Saturday, June 5, 2010 at 11:48PM In my constant search for news about HBO's upcoming Game of Thrones series, I came across this article in Scientific American about the creation of the Dorthraki (a race of horse-riding, war-prone nomads in the novels) language. This may be more interesting to me because I'm an English professor and a word nerd, but check it out and let us know what you think.
Monday, May 31, 2010 at 11:18PM 
The Spiel des Jahres nominees were announced today. The Spiel des Jahres, for those that don't know, is the German game of the year and is the biggest award given in the board game industry. Generally the winner is a family oriented game and is a little on the lighter side and this years nominees are no different. One thing that doesn't happen often is two of the five games on the list are party games and one other the other games is a simple dexterity game, A la Carte.
Monday, May 31, 2010 at 10:59AM The Associated Press is reporting the Guillermo del Toro has quit the production of The Hobbit over what it calls production delays. The bigger news in the article is the reason behind these delays, which is that MGM is holding up the production with the haggling over their portion of the rights to the property. It is no secret that MGM is struggling financially, and it seems they are trying to milk The Hobbit rights for all they are worth. That is understandable, but I doubt it is in their financial interests to run a talented, passionate director off the project with their delays. Clearly MGM and all involved make more money if the films are blockbusters, and having a director like del Toro at the helm seems the best way to guarentee that they are done right and live up to Producer Peter Jackson's legacy. The good news is that the AP article does state that del Toro will continue to work with Jackson and Walsh on the screenplays to the proposed two films. I hope this is a sign that he might be ready to jump back on board when the project eventually gets the green light.
Here is the AP article in its entirety at The Boston Herald.
So, what do you think? Is del Toro's departure the nail in the coffin for a troubled project or is this just a bump in the road?
Monday, May 10, 2010 at 07:20PM Frank Frazetta has passed away, possibly from complications from a stroke. He was 82 years old. Frazetta is perhaps the most famous and successful fantasy artist of all time. His work graced the covers of hundreds of books and magazines over the years. He is also considered the most influential artist in the genre with dozens of name artists pointing to him as their early inspiration. I'm sure we will begin to hear from them soon, and I'll post their comments as an expansion to this article when they start to come in. Our thoughts and prayers go out to Frazetta's family. Please leave comments below on your own experience with Frazetta's work. We look forward to hearing from you.
While we are waiting, I missed this one when it came over the wire. We had written a bit about the dispute over rights to Frazetta's paintings earlier this year. Turns out the dispute has been amicably solved. Here is the Associated Press story on the settlement:
Thursday, April 22, 2010 at 01:23AM
Though it seems that he realizes it is a can of worms best left sealed, Roger Ebert recently revisited the question "are video games art?" or, perhaps more accurately, "is video game creation an art form?" Ebert, famously, has come down firmly on the "no" side of the fence. In his new article (read it here), he elaborates some as a response to a speech at the recent TedxUSC event. I'm not sure what prompted Ebert to take that speech so seriously, but it provides pretty easy fodder. Other than Flower, which is ridiculously hard to describe in relation to its artistic impact on the player and observer, the examples given by the speaker are poor (and even downright weird). Still, it gives Ebert, and now me, a jumping-off point.
I find it odd that the biggest detractors of video games as an art form come from a film background. Visual artists have embraced the medium, as have musicians and writers. Film critics, on the other hand, lead the charge in the "It is not art!" brigade. Stranger still to see that one of the prongs of Ebert's attack has to do with the fact that video games are a collaborative medium.
The fact is that as the industry has grown it has modeled itself after Hollywood. There are equivalencies for nearly every job done on a Hollywood set or in post-production. Directors, producers, writers, art designers, lighting experts, story board artists, sound men--these and more work on each project.
It is this community or artists and the lack of a singular controlling vision that Ebert sees as one of the reasons video games don't measure up to novels, painting, sculpture, and bridge-building. He doesn't see the process as auteur-driven, and, truth be told, it usually isn't. Of course, that fact models itself after Hollywood too. The vast majority of film is made by committee and painted by numbers. The best films are those that provide the support for the auteur theory.
Most video games a made for the lowest common denominator and have little redeeming value, but, consistently, the best games have a single person as the driving force, a designer who is the equivalent of the director of a film. He is the auteur of the medium and the best of them are famous within the gaming community--Miyamoto, Kojima, Schaeffer, Meier, Wright among them. These auteurs rise above the pablum of a commercial, mainstream medium to create something that, at the very least, deserves consideration as "art." At the worst, they are the industry's Spielbergs and Jacksons, auteurs blessed with a vision that appeals to the masses without pandering.
One of these auteurs is going to come up with a concept some day that will push the medium through the curtain of bias, and this argument will cease (or at least the "games are art" side will shift into the majority). When will that happen? I'll avoid playing Nostradamus and say that I am not sure.
It occurs to me that one of the big problems facing a wider acceptance of video games as art is the lack of a truly critical journalistic voice. There is nothing that serves as the video game version of Cahiers du Cinema. There is no Truffaut, no Goddard, and likely there is not any such person in training anywhere at the moment. Video game journalism remains little more than a marketing tool for the industry. We write what is merely another version of the "thumbs up/thumbs down" dichotomy. We are the literary equivalent of At the Movies and very few, if any, sites or magazines provide opportunity for a Goddard or Truffeau, or, hell, even a Ebert or Kael to arise. Serious writers taking the medium seriously and writing powerfully--that will be the first hole in the dam.
Will this happen in your lifetime or mine? Will we see a undeniable artist take the medium to a new level? Maybe not, but I would be very surprised if my young son and daughter didn't live to see that day.
[Do you have an opinion on this issue? We would love to hear it. Please comment below]