The reverence with which we regard art can be tied directly to longevity. The motion picture has a history of over 120 years. The written word has been keeping records for over eight thousand years, but that's nothing. We've been doodling pictures of cats on walls for roughly 30,000 years! The truth is, just because something's old doesn't make it art. For a medium that notoriously struggles for such esteem, video games have come a long way in their forty odd years of life. They've nurtured cathartic, emotionally charged entertainment experiences and appealed to different generations with different technical standards. Just like our oldest forms of art, video games have already experienced multiple eras of stylistic and technological evolution, from simple, pixelated squares to near photo-realistic renderings of fantastic worlds. Pong. Mario. Doom. Myst. Fallout. Monkey Island. The Sims. The originators and perfecters of the FPS, the platformer, the RPG, the RTS, the Adventure Game and every other gaming genre are forever worthy of praise, but genres have evolved. At some point, the influence of younger art must sustain and new classics are born. With 3D games in the mid-nineties and modern mobile gaming has come an explosion of new formats, game design standards and popular game mechanics. The following thirteen games have profoundly influenced the modern gaming era and set the stage for future game design...
Real Science Magazine called James' addiction to video games "sexually attractive." He also worked really hard and got really lucky in college and earned some awards for acting, improv and stand-up, but nobody cares about that out here in LA. So... He's starting over fresh, performing when He can. His profile picture features James as Serbian, vampire comic Dorde Mehailo with His anonymous Brother and Uncle at the Nerdmelt Showroom in West Hollywood. In James' spare time, he engages in acting, writing, athletics, hydration, hours of great pondering and generally wishing you'd like him.
