The 6th Chinese Internet Research Conference is themed, “China and the Internet: Myths and Realities.”
It takes place on June 13-14 in Hong Kong. Topics are interesting, and registration only costs 300 HKD.
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Mafia is a decently well-known game within role-playing communities. To put it succinctly (see wikipedia for a more elaborate explanation of the game), it’s a game played by a group of people in a living room, where people are secretly assigned mafia or innocent roles.
During each turn the innocents have to suss out which people are mafia and vote to kill them. At the end of each turn, the mafia gets to choose to kill another innocent. The game ends when only mafia or innocents are left alive.
Sometimes this live-action game is played on a forum, or even through IM.
And then (according to press statements), the game was brought to China by a foreign student who was in Silicon Valley.
Exhibit A: http://killer.uland.com/
The game was transferred to forums/chatrooms in China and the avatars were dolled up. They also added a new cops role (making it cops, killers and innocents).
Exhibit B: http://www.ss911.cn
These people dolled it up some more, stole some graphics from existing games and created a spiffy GUI for it. They are currently setting up the ability to buy items for your character (making them look prettier or have new special weapons).
What’s interesting to me:
- Does the game work well with just text (versus the living room in-person context)?
- Does the game become more interesting with the cops role?
- Will it evolve further?
(Also: Is it unethical for them to use pirated graphics? I don’t think so — at this beta stage, they’re clearly placeholders for what’s to come. Even if they’re not: They’re using them so badly right now, it would be silly to penalize them.)
Thanks to Gamasutra writer Frank Yu for his help: Check out his new blog — Yum Yum Games.
(Original link to Killcity/SS911 via Dennis’ Blog.)
- People used to greet with “Did you have the dinner?”, now they say “Did you feel it(the shaking) last night?” instead.
- People used to care where their friends live, now they care on which floor do their friends live.
- People now always check carefully on the walls with a magnifier after every aftershock to make sure their house is safe.
- People now start to regard 2-floor as a very high place (to live)
- People now dislike those who always shake their legs.
- People now cannot bear with those who set their cell phones to vibration mode.
- People now are easy to get scared when their legs start to shake (even just ordinary shaking)
- People now feel very bad when the building is shaking. But after it stops shaking, people still worry about whether there would be another one. (No matter whether it is shaking, people are nervous)
- People served by CMCC swear to stop using CMCC while people served by China Unicom swear to stop using China Unicom. (CMCC and China Unicom are the only two mobile service provider in China, the mobile communication was not working for a very long time after the major quake in May 12)
- People now start to calculate how long will it take to run to the ground (from their rooms) as soon as they have nothing to do.
- People now start to carry a bag with the their most valuable belongings all the time.
- People now start to suspect themselves, and always ask each other, “Was there any shaking just now?”
- People now always try to stare at the glass of water every 5 minutes (to check whether there’s a shock).
- People now are very interested in Geography knowledge.
- People now are very interested in life instinct
- People now hesitates about whether to put off there shoes every time before they go to bed.
- People now are always in front of a TV or a PC Screen, watching the news though most of the news has already been broadcast weeks before.
Rough translations given below image.
Source: 青青春春的秘密花园
Source: Daisy*蓓蓓〓部落格〓
Source: 雪茉莉
Source: PChome forum
Source: Ligaohau’s blog
Link sources: China Vortex, China IWOM Blog, ju690 news.
About the show:
Slice is a collaborative project that seeks to uncover relationships between perception and movement, ephemeral experiences and the concrete materiality of everyday life.
In “Stop-Action” artist Rania Ho has handcrafted a scale reproduction of a familiar everyday object—a ping-pong table—out of low-cost commonly found materials. The inertness of this mundane object is humorously offset with a hint of movement through the form of a constantly levitating ping-pong ball… painter Wei Weng has created a site-specific wall painting entitled “As Prospects Get out of Range”… the artist seeks to invent idiosyncratic visual narratives in inadvertent urban spaces through the use of diverse media including paintings, cutouts and installations.
About the venue:
Arrow Factory exhibitions represent a unique approach to contemporary art making that is defined by mediating relationships with the local surroundings and the aesthetics of urban space.
Address:
箭厂空间 北京东城区箭厂胡同38号 (国子监街内)
Arrow Factory 38 Jianchang Hutong(off Guozijian Jie) Dongcheng District, Beijing
http://www.arrowfactory.org/
A friend mentioned this to me when I was back in Hong Kong: Young professionals, after overworking themselves far past midnight, gather in McDonalds armed with… PSPs and Nintendo DSs.
Even though they are strangers to one another, they will get together for a good multiplayer game of, say, Monster Hunter. It’s popular enough that one local gaming magazine published a list of McDonalds to play.
They even offer 20 whole minutes of free Wifi! (Free Wifi is not easy to find in Hong Kong.)
Siliconera and Kotaku have more on this topic. Image taken from this post.
Was passing by Heathrow and picked up a pamphlet about…
And I checked the website, which said they were co-hosting “over 800 events nationwide spanning art, design, cuisine, culture, science, business, technology, education and sport [that] will capture the imagination and advance the UK public’s understanding of China.”
Their lineup seems pretty impressive, and includes these works:
Above by Chen Shaohua, 1992
Above by Ji Ji, 2006.
There is, in addition, an educational component:
Lastly, they even conjured up a clever marketing ploy: To put paper pigeons in Leicaster Square that act as discount coupons:
For more information, see the HSBC Cultural Exchange website.
Question: Are there similar corporate program(me)s in the US?
This happened several months ago, but I think it’s still worth capturing.
From PFSK:
“While single-use chopsticks may be a convenient option for restaurant owners and patrons alike, there is a small group of Chinese DIY designers and young environmentalists who are taking initiative to counter their use. One such group called ‘Unigreen’ has made an open offer online to hand-stitch a free chopstick / soup spoon holder for anyone who pledges to only carry reusable chopsticks.
Original post on PSFK. More pictures of chopstick bags from Unigreen’s blog.
According to a quote from nerve.com on the artists’ website:
“The ecstatically romantic story of Madi Ju and Patrick Tsai (Pat Pat)
tells you everything you need to know about the inspiration behind
their gleeful photography. Taiwanese-American Pat Pat was raised in
California and schooled in New York. Jolted by the Iraq War, he packed
up and moved to Taipei to seriously pursue photography. Three years
later, he met Madi, who lived in China, on the internet. They
rendezvoused in Hong Kong, fell in love, quit their jobs and struck out
on a pan-Asian adventure together…”
And presenting, the photographing duo known as My Little Dead Dick.
Spotted on the streets of Hong Kong:
“Wifi available here,” it says
Unfortunately, it’s just a convenient place for the telecom company to advertise that they are offering wifi… for a fee.
Correction: From a comment by Alex:
“Actually this is not true. PCCW had been offering paid Wifi access at more than 400 access points across the city, a majority of those are from PCCW phone booths! (including all the ones with this wifi label)
They actually have AP built into the phone booths like this one which the company owns.”
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