Video Games as Art: So What?
Monday, 30th May 2011Posted in Blog Archive, Gaming
Written by: Paul Nyhart
Writen By R. Bryant Francis
In the last few months, the question if video games are art or not has ignited the internet like a 2k watt light falling on an actor. (Don’t ask, I spent the last weeks lighting a movie.) It got kickstarted by Roger Ebert’s damning condemnation that video games aren’t art and could never be art, and has recently accelerated with the announcement that the government-sponsored National Endowment for the Arts would for the first time give out grants for video games. And naturally, Fox News has decided to jump in with their usual….dignity and grace.
But while the human race has been debating about what is “art” since Krog the caveman drew stick figures on the wall, there’s one vital question that hasn’t been asked: What does it mean for the gamers? Game developers will be happy for the chance to get extra start-up money, and this news is huge for all you wannabe Cliffy B’s and Peter Moleyneux’s out there.
I don't know if it's art, but it's certainly bad ass.
But what about Joe and Jane gamer who just want to play good games? Well let me tell you…
PBS Hacked: Tupac Shakur is Not Alive
Monday, 30th May 2011Posted in Technology
Written by: Paul Nyhart
You can now go back to your regularly scheduled Memorial Day. Tupac Shakur is not alive.
This wasn’t the case, according to the main page of the PBS Newshour program, which had a story proclaiming the Tupac was alive (and well) just a dozen or so hours ago.
But the hackers didn’t stop there, the fabricated story claimed that Tupac has been fine all along, chilling in New Zealand with, you guessed it, Christopher “Biggie Smalls” Wallace.
Why the hackers chose PBS of all sites can only be explained by the hackers themselves. This, in a public statement by Lulz, the group taking responsibility:
Greetings, Internets. We just finished watching WikiSecrets and were less than impressed. We decided to sail our Lulz Boat over to the PBS servers for further… perusing. As you should know by now, not even that fancy-ass fortress from the third s—-y Pirates of the Caribbean movie (first one was better!) can withhold our barrage of chaos and lulz.
In other words, sounds like they were just kind of bored.
Read more about the story here on PC Mag.
Tree of Life: It’s Like ‘Sci-Fi’ Meets ‘Revolutionary Road’
Saturday, 28th May 2011Posted in Pop Culture
Tags: movie review, tree of life
Written by: Paul Nyhart
Written By Paul Nyhart
In what you’d think would be the most disastrous marriage since combining baking soda with vinegar (spoiler alert…it explodes) Tree of Life, the latest film by the irreverent Auteur Terrance Malick, tries to mix the realms of sci-fi epistemology (where we come from) and uncomfortable family moments (how loud we can yell) together into one film. What results is roughly 2 and half hours of jaw-dropping confusion and awkward pauses that would make an AA meeting seem comfortable.
I went into this film having no idea what it would be about, and came out wondering whether I had just seen the previews for 40 different iterations on how the world might end, or what the Lochness monster looks like in CGI. It was a film that seemingly belonged in an iMax theater or better yet, in a classroom for kids told “this is what movies will look like if you take drugs.” I’ll go on the record and say we’d be drug free by 2014 if we adopted such a method. Keep Reading
They Exist: Great Films Inspired By Video Gaming
Friday, 27th May 2011Posted in Blog Archive
Written by: BDressler
By Ben Dressler
The good news is: Increasing budgets in video game adaptions indicate that Hollywood is targeting gamers as an audience more and more. The bad news is: We have learned that game adaptions seem to allure people with dollar signs in their eyes rather than talented writers and directors. Is that because good filmmakers are not interested in video games? Or is looking at video game adaptions maybe the wrong approach to find filmmakers that look into video games for serious artistic inspiration? Keep Reading
Pocket $100,000 or Get a Free College Scholarship?
