Peter Van Dyke

In case you missed it, Tomb Raider: Underworld was recently released to mediocre reviews and even less excitement, but the kicker was this twitter message posted by Guy Cocker, UK editor for Gamespy:

call from Eidos--if you're planning on reviewing Tomb Raider Underworld at less than an 8.0, we need you to hold your review till Monday.

It was later confirmed (and then denied, of course) by two different industry spokespeople that Eidos was indeed trying to stifle low reviews of the new Tomb Raider game in order to keep metacritic ratings high.

This is not the first time this has happened - not too long ago Eidos embroiled itself in controversy over Kane & Lynch for posting fake reviews/scores of the game on its website. This was in response to a slew of bad reviews the game received because it was - get this - not that good of a game.

The overwhelming opinion of the internet is that the best way to stack metacritic scores is to make a good game. Sounds right to me.

Posted by Peter Van Dyke at 5:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Google has decided to shut down its little not-game interactive chat room experiment called "Lively." Currently, plans are to shutter the service on December 31st, putting the almost 1.2 thousand users out of a place to chat on the internet. But seriously, folks.

It's not every day that Google actually shuts down a service it has invested time and money into, but really, who didn't see this coming? The stylistic art was kind of interesting, but there's not really anything to do in their little rooms but chat. Which I guess is fine, but that's not much of a hook.

Sad times for the users who liked to hang out in the Pyjama Partie room though:

According to a post on Google's blog, they want to "ensure that we prioritize our resources and focus more on our core search, ads and apps business."

Check it out before December 31st if you want to see what this (failed) experiment actually was.

Posted by Peter Van Dyke at 11:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"A Day in Highland Park"

Conceptual: This postcard is both longer and thinner (in terms of ratio) than a normal postcard, and the reason is to allow a progression and to capture aspects of a moment more than just to show a picture. A postcard like this could be one that is purchased, or one that is made from a machine. One could write on the post card, or one could send it without anything on it - the point is to receive the images, not the post card. The images provide the personality and personalization.

Absent of any text, this post card is also representative of a moment of time, with both front and back two different perspectives on the same scene.

Posted by Peter Van Dyke at 10:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This month's Believer has a very interesting piece by Chris Cobb on conceptual art and the process by which it is created. The article is entitled "A Perfunctory Affair," referencing a quote by Sol LeWitt from his piece "Paragraphs on Conceptual Art" from Artforum, published in 1967. The quote in question (which also kicks off the article):

When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes a machine that makes the art.

Really, the most interesting part of this process for me right now is the way it is affected by intellectual property and copyright/patent law. Currently, musical artists hold several different copyrights (assuming that they were not cheated out of them by their label) for each song they have written. When considering how one would go about the process of creating conceptual or procedural art, a patent can apply to the process by which you create the art, and a copyright would apply to both the artistic concept and the final product.

Arstechnica's Julian Sanchez provides an interesting analysis and discussion of these concepts in his article "Conceptual Art and IP." In it, he highlights exactly why I find this discussion interesting: Where does your work end and mine begin? Exactly how different in process and execution does my piece need to be for me to be free from liability? When your process informs my final piece, are both my property? Are either?

Interesting enough to warrant more discussion than we currently have on the subject, I think. Do these types of process patents apply when you're leading a player through your piece - is the way that the player experiences the piece open to patent, simply because it's a process by which a piece is created, when the piece is a space open to exploration?

Posted by Peter Van Dyke at 2:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In a moment of startling innovative clarity, Fujitsu has done something fairly interesting: They have developed a technology, largely aimed at cars, that would allow a driver to see a 360-degree view of the space around their car.

Specifically, this is a video technology that takes pictures from around an object (in this case a car), and composites the images in much the same way that Google Street View does, through in real time and with the ability to display at a given angle to increase visibility for a driver.

Fujitsu envisions this technology integrated into most cars to help drivers park their cars and merge into traffic, but there are questions as to whether or not it would make a crash more likely while merging just because drivers would have to adapt to a new system.

However, this is pretty cool technology and I'm sure there are lots of other applications that we can think of for a chip that can composite four streams of images into improvised video... Maybe some kind of helmet for bikers with an eyepiece? Pretty expensive, but pretty awesome. Plus I could listen to my iPod and write my bike at the same time.

Posted by Peter Van Dyke at 4:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)