It is not all in my head that Head Balter and Head Six are the joker and the thief from the song All Along The Watchtower? I kept wondering which two characters were going to represent those two characters from the song. Then that means our civilization is the watchtower.

The series finale of Battlestar Galactica was last night and it was great in my opinion. I feel they sewed up pretty much everything. The Opera house connection was handled well; the small cease fire moment between Cavil’s forces and Galactica was a little strange but all right. Tyrol killing Tory when he learned she killed his wife was realistic. I liked that the couples’ storylines were finished: Tigh/Ellen, Helo/Athena, Kara/Anders, Balter/Caprica Six, Adama/Roslin. Especially thought Roslin’s death was done in a great way.

The show was also funny and had some really great moments. When Roslin thanks Doc Cottle for helping her survive for so long and the Doc did not have a witty come back, priceless. Another great dialog was after Anders was hooked up to the CIC and Tigh says to Adama “You can still throw them all out the airlock,” which Adama replies “It would take too long.” Yet another was when Baltar and Caprica Six both see their Head replicas of each other and say to one another “You can see them too?” The visualizations throughout the episode were great. Finally, the realization that Kara had lead the Galactica to the exact rendezvous coordinates where the fleet was going and that they found our planet, the second Earth, pushed everything together.

Some of the other great moments were the flashbacks. Boomer’s flashback to her saying she owed Adama was interesting because we have seen Boomer go through so much. Then there were Roslin’s flashbacks that pushed her to get back into politics and really life. The best one was Kara’s and Lee flashback that found Kara almost cheating on Lee’s brother Zak with Lee until they were unexpectedly broken up.

Ron Moore stated in an interview that he felt Kara and Lee never left that moment and they were in a perpetual state of wanting to be with each other but could not. It makes sense and in the end when Kara disappears when Lee is talking to her that was probably the most controversial part of the episode. I feel Kara, Starbuck, was the hero though, she was just riding off into the sunset. I’m not disappointed that Kara and Lee didn’t end up together in the end or that we do not know more about the powers that brought Kara back to life. Something in the story had to be left open and Starbuck deserves it.

In the end we are all Cylons, which I had a feeling we all were going to be anyways. When the Galactica arrived there were already humans living on Earth (the second Earth) so the remnants of the fleet just spread out, ultimately mating with the evolving humans. Ever wonder where the knowledge to build the pyramids came from, now we know. The episode ended with the connection to our own civilization and how it is now our choice to break the cycle of battling our own creations. All in all, I was impressed with the episode and I am excited to hear the episode commentary. There is also ‘The Plan’ and ‘Caprica’ to look forward too. Battlestar Galactica is not over yet.

P.S. I did hate the fact that they killed Racetrack. She was my favorite side character; she was as sassy and rough as Starbuck and probably as good a pilot as Athena. Plus, she was sent on every harebrain mission that Galactica came up with, they could have thrown her a bone (I didn’t care about Skulls though ). I was always pissed that she was part of the mutiny but I guess she did get to nuke the Cylon base in the end. That’s at least something.

I am quite impressed with the new series Unskippable found at The Escapist. It is literally Mystery Science Theater 3000 for games, even the actors’ voices sound the same.

After playing said “burn the rope game” an IGF Innovation Award nominee I’m utterly disappointed. Yeah we get it games can be abstracted to such a basic level that it is the equivalent to turning on a light. But in that case it can’t be considered a game, and an anti-game would have no interactivity at all so I don’t see that argument either.

What about the number of other games like “don’t shoot the puppy” or “press this button to win,” where are their nominations? As a flash animation or Youtube video this ‘game’ is fine but I’ve lost respect in the IGF.

I recently attended the Meaningful Play conference where I was giving a talk about recommendation systems and games. In addition to mine, there were a number of sessions at Meaningful Play that covered games and social networks: The Intersection of Social Networks and Games, Social Play, and Emerging Flash Game Industry. A lot more people have been talking about finding the intersection between these two areas beyond just the ones that are trying to build social gaming platforms, like Raph Koster and MetaPlace.

I see this combination as containing a number of interesting areas: online games, social networks, recommendation systems, game/web analytics and game adaption. And here are some initial questions that I personally am thinking about as it relates to my work in this area.

1. How to build social networks in games?
2. What game mechanics work in social networks?
3. How gamers and web users “game” the system?
4. Where web and game analytics are headed?
5. What types of recommendation systems would be useful for games?
6. What problems with privacy or trust (or other topics) will evolve when game adaption or recommendation systems become ubiquitous in games and social networks?

Check out this awesome quote from a recent article where Obama speaks about what he was thinking when he was out campaigning and answering questions:

“ So when Brian Williams is asking me about what’s a personal thing that you’ve done [that's green], and I say, you know, ‘Well, I planted a bunch of trees.’ And he says, ‘I’m talking about personal.’ What I’m thinking in my head is, ‘Well, the truth is, Brian, we can’t solve global warming because I f—ing changed light bulbs in my house. It’s because of something collective’.” “

I could just see Obama swearing at Brian Williams