Hustler of Culture

The Unfinished Swan for PSN!

Ian's "The Unfinished Swan", a first-person painting game is finished and coming to PSN. More on the visually stunning game about exploration and wonder:

The Unfinished Swan is a game about exploring the unknown.

The player is a young boy chasing after a swan who has wandered off into a surreal, unfinished kingdom. The game begins in a completely white space where players can throw paint to splatter their surroundings and reveal the world around them.

It's being developed exclusively for the PlayStation 3 and will be available for download sometime in 2012. You can follow the game's development on our blog.

LA - Game Night 6 (09.17.11)

Call For Submissions: SFMOMA Art Game Laboratory

SFMOMA Art Game Laboratory: Call for participants

SFMOMA’s Education Department is looking for proposals from artists and designers of all disciplines for simple experiments that use the vocabulary of game play to engage SFMOMA’s visitors. Selected projects will be installed in the Koret Visitor Education Center on the SFMOMA’s second floor, where they will be available for public use. Art Game Lab participants are also encouraged to present components of their projects at alternate community venues or online. The onsite display will open at SFMOMA in January 2012; once a project is selected, satellite and online components may begin before the exhibition’s opening and continue after its closing.

About the project:
Art Game Lab is a participatory educational display space in which artists, curators, game designers and experience designers present new platforms for collaboration and audience participation at SFMOMA. Building on ideas of experimentation, critique, and play, the project will engage visitors to ask their own questions about the art on view and the institutional context of the museum. Proposed projects should use the vocabulary of game play to encourage audiences to access the artworks, galleries, space and culture of the museum in enjoyable and innovative ways. They may also present complex issues of institutional authority, empowering audiences to ask questions about how meaning and value are
constructed within the walls of a museum.

9th Annual Post E3 MMF BBQ

I can't believe we've been hosting our summer kick off barbecue for nine years now! But there you have it. Nine years of post-E3 fun. The crowd has changed from electronic entertainment industry folks-only to a big ass party for our creative cabal.

Thanks to Toby and Michael for hosting our party for the third year in a row. Thanks to Kiino and Matt for hooking us up with tunes. And thanks to all our friends that made the day fun and special. We are looking forward to the 10 year anniversary party, next year! See you then.

Ghibli World of Minecraft

I am so grateful that there are some people with lots and lots and lots of free time on their hands! Someone loves Hayao Miyazaki very much! [Thanks to Mike Steel for this amazing clip!]

Fun And Games

I know this video is old (in internet-time), but it reminded me of how there are some really ingenious ideas floating around out there to motivate people to move a bit more. Having spent nearly two years creating and analyzing health and fitness initiatives for America's youth (for a $4 billion health company), I'm wondering why creative ideas like this, aren't implemented all over the world?

I applaud Volkswagen, an automobile company, for supporting a program "dedicated to the thought that something as simple as fun is the easiest way to change people’s behaviour for the better." For big smiles, check out The Fun Theory for more inspirational ways to make positive change, fun! 

LA - Game Night 4 (01.22.11)

Small Gift: Celebrating 50 Years of Sanrio Photo Recap

A look inside Sanrio's celebration of 50 years of fun and friendship!

LA - "Pixel Pushers: An Exploration of 8-Bit Digital Media" (11.13.10 - 12.11.10)

SF - Come Out & Play Festival at GRSF (10.22.10 - 10.24.10)

LA - Game Night 3 with Meat Bun (10.16.10)

SF - Jennifer Judd-McGee and Mati McDonough's "Spin" (09.02.10 - 09.28.10)

Spin - A New Twist on Vintage Board Games: Work by Jennifer Judd-McGee and Mati McDonough

September 2 - September 28, 2010; Reception 7-9pm, September 2, 2010

San Francisco design store and gallery, Rare Device, is proud to present: Spin - A New Twist on Vintage Board Games: Work by Jennifer Judd-McGee and Mati McDonough. The work will occupy the Rare Device gallery September 28, 2010. A reception for the show will be held Thursday, September 2, 2010 from 7 - 9 pm.

LA - Bryan Lee O'Malley Event and Game Night 2 (08.21.10)

LA - Game Night with Gaijin Games (06.14.10)

In conjunction with the Attract Mode videogame culture shop and LA Game Space, Giant Robot is proud to host Game Night, a pre-E3 party putting a spotlight on Gaijin Games. Gaijin Games is a small indie studio from Santa Cruz, CA that makes the Bit.Trip series of retro pixelated games for the Wii. Their work will be projected on the side of the building and the actual developers will be in attendance to hang out and play with fans. There will also be Bit.Trip-themed food available at gr/eats.

Game Night is a new event that will be take place at GR2 every two months. Each evening will feature a different developer and its games in a relaxed, community-building setting. Because of the onset of E3, many members of the videogame industry are expected to attend the inaugural gathering, which will be a great opportunity for the game-playing public since most parties related to the Electronic Entertainment Expo are invitation-only.

Giant Robot was born as a Los Angeles-based magazine about Asian, Asian-American, and new hybrid culture in 1994, but has evolved into a full-service pop culture provider with shops and galleries in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York City, as well as an online equivalent.

Game Night with Gaijin Games
Monday, June 14, 2010, 7:30 - 10:00 p.m.
GR2
2062 Sawtelle Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90025
gr2.net
(310) 445-9276

NYC - Faile + Bast's "Deluxx Fluxx Arcade" (04.30.10 - 05.27.10)

FAILE & BÄST
DELUXX FLUXX ARCADE

April 30 – May 27, 2010
Opening Friday, April 30, 2010, 7:30 – 10:30 PM

What do you get when Brooklyn-based duo Faile and collaborator Bast take over a disused store front on the Lower East Side? Deluxx Fluxx, a functional video arcade that will be open to the public from April 30th to May 27th.

Jane McGonigal: Gaming Can Make a Better World

SF - "Game Over 3" (03.12.10 - 04.14.10)

10 Inappropriate iPhone Apps - "Squash the $treet"

My husband, Silvio has the great distinction of having worked on one of the top ten best video games in history (ranked by many different news outlets, game polls, etc.), Tony Hawk's Pro Skater.  He also has worked on a game voted one of the top ten worst in history, Fight For Life (I believe it was IGN that gave them this distinction). Can't say he does anything mediocre. Now another game he's worked on has made a top ten list! Huffington Post has named Squash the $treet #5 on their list of "10 Inappropriate iPhone Apps"!

Game Description:

Financial Crisis? Let your rage rain down on the crooks and swindlers who caused it.

Watch the shady bankers, creepy fraudsters and corrupt CEOs flee their gilded offices, sprinting for the nearest escape vehicle. Squash and flick the snarky scoundrels up and down the streets and sidewalks in the festering heart of the city where all the thievery and greed began.

LA - Street Fighter IV Event (06.25.09)

LA - "Jottobots" (06.13.09 - 07.08.09)