Double Fine Kicks Ass at Kickstarter to Fund New Adventure Game

Double Fine is the game developer behind great games like Psychonauts and Stacking. It’s also the brainchild of Tim Schafer, a former LucasArts employee who created Day of the Tentacle and Grim Fandango, two of the very best games ever made. Now Tim has teamed up with Ron Gilbert, creator of Maniac Mansion and Monkey Island, to create a brand new point-and-click adventure game. They’re doing it small-scale, with a planned Fall 2012 release. I can’t wait.

What’s more, Double Fine has decided to forego seeking a publisher. Publishers are a waste of time, and if Double Fine pitched a point-and-click adventure they’d get sent packing. Adventure games are dead! Tim and his brethren have taken the case to the fans instead. They’re going to fund the entire game development through Kickstarter.

Steve Jobs: The Measure of an Impact

Steve Jobs’ death yesterday, after a long fight with cancer, was not entirely unexpected. The outpouring of reflections and remembrances could have easily been foreseen, as well. Looking through my Twitter feed, it was clear: a huge number people in the developed world use Apple products everyday. But to reduce Steve Jobs to his legacy of shiny products is unfair. In 100—or even 10 years, for all we know—Apple might go downhill and nobody will remember the iPod or the iPhone except for nostalgia. Products are stationary. They are made and, like any human being, they eventually die. The true mark of Jobs’ legacy is in the impact he had on the world through those products.

The news yesterday got me thinking about the measure of impact, and what it actually means to have an impact at all. When we say that somebody has “changed the world,” how do we mean it? We could be talking about how Steve Jobs, along with his partners, created the company that birthed the first personal computer and has defined our relationship and interaction with computers for the roughly three decades and counting. We could talk about how Steve Jobs changed the way we buy and consume music and media through iTunes, the iPod, the iPhone and now the iPad. We could even be talking about how Steve Jobs’ sense of design and aesthetics has come to define our concept of style in modernity. These are all worthy and world-changing impacts to be sure. Few can say that they have touched so many things that have become so globally important. Without Steve, our world would look vastly different.

Is that sort of direct, physical impact the only kind worth noting, though? It’s certainly the easiest to measure, but surely a person’s impact goes beyond those confines. When John Lennon died and people wept openly in the streets and held each other in their arms, what, really had John Lennon done? He created music that a lot of people loved, but surely the world would not have been too physically different without that contribution. Surely, if that was the only true measure of an impact, people should be marching in candle-light vigils all over the globe, crying inconsolably at the thought of Steve Jobs’ passing. The impact of the transcendent is far more affecting, and though its scale is smaller and more personal, that intimacy breeds a kind of love that makes the loss that much harder to take.

John Lennon made people feel. Through his art he changed the world, one soul at a time. That’s important, and it speaks to the impact we can all have very easily by simply connecting with each other as human beings. Steve Jobs did not have that sort of impact, not technically, but I think the strong outpouring of emotion in the face of his death signals that his impact really did go beyond the confines of our material lives. He was a transcendant man because he had a vision.

Perhaps the best example of Steve Jobs’ vision in its more pure form is found in the company often left by the wayside amongst all the tech-talk. In 1986, Steve Jobs paid $10 million of his own money to buy and invest in a small computer graphics division of George Lucas’ huge empire. The company would come to be called Pixar, and Pixar would go on to produce Toy Story, the first full-length computer animated feature, and then follow that up with the single greatest run of critical and box office success in the history of Hollywood studios.

With Pixar, Steve Jobs was neither the technical genius, nor the creative genius. Ed Catmull and John Lasseter deserve the credit there, and they get it all the time. Steve Jobs, to a certain extent, was just the money behind it all. That’s not something to scoff at, but it also diminishes what made him so important. Catmull and Lasseter may have had dreams of computer animation, but it took a man like Steve Jobs to see the potential of that dream, to really build something out of it. He brought an ethos to the development of that studio. He built it in Northern California, outside of the Hollywood system, and pushed the people there to strive for greatness, not simply technological achievement. Yesterday, John Lasseter released a statement about the passing of Steve Jobs:

Steve Jobs was an extraordinary visionary, our very dear friend and the guiding light of the Pixar family. He saw the potential of what Pixar could be before the rest of us, and beyond what anyone ever imagined. Steve took a chance on us and believed in our crazy dream of making computer animated films; the one thing he always said was to simply ‘make it great.’ He is why Pixar turned out the way we did and his strength, integrity and love of life has made us all better people. He will forever be a part of Pixar’s DNA. Our hearts go out to his wife Laurene and their children during this incredibly difficult time.

