LO: My Inspiration

The Interactive and Computational Piece of Art that inspires me is the Video Game Fallout: New Vegas. 

A Screenshot featuring Dinky the Dinosaur that is the main attraction of a location in the Game called Novac

The Video Game was created by Obsidian Entertainment, with Joshua Sawyer as Game Director, Inon Zur as Game Composer, and John Gonzalez as Head Writer among about 100 other developers.  The Game’s Development team had 18 months and used the common Gamebryo Engine (out of house engine which they also added code to) to create the game. 

The Development Team also took a lot of story elements from Project Van Buren (which was meant to be another Fallout game before the studio that made it, Black Isle closed down) and the series staple of 1950s Cold War aesthetics.

It released to favorable reviews and had a myriad of bugs.  However, after the bug fixes and DLC came out, the game slowly became a favorite among the Gaming Community. 

I consider it to be the best game in the Fallout Franchise, the best RPG ever made, and my favorite video game. 

I find it inspirational because it shows how open ended you can be when it comes to making Computational and Interactive Pieces of Art. 

This can be seen in the choices it gives you when you participate in the Story and Gameplay. 

For example, I can be a total pacifist in the game, never hurting any Non-Playable-Character, but I can also pick choices that results in the worst possible ending for everyone.  I can do the reverse of this and everything in between. 

I admire that it takes the Interactivity that is allotted to it by its nature of being Computational Art to the very extreme.  The game itself has also inspired me to write and create stories of my own – and potentially create Video Games/Interactive and Computational pieces of Art like it. 

As for future possibilities, the Game was successful so other Fallout games have been made.  Furthermore, the modding community of this specific Fallout Title is very active. 

Finally, here are the links to the Game’s Wikipedia Pages – one is Wikipedia Proper and the other is written by Fans of the Game.

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