Just this week, we had one of the heads of British Telecom’s old venture capital program, Brightstar, come around and talk about disruptive technologies… or rather, as he insisted, disruptive business plans. “You can have the best, coolest, most amazing new technology in the world,” he said (paraphrasing, and imagine a British accent), “but it won’t be disruptive until you figure out how to insert it into the system.”
Anyhow, one of the ways to disrupt old tech was the age old technique of “cutting out the middle man,” which has been in Kickstarter’s DNA for a while now but has mostly been used by young designers to fund art projects and documentaries and cool little gizmos. This is the first time I’ve seen a legit design company - the makers of Grim Fandango (remember that, PC gamer friends?!) use it to fund a real honest-to-business, big development phases video game!
And now that game development project’s raised over $1 million, just the second in Kickstarter’s history (and coming hot off the heels of the first thing to raise over a million - like literally, a day after). Does this count as a tipping point? Now that the million dollar mark is there, how long before crowdfunding stops being an exciting entrepreneurial niche and either:
a) becomes it’s own mega-giant monstrosity ala microfinance.
b) gets bought out by… I dunno, Google. (“Your internet history shows that you funded this project before, perhaps you’re interested in funding this other project too?”)
That’s a bit of a digression. If indie games become as ubiquitous as game blockbusters (but with even more rabidly loyal, non-pirating-because-they-actually-invested-in-this-already fanbases), the industry’s going to have been disrupted. Let’s see if EA fares better than the music industry does.
“
As I ambled exhaustedly along, I decided that L.A. Noire is not a detective story at all. It is a parable about death and purgatory, a story of forgiveness. A man named Phelps went to war. He had his share of flaws, and in the midst of battle he made some bad decisions. Those decisions had repercussions that no one could have anticipated. Some of them were terrible, but then, war is terrible.
Phelps died at Okinawa, and his soul became lost. He couldn’t move on until he found his own justice, acted out his part in a morality play born of his own cowardice and insecurity. So now he wanders a half-remembered vision of his home city, playing detective, solving cases over which he has no real control.
Cole Phelps is not looking for criminals; he is looking for absolution. He must make peace with his failings before he can finally let them go, and this gauzy straitjacket of a city will not let him rest until he has done so. L.A. Noire asks not for players’ help or guidance in this matter; it asks only if they would like to tag along.
”Imagine if every video game caused you to have an existential crisis.
![rzinz:
gamejournos:
Kotaku, Brian Ashcraft: Looks Don’t Come First With Final Fantasy’s Leading Ladies [March 31st, 2011]
If looks don’t come first, why are you opening this article with a cropped picture of a Final Fantasy character’s cleavage?
Submitted by an anonymous tipster who adds, “Stay classy, Kotaku.”
herp derp herp derp dem tittays
I haven’t read the article yet, but I would’ve assumed it was lampooning a comment that sounds ridiculous when you consider that Final Fantasy heroines almost always fall into three tropes: sweet & innocent, sexy & dangerous, or bubbly… and then they have the clothes to match. When they introduce a big girl or a black girl, I’ll believe Motomu Toriyama.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lixvt7vd4I1qaim7mo1_500.png)
Kotaku, Brian Ashcraft: Looks Don’t Come First With Final Fantasy’s Leading Ladies [March 31st, 2011]
If looks don’t come first, why are you opening this article with a cropped picture of a Final Fantasy character’s cleavage?
Submitted by an anonymous tipster who adds, “Stay classy, Kotaku.”
herp derp herp derp dem tittays
I haven’t read the article yet, but I would’ve assumed it was lampooning a comment that sounds ridiculous when you consider that Final Fantasy heroines almost always fall into three tropes: sweet & innocent, sexy & dangerous, or bubbly… and then they have the clothes to match. When they introduce a big girl or a black girl, I’ll believe Motomu Toriyama.
Fun to see Chinese mythology enter the lexicon for American video game ideas.
I feel you Dara O’Brien. This is how I play FPSes too. :( It makes Fallout 3 take ten times longer because I keep on turning on the Pipboy light when all I want to do is stow my frickin’ weapon.
Not so much in the minority anymore are we. Yuss! Maybe, thanks to the increase in girl gamers, for the third edition of Army of Two, there’ll be a girl mercenary and then I won’t have to make the boyfriend uncomfortable when we play as I claim that my smaller, longer haired character is sooo toooootally the pitcher to his big, gruff guy’s anus.
He kind of really is.
“My thought is this: We retire to your tent and I show you the sort of massage skills that one only learns growing up in an Antivan whorehouse.”
Zevran, who sure knows how to romance a dude.And here I was making my boyfriend jealous by constantly hitting on Alistair. I should have just tried to make him uncomfortable by playing a man in love with the elf assassin dude. Oh Dragon Age, will your wonders never cease?
Speaking of which, PS3 Slim now out in Japan. I WANT. (via Kotaku)
