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Add one part satire to two parts sincerity. Sprinkle on a couple of rants. Stir liberally.
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Daily Blah FAQ
Who are you?
I'm the newly-appointed Future editor at Business 2.0 and the former San Francisco correspondent for Time Magazine.
Wow, so does this mean everything you write reflects Time Inc's opinion? Or do you perhaps have some sort of standard disclaimer to the effect that it doesn't?
Naturally, the opinions contained in this blog are not those of my employers. In fact, some opinions may be the polar opposite of my employers. Some may be the same, for all I know. Hey, it's not like I ask my employers their opinions about everything in the news, okay? Let's just say that if this were a Venn diagram with one circle marked "my opinions" and the other one marked "my employers' opinions", there would doubtless be some overlap. But neither I nor my employers are able to pinpoint exactly where that overlap is.
What is this Daily Blah thing?
An experiment for a column I wrote about blogging back in December 2001. All these years later, I haven't been able to kick the habit.
If it's called Daily Blah, how come you don't ... hey, wait, you're writing every day!
See? Told you I'd try harder.
Mister, you talk funny. Are you one of them furrners?
Why yes I am, as it happens. I was born, raised and educated in Great Britain. I've been living in the U.S. since 1996 and identify as British.
I say, old chap, you forgot the "u" in "colour."
No I didn't. I may identify as British, but I am also an American journalist writing for an American audience about mostly American issues. These two different sides of me are a constant source of tension. Nevertheless, Daily Blah will adhere to American English grammar and spelling.
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Daily Blah for... Friday, May 24, 2002
A Tale Told by an Idiot
And so the sound and fury that is the E3 games convention winds down. Tonight was the traditional Thursday night Sony party, where the company takes over a chunk of downtown LA, casts searchlights into the sky, covers buildings with video screens and brings on mystery performers -- tonight the rap group Outcast, in previous years artists like Macy Gray and Lenny Kravitz. It is an exclusive affair, and the little green wristbands Sony gives out for entry are much sought after. Why, I don't know. Yes, there is free booze and food all night long, and there were some interesting fire dancers, and the bands are cool. But socially, I've been to better parties at my college tutors' houses. These are mostly games geeks, and as such, they don't mingle very well. They like the pretty lights and the pumping techno, but what does it all signify? Nothing.
That pretty much sums up the whole E3 experience. Like LA itself it's all surface and little substance. A lot of big screens, loud soundtracks, booth babes and other eye candy, all to advertize products that are themselves, for the most part, all flashy graphics with little good stuff underneath. I could count on two hands the number of games, out of the hundreds I've seen these past three days, that I'm actually excited about. For the record, they are: The Sims Online, City of Heroes, Star Wars Galaxies, Sim City 4, Medieval Total War, Neverwinter Nights, Godzilla, Age of Mythology and Warcraft III. What they have in common is that they exercise the brain more than the trigger finger, and look good without trying too hard to look realistic. Except Godzilla, which is just good clean city-stomping fun, and you get to throw buildings at Mothra.
The whole games industry has long been on this Quixotic quest for realism, and they've started to loose the plot. Insiders marvel at how good the lighting and reflection is in games like Doom III or Deus Ex II, to the point where it is the only acceptable topic of conversation. It is what games people expect you to ask about. I got sucked into an hour-long discussion with Trent Reznor (of Nine Inch Nails fame) and John Carmack (creator of Doom and Quake) Thursday afternoon about the sound and graphics they created for the latest Doom game, and how it was going to leave less and less gameplay to the imagination. I asked them: isn't there something wrong with this picture? Why is everyone in this business so obsessed with filling in for people's imaginations? What about developing original plot ideas, characters and locations instead? If I see one more online role playing game in isometric 3D with orcs and paladins and skeletons and zombies, I think I'm going to scream. Carmack and Reznor thought it was a luddite point of view: you can't stop progress, you can't stop games systems getting ever faster and better at rendering, and you can't divert the search for ever greater realism. It is what keeps this industry going, after all. Original ideas can be hard to come by, and hard to sell. Get the kids buzzing about which game looks more lifelike, and Moore's law guarantees you endless opportunity to keep selling them newer and better games. Just don't let them remember that the criteria for what made a good game used to be more than just texture and shading.
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