December 15th, 2009
I just updated my blog to my own clean install of WordPress. No more buggy exporting from blogger! Also no more having to make sure everything I say is appropriate for my research lab blog (The Expressive Intelligence Studio blog)! Now I’ll probably post more often and about things like: non-game art, philosophy, economics, funny stuff but mostly I’ll still mostly post about art games. I’ll also continue to use this space to keep track of my creative output.
My old band 8-4's ad for musicians
Speaking of that, I created a page for my music. Music is really important to me. Playing and listening. It informs the way I think about art and is probably the medium I have spent the most time exploring. I have made a lot of recordings in the past years and these represent a few of my favorites. I am missing several that I would like to include, and have a couple on there that perhaps don’t belong on the list of my favorites, but as time goes on I’ll refine it (mostly for me!). Check it out here.
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December 11th, 2009
Tale of Tales just released a new game or rather “experimental play experience” (a phrase surely concocted to appease those who don’t accept their repurposing of the word game). Anyhow, it’s called Fatale and it is awesome.
Starting with The Endless Forest, Tale of Tale’s have consistently created environments that exist for the purpose of being looked at and explored. This may not sound all that unique as most 3D games have environments that are explored, but the difference is that these games exist solely for this purpose. To them, game environments are not containers for gameplay, but rather are the reason for gameplay. By only affording the player navigation controls, the player’s mind is free to embark on a journey of induction and introspection. In their own words, Fatale “offers an experimental play experience that stimulates the imagination and encourages multiple interpretations and personal associations.”
Tale of Tales are not alone in creating games for this purpose. Games that encourage observation and consideration of their environments can be said to form an art movement that I am referring to as the observational immersionist style.
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December 11th, 2009
Molleindustria recently created a new game prototype called Kosmosis: “A COMMUNIST SPACE SHOOTER AS AN ARCADE GAME FROM AN ALTERNATE PRESENT WHERE NON-DEGENERATED SOCIALIST VALUES ARE HEGEMONIC.” The game was created as an entry for the Experimental Gameplay Project competition titled “Unexperimental Shooter.” Molleindustria are known for tackling controversial subjects including free culture and religious hatred and are some of the few people who create games from the “message up” (i.e. design with procedural rhetoric in mind).
Interpreting game mechanics is a passion of mine and thus I have strong opinions about the faults and outright failure of most attempts at wrangling procedural rhetoric. Unfortunately, Molleindustria ’s recent attempt at creating a shmup that subverts the war machine ended up with unconvincing and problematic procedural messages that almost completely rely on verbal rhetoric (i.e. skinning as usual).
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December 11th, 2009
I just got back from presenting a paper at DiGRA 2009 about newsgames. You can find the paper here and the abstract below:
Video games have been created about political and social issues since the early days of the medium. In recent years, many developers are rapidly creating and releasing games in response to current events. These games are being referred to as newsgames. With an increasing number of people citing the internet as their primary news source, it would appear that newsgames could become an important part of how people understand current events and could rise to be an important and expressive video game genre. However, the word “newsgame” is currently only quite loosely defined, resulting in the term being applied to many forms of serious, or nonfiction games. Also, despite the quantity of games that relate to current events, very few newsgames can be said live up to the defining claims that newsgames are the video game equivalent of political cartoons – a well developed and established medium for political expression.
This paper fleshes out the political cartoon comparison in order to learn from the long history of political cartoons and give direction to the current state of fledgling and unsophisticated newsgames. It also suggests clear and flexible definitive criteria for newsgames as well as a re-declaration their expressive power.
Just a note, A Moose’s Love is probably the most obscure newsgame ever made.
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December 11th, 2009
Rationalization was covered on the Indie Games blog and reviewed on Rock, Paper, Shotgun. It was great to see that people were interested in checking out the game.
Though, on Rock, Paper, Shotgun people did far more than just check it out. There were over 50 comments and many of these were very thoughtful interpretations of the game. It excites and surprises me that the audience of this primarily mainstream game industry focused blog would be interested in dissecting this admittedly strange “proceduralist” game.
