I'm giving Formspring a try. I figured some interesting conversations might start. Feel free to send something my way and fill up the space between blogposts.
Showing posts with label random. Show all posts
Showing posts with label random. Show all posts
5.12.2010
Any questions?
4.24.2010
Quick Hits 2
Welcome to the second episode of Quick Hits, wherein I sling nonsense about a number of topics, with no real connective throughline. Bang! Starter pistol.Fuck This ConversationI'm just gonna say it: art. I didn't want to say it, I don't want to hear it ever again, but here we are.
Why don't I want to hear about it? I'm a veteran of that war. Anyone who went to art school is. We have PTSD from that endlessly repeated conversation. We have flashbacks, we get the shakes. The trigger: someone, anyone, asking, "what is art?"
It doesn't have to be up and stated outright. The trigger phrase is hidden within any number of statements. For instance, when a film critic with a Twitter account says that video games are not art, the natural followup becomes, "Well then... what is art?" And suddenly we're in some goddamn flourescent-lit student lounge, sitting on a nine-dollar couch across from a dude whose shirt is self-consciously spattered with daubs of encaustic, hip-to-hip with the girl who stamped each page of a copy of The Feminine Mystique with an ink print of her own labia, hearing the guy over our shoulder mention Duchamp for the sixth time this week, and it all just needs to stop right now.
I had a professor, Harrell Fletcher, who is better known as an artist than a teacher, and anyone who immerses themselves in both the art world and art education has certainly been through this conversation enough times to come out the other side. I appreciated his perspective, which was open and accepting while deftly dismissing the question entirely. I'm paraphrasing but, as I remember it: "Art is anything that someone claims to be art. It is then your job to determine for yourself whether you believe that thing is good or bad art."
This acknowledges a number of important aspects of the words in play here. For one, "art" has no concrete definition. Anything more specific than "something which someone has chosen to call art" can be challenged from any number of angles. Is art something that someone calling themselves an artist makes? No, because John Ford wouldn't call himself an artist or his films art, but Francois Truffaut would say they were. Is it something that someone creates to express feeling or emotion? No, let's look at Minimalism or Andy Warhol. So on and so forth. I can smell the nine-dollar burlap upholstery now.
But first and foremost, above all, the term "art" is not qualitative. There may be good art or bad art as the viewer determines it, but something being called simply "art" is not in and of itself either good or bad. It is at most a classification, like "food" or "animal," but it is a classification without any objective requirements, only subjective ones, which means the definition is specific to the individual. One is free to define what is or is not art for themselves if it helps them sleep at night, meaningless as it may be, but anyone who claims to be the arbiter of defining the term for others is absolutely bankrupt in their reasoning, much too enamored of their own opinion for it to be worth a damn, and should likely not be taken seriously in matters such as these.
The Mona Lisa is a painting. 2001: A Space Odyssey is a movie. Ico is a video game. And art is just a word.My Favorite Albums of the 00's1. The Glow Pt. 2 by The Microphones. Phil Elvrum passes through towns and countryside, under buzzing flourescents and the shadows of Mt. Eerie, and wonders to himself the big questions, about life, why we're here, what our role is, essentially, what it is to be alive. It all comes out as epic, strange and intimidating as it should: rattling acoustic guitars ask the questions, timid and indrawn; distortion and huge drums answer back big as the looming sky. Under it all, in the quiet places, the fog horns of a Pacific northwestern coastline echo, situating the album in the place that Elvrum lived it, grounding us in what was for me at the time I first listened, my new home-- a fresh, inviting place that was then still alien, and where I was asking myself a lot of the same big questions... just not as epically. Elvrum had that handled.
Companion piece: Advisory Committee by Mirah. The album was produced by Elvrum, but his signature is so strong on it that it's almost as much his as hers. Very different from The Microphones, but very much the same.
