How to Bed Art Majors Using Only Your Knowledge of Video Games

If you’re in college, you are most likely surrounded by attractive members of the opposite sex right now. If you’re reading this website, you are most likely a nerd and they want nothing to do with you. See, college is the time for attractive people to major in easy non-subjects – predominantly in the arts - that make them sound deep and unapproachable. So, how do you bed this seemingly impossible lay, using only subjects familiar to you, the internet frequenter? Well, start with video games. That’s right! Video games can appeal to the art crowd as well…you just have to know how to frame it.

The Three R’s Test

See, there’s an easy system for determining the viability of art crowd conversation material, and it’s called the “Three R’s Test:” You have to ask yourself, when broaching a new subject, is it about Rape, Retards, or Regret?

If it involves all three, it’s definitely art. Nothing encompasses Rape, Retards and Regrets simultaneously that is not art scene gold. If it’s only about one of the three, check carefully: It could be comedy. Comedy is never art, and laughter is irrelevant. If it involves two out of three, you probably have a suitable subject on your hands. Check to see if it’s in a foreign language - that’s a good first sign, and cause for further investigation. Watch for other indicators: Are there naked men crying? Can you hear flutes? Has anybody spoken backwards? Are there midgets? Are they sad? Is there excessive nudity? Is it intensely unappealing? Any of these aspects may indicate a safe topic of conversation.

That’s not just naked - that’s art naked.

If you stick within these guidelines, it’s perfectly acceptable - in some cases even preferable - to talk about video games at the trendiest of gallery openings. And…

BREAKING NEWS: Irony fucking sucks.

So, right after I tear Paul a new one in the comments for daring (the presumption!) to question my update schedule as well as having the audacity to be much more successful in life than me, I immediately and ironically miss a week.

So, first of all: Fuck you, Poetic Justice. I hope you giggle yourself to death in your peach neckerchief, you fop.

Second: I swear it wasn’t my fault.

I write offline mostly, then format and upload the post, which was just about ready when my internet got cut off. We moved into our own house this weekend, and Qwest was supposed to disconnect/reconnect our DSL yesterday. Instead, they cut it off on Friday - literally in the middle of writing my proposed update - and it’s just now come up at the new place. So, in short: I stand by my previous statements regarding Qwest.

Anyway, last week’s update will be up later today, this week’s update will be up later this week, and then we’re back to the regular weekly updates until I finish up this project.

Braid: The Next Portal?

For something to be considered a work of an art, you have to be able to dissect it - to look at it carefully from every angle, and come up with something to say about it that is both fairly pretentious and a little queer. Braid is a work of art, and I am, let’s face it, fairly pretentious and a little queer. So let’s get this shit done:

Braid is, at first brush, a pretty simple platformer. It’s cute, clean, and has a novel little gimmick, but most truly great games are uncomplicated. They are short, straight-forward, and uncluttered. Take Portal, for instance. There was no long backstory - no lead-up, no expository mess as you segued into the game-world - you were just there. You stood up and you went. You had a unique, necessary ability, a need to get from one place to another, and that was it. It was brilliantly written, minimalist, and twisted. It topped out at six hours, it left you wanting more, and it never got old.

In literally every single one of those ways, Braid is the next Portal.

The concept of time manipulation in games is nothing new – from Prince of Persia to Max Payne, every asshole and his grandma can alter time to cheat death, reverse mistakes, or hell, maybe just find the lost remote control - but Braid’s time reversal mechanics are to these games what Transformers are to Go-bots: Yes, they’re essentially the same thing, but one carries the material off with grace and power and the other is a fucking Go-bot.

Braid is so completely inundated with its time mechanics that they actually function like another plane. Braid is 3-D, if you want to be literal about it - it’s just that instead of depth, that third dimension is time. The…