TL;DR: Skyrim is uncanny.

Exhibit A:  nightmare fuel.

I've played a lot of Skyrim and emerged feeling unsatisfied.  Being a thoughtful sort, I started to ponder why that's the case.  Even if the interface, incongruities, scripting glitches, bugs, etc., were all tip-top, the game would remain unsatisfying for me.  What is it way deep down in Skyrim that's wrong?   And I've concluded Skyrim's basic problem is that it's uncanny.  As in “uncanny valley.”  When a human replica looks or moves almost—but not quite—like an actual human it provokes strong negative emotions in human observers.  Think of corpses and zombies.  The idea is that the high fidelity of the imitation makes its unnaturalness grotesquely obvious.

I’m only using the concept loosely here because Skyrim’s simulation of a world inhabited by agents and artifacts ruled by psychology and physics doesn’t even loosely resemble the real and what it inspires in me is not revulsion but an eerie feeling of emptiness.  Skyrim’s design underlines the game's limitations in a way that forever sabotages its illusions and reduces my investment in its world.

How much is Wasteland 2 worth to you?

Oh Prostitute, the wasteland is no place for a nice girl like you.  Why did you ever leave British Columbia?

Think about it now, because you’ll want an answer ready when a doe-eyed Brian Fargo jingles his change cup at you next month.  He hopes to raise something like $1m to fund Wasteland 2.  As I recall, his studio inXile has owned the license for several years, meaning this Kickstarter idea probably comes after frustration with the limitations of traditional financing.  If nothing else, the ongoing Kickstarter Fever tells us developers have been chafing under the restrictions of the current publishing model for some time.  I hope we're watching the beginnings of their liberation.  The most interesting work of recent years has been done by independent studios publishing digitally but I'm certain there's great talent languishing in studios hidebound by conservative publishers and it will be good for all of us if they can take more risks.

Kickstarter is the new black

The heady stench of hot cash lies heavy over Tim Schafer’s wildly successful Kickstarter telethon and is attracting the attention of other developers who worked on beloved IPs.  Enter Chris Avellone of Fallout 2 and Torment fame, asking what people would pay Obsidian to make.  Hmmm, let me think.  Baldur's Gate 3?  My Little Brony:  the MMORPG?  An Alpha Protocol reboot that doesn't so closely resemble a twisted mass of flaming wreckage?  Something with the Lost Vikings?  An extraordinarily high-budget roguelike?  There's a world of possibilities here.  Do what you do best, internet:  pour your wildest RPG fantasies out in a rambling stream of consciousness.  Tell us why it needs to be turn-based or nothing!  Do it here, do it now! 

Double Fine kickstarts an adventure before I can even get my pants on

There's some double fine advice for you.

I put my pants on one leg at a time just like everybody else, except it takes me 8 hours.  I understand this is not common but for the life of me can’t figure out how it’s done more quickly.  What do you do with all the busted sprockets?  Anyway, I’ve just learned that today, while I was strapped into my pantsing apparatus, grunting and straining to reach the levers, Tim Schafer was out on the internet hustling for cash at Kickstarter.  He wants to return to his roots and produce another classic point/click adventure, something like Grim Fandango or Day of the Tentacle, precisely the sort of game today's risk-averse publishers aren't keen to finance.  So he made his pitch direct to the SCUMM-hungry masses instead.  And they are hungry for SCUMM—he asked for $400,000 and has been buried in a funding avalanche we hope he will not embezzle.  Looks like we’ll be stealing rubber chickens with pulleys in their middles and caching hamsters in freezers this fall. Wow, that Schafer’s a go-getter. I bet he can get his pants on in like 3 hours.

Half-Life protest running out of steam?

Indifference is the true plague of locusts.

The paradoxically violent and atomized non-confrontational mass protest hurled at Valve’s wall of frigid taciturnity has come and gone.  When I first heard it was in the offing I thought the protestors could ride the recent wave of whingey internet empowerment all the way to success.  I expected tens of thousands of cinderblocks would be used to solve tedious physics puzzles and millions of faceless Combine thugs would be gunned down without regard to their race or creed.   

Now I learn that on the big day only 13,216 of the 50,000+ members of the Steam group participated in the action.  Nigh unto forty thousand confirmed Half-Lifers couldn’t be motivated even to alt-tab out of a game that, with all its faults, is way better than Man vs. Machine.  I’ve always thought average netizens capable of complaining and being lazy in roughly equal amounts; perhaps I misunderstood the balance of forces in the internet’s soul.

Half-Life protest takes on Steam

Emboldened by the recent success of internet whinging, viz. the forestalling of SOPA and PIPA, something like 30,000 Half-Lifers are gathering to protest the vortex of mystery that seems to have swallowed Half-Life 3.  Their plan:  to play Half-Life 2.  All at the same time.  They appear to be following Gandhi’s playbook here, protesting a lack of one thing by consuming a lot of something else.  Gandhi probably wouldn’t have chosen a game about shooting anonymous quislings in the face as the venue for one of his protests, but this Half-Life thing is actually quite similar to his celebrated salt march.  You know, the one where he gathered together thousands of Indians to protest the Salt Act and then sent everyone home to drink a lot of water.  Time will tell if Valve is as unshakable as the British Raj.

Much Different? More like Much Potemkin Village.

It’s a world record people.  Most concurrent players in an online FPS ever.  And I was on the scene.  Fifty years from now when I’m appearing before awestruck school assemblies to tell the harrowing true story of my war, I’ll get a little misty-eyed as I gaze into the distance and say, “you can’t know what it was like unless you were there.  I was there, man.”  But I hope the kids won’t ask for any details.