October 8, 2003
MarkBernstein.org
 

Game Query Considered Excitingly Dull

Over at Grand Text Auto, Andrew Stern posts that my question about games is obvious. In the comments, Wardip-Fruin says that it's just not an interesting question. (Jason Rhody, writing on his own weblog, found Stern's restatement more interesting, and his response, from Asheron's Call, is very useful indeed.)

It's interesting that Andrew's note has, in the course of a weekend, generated one of the longest comment threads in the site's history.

Another interesting observation is the inherent tendency of comment threads to become usenet flamefests (an observation Winer made at Bloggercon, though this thread isn't yet very toasty).

"You're all a bunch of fancypants. My response to the question: Syndicate" -- arch stanton

That's interesting, too. I know the work of many of the other contributors, but I don't recognize Stanton's name offhand. I don't know whether the post is written by the musician, or by an admirer, or if if the eponymous domain represents this musician or another one. Perhaps its another arch stanton entirely. Isn't Google interesting?

But, if I understand the intent, this is real criticism of real games -- or at least a gesture in that direction. Like real criticism of real hypertexts, by other means.

And that's always interesting.