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_DZ
Showing posts with label mouse over for text. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mouse over for text. Show all posts
12.16.2009
7.31.2009
.jpg "Or won't you live that long?")
6.29.2009
6.26.2009
5.23.2009
3.25.2009
Games As A Part of Mainstream Culture - What Are We To Do?
Ever since I graduated high school, the mainstream acceptance of video gaming has given rise to a ubiquitous culture that revolves around games and gaming in general. Initially fueled by a handful of websites such as GameFAQs, IGN, 1Up, and Penny-Arcade and magazines like PC Gamer and Nintendo Power, the gaming revolution has exploded in the last year, producing pieces of shrapnel like gamer chairs, Gamer Grub, G4 TV and a gamer line of razors.
As games become a integral part of our culture and artistic expression, many people liken them to other cultural products like TV shows, novels, popular music CDs, and movies. But is this correct? Have games really achieved that level of status and cultural recognition? Is buying the new Madden game every September just as important as seeing a major summer blockbuster? Is Grand Theft Auto as popular as Britney?
Good games certainly have a pedigree, and throughout the short history of games there are ones that are looked on as iconic genre definers. Half-Life, Tomb Raider, Super Mario World, Pac-Man, GoldenEye, Mario Kart, Zelda : Ocarina of Time, Quake, Doom. All of these are classics of the video game culture; the Rockys, Star Wars, Gone With The Winds, and King Kongs of their genre. Regardless of production values, special effects, or story lines, gamers look to them as the hallmarks of good gaming.
And, just like movies, books, and music, games keep being made, released, and enjoyed by people all over the world. But isn’t their something different about games? On one hand they look like a movie, but they play through like a book. And there is always music on the background. A game encompasses a lot of other media forms, and delivers its content in a nice, programmed package. This should be good for us - after all, we now have film, story, and music on one package. But do we take games as seriously as all that? The trend in culture sure indicates that we do.
But where is the social aspect of gaming? Where are the gaming clubs, the dollar game nights, and the Nintendo discos? Why aren’t retro games as celebrated as classic movies or 1920’s jazz music? Why has it taken games longer to reach the majority of the population? I think there are several reasons.
The primary reason is that games run on specific hardware. Unlike movies that would all play in a VCR or DVD player, games were locked to the consoles that they were made for. The recent increase in popularity has a lot to do with more games going cross-platform. The same game is now available on more than one machine, and therefore is more accessible to a larger audience. Hardware tethering, incidentally, has a lot to do with retro games falling out of the public eye. As more and more retro consoles bite the dust, games that are still very playable have nothing to be played on, and thus sit around and collect dust. Retro game emulation and archiving has helped a lot in this area, and needs to continue if we want to save games as part of our cultural history.
Another reason is that games are interactive. They require time to learn and developers usually vary the control scheme from game to game, thus not guaranteeing that being good at one game means being good at another game like it. This can get frustrating. Being interactive also means that games take much longer to complete than a movie takes to watch or a CD does to listen to. Twenty to thirty hours is not uncommon, with some role playing games requiring upwards of seventy hours. This is a lot of commitment, and means that you cannot go through 10 games as quickly as you can watch ten movies.
Being interactive has an impact on the third reason, which is that gamers don’t necessarily like to cross genres. While some casual gamers play sports, racing, and action games, others may play only first-person shooter or real-time strategy games. Music lovers have CDs spanning many different genres, just like movie buffs have films spanning such classifications as action, romance, comedy, horror, or drama.
We are at a crossroads. On one hand, games are certainly a part of our lives, part of out culture, and part of our media. On the other hand, we’re not about to start dedicating spaces in public libraries to house game collections. We still see games as largely a juvenile, time-wasting, low-class art form. Some of you even shuddered when I called it an art form.
So what do we do when our companies are pouring millions of dollars into an industry that we don’t want to recognize as a legitimate repository of cultural value? If games are here to stay, why we don’t feel like preserving them and in doing so creating a visible historical timeline of where we have come from as a gamer culture? Will computer games just turn out to be a fad that eventually dies out? I don’t think so. We as a society have to find ways of making games that aren’t locked to hardware platforms, that are enjoyable for people of all ages, and, most importantly, are worth preserving.
