Hello all,
I have been (kindly) invited to join this forum by Dan (chineseroom). I am currently doing a MSc under his supervision. I finished an MA degree at the Utrecht School of Arts (Hogeschool van de Kunsten Utrecht - HKU) last year. During my four years of game-education I have developed a taste for more 'artistic games'. There were a few 'interesting' games, such as Beyond Good & Evil, that kept me going whilst teachers raised their eyebrows over my 'quality game' hopes. However, it was not until The Graveyard that something really hit me about what games as a medium can do and how the largest problem is not the constraints of the medium itself but the
expectations of the medium. I think it changed me so irrevocably I cannot think back to those days and
imagine not being aware of it. As far as artistic indembtment goes, this is quite it.
Currently I am working on a stand-alone game of a man waiting for his dinner date to show up, which I of course will show once it is done - some last animations and tech work going on now. It is at times hard to focus projects like this... when walking the streets, eating in a cafe, talking with most people and with friends - games may as well not exist in the form I hope to make them. And, worse, on the internet all the 'wrong' type of games are so predominant at times I forget what I am doing. A good friend of mine, Thomas J. Papa, with whom I shared a working 'office' at the HKU, supports me and I him, but at times 'the cold' sets in. Reading some of this forum, however, I see a lot of interesting incentive and within a few minutes I found a link to an article that in turn referred to Atlas Shrugged - signs that, should I ignore them, would make me very unwise indeed. So I hope that by being interesting to you I may draw in turn inspiration from you.
This forum is under the heading of NotGames, of course, which is interesting because I recently decided 'finally' that I want to call these 'works' games - I have greatly been influenced by Roger Callois, who with his four categories to me managed to combine all there is to games... It will be interesting to discuss matters as these - but also less political and more accademic / philosophical matters. My MSc is 'in line' with my interest in the player-character relationship. My HKU MA dissertation was very much about this and I have grown interested in 'symbiosis'. That is, using play in such a manner it 'extends' or at least 'alters' the consciousness of the player. In the McLuhan sense of 'driving a car' allowing us to extent our consciousness to experiencing having a car for a body (in an absolutely non-mystical sense I hope you understand), so having a digital avataric body allows you to extent not only physically but emotionally.
Thanks for being allowed to come onto this forum, I am sure it will be very interesting. My introduction is a bit wordy, but perhaps if I can add a bit to this, I thought I would add I am 21, technologically in love with the 21st century, stylistically in love with the 19th... somewhat of a fan of Wilde's flamboyance and Ruskin's art critique. A romantic in the sense that Ayn Rand described being proper to 'art' making me slightly in love with the proud side of the 20th century - Rand is certainly the most influential writer / philosopher I have come across and I think some of my work will take after her.
Finally, I work as a (digital) painter, writer, poet along with making games and got all of this on my website:
http://jeroenstout.net.
Yours,
- Jeroen D. Stout
