Just chiming in: Portal 2 may not have changed my life, but it was interesting to see how the rhetorics of science and patriarchy intertwine within it, revealing how intersectionality in these subjects can be used to get a clearer sense of how power relations within these fields take place, and their relationship to one-another. It was thus also interesting how glados is portrayed, and how hir role changes from that of the first game, because of the relations of power and how they have changed, and also how glados "came to be", and what the real culprits may be in this saga. This affected me to some degree, yes, just as the first game explores notions of medicalization and instiutions (foucault), double binds (bateson), ontological insecurities (laing), processes of mortification (goffman), master of supression techniques (berit ås). The first game got me emotional because my parents and the psychiatry have pulled those fucking stunts on me, and the second game was more interesting on an intellectual level, but also made me sad because I got a clearer sense of how notions of exploration/final frontiers/final solutions adhere to misogynist values, imperialism and modernism, and because I always have a potential of getting emotionally involved in situations where there is a reversal of roles such as evil guy is really not all that evil (see freudian excuse in tvtropes, although it can be done very badly and is often done so), and reversals such as the good guy is really the bad guy (not saying anything, because it spoils two of my most favorite games).

There is also one thing worth mentioning here, perhaps, which knife_bob will recognize since we met when zie held a lecture at a game meetup in Sweden: in the beginning, one is instructed to stand next to a painting and enjoy art, while classical music plays. Then the whole room one stands is is torn apart, moves around, with you in it, controlled, yet free to look around, an authored yet not authored experience. This is for me an ironic hint at the debate of art, amusing remark on what goes for art, and that without the literacy of that domain, one gets nothing out of it. Also the irony of being instructed, under time pressure, to enjoy something. But how about games, are they not about time, about action? Well, some puzzles aren't, are they more art than something else? I for example think there should be less static things in video games in general, not so that one gets to choose which data set to begin with (what mission) but which mission one simply most let go in order to choose something else over it.

Just some thoughts. The bulk of the game is still puzzles and puzzles and massive areas of looking for where to go next. This can make me tired.

Knytt was the game that came to mind when you told us of you plans, axcho! ^^ Another game I'm thinking of is Small Worlds. And an even older game, one of the first indie games I played probably, is seiklus. This has a bit more challenge to it though iirc, and some gathering of stuff. But atmosphere and exploration is still what matters most -- and it doesn't hurt that old c64 chiptunes play in the background!

I have a friend who was diagnosed with ADD at the age of 30. This person has two computer screens and used to play tetris on one of them, while watching movies on the other, to be able to focus better on the movie. I am a bit worried (mostly for myself) how I get affected by all the interactivity available to me. It's as if getting through longer linear texts is now harder for me, I get cravings to do some marking at least, which is why I either read a document where one can copy the text, or like to have marker pens when reading books, even novels. How is our attention span these days?

Done, and done! Oh, well, actually, tumblr is not done. Right now I'm comfortable with my activity here and facebook.

Mario: well, not too hard, but they are still quite demanding in such ways that they scream "look at me, explore me", and the likes.

Heh. Me, I'm addicted to computers. Hypertexts. Someone wrote about people interacting with hypertexts and how this interaction is different than interaction with a linear text in what parts of the brain are activated. Hypertexts were explored more on the basis of "what decision do I make", scanning, puzzling, in a different way than regular texts. For me, this is addictive, on top of the fact that I find comfort in the whole "me and my computer scenario". Even when playing mass effect and choosing dialogue options, this hypertext quality is added. Especially when I wish to "play well" and thus choose dialogues in the order of what feels dramaturgically sound, or based on my characters temperament. Perhaps Bioware have even thought about this, and perhaps they have scrambled the dialogues around in the dialogue trees so that it doesn't make sense to just go through the options, upper-left to lower-right, but one should indeed look through them quickly and then create ones own maze.

