screenshot

Dreeps plays itself but wants you to take pictures…

Dreeps (Hisanori Hiraoka, 2015) is a game that “plays itself”, allowing the player to enjoy looking at the unfolding of the game. On the other hand, Dreeps provides a minimal button on its lower left encouraging players to take screenshots to be shared on social networking sites. Gameplay is outsourced to the software, while the photographic activity is handed back to the player-photographer, tightly connected to the distribution of images on sharing platforms.

For those who don’t have the time to play RPGs anymore,

this is a new type of game—an Alarm Playing Game!

To play dreeps, just set the alarm. That’s all. Easy, right?

When you head to bed, the robot boy will sleep just like you, regaining HP and recharging for his next day of adventure!

When the alarm rings in the morning, both of you will wake up and start your day. When you go to work or school, the robot boy will head out on an adventure through fields, valleys, and peninsulas where monsters roam. Or, he might discover dungeons where strange bosses lurk…

Either way, every day is a new day for you and the robot boy!

But how does adventuring work? That’s real easy!

After the alarm sounds, the robot boy’s adventure will automatically continue as long as he has enough HP, even while the app is closed. You might miss some events, but don’t worry about it.
 There’s almost no text in this game.

So whenever you feel like it, load dreeps up and check on the robot boy’s adventure. Or, leave it running on your desk while you work, study, or snack. Play however you want, and take it at your own pace.

Visuals and sound can give you hints to what sort of story is unfolding in this little world. But use your imagination! Take those hints and try to guess just what’s happening. Oh! And don’t forget that you can share screenshots of and thoughts about the game by pressing the “Share” button.

dreeps was created to give the player the ability to enjoy a story little by little, day by day. With beautifully crafted art and animations, this is a new kind of game that’s easy to pick up and simple for anyone to learn.

source: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dreeps-alarm-playing-game/id953366068?mt=8

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Akihiko Taniguchi

Akihiko Taniguchi, practice for in-game photography / virtual photography, 2018

More by Akihiko Taniguchi: http://okikata.org/

 

Akihiko Taniguchi’s Alternative Photography course at Tama University (Tokyo) includes in-game photography:

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source: https://okikata.org/altphoto/in_game_photography.html

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source: https://okikata.org/altphoto/take_a_photo_in_game.html

Russia posts video game screenshot as ‘proof’ of US helping IS (BBC article)

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Russia’s Ministry of Defence has posted what it called “irrefutable proof” of the US aiding so-called Islamic State – but one of the images was actually taken from a video game.
The ministry claimed the image showed an IS convoy leaving a Syrian town last week aided by US forces.
Instead, it came from the smartphone game AC-130 Gunship Simulator: Special Ops Squadron.
The ministry said an employee had mistakenly attached the photo.
The Conflict Intelligence Team fact-checking group said the other four provided were also errors, taken from a June 2016 video which showed the Iraqi Air Force attacking IS in Iraq.
The video game image seems to be taken from a promotional video on the game’s website and YouTube channel, closely cropped to omit the game controls and on-screen information.
In the corner of the image, however, a few letters of the developer’s disclaimer can still be seen: “Development footage. This is a work in progress. All content subject to change.”

source: “Russia posts video game screenshot as ‘proof’ of US helping IS”, BBC News – 14 November 2017, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-41991012

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International workshop: Screen-Images (Bildschirmbilder) – In-Game Photography and Screenshots as Photographical Praxis

July 6-7, 2017 in Brandenburg Center for Media Studies (ZeM), Potsdam (Germany)
Starting from the phenomenon of In-Game Photography this workshop investigates the status of the screenshot as a photographical genre which includes but is not limited to computer games. Both, Screen-Photography and In-Game Photography belong to a number of everyday photographical practices that are performed within the digitally produced realities as well as the digitized realities we inhabit and which are largely mediated via screens and screen-like surfaces. Amongst those practices are the so-called “screenshotting” in computer games (e.g. in order to document unusual in-game events and to share those), photorealistic captures of digital 3D models (as they often occur in architecture or design contexts) or, much simpler, the screenshot as a form of camera-less photography. In addition there exist hybrid cases such as photography in augmented realities (which most recently became popular through the smartphone game Pokémon Go (2016)), screen captures with real cameras in artistic contexts, and the creation of screenshots of digital photographs in the computer. Eventually, in the history of “real-world” photography exists a significant amount of photographs which show 1) tv or computer screens, 2) billboards showing photographs of real physical screens and 3) photographs of photographs which are held in hands.
Such practices and phenomena have hitherto rarely been subjected to scientific investigation. There is a considerable lack of aesthetical, cultural, technical and historical analyses as well as a lack of theories and theory production in relevant disciplines. The goal of the workshop is hence to describe screenshot-like practices and phenomena and to ask questions regarding the status, the ontology, the aesthetics, as well as the cultural and artistic significance of such phenomena and practices. The workshop thereby intends to investigate the potential of a new subject area for future research from the perspective of media studies, media aesthetics, and media history, as well as image studies, photography theory and game studies.
Program
Thursday, July 6, 2017
10:00 Winfried Gerling and Sebastian Möring: Welcome und Introduction of ZeM and DIGAREC
10:30 – 11:15 Stephan Günzel: From Screen to Screen – A Dislimitation of the Photographic Image
11:15 – 12:00 Birgit Schneider: Framing the frame – media mimicry from a historical perspective
12:00 – 13:30 Lunch break
13:30 – 14:15 Sebastian Möring: Artistic In-Game Photography and the Conditional Image of the Computer Game
14:15 – 15:00 Cindy Poremba: Constructing through Creating: In-Game Photography
15:00 – 15:30 Coffee break
15:30 – 16:15 Margarete Pratschke: The Materiality of Screenshots. Historical Screenshots as Photo-Objects and their Role within Visual Culture
16:15 – 17:00 Marco de Mutiis: Photo Modes – sketches for a post-photographic apparatus
17:00 – 17:30 Hans Kannewitz: How to Frame Screenshots of Operating Systems – On the Arrangement of a Collection