_DZ
As games become a integral part of our culture and artistic expression, many people liken them to other cultural products like TV shows, novels, popular music CDs, and movies. But is this correct? Have games really achieved that level of status and cultural recognition? Is buying the new Madden game every September just as important as seeing a major summer blockbuster? Is Grand Theft Auto as popular as Britney?
Good games certainly have a pedigree, and throughout the short history of games there are ones that are looked on as iconic genre definers. Half-Life, Tomb Raider, Super Mario World, Pac-Man, GoldenEye, Mario Kart, Zelda : Ocarina of Time, Quake, Doom. All of these are classics of the video game culture; the Rockys, Star Wars, Gone With The Winds, and King Kongs of their genre. Regardless of production values, special effects, or story lines, gamers look to them as the hallmarks of good gaming.
And, just like movies, books, and music, games keep being made, released, and enjoyed by people all over the world. But isn’t their something different about games? On one hand they look like a movie, but they play through like a book. And there is always music on the background. A game encompasses a lot of other media forms, and delivers its content in a nice, programmed package. This should be good for us - after all, we now have film, story, and music on one package. But do we take games as seriously as all that? The trend in culture sure indicates that we do.
But where is the social aspect of gaming? Where are the gaming clubs, the dollar game nights, and the Nintendo discos? Why aren’t retro games as celebrated as classic movies or 1920’s jazz music? Why has it taken games longer to reach the majority of the population? I think there are several reasons.
The primary reason is that games run on specific hardware. Unlike movies that would all play in a VCR or DVD player, games were locked to the consoles that they were made for. The recent increase in popularity has a lot to do with more games going cross-platform. The same game is now available on more than one machine, and therefore is more accessible to a larger audience. Hardware tethering, incidentally, has a lot to do with retro games falling out of the public eye. As more and more retro consoles bite the dust, games that are still very playable have nothing to be played on, and thus sit around and collect dust. Retro game emulation and archiving has helped a lot in this area, and needs to continue if we want to save games as part of our cultural history.
Another reason is that games are interactive. They require time to learn and developers usually vary the control scheme from game to game, thus not guaranteeing that being good at one game means being good at another game like it. This can get frustrating. Being interactive also means that games take much longer to complete than a movie takes to watch or a CD does to listen to. Twenty to thirty hours is not uncommon, with some role playing games requiring upwards of seventy hours. This is a lot of commitment, and means that you cannot go through 10 games as quickly as you can watch ten movies.
Being interactive has an impact on the third reason, which is that gamers don’t necessarily like to cross genres. While some casual gamers play sports, racing, and action games, others may play only first-person shooter or real-time strategy games. Music lovers have CDs spanning many different genres, just like movie buffs have films spanning such classifications as action, romance, comedy, horror, or drama.
We are at a crossroads. On one hand, games are certainly a part of our lives, part of out culture, and part of our media. On the other hand, we’re not about to start dedicating spaces in public libraries to house game collections. We still see games as largely a juvenile, time-wasting, low-class art form. Some of you even shuddered when I called it an art form.
So what do we do when our companies are pouring millions of dollars into an industry that we don’t want to recognize as a legitimate repository of cultural value? If games are here to stay, why we don’t feel like preserving them and in doing so creating a visible historical timeline of where we have come from as a gamer culture? Will computer games just turn out to be a fad that eventually dies out? I don’t think so. We as a society have to find ways of making games that aren’t locked to hardware platforms, that are enjoyable for people of all ages, and, most importantly, are worth preserving.
_DZ
3.19.2009
Minimalism in The Design of Common Objects
Since I talk about minimalism so much and even have the word included in my site name, I think it’s about time that I write a few articles about the subject. So this is one of them.
I appreciate minimalism because, in a world filled with images and designs all vying for your attention, a minimalist design cuts out the clutter, strips away the unnecessary, and provides a no-frills approach do giving you exactly what you need and letting you do exactly what you want to do. It reduces the choices we have to make while at the same time making it easier for our brains to process information. In a world hyper-saturated with media and graphics and noise and flashing lights, minimalism offers a silent, collected, and hopeful alternative.
