DIG 4813 Gameplay Journal Entry #4: Art Mods

In this week’s journal I’ll delving more deeply into the world of game mods with more artistic mods that got a certain style and meaning to them. I will also be covering how those new meanings made in such mods overshadow/subvert the original source material of the game they are modding. The art mod I’ll be looking into this week is called Talim VS for Soul Calibur II. Soul Calibur II is a very popular fighting game released back in 2002 that had very exciting and innovative weapon-based 3D combat with awesome characters. This mod focuses on one of those awesome character’s, Talim, a shaman who worships the wind and has similar powers.

Talim VS is a mod that shares a viewpoint that Alexander Galloway’s on artist mods where “artist-made video game mods undercut themselves to such a degree that they almost cease being games” (111). The way Talim VS was built involved removing all the background environments and other characters, only leaving Talim to be playable so that users can see her full moveset without any distraction. The creator of Talim VS, Karl Orozco, modified that game in this manner in an effort to fight against the colonialism that Talim’s people faced back then. Orozco subverts that original structure of Soul Calibur II by removing objects from the game world to fit his own message about Talim’s culture into the game, which is something that carried some weight since some mod storylines have to do with topics of colonialism or higher powers encroaching on indigenous ones. This video about Talim VS presents what the game looks like.

Work Cited

Galloway, Alexander R. Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture. University of Minnesota Press, 2010.