I’ve already confessed on here that when it comes to Apple products, I’ve got less self-control than Eve, Snow White, and the guy from American Pie put together. So the day after they announced the new iMacs, I made the pilgrimage to the local Apple store just to feel of them. (Key finding: the 24″ iMac looks to be the best desktop computer they’ve ever made).

I would’ve gotten one of their new absurdly thin keyboards, but they’re not selling those individually yet, so I was lucky to make it out of there with just a copy of iLife ‘08.

And that’s where I just don’t get Apple anymore. On the hardware side, it’s been easy to see the trend: they’ve got a bulimic’s obsession with getting thinner and thinner. But on the software side, they’re sending mixed signals.

As far as I can tell, the philosophy for Apple-supplied software has been the same since the days of MacPaint and my beloved HyperCard: supply a full suite of creativity software for free with every new computer. Programs that any user can pick up and start using immediately, and then discover more powerful features as they get more familiar with them. It was excellent branding, building Apple’s reputation as the left-brain computer. And it was practical — with fewer third parties developing software, it was necessary for Apple to provide it themselves to keep Macs from getting a reputation for being unsupported.

But the last few iterations of iLife have been all over the map, when it comes to functionality and ease of use. Some of the additions are clearly welcome and downright ingenious. Others are just baffling.

The only iLife program I use consistently has been iPhoto, and that’s basically just as a glorified file browser. All the keyword and album stuff has been too clunky, unwieldy, and tedious to use; I use flickr for all the organization, picture naming and keywords, and sharing. The new version centers everything around Events, one of those things that you can tell is ingenious because it seems obvious in retrospect, but never occurred to me before. Apart from that, there are some genuinely improved editing tools, but nothing revolutionary. The other big batch of “new” stuff is all about .Mac photo galleries, and new publishing and printing options.

Which means templates. Back when iWeb was first announced, my initial excitement faded to disappointment as soon as I realized that the fancy show they put on at Macworld was the limit of what the program can do — it does allow you to set up a nice-looking web page just by dragging and dropping, every bit as quickly as they do it in the demos. But there’s nothing behind the curtain; once you’ve filled in their stock layouts, that’s the limit of what you can do. The company stresses how these programs allow you to express your creativity and individuality, as long as your creativity and individuality fit within their predesigned constraints.

GarageBand’s biggest new feature is a Microsoft Bob-like interface that lets you lay a single track on top of one of their prerecorded songs. iWeb promises greater control over your websites, but it’s really just a couple of new widgets and a way to insert a small bit of HTML on a page; nothing’s really been fixed in the inherent limitations designed into that program. And iDVD only adds more new templates and overall, feels like an afterthought — at least they’re prescient enough to realize that DVDs are on the way out and publishing via the web is the way things are going. (And they’re still trying to push the overpriced and limited .Mac service throughout, of course).

The standout for me has been the new version of iMovie. With earlier versions, I never saw the appeal. Like iWeb and GarageBand, it was a case of playing around with it for a few minutes, getting frustrated with the limitations, and never touching it again. Trying out the new version, though, was actually fun. I threw some clips together, added transitions and titles, and put it up on YouTube, all in about 30 minutes.

It’s a lousy, boring, and amateurish video, but that’s not the point: the point is that I enjoyed making it. I felt like I knew what I was doing the entire time. I tried things, and they worked. I scrubbed the mouse back and forth over the clip and could see exactly how it was going to turn out in the final, at any point. I understood how my clips were organized, I understood the effect most of the buttons and drags were going to have, and I felt encouraged to experiment. I wanted to put it online, as boring as it is, just to say, “Hey, look at what I made.” And I was encouraged to go out and shoot more video.

For all I know, it could very well be another case of iWeb syndrome: it seems powerful on the surface, but the more you try to play with it, the more you run into limitations. More than a few other Mac zealots were immediately incensed that Apple had “dumbed down” iMovie from its previous version (and Apple has made the previous version downloadable for those who don’t like the change). But based on what I’ve seen so far, it does what it’s supposed to do, and it actually makes it enjoyable. And it seems to be designed exactly like they claim: somebody started not just by looking at what other video-editing programs do and iterating on that, but by stepping back and saying, “I want to edit a video. What do I need to make that easy to do?” There are plenty of built-in transitions and titles and sound effects, but it still doesn’t feel like being locked inside Apple’s predesigned sandbox.

