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Videogames: Games
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"Just like paintings, sculptures, plays, films, or symphonies, videogames can both display breathtaking aesthetics and convey powerful messages. Videogames can carry the twin payloads of beauty and purpose as any other artistic medium," writes CNET editor Will Greenwald. Click "PRESS START" on the page and you'll see screenshots of 10 examples, among them Bioshock (featuring "brilliant art deco-inspired level design and fascinating analysis of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged and the Objectivist movement"), Okami, Metal Gear Solid, Eternal Sonata, and Alice. Meanwhile, CNN reports that producers in this very visual artistic medium have "largely ignored … the blind." "With that in mind, a team of researchers at the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab in Massachusetts set out this summer to make a music-based video game that's designed for mainstream players and ... accessible to the blind."
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What separates videogames from other mediums of expression is interactivity. Most traditional forms of art are viewed statically while games dynamically allow players to become a part of the expression. Popular pro-wrestling games like WWE Smackdown: Shut Your Mouth for the PlayStation 2 provide a Create-A-Wrestler option that allows players to invent a wrestler according to their own vision and place that creation into the thick of the action. In "God" games like Sim City series for the PC, players aren't restricted by a script or path to follow in order to "beat" the game. Instead, players are given tools and challenged to be urban designers in accordance with their own vision and individuality. In Animal Crossing for the GameCube, players are free to decorate their homes as they see fit and can even design their own patterns, clothes, and wallpaper from scratch.
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Attended by more than 16,000 programmers, artists, producers, game designers, audio professionals and others involved in the development of videogames, GDC regularly features many of the year's biggest game announcements. "X-Play" hosts Adam Sessler and Morgan Webb will provide in-depth updates on all of the event's news, and introduce viewers to the people behind the most popular games through exclusive interviews from the floor. G4 will ... have coverage of all the major keynotes that reveal the future of gaming and the most eagerly anticipated hardware and software.
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As his search engine Ask.com inches toward irrelevance, besieged IAC CEO Barry Diller has found another crowded market to pour cash into: videogames. According to Variety, Diller plans to invest $50 million to $100 million of IAC's money on InstantAction, a new site from recently acquired IAC subsidiary GarageGames. GarageGames doesn't develop games quite so "casual" as the type Mark Pincus's Zynga produces, but the venture's product will still be Internet-based games made for those who don't want to waste time in front of a TV. Just like everyone else in the market, only a year or two later.
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Take Two Interactive, creators of the Grand Theft Auto series of videogames, is embroiled in controversy again. It has suspended the release of its latest product, Manhunt 2, “because of a rating controversy in the United States and a ban in Britain and Ireland,” the Associated Press reports. The Entertainment Software Rating Board gave Manhunt 2 a preliminary rating of Adults Only, which can really put a damper on sales since stores like Wal-Mart won’t even put AO games on their shelves, and Nintendo and Sony “said their policies bar any content rated for adults only on their systems.” The game is about “the escape of an amnesiac scientist and a psychotic killer from an asylum and their subsequent killing spree,” the AP adds. “In the Wii version, the console's motion-sensitive remote is waved around to control a virtual murder weapon.” The game was supposed to be released in the US on July 10 for the Nintendo Wii and PlayStation 2 consoles. Meanwhile, Sony apologized to the Church of England for using one of its churches as a backdrop for one of its games, the Associated Press earlier reported.
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News flash: CNET's "ad sales team carries more weight than the editorial team," writes Alex Petraglia, editor of Primotech, a videogames-news site. In the wake of Gamespot editorial director Jeff Gerstmann's firing, should anyone find this shocking? No. But in an attempt to jump on the Gerstmann story, Petraglia has posted a long-winded rant about a new ad campaign plastered all over the Gamespot website. More»
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