WANTED: Someone to restore Arteri and give it 2nd life. Interested? Email: mail.sharonchin.com
I play videogames a fair bit — usually when I’m procrastinating over some assignment or other. (Right now I’m trying to write out some thoughts about Yeo Joon Han’s Sell Out! — which I’ll post here soon, honest!) Something I’ve been spending time with is a demo of Braid, most recently out for Mac.
If you are an observer in any capacity of the videogame industry, 2008’s Braid was hailed as a significant milestone for the games-are-art argument. It’s easy to see why: painterly visuals and ingenious, spare gameplay mechanics — which tie into the game’s primary meditation: time, or our longing to reverse past wrongs.
Other bits: an avatar named Tim, in a salaryman’s suit, chasing after his Princess, always “in another castle”; homages to Mario and Donkey Kong; text inspired by Calvino’s Invisible Cities; haunting music; carnivorous bunnies.
Braid was largely a collaboration between indie game designer Jonathan Blow, who famously styled Blizzard’s World of Warcraft as “unethical” — and graphic artist David Hellman, perhaps most known otherwise for the genius A Lesson Is Learned But The Damage Is Irreversible webcomic.
Just wanted to share with y’all. We’ve all been a bit generous this weekend.
(ZS)
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You might know about this already, Z. There’s a hit internet TV series made by Felicia Day (from Buffy and Dr Horrible’s Sing-along Blog) called The Guild. She channeled her World of Warcraft addiction into making a show about it. Great example of independent net TV and a gaming show by gamers!
http://www.watchtheguild.com/
Hey Shao Loong:
I do indeed. Caught their first episode when it launched — though never got hooked. I guess the WoW culture is something I’m not too riveted by. More crazy is the Eve Online one:
http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/65475
“Lotka Volterra had unveiled one of the first Titans against us to catastrophic consequences, and at the time these profoundly silly ships were nearly impossible to kill through legitimate in-game means; they were essentially invulnerable, with the only Titans destroyed through catching the ship while the pilot was disconnected from the game. It was determined that ‘The Enslaver’ and his Avatar-class Titan had to go. I was approached by one of the leaders of Red Alliance to help make this happen, but almost immediately we were down the rabbit hole. Much to my surprise, the RA director didn’t want in-game information from me; he wanted us to use the forensic resources of our intelligence agency to trace down The Enslaver’s home address. At a coordinated time, armed with this information, a RA member would apparently cut the power to The Enslaver’s house in the real world, and in EVE a RA capital fleet would assault the abruptly pilotless Titan. Yikes.”
Z, read a few pages of that EVE thing. Weird!
woah, gaming is so advance now huh? the last game i played was one of those lucas art/games point and click adventure… hehehe. i still think of them fondly. games these days too much killing la. i am the sort who doesn’t like to die in my game. and like games with lots of bad jokes in them.
btw, The Guild is really funny. LOL. I love the stand off between the tall FPS neighbour and Codex :)
I only like the Warcraft of yore… From ten years ago, possibly. Where my men were little people and the interface was stupid-friendly. I always prefer being on the Orc side though.. so much more interesting.
http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/8nwvb/if_a_game_uses_rewards_of_any_sort_to_entice_you/
Pretty fun observations on gaming and being gamed