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Oh goody. We touched on this interesting, but sadly neglected topic a while back, but now Jim Rossignol from Rock, Paper, Shotgun is touching on it a whole lot more. More »
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Video game levels are designed with one thing in mind: fun. But that fun comes dressed as architecture. Cathedrals, castles, office buildings, homes. The kind of stuff architects are best at. More »
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The game-related posts on architecture blog BLDGBLOG are few and far between, but generally worth waiting for. This week, Geoff Manaugh took a look at Fracture and Celestial Impact, especially in terms of the game mechanics of deforming or otherwise changing the terrain. Looking at game design elements from an architectural perspective is a fascinating one, but Manaugh goes on to ponder if architects tried their hand at designing for games: More »
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I love architecture — and still have days where I think I probably should've gone into architectural history — so I always enjoy BLDGBLOG's game-related posts. This week is a chat with Daniel Dociu, Chief Art Director of Guild Wars. The interview is worth reading for a look at the pictures alone, but a look at how gorgeous environments are created is interesting, too: More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=384472&view=rss&microfeed=true Lost Odyssey will be here in the States soon and GameTrailers has an exclusive trailer featuring some of the city environments. The graphics really look sharp and the city architecture is beautiful, but unfortunately it looks like they've at least partially stuck to that hideous beige and brown color scheme we see so much of in games these days. Hopefully this isn't a choice they've decided to stick with it for the better part of the game. More »
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A new anthology on gaming - on design, architecture (both of the virtual and actual varieties), urbanism, and lots of other interesting and academic-sounding things - will be coming out next month (or November, for those of us in the US). Entitled Space Time Play: Computer Games, Architecture, and Urbanism: the Next Level, the volume brings together an impressive number of authors with a variety of backgrounds, and everything from game reviews to essays to interviews: More »
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Jonathan Blow (of Braid fame) has an insightful response to Stephen Totilo's comments lamenting the lack of gaming landmarks: the status of 'landmark' shouldn't be tied to representations of fantastical architecture or a particular visual look, rather to what happens in those spaces. He talks about landmarks of 'conceptual space': I started having bad flashbacks to slogging through Benedict Anderson's classic Imagined Communities at this point, but Blow has some interesting points and examples (he points to Counter-strike and Team Fortress maps that may change their look from incarnation to incarnation, but retain a sense of place thanks to the history of gameplay within those spaces, no matter what form their visual trappings take): More »
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An entry at Terra Nova links to a rather lengthy paper on architecture, space, and gameplay in WoW and Battle for Middle Earth 2. The paper is well worth a read through, but the Terra Nova entry has some choice quotes pulled out for those short on time. The paper concerns itself with how two different games use their spatial organization and architecture - both in terms of buildings and the fundamental design of a game world - to impact play experiences: More »
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The Farnsworth House may be one of the most iconic pieces of modern architecture, and it also happens to be fairly unsuitable for habitation: what better place for it than the virtual world of Second Life? The Guardian has an interesting look at the architecture of SL and the real-life architects that are creating new communities or recreating old ones. It also happens to be one of the first 'mainstream' media pieces that points out that despite a large registered user base, SL often feels more like a 'ghost town' than a 'boom town' unless you're in a popular area, as well as the trippy nature of virtual environments (why exactly do you need a house for anything at all?). More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=283568&view=rss&microfeed=true If you've never made it to architect Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater (aka the Kaufmann House) in southwestern Pennsylvania (I have), now you can take a tour of it with your Half-Life 2 install. More »
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This postmodern housing structure sits in Madrid and was designed by architect Blanca Lleo, who seems to be either way into Legos or Tetris. I say, Tetris. Comments from the peanut gallery? Brian Ashcraft More »
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