Kill Screen Magazine's Blog, page 310

We talk to the creator of the dude-butt sensation Hurt Me Plenty

Consent has never looked so sexy.

Video Game: The Game is a flashy, joyous, bullet-hell parody

Beware of flashing lights and flying coins. 

The Red Wedding looms large in Telltale’s Game of Thrones

Valar morghulis, indeed.

This short film celebrates the beauty of space

In space, no one can hear you gawk.

Fall in Love with the adorable outer-space pets of Cube and Me

"Fine, if I can't have a puppy, then can I at least get an outer space cube-alien for Christmas?"

Cube and Me is the pet sim/dungeon crawler that looks like companion cube had a bunch of badass babies.

A glimpse into the low-poly future, where no one sits and everyone is attractive

This sprawling polygonal blot is the work of the architecture firm RAAAF and the visual artist Barbara Visser, and, while it sort of looks like a laser-tag course or the Aggro Crag or something, it is in fact a vision of a healthier, happier future. We all know that sitting down all day is unhealthy—"worse than smoking," we hear; leads rather directly to obesity, cancer, and heart disease—but the issue remains that making the switch to standing all day, for people who are able to, still isn't easy. We have decades of office construction built around the seated desk, and breaking out of that costs money, not to mention the willingness to loom over all of your coworkers like some sort of productivity centaur. 

Hence: this mountain, which the involved parties have dubbed The End of Sitting. Its long angles and crannies provide places to stand, lean, recline, congregate, loll, etc.—all without taking the proverbial load off. I've used a standing desk for a few years, often constructed on upside-down garbage cans and weird slats of wood that I find, and I can say that there is a certain energy that carries through the day, not to mention a rewarding fatigue toward the end of the day. So your dogs, they will be a-barking after a day on this playground, but, if the pictures are to be believed, you will also be a lithe, handsome Dutch person, so it'll all be worth it. 

The obvious question is: should we be worried about this when playing games? Motion controls and live-action roleplay are much more three-dimensional, but the fact remains that the vast majority of digital and tabletop game-playing involves sitting still for a really long period of time. (All three people who I spent a Sunday playing Mage Knight with a few weeks ago had a sore back by the end of it.) But the notion of standing around while holding a traditional controller just seems ungodly, like I somehow lost a bet. Point being: I'd like to see some of the creativity on display in The End of Sitting applied toward where we sit everywhere—not just at work, but at play. 

The End of Sitting is on display for three more days at Looiersgracht 60 in Amsterdam.

h/t to Pop-up City

How virtual real estate was made by possible by gaming

The CEO and founder of Floored walks us through building realtime spaces.

E-TRACES turns dance moves into data

Electronic Traces, a concept created by Spanish designer Lesia Trubat, plans to turn real dance moves into viewable files.

By combining a pair of ballet shoes with e-textile microcontroller technology by LilyPad Arduino, the shoes register both the pressure and the movement of the dancer’s feet and then beams the data to an app.

The output that results from the futuristic footwear is reminiscent of elegant brush strokes. Almost a neon variant of a paintbrush sequence straight from Okami.

Parallels can also be drawn to the mobile game Bounden, made in collaboration with the Junior Company of the Dutch National Ballet, where players in tandem use a phone’s smart gyroscope create a flow of ballet moves. But where as Bounden is to geared towards social interaction, E-TRACES is designed for teaching purposes.

Trubat’s plan is that these files can be used in educational scenarios, both for self-teaching and for classes. The videos can have stills printed from them, or the data can be presented graphically and compared between users.

Project by: Lesia Trubat
Photo credit: Lucía González / Marta Guillén

Here's what it's like to spend a weekend at a castle in Poland doing a Harry Potter larp

Wizarding school is alive and well.

Twelve Minutes examines the hellish reality of videogame time loops

Imagine a moment you must relive until you get everything right. Now realize that that's literally every videogame.