I remember reading a scan of an old real print comic once.  The character in it was railing against the imaginary people of his imaginary world, taking them to task about their dissatisfaction with the future they lived in.  But it was really aimed at the stupid people who wanted their stupid little futures and who were too stupid to see that the future is now.  It’s always now.  Except it isn’t anymore.  The TITANs changed that.  The future is now yesterday, and last week, and ten years ago.

–ECLIPSE PHASE

In August of this year, I had the opportunity to interview Rob Boyle and Brian Cross – two of the minds behind the post-singularity, transhumanist horror Role-Playing Game ECLIPSE PHASE.  We covered a lot of topics — from details about the game and the game world to the singularity, technology’s influence on politics, reputation economies, anarcho-transhumanism and more.

(Also?  Creative uses for bacon in the dark post-singularity future.)

You can listen to the interview (recorded August 7th, 2009 in a noisy bar during the GEN CON gaming gaming convention in Indianapolis, Indiana) here:

(Or you can download it in a podcast format from here.)  As a minor warning, there are some setting spoilers in the interview.

ECLIPSE PHASE comes out this week in the US and elsewhere from bookstores and gaming retailers.  (Or in PDF format from Drive Thru RPG.)

@grinders is the twitter feed for grinding.be. Bite-sized grinding chunks, neatly delivered to your twitter account of choice. Please don’t reply to grinders, as it’s now only programmed to relay the posts presented here.

Want to send us things via twitter?

• m1k3y
• Kevin
• xutraa
• Spiraltwist

Now you can.

So six weeks ago now I was at the Tokyo Game Show, touching it’s stuff.  I battled Sonic and was snack-attacked by a ninja. I also got to see a whole slew of new games, demos mostly, and was warned away from taking any photos of the actual game screens, having failed to secure a Media Pass.

(Quick note for those wanting to visit Tokyo Game Show:  go on the Business Days!  The queues are much shorter and it is a far less harried experience.  All you need is a business card (thanks moo) and the entrance fee.  Go to the International Visitors entrance and then enjoy the relative lack of people).

So apart from the booth babes (yawn), what were the highlights? Well there were only two things I was super desperate to get my hands on…

Mirror’s Edge

Here I am minutes away from playing the demo level of Mirror’s Edge.  As I have written earlier, I was pretty excited to see just what a decent parkour game might be like to play; and had possibly re-watched the trailer for it ~100 times.

Sadly you only got ten minutes playing time on this, and despite having laughed at those going before me, I also struggled to balance walk across the first pipe, and make the first leap.  Since returning home I have played through the demo in full, and damn is it wicked fun.  Tricky, but once you get the hang of it, it’s fantastic to switch from a parkour trick into a melee attack.

The full version’s available to buy world-wide (I think) now.  Has anyone played through it yet?  Tell me;  I must know!  (And pray Santa brings me a PS3)

Neurosky

These poor guys were set right at the back in the business section, but, again, having written about this previously, I sought them out and made a bee-line straight to them.  There was no queue for this; just a take a ticket and wait 90 minutes deal.

I did, on the other hand, have time to pose with their lovely promo girls.

So sadly I did not get to experience mind-control first hand.  What I did do was watch other people use it, and have a long conversation with one of their marketing people.

Basically, it’s a good news, bad news situation.

Good news – it totally works!  Though all they had to show off was some simple demos they had coded up with the SDK; like a First Person Shooter where the zombies only appear when you think about them just so.

What I found very interesting was that most of the device is shielding to stop the sensitive EEG from being affected by all the ambient electronic emitted radiation.

Bad news - the reason they were there was to drum up interest from game companies.  Estimated time we will be able to buy a proper game or software using this device:  Christmas 2009.  Damnit!