Extra Punctuation: What Kinect Can Do

[SnakeoilSage]

My mom, who is currently 45, says it a lot. But maybe it has to do with it being more common with non-north american english. Yahtzee is a Brit and my mom learned english from a south african.
In fact, I'll bet that that's it considering that, as you said, apropos comes from French and British English has always pulled from French starting from the Norman invasion to the majesty of Louis and the success of Napoleon. Its why, if I remember this correctly, the "posh" accent was created. It sound more French, particularly the "r"s.

There's nothing I hate more than people freaking out at words over 2 syllables long. I take philosophy in university and the crap I have to read has maybe desensitized me to complex phrasing. Its very different from regular writing because you want to say things in the least amount of words, not with the most coherent words.

And in terms of "slang", then we get into a discussion of prescriptive and descriptive definitions for words. I don't think you can win arguing for prescriptive because then it fails to explain how words are used, implying that all slang is meaningless or only understood within a unique community. But Britain is not a community unique enough for that, and it could be understood by those outside of the community. The only reason to dislike slang in writing is twofold: ambiguity. Sometimes the meaning of the slang is too specific but would appear to have a more general application or just a different way of using it. This would make it difficult for people who aren't used to the slang. Two, you are an extremely prescriptive grammarian and so certain things should be avoided. However, consider that if you go to Webster dictionary, even they would support slang usage of terms both in the dictionary and in their special video series (where they taught me that ending a sentence with a preposition is not as wrong as people think it is because prescriptive grammar was mostly codified in the 18th and 19th centuries and was even then not near being descriptive of actual language use).

If I wrote an article about hipsters, would that be slang or a word? How does something go from slang to word? How do you even measure such a thing? I don't think you can but I'll be interested to see what you have to say on the topic since all I know is from Philosophy of Language and you seem to have more knowledge about general writing.

Well in answer to your original post, yes, this was a bit of trolling. No point in denying it. I was in an already smug yet pissy mood and a word like "apropos" just riles everything I know about professional writing. Giving it's a term more common outside of North America, I probably should have cut it some slack.

I call it slang because "apropos of nothing" means "on the subject of nothing," which really doesn't translate into "without reason," which is what the term "apropos of nothing" replaces. I can only assume that because the phrase itsef doesn't make sense in the context of its use, people decided it would be a good way to colorfully express what came to be its current meaning, which is essentially the definition of slang.

As for my writing style, when I'm not lurking on forums for things to fly off the handle about I'm a fiction writer and I've been very fortunate to get advice from a wide range of published professionals (God bless the Internet). I learned that when you're telling a story you never use fancy words when simple words will do. Adverbs, for example, are things to avoid as much as possible.

So when Yahtzee says "apropos of nothing" when he could have said "without reason" it sets off a red flag for me. In my experience people who go out of their way to dig up exotic words and phrases think they're being very clever when in fact they're being pretentious. It turns their prose purple, to use an even older turn of phrase.

 

[Snooder]

The problem I have with Yahtzee's suggestion here is you don't actually need to buy a $100 add on or take your hand off the controller to do this, the wii-mote nunchuk and/or the Sony copycat can do this by default while still providing regular game controls. On the Wii for example technically for the Okami port they didn't actually need to implement a pause to do your brush strokes, it could have been all real time.

Sony tried that with the six-axis and it failed. Miserably. Partly because of the inaccuracy of the current systems, and partly because having to move your hand physical from one control medium to a wildly different one is uncomfortable.

The main problem with inaccuracy isn't even really a technical one, it's an AI issue. See, it doesn't matter if the tech can accurately map your hand's location, it has to be able to interpret what that data means. Which is difficult because people are people, so (a) they cannot do it exactly perfect every time, and (b) different people will move in different ways. So you need a AI that's about to decide when a movement is "close enough" to the real thing to be viable while filtering out noise motions or motions that look like the real motion, but aren't quite it. Try out this example, lift your hand up to your chest, with your palm facing inward, then turn your palm facing forward and push your hand out about an inch. That's the motion for "stop". Now do it again, but faster, and it becomes a wave-off. However, sometimes the wave-off will be slow and the stop motion will be fast. Let's say if your lazily brushing someone off, or trying to tell them to stop in a hurry. The meaning of those small, minute signals depends largely on context and interpretation in a way that machine intelligence just isn't up to yet.

Which means it's a gimmick. And like Yahtzee says, a $129 gimmick for inaccurate controls just isn't something that people will put up with in a serious game.

 

[Frostbite3789]

That is why I think the voice command in Mass Effect 3 is a feature that might work with Kinect. You don't need to take your fingers out of the controller, and having to shout commands is more natural and immersive than a button combination (which, in turn, takes you out of the action).

The only problem is that this has been done before. End War did it this generation. SOCOM did it last generation. And those had the mic in your face. I don't see how putting it across the room will make it better.

Also I should've mentioned, it didn't work well in either of those cases.

 

[zephae]

I was thinking that Kinect would be good for a Naruto game where you have to make the hand seals to do the spells. It actually would work well for them by getting players even more invested in the series itself.

 

[masterbazza]

DAMN YOU YAHTZEE!
after that bit about fox news
i now have to play final fantasy

 

[Sandytimeman]

this is probably the first time, that I've actually laughed out loud from an extra punctuation. The ball bearing in a cereal bowl line just cracked me up.

 

[Eric Staples]

The way I see it, the Kinect has the ability to replace one analog stick and one button. This allows it to play games with about as much depth as an Atari 2600 game.