Comments | zhai: The ghost in the machine

zhai

The ghost in the machine

Nov 29, 2007 00:06

I am back from Montreal and about as flattened as I've been in awhile. A very uniquely terrific conference, though, and one I would make a repeat visit if I thought I'd still be in the northeast next year. But I suppose if Tom Buscaglia can fly out from Seattle for it I have little excuse. We shall see. Considering the short amount of time I spent ( Read more... )

hm, travel, philomath

Comments 21

I have no idea what's going on right now eggsniper November 29 2007, 05:53:24 UTC

You've seriously lost the drunk idiot crowd.

( ... )

genmaicha November 29 2007, 05:55:45 UTC

I've seen that Animal Crossing piece before--as a translated comic, not the YTMND presentation (which does add to the experience, pacing it and adding the music). It's saddening but also strangely reassuring? I'm not entirely sure. Definitely bittersweet.

zhai November 29 2007, 05:58:03 UTC

Interesting that you saw it first as the separated static comic. If I did, I didn't remember it -- which I find odd, so I think this has been the first I'd seen of it. But yeah. I think it's both. And it's weird, but I think if I had something like that, the save cart would become a kind of sacred object.

genmaicha November 29 2007, 06:01:07 UTC

It was just a few days ago, honestly. In a chat room. For some reason we went from sharing cat macros to sharing bittersweet images, and that one won, hands down. The sharing stopped, and we all just quietly mused about the story. I don't know where the person who shared it got it. But it definitely left an impact on me. I almost posted it to my LJ.

zhai November 29 2007, 06:14:21 UTC

Ah, okay -- so it is still a pretty newly appeared thing. The static comment did get separated pretty quickly from the video file. It stuck with me, too -- I saw it last week and had been turning it around for awhile.

ecmyers November 29 2007, 05:59:25 UTC

Wow. I hadn't seen that Animal Crossing video before... Very touching.

zhai November 29 2007, 06:12:26 UTC

Ah, I wondered if it had made the 1P circuit. Meant to send it to you and Chelsea, actually.

Gack zhai November 30 2007, 05:56:49 UTC

I just realized that I utterly confused you with someone else -- sorry if I confused or unsettled you with the last comment!

Re: Gack ecmyers November 30 2007, 15:40:05 UTC

Ha! No worries--I was briefly confused but it was easy to see it was just a mistake, so there's no lasting emotional scarring.

kiohl November 29 2007, 10:24:33 UTC

Aww... it's a sad story, but... touching, in a way. You know, more recently games have become a medium in itself for people to interact like they do in 'real life'. You ever hear about the funeral held in WoW? Though it was trashed by the opposite faction (... Alliance really annoys me sometimes >.>), it was still a good gesture I thought. A lot of people ridiculed having something like that in what was 'just a game', but sometimes that's all you have, y'know?

I dunno, that AC story just reminded me of it.

Anyway, good to hear from you again. :)

haikujaguar November 29 2007, 22:34:38 UTC

There's also (I believe) a new NPC on the Aldor Tier, a night elf hunter and pet who represent a dead player that for some reason got memorialized? I'm not sure of the whole story on that one.

kiohl November 30 2007, 01:44:44 UTC

*looks it up*

From http://www.wowwiki.com/Caylee_Dak :
"Caylee Dak was named after a 28 year old World of Warcraft player named Dak Krause who died of leukemia on August 22, 2007. He was born March 10, 1979."

She was a bit hard to find, since I'm Scryer and the Aldor hate me. o.o But yes. Blizzard does have a soul.

anguirel December 1 2007, 03:33:59 UTC

There's also a few new characters and an item for a kid with cancer, via the Make-A-Wish foundation.

Thread 6

wijsgeer November 29 2007, 12:57:57 UTC

some time ago I wrote about something that happened to me and the response was "was that real or in second life?" it was not something terribly unlikly or odd, it in fact happened in 'real life' I happen not to have a precense in second life actually. It somehow reinforces the idea that life is split into paralel lanes that might cross. Of course this is not completely new, having work life, private life, and perhaps political life or hobbylife etc. But there is is at least one difference and that is timeline. As the little video about animal crossing showed, her mother's timeline and the daughter's where not paralel in the game reality, while they were in 'real life'
Ah, there is more to be thinking about concerning this. But now I have to do my own work (real life interverence)