Regardless of where you sit on the Games As Art bench, it’s hard not to appreciate the craft Gregory Weir puts into his flash titles. He recently won an award for December’s I Fell In Love With The Majesty of Colors. It’s one of those sublime games that reaches a new strata of emotional impact, similar to the way I felt about Raph’s seagull game when I first played it. If you haven’t tried Majesty of Colors yet, go for it, right now. It only takes a few minutes to play through once.

What’s notable now is that he’s just released Bars of Black and White, an interesting twist on the ubiquitous “room escape” subgenre of the puzzle/adventures. It doesn’t have quite the immediacy, flow or oomph that Colors does, but it’s admirable all the same. The theme feels a little bit like the mid-90s adventure game Normality, albeit far more serious and dystopian. The internal monologue really speaks to me, though; it’s strikingly reminiscent of a character I’m working on for one of my projects.

Definitely give Bars a play-through.

Looks like another film titan has decided to try for a bite of the gaming pie. I’m not normally one to read Variety, but that’s where the announcement came out: Paramount will be opening a new wing in its “interactive” division, focused on publishing video games they partially or fully fund. Naturally, they’re headed to the land towards which all money flows these days - casual and mobile gaming.

This modest initial mission is actually a good and studied move for a new entrant into The Industry; they can quietly get some experience, traction and operating revenue before diving headlong into the potentially-dry creek-bed of big-budget blockbusters. They’ve clearly learned from certain less fortunate traditional media companies whose forays into Interactive ended in outcomes that could be considered less than auspicious.

On the other hand, this is also an entertainment giant pushing into a space that’s currently a breeding ground for smaller, independent success stories; casual games gave us Pop Cap and friends. I have to wonder if this move might start a trend that gobbles up what would otherwise have been fertile ground for gaming startups. Given that Paramount seems primarily interested in monetizing their own existing properties, that fear may be unfounded - for the moment.

They’re definitely serious, though. While their histories are not the most impressive, Matt Candler seems to have passed through several development houses on his way to the top and their new external licensing exec, Luke Letiza, came from Sega. Not exactly the heavyweight it once was, but it still carries considerable clout in the console market.

There’s also an interesting bit farther down in the article, regarding the attitudes of film execs.

Though such moves are financially risky, an increasing number of studio execs think that getting more involved in vidgames (sic) based on their movies will help them to ensure quality as well as move faster without having to wait for a publisher to become interested and make a deal.

Emphasis mine. I’m not sure which way to take that remark, but it could be a signal that the film industry is tiring of the mimeographed movie tie-ins that get stamped out by the less illustrious members of our profession. Cynically, it could also just mean they don’t want to pay someone else to develop the things, so they can keep more of the potential profits.

Via Gaming Insider.