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The new issue of Neural looks like a cracker..
Computer virus art, Activist Italian Videogames (interview with
Molleindustria), an essay on Videogame Art, and a ton of news and reviews.
For those of us whose Italian isn't yet al dente, they have an English edition of the printed magazine available. More about that here.
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First Person - New Media as Story, Performance, and Game.
Edited by Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Pat Harrigan.
The MIT Press
ISBN 0262232324.
Review courtesy of
Neural.it.
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Theory: Building a Mobile, Locative and Collaborative Application
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An interesting PDF surfaced recently on the Locative mailing list, one that outlines the challenges and design decisions made by a small team in the creation of the locative game CatchBob.
The paper takes experience gleaned in the project and looks at it's wider application in other location-based projects, with an emphasis on games. Definitely worth a read by anyone considering developing such a project for this emerging platform.
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Theory: Brenda Laurel on Games, Boredom and the Spectacle
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Brenda Laurel has a useful, if slightly one-dimensional 'rant' that appeared in Zimmerman/Salen's slowly circulating The Rules of Play (though I don't remember it in there). She talks about gaming as a kind of 'doing', one that can either nourish/empower, or defer to a kind of daily-dose media-prozac prevalent in American society..
Qualitatively speaking (and to the credit of games), it's hard to externally evaluate what might consitute an empowering or transformative experience, especially where a screen and two thumbs are concerned. Regardless, she waves a refreshingly bloody-flag, even if exhibiting a pointedly reactionary vision for the medium. Afterall, deep play is an in-itself-for-itself state; making room for messages (without sounding like an instructional video) is a rare but fruitful science.
A key premise of the mobile-technology game industry is that the pleasure of interactivity is preferable to boredom. Who would choose simply to sit on a train or wait in a line when you could be distracting your brain and hands with a game? Idleness, slowness, contemplation, being mentally present in a situated context have no place in this wired world. But for those who were alive before this hyperactive culture grew up around us, it was during those interstices of life’s activities that we breathed, relaxed, observed, thought things over. Listen up - even the smallest fragments of your idle time have now been colonized with meaningless, addictive junk. Junk that is part of the fabric of the Spectacle.
Hmm where is GTA after all this? Read the rest here.
Thx Marta!
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Posted by julian on Tuesday, February 15 @ 02:32:33 CET
(comments? | Score: 0)
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Theory: 5th Symposium on Art and Multimedia Metanarratives.
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The Vth Symposium on Art & Multimedia Metanarrative(s)? took place in Barcelona January the 28th & 29th. Debate about narrative media history, narrative &/ vs database, videogames and social narratives for the public raised during these two intense and exciting days.
Now, to know more about Metanarrative(s)? you can check the updated website with full version papers, works and multimedia art research.
http://www.mediatecaonline.net/
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Eurogamer has a thoughtful review of the PSP's 'Lumines', the new audiocentric game by Tetsuya Mizuguchi (of Rez fame). In a development climate prioritising lush, mutable worlds, Lumines instead chooses the 2D grid as both it's field of play and means of composition.
Given that music is often described in patterns, perhaps Mizuguchi's innovation extends beyond the game; a music machine that is simultaneously instrument and (in the musical sense) score.
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Theory: Papers by Matt Barton
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Papers by the excellent Matt Barton are now in our theory archives (linked for the time being): 'Hackers, Slackers, and Shackles: The Future of Free Software Game Development', 'Gay Characters in Videogames' and the well argued 'The Videogame in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction'.
Find them here. Matt really grokks the cultural benefits of a free-software model in game development. V' recommended weekend reading..
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Theory: NMK - New Media Knowledge
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The NMK Convergent Media Interest Group's research on games includes papers covering
* Games for grown ups
* 3D Storytelling
* Interactive fictions
and
more
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This is an interesting evolution in the world of modding, where manipulations of gamecode are unwittingly replicated and spread by gamers to the advantage, or disadvantage of others. Unlike most mods, where the hack exists as a standalone, these Sims2 mods co-exist with the running game.
The first sign that some of the hacks were spreading to unwilling users came in October, in the form of a dishwasher that did nothing special, but was inexplicably named Candace on the screen. Candace began replacing the ordinary dishwasher in the houses of users who had never visited a Sims 2 hacking site, or knowingly installed a hack.
After that things got much stranger..
It seems EA finds this enough of a problem to develop sanitisation methods not dissimilar to that of antiviral software.. Where was I when all this was going on!
More here.
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Theory: Difficult Questions about Videogames now Available
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Via email:
We're pleased, proud and mildly ecstatic to announce the UK publication of 'Difficult Questions About Videogames' on this, the
15th day of November, 2004.
