Red vs. Blue

It's nice that the gray lady has noticed machinima and all, but do they have to sound so much like a bunch of dorks?

More than just a cheap way to make an animated movie, machinima allows game players to comment directly on the pop culture they so devotedly consume. Much like ''fan fiction'' (homespun tales featuring popular TV characters) or ''mash-ups'' (music fans blending two songs to create a new hybrid), machinima is a fan-created art form. It's what you get when gamers stop blasting aliens for a second and start messing with the narrative.

What is this "interweb" you speak of? Then again, most NYT readers don't know from machinima. I guess it's just something about the use of "quotes" (a typographical convention indicating that someone other than the speaker is the source of the words in question) that bothers me.

It's funny, for example, about the Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic game that you can't kill random bystanders. This seems like a real defect, although the game kicks ass in many ways. I love it that soldiers in Iraq are all about Red vs. Blue, though. It's these little details about modern life that make sci-fi seem behind the times; seriously, that's about the most cyber-punk thing ever.

Comments

[Glenn Fleishman]

There's something about the New York Times reader that requires "quotation marks." I don't know what it is. I write regularly for the Times technology section, and it's very interesting the assumptions that the copy editors make--correctly--about precisely what an educated reader will understand. You know, what's in the common knowledgebase of a businessperson or colllege-educated urban dweller who pays the enormous amount of money to read the Times in print. (Or reads it for free online.)

[belle waring]

it's not that I don't think they should explain the terms they use when they are likely to be unknown to most readers; it's just something about the formule of dropping "x" (followed by capsule definition of x) into the sentence...no even that's Ok in principle, but they shouldn't do it all the time, or more than once in one article.

[MoXmas]

So I'm catching up on feeds after a week in Maine, and I read this post. And thought: "Gee, that writing style in the pullquote sounds familiar."

Sure enough, it was my pal Clive (collisiondetection.net) who wrote that. I'll see if I can harass him about this. Not least because he knows very well that folks in NYC and other places were making bad talk shows using the Quake engine in '96 or so. Late 90's, my ass.

(It's incredibly excellent when the internet can randomly throw you opportunities to bug your friends.)

[jb]

see, for example, fett's vette:

http://lucasfiles.com/index.php?s=&action=download&id=673&agree=true

http://tinyurl.com/daad4

gotta love bobba fett.

[Phil]

I used to work with a guy who put everything in quotes. For example, "I hope you had a 'good time' on vacation. We're really 'glad to have you back.' Here are some things to read to help you get 'up to date'". Those are just unnecessary. But my favorite was, "If I'm not in my office, you can leave the papers with my assitant 'John Jones' who sits next to me." That's where you use commas, my friend; yes, commas. Unless "John Jones" (or whatever the name actually was) was an alias...

[Matt Weiner]

I am but a New York Times-reading (except I am told that the daily Times is not even for sale in Lubbock--sheesh), non-game-playing, pretentious old dork, but this movie is moving and beautiful. Unfortunately you can't watch it online--in fact given the prices you can't really watch it unless some friendly non-profit brings it to town.

[joe o]

Here is a halo based talk show that interviews the maker of the movie Matt links to.