‘Im just five hours old … Truly beautiful to behold …’ Fresh from the mint, here is KerLeone’s very first frag movie—high quality definition, editing, and frags, plus a gorgeous soundtrack. It was he, my old on- and offline pal, who brought me to ↑Quake more than a decade ago … and it took him that long to create a frag movie :) Enjoy! … Continue reading
Way back in 2008 I reported on attempts to cyberpunkify ergonomic solutions for computer workplaces: see ↵laid back and ↵laid back flagship. Now MWE Lab has driven it to new heights in every respect … the ↑Emperor 200 comes with a lavish price-tag of $45,000. Roberto Baldwin at Wired’s Gadget Lab ↑has commented perfectly: Upon sitting in the Emperor 200, users tap on the touchscreen to lower the monitors and nestle themselves into a computing bubble worthy of a Bond villain. Because each workstation is built to order, MWE labs can customize each installation to handle different computing platforms, even … Continue reading
Just yesterday I had a longer conversation [not online, but face to face, beer by beer] with a doctoral student of mine ↑who does deeply immersed fieldwork around and within the ‘StarCraft II’ (SC2 | Blizzard Entertainment 2010) pro-gamer scene. Matchingly enough the day before yesterday I reread ↓Bearman 2008 and ↵watched ‘King of Kong’ (Gordon 2007) and ‘Chasing Ghosts’ (Ruchti 2007), wondering at the lengths high-end arcade-gamers go. Well, he told me about the lengths the SC2-specialists go, especially in terms of analysis of the game, its patches, actual matches, etc. Up to writing book-lengths compendiums. After enough grinning … Continue reading
Joshua Bearman’s article ‘↓The perfect game‘ (2008) since years slumbers on my HDD—luckily it’s still available online for everybody. Testimony to the amazing zen-like perfect-flow achievable in high-end arcade gaming. Additionally there are two magnificent documentaries on the subject: ‘The King of Kong: Fistful of Quarters’ (Gordon 2007) and ‘Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade’ (Ruchti 2007). Here are the trailers and what ↑filmcritic‘s ↑Anthony Burch has to say on the two documentaries: the king of kong Put this one at the top of your “Must Watch Now” list. Like, right now. Beyond functioning as an entertaining if somewhat shallow look … Continue reading
PASLEY, MIKE. 2008. Frag [documentary film]. Cedar Falls: Cohesion Productions. … Continue reading
In a way ‘↑Second Life‘ (SL) is the online analogon to a social club of sorts—“↑Quake Live“ (QL) in turn emulates a boxing gym, or any other sports club centred around a competitive pastime. In the end both of course are social institutions, but differ in terms of qualities, differ in culture. … Continue reading
The fifth annual „↑International eSports Conference” is the most important conference for the eSport and gaming community worldwide. It consists of three main elements: Conference, Exhibition and Networking. Lectures, discussions and workshops will present the most important issues and innovative developements from the international electronic sports (esport) market. The focuses of the conference is to conceive eSport as a disciplinary sport; to give some new economic impetus to current developments; to view future technical standards and to promote dialogues and interactions among the participants from different countries. More than 250 participants and 30 Speakers from Germany and abroad will be … Continue reading
Not too long ago, when ↑KerLeone—who introduced me to “↑Quake III Arena“ (Q3A), but meanwhile shamefully has defected to “↑Battlefield 2“, the traitor—asked me what people actually are playing nowadays when they are out for the deathmatch experience, I answered: ” “↑Painkiller” (PK), I guess.” My guess was based on two observations. Firstly the ↑Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL) had chosen “Painkiller” for the ↵CPL World Tour 2005, and secondly the game indeed emulates gameplay, feel, and ambience of the classical ↑first-person shooter (FPS) games. But emulation is not the original, accordingly in 2006 the CPL fell back on Q3A … Continue reading
Computergames can be spectacular, ↑first-person shooters (FPS) in particular. ↑Electronic sports (e-sports) almost always are spectacular. Marketing in turn definitely has to be spectacular. Marketing a computergame for e-sports for sure will be a spectacle. From the beginning on a new project in this realm has to be advertised in a fashion which generates the most impact possible. Already the announcement should be spectacular and correctly placed. Here a lot depends on the choice of the announcer. Since decades almost every championship bout in heavyweight boxing is announced by ↑Michael Buffer, who, together with his coin phrase “Let’s get … Continue reading
“If one wants to truly pwn, one must pwn in all games.” —Teh_Masterer … Continue reading