Video Games

Video Game Commentary: The Ideology of “Angry Birds” — Back to “Animal Farm”

July 16, 2014
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The mega-popular video game Angry Birds is nothing if not hypocritical. A story of political and moral resistance is packaged to fill corporate coffers.

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Arts Fuse Year-End Fundraiser: Once More unto the Breach, Dear Friends, Once More

November 23, 2013
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Please send tax deductible dollars to “The Arts Fuse” so the magazine can continue to serve its mission — we need funds to pay our writers, to continue to grow our readership, and to raise our visibility around the region.

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Visual Arts Review: Boston Cyberarts’ “The Game’s Afoot” — Something Clever

March 20, 2013
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None of these games engendered any suffering at all. They were already pre-designed for failure; a player has no chance of success. But isn’t part of the pleasure of gaming the repeated failures that, over time, lead to successes?

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Video Game Review: Playing the “Ace of Spades”

January 11, 2013
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“Ace of Spades” is pure fun to play, but I’m not sure smashing two games together qualifies as innovation.

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Coming Attractions: Jazz Week 2012 Update

May 2, 2012
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Swarms in the train station! Improv in the library! Video game hits and poetry! Must be Jazz Week–and there’s plenty more, including a major CD release by Argentinian bassist Fernando Huergo paying tribute to the land of the Albiceleste.

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Arts Commentary: The Brave New World of Videogame Art

April 10, 2011
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So let’s steady that swaying hive, put down the poking stick, and take a deep breath. Games continue to evolve in creative, unexpected ways, and the mechanics of gameplay can form the basis of intriguing and thought-provoking works of art.

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Fuse Visual Arts Review: Questioning the Image

November 18, 2010
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But The Image in Question begs a crucial question: Isn’t modern media supposed to be flashy, colorful, and loud beyond all sane toleration? Aren’t  shrill, unceasing proclamations a part of what drives some individuals away from television and video-games to art galleries, the concert-hall, and the cinema? THE IMAGE IN QUESTION. WAR — MEDIA —…

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Film Commentary: Video Games — The Real Final Frontier?

February 8, 2010
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“Avatar” is beautiful and otherworldly, but the film is so grounded in down-to-earth concepts that it restricts the viewer’s imagination rather than broadening it. An infinitely better and more complex recent space opera, “Mass Effect 2,” comes in the form of a video game. Is it art? Yes. By Justin Marble Over the centuries the…

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Book Review: “Expressive Processing” for the Masses?

October 4, 2009
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Author Noah Wardrip-Fruin argues that each of the sometimes tangentially related processes in a video game shapes “the audience’s experience as fundamentally as the specifics of the images used in a motion picture.” Expressive Processing: Digital Fictions, Computer Games, and Software Studies by Noah Wardrip-Fruin. The MIT Press, 480 pp, $34.95. Reviewed by Mark Nolan…

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