The Skinny: Latest

What The Sims taught me about living

hello@theskinny.co.uk (The Skinny) — Mon, 30 Aug 2021 12:07:33 +0100

With the arrival of a new expansion pack, Cottage Living, one writer contemplates what The Sims has taught them about idealising work, productivity and success

Meet two Glasgow Creative Accelerator 'Founders'

hello@theskinny.co.uk (The Skinny) — Wed, 21 Apr 2021 12:36:24 +0100

Fifteen creative companies in Glasgow are currently taking part in the Glasgow Creative Accelerator, a mentorship programme to help creative businesses reach their full potential. We find out more from two of the participants

Inside the murky world of social media moderation

hello@theskinny.co.uk (The Skinny) — Mon, 09 Nov 2020 13:47:00 +0000

More and more social media content moderators are coming out with horror stories about their workplaces. One writer takes a look behind the curtains of what it's like moderating for big tech

How the internet revolutionised communication for autistic people

hello@theskinny.co.uk (The Skinny) — Tue, 13 Oct 2020 14:50:00 +0100

The internet has been radical for creating safe online spaces for autistic people. As we increasingly rely on the internet during COVID-19, one writer explores what we can learn from online, neurodiverse communities

Love Bites: On TikTok Dance Duets

hello@theskinny.co.uk (The Skinny) — Thu, 08 Oct 2020 13:25:00 +0100

This month's columnist reflects on how TikTok dances became a language between her and her sister during lockdown

Wendy Liu on Abolish Silicon Valley, technology and capitalism

hello@theskinny.co.uk (The Skinny) — Fri, 03 Apr 2020 13:00:00 +0100

Wendy Liu on the future of technology without capitalism, being a woman in a male-dominated industry and the pitfalls of corporate diversity

Get Off the Grid: Instagram and Environmentalism

hello@theskinny.co.uk (The Skinny) — Thu, 08 Aug 2019 15:19:00 +0100

As Instagram environmental influencers take off, one writer explores the problem of environmental activism and capitalism’s unlikely union

How the UK 'Porn Block' could damage sex education

hello@theskinny.co.uk (The Skinny) — Wed, 17 Jul 2019 12:25:00 +0100

As the British government pushes back enforcing age-verification porn legislation for the third time, we look at what this badly thought out "Porn Block" policy would entail and its potential to damage young people's sex education

Digital Locket: On Lock Screens & Memories

hello@theskinny.co.uk (The Skinny) — Thu, 11 Jul 2019 16:30:00 +0100

One writer explores how her phone can act as a digital locket to hang onto vital connections and memories

Apply Yourself: On phones, apps and grief

hello@theskinny.co.uk (The Skinny) — Tue, 02 Jul 2019 12:00:00 +0100

Phones get a bad rap for harming our mental health, but one writer explores how apps and social media can be harnessed for good

How Slow Dating took over online dating

hello@theskinny.co.uk (The Skinny) — Mon, 01 Apr 2019 13:30:00 +0100

Are we moving too fast? One writer asks if ‘slow dating’ really is the new speed dating and whether it can absolve us of our online dating anxieties

Call Me By Your Star Sign: On Love & Astrology

hello@theskinny.co.uk (The Skinny) — Fri, 08 Mar 2019 12:48:00 +0000

This month’s Intersections columnist asks if intimate connections are written in the zodiac

How Rookie became the business model for a generation

hello@theskinny.co.uk (The Skinny) — Mon, 04 Feb 2019 14:30:00 +0000

The end of online teen mag, Rookie, felt like the end of the era of blogs. One writer reflects on how its closure impacts how she views monetising her own creative projects

4 Great Podcasts & YouTube Series

hello@theskinny.co.uk (The Skinny) — Fri, 14 Sep 2018 13:49:00 +0100

Need foodie inspiration, an audio hug, an intellectual jolt or some low-key language tuition? Here are four places to find just those things...