Thursday, 26th May 2011Posted in Blog Archive, Pop Culture
Written by: Paul Nyhart
By Paul Nyhart
Peter Thiel, one of the founders of Paypal (also the guy that played the first investor in the Social Network) has started a $2 million fund to get college students younger than 20 to drop out of school and start a business with $100,000 each.
“We ended up picking 24 people to try to get them to work on very specific projects that would push the frontiers of science and tech in areas ranging from biomedicine to computers to robotics,” Thiel told ABC News.
Thiel knows a thing or two about education– Keep Reading
The Battle Begins: Who Owns The Internet?
Thursday, 26th May 2011Posted in Technology
Written by: Paul Nyhart
Written By Paul Nyhart
Don't Tell this guy what to do with his internet
They call it the information super-highway; with the click of a mouse, the internet can take us on a ride from one end of the world to the other, spewing information at us that would take us months to search for in books.
The question is, who owns the roads? Who decides where to put up the roadblocks and who gets to go where? Keep Reading
Prisoners Forced to Play Online Games for Cash
Thursday, 26th May 2011Posted in Blog Archive, Gaming
Tags: china jails gold farming, prisoners cash
Written by: Paul Nyhart
Welcome to the world of Gold Farming; the global industry which is valued at nearly a billion dollars. It’s so lucrative even prison guards in China are reportedly getting in on the act.
Accoding to a report in the Guardian, inmates at the Jixi labour camp in China, would be forced to do manual labor during the day, than cast raids and spells at night.
“Prison bosses made more money forcing inmates to play games than they do forcing people to do manual labour,” Liu (an inmate) told the Guardian. “There were 300 prisoners forced to play games. We worked 12-hour shifts in the camp. I heard them say they could earn 5,000-6,000rmb [£470-570] a day. We didn’t see any of the money. The computers were never turned off.”
Forced to play video games after a day of grueling work…jails around the world will never again be the same.
Study Proves People Would Rather Be Called “Geek” than “Jock”
Wednesday, 25th May 2011Posted in Blog Archive, Technology
Written by: Paul Nyhart
Being called a geek used to be considered an insult, now, it’s a compliment. Well, when compared to being called a jock.
A new poll said that 57% of Americans would rather be called a geek than a jock:
“People have gone from the vision of the movies ‘Revenge of the Nerds’ and that was what geeks would be associated with being, to Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, considered pretty cool people,” said Jack Cullen, president of Modis, a provider of information technology staffing. “I point a lot of it towards the coolness of Apple and what they’ve done to bring everybody into the forefront of the digital world.” Keep Reading
Military Gaming and Jace Hall?
Tuesday, 24th May 2011Posted in Blog Archive, Gaming
Written by: Paul Nyhart
MMOWGLI: You can probably guess what the first half of this means…the second half may be a little less familiar.
What MMOWGLI stands for is massively multiplayer online wargame leveraging the internet. ADI News recently mentioned the Jace Hall Show in their article on the effort to collect military intelligence from individuals.
Jace Hall could use his mad gaming skills to save the world.
That would be taking the Kaboom Challenge to a whole ‘nother level…
Meanwhile, Todd Roy is arguing that his efforts, via his Cataclysm expansion pack, have already helped humanity in ways indescribable via this blog post.
But apparently the military is looking for something a little more “concrete”:
Navy Seals have begun incorporating it into their training:
MMOWGLI was developed by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) to test the feasibility of using massively multiplayer online games to solve difficult strategic problems like real-world high seas piracy. The MMOWGLI game launching in May focuses on combating Somalian piracy, but the gaming platform is designed to be open enough that it can be adapted to other military hotspots and situations.
Proof yet again, that video games may just help save the world…
For more information on how you can become involved visit the main site by clicking here.
If You Have an ipad You also Have…
Tuesday, 24th May 2011Posted in Blog Archive
Written by: Paul Nyhart
Written By Paul Nyhart
On a most recent vacation, I found myself needing to be productive (yes, it was one of “those” kinds of vacations). I was left with only an iPad to accomplish my tasks, yes, the much ballyhooed iPad 2.
