Blips: Television X

Source: Revisiting the gxTV, a “television for gamers” from 1997
Author: Dan Solberg
Site: Kill Screen

One aspect of video games that often gets overlooked is the TV. We tend to focus mostly on what happens on a screen and occasionally delve into the physical act of interaction on the part of the player, but almost always ignore the device that houses the screen, the object we perform in front of. To some extent, this is because TVs are seen, more or less, as constants. It's assumed you have a TV if you're playing video games because you can't play them without one. But different TVs provide different play experiences, both on a technical level and an intertextual interpretive level.

My most intense, most free time spent with video games was playing them on a gxTV in my bedroom during middle school and high school. The gxTV was billed as a "TV for video games," which meant that it provided a particularly appealing platform for games (especially in the audio department), but also that it was not meant to be the primary family television. Thus, the gxTV was mine and mine alone. It was in my room and it's unique style and functions made it non-interchangeable with other TVs in the house. Other TVs are just plain boring, even moreso with modern TVs that seek to hide that the device is anything but a magic floating rectangle.

It was with this nostalgia and profound appreciation for what the gxTV was and is that I wrote the above-linked article, detailing what made it special to me and in the industry. Also, I wanted to share some more pictures of the gxTV that didn't make it into the article because my mom was kind enough to take them for me, and I think they're pretty great. See below:

Blips: Positive Development

Source: Static Electricity: On Photography in Videogames
Author: Lana Polansky
Site: Sufficiently Human

With the ubiquity of video capture in the gaming sphere, the screenshot can tend to feel a bit old fashioned. The constant technological progress of games and the media that covers them redefines screenshots as outdated documents meant for use in near-extinct print publications. However, those screenshot tools are now in the hands of players and easier to access than ever before, resulting in an uptick in virtual photographers, like myself. Granted, I've enjoyed real-life photography ever since owning one of those little toy flashbulb cameras back before they sold disposable ones, and much before digital photography was an option. I think much of what I like about photography in general translates to why I like to take pictures in virtual environments: exploring and finding sights rarely seen, transforming the familiar into the unfamiliar, and showcasing aspects of the world that I find interesting or worthy of attention.

In a recent essay, Lana Polansky writes about her own photographic explorations in the game Killing Floor, and what it is about in-game photography that makes it resonate with people. She speaks with photographer Robert Overweg (top image) about his images from Left 4 Dead and Half-Life 2 that focus on glitches in those games. Glithes, Overweg says, reveal the humanity of game design, that games are ultimately made by people despite their often cold and mechanical character. Glitches are the parts of games where someone didn't sew up the seam quite tight enough, and that actually carries an endearing quality.

But Polansky's not just talking about capturing glitches, she sees in-game photography as another way for players to project themselves into virtual worlds. As players and photographers, we take on the role of inhabitants of these spaces, wherein we document our experiences and put our personal spin on the way we perceive them. Many new games are including selfie options for your in-game character. What the selfie option does, as Polansky states, is reverse the long-standing belief that game characters are exclusively opportunities to wear someone else's skin, and instead provide a platform for players to insert more of themselves into the game. I love that games have been more readily offering these photography tools (Gran Turismo 6's photo mode simulates an actual DSLR camera) and have even made a habit of supplying my own screenshots for games that I review. Photography modes acknowledge the architectural aspects of games and allow players to interact with them as such.

Blips: Photographic Memory

Source: The Great and Secret Gaming Photographer
Author: Evan Amos
Site: Unwinnable

You're probably familiar with Evan Amos' photography, but you're probably never heard his name before. Amos' current passion project is documenting video game hardware with clean, high resolution images, and making them publicly accessible and royalty-free. He's already taken quite a few pictures and uploaded them to Wikimedia's database, replacing the small, low-quality images that were there before. Because of their immaculate quality and the ease of access to them, Amos' images show up everywhere. I myself used them when I was putting images together to make joking comparisons between consoles and characters from Game of Thrones. Amos' photos are hands-down the best images of video game hardware available online, and the exciting news is that he's looking to expand his collection.

