts to have such an unexpected chunk torn from my budgets. The fund raising party is still under consideration, complete with colour-it-in thermometer to measure distance to goal.