Then again, I’ve never tried to do much with flickr’s default layout. And I am completely at a loss to explain the popularity of myspace. Maybe people do like being constrained to templates and told what to do. I still can’t help but think that we’re taking a step backwards, though, trying to make computers easier to use by limiting what you can do with them.

Hay guyz does anybody has seen that hilarious Hampster Dance page?!?

Nothing can make you feel like a dinosaur faster than trying to keep up with the internet memes. The people already have a dozen parodies out on the youtubes before I’ve even seen the first one.

Luckily Ape Lad is on top of the situation. His great-grandfather eerily predicted the internets with his “Laugh-Out Loud Cats” comic strip. It’s impressive enough that grandpa was able to predict so many fads with Nostradamus-like accuracy, but even more impressive how quickly Ape Lad is able to dig through the archives and find the relevant one.

Most recent is this strip, which if you’re lucky enough not to get, references this video.

My favorite parody of the moment (already a month old, and based on this):

And my other favorite: (It’s only funny after you’ve seen the original, and watch it at least until 1:30).

This isn’t just a rehash of already-outdated internet memes. THIS IS SPARTA!

For this vacation, the family’s been indulging me in a bunch of nostalgia trips. The other day was The Georgia Aquarium, which is tough to be nostalgic for seeing as how it only opened a few years ago, but it was my first time back in downtown Atlanta in a long time.

For the record: the Aquarium has a big, friendly staff, and you could tell a ton of money had been put into it, but the whole thing struck me as overly Disney. But in a bad way. I didn’t think it would be possible for me to say this about anything, but it was too theme-park-like. Right down to the 3D movie with CG fish and a turtle that sings like Aretha Franklin — it was all slick, but empty. Which I realize are two good qualities for fish in general, but I wanted something meatier. On the plus side, there’s a pretty cool mural by Shag outside the theater. And we skipped the new World of Coke museum entirely.

I’ve eaten at The Varsity twice, Chick-fil-a once (so far), drove by the restaurant we always called the blue hamburger (which used to be the most distinctive building in the Atlanta skyline, but is all but invisible now), and got caught in the traffic that’s now choking my hometown to death. All that’s left is The Big Chicken and Stone Mountain, which I guess I’ll have to re-visit on another trip.

Today we went up to Athens, my home for four years, which I haven’t seen in at least twelve. Like most fits of nostalgia, it was an eerie combination of being surprised at how much has changed, and simultaneously surprised at how much was exactly the same.

There’s now an enormous Starbucks across from the campus, of course, but I can’t claim to be that upset since I can’t remember what used to be there. My favorite concert venue, the Georgia Theatre, is still there; so is my favorite bar, the Globe, across the street; and my favorite record store, Wuxtry. Guthries, which had phenomenally good chicken fingers, has been replaced by some slick new place that we didn’t try. Also gone is Lowry’s, the most irresponsible thing possible for a college town: a bar that had nickel nights every Thursday, with stands giving out free cigarettes at every table. And you could smoke indoors back then! You just had to go outside to vomit. It was just like Pleasure Island without the turning into donkeys.

Today I made the exact same circuit I always made, from the campus to my favorite spots downtown, and it was all just familiar enough to be pleasant, but not enough to make me think I actually missed it. At the time I was there, I didn’t have any great love for the place, so it would be phoney for me to suddenly claim some great attachment to it. Still, it was nice to go back.

One semi-interesting story: back when I was at UGA, I was just getting into the LucasArts SCUMM games, and was a fan of the Sam & Max comics in the back of the Adventurer magazine that came with every game. I hadn’t realized they were a real comic until I started going to Bizarro Wuxtry, a great comic shop in downtown Athens. They had all kinds of Sam & Max stuff that turned out to be pretty rare: one of the first T-shirts, a couple of the comics, the color collection, and Steve Purcell’s Toybox comic.

Right after I moved out to California, I somehow lost that Toybox comic. I’d gotten Steve to sign it, and had safely packed it away in geek storage, but I must’ve loaned it to someone and never gotten it back. It’s one of my favorite comics, and going without it all these years has been like adjusting to a phantom limb. Today I went back to the same store, and right there, probably in the exact same place I’d bought it 14 years ago, was another copy of the comic book.

I snatched it up and was telling that same story to the guy who was working the counter, and he offered to track down some more Sam & Max-related stuff, but it turned out I already had most of it. He was nice enough to warn me not to pay the 300 or so bucks that people are charging for Surfin’ the Highway, because some company is about to reprint it. I was having warm feelings of fond memories and the realization that I’m doing exactly what I’ve wanted to be doing for a long time, and then he told me he hadn’t played the games because they’re Windows only.

