6/6/2023 0 Comments Pixatool alternativeWhen you contrast that against these smaller tools, you see how valuable they become. So whatever trend, aesthetic, industry need, is most popular is what gets built. I participated in a few prerelease things for mainstream and corporate software… it’s really interesting how the larger and more popular a tool gets the more it fixates on the popular use cases.Īrtistic approaches in mainstream tools are heavily centered around market demand. The thing that I find the most valuable about these experimental and often silly tools is how they fill a creative niche. When I started working on the Electric Zine Maker I fell heavily into exploring all the stuff that was out there. They are a flavor that we crave and miss. It’s like these memories we hold onto about games (basically nostalgia), translates to art tools too. That there’s a craving for that interaction you get when creating with weirder software. That people still seek out these old programs. It says a lot that things like Kid Pix are still talked about. Small tools by small devs, made to serve a specific creative niche, bring me back to my earliest memories of creating stuff on a computer with these silly edutainment programs, or things like Mario Paint ( which I regularly gush over in my posts). To me, they remind me why it’s fun to make stuff on a computer. These things are like a breath of fresh air. We see genuine enthusiasm for quirky artistic tools… things that you could basically call a creative “toy”. The level of interest that exists for freeware and shareware tools (in general, tools made by small creators) is really exciting to me. Some months ago I asked if there was interest in another one of these, and yes. This is a followup to my first post where I talked about the wonderful world of tools and art toys that exists outside the mainstream. “Everything is going to be OK” is in THE collection in MoMA (also Tetrageddon won the Webby).Liminal Fever Dreams & Rejecting the Player (the surrealist, strange, upsetting otherworlds of video games).“Abusing you was by the book” (documenting two years of abuse from Game Journalism, after sharing my #metoo… the whole painful story all in one place).BlueSuburbia Progress Update (screenshots of what I’m working on).When software makes you laugh! (…creativity as a mechanic, how it exists in games, and the ethics of either empowering or exploiting creation).MoMA’s “Never Alone: Video Games and Other Interactive Design” Exhibit & The Hopeful Future of Video Game Preservation.Exploring the beautiful worlds of games made with “RPG in a Box”.The open-source no-code world of GDevelop (if you miss browser Flash games, this is keeping that dream alive!).The GDevelop Game Jam #3 is here (with prizes!) and I’m honored to be a judge….A curation of beautiful thoughtful poetic silly and queer zines made with the Electric Zine Maker.Celebrating some beautiful jam games “Death Stranding Meets Net-Art” in a poetry world (devlog update).Documenting what it’s like to be treated humanely by a journalist.Indie Games and the promise of better spaces.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |