go farther

Go Farther: We Need a Remake Site

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Remakes are a big trend in the Geekonomy.  From reviving films like "Fright Night" and "Highlander" to remakes of games and tv shows (or slapping an old name on a new game), everything's getting remade.  I eagerly await the revival of "M.A.S.K." and "Zapped."

OK, no I don't.  Well, not "Zapped", but anyway . .

Watching my childhood and teenage years get remade has given me an idea, an idea that I humbly present to you, my audience, as a venture someone(s) should engage in.

We need a site that tracks remakes of media.

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Go Farther: Gaming Cons

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Gaming conventions are the peculiar state these days. They have a long, honorable, interesting history. Yet, in a time of computer games, they may seem a bit outdated to some outside of the fandom (at least to those outside the fandom).  I also have seen, at least in my area, a revival of interest in non-electronic gaming, making me wonder what trends this portends.

Now, as I've been recently addressing ideas on how various kinds of conventions can “go farther” (thanks to Convention Career Connection), gaming–oriented conventions are really interesting to speculate on. They are, in many ways, traditional and focused. Yet, in other ways gaming has such a long history of innovation and change, such a long history of interesting people developing unique entertainment, there's also a lot to talk about career-wise.

(I should note, in order to talk about gaming, I am focusing on cons that deal with war-gaming, pen-and-paper RPG, etc.  Video Game events will fall under another essay.)

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Go Farther: Fiction Needs Irrelevance

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When we build a world for our fictions, games, and shows, we construct cultures.  Cultures explain why people do what they do, how they think, why they eat, how they war, how they make peace, and more.  Culture is unavoidable when you make a setting – one could even argue that characters are often expressions of their cultures.

When we build these cultures we're often thinking about important things.  We want to know why characters believe as they do.  We want to explain why characters go where they go and do what they do.  We want to explain why magic is the prerogative of the ruling class, why there's a different language spoken on this distant space station, and so on.  We want to explain what matters – in short, cultures explain the Big Plot.

This is short-sighted.

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