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.

Just a brief post this time, not one of my five-hundred-word monsters.

Spotted on Raph’s Blog, check out Champion of Guitars (requires Java), a sweet sendup of Guitar Hero styled after traditional interactive fiction by Bill Meltsner.

This isn’t a debate I normally want to get deep into - I had enough of that shit when I was, oh, fifteen - but there’s an interview with Alex St. John (he made DirectX) up on ExtremeTech that’s worth reading, viz. Consoles as We Know Them are Gone. Also, Part the Second, Vista Blows.

The interesting bits here, aside from the obvious Nerdrage Against The Machine, are the comments that WoW is only successful because of community, that consoles attempting to provide community features will fail at the attempt, and that consoles are primarily Orwellian DRM Nightmares made Flesh PCB. There’s also some grist about onboard video chips.

Most of these are stances I don’t necessarily agree with, aside from the tautological first statement, but it’s an interesting take from a rather knowledgeable individual. That said, I think he’s missing a few things, especially the massive added value of Convenience that consoles serve up.

And boy, do we consumers love paying for convenience. Just ask the CEO of McDonald’s. That is, if he can hear your inquiry through four-foot walls of solid, engraved gold.

Via F13.