6 Essential Student Apps

hello@theskinny.co.uk (The Skinny) — Thu, 13 Sep 2018 10:21:00 +0100

Find inspiration, keep your health in check and save yourself from fumbling with a handful of pennies with our selection of excellent apps for your smartphone

Enter the Upside Down with Stranger Things: The Game

hello@theskinny.co.uk (The Skinny) — Thu, 05 Oct 2017 12:41:53 +0100

Ahead of season two of Stranger Things, Neflix have released an 8-bit style Stranger Things game for mobiles

The Criminal podcast & 5 more great crime podcasts

hello@theskinny.co.uk (The Skinny) — Fri, 18 Aug 2017 12:24:00 +0100

Our new monthly Pod People column, casting a closer eye over our favourite series, kicks off with Phoebe Judge's Criminal

Total Immersion: FuturePlay preview

hello@theskinny.co.uk (The Skinny) — Mon, 31 Jul 2017 16:00:00 +0100

Step into a virtual world with FuturePlay's immersive 3D gallery

How VR could be the future of theatre

hello@theskinny.co.uk (The Skinny) — Wed, 12 Jul 2017 16:41:00 +0100

Virtual reality is being hailed as the future of Hollywood, but might VR's more natural home be the stage?

The relationship between art and science

hello@theskinny.co.uk (The Skinny) — Wed, 31 May 2017 15:41:08 +0100

Art and science can work to enhance each other. We hear from Schema47, a research group who bring both domains together, and a filmmaker working with NASA to make a space movie that's more science than fiction

A brief history of women in astronomy

hello@theskinny.co.uk (The Skinny) — Wed, 03 May 2017 13:15:00 +0100

Like many fields of science, the number of female astronomers is depressingly small. Their impact, however, has been considerable. Transmission Podcast regular Beth Biller tells us about her experience as an astronomer and her female astronomy heroes

Leeds International Festival's inspiring Tech bill

hello@theskinny.co.uk (The Skinny) — Thu, 06 Apr 2017 11:32:00 +0100

Yorkshire's cultural calendar gets a shake-up this month with the first ever Leeds International Festival, which boasts an impressive Tech strand. Curator Natasha Sayce-Zelem tells us about a diverse and cutting-edge programme

Share your innovative ideas with TEDxGlasgow

hello@theskinny.co.uk (The Skinny) — Wed, 08 Mar 2017 13:13:56 +0000

The deadline for the first TEDxGlasgow Award is nigh… Don’t miss out

Appy Days: Essential Student Apps

hello@theskinny.co.uk (The Skinny) — Thu, 15 Sep 2016 16:03:54 +0100

Arriving in a new city can be confusing. Luckily technology is on your side with everything you need to find your way, make friends and stay safe. We asked our team what apps they swear by for general life and navigating new cities

Doing the Fringe for Free with Little Birdy

hello@theskinny.co.uk (The Skinny) — Fri, 19 Aug 2016 11:30:00 +0100

New membership scheme Little Birdy offers the chance of unlimited complimentary tickets to Fringe shows. We sent a writer to find out if it's as good as it sounds

Edinburgh Digital Entertainment Festival preview

hello@theskinny.co.uk (The Skinny) — Tue, 02 Aug 2016 13:30:00 +0100

Edinburgh has a new festival in town in the form of the Edinburgh Digital Entertainment Festival, and it's taking us into the brave new world of virtual reality

Heart of the Matter: Alex Preston on Hyper Light Drifter

hello@theskinny.co.uk (The Skinny) — Fri, 22 Jul 2016 16:31:00 +0100

After a phenomenal Kickstarter appeal, Alex Preston of Heart Machine has been putting everything into his first game, Hyper Light Drifter. Ahead of its release, we spoke to him about debilitating health problems, facing your own mortality and the joy of Nintendo.

Though health is a prevalent feature in videogames, it’s not something that developers spend a huge amount of time thinking about. In the past, an apple or roasted chicken would deliver a much needed vitality boost to a poorly fighter with little regard to reality. More recently, the ‘recharging health’ of Halo has been adopted by just about every first- and third-person action game going, with even less adherence to the real world. Hyper Light Drifter doesn’t exactly buck these gaming conventions – it’s still a rugged action platformer at heart – but it does come from a place that’s a little more rooted in mortality.

