You want games as art? I'll give you games as art.

Hatetris.

This is game-programming-as-sculpture, not "I want to make something that's fun to play" (sculpture equivalent: "I want to make something that looks pretty"), but an attempt to achieve a platonic ideal -- find the sculpture already in the stone. Everyone who's played Tetris has felt at some time like the game hates them. This is an attempt to program a version of Tetris that really does hate you, the pattern within the pattern made real.

It's not perfect. I don't think it quite works. It's a draft. But it's still art.

Floor Wax / Dessert Topping

Game designer interviews are depressing. There's too much money on the line for candid statements. I don't remember the last time I read or watched an interview with a game designer where I didn't always know what the response would be just by reading the question.

Take this one, for instance.

It's about Dead Space 2.

I loved Dead Space. Loved loved loved. I would go so far as to say I lurveded Dead Space. I am really looking forward to Dead Space 2. The reveal trailor has me pumped. Necromorphs and PTSD? Yes, please!

(I want a whole Aliens movie with no aliens in it, just Ripley dealing with PTSD. Remember, the amount of subjective time she's spent between the beginning of the first movie and the end of the fourth is maybe two months, and most of that was as a dockworker between the rescue at the beginning of Aliens and getting recruited to go back to the colony.)

Man, take a look at that interview. "We're adding more action!" "Won't that entail reducing the horror?" "No, there'll be just as much horror as before, but more action! We're empowering the protagonist!"

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't horror traditionally entail giving the audience the impression of a disempowered protagonist? (Ha! Irony, suggesting action precludes horror in a blog post that invokes Aliens. But you know what I mean.)

...

Again, I get it. They've got to say something. Gotta keep the hype up. Gotta chase that Modern Warfare 2 audience, but can't risk scaring away the established fans either.

The really terrible thing is, even if they're being completely sincere, and they're Aliens-level competent, and it really is going to be just as scary as Dead Space while also being way more action-packed, this interview doesn't tell me that, because they'd be saying the exact same thing if they had no idea what they were doing, and were just creating an incoherent mess. It has zero information content.

So much gaming press is like that.

That new X-Com first-person shooter thing

Okay, look. When I was... I think it was eight? Six?

Really young, anyway.

When I was really young I remember, vividly, watching television and seeing a commercial for some Consumer Reports type thing, I'm pretty sure it wasn't actually Consumer Reports, but something that lists products by quality. And I remember a tagline, "We sort products by the most reliable something something whatever... by brand name."

It didn't actually say something something whatever. It used coherent language. But "...by brand name" was the tagline.

I remember this vividly because I remember hearing that, and even at six, or eight, or whatever, thinking "That's bullshit. There's no way sorting by brand name is going to make for a sufficiently accurate quality metric. Different companies excel in different areas. You're selling me something." I didn't use those words exactly, but that's what I thought.

My parents were hippies. They taught me at a young age that anyone trying to sell me something is my enemy.

(Growing up a bit more I've come to realize that's not the best way to look at the world in all contexts, but it's still my default filter.)

2K is making an X-Com FPS. I am supposed to be excited by this because X-Com was great, so X-Com as an FPS should be great. But there's no reason why that should hold true! Just because X-Com was a great isometric base-building-and-squad-tactics game at some point in the past doesn't mean it'll make a great FPS now. 2K marketing guys, whichever one of you wrote the press release you have to know that you're insulting my intelligence by presenting such a facile argument. And, I mean, I know, you're a press release writer. You have to write something. Drawing on the power of established brands to pitch your new product is a tried-and-tested marketing technique and it works. I get it.

None of that matters. You're selling me something. In particular you're selling me bullshit and absent logic. I'm not buying it.

I will give this FPS a fair shake. I'm sure the people who actually are making it want to make a good product. I won't hold the stupid, insulting press release against the game. But it is a stupid and insulting press release and it's not exactly making me better-disposed towards the products.

At least put a picture of a Chrissalid in there.