video game babble

Yesterday pretty much fell into a big hole called "System Shock 2". Thanks, Matt. Today might do the same. ( SS2 spoiling commentary )

Also, I think there's some room to ponder the particular video game genre of "player wanders around a deserted spaceship, piecing together a horror story based on scattered log entries". SS2 is an example of this, so're the Marathon/Halo games, so's Project Firestart back on the lowly c64. PF's story is of bio-manipulation gone wrong, rather than AIs going crazy, but it's selling the exact same experience - wandering around a deserted spacecraft, never sure what's going to jump out at you next, trying to figure out what went wrong. Right down to the early close-up of a dead person sprawled next to a warning written on the wall in their own blood. (Also cross-reference Portal, another epistolary novel game, which I haven't played - lone astronaut comes back to Earth after some kind of Singularity, and puts the pieces together by data-mining; the whole game is you doing the data-mining. Lacks the jump-out-and-scare-you element, I believe.)

In other news, I sent off some e-mail at, like, 6AM this morning (see "big hole called System Shock 2") regarding the work I may've found at SIGGRAPH, and got replies by the time I returned to consciousness; things still look pretty positive! Still no details in public 'cause nothing's firm yet.

influence?

In Borders. Browsing the art books. I didn't find what I was looking for, but I found something else: a collection of the work of Milton Glaser. With much commentary by him.

Holy shit his deco/psychedelia solid color sinuosity was everywhere growing up in the Seventies and I think he's a major subliminal influence on me arrgh!.

I didn't look at the price on the book. Way out of my range right now, I'm sure. I'll dig for it later, if things work out well.

I'm going other stylistic and thematic places, but there's a lot of the same visual concerns in my signature style as in his. Though his comment at one point that he adopted it as a time-saving measure is exactly opposite to me; I spend way too much time on tiny details as a rule. I've been trying to cut back but I feel like it's still important to get that half-pixel-wide shape right sometimes.

Also, wholly unrelated, this is the coolest take on "driving game" since "Night Driver", even if it's just a little demo fragment Windows executable. Be sure to hit F1 and play with the options; it's lovely.