2. Knife Play by Xiu Xiu. Jamie Stewart is not a reserved guy, at least as evidenced by his music. With Knife Play, he wants to get personal right up front: a sticker on the cover before you even open the CD states: "When my mom died I listened to Henry Cowell, Joy Division, Detroit techno, the Smiths, Takemitsu, Sabbath, Gamelan, 'Black Angels' and Cecil Taylor." It's a strategy to scare off as many of the undevoted as possible, which continues in the music: the first 30 seconds or so of Knife Play is some of the most discordant, atonal sound you're likely to hear this week. And then Stewart starts in with his airy, otherworldly voice, his lyrics about suicide, hermaphrodites, and HIV, his gongs and bells and whispers and yelps... and it all starts leveling out into something incredibly listenable and intriguing, while remaining dark and personal. Some people find Knife Play to be terribly depressing, but I don't feel that; I love the songs, I love the sound, and while the words are tough, I don't feel like this is a downer of a record; Knife Play is the sound of someone getting through it.
Companion piece: Fag Patrol by Xiu Xiu. Acoustic versions of a number of the songs from Knife Play and its followup, A Promise. Hearing these songs in their more compositionally-pure state strips away the artifice and shows what strong songwriting underlies them.
3. The Sunset Tree by Mountain Goats. John Darnielle had performed as Mountain Goats for a number of years prior to the release of The Sunset Tree, but it was the death of his stepfather that allowed the album to appear-- Darnielle had been abused by the man throughout his childhood, and had to wait until that presence was out of this world to address his experience directly. What results is a document of a young man growing up with the torment of physical abuse, and his escape from it through love and music. The album begins with an attempted suicide and ends with a death that provides closure and reflection; in between are scenes of youthful abandon set against harrowing violence and contemplations on shame and mortality, all fusing together into an image of a young Darnielle coping with hardship in ways that would define his music, and the rest of his life. The tenderness with which the final track sets down the memory of his stepfather, steps back and lets go is a heartbreaking relief.
Anyway,
UsabilityVideo games are objects that people use.
Look at the history of the video game industry: the number of users has gone up and up, and what has driven this climbing userbase? One might credit graphical fidelity, innovative new gameplay modes, online connectivity, and so forth; I might credit, above all, improvements in usability.
The obvious stuff here is what we normally apply the concept of usability to: interface, primarily. And this is important, but only one element. In video games, gameplay is usability.
I guess we should define usability here. I'm going to go with "the degree to which the user intuitively understands the function of the object, and is able to achieve the desired effect without frustration or confusion." If I look at a toaster, I should be able to to intuit where the toast goes, how to set the darkness of the toast, how to initiate the toasting process, and be able to achieve the desired results consistently.
Perhaps in a video game my desire is to progress forward through a linear sequence of challenges. In the 80's, I might have died at the end of a level containing multiple challenges, requiring me to return to the beginning of the level and repeat all of the challenges up to the one on which I died. This is frustrating and monotonous. If I die enough times, I lose all my lives and must start the entire game over. This will drive away most users.
In the 90's, I might have died at the end of the level, returning me to a mid-level checkpoint, requiring me to retry only the last couple of challenges in the sequence. I can die as many times as I want and simply return to the checkpoint in time. However, if I have to repeat this enough times, I still get frustrated with having to redo challenges I've proven I can pass, and many users will still be driven away.
In the 00's, I might have died at the end of a level and been returned in space, not time, to a respawn point, allowing me to keep all of my progress and collected items and requiring me to retry only the challenge that killed me. Many fewer users will now be driven away. If the challenge itself is too difficult, users unable to surmount it will check out, but this is due to the difficulty of the challenge itself, not to the difficulty of retrying the challenge, as in prior revisions.
The intended use of the object in this case is to "progress forward through challenges." As game mechanics have improved usability, the audience has grown due to more people being able to use the object as they intend.
And so artfulness, graphical fidelity, innovation, connectivity, while all attractive, are secondary to usability improvements in interface ("I want to get online and play against my best friend,") input ("I want to be able to shoot that enemy using these controller thumbsticks,") and progression ("I want to always know where I should go next.") These elements are concrete-- sets of rules and conditions that can be tested against real users, scientifically, and adjusted to accommodate the most fluid user experience. Improved usability, then, is the conduit through which the creativity of your game flows. The more usable the object, the more people will be able to connect with the unique aesthetic experience you're trying to convey. Usability is the aspect of games which must advance first, to allow the rest of the medium to flourish.
