Posts Tagged ‘games’
“As for memes, the word ‘meme’ is a cliche, which is to say it’s already a meme”*…
(Roughly) Daily began nearly two decades ago as a (roughly daily) email to friends. One of the earliest “editions” featured a then-current video (and the myriad reactions to and appropriations of it)…
As the Internet began crystallizing into its modern form—one that now arguably buttresses society as we know it—its anthropology of common language and references matured at a strange rate. But between the simple initialisms that emerged by the ’90s (ROFL!) and the modern world’s ecosystem of easily shared multimedia, a patchwork connection of users and sites had to figure out how to establish a base of shared references.
In some ways, the Internet as we know it really began… 20 years ago [this week], when a three-word phrase blew up: “All Your Base.”
On that day, a robo-voiced music video went live at Newgrounds.com, one of the Internet’s earliest and longest-lasting dumping grounds of Flash multimedia content, and went on to become one of the most beloved Internet videos of the 21st century. Though Flash support has since been scrapped across the entire Web-browsing ecosystem, Newgrounds continues to host the original video in a safe Flash emulator, if you’d like to see it as originally built instead of flipping through dozens of YouTube rips.
In an online world where users were previously drawn to the likes of the Hamster Dance, exactly how the heck did this absurdity become one of the Internet’s first bona fide memes?
One possible reason is that the “All Your Base Are Belong To Us” video appealed to the early Internet’s savviest users, since it was sourced from an unpopular ’90s video game. Zero Wing launched on the Sega Genesis in 1992… Across the earliest post-BBS Internet, underappreciated 8-bit and 16-bit games changed hands at a crazy rate thanks to small file sizes and 56K modems—and if you were an early Internet user, you were likely a target audience for activities like emulating a Sega Genesis on a Pentium II-powered PC.
That was the first step to exposing the world to Zero Wing‘s inadvertently hilarious text, translated from Japanese to English by an apparent amateur. Classic Japanese games are littered with crappy translations, and even mega-successful publishers like Nintendo are guilty of letting bad phrases slip into otherwise classic games. But Zero Wing soundly trounced other examples of wacky mistranslations thanks to its dramatic opening sequence pitting the generic “CAPTAIN” against a half-robot, half-demon creature in a robe named “CATS.”
Its wackiness circulated on the early Internet as a tiny GIF, with each of its silly phrases (“How are you gentlemen!!”, “Somebody set up us the bomb”) pulling significant weight in terms of weirdly placed clauses and missing punctuation. Early Internet communities poked fun at the sequence by creating and sharing gag images that had the silly text inserted in various ways. But it wasn’t until the February 2001 video, as uploaded by a user who went by “Bad-CRC,” that the meme’s appeal began to truly explode. The video presents the original Sega Genesis graphics, dubbed over with monotone, machine-generated speech reading each phrase. “You are on your way to destruction” in this voice is delightfully silly stuff…
Newgrounds was one of many dumping grounds for Flash animations, making it easier for friends to share links not only to videos but also free online games—usually in ways that school computer labs didn’t necessarily block, which led kids to devour and share their favorites when teachers weren’t carefully watching students’ screens. And in the case of “All Your Base,” its general lack of vulgarity made it easier to reach kids without drawing parental ire. This wasn’t like the early ’90s Congressional hearings against violent and sexual video games. It was just… weird.
And, gosh, it still is. Yes, this video’s 20th anniversary will likely make you feel old as dirt [indeed it does], but that doesn’t mean the video itself aged badly. There’s still something timeless about both the wackiness and innocence of so many early-Internet pioneers sending up a badly translated game. And in an age where widely disseminated memes so often descend into cruelty or shock value, it’s nice to look back at an age when memes were merely quite stupid.
Back in the day, memes didn’t benefit from centralized services like YouTube and Twitter: “An anniversary for great justice: Remembering “All Your Base” 20 years later.”
See also: “All Your Base Are Belong To Us has turned 20.”
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As we watch time fly, we might recall that it was on this date in 1986 that the Soviet Union launched the base unit of the Mir Space Station into orbit. Mir was the first modular space station; it was systematically expanded from 1986 to 1996. And while it was slated to last five years, it operated for fifteen– outliving the Soviet Union– after which it was replaced by the International Space Station.
(We might also note that it was on this date in 1962 that John Glenn, in Friendship 7, became the first American to orbit the earth. Yuri Gagarin had become the first person to accomplish this feat when he orbited the Earth in a Soviet Vostok spacecraft on April 12, 1961.)
“The tendency to perceive a connection or meaningful pattern between unrelated or random things (such as objects or ideas)”*…
I am a game designer with experience in a very small niche. I create and research games designed to be played in reality. I’ve worked in Alternate Reality Games (ARGs), LARPs, experience fiction, interactive theater, and “serious games.” Stories and games that can start on a computer, and finish in the real world. Fictions designed to feel as real as possible. Games that teach you. Puzzles that come to life all around the players. Games where the deeper you dig, the more you find. Games with rabbit holes that invite you into wonderland and entice you through the looking glass.
