The Inkbottle

MMORPG and Macs

You know why World of Warcraft is such a big deal? It's Mac-compatible and has been since the beginning. There are so many MMOs that are PC-only that to find a Mac one is like finding that lost treasure in the end of an Indiana Jones movie. Age of Conan, Lord of the Rings Online, and Guild Wars are just three games that are PC-only. And according to my scientific calculations, that means those games suck.

Recently Eve Online released a Mac version--and good for them! I tried the game and didn't really find it to my liking, but I appreciate that they went the extra step to release it for Macs.

Yes, video games have been dominated by PCs for a long, long time, but times are changing, folks. The current OSs are going bye-bye soon, to be replaced by something like Apple's iPhone platform. Keep that in mind when developing new games.

My List

Here's a list of 20 places and things I like (in no particular order):

1. Sigur Ros
2. Boards of Canada
3. The LA Angels
4. Children of Men
5. Finnegans Wake
6. Marinetti's "Futurist Manifesto"
7. The iPhone App Store
8. Rib-eye steak
9. Sunday nights on Adult Swim (Venture Bros, Metalocalypse, Squidbillies...)
10. Sleeping in
11. The British Library
12. Lawrence of Arabia
13. The Daily Show
14. Doctor Who and Blake's 7
15. Dublin
16. Red Vines
17. Everything Kafka ever wrote
18. Monty Python
19. Aguirre, the Wrath of God
20. Maps

Tricky and Bad Planning

Okay, explain this to me: Tricky's latest album, Knowle West Boy, came out a week or two ago in the UK and Europe.  It comes out in the US on September 9.  Between now and September, how many people in the US will be downloading that album from file sharing sites because it's not available in the US?  I'm guessing 100%. 

These sorts of release schedules were probably acceptable ten years ago when Maxinquaye came out, but they are simply not feasible in today's iTunes music-on-demand climate.  Someone at Tricky's label needs to be slapped on the face with a herring.

In San Francisco

My room in San Francisco. Too boring?