Who Tackles the Untackleable?
The opening credits of the “Watchmen” movie were shown at WonderCon, and they’re amazing. If the rest of the movie can live up to the first 10 minutes, I’m sold.
Myths of Videogame Storytelling
A recap of all my posts so far on the subject of storytelling in videogames.
On Brevity
Why “videogame writing should be short” is bad advice.
Oh, stop thinking how ridiculous it is!
My opinions of “Lost” episode “316”
Content Withholders
Hulu.com is going to great lengths to block boxee from accessing its “service,” and its self-serving justifications aren’t helping.
Happy Valentine’s Day!
Make your own! Some good ones available via twitter search.
All Will Be Revealed… At Once
Apparently the revolutionaries of the last few episodes were armed with low-caliber exposition rounds, Teflon-Flashback coated to penetrate the armor of the Rules of Dramatic Writing, including “Show, Don’t Tell.” But I kid “Battlestar Galactica” only because it annoys me so much. This week’s episode (“No Exit”), was paced and written as well as it…
But our pistil is in another castle!
The game “Flower” for the PlayStation 3 is short, simple, and masterfully done.
This place is AWESOME
Okay, “Lost,” I can see how watching a bunch of French-speaking scientists slowly going mad and shooting each other might not be the gripping, edge-of-your-seat drama that I’d been imagining all this time. Thanks for letting me discover that for myself, though, and showing us only the cool parts. For at least the first 20…
Feedback Loop
Previously on Spectre Collie, I snapped my tether and responded to a critique of games I worked on. The claim was that adventure games are bad at giving feedback to the player, partly because it’s impossible for the game to know what the player’s thinking. I agreed that adventure games are usually lousy at giving…
Good times never seemed so good
For some reason (probably because I was conflating it with Stardust), I didn’t expect Coraline to make a big dent in the box office. I thought it was going to be one of those relatively low-key indie movies where fans go on for years about how ingenious it was and complain that “most Americans” just…
Redemption
Last week, I complained that it was clear “Battlestar Galactica” had done me wrong, because they put out a very good episode that I couldn’t enjoy because there were still just too many problems with the series as a whole. This week’s episode (“Blood on the Scales”) was even better. It started with a space…