Bunny Blog

But first, I couldn’t help but share this little nugget of self-reflexive gold with the world.

Tim Schafer, he the hero of the bygone glory days of LucasArts which singlehandedly inspired me to believe that writing games was a viable profession and more importantly a viable form of artisitc expression, now runs a delightful company called Double Fine. Tim was also the host of the Game Developer’s Choice Awards, our Oscars, more or less, up at GDC — but Double Fine also produced this little gem about him hosting the awards.

A classic graphical adventure game from the Last of the Good Guys. If I wasn’t insanely busy and designing one too many games myself right now, I’d totally do one of these for the Bunny.

I’m probably not the first, but I just noticed the striking similarity between the Battlestar Galactica logo and that of our very own Consumer Product Safety Commission:

We recently had the great honor to contribute a little pro bono headscratching on behalf of Mary Flanagan and the good folks at Tiltfactor Labratory out of Dartmouth College. Tiltfactor, in case this is your first time hearing about them, spends most of their time dreaming up games that have some kind of critical or value-based interaction at the heart of their experience.

Their new game just came out. It’s called LAYOFF, and you can play it here.

The Bunny’s thoughts on the experience and the inherent problem after the jump.

(more…)

For those of you who missed it (which is probably most of you), there was a recent explosion in my hometown of Bozeman, Montana. Three buildings were completely leveled, and several others burned. Sadly, one person was killed (which, in and of itself, is an astonishingly low number when you consider how much physical damage there was).

Here’s the progression of how information rolled in to me:

-I found out about the explosion first from my mother, who called to let us know that the windows on my father’s had been blown out by the blast, and that my father was thankfully unharmed.

-In signing on to IM, a friend linked me to a Facebook page that had pictures up. By this time I had turned on the TV and looked on CNN.com - neither of which had any information on the explosion.

-Friends and other locals constantly updated their Facebook statuses, uploading pictures and posting information as it was gathered.

-Eventually, about six hours after the explosion took place, CNN started posting pictures that had been uploaded from its iReport site. This was the extent of the CNN coverage, however.

-After the dust had settled somewhat (literally), the local papers in Montana started posting information to their websites.

I guess what amazed me the most was how little coverage the story got. Three buildings were LEVELED, with a fire that raged for days. My only thinking is that a single casualty is not news-worthy. If a hundred people had died (as they could have, if either of the two destroyed bars had been open), or if Michael Jackson hadn’t had a press conference at the same time, then it’d be all over the news.

After this sad fact had settled in, I started thinking about how worthless the news media had been, aside from the local Montana news organizations. I was learning about the facts of the incident from Facebook! If I was on Twitter, I’m sure I would have gotten even more info (both useless and useful). Then I realized how revolutionary these services are going to be, and how obsolete global news agencies are going to become.

And I don’t think I’m alone. CNN created its iReport site to get in on the Facebook/Twitter action, screening the news and selectively reposting as it sees fit.

Similarly, the cable news networks now post Tweets of Average Joes on their news tickers. Here’s an example: I was sitting in an airport over the holidays while the Israel/Gaza conflict flared up, and instead of posting facts about what was happening, CNN had a loop of six Tweets that people had sent in: “My thoughts go to the people of Israel.” How is this news, and how can CNN think that such dreck is relevant in the middle of the onset of a war?

While the news media is trying to catch up to immediate nature of information sharing these days, they need to figure out what’s important and what isn’t - otherwise they’ll be obsolete before they can post a Tweet about it.

This is a pretty darn useful little piece of software.  If you’re a graphic designer, producer, photographer, or programmer, this is an incredibly useful tool. Ever wish you could just have a list of everything that is on your harddrive? If you have more than two hard drives, it can get a little confusing trying to remember if that file was on this drive…or that drive…or possibly, “Oh god, was it on that drive that crashed last week?”

We’ve been using this program for the last four years, and it’s been great. It gives you an entire, searchable list of every hard drive you own, and there’s no need to plug in all of them to remember what is where. It’s saved us a TON of headaches. And guess what, it’s only 20 bucks.

http://www.haxial.com/products/diskcatalog/ 

While writing my last post, I started feeling nostalgic, and wanted to check out my old Geocities page.

“How can you do this?” you ask. “That was over a decade ago.”

After I stop shivering at your last statement (even though I made the same statement in my post), I say, “Have you ever been to the Wayback Machine?”

“The Wayback Machine? You mean from the Rocky and Bullwinkle show?”

“No!” I shout, throwing my hat onto the ground. “This Wayback Machine!”

I point you to www.archive.org, where tons of websites have been saved for posterity (but alas, not all - my Geocities page was never archived).

I’ve been harassed lately by several ads that show up in the ticker on my Gmail account.  And by “harassed” I mean the ads are terribly convenient.  Because, you know, they’re targeted.

I’ve sent maybe one or two emails with “Doctor Who” mentioned somewhere within the contents of the email, so of course I get ads for Doctor Who on DVD. Well, apparently there are a few sites that sell all four seasons of the relaunch for a measly $79.   Considering each season individually goes for that much, I’m DYING to order the complete set.   The problem is, most of those sites are shady as hell, and I’m sure that my identity and/or credit card information has been stolen just by looking at them.

So, for all you web-sales entrepreneurs out there, here’s where these guys are going wrong:

Let me start by saying that these companies might be completely reputable.   Unfortunately, none appear as such, which is why, against my better judgement (or in conjunction with it, now that I think about it), I will never order from any of these sites.

Most appear to be internationally based, which is fine.  Most of the best board games are only available internationally these days, and I’ve ordered safely internationally in the past.  I won’t hold this against any of these sites.

They offer free shipping to the U.S., which is part of the appeal (because who ever wants to pay for shipping - especially internationally?).

One of the sites appears to have launched in November, another in September, which, again, I can deal with.  You have to start your business sometime, right?

The fact they’re advertising on Google is a check mark in the “legit” column.  If you’re not a legit business, you’re not going to advertise.  Or is a fake business creating a mirage of legit business through advertising?  It’s easy to get paranoid when your identity is on the line.

Here’s where things get shady.  The one site has a contact email that is Gmail-based, and not the company’s domain.  If you’re going to go to the trouble of creating a fake website to lure people in to buy your fake goods, at least take the half-step more of using an email address with the same domain name.

The fonts are nearly illegible, which is also shady.  Maybe I’ve been spoiled by Amazon, but I like the sites I order from to at least look presentable.  My Geocities page looked more well designed, and that was over a decade ago.

When you click the “Locator” link on the one site, it says “We are located on the web at [their URL].”  Really?  Do you think?  At least make up a fake physical address, instead of just looking lazy.

Both sites have typos galore.  Again, shady.

The one site actually says they get their DVDs from China “releases.”  Considering that I can’t find a legit site that carries the supposed “Complete Season 1-4 DVD Boxset,” I’m guessing that these are bootlegs.  The fact they are Region 0 doesn’t help the case at all.

I guess what pisses me off the most is that I’m wasting my time trying to prove these sites aren’t legit, but whoever is running these “businesses” aren’t even trying to pretend to be legit in the first place. At least try to look professional.  That’s all I’m asking.  I want to give you my credit card and my identity in exchange for a cheap DVD boxset.  You just have to work to get it.

Several of us are Flickr junkies here at Psychic Bunny.  I confess I am one of them.  I recently found some Psychic Bunny love floating out in Flickrland.  Thanks for liking our business cards.