When I saw QAnon, I knew exactly what it was and what it was doing. I had seen it before. I had almost built it before. It was gaming’s evil twin. A game that plays people. (cue ominous music)
QAnon has often been compared to ARGs and LARPs and rightly so. It uses many of the same gaming mechanisms and rewards. It has a game-like feel to it that is evident to anyone who has ever played an ARG, online role-play (RP) or LARP before. The similarities are so striking that it has often been referred to as a LARP or ARG. However this beast is very very different from a game.
It is the differences that shed the light on how QAnon works and many of them are hard to see if you’re not involved in game development. QAnon is like the reflection of a game in a mirror, it looks just like one, but it is inverted…
Read on for a full and fascinating (and frankly, frightening) explanation from Reed Berkowitz, head of Curiouser LLC (@soi). Playing with reality: “A Game Designer’s Analysis Of QAnon.”
Then consider Roland Barthes‘ (painfully–prescient) “The World of Wrestling.”
* Merriam-Webster’s definition of “apophenia.” See also “Being Amused by Apophenia.”
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As we wrestle with reality, we might recall that it was on this date in 1856 that Millard Fillmore was nominated for the Presidency by the (altogether-accurately named far-right nativist) Know-Nothing Party. Fillmore, who had been elected Vice President in 1848 had ascended to the presidency in 1850, when Zachary Taylor died, but then failed to get his own party’s– the Whig’s– nomination to run for re-election in 1852. In 1856, Fillmore turned to the Know-Nothings in (an ultimately unsuccessful) attempt actually to be elected to the highest office.
He was finally trumped by Gerald Ford, who was not even elected– but was appointed in 1973 by Richard Nixon– to the Vice-Presidency, then assumed the top job on Nixon’s resignation in 1974. Ford beat back a primary challenge from Ronald Reagan to win the Republican nomination in 1976, but lost to Jimmy Carter.
“If Ancestry or its businesses are acquired… we will share your Personal Information with the acquiring or receiving entity”*…
If you’ve never before considered how valuable an asset your DNA might be, you are far behind. Some of the biggest direct-to-consumer DNA sequencing companies are busy monetizing their large-scale genomics databases, with hopes to shape the burgeoning DNA economy and reap its rewards. And if you spit in a cup for one of these companies, your DNA might already be under the corporate control of some of the richest firms on Wall Street.
With their purchase of Ancestry.com late last year, the private equity firm Blackstone now owns the DNA data of 18 million people. And Blackstone is currently ramping up efforts to monetize the data amassed among the companies it owns. But experts say Wall Street firms’ interest in genomics poses new and unforeseen threats, and risks sowing distrust among DNA donors. Without trust, could we miss out on the genome’s real value?
Since the global financial crisis of 2008, private equity firms—which buy up and reshape diverse private companies—have quietly overtaken traditional investment banks like Goldman Sachs as the “dominant players in the financial world,” according to the Financial Times. It’s been a rough tenure so far. While private equity mega-deal hits have made billions for investors, often the companies acquired pay the price, as with high-profile flops including mismanaged music group EMI and bankrupt retailer Toys R Us. The industry has become “the poster child for financial firms that suck value out of the economy,” said U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, while introducing an act to Congress aimed at reining in private equity “vampires.”
In December the biggest, most dominant private equity company of them all, the Blackstone Group, Inc., which boasts half a trillion dollars in assets under management, made a dramatic entry into the genomics space when it bought a controlling stake in Ancestry.com as part of the deal that valued the genealogy and gene testing company at $4.7 billion. And with that one stroke of the pen, the firm acquired the largest trove of DNA data assembled by any consumer gene tester. If your own DNA sequence is included in this collection, it exists on servers somewhere along with the genomes of 18 million people from at least 30 countries.
Announcing the deal, David Kestnbaum, a senior managing director at Blackstone said he foresees Ancestry growing by “investing behind further data, functionality, and product development.” At the same time, many privacy-concerned watchers had the same question: How does Blackstone aim to monetize Ancestry’s massive database, which includes users’ most sensitive genomic data and family histories?
Those lingering worries were ignited in the final days of 2020 by revelations buried in U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings, and unearthed by Bloomberg, that showed Blackstone will begin to “package and sell data” from the companies it acquires as a fresh revenue stream.
For any entrepreneur or investor in the genomics space who knows the industry needs investment to realize its dramatic potential, the question is vexed. Are deals that bring sensitive data under the control of private equity mega-funds a much-needed path to realizing the industry’s goals? Or do they threaten to derail the rapid progress that consumer gene science is making?…
A Wall Street giant’s big bet on Ancestry.com drives home the financial realities– and the privacy challenges– facing the consumer genomic revolution: “Is Your DNA Data Safe in Blackstone’s Hands?“
* from Ancestry.com’s EULA, September 23, 2020 (between Blackstone announcing its plan to buy and the deal completing)
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As we appraise the personal, we might send carefully-deduced birthday greetings to Samuel “Sam” Loyd; he was born on this date in 1841. A chess player, chess composer, puzzle author, and recreational mathematician, he was a member of the Chess Hall of Fame (for both his play and for his exercises, or “problems”). He gained broader posthumous fame when his son published a collection of his mathematical and logic puzzles, Cyclopedia of 5000 Puzzles after his father’s death. As readers can see here and here, his puzzles still delight.
