Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Time to Wake Up: The Darkness, Reflections on Comics and Games



So I'm a bit behind schedule, but also finished Lost and picked up Naruto today, and I have finally finished my reflection on the video game adaptation of the comic series The Darkness. For future reference, I will be using the comic series in Italics and the video game in Bold.

A long time ago, when I was just a sperm concerned with getting inside a vagina to bring forth new life, the comic book industry thrived along with the arcade industry. The two cultures began to mesh as the arcade industry died down and some of the steam of mainstream comics began catering to a more devoted crowd. Flashing forward a little more than 18 years, one will notice very few of the things previously mentioned have changed. The video game industry continues to grow each year, Comic-Con and other festivals expand audiences yearly, and I am still primarily concerned about spreading life. However, both cultures continue to share one trait in common: comics and video games are niche markets. On a mainstream level the fans are sterotypical nerds and geeks who dress up as imaginary characters and rarely leave the home, only for D&D night, to wait in line for the next Star Wars film, or to LARP all over someone's face. The problem is, as most gamers/comic readers will tell you, that these stereotypes are flawed and very wrong. The casual fan is just as important to each industry, and with the influence of comics in other mediums the pairing of these two previously intertwined cultures seems obvious.

Monday, June 30, 2008

Opening Day

Hello world and welcome to the first post on MultiPlatform, the blog geared towards an in-depth analysis and reflection on different forms of media. Instead of posting news, I have taken it upon myself to give a more concise perspective on specific topics going around a particular industry. Given the title of the blog, I will be most focused on video games, and rightly so since any formal type of analysis and criticism seems to not have found much acceptance in the industry. I am here to look at games in a different way, as more than a medium for enjoyment and instead as viable pieces of culture.

Now, video games will not be the sole focus. I plan on lumping together films and television in this blog on occasion and offering a perspective on trends of each subsequent industry. While I have not yet determined the best way to go about reflecting on each specific topic, I plan to start with the idea of 'mini-marathons.' Whether going through the decline of a previously popular medium and speculating on the interest of another, or simply examining specific genres, the marathon format would seem to give me the ability to make an accurate judgement with a variety of background information.