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Friday, March 23, 2012
Top Stories from the last 24 hours
Haven't Changed the Way You Drive in Years? Then You're Probably Driving All Wrong
March 23rd, 2012Top StoryHaven't Changed the Way You Drive in Years? Then You're Probably Driving All WrongBy Melanie Pinola
The new take: AAA, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and driving instructors teach that you should keep your hands lower, at 9 and 3 o'clock, or even lower, at 8 and 4. MSNBC says this change is partly to protect our hands and head, because if airbags go off, they're more likely to injure your hands that are higher up on the steering wheel and then slam your hands into your head. So apparently it's a "stop hitting yourself" adjustment. You may also have more control or improved stability in that "parallel position", another term for the 9 and 3 steering wheel position, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety's guidelines for new drivers (PDF). Finally, that "hand over hand" turning maneuver you were taught? Also out. Now:
This, too, is for safety reasons to avoid the perils of a deploying airbag. So there you have it. News to us. How about you? Get with the times: You're driving all wrong | MSNBC via NextDraft Photo remixed by Christopher Elwell(Shutterstock)  |
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Video Games Should Be Funnier, Says Tim Schafer
March 23rd, 2012Top StoryVideo Games Should Be Funnier, Says Tim SchaferBy Jason Schreier
Speaking to some two hundred people at the NYU Game Center Thursday night, Schafer shared his thoughts on the current state of the gaming industry, discussing the nature of adventure games, his personal favorite titles, and that one important tool that many developers fail to use: humor. If you go and ask a game development team why they're not making funny games, the Psychonauts creator said, half-joking, they'd say it's because nobody's made one that sold very much. "Comedy's really scary," he said. But it's also really necessary. "If the game is not funny, you're missing something," Schafer said, telling the crowd how he used comedy as a tool to solve problems in The Secret of Monkey Island. While working as a programmer/writer for developer Lucasfilm, Schafer was tasked with writing the scene where protagonist Guybrush Threepwood and Governor Elaine Marley meet on the beach and fall in love. In five lines. "You can't write a serious scene that has a pirate and a governor fall in love in five lines," Schafer said. "Humor is a tool to cover up the fact that this is not a solvable problem." So he wrote the scene as if it were a joke, peppering the dialogue with terms like "honey pumpkin" and "plunder bunny." Without that humor, it wouldn't have worked. But by playing it up to absurd proportions, Schafer was able to throw logic under the rug and leave players laughing instead of scratching their heads. Schafer, who has made headlines recently for his monumentally successful bout with crowdfunding site Kickstarter, didn't give any specifics on his new $3.4 million point-and-click adventure game, though he did assure the crowd that it will be in 2D (because it's cheaper). He promised that it would be true to the nature of adventure games, as nostalgic Kickstarter backers might demand. But it will also have new ideas, he added—because "people like to be surprised." And—like all of Schafer-helmed studio Double Fine's projects—the upcoming crowdfunded adventure game will aim to be funny. "If you don't have anything funny to say about a situation, the player will realize something's fake," Schafer said, bringing up the oft-cited pot-smashing of Zelda games, in which you can destroy and steal from peoples' homes with reckless abandon. When those townspeople don't react, the illusion is broken. Suddenly you realize that you're playing a video game.  Speaking at the NYU Game Center in Manhattan last night, Tim Schafer showed off a prototype for a cancelled Double Fine game that used emotions like anger and fear as puzzle-solving tools.Maybe that's why Schafer has fallen in love with what he calls "wacky Japanese games"—titles like Katamari Damacy, LocoRoco, and Okami. Even when they're melodramatic, those types of games still never seem to take themselves too seriously. And they're atmospheric, Schafer points out. They're packed with emotions. "Those things that the King of All Cosmos says are just so crazy," Schafer said, referring to the planet-sized Katamari character. Last year, Schafer and his team developed a prototype for a narrative-heavy game that was quite literally driven by emotions. Instead of using verbs or commands to solve puzzles in the Kinect-controlled adventure game, players would use gestures to manipulate characters' feelings, forcing them into emotions like fear, anger, and love. The publisher backed out after the final prototype, so we'll probably never see that game, Schafer said. One fan asked Schafer what he thought of the Mass Effect 3 ending controversy. Though the designer said he hasn't paid much attention for fear of spoilers—he still hasn't even beaten Mass Effect 2—he mused that he "always winds up defending the author" in situations like this. "Games aren't made by an autonomous robot," Schafer said, "they're made by people. And those people have a point of view on the world and that's interesting. Connecting with those people is what makes art art for me." Another crowd member asked if Schafer was worried about that sort of fan pressure now that he has 87,139 backers to worry about. Does the thought of living up to all of those expectations stress him out? "It's not that stressful to get a whole bunch of money all of a sudden," Schafter said. "It's kind of relaxing."  | |
Death Games for Kids and the GOP's Kickin' New Sketchers
