Meta narrative
We’re making a video game this year, but it’s a bit secret at the moment. Don’t worry, it’s got spies in it and it’s going to be awesome. At the moment, I’m trying to sort out some sort of narrative for our game to give players a reason to do what they’re doing (whatever that may be; it’s a secret, remember).
I am ‘the editor’ and I am responsible for words.
In our lecture today, we were told that most narratives — including video games — follow the same basic structure that has existed since the Ancient Greeks, for the amusement of peasants (apparently):
- Intro
- Rise
- Climax
- Fall
- Catastrophe
That sounds about right, but I think it’s missing something; resolution. You know; the happy ending, the hero saving the day at the last minute, Mr. Spock reversing something the polarity of the fusion cannon and saving the ship… you get the idea. And with that in mind, I’ve got some stories to be writing.
Liam Lynch
Liam Lynch (Sifl and Olly, The Tenacious D movie, the Lynchland podcast and, of course, the United States of Whatever song) is one of those people who makes me want to make stuff. He just seems to be able to come with an idea, and then go ahead and make it. Plus he cloned his dead cat, which is as sweet as it is creepy.
If you’re new to Liam Lynch, I would recommend checking out Lynchland, Sifl and Olly (it’ll be on YouTube) and the songs The Fresh Electric and This Town Sucks.
Like Michel Gondry, he is one of the people who I intend to steal appropriate ideas from this year.
Monotype Grotesque
It seems like I can’t talk about Helvetica without mentioning Arial (again), so today I’m going to talk about Monotype Grotesque. And then we’ll get back to Helvetica and the sniggering at the capital R can continue. First of all, a comparison of Arial and Monotype Grotesque:
Apart from a few variations in the strokes, character spacing and proportions they’re pretty similar. Arial was based upon Monotype Grotesque; tweaked to look better on screen and for printing from laser printers (as far I can tell anyway, it’s quite hard to find anything about Arial in typography books, they get all sniffy about it). Now here’s where it gets typographically interesting; this new Arial with its tweaked spacing and proportions, just so happened to very closely match the spacing and proportions of Helvetica. And then a certain Microsoft adopted it as their default sans-serif and from then on, rightly or wrongly, Arial was stuck with a reputation as a cheap Helvetica knock-off.
One more thing…
Dissertation proposal
I’ve finally managed to put into words what it is I want to write about this year; before I could only manage it with much waving of arms and obscure references to Jacques Cousteau.
The world-wide-web remains largely unexplored because — much like the London Underground before the introduction of Harry Beck’s diagram — we can’t comprehend the entirety of the network as it is currently presented to us.
On another note, I used Avenir as the typeface for the PDF of my proposal. It’s nice, but the capital R isn’t anywhere near as filthy as the one from Helvetica.
Maps of the web
This year, I would like to go exploring the web (I’ve probably already mentioned that a couple of times). An explorer needs maps, and so I’ve been thinking about the way the web is currently mapped. Most of the maps out there are either based on network connections between machines (which isn’t that interesting to me) or on semantic connections between topics (which is better, but still not that interesting). More on the semantic web another day, though. And I’ll start talking about mappa mundi once I’ve been to the library again and know what I’m talking about.
So far, the best map of the web I’ve found is this map of online communities on xkcd.
Neue Haas Grotesk
In 1956, Max Miedinger was commissioned by the Haas’sche Schriftgiesserei (Haas type foundry) to develop a new sans-serif typeface. Haas Grotesk was designed and released in 1957, inspired by (and intended to compete with) Akzidenz Grotesk; at the time a leading typeface in the ‘Swiss design’ movement.
In 1960 Neue Haas Grotesk was renamed Helvetica (Latin for Swiss), a clever marketing ploy, for it ended up becoming synonymous with ‘Swiss design.’
That is clever.
I’ve been reading actual dead-tree books whilst researching this (the Wikipedia articles were a bit rubbish, not to mention inconsistent) — Helvetica: Homage to a typeface by Lars Müller and Sans serif: The ultimate sourcebook of classic and contemporary sans serif typography by Cees W. De Jong.
London Underground map
It’s not really a map; it’s a diagram — it has, at best, a tenuous relationship with the actual geography of London — but to many people (including me) it’s the only map of London there is. As I’ve experienced it, London is a collection of islands, joined only by an elaborate network of tubes. The London Underground map is London.
So… the internet (and by internet, I mostly mean the web). Physically, the internet is just a lot of computers linked together; sending, receiving and routing packets of data (through, oddly enough, an elaborate network of tubes). That’s just machines though, that’s the way they see it.
What I’m trying to say is; the way I experience London through the Underground map is somehow related to the way I experience the internet through Safari and Google. And in the same way that most of London is left off that map, to be forever unexplored; much of the internet is floating around in unexplored obscurity, not linked into the Piccadilly Line of the web.
I want to go exploring.
Electroplankton
I love Electroplankton on the Nintendo DS, it’s great for whiling away the insomniac hours (also, is you say ‘Adam’ into it, and play it backwards; it sounds like ‘murder’). Is it a game though?
Electroplankton has been described as a ‘toy’ rather than a game because there is no conflict, no time limit and no particular goal. I suppose it depends on how you define ‘game’. It’s dictionary time:
Game: A pursuit or activity with rules performed either alone or with others, for the purpose of entertainment.
By that definition, which sounds reasonable to me, I would say that Electroplankton is a game. It definitely counts as an activity, it certainly has rules / constraints and it is entertaining. Personally, my definition of a game is something you play for fun.
Shotcode
I know Dan’s already blogged about Shotcodes, so I’ve been thinking about a bit more about them. Ultra-quick version: it’s a little blob that takes you to a website if you point a mobile phone at it. Here’s one I appropriated (I love using that word) from Dan’s blog that will send you to his website.
Dan’s idea for getting the shotcode up and around the town was to make stencils and spray it onto to stuff. Well now, that’s just plain illegal, and it’s not like we could just say sorry and wipe it off. My cunning plan, is to get them printed up onto little vinyl stickers and stick them onto everything we can. That’s still illegal, but at least they’d be easier to clean up.
