[Fantastic Video is a regular Venus Patrol feature where we recap the goings-on of the 2012 installment of Austin’s Fantastic Arcade, the indie-game spinoff of Alamo Drafthouse’s genre film festival Fantastic Fest. You can find all the Fantastic Videos by clicking here, and find out more about Fantastic Arcade here!]

In this latest installment of Fantastic Video, we’re joined by a slightly inebriated Rob Lach (in the true spirit of Fantastic Arcade), for a forty minute look behind the scenes of POP – Methodology Experiment One (the trailer for which is below).

In it, Lach explains how the game is both an attempt to both “extend the definition of what a game is” (POP standing for the “philosophy of play”), and to flip the script of the standard methodology of creating a game — working from concept to asset creation to music to technology to final product — by here beginning with the music and working forward from there.

In the interim, Lach also lays his books wide open, showing the results of his “pay what you want” sales, and comparing the breakdown between those that came in from game sites versus those that discovered the game from art & design blogs (hint: the favor’s not in the game-fan’s court)… and gives you more information than you ever knew you wanted about firearms.

[Fantastic Video is a regular Venus Patrol feature where we recap the goings-on of the 2012 installment of Austin’s Fantastic Arcade, the indie-game spinoff of Alamo Drafthouse’s genre film festival Fantastic Fest. You can find all the Fantastic Videos by clicking here, and find out more about Fantastic Arcade here!]

In this latest installment of Fantastic Video, we’re joined by Dennis Wedin & Cactus — the duo now better known as Dennaton, for a thirty minute look behind the scenes of the creation of their 2012 ultra-violent & ultra-sytlish Hotline Miami — a game that now sports its own bonus level based on Fantastic Arcade itself.

Not only do you get a look at the prototyping process that spans back to versions Cactus had created nearly a decade ago, but also the real-world cultural touchstones that inspired the game’s neon-lit and blood-drenched scenery.

As a bonus, below you’ll find the post-mortem aftershow in its entirety: the Catline Meowmi Megamix, about which there is little more to say than ‘just watch’.

[Fantastic Video is a regular Venus Patrol feature where we recap the goings-on of the 2012 installment of Austin’s Fantastic Arcade, the indie-game spinoff of Alamo Drafthouse’s genre film festival Fantastic Fest. You can find all the Fantastic Videos by clicking here, and find out more about Fantastic Arcade here!]

In this latest installment of Fantastic Video, we’re joined by Paolo ‘Molleindustria‘ Pedercini — the peerless leader of using games as socio-political commentary — and Jim Munroe, artist, novelist, filmmaker, indie game creator (who you may recall from his latest interactive fiction work, Guilded Youth) and co-founder of Toronto indie-collective Hand Eye Society.

The two discuss their latest game, Unmanned, an accessibly-light-hearted but ultimately sobering and prescient investigation of the life of drone pilots, which was in part an attempt to answer the question “how do you make a videogame about war, when war already has become so videogame-like?”

The hour long video also includes an in-depth discussion on Phone Story, Pedercini’s commentary on the practices and social repercussions of manufacturing the technology we use every day — specifically, our ubiquitous iPhones, which itself was presented as an iPhone minigame collection that was ultimately banned from the App Store, later resurfacing on the Android marketplace.

As a bonus, below the fold you’ll also find Pedercini’s “reverse propaganda” machinima film “Welcome to the desert of the real”, referenced in the video above and discussed at much greater length here by researcher Simon Ferrari.

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It only took us like six or so months to get everything online, but the day’s finally come: Venus Patrol’s proud to present the first installment of Fantastic Video, a new, regular series showing off all the talks from last year’s Fantastic Arcade.

In this first video, Rami Ismail & JW Nijman of Vlambeer give an hour-long look into the genesis & evolution of their upcoming Supermarionation-inspired dog-fighting game Luftrausers, a game that can be traced all the way back to 2007’s Airhound, a 3-hour game-jam game that since seems to unfortunately have disappeared from the internet, but which you can see a bit more of here.

Enjoy the video above & the rare chance to peek into JW’s consistently amazing pitch-docs & sketchbooks, and stay tuned for the next Fantastic Video installment!