Thanks for sharing, Alex. I'm familiar with Lost to a point (I think I watched the first 2 or 3 seasons). On the one hand, this seems pretty basic: tell a story where you interweave the past with the present to form unified and interesting characters, etc. On the other hand, I think we can learn a lot by analyzing things at a basic level,  and this seems like an interesting starting point from which to discuss nonlinearity.

Thanks for sharing Dagda. I've read through most of actionbutton.net's manifesto reviews, and have been a Tim Rogers fan for a while.

Thanks for your continued thoughts Michaël! I'm still not sure I agree with you completely on Passage, but I think I understand what you're getting at. I'll have to sit and ponder for a wile longer



P.S. Do forgive me if I go dragging semantics into things (and feel free to punch me in the nose): I'm not a huge fan myself. At the same time, it seems impossible to avoid some level of semantic discussion when trying to communicate

[Comic book:]

Good thoughts. To me, the difference between closure in videogames vs. closure in, say, comic books, is that in videogames the player is constantly in the process of determining what "frame B" might be, as well as then attempting to fill in the gutter between frames A and B.

Comic book:

1. "Oh, there's a dude with an axe chasing another dude in frame A"

2. "Okay, in frame B somebody that I can't see is yelling out"

3. "What happened between the frames?" [filling in the gutter]


Videogame (or notgame):

1. "Okay, here's a dude in a virtual space-time continuum (frame A)"

2. "What do I want to do with this dude? What can I do with this dude? Where is this dude going? What's his motivation? What's my motivation? How are we connected?" etc. Player takes all this into account, and imagines some kind of frame B in their mind (whether that's destroying a castle, or jumping over a chasm, or whatever).

3. "Now, how do I bring about this idea for frame B?" Player comes up with some sort of plan, whether that's "build tanks" or "press space bar to jump." [filling in the gutter]

4. Player tries to carry out plan. It will most likely succeed in some regards, and fail in some regards--both from the standpoint of "I jumped to soon" and also from the standpoint of "hm... it appears that you can't jump in this game."

5. Player then returns to the start of the loop, with new information to help them continue their journey.


Point to note: there is certainly no less imagination going on (inherently) in videogame closure than in comic book closure... in fact, I think there's room for a great deal more.

The fact that this dynamic closing process is so incredibly intricate and rich when it comes to interactive art is basically what makes me so excited about it.




P.S. Would it be possible to get html lists working on these forums? Currently the css is not very useful there... not a big deal.

Very interesting thoughts Michaël; I'm still not quite seeing it, but bear with me. The problem I have with Passage saying "imagine life as a game" is that it isn't a game--is it? I mean, it's lacking in most of characteristics we would typically think of a game as having. It's not fun or intended to be fun, it lacks any explicit (and arguably even implicit) goals or challenges, and the "rules" are thus more like physical constraints than "playful" or "gamelike" constraints. How, then, can it be telling us to imagine life as a game, or reducing life to a game?

The thing is metaphorical for sure. It's saying "take this narrow passage to be life, for a moment," but in that regard it is hardly different from any borderline-abstract artwork, from any medium. It's just using the word "game" to describe it (as opposed to "notgame"), that I don't understand.

Could you give some examples of works that you would hold up as examples of notgames (realizing, of course, that notgames is not a category )?

Thanks for the warm welcomes

@Michaël:

It's interesting to me that you view Passage as a "border case." Can you expand a bit more on what you mean there? It seems to me that you're saying it's a "border case" of a notgame... because it's not enough like a game?? Or rather, because it "perverts" the medium of games (in the style of found object art), and is thus more "about" games than it is about its cover themes of life and death. Am I reading you right, there? If so, I would have to contest. Passage doesn't seem "broken" at all to me, nor do I feel that it is about perverting the medium of games. To me, it is a short interactive experience that is simply not concerned with being a game... ie, an exemplary notgame. It seems to me that people read it as a sort of "found object" / "commentary on games as a medium" simply because it is so unconcernedwith gameplay... not because it is pervertinggameplay.

