Category: You Can Quote Me On That

  • Social Gaming (As It Stands) is a BANE ON HUMANITY [GO/YCQMOT]

    To the abovementioned small man and to others like him, to all the craftsmen of these mommy’s-credit-card-number-snatching games like Tap Zoo and Tap Pet Shop and Top Girl and what-have-you, I offer this lesson from the annals of economics: “Monetize” is a fucking stupid word. The idea of a business is to make money. “To […]

  • On Subtlety and Showing, Not Telling [YCQMOT]

    Aspiring writers, artists, really anyone involved in media take note. Your audience may seem dumb, but they’re really not. In what universe does artlessly spelling everything out qualify as an improvement over inference and subtext? It’d be like remaking Citizen Kane, but changing the protagonist’s last words to “Rosebud… which incidentally was the name of […]

  • More on Why “The Help” Is Whitewashing The Past [FB/YCQMOT]

    There was no real-life book similar to Skeeter’s magnum opus; it’s a fictional flourish that feels like a college-educated white liberal’s wish-fulfillment fantasy of how she would have conducted herself had she been time-warped back to the civil rights era. I wouldn’t have just stood by and let it happen. I would have done something! […]

  • Derivative Art, Japanese Rock, and the Coming Rock Revolution [You Can Quote Me On That]

    From Tim Rogers’ article on Japanese music and Sambo Master (so good, but long!): I told Sanyon, “Art is poison. The ‘art’ of the past — the words of the past set down for future generations to remember — was it not made or chosen with the best judgment, can only hinder the freedom of […]

  • Neal Stephenson’s Writing [You Can Quote Me On That/Bookmark This]

    Here’s an interesting analysis of most of Stephenson’s writing by Matthew Bey of the Austin Statesman: But even as Erasmas and company pursue the answers to their cerebral quandaries, violence and chaos aren’t far behind. As intimidating an intellectual artifact as “Anathem” is, it’s still an action story. Stephenson takes just enough time to establish […]

  • PA on GoW 2 Dialogue [You Can Quote Me On That]

    Here’s what Tycho has to say about the dialogue in Gears of War 2: Still. There is a point at which “the rookie” says there are a shitload of grubs down there. Marcus Fenix corrects him, suggesting that there are, in fact, “Ten Shitloads.” I want to grant that Gears of War takes place on […]

  • You Can Quote Me On That: Tim Rogers

    If you know me or read this site regularly, you know that I’m a huge fan of Tim Rogers of ActionButton.net. I don’t universally agree with him, but I do universally love how the things he says about game design and video games in general make me think critically about games both as entertainment, as […]