Category Archives: Muse

Short quip: Chicken first, or egg first?

Maybe, dinosaur.

The Internet is pretty much defined by the “click” – people are trying to improve “clickthrough” rate, the cliché goes: everything is just a “click” away, etc. Whether we realize it or not, our experience and perception of the Internet is defined by the “click” (and by extension, the physical input that goes with it, like the mouse). Don’t Click It is an interesting website that attempts to breakthrough the “click”, featuring a full website where clicking is not an option – there are no buttons or links that are clickable, so alternative navigation methods were explored. Personally I felt this is quite a refreshing take on the Internet and the browser environment – I was secretly hoping for even more conceptually interesting navigation though!

PS: You’d have to click on the “Don’t Click It” link to get there. Then be prepared to resist clicking!

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.

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!