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That Mordin Moment: The Unusual Case of the Singing Salarian

Grill — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 13:30:09 +0000

To the tune of: The Element’s Song by Tom Lehrer

It’s 2010 and my jaw is hanging like it’s been wired open. I can’t believe what I’m watching on screen. The wise-talking pensive scientist / special operative who’s been fighting robots and aliens and stuff at my side, is… singing. And, in the deep darkness of the far future, in the lab of my one-of-a-kind spaceship in uber science-fiction action-game Mass Effect 2 what he’s singing is… Gilbert & Sullivan? Particularly a parody of a Modern Major General.

It’s 2007 and I’m munching on a buffet at Bioware’s offices in [more...]

Added Extras

Grill — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 14:04:06 +0000

(This is a response to Rob Fahey’s Special Editions piece on Gamesindustry.biz) . To the tune of: Yo, Ho – Disney There are three things that are going to keep gamers buying games rather than pirating them. Those are community play (achievements, online play, friend lists, chat, etc), fear (in my opinion, generally inducing negative emotions in the general population is something to be avoided as much as possible) and bonus content, such as DLC and Special Editions. Special Editions, in particular, are the future of boxed games..

A 1C Shop in Moscow

Why? Let’s look at Russia. Russia [more...]

Through Looking Glass, Darkly.

Grill — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 19:00:22 +0000

To The Tune Of: Hey, Hey, 16K by MJ Hibbert Having launched the Official Xbox 360 Magazine, it would be surprising for me to say that I’m platform agnostic, but possibly more surprising to say that I’ve been a PC gamer all my life. PC wasn’t my first love – that was, of all things, the Acorn where we played multi-player Risk in school lunch breaks – and I didn’t have any games systems myself until a very late purchase of a Master System 2.

I just used to watch friends play them on their systems, Amigas and Commodores, [more...]

Moral Incontinence (akrasia) and Technology

Grill — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 15:45:16 +0000

To the tune of: Akrasia by James Falzone

I have a problem with tech – I’m morally incontinent (stop your giggling at the back, Jenkins!), in that my mind is slightly spoiled so it strongly seeks pleasure, even when I know that the good thing is something else. Plato called it ‘akrasia’, and it implies a lack of moral control.

This has been a problem since my university days, when I couldn’t be dragged away from my computer, by hell or high water. It used to sit on, in my room, 24 hours a day, normally with the door open [more...]

Buying Books: The Perils of Nabokov

Grill — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 13:17:49 +0000

To the tune of: April March – Poor Lola

You are browsing the second-hand books in a small town’s famous covered market, waiting for the other reader to finish whatever the other reader is finishing, when you happen across a book. It is amongst the Books You Normally Read and The Books You Like The Cover Of, a most fortuitous placing, and it is a Book You Always Wanted To Read as well as a Book You’re Ashamed You’ve Never Read, and possibly a Book You Pretend You’ve Read.

It is Lolita, a book you are so familar [more...]

Veni, Vidi, Validity – Blue Monday and Valid Arguments

Grill — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 15:51:01 +0000

(This post to the tune of…)

Professional statistics-mangler Professor Cliff Arnell is conquering the news again today, for his yearly profile-raiser about this being the most depressing day of the year. As Ben Goldacre has pointed out, he was paid to produce this research by Porter Novelli, a PR firm, who pitched the idea and date out to several academics back in 2005, to persuade people to buy holidays from a client of theirs. However, as any fule logician knos, merely because something has dodgy premises, that doesn’t mean it isn’t true – and vice versa, just because something is right, [more...]