Cool vid

Filmic Games

Now with this new computer running, and due to cold thats put me out of school, ive had a chance to try out some games on the leading edge of technology. Ive tried the Crysis demo, the Bioshock demo and some Colin Macrae DiRT. Particularly for the first two games listed, I've noticed that games are becoming more and more like films. Where instead of interesting activities and challenges are the focus of your experience, the games manage to tell a story, with dialogue, musical score, lighting and sound FX - basically a film with a much deeper involvement.

Peter Jackson, director of the LOTR series and King Kong, plans to produce video games set in the Halo universe. Although being the film director he is, he refers to these proposed games being "filmic games". I think this concept of filmic games is gradually going to become more popular overtime.

On a not-so-separate note, 2K's video game, Bioshock, is actually going to the silver screen, being directed by Gore Verbinski (Directed Pirates of the Carribean and The Ring). Perhaps along with this idea of filmic games, there will be a rise in game-to-film adaptations like this among others (Hitman, Resident Evil, DOOM). Perhaps instead of what we say now, that is something like: "The book was much better than the film", we'll start saying: "I thought the game was better than the film"

Just my thoughts...

New Computer

Ive recently got a new computer, here are the specs:

Gigabyte EP45-DS3R
Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 (3.0Ghz Dual Core)
Asus EN8800GT (512mb)
2G Kingston DDRII RAM

This was my first computer build (although I got a friend to help with the actual building) and overall, I spent alot of time making sure I was getting the right parts that would last a 3-4 years. Now that it all works (with some slight faults i'll need to sort out), I've found the whole process to be quite satisfying. The research made me learn much about each of the parts and now to see them all together working well, it feels like quite a satisfying accomplishment.

Earth Hour

hey folks

i found an interesting news report for the upcoming Earth Hour:

FlickerFest '08

Yesterday, i had the privilege to attend the opening night of FlickerFest this year.

It is a international short film festival that screens award winning productions (that go for no longer than 40mins) from around the world.

There were funny films, and there were serious films. Films that just entertained, others that made a deep use of film conventions and positioning techniques to get a message across.

Mostly, it would seem that the funny the film was, the less it would stack up to the others in terms of filming prestige. However, my favourite, an animation involving stick figures from the USA, incorporated plenty of humour, with a strong theme to it. The director used not just dialog, stick figures and sound effects, but used some "real" images around the place coupled with some rather eeryie sounds.This created a much deeper effect on the viewer than you would have expected from an animation with stick figures.

So i learnt last night that i quite enjoy short film festivals, and i want and plan to attend more in the future

doug.

MSN-Free Week

For all of my loyal fans that still read this somewhat retired blog, I would like to point out that I am having a (nearly) whole week free of msn.

Starting tomorrow (monday) i am going without all communication involving MSN Messenger and other clients that use its protocol. I am to do this up until approximately 3.30pm on Friday when my weekend technically starts...

wish me luck!