Recently on Offworld

By Brandon Boyer at 8:21 am Friday, May 1

Videogames should be more violent, not less.

Recently on Offworld, Ragdoll Metaphysics columnist Jim Rossignol takes the occasion of J.G. Ballard's death to argue that, with his future of boredom -- of calm consumer choices and deadened emotions -- realised, that videogames are an ideal safe excursion to violence and excitement, outlets for Ballard's "vast systems of competing psychopathies." Elsewhere we took a longer look at WINDOSiLL (above), the latest Flash creation from Vectorpark artist Patrick Smith, and its magical hyper-real surreality -- certainly one of the most physically expressed worlds in recent game memory. We also saw fantastic footage of Q-games' latest PixelJunk game, showing off the interplay of its realistically modeled particle/fluid mechanics, saw Bandcamp's hidden Defender stats-graph easter egg, watched Infinite Ammo's gorgeous paper-cut planar-platformer Paper Moon in motion, and cut paper of our own to assemble adorably lethal Team Fortress 2 models. Finally, we launched a 'One Shot' series of single-serve art doses with Katamari-head jellybeans, a Super Mario graveyard, and a Nintendo Entertainment System mouse, dug on Dr. Mario Dunnys, and showed off easily one of the best bits of press swag ever put to paper, with a neo-futuristic Space Invaders Extreme print signed by original game creator Tomohiro Nishikado himself.