Loris Z.com

“The question is not whether or not videogames are art, or can be art; that’s a terrible question. Asking if anything is or is not or can be or can not be art is a truly horribly bad question. It’s an microphone-off-shirt-collar-ripping, “This interview is over” kind of question. If I were a producer of any kind of entertainment, that’d be my reaction. Furious exasperation. For God’s sake, before you ask if videogames are art, ask if they’re entertainment. And if you confirm that they are indeed entertainment, ask if they are, or are not, terrorism. ”

An excellent essay by Tim Rogers, found on Kieron Gillen’s site. At Insert Credit.

New Games Journalism rejects this, and argues that the worth of a videogame lies not in the game, but in the gamer. What a gamer feels and thinks as this alien construct takes over all their sensory inputs is what’s interesting here, not just the mechanics of how it got there. Games have always been digital hallucinogens - but games journalism has been like chemistry, discussing the binding reactions to brain sites. What I’m suggesting says what it feels like as the chemical kicks in and reality is remixed around you.
While drug-poetry is certainly one approach to the subject matter -and one the earlier State experiments turned to - it’s not the strongest. “Bow, Nigger”, while being clearly totally subjective, austerely embraces Hemmingway’s cleanness. The tone has to be confessional - what happened to you and how it made you feel - or people simply won’t believe it, or be interested. Pub anecdotes with delusions of grandeur, essentially.

I stumbled upon this on a time where I’m thinking about the subject a little too much. As everything that holds a certain importance in my life, the pieces starts appearing at random, and decantation takes care of the rest.

Bow, Nigger, is a brilliant piece on gaming journalism, and if you have a interest in any of the two, you should go read it. Fuck, go read it anyway.

All of this was found on Kieron Gillen’s website.

It is the start of another Toy Fair, the venerable institution in which toy companies trot out their wares for buyers and media. Only this time no one is quite sure where to go or what to do. The Toy Building, where most companies had showrooms for decades and decades, is closed for the most part; the action has moved to Javits and a smattering of other showrooms around the city. However, just to make it more fun, some companies still have their showrooms in the Toy Building, and others haven’t really moved.

Am I the only one scared of Star Wars Transformer toys?

Also, a message for the kids:

Watch out kids, it’s the return of the KUNG-FU GRIP!!

(via the fundamental The Beat)

The writers and foreign correspondents who came to Spain invented a new kind of war journalism, reporting in first-person, eyewitness accounts the brutal feel of the battlefield.

“The reason that women are losing the war on sex? Because strippers hate our freedom.”

(remember to watch that video, please?)

Poland’s most celebrated journalist and non-fiction writer, Ryszard Kapuscinski, has died in Warsaw, aged 74, after a heart operation. 

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