“Make it great.” Such a simply idea. So obvious in retrospect, but the truth is, Steve Jobs would have had an impact if all he ever did was give us the Apple Macintosh, just as Pixar would have ushered in an age of computer animation even if Toy Story had been a terrible film. But Jobs had a vision that extended beyond that physical, that transcended the basic. Jobs aimed to build a world in which our interaction with technology was not merely utilitarian, but actually emotional. With Pixar, he saw the chance to change the face of Hollywood, but he also saw the chance to touch people’s hearts through the magic of film and art.

Maybe that’s where the real measure of Steve Jobs’ impact can be found, not in the stuff he got us all to buy, but in the vision he had for how we would use that stuff; in the vision of what a modern world would look like. And we truly do live in Steve Jobs’ world now. From computers to music to movies, Steve Jobs gave us his vision and that vision has come to define our world. He showed us the future, told us it was within our grasp, and strove to “make it great.” Steve didn’t just sell us a bunch of products, he sold us the future. How’s that for the measure of an impact?

“Can’t Stop Marathon” Review #12: Ink (2009, Winans)

I really do hate that I have to do this. A small indie that got no proper distribution and actually found financial success through exposure from internet piracy is not the kind of film that deserves a negative review. It’s impressive enough that the film got made and completed, why should I tear it down? It’s already the underdog. But the simple truth is, Ink, despite its ambition, is not a good movie.

The film involves some weird dream world and a lot of weird sci-fi/fantasy elements. There is a potentially emotional drama at the core of it, but there are also a lot of special effects and fight scenes. The problem is that none of it actually connects. The drama would be involving had it been written well. It might be easier to connect to the characters if the acting was any good. The special effects would be impressive as more than just examples of low-budget ingenuity if only the film had a good visual style.

Actually, the visual style is the first thing that had me down on the film. There is no reason for any film to look this bad, and a low budget is not an excuse. Evil Dead was made for no money, and it isn’t the most polished looking film, but it has a really nice, gritty quality to it. Ink suffers from MirrorMask syndrome. Instead of attempting to design a compelling look for the film, the director chooses to blow out the whites and give every shot an awful soft-focus effect. It’s awful and distracting.

The next problem with the film is what I’m going to call “the film student effect”. It’s non-linear, it attempts to deliver exposition through “showing” at every possible step, and maintains and ambiguity for much of the storyline. This might sound good, except that it all still feels paint-by-numbers. It’s non-linear, not because it needs to be, but because, well, why not? The bits of expository action, especially at the beginning, go on for too long and treat the audience like we would not have understood what the characters were doing had they not shown at least five or six examples. And the ambiguity? Nothing but laziness. If I still don’t understand anything about the rules of the world or why the characters are doing what they’re doing halfway through the film then we have a problem. That problem could be mitigated if the writing or the actors provided and easy entry point for me to relate, but nope, it’s all too amateurish.

Ink is not a good film. I totally understand why people would be impressed by such a low budget film have such ambition, but ambition only gets you so far. If the film does not deliver a good story with interesting characters then it’s all for nothing, really. Such is the case with Ink. I applaud writer-director Jamin Winans for getting the film made, for getting some quality effects work done, and even for embracing the underground distribution the film had to go through to get in front of an audience. But that’s really all I can do.

“Can’t Stop Marathon” Review #11: The Woodsman (2004, Kassell)

Pedophilia is awful and wrong and monstrous and evil and the worst, most despicable act a human being can engage in. I think most of us agree on that. The Woodsman agrees with that as well, but it also dares to ask the question, aren’t pedophiles people, too?

The Woodsman stars Kevin Bacon as Walter, a child molester, recently released from prison, attempting to adjust to a normal life and possibly cure himself. It’s a short movie, and very focused on those two things. On the one side he gets a job at a lumber yard and through that gets a girlfriend. On the other side he is seeing a psychologist and trying to work through whether there is any hope for change from within.

The film is quite powerful in the way that it doesn’t make outright judgements about the character, instead allowing Kevin Bacon and his amazing performance to breathe humanity into him. What we see in him is not a monster, but a man, drawn to young girls and prone to committing heinous crimes. He knows that what he does is wrong in the eyes of society—even though he does try to justify his actions with the classic “they want it, too”—and unlike some truly far-gone psychopaths he wants to change because he values the normalcy associated with being a part of society.

