Hidden Peanuts

And the nominees are:

• Super Mario Galaxy
• Portal
• Halo 3
• Rock Band
• Picross
• Bioshock

A few words about each:

As with other categories, each and every one of these games is worth your time. Super Mario Galaxy is the best Wii game I have played, bar none. The level designers have done amazing, mind-bending things, and unlike many other wii games the motion-sensing controls manage to not feel tacked on. Portal is a work of art, another example of brilliant level design, but also coaxes an in-depth plot out of minimalist surroundings. Halo 3, while still fun, somehow didn’t quite live up to my expectations. While the gameplay was fun, ultimately no sequel can live up to the original Halo’s story. Rock Band is an amazing party game, and once you get over the fear of looking (or sounding) silly it provides a brilliant gaming experience. Picross was a surprise, an addicting DS puzzle game that I’ve played almost every single day since I got it, for at least a few minutes. Bioshock’s art direction and storyline are excellent, bringing vivid life to a decaying underwater city. Unfortunately the storyline falls apart a bit near the end, but up until then it is one of the most genuinely mature and deep stories I’ve seen in a game. The much-hyped moral choices that a player supposedly gets to make in the game really don’t amount to as much as I expected, but how those choices are handled is brilliant. No game has ever managed to make me think about the very nature of choice in a video game before.

So, I really wanted to give the honor to Bioshock. It truly is a work of art. And, I admit, I am a sucker for anything with such a heavy art-deco visual style. But the ultimate whimper of the plot’s resolution gave me pause. Couple that with somewhat limited replayability, and I have to regretfully pass it over. Still, I don’t want to downplay the game too much. Go play it, I doubt you’ll be disappointed with the purchase.

Now on to the winner:

Rock Band

Almost two years ago, my friend Matt and I sat in his living room, playing the first Guitar Hero game and idly speculating how awesome it would be to have a game just like it, but with drums. And a microphone. And online play. Sure, brilliant idea, but naaaaah! It’d never happen! I was glad to be proven wrong: Now I own that game, and Matt and I played it together over Thanksgiving.

The day Rock Band was released, some friends and I played it for almost seven hours straight. And we’ve had a number of sessions almost that long since then. If that can’t justify a selection as game of the year, then I’m not sure what does. All other games have been pushed aside for us, and this is pretty much all we play right now. The track list is near-perfect, and the addition of downloadable content provides near endless replay value as new songs are added. I’m not sure I can fully describe why i love the game so much, largely because so much of that justification is based on intangibles. After finishing a song next to my friends, we all feel amazing, like we just accomplished something awesome. Sure, we aren’t really playing the music. But I will never be able to play these songs on ‘real’ instruments, not without more time than I have to put into practicing. Rock Band captures what I imagine is the full feel of being in a band, and concentrates it down into something the rest of us can experience.
I’m going to cut myself off before I over-gush about this game, (what’s that? Too late?) but I think this XKCD comic sums it up quite well:

If you can get over your fear of looking a bit silly, many hours of quality entertainment await.

Here’s a recap of the full nominee list:

• World War Z, Max Brooks
• Pattern Recognition, William Gibson
• Halting State, Charles Stross
• The Invention of Hugo Cabret, Brian Selznick
• I Am America (And So Can You!), Stephen Colbert
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling

Each of these is worth a read. I was tempted to give the award to Harry Potter, if only for the massive societal upheaval and hoopla that the book’s release caused. I have never before stood in line to buy a book at midnight, and expect that I never will again. Pattern Recognition, while not a new release, connected with me on a fundamental level. I relate to the characters and the lifestyles they lead more than any other book I can remember reading. World War Z is pure fun, with fictional interviews of survivors of the first great zombie war. Alternately horrifying and thought provoking. The Invention of Hugo Cabret swapped back and forth between traditional text and large page blocks of gorgeous illustrations telling some segments of the story. The end result is a book that reads surprisingly fast for 544 pages, and inspired me to do some research into the history of film when I finished. I Am America made the list simply because Stephen Colbert makes me laugh so much. But, in the end one book just blew my mind:

Halting State, by Charles Stross

Set in a near future Scotland, the novel opens with a bank robbery inside an online game, and from there eventually spins into high level international intrigue and espionage. The entire book is written in the second person (”You enter the room…”, etc.), which while jarring at first is ultimately a perfect choice for a book so focused on gaming and its impact on our culture. All plot aside, Stross’ world building is extremely thought provoking. ‘Overlays’ on goggles provide constant streams of data to anybody who wants it, gaming is seamless with everyday life, pseudo-VR interfaces are ubiquitous, etc.
Halting State even manages to pull off a standard Big Dumb Action Movie cliche plot element, and make it seem semi-realistic and plausible. I won’t go into specifics for the sake of avoiding spoilers, but I was more than able to suspend my disbelief around it.

