An interview with my nephew

[imomus]

Before leaving Scotland I interviewed my nephew Robbie, who turns 12 on Friday, about computer gaming, his big obsession. The interview is a bit murkily recorded, so probably only hardcore game nuts (or big Robbie fans) will listen to the whole thing. We discuss whether gaming has eclipsed pop music, whether you can tell someone's favourite game by looking at them, whether people over 30 can game, how the Gamecube measures up to the PS2, the pleasures of retro, whether games have auteurs, and Robbie's plans to be a game environment or character designer when he grows up.

Robbie Interview (16.49 MB mono mp3 file, 36 minutes)

Comments

[fez-rejection.livejournal.com]

what an attractive family.

[freddster.livejournal.com]

cute kids!

kiddie records

[fritzyclops.livejournal.com]

Slightly related to a kid's experience of culture, perhaps you've seen this sight that just poasted its first offering? I saw that it was the tale of Robin Hood and thought of your new song. This take on the legend is a bit more, i don't know, traditional maybe. The whole kiddierecords project i worth keeping tabs on in general I think.
http://www.kiddierecords.com/

On an unrelated note, I recently visited the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh. That Ed Ruscha show is HOT!

sound

[(Anonymous)]

a very glitchy interview momus!

i can hardly hear half of it though.

/viktor.

http://elefanten.blogspot.com

[mrslunch.livejournal.com]

I can see the physical resemblance between Robbie and you, in the jawline/mouth area. :)

[thetikigoddess.livejournal.com]

I wish you a wonderful 2005! Health and happiness and much less suffering in the world.
Adorable kids! It's lovely you spent the holidays with family. It's a shame my connection's too slow to listen to the interview.
I had a similar discussion a few months back with a 15 year old nephew of mine visiting from Melbourne. He too gets excited with all the pc games around but what I found really interesting was that he and his mates chat after school. They all go online and chat on various messenges. They actually prefer facing a computer screen than their friends.
Mind you I found my nephew quite intelligent and not at all shy. He was opinionated and open.
I'm baffled, though...something doesn't quite click right with me. Is it alienting and de-communicative?

[(Anonymous)]

These really are the *most* beautiful children!

Monkey's uncle

[xyzedd.livejournal.com]

This has nothing to do with Robbie or the subject at hand, but here is as good as any place to tuck this secretly away...



Due to travel and other distractions, I've neglected "Click Opera" for a month (having also become too much the scold there), but Momus has come back to nag me in my subconscious: This morning I dreamed it was 1995 again--and there was Momus on the American TV show "Saturday Night Live," with long glossy hair and dressed like the character "Hombrecito" in Herzog's "Every Man for Himself and God Against All," one of my favorite movies. (Hombrecito is an Incan who plays the nose flute and wears three jackets to protect against "the evil breath of humanity.") Momus was talking like Jack Kerouac and cracking jokes about traveling America by Grayhound. Could this be the portent of an upcoming American tour, provided Bush is deposed first?

When (minor?) celebrities show up in my dreams, it's proof of the paucity of my imagination. Do we owe them an appearance fee or simply an apology? Whenever Momus shows up, which has been a scant number of times, he's always acting something like Virgil, pointing into the abyss. Likewise, Liza Minelli is in the permanent cast of my nightmares, for some reason.

Sorry. Maybe I should simply remain anonymous, when I can be everywhere and nowhere, everyone and no one. Every man for himself and God against all?

Anyway, I think there's a Momus birthday coming up soon and "Click Opera" will soon be one year old, so I say "Happy Birthday!" twice and "Happy New Year!" once. Momus is a little dancing ray of sunshine in all our lives--well, maybe sometimes closer to a glowering Scots gloam--but anyone who ever stops by here owes him a hearty drink and an even heartier "thanks."






PS At my own untended "Live Journal" site, where the weeds are poking up through the HTML tags, I've just posted an unfinished little nothing from last summer, which I dedicate to N. C.

[(Anonymous)]

momus, you are a lucky man: you seem to have a really nice and cool family (I had noticed from previous posts already);
hope you do get to see them more often than just at christmas :))
oh btw have a very nice 2005!

dave

Pac-Mondrian

[timnyc.livejournal.com]

Have you played Pac-Mondrian (http://pbfb.ca/rhizome_commission/)?

Great concept, if not as perfectly playable as the original.

Pararappa the Rapper was indeed aesthetically brilliant and charming. And, as I remember it, also frustrating and annoying as hell.

Tim

P.S. Your serious nephew needs to listen to more uncle Momus records!

[leaflets.livejournal.com]

what a cutie!

[(Anonymous)]

This interview was adorable! A few years ago I was playing an emulator of "Space Invaders" and my little brother (then, 16 I believe) and he walked up behind me and asked what it was. It hit me like a ton of bricks; how could anyone living in a digital society not know what "Space Invaders" is? Games like "Paper Mario" may be kitschy to us that remember the originals, but what do little kids think of them, when they've never lived through the originals?

Anyways, you're on the money in one part. Kick! Punch! It's all in the mind!

Adam

interesting

[(Anonymous)]

Interesting for me to read this, as up until Nov I worked as an artist in the games industry for 10 years. I didn't really grow up playing games, and came from an arts side into it, so its fascinating for me that someone so young knows exactly what he wants to do. Anyway I'm sure he will be successful in his career, (if they are still making games in the UK when he is old enough).
Frances
www.transistorsix.co.uk
www.caperstreet.com

[rciaodree.livejournal.com]

I think it is very future-retro that Robbie is keeping an open mind to 2D designs as well as 3D designs in his future career as a video game producer.