Artsygamer
4 those who see(k) the art in games
A globalized game market?
0I’ve just read with great interest this article Analysts warn of "struggle" for Xbox. I’m proud to say things are slowly turning as i had anticipated last year, when everybody was praising 360 domination and crying ps3′s doom… even the Wii seems to be getting it’s warning signs, but i expect there may be another year before it gets serious. Anyway, how does this affect us artsy gamers? Well, first off I’m probably what they call a "core" gamer… and in theory I’m 360′s target. Yet I don’t have one (yet): I have yet to have my confidence gained in a durable reliable system (at a mainstream price). I don’t have their data but if somebody had asked me I would have assumed this might be the reason Europe wasn’t won over by the 360: MS seems to me to have strongly supported US while getting a bad rep & low support in Europe… but what do I know? I live in my own little world (but they know me here :D all my imaginary friends).
Anyways, a more relevant point would be this: i’m happy to announce that I feel this is proof that we’re becoming a more and more globalized society. Not winning everybody over seems to be a "dooomed" level of "bad". This is really great for the games industry (us!) because it combines with the second point i wanted to mention: one genre is no longer the definition of games, meaning games have grown up a lot, meaning we may see the end to game cliches and the kind of variety that spawns passionate niches, people who love their particular types of games… and many types… which is sooooo great I just can’t say it in words! Long live the games-are-art niche!!!
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Bioforge
0Now obviously this may look very bad by the standards of 2008… but this is not a website about technology, it’s one about artwork: and for me this game was aaaamazing! I was impressed by it’s strong mood (feelings like solitude, injustice, search, desire for freedom…) and superb storytelling. I spent many hours just reading and re-reading some of it’s incredible in game backstories told via journals & logs. Even the puzzles felt shockingly original and almost “realistic” in their variety (which didn’t make them easier). Big thumbs up for this game! In my opinion it could easily rival some of the best sci fi novels in it’s story… or at least short stories: hough the backstory is really deep you might argue that the character interaction is weaker – but it’s also something that may be one of the ingredients of the game’s eerie-spoooky “alone in a corner of the universe” horror-ish feel. Looking forward to a modern game to fill this niche better… though none will be able to replace it completelly: that’s what (good) artwork is like.
PS: the item interactions in the game were not only pioneering in my opinion but also really awesome: remotes controls, devices… but most importantly what I loved was using the flute at which point the character played these heart tearing sad tunes after which he mused about them in the journal wondering what they could be telling him about the life he lost/forgot…
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Zero Punctuation: The World Ends With You
03 years ago
by Void
in Entertaining
Happy to see i’m not the one banging on the "games could do so much more than just tell linear stories… books/movies do the same… games could be more" drum.
Silent hill 4 intro
03 years ago
by Void
in Cinematics
The memory of the amazing mood/feelings of camera flying through the house intro scene just popped into my mind… a very powerful scene in my opinion. This is a longer clip, including some gameplay footage and the scene I’m talking about only starts at 2:55, but for those who haven’t played the game it may set the context. I do believe this game is a masterpiece. Besides the camerawork & music in this clip you can also get a taste of it’s other great techniques. The character’s introverted nature helps a lot… and I was particularly moved by the feeling of claustrophobia given not only by being locked in but by the glimpses of the outside world: the feeling of being so near and yet impossibly far away, between them and yet not among them… couple that with the later questions weather or not they’re all dreams and/or the question of guilt…
PS: at the risk of a minor spoiler: this is a song that blew my feelings away when it popped up (fragment): Room Of Angel (Akira Yamaoka)
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game publishers ~= movie publishers?
0Gamasutra has an interesting article
Are Game Publishers Becoming More Like Movie Publishers?
It does raise some very interesting points on such issue as relationship between ratings and profitability… it is a business after all, even though it may be a beloved passion for many of us. From the article: It seems that publishers within the video game industry are taking the same route as movie publishers, not necessarily concerning themselves with quality so much as publishing profitable titles. Essentially, Activision is to the video game industry what Paramount is to the movie industry: Infinity Ward as Activision’s LucasFilm, Call of Duty 4 as Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
[...]
The uncanny resemblance does not end there – as the movie publishers sometimes act as just a distributor for a film, having little control on the film’s production. Again, refer to Paramount, which acts just as a distributor for companies like DreamWorks and Marvel.
But unlike what many may think I am not actually crying for these things or complaining: I do understand it’s a business, and i think that’s a great thing. People have loud mouths but they really vote with their pockets (and the two messages often differ). I do see a silver lining though: the bigger the business becomes the more valid niche products become… because, let’s admit it, games which are about high art are a niche, not the norm and what everybody wants to see… but that’s okay :D Those of us here are used to being "different".
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The rise and fall of my vanilla love
0Vanillaware… what a glorious company name! I wanted to say something about two of their games: GrimGrimoire & Odin Sphere… both unique pieces of art, one that made me fall in love and the other that made me fall out… even though they both had quite good artwork.
First I would like to say that YES, i do see what you see: anime look + children main characters… and yes that does seriously put me off: I am looking for more serious stories. Doesn’t mean I don’t like animes as a style, in fact they can be very deep even with that means of expression (eg. Cowboy Bebop, Trigun, Ghost in the Shell…) but I do find something wrong when there are no mature characters, and characters who look like they’re all 14 play roles of mature stories… That being said though you’re in for a great surprise. At least I was. GrimGrimoire blew me away with a mature story, of time paradoxes, characters, demons and angels, love and manipulation… that coupled with finding a way to go through the game at an easy level enderead itself to me. It helped that all the artwork was delightfully well done while keeping with it’s internal style. Which is why I started Odin Sphere too… but while i had like a few hours of excitement like I only get from great masterpieces they were later erased by many more hours of the great big flaws i see in games:
- a LOT of repetition, level grinding, stoping story progression because you have to go back and get some new powers, items… even worse, through places you’ve already been
- bosses & hard fights
well, they’re basically the same, or at least related… but that’s how they (again) ruined some great art for me.