“My body’s a wreck,” states Alex Preston, director at Heart Machine, with what seems to be a characteristic bluntness. The man behind Hyper Light Drifter, a game which set Kickstarter ablaze back in 2013, isn’t backwards in coming forward about his health issues. “I have a congenital heart disorder and I have some other ‘fun’ problems that come with a genetic mutation,” he elaborates. “And then there’s some serious diseases on top of that. I’ve dealt with these health issues all my life, but it’s been particularly rough over the past five to ten years.”

Hyper Light Drifter

You might expect someone in such a position to be taking it easy with their life, but with Alex… not so much. “I was actually just in surgery and the day that I got out I was working in the hospital because I don’t want to be held down by my limitations,” he explains of his work ethic. “It’s a difficult thing to deal with but it affords me a certain perspective that other people might not have. I’m coping with these very serious life and death issues on a regular basis, so the typical stresses of work aren’t quite as hard for me – I have other things that are more important to worry about.”

Still, Alex has been fretting over his first game as director for the past few years now, the stress perhaps compounded by a Kickstarter campaign that had him ask meekly for $27,000 and, in the end, rake in over $640,000. Not something to grumble about for sure, but this led to the game being widely expanded with a release across multiple formats. This, along with Alex’s health issues, ultimately led to Hyper Light Drifter being delayed numerous times.

“People don’t really understand the impact that this can have on somebody’s life and how it can really fuck things up in so many ways,” Alex elaborates on the periods of that have debilitated him during the games’ development. “I think disabilities aren’t really talked about in society at large just because people don’t want to be open about them. It can be a very private thing and that’s understandable, but it also leads to misunderstanding.”

Learning lessons from Nintendo

To be clear, Hyper Light Drifter isn’t the latest in a line of socially-purposive ‘anti-games’ like the recent That Dragon, Cancer. Taking its biggest cue from 1991’s Zelda: A Link to the Past, HLD is a top-down platform shooter that’s been built from the ground up as a game first and a piece of social commentary a very distant second.

“For me, the ‘feel’ of a game is the most important aspect,” explains Alex. “It’s about the little flourishes, the sort of thing that Nintendo does really well – those little dust clouds or how a character’s foot stops at a certain point – all those little things add up. That was one of the first things we did, to make sure the character felt good to move around and hit things with because that’s the core interaction. Before I even put any animation in I made sure the character felt really satisfying to move around. Plenty of great developers do the same thing but I learned it from playing Nintendo as a kid.”

Indeed, there is a story revolving around the seminal Super Mario 64, where director Shigeru Miyamoto made the team design a box that moved with grace and fluidity before drawing a single frame of animation that would become the moustached plumber himself. “Yeah, I heard that too,” says Alex when we compare design strategies. The upshot is that above all else, Hyper Light Drifter ‘feels’ marvellous to play right from the off. Given the range of your protagonist’s tool set, there’s little acclimatisation needed to get going, the ease of flow and pixel-tight responsiveness a testament to Heart Machine’s work in this area.

(Continues below)

A tool for coping: Life, death and videogames

Review: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD

Yet, despite the heroics your character displays from the beginning, it’s always offset by his underlying health problems. Referred to only as The Drifter, he carries a mysterious illness for which he is in search of a cure. From the opening scene we see the effects of this as he doubles over, spewing black bile into a nearby stream. It’s a startling introduction for a videogame hero.

“You’re kind of a glass cannon in a lot of ways,” suggests Alex. “You can die pretty easily if you’re not careful. This game is hard – it’s a challenge and everything in it is very, very dangerous. You’ll still be able to respawn but we’ve played with some illness mechanics and we’ve played with ideas of character strength. Ultimately though, it’s a game so we’ve not gone too crazy but you’re certainly not super-invincible here. You might be powerful and you might be fast but you really need to be aware.”

