Video Games: A Cultural History - A History

So yes, I do a bit of moonlighting on another blog, Mercy Recommends. For a whole bunch of weeks now, I've been posting a regular feature every weekend, one which I call: 'Video Games: A Cultural History'.

The tone oscillates between irritatingly flippant and a kind of Simon Schama esque middlebrow patrician didacticism, and I expect it will continue to not know what it really is up until the day Mercy tell me to push off or I run out of steam. But anyway, in case you'd like to pick through the tatty stitchwork of my musings, I thought I'd post some links to what I've done so far. Hey, you could even read the rest of the blog. Who knows, it may save your life one day!

#1 - Wonderboy In Monster Land
#2 - Wonderboy Solves The Riddle Of The Sphinx
#3 - Choice And Identity In Blue's Journey
#4 - Japan's Construction Boom In Hammerin' Harry
#5 - Fear Of The Other In Bad Dudes Vs Dragon Ninja
#6 - The Spectre Of Socialism In Strider

Tiny Art Director

(via Metafilter)
My favourite website, the community blog Metafilter, has yet again led me to something great online that really cheered me up. Tiny Art Director is a blog where Bill Zeman's little daughter requests pictures, which he then draws for her. Each picture is accompanied by a description of the brief, and the Tiny Art Director's response. She nearly always hates them. Here, for instance, is her reaction to the commission the picture of crocodiles:

The Brief: Crocodiles
Preliminary Sketch (no longer extant): Upon seeing the preliminary sketch, the art director, in a rather unprofessional outburst, collapsed on the floor sobbing and screaming.
The Critique: The back is so so so bad I don't even want to look at it! You always do that to the crocodile's back!
Job Status: Rejected and Destroyed

The Tiny Art Director has some favoured themes - dinosaurs feature heavily - but her true talent as a visionary is made manifest in what I believe to be the high watermark of all Western culture: the Poo-Poo Airplane.

Her commissions have been collected into a book, which is available via the blog - perfect for the discerning aesthete's coffee table or nursery.

Mercy Recommends

Hey. You should put Mercy Recommends in your favourites list.

It's a new blog by the talented folks behind Mercy, covering lots of their interesting artsy projects and random assorted fascinating stuff culled from the interwebs. I'm going to be contributing a feature semi-regularly (or at least until they tell me to bog off), where I map out the neglected cultural history of video games.

The Kingdom Of The Blind

Look, straight up, I think the blog format where a writer picks whatever stories happen to be making the news then gives their opinion on them is hackneyed and crap. We have a culture of analysis over content, because analysis is a piece of piss, and content is hard.

The opinion piece I wrote for the Guardian ages ago was really easy to write. Why? Because I wasn't required to line up facts in support of my argument. I didn't have to interview anyone or do any research. I didn't even have to leave my room. The only criteria was that I said something guaranteed to piss people off, and said it stridently.

I bring it up because this is one of those posts. And, you know, I guess I can understand why bloggers resort to it - it's hard to think of new things to write about continually, and if you choose a little-reported story, you can draw people's attention to it.

This doesn't even count as under-reported, but meh. Calls are being made for Jeremy Clarkson's head after he referenced the fact that PM Gordon Brown has one eye in an insult. Apparently, calling Gordon Brown 'one eyed' is the height of insensitivity - even though it's a simple statement of fact, albeit intended perjoratively - because it draws attention to a disability. On the other hand, the media consensus seems to be that, in the case of Heather Mills, having one leg is not such much a disability as a comic misfortune.

Sure, I find Senor Clarkson a bit irritating, but that's his job. Don't MPs have anything better to do than complain about a hack humourist's off-the-cuff remark? Apparently not.