March 23rd, 2012Top StoryDeath Games for Kids and the GOP's Kickin' New SketchersBy Mobutu Sese Seko
The man who said that was Eric Fehrnstrom, which would be fine if he were Professor Farnsworth's nemesis on Futurama or President of the Association of People Who Share the Same Name as Charlatans Groucho Marx Played. Unfortunately, he's Mitt's charlatan: Fehrnstrom is his Communications Director. Fehrnstrom's further comment, that you "kind of shake it up just restart all over again" only made things worse. Even out of context, it's an instantly recognizable jerkoff comment, in a country where most people under 40 grew up with video games and know that the most intolerable asshole in the world is the guy who doesn't like how the game's going and hits RESET. It's even worse in the context of Mitt Romney, whose campaign conduct alone inspires "reboot" lines even before his robotic demeanor practically screams for them. All of this is funny. You're already launching something comically special when a guy whose only job is "messaging" and "using words" manages to use all of the bad ones, badly. But Fehrnstrom breakfasted on his feet, on CNN, a little after 5:00 a.m., and by midday Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich had already been photographed with Etch A Sketches. Both men are quicker and more natural than Romney, and they made the unintended joke funnier. Newt had his trademark fat smirk of cherubic naughtiness while talking about Romney and ended by handing a little girl the Etch A Sketch and saying, "She could now be a presidential candidate." To bring this back to video games, "HE'S ON FIRE!" Even the Etch A Sketch itself was sublimely absurd. This was the big "impact" talking point of the day, and it involved former speaker Hugo Drax (R-Moon) and former senator Gregory Seven (R-Dictatus Papae) holding children's toys-deriving significant, bolstering meaning from children's toys. It never would have occurred to them that an antiquated, rigid device whose only positive output is two-dimensional and easily destroyed might as well speak to the precarious, Manichaean economics they all share. It also probably didn't occur to them that anybody not already deeply invested in this tedious slapfight would instantly start thinking of other Republican family games and toys:
That said, this latest Romney-related gaffe probably won't arrest his Tampa-bound slog, even though everyone knows he's a horrible fraud. Aside from the unintentional comedy, all Santorum and Gingrich did was tell an oft-told story with a new prop. Mitt Romney's ship of state steers whichever way the wind blows. In 2002, in liberal Massachusetts, Romney vowed to "preserve and protect a woman's right to choose"; now he's anti-abortion. Even as late as 2008, he said "I like [insurance] mandates" when they were a Heritage Foundation scheme to co-opt Democrats' dominance on the health care issue. Once Obama established them on the national level, Romney steered right, abjuring one of his decent accomplishments and heading straight toward electability. And while, yes, presidents tend to move toward the middle once elected (every Obama supporter currently enjoying a public-option health plan can testify to this), Romney likely cannot move very far in that direction. The GOP's tests of ideological purity have grown so stringently Stalinist that each election cycle sees someone's pictures cut out of the group photos and disappeared. Christine "Not a Witch" O'Donnell thumped Mike Castle, who died via the Tea Party ordeal by water. John "Ernie" Boehner is our first Muppet Speaker of the House, occasionally weeping with discomfort from Eric Cantor's arm manipulating his orange ass and shoving him rightward. They even went after notorious prig Orrin Hatch and might have won if they'd kept themselves from astroturfing so hard. In this climate, the idea that Romney could move fully to the center is silly-especially if he wants funding out of the House. No, what makes this a big deal is that Mitt's Communications Director gave away the ending. Everyone—especially Democrats, who watched Obama go from lightweight FDR on the stump to Clinton 2.0 in the White House—knows that their chosen presidential savior will tack away from them as soon as he palm-slaps the Bible and starts swearing oaths. Fehrnstrom's obnoxious truth-belch was like owning a special screener copy of Back to the Future. You watch it once; it's normal. The second time, though, with just 10 minutes to spare—as Marty's desperate to get the DeLorean down Hill Valley's main drag, to the clock tower, and Doc struggles to reconnect the wires—the whole thing pauses, and Bob Zemeckis says, "Why are you tense? Why are you holding onto the arm of your couch? You know Marty gets back to 1985." Some people are bound to be annoyed at spoiling a 27-year-old movie. But this political tale—of pandering toward the wings in the primary and slouching to the middle once in power—has been a certainty at least since 1969. Still, it excites and terrifies us to think that this time it could be different: Marty doesn't go home; the Democrat doesn't turn into a craven sellout; the Republican reaches across the aisle and starts making out with Harry Reid, their flesh melting together. We need these polite fictions, either because we contribute to erotic fan message boards or, more likely, because they ward off despair. They're another unreal buffer between the sentimental ghosts of those political truths we dreamt about in civics class and the vengeful, capricious specters that haunt us between inauguration days. Illustration by Jim Cooke. "Mobutu Sese Seko" is founder of the blog Et tu, Mr. Destructo? and a former political blogger for Vice.com. He has also contributed to GQ.com and SomethingAwful.com. You can follow him on Twitter and Facebook and email him here.  |
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