Max Vs. The Internet

From the official announcement:

Attached, please find a flyer for “Platform Studies: Material Constraint in Words, Images, and Computers,” a talk by Ian Bogost that will take place Monday, October 15, from 5:30 to 7:00 p.m. in THH 170. Bogost, a graduate of USC’s own comparative literature undergraduate program, is an Assistant Professor of Literature, Communication, and Culture at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is also a videogame researcher, critic, and designer, as well as an author and an entrepreneur. He co-founded Persuasive Games, a videogame studio, and Open Texture, an educational publisher. To learn more, please visit http://www.bogost.com/

Bogost on the Colbert Report after the jump.

Apparently, Will Wright won the US Express, successor race to the Cannonball Run, way back in 1980. As Ben put it, "oh damn, I need to do one totally ridiculous thing before I enter The Industry."

http://www.wired.com/cars/coolwheels/news/2007/10/will_wright

As I'm putting it now: What. A. Baller.

The documentary Wright was interviewed for, 32 Hours 7 Minutes by Cory Welles, sounds pretty snazzy too. From a design perspective, this sort of grandiose competition without spectacle fascinates me.

There's been a lot of hemming and hawing about "art" and what Bioshock means for the state of the medium and far too much meandering (b)logorrhea about "moral choice" (when, really, we're just being set up for a solid handful of paragraphs of that special ennui best called oh-good-Lord-please-spare-us-from-another-analysis-of-what-killing-little-sisters-means-to-you).

So let me cast my hat into the ring and add a wafer-thin opinion to everyone's Mr. Creosote-style ruminations:

Portal is a much more important game than Bioshock.

Think about it for a little bit. I'm going to, and then Portal will get the full post it deserves later.