national-post
Latest
Eddo Stern's WoW and MMO sculpture installations
The National Post has an interview with an artist named Eddo Stern, who has created what he calls "sculptures" of figures from WoW. You can clearly see what looks like a dragon (Onyxia), Chuck Norris, and a Night Elf above, and there is apparently another sculpture in the series featuring Chuck Norris mashed up with something from Chronicles of Narnia. Finally, Stern apparently has created a video installation of a thread from the EverQuest forums called "Best... Flame War.... Ever." Sounds like pretty standard forum posturing to us -- a kid calls another guy a noob, said guy threatens to show up in RL for a fight and then talks about his buddies in Iraq.Stern is supposedly playing with the virtual machismo of playing in MMOs, and how different the players supposedly are from the heroic character they're playing. Sounds like interesting stuff. While I don't really agree with his premise all that much (there are all kinds of people playing these games, and the vast majority of them don't really emulate Chuck Norris or try to pick fights on message boards), I like the techniques a lot -- those projections look pretty good. And his next project sounds even cooler: he's going to try and project a huge dimensional portal on the side of the highway in San Jose. Should be fun to see.[Via Worldofwar.net]
Columnist calls video games 'crack cocaine'
A columnist in Canada has called video games "crack cocaine," bluntly proposing to readers: "Don't play video games." Writing for the conservative National Post, Father Raymond J. de Souza (pictured) explained that he "learned the truth" about video games the hard way -- he hasn't touched one after deleting Tetris. De Souza went on to label video games as "dangerous," blaming them for fat kids and missed pockets in time. Just about what you'd expect from "the crack cocaine of the electronic world."As if approaching Godwin's Law wasn't enough, Father de Souza also insisted that too many games celebrate graphic violence, multifarious delinquency and borderline pornography. We guess Father de Souza will be missing out on the joys of Peggle too, what with Tetris being "deadly enough" for him.[Via GamePolitics]
