RND/ to consider scenes, notes, critique and conceptual art based around modern notions of the so-called ‘aaa games industry’ (note: say ‘Triple A’ like Jim Sterling Does ie while channelling Skeletor)
Oh the privilege of unawareness of privilege.
—
No more or less
—
Candy coated sh1t king.
Agent K: Do you know the most destructive force in universe
– Agent J: Sugar?
(From) Men In Black II movie, 2012
—
Celebrating gamedev diversity.
Consider Liz Ryerson’s excellent in depth response to Darius Kazemis.
—
On sex, honesty and public nostalgia – to consider Cibele by Nina Freeman.
—
To consider a digital remix of #ps4 & shrimp, featuring Odontodactylus Scyllarus and a submerged PS4 controller.
—
To consider all characters from David Cage games as S.F.F simply fucking freaky.
—
To consider Dayz’s lovable Lag Dog (RIP DayZ):
First identified by LOLtube player Jack Frags – Lag Dog seems capable of small quantum leaps in local dimensional spacetime frames and is allegedly capable of passing through walls. He’s never quite where you expect him.
Oh, the happy existence and lovable presence of Lag Dog as an ironic symbolic reminder, both of DayZ’s general historical desync, lag and dire frame rates – it’s inherently poor design – as a sign for frustrated players to (somewhat) philosophically ask why are we even playing this forever shit ‘Permanent Alpha’ project?
—
Developer Psychosis Syndrome. On digital homicide.
Consider frivolous gamedev litigation as the unwise in pursuit of the apathetic
– paraphrasing Oscar Wilde
Useful terms:
– Shovelshitware”: what such devs do
– Dingleberry Dev: low hanging gamedevs
– Psychodevs: devs who hate on players for hating on projects they themelves obviously had no love making.
—
Dual Universe concept art, retouched enlarged with hybrid concept screen.
—
To consider the faded brown sadness of Valvetime website, alas – trying in silent lightly weeping vain to show a vague semblance of interest concerning the standardized industry micro-innovations of Valve Hypercorporation, who neither know nor care of said website.
—
Fading heatmap of a gamedev’s lament – the desperately slow sad heat generated by being forced to design video games – having to sit and stare at screen for years in terminal boredom.
—
Seriously, fuck crafting. File under BS jobs / Busywork / Playbor.
—
So welcome to the Funhaus Apocalypse.
—
To consider Big Gabe of Valve ‘Not Your Friend’ Hypercorporation as slightly psychotic looking, knife collecting video game kingdom overlord wearing broken glasses, with a thousand yard ultra Capitalist stare – lording fiendishly over people’s hopes and dreams for the next instalment of a once popular franchise. (Note: fuck Gabe Newell. Black Lives Matter, Valve!)
—
Standard eye rolling AAA Games Industry grade wisdom.
—
Big Crunch: life under digital capitalism.
—
AAA games industry nostalgia as not what it once wasn’t.
—
GString Mod Hammer Editor blues.
Thousands of human years worth of pointless effort and struggle just to get one fucking textured cube to appear.
—
Considering Half Life 2 “Pushcart Model 01a”:
Example scenario: In which you develop a mild postmodern fetish for symbolic Half Life 2 / GMod object / model / junk prop / industrial transportation mode ‘pushcartmdl’ aka pushcart01a.
In everyday usage one calls such industrial objects Bellman Carts – hotel carts or simply luggage carts – which point to an entire minor miserable world of pointless shifting of other people’s material belongings – a wasted life of servitude and drudgery.
This pushcart model is unusual in that its physical properties are highly concave due to the useful void in the middle. Somehow this makes it seem it fits awkwardly in its particular video game world-space. They cannot be stacked easily, and also seem bottom heavy, despite this fact itself seeming obvious.
Perhaps this pushcart model holds such interest, precisely because it seems largely ignored; its cultural status as an everyday object with mundane usage – albeit on slight fringes of recognizability – somehow prevents its full acceptance in a virtual play world.
In sandbox game Garry’s Mod, such a prop is merely one amongst thousands, yet – for you at least – it gives off a strange air of unexplored potential. Almost as another ‘play space’ were waiting to happen or emerge from the old and dead.
Normally, players just use this prop to fly via its janky physics – yet if only such play generally allowed one’s imagination to soar.
—
Historical peasant uprising; intense graphical expressions of old filthy casual console (dead memes) yoke.
—
To ask, in what ways does Half Life 3 exist andor not?
To consider that one is already living and playing in a post (/modern) Half Llife 3 era – that there seems a way in which game experiences like HL3 are not only already ‘confirmed’ but already in a complex process of active play by a large passionate userbase.
That is, to say, by simply pretending that for example Half Life 3 exists – or even unconsciously pretending to pretend – one might already somehow be playing Half Life 3.
In which there seems a way in which it does not matter too much whether the ‘real’ Half Life 3 by Evil Valve Hypercorporation ever releases – discussions about it appear to fully function as a living online social play space – its very own diffused reality / simulation – one might call such play “Hype Life 3: Confirmed.”
There appears a mass psychological emergent need to confirm the existence of HS3 – to state in varied ways how it might or might not exist. Such practice feels like a cross between a conceptual art MMORPG and an Alternative-To-Reality game – forms of play termed verisimilitudes.
HL3:C seems a persistent potential play space of potentials – ideas and concepts continually evolving, floating around with strange life and momentum – a play system of hopes ideals and expectations. Vivid imaginings.
No longer does the old expectation equation of Progress (times) Valve Time (over) Expectations (plus) Expectations (times) Valve Time apply – playing HL3:C everyone gets the HL3 they think or imagine they want or need simultaneously – maybe even if they don’t want or need it.
Just like HL3 in the distributed hive mind of fans, many definitive versions of HL3:C exist.
Rather than endlessly wait for sum video game hypercorp to create the second coming of Freeman, consider how ‘endlessly waiting for some video game hypercorp to create the second coming of Freeman’ might itself be an expression of HL3:C gameplay – part of an incredibly complex holographic network of emotions, truths / illusions which makes up tje semi transparent bio digital polyverses of social dream spaces like HL3. So rather than just saying – “Pffff, Half Life 3 will never release” – also consider such statements yet another part of the game – a virtual experience one can play with / in – ignore, respond to or modify on the fly.
Indeed, the active play state of Hype Life 3: Confirmed may apply to any number of other games or concepts which involve or require wish fulfilment media / hype – social confirmation or mass alternative reality simulation to manifest (Star Citizen, anyone?)
—
I believe in Zolani Stewart.
—
To consider interactive fictions as games with the burden of interactivity.
—
Term: “Crapolaware” (defined here in the general sense given by Jim Sterlingson, garme journalism god who referred to one of worst games of 2012 as “A fucking jar of monkey anuses”): demonstrably dull, all too explicably bland, barren, sterile, desiccated, profoundly derivative, rehashed lazy / generally shoddy ass play forms – industry mandated throwbacks featuring washed out muddy or murky textures, virtually no style, a terminally boring pace with loads of padded out filler and awesomely janky mechanics – casually farted out by roving hit and run bands of shady, self hating, violently apathetic fly-by-night developer cowboys with a near pathological interest in cheap knock offs and weightless, hyper generic misanthropically cynical cash-ins.
—
To consider 1337 hardcore g4rm3r Jimmy ‘getr3ktn00bz-ipwnu’ de Dantas denial of the_real.
“They Garme – We Live.”
—
AAA Games Industry Notes / Critique / Conceptual Art (2)
// how to play big science