Friday, July 7, 2017
10:30 – 11:15 Jan Distelmeyer: Using Depresentation. Observations on/by Desktop Movies
11:15 – 12:00 Winfried Gerling: The Schirmbild – The Long and Short History of Screenphotography
12:00-13:30 Lunch break
13:30 – 14:15 Matteo Bittanti: tba
14:15 – 15:00 Markus Rautzenberg: Ways of Vanishing. Ludic Mediality in Computer Games and Photography
15:00 – 15:30 Coffee break
15:30 Final Discussion/Outlook
Organizers
This workshop is a collaboration between Brandenburg Center for Media Studies (ZeM, http://zem-brandenburg.de), Digital Games Research Center (DIGAREC, http://digarec.de), European Media Studies (EMW, http://emw.eu), University of Applied Sciences Potsdam (FHP) and University of Potsdam (UP). The workshop is supported by Potsdam Graduate School (PoGS).
The workshop is organized by Winfried Gerling and Sebastian Möring.
Venue
The workshop takes place at Brandenburg Center for Media Studies (ZeM):
ZeM – Brandenburgisches Zentrum für Medienwissenschaften
Friedrich-Ebert-Straße 4
14467 Potsdam
Approach/Site plan:

COLL.EO, Boring Postcards From Italy

Boring Postcards From Italy by COLL.EO (2016)

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To create Boring Postcards from Italy, COLL.EO has collected more than one hundred of the most boring images from Forza Horizon 2. The result is a book that, in sharp contrast to the title, fascinates and surprises. Boring Postcards from Italy redefines the relationship between reality and simulation with “postcards” that are “boring” both in content and composition. The project is an appropriation and homage to Martins Parr’s seminal Boring Postcards series: a commentary on videogame architecture, tourism and simulation, photography and representation. It is, above all, a provocation.

source: https://concrete-press.com/boring-postcards-from-italy/

game photography on tumblr

screenshot by simssries – simssries.tumblr.com

a selection of tumblr pages about in-game photography:

“Appendix to article Screenshots as type of visual art – interviews”

Alien: Constipation, by K putt

This series of interviews with screenshot artists, who take extensive and highly crafted in-game photographs, is an appendix to an article titled “Screenshots as type of visual art“. Unfortunately the article is in Czech (although a google translated version seems to output a readable translation), but the interviews part of the appendix offer a great insight into the work of popular screenshot artists. The artists interviewed are: PixieGirl4, K-Putt, Jim2point0, DeadEndThrills, Natty Dread.

Five selected artists answer a set of standard questions, revealing interesting practices of this community.

  • One common answer from all interviewees is the recognition of the forum of deadendthrill.com as the main platform for the community of video game photography.

“deadendthrills.com has a new forum that will become the Mecca of a screenshot related stuff” -Natty Dread

  • Technical quality (resolution, textures and anti-aliasing) of the images is very high and hardware used is powerful and custom made.

if you’re doing screenshots then you often have to use downsampling to achieve perfect image quality. Some games suffer such bad shader aliasing, furthermore, that you’re talking resolutions of 8K or even 12K before all the aliasing is gone. You want a resolution high enough to not just antialias the image when you downsample, but to downsample using a sharpening algorithm that preserves the detail in the textures, etc, without bringing out any jaggies. – DeadEndThrills

  • Another interesting point is about what is allowed in terms of post production. Only cropping and colour grading is accepted, and certain tools are favoured (SweetFX versus Photoshop). The majority of the screenshots are achieved in real-time and saved as they are grabbed. Such rules seem strict in comparison to the GTA V in-game photography group Landscape photographers of Los Santos and Blaine County* which encouraged users to take their pictures and “work them up in Photoshop or your favorite editor before posting them here in all their glory”.

I normaly just crop pictures to a different aspect ratio. […] Or i remove little annoying things like one little blade of grass that looks through a shoe or something. I don’t like to change the colors in Photoshop. That’s what SweetFX is for. I want to capture the game like i see it ingame. Photoshoping a game screenshot is also frowned upon in our little screenshot community. –K-Putt

 

If a screenshot has a small, distracting element I can remove with content aware, I’ll probably do that. But it’s very rare and I can’t even think of the last time I had to. My screenshots are almost all unedited. I wouldn’t know what to edit in them that I couldn’t achieve in real-time with SweetFX anyways.

[…]

There are so many amazing screenshots from all sorts of talented folks, and the best would go up on the DET community page. –Jim2point0

 

I don’t do any post work unless it’s the very rare case of a glitch ruining a shot that’s taken hours to set up. If a character’s finger is clipping through something, for instance, then I’d probably fix that. Otherwise the shots are exactly as they’re grabbed. –DeadEndThrills**

* see https://ingamephotography.wordpress.com/2015/02/25/landscape-photographers-of-gta/

** DeadEndThrills was also featured in a blog post on Videogame Tourism titled “The art of in-game photography”: https://ingamephotography.wordpress.com/2015/02/25/the-art-of-in-game-photography/

Links to the interviewed screenshot artists

PixieGirl4 : https://www.flickr.com/photos/pix111/

K-Putt : https://www.flickr.com/photos/k_putt/sets

Jim2point0 : https://www.flickr.com/photos/jim2point0/

DeadEndThrills : https://www.flickr.com/photos/duncanjharris/

Natty Dread : https://www.flickr.com/photos/90866390@N06/