The Secret of Immersive Game Worlds »

The makers of The Vanishing of Ethan Carter on how games today are created with an artificial ’lure’ to pull the players through the level (like the yellow landmarks in The Last of Us) and how this makes the game world feel synthetic and unnatural.

The Setup / John McAfee »

This is amazing. Without spoiling much: his favourite piece of software is the remote control software for the M153 50 caliber machine gun. His second favourite is the Smart Voice Recorder for Android.

Defining Cinematography »

Interesting anaylsis of how ‘cinematography’ and ‘visual effects’ are intersecting from the point of view of the Academy awards.

The Wildly Functional Studio of Video Wizard Casey Neistat »

I have the weirdest hetero man-crush on Casey Neistat. This behind-the-scenes video of how he works reminds me a lot of Stanley Kubrick’s Boxes, just how weirdly obsessive he becomes about every little thing. C.f. Neistat’s organisation of little red boxes according to the relationship of contents of the box to the other boxes around it.

House of Cards Against Humanity

Netflix teamed up with the Cards Against Humanity guys to promote the second season of House of Cards. We’ve already seen how CAH have a habit of thumbing their nose at the established way of doing business, so how did this work out? Predictably. Here’s how CAH introduced this new pack:

Last month, someone in the Netflix marketing department had an epiphany: House of Cards andCards Against Humanity both contain the word “cards.” When we got a phone call from Netflix, we enthusiastically agreed that the two products indeed contain the word “cards.”

You know how Cards Against Humanity works, right? It’s sort of like Apples to Apples. The black cards have sentences with blanks in them and the white cards have potential answers for those blanks. In the House of Cards set, the first black card says “I can’t believe Netflix is using to promote House of Cards.”

https://twitter.com/MaxTemkin/status/434063801567031296

https://twitter.com/MaxTemkin/status/434063968370323458

I don’t think Cards Against Humanity will be getting a call from Netflix again any time soon.

Dirtbag Hamlet »

Enter HAMLET, skateboarding

OPHELIA: My lord, I–

HAMLET ollies over OPHELIA’s head

HAMLET [offstage]: we were never dating

Paris’ abandoned subways to be turned into underground entertainment venues »

This sounds like a great idea, but can you imagine what it would be like if someone used one for a Sleep No More/Punchdrunk venue?

Radiotopia »

Your new favourite podcasts.

Warriors. Come out to pla-ay.

Fan-made trailer for The Warriors. Spot on.

hey are you cool »

A collection of the people one player meets in Day Z. This is exactly what I love about these sandbox online games - the stories that come out of them are fascinating.