UFOs and Their Spiritual Mission, from Social Malpractice Press, containing art by Daniel Glendening and fiction by yours truly, is now a thing the world, really and truly. If you’re interested in how video games and fiction and art can intersect on paper, you should check it out.
So I wrote a story for a book, a book full of art by Daniel J. Glendening. I know the title promises UFOs, but they’re sort of metaphorical UFOs. If, however, you’re interested in how video games and art intersect in a space that’s not actually a video game, and is, instead, sort of papery, you should check this book out.
Social Malpractice, the lovely press responsible for publishing UFOs and Their Spiritual Mission, is hosting a giveaway. Go try and win.
More news to come.
I’ve noticed that the wagon wheels in Red Dead Redemption have that counter-spin effect on the spokes when in motion. Why? (more…)
One of my refrains in response the complaint that there aren’t any games with artistic merit has been that people aren’t looking outside the blockbuster titles. Just like blockbuster films, blockbuster games are much less likely to be artistic – after all, they’re profit oriented and art doesn’t generally make anyone much money…until the artist is dead.
So here’s a little taste of what I’m talking about to get you started:
The Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 1, released back in 2006 (so some of the content is no longer compatible with current versions of Flash). Sure, not all of these are games, but some are, and some of the interactive content is really only not called video-games for reasons of semantics. Check out Bad Machine if you can deal with text-based games, it’s a fantastic piece of interactive science fiction.
Jason Rohrer’s site. This guy is trying, he really is. And some of his stuff is pretty damn good.
FATALE. Tales of tales are also trying hard – I mean, a video game based on Oscar Wilde’s Salome? You can decide for yourself how successful you think the project is.
And that’s just a start. All I’m saying is that if you keep your ear to the proverbial ground, there’s a lot out there to find. Even just paying attention to Newgrounds yields the occasional attempt to create art. Designers aren’t always successful, but this is a young medium, and it’s being mostly worked with by young people. Both the medium and the artists need to mature. And they will.
Jason Pargin wrote a great article from E3 this year, in which he laments that the gaming industry has traded real innovation for a flood of gimmicks and sequels. This year, for example, sees the introduction of Microsoft’s Kinect and Sony’s Move, both of which are being launched with a lot of knockoff Wii-shovelware titles.
Wii Sports, meet Kinect Sports. Wii Fit, meet Your Shape. Etcetera, etc.
From my point of view, the biggest woe is that every time a new gaming “advance” is introduced, storytelling tends to take a back seat. The move to HD and “next gen” gaming made graphics the most important part of the game. As Mr. Pargin pointed out, gamers posted more than 2,000 complaints on Remedy’s forum about Alan Wake not running in full 720p.
Ten days ago I challenged Ebert a wee bit over his article, “Video Games Can Never Be Art.”
Four days ago, I wrote a post about my…let’s call it, “distaste,” for 3D.
Yesterday, Roger Ebert decided to agree wholeheartedly with my opinion on 3D. He did so in a reasonable, logical, and fully explicated way.
Now, the best response I’ve read to Ebert’s article on video games came from Jerry Holkins of Penny Arcade fame. In his response, Holkins says of Ebert’s article, “[Ebert's] arguing 1. in bad faith, 2. in an internally contradictory way, 3. with nebulously defined terms, so there’s nothing here to discuss.”
Ebert’s article on 3D, however, has a number of clearly developed points, and a number of conclusions he and I arrived at separately. Movies are a media we have each engaged with and learned to appreciate in a number of ways. I’d like to suggest that perhaps, had Ebert ever bothered to make the attempt to engage with video games in a similar way, he would be able to offer a well defined and good faith argument about their validity as art.
And maybe he would even agree with me. After all, we clearly see blue-lens to red-lens.
Will Kaufman. Proud owner of 34 vertebrae.
