Kill Screen Magazine's Blog, page 417

Dave Gilbert: “Adventure game fans [are] a very insular kind of community.”

These are the words of outsider adventure game creator Dave Gilbert, author of games such as the Blackwell series, and also the publisher of many fine independent adventure games at Wadjet Eye Games. Here’s the whole quote from his interview at Gamasutra:

What's important for a lot of developers to learn to do is to break out of the—I don't want to say 'clique' exactly—but making adventure games clearly for adventure game fans was more challenging, because it was a very insular kind of community.

His disillusionment with the community seems to stem from the way they demand that adventure games continue to exist as they were back in the day: with difficult, oftentimes illogical puzzles that kill the pace of the story. But outside the old guard, the vast majority of people much prefer narrative flow to unrealistically hard brain-teasers that were, it should be remembered, originally designed that way to make players pony up for strategy guides. “You can’t just think of them as adventure games. They are games, and games are for everyone. They're stories, and everyone likes stories,” Gilbert says.

This interactive music video is everything you love about Hotline Miami, sans the pig masks

Granted, there’s a lot to love about the pig masks. But Scarface-types in animal masks aside, the smooth, distinct vibe is realized in the music video/not-quite-a-game Honey by musical artist James Dean and video artist Vince Mckelvie. There are the rows of palm trees receding in the horizon; the thumping synthpop that beckons you to sit back and chillax; that impossible shade of pink that could only exist on computer monitors and in your memories of the ‘80s. All that glorious mimosa can be found in this playful music video. Mind-melts aside, we’re loving this trend of musical-mind-meets-digital-arts-mind, which we’ve seen a lot of recently, including the music video for Pale Machine, which is worth revisiting.

You can play Honey here.

Minecraft, No Man’s Sky, and the hunt for a true archaeology sim

Procedural generation is all the rage. But it’s missing something: life.

A checklist on how to avoiding losing your lunch in virtual reality

As someone who has personally experienced the queasy aftermath of virtual reality firsthand, lemme tell you it's no picnic. For me it was worse than smoking too strong of a cigar, but not as bad as being in rough waters on a fishing boat with a bucket of squid in your face. Somewhere between there. But luckily Ben Lewis-Evans over at Gamasutra has a handy guide instructing players on how to keep simulation sickness at bay. Here are a few pointers:

Be young: If you happen to be young, then good news! You’re more resistant to simulation sickness. 

Looks like I’m screwed there.

Play in a well ventilated, temperature regulated, safe space: Most of the symptoms of simulation sickness are aggravated by poor air and uncomfortable temperatures (particularly heat). 

So, best move your VR helms from your battle-stations.

Play when healthy: If you are feeling sick already, hungover, or particularly drunk/on certain drugs then jumping into a VR experience may not be the way to go. 

That one's for you, Clayton.

Focus on stable objects on the horizon: Assuming they have been provided it can be helpful if you start to feel sick that you focus on a stable object near the horizon in the game. 

And if all else fails...

Try again: For most people repeated exposure to a VR experience will reduce or remove simulator sickness.

You can check out the complete list here. 

Luftrausers accused of being Nazi chic. Vlambeer responds

Vlambeer’s manic new shooter Luftrausers is taking some heat not for its relentless gunning but for its provocative art direction. A blogger has claimed that the game’s edgy imagery bears resemblance to the Nazi aesthetic, a view he shares with one Game Informer reviewer who called it an “edgy, stylized faux-Nazi aesthetic,” he points out. 

He goes on to blame Vlambeer for purposely amping up the controversial imagery for cool points, a trend we’ve seen before in the 70s in punk rock. It should be noted that no direct use of Nazi insignia appears in the game, and the blogger’s point is that the art seems inspired by it. 

Groundless or not, it did invoke a reply from Vlambeer, who of course denied that you play as a Nazi pilot in the game, elaborating that being from the Netherlands, a nation that was once occupied by Germany, they are well aware of the terrors that happened and would never manipulate that. 

However, they do acknowledge that “no way of reading those implications is ‘false.’” Once an author creates a work and puts it out there, their view is only as valid as the next. “If we accept there’s no wrong interpretation of a work, we also have to accept that some of those interpretations could not be along the lines of what we’re trying to create,” they write. 

Minecraft gets a Simpsons intro. What's next, Notch on MTV Spring Break?

Is there any bigger indicator that a person or product has made it than getting featured in a Simpsons intro? Well, Minecraft has crossed that threshold and joined the upper echelon of pop culture. Last night, during the opening credits, the familiar logo was, uh, somewhat cleverly replaced with the words “The Simcraft.” The scene that followed, which is by now burned into our unconscious—Homer and Bart and Maggie and crew bum-rushing the garage in a mad dash for the couch—was rendered in blocky cubes in a tribute to the mega-popular gazebo-building game. True, The Simpsons is not what it used to be, but there couldn’t be a better fit: the show that refuses to die, and a game that looks to do the same.

Watch below.

Monaco makes its final getaway, but not before one last killer update

It’s been a long ride with a dead body in the trunk and half-a-million euros stuffed under the seat since Monaco won the Independent Game Festival in 2010. “The money I’ve made from Monaco is kinda gross, when taken in one big chunk. But it’s really only about what I would have made had I been working for a salary [for a decade],” says Andy Schatz in a blog post announcing he is officially done with the game, which came out last April.

Perhaps he’s feeling a little millionaire-dev-shame, or perhaps he’s just a really nice dude (I’m going with the latter), but Pocketwatch Games for the grand finale has dropped 8 new episodes for their Pac-Man-meets-Metal-Gear hybrid, appropriately titled “Fin.” This goes along with substantial updates: a new “The Blonde” class, zombie mode, a second campaign, and player-versus-player. But like every good heist film the game took inspiration from, the credits must roll eventually.

Cardinal Quest 2 simplifies the roguelike too much

Our friends in Berlin would be appalled. 

How wearable interfaces could free videogames from the tyranny of screens

Videogames outside of the living room.

This artist is playing Civilization 24/7. You know, for art

You can find the artist Diego Leclery at a makeshift desk outside the Whitney Museum, staring at a monitor displaying Civilization, hand clutching a mouse. He has previously dressed up as a polar bear and allowed people to be photographed with him as art. His new piece is called Me Playing Civilization. His reasoning? “Since I moved to New York, I haven’t really made any art. I play a lot of Civilization. I got asked to be in the Biennial, and what am I gonna do? Make some shit? No. I’m going to transform the activity of the last year and a half,” he told Animal. 

Leclery says the statement of his lazy readymade is “running away from things,” something he’s been doing a lot of since he booted up the game a year-and-a-half ago. He has cooked up a lot of elaborate metaphors for his piece that go undetected by the children and parents who wander up, thinking he’s just playing a videogame, which, indeed, he is. Truthfully this will raise an eyebrow of everyone who complains that the art world has lost touch with reality. But on the other hand, it could be commentary on MMO addiction and the isolation of digital society. Or it could just be this guy loves Civilization a lot.

Via: Animal New York