This has been Quick Hits. Thanks for playing.
8.29.2009
A predator
This morning I woke suddenly from a dream.
In the dream, I was playing a video game. The game took place on some sort of alien Serengeti. I played a predator, something like a lion-- I couldn't see my own form, as the game was in first person. I approached a group of prey animals standing in a clearing of yellow grass. They resembled giraffe or llama, sort of similar to the mucalosaurus from Zeno Clash, but smaller and with fur. They were scaled to various sizes-- adolescents to adults, I assumed.
Being a predator, I leapt forward and seized onto a fairly large one, biting at its flesh. It offered no real resistance, but within a few moments I began taking damage from the side. I turned from my prey to see a larger one of the creatures trying to fend me off. I realized that this creature must be my target's mother. I swiped at her, easily repelling the mother and sending the rest of the group scattering. They stood uncomfortably in a perimeter around me as I returned to my work.
I looked up to see the mother creature keeping its distance, as it was no match for me. It looked back at me and said sadly, "No, stop."
I dropped the game controller and recoiled, repulsed and disgusted by the scene I was in the midst of: as I tore at its child, the mother creature-- which I didn't expect to have the power of speech at all-- was reduced to pleading as it looked on helplessly. My predefined role as the player was that of a predator, but the unexpected repercussions of that role on these alien life forms hit me with a wave of shock, terror and remorse. That's when I woke up.
I wonder if it means anything.
1.20.2009
1.04.2009
Moddin'
I dug into the Fallout 3 editor this afternoon and threw a new item into the mix. With this mod installed, the player will occasionally come across a can of Dinki-Di dog food out in the wastes. Either eat it yourself to regain a few hitpoints, or better: give it to Dogmeat through his follower dialogue. Each time he eats a can of nutritious Dinki-Di, Dogmeat will grow just a bit tougher and more effective in combat.
An unobtrusive mod that should layer well over the base game or other plugins. Just for kicks. Untested in the longterm, may result in an unstoppable superdog over the course of a full campaign.
Download it here: Dinki-Di dog food mod for Fallout 3
Unzip into your base Fallout 3 install directory. Check dogfood.esp under Data Files in the Fallout 3 launcher and play.
1.03.2009
Casting 4
The continuation of my last week's visit to the Idle Thumbs podcast, part XI-2, has been posted online for listening pleasure. The second half of a marathon recording session, this one only goes further down the rabbit hole. Dazzle at our lengthy digressions and obscure gaming references. Idle Thumbs GOTY is revealed (hint: it's Fallout 3) as well as less-predictable GOTY entries from a number of listeners.
References:
Idle Thumbs' GOTY website
Mother 3 fan translation project
Wizardy in Japan
The Dark Spire
Bangai-O Spirits level transfer video:
(Click here to listen to Kaori's level)
12.24.2008
Casting 3
In an attempt to provide coverage over the Christmas break, I recently recorded two podcasts in a row with the Idle Thumbs crew: one is available now, the other should run next week. This week's is a weird one, where we spend most of our time talking about old simulation games and other seemingly (but not!) boring stuff. Also covered: the origins of indie shooter Retro/grade, a city-building MMO, and Emily Dickinson tech demos.
References:
Minotaur China Shop
QWOP
Gamasutra Last Express retrospective
Penumbra
Peter Molyneux's "Emily Dickinson" presentation
SimCity 4: Rush Hour
CitiesXL
Bus Driver
Eric Kaltman's blog
Retro/Grade
11.17.2008
Casting 2
I appear again this week on episode 7 of the Idle Thumbs podcast. We wax effusive about Fallout 3, I break Chris's chair, and the phrase "hot scoops" is dropped in excess of 80 times. Enjoy... if you dare!
Click here for Idle Thumbscast!
References
- Illbleed 2nd Trailer
11.02.2008
Muertos 08
It was a year ago tonight that Rachel and I attended our first Dia de los Muertos celebration in San Francisco's Mission district, and we went again this year.
Since my prior post sums up the meaning of the proceedings, I'll just show some pictures from this year's parade.
click any picture to enlarge
This parade has become one of my favorite yearly events. The energy and vibrancy of the proceedings are just incredible. Though I got a couple good pictures, they really don't do the event justice. Suffice it to say, it's something worth going out of your way to see in person. I'm glad I could be there again this year, and hope to be there for many more.
10.22.2008
Casting
As a former member of the Idle Thumbs video game website editorial staff, I'm proud to have taken part in Idle Thumbs Podcast 3: Field of Dreams. The episode is now available on www.idlethumbs.net, or through your local iTunes. Come along with us on an embarrassing aural journey, as we lovingly cast our pod into your face. Or don't. That's your call.
6.21.2008
Retro
It's fun to look back at what we thought the future might be.
It's why Tomorrowland was better before they updated it, and why Buck Rogers, The Jetsons, Star Trek and the like make us grin. It seems we've come far enough that Ghost in the Shell has entered this category as well.
Ghost in the Shell felt incredibly futuristic at the time of its release, and saw 2029 through a particularly Japanese lens-- a world of artificial humans, gleaming Tokyo skyrises, and rampant cybercrime by extranational organizations.
It's a world where people replace their bodies with mechanical ones and love jacking cables into their skull sockets, and today it all seems pretty silly, if still cool in its retro way. The original movie is almost 15 years old now, and the manga it's based on even older, so it has a right to be outdated.
But it makes me think about what form my version of a soon-to-be-retro future vision might take. And it mostly centers around the net, subconscious media, and the death of the written word. I imagine a world where each one of us is connected to the other by a digital "psychic" network.
I've been using Twitter from my computer and my phone, allowing me to see what my friends are up to at any given moment. Between blogs, social networking sites, and web-enabled cell phones we're capable of being connected to our chosen network of individuals and organizations constantly-- constantly, but indirectly. To update my current activity on Twitter, I have to access a web-enabled device, open up the software, type in the text, and upload the entry to the net; similarly, to check my friends', I have to access a web-enabled device, navigate to Twitter or refresh the page, then read their entry. Along with needing the physical device present, I also need to occupy multiple parts of my body-- eyes, fingers-- to complete any given transaction. Even a cell phone call requires at least my ear, if not a hand. All of this makes communicating with others a semi-exclusive activity which, when attempted simultaneously with another act, is distracting at best and dangerous at worst. In any case, it's cumbersome. At the root of all this is that we must input and output data physically, via our hands and sense organs. Our bodies introduce one step of remove.
I imagine a world where any required communications hardware is minuscule and acts merely as a relay-- it could be carried on something like a keychain or necklace, or maybe implanted subdermally if you're more sci-fi inclined. This device is keyed exclusively to the user's particular brainwave pattern, and transmits data directly into and out from the user's consciousness as pure knowledge. The sense organs are bypassed entirely, allowing the user to acquire new information without manually processing it via representation in the world.
Consider a present-day RSS feed from a news organization like CNN. Maybe I have it set up on my cell phone, and each time the RSS is updated, I receive the headline as a text message (I may reply to the message to receive the full story as a series of texts.) I feel my phone vibrate, open it up, check my new message, read it, and now I have at least the knowledge provided by the text: "Obama secures Democratic nomination," let's say. This process assumes I notice my phone has received a message, and that I am able to execute the required functions with my hands and eyes to receive this knowledge.
In the future I'm picturing, once I've attuned myself to the future version of CNN's news feed, each time the feed is updated I simply "know" what has happened. So, I've signed up, I'm driving along in my car, someone at CNN updates the feed, and within moments I simply become aware that Obama has been nominated.
It's a world where the collective unconscious exists as a literal entity. When a major news event occurs, everyone in the supermarket would instantly know what had happened, and be able to turn to one another and share their shock, sadness or delight without having received the information itself from an audio/visual broadcast, or relayed it via word of mouth.
