Column: 'The Esoteric Beat: Harnessing Dead Media'

In today's edition of The Esoteric Beat, Gamasutra's weekly look at the esoteric side of game design and development, regular columnist Jim Rossignol explores prototyping via online virtual community Second Life, a Super Mario Bros. simulation using a real-life elastic harness for jumping, obscured game media formats, and a new "pay-as-you-go" PC scheme, as outlined in the following extract: "This week's New Scientist reports on pay-as-you-go PC schemes to be launched in China and India: "Microsoft and Chinese PC maker Lenovo have announced plans to launch pay-as-you-go computers in China and India. Consumers will be able to buy a Lenovo PC for about half its normal price and then pay off the remaining balance by purchasing pre-pay cards. The 'FlexGo' scheme will be similar to pay-as-you-go for mobile phones, with codes on pre-paid cards used to activate the service, the two companies said in a joint statement released on Monday." Which begs the question: why aren't there more pay-as-you-go models in the games industry? A pay-as-you-go console? Pay-as-you-go MMOs? Oh wait, that's Project Entropia. Still, you do have to wonder why so few games are looking at esoteric billing models. Surely the astounding financial success of Guild Wars has something to say about that?" You can read the full Gamasutra column for more (no registration required, please feel free to link to this column from external web sites).