No, it has nothing to do with Alterac Valley (a player versus player battle zone) and its minutia. I simply could no longer tolerate having this nonsense crop up in my brain on a daily basis. There are no thoughts or lessons or memories in my head that should be rightfully displaced by knowing how many scraps of armor it takes to achieve a damage multiplier.

This week, TED, offered up a fascinating lecture by game designer and futurist, Jane McGonigal. Particularly interesting is the bit starting around 12:30 where she relays Herodotus’s tales of gaming in the Lydian empire (circa the 12th century BC).

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For those of you that don’t know, I spend the majority of my days VJ’ing for Frequency, an internet video show akin to radio’s Pandora.

While most of my work consists of combing the internet for various gems, I also occasionally get to create custom playlists to show off the site’s toolset for assembling video collections. Here are two recent ones I’ve compiled:

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I’m a bit late to the party on this, but something this absurdly awesome really has no expiration date.  Next question: what’s it going to take to get this to the top 40?

Either artist Daihei Shibata has a profound respect for the natural world, or has been binging too much on Spore.

This week, ESPN’s groundbreaking “30 for 30” series explored the origins of one of the most popular internet activities – outside of Facebook and LOLcats. It attempted to re-enact the conditions under which “Rotisserie” baseball was created.

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Initially popularized on Reddit, this video depicts the creation of “Magnasanti,” a Simcity 3000 metropolis that, in terms of game mechanics and incentives, is a model of perfection.

Entitled “Simcity 3000 – ABSOLUTE MAXIMUM,” the creation video relays tales of a three-year construction period executing Da Vinci-like designs scrawled on reams of parchment. Magnasanti sports a population of over 6 million, a crime rate of zero, no roads (mass transit only), and a flawless integration of commercial, industrial, and residential zones modeled after the Bhavacakra, or Tibetan wheel of life.

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This Double Dragon/Super Mario protagonist ventures beyond the typical 8-bit endgame to find an even more harrowing challenge — keeping the affections of a rescued princess.

Link via BoingBoing

This is what happens when you have an acid flashback on your way home from the arcade.

If you’ve got a free hour and a half, check out redlettermedia’s series of Star Wars Episodes I + II critiques. They fully expose the prequels as the worthless schlock that everyone suspects them to be.

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