Proce, who contributed to Midway’s final fighting game before being snapped up by Warner Bros, Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe, wrote that the re-imagining of the MK franchise proposed “mixing modern muti-player and dismemberment game design with the original fighting mechanic.” The artist’s take on four Mortal Kombat mainstays—Raiden, Kano, Scorpion and Sony Blade—are more dramatic, grittier and certainly a welcome change.

Proce describes his Scorpion as “a wraith wearing the yellow blood of the demon” that resurrected him and his Kano as “half Japanese half US military bad arse.” His Sonya, which will likely draw the most criticism, was redesigned as “the daughter of a Texas Ranger who’s sex appeal weakens her opponents while her Special Forces training kicks their asses.” Finally, his Raiden pitch portrays “a god [whose] feet rarely touch the ground.”

We’re not sure what direction the Mortal Kombat team is taking the series at its new home, but I’m personally hoping it’s more along these lines—a darker, more dramatic, less comic book-like tone with a pared down cast—than what we got with Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe. I enjoyed that game as much as the next guy, but I like my MK with a little less Wonder Woman.

Here are the never before seen Mortal Kombat characters… [Vincent Proce Art Blog via GameSetWatch/SRK Forums]

These aren’t the kind of things you’d get as a pre-order gift thrown in a cheap plastic frame. No, these are the kind of things that are limited to 100 of each, and will cost you $175.

There are three different prints, and each measures 13×19 inches.

Now, I dig Tomb Raider. But after Zero Punctuation’s brutal review of Underworld, I’m started to feel mighty uncomfortable about all the animals Ms Croft knocks off on her way to steal valuable stuff from dead people. In all seriousness, I actually apologised to the virtual panthers I shot up during my own review of Underworld. Because I’m a huge softie. And a cat owner. And maybe a little crazy after 10 straight hours of gameplay on deadline.

Enjoy the artwork, from the over-sexed to the over-manga’d. This image comes from Joe Jusko.

40 Various Styles Artworks of Lara Croft [The Design Inspiration]

Owens’ built his “Avatar Machine” costume to “[replicate] the aesthetics and visuals of third person gaming, allowing the user to view themselves as a virtual character in real space via a head mounted interface.”

Which means… yeah, you guessed it. “The system potentially allows for a diminished sense of social responsibility, and could lead the user to demonstrate behaviours normally reserved for the gaming environment.”

That’s all well and good, but we just want to know one thing: Can you make us one, Marc?

Avatar Machine [Marc Owens, via GameSetWatch]

As reported by Gamasutra’s Chris Remo, Chris Hecker (formerly of Maxis, now an independent developer) addressed the International Game Developers Association’s Leadership Forum in San Francisco this past week. In the following excerpt, Remo digests Hecker’s remarks and their main point — that games remain fixated on narrow experiences, revenue and the easy appeal of proven forms of presentation — especially the “power fantasy”, with its attendant explosions and special effects.

“If we continue on our current path, we’ll end up in the pop cultural ghetto where [comic books] are,” Hecker said. “An alternative path is where film, books and music ended up.” Such media certainly have their low-brow offerings, but on the whole are “relatively bulletproof” as accepted forms of art, worth scholarship and refined criticism.

But even on four tests of popular culture acceptance — revenue, units sold, cultural impact and diversity of content – games succeed at only one, Hecker argues. Revenue. “We f—k it up on the other three,” showing that the medium is still an infant next to its supposed peers.

Here, in the words of Hecker as reported by Remo, is the bigger picture of how games, before aspiring to the old-money legitimacy of the fine arts, can first avoid a cultural ghetto.

IGDA Forum: Asking ‘Why’ Will Keep Games Out Of The Ghetto, Says Hecker [Gamasutra, November 13, 2009.]

Like literature, music, film and other forms, games offer their own intrinsic element to add to culture. For games, it’s interactivity. That uniqueness is necessary for a form to carve out its own cultural space, and it’s what will allow games to occupy such a space if the gaming community doesn’t wall it off.

But that means designers must strive to convey some kind of “why”, and when they do, it will ideally be conveyed through interactivity, not just cutscenes. Linear “theme park ride” games, as Hecker calls them — recently, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, et al. — can be great fun, and we have become quite skilled at making them, but they also represent something of a creative red herring: “The part that speaks to the human condition is in the cutscenes, not in the interactivity.”

Furthermore, while gamers are highly resistant to decreases in graphical fidelity, they seem on the whole un-bothered by regressions in interactivity, hence the flourishing of the theme park ride approach. And since, for technical reasons, it’s safer and cheaper to decrease interactivity as you increase realism, the latter may well continue to suffer.

The booming market of casual and social games, Hecker points out, has a different problem. “It’s great to have a game to play while you’re waiting for a bus,” he said, “but they’re not trying to say anything at all.”

That leaves the broad category of “systems games”, which are more intrinsically predicated on interactivity and player-driven choice. They contain the best candidates for creating unique, meaningful works in games, Hecker believes, but at the present moment, “these games aren’t really saying anything either, because we don’t know how to say things through interactivity, how an authorial voice works through a system.”

There’s no easy way out of this arguably slippery slope except for the dedication and intent of the people making the games. “I believe this is the big question for the next ten years of game design,” Hecker said. “We have so many opportunities.”

Mechanics and systems can be continually evolved, but designers would do well to keep the following questions in mind, he said: “What are you trying to say and why?” and “And are you trying to say it with interactivity?”

“If you can answer those,” Hecker concluded, “you’re on the right track.”

- Chris Remo

Weekend Reader is Kotaku’s look at the critical thinking in, and of video games. It appears every Saturday. Please take the time to read the full article cited before getting involved in the debate here.

Perruchon didn’t own a PS3 until the cheaper and slimmer model hit and had been spending the last few years playing his Xbox 360. The PS3 reminded him how much he liked the DualShock design, which inspired this table.

No word on whether this will actually go into production, Perruchon’s DualShock table uses controllers to buttress glass surfaces. The design is for the black DualShock and the white one. Another concept image below.

Table basse design Sony dualshock … [Stephane Perruchon via Born Rich]

This is Bowerstone, circa Fable III. Little late to catch the steampunk bandwagon, sure, but clock-powered bad guys and RPGs with trains and moustaches are always appreciated.