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Erik Svedang once made the analogy with an iceberg where videogames are the small visible part and notgames the huge unexplored part under the water surface. I think that together this iceberg is one medium, as yet unnamed. And games are just a small part of it. The rest of this medium still needs to be developed. Games are to this medium what action movies are to film, or heavy metal to music, or super hero comics to all of literature. Etc.

Abandoning the conventions of this "genre" called games is a simple way to stimulate creativity.

I for one will be taking another step in my future work and much more diligently avoid games. I personally think videogames are a creative  dead end. They're not going anywhere. And I want out.

I think our games can stand on their own perfectly well. And there is no need to play all of them. Just play one.

I don't like to talk about art theory, and I'm not good with names.

I have a classicist background in drawing. Not production art, I don't have the patience, but very quick and very classical sculpture like concept art, with mechanical pencil, mind's eye to paper, kind of like fashion drawing only with a minimalist's attention to detail, and markers for coloring.

What I mean to say is I'm very sympathetic to classicist/romantic art. But I'm not sure it's the best fit for videogames right now, or even in general, in the long term. The thread that I see running through modern art, is the question, of is this form or that form truly of esthetic value, or is it merely of sentimental value? And can we comprehend anything in purely esthetic terms or not?

I feel like modernism is a perfect fit for 3D games, for two reasons:

1) it's much more practical to make games with a modernist esthetic. This requires only simple low polygon models with rudimentary textures. Sometimes there is sheer joy in just seeing how abstract you can possibly take things. Great for rapid prototyping (asks people to make esthetic value judgements that reflect on our primitive instincts: more "graphics" please?)

2) for me I can't help anthropomorphizing my electronics. I feel like ultra realistic graphics, which are almost required for non-modernist art styles is cruel to my electronics. It requires lots of heat, every frame, lots of processing power, lots of everything, it just feels like the height of extravagance, and I'm not sure it would feel any different if every ounce of electricity was converted from sunlight right outside my door, or if the computer were passively cooled, or computed with pure light not generating heat. I could rationalize this but not being born of an age of abundance it would still feel extravagant, and I'm not extravagant by nature in the slightest. It just feels like a wrong fit to me. Inelegant.

(edited: and of course it also requires expensive electronics. I expect that most computers in the United States are not capable of playing PC games with baseline graphics. Still all new computers have integrated graphics that can technically do everything that a GPU card is able to do. But they are just optimized for HD video playback and window compositing. It seems to me like department stores only sell this kind of PC. Best Buy probably still sells gaming PCs/GPU cards.)

Realism dominates film, but that's because its functionally photography, so realism is easiest (and I think a lot of film can just be boiled down to fascination with the actors themselves, or how we see ourselves in their chance micro-behaviors.) Film loves to revel in animation, and any kind of non-realistic style they can, but it's cost prohibitive and not practical. Japan has made an art form of this in anime, the most utilitarian form of animation. Yes it's still back breaking animation, but it's special effects budget is flat, infinite even, and that gives it a niche.

Mediums have strengths and weaknesses, and at this time in history when video games so desperately need to get off the ground, and we need all hands on deck, I think it's even irresponsible to promote so thoughtlessly an esthetic style that is realistically not attainable by most people who might be able to make really brilliant 3D games.

We should come to appreciate the modernist style above all else, and then only then, treat ourselves to a bit of extravagance now and then, opting for that plain old "realistic" presentation setting. The setting that we take for granted every waking hour it is unfolding all around us.

Thoughts? Impossible beauty standards. What do you think?

I'm wondering Michael, since Tale of Tales has closed it doors for at least this era of its games.

Is there or can there be a single game download that can be like a ToT collection? So that we can install 1 program, and uninstall 1 program, and not have to fuss with every individual game. And if so how big would that download be? Could it cost like a standard $60 game or so? Maybe less being digital only (possibly excluding Endless Forest since it's multi-player.)

I think a lot of your games might not stand on their own. Just for the fuss. But as a collection? And not just a bundle that gives you all of the games. It has to be packaged together in a single download/installer so the pain of fussing with this is only felt once (I often lament that Windows can only uninstall one program at a time, and it takes so long)

There is a lot of scientific evidence to show that adults have a hard time keeping their attention focused on something for more than 90 minutes. I suppose it's just part of our rhythm, since we sleep in 90 minute chunks as well. That's why you have intermissions for events (even sports!) that last more than 90 minutes.

It has been argued on Gamasutra that film is about short edits, so videogames are about continuity. I remain unconvinced.