I’m going to take a short break from not updating my award-winning* series of posts about storytelling in videogames, because the whole “Are videogames art?” debate has flared up again this week. People are already tired of the debate, and for good reason. But I can’t tell if people are tired of it because they believe the question is irrelevant, or because they believe it’s already been settled, or because it always devolves into name-calling and pointlessness.

I think it’s plenty relevant. And based on the varying responses you see whenever the topic comes up, there’s no clear evidence that the issue’s been settled. But there’s a ton of evidence of how quickly it becomes a pointless argument with a predictable pattern. The most recent example:

1. Over a year ago, Roger Ebert got a bunch of shut-in gamers (myself included) all hot and bothered when he said videogames aren’t art and are incapable of art.
2. Clive Barker responded with “is too” and rhapsodized on the artistic merit of bowel movements.
3. For some reason, Ebert responded to that by reiterating that he hasn’t played that many games but he still knows they’re not art, and compared Barker and other game fans to earnest but ignorant 4-year-olds.
4. This Monday, Newsweek’s N’gai Croal picked apart Ebert’s commentary, making sure to take potshots at Ebert for writing Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (which, at this point, is about as trite an argument as “oh yeah well you’re fat!”)

And that’s just among the people getting all the press. Whenever the topic comes up on message boards (at least, the ones populated by the literate), you get the pattern: What does Ebert know anyway?, then What about Shadow of the Colossus?, then Games are still young, then What does it mean to be art? Once you hit the last point, you’ve ventured into the types of conversations that college sophomores with a major in philosophy and a minor in art history have, and nobody wants to go there.

But I still believe it’s an important question to keep asking. Not with answers as meaningless as Barker’s claim that basically “anything that you like is art.” Not with Ebert’s increasingly myopic definition of “art” as basically “anything that includes movies but excludes videogames.” And without spinning off into well-intentioned but impractical mentions of Duchamp and Magritte and Pollack and representational art vs. expressionism and attempts to come up with an all-inclusive definition.

Seeing how quickly the question devolves into pointlessness and pretense, it’s understandable to ask, “What does it matter, anyway?” N’Gai Croal’s article mentions three notable game designers (including Shigeru Miyamoto!) who claim that games are product, not art; and they still seem to be doing okay for themselves. The prevailing opinion is that a game’s first and only obligation is to be fun, not artistic. And what’s so bad about entertainment for its own sake?

There’s nothing bad about that, of course. I’m proud of the games I’ve worked on, and I’d be hard-pressed to put forth any of them as examples of what Ebert calls “high art.” And some of the most insightful, genuinely artistic movies I’ve ever seen walk a fine line between “art” and “just entertainment” (Adaptation and Miller’s Crossing to name two). The low art vs. high art debate (part of what Croal calls “art as broccoli”) is pretty much unnecessary unless you’re writing a term paper or a condescending review. I say that most of us are capable of distinguishing between a work that’s pure entertainment and a work that strives to say or do something greater, even if we can’t come up with an all-inclusive definition for what that something is.

At this point in the development of videogames as a medium, that’s really all we need: to acknowledge that there is something more that games are capable of expressing, that they’re not expressing now. Because there’s just no getting around the fact that videogames on the whole are still pretty stupid and juvenile. Stupid and juvenile is fine if it’s by choice, but not if it’s by necessity.

And this is exactly what we’ll end up with, if we don’t start to hold videogames to a higher standard:

