I’ve recently been showing you (y’all) various interactive thingymajobbers that can be engaged with on the web. And, I… seem to be unable to stop myself.

I attended the Game Developer’s Conference last week. Normally this is an excruciatingly pleasant affair for me; I really dig swimming around in academic-style higher-learning thinking, and reminding myself of the fundamentals of what we do.

This year? Not so much. I was fighting a flu of some kind, and when I get sick I get stupid. So, I missed most of the talks I wanted to see, the talks I did see sucked badly, and I just generally walked around and went “duuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhh…”

However, I did find something I want to show you.

The Independant Games Festival (IGF) is a hoot; folks make games for free, and then compete for a cash prize and the prestige of their fellow game developers (which hopefully translates into some kind of distribution deal–HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA *wipes tear from eye* hooo, boy I crack myself up sometimes… no, seriously though, I think someone one time got some money for it, but I can’t confirm that).

The IGF benefits me directly, because I get to play their games. Most times, they are not so good. Lots of love there, but…

Common mistakes repeat themselves endlessly among the new initiates into the realm of entertainment making, and games are no exception to that. But, every once in a while, you get a rare gem. Something that could not ever possibly make money, but is so completely captivating that it can only be described as art.

Palette is that.

Before you click on that, here’s a couple of hints to help you navigate the unbelievable overdone website. Click on the door, and then… don’t panic. Everything’s okay; the little window that just exploded and then resized itself is the game. I know, I know, it’s just a black window. Wait for it. Wait… wait… it’ll load. Do not try to click back to the main site; it’s useless to you now.

There you go. Now, as a favor to the latent stained glass artist in all of us, spend ten minutes with it.

Oh yeah, and turn the sound on. It’s just not the same game without the sound.

Here’s something that isn’t obvious until you’ve dumped four hours into it (like I might have done, I don’t really remember, it’s all a blur of color and light… so… beautiful…): there are several color layouts for each “window”. When you replay, you will likely have a completely different problem to solve than the first time you played it.

Not sure if you care that much. God knows I do. But, I’m starting to wonder about my sanity.

I have spent about 30 minutes with this thing so far. It is…

Well, here, take a look for yourself.

There is this whole new experience that the vile alchemy of Teh Interwebs + Flash + Creative Geniuses + lots of free time has created. Let us call this branch on the tree of entertainment “Amazing Things That Should Not Be Free But Somehow Are”. There are many examples of this, some of which can be found on the sidebar of this very blog. Yes indeedy.

Actually, let’s just remind our readership (all two of you) about some of that.

If you haven’t played Tower Of Goo… well, what the hell, man. Do I have to spell it out for you? C-L-I-C-K… T-H-E… L-I-N-K. I know, I know, “But I have to download it, man. How come I can’t just play it?” Yeah, shut up. Download, play.

On the topic of The Swarm, it is important to understand that my daughter, once hooked in to a particular challenge, is pitbull-like in her inability to release the tether until she has somehow pegged an impossible score. She did this with the “keep the red box from hitting the blue boxes game”, and she did it here. I think the macabre nature of the piece in question helped keep her attention. I believe her highest impact velocity was 218mph. Beat that.

There are more. So many more. I hesitate to even link; I fear the destructive power such a post might have.

All of this coalesces into the strange world that is the Now; a world where we can casually drift across a vast network of information, and occasionally be entertained by objects of such beauty and simplicity that ten years ago, and rolling on back four million years, they were impossible. I caution you: the future has more of this coming for you, and it’s coming soon.

Must… reach… the end…

http://ps2.ign.com/articles/685/685298p1.html

http://xbox.gamespy.com/xbox-360/x-men-the-official-movie-game/687173p 1.html

http://www.nintendospin.com/previews/gamecube/1470/x-men-the-official- game.html

druid writes:

Congrats on your mount. BTW, is that…um…a fiery enchant on your sword? O_o

Have you gotten *any* of your MC gear yet, or have all drops really gone to other people? What’s it like running MC (what’s the time investment per week)?

Oh, and as a debuff class, it’s painful to see you are running Decursive now. Nothing kills me (literally) more than having some Paladin hit a key and wipe away all my carefully placed DoTs

P.S. Lvl 53 now…

So good to hear from the youth of today’s WoW players. The young, not-yet-60-but-been-playing-the-game-for-over-a-year crowd.

To wit:

Yes, that is a fiery enchant. My guildmaster gave it to me as a “welcome to being an officer” gift. I’m working on getting a Crusader enchant; almost have enough for it.

Nope, I have gotten no Molten Core gear yet. But, I’ve only been in the guild for two weeks. I didn’t really expect to show up and be suddenly in the earn. Surprisingly, they don’t have a DKP system yet, so it’s a free-for-all. I just might get something soon. (Don’t worry about it if “DKP” is meaningless to you; it’s still mostly meaningless to me. We’ll talk later.)

Molten Core is… it’s quite a thing.

Completing Molten Core (which I’ve never done, and I’m not entirely sure my guild has done) takes two or three 4-6 hour runs. We generally go on Friday and Saturday nights.

…

Yep, it’s 8+ hours of gameplay. And if you’re lucky, you might get 1 piece of equipment out of it. Oh, and you get no money, and in fact need to pay for your repair bill.

Taken as a whole, it’s quite possibly the most fun I’ve had yet. Let’s talk.

