Here’s another one she did for Uncharted 2…

There are some genuine talents in the world of music, but it’s dominated by ‘characters’ played by people who are likely to be case studies for psychologists in the future. Gaming doesn’t have talents that make such an effort to stand out (except CliffyB, maybe) because the most talented people in games sit behind computer screens coding and rendering all day. It’s the same problem Microsoft have when Bill Gates gets all the praise for Windows, when there are thousands of people worldwide who did the real work. John Carmack stands out as someone willing to stand up, be counted but also credit his team. He recently said of his work on id’s Rage HD app for the iPhone, “I got the groundwork done, then the guys did all of the real work.”

But this begs the question, does culture, or movements, require icons to make it happen? Obviously this works for music and movies when Tom Cruise goes onto a poster, it’ll sell regardless of the manure it’s advertising. The same goes for when Lady GaGa goes out drinking in a ridiculous costume, it helps sell more albums and tickets. These are icons of a movement that will fade away in a way that Chopin never will. This is because they are icons in a movement, not actual great talents that will be recounted for aeons. Chopin or Beethoven were the genius’ of their time, and gaming has these.

Hideo Kojima, John Carmack and countless others have been the genius minds behind gaming, but they certainly have not shaped its culture, much in the same way Chopin was a genius musician, but did nothing to shape its culture. Having said that, Carmack might have done some cultural shifting when Doom was released – as now, decades on, hundreds of FPS clones with monsters are being released.

Culture is defined by its people. Metal music is great, but the culture around it is of beer swilling Pantera fans who get prissy when a band break up and shoot someone from said band. They’re depicted in a way that makes them look like juvenile delinquents in their mid-20s and early-30s who simply won’t let go of their youths. Gaming culture isn’t too far away from it. The world of gaming is getting very refined and has some incredible games that anyone can enjoy (I’m talking Flower more then Wii Beach Sports Resort). Show anyone Shadow of the Colossuses and they will get excited, but the gaming world is defined more by Gears of War (brash, loud and dark). That is not to say that the things defining it to the public are bad. Gears is an incredible series, but it’s by no means ‘genius’.

To the discerning eye, gaming is like metal. No real brains in there, lots of loudness, shouty and dark leading to messed up people who play games trying to kill each other with their parents’ pistols. This means it’s not inviting enough for someone outside to dig a bit deeper and find their “Chopin” of gaming and enjoy it for what it is. Who knows, maybe they’ll migrate from Mario to Killzone in no time because they find that’s their niche. Much like movies, for every “Knight & Day” there’s a piece of genius in there. And then there’s the flipside, where we enjoy trash because it’s trash, like McDonalds. So the loud, shooty games that make no difference at all, or fail to impress are bland and rubbish, but we love them because of it!

And so comes the main issue here… gaming has no culture, no icons, and no one is trying to step out from the shadows and define it. A few years ago a pro gamer called Fatal1ty tried to step out and be the icon but ended up setting the idea of a tangible culture back a few years by simply playing Unreal Tournament and, rather then even attempting to promote it as a sport, cashed in on expensive items as if he was creating the digital age’s answer to Air Jordans. This plays right into the hands of the juvenile delinquent image.

It’s not an issue for those of us who play games. Not at all. It is, however, and issue for the detractors. There’s too much fuel for the fire for politicians like Hillary Clinton, who are afraid of what games make people become (murderers, basically). They are afraid that kids will play GTA and then idolise the digital character, rather then the men and women who made the game. Much like music, people idolise Kurt Cobaine, not the songs themselves necessarily. It’s almost like the artform needs to be a conduit to falling in love with the artist. Gaming doesn’t have that, and when it does it looks a bit weird and creepy (people who love Hideo Kojima “should be doing something better with themselves”).

I’ve no solution to this scenario – but as a brain dump it’s an interesting case study to look at what kind of culture we’re building up around us. If we weren’t involved, would we even like it or attempt to ‘jump in’ to gaming?

I couldn’t help but post this when I spotted it, a cool “Mad Men” esque homage to old school Nintendo in the form of a product poster from the 50s. Retro!

Okami is always looked at as a beautifully artistic game

When we look at titles like FIFA or Madden, though, it’s purely a piece of objective software, rather then a piece of art. Even if hundreds of man-hours are lovingly poured into the rendering of every thinly-layered hairline in Wayne Rooney’s head, you would still be pushed quite hard to argue that FIFA is an artistic piece of work. Take a snapshot of it, though, and maybe you’re onto something.

The argument changes, that perhaps only artistic software creation, like upcoming Disney title “Epic Mickey” can make a game artistic – and that everything else is just software. Even Crysis, which is by far one of the most beautiful looking games we’ll lay our eyes on is just a huge piece of software rather then an artistic piece. Killzone 3 will always be looked at as a big dirty shooter game, rather then a piece of art.

