The launch of the Nintendo 3DS has sucked up most of Gamesblog's limited attention bandwidth this week, so here's a selection of the interesting snippets that almost got away.
The picture comes courtesy of Activision, who captured a range of Star Wars mini-figs sightseeing in London to celebrate today's launch of Lego Star Wars III: The Clone Wars. Of course, what they should have done is commission a special Bobby Kotick figure, dressed as Emperor Palpatine. "Now witness the power of this fully armed and operational Modern Warfare 3 multiplayer subscription charge!" Just kidding – that's not actually happening.
Anyway, here is some more stuff I wanted to write about, including a Red Dead Redemption song, GameCity Nights, an intriguing alternate reality game and a mash-up of Monopoly and Tory economic strategy!
GameCity Nights – Tonight
The latest event on the GameCity Nights calendar is taking place tonight, and it looks like a cracker. This regular series of Nottingham-based gaming get-togethers is organised by the creators of the GameCity festival and they always feature an unmissable range of indie upstarts and superstar developers. Headlinging tonight is multimedia artist Jakub Dvorsky, founder of Czech games studio Amanita Design, who'll be showing off his two latest works – a significant coup for GameCity – and chatting with Goldeneye co-creator Martin Hollis. There will also be a range of new indie games to check out, plus Nintendo 3DS demo units to try, and the brilliant videogame-inspired graphic designer Cory Schmitz will be giving a live video interview. The event takes place at the Antenna club in Nottingham and tickets are £6 on the door.
Akira versus Red Dead Redemption
Earlier this month, mixtape specialist Akira The Don released his 25th compilation of mixes and mash-ups, but the line-up included a track of special interest to us. Red Dead Redemption is essentially a forlorn ode to Rockstar's western adventure, written after he'd finished the game. "I found myself singing 'lord I miss red dead redemption' to myself over and over in the shower, which is how a lot of my songs start. So I got out, sat down at my desk, and went to the Red Dead Redemption website, where the first thing I saw was their music video for Jose Gonzales' Far Away, which was used to such emotive effect in the game. I press play, and within four bars I found that the "lord I miss red dead redemption" refrain I'd been singing to myself fit over it perfectly, so I sampled it, looped it, played some drums over it, took a load of music from the game itself, changed the pitch of that so it fit with the song, and put the whole thing on loop for half an hour, at the end of which I had written completed song."
Rockstar later discovered and cosigned the track. "Hopefully they keep me in mind when choosing music for GTA5!"
Black Helix and the future of ARGs
The Design Zoo, a creative digital agency based in Northern Ireland, is currently running an Alternate Reality Game, entitled Black Helix. The action revolves around the mysterious kidnap of a 27-year-old PHD science student who is snatched from her apartment after conducting her latest research video log. Players must use social networks and websites to work out where she is and what's happened. Participants have even been able to interrogate characters from the game via a live video feed. The fascinating project is ending tomorrow, but not without leaving a legacy. The creators are crowd-sourcing all the player-created narratives and turning them into an ebook, which will be published in the summer.
The creators hope to attract more casual gamers to the ARG scene and reckon the genre has plenty of untapped potential. "Over the last few years, ARGs have been mainly focused on launching new films/TV productions and have usually been as an addition to a large digital marketing spend," says technical director, Adrian Campbell. "The recent Dark Knight and Flynn Lives ARGs got great press coverage and engagement by players. But ARG's also have great potential in the area of serious games, the idea that gaming can bring change and tackle important subject matter such as energy crisis, social change etc. This has seen a recent rise in popularity, with awareness of ARG's increasing rapidly due to advocates such as Jane McGonigal, her recent TED talk on serious games attracting a lot of attention."
Black Helix is designed to be playable from any point in its lifespan so it's not too late to get online and check it out.
Hide&Seek vs George Osborne
Earlier this year, the experimental game development studio Hide&Seek released a brilliant app named The Board Game Remix Kit which provided users with a selection of compelling and clever new games based around Monopoly, Scrabble, Cluedo and Trivial Pursuit. The team jokingly mentioned a number of game titles they'd like to have included in the batch of 25 possibilities and one of their undeveloped projects was entitled, Being George Osborne. An owner of the Remix Kit liked the idea so much, he invented the game. All you need is a Monopoly board and the new rule set. The aim of the revised version of the property trading game is to evict all the benefit-claiming tennants from your area while filling the Government account with cash. There's definitely a Facebook Game in this idea, too. OsborneVille, anyone?
