waffle

So, Photoshop Tennis is finally back, only now under the guise of Layer Tennis. Why so? Adobe’s sponsoring it, that’s why, and they are presumably mad about the verbification of Photoshop as well as the genericization of their trademark.

I don’t like the name change. Photoshop Tennis is the ancestral name of the game; like the real sport’s terminology like love for zero (deriving from the french l’oeuf, meaning ‘the egg’), so should this noble sport pay homage to its history.

Adobe’s sponsorship also brings in a well-done, but intrusive Flash ad on the right side of the screen. To promote its interactivity it jitters, teasing you with an animation for the first few seconds after you load the page, and since it is an element of the sport that you practically have to reload the page to see if there are any new volleys, you’ll see that a lot.

I get the whole point of Adobe being sponsors - whooop-de-doo, they invented Photoshop - but I don’t like it. There’s something about those ® marks following the product names throughout the web site that makes you itch, that could almost solely turn you anti-corporate, the sentiment being: “Why are they poking around in our community sport? We did just fine before your Registered Trademark signs showed up.”

I suppose it could be worse though. Frito-Layer Tennis, anyone?