From the invention of the printing press to the popularization of the internet, text has been the primary means of mass communication; the technology I'm picturing ("direct knowledge transmission"-- DKT?) would make the written word all but obsolete. Buildings could be wired to transmit information from limited-proximity nodes, making physical signage pointless: as one approaches a door they become aware that it's the men's bathroom, or better yet a map of the building is transmitted to anyone crossing the threshold onto the premises, providing the user with the foreknowledge of where their destination is and how to get there. Decentralized information would no longer be visual or auditory-- instead of using Google image search to look up pictures or video of a celebrity, you would transparently become aware of what they looked like, just the way you remember the faces of people you've met in real life. Many concepts could be received simultaneously by the user, condensing the act of processing a day's news into seconds, instead of the minutes or hours taken to read a series of news stories or watch a cable program. Foreign languages would no longer be a communication barrier, as your conversation partner's speech would be translated into your own language by the net in realtime and delivered straight into your brain. At any time you would have knowledge of your current bank balance, the time, date, phase of the moon, strength of the US dollar, what music your best friend is listening to, exactly how far you are from the corner of Market and Sixth in San Francisco (and how to get there from your current location,) so on and so forth-- the act of wondering about any given concept would send out a query to the net, and in moments you would become aware of the knowledge you seek.
I'm not the biggest sci-fi buff: is this vision of the future already an established one that I hadn't been aware of? Is it too out-there to be a feasible future at all, or will it soon seem short-sighted and quaint like Ghost in the Shell's mechanical humans? Imagine if we never had to type another word or make another phone call, but had more knowledge instantly available to us than ever before.
6.16.2008
6.08.2008
6.06.2008
101
The highway is kind of horrific. I've been doing a lot of highway driving lately for my job (about an hour every day,) and it's the only place I'm routinely exposed to the indignity of death, at 80 mph no less. This morning I saw unidentifiable lumps of shredded meat between two lanes, probably a misguided forest creature but maybe someone's former pet? Who needs that in their head? On the off-ramp into Novato I saw a dead little spotted fawn curled up on the shoulder. I'll sometimes see people's dogs, golden retrievers and such, that apparently escaped from their truck bed or back window, pathetically laid out against the center divider.
I dunno, it's just strange how getting a new job has indirectly exposed me to seeing all these poor dead things. If I notice something in my peripheral vision along the side of the 101, I kind of dread looking directly at it, because who really wants to look over and see some sad, dead animal lying there in the middle of their morning? What a world!!
5.21.2008
Interviewed
A brief interruption to the Call to Arms: Michael Abbott has generously allowed me to contribute to his latest Brainy Gamer Podcast, by encouraging me to blather on and on in response to his thoughtful interview questions. Give it a listen to hear my thoughts on art school, Gears of War, and playing video games on the last day of your life.
5.20.2008
Call to Arms 2008
Entry 01: Couples Counseling by LB Jeffries
Entry 02: Family Commute by JC Barnett
Entry 03: Last Call by Borut Pfeifer
Entry 04: Sellout by JP LeBreton
Entry 05: Resonance by Michael Clarkson
Entry 06: Strange Land by Steve gaynor
Entry 07: Jump by Duncan Fyfe
Entry 08: Potter by Steve gaynor
Entry 09: Survival by Coleman McCormick
Entry 10: Bumbershoot by Dan Bruno
Entry 11: Friends Like These by Justin Keverne
Entry 12: Bereavement in Blacksburg by Manveer Heir
Entry 13: Fruit of the Womb by Roberto Quesada
Entry 14: Peace by Christiaan Moleman
Memories. Feeling. Meaning. Conflict.
They can all be expressed through interaction-- games. Interactive experiences are driven by design. And we're all designers. Of any discipline involved in game-making, design's door is open widest. There is no barrier to entry. Players, artists, teachers-- we're all designers.
The challenge then is to express through interaction an experience that the player will find meaningful-- something novel, poignant, interesting, personal, or enlightening. As video game designers, we've explored a few forms of conflict with great fidelity: mostly direct and violent; mostly expressing the feeling of prevailing over one's rivals.
So, Fullbright proposes a public thought experiment; a decentralized game design symposium; a call for new takes on interactive expression. If we've succeeded by now in conveying feelings like "exhilaration," "fear," and "victory," and conflicts such as "individual power vs. strength in numbers," "man vs. rule system," "entropy vs. order," and "good vs. evil," the Call to Arms focuses on some more elusive aesthetics. Here's the procedure:
Below are my initial proposed feelings:
Next, my initial proposed conflicts:
This exercise bears something in common with Clint Hocking's "Seven Deadly Sins" elective from the Game Design Workshop; for a starting point, check out how one team of designers at this year's GDC expressed Gluttony with a card game. Alternately, note how BioShock used a character-based approach in expressing Altruism vs. Self-Interest, and whether its mechanics supported the implications of that conflict. Or, how Jason Rohrer explored the bittersweet melancholy of aging with Passage.