• Enforced Stupidity: You get a real sense of anti-intellectualism from videogame fans. It doesn’t stop at just “games don’t need to be more than entertainment;” it turns into “games shouldn’t even try to be more than entertainment.” You’re actually penalized for getting all uppity, having the arrogance to try to insert meaning into something as trivial as a videogame. It’s not just “outsiders” like Ebert and the Anti-Game Politicians who are keeping games in the ghetto, it’s the fans.
• Tighter Restrictions: As long as the popular perception remains that games are product, not art, then it just leaves the medium wide open for the government to regulate it just like product, like toys.
  Want to have a parody of a celebrity or a TV show or movie in your game? The rules for parody and satire are different for products than they are for art. You’ll often see the same people who get all hot and bothered about the First Amendment as it applies to violent videogames, then turn around and complain that a game doesn’t meet some arbitrary dollar-to-game-time ratio. You can’t have it both ways, guys — pick a side: art or product.
• More Censorship: Related to that, the more you insist that games don’t have to say anything, the more you’re encouraging an environment where games aren’t allowed to say anything. Whenever another hot-button game like Manhunt 2 comes along, you’ll hear people fretting about the First Amendment and freedom of speech, and you’ll frequently see comparisons to the Hustler obscenity case. The problem is that it’s a little easier to defend something like Hustler when you see that it has obvious implications for protecting great works like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It would’ve been a lot harder if the medium hadn’t produced anything classier or of more non-prurient-interest merit than Playboy.
• Bad Criticism: Videogame reviews are written as buying guides. It’s a common complaint that game “journalism” is crass and amateurish, even among game journalists. The problem isn’t just that bloggers and reviewers have bad grammar and can’t spell, and it isn’t numeric or percentage-based reviews. It’s that they’re refusing to analyze games as works of art. You’ll find plenty of movie reviews that use simple thumbs-up/thumbs-down ratings, or some arbitrary number of stars, but they still talk about the movie in terms of what it’s trying to express, not in terms of film stock and editing glitches and running time.
  Reviews of even the most transparently commercial movies, like Transformers, will mention its themes, talking about the love of a boy for his car or some such. I have never seen a review of The Sims that describes it as a satire of consumerism.
  Once we get reviewers who are better able to analyze games as art, then we’ll get better-written reviews, and eventually, better games.
• An Endless Cycle of Cliches: When you’re penalized for breaking from convention, you stick to convention. When the fan base insists that it’s game mechanics that matters to a game, not theme, setting, meaning, or overall artistic merit, then you can look forward to more decades of WWII shooters, dystopian sci-fi, and the choice of playing as a dwarf or an elf.
• Bad Writing, Animation, and Design: When the medium is regarded as a big money-maker but a creative wasteland (or as simply commerce, or a diversion), then it doesn’t attract the best talent. It wasn’t until people like Will Eisner and later Alan Moore showed that it was possible to make art from comics, that you saw a greater pool of talent attracted to the medium. And if people had been satisfied that television was capable of nothing more than a diversion, and that movies were the real art, then we’d still be watching “The A-Team” and “Knight Rider” and thinking that that was the best we could get. Twenty years ago, it’d have been impossible to imagine the environment in Hollywood today, where people freely bounce back and forth between TV and movies, instead of just retiring to “The Love Boat” once their movie career tanked.
  As it stands now, people are attracted to games for the money, but most still don’t understand games, and only a very few are attracted to the medium itself. As long as that keeps up, you’re going to keep seeing programmers trying to write comedy games.

So in short, insisting that games are art — not sports; not “just” entertainment; not in the sense that everything is art; not at the expense of fun but in addition to fun; and not in some esoteric, abstract “inherent beauty of Tetris” way, but in a way that everybody can understand even if they can’t define it — means we’ll start seeing better games.

*Longest Delays Between Superfluous Blog Posts, 2007 — Rambling Weblog Weekly

What’s the cut-off date for post-Comic-Con recap blog posts, anyway? 12 hours? A day? Can I get an extension for having to spend a whole day driving back from San Diego, then the next day flying back to Georgia, then the next day sleeping? Plus another extension for having nothing particularly interesting to say except complaints?

The Hotel del Coronado
is pretty… pretty lousy! Boom! But really, it’s a neat-looking place, but the service is a drag. It took about 30 minutes to check in and be told that our reservation for two beds got us a room with one bed, so I got to spend several hundred dollars to sleep on an AeroBed. I was having a hard enough time convincing myself it was okay to spend way way out of my price range for the once-in-a-lifetime historic-hotel thing, but with the waits and prices they just kept making it worse.

On the plus side, though: I got to walk out on the beach every night and feel the tide dragging the sand out from under my feet, something I haven’t done since I was little and spent summer vacations at Myrtle Beach. I’d recommend visitors to San Diego check the place out, but not actually stay there, even if you can afford it. And if you’re going for Comic-Con, book your hotel well in advance! By the time we booked in April, the del Coronado was actually one of the cheapest places we could find!

Panels
The show was so incomprehensibly crowded, and the lines so long, and me so lazy, that I only managed to see one: the Futurama panel, with the entire cast and the executive producers. They did a dramatic reading of the free comic book given out at the panel, which was basically an extended joke about Planet Express’ cancellation by the “Box Network” and being saved by the “Carton Network.” (Get it?!?) But it was worth it for Maurice LaMarche’s reading everything as Calculon. Which then turned into an extended (and really funny) voice-off competition between LaMarche, Billy West, and John DiMaggio.

