Amazon guts Comixology
Gerry Conway: The ComiXology Outrage
And so, as we could have predicted, Amazon wrecks Comixology.What has it been, less than a month since Jeff Bezos bought the most promising tool for renewing the mass distribution of comics in the digital era? I’ll give the man this: he’s moved faster to undermine an existing technology for the benefit of his own company than General Moantors did when it sabotaged Los Angeles’s public transit Red Line for the benefit of the bus fleet they wanted to sell the City of Angels. Job well done, Jeff. My comics reading has gone through the goddamn roof thanks to Comixology. The convenience of having an entire comics store at my fingertips is a powerful thing for someone with poor impulse-control. Being able to buy and read a comic from the same app is beautiful and simple and is exactly why I spend way more time inside Comixology than say, Comic Zeal.
Splitting it into two experiences - buying a comic from the website, switching apps, downloading reading it in the Comixology app destroys this simplicity. It destroys what made Comixology so powerful. And to what end? To increase the profits on each individual sale at the expense of what I bet will be lower overall sales? It’s a giant shame to see a smart company be so short-sighted.
(Of course, I realise this whole thing is such a Western problem. You’d expect a lot of people’s monocles to fall into their tea over this issue. “You mean they changed it to make it harder for me to waste money with them?!”)
# Apr 29, 2014This Guy Is Trying to Collect Every Single Copy of the Movie 'Speed' on VHS »
And you’re going to collect them all.
Yeah. People always go, “Dude how many of these things are you going to get?” And I’m like, “All of them, duh.”
Godspeed, you crazy bastard.
# Apr 22, 2014The Guilt of the Video-Game Millionaires »
Great article about how indie game devs are handling sudden financial success. Favourite line is this, about Davey Wreden, the creator of the Stanley Parable, on how he’d ground himself:
# Apr 4, 2014Wreden returned home having decided how, if his game sold well, he would spend the money. “He said that he would go to the store and buy the cheapest and most expensive salmon,” Ismail recalled. Wreden would then cook the two fish side by side and conduct a taste test to see whether the cost difference was justified.
Jodorowsky's Dune
Jodorowsky’s version of Dune is right up there with Kubrick’s Napoleon as one of the most famous films that never was. This documentary is an amazing glimpse at what could have been.
Visual Revolution of The Vanishing of Ethan Carter »
Despite the fact they’re a small team, the Astronauts are pushing the boundary of “whoa” visuals in videogames. This lengthy blog post explains how they’re doing it (spoiler: photogrammetry)
# Mar 28, 2014The 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.
# Mar 23, 2014The 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.
# Mar 14, 2014Defining Cinematography »
Interesting anaylsis of how ‘cinematography’ and ‘visual effects’ are intersecting from the point of view of the Academy awards.
# Mar 12, 2014The 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.
# Feb 16, 2014