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Video games are more important than ever
When Bob Dylan won the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature, it shocked the humanitarian world. What's more, Dylan himself hasn't behaved like a traditional Nobel winner: He hasn't commented on the honor and has yet to give an acceptance speech. At least one member of the Nobel panel has called Dylan's silence "rude and arrogant," and the public has been reminded that if he doesn't give a lecture within six months, he won't receive the $900,000 prize money. It's a new kind of strange in-fighting scandal for the Nobel community. However, it's not surprising. Selecting Dylan as a Nobel laureate may be contentious, but it's mostly a sign of growth for intellectual society -- at least in Literature, no one is off-limits, not even mumbling masters of wordplay and songwriting. Growing pains are expected as the world of mainstream politics, activism and academia is suddenly forced to consider the potential of new industries and vice versa. Songwriting might just be the beginning. With the growing accessibility of high-end living-room consoles and virtual reality headsets, it's easy to imagine a video game on a list of Nobel nominees in the near future. Nowhere was that more apparent than at IndieCade 2016, an annual festival celebrating independent video games held in Los Angeles, California.
The game that makes drone warfare personal
Killbox is a game that creates humans out of brightly colored 3D shapes, only to slaughter them in the most dehumanizing way: a drone strike. And not just any drone strike -- the game is based on the first real-life UAV mission ever carried out in an unofficial warzone. Killbox has a heavy-handed message delivered in a direct, uncompromising fashion. It's a two-player game; one person embodies a sphere in an simplistic yet idyllic farming landscape. This player cruises along pathways to collect tiny white motes that emit a pleasant sound whenever the 3D ball rolls over them. There are no instructions, but the objective is clear: Collect as many motes as possible. The sphere rolls along the flat green grass and down pathways lined with balls of soft white light, passing other bright beings that appear to be frolicking, playing and dancing around each other. Larger pear-shaped creatures wander around the area, changing colors with an adorable sound every time the player's tiny sphere runs into them.
