But we can still convince Jodi Foster to travel there and check it out for us right?

Also, if the OP is going to local conferences already, does he/she network with people there? Could they also be interested in this tech? A good way to network and save money is to find someone to share a hotel room with. I find that conferences aren't useful for me unless I'm presenting because I'm really shy and it's something that I (and the OP, from the sound of it) need to get over.

I, too, drifted away from my faith when I discovered there were cookies and pizza to be had at graduate seminars.

My antimatter holo-reactor will only take another 30 years to develop! The first 40 backers at $1000000 or more will get a plush boson that they can squeeze at night as they dream of their grandchildren getting unlimited energy routed to their VR implants and stasis tanks.

Screw beta!

Bad analogy. It's equivalent to having ads for Netflix displayed in the DVD section.

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...