Facing your own mortality

These cues from Alex’s own experiences are subtle, and even without the knowledge of his health issues, Hyper Light Drifter is still a marvellous game. Knowing about Alex’s heart condition doesn’t make it any better per se, but it does make it more interesting, more though provoking. “Facing your own mortality is a difficult thing,” Alex states. “You lose a piece of your innocence and childhood and the whimsy of being a teenager – like, ‘yeah, I’m invincible,’ when you know you’re not invincible at all. As a teenager, most people don’t ever face their mortality.”

As such, Alex is more grateful than most to finally be seeing the release of Hyper Light Drifter. The expanded scope of the game, thanks to that Kickstarter appeal, has added to the delay but as recompense, followers can look forward to a much bigger, more polished game, released across multiple formats and with a fantastic score by Rich ‘Disasterpeace’ Vreeland, the man behind the seminal soundtrack for cult indie classic Fez.

The extended development time has brought other benefits too. Alex and the team have released various beta versions of the game to backers, and their valuable input has helped shape the finished product. “It’s a critical part of the process because it’s such an eye-opener,” says Alex. “When you’ve been playing the same game for over a year, you kind of get lost in it or you have certain behaviours that you always do (whereas) someone who’s never played the game, they will do the exact opposite and fuck it all up! It’s an eye-opener for us and it’s extremely helpful.”

So, several years behind schedule, Hyper Light Drifter is now ready for release. “There is light at the end of the tunnel,” confirms Alex. We can but hope that this is as much about his own prognosis as it is about the culmination of his project, but either way, Hyper Light Drifter is clearly a game made with a lot of heart.

Hyper Light Drifter is due for release on PS4 and Xbox One on 27 July. A Wii U version is also in development.

bluedot 2016: The Sounds of Science

hello@theskinny.co.uk (The Skinny) — Fri, 15 Jul 2016 17:33:00 +0100

Science and music collide at Jodrell Bank Observatory this summer, as bluedot brings the goods to Cheshire

In Design: Young graphic design & animation studio

hello@theskinny.co.uk (The Skinny) — Wed, 06 Jul 2016 14:00:00 +0100

In the first of a new series looking at great design in the North, we speak to Young, a graphic design studio focusing on animation.

Resident artist for CERN/FACT collab announced

hello@theskinny.co.uk (The Skinny) — Fri, 17 Jun 2016 18:09:00 +0100

South Korean artist Yunchul Kim has been declared the winner of the COLLIDE International Award, a collaboration between CERN and Liverpool media arts centre FACT.

The Berlin-based artist's proposal beat a record 904 entries from 71 countries.

Now in its fifth year, COLLIDE is a major arts and science residency programme, which sees CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) collaborate with different international cultural organisations.

This year’s partnership with FACT gives the artist the opportunity to undertake a two-month residency at CERN, Geneva – spending time with a community of 14,000 scientists at the world’s largest particle physics laboratory, home of the Large Hadron Collider – and one month at FACT.

Kim’s work explores the artistic potential of fluid dynamics (the science of liquids and gases in motion). His winning project proposal, Cascade, will ‘look at the possibility of controlling the propagation of light through colloidal suspensions of photonic crystals’ – which roughly simplifies to ‘spreading light through crystals suspended in liquid’.

(Take a look at some of Kim’s work in the video below.)

Kim was chosen as the winner by a jury including Mike Stubbs, artistic director of FACT; Monica Bello, head of Arts@CERN, and University of Liverpool physicist Tara Shears.

“As scientists, we’re exploring what the world is made of,” said Shears at the announcement event on Wednesday. “Art is an exploration of the world around us too. It can open you up to exactly the same idea from a completely different direction.”

“The sculptural nature of Yunchul Kim’s work creates uncanny experiences, which at times seem beyond belief, and challenge our understanding of the world as both analytic and embodied,” the jury commented.

“[He] has an outstanding ability to explore the gap between the experiential and conceptual, and we are thrilled to see how he will embed these ideas in his residency at CERN and FACT.”

Honorable mentions went to Mexican conceptual artist Julieta Aranda and Athens-based British artist James Bride.

arts.cern

fact.co.uk