Loyd’s most famous puzzle was the 14-15 Puzzle, which he produced in 1878. His original authorship is debated; but in any case, his version created a craze that swept America to such an extent that employers put up notices prohibiting playing the puzzle during office hours.
“We don’t stop playing because we grow old. We grow old because we stop playing.”*…
In the Netflix show The Queen’s Gambit, based on a novel by Walter Tevis, a burly custodian in an orphanage basement, hunched over a chess board, intrigues a nine-year-old girl named Beth Harmon, who sees him playing, under a dim light, against himself. This Mr. Shaibel can tell Beth’s a bit desperate to understand what he’s doing, and begrudgingly agrees to teach her to play. At night, high on the tranquilizers the staff administers to orphans—this is the early 1960s—she practices tactics in bed, staring up at a chess board that she hallucinates on the ceiling. Beth advances rapidly in skill, until Mr. Shaibel, who plays in a club, can no longer reserve how impressed he is at her abilities. He invites a fellow chess player, who heads the local high school chess group, to meet Beth, and recruit her. She ends up playing the boys in the club simultaneously, including last year’s champion. A crowd of students forms as she bests each one.
As I watched Beth dreamily focus on her imaginary chess board, simulating alternative possibilities, I thought about how that must be shaping her brain, particularly the part dedicated to planning and decision-making, the frontal cortex. Compared to other regions, it’s uniquely malleable, or plastic. Stanford behavioral endocrinologist Robert Sapolsky calls it “the brain’s hotspot for plasticity.” Our brains are changing, forming new neural connections and severing others all the time, of course. But at a young age the brain’s plasticity is much more pronounced. This is something that Tom Vanderbilt discussed in his Nautilus feature, “Learning Chess at 40,” in which he reports what it was like taking up the game with his four-year-old daughter. Neil Charness, a psychologist who has studied cognition through chess for years, told Vanderbilt, “If you’re talking about two novices, your daughter would probably pick things up about twice as fast as you could.” In that way it’s like learning a language—children can assimilate the game’s complex rules and action much more intuitively and quickly than an adult.
This means that chess offers a unique opportunity. It could perhaps be the ultimate window through which we might see how our mental powers shift during our lives. This is because the moves of professional chess players in games, going back over a century, are recorded, and so researchers can objectively analyze the quality of players’ moves over their career, inferring cognitive rise and decline. And that’s exactly what a recent study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, did…
How a game that dates from the 6th century can teach us about ourselves and how we change as we age: “Scientists Analyzed 24,000 Chess Matches to Understand Cognition.”
The study- is here: “Life cycle patterns of cognitive performance over the long run.”
* George Bernard Shaw
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As we consider our next move, we might recall that it was on this date in 1877 that the first meeting of the Manhattan Chess Club was held; the entrance fee was $1 per person and dues were $4 per year. MCC was, until it closed in 2002, the second-oldest chess club in the U.S. (The oldest, The Mechanics Library Chess Club in San Francisco, first met in 1854– and is still in operation.)
“Sometimes the only way to move forward is to revisit the things in your past that were holding you back”*…
Adobe Flash was the language of choice for a generation of game developers, helping kickstart an indie revolution on the still-young web of the 1990s and 2000s. But it withered on the proprietary and insecure vine, and both web browsers and Adobe have now canned it, threatening countless games and interactive presentations with the memory hole. The Internet Archive comes to the rescue, not only archiving the flash files but emulating the player itself, allowing history to live on.
“The Internet Archive has begun emulating Flash Animations, Games and Toys in a new collection,” wrote archivist Jason Scott on Twitter. “It’s at https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_flash and it’s going to be past 1,000 items in 24 hours. You can add your own and get them running, and the animations have never ran smoother or better.”…
From our friends at Boing Boing: “Internet Archive turns on Flash emulation, already has 1000 items to check out.”
* “Barry Allen” (The Flash)
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As we celebrate that what’s old is new again, we might recall that it was on this date in 1915 that Albert Einstein presented the Einstein Field Equation to the Prussian Academy of Sciences. Einstein soon after elaborated it into the set of 10 equations that account for gravitation in the curved spacetime that he described in his General Theory of Relativity; they are used to determine spacetime geometry.
(German mathematician David Hilbert reached the same conclusion, and actually published the equation before Einstein– though Hilbert, who was a correspondent of Einstein’s, never suggested that Einstein’s credit was inappropriate.)