Available from Amazon, Waterstones and
any decent book stockist (ISBN: 0954882504), we would however recommend
that you purchase it directly from the source at Buy Public Beta.
This would give you the satisfaction of knowing that even more of your
investment is directed straight to the PublicBeta project. With
Christmas approaching, you know it makes sense. Our children must not
starve.
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Theory: Patently Absurd, A Rant
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Clearly the most miserable creature walking the earth is the software patent lawyer. This parasite is carefully trained to be above ethics or practical sense, seeking only to drain capital from software developers so that it can afford an island cruise for its equally miserable spouse. And just like the zombie, dying companies infected with the Patent Virus will often rise up from the grave and start filing patents, essentially moving from software development to Full-Time Nastiness.
While not as severe here in Europe, software patents are a lurking threat to commercial game developers; you need a lawyer in a watchtower scouting for a potential breach before you fall into it's smelly maw..
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Theory: What do Women Game Designers Want?
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The NYTimes has an article on the topic, largely surrounding the Women's Game Conference in Austin, Texas last week.
However most of the AAA developers interviewed seem to reiterate very little of what I've heard from the female developers I know, let alone those that have eaten me alive in Soul Calibur or Warcraft. This has me a bit suspicious about the project of 'gendering' game design within the marketplace..
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Theory: I am a Light Cycle
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This is my result in the "What Pre-1985 Video Game Character Am I?" questionaire. Despite being the proud owner of a LightCycle id, the results seem strangely aware of the fact I've been playing alot of GLTron recently.
I should probably put on a suit and coin this 'Avatarial Transduction' (or similar).
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Theory: The Sims2 - Recursion
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Playing the Sims, in Sims2. Thanks Wonderland.
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Theory: How They Got Game
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The History and Culture of Interactive Simulations and Video Games
http://www.stanford.edu/group/shl/research/how_they_got_game.html
Main website (in development)
http://hpslab.stanford.edu:16080/projects/HTGG/
"The aim of this project is to explore the history and cultural impact of a crucial segment of New Media: interactive simulations and video games. The current generation of video and PC games has established genres that effectively use narrative structures, allow for community-based interaction and content development, and push the boundaries of computer-generated animation, graphics, and audio.
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Theory: The Art of Realtime
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This new book from Even Lake Studios covers the elusive origins and evolution of the demoscene - the practice of making self-playing executable clips that demonstrate the maker's 3D and audio programming talent. The demoscene has always set a telling precedent within realtime 3D design practices, making so many of today's asset laden 3D projects look like bloatware. Some demos are as tiny as 5k and play for several minutes, with all the textures, sounds and meshes generated in realtime.
Due to this state of runtime independence the scene has been prolific in publishing and distributing it's work; alot of what's referenced in The Art of Realtime can still be found online.
Whether info-archaeologist or artist, we can all take a leaf from 'the scene'. read on for refs and files
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Theory: Interview with Radwan Kasmiya of AFKARMedia
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Well that didn't take us long! The author of UnderAsh and UnderSeige, Radwan Kasmiya, talks to selectparks about AFKARMedia's challenging political games, their message and their plans for the future.
This interview will also be translated into Spanish by Marta and published on Elastico.
Thanks luv!!!
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Theory: First Person(s): 'Under Seige' and The New Virtual War
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I first became aware of AFKAR Media's 'Under Ash' a couple of years ago via Kipper, while we were drawing up our own political game, Escape from Woomera. What excited us was to see a full-featured 3D game being used to distribute awareness of a situation as serious as the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. Given Under Ash's content, it's also interesting that it's widely known as the first Arabic 3D Game.
The team's next project, 'Under Seige' is timely for another reason however, and questions whether games can be so clearly defined as a medium of entertainment..
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Theory: Full Spectrum Propaganda
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The NYT's has an interesting article on the use of wargames as training material. We all heard about this of course when America's Army first hit the streets via GameSpy, its second patron after the US Army itself. I had no idea however that Full Spectrum Warrior was being used for training, and as the article suggests, FSW is supposedly a tight depiction of what's it's really like 'out there'..
This is interesting in that our humble Grunt obviously has eye-implants with an advanced, networked and strangely game-like targeting system. The enemy (ragged and desperate Iraqi militia of course) are thus covered in hovering layers of telematically delivered iconography; essentially reduced to a set of predicted and present variables for purposes of better killing them.
Anyway, it doesn't matter whether I think it's authentic or not, I'm being told it is.. This has me thinking that maybe another kind of training is at work here..
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Ungravity's
'Oversaturation'
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syndic8 us! Copy this url into your feedreader.
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