Since I don't have any troll points, here's the sort of 'compromise' that happened with health care reform in the Republican-led finance committee:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Baucus#Opposition_to_single_payer_health_care

Which is worse... the fact that *I* understood this reference or the fact that no one else did?

So what you're really saying is that Democrats have won more wars?

5) Move all your problems to a developing country without these sorts of taxes and restrictions.

(links to article)
http://33jz.sl.pt/

Making anything is a craft. His point was that when these products are meant to be interactive and the audience is meant to fulfill a set of predetermined outcomes then any art associated with this is incidental. You could have Shakespeare write the backstories for every piece in a chess game, have a romance between a rook and the enemy queen, and he would have made art based on chess whereas the game itself would still remain chess.

This is why people like us can't have a conversation with an art critic. From my perspective I could have the most exquisite ceramic teapot in the shape of a bird but the fact that I use it to make tea precludes it from being art until I set it back on the shelf. And I think this is where I agree with Ebert -- the moment I start interacting with your game I start thinking of how to beat it and any half-assed dialogue that your characters have on the state of the human condition becomes a distraction. The interactivity is a layer *on top of* whatever non-interactive art may be present in your game. When I play through the dialogue trees and watching the cut scenes in Grim Fandango I will certainly claim that I'm experiencing art. But when I have to actually interact with the environments and inventory I must come to grips that I'm controlling a very frustrating game.

The TFA is a specific response to Kellee Santiago's TED presentation that "video games are art." After seeing the presentation I think that she's having a lot harder time making her case. Games have always been a consumer product with an eye to a market and they have always attracted skilled and creative craftspeople. At what point does a 'craft' become an 'art'? My Settlers of Catan game isn't art and playing it on my computer doesn't make it art. This is where she starts splitting hairs and this is why Ebert brings out the literature and music angle.

FTFA: "In the end, did Scientology get me laid? What do you think?" That's why I became Unitarian! Not much screenplay material here oddly enough...

That's when you call Big Jim Slade.

This is also why such a complaint is strange coming from Strauss. In *his* rebels-vs-evil-despots novel the rebels find a insta-cloning machine and in the last four pages of the book make enough copies of themselves to assure total victory. Brilliant use of science and storytelling there.

It's something that should have been set up long ago. If I'm playing an online FPS I can always play with people I know IRL. The friends I have who play WoW are all on different servers; what good is Massive Multiplayer in that case?