The Crossplayer Genre

So I was watching the 1up Show, something I haven't done in a good long while, and they were talking about this game called "The Crossing" from Arkane that's so interesting that it almost create its own genre. So I explored and found an interview that was just put up today and sure enough, it's a pretty sweet idea. The reason it's called crossplayer is that it brings together singe player and multi player. They call the people playing the single player story mode "Elites", and the people who are online playing multi player the "Skirmishers". Basically, if there are Elites playing with spots available, Skirmishers can join in and take over the bodies of the A.I. units and their mission becomes to stop the Elites from completing their mission. If there aren't any Elites around though, the Skirmishers will just play deathmatch amongst themselves, but when they play with the Elites though, the Skirmishers form a team. This makes the game much harder, I imagine, and should make the experience quite interesting. I think one of the complaints of video games since the consoles with 3-D graphics came out are that the A.I. is just too stupid (before then, the games were so ridiculously hard that everyone kept their mouth shut). A.I. can only advance so fast, and here's a company that solves the problem by bringing you in the game to see if you can do a better job. It sounds pretty cool to me, just thought I'd mention it because it sounds like something that will be accruing a lot of press very soon.

My beloved Gaim has come out with a new beta that claims to fix some more bugs, including issues with crashing (which I myself have had, as well). They claim that it'll be the last beta before final release of 2.0. If you do use Gaim, you may want to check out this plug-in that allows you to encrypt your messages. In today's age of threats to our privacy, I think it's awesome to be able to encrypt your online speech. More than that though, I'm just fascinated by computer security (especially how RSA works). Microsoft has decided to also sell Vista online for download, which is interesting but I don't know who's going to go for that. Why wouldn't you want a physical copy of something that costs so much money? What if your computer crashes? It's possible that they'll allow you to re-download it in that case, but with their recent stint of anti-piracy measures, I somehow doubt it. Lastly, it turns out that both iPhone models cost less than $300 to produce, according to iSuppli's estimates.. The estimates do look reasonable, but do not account for R&D costs. 30 months of development is a long time, and I'm sure requires paying the salary of many expensive employees. Apple is clearly going to want to recoup those losses before reducing the price a bit closer to what each unit costs them to manufacture.

I have a few movie items to share. The 300 video production diary has a new entry, and this one is for Xerxes, the megalomaniac Persian king. He sounds like a pretty cool character, and makes me want to see the movie, once again, even more. Pixar has decided that its next movie (after Ratatouille) is going to be called Wall-E about a young robot looking for love. Doesn't sound quite as promising as Ratatouille, but you never know. Since The Departed received so much praise and attention, there are now talks in motion for a sequel and pre-quel to be made, since the original was based off of one part of a Hong Kong trilogy. Nothing is official yet, but the actors sound interested if Scorcese came back for it. Salvador Dali is my favorite artist, and I think it's awesome that Al Pacino will be portraying him in a movie called Dali & I: The Surreal Story and has the team behind the much critically acclaimed Thank You For Smoking working on it. The director could be better, but I'm not going to let that dampen my hopes. The cast of the movie 21 is being built up quite nicely with Lawrence Fishburne now joining in as well to be the security chief trying to bust the group of MIT students counting cards in Vegas casinos. That's the third great actor to join this cast (after Kevin Spacey and Masi Oka), so I hope the movie turns out to be good. Lastly, if you want a good horror trailer, check out the one for Dead Silence. The restricted version, by the way, has very very little extra in it.

Now for Friday's Feast:

Appetizer
Which television shows do you just refuse to miss?
All the ones I watch since I don't watch them live because of my intense schedule and just download them.

Soup
Who did you last speak to on the telephone?
My friend Adam because I'm getting ready to go out tonight to party with him and some of our friends.

Salad
How many pillows do you keep on your bed?
Just my head pillow.

Main Course
Name one addition to your computer (software, hardware, etc.) that you'd love to have.
I don't really know that I need anything else for my computer at this point. I pretty much have everything I need, I'd just prefer a laptop for portability.

Dessert
What is your favorite foreign food?
Probably Indian food. Within the realm of Indian food though, no idea. Maybe tandoori chicken?