How would the game react to the player? Can we express the joy of the game? Its curiosity? Its wonder about the player? Its desire to interact with him/her?

That´s a very inspiring point of view!

The Cncntrc prototype actually looks really good. It´s not a surprise that you are somehow disapointed given the disconected process you choose, but even if you are not fully satisfied wouldn´t it be unfair to not allow the audience to judge by themselves? I would release it if I were you, if only to learn from what kind of impression it makes, both on people who already like your work and people who don´t.

I honestly enjoy Valve´s games and I can see that they have mastered their design process. But to me Valve is not making games, they are making interactive movies: anyone who plays it, every single time, will have the exact same experience. We have movies for that, games allow us to create unique experiences, living worlds that change and evolve acording to how the player plays. I don´t ask for total freedom, I ask for something to meke me come back to the same game again and again and always be surprised.

Yes, they are very good "painters" but this is exactly the thing I hate about Valve´s games. They are so meticulously designed to ensure that every player has the exact same experience that they kill any possiblily of freedom replacing it by a poor illusion. While reading this I can hear Chris Crawford saying "game designers just want to talk, talk, talk to the player, but they just won´t listen!"

Please, that would be fantastic! Let´s remix each other´s games!

I bet we´ll learn a lot from the experiment.

@György I totally agree with you, and what you are pointing out is something I´ve been thinking of a lot. I do miss being "nobody", not being so relevant, not having the whole world turning around me. I thought of starting a topic on that, I may do it eventually, but that´s another topic. This thoughts came to me while playing a couple of games lately, it´s not so much focused on the games I want to make, but rather how some games I play keep me away from fully enjoying their universes.

György made me think of this conference, where Chris Crawford explains interactivity and his ideas on how to turn it into a medium of expression to a group of art and design students with no programming knowledge. I found this talk very, very inspiring:

http://www.vimeo.com/24212555


While looking for that one found another talk of his about the nature of play, which is very nice too:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9N1GGAi1C8&feature=related

No, I don´t think Greenaway has any idea of what an RPG is. The numbers on the screen count the hits that Tulse Luper recieve during his life, up to a total of 92. Everything turns around that number in this film: the suitcases, the list of objects to represent the world... it´s the Uranium atomic number, as Greenaway says that Uranium is the symbol for the twentieth century.

I think his most "interactive" film is by far "Drowning by Numbers", which is not only a film about games but also a film which was shot following a very severe set of rules, and which hides many riddles, secrets and games to be uncovered by the viewer. It´s all explained in his film "Fear of Drowning", very interesting to watch if you have the chance.

I also share this feeling for the cinema as interactive, It´s certainly not passive although I must agree with Chris Craford definition of interactivity when he says that cinema is "reactive" not "interactive", as for it being really interactive cinema would have to be able to listen and react to the audience´s reactions.

No, iPad only, it´s really unplayable on a small screen.

It´s done in Unity although I didn´t handle the programming myself. The original prototype was done in Multimedia Fusion 2 though.

Just released a new version of my game Loop Raccord for iPad:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/loop-raccord/id464293817?l=es&ls=1&mt=8

For those unfamiliar with it it´s a video-editing game in which you have to synchronize a chain of videos to create an illusion of continuous movement between them.

Made a trailer for it: http://vimeo.com/troshinsky/loopraccord

More info here: http://pluralgames.blogspot.com/2010/09/loop-raccord.html

I have a couple of spare promocodes so if any of you wants a copy leave me a message and I´ll be glad to give you one!

I think this has a lot of sense.

I do feel that for every game idea there´s a massive work to be done, if counting only the graphics it a huge amount of work already. I´ve been thinking seriously too about starting a series of games to explore some ideas I have and keep the same visual style between them, so I can reuse everything and acumulate elements as if constructing an alphabet.

Then of course, I tend to have very diferent ideas and many will need a diferent focus, and doing something new is always more encouraging.

But I think you a right, it´s hard but worth trying. Little steps are not enough. There are few people who seem to be doing a "research" in their field, it´s certainly interesting when you see someone´s work evolving and you can only wander about what will be the next step.

Interesting article about how the ability to make plans is a more important component of games than win/lose conditions:

http://robotgeek.co.uk/2011/09/players-are-planners/

The touch feeling in there is powerful, but me too I would have prefered if they hadn´t chopped out the hand...

I´ve been thinking about this lately:

My feeling when playing most games is not that I am that character but rather that I have control over him through a remote control. Video game characters feel more like puppets than human beings, and may be another cause why I don´t identify with them.

One thing that stuck with me was when playing Amnesia (I haven´t played much, it stresses me), somewhere near the beggining you are going upstairs in a wide room and you hear a scream from the left. The game takes control of the character just for less than a second to turn your view around as a reflex. This was really powerful, as it´s exactly what that character would do and as reflexes are always out of your control. It made the inmersion stronger.

Another thing I remember is in Mirror´s Edge, you could not fall from a ledge because you character had the reflex to rebalance herself, and when you got close to a wall, she touched the wall with her hand. A little detail that gave her more presence, made her more real.

So I wander if this could be pushed further. It makes no sense seeing my avatar running stuck on a wall, or falling off a ledge by accident or miscalculate a jump. It´s not a question of skill, is that as a human being he would have reacted and not fell down like an idiot. I wander if we can avoid our avatars making stupid things and avoid players taking care of stupid tasks. For instance, if my character is talking to another character while walking, the character focus should be the speech, and walking should be done instinctly, as an effortless task. And I don´t mean taking away control as many games do, but maybe reduce control to what makes sense. If I cross a room filled with desks and chairs I should not care about finding a path between them like in a maze, I don´t have to think to do it in my everyday life. If I try to jump from a rooftop to an obvious death I would like that character to get scared and not dare to. I mean, If I was to jump and misjudged the lenght and died, why do I have to see myself die, then load the game and try again? Couldn´t the character see it by himself?

I want to be those characters, with their reflexes, their manias, their behaviours, their tics, their preferences and their subconcious. I want to decide what to do but do it only in the way that character would. I don´t want to play a remote controlled puppet.

Very beautiful film.

I remember seeing a film by her some years ago but this one is much more interesting.
Somehow it makes me think of the Quay Brother´s films, although I don´t remember them ever saying she was an influence in their work.