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July 04, 2008
Gaming Lifestyle from Paris
I’ve been waiting for this half my life. In fact, one big project I did while studying graphic design was to create a concept for an imaginary magazine and design it. I came up with a magazine called Introvert, that was supposed to connect gaming to a broader context of aesthetics and the interactive arts. I remember feeling so passionately at the time that this magazine absolutely needed to exist. I think that was around 2003 or so.
Well, I was recently in Paris, and Digiki happened to have the first issue of a curious stack of glossy bound pages that a friend of his was involved in creating. It’s called Amusement, and as far as I can tell, it’s very close to the videogame magazine I imagined that I’d be salivating over, and more.
Someone finally did it. Fuck yes. These people realize that gaming is a major pop culture event, to be reckoned alongside fashion, and music, and all those other things that make the shiny young people in this world sparkle in the way that they do. But more importantly, they did not merely realize this fact, but acted on it. In fact, games are the tastiest pop cultural morsel of this century, and its about time someone acknowledged it from a bold new journalistic angle. The music industry is in the toilet, games have been generating more revenue than the movie industry for years, and keen consumers must be aware that while Hollywood is keen to recycle the same formulas, gaming’s key innovations are still to be discovered, the best new experiences still to be had. So can we please let gaming take its place on the world stage of cool already, where it so rightfully belongs.
Amusement seems to be a bold step in this direction, and a quick look at the intro animation on their website will reveal as much. From my estimation you’ll be as likely to see art or fashion inspired by gaming culture (Space Invader graffiti), as interviews with creative motherfuckers who play games (did I see Sebastien Tellier?), as you would an actual game review. I cannot confirm all my assumptions, because I don’t have a copy of Amusement in front of me, nor could I read the French, even if I did. But as you can probably tell, just the knowledge that it exists is inspiring to me. We can only hope this is the start of something much bigger.
Posted by shane at July 4, 2008 02:20 AM