September 2, 2009
Nobody's Talking About Polygons Here
Robin says,
The thing I like best about Seth Schiesel's NYT piece on The Beatles: Rock Band is that it's entirely about the game's cultural impact, the way it fits into our world. There's a bit about the play mechanic, too, for those unfamiliar with Rock Band. But nothing about the technical dimensions of the game—not the barest mention of framerate or polygon count or HDR lighting effects or clever combo systems or... ahhh.
I know this isn't unique, and game criticism has been getting a lot better in the past few years. But that the piece could hinge on this claim—
By reinterpreting an essential symbol of one generation in the medium and technology of another, The Beatles: Rock Band provides a transformative entertainment experience.In that sense it may be the most important video game yet made.
—seems like a watershed to me. Even if he's wrong, I love the fact that Seth Schiesel can make that claim and then spend the rest of the piece trying to back it up.
August 15, 2009
"While My Guitar Gently Beeps"
Matt says,
If you were planning on not reading this week's NYT Mag cover story because it's, um, about Guitar Hero, reconsider. It's really good. And the photo at top is mesmerizing. (And whoever came up with the headline, I salute you.)
August 5, 2009
You Won't Find These on Threadless
Robin says,
Oh man, how much do I love these arcade boot-screen t-shirts?
Reminds me a bit of Gerhard Richter's stained-glass pixels. Or maybe it's the other way around.
August 4, 2009
FF4-ever
Matt says,
We already know how much I love Final Fantasy IV and its immortal score. So even though this appeared on MeFi weeks ago, it's clear that it would find its way here eventually:
The geniuses over at OverClocked ReMix have given FFIV the full OCReMix treatment -- an entire album of Final Fantasy songs, re-imagined in something other than midi. My first love, the "Red Wings Theme," has been transformed into "Full of Courage." (Incidentally, I think "Full of Courage" is a very valiant attempt, but it sadly neglects the song's longing in favor of its bombast; it's like John Williams' take on Nobuo Uematsu.)
The album's available as a free download, natch. Let me say it again: I LOVE the Internet.
July 6, 2009
Gratuitous Space Battles
Robin says,
Seems like the essence of a good video game is (sometimes) figuring out what a player really wants to see on the screen, and then engineering a system to conjure up that screen as reliably as possible.
I feel that the designers of Gratuitous Space Battles have done exactly this.
June 8, 2009
SimCity... Actually a Terrible Simulation
The blog Human Transit outlines the ways in which the original SimCity -- the one I spent the most time playing -- codified a now-outmoded planning orthodoxy:
In short, Sim City could be hailed as a triumph of reactionary brainwashing -- in that it instilled in a generation of 1990s teen geeks all the worst assumptions of 1960s city planning.
But, let's not not pick on a decades-old video game. Let's imagine a new Sim-something instead -- one that codifies the values we thing are important today, in 2009.
How about SimRegion? It would be all about region-wide transportation infrastructure, water management, food production (big emphasis on that), migration, and more. Hmm. That sounds educational. And boring.
Maybe SimSocialNetwork. Forget geography. This one's all about tending an online garden of weak ties and attention-feeds. (I'm not being sarcastic. I think, abstracted in the right way, this could actually be fun and instructive.)
Or how about some kind of bifurcated simulation: SimHealthCareSystemAndIndividual. One side's macro, the other's micro. You play both, and see how decisions on one side affect the other. I like the sound of that, actually. The trick with any social simulation is that, inevitably, the way you design it says a lot about how you view the world. So the micro/macro sim would play up that tension; the models might even be designed to sort of "fight" each other. SimBourgeoisAndProletariat.
(Via Noah Brier.)
File under: Snarkonomics, Snarkpolicy, Society/Culture, Video Games
June 7, 2009
The Path
Robin says,
I haven't tried The Path, the new game from Tale of Tales, but I gotta give a priori props to a project that can earn this kind of paragraph:
I'm left feeling incredibly unsure about how to express my negative feelings, having attempted this paragraph half a dozen times. I don't want to give anything away that happens in the game, but I do want to discuss my experience of playing as Ruby, and why it genuinely upset me. I think this is The Path's greatest achievement -- to be capable of being genuinely upsetting.
And then check out the comments. This is not the kind of convo you usually get about a new game release. Granted, this is all on Rock Paper Shotgun, which is already sort of the New Yorker of game blogs. But even so.
May 10, 2009
Kindle Up Your Textbooks, Children
The Chronicle of Higher Education on the Kindle DX and the market for electronic textbooks:
Most college students