...will he ever win?
Aaaaand, we're back!
It's been a while since I could go into this weekly update without wondering how I was going to manage to fill three to four paragraphs with words. And, let me tell you, if you've ever got me wondering how to BS through 300 words of content, then you have found an especially dark void of activity. You're usually lucky if I don't drop 300 words in the description field of a personal check.
For my money, this week, I'm going with Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, because when it comes to creating epic role playing action, I think of Hall of Fame MLB pitchers. All kidding aside, I've been intrigued with this game for a while, and not just because of the Day 1 DLC flap, but really from the moment someone said it was going to be like God of War meets Oblivion. As far as strong pitches for my interest go, that's pretty much the skyrocketing over my bar for success.
I also really want to be interested in Jagged Alliance: Back in Action, but so far I'm just not confident in what I've seen. I love games like X-Com, Fallout Tactics and Silent Storm when done really well, and I'm hopeful that my gut feeling on Jagged Alliance is off base.
As if that weren't enough, The Darkness II comes out for PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 this week alongside Resident Evil: Revelations on the 3DS and Gotham City Imposters on XBLA, PSN and PC. So, welcome back video game industry from your too long slumber. Never leave me again!
read more
February 06, 2012 04:57 PM
If I were to tally up all the people I've shot throughout the host of single player first-person shooter campaigns I've played I'd be shocked. Outside of the games where the antagonists are super natural or not of this world, most of the humans were foreigners, people who already feel alien to me an...
February 06, 2012 01:00 PM
10,000 fans of the Half-Life series logged on to play Half-Life 2 over the weekend in an attempt to force Valve into revealing more information on the Half-Life series, whether that be Episode 3 or Half-Life 3...
February 06, 2012 12:38 PM
A fantasy campaign without bloodthirsty monsters is like a picnic
with bloodthirsty monsters. It's just no fun! Fortunately,
GURPS Classic: Fantasy Bestiary is here to help.
With over 250 fantasy beasts and plants based on folklore and legends, this volume can add "run for your life" excitement to any fantastic-minded campaign. Everything has stats for
GURPS Third Edition, and the meticulously researched lore and insightful ideas should prove inspirational for any campaign.
Make no mistake:
GURPS Classic: Fantasy Bestiary will surely spice up your magically minded world, and it definitely
won't be a picnic for the heroes. Unless, of course, their picnics are routinely disrupted by giant owls, gullet snakes, manticores . . .
--
Steven Marsh
February 06, 2012 06:11 AM
February 05, 2012
With an interface that is so controlled, can there ever be something truly original? Moreso, is there something that cannot be reproduced by someone else?
The hand of the artist is forever attached to the artist and is unlike any other hand and their brain unlike any other persons. Yet, the computer and technology is made uniform, homogenous, so that the interface is the same for everyone that uses it. Is that where it all differs?
Is there no moral hindrance from using someone else’s code and modifying it? No! People do this all the time in different art forms. Animators draw inspiration and examples of gestures and movements from living animals and human beings. Even traditional artists look at work done by other artists attempt to reproduce the works of art. Artists can mimic what they find desirable in a piece of work and incorporate it into their own.
Perhaps it is that technology just makes it exponentially easier to mimic other artists’ work and thus eliminates this process for us. If I were to try and copy the Mona Lisa and add something of my own creation, then I would need to understand key concepts of light and form and also have the tools and paints Leonardo Da Vinci possessed at the time of its inception. This is immensely harder to simulate than it is to mimic a new media artwork since the both the tools and skills are easily accessible in digital art.
Some digital art tools, such as Processing and Maya, are actually free to users and students whereas paints and paintbrushes can run you a couple hundred dollars for a full set. Also, the skills needed to reproduce works of traditional art are significantly unattainable compared to that of digital media skills. There are many tutorials and help sites for programs such as Java, Processing, and Maya that allow users to learn and develop a skill set for reproducing digital work. On the other hand, where there might be tutorials on how to paint like Monet, there are far fewer of these kinds of aids and the interface is still subject to the artist. That is to say, there are specific codes and algorithms that have specific outputs, yet with a human hand, there is more subjectivity and chance for error.
The idea that the foundations of digital art are more objective and more easily accessible causes me to feel both anxiety and inspiration. There is something unnerving about thinking that anyone can see the code you used, copy it, run it, produce you artwork, then change one aspect and proceed to call it their own. I think that we live in a competitive era and it’s only natural to feel a little uneasy about this concept. Yet, it is also extremely inspiring! The fact that I can reproduce a work on my own computer or in my own environment gives me a sense of power, even if it is someone else code or idea. I think what’s important is that we remember that just because we can easily reproduce other artists’ works doesn’t mean that we are taking something away from them. They created the original concept and that may inspire us to create something similar, but with a completely different feel. I don’t think that anyone can say that their idea or artwork is completely original because everyone draws inspiration from something that leads them to their idea. In this day and age, everything around us is completely original, yet at the same time, true originality ceases to exist.
February 05, 2012 10:52 PM
Photo-Realistic Sky Generator, with enhancements apon the real sky. :)
More about Stellarium
February 05, 2012 07:26 PM
I’m very pleased to see the article Mia Consalvo and I wrote published in Loading…,
the journal of the Canadian Game Studies Association (CGSA). There’s an intriguing lineup of articles in Loading… Vol 6, No 9; ours is:
Montfort, Nick and Mia Consalvo. “The Dreamcast, Console of the Avant-Garde.” Loading… 6: 9, 2012. http://journals.sfu.ca/loading/index.php/loading/article/view/104/116
We look at the connections between the Dreamcast platform, five games in particular (Jet Grind Radio, Space Channel 5, Rez, Seaman, and SGGG) and avant-garde movements and work in art, literature, and other areas in the 20th century. By seriously considering and applying the idea of the avant-garde and looking into these fives games closely (in terms of gameplay, in interpretive ways, and with regard to players’ online discourses about them), we show some ways in which videogames, within gaming, have done the work of the historical avant-garde; the business situations and factors in platform technology that relate to this innovation; and what opportunities for radical exploration in console gaming remain.
February 05, 2012 03:21 PM
I spend a lot of time poring over numbers at
e23, and it's always a treat when one catches my eye. Such is the case with
GURPS Social Engineering. As best I can determine, William H. Stoddard's masterpiece has been the fastest-selling e23-original supplement since its release last October. (
GURPS Low-Tech sold a smidge more in the same period, but since we planned it as a hardcover, we always expected it to do well.)
Given how integral (and fun!) the use of interpersonal abilities are in most RPGs, it's not surprising that this supplement has sold as well as it has. We've gotten lots of comments from folks about how it opened up new possibilities for having adversaries who could be intimidated/charmed/seduced/tricked/blackmailed.
If you haven't checked out
GURPS Social Engineering, I'm now using my persuasion skills to encourage you to do so. Plus, to see a great worked example of this supplement in action, check out
Pyramid #3/39: Steampunk; it features a Stoddard-written article that shows how the social structure of real-world Victorian England maps to the
Social Engineering rules. (And notice how skillfully I'm "Giving Information," per p. 28 of
Social Engineering . . .)
--
Steven Marsh
February 05, 2012 06:10 AM
