I found this game via the Project New Media Literacies, and what’s interesting is that high school students were involved in creating it.  Also, it’s got a bit of a social commentary that it brings the player through simulation, like many  of the games we feature here.

The point of this game is to manage a family. However, unlike in the Sims videogames where it’s easy to get a job, make money, buy stuff & make friends, in this game it’s actually HARD to even survive. The challenge of this role playing game is to figure out how you can get your family to survive for four years.     

Today, my boss at work showed me a “Game” Called The Graveyard. I use quotes, because this is more like a piece of art, powered by video game technology. The entire experience happens in about 5 minutes, where you guide an old woman down a path in a graveyard to a bench. She sits down, and a little music video plays, then you guide her back out.

The visuals are quite stunning, and a little eery. I think its really f’n cool.  I would love to see more stuff like this, and reminds me a bit of Brody Condons work.  The piece is done by a small team called Tale of Tales. Once I get a chance to try out their other games, Ill report back.

Check it out here.

PLAY HERE

I have to say, not really that impressed with this. While the surrounding art and production are rather impressive, the actual game itself is rather shallow, and does not serve the content that well. The game is based on the Torque Engine, a virtually free piece of software used for low cost games. It is primarily a first person engine, and ICED really would be better off as a 3rd person game.

Gameplay mainly consists of running around a deserted city, picking up little icons that do little more than flash up some text about planting trees, and doing other good public service acts. The city you navigate is eerily empty, and other than picking up these random icons that don’t really do anything, you can find scattered people here and there to talk to. Most of the time though, you can’t actually do anything because you are playing as an illegal alien. One woman asks you if you would like to register to vote. And then the games like “Nope, you can’t do that because you are illegal. If you try to register, you could get deported”. Fun?

However, there are also these Immigration agents that run around as well, and its hard to tell them apart from the people you are supposed to talk to. If you collide with them, you get sent to a camp. It feels like the game is designed just to have you get sent to the camp as fast as possible. It’s really jarring when it happens, since the city feels open and peaceful. Then suddenly BAM, in the camp you go.

Once you’re at the camp, things get a little more interesting since the sense of impending doom fits more appropriately, but ultimately, if you try to do anything interesting beyond saying “no” to every option, you get deported.

There is a jump action in the game, which is odd, since I can’t figure out why. It certainly doesn’t help you evade immigration officers.

This is an example of a good idea, poorly executed. And it also shows how resource intensive games are. To flesh this out to a good game would take a lot more energy, time, and ultimately, money.

Check it out regardless, I am curious to know what you think. Is there a better way to teach about Deportation through interactive media?

On a side note, I couldn’t get this to download on my Mac, worked fine in windows.

Apparently, according to some researchers in Finland, you actually enjoy getting killed in a game.  This interpretation of the data is totally panned by commenters on the New Scientist post.  But what about the anxiety people demonstrate (according to the study) when killing an enemy?

From the Gamasutra Article:

I decided to make a game about whaling and specifically about Japan’s claim that their whaling is scientific, to draw international attention to the issue. Games have the ability to reach a younger and broader audience than newspapers or television and a game distributed on the Internet can have a truly international impact.

Check out the article here.

And Play it here.

I personally think the idea is awesome, and is sure to raise a reaction from people.

SINGULARITY IS NEAR, Independent Feature Film Seeking Artists

The independent futuristic feature, SINGULARITY IS NEAR, based on the book by Ray Kurzweil is currently seeking Bay support in the Visual Effects and Art Departments. We are seeking 3D, compositing, and concept artists.

For more information, visit:

www.singularity.com/themovie

If you are interested in working on the project, please send your resume and a sample of your portfolio to Line Producer, Ehren Koepf at: ehrenkoepf@aol.com

Do to the high number of inquiries, our apologies if we do not respond immediately. Thank you.

From the NY Times Article:

With the Second World War passing from living memory, the Holocaust remains a subject taught as a singular event and obligation here, and Germans still seem to grapple almost eagerly with their own historic guilt and shame. That said, few German schoolchildren today can go home to ask their grandparents, much less their parents, what they did while Hitler was around. The end of the war is now as distant from them in time as the end of the First World War was from the Reagan presidency.

Paradoxically, this seems to have freed young Germans — adolescent ones, anyway — to talk more openly and in new ways about Nazis and the Holocaust. Passing is the shock therapy, with its films of piled corpses, that earlier generations of schoolchildren had to endure.

In the comic Esther recounts to her grandchildren what happened to her family, and in the process facts emerge about Hitler’s rise, about deportations and concentration camps. Without excusing anyone or spreading blame, the story, rather than focusing on Hitler and geopolitics, stresses instances where ordinary individuals — farmers, shopkeepers, soldiers, prison guards, even camp inmates — faced dilemmas, acted selfishly or ambiguously: showed themselves to be human. The medium’s intimacy and immediacy help boil down a vast subject to a few lives that young readers, and old ones too, can grasp.

March 17 - May 12, 6:30 - 9:30pm

More info here:

http://www.cel.sfsu.edu/multimedia/classes.cfm?selection=classes&ID=988291&Period=20082

Please pass this along to anyone you know who may be curious. If anyone non artside (I’m thinking producers and possibly engineers) wants to gain an basic understanding of how game art works, this is the class to learn. Please don’t hesitate to pass along my info to anyone who is interested.

This class uses Maya and Photoshop

cheers n thanks,

dabu

This essay by Greg Costikyan is called “Game Criticism, Why We Need It, and Why Reviews Aren’t It“:

The point is that a critic has to take his subject seriously, as an example of art, or at least of craft; and take seriously as well the intentionality of the creator, and the importance to those who experience the results of the results, and the impact on how they think and feel. Reviews don’t go there; they give you three stars. Good or bad, that’s all that reviews are concerned about.Criticism understands that “good” and “bad” are just the surface. What’s more important is why, and how, and to what end.

Posted on boingboing so it’s getting a lot of play. One commenter fires back:

We have criticism. The problem is that most of it is bullshit tangents that no one could possibly find relevant, largely due to the critic somehow lacking the wonderful cognitive check that allows the rest of us to internally query: “Who fuckin’ cares?”.

What do you think?

From the Wired Article:

The first comic books were created as collaborative effort with the US Army Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, which did the initial character and plot development. They are based on the security forces, both military and police, in the Middle East. The initiative for the comic-book project came from the US Department of Defense’s Central Command, which is responsible for US security interests in 25 Middle Eastern and Arab nations. It is hoped that the comics will help engender respect among children for the national police force and the new Iraqi Army.