For real ?
FOR REAL ?
Photographs & text by Van Malleghem
The video game world industry revenue in 2016 is 100 billion dollars and about 50 million dollars in Belgium in constant increase, with 4,700,000 players in the country. Still in Belgium the age of the players is an average between 25 and 45 yrs old. Recently (2017/18) Playstation in partnership with the game company Guerrilla Game launched an exclusive game called HZD. Post apocalyptic game where human race as been wiped out of the world pushed back to prehistoric age and are the preys of machines.
In a complete open world, the player can evolve as he wants as a hunter in a flourishing nature. Machine animals reflects the new technologies actually in creation by the DARPA ( Défense Advanced Research Projects Agency / USA) and Boston Dynamics.
On the left a conifer photograph in Yosemite by Ansel Adams (Jeffrey Pine, Sentinel Dome, 1940) on the right a similar tree can be seen in Horizon Zero Dawn, photographed by SVM as a player.
The artistic direction brings you to place referring to Yosemite National Park, High Moutains area (Tibet, Tanzania etc.) but also to images referring to war zones and many more (human believes, anthropology etc). In addition to this, the developers added a quite precise « camera mode » inside the game where a photographer could adjust to camera, measure de light and photographs what he wants in total freedom. This isn’t new, and the industry world is expecting to see more and more people virtually connected. Video games are now using more budget than Hollywood movies, and are not yet recognise as a new form of Art. Questioning our relation to reality and virtuality, video games are a new born leaders of our future visions.
On top : one of the main machine of the HZD video game lays destroyed on the floor, photographed by SVM as player.
Under : 'Cheetah' has just broken the speed record for robots: 29 km / h. Noel Sharkey, professor of artificial intelligence at the University of Sheffield: "This is a big step in the development of a high speed killer for military operations. At the moment, the system can not yet distinguish between citizens and hostile combatants. " ©WENN.com / © Belga Image
War scenes depicted in the game taking references of images from actual war zone, or terrorist attack.
The report published by De Standaard
If you liked this nerdy post and want to comment or talk about it’s all below!
Cheers!