Molten Core is a kind of initiation into the higher game echelons. One reason is obvious: you have to bring 39 of your closest level 60 friends to have the barest hope of succeeding in there. Less than that? Certain death. More than that? Not an option; there’s a40-person limit on how many people can go in together.

The other reason was not so obvious. Here it is: after 15 months of sort of dancing around the lip of this high-level-content precipice, now, thanks to my upwardly mobile guildmaster, I find myself… Well, that’s just the thing. I find myself in a completely different category of gameplay. And, more importantly, a different category of game players.

Where before I was bumping along, enjoying the scenery, killing stuff and taking their treasure, and chatting away with great wit with my guildies, I now find myself being swept along at a pace that I can only describe as professional.

You don’t chat in guild chat in my new guild. You state your business. We’re here to play the game, people, not socialize.

…

The part that really startled me about this whole thing is this: I am, quite suddenly, surrounded by people who are more than willing to burn two hours grinding on random high-level monsters for an incremental gain in faction (or some other abstract goal).

See, before I hooked up with these ultra-nerds (who are, in actual fact, an elite squadron of nerds that are gathered together to handle high pressure situations that many strive for but few attain; nerd ninjas, in a word), I would generally be able to extract about 30 minutes of running around and just killing stuff from people I met before they got bored and wandered off. It was a constant struggle, finding new peope with which to endlessly repeat the same challenges.

In this new gaming world, I find that it is an unstated assumption on everyone’s part that we are just going to quest for whatever is in front of us, forever, until work or some other real-life requirement extracts us from the task. It’s not even discussed.

For example. The other day I was in Silithus, and I saw a guildie ride by. I sent him a tell (“Hey, by any chance could I interest you in grinding a few mobs? ”). No response.

Then, an invite. He’s got another guy with him, and with a curt “hey there”, we are off. We spent the next two and a half hours killing Twilight Cultists, summoning their Elemental Lords, and killing them. Maybe ten sentences were spoken during the entire duration of the run. None of these sentences even mentioned any awareness of how long we were spending at this task. And then, after summoning one of the big ones, we were quite suddenly done. Everyone left, and I ran off to go turn in the 10 Twilight Texts I had collected during the massacree, much to my joy (and personal reward: I can now make Darkrune Helms).

This happens all the time now. I don’t even know who these people are. Sometimes I hear them talking on the guild chat server, but I have no clue who is who. I have a suspicion that they don’t either, and, further, that no one really cares. We’re all just happy to have gotten rid of the players who get bored with our special kind of gameplay, and don’t want to rock the boat.

They don’t even joke about it. You know that kind of light embarassment you (WoW players) feel when the topic of how long you’ve played comes up? It’s gone. Utterly absent. Every now and then someone mentions WoW being a life-destroyer, but that’s it. I’m in the darkest back corner of the opium den, surrounded by my comrades, who have also all accepted that they will die in the embrace of their drug, and are simply pleased to have the pleasure of my company.

So, in short, it’s nothing like the game that you’ve been playing. Nothing at all. And, once you start down the path, you’ll never look back.

Quit now, before it’s too late.

A couple of things have happened.

For one, there is this:

Some of you may recognize that immediately. And, of course, turn green with envy. Or, at least I’d like to imagine that you would.

For the rest of you (those with lives), that is the Paladin Epic Mount.

Mounts in World of Warcraft turn out to be a really big deal. Since you spend a huge amount of time walking from place to place (just like in real life!), getting yourself a more efficient mode of transportation makes things much more pleasant. It reminds us of what it must have been like for our distant ancestors, before the invention of alternative forms of locomotion. Yes, it’s true: playing World of Warcraft reminds you of history. Yep.

…

Not really. But it does suck to not have a horse. Which is the case until level 40, where you are able to purchase your mount, and suddenly your world becomes 60% faster. Yaaaay!

But, of course, this is an MMORPG, and so that 200+ hour investment is just the beginning.

[ Quick aside: I'm playing as I type this, and out of curiosty, I typed "/played", which tells you how long you have spent playing as the current character. Mine says "32 days, 21 hours, 25 minutes, 37 seconds". Help me. ]

There is a second mount available to you at level 60. The Epic Mount. For most players, this is just extremely expensive (1000g, or the equivalent of most of your free time for a month). For Paladins, however, it’s extremely expensive (~600g) and time consuming: you have to quest for it.

Or, I should say, you get to quest for it. It’s really fun.

So, after months of procrastinating and struggling and hewing my way through various challenges, it’s over. I have my horsie. My world is now 100% faster.

So, that’s cool. But that’s just bragging.

…

Let’s brag some more. Let’s brag about Molten Core.

Several months ago I landed in this really cool guild. Nice people, kinda chill. So, just recently, my (rather ambitious) guildmaster got our whole guild merged into another, larger guild, that is doing Molten Core runs.

Again, it is rude of me to assume that any of you know what the fuck I am talking about. “Molten what??” you are saying to yourself. Let me es’plain.

…

No. There is too much. Let me sum up.

Molten Core is just that: a lava-filled hole in the ground. It also happens to be full of nasty, monstrous, and very angry boss monsters. Boss monsters that kill me, over and over. Boss monsters that also drop loot. Epic loot. By which I mean rare and powerful armor and weapons. All of which end up going to other people in the group. Sigh.

I have more to say on this topic, but it suffices to say that I am no longer playing this game. No, friends. I am now engaged in a pursuit.