12 Best Games, in year 2010

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Someone has compiled a top-twelve list of the best games – the catch though, is that these games are not published, nor even being scheduled for publishing (as far as I know anyway). They simply represent the dreams/desires of gamers – and I must say that they are really imaginative gamers – because the suggestions that they came up with definitely appealed to me (I’d really want to jump in and play some of these suggestions) even though it was just a simple paragraph explaining how an example game scenario would work in each of those games.

The first picture is for the imaginary game Total Kungfu – where you’d fight animated opponents using the Wiimote, leaving you frantically waving and flailing ala Dance Dance Revolution gone havoc. The next picture, showing a war scene, is simply a Massively Multiplayer Single Scene War – hear ye:

    This is the Combined Arms Simulator PC gamers have been dreaming about from the first time a shot was fired in anger over a modem. A sprawling world war, a Battlefield 2 but with one gargantuan, persistent map that everybody plays on.

There will be AI units to do grunt jobs like holding positions and supply lines. There will be RPG elements like statistics, character growth, and chain of command “guilds.” And Normandy-sized invasions with five thousand players.

Wow, that’s pretty cool aye! Some of the others have pretty cool concepts too! Like “Hard Cell”, whereby the protagonist you control need not want to follow your orders – he does not particularly want to follow your orders, especially if you have betrayed his trust and sent him down hell holes. Your task is then to shepherd and guide him past various obstacles and challenges in the game – fail to look after him, and things gets ugly… COOL isn’t it?

(Am I just fanatical here or something?)

Anyway, here’s the complete list – go look at them yourself and see if these games move you! Game publishers, take note too! And with some luck, some of these would DO indeed come to life.

Philips Light Painting


Philips seems to be quite keen on bringing mood/ornamental lighting (as opposed to illuminating) into everyday life – from their Ambilight Television sets to the Lumalive textiles, it does seem as though their chief has been to one too many musical fountains or something.

Shown above is a rather amazing application of light quite literally as paint. A glowing wand first dips into a pot of colored-light, and the child can then begin to draw on the wall. Painting with light – isn’t that some sort of childhood fantasy coming through?

Here is a press-release site of some of the other items that were shown in the Philips Simplicity Event last October, featuring many other similarly intuitive and yet imaginative applications of lights and colors.

Upcoming Star Wars Game Physics Engine


This is pretty amazing – yet another step in the holy grail for realism in game and game designs – the materials and AI that reacts in real time to random actual instances around them and acts accordingly. Quite a mouthful, but you’d get what I mean when you watch the video.

The physics engine is called Euphoria – and would be used for the Star Wars movie (I suspect this video is part of the sneak-preview buzz campaign).

Slimming Michelin Man

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The Michelin Man, aka Bibendum, has just been recently overhauled to give a refreshed image to the company – according to Thierry Rudolph, Michelin’s head of Marketing:

We’ve refreshed him because he’s a key asset for us. We’ve slimmed him down because it shows the evolution of people and is a way of keeping up with changes in society. He demonstrates the evolution of society but also the evolution of the brand and the world we live in.

That statement is rather interesting in its irony: while the society’s definitely getting more obese by all indicators, the ideals and aspiration of the society heads the opposite direction – a healthier, slimmer one. In the same vein of irony lies products like McDonald’s, Diet Coke etc: while they continue to feed the growing trend of obesity, the power of marketing concocts the bluff that these products help to reach the consumer’s ideal of being slim and healthy. And that’s where Michelin heading too – mirroring the society’s aspiration rather than reality.

It’s also pretty interesting to see the evolution of the Michelin Man, which has continuously evolved, mirroring the changing landscapes of the society. Starting off as a proud, cigar-smoking, leather-boots wearing persona, the Michelin Man then was one of aristocrat – only the richest could afford wheels, even if it’s just bicycle wheels. The same persona continues even as cars were developed – the tire on his bodies are still slim (reflecting the tire dimensions then).

As automobile develops to become a mass-market item rather than luxury, the Bibendum was toned down to be much friendlier, as it put on massive weight around its tummy to mirror the girth of the tyres. And now it needs to slim down and cut out its flab due to the society’s health concerns. I wonder what’d be next – for example, if the airless tyres (known as tweels, incidentally developed by Michelin) were popularized – will he be left to just bones?

[see more of the Bibendum’s history here]

**** Addendum ****

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In response to Hann’s comment about KFC’s Colonel Sanders losing weight – well they’ve just introduced their new logo (to my dislike), and it does seem like some of the changes are similar in spirit to Michelin’s:

Colonel Sanders has discarded his clean white suit for a more blue-collared apron (Apron! Sensitive New Age Guy we have here?) outfit – now he resembles the person serving your fried chicken rather than a rich wealthy white colonial master or something. He’s definitely gotten his Botox jab, looking a lot younger now. Yup, and like Michelin Man, he’s definitely slimmer now.

