Linked List: January 2025
Monday, 6 January 2025
- Why triple-A RPGs focus on violence ✶
-
As descendants of hunter-gatherers, there’s a thrill felt by many humans, maybe around 50% of them, when swinging or launching a projectile that hits a target. The opening scene of 2001: A Space Odyssey is a good example.
Maybe this is a reason violence in video games is so popular. It lets humans express it in play without real-world consequences.
Yet, at least. See Ender’s Game, Ready Player One, drones in ongoing wars, and James Somers’ writing about AI and robotics for a glimpse of a future, or present, where joypad-controlled machines kill remotely.
The most efficient killers, however, are the ones who can convince a mob to kill for them. Unfortunately, once in a while, they take power.
Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions.
- DOOM: The Gallery Experience ✶
-
Admire the glasses and critically curious, somewhat worried expression of your space marine avatar while drinking wine and eating hors d’oeuvers in a web browser experience “…created as an art piece designed to parody the wonderfully pretentious world of gallery openings.”
Press 1 to switch from the glass of wine to your hand and then click each artwork for a close-up, then click the title of the artwork to open its page at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
- Zelda Breath of the Wild controls ✶
-
After playing this video game art piece again yesterday I’ve updated the Zelda BotW page with a table of controls to help avoid future rage during livestreams.
Friday, 3 January 2025
- Abject Audio Inputs ✶
-
Utility to bind inputs from your keyboard to frequencies recorded from your audio devices so you can control a video game character with a musical instrument.