How does one play a Koyaanisqatsi of games?

It's interesting in a way you ask it that directly, because in a way it is very easy to make Koyaanisquatsi interactive, either through camera movement, translation movement, determining cuts or rates, &c., &c., but it is hard to know whether it is 'good' because for that you need the right audience to experience it.

To me this sounds like a way to make different versions of the same thing. An editing tool. I think we spend too much time making/playing games and not enough making/thinking in terms of tools and improving/studying existing games. I think that's why progress is glacial. I don't like having the option to look around when interesting things are happening, it creates a sense of anxiety, never knowing if you are looking at what you are supposed to be looking at. So I only see something like this as a development tool for if you think you can edit better and are unhappy with the edit, or think an alternative edit would be interesting.

I humbly think it is by far too early to say that. I know the anxiety you mean; but that is then also a problem of a game showing you Interesting Things while having a big countdown in the background. In ballet there can be a huge number of simultaneous things happening without viewer anxiety over missing parts (which will inevitably happen). I think the anxiety more comes from badly guiding players and bad scene set-ups than the possibility of looking around. Certainly when you get to something like Koyaanisqatsi, which has far less of a clear "Interesting Things".

we do need a Koyaanisqatsi of games, too.

Funny that you should say that. I just watched the 'qatsi trilogy in preparation of a new project…

Go oooon....

How does one play a Koyaanisqatsi of games?

It's interesting in a way you ask it that directly, because in a way it is very easy to make Koyaanisquatsi interactive, either through camera movement, translation movement, determining cuts or rates, &c., &c., but it is hard to know whether it is 'good' because for that you need the right audience to experience it.

It is rather temping, now you have me thinking about it.

*Guardedly adds it to the daunting stack of 'rather interesting game ideas'

I think it is more that games are bad at rapid successions of intelligent interaction. The problem is, methinks, not so much depicting humans (especially with the technology of today) but making it interactive without having the 'video / choice / video / choice / video / walking / video / choice / video' type structure which is currently in most of the human-driven games (Life is Strange or any Telltale game) or the 'watch an audiolog' approach (Bioshock, Gone Home and their new game). It requires leaps in AI to be able to make such things interesting to play with.

The problem with the landscape games is that Gamers (who-ever that is) are culturally disinclined against them. I wish we had invented games in another century, we would be drowning in travelogues and imaginary landscape games. But by that same thought; we do need a Koyaanisqatsi of games, too.

There can be something a little ironic about the desire for drama. I think games culturally inherits from the very narrow space of 'Big Drama' rather than, say, travelogues, pastorals or character-driven pieces. To some extent, some pieces of drama from the past aren't that dramatic by such standards. At least my experience reading older literature is frequently that of realizing I can calm down and just enjoy the act of reading itself, rather than reading for anything.

Like that, games can be about the pleasure of (inter)acting, rather than interacting for the sake of Big Drama. Not to say they cannot be 'dramatic'; Cheongsam is dramatic in a slow character-piece type of way. There's room for a lot in games but we need some different cultural heritage.

As such the closest analog might in fact be poetry. And then I agree: let's abandon the ubiquitous classic epic poem in favor of modernist colleague and experimentation with language.

I do think of some games as decorated poems (where the decoration stands on equal or greater foot to the poem). So I was drowsily nodding along with this, but then you said abandon classic epic poems and I had to spit out my coffee in shock.

I concur with Michaël, mostly - it was interesting but beyond what the alpha showed not much happened. The story was 'about' something but nothing ever happened; there was little pathos, no involvement between characters (everybody was an island)... just at no point was the story ever alive. There were one or two moments where I was excited. If this had been a novel I would have thought it very poorly written. I was happy to see some who actually dealt with 'coming out' as homosexual criticized the story for being one of those 'white people walking in the part' type of affairs.

It also showed a strange difference with Dear Esther, where Esther's environment is so excellent it is a constant delight - in Gone Home, the environment is simplistic and jejune. At some point I was thoroughly tired of it all. Yes, yes, I can pick up items and turn them, but why? I found myself wishing they had a three room apartment where all the detail could have been focussed on the place, rather than padding it out in a needless way.

