Comments on: [Links] No news is good news edition

By: Targeter

Targeter — Mon, 13 Aug 2012 17:06:07 +0000

London’s Olympics were awesome to watch. If only NBC’s coverage was half as good as the BBC’s … /sigh.

By: Shintar

Shintar — Mon, 13 Aug 2012 16:40:09 +0000

As an Austrian living in the UK, the Olympics were quite an odd experience. I’m not hugely interested in sports on the best of days, but even then all my country’s best athletes are skiers. The summer games are a total non-event for Austria as we never win anything. It was weird to see even people who usually aren’t that into sports talk about the Olympics all day… but I just smiled and nodded, and in the end I did get at least a glimpse of what excited everyone so much.

By: Redbeard

Redbeard — Mon, 13 Aug 2012 00:25:26 +0000

And, as is seemingly traditional by now, the closing ceremonies are on a tape delay. The Mars Rover does a better job of getting a signal to the U.S. than NBC does again.

By: Doone W.

Doone W. — Sun, 12 Aug 2012 23:16:51 +0000

I wanted to talk about olympics but honestly, my blogging has been so thin this summer Im sure it wasn’t a real surprise to you. Still, I watched them daily and cheered on every underdog as usual …and of course applauded the supreme athletes who broke crazy records this year!

Great Linkspam! This edition was full of stuff I hadn’t heard about yet. Ill be catching up on the blogosphere and industry this week. I may even indulge your challenge and write something gaming-olympics related.

By: Daraxis

Daraxis — Sun, 12 Aug 2012 22:31:06 +0000

Kurn is female.

By: spinks

spinks — Sun, 12 Aug 2012 18:45:49 +0000

I was in a pub on Thursday night (say it ain’t so) and the whole pub full of people went silent for a brief minute and then erupted into cheers as Bolt won the 200m final. That was pretty cool.

And Mo is just amazing, what a hero.

By: Redbeard

Redbeard — Sun, 12 Aug 2012 18:37:20 +0000

Mo Farah rocks! (And his training buddy Galen Rupp ain’t so bad either.)

By: Injera

Injera — Sun, 12 Aug 2012 18:02:42 +0000

Well, the “modern pentathalon” of e-sports would need to be as anachronistic as testing the bona fides of a cavalry officer at the start of WW1. So, a twitchy, text-based game circa the release of Doom?

And yes, that L2P quote from Aly is great. Games are fun because there’s a learning curve, and the great ones have you always figuring out new things. I think one of the big reasons most MMO’s (in particular, WoW) feel so bland right now is they put everyone into the same pool, a pool that’s deep enough to frighten the first time swimmers but too shallow to let anyone actually dive.

By: spinks

spinks — Sun, 12 Aug 2012 17:07:18 +0000

A lot of us had doubts, but I think the games has totally won people over here. I’m so proud of my mates who have been volunteering and if I lived in London, I’d have wanted to do that too.

In a way, we have a sort of national lack of confidence on many levels. It’s nice to remember that actually we do a lot of things very well still. And props to all the sportspeople. I was going to write a post on sportsmanship but it got a bit sappy — ended up concluding that it doesn’t really matter who gets the medals; in a way, we ALL win.

By: rowan

rowan — Sun, 12 Aug 2012 17:03:51 +0000

I may just have to steal that quote from Aly. She is absolutely right, in that having to learn something is never grounds for criticism. On the other hand, even though we know gamers are not a monolithic bunch, we often treat oursleves that way. “Gamers” want something different, but then “Gamers” complain about differences. It’s probably not the same set of gamers complaining about both stagnation and progress, though it is possible there is some overlap.