Debate around rhizome fees and website access aside, there's no question about rhizome's efforts to keep net.art alive and well, whatever the New York Times has to say on the subject of its death. Rhizome will see 5 fully commissioned projects, and 2 smaller awards, going to Paul Catanese, Warren Sack, Jason van Anden, Luis Hernandez Galvan, Carlo Zanni, Kabir Carter and C-Level, respectively. Artists were asked to 'propose projects that will contribute to the art game genre, or reflect on broad interpretations of 'game'.' The commissioned projects range from Sack's 'agonistics,' a language game that literalizes the metaphors of popular theorists as interactive graphical objects, to C-Level's 'Waco Resurrection,' an 'Endgame' where 'each player enters the network as a Koresh and must defend the Branch Davidian compound against internal intrigue, skeptical civilians, rival Koresh and the inexorable advance of government agents.' Catanese's proposal, 'Misplaced Reliquary,' even goes so far as to catalogue real-world objects in the virtual environment of a gameboy, turning collections of 'misplaced relics of the animal saintyard' into a map of our own curiosities. - nathaniel stern