Thursday, June 18, 2009

Gaming Links And Notes

Firstly, please go buy Red Faction: Guerilla. Immediately. I'll wait.

Matt Sakey's excellent Culture Clash column has a new installment, this one titled Ignoring Occam: When Blame Goes Bad. +5 for mentioning Occam in any context.

Steven Kreuch e-mailed this week and said something about Natal that I hadn't thought about previously:
Natal could be a huge boon to disabled gamers. No longer will people with impaired mobility and movement in their hands have to deal with controllers that are difficult to hold, buttons that are hard to press, and analog sticks that their dexterity might not let them handle with the deft touch most games require.

That's a great point, and that's a great reason to root for Natal to succeed.

There's a feature over at GameLife today on Scribblenauts, and since the fun of the game depends on recognizing the words a player inputs, this is particularly relevant: How Innovative Scribblenauts Recognizes 10,000 Different Words. It's just impossible not to conceptually love this game.

There's an interesting feature over at Dev.Mag about indie game marketing titled Zero Budget Indie Marketing Guide.

I played a very charming Flash game last weekend called Little Wheel. No spoilers, but it's incredibly striking and the music is excellent. It's the best half hour you'll spend at work this week, by far.

This isn't strictly a gaming link, but Ryan Leasher sent me a link to a fascinating story about visual perception. Different people "see" things as differently sized, and here's the explanation of why:
Depth perception is directly correlated to the stereo view angle, and in turn, the stereo view angle is proportionately related to the distance between the left and the right eye of a human being. The wider the eye separation, the larger the view angle and the smaller objects are perceived and vice-versa.

I've also seen stories (and received e-mails from you guys) saying that the ability to perceive 3D graphics varies by person, which could be an interesting obstacle for widespread acceptance of 3D displays.

Oh, and did I mention that you need to buy buy Red Faction: Guerilla?

Site Meter