Spiderweb Software "Avadon 2: The Corruption"

To be clear: I'm posting this without having yet purchased or played this game. But I am going to purchase and play this game, and you should too. I should clarify some more: if you are a story-driven gamer that "grew up" long enough ago that you recognize retro-style genius game-play and don't need total-immersion high-definition graphics to have an enjoyable experience... like me... you should purchase and play this game.

And for the record, you probably should purchase the other games Jeff Vogel of Spiderweb Software has available. The company was founded in 1994, and I played my first game of his -- Exile -- not long after. Whenever it was included on the (now defunct magazine) Mac Addict shareware CD, whichever issue it came with, was my first exposure.

Something was fishy, because I was hooked.

I even ordered one of the "tip books" that was available to help the ess-than-brighters among us (such as me) walk through the expansive game. Call me a fanboy if you will, but I'll wear the title unabashedly.

Back to the matter at hand: Avadon 2: The Corruption has been released.

Jeff talks a bit about the release in his (always entertaining) blog, The Bottom Feeder. [BF]

It's available from the Spiderweb Software store, the Mac Game Store, Steam, Gog... and probably elsewhere soon. [SSS][MGS][STEAM][GOG]

And in case you're not totally convinced, download the demo... these are always huge, and pretty much worth the asking price on their own!

For fun, here's the game trailer:

brilliant timewaste | You Have To Burn The Rope

The game You Have To Burn The Rope, while cute, is nothing super-special... but listen to the music! And be sure to play it right through to the end (it's short)!

Thanks haha.nu.

useless mental tidbits | APM: Actions Per Minute, as demonstrated by Korean gamers

Evil Genius | Vincent Ocasla

Vincent Ocasla spent four years running equations and cumputing on graph paper to build a totalitarian Sim City 3000 hellscape called Magnasanti. He grew a population of six million and maintained it for 50,000 in-game years. He claims to have beaten an otherwise unbeatable game. (Yes, yes, SimCity has no "winning" state... but as an analytical tool I've always seen the possibilities... and Vincent took the effort to explore the possibilities to their ultimate conclusion in totalitarian efficiency. Fantastic.)

Read the Vice story, there's a great interview with Vincent.

If anyone’s wondering, I am not autistic, or a savant, nor suffer from OCD, or suffer from any other form of clinical mental disease or illness for that matter.

Nicely put.

Thanks to kottke for bringing that one to my attention.

pong'd | First-Person Shooter Disease

Blatent PostWaste Series Experiment #70 | All Your Base Are Belong To Us

Lines of Reality are blurring...

Is there a trend beginning...?

First, some Dutch kids (15 and 14 years of age) were convicted of forcing a younger kid to transfer some of his Runescape items into their accounts. Apparently they threatened him at knife-point, according to one comment, so there were "real-world" violent actions involved... but over items within a virtual gaming world...? (Wired)

Next, a 43-year-old Japanese woman was arrested after deleting her virtual ex-husband's avatar after the couple's online divorce... (Wired)

Granted, two instances do not make a trend, but does raise the interesting question about the effects of virtual reality on morality. And to reverse the thought, what about the effects of morality in the virtual world? An interesting essay in Adbusters explores this further. (Adbusters)