Dudas: Many times, the story in games isn't very good also, which probably contributes to you not remembering it. Have you played far cry 2? It was designed with a purpose in mind: stories there are emergent, from the procedurally generated content, and people are supposed to have their own stories, stories which the designer haven't thought of. A bit lite dwarf fortress then, minus the intent maybe (I don't know actually what the designers of dwarf fortress had planned for it).

Samyn: What is the top layer you're referring to? And also, how could interaction on the reptile level improve the experience, do you have any ideas? I get the feeling that what you're getting at isn't how gameplay can make something more meaningful as such (mirroring the themes of the "story" to be more resonant), but something different.

Judge for yourself!

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/591565

A case could be made for instants or whatever they're called in god of war/asuras wrath and the likes, where you just press buttons when there's a movie going on. For me, it may work sometimes. In Indigo Prophecy/Fahrenheit, no. Distracted and didn't give me much.

Photopia by Adam Cadre, little spoilery ahead:

"Through one simple trick, Cadre shows us that interactivity fundamentally changes the act of reading, and he manages to associate non-interactive reading with the non-potential of death. Thus, Photopia is certainly a declaration of love to interactive fiction. But it is also critical of the present state of the medium. This criticism would have already been felt if Cadre had just, in a total break with the tradition, refused to put any puzzles in the piece. It would have been strengthened by the anti-technological bias of the game, where machinery--the favoured material of puzzle builders--is totally inert and devoid of meaning to the human individual. But in what has to be described as a stroke of genius, Cadre did put in a single puzzle, to wit, a puzzle that utterly undermines the idea of puzzles and that points to a freedom beyond puzzles.

I am, of course, referring to the famous maze-puzzle, where the player must take off her spacesuit and type "fly". The symbolism cannot be missed. We are faced with the most archetypal of IF puzzles, and to solve it, we must refuse to solve it. We must, in a literal as well as a figurative sense, rise above it. This gives us an instantaneous freedom that interactive fiction until now has explicitly denied us."

This notgame:

http://www.dreamsofyourlife.com/

And this background:

http://www.brainygamer.com/the_brainy_gamer/2012/03/hitting-the-game-design-wall.html

"Robertson began thinking about systems and how she might identify something concrete upon which to build a game. "How can we boil this down to elements we can deal with that form structures?" The problem, which reflects the dominant theme of the film, is that Joyce's story is a lesson "that all sorts of systems failed. There was no system here, and that's the real story of Joyce's demise."

Studying the events that led to Joyce's death , says Robertson, reveals "imperceptible, longitudinal, tiny details" that add up to Joyce's story. When you try to apply a playable system to this, you impose a reductive structure to something that resists it. "You diminish it in insulting ways," says Robertson."


One thing I've struggled with is that what games seem to do best is explore systems with lots of interacting thingies, lots of numbers, or relations of some sort, abstract and impersonal, meaning coming from going through these systems, replaying, trying out, etc. But what about more personal stories, with a different kind of reduction? I've been wanting to do games and use game mechanics also to tell of these stories, yet it seems like trying to fit something into a too small suit indeed. So the choice would be to change format (into movie, book, notgame), or tell a different story. Yet I want to take on the challenge of ludology sometimes, as if it's the holy grail of gaming to tell through mechanics. But what are the limitations, and what could have been done differently in this specific case?

Here is a write up:

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/164420/GDC_2012_Die_Gute_Fabriks_Wilson_on_how_simple_tech_enhances_folk_play_.php?

Ah, an updated version with better controls would sit quite nicely. At first I was sceptic towards the trend to remake games and was irritated that some people I know thought that the best thing that happened like on last years gdc on something similar was hd versions of metal gear solid. Now I kind of get it; old technology sucks, breaks down, and has graphics and frame rates that hurt your eyes.

What did you find inspiring in the talk, given that you seem to have no interest in the types of games talked about?

