This month our Onlooker gives us a Flow-inspired makeup look!
Pixels VS Pigments will feature looks inspired by anything and everything video games, but also recreations of looks as submitted by you the viewers (the more requests the better.)
Hopefully you enjoy these tutorials and you let us know in the comments what you’d like to see next! Subscribe!

Products:
Benefit Stay Don’t Stray Primer
The Body Shop Eye Shimmer in 04 Copper
MAC Shimmermoss e/s
MAC Club e/s
MAC Contrast e/s
Clinique Brush-on Cream Liner in True Black
Urban Decay 24/7 Glide-On Eyeliner in Zero
MAC Zoomblack Mascara
MAC Dame blush
Benefit Highbeam Highlighter
Tarte Carried Away Lipgloss Mini in Mel

Products Not Filmed:
Laura Mercier Silk Creme foundation in Rose Ivory
MAC Studio Fix Concealer in NW25

Follow us at:
http://www.twitter.com/outofhp
http://www.facebook.com/outofhp
http://www.outofhp.tumblr.com

Dannie Phan
The OP

There has been a bit of a dark cloud hanging over video games while researchers, politicians, parents and gamers discuss violence in video games. But there’s room in the sky for some rainbows if we shed light on the good things that the gaming community has been doing this week.

Speed Demos Archive (SDA) is hosting their third annual Awesome Games Done Quick in hopes of raising  $250,000 money for the Prevent Cancer Foundation. It’s a seven-day gaming marathon that began January 6th. These players will try to finish over 115 games, from Ape Escape to Final Fantasy IX. SDA is just about halfway though the marathon and so far raised 148k. You can head on over to the AGDQ 2013 to donate to the cause and watch the live stream of the event.

If being the good guy is your thing and you would like to get involved in similar events, check out some of these other charity events:

Extra Life
Child’s Play
Humble Indie Bundle

Do you know of any other events where gaming does good? Please let us know by commenting below!

Joel Paarmann

Let’s rekindle the book burnings and ban that pesky Rock and Roll again.

While it never takes long for video games to get blamed in the wake of a tragedy, 2012 has been a really rough year for games. So many times we heard “violent video games and movies breed violence” and that we should re-examine what we are allowed to see rather than doing anything meaningful to try and actually remedy the actual situation.

In the wake of Newtown, we saw a wave of gun buybacks across the country, where gun owners could choose to sell firearms they owned in exchange for gift cards or cash, depending on the organizers. For a majority of these buybacks, the traded in guns must be melted down for scrap, and turned into park benches, lamp posts, and stop signs. The response was enormous, thousands of gun owners in each city showed up to sell their guns and even set records in many areas for such buybacks. But now it seems, after the initial wave of solidarity and sympathy for our fellow Americans, it is time for one of the worst parts of our culture to show themselves.

As Americans we famously burned books, banned movies and music, we have all around tried to repress elements of our own culture, and it seems some of us are still willing to use such censorship of art. A group in Southington, Connecticut is in the process of organizing a buyback of “violent video games,” in which they will destroy them in exchange for $25 gift cards “that might bring the family together”. Their guidelines for what is considered a “violent video game” is whatever the family believes is “detrimental or leads to risky behavior.” While the organizing group has openly and explicitly stated that their event is in no way meant to be construed as a statement blaming violent video games solely for these tragic shootings, they are creating a message that destroying a video game in a massive public pile has the same impact as taking actual weapons out of cities with a high gun-crime rate. A group spokesman has also stated, that taking violent video games out of the home is what will bring disjointed families back together. It is really difficult to see this buyback as anything but a step backwards toward a day where we renew the ban on The Canterbury Tales because of the wave of rapes perpetrated by its readers after reading “The Wife of Bath”.
Too many times gamers have had to defend themselves by saying that if we’re to “blame the shooter, not the gun” then we should blame the gamer and not the game. For now, the gaming community must come together to actively combat the constant blame placed upon a group or pieces of art for the horrendous actions of individuals, and demonstrate that in the 21st century trying to quell a problem by banning art is, and will always be, futile.

Let us know what you think, if you’ve had experiences with gun buybacks, or how we might steer future conversations about this issue away from seeing censorship as the solution

Original IGN Article:
http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/01/03/connecticut-town-will-collect-destroy-violent-games?utm_campaign=ign+main+twitter&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social
Video Game Buyback Article: http://www.wtnh.com/dpp/news/hartford_cty/group-plans-violent-video-game-buyback#.UOXQbLtxycI

UPDATE: It seems the event has actually been canceled. http://www.gametrailers.com/side-mission/44703/connecticut-town-cancels-planned-game-burning?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook

The new portable platform also acts as gateway to accessing cloud gaming platforms utilizing Nvidia’s Geforce GRID technology, as well as home PCs using Nvidia cards. The clamshell form factor contains the company’s newest tablet chip, the Tegra 4, as well as a 5 inch 720p screen, and is expected to outperform every single tablet processor available today. Availability is slated for Q2 with a “competitive” price point.

