I can’t help myself, I just can’t. There’s a new YouTube-series called “Hooking Up”. It seems to be a gathering of the who’s who of YouTube-stars, at least Lonelygirl and What the Buck guy – I’m not sure if the others are well known from something else. I love the way Facebook is such an important feature og the script. I can’t help wonder if they’re maybe sponsored by Facebook. But I enjoyed it anyway – I’m such a sucker for simple high-school drama.
YouTube game
Seriously! I thought it was fun! A bit messy because it’s hard to come back to start – but definitely worth your while.
Found at Shattered Keyboard.
New Machinima Night at Landmark
Yup! We’ll be going at it again. I was so pleased with the turn-out last year and I hope it will be just as succesful this year!
On the 13th of November, Tracy Harwood, the manager of the European Machinima Festival 2007 will be visiting us here in Bergen to talk about machinima. There’s still some organising left. But she definitely is coming and we’re really pleased about that! It will be great to have an expert to listen to!
There will of course be viewings of films. If anyone has anything new they want to show – please let me know!
Anyways…November 13th! We look forward to seeing you there!
I’ve been so back and forth about how to organise this event that I’ve completely lost track! Time to bunker down, I think. I was fiddling with the idea of creating a work shop type event – but I think I’ve let that idea go into the “when I have the energy to be overly ambitious” file.
I leave you now with some documentary footage of the machinamite! Enjoy!
Poster Game
Molleindustria has come out with a new game called The Free Culture Game. It’s interesting. I couldn’t win it, but I’m sure that’s the whole point behind it.
The Free Culture Game is a game about the struggle between free culture and copyright. Create and defend the common knowledge from the vectorial class. Liberate the passive consumers from the domain of the market.
Ian Bogost notes Paolo Pedercini as describing this as a ‘poster game’ for Exgae. It’s a great new genre or concept. Lots of the flash games we see can be described as poster games. I’m quite amused by the concept.
Replay Art
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.
A seven minute tour of virtual worlds
Personalize Media has a video out with a summary of the virtual worlds out there. Far from all are included! Most of these are non-game social worlds and there’s loads that I haven’t even heard of! I was suprised to see A Tale in the Desert there, though. For one, I thought they definitely qualified as a game and second because I thought their numbers were so low that they wouldn’t survive. A Tale in the Desert is a great idea – and I’m so incredibly happy that they’re still alive! That really is good news.
Stolen from Raph Koster’s blog.
Thoughts on analysing Machinima – part 1
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?
Grimm – FINALLY!
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.
Steampunk in Second Life
It’s such a long time since I’ve been in Second Life – I haven’t even installed it on my current computer.
Cory Doctorow (@BoingBoing) shares a video of a Steampunk island, called New Babbage and this is reason enough for me to hit the install button right away.
I’m curious, though. The steampunk city is supposed to be “bringing together the combined interests of Steampunks from around the world to a place they can roleplay and be creative” – I get the creative – because I adore steampunk art – but how do they roleplay? What’s steampunk roleplaying? Definitely something to check out – I think!
Public Broadcasting goes gaming
And it’s about freakin time too!
NRK the Norwegian Public Broadcasting company will be releasing a free computer game for kids this fall, called Superia.
Spiller.no writes that they want the game to give kids creative freedom to make videos, animations and drawings a.s.o., and this will then be shared on the childrens tv channel or something. I’m also presuming that content will be shared between players as well – will they be able to interact with one another in the game, you think?
Either way… I’m so so so so so happy that nrk is brave and innovative enough to explore this direction. I’ll have to dig a little deeper. I was just about to close down for the night when I read about this – so excuse the rushed sentences.
The gameplay that spiller.no has posted doesn’t really seem all that creative or adventurous, to be honest – but I’m sure the real fun’s in there somewhere!!
It’s apparently created by the BBC – hmmm…. – it must be Adventure Rock, right? I wonder if the lovely Mildly Diverting and Wonderland had their interactive hands on this at some point.
Remember What The Dormouse Said 