Notgames Forum

Is Jason Rohrer after all taking the opposite path to the one we are pursuing here?

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/38330/MIGS_2011_Redefining_Challenge_In_Games_Can_Push_Artistic_Boundaries_Says_Rohrer.php

I´m not quite convienced by his point so far.

depends on how you define challenge. A Picasso can be very challenging. Being good and fast at pressing buttons at the right time is challenging, but I want to be challenged in the Picasso-way.

I do not really understand what he is after either, but then this is just a summary.

Wow. This was unexpected. I can see some points concerning challenge, but challenge per se, as he seems to think (like a large chunk of the contemporary indie scene), does not make an interactive work (see - not a game) interesting. Then it is after all just a game. If a "game" as a term is something to move beyond, then Rohrer took the first train getting the fuck away from his last years of work, it seems, standing firmly within conformity.

And we should care about what he thinks because...?

I think it's a legit concern that a lot of art games are boring.  However, the idea that a conclusion has been reached that it's a dead end is patently absurd.  Maybe he has personally grown tired of the effort and is projecting his disappointment onto the field at large.  I'm not sure how increasing challenge will help create more involved plot (that's the main thrust I got out of the article, anyway).

Of course games should not be boring, but to me: challenge is boring. At least if we're talking challenge on a superficial level rather than an intellectual challenge.

The problem with 'boring' is that it's an overused and unspecific word. People call Andrei Tarkovsky's work boring, and I disagree in every way. So when people call my work boring it's hard to seperate the ones who have a legitimate point from the ones that, for lack of better terminology, "just don't get it" (which is perfectly fine not to do). I agree that many art games are not engaging enough (often through the use of, in my opinion, too abstract representations*).

*Abstraction can work fine, or even better than realism, in certain topics but the problem is that the abstraction often seems to be used not because it's effective but because of either time-constraints or lack of artistic talent.

Jason Rohrer has always been on the opposite side. Simply because he believes that game rules are the thing that should express everything, while we here look at the medium of video-games as a much broader thing that offers opportunity for all sorts of formats. We simply disagree that game rules are the essence of this medium.

The politically incorrect secret as to Why All Those Art Game Are So Boring is that most of the people who make them are not very good artists. And I don't exclude myself from this. But one should not blame a medium for the faults of its users.

When I see games like Beyond Good & Evil, Zeno Clash and Sacrifice, which are challenge games within an interesting context (I think), I am often reminded that what is keeping most games uninteresting for me is the very same problem; the people making them are not artistically interesting. They focus on challenge, which they do well, but thematically they are quite dull. I suppose 'art games' (he says as-if it is ahuge thing we just wish it was) have that problem more vocally because without the challenge, all the other defects are more visible (whereas Zeno Clash' story is just silly, but it works as a fighting backdrop because I feel challenged).

EDIT: I do not think that removing challenge is like removing plot from films; it is like removing the arbitrary fighting scenes from films

Another reason why art games are so boring is because they are boring compared to creations that have for over 30 years perfected the science of making player addicted to competitive interaction. If I may also be politically incorrect, then art games are like giving people addicted to heroine the first attempts at making wine. It is really hard for the addicts what the fuzz should be about when they got such a potent stimuli already.

There have been so very very few attempts at making art games that remove challenge compared to the vast space of games with challenge that it is not fair to compare at at all. The challenge based games have also had the advantage of thousands of years of evolution in sports and traditional games. Also they can utilize very rooted traits that have been apart with us before we were amphibians. Art games try and speak to much more recent additions to us are very much specific to humans. It is a much tougher challenge.

So to say that the removal of challenge has been tried and fail is not really a proper stance on the subject.

depending who you ask, even the greatest art is considered boring by many, many people. Art is boring if you do not invest in it. Mathematics is boring if you do not invest in it, if you do not try to learn and understand it. Once you have done your investment, you will find that Mathematics is quite interesting. If someone says to me: your game is boring, I feel the urge to reply, "No, you are boring!"

I like how you make challenge-based games seem like belonging to the natural domain, while artistic games belong to the cultural domain, Thomas. :)

This is true to some extent, of course. But it's a slippery path. Because if you do an effort and stare at a blank wall for over an hour, you'll probably also experience something deeply meaningful.

Also, art experience cannot be learned explicitly, I think. You need to have grown up in a cultured context. If you haven't, you're probably pretty much lost. Or it will take an enormous amount of effort.

I also fear that the sensitivity required to appreciate art may be in part genetic. Much like some people are better runners, some are more intelligent or have blond hairs, some simply have a larger capacity to enjoy art.

That being said, we do currently seem to live in a culture that rejects complex forms of amusement (like art) in favor of simple fun (like games). This is almost expressed like a political right: the right to be stupid. So, probably, many people with the genetic capacity and the cultural background required for the enjoyment of art, may end up rejecting it because that is the right/popular/cool thing to do.

While it is obviously a much bigger task, I also agree that the challenges facing those/us making works outside of normal game contexts are not limited to a hermetic packaging - that is, our problems can't be solved by us, inside and only within our sphere of interest. Being "cultured" or sensitive to experiences that are not plainly visceral is likely a major step in becoming a part of the audience of these kinds of works.