By the time I felt something was happening, the plot was moving along, more interesting things happened - the game ended.

Not quite worth the money I paid for it, quality-wise. Purchasing novels would have been a more sound investment.

EDIT: I think the concept is wonderful, though. I just think this execution was so flawed I became rather cynical hearing anybody speaking in praise of it. Perhaps I just did not really experience the 90's in such a way I am emotionally ticklish. At any rate, this is an ideal format for a 'explore the family space' concept. I for one would love to walk around the house of interesting people and overturn all the papers; it is something I do when-ever I am left to my own devices in a friend's home. But I would prefer people who are either interesting or meaningful, rather than just meagre parts of a thin narrative.

A quick thought;

Can we see the emotions possible as such:

Real failure | Game failure | Sympathetic failure | Observed failure

If this is as good dimension, I would think that we can only go so far in making failure and that sympathetic failure is not much less than game failure

You could have pathetic failure, in the sense of you sympathising with a character who goes through a failure.

But can't you get that from a cutscene, or indeed any other medium? I don't see why you need a notgame for that.

You can get a story from a book, but it can work well in a film - you can get pathos from any other medium but it being a game can work well for it, too.

but the actions of characters in games is not really something that I feel translates well to 'personal' failure.

Just some hypothetical examples off the top of my head:

-Failing to get a job
-Failing to get popular at your school
-Failing to preserve your marriage
-Failing to prevent the suicide of a loved one

I don't see why you couldn't make the player feel personal failure by simulating such events?

Speaking for myself, I do not have the suspension of disbelief to make me failing to get a job in a game feel like failing to get a job in real life. If you were to present me a character in a game that I am to portray and tell me he is struggling (and failing) to save his marriage then of course I can sympathize. But giving me a system that pretends to be a marriage never really grips me. Perhaps it is overly symbolic for me; I can tell the mechanics only symbolise the real world rather than having a more clear artistic voice.

That is to say, I would rather play a tragedy in which I cannot not fail, because then I know what I am doing. In a game with a system, I would not see this loved one and the suicide - I would think about the underlying mechanics.

My personal problem is that challenge as a form is hard to integrate with narrative (if failing a challenge creates a narrative branch) or exists as a meaningless bubble where narrative laws are suspended and resumed. In both cases I am not sure I truly feel the challenge added anything to the game. I am personally a proponent of 'meaningless interaction' as a way forward- i.e., the player performing actions which have no 'large' consequences and rather just serve to increase engagement, presence, &c.

A valid position, although not the only possible one. I think both Heavy Rain and things like DayZ and Crusader Kings (the latter two in a much less purified notgame state) show that challenge and failure can be powerful narrative tools. The unique strength of the medium is to immerse people in particular states of mind by letting them do stuff in a virtual world which would trigger that state of mind if they did it in real life. Quite frankly, if you want to give the player a sense of failure, what better way to do so than to let them fail? It may be hard but that doesn't mean it's not worth trying.

Of course one can try - it can go both ways. But personally if a game lets me fail I cannot help but try to play the system to win, rather than focussing on the artistic content of a game. For me playing a tragedy is a better way to experience failure.

I do not see challenge as an essential part of games at all.

Allow me to rephrase: Challenges are a perfectly valid component of the medium of videogames. They do not have to be in every notgame but nor should they be excised from them. The key is that the virtual world should not be structured as one big challenge; challenges (if they exist) should preferably exist in pockets within the larger world which operates on different logic. And of course there should be more meaningful results of success or failure than getting or losing some points. This is how challenges work in the real world - a world without any challenges is just as unreal as one where time stops if you fail a challenge. (And traditional challenge-worlds that work entirely on game-logic can also be perfectly good, if abstract, art - see Rohrer's work - but that's the constricting standard we're trying to get away from)

How else would you instill the feeling of failure (the actual emotion, not the gamified facsimile) other than allowing the player to fail?

