Culture

Culture — 8 Comments
18
Apr 10

Thank you, Roger Ebert

I’d like to thank Roger Ebert.

The world’s most famous film critic, and noted long-time opponent of the idea that games can be art, has written another article explaining why games are not art, cannot be art and never will be art, at least within the lifetime of anybody alive today. He bases this argument on two assertions: that art requires complete authorial control:

I believe art is created by an artist. If you change it, you become the artist. (…) Art seeks to lead you to an inevitable conclusion, not a smorgasbord of choices.

And that games are crap:

[V]ideo games represent a loss of those precious hours we have available to make ourselves more cultured, civilized and empathetic. Continue reading →

Culture / Experience / Game Design — 1 Comment
17
Apr 10

The game they let you play in heaven and make you play in hell

God damn it.

It’s 2am. I’m tired. My back hurts. My eyes hurt. I can’t think clearly. I want to go to bed. I can’t stop playing Fire Emblem, because it’s so much god damn fun I want to stab myself with a pencil.

Playing Fire Emblem is like being in an abusive relationship. It’s a frightening, nerve-sharpening, anxiety-inducing experience. The game makes you hate it for its cruelty, and love it for its rare, begrudging approval, and hate yourself for not being good enough for it. Continue reading →

Culture / Industry — 7 Comments
13
Apr 10

When the trailer is better than the game

I’ve already consumed the best that Gears of War 3 has to offer. And I did it for free.

It’s nothing to do with the game, which I have no burning desire to play. It’s the trailer. Continue reading →

Culture / Industry — 4 Comments
6
Apr 10

On inclusivity

Of the many embarrassing elements of videogames, surely none are more obvious than a more-than-occasional lack of inclusivity. From homophobes on Xbox Live to breast physics, it’s something that comes up too often for me to feel like the medium has really matured. Two tidbits over the last few days have really caught my attention on this issue. Continue reading →

Culture / Experience — 1 Comment
3
Apr 10

RKD on… The name of the games

Earlier I wrote about how “Xbox” has come to be used as a generic term for videogames. After I noticed the phenomenon once, I started to see it everywhere, like in this news article from earlier in the week:

The glamorisation of crime has been condemned by Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione, who cited everything from Xbox games to television crime dramas and Hollywood movies as “abhorrent”.

Xbox is not the first brand to rise to this position of prominence; it only dethroned PlayStation sometime within the current console generation, and in the 1990s Nintendo was king. The dominant brand changes over time, but digging into the history is difficult, as the phenomenon is rarely remarked upon and examples are hard to find with a web search. I asked the other writers at RKD what they could remember about the names people came up with for videogames in their younger years. Continue reading →

Culture — 6 Comments
31
Mar 10

The name of the games

The latest console war has been underway for five years now, and it’s still difficult to call a winner on the basis of sales. But one game company is winning the battle for a place in our minds.

Have you heard of “the Xbox factor”?

The story goes that cinema ticket sales are increasingly dominated by romantic comedies, character-driven dramas and film adaptations of lusty vampire novels – in other words, “chick flicks”. Some Hollywood executives have attributed this to the fact that men are becoming less interested in going out to see a movie as they become more caught up in “sophisticated video games” (and the Ultimate Fighting Championship, apparently).

To me, the most interesting part of this story is the fact that the phenomenon has been dubbed the “Xbox factor”.

Not the “Playstation factor”. Not the “Wii factor”. Not the “Games For Windows Live factor”, amazingly. The word “Xbox” has been chosen to represent all videogames – or at least the videogames predominantly played by young men. Continue reading →

Culture / Experience / Game Design / Industry — 1 Comment
14
Mar 10

Gorillaz in our midst

Welcome to the world of the Plastic Beach, a collaboration between musicians and mediums alike.

My plane arrives at its eerily uncharted destination by the sea. Fortunately, there isn’t an abrupt crash landing, or an Ayn Rand-inspired dystopian society to welcome me. Unfortunately, my first contact is with the insufferable likes of a dopey pelican and a suicidal seagull voiced by the lead singer of Blur.

I must be in Gorillaz territory. Continue reading →

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