DonkeyXote tells all

Sometimes we spend so much time in our own part of Microsoft we forget what kind of cool stuff this company does. Check the link below for a new piece of our tech, Microsoft Photosynth, that was recently featured in an episode of CSI.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/products/2008-04-29-microsoft-csi-product-placement_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip

I mentioned a while back that I was going to read this book to see if it has any interesting insights that we in the games business could use. The book is about the people who worked in the comic book industry and the development of that industry up to the institution of the Comics Code, a self-regulatory system enacted to avoid government regulation of the comics industry. That's not actually what the book says it's about - it says it's about the industry as a whole and the impact of the Code - but I guess you can't judge a book by its cover.

I kill me...

Seriously, this is an interesting bit of history and stands on its own there. It recounts the business, and the political and cultural environment in the 1950s that all but killed the business. But it's those words "all but" that make the big difference between what this book purported to be and what it is. The fact is, comic books survived. They were published through the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. They started coming back into their own in the 1980s, and by the 1990s the graphic novel craze had brought them right back. How did this happen? You won't find out in this book. Considering its subtitle is "The Great Comic Book Scare and How it Changed America" I would have expected to see it deal with events both before and after. It doesn't.

Net-net: if you're looking for a historical document to describe a period of time and the people who were active in it, this book does that very well. The author is a journalist and uses those skills. Those aren't really the kinds of books I usually buy or read for pleasure, but your mileage may vary.

Now, whether it's instructive from a work perspective is a different story. Comics was an industry that was confronted with widespread hysteria that they were turning children into criminals, ruining and warping their minds, and had no redeeming social value. I do see a parallel here. They even had an industry CEO who showed up to testify in front of a Congressional subcommittee and said a bunch of weird things that made other people in the industry cringe, and this bad performance led to a lot of unwanted consequences. I don't quite know whether that whole set of events has occurred in our industry; I don't know if there will be consequences to the weird Congressional testimony, but history does sometimes teach lessons. Unfortunately because of the limitations I mentioned above the book leaves off before it could answer the questions of how comics dealt with self-regulation. That's the part that would have been interesting to me because of our industry's relationship with the ESRB and not having it there makes this book less useful than it could have been.

I would have liked to have known the answers to questions like:

• Did companies that were subject to the Comics Code sell more issues than companies that weren't?
• Did parents actually consider whether a particular book was subject to the Comics Code when allowing their children to purchase?
• Did members of the Code try to push its limits or self-censor to make sure they stayed well inside its scope?

Without them, it was instructive for me and not a waste of time from a work perspective. With them, I would have made all my colleagues buy it. But this would have taken an author like Niall Ferguson, and this author isn't Niall Ferguson.

Available at Amazon if you're interested: http://www.amazon.com/Ten-Cent-Plague-Comic-Book-Changed-America/dp/0374187673/ref=pd_sim_b_title_1

Interesting post on Kotaku about why it's hard for Western-style games to crack the Japanese market. One thing I find interesting is tucked in at the end: Japanese game publishers don't like community because they can't control it. Interesting when you think about people who ask why there's no Major Nelson at Sony (who at least have their PSN blog team) or Nintendo (who are a cipher). I think it's a bit of overgeneralization - the Pokémon site at least has a mailbag (don't ask why I know these things) - but it's still interesting data...

http://kotaku.com/385604/how-to-bring-the-west-to-japan

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3167619

1Up is reporting on rumors that "Peekaboo Pole Dancing -- a company that produces home pole dancing kits endorsed by Carmen Electra -- is looking for a partner to help license their concept to create a pole dancing fitness game for the Wii."

Wow. Just... wow.

Like I've said before, I don't get involved in American politics. That said, I do like the nuanced attitude that Barack Obama seems to show to the video games industry. In a Q&A session he referenced GTA4 and then - the horror - said it's not for kids! And went on to say that perhaps the issue is that parents are letting their kids be raised by video and not given a thirst for knowledge instead, and maybe that's what causes some of the problems in America today.

Found in a lot of places, tip to Keith Boesky's blog. Keith is the ex-CEO of Eidos, and generally has a lot of interesting ideas. http://boesky.blogspot.com/2008/05/politician-finally-got-it-right-obama.html

Newsweek reports that a cosmetic surgeon in Bal Harbor, Florida has written a book called "My Beautiful Mommy" for mothers to give to their children to explain why mommy, who is already "the prettiest mommy in the whole wide world", is having a tummy tuck and a nose job.

There are no words.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/132240/page/1