Infocult: Uncanny Informatics

Place as narrative game

Safe Place is an environment-based game, a setting whose details and surfaces users explore, discovering and surfacing new aspects.  It's a gentle game.  Should be fine for kids. 

Like Flyguy, the rules, ethos, and flavor of this game are not goal-driven.  There aren't immediate threats demanding quick responses.  It's not about suspense, but suspending the assumption of following a clear narrative line.  It's a form of the Daoist free and easy wandering.
(via MetaFilter)

What the world is listening to, by RSS

The Hype Machine seeks to aggregate and sort which songs people around the world are listening to, by RSS.  It's an analog to other digital globe-spanning tools, like Google's links study Zeitgeist, the linked stories survey Blogdex, and Daypop's tracking of search words WordBurst.

Blogging for nonprofits

Marnie Webb has published a very useful intro to blogging for nonprofits.  Check it out.  I suspect she'd appreciate feedback.

Seven reenacted by plush toys

Remember the Flash animations of horror films reenacted by bunnies?  Now there's a live-action twist, with the conclusion of Seven, as replayed by stuffed animals.  Mirror here.

(via Miss Wurzel, of course)

Googlemancy

The uncanny internet and magick: not all Gothics involve the supernatural, but some do, while others pretend to.  Googlemancy was probably inevitable.

(via Ellis)

Promotion of self, shameless

Chandrasutra is running a series of blogger interviews, in order to offer a sense of the field other than what most media proffer.  You can see her Q+A with me here, or check out the others.

Taphophilia on the web

Today's Gothic and life-imitates-Gothic source: Taphophilia, a fine site for death stuff.  The name?  Necrosys explains:

Taphophilia is a love of all things related to cemeteries, mausoleums, crypts, and funerary objects.

The OED won't admit the term, but does offer taphonomy:

The study of the processes by which animal and plant remains become preserved as fossils.

(via Zach Chandler, via Oishii)

Game, story: A Treasure's Trove

My daughter and I are enjoying A Treasure's Trove, which is a fascinating combination of game and story, with a collaborative aspect reminiscent of ARGs.

Here's the gist: a kids' book appeared, called A Treasure's Trove.  This illustrated text includes a fairly unsurprising tale about an evil magician battling fairies for the future of a forest.  At the same time, the book claims to include puzzles and clues which, when solved, will lead readers to twelve physical prizes, hidden in locations across the United States.

Collaboration: there are already several fora working on this, including TreasureNet's, 12Gems, and Tweleve.  Wired notes that these social puzzle-solving communities draw on a history of practice, including the world of alternate reality games.

At the narrative level, I'm interested in how the collaborative puzzle-solving both reveals and constitutes stories around the book's narrative line.

More machinima: one good blog

Thinking Machinima is a blog focused on machinima, the emergent form of creating digital art and stories by using computer games as composition devices. Paul makes machinima, studies intellectual property issues, is based in The Academy, and has a book in the works.

(thanks to Randy McCall)

UN simulation game: Food Force

Food Force is a simulation game from the United Nations' World Food Programme.  Aimed at kids, it leads the player through various steps in assembling relief for a disaster-hit nation.  The series of minigames, exercises, and inserted footage combine to form a linear narrative of aid.

All sorts of ideologies and arguments in play, of course, from the steady pro-WFP drumbeat to a weird imbalance between collective action and the player's lone ego: 
(thanks to Ladi and Linda Rogers)