Art Crit and Games
Over the weekend, I started noodling around in City of Heroes. Long story. I'll tell you later.
One thing that's striking is the difference between the writing and the art direction. The writing is perfunctory at best -- and that may yet prove generous. The art, though, strikes me as intriguingly complex and sophisticated. There's a lot of urban landscape, here, and it seems to be thought through in some detail. I think, for example, that I see some visual digs at what Chris Jencks calls Fascist Modern, and also some nostalgia for early Russian social realism.
But I don't know much about the image of the city in modern art crit. I bet some of my readers do, though. I'd like to know more about what's going on here.