bruceb news

On 11/11/11, a new game will be released that has a lot of people panting in anticipation. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is the latest game in a series that goes back to the dawn of computer gaming when The Elder Scrolls: Arena was released in 1994 for DOS computers. Since then, each successive game has caused endless lost hours for computer gamers as they explored vast landscapes filled with open-ended fantasy adventures.

As with its predecessors, Skyrim is a single-player game, defying the industry’s move to online multiplayer games that require more expertise than aging baby boomers can bring to the keyboard. […] continued

Machinarium is a stunningly beautiful game with hand-drawn characters and backgrounds that are packed with detail and personality. Better yet, it’s an adventure game in the old point-and-click style – no shooting, no running, no reflexes! The game has no dialog, so puzzles are solved the old-fashioned way, by hunting for hot spots and picking up items and trying to figure out a sequence that makes some kind of sense. If you can recover the dog trapped across the water and give it to the woman calling for it, she’ll give you her umbrella, which you can use to walk under the broken pipe, which will let you get to the area where . […] continued

Sometimes it seems impossible to find a a couple of hours that can be spent away from the real world. People over 25 might find time for a good book but computer gaming belongs to the young – almost any good computer game requires at least a few hours to learn the controls and become familiar with the setup, and the best of them can easily hold your interest for anywhere from 20-60 hours. (Not to mention that most of the shooting games are so fast and require such twitchy reflexes that I couldn’t have played them even when I was young. […] continued

There will be time next year for news about technology that affects your business. Let’s focus on something more important.

On Xmas day, a new Wallace and Gromit short film, “A Matter Of Loaf And Death,” was broadcast on British television! This is exciting news for anyone who enjoyed A Grand Day Out, A Close Shave, The Wrong Trousers, and The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit. Everyone likes Wallace and Gromit! The new film is just as wonderful as the rest. It will eventually be released in the US, although anyone familiar with Bittorrent can find a copy pretty quickly. […] continued

By the close of the 2008 Olympic Games, NBC will have broadcast 2,900 hours of live coverage – more than the total number of US television hours for all previous summer Olympic Games combined.

In addition to the broadcasts on the primary NBC channel, video coverage will be virtually nonstop on NBC’s Spanish-language outlet, Telemundo, and on five of seven major NBC Universal-owned cable channels. Huge amounts of video covering every sport will be served up by streamed video on NBC’s Olympics Web site, NBCOlympics.com. Here’s a good article about the monolithic coverage and the accompanying promotional effort.

This article examines the technical challenge of handling that much video – 11 terabytes of high definition content alone. […] continued

If you are young or young at heart, and have the luxury of free time, it’s worth noting the release tomorrow for the PC, XBox 360, and PS3 of Grand Theft Auto IV, latest installment in an increasingly important franchise. Early reviews are flowing in and GTA IV seems on its way to becoming the best-reviewed game in history – currently standing at 99% at metacritic.com.

If you’re too old to be playing a violent game in a seedy underworld, don’t overlook Sam & Max, a big floppy dog with a fedora and a hyperkinetic smart-aleck rabbity thing, who triumphantly returned a couple of years ago in consistently hilarious adventure games released at regular intervals on the Gametap service. […] continued

Halo 3 will be released for the XBox 360 on Tuesday. I know, you don’t play games, but this is one of those cultural events that are worth knowing about to keep from feeling old and out of touch.

It’s likely that the sales during the first 24 hours will be $155 million or more – allowing Microsoft to brag that it is the largest entertainment launch in history. That’s more money than any movie or book has ever brought in – bigger than Spiderman 3, bigger than Harry Potter. Here’s the kind of news item you’re likely to see about the record-setting sales. […] continued

I mentioned a few days ago that the latest version of Google Earth includes “Google Sky,” adding the ability to zoom through the universe viewing high-resolution photos of stars and galaxies.

Many features have been added in the last couple of years for displaying photos, Wikipedia entries, 3D skylines, and more. Here’s two that are new to me.

This site has a long discussion of how to download high-resolution 3D images of structures around the world, created by real people and uploaded to Google’s servers. The article focuses on buildings in Disneyland contributed by adoring fans, but there’s more being constantly added around the world. […] continued

Second Life looked like it was poised to be the Next Big Thing when the media gave it blanket coverage a few months ago. (I got caught up in the hype and wrote a description of it that was way too enthusiastic. I’m sorry.) It’s still growing and making its presence felt, but its growth numbers turned out to be exaggerated and many people have been discouraged by the difficulty of getting started and unimpressed by the experience of wandering the virtual world.

Here’s a wonderful description of one person’s first excursion into the world of Second Life. It’s enough to satisfy my curiosity for a while. […] continued

Productivity is overrated. Close the e-mail program, shove those piles of paper aside, there’s more important things to do: Sam & Max are back in a new game, their first appearance on computer screens since the late, lamented Sam & Max Hit The Road in 1993. Here’s the web site for Sam & Max Episode 1: Culture Shock.

Young gamers have no knowledge of the adventure game genre – pointing and clicking and solving puzzles, frequently while laughing out loud. Computer gaming began with adventure games, starting with Colossal Cave, progressing through Activision’s Zork and other text adventures, through Sierra’s long line of games in the 80s, and culminating in the Monkey Island titles and many others from LucasArts. […] continued