In which, Tracy and Dude follow up on the previous podcast on freedom of speech with a podcast on censorship and how it is different for geek culture than it is in the larger American culture. We discuss the difference between bottom up and top down censorship, the difference between voting with one’s wallet and screaming for censorship of art, and why the religious right of the 80’s and 90’s are both similar and not to today’s third wave feminists and progressives.
Filed under Geek Life, Joseph De Paul, Podcast, Tracy Gronewold
Movie adaptations from books, comic books, and plays are common and have had a wide range of successes. However, making a movie based on a video game is a different monster altogether. It’s like invading Afghanistan, no one can do it right. While at times they can make some money at the box office, these movies have never been a hit with critics and rarely please fans. The mostly critically acclaimed one, and I use the phrase loosely, was Final Fantasy and the best performing one at the box office was Mortal Kombat. That being said, here are some games that I’d like to see get made it to movies even if they have already been screwed up already and will most likely be screwed up again. Just maybe, if done right, these could be great (ok, maybe enjoyable) films. Continue reading
Filed under Gaming, Joseph De Paul, Movies
Americans love a good rags to riches story, especially when the protagonist has to work hard, pull himself up by his bootstraps, and eventually makes it big. Horatio Alger sold dozens of books based on this very formula. There’s also a Geek You Should Know that did this very thing! Ralph Baer is credited with creating the world’s first gaming console, the Brown Box–later called the Odyssey–but he didn’t start as a technological guru.
Filed under Gaming, Geeks You Should Know
I’ve been playing female characters in video games for years. I don’t even think about it anymore. This seems to be strange to people who watch me play, and I don’t understand why. I’ve had family comment. I’ve had friends comment. I’ve even had my friends’ kids comment. I have never understood why this is looked at as such a strange thing. Their disbelief is most commonly phrased as an obvious statement of fact, “… But you’re not a girl.” My response is, “Um…so what?”
It seems that some people who have a natural inclination to role-play themselves in games expect that others do the same. I lost this inclination very early on, and not for some adolescent desire to ogle the nicely animated female characters. The real reason I started liking and playing female characters is far more practical: they were always faster, more agile, and made better spell casters. Essentially, they got the first opportunity to act in most role-playing games and were usually faster than their usually heavier male counterparts in fighting games, while throwing cool spell effects at enemies. In racing games, the girls tended to have faster acceleration. Since I had the tendency to smash into things instead of being able to run through the tracks, I really needed that acceleration more than the higher max-speed that the males generally had. Continue reading
Filed under Gaming, Geek Life, Kurt Klein
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Therefore I Geek 