Minimalism, at least in relation to design, comes in three different forms. These forms can and often do overlap, but they can be separated into their distinct individual elements. These elements are aesthetic minimalism, functional or utilitarian minimalism, and spatial minimalism.
Aesthetic minimalism is a celebration of the simple design. Iconic logos such of the Mobil pegasus, the Shell shell, the Nike swoosh, the Adidas three stripes, the Target bulls-eye, and the McDonalds arches are simple images that are recognizable the world over without the addition of any text at all. Clean lines, simple shapes, solid colors, cohesive textures, and stark contrasts are the norm here. Consumer goods also benefit from a minimalist design approach. An iPod can be recognized as an iPod from across any room, as can a pack of Newports as the iconic menthol cigarettes that they are.
Functional or utilitarian minimalism applies more to products, and can used when a consumer good has been designed for one or two specific purposes and does those very well. Examples are when a radio is just a radio, an analog watch just has hands, or a coffee pot just brews coffee. This is a rebellion against the scanner-copier-fax-printer, the alarm clock-radio-CD player-tape deck, and the MP3 player-calendar-internet communication device-cell phone. This is when you want something do to exactly one thing, and do it well without the extras because, let’s face it, most times you don’t need them. The last twenty years has seen our companies design product after product and software package after software package packed with features that we will never even read about in the manual, let alone use.
The opposite of the functional or utilitarian design is spatial minimalism. This again applies to products and is used to describe a product that does as much as can be done in the footprint that it occupies. The more it can do in as little physical space as possible, the better. A dominant product of this school of thought is the personal computer that can function as nearly anything to anyone. Accounting tool, music studio, radio, dictionary, home entertainment system, newspaper, telephone, artistic canvas, and so much more - if you can name it, it can probably do it. Spatially minimal products are great when you want to reduce clutter in your living space or multitask without having to physically move. Some of them utilize a minimalist exterior, preferring to have all of the options appear on a screen rather than through knobs, sliders, and buttons. A really good example of this can be seen in the transition from film cameras to digital ones. Settings and options that were once assigned to a few buttons and winders are now available to be scrolled though in a screen. This makes the camera more powerful, but also more complicated to use.
Like I said earlier, these styles of minimalism can overlap. My MacBook is a good example of aesthetic spatial minimalism, while a product like Samsung’s ML1630 laser printer is an example of aesthetic functional minimalism. I’m sure you can find plenty of your own examples as well.
.jpg "Yes, that is actually a printer")
The keys to fully subscribing to minimalism are factoring in price to your purchasing decisions, and disregarding the corporate mandate that New is always Better. While aesthetic minimalism transcends time, functional minimalism is sometimes most evident in older products. Spatial minimalism spans a wide expanse of products and a variety of industries and is fast becoming the norm for consumer electronics.
Important for the aspiring minimalist to realize is that sometimes sacrifice is in order to preserve a uniformly minimal style. Often this means leaving features out of things that you buy. Opting for less powerful but more streamlined and aesthetically beautiful objects bring you back to thinking about why you really needed extra features in the first place. Whether it is a lamp with no ornamentation, a toaster that is brushed metal instead of white plastic, or a car with beautiful lines, these functional items may cost more, but have the added benefit of being something that you enjoy looking at.
And that in itself is beautiful.
_DZ
I appreciate minimalism because, in a world filled with images and designs all vying for your attention, a minimalist design cuts out the clutter, strips away the unnecessary, and provides a no-frills approach do giving you exactly what you need and letting you do exactly what you want to do. It reduces the choices we have to make while at the same time making it easier for our brains to process information. In a world hyper-saturated with media and graphics and noise and flashing lights, minimalism offers a silent, collected, and hopeful alternative.
Minimalism, at least in relation to design, comes in three different forms. These forms can and often do overlap, but they can be separated into their distinct individual elements. These elements are aesthetic minimalism, functional or utilitarian minimalism, and spatial minimalism.
Aesthetic minimalism is a celebration of the simple design. Iconic logos such of the Mobil pegasus, the Shell shell, the Nike swoosh, the Adidas three stripes, the Target bulls-eye, and the McDonalds arches are simple images that are recognizable the world over without the addition of any text at all. Clean lines, simple shapes, solid colors, cohesive textures, and stark contrasts are the norm here. Consumer goods also benefit from a minimalist design approach. An iPod can be recognized as an iPod from across any room, as can a pack of Newports as the iconic menthol cigarettes that they are.
