The Golden Age of Game

There's something vaguely satisfying about being at the start of a revolution. its brilliant to look at all the poor suckers tryng desperately to catch up and getting very excited about some concept which you've gone way past, man. Like, far out.
Oh, yeah, im satisfied. I'm seeing a revolution happening right in front of me. It's happening at the bookstores, in Pallika Bazaar and Richie Street, on the desktops of people between 6 and 26. The new age of interactive entertainment. Say goodbye to tv, chuck the feelms, the Golden Age of Game is coming.
Its impossible to ignore, the new age of interactive entertainment. Admittedly, games can't claim to compete actively with tv or the flicks yet, but a number of factors are going to make all of that go away.
1. computers are getting cheaper and cheaper every 6 months.
2. More and more people are becoming computer literate, or realise the pressing need to be so.
3. Games are becoming more and more realistic every day.
4. The themes games deal with are becoming much more relateable to the average ajay.

Most people would outright deny this ridiculous contention, citing the absolute lack of people who really play games. Not so true any more.Even now, hundreds of thousands of people interact with each other, build strong alliances, develop intense hatreds, fall in love and exploit each other on MMORGs(Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games) such as World of Warcraft, or Ultima Online. Even more just go online or hit the LAN for the express purpose of machine gunning, flaming or cunningly left flanking their good friends on multilayer enabled games like Counterstrike or Starcraft. For people who dont think lots of blood is their thing, any amount of good old fashioned legalised psychological violence is possible while playing the Sims, where ironically, you escape from reality by simulating it.

Another concept that is getting blown out of the water is that games are for kids and nerds, and not for "normal people". Give that one a rest, please. The number of people obsessed with the NFS franchise, or cricket 200andsomethingortheother puts that one to rest immediately. Besides, the one about games being for kids... Well, has anyone seen the covers for games like any of the Resident Evil series or even Deus Ex? They're marked M, for sale to Adults only. And its not the gore that puts these labels on the games. Software and hardware today is competent enough to allow games to deal with issues as complex as any "soap opera conundrum". In Deus Ex 2, you are faced with complex political choices, like the one between security and material wealth and inner happiness and spiritual satisfaction.(You may also have to help a gay cultural affairs minister to hook up with a guy he' been keeping an eye on).

Affordability used to be a major factor with games priced at ridiculous rates like Rs. 1600 (about $40 in 1996) per game and people in most 3rd world countries, capable of affording a cheap movie at Rs. 1o per tape or Rs. 30 per vcd (for rent) would never imagine getting a game at these prices. (Hey, I once bought Dangerous Dave for Rs. 200). Today, thanks to our fine eyepatched buddies, the software "pirates" everyone in a majoor city has access to a game at the rate of about Rs. 100 per game. And comps arent so bad anymore either. You can buy one thats rudimentarily game enabled for about Rs. 20,000.

If you still dont buy all my word of mouth bullshit, just perfom following simple exercise: Head to the nearest rel;iance webworld, or satyam gamezone or whatever: there are multiplayer tournaments happening in India for games like counterstrike and quake III arena. A bit outdated admittedly, but still, happening. Its gonna take some time before the revolution shows us people playing starcraft for millions of dollars like in Korea, but that day isnt too far off. So, addicted gamers of the subcontinent, unite, our day will come, and when it does, I know whose back is gonna be up against the wall first...

The Return of the Things

somthing I find hard to understand about people. The automatic rejection of any theme which professes to deal with the larger-than-life. Larger than life images, larger that life themes, larger than life worlds. Of course, if a medium does'nt outright profess to be larger thatn life, but manages to stretch the boundaries of imagination and reality in its own establishment way, noone seems to care. This is how you end up with scenarios where people dismiss fantasy and sience fiction and comics as kid's fare, but are more than happy to see Clive Cussler's "Dirk Pitt" rappell off an airplane, on to a zeppelin, kill all the neo nazis on the zeppelin with a tuning fork, then jump off and detonate the zeppelin with abovementioned tuning fork.
Well, watch out Dirk Boy, fantasy and science fiction are making a comeback. The Lord of the Rings movies and the Matrix trilogy (okay, please dont make me go into the actual quality of the latter) are making people open up their eyes to the inherent metaphor within the "absurd". I mean, after seeing the matrix, people are actually starting to ask, "what if?". Some of them are even trying philosophy. This is why, leaving aside the actual quality of the matrix trilogy, I mark it down as something of an influence.
As for comics, as you can see, most of the marvel heroes are at last getting their turn on the limelight (and also, in the case of Daredevil, getting totally raped by it), and raking in huge bucks by the look of it. And soon , it'll be the turn of Dark Horse's Hellboy to enter the fray. Now, if there's one movie I've been meaning to watch, it would be Hellboy. What a brilliant concept, the antichrist as the saviour of mankind, ragnarok betrayed, metaphor extreme.

