Archives for October 2011
The Art and Science of building a Zombie Apocalypse Safe-House
“The Safe House,” designed by KWK Promes. From All that is Interesting:
“The most essential item for our clients was acquiring the feeling of maximum security,” begins the designers’ website in the summary of the structure. Who wouldn’t feel safe in a concrete rectangle that folds in upon itself to become completely sealed? Even the windows are covered with a slab of concrete when the structure is on nap time.
The house, with its movable walls, has only one entrance, which is located on the second floor after crossing a drawbridge. Seems like the perfect opportunity to use a flamethrower and defend the life of your family, while stylishly nesting in a piece of architectural elitism.
Also, Bustler is running a zombie safe-house competition … go vote NOW!
Impressive Buildings and Unhappy Endings
11. Historically, a story about people inside impressive buildings ignoring or even taunting people standing outside shouting at them turns out to be a story with an unhappy ending.
Games & Real Emotions
It is also important that we start talking about how games generate primary emotions. The feeling of victory in a game of Chess is real. The feeling of anger at a Counter Strike camper is real and visceral. The feeling of belonging when you are asked to join a popular guild will stay with you for the rest of your life. We are not reflecting or empathizing (though this can occur in parallel). Due to the interactive nature of the game and our ability to adopt the value structure of the game, there are consequences that are real enough for our body to muster actual new-to-the-world emotions. This is an amazing and fundamental property of games that is at best weakly represented in more traditional media.
Games have become the top earning entertainment category. This probably has something to do with it, and also with why I think gamification is only a superficial way to tap into the power of games elsewhere. Games evoke real emotion, even without the color of narrative, in a way that linear media cannot.