i am not even really a fan of firefly -- i've seen it and liked it! -- though this sounds like probably the best idea anyone has ever had. that'd blow tim schafer out of the water.
. . . not that i . . . want to see tim schafer blown out of the water, or anything.
trust me -- i've been all the way around the blog world a dozen times, so i know the answer, and it is: they would immediately jump on the hate train. they would ride the hate train until it rolled off the edge of the darn earth.
yeah, the apple hatred is a weird one.
i once drafted an article for this website, entitled "why hate apple?" and i . . . just couldn't get around to finishing an intro in any way that didn't raise two or five red flags: "some apple-hater will immediately pounce on this".
apple have sort of double-edged-sworded themselves with the "cool" image thing. and that's a shame, because they really are focused near-entirely on Neat New Tech. it's just . . . they need that image and that marketing (and popularity) in order to ensure that they can continue to make new tech. (it is through the "paid beta testing" of apple OS X that we end up with more robust / exciting new UI features in windows 7 or 8 ("lol" that is an "apple fanboy joke" (i am not actually an apple fanboy)).)
i own a kindle and no iPad; i do 95% of my work on a windows 7 frankenbox i built with my bare hands. i play PC games with primarily a mouse and keyboard. i have a gibson SG and a fender telecaster. i own playstation 3, xbox 360, nintendo wii, sega dreamcast, and an iPhone. i own a kinect, a motion plus, a playstatio move . . . and an apple magic trackpad.
i am not brand-loyal to anybody.
so i'm just saying "this new apple trackpad is probably onto something neat".
it's just, yeah . . . i guess that, in trying to be succinct with that intro there it sounded like i was being the typical apple apologetic fanboy. i could have expanded / diluted the "apple products are the only ones i don't think are hideous". because though that's true, i was also a little too mean and confrontational about it. (again: i do 95% of my work / gaming on a windows desktop machine and will not be "upgrading" to a mac pro anytime soon!)
so, yay for coming to an understanding! kotaku comments threads can be fun like that.
stay tuned for my next article, "FUCK MICRO$OFT, APPLE OWNZ"
replying to this stupidly late: i am ambidextrous myself, with a slight right-handed bias. so i apologize for the slip-up in my attempt at objectivity! (i should have never admitted that right-handed bias . . . !)
i swear: i will write an article alllllll about bad menus at some point in the future. hmmm. i might even be cooking it up now.
i did like it, you jerkish anonymous internet bully-person!
did you even read the intro?
i wouldn't play something for forty hours if i didn't like it. god.
there ain't no god darn law that says you're not allowed to criticize something you like!
loosen up a bit, man!
you guys are probly going to have to replace jetpack joyride with ZiGGURAT in a couple days (jetpack joyride is 4 noobs)
i am ok with all these other ppl as long as i am still the only male columnist
hi! i don't know why i'm looking at this article right now, today, though i see that your comment was recent, so i'll reply:
1. i don't really see many obscure words here. do you mean "obscure" as in difficult to understand, or "obscure" as in they distract from some deeper point?
2. i am not trying very hard to give the impression that i am the coolest guy ever. i am trying sort of leisurely to be funny enough for people to read the ideas that i sort of want to eject into the world. if you envy me or detect that i am trying to make you envy me, i'm sorry. for one thing, game design is literally 99% algebra and spreadsheets, and mostly about as fun as working at a cardboard box factory. for another thing, i have a prostate tumor and no health insurance. so forgive me for maybe-accidentally trying to make myself feel cool, because if i were writing about my bloody urine instead of "lol hair care products" it'd be depressing for all of us.
the more i think about it (in my line of work, i am forced to think about it a lot), the more convinced i am that, at the very least, trackpads -- not just ones by apple -- are at least better than kinect.
the large bluetooth apple magic trackpad has six "click zones" arranged in a 3x2 grid on the bottom two-thirds of the device. the darn thing knows when you're pushing the click button with one, two, or three fingers! and the glass friction is so perfect that it knows when you're pushing hard enough to be About To Click, as opposed to just touching. i was messing with one at a business associate's desk today and it just blew my mind. i didn't know it could do that -- i really want a custom starcraft 2 setup with two of those trackpads. it would be awesome.
so. not gushing about apple -- just gushing about how neat technology is. sorry about my hyperbowling! i'm just excited. i've realized i'll never be able to buy a jetpack or a flying car, so this is the sort of thing that excites me.
