The Thing - (William Latham)

The Thing is a third person survival horror game, and sequel to John Carpenter's 1982 film The Thing. It was developed by Computer Artworks. PlayStation 2 version of this game was released in North America on August 19, 2002, and in Japan on February 27, 2003. ^[1]The Thing is set after the film's ending, when two United States military rescue teams, Alpha and Bravo, are dispatched by Colonel Whitley to investigate the loss of contact with U.S. Outpost 31. Alpha Team, headed by the unit's second-in-command, Captain Pierce, is dropped at the nearby Norwegian Outpost. Bravo Team, led by the unit's Commanding Officer, Captain Blake, is then dropped at the American research station. The player assumes the role of Captain Blake, and must learn how to coordinate and command his Bravo Team colleagues while investigating the ruins of Outpost 31 and locating clues and messages detailing the incident for players who are unfamiliar with the film. The mission supervisor, Colonel Whitely, will offer sporadic assistance and relay objectives via radio. This section serves as an in-game tutorial and training level and offers some insight into the events which transpired following the end of the movie.

During the player's investigation of the ruins of the Outpost, they will find the UFO from the film. They will also find the body of Childs, one of the survivors from the movie. Upon securing the facility, Blake is airlifted to the Norwegian research station to locate and reinforce Alpha Team after Whitely informs him that they have lost contact with the team. There Blake and his group encounter swarms of Things that slowly dwindle down his team as Blake rescues Colin and learns of a government conspiracy with Gen Inc in conducting experiments on the alien lifeforms before they began to infest the research facility. Blake learns that Whitely was behind it the whole time and even injected himself with a Cloud Virus B4 Strain. With a new group, Blake fights his way through numerous black ops and creatures before killing the transformed Colonel Whitley. The player has the assistance of a helicopter pilot, revealed to be R.J. MacReady, the hero from the original film.

Wiliam Latham - Week 2

Wiliam Latham is another artist introduced to us during the Week 2 lecture. This artist is related to our Experimental Gaming module as he developed software that was used in games such as:

• The Thing (2002)
• Evolva (2000)
  

Here's a brief biography on the artist:

From 1987 to 1994 he worked for IBM in their Advanced Computer Graphics and Visualisation Division at IBM Hursley near Winchester , and his Mutation work achieved world wide recognition at SIGGRAPH and other events and a number of IBM patents were published. He was co-author with Stephen Todd of the book “Evolutionary Art and Computers” published by Academic Press which is still recognised as a key work in this area. His organic artworks and films were shown worldwide in major touring exhibitions of the UK , Germany , Japan and Australia

William was CEO of computer games developer Computer Artworks Ltd from 1994 to 2003, hit games produced included The THING (Playstation2, Xbox and PC) which sold in excess of one million units world-wide, and was Number 1 hit in the UK and Germany . The Thing was published by Vivendi Universal in USA and Europe, and by Konami in Japan and the Far East . (The Thing game was the sequel to the cult John Carpenter Film The THING starring Kurt Russell).

He has a wealth of experience in games development and games business and has managed (and closed) contracts valued $200K to $5m with Microsoft, Nokia, Atari, Vivendi Universal, SCi, Sony SCEE and Virgin Interactive. He has direct experience in film rights negotiation, copyright issues, games negotiation, digital assets management and games technology development.

In 2004, recognising the ongoing increase in games budgets and increasing new investment from financial organisations outside the games industry William founded Games Audit Ltd. Games Audit Ltd is a project management and audit operation for the games industry and offers a wide range of services. Clients include Ingenious, Add Partners, IDGVE .

From 2005 to 2006 William Latham was Professor of Creative Technology at Leeds Metropolitan University and a Research Fellow of Goldsmiths College ( University of London ).

In 2007 William became full Professor of Computing at Goldsmiths. He continues to remain CEO of Games Audit.

William has an MA from The Royal College of Art and a BA from Oxford University

Paul B.Davis

Some interesting work from Paul B.Davis.

In my opinion, Mario is the face of games as a whole, and i find his work interesting because of the manipulation techniques used by Paul B.Davis on something that is so ancient in terms of the gamining world. To me Paul B.Davis's style is simplicity and now we see that like the Giant Joystick, were size has made it that much more interesting. Simplicity or a simple change in imagery has made the Marion game more interesting.
I like to play sports simulation games, especially football games, such as Fifa and Pro Evolution. For many years i've played both games and seen their development(from Fifa '96 to Fifa 10 and ISS Pro to Pro Evo 10) and to be honest, the game doesnt really change drastically (year by year), but when the next years game is due to be relaesed, the question on gamers hearts are "whats new?"

Click here for a video I found on Paul B.Davis

And Yet It Moves Wii Teaser

Another interesting resource:

And Yet It Moves

Giant Joystick - Mary Flanagan

Another resource introduced to use during the week 1 lecture, Mary Flanagan's "Giant Joystick"

Multiplayer Atari, using a giant joystick from artist Mary Flanagan... "Inviting users to play classic arcade games by collaboratively moving on and controlling a 9-foothigh joystick (modelled after the 1980 Atari 2600 one), Mary Flanagan highlights the spatial and social role of the interface. The joystick itself becomes a social sculpture and territory for inter-personal communication."

I found this interesting in a similar fashion as the "safety pin", as the exaggeration of size makes an ordinary object (or in the joysticks case outdated) a lot more interesting than it really is. The joystick can be used to play original Atari games, and i think the fact that the size changes the experience makes it that more exciting. You need 2 people to operate the machine, and no doubt, movement will be a lot more restrictive and will require a lot more energy to perform.

In relation to this, I saw some works by photographer Vincent Bousserez in the local newspaper and he photographs minature figures doing everyday "chores", but what makes them interesting is his innovation to these figure doing their chores on life size objects, such as sunglases, pie, toilet tissue and so on

Safety Pin - Claes Oldenberg

We were also introduce to this work entitled Safetuy pin which is from the De Young Museum.
I felt that this piece was quite interesting, the fact that they have taken an everyday, unnoticed item and turned it into an intersting piece of art. Questions arised instantly in my head abourt this piece:

• can the piece bend just like an ordinary pin?
• if possible, is there any pactical uses for the pin?

in relation to games, the theme of growth comes to mind. The game mario is probably the clearest example, where Mario is able to grow by a substancial amount in the Super mario series, when he powers up for a limited amount of time.

Stelarc

We was also introduced to another resource in the form of Stelarc.

Stelarc (born Stelios Arcadiou on June 19, 1946 in Limassol, Cyprus, to Greek Cypriot parents) is an Australian performance artist whose works focus heavily on futurism and extending the capabilities of the human body. As such, most of his pieces are centered around his concept that the human body is obsolete. Until 2007 he held the position of Principal Research Fellow in the Performance Arts Digital Research Unit at Nottingham Trent University in Nottingham, England. He is currently a visiting Professor in the School of Arts at Brunel University, West London. He has two daughters, one of whom (Astra Stelarc) has continued in his footsteps as an artist. - Taken from Wikipedia

After viewing this artsist's work, it reminds me of the Terminator movie series, where natural human characteristics have been combined with technology to advance humans. Removing the disadvantages of being a human (i.e feeling pain)in a war like environment, but it also raised up other disadvantages being a robot. It also reminded me about a character in the Tekken game series, his name was Yoshimitsu.