Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Avowed Metalhead Now President of World's Largest Muslim Country

More here on Joko Widodo, president-elect of Indonesia.



Given his shirt, I wonder if he is "chuffed". Indeed, perhaps his father said, "Turn that dine. Turn that unemployment dine. Wot koinda policies are them." Napalm Death inside jokes have a limited audience, but such is my refined taste in humor.

Friday, July 18, 2014

Why Video Games Haven't Wiped Out Movies

Video games generally have a much better ROI than movies (actual figures here), to a point where you can't help but wonder why the entertainment industry is still making movies. (Status to studio executives? Status and financial incentives to irrationally optimistic individuals, i.e. actors? Difficulty of retraining talent?) But there are reasons that games haven't completely dominated the entertainment industry yet, and one of the more not-immediately-intuitive ones is that each individual product tries increasingly to keep players online for more hours. Assuming a finite number of game customers, that means that as games get better at holding onto a finite pool of player hours, newer games have to be much, much better to compete, or just be satisfied with ever-shrinking market shares. Many more observations here.

Tuesday, July 1, 2014

A Fun Game: Science Fiction Mars, or the Navajo Nation

One is a picture of Navajo Mountain, Arizona (presumably from Lake Powell; credit mikereyfman.com) and the other is one of my favorite cover art pieces ever. Spot the difference.