I'm not in the habit of promoting Kickstarter projects, but this one is different; it's educational. Amos is documenting historical objects and releasing his work for free, and he's even donating all of the consoles he buys to NYU's Game Center after he's finished taking pictures of them. At a time when video game companies themselves seem to be dismissing their own past when it comes to preservation, it's great to see someone stepping up to tackle at least one archival aspect of gaming history. My only regret is that I didn't know about this Kickstarter before I used Amos' photos, otherwise all the people who saw that post would have known about the story behind the pictures. Even if you don't want to donate to the project, it's worth knowing that someone has taken up this task. Kudos to you, Evan Amos, and best of luck!

Blips: Hardware Fetish

Source: Sony's not showing its new Playstation 4 just yet, but here's a taste (video)
Author: Ben Gilbert
Site: Engadget

In a preemptive response to Microsoft's imminent Xbox unveiling, Sony has released a teaser video for the actual Playstation 4 box, notably absent from their own reveal event in February. The video shows extreme close-ups of console and controller details and a blurry black square, hiding the final device's true form. While it's all pretty silly in the context of a hype video (guess what, the PS4 will be a black box!) the detail shots, taken on their own are pretty interesting.

Now, since I can't really tell what's going on in these pictures, I can't evaluate the functionality of design components or anything like that, but still, there are some intriguing photographic images here. In fact, they remind me of abstract urban architecture photography. You're not really looking at the building or structure as a whole in these pictures, only the photographic composition. As such, you don't really get any information about what the PS4 looks like or does from the teaser, but maybe there is something the photographer is trying to say with these images besides "watch this space for further corporate announcements."

From the collage above, I'm most drawn to the center left and bottom right images. The bottom right picture is not quite divided in half by what could be a seam, ridge, or corner. Perhaps if it was to go directly through the middle, the line might appear to be crossing out the out-of-focus box transposed in the middle, a bad marketing move I'd guess. The center left image is a bit more complex, but retains the clean, monochrome gradients of the bottom right. If there is a PS4 in the middle of this composition it's engulfed by the cavernous void on display. It's difficult to tell where positive space ends and negative begins.Where does this dark alley, outlined by an illuminated doorframe lead?

While these are fun questions to consider at the moment, it may be hard to come back to these images after Sony shows off the units to press, who will in turn whip out their smartphones and all-too-easily obliterate the mystery. I'm just trying to have a bit of fun with the hype machine before the gadget connoisseurs dominate the discussion with hands-on purchasing advice and profitability projections (sigh). It all happens so fast.

Blips: What Do You See When You Die?

Source: On Death (In Half-Life 2)
Author: Oliver Payne
Site: Nero

When you die in first-person shooter Battlefield 3 multiplayer, you fall to the ground and your character reaches out with their final breath. To whom or what they reach for is unclear. It's a gesture of desperation, perhaps overly sentimental given the quick respawn that follows shortly thereafter., a dramatic flair incongruous with the mechanical nature of multiplayer competition. Maybe it's helping to mask a load time, I don't know.

In Oliver Payne's brief essay/photo series, he reflects on Half-Life 2's unique perspective shifts during Gordon Freeman's death animations. Are the camera moves and rag doll physics meant to shed further light on the game's virtual world or perhaps on how we see our own?

Proteus' Photogenic Landscape

I've been playing and thinking a lot about Proteus. In addition to a review I intend to write (done), I also discuss the game's musical systems in a forthcoming piece for Kill Screen (also done). Player-driven sound composition is the driving force behind Proteus' incentive to explore, but it's visuals deserve special recognition as well. I'm burned out on pixel art, but Proteus' mixture of flat-shaded polygons, gradient-laden color fields, and always-facing-you sprites hits a nice balance; no 8-bit nostalgia required.

I primarily play video games on consoles, but when I do play on my Mac, I like to take screenshots. Sure I use them in blog posts, but I also just enjoy in-game photography. With IRL cameras, landscape photography is not my thing, but Proteus presents such strikingly beautiful vistas, I couldn't resist.

After I'd already taken the shots you'll find below, I learned about Proteus' Postcard feature, where you can take screenshots using the F9 key. The resulting png files also have data embedded in one of their corners so the game can recreate the world from the image. This means if you run across a rare weather occurrence, you can both snap a dynamic picture and a shareable save state all at once. It's pretty neat.

Again, unfortunately none of my images are Postcards, but I didn't think I could recreate these same images on a new island so I'm sharing them as is. Enjoy.