Functional or utilitarian minimalism applies more to products, and can used when a consumer good has been designed for one or two specific purposes and does those very well. Examples are when a radio is just a radio, an analog watch just has hands, or a coffee pot just brews coffee. This is a rebellion against the scanner-copier-fax-printer, the alarm clock-radio-CD player-tape deck, and the MP3 player-calendar-internet communication device-cell phone. This is when you want something do to exactly one thing, and do it well without the extras because, let’s face it, most times you don’t need them. The last twenty years has seen our companies design product after product and software package after software package packed with features that we will never even read about in the manual, let alone use.
The opposite of the functional or utilitarian design is spatial minimalism. This again applies to products and is used to describe a product that does as much as can be done in the footprint that it occupies. The more it can do in as little physical space as possible, the better. A dominant product of this school of thought is the personal computer that can function as nearly anything to anyone. Accounting tool, music studio, radio, dictionary, home entertainment system, newspaper, telephone, artistic canvas, and so much more - if you can name it, it can probably do it. Spatially minimal products are great when you want to reduce clutter in your living space or multitask without having to physically move. Some of them utilize a minimalist exterior, preferring to have all of the options appear on a screen rather than through knobs, sliders, and buttons. A really good example of this can be seen in the transition from film cameras to digital ones. Settings and options that were once assigned to a few buttons and winders are now available to be scrolled though in a screen. This makes the camera more powerful, but also more complicated to use.
Like I said earlier, these styles of minimalism can overlap. My MacBook is a good example of aesthetic spatial minimalism, while a product like Samsung’s ML1630 laser printer is an example of aesthetic functional minimalism. I’m sure you can find plenty of your own examples as well.
.jpg "Yes, that is actually a printer")
The keys to fully subscribing to minimalism are factoring in price to your purchasing decisions, and disregarding the corporate mandate that New is always Better. While aesthetic minimalism transcends time, functional minimalism is sometimes most evident in older products. Spatial minimalism spans a wide expanse of products and a variety of industries and is fast becoming the norm for consumer electronics.
Important for the aspiring minimalist to realize is that sometimes sacrifice is in order to preserve a uniformly minimal style. Often this means leaving features out of things that you buy. Opting for less powerful but more streamlined and aesthetically beautiful objects bring you back to thinking about why you really needed extra features in the first place. Whether it is a lamp with no ornamentation, a toaster that is brushed metal instead of white plastic, or a car with beautiful lines, these functional items may cost more, but have the added benefit of being something that you enjoy looking at.
And that in itself is beautiful.
_DZ
3.10.2009
My Experience with Non-Religiousness, aka Atheism
I read this article today about new research that claims that 15% of the American population is non-religious, and how the current public perception of the non-religious/atheist does not reflect that number. I guess a lot of people think that atheists are blood drinking baby killers of something along those lines, when that is not always the case. Oops, I guess I just proved their point.
But really, it’s appalling to think of all the people who think that atheists are somehow subhuman or something like that. The atheists that I’ve met (which, granted, are not many) have all been very nice and pleasant people. We just have radically different views on religion. They may think that my views are irrational and I may think that their beliefs are extremely, if not painfully, susceptible to subjectivity, but that’s where you talk through differences and debate points. Sometimes, however, I have the upper hand.
Now I don’t claim to be an expert on atheist beliefs (if there can even be such a person), but I haven’t always been a Christian either. I was ambivalent about religion until I was about 16 or so, and after that I had a two year or so stint of living with no consideration for religion whatsoever. I lived however I felt best. This was really liberating at first, but as time went on I became more and more depressed with each bad decision I made. Soon I was about to turn 18, and I had a whole host of options available to me about what to do with my future. Should I go to college? Where? Should I work? Where? Should I stay In Japan? What did I want to do with my life? Should I go overseas? All of these questions came crashing down on me, and I broke down. I couldn’t handle the reality of potentially making a bad choice and being unhappy for the rest of my life. I had enough trouble choosing my high school classes. How could I be expected to run my own life? I needed answers. I needed a purpose.
And this I feel is where atheism doesn’t, or indeed, can’t, help. It has no compass. It is humanistic. ‘Do whatever you feel is best,’ it says. ‘Try not to be a jackass, but as long as you do what is best for you, that should be good for others as well,” is what I feel is the overarching message. It has no roots, no baseline standards. And that makes it scary for people who don’t understand it. Atheists that I know turned to atheism out of a disdain for religion - not because they thought it was a good idea. They didn’t sit down in their local library, pull out the Big Book of Atheism and say, “Hey, this sounds like a good way to live!”
When you have a non-religion that teaches that you should live your life the best way you know how, you get a different flavor of atheism for each follower. And this, I think, is what scares people most.
Coming back to my own story for a minute, I turned to Christianity when I felt like I truly had no more options left. I was unwilling to make choices about my future out of fear of failure, and nothing inside me could point me in a better direction. If I hadn’t accepted Christ, I have no doubt that I would’ve been dead in six months. I would have found the easiest way out of my situation, regardless who who it hurt, because that is what I felt would’ve been best for me.
Instead I chose the seemingly paradoxical option of turning my life over to God so that I could live more freely. I submitted to God’s will for my life so that I could pursue it wholeheartedly, with faith that God would show me what it is. After all, He did make me, so I think he knows how best to use me in the world.
I wonder how many atheists know what their purpose in the world is?
_DZ
But really, it’s appalling to think of all the people who think that atheists are somehow subhuman or something like that. The atheists that I’ve met (which, granted, are not many) have all been very nice and pleasant people. We just have radically different views on religion. They may think that my views are irrational and I may think that their beliefs are extremely, if not painfully, susceptible to subjectivity, but that’s where you talk through differences and debate points. Sometimes, however, I have the upper hand.
Now I don’t claim to be an expert on atheist beliefs (if there can even be such a person), but I haven’t always been a Christian either. I was ambivalent about religion until I was about 16 or so, and after that I had a two year or so stint of living with no consideration for religion whatsoever. I lived however I felt best. This was really liberating at first, but as time went on I became more and more depressed with each bad decision I made. Soon I was about to turn 18, and I had a whole host of options available to me about what to do with my future. Should I go to college? Where? Should I work? Where? Should I stay In Japan? What did I want to do with my life? Should I go overseas? All of these questions came crashing down on me, and I broke down. I couldn’t handle the reality of potentially making a bad choice and being unhappy for the rest of my life. I had enough trouble choosing my high school classes. How could I be expected to run my own life? I needed answers. I needed a purpose.
And this I feel is where atheism doesn’t, or indeed, can’t, help. It has no compass. It is humanistic. ‘Do whatever you feel is best,’ it says. ‘Try not to be a jackass, but as long as you do what is best for you, that should be good for others as well,” is what I feel is the overarching message. It has no roots, no baseline standards. And that makes it scary for people who don’t understand it. Atheists that I know turned to atheism out of a disdain for religion - not because they thought it was a good idea. They didn’t sit down in their local library, pull out the Big Book of Atheism and say, “Hey, this sounds like a good way to live!”
When you have a non-religion that teaches that you should live your life the best way you know how, you get a different flavor of atheism for each follower. And this, I think, is what scares people most.
Coming back to my own story for a minute, I turned to Christianity when I felt like I truly had no more options left. I was unwilling to make choices about my future out of fear of failure, and nothing inside me could point me in a better direction. If I hadn’t accepted Christ, I have no doubt that I would’ve been dead in six months. I would have found the easiest way out of my situation, regardless who who it hurt, because that is what I felt would’ve been best for me.
Instead I chose the seemingly paradoxical option of turning my life over to God so that I could live more freely. I submitted to God’s will for my life so that I could pursue it wholeheartedly, with faith that God would show me what it is. After all, He did make me, so I think he knows how best to use me in the world.
I wonder how many atheists know what their purpose in the world is?
_DZ
3.05.2009
Everyone should be able to check this box at least once in their lifetime!
I was finishing up my taxes the other day, and I came to this screen.
Knowing that little things like this exist on tax forms makes me happy.
_DZ
Knowing that little things like this exist on tax forms makes me happy.
_DZ
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