OK, I admit it – I’ve been there before, a couple of times: Ordering something cool, just to let the initial sensation and motivation to actually do something cool with it quickly fade away…
The next chapter in this will (hopefully not) be this thing – introducing the DIY Meggy Jr RGB handheld:
It seems the space for 3D gaming via web browser plugins is getting more and more crowded.
Of course, Quake Live created a big buzz (and long waiting queues) when they launched, GarageGames started their InstantAction portal and technology a while ago, same goes for the Unity web player, and now Google released their O3D API.
Still, there is no standard format – I’m not the expert, but for me VRML seems to be dead for over a decade now… (though I just read that it morphed into X3D, but are people actually using that for more than experimental GUIs, like… games?)
This is the perfect game for you: Achievement unlocked
As auntie pixelante puts it:
achievement unlocked is a game the goal of which is just the simple accumulation of these arbitrary goals. there are a hundred. you’ll have unlocked at least two before you even start the game, at which point you’ll unlock four more: one for having started the game, one for having reached the game’s first (and only) screen, one for not having moved yet, and one for having unlocked at least one achievement.
…
all the things that satisfy the compulsive behavior publishers assume we have.
Now, as I’m in the process of implementing a MMO-light’ish platform, the topic of having achievements has been raised a couple of times in various discussions between the designer and me already… and I’m kind of undecided whether they should and would play an important role in the platform, or not.
Thinking about it, I observe how strangely fulfilling it seems to be to just count and compare the numbers of “friends” or “buddies” in Facebook, Xing or other similar platforms, at least for some people…
Is this the true meaning of virtual life – to be friends with as many people as possible (especially if it’s as easy as inviting somebody as friend with a click of the mouse, and no obligation to do anything else afterwards – EVER)?
Stephen King (yes, the Stephen King) writes on Entertainment Weekly on a bill pending in the Massachusetts state legislature:
[The bill] would restrict or outright ban the sale of violent videogames to anyone under the age of 18. Which means, by the way, that a 17-year-old who can get in to see Hostel: Part II would be forbidden by law from buying (or renting, one supposes) the violent but less graphic Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.
According to the proposed bill, violent videogames are pornographic and have no redeeming social merit. The vid-critics claim they exist for one reason and one reason only, so kids can experience the vicarious thrill of killing. Now, what does and doesn’t have social merit is always an interesting question, one I can discuss for hours. But what makes me crazy is when politicians take it upon themselves to play surrogate parents. The results of that are usually disastrous. Not to mention undemocratic.
[...]
What really makes me insane is how eager politicians are to use the pop culture — not just videogames but TV, movies, even Harry Potter — as a whipping boy. It’s easy for them, even sort of fun, because the pop-cult always hollers nice and loud. Also, it allows legislators to ignore the elephants in the living room. Elephant One is the ever-deepening divide between the haves and have-nots in this country, a situation guys like Fiddy and Snoop have been indirectly rapping about for years. Elephant Two is America’s almost pathological love of guns. It was too easy for critics to claim — falsely, it turned out — that Cho Seung-Hui (the Virginia Tech killer) was a fan of Counter-Strike; I just wish to God that legislators were as eager to point out that this nutball had no problem obtaining a 9mm semiautomatic handgun. Cho used it in a rampage that resulted in the murder of 32 people. If he’d been stuck with nothing but a plastic videogame gun, he wouldn’t even have been able to kill himself.
Case closed.
Now, I know from personal experience that it makes little sense to discuss this “pathological love of guns” with Americans – been there, done that, got no t-shirt. It’s disturbing at least, to see liberal minded folks suddenly taking that “I have the right and the need to defend myself and my family”-road in a discussion.
On the other hand, Charlton “”From my cold, dead hands!” Heston died recently, so there’s always hope. 
Found in Gamespot’s review of Burnout Paradise
This game contains some of the most downright erotic car crashes not featured in a J.G. Ballard novel.
Beautiful.