American Propaganda, Then and Now Wednesday, May 21, 2008

I've begun work on a new game based on Cold War ideas: the Atomic Bomb, the Red Scare and J. Edgar Hoover's FBI. So I've begun doing some research on the period: McCarthyism, American propaganda, and the blind jingoism of political discourse of the day.

As a result, I stumbled upon the work of artist Micah Wright. He creates what he calls "Remixed Propaganda" posters, taking classic works of this age (such as Rosie the Riveter of "We Can Do It!" fame) and Photoshopping them to provide new messages from the "Ministry of Homeland Security". His work is smart, poignant and extremely well executed. Here are some examples:

I've added Micah's book to my Amazon wish list and you should, too.

Another thing I stumbled across was an absolutely fascinating reprint of an interview of J. Edgar Hoover conducted by U.S. News and World Report, on the subject of communism. It's a fascinating look at what amounts to mass hysteria. Remember: this is words spoken by the man who runs the American federal police:

QDo your investigations show that the basic allegiance of a Communist is to a foreign government rather than our own Government?

A Most emphatically. As I mentioned in my previous answer, the ultimate loyalty of fully indoctrinated Communist Party members is to Moscow. Stalin is represented as the foremost leader of international Communism, the omnipotent oracle from whom all wisdom flows. The Communist Party is today a Trojan horse of disloyalty, coiled like a serpent in the very heart of America.

It may mouth sweet words of "peace," "democracy," "equality," and flourish gay slogans of "international solidarity" and "brotherhood of men," but its body and feet are from the Russian bear. Wherever the Trojan horse of Communist fifth columns has walked, the indelible footprints of Russian imperialism remain behind.

Read this next bit, replacing "communist" with "terrorist" and "club" with "mosque" or "madrasah", and suddenly you gain a whole new perspective on today's political landscape:

QHow do the Communist "cells" operate? Are these the training units out of which larger numbers of Communists are recruited?

A The basic unit of the Communist Party is the club. These clubs may be "shop" or "industrial" clubs, that is, Communist units within a special manufacturing or industrial plant, or "neighborhood" clubs, drawing members from residential areas. These clubs are co-ordinated through an elaborate apparatus, from ward, city, county, State and district organizations to national headquarters in New York City. Because of security reasons, they have now been divided into small groups consisting of three to five members. In these clubs the Communist Party conducts its basic and fundamental activities: instruction in Marxism-Leninism; organization of pressure campaigns; the passing out of leaflets and handbills; the circulation of petitions. Here Communist literature is sold; dues collected; instructions received from "higher officials" disseminated. The club is the basic operating unit of the Communist Party. Through the club, of course, new members are recruited and indoctrinated.

I think the imagery and rhetoric of the fifties still has a lot of power in a way that is uniquely American and should cause any thinking person to step back and question the hysteria he's surrounded by. If anyone has any additional suggestions for material, I'd love to hear about it.

Not for Morning Muzzle Wednesday, May 09, 2007

So this is what Google says the German guys at PlasticThinking.org said about S3QUENC3R:

S3QUENC3R is a small Game for occasionally. It resembles the play "Simon says". Types the numbers in reverse order its appearance.

I suppose "small Game for occasionally" means "casual game".

One guy did comment on the game, but Google's rendering of it wasn't entirely illuminating:

Definitely nix for Morgenmuffel… are still much to unausgeschlafen for sowas. The play is completely nicely, although no Uber Game; -) The Highscore is unfortunately limited on 1540. If one would turn there still a little at the speed, one could make the open ended.

So I tried a different site: PROMT-Online. Theirs was a bit better:

Definitively nothing for morning muzzle ... has still unslept off a lot to for something like that. The play itself is quite nice, even if no Uber-Game;-) Unfortunately, the high score is limited to 1540. If one became there still a little bit in the speed turn, one could do open ended.

Not sure what "morning muzzle" might refer to; this has got to be some sort of idiomatic thing. Anyway, he did call the gameplay "quite nice"... I'll ignore the bit about it not being the Uber-Game.

