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This is a really long thread, I don't know if I can possibly read it, but I was just about to make a thread about this subject, so I will leave a link here afterward.

I don't think though that you really want visual programming. It sounds like a good alternative, but it's going to get you to a place that is a jumble of knots impossible to untangle. I think you want literary programming...

EDITED: http://notgames.org/forum/index.php?topic=853.0

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.

Maybe I'm just younger than you are, but I don't even think of it as an allegiance or commitment to anything like games. I'm just doing my thing. I wouldn't be doing it the way I am unless I was hungry for an alternative. I'm probably hungrier than you are. I wouldn't be surprised if I'm the person most invested in games alive, which is why I take it very seriously, more seriously than I think you do.

So, wherever you decide "out" is, if it walks like a video game, and quacks like a video game, you'll find me there. I think you've earned the right to call that whatever you want. I hope you don't retreat to old media, or early retirement (my beef with games is I just don't find them compelling. I think people who play games, if they also have a broad media diet, and are intelligent, they will eventually come around to the realization that games aren't pulling their weight. That's the problem with Sunset. It wasn't competing with games. It was competing with real media. That's a completely different weight class. Games were once new and exciting, but they've been around for a long time, so it's time they ought to become compelling. There's no time for excuses.)

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'm just going to take a guess and presume Michael is alluding to the (ubiquitous) "epic" video game program. It should be abandoned, but I'd personally liken the appropriate form of abandonment to training wheels.

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 would like to add that games tend to tell stories inefficiently.

I definitely enjoy the first person out of body experience, but that necessarily adds time to the clock. I think how you play should ideally be up to player, which would not be difficult if games are made with preexisting platforms that bring these options to the games for no extra work.

NOW. Good movies work by suggestion. They are cut down to the bone. So you'd never waste screen time walking through a doorway just for navigation sake. Often in movies you'll notice that if its clear what a scene is about, the scene will not address the thing that it's about, not give it a moments dialogue or anything, because that's just telling the audience what they already likely know, and it would feel like a beating to just regurgitate what the audience already knows. Games can be extremely guilty of this.

In cutscenes it is practically unacceptable how literal games can be. Beating their audience up as it were. But it's a tougher question when asking, when you press X to walk through the door, what then? Do we waste the time playing the open/walk-through-door animation? Or can we just cut to the next scene? As if the door is an exit to the next scene. It depends on the focus of the game I think. And the focus can be changed if it will make the game easier to make, nothing wrong with that (a lot of the time doors represent loading screens, but ideally games should be seamless, and cuts should be instantaneous. Load screens are a failing that we can't criticize enough)

Still in a received medium like film, you feel like things are revealed to you, but never actively discovered.

Potentially inspiring distinction.

So there's a switching of roles: in a film the creator is active. But to feel discovery, the spectator needs to be active. Or feel active?

I almost missed this post! I don't know.

The creator is present, but I'd hesitate to call them active, since film is a passive/received medium. They are definitely active while making the film.

What's active is your imagination, and faculties for judging what is happening. And as QXD-me demonstrated, you can discover connections, if you are actively looking for them (I don't know if I experience film this way, I prefer they wash over me, and that probably affects the kinds of films I--present-I--seek out (mostly foreign language arthouse films.))

But film in this way denies the body. The body is what games can bring to the table; traditional storytelling/idea conveying medium wise. This is why when you say Discovery in the context of games, the mind leaps to unearthing a physical artifact of some kind, or stumbling into a scenic vista.

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 mean stand on their own as a purchase, and commitment to jump through all of the hurdles involved. I don't think any game really stands on its own. I'm thinking since you can't just put the games on television, how could you make it as close to changing the channel or tuning in later, with no extra fuss in the meantime.

I think most people who'd be of the mind to buy this kind of a package would look at it as a way of getting money to your studio and not over scrutinize it. But I understand if it's a hassle to setup. If you don't have a "donation" (patronage) system on your website... I think a lot of small artist studios really miss out by not providing a way to donate after the audience has experienced the product. Donating "what you want" before experiencing it is kind of silly if you think about it, and it's probably a good way to not get as large a donation as you could have.

I think if you do not welcome some orthodoxy you're going to drown or freeze trying to explore the bottom of that iceberg.

I'd like to ask all of the people who've entered these halls whether they think of themselves as developers/artists first, or revolutionaries. Because if you think of yourself as a revolutionary you have to plan and adapt like a revolutionary, towards an end that everyone is able to articulate.

Something that aggravates me a little bit, is people who want to skip to the end of the story. That's fine if you just want to look ahead, and see how it ends. But that's not how you get to the end of the story (and obviously you miss out on everything.)

(full-disclosure: I always do read ahead to the end of the story... this is how I know when I'm fully invested in it.)

I feel like story forms the backbone or skeleton of just about anything that is going to have a lasting impact on society at large.

You can look at a project like Proteus. I think that's a good name for it, because it looks like a wonderful platform for making worlds that are alive, and it's protean in the sense that it's only a hint of what's to come. But for me the power of a tool like Proteus is to adorn the skeleton of a story. And if there is no story, it's aimless, and all of the atmosphere in the world is directionless and almost pointless.

Dances that people watch tend to have an embedded story, same for most music and opera. Architecture is a little bit too elite an artform. I'd rather think about sculpture and landscapes. But at least videogames provide a way to experience architecture outside of the public squares. Anyway. I'd definitely describe Proteus as modernist. There isn't a medium that is such a natural fit for modernist exploration, that I consider it a crime to not explore that. I think we'd feel a lot more liberated if the artistic style was decoupled from the production, because you can do that with digital media very easily. You just have to get yourself out of the lone artist sitting in a corner mindset.

I'm interested in experiencing realistic sensations through games. But they don't need to be visual. Maybe we should think more of dance and architecture and less of film or even literature. More than any other medium, games are about feelings, visceral effects, presence, immersion. 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.