I've never been to a game conference myself, but remember the days when I used to stream things live, while being on some game forum at the same time and discussing what was happening with other nerds. Like for example when Shigeru Miyamoto came up on stage with a sword and shield, showing us the new "adult" zelda game after wind waker I think. Ah, these days I don't give a crap (actually expect to get more personal pleasure out of the mario games), but back then it was really cool. I remember people on the forum writing that they actually started crying during this reveal.

Were you there, on gdc?

Connected to this, and the emerging folk-game genre:

http://www.theverge.com/gaming/2012/2/22/2814816/johann-sebastian-joust

I mailed Wilson to see if the talk zie gave at gdc would show up anywhere else and will report here.

So this thread can be deleted I guess!

A game created out of currently existing technology!

More info will come later.

Question: Are developer blogs/entries such as this one ok here?

I do find it interesting that when I'm planning to make a game about interfaces, about technology, and what it hides and shows, how it enables and disables, one of the main problems I have concerns interface! And here I'm not talking about my lack of computer literacy (inability to code), or the lack of WYSIWYG ways to go about ones digital art business, but the fact that I have trouble with open office and documents stretching for more than say 30 pages. Things become so hard to understand for me, get a sense of, in a holistic way. I want to be able to traverse my document by labeling chunks of texts under "chapter 1", "chapter 2", etc, and then have the option to next to the title ("chapter 1" for example), to hide or open that chunk of text that's under/associated with that chapter. Is that possible?

The idea for the game came about in part because I'm so tired of writing my Great Work, a manyfest(ival) for posthumanists, transhumanists, freaks, hypocrits, etc, and where to go from here, politically, in day-to-day interactions with people, and with philosophy. The document is now so large that I simply do not feel like I can get a good grip on it. Yet there are great advantages to keep everything in one document since the way I write is fragmented, going from one topic to another that may be 100 pages away, in a second. I also find myself constantly reminded that I do not understand how to write things in linear motions. I see connections between very disparate ideas all the time and so wish to connect them, connect all those dots which perhaps a good writer would hope that the reader hirself will connect. But I also wish to connect them for myself, so that I don't forget them, and get more to explore. I've thought about doing the document in a hypertext of some sort, a labyrinth with a compass. Even the way I write the "book" is labyrinthine; ctrl+f "death of author", oh, yes, here I can put my thoughts. Next ctrl+f...

So the game is sort of like a double structure of making understandable for others, but also making easier for me. Because I do not understand what I'm doing sometimes. In the game, I can play, interrogate all these different aspects of my writings, and perhaps learn something. From interaction with it, but also from the thoughts of others. My great work has a lack of structure, basically, and often I curse myself when I realize that I must ctrl+f the document 20 times before finding a specific passage. I get dyslexia, my eyes hurt from straining, etc. Here, I want to make the game work for me. It does not have to follow a given path, be clear in that specific way a text has to; I don't have to decide as much what comes first, then second, because the game is a process which is not linear. In a way, the game is perhaps an experiment in the oeuvre of Hundred Thousand Billion Poems, but with many times less permutations, and perhaps a more thought out framework with more specific meaning attached to it from me.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Thousand_Billion_Poems

In relation to the "writing", I would feel more free if doing them in a game perhaps, even if also here there is a double motion because I think it would be good for my own understanding and the game itself to be rigorous in my investigations of the concepts at hand, so that they may trickle down into the game. A sense of freedom will perhaps also come with changing the pace from academia to art, because it is not about being precise in the same way. Art is perhaps even about not always saying everything, but give a sense of, to let the reader "get at", go deeper, and get a feeling for whatever may lurk beneath.

There is another irony concerning structure and interface at play here: the game is supposed to be a collection of smaller games, forming an inclosed space, as an art exhibition. I could release the small games one at a time, to get a sense of progress and encouragement. Yet, by themselves, these games lose much of their meaning, since the reason I make them is in part because I wish to use these small games to interrogate each other. In the game I want there even to be a function which makes split screen possible, so one can unravel whatever might lie between them, whatever connections and similar mechanics there might appear when doing so.