neato

The Unfinished Swan - Tech Demo 9/2008 from Ian Dallas on Vimeo.

I saw this on 'Why, That's Delightful' a few days ago and was rather impressed. I'm really happy whenever I see games like this (the only other example I can think of is Portal, but there are plenty of others). When I saw how close games were getting to photorealism I really hoped that we'd get some sort of gaming equivalent of impressionism and abstraction. Because, as any 19th century artist will tell you, photorealism is boring. I am pretty sure that in about five years Twilight Princess will look really badly dated, whilst The Wind Waker will still look stylistically amazing. The fact that developers are doing things like this provides a satisfying counterbalance to the ongoing efforts to render team sports, cars, and brutal violence in ever more colorful detail.

Not that I have anything against violent games, or games where I crash cars, it's just that sometimes I like to feel like games should at least try and punch their weight in a cultural or aesthetic sense.

-Ben

I was going to link a load of other things I've read and seen recently, but most of them are in some way political and really, I think that anyone reading this doesn't need to be told that Sarah Palin is a moron again.

Oh, but I should link this fine example of what must, surely, be genius trolling. That, or an idiot of truly magnificent proportions.