Perfectly normal. Perfectly healthy.
it’s a character from venture bros.
So I launched this videogame magazine project on Kickstarter a while ago and it’s turned out so well. For some reason, I never brought it to Tumblr, but now seemed as a good a time as any. Here’s our pitch statement:
“Gamers don’t read.”
You’ve probably thought that. Or read it maybe. Or overheard it. Well, if not, then we’re telling this to you now. What we hear is that people who “play games” are too immature, too uneducated, and too short-attentioned to focus on anything other than the killing, robbing, and leveling up. Feelings? Reflection? Discourse? No, thank you.
We can do better.
There is a single question that we are fixated upon — “What does it mean to play games?” We want to be what early Rolling Stone was to rock n’ roll or Wired was to tech. We want to look like the Fader and walk like the Believer. We’re talking about the long format read on the creative minds behind AAA and indie game titles sided by the personal essays about what games mean as part of our daily little lives. There are intersections between the games and everything else that are only beginning to be explored. The minds of the videogame world are woefully faceless and we should change that.
Enter Kill Screen.
Here’s what we’re proposing — a smart approach to a beloved medium led by folks who’ve written for the New Yorker, GQ, the Daily Show, Christian Science Monitor, LA Times, the Colbert Report, the Onion, Paste, alongside some lovely photos and even a poster or two! We promise to keep explosions to a bare minimum and limit fawning praise for Modern Warfare 2 to a giggle.
But here’s the good news! Kill Screen is already done. (See the potential cover and sample pages here .)
Thanks to Anthony Smyrski, our creative director extraordinaire (who designs Next American City, Megawords and Swindle as well), we have a completed project in need of publishing. Basically, we owe everyone backrubs.
Your donations will help us print the first run, effectively known as ISSUE ZERO, and hopefully Kickstart a long term project for us. Have you seen Swallow Magazine? No? Well, Kill Screen will look a lot like that. (Except we promise less food and more doodles.) It will be oversized and hopefully hardcover. It’s already been priced out and we’re working with a publisher overseas. We will print as many copies as there are donations.
Much love,
KILL SCREEN
PS. The name comes from this clip.
PPS. If you want to write for us, drop us a line!
(via bullshit)
deanminifie: (via natashavc)
“Texaco used to pay for the Metropolitan Opera to exist. Armstrong Tile used to pay for Jacques Cousteau. Sponsorship. If American Express said that they wanted to take care of Mad Men, not put any ads in it, and say, “American Express presents Mad Men,” and even have Don Draper throw the card around once in a while, that incredible purple card, the one Eisenhower had — that is the past of advertising, not the future of advertising.
As a content provider, I look at the networks and say their desire to reach this mass audience to preserve their advertising dollars is half the reason why their content slid. It’s insane. It’s insane to guess what people want. It’s a joke. If you have no personal opinions, you should not be involved in the content business. You’ve got big businesses and they’ve got lots of money at stake and they have stockholders, and I understand why things move the way they move.
When I look at digital, the dark side of it for me is the physicality that’s being presented alongside the Internet. I think about that movie The Matrix, and about these bodies that are human batteries that support computers. I met this guy who was creating software where you could watch Mad Men and you could chat with your friend while you’re watching it, and things would pop up, and facts would pop up, and I said, ‘You’re a human battery. Turn the fucking thing off! You’re not allowed to watch the show anymore. You’re missing the idea of sitting in a dark place and having an experience. Are you just like sitting with your phone and you’re kissing your girlfriend and saying, “‘I’m kissing my girlfriend! This is so great, we’re having sex!’” EXPERIENCE THINGS!”
—transcript from New Yorker festival talk.
9gag:Rocket Science
Note from Ron: I want this so bad.
From Cracked’s If Video Games Were Realistic Photoshop contest.
[video]
Pithy.
such a mess. also they keep money in an industrial tin.
[video]
Everyone’s got their knickers in a twist over this MIT “Personas” project, but I’m not that into it. This graph is a mashup of the 10 other “Dennis Crowleys” on Google and I want to just see mine. Wah!:Make one: personas.media.mit.edu/personasWeb
More info: personas.media.mit.edu/
My favorite part? Finding this quote as it scanned the web on info on me:
“Dennis Crowley is the worst kind of dot-com tool.”
www.fimoculous.com/archive/post-5615.cfm
Ha!
sorry adam smiths. you’re pretty much screwed.
(via tofuttibreak)
You had to see it coming.
(via courage-wolf)