You could have pathetic failure, in the sense of you sympathising with a character who goes through a failure. This works for fiction as a whole... You are right about personal failure, which is part of the ladder of Starcraft, but the actions of characters in games is not really something that I feel translates well to 'personal' failure.

My personal problem is that challenge as a form is hard to integrate with narrative (if failing a challenge creates a narrative branch) or exists as a meaningless bubble where narrative laws are suspended and resumed. In both cases I am not sure I truly feel the challenge added anything to the game. I am personally a proponent of 'meaningless interaction' as a way forward- i.e., the player performing actions which have no 'large' consequences and rather just serve to increase engagement, presence, &c.

and reminded me of being a player, rather than an audience.

Isn't that the whole point of this medium?

I should say not - you can be an audience in a game as much as a player or a participant. I want to sympathise with characters more than I want to have the illusion of responsibility.

It's clear that challenge and failure are absolutely key to videogames as to all other fiction. You just have to degamify them. It's the same as with all other gamified interactions.

Is it? There is quite a large amount of work that is not challenging. Not to mention that there is a large difference between a fictional character being challenged or you yourself being challenged. I would not like to be able to fail in a book, nor do I like it in a game when my purpose of playing is not explicitly to be challenged. The skill challenges in Heavy Rain, for instance, I thought tedious and annoying and reminded me of being a player, rather than an audience. I do not want David Cage to judge me on whether I am a good father - I want him to tell me whether I am and just leave me to get to it.

I do not see challenge as an essential part of games at all.

Considering manipulation (in the context of emotions) means 'to influence or manage shrewdly or deviously' I would say it is somewhat naive to phrase our engagement with a work of art as manipulation. And I do say naive because seeing manipulation as a positive is not even cynical; not seeing the absurdity of a world in which art has to be devious to evoke anything is some contemporary naivety.

We can feel manipulated (I would argue) if we feel the emotional content is not sincere and rather other conditions are created for the sake of tricking us. I.e., a film which has no real drama trying to manipulate you into feeling things. That is greatly different from a film which evokes a sense of drama, thereby making you feel things.

But on my end I like to read novels as-if I am the writer's peer; and I would hardly seek to be manipulated by my peers.

You are welcome

I have smoked pipe for a few years now - a lovely thing for summer afternoon reading.

Not having seen the talk (yet? there are only so many hours), but it is interesting you say 'what isn't manipulating'. It is a sorry state for art if it has to do what it does through manipulation.

I more frequently have the feeling that 'we are going on a journey together' [EDIT: in other art] rather than having my feelings manipulated. An extreme of this is Northanger Abbey where Austen tells you that because stories 'such as this' need a heroine of a certain kind, there is one. It feels more like coming to tea to be entertained by the author, rather than being manipulated. I have the same with Donne, who can evoke a 'talking about it while sipping beer in a pub' feeling.

In game terms I would say 30 Flights of Loving is a little scherzo which 'invites you in'.

But it is also an aesthetic choice, I suspect, whether you (as a reader) want to throw yourself to the waves and feel things or take a measured stance and enjoy a work for what it evokes. I notice with Journey I can never participate in the conversation because the game has no hold over me and I never really can sympathise with other's feelings about it. The talk about 'it made me feel x,' 'it made me feel y,' and 'then this happened and I really felt, like, z,' and all the while I stand there like a forgotten statue holding a glass of white wine.

Hello, all!

Recently I was asked by Indievelopment to give a presentation, which they have (quite rapidly) put online here: http://vimeo.com/64925083

I thought I would post it here for your potential interest as it is about the following;

A ‘clock’ that forms when (often violent) high-consequence interaction is alternated with passive storytelling in the hope of making both part of the same mental space. The specifics of the types of interaction (fuzzy and linear) are discussed with their requirements and suitability for action and storytelling. However, the requirement for this clock is found to be a lie that comes from an audience demanding ‘high consequence’ interaction; we can see consequence is an illusion and acknowledge that games can offer illusions other than consequence. Indeed, we are stuck with the clock, but only while we do not ask players to treat our games differently; asking a player to treat a game like ‘acting’ or purely with ‘presence’ means we may do many things that the clock cannot.

What-ho!