Tuesday, December 6th, 2005
Thinking about recent TV ads for the newly released XBox 360, I’ve come up with an idea for the next in the series. So far we’ve had Jump Rope in NY City, Water Balloon riots in Buenos Aires, and ‘Joy‘ - an encounter with a Japanese-style horror monster in Lond perhaps. Each with the super, “Jump In”. Now it’s time for a real jumping experience.
The way I’d have it is:
Soundtrack: Enigma, “The Gate”, 1st track from Screen Behind the Mirror
- incorporating samples of Carl Orff.
We’re free falling - getting our 360 degree views as we swirl around.
We see another jumper not too far away - the camera zooms in to show us a Halo-style Spartan super soldier taking aim with his battle rifle. There’ a flash, and the words, “XBox 360. Jump In” as we rapidly descend into the battlefield.
Tags: Advertising, Culture, gaming, Music, TV Ads
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Saturday, September 3rd, 2005
I bought a copy of Bibleopoly for $5 at a school fair a couple of weeks ago. And finally today I got around to playing the game with my daughter.
It’s pretty well a copy of Monopoly. Instead of property titles you have deeds. Instead of rent you have offerings. Instead of community chest you have “Abyss”. Instead of Chance you have Faith and Contingency. The object of the game is to build a church, complete with cornerstone, three bricks and a steeple (the player’s piece).
The twist: You can lay a cornerstone once you have three out of three properties in a set. Instead of paying for it you acquire the stone by giving away one of your deeds to a person who needs it to complete their set. Generosity is the order of the day. If you can’t afford the ‘offering’ you just pay what you’ve got and keep playing. Once someone has completed their building everyone advances to the property for a dedication service.
The game was produced by Late For The Sky back in 1991. They have also produced Birdopoly, Booo-opoly, Brew-opoly, Canada-opoly, Cat in the Hat-opoly, Chocolate-Opoly, Dog-Opoly, Millenniumopoly, Motown-opoly, and so on…
I had a conversation with my daughter about ‘churches’ in New Testament times. We hear about the church in Pergamum, Ephesus, Laodicaea. But were they buildings? And in particular, 1950s style buildings? And did all their offerings ultimately go towards such buildings?
Tags: gaming, Home Front
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Tuesday, June 28th, 2005
Yesterday was the day of Lachlan’s Lach LAN (Local Area Network) party. We had twenty 16-18 year olds here to connect up with each other on XBox and Playstation for eight hours. It’s becoming a trend here. A LAN party every school holidays. Lachlan’s getting it down to a fine art, with a business plan, budget and online registration. There’s a basketball hoop out the front for breakout time. (Pity it rained most of the day) Way too much Pepsi. And a quiet room just for conversation. A card table. And then scattered through the house - an assortment of connected Xbox and Playstation consoles, televisions and projectors.
One of Lachlan’s friends blogged about it at Gifted Twit.
“I’m going to a madd-hizzhouse Xbox party tomorrow at a good friend’s house. This plans to be a grand event, possibly with much cursing and shared hatred, and skinny nerdlingers throwing controllers at each other and screaming prolific phrases like “OMG WTF U HAXOR N00B SHOTGUN WHORE!!!”. Roughly translated, this implies that the target is apparently cheating and appears to favour the shotgun weapon. I used to have a serious Counter-Strike addiction, and you would be astonished by the number of pre-pubescent geeky poofburgers that use this terminology. This however, presents the upside in entertainment, as there is simply nothing funnier than listening to two 12 year-olds facing off (with voice communication) screaming at one another actually saying “double-u tee eff” and “oh-em-gee you noob”. Sigh, no wonder we haven’t cured cancer.”
See my post from the last LAN party.
Take a look at the Lach LAN registration page.
Tags: gaming, Home Front
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