Art has proved a fecund source of game ideas. Tetsuya Mizuguchi was inspired by Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky to create Rez; Ken Levine drew on the Art Deco movement for Bioshock; Uncharted co-lead designer Richard Lemarchand looked at the works of Victorian painters such as David Roberts and Caspar David Friedrich for the exotic locations that Nathan Drake discovers. And countless dungeon designers have looked at the complex works of MC Escher and Giovanni Battista Piranesi for their labyrinthine environments.

– Keith Stuart @ The Guardian

These images have a playful quality — playful about violence — which makes me think about game design, and the pleasures of violent videogames.

CUT magazine: ‘Soft Guerilla’

A series of weapons made from harmless materials for a feature article centred around the topic of ‘Guerilla Gardening’ and ‘Yarn Bombing’.

Photography: Sam Hofman

– Kyle Bean

– Phil Noto

Via Boing Boing.

The show consisted of a minecraft themed gallery, complete with 2 crafting tables, tools, working LED torches, a creeper costume that greeted you at the door, and a fully interactive grass block world in the center. The wall textures, the crafting tables and the center grass block are all to scale (1 meter cubes), to increase immersion and really make you feel like you’re in Minecraft. Clearly the possibilities for a project like this are endless so it was extremely difficult for us not to pursue other ideas we had (Steve costume, pigs, cows, music, automatic day/night cycle, minecarts etc.). For purposes of time and budget, we had to restrict ourselves from getting too crazy.

– realworldminecraft.com

Via Rock, Paper, Shotgun.

motorcycles out of watch parts by dkart71

Someone, please, make a game where the player constructs a motorcycle made out of watch parts, and then rides to safety:

• Shrink the player until a wristwatch is the right size for motorcycle parts
• Drop the player into a magical (high-tech, alien, etc.) wristwatch factory
• – My person favorite: neo-retro Evil Nazi wristwatch factory
• Remind the player that watch parts can be assembled into motorcycles
• Sound the burglar alarm
• Start winding up the clockwork watchmen, make it loud
• Remind the player that watchmen are dangerous, and motorcycles go faster than watchmen
• Every so often, wind up more clockwork watchmen, as incentive for the player to finish that motorcycle ….

If the player doesn’t build a motorcycle in time … well, bad things probably happen … if it were my Evil Nazi Wristwatch factory, I would release the Giant Wind-Up Chattering Teeth … but you have your own kind of fun, and be sure to let me know about it, I’ll award you the Handy Vandal Medal of Supreme Coolness.

Via Boing Boing.

Jeff Koons Must Die!!! The Video Game from Hunter Jonakin.

– Tip of the hat to Agent 99 for the link

Obsolete (2006)

This belongs in a game somewhere. It really does.

Pawel Hynek’s 2006 image “Obsolete” depicts a homeless robot begging for electrical power; it’s striking and funny as well as a little uncomfortable-making.

– Cory Doctorow @ Boing Boing

I’m reminded of William Gibson’s novel Mona Lisa Overdrive, where we encounter The Finn (a character from earlier Gibson novels) now incarnated as a back-alley machine personality construct:

“I wanna talk to him,” she said, her voice hard and careful.

“He’s dead.”

“I know that.”

A silence followed, and Kumiko heard a sound that might have been the wind, a cold, grit-laden wind scouring the curve of the geodesics far above them.

“He’s not here,” the voice said, and seemed to recede. “Round the corner, half a block, left into the alley.”

Kumiko would remember the alley always: dark brick slick with damp, hooded ventilators trailing black streamers of congealed dust, a yellow bulb in a cage of corroded alloy, the low growth of empty bottles that sprouted at the base of either wall, the man-sized nests of crumpled fax and white foam packing segments, and the sound of Sally’s bootheels.

Past the bulb’s dim glow was darkness, though a reflected gleam on wet brick showed a final wall, cul-de- sac, and Kumiko hesitated, frightened by a sudden stir of echo, a scurrying, the steady dripping of water. . . .

Sally raised her hand. A tight beam of very bright light framed a sharp circle of paint-scrawled brick, then smoothly descended.

Descended until it found the thing at the base of the wall, dull metal, an upright rounded fixture that Kumiko mistook for another ventilator. Near its base were the stubs of white candles, a flat plastic flask filled with a clear liquid, an assortment of cigarette packets, a scattering of loose cigarettes, and an elaborate, multiarmed figure drawn in what appeared to be white powdered chalk.

Sally stepped forward, the beam held steady, and Kumiko saw that the armored thing was bolted into the brickwork with massive rivets. “Finn?”

A rapid flicker of pink light from a horizontal slot.

“Hey, Finn, man . . .” An uncharacteristic hesitation in her voice . . .

“Moll.” A grating quality, as if through a broken speaker. “What’s with the flash? You still got amps in? Gettin’ old, you can’t see in the dark so good?”

“For my friend.”

Something moved behind the slot, its color the unhealthy pink of hot cigarette ash in noon sunlight, and Kumiko’s face was washed with a stutter of light.

“Yeah,” grated the voice, “so who’s she?”

“Yanaka’s daughter.”

“No shit.”

Sally lowered the light; it fell on the candles, the flask, the damp gray cigarettes, the white symbol with its feathery arms.

“Help yourself to the offerings,” said the voice. “That’s half a liter of Moskovskaya there. The hoodoo mark’s flour. Tough luck; the high rollers draw ‘em in cocaine.”

“Jesus,” Sally said, an odd distance in her voice, squatting down, “I don’t believe this.” Kumiko watched as she picked up the flask and sniffed at the contents.

“Drink it. It’s good shit. Fuckin’ better be. Nobody shortcounts the oracle, not if they know what’s good for ‘em.”

“Finn,” Sally said, then tilted the flask and swallowed, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, “you gotta be crazy. . . .”

“I should be so lucky. A rig like this, I’m pushing it to have a little imagination, let alone crazy.”

– Link

Beholder by Coop

Via Boing Boing.

I played many hours of Dungeons & Dragons back in my youth — enough that I feel qualified to answer the question, “Is the Beholder the coolest monster in the game?”

Yes. Yes it is. Si monumentum requiris, circumspice ….

Test Tube Baby — T-shirt design by Patrickspens.

Via Laughing Squid.

This should be a game! Won’t someone think of the children?