- Art - what makes a impact in a digital, global world? (Inspired by deviantART)
- Games - how do they change the way we interact with computers, movies and games
When more and more of what fills our leisure time is digital and also increasingly online - how does that affect "art" in the traditional sense? Is there any point in printing out a photo, when you can put it on Flickr, Picasaweb or deviantART and get it in front of more people - get better feedback - and improve your skills along with their enjoyment?
Or take this great artwork by Heise - in 8 hours it got the attention of nearly 10 000 people - and in 14 of over 20 000- a lot more than most "regular" art shows get in a week or more (if at all). It is a stunning piece, so full of details and suggested meaning, truly on par with several traditional portraits I've seen in galleries and museum across Europe. And it is online, freely viewable to view and download.
devStats: submitted: 8h 20m ago - favourites: 1,299 - Views: 9,831
[update]: by 14h 15m favourites = 2,513 and views = 21,751 ...
How can you (aka the professional) compete with the skill and combined leisure time of millions - and more importantly - should you? Not only in terms of attention, but in terms of monetary gains. In an era of abundance, what place is there for those who still 'need' a living from their art?
Camera, action!
The GDC is underway/over, so there are a lot of games related articles with more than just reviews coming out from Gamasutra. One rather interesting is about "camera theory" in terms of how it affects gameplay and drives the player trough the story."a player will base decisions upon what is perceivable, and a given scene may well present a variety of options to the player" - I felt that when testing GRAW2 before the weekend, as the map and the pan made me aware of what might be behind a given building and made me send the team around the left corner rather than the right...
From break-out cut scenes in Final Fantasy, to in-game events in Half Life 2 - games are changing how they tell or explore events, evolving and learning - just like cinema did over the decades, and television did when it expanded into cable and storyland (thank you HBO)
So will there be a new way of doing "cinema" for games? Or will it vary greatly across the genres, picking up the current trends in the relevant settings in other media outlets - like sportscasts, TV drama and perhaps sitcoms? One rule to guide them, or simply moving to the next level in terms of doing a solid job based on some accepted and tested principles (in just the same way as Sheldon and Campell have given a leg up for working with characters and story, respectively)? Hopefully for the viability of the "nextgen" consoles, which ever direction gains prominence - games as entertainment and valid choices (on par with tv and magazines) will continue to enter the 'mainstream mass market suburbia', one inquisitive teen at a time!
-listening to Joost - Music Nation, chillin' with Living Legends cool beats
...and the sun was actually still out when I got back from work - probably why there is energy left over for this post and possibly another later on...