Of course, it is possible that all this commercialisation of fantasy and science fiction will destroy its earlier purity and beauty and pulpify it for mass consumption (as one of my friends argues about everything from computer games to art, basically doesnt like sharing). I dont deny the possibility that the return to public consumption for fantasy/sf could change its shape, but who are the elite to say what shape it should take? the purpose of fantasy/sf is to provide to use the world, unadulterated and undiluted, through its own fractured lens, so we may see the beauty and the horror of that which happens around us with that much clearer an eye.
If that be the strange fruit of this union, then so be it borne.



pop philosophy? maybe. But its still food for thought.

Really cool unusual blog

When I set up this weblog, I had no idea what the hell I was doing ( a fact you will find amply evident from my first entry).

Now, about 3 months and innumerable template tweaks into this experiment, I can confidently say that I still dont know what the hell I'm doing, I'm just doing it with a bit more panache.

But Ms Belle Du Jour certianly has a pretty clear picture of what she's doing. I chanced upon this site while checking out the Guardian's 3 best written blogs. It's a brilliant, offbeat and in places quite hilarious look at the soft and slightly ticklish underbelly of the prostitution racket (kinda cool, cause the prostitution business itself is supposed to be a bit of a soft underbelly itself, isnt it, so what wer'e looking at is an underbelly's underbelly, and... ok, i digress). Not only do you get rather witty photo quality word sketches of London life, you get the inside stuff on hair removal, golden showers and the Jennicam. What I love most is this person's frank and impassive look at sexual 'perversions' de jour, from an insider's perspective. oh, by the way, dont go if you dont appreciate comic accounts of threesomes or bikini lin waxing, cause if that isnt your thing, then this definitely isnt your thing. The links lead to some of Belle du Jour's sisterbloggers, but again be warned, these are raher more raunchy than the rather plain and simple blle du jour's site.
At any rate, for a witty insider's perspective on one of the really old professions (isnt it supposed to be the oldest?), please take a look at belle du jour

My Personality Disorders

Disorder	Rating
Paranoid:	Moderate
Schizoid:	Low
Schizotypal:	Moderate
Antisocial:	Low
Borderline:	Low
Histrionic:	Moderate
Narcissistic:	Moderate
Avoidant:	Low
Dependent:	Moderate
Obsessive-Compulsive:	Low
-- Personality Disorder Test - Take It! --

Whe I was very young, I used to have these strange fantasies.

I used to wish that one day, all the dirt, the grime, the sludge, all the muck in the world would suddenly levitate, fly up into the air, hover over the atmosphere and then disappear, and everything would be spotless, clean and... nice.

When I grew older I saw this article in the paper. It was an interview with this Serbian (or was it Bosnian?, or Slovak? I dont remember). He was talking about how he used to kill mothers and children in a small mountain town thereabouts. At long range.
First, he would get them in their sights.
The mother would probably be running, with her child held protectively in front of her.
Then, he would take careful aim.
Shoot
And get the child in the stomach. So he wouldnt die instantly.
Then, he would watch the mother in agony while she screamed and her child's lifeblood drained away in jerks and shivers.
Then he would shoot her in the head.

I think it was that night when I went to bed and dreamed that somehow, all the bad men, the evil men, they were suddenly levitated, lifted high into the sky, and then, somehow, in the midst of all the screaming and the moaning and the wailing, they were ripped, spliced, shredded into particulate matter, and a fine rain of blood, and a fine snow of bones would fall over the earth.

And everything would be perfect. No bad men left in the world. No more evil. Nice.

Why did I share this with you? I dont know. I just had that same dream again recently, and all the "bad people" had faces I could recognise. They weren't necessarily people I knew, but I knew their faces. They were faceless when I was younger. Why can I recognise them now?

Douglas Adams' Ugly Mug and his Homepage

The man himself,find out more if you want.

Douglas Adams, As Always

Here's a speech of Douglas Adams' about the internet. If any of your grandparents, friends, parents, whatever, think the internet is the first sign of the coming of the Antichrist, give this to them. He's fun, he's witty, he's irreverent, and, in my opinion, scarily prophetic. And the quiet measured reasoning that comes through the chaos is my favourite thing about him. Hats off, if i wore a hat. Doulglas Adams on the Internet