Kill Screen Magazine's Blog, page 395

There will be no hanky-panky in Chinese console games, apparently

It seems Russia is not the only regime making moralistic demands on videogames that seem outrageous to our modern Western lifestyles. According to the gaijin-centric Rocket News 24, China too is getting in on the censorship train, issuing statements to Japanese developers saying that characters wearing shorts, bikinis, and exposing outfits are not allowed. Also completely prohibited: bodily touching between males and females. Seriously.

The blog trail runs cold into the Japanese language barrier, and doesn’t reveal which publishers received the letters, but one possible explanation is that they were specifically directed at devs known for hyper-sexualized depictions of anime, as is wont to happen in Japanese games. Otherwise, it’s going to be basically impossible for any game ever featuring realistic human beings to release in China. 

via Game Politics

Collages of bullet hell shooters and anime art are the best thing

For those of you wondering what the collective consciousness of 2chan users might look like (which admittedly is a dangerous thought), these hot-as-shit collages made of bullet hell shooters and doe-eyed anime girls pretty much nail it. Culled together from images found on Japanese parts of the internet, the giant, overwhelming, impossible artworks are populated with pop icons from otaku culture like pixel-y bullet patterns and little witches. I also spy exactly one Mega Man extra life. Kazuki Umezawa, the 29-year-old artist responsible for these incredible works, also does commissions for the likes of Diesel and designs the raddest cell phone covers you will ever come across.

See more at Triangulation.

More online viewers watch Twitch than Game of Thrones

We already knew Twitch was big. We just didn’t know the extent of the popular game streaming service’s hugeness. Well, that’s become a little bit clearer with this new report on Internet traffic, which says that Twitch is bigger than HBO’s digital service Go. That means more online viewers are tuning in for games of Dota and Madden than Game of Thrones (legally, anyway).

This is just the latest evidence to support the mainstay of the phenomena of watching others play games, as we've heard previously that Twitch only plays second fiddle to the Internet goliaths like Netflix and Google during peak hours. I’m not sure if this is a cause to celebrate games’ ever-increasing cultural relevancy, or just a sign that people who play games flock to the Internet.

It will be an awful long time before coders come close to cracking Go

Go is an ancient contest of meditative strategy, but in the present day another deeper meta-game of cracking its mastery with algorithms is going on. Yet the way the mind of a Go player works continues to elude programmers. Computers are no match.

Wired has a pretty fascinating feature on the subject of how code just can’t grasp Go. Says one cognitive scientist and complex systems theorist who studied the pros:

The result was totally unexpected. Moves became steadily more predictable until players reached near-professional level. But at that point, moves started getting less predictable, and we don’t know why. Our best guess is that information from the rest of the board started influencing decision-making in a unique way.

In other words, a scientific shoulder shrug. If you’re as fascinated by the limits of computation as I am, you should definitely go read more. 

UN considers ban on killer robots, puts damper on our dream of owning a T-1000

The topic of banning deadly, autonomous robots is on the table in Geneva, meaning that Kill Screen’s plan for world conquest is temporarily on hold. Foiled again.

But seriously, this is important stuff. The UN convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (read: killer robots) is a preliminary step on internationally outlawing any weapon that, once activated, can engage targets without a human controlling it, like drones that electrocute you, and possible these real-life aimbots, and that terrifying piece of machinery in the header. 

The findings of the 4-day meeting on the humanity or lack thereof of autonomous killing machines will be presented to the convention by Ambassador Jean-Hugues Simon-Michel of France in November. And while it should seem obvious that gun-toting robots are bad, there is an argument to be had. Specifically, they could reduce the number of human casualties. On the other side, they're killer robots.

Read more here.

When will Games for Change actually change?

A revolution becomes entrenched.

Full Bore and the quiet joys of digging games

A game about finding gems. Or not.

Road to Two5Six: Tamas Kemenczy

Kentucky Route Zero is amorphous to its core.

Kaiju-a-Gogo has plenty of urban-razing kaiju, decidedly less gogo

There haven’t been nearly enough games where you terrorize modern cities as ravaging mecha Kaiju roused from the pits of nuclear hell, which is a shame. But luckily Kaiju-a-Gogo is a new entry in the genre that has been asleep probably since SNK’s King of the Monsters, unless you count the Hulk and Transformers games, which I don’t really. 

This one is vying for your attention and beer money on Kickstarter, and sounds promising on the premise alone, even if the dev only has one meager screenshot to show for it and a pitch trailer with no actual game footage. You’ll be able to upgrade, mutate, and surfeit your very own giant monster on PC, Mac, Linux, iOS and Android if this one reaches its goal. 

Monument Valley fan art makes us wish those new levels were ready now

We don’t normally post about fan art, but when that fan art is for the quaint and lovely M.C. Escher-esque Monument Valley, we'll make an exception, because beauty yields beauty, it appears. That such a small and unpublicized game has inspired a group of dedicated artists on Tumblr is pretty amazing. And what a wonderful Tumblr it is. Monument Friends is a hub where players have created and uploaded a lot of inspiring and geometrically impossible art. 

My personal favorite is this fuzzy, stuffed animal incarnation of the puzzle block creature that helped you reach higher ledges of non-Euclidean planes. He is much less disturbing like this. Other beauties include drawings of disjointed level design, like this one that crosses Monument Valley with Journey’s desert ruins. It gets me excited that the developers are designed new levels as we speak. 

Check out all the fun art, then go play Monument Valley again. I know you’ve been looking for an excuse to.