AnandTech
The Verge

Image Courtesy of Nvidia

Game Stick

http://www.gamestick.tv

The Kickstarter:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/872297630/gamestick-the-most-portable-tv-games-console-ever

OUYA

http://www.ouya.tv/

Derek Sakata
the Dungeon Master

On December 14th, 28 people including 20 children were shot and killed at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut. While the fine details are still in the air, this was a massive tragedy that will live on throughout the history of the United States as one of the deadliest shootings in modern America.

This is an incredibly delicate subject to talk about. Let it be known that we at OutofHP send our prayers and deepest sympathies to everyone affected by the Connecticut school shooting.

I first heard about this event early on the 14th. Another school shooting. My first thoughts were incredibly self-centered: “how long until someone blames this tragedy on violent video games?”

Sure enough, by 2:50 that afternoon, Jason Schreier, and editor for Kotaku, released a short article that confirmed my prediction.

“Fox News is already bringing in experts to link the massacre to reality TV,Facebook, and … computer games. Of course.”

Now I am not going to dive into the massive, turbulent ocean that is the violent video games debate. I have my opinions. The rest of us at OutofHP have their opinions. And we’d love it if you shared your opinions on the subject as well. All of that? I’m going to leave that for the comments section.

December 14th, 2012 will be forever inscribed into the tome of American history as  a great tragedy. Even writing this article is a struggle as I attempt to hold back tears.

Derek Sakata
The Dungeon Master 

So here I am in lieu of making any sort of video content, browsing the web looking for sites and sources for some papers I need to get done when I came across an article posted early last October titled Are Video Games too Easy These Days?

In the article, author Oscar Langford recounts how truly challenging video games were in the days of the NES. Which is true. During those pre-Internet days it was just you, the game, and (usually) three lives between you and victory. If you lost all your lives, tough titties, try again.

Nowadays, however, Langford languishes at the simplicity of games

“Regular save points give you virtually unlimited lives, and having to repeat even small sections can leave gamers frustrated. When I recently played Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit, I noticed that certain checkpoints force you to replay the last few minutes before death, and I wasn’t happy doing so.”

While I do believe that constant save points have lessened the threat of imminent destruction, I understand why the lives system was removed from modern games.

Back in the NES and Atari days, quite a few games were effectively ports from arcade games where the only way to turn a profit was to give players a set amount of lives and have them deposit more quarters for more chances to defeat the game.

The idea of lives carried over to home consoles for another reason that Internet celebrity Arin Hanson (a.k.a. Egoraptor) literally illustrates in his series Sequelitis.

“See the thing you gotta realize is about games in the NES days is that lastability was even then a big issue. Games were anywhere from thirty to sixty bucks and that … was steep.”

Because of the near maddening cost of games, developers and designers had to make their games harder in order for players to get their money’s worth.

Oscar Langford’s article sheds some light to an issue that has been incessantly rattling through the rock tumbler that is my brain for a while: why aren’t modern games harder? And I don’t mean games like Demon’s Souls or the Super-hard-kicks-your-ass-in-ten-minutes difficulty settings in Halo.

As an average, if not brilliant and devilishly handsome gamer, I pay around $50-60 for any given console game. Yet I can sit down and play Final fantasy XII or F.E.A.R 3 from start to finish without breaking a single bead of sweat.

What have video games become? Why are developers creating games with more and more adult themes but treating players like they’ve never heard of a video game before?

Who knows? Maybe I’m just a sick masochist just aching to have my ass handed to me on a silver platter. Perhaps I’ll just pick up a copy of Demon’s Souls and go get the punishment I so thoroughly deserve. I have been bad, haven’t I?

Have any questions? Got any answers? Leave a comment below or send us a tweet at @outofhp!

References:

http://masonicgamer.com/are-video-games-too-easy-these-days

BEWARE OF SPOILERS!

Watch the movie first and comment, tweet, or e-mail us with your
opinions, especially if you disagree with any of us!
Also, this is slightly NSFW, so give us a listen if you don’t mind words like #@!$ and @&%!.