I fear however that the biological implications of current "visceralist" culture may create subjectivities that could possibly auto-negate these attempts. I place a great deal of hope in related fields, such as art, pedagogy/education and various social agents (among other things) as the primary instances in society that can counter-act a devolution of sorts.

I am not a biologist or scientist by any means, but as I've made clear, I find it laughable that issues of biopolitics have not been raised more often as that may be where a current battle (will) stands at.

I still think we can use the visceral appeal of interactive work to our advantage, to the advantage of culture. Maybe there is a way to experience artistic ecstasy without having to suffer through education. Or maybe we can learn through virtual visceral experience (as we do through life experience).

Our enemy is not human biology. It is a culture that celebrates banality. Physical sensations are not evil. But they too can be refined. And refinement is what's lacking.

I think the common argument for this is that if staring at a blank wall like this would produce such an effect, we would do it. I know the 'you have to learn how to eat it' argument is sometimes countered with 'you can learn how to eat dirt and like it', but the effort is too great.

Like the aforementioned mathematics, there are things which are too much effort for me to learn. But I do believe nobody is born with a natural taste for 19th century English folklore music; but I am happy I acquired it.

A friend and I would say it is somewhat like having spare time, and investing that spare time in making future spare time better by learning a new appreciation skill. Learning how to appreciate a blank wall would cost more spare time than it delivered (so to speak). And some element are incompatible with your beliefs and would damage your enjoyment of life rather than aid it.

I see no problem with education - I would actually say that it is biology which we train; the untrained biology is our enemy, the refined biology our ally. We have to domesticate ourselves to get the most out of ourselves. I do not think I was born liking Beethoven, but after many years it is an inseparable friend.

(But then I am English enough to like a good bit of stiff upper lip.)

Otherwise known as... meditation. ;)


It's called meditation. Some of us do it. I'm happy I've acquired the taste for it.

I think you guys might be reading a little too much into this. I think that after playing a few specific indie titles he's simply really into the concept of challenge in videogames right now, and thinks it could be interesting to explore how that challenge can be made more expressive. And he's simply trying to be a persuasive debater and lead people in the same direction.

I guess it seems to me that, like many of us, he has new ideas of things to explore every couple of years, and this is his latest. I don't share his overall view, but I can respect his goal of suggesting that the mainstream explore game concepts more expressively. This time he just seems to be meeting them more where they already are. My overall response is a sincere "good for him."

To me, though, it's much more exciting to think about directions being explored by other videogames that are recently released or will soon be: Dinner Date, Amnesia, Dear Esther, Proteus, even To The Moon. It is an exciting time. :)

I did not realize I described meditation, and that we then of course do stare at a blank wall (so to speak) :).

@God at play
I am happy to hear you mention To the Moon, it was a real dark horse for me. Never expect that technology, style or idea to work, but it really quite caught me in a certain way!

I haven't even played it myself, thought it's on my list. But watching the video it struck me as a JRPG minus the RPG elements, and that's what excites me about it.

...hey, what do you know, it's on Wired. Takin' this to a new thread.

Heh. :) The blank wall is optional, of course. But it's the same sort of thing. ;)

No one answered my question: Why should we care what Jason Rohrer thinks?

Because he has lots of fans?

Because he's a fairly prominent art and games things person, I think. He also has some pretty progressive ideas about games, or at least I believe they were progressive at the time.

What games has he done?

He is probably most well known for Passage, and he's also done Gravitation, Sleep is Death, and Inside a Star-filled Sky. At this year's GDC he won the Game Design Challenge with a pretty awesome idea, which I would argue is very much a notgames approach to the challenge: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Rohrer

The entry doesn't fully do the idea justice because of the elegance of the rules, but hopefully as a designer you can think ahead to what would come about from those rules.

You certainly don't have to care what he thinks, but he is a thought leader. Therefore, by definition, he contributes to "the state of the art."

Oh yeah, Passage. It was ok, I guess.

I read the article. He's stuck in the games as games headspace. He called The Graveyard a game and said it was boring. It's not a game at all. And slow isn't the same as boring. He may be a thought leader in games but nothing he said here is applicable to notgames and experiential interactive art. Quite the opposite. He is an iconoclast. He wants to push the boundaries of games but he clearly can't see beyond that barrier.

I think simply because we are "relatives", maybe not the closest ones but still, our work will always be related to his becuse he gained the status of being "the art games designer". Like it or not, whoever tries to push video games into the art domain will be compared to his achievements.

And anyway, maybe he has a different approach but we share interests. I personally think that "Sleep Is Death" is a brilliant notgame.

Yes.

Quite true. And very adamantly so.
But he also strikes me as very confused. He often changes his position. Almost like a child growing up.
In theory and in his heart, he might come around some day. But he is very fond of low-tech so he might never see "the light". I don't think he owns a computer that can properly run 3D games. I think this is a matter of pride to him. Antiorp used to call people like this "low tech posers" (a phrase we fondly use to this very day, next to the more recent "pixel corpsefuckers" we owe to you :)).