As if World of Warcraft armour wasn't silly enough.

There I am, stalking through the post-apocalyptic ruins of the Suez Canal in my captured L-5 Bogatyr battlewalker, searching for PAC infantry and other soft targets, when I notice that there's a familiar billboard ahead. Hmmm...given that I'm playing Battlefield 2142, it would appear that things fell apart about 133 years ago. Either that, or some radiation-crazed mutant has a fondness for putting up vintage movie ads.

A little online investigation reveals the following information from a 2006 Electronic Arts press release:

Today's announcement from Electronic Arts describes an agreement with New York-based in-game advertising firm IGA Worldwide, which will see an unspecified number of EA franchises implement in-game advertising. The first game that will see ads from IGA is Digital Illusions CE's Battlefield 2142, which will be receiving dynamic ads tailored to players' physical locations. Interestingly, the press release also states that ads will be customized by platform, though the game has been announced only for PC, suggesting that the game may eventually be coming to other systems. "Consumers are increasingly gaming in deep, virtual worlds and advertisers need adapted ways to reach these audiences," said European VP for Online and Strategic Relationships Frank Sagnier. "The agreement with IGA is a first step in a detailed strategy to deliver advertising in a seamless format." It was not specified what type of real world brands will be used to seamlessly and realistically integrate modern advertising into the fictional setting of a war-themed game set in 2142.

Sigh...yes, consumers are spending more time in "deep" virtual worlds, but obviously they're not deep enough. I can just see the next step in the process: some desperate, battered human raiders making their stand in World of Warcraft as the Orcs begin their charge: their Nikon spears ready, their Coca-Cola shields braced, heads defiantly held high in their Nike helms...

- Sid

Even two seems like a lot, when you think about it.

"Do you add to the blog on a regular basis, like do you work on a topic for a while and then post it sort of on a schedule, or just as it comes? Inquiring Cloins want to know..."

Colin Campbell

Since Mr. Campbell, whose Campbell Brothers blog was the inspiration for The Infinite Revolution*, has expressed some curiousity about my process via e-mail, I thought it only appropriate to take a moment and do a posting on posting. I suspect that anyone who does blog postings on an area of interest rather than as a diary ends up doing one of these meta-media things, so I might as well get mine out of the way.

I don't have any sort of set schedule for postings. It's just something I do for fun, and as such there's no reason to sit down every two days and force myself to write something. However, I have to say that life is full of inspiration and opportunity for topics. As an example, let's look at the last week or two.

About a week and a half ago, I discovered that my Friday night dinner-and-drinks friend Chris, who is familiar with Terry Pratchett's work, is (or was, he's fickle) a big Harry Potter fan, likes Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, and is gradually weaning himself away from World of Warcraft, had never heard of Michael Moorcock's Elric series. Well, rather than bending the poor fellow's ear for half an hour, I'll probably do an Elric of Melniboné posting to get that out of my system.

I received my income tax refund this week, and as a result did a little non-necessity shopping this weekend. Picked up a copy of the straight to DVD movie Stargate: The Ark of Truth and found that it compared unfavourably to the Firefly and Farscape post-series movies, another good topic for a posting. I also bought a copy of The Crow - comic book adaptations have been uneven as well, lots of grist there for the mill.

I'm currently reading a couple of books (they're in different rooms, if you're wondering how that works) that both deal with hostile or possibly hostile technologically superior aliens. Aliens - good topic, that, one of the big SF concepts as well as being one of the major foundations of the genre as established by H. G. Wells. Wells gave us time travel, space exploration, alien invasion, genetic manipulation (The Food of the Gods) and invisibility, just to name a few of the major themes that he introduced. This one is probably two postings, I've been toying with an H. G. Wells piece for some time.

And so it goes... I've also got a few partial drafts in progress, as well as doing ongoing research for the global/racial/feminist postings. It's difficult sometimes, because I worry about having the right titles and opening paragraphs, not to mention picking out all those quotes. Irritatingly, I find that I tend to compose bits of the postings in my head when I'm at the gym, and end up either forgetting them or trying to scribble them down in my workout log book between sets.

Sourcing images is fun too. In this case the graphic at the top of the page is taken from xkcd, a webcomic of "romance, sarcasm, math and language." Taken without permission, frankly - the Internet is like that - but I'll be happy to remove the image if they complain and at least I've credited them and linked to their site. I've done scanning, pulled images from .avi files, and learned the Unix command that provides a workaround for the fact that Apple disables the screen shot keyboard command when DVD's are playing.

All in all, I find it to be a pleasant little hobby. At one point I was considering taking a class in science fiction as literature, but I think that blogging has removed that desire by giving me a forum to speak my mind without having to worry about being graded.

- Sid

*Much as axe murder was the inspiration for brain surgery.