In the dark autumn
came the Q3 point release:
signal eleven.
- WWWWolf, 2002-11-27
(Hope that remotely passes as a real haiku, too =)
Quaiku is one of those odd art forms that form when two completely different things collide and someone decides it's a good idea to mess with them...
Take Quake, iD Software's great computer game. Take Haiku, an old, traditional Japanese form of poetry. Combine them, and watch the people's reactions, but beware, people can be shocked. Or outraged. Or, as in most of the cases, amused or creatively inspired.
Quaiku was probably invented - or at least effectively collected - by two people, Dragoon and Maelstrom, and was reportedly inspired in large part by spam haiku. Maelstrom maintained a page at Planet Quake that collected good examples of Quake Haiku. The first examples were put to the web page in August 1996.
Since the Western idea of haiku as a popular art form is widely misunderstood, the actual "haikuness" of the Quaiku is often in doubt. Of course, saying that would be missing the point. The point is, as Maelstrom writes, to illustrate the gamer's life in Quake - the bloodbaths, the addiction, the great games, the critical frags, everything. One might even say that you can just replace the seasonal reference with essential idea in Quake life.
It is strange thing is, while Quaiku is by definition a very humorous form of art, it still can be beautiful in its own weird, violent way. It accentuates the surrealness of the whole game and the surrealness of the violence... Consider another example, which has remained my favorite ever since I heard of this art form:
Body parts sailing
In slow motion - bloody arcs
Through the Ziggurat
- Mofo
The best Quaiku of March 1997
Naturally, the genre has since expanded to other games as well.
Maelstrom, "Quake, the Universe and Everything - Haiku", Quake, the Universe and Everything, February 1999. <http://www.planetquake.com/que/haiku/haiku.htm> (2002-11-27)