Think Different...or just not at all?
The only thing that I was able to accomplish, however, was this list below, which based off my experience–my first ever using the device that owns 80% of the Tablet market, encapsulates much of what it means to own an iPad.
The device is obviously popular, but it’s popularized amongst a certain group of people. The kind of people that are beginning to fit themselves into a certain category, one I’ll creatively call:
iPad users.
If you have an iPad you probably also have one of these. Feel free to chime in and cal me an idiot, just don’t scratch your screen in the process.
If you have an ipad you probably also have:
More Money than You Know What to do With:
This one is kind of a given, one because it’s obvious that the iPad doesn’t have a need, it has an image, and thus only people who generally have more money than they know what to do with, can afford to feed their appetite.
3 Other Apple Devices that do the same thing
What’s great about the ipad is that its very slim and light, which allows you to pack your ipod, iphone, and macbook with tremendous ease in to the same suitcase.
That’s swell, unfortauntely, you realize you dropped roughly 700 bone on a device that does 80% of those duties but doesn’t go far enough to replace the above devices. You’ve not only proven that you have too much money, but that your confused with what to do with all of your electronics.
One Hand busy at all times
Some would turn this into a sexual joke, but the iPad naturally just turns this into a reality. The device is neat when you’re using it, but what happens on those rare moments when you’re not? Like Walking, riding a bike, drinking a cup of coffee.
You’re all of a sudden “that guy” who has to kick the elevator door to hold it open. Yes you could say the same thing for the kindle or whatever e-reader that’s out there, but at least those signal to other people that you READ. The iPad just tells everyone in the western world that you’re a Hulu Plus subscriber…
A lack of Productivity:
Congratulations?
Typing on the iPad is like playing whack a mole with an LCD screen, I think I typed one sentence and then quit because of exhaustion.
Not to mention you can’t switch back and forth between applications.
In this day and age, multi-tasking is a requisite, and I need to be able to work between word, the net, even photoshop, seamlessly. The iPad doesn’t do that, and to their credit—as much as they do try and pretend—it doesn’t say it’s meant to be. The guy on the left found this out the hard way.
An Affinity for Magnets
This is my favorite part about the iPad 2. It’s advertised as lighter, slimmer, and now (get ready) Smart Covers!!!
Technically smart covers don’t even come with the ipad; in the grand tradition of Apple, you have to drop half a hun just to protect your device.
The only thing smart about the smart cover is not buying it. Certainly, if anyone has a smart cover, they have an akward crush on magnets, or anything else that adheres to a metal surface…that’s the only way I can explain this one.
Terrible Posture
The great thing about the iPad is that it fits in your lap. The bad thing about our necks is that it isn’t meant to stare at your lap for 3 hours at a time.
Sure, you could hold it in front of you, but who has the energy for that?
Unless evolution can take its course and adapt the human body for staring downwards half of our day (God knows we’re trying) you should be able to spot an iPad user not just by their smart cover, but by their crooked neck.
Have Never Heard of a Macbook Air
What’s the difference between an iPad and a Macbook air? Well, by the time you get the keyboard add-on for your iPad and the cover to go with it, maybe around 100 bucks.
Who wants something that flips open when you can have a tablet that doesn’t? That might just be the biggest difference.
It was what separated the Motorola Razr, from many of its peers. Now it’s suddenly an after-thought.
A Kindle Collecting Dust
Remember back when buying this was a good idea? Some Kindles were selling for close to 400 dollars with the sole purpose for just…reading?
Miraculously, kindle books have managed to surpass the sale of print books on Amazon, all while being the number one product advertised on the most popular, global online merchant…
Many of those are still being read on other tablets, but for those of you poking away at your iPad, your tablet formerly known as Kindle, is probably on a shelf somewhere (or the modern equivalent…Ebay) collecting dust.
