Im November gab’s im GameStandard wegen AAA-Schwemme nur wenig Platz für Indies, hier bei VGT allerdings bleibt’s bei monatlicher Rundschau: die besten Indie-Games der letzten Wochen im Überblick. Ein Hinweis ganz zum Anfang: Für maximal 20 Dollar gibt’s beim grandiosen Good Bundle 150 Spiele (!) im Megapaket für den guten Zweck. Der Erlös geht an US-amerikanische Charities, die durch Trump in ihrer Existenz bedroht sind - die Spiele stellen nicht nur quasi ein Best-of der #altgames-Szene auf itch.io dar, sondern beinhalten auch große Klassiker wie “Gone Home”, “Proteus” und “the Novelist”. Kaufbefehl!

Da aller guten Dinge bekanntlich drei sind, präsentiert Stefan Köhler bei seinem Abstecher in die Welt der Spielbearbeitungen für VGT am ersten Montag dieses Monats, dem Modtag, den finalen Fragebogen in der zweiten Runde der aus der WASD bekannten Modderview-Serie. Nach großen Namen stellt sich hierzu ein unbekannter, aber nicht minder interessanter Modder dem Experiment…

#24 – ZuTheSkunk - Five Nights at Vault 5

Jim Rossignol used to be a games journalist before he ventured into games development with Sir, You Are Being Hunted. Now, his studio Big Robot is working on The Signal From Tölva, a single-player FPS set on an alien planet. I wrote about this promising project for Der Standard; here’s my full interview with Jim.

You have made the switch from writing about video games to creating them. How did that happen?

Gradually. In 2010 I worked on a project commissioned by Channel 4, and ended up forming a small games studio to get the game - an educational puzzler called Fallen City (sadly now defunct) - designed, produced and published. With the money left over from that, plus a Kickstarter in 2012, we raised the money for Sir, You Are Being Hunted. I didn’t work full time on that, because we needed to pay the designer, programmer and artists, and so I remained a writer at Rock, Paper, Shotgun through most of its development. Fortunately it did well enough that I was able to work full time for past two years on our new game, The Signal From Tölva. It has only being during that period that I’ve really considered myself to be a game creator, although the switch still remains sort of opaque to me, perhaps because of how slowly it has happened..

Aus organisatorischen Gründen gab's diesmal im GameStandard nur drei Indie-Games der Woche, hier jedoch gibt's die Luxus-Variante der schönsten Indie-Spiele der letzten Wochen. Bon appetit!

Games can be more than mere entertainment. In our column Alt+Home, intermedia artist Kent Sheely explores the ways independent developers are challenging the status quo, creating brand new experiences, and making a difference in the world.

October is an important time for the brave souls who spend the 30 days leading up to Halloween indulging in as much spine-tingling, heart-pounding horror as they can survive. Every year I like to set aside some time to play some of the spooky indie games I haven’t yet had the chance to savor, but with so many to choose from across so many various outlets, it can be a daunting task just figuring out where to look! If you’ve got a full schedule and just don’t have time to choose, not to worry; I’ve picked out a selection of my favorites, and I’ll tell you why I think they’re worth adding a few gray hairs to your head.

Bridging Worlds is artist Eron Rauch’s ongoing series of in-depth articles on the curious places of connection between video games, contemporary art, and culture. This is the final part of a four-part essay on The Beginner's Guide - the previous parts can be found here

“It’s hard to create a narrative of success when you’re the dark matter against which the stars shine, but I find that it’s important for artists to be able to articulate what is valuable about art beyond prices and the market.” -William Powhida

Continuing last week’s discussion of the The Beginner’s Guide as an attempt to trigger an apocalypse to wipe clean the slate of video games, it is useful to note that in Japanese creation circles, there is a genre of animation and comics called sekaikei (literally: “world type”). This genre places a single character, almost always male and young, as the center agent in the future apocalypse. This character’s psyche alone gets to remake the world, but only as it burns to ashes. The interior becomes the all-consuming exterior. While perhaps the capstone of this genre, Neon Genesis Evangelion is unique that that it leverages the dark logic of fandom to subvert its perfect apocalypse and decry the passivity and literalism that threatened to stifle the future of anime fandom.

Bridging Worlds is artist Eron Rauch’s ongoing series of in-depth articles on the curious places of connection between video games, contemporary art, and culture. This is the third part of a four-part essay on The Beginner's Guide - part one and two can be found here

“One of the greatest things about being an artist is, as you get older, if you keep working hard in relationship to what you want the world to be and how you want it to become, there is a history of interesting growth that resonates with different moments in your life.“ -Catherine Opie

In last week’s installment of “Sin, Apocalypse, Cash” I discussed ways that replaying The Beginner’s Guide provides expanded choices for audiences to interact with the game, and how those supposed choices are still mired in a simplistic and antisocial framework for art. Yet, let’s approach The Beginner’s Guide again from another angle to see if there is perhaps another, less obvious, social interface that is happening.

Bridging Worlds is artist Eron Rauch’s ongoing series of in-depth articles on the curious places of connection between video games, contemporary art, and culture. This is the second part of a four-part essay on The Beginner's Guide - part one can be found here

“Why, impervious to both affirmation and negation, why in the world this insistent, subsistent, irrepressible, pure repetition be it of nothing, why a picture? Why this picture?” -Jacques Roubaud “Some Thing Black”

In the first portion of this essay I examined why players of The Beginner’s Guide often perceive the game to be a trap, and the ways in which the game’s internal logic leads it to formulate art as martyrdom. But what if I’m approaching the game from the wrong angle? What if I overly focused on the naive macho egotistical vision of art and the purifying flames of antisocial creative angst? There certainly seems to be a radically alternative way to approach the game in a second play-through.

Bridging Worlds is artist Eron Rauch’s ongoing series of in-depth articles on the curious places of connection between video games, contemporary art, and culture. This is the first part of a four-part essay on The Beginner's Guide.

“What is important is not so much what people see in the gallery or the museum, but what people see after looking at these things, how they confront reality again.” -Gabriel Orozco

When I mention that I’m working on an article about The Beginner’s Guide, first there is a pregnant pause, mouth slightly open, then a lingering awkward silence. Then the seemingly inevitable question follows, “Did you play The Stanley Parable?” eyes narrowing, moving side to side, as though scanning the horizon for the shadows of danger.

In Wien war GameCity, aus diesem Anlass habe ich eine praktische Liste der bislang besten Indie-Spiele des Jahres zusammengetragen - hier nachzulesen. Auch abgesehen davon gab's Bemerkenswertes - hier die schönsten Indie-Spiele der vergangenen Wochen, plus Bonus-Track.