Alice and Kev

Strange - I actually scheduled the below post for last Thursday but for some reason, it never actually posted. Anyway, here is what I wrote for you last Thurs.

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It never ceases to amaze me how creative some people can be with their video games. I've talked before about machinima, which is the art of taking a game engine and using it to create a video. In the previous blog post about machinima, I was talking specifically about Red vs Blue which is a comedy video series made using the Halo game but another popular video game used for machinima is The Sims (a virtual life simulator released by EA).

In the past, there have been some pretty good machinima done using The Sims 2. In particular, creating music videos using The Sims 2 seems to be really popular. A couple of good examples that I've seen are When You're Gone, Space Oddity and Thriller.

Just in case you didn't know, EA has recently released The Sims 3 - the latest update in their multi-million unit selling franchise and already, some enterprising bloggers have gone about to see what the new game lets them create. Which finally brings us to the point of this post - Alice and Kev.

Alice and Kev is a blog created by a game design student in the UK detailing the exploits of a homeless father and daughter in The Sims 3. Kev is hot headed, mean spirited, inappropriate and insane while Alice is a kind hearted clumsy loser. Straight away, you can tell we are headed for comedy gold.

Despite the comedy potential, what really makes the blog stand out is the quality of the screenshots posted in the blog. Alice, with no home, no money and a horrible father, often has difficulty coping with school and life in general and the screenshots do an excellent job of capturing her mood as she struggles with her daily life. Considering all the situations talked about in the blog actually happened in game, the level of emotion shown on the characters faces is incredible. At varying times, you can clearly see that she is sad, hopeful, angry, resentful, determined - it all comes out from just looking at her face.

Another interesting point is that reading the blog almost feels like watching soaps again. When I was a kid, I used to watch Neighbours religiously. Just to show my age - I not only recall the Scott and Charlene wedding, I also recall watching Scott meet Charlene, or rather her fist, for the first time. Perhaps this is part of the reason why I enjoy reading the exploits of Alice - at some level, it reminds me of my childhood watching soaps on British TV. Of course, the other possibility is that I'm a sicko who derives satisfaction from the misery of others...