furtherandfaster

Guitar accessories

Spotted this in a game software shop. Marvellous example of creative thinking. Its not enough to turn a computer game into a plastic guitar sale on top of the software. But to design a double guitar stand to hold two plastic guitars. That is genius!

Go to hell

Today I discovered that there is a blockbuster waiting in the wings due out early next month. Dante's Inferno turns the 13th century spiritual classic into a swords and sorcery romp. Its bound to offend - which is of course essential these days for publicity. I suppose it was inevitable that once the Dungeons and Dragons Lord of the Rings seam was worked out that someone would go looking for something better. And the Divine Comedy can fairly claim to be one of the greatest ever works of imagination with way more monsters and baddies than Tolkien ever thought of. Now rendered in CGI. Of course its not exactly the same book. Beatrice love of Dante's life has been snatched by the Devil so Dante has to weapons in hand to get her back. So a rescue plot - Orpheus goes into the underworld to get Eurydice - only the monsters in that story aren't a patch on Dante's. Then there's Dante's guide,  his conflicted helper Francesco died in the Crusades because Dante messed up (shades of Lion King there). So Virgil the greatest of Roman poets and auther of the Anead Dante's spiritual guide in the original has been dumped for Saint Tonto. And Tonto has issues. So its a buddy sorta revenge movie as well.   What it isn't is a road movie. Its fighting blood and guts all the way. Which curiously enough you won't find in the original - but that never got in the way of a great RPG.You have circles of hell which correspond to the deadly sins. There's a range of weapons including a cross. To quote a developer: "The cross is not used for physical contact. Its a form of crowd control. It can buy you time.You can use it to hold them in place till you're ready to beat the sh** out of them." Aquinas couldn't have put it better.

Actually the borrowing of the religious imagry of the Divine Comedy is very relevant as a kind of update. The travelogue pilgrimage is a staple of European literature from Dante's time onwards. Chaucer's canterbury tales, Piers Plowman, and Pilgrim's Progress all used the idea of spiritual development as a journey. And it was mirrored in medieval times by actual pilgrimages.  The idea is largely obsolete. I mean there are still rambling clubs and people who make travel documentaries for the rest of us to consume. But the notion of making a journey to spiritual enlightenment has largely gone. The paradigm we have with us now is the contest or competition. Its the story behind football.  Reality TV has taken the idea of a competition in which the winner is the last one to be eliminated and turned it into a dozen formats which have generated thousands of hours of cheap programming and even more hours of discussion.  Reality TV is moral improv theatre.  And competition/struggle is of course the mainspring behind just about every kind of gaming.  As it is for Dante's Inferno.

All deep immersion games involve action, but also problem solving, reflection and attention to context. The AI built into the game makes sure that the problem solving is strongly linked to context. The Christian imaginative tradition is ripe for exploitation. That relaunched blockbuster Dr Who regularly borrows Christian themes because there is still awareness of them in folk memory and US influenced science fiction dominated by  westerns and the cold war is too dull a resource. Why not use the resources of 2000 years of European storytelling?  So what's next: Paradise Lost?  The Inquisition?

Here's the Dante's Inferno website if you're over 18 - they actually checked - adult entertainment eh? Its out early in Feb