The Auteurs of Christmas

Cultured beef, steam power and slavery

Hypothesis

The advent of cultured meat will change the perception and interaction humans have with animals --- gathering all species under one flag, very much like steam machines ignited human rights for humans.

Reasoning

Back in the late 18th century the ability to substitute slaves with steam powered machineries shifted the lens through which we looked at slavery.
The "Let's buy a slave to do the job!" option in agriculture turned into a --> "Well, I guess this never-tired steam machine offers a better return on investment, so why buy a slave? ", and finally became a --> "Hey guys, maybe we should end slavery...".

Steam revolution exposed this cognitive dissonance that was going on for centuries, and slowly de-normalized the coping mechanisms (racial hierarchy) people use to secure their needs (work supply).

Likewise, abundant cultured beef may slowly end the coping mechanism we created long ago to dissociate us from the slaughtery of other living beings.

And if killing animals is no longer justified by our meat consumption needs, then speciesism shoud slowly fade into history, opening the doors to a new era of economic and behavioral interactions with other species.

Some related articles:

http://www.permaculture.co.uk/articles/have-simon-fairlie-george-monbiot-got-it-wrong-about-meat-eating

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/05/us-science-meat-in-vitro-idUSBRE9740PL20130805
http://on.ted.com/forgacs
[Updated on 14/08/2014] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ttl47rss9Rk

What would micro gaming look like ?

Micro stories

Micro stories are crazy short narratives, carrying the essence of emotions one would found at the climax of a story.

ex1: six-word novel by Ernest Hemingway

For sale: baby shoes, never worn

ex2: [courtersy of 365 MICRO STORY PROJECT ]

Two bodies discovered in house

They talked on the phone all night, stitching themselves into each other lives, papering over the cracks that had grown between them. Distance made their differences seem less important. By the time the first light appeared they were together, entwined. 

Micro movies

In the same vein, micro movies would be defined as the essence of emotions one would found at the climax of a movie.

ex: One Last Dive

(...before I go)

...nothing more than the essential.

[Edited  Aug. 10, 2013]: and Vine goes even further with almost nano-movies :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YI-MIhsx1xg

[Edited  Jan. 22, 2014]:
http://i.imgur.com/wmrc5Xx.gif

Micro blogging

Todays blogs, micro-blogs, tweets, feeds ...etc, are the reflection of this need to cut, simplify until one reaches a burst of words, intense enough to carry the all news.

ex: Today's Gaming Drama

Micro education

ex: Minute Physics: E = mc²

Micro gaming 

What would micro gaming look like ?

ex1: Parameters
(essence of RPG mechanics)... by the way, you should give a try to their other stuff... really amazing work of simplification there.

ex2: A Dark Room

Those two examples are extreme simplification.
But is it all ? Is it what micro gaming would look like ?

If you watch again "One Last Dive" (video above), you'll notice that the shots could have been those of a 2h movie, while "A Dark Room" game could not have been a sub-part of a AAA video game.

So again: what would micro gaming look like if we were to do for games what has been done with "One Last Dive" for movies ?

It'd probably look something like that:
Take the quality of "The Last Of Us", remove all cutting scenes, divide the gameplay hours by 100. You're left with 100 seconds of pure and concentrated horror/adventure/suvival game. Keep a 30sec slow pacing familiarization. Enough to get used to simplified controls, decision system, get bound to characters and set the plot of the game. Then add a 65sec of increasing decisions making, including dangerous climbing, concentrated level design, fights and survival stuff. Finish with a climax, where it all comes together in a brutal ending.
Can we make that for 1/100th of the cost ?... probably something around $500K...
Provided there's enough replayability, players would happily spend $1 for this, resulting in the same gross for fewer risks, and legitimating the effort.

[Edited  Aug. 10, 2013]: Rogue Leagcy is a good candidate for plateformer micro-gaming.

Computer Chess - The Movie

How not to play chess...

(1.d4 Nf6; 2.c4 g6; 3.Nc3 Bg7; 4.e4 d6;) 

Controlling two characters with one gamepad

Control each brothers with a different analog stick. I love the smell of video games when they look like handmade polished piece of work.