Three things strike me about this. The first is that it looks gorgeous. The second is that it’s interesting that this “last outpost of humanity that doesn’t know that outside is OK” theme is so resilient — Logan’s Run, The Island (which, OK, was more or less a remake of Logan’s Run), Paranoia, Moon’s busted [...]
The existence of Homo Floresiensis is one of the primary things that motivated Human Contact when we first started playing it. This is a three-foot tall hominin that’s been discovered in Indonesia that, while it had a cranial capacity two thirds smaller than ours, was clearly a tool-using, cultural creature, and it looks like major [...]
The vertigo kicks it right after 1:30. They seem to have biking shoes, around 10:30, over there on the right. Around 12:30, they’re doing something very practical, but it really looks fun. (This is from Space Gizmo, which is fascinating every day.)
Reportedly, this is already planned as a feature-length film. Has Neill Blomkamp set a precedent here? Is this the way to make movies now? And do you need movie theaters to make it work? Might straight-to-iTunes be a better way to publish? (Also: I’m not sure why Philips thinks that reducing the resolution is a [...]
There are several parts of Academy law that will be broadly applicable to the interstellar expeditions that will be the core of play in Human Contact. I’m interested to see how these are interpreted (and ignored) in the course of play — after all, it’ll be years, or maybe decades (or maybe never!) before contact [...]
I kinda like how this is told as a beautiful little story. It’s a bit Bradburian.
Over at the new Shock:Human Contact forum, Malcolm Craig asks, Are the Academy always overt when they arrive at a planet? The answer is, “It’s hard not to be, but there are ways, when the circumstances are right.” Join the conversation and help form the Academic Contact Best Practices document!