But there is one point where I think the movie fails itself a little. It’s actually quite a good scene, with some wonderful acting and a powerful realization, but it feels forced, a little too contrived for the sake of catharsis, and that undermines what the film is otherwise trying to do. In the scene, Walter is attempting to get close to a young girl after speaking to her for a little while. Through doing that he comes to understand that the girl has been touched inappropriately by her own father. The tears streaming down her face, the pain in her eyes, and her eventual submission all coalesce to finally show Walter the true results of his actions. At that point Walter might not be “cured”, but for the first time he is actually properly disgusted with himself, giving him a much stronger motivation to change.

The problem with the scene is that the entire hopeful ending of the film rides on it, but the situation itself seems too coincidental to be realistic. It feels like the hand of a screenwriter at work, finding any possible way to bring along that change within the character. As I’ve said, the scene itself, on it’s own, is very good. But in the context of the rest of the film it feels somehow wrong; the only time the film actually tries to impose a moral judgement on the character that the audience is supposed to buy into. This goes completely against the more hands-off approach of the rest of the film, and it is a lesser film for it.

All that being said, The Woodsman is still a powerful film. It has perhaps the best performance Kevin Bacon has ever delivered. It generally treats its difficult subject matter with a great degree of nuance and sophistication. It is a difficult film, no doubt. It deals with a moral grey area that most people would rather see as black and white. It gives humanity to monsters, and while that may be tough to deal with, it is great to see the film do it anyway.

The Wii U, 3DS and How Nintendo Went So Wrong

Yesterday, Nintendo stock tumbled 12% after the company posted a quarterly loss of $324 million and a 50% decline in sales. Along with the losses, Nintendo responded to poor sales of their latest flagship mobile gaming device, the 3DS, by cutting its price from $250 to $170. For a company that a few years ago was setting the world on fire with incredible sales of the Nintendo Wii, DS and its variants, this has to be a huge hit to morale.

But where did Nintendo go wrong?

I think the answer is quite simple: the iPhone. Nintendo completely failed to envision the impact that the new generation of mobile phones would have on their bottom line. And no, it’s not just because people prefer and iPhone to a 3DS, or even DS Lite. The rise in the iPhone doesn’t alone account for troubles with the future of the Wii and the utterly confusing Wii U, which Nintendo unveiled at this year’s E3 expo. No, the iPhone is simply the device that proved Nintendo fallible; Nintendo’s was a self-inflicted wound right from the start.

Google+ Puts Facebook on the Defensive and in Partnership with Skype

Google+ has only been out in the wild for a week, and even then it hasn’t really been in the “wild” considering invites have been closed for days now. That hasn’t stopped Facebook from realizing the potential of the Google+ system, and more importantly its so-called “killer app”, Hangouts. Today, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook will be partnering with Skype to provide video chat right through the website, using a simple plug-in. This is not far off from what Google+ currently offers with its Hangouts feature, and I’m sure Facebook hopes this addition will slow, or even kill any momentum or buzz Google’s new social network has picked up. For now, Facebook and Skype will only offer one-to-one video chatting, though I’m sure we can expect multi-user capabilities in the future, otherwise it’s not exactly on par with Google+.

Along with the Skype video chat, Facebook has also introduced group chat, which allows groups of people to, well… chat. Simple enough, but a feature that’s been a long time coming and welcome now that it’s here.

Finally, Facebook has also announced that the entire chat interface will have a new design to better incorporate these new features.

What’s clear in all of this is that despite the official status as king of the social networking world, with over 750 million users, Facebook sees the heat of competition coming its way. As long as that means new features and more innovation, that can only be a good thing for everybody.

“Can’t Stop Marathon” Review #1: Lucky Star (1929, Borzage)

I’m a very heavy user of the Filmspotting.net message boards. It’s one of the best film communities you’re likely to find on the entire web. Friendly folk who love real, in-depth talk about movies and other subjects. I recently decided to take my forum participation to the next level by starting a marathon. The premise is simple. I gave everyone and anyone on the forum the mandate of choosing five films I had yet to see. Any films. Good, bad, long, longer, disturbing, fun, anything. My first set of five films, submitted by forum member, Junior, consists of five films by Frank Borzage. First up: Lucky Star.

First of all, I have to admit complete ignorance of the work of Frank Borzage. I have not seen a single one of his films, and going into Lucky Star, I was completely unaware that is was silent. No problem, I like many silent films. But I have to say, I was a little worried. In my experience, silent dramas have often been too slow for my liking. A lot of stationary shots of people wildly acting out motions. You get the idea after a few seconds, but the shot just keeps going on and on way past the point of tediousness. So it was with a little bit of trepidation that I stepped into the world of Borzage. After watching Lucky Star, all I can say is, that trepidation has been fully been replaced by a ravenous desire for more.