Way back in March of 2008, we reported on a pretty impressive Bioshock 2 fan art collection by then student Ben Mauro. The art was so well done that it caught the attention of 2K Games Community Manager Elizabeth Tobey. That was just the beginning for a kid who “never expected anything to come” from his school assignment.

Shortly after discovering our post, Elizabeth contacted us asking how she and 2K could “track down the artist, and thank him for his work”. We happily helped out and suggested they thank him by offering him a job. In fact, my exact words were:

“I’d love to be able to report that this talented kid was able to land something with your team. Even if it is just an internship. He is very talented and humble as well.

When I told him you were looking to contact him he seemed shocked and said he never expected anything to come out of his assignment.”

A few months later I shot an email over to Elizabeth asking if they ever pulled the trigger on hiring Ben. She responded letting me know that they “didn’t hire him or anything but he did get some big kudos from [the team].”

Unfortunately, kudos don’t pay the bills. As it turns out though, Ben got his break anyway. According to his updated blog, portfolio site, LinkedIn profile, and countless other social networking interweb devices sure to be monitored from this point forward by news hungry bloggers, Ben is working on some pretty exciting game related projects.

Two projects under the client “Insomniac Games” titled “RCF2″ (most likely likely Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time) and “R3″ (guessing Resistance 3 on this one), recently caught the attention of Joystiq’s Ludwig Kietzmann. Ludwig then proceeded to contact “the parties concerned” at which point Ben wisely removed the info from his personal blog.

Well, I’m happy to say that I finally got to report on the successful hiring of Ben Mauro. Sure, it wasn’t for 2K as I had originally hoped, but as the title says, 2k’s loss is Insomniac’s gain. On that note, I look forward to the possibility of stomping around in a Ratchet & Clank Future 2 or Resistance 3 Ben Mauro inspired level with weapons blazing.

Congratulations Ben, you deserve it.

“Leaked” Final Fantasy XIII Japanese box art has been making its way around the web today with a few people debating its authenticity. The main argument against its validity is based on the fact it was submitted to VGboxart.com, a website dedicated to hosting video game box art, on 9.30.09 by a user named “Stunt” who openly admitted:

“This is actually the Japanese box art. It’s never been released digitally, so I decided to create it in Photoshop.”

As you can see in the image above, the replica on the left does closely (if not identically) resemble the box art shown at the 2009 Tokyo Game Show reveal of the PS3 FFXIII Lightning Edition. The logo is a tad off in size and placement but that’s just nit-picking.

It remains to be seen whether or not the box art shown at TGS 09 will actually become the “final” FFXIII Japanese box art when the game is ultimately released. That said, the fan art is close enough to anything Square-Enix might have made available, had they wanted a digital version of the cover shown at TGS 09 to circulate, that it almost entirely makes the debate as to whether or not it’s “real” a non issue.

Hit the jump for a high-res look at the replica cover shown at TGS 09.

Australian graphic artist Patrick Brown has created some truly awesome Grand Theft Auto-inspired fan art. Check out the gallery for the GTA goodness, as well as some other videogame/comic book/movie-related masterpieces.

Patrick’s work is currently posted on his deviantART page, aptly named “Grand Theft Awesome.”  No, I wasn’t the innovative one that thought up the creative title — it was all him and I totally ripped it off.  He has a lot of stuff in his gallery that we didn’t post here, so show the man some love and check it out.

Grand Theft Awesome

16 Photos