Tag Archives: max payne

payne & redemption revisited

Posted on by October 14, 2012
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  Earlier this year I already ↵reported on “Payne & Redemption”, the other Max-Payne-themed “meatspace-movie” besides the short ↑Max Payne Hero. But meanwhile at ↑payneandredemption.com there is a wealth of material worthwhile to check out for everyone interested in movie-adaptations of computergames.  The above picture is a clipping from the publicity still “Psychoanalysis”, property of The Payne & Redemption Production Team. Copyright © 2006. For details of specific credits. … Continue reading →

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ablaze

Posted on by October 14, 2012
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  If it wasn’t for my having an appointment here and now, there’d be little wonder in the downtown Manhattan spaghetti joint being perfectly deserted at that time of night. Way past the graveyard shift, uncanny twilight, floor covered by classical black and white checker tile, rows of lavishly upholstered benches, matching diner-style tables squeezed between them, an enormous mahogani bar in the back, and nobody to be seen. A cliché setting. But the cliché doesn’t miss its target and brings home the menacing ambience quite nicely. Just if I’d not be nervous and frightened enough yet. Alas, there’s no … Continue reading →

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welcome to bright falls

Posted on by October 14, 2012
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  ADM, whom I know already for quite some time—in fact as long as ye olde days of ↑Max-Payne modding glory—has made his promise true and, on 22 September 2006, fired a new ↑Alan-Wake fansite online: ↑brightfalls.com. The weblog focusses on the news about Alan Wake, and ADM, with his excellent contacts to Remedy, does a tremendous job of collecting every item published on Alan Wake, as soon as it is published. There was quite some of it during the last three months. Head over to ADM’s new site if you want to know everything about the game which there … Continue reading →

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in the wake of modding

Posted on by October 14, 2012
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  Now is the time to hop aboard: “↑Remedy Entertainment, the developer of the ↑Max Payne games and one of the leading independent game studios in the world, is ↑looking for Gameplay Designers to work on the upcoming next-generation title ↑Alan Wake.” The most interesting to me is this line from the ↑recruitment info‘s list of desired skills: “Proven experience with modding, level editors, scripting and creation of story-driven gameplay”  via entry at brightfalls.com … Continue reading →

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gamemodding definitions

Posted on by October 2, 2012
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The wall went down last month. From now on in computer gaming, there were to be no real barriers between creator and audience, or producer and consumer. They would be collaborators in the same imaginative space, and working as equals, they’d create a new medium, together. (↵Au 2002)  “Day of Defeat” is a mod—a fan-made modification to a pre-existing game. Or, in modder jargon, it’s a “total conversion,” the most ambitious form of mod, in which all the graphics and gameplay of the original title have been reshaped by fans to create an entirely new experience. (↵Au 2002)  The community … Continue reading →

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mod researchers

Posted on by October 14, 2012
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Some day in the first half of April 2002 I ↵stumbled over gamemodding and slowly realized that there was more than something in it, legitimizing an anthropological look. Before that I was aware of player-created game-content, as I had played ↑“Descent” (1995) and lots of custom maps for it, but at that time I did in no way associate the thing with anthropology. This completely changed with my first encounter with the Max-Payne community, and since then I every day get more convinced that gamemodding is a relevant and central contemporary issue to be fathomed academically. Back in 2002 I … Continue reading →

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the art of gamemodding

Posted on by October 14, 2012
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  It seems that the time of harvesting the fruits of my efforts finally has arrived. Today again an invitation to write an article for an anthology came in—I didn’t even send a proposal … God, am I satisfied and proud. Alas, the problem is the now emerged density of deadlines. But self-organization is the key to damming up this kind of trouble. So I skimmed through my physical and digital folders and found yet another abstract I submitted to … well, honestly, I can’t remember where to I sent it. But obviously it was not accepted or even received. … Continue reading →

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equilibrium

Posted on by October 14, 2012
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  The aficionados of course ↑can not accept cyberpunk to be a “long-since dead relic of the 80s,” but “consider it to be alive and well.” Not surprisingly I completely second that. Although ↑Bruce Sterling himself ↑sees it to belong to the 80s’ “Movement” and calls for a new generation, and although the terms “cyberpunk”, “cyberspace” and the like have virtually no meaning within my tribe’s, the ↵MP-community’s discourse [in said context “Gibson” again—or still—is associated with &uarrguitars and not with ↑a writer], I deem cyberpunk alive and well, too. Furthermore I think it to still be dramatically influential—and important … Continue reading →

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alan wake community infrastructure

Posted on by October 14, 2012
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  Quite some things have changed concerning the structure of the online territory the Alan Wake community inhabits. AlanWAKE.net, home of the official Alan Wake forums, vanished in February, the URI was set to redirect to ↑http://www.alanwake.com/forum. The workload and effort to run a site of this size and complexity simply was too much for ADM, having an increasing study load at University sitting in his neck.  ADM: I started up AlanWake.net in the start of May 2005, it was the first Alan Wake fansite on the net and it drew it quite a good amount of traffic as well. … Continue reading →

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darth payne

Posted on by October 14, 2012
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  The external HDD still works like a charm, and I am again at organizing my material. Just found the above unfinished faceskin for ↵MP2 which I did on 10 September 2004. Of course it was intended for ↵LS5, which never saw the light of day. See ↵lightsaber outtakes. It’s not a great deal all in all, I know, but on a small scale the above artefact illustrates a typical process of combining elements and aspects—most artefacts stemming from modding-communities are collages of this kind. The image’s backdrop is the digitally reworked face of actor ↑Timothy Gibbs who gave his … Continue reading →

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