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Red and white devil, God hath given you one face, the same you cake with cherry make-up every day before you smile wide and slide on those tight spades, my heart and diamonds
In his seminal, posthumously-published work, the Course in General Linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussure writes: “Of all the comparisons that might be imagined, the most fruitful is the one that might be drawn between the functioning of language and a game of chess. […] A game of chess is like an artificial realization of what language [...]
Why do we play games? The obvious answer, and doubtlessly true, is that we play games in order to be entertained, but that seems altogether too simplistic and easy an answer. The sources of entertainment in our culture are legion; our choices are abundant and ever changing. Why are games rapidly becoming the most lucrative and pervasive form of entertainment in the world? They may not yet have completely usurped the dominance of film and television, but they are quickly gaining ground. Why? What is their appeal to our culture? Does their relevance reside purely on the generic level of Western affluence (which can afford the ostentation of electronic amusement?) Or does it extend beyond civilization, to something innate in what it means to be human, and alive?
i used to be so god-damned good at aching youth…
It’s easy to treat background music in games as...well, as mere background, but there are a few games in which the background music has transcended that function and added something really special to the game. The Fallout series is a perfect example of this.
Me hope momma be proud. Me grow big for to smash good guys.
Running across water, I must be arrogant, blue Jesus, infinite Easter with 99 lives (God cheats all the time, so why can’t I?)
For the last 6 weeks I’ve been posting about games I played as a child on our first family computer, the Mac Plus. Revisiting these games (using the Mini vMac emulator) has been full of tremendous joy, frustration and nostalgia. I’ve been struck by several things over the course of my adventures: 1) Just how [...]
Walter Benjamin, in his seminal essay Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, famously argued that objects of art, with the advent of film, lost the aura of being the direct, unique, and original products of an artist. By following templates, music and film pushed art into a mode of mechanized reproduction; the original became just a model for the production of copies...
Video games occupy a rare and incredible position in culture. They are a relatively new medium that is just beginning to attain a level of almost universal saturation. They are also being made by people with highly developed artistic sensibilities, raising powerful and important questions about their relationship to art. In the recent TEDx talk at USC, Kellee Santiago defends the thesis that video games are art. She does this, perhaps somewhat weakly, by employing an easy Wikipedia definition that states:
Of all the classic games I’ve featured in this series, 3 in Three is the one that holds up the best. It is hard to imagine how modern technology could improve this delightful little puzzle game one iota. Each puzzle is clever and satisfying; each little cut scene is snappy and smart. Even the graphics [...]