What is meaningful to you? How can that be conveyed to others through interaction? Design play to share that experience with others. Heed the call to arms!
3.16.2008
Requests
Things I'd love to see more of in video games today:
- Interactive conversation. Let me talk to NPCs, even if it's in a very conventional way. Dialogue trees are okay as long as I can be engaged in meaningful conversational exchanges with NPCs.
- Functional spaces. A house you could live in, not a movie set or dressed up tunnel. Bathrooms, kitchens, fire exits, storage closets. Apartment buildings filled with apartments, not painted-on doors lining the halls.
- Mundane places. Malls, gas stations, diners, houses, apartments, cafes, hotels, shops, offices.
- Living worlds. Places currently in use, populated with non-hostile NPCs. Not derelict, destroyed and empty ruins. Places filled with living people going about their daily business. Friendly, happy people being nice to you. Not dead worlds, where the only actors are the player and things that want to kill the player.
- NPC Mentors. NPCs who know what they're doing better than the player does and will lead the player through the world, adding life to the gameworld and giving the player an example to follow. Better than the old disembodied voice in the ear. Good recent examples: GUN's tutorial level featuring a hunting trip with your Pa; Call of Duty 4's Pripyat level featuring Capt. MacMillan as your mentor.
- Real-world clocks. Animal Crossing knew what time and date it was in the player's world, setting the events in your virtual town by the real-world clock. Day turned to night in your Animal Crossing town just as it did in your own living room; when you visited your town the next day, things had changed while you were away. Lends the gameworld a feeling of realness by implying that it keeps going even when you're not playing. Makes play of the game part of your everyday life in a low-impact way over the long term. Why haven't any other non-MMO games seized on this?
- Hand-scale interactions. Let me grab and turn doorknobs, pick up items, interact with computers, write & draw on paper, zip zippers and button buttons, slide open drawers, and perform other hand-scale tasks manually with full interactivity. Good recent examples: pulling and twisting the controls of Samus's ship in Metroid Prime 3; picking up items in Crysis; interacting with computer screens in Doom 3; most all the interactivity of Penumbra: Black Plague.
- Etc.
3.11.2008
Idealism
Three movies I love, which speak to anyone who wants to make a difference through the entertainment media:
Ed Wood -- Tim Burton's masterpiece. Profiles a strangely chipper lost soul of a man (Wood, played by Johnny Depp) who putters around film soundstages as a gofer but desperately wants to direct movies himself. When given the chance, he finds he's utterly unequipped to do so, flaunting his neuroses as he fails painfully and absolutely. Sometimes your best just isn't good enough, no matter how much you want it. Soul-crushingly sad and depressing for anyone at the bottom who dreams of one day making it big.
Barton Fink -- The Coen Brothers' surreal tale of a celebrated playwright's failed attempt to illuminate the plight of the common man, and break into Hollywood at the same time. While Barton's aloofness is unfortunate, his intentions are good; regardless, his minor sins are repaid with interest as his livelihood, family and everything he aspires to are crushed before him simply for trying to make great art.
Sullivan's Travels -- Surely part of the inspiration for Barton Fink. A minor film director aspires to create socially meaningful film about the plight of the common man (his dream project: an adaptation of "O Brother Where Art Thou," a made-up book spoofing The Grapes of Wrath and decades later the name of a Coen Brothers film.) His producers tell him he doesn't know the first thing about the common man, so he sets off on a journey of discovery, riding the rails dressed as a bum and accompanied by the plucky Veronica Lake. After many trials, Sullivan realizes that making stupid crap for the lowest common denominator to laugh at has value after all, and gives up on his high ideals of "art" and "social impact."
Any more to add?
