Charles Kriel

Games Industry publishes an insightful interview with Microsoft’s Peter Molyneux.

For a man representing a corporate behemoth, Molyneux is incredibly introspective about his practice, as much in this interview as in others we’ve encountered. Of particular interest are his thoughts concerning why Pixar manages to avoid the Uncanny Valley, what it means to add features just for the sake of adding them, why less blades make a better razor, and how great ideas are hindrances in the face of poor delivery.

Molyneux also takes time to reflect on the future of iPhone gaming. He predicts a future of seven-figure budgets and high barriers-to-entry for iPhone developers. This vision speaks volumes concerning the presence of big brands in the iPhone space. We’d love to see an interview with Molyneaux that tackles the future of casual gaming on the device, as well as the role of indies in relation to AAA developers on the iPhone. His is a brain we’d like to see into.

An excellent interview and write-up by Managing Editor, Phil Elliot.

 http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/dailydose/

Thanks to Ros Lawler over at Random House, we found this link to an article in The Olympian.

Best quote: “[T]he neurological phenomenon of reading is centered in a location of the brain that appears to have no preference for media, other than black words against a white background.” From Stanislas Dehaene.

Marcus du Sautoy, the author of The Num8er My5teries: A Mathematical Odyssey through Everyday Life, writes a long and interesting post on apps and their relationship to literature, non-fiction and children’s books.

Taking Wolf Hall and Alice’s Adventure’s in Wonderland (the apps) as starting points, he makes a strong case for the integration of rich media into literature. He briefly suggests that novelists should consider multiple-platforms at the conception of their work, and just as quickly moves on to explore the potential for non-fiction writers.

I wish he had stood still for a moment. In original enhanced fiction, not interactive footnote references, animated illustrations for children, adaptations for the iPad, or video interviews with the author, lies the greatest potential for rich media fiction. Bring on the literary apps - a few text-based literary journals on the iPad just aren’t doing it for me.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jul/03/marcus-du-sautoy-apps-books