If you are at all interested in how gaming will develop in the next few years, and the effect that might have on our culture, read this book.

Something exploded in my site’s layout overnight… not really sure what happened, since I made no changes at all. But I’ve reverted to an old theme for now, hopefully I’ll have time to fix it up in the near future.

Update: and, the issue magically fixed itself! Please leave a comment if you see any irregularities. I suppose this is a sign that it’s time to do a Wordpress upgrade.

The nominees are:

• Smashing Pumpkins - Zeitgeist
• Foo Fighters - Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace
• Nine Inch Nails - Year Zero

Keep in mind that I’m not claiming these are the absolute best albums of the year. They’re simply my favorites out of what I listened to.

The winner is:

Drumroll please…

Nine Inch Nails - Year Zero

This album blew me away, I really don’t know how I forgot to include it in my preliminary nominations. Year Zero is a concept album, telling the story of a near-future USA which is run by a totalitarian theocracy. The songs come from different points of view, from people on all sides. The album has something for everyone - radio friendly hit singles like Survivalism stand next to a number of quirkier pieces. Trent Reznor and the band are at the top of their games here, delivering an album that plays great from start to end. There’s not one dud on the entire thing.

On a meta-level, Nine Inch Nails did some fascinating things with their promotional campaign. The current issue of Wired has a feature about the related Alternate Reality Game here. I played along a little bit, and the associated websites (which can still be accessed) do a great job of fleshing out the album’s story. In addition, there’s a new remix album of the Year Zero (somewhat clumsily titled ‘Y34RZ3R0RMIX3D’), which includes the raw tracks for each song on a DVD, preformated for audio editing programs like Garage Band. Fans are encouraged to create their own remixes and upload them to an official website for sharing.

I feel like Year Zero is an important album. Not just for the message, but also for what it heralds about the future of interactive participatory marketing in general.

(now updated with links to the posts announcing winners)

Pretty soon it’ll be time again for me to write about things I liked this year. Books, movies, music, and games are up for grabs. In an effort to revive my somewhat flagging rate of posting lately, I’ll break each category out into its own post once I decide on the winners. I haven’t quite made those decisions yet, but here’s the nominees:

Books:

• World War Z, Max Brooks
• Pattern Recognition, William Gibson
• Halting State, Charles Stross
• The Invention of Hugo Cabret, Brian Selznick
• I Am America (And So Can You!), Stephen Colbert

Movies:

• 300
• Stardust
• TMNT
• Hot Fuzz
• Ratatouille
• Transformers
• Stranger Than Fiction

Music:
(I didn’t listen to a lot of whole new full albums this year, so the list is a bit limited..)

• Smashing Pumpkins - Zeitgeist
• Foo Fighters - Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace

Video Games:
(This will probably be the most hotly contested category)

• Super Mario Galaxy
• Portal
• Halo 3
• Rock Band
• Picross
• Bioshock

You might notice that not everything in these lists was originally released in 2007. I like to make lists on everything I took in over the year, not just what’s new.

Can you feel the excitement building? I know I can

I’ll be posting the winners gradually as December winds itself up. See anything I left off the lists?

(Update) Links to the posts identifying winners:

Books
Movies
Music
Video Games

With the release of Facebook’s new Pages system, libraries can now create an official presence not tied to an individual staff member’s account. But once created, options for what you can do with that page are still somewhat limited. For reasons I don’t entirely understand, not all Facebook applications that users can add to their profiles can also be added to a Page. As best I can tell, Application creators have to specifically allow this to happen in their options. And once they do, there are still a host of other issues that sometimes rear their heads.

One thing I really wanted to do was embed a Meebo widget in our library’s page, allowing users to IM a librarian directly from there. Of the two existing Meebo apps, one has not enabled the option and I can’t get the other to work right. So, here’s a temporary workaround:

Thankfully, Facebook has provided an app called Static FBML (FBML is the FaceBook Markup Language, the code that makes the magic happen). Essentially, this app is a blank slate. You can insert whatever custom code you like into it. We can use this to display a Meebo widget without too much difficulty:

Step 1: Add the Static FBML application to your Page.

Step 2: Edit the options. Go with whatever Box Title you like (I went with ‘IM a Librarian’).

Step 3: This is the meat and potatoes. Put this code in the FBML box: