Kill Screen #6 – Change by Kill Screen

Author:Kill Screen [Screen, Kill]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: vl-nfcompvg
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

BREAKOUT

Funspot attempts to preserve the past, or evoke one that never was. Playing classic games is another way to relive the moment we played them first: a stagnant form of time travel. Sarah St. John, owner of Pinball Wizard, took over a building that housed Accent Bath & Spa, another business reliant on a customer’s need to feel young. Playing Galaga in 2012, you remember the way things were. The way they might be, if only you could go back. Perhaps arcades died out not due to the advancing capabilities of home consoles or a reluctance to set our children in unsupervised darkness, but because the surrounding culture devised more efficient ways—Botox, TV Land, wheatgrass smoothies—to feel ageless.

In his essay from Playing the Past, Sean Fenty writes, “we cannot help but think of these virtual playgrounds as perfect and immutable constants that we can return to for comfort as our world changes around us.” He’s referring to emulations of old games—an exact representation of the mechanics and audiovisual content, but played instead through modern computers or consoles. He argues such mimicry loses much in the transition. But what if those playgrounds still stood? What if arcades never faded away, crumbling into lots more profitable when empty?

Perhaps what is needed is a different type of soil altogether. On February 3, 2012, a new game development team called Innovative Leisure was announced, bringing together the creators of Atari arcade games such as Battlezone, Missile Command, and Centipede, headed by Xbox visionary Seamus Blackley. Their mission: Create original, industry-shaping games, just like they did decades ago. “We are looking at the new arcade,” Blackley wrote, describing the growth of mobile games, “and 99 cents on the iPhone is the new quarter.” Upon hearing the news, Gary Vincent, purveyor of the old, feels optimistic.

“Gaming is all about innovation and keeping up with the times,” he responded in an email. “It is nice to see a melding of classic game designers and new technology… This should be exciting to follow.”

Such news is heartening. Instead of coercing old games onto new platforms—the virtual joystick, a bit of touchscreen fakery meant to replace the real deal, is surely a creation of Beelzebub himself—our industry’s ur-designers can use today’s methods to create tomorrow’s games. The playfield has expanded to each and every hand with an opposable thumb. That infectious stimulation, found previously only in dark rooms pulsing with light, is now everywhere. But can distraction be meaningful if it’s all that you feel? What was once soothing vapor is now ever-present miasma. Arcades no longer exist because everything is an arcade.

Down the street from Good Time Emporium's old home, smack in the middle of America's densest city, other businesses still thrive. On a Saturday in January, cars filled the parking lot in front of a place called Christmas Tree Shop. Anxious customers streamed through the automatic doors. The store's slogan posed a question: Don’t You Just Love a Bargain?

Across the way sits a decrepit building. This is the District Court of Somerville, est.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.