Sony Design

Sure, Sony seems like a pale shadow of its former self – it is no longer the de-facto category leader in most of its audio/visual business, the brand value is falling, Blu-ray notwithstanding. Yesterday though I was flipping through a book called Digital Dreams – The Work of Sony Design Center, and I must say that I am still rather impressed by some of its concepts/designs.

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The amazing thing about the concept products in these pictures is that they’re all designed eons ago (relative to the digital age anyway). The first two are Walkman concepts by Joe Wada, done in 1989. The last one is a Street-style earphone, designed by Hiroshi Yasutomi in 1996 (which has since evolved into the mass-production version of the category-defining MDR-G61 StreetStyle. While the technology has moved on, the design to me is still very classic and dare I say, avantgarde even in 2007. The design principles and rationale behind them are still very relevant and inspiring.

And did you know that the Sony VAIO logo (VAIO – acronym for Video Audio Integrated Operations – the sub-brand in Sony that handles items using consumer audio/video) is supposed to represent the transition from analog to digital? The letters V and A forms a analog sine wave, while IO looks like the binary inputs of the digital age – and in fact, the people over at Sony is geeky in some ways – the startup melody made by VAIO products is actually the equivalent to the sound of punching V-A-I-O into a dial tone telephone.

Cool stuff – do check out the book if you have the chance – it’s a great read on the philosophy and legacy of the (once-great, and hopefully will revive to its former glory someday) Sony.

What’s Special About this Number?

A mathematical fanatic, a certain Professor Friedman, either had too much time on his hand, or perhaps he was actually tenured to do this – anyway, he has created a list explaining what is special about the numbers from 1 – 9999, just so you’d know that 31 is a Mersenne Prime, and that 143 is the smallest quasi-Carmichael number in base 8, or that 9862 is the number of Knight’s Tours on a 6×6 chessboard.

If the properties of each number doesn’t fascinate you, well, maybe the sheer effort to find out what’s special about each of the 9999 numbers would, like how teachers would tell each kid that they’re special (what happens when everyone’s special?) Though there are definitely plain kids too – when even teachers fail to distinguish any special talent or ability in the child – as is the case for numbers like 8930 – 8939.

Architecture against Death

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Externally the architecture may look like Gaudi rose from the dead and had a cup too much, or perhaps the architect is just woefully child-like. But these lofts, “Reversible Destiny – Mitaka” has just the opposite aim. Constructed in 2005 with the aim to delay the degradation of elderly’s sense, it invigorates and excites their senses not only by the vivid colors and complexly-juxtaposed geometries, but also by purposely having a difficult house to live in.

For instance, inside, each apartment features a dining room with a grainy and bumpy floor, a sunken kitchen and a study with a concave floor. Electric switches are located in unexpected places on the walls so you have to feel around for the right one. A glass door to the veranda is so small you have to bend to crawl out. You constantly lose balance and gather yourself up, grab onto a column and occasionally trip and fall.

According to the people behind this, Shusaku Arakawa, a Japanese artist based in New York, and his creative partner, poet Madeline Gins:

Set up to put fruitfully into question all that goes on within them, they steer residents to examine minutely the actions they take and to reconsider and, as it were, recalibrate their equanimity and self-possession, causing them to doubt themselves long enough to find a way to reinvent themselves. These tactically posed architectural volumes put human organisms on the track of why they are as they are. To be sure, every loft comes with a set of directions for use.

Like a crazy children’s playground, this house is definitely one for you not to relax in. And that is precisely the point. Many of you may know some elderly relatives who’d slowly become dull and senile simply by being bored and sit their lives away. I’m not quite sure how much of this architecture is bull, or whether it be truly be effective, but judging by their sale of $750,000 a piece and people actually snapping it up, it does seem like a good venture!

More pictures of this project, and other similarly radical proposals for hotels here.

Volkswagen Ball

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My brain went “PS!” the moment I saw this picture (for the less aware, PS means photoshopped – where the photo was manipulated using Adobe’s software). “Bah, a very well-done spherize-filter or something.” It looks like I’d be eating the humble pie – because this seems to be the real deal – someone actually made a Volkswagen like a ball! Full respect for the audacious idea, and more for the execution.

Now if only this could really drive (it has no wheels) instead of just rolling around perhaps…

[link]

Microsoft Help Clip Dies

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Wow, the clip is finally dead in Office 2007. No more of it popping up and zipping around, trying to be cool and cute. First introduced in 1997, it managed to sustain ten years of what most people perceive to be pure annoyance – and its termination in 2007 is probably ten years too late. It does make me intrigued at how the decision to keep/discard it is made – who actually makes the call? And if they killed it now, why didn’t they kill it earlier – what were the factors that were present then that are absent now (or vice versa)?

Anyway, good riddance!