That’s my story. Maybe I just need more time with the iPad to fully become an iPad user…
Videogame Movies Done Right
Tuesday, 24th May 2011Posted in Blog Archive, Gaming
Tags: gaming movies, good video game movies, video game movies
Written by: Paul Nyhart
By R. Bryant Francis
We’ve talked about Video Game movies here at the Jace Hall Show. They suck. Well, okay, I kind of liked Prince of Persia, but that’s beside the point.
The point is, for whatever reason, films have repeatedly failed time and again to capture the magic and excitement of video games, which is really kind of abysmal.
Time and again, we’ve asked why this happens. Everyone’s got a different reason. Yahtzee talked about the fundamental difference between games and Cinema and Jerry Bruckheimer’s blamed the abilities of the filmmakers.
But I think Tomb Raider and The Mask scribe Mike Werb nailed it on the head at a recent event where he told us how the director of Tomb Raider at one point (allegedly) screamed “I hate this game, I hate these gamers.”
Keep Reading
Naysayers Claim World is Ending; Tell Us Something We Don’t (Already) Know
Thursday, 19th May 2011Posted in Blog Archive, Pop Culture
Written by: Paul Nyhart
Written By Paul Nyhart
Experts, naysayers, and googlers alike are all but declaring the world over after May 21st. Many people think this isn’t true, but just look at the signs–clearly, we were warned, people. Recently of note, Lady Gaga was named the most powerful celebrity on the planet, supplanting Oprah, and just squeezing past Justin Bieber (probably a joke in there somewhere). If that isn’t a strong sign that the world is coming to an end, I don’t know what is.
Because this would be too easy...
There was also the news that a man, disguised as John Lennon, ate his 25,000 Big Mac. Not only did a human being manage to eat 25,000 big Macs in one lifetime, but we all managed to hear about it. Even the Hamburgler is looking at us like we’re idiots.
New “Facebook Legislation” Could Mean More Privacy (For Some)
Wednesday, 18th May 2011Posted in Technology
Tags: facebook bill, facebook privacy, social networking privacy
Written by: Paul Nyhart
The clamps are coming down on Facebook. Well, not yet, but some people are working on it.
A new bill would make privacy settings much more visible to the lay-person, and require sites like Facebook to offer parents and users the chance to restrict, and possibly remove, content from their page: Keep Reading
First Livable Planet (Other than Earth) Discovered in Space
Tuesday, 17th May 2011Posted in Blog Archive, Pop Culture
Written by: Paul Nyhart
For those of you that are afraid of pollution, consider this good news. Scientists beleive they’ve found the first planet, outside of our solar system, that can support life.
Gliese 581d shows it has the potential to be warm and wet enough to nurture Earth-like life (who deosn’t count as “Earth Like?”). It revolves around a star called Gliese 581, located around 20 light years from Earth.
Unfortunately (especially for you walkers) 20 light years is very far away. How far?
Our present “rocket technology” would allow us to get there in a shade under 330,000 years…or roughly the life span of 3,917 turtles combined.
However, there’s hope. Say, for instance, that we were able to develop the technology to travel at light speed–not only would it be amazingly badass, but it would allow us to reach plant in a mere 20 years (roughly how long it takes a human to become educated…space school, anyone?).
“With a dense carbon dioxide atmosphere – a likely scenario on such a large planet – the climate of Gliese 581d is not only stable against collapse but warm enough to have oceans, clouds and rainfall,” France’s National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) said.
Apple Planning Huge Surprise for Stores’ 10th Anniversary
Tuesday, 17th May 2011Posted in Blog Archive, Pop Culture, Technology
Tags: apple store anniversary, apple store turns 10
Written by: Paul Nyhart
Written By Paul Nyhart
And you thought the Osama Bin Laden Operation was covert…
Apple is planning on rolling out the surprise of the decade when they celebrate their 10th Anniversary, this Sunday. Employees will be on lockdown, cell phones will be taken away, and stores blanketed in suspense. What could the retailer of everything-bright-and-shiny possibly have planned?
