I’ve been looking for this film for AGES – but I thought it was made in Drive not Trackmania Sunrise – color me stupid, huh?! Anyhoo – it’s just stunning to look at!
Still beautiful.
I actually caught both these videos from a conversation between Jerry and Mark (WelloHorld) on Twitter.
I’m not a big fan of the notion that machinima will replace the art of animation. Machinima is something completely different, in my opinion. Like Henry Lowood says:
“It is important to recall that the origins of machinima lie not in content production, but in gameplay” (Lowood, 2006 in Video Games and Art)
It is something that has evolved from high-performance gameplay to brilliant meaningful content, but the essence is still gameplay. The ability to master a game so well that you can bend it and form it into your own mold of content, your own story, your own expression.
Dr. Lowood again:
“Depicting machinima as high-performance play stems from its emergence from inter-relationships of play, spectatorship, technical virtuosity and storytelling in computer games. Each of these factors played a role in defining the practices of machinima as practices of game performance.”(Lowood, 2006, Video Games and Art)
So how should we go about deconstructed machinima, finding it’s meaning, it’s aura – it’s true art?
Don’t miss the first episode of American McGee’s Grimm, which is available for free at Gametap on Thursday, 31st of July.
I’ve been looking forward to this for so long. McGee’s an excellent…ehm…I wanna say interactive storyteller…but…fairytale converter, maybe? It’s too easy to say that he’s a great artist. What can I say? He manages to combine the beauty of great storytelling with the joy of wonderful gameplay mechanics in such a delightful and meaningful way.
The game will be available as episodes. This will be the firt episodic game I’ve played and I’m quite eager to see how well games work as episodes. Although, saying that, I’m still playing Play the News – which I suppose is also a form of episodic gaming.
Just a little list of observations and things on my ‘to read’ list. I don’t know why – but I’ve been so incredibly unfocused lately. I’ve actually been very social this weekend – which has been lovely but I feel I’m lagging behind on my feedburning!
1) Finland’s Game Research Lab has had what looks to be a really great conference/seminar (I’m sure someday I’ll actually care what the difference is) – Breaking the Magic Circle. What really struck me first was Vili Lehdonvirta’s contribution, Virtual Worlds Don’t Exist. I was instantly sucked in yesterday but three pages in I was rudely interrupted – and look at me now – blogging instead of reading! Vili’s one of those people who manages to see clearly and keep both his feet on the ground when it comes to virtual worlds studies – and I honestly can’t wait to finish his paper. Because the dude’s definitely on to something.
The abstract:
I argue that much of MMO-related scholarship is implicitly based on a dichotomous “real world vs. virtual world” model, which is heavily influenced by the “magic circle” concept in game studies. I show a number of shortcoming in this perspective and propose an alternative perspective based on Anselm Strauss’s social worlds (Strauss, 1978). The alternative perspective unbundles users from the technological platform and places MMO-centered social worlds in context with other worlds like religion and workplace.
I think Virtual World Studies are growing up – and that suits me fine!
2) There are now more than 100 youth oriented virtual worlds live or in development. Look – Virtual Worlds Management has a list!
3) The virtual world VizWoz is launching a virtual cinema on April 18th, according to Virtual World News. I had a 15 minute test-run of the place and I pretty much hated it. But I’m not a teen and 15 minutes is never enough for true judgment.
I’m really tickled by the virtual world cinema concept. It’s something I’ve wanted virtual worlds to get into for a while now. I’ve always thought that this would be the way for stupid licensing issues to disappear. But I wasn’t too happy about the fact that I needed to register if I lived in the States or not while getting an account – I, of course, lied – we’ll see if I can get away with it. I’m also eager to see the quality of the films they’re going to screen.
I applaud the initiative.
4) Speaking of April 18th – Funcom is together with GameSpot offering to play PvP Age of Conan from April 18th to April 20th for 15,000 gamers. I’ll be unwired in Gøteborg that weekend so I haven’t bothered to have a look at how I can be a part of it. Yet another sign that Age of Conan won’t be delayed again, I think! I wish them luck!
5) Have to read Raph Koster’s “Is there such a thing as a casual online world?”
Congrats to Channel 4’s Public Broadcast Gaming initiative! And Alice Taylor!
I just tried Bow Street Runners and by golly it’s amazing! I really enjoyed it! It’s really good lookin’ and even educational! Which seems to be the point of Public Broadcast Gaming – creating games that educate. For example – I didn’t know gin had such a societal impact on London in the 18th century. I learned that just by clicking on a bottle – they called it Madame Geneva. So after the game episode I looked it up and listened to a BBC podcast on the subject – apparently it was a female craze. Really interesting!
The game is in unison with the Channel 4 series, City of Vice, which I ofcourse aim to see now that I’ve played the first episode of the game!
According to Dagens It (ofcourse!) Funcom’s Age of Conan is delayed, yet again to May 20th.
I worry that they’re gun shy after the problems endured after the Anarchy Online release – but then again – maybe perfection upon release is the way to go. They’ve learned from their mistakes – but then again, I don’t think perfection is completely possible before release. Is it?
While waiting, though, Massively did a great in-depth interview with Jørgen Tharaldsen (I can’t believe he’s not in Wikipedia – I’ll have to sort that out in a sec)before Christmas, which is worth a look at. They go into the politics of rating, which I found really interesting! Akela Talamasca also shot this gameplay footage:
The World Wide Workshop, an organisation commited to using the internet for educational purposes of youth and children in developing communities, has created a wonderful site called MyGLife.org, through it’s Globaloria Project. It’s still in Beta – so I haven’t been able to test it yet – but just look at this:
“And with an office in Seoul, Korea, Outspark hopes to tap into the
much-lauded game developer pool in the country. Both its current games, Fiesta
and Secret of the Solstic, are licensed from Korean developers.
Altos Venture general partner Han Kim said Outspark will continue to source games from Korea and then “localize” them for the North American market.”
“Users get a single ID and use the same currency across all of Outspark’s games,
so they don’t need to sign up multiple times for the same services. The idea is
to encourage Outspark users to connect through common interests, not just
through the games they play together.”
“to create a unified production method for story telling across the interactive and film industries” and of himself, he says, “I want to be the next Walt Disney, only a little more wicked.”
via The Pensive Harpy via The Escapist
Remember What The Dormouse Said 