Welcome to a brand new series from Out of HP: Pixels vs Pigments (PvP)
This series will feature looks inspired by anything and everything video games, but also recreations of looks as submitted by you the viewers (the more requests the better.)
Hopefully you enjoy these tutorials and you let us know in the comments what you’d like to see next. Don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube!
Products:
Urban Decay Original Primer Potion
Wet N Wild Mega Eyes in Envy
MAC Vanilla e/s
MAC Lucky Green e/s
MAC Dark Indulgence e/s
MAC Fluidline in Blacktrack
Kat Von D Metal Orchestra palette (Lucifer)
Tarte Lights, Camera, Lashes Mascara

Products Not Filmed:
MAC Face & Body foundation in C3
Ben Nye Neutral Set- Colorless Face Powder
MAC Studio Fix Concealer in NW25
MAC Dame blush
Buxom Big & Healthy Lip Polish in Dolly

Follow us at:

http://www.twitter.com/outofhp

http://www.facebook.com/outofhp

http://www.outofhp.tumblr.com

During our Nerdventure to Comikaze, Derek and David would play Magic: The Gathering and take quite some time (as in a lot of time) hanging around booths with M:TG stuff. It’s been quite some time (as in a lot of time) since I last played. The guys caught on to my interest and told me about an event to celebrate a new installment to the Ravnica set. So that’s how we ended up at Game Empire!

I haven’t played Magic after losing by deck in Vegas– and it’s not what you think. I was eight years old and dropped it somewhere. There’s no crazy story, just a young girl’s heart was broken that day.

I didn’t participate in the tournament this time around mostly because I felt to intimidated and didn’t want to get destroyed. I still had an amazing time living vicariously through my friends, who happened to do pretty well! I want to mention that this is an all day event, so if you’re there to support a friend, I’d recommend bring snacks and water.

STAFF AND AFFILIATES
Hosts: Dannie Phan & Derek Sakata
Camera Ops: Dannie Phan, Derek Sakata, David Mendez
Designer & Editor: Dannie Phan

MUSIC
Chris Songco — “Kawaii Metal” “Pornography” “Chicks with Sticks” “Let’s Swim”
http://www.youtube.com/chrissongcomusic
http://soundcloud.com/songcolikesmusic

Henry Homesweet “Simple Pleasures” “Tragic but Magic” & “Summer Smiles”
http://www.myspace.com/henryhomesweet
http://soundcloud.com/henryhomesweet

SPECIAL THANKS
To Game Empire staff and community for taking care of us and letting us film!

Game Empire
1795 E. Colorado Blvd.
Pasadena, CA 91106
http://gameempirepasadena.com/

Joel Paarmann
The Prime Specimen

Most people would agree that the runaway success of the Wii would mark Nintendo as the winner in this round of the console wars and that the PS3 with its late launch, high initial cost and the PSN incident is the loser, but frankly I think the biggest loser of this round is actually myself and my fellow Xbots.

Now don’t misunderstand what I’m trying to say, the Xbox 360 had a great run this generation and in the late stages actually took over the top sale slot for the consoles, so the 360 didn’t lose, but we the gamers who did. The first and most memorable step in this loss is of course the oft mocked Red Ring of Death (RRoD) which plagued many Xboxes, and while Microsoft did step in and extend warranties for consoles suffering RRoD, it was an issue that was “fixed” and found to be not so fixed in later hardware iterations. There was also the abandonment of backwards compatibility for original Xbox games via patching in favor of adding original Xbox titles to Xbox live as games on demand which in turn was itself quickly abandoned.

Then came the rather lame attempts to broaden the audience for the box with the introduction of Avatars as representations for the players that they could customize. They even tried expanding the appeal with unlockable outfits through Avatar awards that also acted as extra achievements for games. This was also promptly abandoned in favor of nickel and diming gamers into oblivion if they wanted to have more interesting options. These, however are more or less tolerable (though not necessarily excusable), as Microsoft did extend the warranties out to three years for the RRoD, the failure rate of the original Xbox wasn’t extraordinary so many of them still functioned and Avatars can be easily ignored.

The one thing that truly makes Xbots the losers of this generation is dashboard ads. We are subjected to advertising when we flip through to get to the zune marketplace or toward game downloads. We see promotions for movies,downloadable content, and games, some of which aren’t even available on Xbox (I’m looking at you World of Warcraft). And despite these ads, which I imagine bring in some revenue for Microsoft, we still have to pay $60 a year for the privilege of playing games online, something that PC and PS3 users can do by simply having an internet connection and something Wii users don’t really have to worry about. This even applies to the “amazing” additions to the dashboard like Youtube and Internet Explorer which are so clunky that it’s hard to see them as worthwhile incentives to pay for Gold. Xbox users lose a whole retail game’s worth of money a year just for the “privilege” of fully experiencing the games we buy on a box that, in the end, is never truly paid for.

All in all the PS3 may have lost in terms of sales, but even with all the trouble it’s been through it’s still not the biggest loser, we Xbots are.