According to Boy Genius Report, here’s the full details on the preparations: Keep Reading
What Gamers Want from Hollywood!
Tuesday, 17th May 2011Posted in Blog Archive, Gaming
Tags: how to turn video game into a movie, lara croft, tomb raider movie, video game movies, video game movies hollywood
Written by: BDressler
Just before Christmas 1996 I, for the first time ever, went to spy on my presents. Since my mother thought I was a good boy, it wasn’t too hard and soon I found the box labeled: SONY PLAYSTATION. I held the next generation of video gaming in my hands. And next to it…A game called TOMB RAIDER.
The first two cutscenes went by, graphical splendor unknown to the eye, and then I was controlling Lara, entering the catacombs of Vilcabamba, shooting and attacking wolves and bats, diving through unknown pools, discovering secrets…It was the first time I ever controlled a character in a three dimensional virtual world and it was magical. Keep Reading
How Technology Can Make Us The (Next) Greatest Generation
Monday, 16th May 2011Posted in Blog Archive, Gaming, Technology
Tags: gaming generation, generation of gamers, greatest generation
Written by: Paul Nyhart
Now You Know How Our Parents Feel...
If the so called doomsday naysayers have their way, May 21st will be the end of the world, and this post will be rendered useless.
But let’s say that May 21st, what is supposed to be the beginning of a series of earthquakes that sends humans towards our demise, isn’t the end of the world. In fact, it’s just another Saturday in ordinary time.
Will we still be able to say the world is in good shape? The obvious answer is yes, anything conceivably is better than the apocalypse (I’m just basing this off my experience with Michael Bay films).
But in all seriousness, the status quo of our society, isn’t in good shape. There are so many signs pointing in the wrong direction, you’d think we’d have gone crazy right now trying to correct the issues.
But we haven’t. We’re still struggling to pay attention. Keep Reading
Jace Hall Gets Hit By “PSN Fraudulent Charges”
Sunday, 15th May 2011Posted in Technology
Written by: Paul Nyhart
It started with a 1-cent charge and then moved its way towards a random Apple Store purchase…Another 1 cent charge, and then (ironically enough) an erroneous charge from the “Sony Australia store.”
Whoever was hacking the account, it’s rather obvious they were doing a test charge of 1 cent to verify the card, than repeating the same charge microseconds later–this time making more substantial purchases.
Keep Reading
E3 Preview: Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception
Thursday, 12th May 2011Posted in Blog Archive, Gaming
Tags: e3 preview, game preview, uncharted 3
Written by: Paul Nyhart
Written by Dash
The plot of the first two Uncharted games reads far better than half of the films I’ve seen Hollywood put out. Here comes the trailer: (You’ve probably seen way too much of)
Before we get into it, if you buy InFamous 2, or have access to PSN Plus, you’ll have a beta on June 28th. Everyone else gets the Beta on July 5th. No word if the free month of PSN Plus we might get as a result of the PSN breach will count toward beta access, but my bet is it will not.
A) Single Player
Let’s go into the story. In an interview during development, before the name of the game was officially announced, the developing studio released a tidbit saying the plot was about T.E. Lawrence’s archeology days in the Middle East.
You may have heard of T.E. Lawrence, but you probably thought it was Peter O’Toole…
Keep Reading
Are “Geeks” More Likely to Be Successful than the “Popular” Kids?
Thursday, 12th May 2011Posted in Blog Archive, Offbeat, Pop Culture
Tags: geeks, geeks popular kids, how to beat popular kids
Written by: Paul Nyhart
Checkmate...
What’s the difference between being “popular” and being a “geek?”
In school, usually the popular kids are the ones who everybody knows–the jocks, Prom kings, party animals, etc. The Geeks were the ones that got/get better grades, who spent more time in books than at football games. Usually, geeks are talked down to because they’re different, they don’t choose to do many of the same activities as the popular kids (and for good reason). Keep Reading
SEASON 5 IS COMING…
More Music From Jace Hall
