Friday 9 November 2012

Sound's like it won't be a Dead Cat nor $50,000...

My mysterious housemate Ollie (a.k.a. author of The Enormous Blogodile) made a surprise appearance in the house today. While here, he informed me about Peter Molyneux's massively multiplayer smartphone game / giant psychological experiment, "Curiosity".

After I took a look at the following video, my response was similar to my response towards Zynga games:

- Almost entirely sure I would never play it,
- Entirely certain that I would not pay for extra content in it,
- Quite interested to see the big picture ideas or lessons that come out of the whole thing.




I also posted a link to it on my Facebook Art & Design Page with the following status/comment text:
I don't think I can like this until someone else finishes it and I learn that the ending was really clever without having to put any time or money into clicking or chisels myself. I kind of have my own pixels to manipulate. Or maybe I just have more patience than curiosity in this case.

It just sounds to me like popping bubble wrap except something is supposed to happen when the last bubble is popped and we're supposed to want to know what.
But then! Oh, but then....

But then I found and watched the entire video below.


I found his reaction towards Peter Molyneux's decision to put a $50,000 price tag on the Diamond Chisel absolutely hilarious.

Perhaps I'm just an ignorant douchebag who finds great joy in the angry incredulity (yeah, I didn't realise that was a word until just now either) and frustration of others despite any valid points they might or might not be making.
Trollollollollol.

Perhaps I just find it funny when people get angry about the rules of a game that don't guarantee them a win.

Lol. 
It's a game, not life.
 Either cry to your parent/guardian about how unfair it is 
or design a new game with the rules you think it should have. 

In any case, thanks to the enjoyment I received, I have now mentally elevated the Curiosity experiment from crappy-Zynga-games-level to something better and more valuable to me, like some-pranky-mindfuck-stunt-Derren-Brown-might-pull. I think I'm actually jealous that Molyneux did it before I got to think of it. I do love messing with people sometimes.

I've never seen any of this guy's videos before, but after I watched it I exclaimed out loud, "That guy is fucking mental" and decided to see how I'd find his other videos. I'm going to watch them after I've published this post.

I look forward to more angry nerd videos. Oh! Imagine Curiosity being reviewed on Zero Punctuation.

In the meantime, I need to do some research on Kit Williams and the golden hare. Sounds exactly like a plan inspired by Mark Z. Danielewski's "House of Leaves" and Danny Wallace's "Join Me" that I wanted to carry out a year ago but never really finished.


Follow this blog to see if I ever post a follow up post on the angry guy from AlphaOmegaSin or end up getting lost on a mysterious trail of my own invention.

To create, one must first destroy.

Look! I'm using the proper caption tool! Also, check out this swanky fictional apartment. Are you jealous?
Today, a man visited us here in our rented house in Cardiff, doing checks for roof insulation. A chatty fella. When he saw that the girl sat on the couch in her pink fluffy dressing robe appeared to be navigating a virtual world, he asked her what she was playing.

When I told him that it wasn't a proper game, he cheerfully replied, "Ah, I see! I thought it didn't look very exciting!"

I imagine his response might have been different if he had heard me add that it was just a thing I made and that there wasn't anything to do yet, but he had already propelled himself onto the response above and evidently didn't pick up on my quiet mumblings. Perhaps he's used to something a little more rapid-fire. I didn't even get to sound brainy by telling him that I hadn't got around to programming anything more than some basic start screen menus.

I would show you what it is he saw to gain a second opinion, but unfortunately the shameful evidence of the boring appearance of my game's lower floors at that time is gone. Earlier this afternoon I deleted a bunch of what were to be redundant materials in the Materials folder in Unity, which turned lots of the objects in the game bright pink.

It looked exciting - too exciting. I know my dressing gown is pink, and my pyjama top is pink, and even my laptop is pink, but if I could pick a favourite colour it may surprise you to know that it would not be pink. If you checked out my not-so-secret secret hoard of collected online images, you'd see. Even if it was my favourite colour, it really wasn't the look I wanted for the objects in this part of the game. It was supposed to look like a Wetherspoon pub.

The Damage.
Somehow I figured out that turning off the option to import the materials turns these bright pink objects grey, and my eyes rejoiced. All of this does mean that I now have to reapply all the colours to the objects. Perhaps it's a good thing. I mean, none of them had been properly unwrapped or textured anyway. Should probably get on that.




Follow this blog for more updates on this project, which could be on the road to nowhere but hopefully isn't.