I have some ideas for a slightly more developed version of the game. Based on the feedback, the main features I'm considering are:

• A timer to keep the pressure on. This is more for feel than any real game function. I don't think people are taking too much time to repeat the sequences. I find myself playing at a decent clip just to keep my memory fresh.
• Adjustable difficulty levels.
• Switching back and forth between reverse and forward puzzles.
• Open-ended gameplay. It's always been my feeling that a good game should have no ceiling, though S3QUENC3R seemed to so naturally call for an end when all 9 digits were in play.

If anyone can shed some light on what "nix für Morgenmuffel" means, that would be greatly appreciated.

Jay is Games Link Dumped Me Friday, May 04, 2007

As in put me in his "Link Dump Friday" post. Not that he dumped me. I don't know Mr. Jay, and I'm sure whatever his reasons would have been for him ending our hypothetical relationship would have been mutual, and we would have stayed the best of friends. That is, if dump meant dump and not dump. Erm.

So I checked the stats on S3QUENC3R and couldn't believe my eyes: after averaging around 20 uniques a day since the release, I got over 550 unique visitors today!

And not a single comment, Digg, or posted score.

*sigh*

Well, I would call this experiment in generating traffic for a simple game a success, though I do find it interesting that there wasn't a single user in the hundereds that visited who would do any of the aforementioned second steps.

Theories?

Gnomification Friday, April 20, 2007

I've been gnomified (is that a word? um... I supposed it could be, what with the pleasant experience that I recently... experienced), and feel terribly good about it. All of you humble (and not-so-humble and furry gnomish types) web-surfers should find your way to the remarkable treasure trove of web-knowledge known as A Random Gnome's Random Lair and feast your eyes on the decidedly gnomish write-up of my game, S3QUENC3R!

And please give a lonely bull a hand by telling the world how much you "digg" my game!

S3QUENC3R Wednesday, April 18, 2007

I think I have worked out some of the kinks with S3QUENC3R, so here it goes a third time. I think people were having trouble running the game the first time, so if you would be so kind as to click here, you can load up the game and see if you still have a problem. I've had a hard time diagnosing the problem on my side, so please leave comments if you do encounter problems.

I've noticed that sometimes the game just hangs and doesn't start. If that happens, just refresh the browser. That should fix it. In the meantime, I will see what I can do about it.

But I'm excited for people to try out the game. Let me know if it's too hard, and post your high scores!

A Victim of Guitar Hero, Astoria, and Fear Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Since gnomie asked, I figured I'd briefly post about where Space Avenger is at the moment.

The short answer is: much further along but still not ready due to a number of real-life distractions. Between my move, my new job, my travels, the holidays and the like, Space Avenger has had to go to the back-burner.

And, lest you think that I have all good reasons for delaying the release of Space Avenger Beta 3, my girlfriend also bought me several new games for Christmas that have been sucking away my free time like never before:

• Guitar Hero (One),
• Katamari Damacy, and
• Soul Calibur III

Yes, they're all old games, but they're new to me, since I had foolishly jettisoned my PS2 in favor of an XBox. The PlayStation 2 still has the best games for any platform — hands down. There's no contest. I kept hearing about these great, innovative games coming out and they were all for the PS2. The XBox hasn't, IMHO, had a great game come out for it in a good while. Sorry, Microsoft. You've lost a customer due to your ridiculous assumption that the only games that people want to play are first-person shooters and GTA clones.

Space Avenger has a lot of work left before I can release it. The new version is far more complicated than previous versions and has required rewriting a good number of core game objects in order to make it work. Now that ship customization is becoming a core game element, I'm touching on a number of areas of Flash development that I haven't dealt with yet, so the learning curve has been pretty steep. This has also required a large number of new 3D models, which take a long time to create. I'm slowly improving in this area, but it's not easy.

At this point I think it would have been faster to start over from scratch, but then again, I didn't know that when I had first started the enhancements. C'est la vie. Now, of course, I'm staring down the myriad reasons that I will never finish the game. I am doing my best to ignore all of these fears and get back to doing development, but when I have all of these distractions and excuses, it's easy to let it fall by the wayside.