As a computer scientist by trade, I find a lot of poetic justice to be found in wonderfully written code. Sure, that’s all a bit metrosexual but I do think future generations will get a lot of pleasure from reading lines of well written code. The seeds of that are being laid down with sites like Stack Overflow and Github. So, something like Killzone which has a wonderfully rendered art style – with millions of polygons going into creating a very easy-on-the-eye world can become artistic, not only because of that, but also because it does this so smoothly and elegantly with well written code. Sure we can’t see it – but we’re gamers. We can feel it working in the background. You know something’s written well because it just works.

As we move into an era where programmers can more elegantly express themselves because hardware can catch up to our over-active imaginations and artists can actually stop holding back their talent to allow rendering engines to work we might see art spill out from games, rather then the other way around. Rather then books, paintings or films inspiring game developers, game developers can inspire authors, painters and film makers.

Let’s be honest, games can be wonderful things. It takes years to make one game. A lot of hard work goes into the development of a good game, but it can be forgotten so quickly. Only the best survive to make more iterations of their title. And most often, those are the prettiest in terms of software and artwork. Can we stop trying to compare games to paintings, and define our own version of “art” now?

Surely playing any random level of New Super Mario Bros on the Wii is as artistic and immersive an experience as seeing a Van Gogh in Amsterdam? Not only that, considering games as art opens the world of art up to millions more people then ‘art’ today is opening itself up to. By no means am I saying all games are art, but if we analyse games like Halo like we analyse a new piece of classical music then maybe the world of gaming will attract more and more talent, keeping both the software and artwork side of things in perfect harmonic orchestral sync.

No plastic peripherals, absurd pricetag or has-been gameplay is to be found here. No, simple, clever and well-rounded is the best way to describe the relatively new EA franchise. And here is the box you’ll be staring at when you choose this over the Activision stable-mate:

360 and PS3 art. I'm not sure why they're both here, given it's the same.

Some stages are wonderfully coloured, others can be dull and dark at times

Very rarely do we review Wii games here. Not because the Wii is a bad console, but because the Wii is a terrible platform for games right now – consistently being beaten down by what feels like its bigger brothers: the 360 and PS3.

But once in a while a title that isn’t featuring Mario or Link arrives that can really warm the cockles of your heart. This time, it’s the turn of A Boy & His Blob. This is a disc release, not a virtual console download. Probably one of the nicest, cutest and easiest platformers out there that uses the Wiimote in lazy fashion – just how I want it. This can be played in classic controller style, which appeals to old fogies like me a lot.

The game has a simple premise, you control a boy in a wonderfully rendered cartoon world, and you’re friend, who happens to be a blob, helps you go through platforming objectives by turning into ladders, holes in the ground, and so on. Your only real enemy are various sized black blobs (yours is white). It’s funny, this game hasn’t gotten any of the slack from the evil blobs being black that LocoRoco did. The claim there being that it was racist. The story follows the blob who lands on earth into the path of the boy after his home planet of blobbolonia…. you get the jist. This is typical Nintendo light & fluffy story telling.

Use of lighting effects on the hand-drawn artwork is wonderful

You control the boy and unlock abilities of the blob by collecting jelly beans as you progress through the game. These jellybeans are accessed by an in-game menu that pops up akin to Crysis, ironically. Each Jellybean is thrown on the ground for the blob to eat, and he will diligently perform whatever task assigned by said jellybean. These are mundane tasks such as becoming a hole in the ground, or a ladder but get interesting when you can parachute or make the bubble go around you in order to bounce around a stage.

This game came out originally on the SNES 20 years ago, designed by the Pitfall series creator, and was re-released earlier on DS, only to get a full port on the Wii. It features four main area’s and a total of 40 stages to platform your way through, as well as packing 40 challenge area’s.

The graphics are beautiful. The hand-drawn style really lends itself to the Wii, and it features some seriously impressive lighting effects that will whimsically make you smile like a 10 year old boy. The only downfall to this artwork is that throughout the game, a lot of motifs are re-played over and over as the four different stages of the game take places in roughly the same locations.

Blobolonia looks a bit Mario Land ish at times

To give this game extra cute factor, you can hug the blob for doing a good job. Or, alternatively, you can scold him for being a bad blob. Do both and you can probably scar the blob for life, turning him into a white trash hill billy blob that’ll undoubtedly raise a family of unruly young blobs to ruin Blobolonia’s suburbs.

Check this game out if you find it. I only stumbled across it and thought it looked interesting enough to dust off my Wii. It was released earlier on the DS so there’s a high chance of finding this in a bargain bin or second-hand shelf. It’s worth the experience. The full Wii version is due later this week.