BOTTOM LINE: i at least want these modern trackpads to be as recognized as mouses. so i need to hyperbowl a little bit to put that message out there. too many jerks be immediately jumping up with "trackpads always suck and always will end of story!!!!!!!!!!!!" (as you can see many, many times in this comments thread.) trackpads are a darn a weird thing to be pseudo-racist about.
anyway: the end! (of this comment)
play it and join uhhssssssssssssssssssss
the facebook version is neat; the iOS version is free as well, and also very neat.
all you get for paying money is "unlimited turns". the game is nothing -- and depressing -- with unlimited turns. it's a skill game through and through, and it's one of the most brilliantly-designed brain-teasers i've ever witnessed. and i am a heck of a brain-teaser-witnesser! trust me: i witness brain-teasers every thirty seconds (many of them disguised as ordinary emails).
have you played triple town?
i am pretty sure you haven't. if you had, you wouldn't be insinuating it's not a "real game".
it's about as real as games get.
hey pal,
i realize you're trying to be funny!
though here's a thing:
triple town is awesome. play it. you obviously haven't played it, and are being a presumptuous jerk.
THE END
i can sort of understand your accusations, though it's not the "too long" criticism that confuses me. it's the "op-ed" part. that is just such a serious term. i know that, on some level, all op-eds involve the writer laughing at him/herself or some aspect of the world, though i don't imagine they're laughing as vigorously or evilly as i was while i wrote this.
what i'm saying is: if i was laughing every line, i might as well put it all up.
it's like: we're talking about the way videogames' worlds would probably smell. we're not talking about a matter of life and death or of war and peace. the "message" is "not important". it's just for fun.
i think people complaining about the length of a purposely stupid and fun internet article would better spend their energy complaining about the length of other stuff. like a supermarket checkout line: like how fry's' checkout system (customers queue up in a single big snaking line, and are invited to the next open register as it opens) allows lazy cashiers to be lazier, because if they take their sweet time, they can possibly get away with dealing with only four customers an hour. (i've done the research on this!)
people like you would be more useful to the world by complaining about stuff like that! not by complaining about the length of some thing that is (decidedly) not part of people's everyday life.
so, going back to your original post -- "conveying the idea effectively" in the case of this article is: what? describing the way game worlds would smell? is your idea of "effectively" that i would just say "gears of war" and then have a list of household objects?
i'm not trying to be snippy or insult you, here. you present your question in a manner that doesn't immediately make you look like a jerk. and you gave me an opportunity to remember that fry's thing.
seriously, pokemon is a world where most people (well, all the cool people, anyway) have six pets with them at all times -- and hundreds! more in storage -- and it's okay to bring pets into department stores and public transit. how pleasant could that be? i'm pretty sure it'd be awful.
that's all i'm saying -- that i hesitate whenever thinking of getting a pet, and i can declare immediately that a world full of pets would be scary for the nose.
when we move into our larger office, i'm definitely going to have a dog in there. a corgi. it'll be the whole company's dog. how about that!
man, you must be crunching some psychedelic cereal to look at this article and then feel not absolutely balls-to-walls clown-shoe ridiculous when accusing it of being "too long" for an "op-ed" :-/
i just . . . couldn't give up that much of my living space.
i purposely got an apartment that allows dogs -- lord knows my neighbors have about twelve of them, and barking must feel like a constant orgasm for them, because they're barking all day -- because i thought i'd get a little corgi puppy.
then: i looked on the back side of the curtains the previous tenant left behind: they were just . . . coated in cat hair. it was disgusting. i realize cats and corgis have far different hair densities. still, it turned me off of the pet thing, and it's been a year. i don't think i'm going to end up with that corgi after all.
actually, i've been telling people for years that my "blog schtick" is to write like seanbaby, and then delete the punchline off the end of every paragraph. i do this a lot! i type a final sentence, lol quite vigorously at it, and then cut it off.
this lends the writing a mystifying and bizarre quality.
it could be the blog equivalent of an RPG silent protagonist: imagine your own punchline.
oh no maybe i'm bad at internetting after all :(
i wanted to mention this in my article, though i was too afraid of skim-reading commenters immediately hitting their favorite forum with news flashes of "look at this jerkoff who hates earthbound". and i certainly wouldn't have wanted that!
so: thanks for bringing it up for me.
or glue (i considered this)