I can anecdotally confirm this. I think people who binge watch and watch longer than feature-length movies in a single setting are probably depressed somehow. We would've called them couch potatoes 20 years ago. Studies have suggested as much. Reputable or otherwise.

I think Sunset looks like an interesting game, but I dread playing it for more than 90 minutes. I wonder if it would have sold a lot more copies if people who are potentially interested in it didn't read that you work an hour every day for a year! And then realize that the hour must be compressed somehow so that a year is only several hours!! I understand that maybe it doesn't work any other way, but that's a major commitment. Today there is so much media if something isn't firing on all cylinders for you it's so easy to pass.

The house reminds me of my aunt's vertical house who with her spouse owned/operated an architectural firm in St. Louis (still more or less does I think. She is a vicious Ayn Rand conservative nazi who may even belong to a weird secret society or two!! Edited: for the record this is a mischaracterization, but a heart felt sentiment nonetheless.)

It seems like the perfect game to stream off a Netflix like service in theory. Either getting drawn in or turning it off. It's too much work to download, install, play, uninstall, it's just not worth it, not any of it. This isn't the way to change the face of videogames.


PS: Please STICKY this thread. Never forget

Hi, and welcome Can you elaborate on what you mean re: your last few sentences? I'm not sure I get what you're saying.

Thanks! Someone is here. Maybe we can resuscitate this place.

Rule of thumb, "a few" being 3: "Could it just be one-upmanship? Or do I just require time to adjust. It seems like it is/was a largely male dominated community."

Funny you say so. I just used "Dragon Cancer" as an example for one of Michael's design threads of late (Lose Control) that has repeatedly vexed me to the point that I would be embarrassed if I had any shame. What is your role in that game BTW?

What I mean is just that I'm floored a little bit by how much of the discussion seems driven by a palpable desire to part company from videogames. I find it ahistorical and more than a bit extremist or fundamentalist. I wonder if this desire is true or artificially inflated. And is it even a healthy one. You get men together in close quarters and things will become a pissing contest.

EDITED: I'm really not trying to take anyone down a peg. I'm making excuses for being generally confused, but also wondering why or how things can be this confusing at the same time.

Hi, and welcome Can you elaborate on what you mean re: your last few sentences? I'm not sure I get what you're saying.

Dear anyone who's suffered my posts,

It's 2015 and I'm just reading through the forum... maybe the entire forum (it's a little intimidating how big it is.) And I probably won't be able to resist leaving a mark on every other thread. Just to help process what I read.

I'm sympathetic to the tumblr blog posts post Sunset. I think if I ever find myself at the nexus of a large inflow of money I will just give a chunk of it to Michael to do what he wants with it.

I'm quite dedicated to cinema-like-games. Not necessarily with meaning, but with esthetic and or ethical values and messages. I find myself agreeing with Michael's blog posts, but have a difficult time with some of the concepts being discussed inside the forums here. I'm not sure why the eagerness to so thoroughly break from convention. Could it just be one-upmanship? Or do I just require time to adjust. It seems like it is/was a largely male dominated community.

(I clearly can't wrap my head around this. Too much into game/cinema, not sure if there can be anything outside that box or not.)

I deleted three posts because it dawned on me your three points seemed to be towards addressing a hypothetical game project instead of a general design principle. A stop-gap project to sidestep lingering problems you've identified? They don't seem like permanent problems as you put them. The awkward computer could always be upgraded could it not?

Typically games solve this by cutting whenever you do something. So if you open a door, cut to scene of opening the door. So it doesn't matter what the configuration was when you did the door "activation".

You can solve these problems with programmatic solutions also. You might want to look into "inverse kinematics" and animations can be blended. I'm not sure what the obsession is with super convincing games myself. The medium hardly has an identity yet and everyone is so eager to jump to doing super experimental work intensive productions.

I find realism bankrupt mainly because shadows. The current state of the art for shadows is so primitive that if Super Mario Bros. is an "8-bit" game, then shadows today are 12-bit shadows (as much as I resist calling them two-bit. Only large untessellated vertex shaded shadows have qualities suggestive of shadows. I think the future is in shadows that will themselves be models, meshes.)

Maybe it is more modernist, but there is nothing wrong with an abstract visual style, much like the Dragon Cancer game employs. And in this style, maybe a little awkwardness will go unnoticed. I don't feel like we've earned the right to progress beyond this level of presentation, and I feel like artists who do so are a little bit ignorant of history and a little too gung-ho for their own good.

Generally anything is acceptable, it can just be hard to communicate to the player how to interact.

Any other ideas?

- Automate / limit navigation.
- Disconnect navigation from the character.
- Cut out navigation ( sequences ) entirely.