Celebrity Sightings
As I already mentioned, I passed by Craig McCracken and Nick Frost, and caught a glimpse of Kristen Bell signing photos at some booth. (She’s really tiny, and from what I could see, just as astoundingly beautiful in person as she is on the TV box).

Edited to mention: Rain got to go to a panel with the women of Battlestar Galactica, and Ron Moore, so she wins. Front row, too.

Failed Social Interactions With Artists
I saw Shawn McManus in the autograph area, and I intended to tell him I’ve been a big fan of his stuff since his Dr. Fate series with J.M. DeMatteis, one of my favorite-ever comic series. But I didn’t have anything for him to sign, and it’s kind of awkward just to go up and say “I’m a big fan.” (I know that from experience). I headed out to the ATM to get some cash to buy one of his prints, but by the time I got back he’d already closed up the booth.

I did bring my hardbound Art of Hellboy book to get signed by Mike Mignola, and then failed to do it. The only signing opportunity was a big, crowded event at the Dark Horse booth (at least when I passed by). Instead I got another of his small convention prints, like I did at the last Wonder Con. I predict I’ll eventually have enough of them to wallpaper my house, or at least roll around in.

Also in the failure category: my copy of DC: New Frontier by Darwyn Cooke remains unsigned. The DC booth was nuts. Bill Willingham and Mark Buckingham of Fables were there for a signing, but of course I forgot to bring my copies of those books.

Failed Booth Appearances
I was tentatively scheduled to be at the Telltale booth to sign copies of the Sam & Max games (and I suppose Curse of Monkey Island, if anyone had brought their copy), but completely failed to make it. The scary part is that I can’t even remember why — I was either still dealing with traffic and parking, or finding something to eat, or wandering naked and confused through the exhibition hall. The entire weekend was a confused blur, so by about 5pm on Friday I was just passively asking people around me what to do next. I’ll try to make it up to my legions of fans at the next Wonder Con.

Successful Purchasing Experiences
I felt like kind of a douche for badgering Steve Purcell to sell me one of his few remaining Sam & Max prints, but dammit, I’ve wanted one for a long time. There’s one hanging in the Telltale offices that I’ve contemplated stealing ever since the first time I visited, a couple of years ago.

Apart from that, I got a copy of Flight Volume 4, an always-beautiful compilation of indie comic artists’ stories with a common theme. They had a great system set up where they’d pass the book along to all the artists at the booth and it would eventually work its way back. So even though I didn’t actually talk to any of the artists, I still got a personalized copy. I’m a fan of Vera Brosgol’s work on her website and the previous Flight volumes, so I was glad to see she’s got a story in this collection. And I didn’t realize until later that my friend Graham has a story in it, although he wasn’t there; I’ll have to see if he can sign it at APE or something.

And I got two copies of the Tek Jansen comic, signed by the artist. I just hadn’t realized he was the artist when I was paying for them, and was a little surprised and felt somewhat foolish when he took a pen and wrote his name on the cover of each. “What the heck are you do– oh.” Whoops.

Congratulations
to Steve Purcell for winning the Eisner award for Best Digital Comic, for the Sam & Max story on Telltale’s site. (You can see a recreation of the award ceremony from the Pope on Telltale’s blog).

It’s reassuring to see that the internet is still working, and you’ll see embittered complaints about a funny, hand-painted original comic presented for free, complete with anonymous criticisms and allegations of ignorance on the part of the judges. Call me biased (or, since this is the internet, I guess call me bias) but I say any comic with a panel about Sam’s hideous junk deserves to win every award the show offers.

Interstate 5
I’ve heard rumors off and on that they’re planning to build a bullet train between San Francisco and Los Angeles. I would welcome such a creation. If it proves unfeasible, I suggest they spend the money on an alternate technology: a Spy Hunter style button that I can press to take the minivan driving at 55 mph in front of me and send it careening into the median with a fiery explosion.

What in the hell is so hard to understand, people? You drive on the right, you pass on the left. If you’re not actively engaged in the pursuit of overtaking another vehicle, by which I mean you’ll pass it within the next 10 minutes, you get the hell over in the right lane. There’s no excuse to be driving 60 mph in the fast lane of a highway with a 70 mph speed limit. Has the world gone mad?

I’m pretty sure that I’m not going to another Comic Con. Good to see once, but I’m perfectly happy with the more awkward but also more earnest Wonder Con from now on. But if I do ever have to go south of San Jose again, I’m flying.