Joshua Topolsky interviews Damon Lindelof:
There’s some interesting stuff here for Lost fans in this hour-long interview straight from one of the the show’s showrunners. This is the first I’ve seen of Lindelof talking candidly at length about some of the issues that people had with Lost and the finale. Don’t expect any mindblowing revelations, but at least there is some confirmation as to what was “real” and wasn’t.
via The Verge.
This interview is very long, but once you start listening to it, you won’t even notice the time going by. Plus, it’s the weekend, so you’ve got the time.
You’ll be absolutely enthralled by David Choe because he’s the honey badger of artists. He doesn’t give a shit about “normal” conventions or the decisions that normal people would make. He plays by his own rules and is completely candid with Howard. He tells stories about his time incarcerated in a Japanese prison where he had to bash his head in to cause a visible injury so the warden would take him to a hospital for internal bleeding treatment. He’ll tell you how he came to paint the walls of the original Facebook offices and how he came to the decision to choose shares in the company as payment rather than hard cash. There are some vulgar moments where he talks about sex and masturbation, but it’s all part of his profile.
It’s the most fascinating interview I’ve heard or read in a very long time.
Quite a lot of mainstream press has been given to how video games contribute to the downfall of our youth and society. While I won’t argue that there’s a sizable collection of mouth breathers on something like, say, Xbox Live, there’s still hope for upstanding gamer youth yet.
Witness this video featuring Quake Live player, Shane “rapha” Hendrixson:
It’s a long video, but I guarantee you that once you start watching it you’ll be captivated. I had no intention of viewing past a couple minutes to get the gist of it, but found myself sitting through the entire video.
Young Mr. Hendrixson here has the articulation, poise, and humility that rivals even some of our best professional athletes.
I’m not trying to exaggerate here. I’ve seen my share of sports analysts and athletes give interviews and rapha’s performance in the above video leapfrog the vast majority of them. Just listen to him break down the mechanics and strategies of a high level Quake duel. It’s fascinating stuff that really brings to light how much strategy and planning that goes into the game, on top of the pure hand-eye coordination skills needed to execute them.
Compare this with any postgame interview of an NBA or NFL game. When was the last time you actually heard anything insightful from those “interviews?”
The kid even has the humility and maturity to acknowledge his opponent in a non-patronizing way (17:40 in the video) with no prompting from the interviewer. I’d wager that a good number of pro athletes including LeBron James could stand to learn something from rapha here, especially after last week’s debacle with “The Decision.”
For Pro mode, for the guitar, are you basically learning the song? Like, if you got up to Expert in Pro mode, and you played the song, would you then just be able to go pick up any other regular guitar and play that song?
DS: Effectively, yes. The underlying design of Rock Band Pro across all the instruments is that whatever you’re doing in the game translates to some form of genuine musical ability outside of the game. So on the keyboard, even if you’re playing on Easy or Medium, the notes that you’re playing, or the notes that the game is cueing you to play, are pitch-accurate.
And in guitar, it’s the same way. We’ve designed an interface that covers everything from single notes and single-note runs, to power chords, to full barre chords and open chords. It gets pretty complex.
We have arpeggio language — it does take you all the way through to Expert, which is note-for-note authoring…for ridiculous songs! Like, “Crazy Train,” or “Rainbow in the Dark,” or whatever — these songs that have blistering solos — in order to beat those songs in Pro mode on Expert, you will have to learn the song.
The interview also talks about how the new guitar and keyboard peripherals will have MIDI out.
This is huge.
The line between video games and music creation is officially blurred.