2.23.2008
Thanks
Thank you to everyone I met over the last three days, who have made this my most incredible GDC yet (you know who you are.) It was wonderful meeting you all in person for the first time, and having that opportunity to exchange ideas and experiences, if only briefly. In the past, my most exciting memories from GDC were events; this year it was the people. I'm sincerely looking forward to seeing you all again soon.
2.06.2008
Concepts
A former colleague sent me this link which, as a fan of Monolith's games, I found really excellent. It's the flickr photo album of Monolith's art director, which includes concept pieces for the NOLF series and FEAR as well as sketches and studies from life. The drawings themselves are quite nice, and I always love seeing original concept work from great games. It's interesting seeing early sketches from FEAR that line up with comments I remember Craig Hubbard making about revisions that occurred over the course of that game's development: for instance, Jin was originally to be sniper support for the FEAR squad, which is why they gave her the red trigger finger on her glove; in the sketch here we see an early Jin with her rifle (which, by the way, appears to simply be the G2A2 with a large silencer attached. Not ideal for sniping considering how it handles in FEAR.) Similarly, it would seem that the ghoulish Assassins originally carried submachine guns. Lots of interesting behind-the-scenes insight to be found.
Oh, here's a funny connection I discovered while researching FEAR during my time in Texas: one of the main factions in FEAR is the ATC, Armacham Technology Corporation. Around midgame you raid their offices and mow down wave after wave of their private security force, including opponents in hulking powered combat armor, trying to discover the secrets behind Paxton Fettel and all the strange goings-on in and around the city's Auburn district. Displayed throughout their facilities are graphics and replicas of orbital satellites.
Funny thing is, the ATC first appeared in the backstory of Shogo: Mobile Armor Division, the first game that Hubbard was the writer and project leader for. According to an article on shogomad.com, Armacham is "one of the dominant megacorporations" in the Shogo universe:
Armacham Technology Corporation got its start with the manufacture of commercial satellites and ground-based communication systems. Eventually, they would expand to encompass civilian and military vehicle manufacture, musical equipment, security systems, and, predictably enough, MEV and MCA ["mobile combat armor"] technologies. Their MCAs (they discontinued their MEV lines after some early experiments) immediately caught the attention of the private sector and various military organizations alike.So, in both FEAR and Shogo, ATC manufactured communication satellites as well as powered combat armor for private and military use. Is the implication that FEAR and Shogo take place in the same universe, with the events of Shogo simply occurring many centuries further down the line? Going a step further, do the events of NOLF also take place in this same universe, some 40 or 50 years before the events of FEAR? I haven't seen any evidence of this last connection, but it's interesting to consider all three of these stories occurring within one strange little off-kilter alternate reality.
Well, enough geeking out for me! To get back to the point: I do wish more game concept art like the above were available, anywhere, in art books or online. It's nice seeing all the concept pieces in No More Heroes' New Game + mode, but why aren't all those concept works up online somewhere in high resolution (aside from a few nice images I found scattered throughout IGN's NMH screenshots?) IGN also houses a handful of gorgeous character concepts from Monolith's Condemned: Criminal Origins, but I unlocked all the concept art in that game and I know there's more to be found. Where's the rest of the great foundation sketches that led to the visual look of all my other favorite games? Granted I probably just haven't searched hard enough to find more of this kind of material, but it seems only the most wildly successful franchises make their concept art easily accessible, usually in the form of an expensive art book like the one for Half-Life 2 or World of Warcraft. Either that, or you get something like the anemic little "art book" that shipped with the Persona 3 special edition, which Atlus practically might as well not even have bothered with.
Have you got any good links to more video game concept art available online? Leave a comment, I'll appreciate it.
[Update: After a bit of googling, I found Creative Uncut's game art galleries. Much of it is devoted to concept art from fairly minor fighting games and JRPGS, but some interesting properties are represented including Bioshock, Metal Gear Solid, Resident Evil, Chrono Trigger, Okami, and Zelda. More resources to come, hopefully!]
[Update2: RPGamer has an extensive collection of concept art for nearly every RPG they list, both Western and Japanese. Click an upcoming, series, or other game title, then click "art." Their set of Mass Effect concepts is rather nice, for instance. Too bad the site is genre-specific.]
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