Print Announcement Week Continues: The Witness, That Dragon, Cancer, and Dateline: Bronzeville
Clockwise from left: Artwork from The Witness, That Dragon, Cancer, and Dateline: Bronzeville
VGA is delighted to announce the ongoing release of artwork from three important games: The Witness, That Dragon, Cancer, and Dateline: Bronzeville. Posters start at $35 each. From now until the new year, enjoy 20% off with gift code HOLIDAY. COLLECT ARTWORK HERE.
The Witness: Jonathan Blow is one of the most important figures of the revolution of indie gaming. His Braid (2008) won an Innovation in Game Design award at the Independent Games Festival and the story of its development was told in the insightful documentary Indie Game: The Movie (2012). Six years in development, The Witness debuted in early 2016 and revived the adventure puzzle genre forged in the 1990s by games such as Myst (1993). Its colorful postcard landscapes are rendered in a style distinguished by its emphasis on lighting, shape and color in contrast with an industry that is reliant on traditional texture maps. Without loading screens or cut scenes, the game is wholly manifest in one unbroken immersive experience. The panoply of environs tantalizes the wandering player to discover all of its secrets. Yet its familiar gaming environment tropes of jungle, desert and mountains are imbued with an alien quality by their lack of characters and fauna.
That Dragon, Cancer: Ryan and Amy Green heartbreakingly lost their son Joel to cancer in 2014. As a way to grieve, empathize with others, and commemorate Joel’s life, the Greens developed and released That Dragon, Cancer on Joel’s birthday in January 2016. Among the most profound and moving stories told in the medium of video games to date, That Dragon, Cancer is an intensely personal struggle of raw emotion and moving metaphor that utilizes the medium for connection and personal engagement, in a manner without precedent. The game leverages an art style where characters are rendered without distinguishing facial features. This technique functions as both a vehicle for empathy, allowing participants to insert themselves into character roles, while also softening what might otherwise be an overwhelming and too real experience. The entirety of the game is bathed in an otherworldly light, underscoring the presence of the supernatural throughout.
Dateline: Bronzeville: In the first half of the 20th century, Chicago's Bronzeville neighborhood was known as the Black Metropolis, alive with vibrant Black culture and business that flourished during the Great Migration. Highlighting this historical moment, multimedia artist Philip Mallory Jones has developed a first person mystery video game, DATELINE: Bronzeville, set in 1940 based on oral and historical documentation. Philip Mallory Jones has long played an important role in the media arts field; he was founder and Executive Director of Ithaca Video Projects, a pioneering media arts center, from 1971 to 1984, and Director of the Ithaca Video Festival from 1974 to 1984. He has held a number of artist residencies around the world and his videotapes and installations have been exhibited internationally.