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Katamari Damacy

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Video Games Are Art, Part 2: MoMA

moma-logo A few months ago I was excited to see that the NEA had funded several video games as legitimate art projects. As a follow-up to that, I am thrilled to see that the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City has officially added video games to its permanent collection! Here are their initial 14 acquisitions (and you can go to their announcement for more info on each):

  • Pac-Man (1980; Played it, of course)
  • Tetris (1984; Same)
  • Another World (1991; Don't know it)
  • Myst (1993; Never played it, but I was in graduate school then, so I have an excuse)
  • SimCity 2000 (1994; Got it)
  • vib-ribbon (1999; Never heard of it)
  • The Sims (2000; Know it but never played.)
  • Katamari Damacy (2004; Have this on my iPhone and on our vintage PS2, it's hilarious!)
  • EVE Online (2003; Downloaded but never played)
  • Dwarf Fortress (2006; Have it but couldn't get it working!)
  • Portal (2007; Got it, cool)
  • flOw (2006; Got it)
  • Passage (2008; Never heard of it)
  • Canabalt (2009; Have it on my phone, love it)

Again, I spend about 100x as much time cleaning dishes as I do playing video games but I'm very happy to see this happen.

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Back to School, Spring 2012 Edition

[Above: Happy Russian mining students displaying their school pride. The sign translates roughly to "We don't need no stinkin' Rose Bowl." Or something like that.]

Whee! School started again today at the University of Utah. I'm taking two regular classes: Intro to Video Games (for real — you can see the syllabus right here at introtovideogames.com) and the Arts Technology Capstone course.

I've already had to start working on the video game class, where we were told to get cracking on Psychonauts (I have it on my Mac), Katamari Damacy (a very bizarre Japanese game that I have on my iPhone), and some version of Super Mario Bros. (my son Quinn has the brand new Super Mario 3D Land on his Nintendo 3DS, which he might let me play, but just in case I just ordered Super Mario Galaxy for our according-to-my-teacher-not-a-real-console Wii; it'll be here Thursday and I'll get right on it).

As for the Capstone course, I can't say too much yet but it looks like it will be serious art and I'm very excited about that!

Otherwise, I'll be doing four independent study courses: the first on Processing, the second on Arduino, the third on Max/MSP, and the fourth on the related Jitter. I'll have more to say very soon.

That's all for now. Nice to be back.

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