Almost surprisingly, most interpretations were in line with what I was intending to communicate. A big inspiration for Rationalization was Rod Humble’s The Marriage. As part of my quest to harness the alleged and only slightly understood power of “Rules as Art“, Rationalization was first purely abstract (no words, instructions or key), but because of the difficulty most people have playing and interpreting The Marriage, I decided to slightly ramp up the amount of representation and give the player some context. I worry that I perhaps went too far, but I believe there is a sweet spot that someone will stumble upon soon enough.
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December 11th, 2009
I made another game to help me think through some stuff. It’s called Rationalization. Play it! I’ll post more about it later.
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December 11th, 2009
I helped organize Santa Cruz’s branch of the first annual Global Game Jam this weekend and also participated. In case you aren’t familiar with this, this is an event where small groups of people get together to make a game in 48 hours and it took place in 20+ countries and 50+ locations. The experience was overall a good learning experience for all involved and my team and I (Teale Fristoe and Bill Manegold) ended up creating a game I am quite happy with: A Moose’s Love.
Play it before reading. Its short.
This is another game that began with an idea and the rules and gameworld emerged. I’m still experimenting with this design strategy as it completely underemphasizes gameplay and fun. Though, this game ended up much more entertaining and coherent than my previous Relationships game.
To sum up its creation, I wanted to create something political, my team members and I were of different political persuasions though we all agreed that we were pissed about California’s proposition 8 that recently banned gay marriage. The intention was to try and make the game actually about the broader issue of people judging and trying to control others, but there is no time in 48 hours for such things!
I’m pretty sure the metaphor we were going for stacks up in all cases. I haven’t yet heard of an exploit that communicates some possibly hilarious unintended message. This is always a risk with creating rule systems as metaphor. What I am most happy with about this is that this game presents a not particularly complicated metaphor. There is hardly anything understood about communicating with rules (just a few examples) and progress is going to come through simple, allegorical games like this.
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December 11th, 2009
Some weeks ago (in October 2008) I underwent a painful experiment. I made another art game. In the end, it wasn’t a complete success but I learned a lot and think it was a step in the right direction.
It all started when I heard about Gamma3D - a curated art show and call for short games that use 3D glasses in some way integral to their gameplay. I had been working on and bailing out on ideas for short art games all summer and I decided to commit myself to creating a game for this (despite the fact that I missed the initial call and there was only two weeks left before they were to be submitted…). What resulted was Toward Understanding Relationships and what follows is a description of the game, the metaphors at work (visual and system) and the motivations I had for making it.
I started with a subject that I have thought a lot about for years and still don’t really have a grasp on: Communication can be hard between any two people but even harder between two people who love each other. For example, with my fiance, I will often think I hear her say something and respond to what I thought I heard. Often we will be having completely different conversations altogether without even knowing it. To make things worse, you want to do nice things for your loved ones right? Well, sometimes you don’t know what is good for them at all. You only think you know and you can only make educated guesses (based on what you think you heard!). On top of all that you have your own thoughts and needs that are competing with your loved one’s needs. With a busy schedule, you only have so much time and a wrong response can be lead to a meltdown.
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December 11th, 2009
Wii Music is a step ahead the rest. I am a very busy musician. I like to improvise. I like to communicate with people about “energy” and “vibes”. I like to move my body and express myself. I like to laugh and smile with my fiance. I like Wii Music.
Despite the overwhelmingly negative reviews (4/10?) that the game/play thing/whatever is receiving I would like to publicly declare that this game provides a much more musical and expressive experience than Guitar Hero and Rock Band combined. Of course I am not trying to slam those great games, but Wii Music actually opens up the line of musical communication between musicians and non musicians. That is an innovation and accomplishment that is worthy of praise.
Nintendo does a lot of good for the world and I am glad they are making money.
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December 11th, 2009
At this junction where I start working on earning yet another degree about video games, I feel it necessary to start writing about my work and ideas. I have so many things I want to work on/create that I can’t actually bring them to life. Maybe with this blog I can at least write them down and feel a little bit of satisfaction.
Anyhow, more to come!
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