Video Games
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Space Invaders
In September, LA Game Space finally loosed Experimental Game Pack 01 upon the world. Fifteen bucks to Kickstarter, and you’ll find yourself in possession of 23 strange, disturbing, funny, moving, sad and psychedelic games from some of the world’s best and most promising indie designers. Back-story: It’s 2008. Two guys meet at a conference. The guys are Daniel Rehn and Adam Robezzoli. They’re thinking, you know what the indie game world could use? A space. A real-world physical location for exhibits and events, a speaker series, a research lab and an artist residency. Institutions such as the Museum of the […]
by Heather Chaplin on Oct 21, 2013 -
Beyond: Two Souls at the Tribeca Film Festival
The distance between video games and cinema has been shrinking for years. Nowhere was this more obvious than in the presentation of Beyond: Two Souls last Saturday during the Tribeca Film Festival’s closing weekend, an event billed as the first time a video game has ever been shown in a film festival. Certainly in the packed SVA theater, past the red carpet for actors like Elliot Page and after the enthusiastic introduction by Tribeca’s Chief Creative Officer Geoffrey Gilmore, it felt like a convergence of the two media that we haven’t seen before. This isn’t a game based on a […]
by Randy Astle on May 2, 2013 -
GRAHAM LEGGAT, 1960 – 2011
Graham Leggat, the executive director of the San Francisco Film Society and a former Contributing Editor of Filmmaker, died yesterday at his Bay Area home from cancer. Always erudite and elegant, Leggat brought intelligence and real creativity to the worlds of film festivals, exhibition and journalism. From his obituary in Variety: For nearly six exciting and transformative years, Graham Leggat led the San Francisco Film Society with irrepressible determination, dash and design,” said Pat McBaine, president of the Film Society’s board of directors. “His vision, leadership, passion, work ethic, tenacity, imagination and daring along with his colorful language and wicked […]
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 26, 2011 -
IS THIS VIDEOGAME TRAILER BETTER THAN MOST MOVIE TRAILERS?
AICN thinks this trailer for the zombie game Dead Island might be better than most movie trailers, and I tend to agree. More Dead Island Videos
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 16, 2011 -
VISITING “PANDEMIC” MISSION CONTROL WITH LANCE WEILER
I stopped by Sundance’s New Frontiers building yesterday and visited Pandemic 1.0 with its creator, Lance Weiler. Here’s a short, casual Flip video with Weiler showing me the two rooms of the installation. For more info on this piece, read Weiler’s column in this issue of Filmmaker. And here’s Jamie Stuart’s piece on Weiler shot this week in Park City at our Main Street lounge.
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 28, 2011 -
MICHELLE BYRD JOINS GAMES FOR CHANGE
Here’s news I’m just coming across — former IFP Executive Director Michelle Byrd has joined the non-profit Games for Change as Co-President. Congratulations to Michelle, and I look forward to following the organization’s next endeavors. From the press release: For Immediate Release – New York, NY (July 12, 2010) – The Board of Directors of Games for Change announced today the appointment of Asi Burak and Michelle Byrd as Co-Presidents of Games for Change, the leading global advocate for making and supporting digital social impact games. Mr. Burak and Ms. Byrd will work together on the strategic vision of the […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 18, 2010 -
WHAT’S IN MY INSTAPAPER (SUNDAY MORNING LINKS)
Here are a few links I sent to my Instapaper account and have been reading this weekend. * When we queried a few filmmakers for a column on software and apps in the new issue of Filmmaker, I noted the number of respondents who had migrated to the Android operating system. I recalled meeting an Android developer at SXSW this year, and he told me he was planning for the platform’s rapid rise. He also said that he was an Apple fan too, and he felt the competition would be a good thing for both platforms. There’s an exchange along […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 11, 2010 -
GRAND THEFT AUTO’S COCAINE NIGHTS
A misapprehension among people who do not play videogames is that the people who play them do so because these games must be fun. I am not saying that videogames are not fun. Sometimes they are and sometimes they are not, and whether one would call a game “fun” often has little bearing on whether or not one keeps playing it. To say that you play games because you are looking for fun is like saying you are hopping online or checking your iPhone because you are seeking information. You are, of course, but it’s way more complicated than that. […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 25, 2010 -
LOVE, HATE, LABUTE AND “HEAVY RAIN”
I took note of the videogame Heavy Rain after reading Seth Schiesel’s wildly positive review in the New York Times. Here are the first two grafs: The big storm has been raging for days. The winds around the eaves make me lonely, melancholy, and yet my guilt forces me forward in search of redemption. I have probably spent 10,000 hours playing various sorts of electronic games. But no single-player experience has made me as genuinely nervous, unsettled, surprised, emotionally riven and altogether involved as Heavy Rain, a noir murder mystery inspired by film masters like Hitchcock, Kubrick and David Lynch. […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 22, 2010 -
LEFT JOYSTICK
The British newspaper The Guardian has long been a daily read for its left-leaning political coverage. Now they’ve added a Gamesblog, so you can check them out for smart takes on gaming played on platforms ranging from PCs to phones. Amid the obvious — like links to the new Doom 3 demos — the blog discusses a game featuring an s/m virtual world, a forthcoming game in which one can hunt Osama Bin Laden, and the poltical potential of quickly conceived and rendered downloaded Java games.
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 2, 2004