I haven't played Train, but I have read up on it, and that seems like it might be a better example of a "perverting" / deconstructing kind of game that is as much about the expectations of gameplay as it is about death camps. A game that I think fits really well in this category is SCMRPG: a work that is indeed filled with traditional gameplay components, and expectations, but whose entire existence and message is based on the undermining of those rules and expectations... a sort of "anti-game" more than a notgame. Other examples would be the Karoshi games, or the bunnies game I made a little while back. Those games are all "found object-like", in that they are about the idea of gameplay as much as they are about Columbine, Suicide, or Genocide, respectively. Passage, on the other hand, is, to me, a pure memento mori.

Maybe I'm reading you all wrong here. Or maybe we just had different experiences with Passage (quite likely). In any case, I'm keen to hear more about what you think on this.

So I already posted over here after Axcho pointed me to this forum, but wanted to take the time to introduce myself in a stiff, formal manner

My name is Jordan, I've been playing computer games for about 20 years, I guess, and making them for about 13. I've gone through various stages of loving and loathing games, being intensely engaged, and thinking that they were completely boring.

I've been involved (on-and-off) in the indie gaming scene for a while (I founded TIGSource.com back in 2005, which some of you might be familiar with), and have enjoyed the surge of independent spirit and experimentalism that has come with it.

For some time I have believed that videogames can be more than games: that they have the potential to change the way people think, express emotion, etc. However, progress towards this goal has seemed to be very slow, even within the indie scene (the commercial sector is pure molasses). Playing Jason Rohrer's Passage a while back was something of a breakthrough for me, as it was the first game I played that stood out to me as really being more than a game, or different from a game: an interactive experience that was entirely about expressing some truth about life (and that, for me, really succeeded). Looking back on that experience now, I realize that Passage was not a game at all, but a notgame.

I feel like a lot of things are converging for me right now, in my thinking about interactive art, and finding this website has been a real boon. I'm excited to be here, and discuss notgames with all of you.

Best wishes to all!


P.S. If you want to know a bit more about me, you can check out my bio at http://www.necessarygames.com/about

P.P.S. I've actually been making notgames for a while, without using the term. Here's a micro example I made for Ludum Dare a few days ago: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-17/?action=rate&uid=1382

(imagination can also be used to reduce programming complexity and asset creation because you basically make the player a co-creator)

So can procedural generation, although programming an artist might be more painful than just hiring one 

 

[Welcome to the club!]

I like how the writer of this article (a game developer) honestly analyzes his personal response to an experience with games and realizes that the things he responds the most to are things that have nothing to do with games. Welcome to the club! 

Thanks 

With regards to his question if the games are "better than a pretty picture", I have a counter-question every game creator should ask themselves:
"Is my game as good as a pretty picture?"!
Because pretty pictures can be very striking, emotionally. And if your game is not as striking with all the benefits your medium offers of interactivity, procedurality and non-linearity, well, frankly, you're doing it wrong.

I absolutely 100% agree with this. I was using "better" there in the since of offering something "beyond," which I do think that an interactive experience should do (otherwise it simply IS a pretty picture), and I think I was almost hoping that someone might jump on it like this .

I also like how he concludes that a game's interaction needs to serve its aesthetics, that it shouldn't "draw attention to itself". The next step is, of course, to start your project from these aesthetics and design gameplay for the sake of these aesthetics.

I also agree with you here (which I guess makes sense, since you're basically agreeing with what I wrote ), though I think there's still some issue of people confusing aesthetic with graphics and sound, and I don't think gameplay/interactivity should serve graphics and sound: I think all three should serve the developer's vision for the game's aesthetic. The problem with most contemporary games, I think (and what I was trying to say in my article) is that most game developers only believe that graphics and sound need to serve the aesthetic, and that gameplay is this other "dimension", of puzzles and point scoring, that you tack on, on top.

This idea of interactive closure sounds quite interesting! Need to have it in mind!

However, it is needed that the player knows what B is and this can sometimes be hard get across. It might also force the game to be very linear. I guess one can have more fuzzy goals, like "become happy", but the fuzzier B gets, the harder it will be do focus on closure (since the future actions will be harder to know). Any thoughts on this?

Good questions. No answers off the top of my head, but I think there's room for a working theory here.


Finally, just wanted to say that I've been looking around the notgames forums and blog, and I love what I see here . Best wishes to everyone.