Video/Game Art Playlist
Here’s a collection of videos related to game art, machinima, and remediated games. I’ll be incorporating this into my artist presentation in a few weeks for my Seminar class.
Archive for January, 2008
Retro Mario vs. Koopa on Ice
An amazing piece of advertising from the 80s featuring Jason Bateman and Alyssa Milano as anonymous teens and Mr. Belvedere (I mean Christopher Hewett) as Bowser. Bateman sells it as the “video prince.” Beyond the pure pop-culture joy, most fascinating to me is hearing the voices of the characters as envisioned then (real-world plumbers from Brooklyn and a hilariously provocative Princess Toadstool with obvious connections to the “real world”) and now (cartoon-like and pure fantasy). Thanks to Wired for the link.
Army of Two and PMCs
Army of Two is a new game from publisher EA that puts you in the role of a private military contractor, or PMC, or what lots of people call a mercenary. “Combat, camaraderie, country” is replaced with “Combat, camaraderie, cash.” It’s fascinating to me that with all of the focus on Blackwater and other groups that a game like this exists without any sort of political commentary. Here’s a bio for one of the main characters that is more than a little disturbing. Can someone tell me why nobody in the mainstream media is talking about this game in a social context and instead fussing over the sides of alien breasts in Mass Effect?
Mario Mashups
A couple interesting game universe mashups – Mario & Halo and Mario & MegaMan. Both of the games were done with Game Maker.
Pacifist WOW Player
I’m just catching up on reading and found a great piece at Gamepolitics about a World of Warcraft player who reached the highest level in the game as a pacifist, never intentionally attacking or killing another player. He found real-life examples of pacifism that related to his character class and based his role-playing and character names after them: Franz Reinisch (link in German) and Noor Inayat Kahn.
Videogames in Education
I’m interested in the use of games and play in education, from the design and creation of games to the use of games to teach concepts in the classroom. This video is about the latter and features interviews with influential people like Henry Jenkins and James Paul Gee. Even though it’s ancient by blog/videogame/internet standards (it’s really just a couple years old), it still features relevant discussion. There is some filler including a section that seems like a plug for a World War 2 simulation and the company that created it, but the interviews, especially with Gee and Jenkins, are really great. Learning through play seems to be a main point, and my extension of that argument is to reorient many of the things we do towards play.
Update on Lolspace
The four pieces that I showed you a picture of in my last post sold! I went to check out the closing show and met Kym, the woman who bought all four because they made her laugh. She is a member of the Kanon Art Collective, a gallery in the art district on Santa Fe. I’m hoping at some point to do some larger prints of these.
