Common Language Monday, May 12, 2008 : 12:00 AM By: Chris

This strip couples well with this one. Both stem from how woefully out of touch movie and television writers are with games. Regarding dialogue, it's clear that these writers feel that game design has not progressed since the mid '80s. Actually, this stuff was bad for its time even when it popped up 20 years ago. Let me quote a modern classic, The Wizard: "I don't believe this. I got the scroll weapon, and I almost beat Mecha-Turtle at the end of level three!" This is such a textbook example of this phenomenon that I don't even know what I can add by way of commentary. Videogames are so ubiquitous in this day and age I can't even posit any kind of explanation for why such outdated terminology has survived this long in popular media. Apply the phenomenon to any other topic and it becomes clear to anybody how ridiculous and jarring this stuff is when you encounter it. For instance, if there was a cinematic car chase set in modern New York and the pursuing driver exclaimed "Secure the door latch! We're nigh unto the time for pushing this horseless carriage to the maximum!" it might just take you a little bit out of the scene.

For the past week or so, the site has seen a tremendous boost in traffic. This is in large part to Scott Ramsoomair, who was extremely kind in adding DU to the VG Cats links section and even linked to a DU strip on the VG Cats home page. As someone who has long envied Scott's art and creativity, this has been a real honor for me.

For the better part of next week I will be at a conference in Washington DC. As a result, the next strip will again be a bit late. Sorry about that. However, after next week I will be ready to shift the site to two updates per week.