Event #1- "Punk Arcade"

Event #1:

At the event: "Punk Arcade"

The first event that I attended this quarter was a one-night exhibition called “Punk Arcade” and it was located at the Broad Art Center on UCLA campus. This event could only be made possible with the work from artists, designers, students, and filmmakers who came together to construct “do-it-yourself”/handmade video games. As I approached the building I could hear laughter and the talking coming from the room and I was excited to see what this whole event was about. As I walked into the building, I noticed that these video games were very different in the sense that they weren’t typical mainstream products, they weren’t put together in a neat manner, and some were very large and uncommon. 

At this moment after scanning the room and the various video games, I started to become more open and understanding seeing that these video games were not ones that needed to be approved by any toy or gaming company, but rather they were an expression of the individuals who constructed them. One of the games that caught my attention for most of the time that I was there was called, “Distribution of Wealth” created by Michael Wilde. This game required the player to control the character, in this case the designer intended for it to be Johnny Rotten (the lead singer of the Sex Pistols). The player had a command station that is shown in the picture below and they were able to move around the joystick which enabled “Johnny Rotten” to move around on the screen. 

This game reminded me of “Pac Man” because it is a game where the player aims to gather funds, which were money signs on the screen and trying to avoid what the designer describes as “Corporate Fat Cats”. By incorporating this political spin, the designer was able to put his own mark and opinion into the game. This clever addition to the game illustrated how this event was open to individuals expressing themselves anyway and by any means. This game brought together both fields of technology and art because it allowed the designer to use technology used to create video games as well as having the freedom to add his/or her personal and artistic touch.

 The Punk Arcade was a very different event and was one that opened my eyes to see how the public has the capability of using their artistic abilities to make video games. It amazed me that these video games were constructed in just 3 days and the designers were able to bring together both their knowledge with technology/gaming software and their creativity to create a stable/functional video game.