Now obviously there’s something really great with these games: otherwise I wouldn’t be writing about them (I don’t see anything constructive in just compaining!). I’m talking about great graphics, superb story, interesting characters & music. Even in terms of game mechanics there are some fascinating stuffs: I got totally hooked to the recipe gathering in Odin Sphere and Grim Grimoire has a brilliantly fresh approach to strategy that actually works with a gamepad!
But my true love are still the superb stories. They have some very rare ingredients: touching on subjects of time, choice & destiniy, stories told from multiple points of view with no overbearing sense of morality (you actually get to see/feel how different characters all have their own agendas which each could be somehow considered valid even though put together they are conflicting). So what I’m trying to say is: I’m recomending these for a try, you might find they’re just as anime-ish as you thought and you don’t like that, or on the contrary you might find that hidden behind the presentation is something quite different and surprising. Few other games go into such subjects as being trapped in a time loop of failure, a daughter’s desperate attempts to gain the love of her father, forced love turning into true love, devil’s who might find themselves doing good, the curse of being different and losing your old life…
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Quake 2 – adrenaline music
1Now I wish I could say Quake 2 is an art masterpiece, but to be honest I played it more as a fps experience & a technology breakthrough… i love the immersion that 1st person brings… but there is one BIG thing that made my play a FANTASTIC ride, and that is the amazing music. It blew me away and set my standards for many years to come of what great adrenaline music can be… for years I would ask everybody if they know of anything like this, and though it’s been many years I don’t think I have ever found anything as energetic and yet without the clutter of words (unfortunatelly music like this is usually accompanied by screeming people, which tend to bring more negative feelings while this brings pure “I’m doing something exciting” feeling). Also very cool: because it was audio tracks I could take my Quake 2 cd to friends and listen on their cd players: everybody was blown away.
Btw, if you wanna hear the real sounds to the video (the game intro) it’s here (there too my favorite moments are when the music purrs with the drama of the crash after the excitment of the great attack).
PS: I was still marked more by the Unreal soundtrack, but the story of my reverence for Straylight productions and their mastery of tracking is a story for another post…
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Zero Punctuation: Grand Theft Auto IV
03 years ago
by Void
in Entertaining
Sounds good… for a GTA game… now, like I was saying… if only it happened in a more original setting with a more original universe and mythos (Oblivion springs so mind as a decent example… though that doesn’t mean I’d like it repeated :D It was good for a lifetime… now a new one… please )
1/3 scifi + 2/3 horror = ?
03 years ago
by Void
in Entertaining
Well… the good news (for me) is that it’s coming sooner than I expected (i thought late 2009)… the bad news though: it seems kinda generic. I mean by the numbers "alien/zombie infection in space turning crew into killers". Been through that too many times… it may be awesome for the newer generation… but I was hoping for something with a bigger twist… and it may come (hopefully some aliens will turn out to be conscious & friendly/philosophical)… but honestly… I’m afraid they may not have worked into the story too much. Obviously this is very subjective intuition based on very little data… but it’s not looking as great as i was hoping. I thought there was going to be a lot of possibility there, but instead now I see unimpressive artwork: rectangular coriodors, metal not complemented by any architecture/organic/decorative and while their decision to make low ceilings might be scary in real life if it turns out to become like a boring labirinth in which you can’t tell one corridor from another (well, not very easily. Obviously they’re different… but i’m talking in feel/shape/design)… well it may be Doom 3 all over again. Which would be a great shame. In theory I have huge expectations of a game that could become the Event Horizon of games… but … well… without a lot of story and no artwork, and instead of those important things a focus on fighting and puzzles… well, it may not be my slice of cake :( Not to mention that they haven’t said anything about the MOST important thing a game can do that no movie or book can: give you choices and story branches…
we shall wait and see. Either way, happy it’s coming out sooner: if it’ll be good, awesome, if not the better ones will come in a ever growing games industry.
PS: was it just me or was it a bit ironic the way they emphasised hardcore "M" rating because of a lot of violence but then underlined that it’s the "alien violence" (which society happens to deem more okay…)
Places to see before you die…
2Well, it seems i have forgotten my own principle when starting artsygamer, resulting in the ancient fear come true: for fear of lack fo time to write the “good” articles I would like to I end up writing nothing… not good. So, please remind me should i forget again: better short than nothing! Hurray for the glorification of short!
So, back on subject: this is an interesting link I’ve been meaning to post for a long time: 10 Must See Virtual Places To Visit Before You Die. Can’t say I agree with the elements on the list, but love the idea: I must say that some of my best memories of places I’ve visited are virtual rather than real world places (Unreal experience comes to mind). For some reason the real world is not as full of fascinating ruins coupled with soundtracks :P … also this article gives me an excuse to post Samorost which though i didn’t play from what i’ve seen find has a very unique and praise worthy artistic mood/feel.
Big thumbs up to the whole world!!
PS: in case you’re curious (i am), what i’ve been up to recently and why haven’t posted recently: heavily learning drawing stuff. Big shout out for Andrew Loomis, the illustrator that blew my mind with his amazing books (who would have thunk that books from 1950 can be sooo amazingly relevant today)