Uhhhh. Last week I made my boyfriend watch that Famicom footage of the never-released Aliens game, and then this morning as I was stalking his Facebook page, I saw that someone had slapped up a link to 1UP on his wall.
Frank Cifaldi did some really nice legwork here. You know, he’s that guy. The guy who does all the nice legwork.
This lit-journal has posted some of the loveliest, most careful work on video games I’ve read, OK, but what I really love is this-this-this. (It might be the watercolor illustrations helping out.)
I am linking to the version of this animated infographic that counts it out in U.S. $$z so that, if you’re anything like me (California-born, bad at numbers), you don’t pop a blood vessel doing math.
My Second Life avatar, awestruck by almost a thousand other avatars (click for a closer look).
“Mixed reality” artist Kristine Schomaker—Gracie Kendal in Second Life—is completing work on 1000 Avatars, a tower of larger-than-”life”-size avatars photographed from behind. Get it? Because, in a third-person game like Second Life, you only see your own backside—Kristine’s photos reflect how Second Life users actually come to visualize their virtual selves.
The chest-bursters look less snakey in this version, and I like this Samus-Ripley a lot more than the big, super-detailed MSX sprite, which seems comparatively clunky. The music is rockin’ in both (it’s Uematsu!).
"Cognitive scientists have known for some time that being in a good mood improves many aspects of thought; in particular, it boosts your ‘cognitive flexibility’—your ability to detect unusual relationships between things, and to figure out new, different ways to solve problems."
I feel like I can make a number of credible guesses from this footage:
1) best rec room ever
2) baby brother is a trouper
3) middle brother’s girlfriend is going to see her YouTube subscriptions quadruple
4) this video will sell a million Kinects
When and how did I miss this? I was peeking at performance artists Eva and Franco Mattes’s website—to see if they had any other insights about Second Life to go along with their 2006 "avatar portraits"—when suddenly I am instead watching this video of people playing games and having minor meltdowns.
It isn’t even slightly funny. I had to pause and leave the computer several times. Probably NSFW.
Edit at the 8:27 mark: Aha, I knew it. They included Angry German Kid, which is sad, because it was a hoax meant to be thoughtful and funny, and now the kid wishes he’d never taped himself.
Maybe some of these clips are staged, too, but oh my god they can’t all be.
And now for the first complete game submission! Leaky World: a Playable Theory is, its developers explain, an interactive illustration of Julian Assange’s 2006 essay “Conspiracy as Governance.”
As a demonstration, Leaky World conveys how information travels among nations, but also how too much centralization (imperialism?) permits these informational “leaks.” And because uncontrolled leaks will eventually result in radicalized dissent from the unwashed masses, the leaked headlines must be squelched as fast as possible by severing diplomatic ties between nations. I think? Is that what is going on?
As a game, Leaky World is high-speed connect-the-dots. Aesthetically it resembles an Introversion game, probably because of the world map and the metaphors and all the stress.
Kevin and I wrote this end-of-decade wrap-up last Christmas, and even as we neared the piece’s natural end, we couldn’t stop adding to our joint Google Doc. Maybe our selections are obvious and not inventive, and probably we are blowhards who like the sound of our own writing, but here is the whole unwieldy mess, not even in its entirety, as it has appeared in my draft box since 01/01/2010. Blah, blah, blah. —ed.
When Jenn asked me if I’d assist in compiling this list, I was pretty excited! Ten years of games! I thought. Why, I have quite a few favorites in that lengthy time period I could mention.
Of course, narrowing it down is no easy feat. In terms of gameplay, video games haven’t exactly taken the huge technological leap the way they have in decades past, and graphically, the only real change is in visual detail. Nonetheless, this decade heralded the advent of downloading games and the return of in-console saving. Some games introduced these fresh innovative ideas; other games didn’t necessarily bring anything new to the table, but did what they did extremely well.
I’m not saying I played all the AAA titles and underground hits—I have eclectic gaming tastes, a low budget, and a proclivity for gaming mostly with other friends—but that has not stopped me from proselytizing the multiplayer goodness of Powerstone 2 or wild system-pushing 2600 homebrews like Adventure II to anyone unfortunate enough to get me started on the subject.
So here are some top picks from the gaming experiences of both Jenn and myself from the past 10 years, and hey, maybe you’ll find something interesting to check out! —Kevin B.
You guys! Luke Plunkett kotaku’d me twice in a row this week, PLUS he linked to this radical Marvel vs Capcom 3 trailer. I am feeling the goodwill! Happy holidays!
"Jonathan Gourlay plays the game ‘Braid,’ a platformer about time travel and regret." I think I was unduly mean about the rhythm of Braid in a recent thingie I posted because, framed here, Braid’s prose looks newly poetic (as opposed to uh prosaic I guess)
More magic, this time via @TVsAndyDaly on Twitter—he of "Eastbound and Down," season 1, for all ye benighted—who adds, "I love this despite my not knowing what Bubble Bobble is."
Or that is how Google translates the headline-ish. Love.
OK, yes, I realize Famitsu is in Japanese. That is exactly why I keep an "English" button in my Firefox bookmark toolbar. I am totally not joking. Anyway, you have got to check out Famitsu’s coverage of the 2011 IGF Nuovo Award finalists. (via IGF’s chairman, @brandonnn Boyer)
Now that the IGF’s Nuovo Award Finalists have been announced, I hope it’s safe for me to post my impressions of another strong contender, Loop Raccord.
In Loop Raccord, the player is tasked with finding just the right spot in an animated gif, splicing it there, and then reversing the footage so that it creates an infinite loop.
In any given stage, videos are arranged in a grid, 12 at a time, everything moving and bobbing and jumping all at once. Its no-frills presentation is jarringly ugly. It’s a YTMND migraine. It isn’t even fun. And I couldn’t stop playing it. Oh, my god, I came back to it again and again.
And I was horrified, too, because I knew that clearing all these stages was pointless: the game was developed according to the Experimental Gameplay Project’s Neverending theme. Loop Raccord’s visual cacophony is endless. I knew I was headed nowhere! And yet I was completely arrested.
What should video games do? Often we—I am lumping myself in with critics and reviewers, but game-makers say this, too—tell designers to ‘engage the player,’ without considering what we’re really saying. What does that even mean, to ‘engage’ someone?
I have a Mystery House ROM for my Apple II emulator, and I’m going to be truthful, Mr. Jake Elliott: your A House in California did not exactly resemble it as advertised.
Oh, sure, A House in California, recently named a nominee for the IGF’s coveted Nuovo Award, is all stark white flixels against a black backdrop, in the style of some early 1980s graphic adventure game. It is point-and-click interactive fiction, terribly sparse, with all possible parser commands weighting the bottom of the screen.
But the commands are strange—“Remember”? “Forget”? “Befriend”?—and sometimes, depending on what I accomplish in the game, the commands change. That is disturbing. But also, inexplicably satisfying, to see that I am somehow changing things with my actions?
I now totally get why House in California was included in this year’s Learn to Play gallery exhibit: the game uses a lot of “dream logic” and “guess-what-the-designer-wants-you-to-do,” and as you explore and progress, you find yourself making real sense of the game’s mediations. Like other good games that toy with their chosen genres, this game demands that the player learn its secret language.
