Mini Review: Section 9

Last night I got the chance to finally see Section 9. I had been wanting to see it for a while, since people kept asking me if I saw it and telling me how awesome it was when I answered in the negative. I will try to keep spoilers to a minimum in this review. The basic plot of beginning of the movie is that some aliens crash land in Johannesburg, South Africa and are cordoned off in ghetto camps, and generally treated like non sentient beings. The movie starts with a millitary group called the MNU trying to move them to a smaller camp further away from humans. The location is of course very intentional, and the writer/director is from S. Africa. They don't hit you over the head with this, and the apartheid is never mentioned, though it is enough that the viewers carry this in the backs of their minds as a connecting theme. It was an interesting movie, and I did enjoy it, over all it was a very good science fiction action movie, and more than that had a lot of "brain" to it, and things to think about. However, I thought there were aspects that were lacking. As someone interested in anthropology I was disappointed how little we got too little a look at the alien's culture. They like cat food for some reason, but there's no cultural reason why that'd be signifigent, and so just comes off as this quant thing thrown in. Also, I thought the main character was just a plain ass through most of the movie, and had a hard time connecting or feeling sympathy for him. Perhaps that was the point that I connected more with the alien. At first I thought it was just cluelessness but he appears pretty quickly to have no problems with outright genocide and mistreatment. I liked the sort of documentary style of the shooting of the movie, employing many "head cam" shots and interviews with people interspersed, and yet it didn't interfere with the action sequences and the story of the movie. Now that I've seen it, I agree it was a pretty great movie, and I recommend it. I was thinking that it may be interesting for people to try to develop a culture and history for this race of aliens. Other people interested?

A week without posts

Wow. It's been nearly a week since I last posted. Sorry, to those who may be reading this. My computer's still on the outs. I'm currently working also on applying for a cool job that I hope I get, but I'm not sure I should be more specific than that right now. So yeah, vagueness.

Amazing...

This one of the most amazing things I've ever seen, interactive little computers that interact that communicate with each other. I want one of these!

TED talk - Siftables (YouTube video, 7 minutes)

Mini Review: End of the Spear

On the flght I read through "The end of the spear" by Steve Saint. I thought it was perticularly fitting since I was going to ecuador.

The story of his father was widely published throughout the world when he and four others were killed by the "Aucas", or Wodoni who they were trying to make contact with in the jungle of ecuador.

Steve Saint tells the story of his living with there very people who killed his father as a boy, and how the lives of a tribe that lived with killing and hate turned around. The story has humor and is deeply moving, and was a truely fascinating read.

I was also very fascinated as a sort of hobby anthropologist the description of the culture, and how outsiders did their best to fit in to such a different world. There was the opposite factor of wodani trying to fit into the culture of ecuador and america (which are fairly different from each other!) that is poignent, funny and fascinating.

Over all, it is very well written. I thought perhaps the time skips were a little confusing, but I figured out pretty quickly when it was supposed to be. I highly recomend this book, especially for those who enjoy biographies.

Just got back from Ecuador... no my arms aren't tired.

I just got back from a 9 day trip to Ecuador. It was quite an experience, and especially interesting going to a place with another culture and sets of customs. I guess "thrown into" would be a good description. Some of those customs did seem pretty strange as an outsider (as I'd imagine mine would seem strange to them), and even the locals didn't exactly know how those customs were formed (for example, the brides maids wearing red).

It took some getting used to, and of course it wasn't a long enough time to not feel like a silly outsider, but I feel like I acclimated to some of the customs there.

Democratic Game Design Redux

(My computer is still down, so thus my lack of posting. I'm working on it, or rather have a relative working on it, and hope to have it back up soon.)

Though I had linked to another democratic game design project of mine, little paper men on my sidebar, I didn't mention it because it was still messy and I hadn't done anything with it for at least a year. Now that I have done some updating (still needs quite a bit of work, hint hint contributes) but it's in a state where I'm not too embarrassed to draw attention to it. The idea is to put stats to paper miniatures figures to provide a simple and cheap (practically free) war game. Right now I have a shoe box full of paper figures of different sizes and types that were really easy to put together (I'm not much of a do-it-yourselfer).

I found it fun to try to think about how the abilities for characters would reflect characters, especially abilities that are flaws, making things harder not easier.

Anyway, check it out. Anything I wrote is just there so there's something and nothing is set in stone, and I look foreword to hearing other people's ideas.

Democratic Game Design

I've been experimenting with what I call "democratic game design", that is a game that is open to many people to all contribute. With democratic game design you can get many many different ideas, and get more eyes to correct typos, play test and make adjustments.

Tools

The internet itself is what makes this possible, and there are tools on the internet that makes having a democratic game design project much easier.

Wikis are basically websites where you can in one click edit the pages. Most everyone is probably familiar with Wikipedia, which is a very good example of a wiki. For personal wikis I like to use pbwiki for my projects.

The Creative Commons Licence is a licences that basically declares that other people may use and remix your materials. There are a few variations of the rules that you should check out and decide which works best for your project (for example, do you want others to be able to use these materials commercially?)

Is democratic game design right for me?

Most everything has a downside, and this is no exception. One disavantage is you obviously no longer own the project, but it belongs to everyone. This means that once you declare something open and you get contributers, then you cannot ever claim it solely as yours ever again. You're not going to make a profit of this, but that's exactly the opposite of the point of democratic game design anyway.

A second disadvantage is with differences of vision for the project. Not everyone's going to see the project exactly the same, so it's important to have an idea before hand of rules to resolve conflicts. You should state them clearly, posting a link at the top of the front page.

I like the rules used on Wikipedia where if something you wrote is changed, you're not allowed to change it back until you've discussed it in the comments area, and if necessary put it to a vote.

An example project

My democratic game design project The Paisho Wiki is based on the board game that's played in the animated television series "Avatar: The last Airbender". I've had quite a few people now contributing, and the start rules have popped up even on other wikis!

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Democratic game design is a neat way of getting a project off the ground, and it can be fun to see how many people get together to build something together. If you know of other neat game design projects like this, or have one of your own, comment here or shoot me an e-mail and I'll gladly link it!