Dagnabbit, Winterbottom!
Oct. 20th, 2009 09:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ariadVideo Games as Art
I just returned from UC Berkeley, where I was sitting in on the class Video Games as Art (ENGL 98). It's a DeCal class taught by three (four?) students about, as you can guess from the name, video games as an artistic medium.
I'd decided to sit in after being invited by Eugenia. She said she thought I'd really enjoy the class, and as she explained to me some of the topics that covered, I had to agree. The time conflicted a little with Ohlone College's Game Development Club, where I've been learning to model characters in Autodesk Maya, but VIDEO GAME CLASS, HELLO, so at 4:30 PM, I packed up my things and went to Berkeley.
THE CLASS WAS AMAZIIINNNGGGGG. I wish I'd taken notes because the content was so interesting and I have so much to say about it. Here's what I remember:
Discussion on boycotting games based on the beliefs of the creator(s).
The context: Gamers have been boycotting Shadow Complex, a game created by Orson Scott Card (whom I dislike for other reasons related to his views on writing), because Card is a founder of an anti-gay organization, and it can be assumed that a portion of the money generated by Shadow Complex will go toward his organization.
The questions: How do you feel about boycotting games based on the creator(s) beliefs? What if the game doesn't directly support what you oppose? What if it does, but it's really fun? What if it's like the BEST GAME EVER?
The arguments: You can play a game without advocating what it or its creators support, but boycotting is taking a position and can be an effective method of getting a message across. It wouldn't be fair to the other people who worked on the game.
My opinion: It comes down to what you feel comfortable with. Let's set gay marriage aside for a bit and say that a portion of the money made from the game will go to shooting babies (or stabbing people with knives covered in AIDS-infected blood; this class is hilarious). No matter how much fun the game is, no matter who else worked on it, I would not feel comfortable purchasing the game. In the end, the game is a game, and it would be awfully selfish to leave it at, "BUT IT'S REALLY FUN," knowing you're contributing to infanticide/stabbing/AIDS. Then again, I'm very pro-boycotts looool. And I have huge concern for moral decisions based on a matter of principle, whether or not it accomplishes anything.
Lecture on art history. (It's like history –– but less important.)
Remy had a sore throat and could not lecture, so he made an amusing PowerPoint presentation, which was not about visual art but about post-Enlightenment philosopher-poets' views on what art means. It was really confusing and had a lot to do with people's perception of reality and spirit and how freedom equals the ability to appreciate beauty. One philosopher-poet was a platypus. Another wrote the first two seasons of Scrubs. A third had CRAZY AWESOME HAIR. Kind of love Remy now, haha, even though I didn't understand most of it.
Discussion of innovation in game mechanics.
The fifth and sixth dimensions: In order to properly introduce us to certain game mechanics, Wentao explained the fifth and sixth dimensions. If the fourth dimension is time, then the fifth is a possibility that did not occur, and the sixth is a dimension in which multiple possibilities occur simultaneously. The fourth dimension is played with in Braids, in which you can move back and forth in time (recent time, watching things move backward and forward, not big leaps in otherwise chronological time like in Chrono Trigger) to complete each level. A lot of games fiddle with alternate realities, too. (Chrono Cross comes to mind.)
But an upcoming game, The Misadventures of PB Winterbottom, uses the sixth dimension as an innovative gameplay mechanic. In this game, you must perform tasks several times, interacting with alternate selves, in order to solve puzzles and advance through the game. It's difficult to explain, but a trailer can be watched here. (It's a bit disturbing and reminiscent of The Prestige how he deliberately screws himself over to get ahead.)
Brain controllers?: Wentao also showed us a new game controller that reads signals in your brain, but pointed out that rather than responding to your thoughts about moving the ball left or what have you, the controller acts as any other controller with preassigned buttons, and you train your brain to activate in specific areas to press those buttons, so in terms of practical gameplay, it's not much of an advancement. Devices that actually react to motor neurons have been invented, but Wentao said those could not be used on humans yet.
Discussion on sandbox vs. linear games.
The context: A lot of recent games seem to pride themselves in being sandbox games––that is, providing the player with an environment in which they can do whatever they please without having a set direction. Examples include the Sim series and Little Big Planet, as opposed to games that tell you do this, go here, hit this boss at this point.
The questions: Do you think telling a player what to do adds to or takes away from a game's artistic value? If you could play only sandbox games or linear games, which would you choose?
My opinion: I would definitely choose linear games. Sandbox games give you the paper and the markers, so to speak. They provide the materials, and you create your own art, which can be fun, but you end up experiencing your own ideas over and over. Plus, sandbox games feel to me like a waste of time because they don't work toward any end. They also lack a story, which I consider an important part of video games' artistic value. Linear games allow the player to experience the creators' ideas. They take you outside of yourself and into someone else's world, which is what a lot of art is about. They're also generally more visually, musically, and literarily stimulating because no plot = no emotional fodder for artistry.
I do think it's important to balance linearity with nonlinearity, however. The beauty of games is their interactivity, and part of that is making it so that the player's actions have consequences beyond "game over" or not. I brought up Silent Hill 2 as an example, to the delight of another sit-in student, although I don't even remember what type of actions determine the endings, haha, hmm.
But more emphasis placed on the story inevitably means a greater sacrifice of nonlinearity. Compare Final Fantasy VII to Tales of Symphonia, for example. In the former, you don't have a lot of say in the direction of the plot. You are allowed some choices in Disc 1, but I read an excellent essay about how this is all an elaborate hoax intended 1. to emulate Jenova's Mimic ability and 2. to delude the player into thinking s/he knows Cloud and is in control of the situation. After some vital plot points at the end of Disc 1, this decision-making disappears almost entirely. In Tales of Symphonia, on the other hand, you get to decide the second most important character. As much as I love the plot, I fully admit that it really only works if this character is Colette or Kratos, and even the Kratos path results in some storyline changes that are perhaps less fitting. And if you make this second most important character Regal, then that makes no sense at all because nobody gives a fuck about Regal. Fortunately, you're only likely to get Regal if you try very hard to do so, in which case you're aware that you're disturbing the plot and the sacrifice of story can be forgiven.
Tales of Symphonia does pretty well to ensure you get the intended story unless you're trying otherwise, but in other games with multiple possibilities, like Chrono Cross, it's pretty disappointing when you defeat the final boss the normal way and then are just like, "oh. .____." In the end, I think all games should have an epic-ass ending (a la Final Fantasy X) that's easy to get, and then maybe other endings can be possible in replays.
Okay, wow, rant. I love video games. <3
The metaphor: Ted used music with lyrics that tell the listener how to dance ("Hokey Pokey," "Crank Dat," "Time Warp") as a metaphor for games that tell the player what to do, but I don't think the metaphor applies very well. When it comes to music, that type of direction takes away from the artistic value by sacrificing potentially more meaningful lyrics which would be up for greater interpretation as much art aims to be. But comparing those songs to linear games and other songs with no such instructions to sandboxes is claiming that the artistic merit for music lies solely in the ways to which it can be danced, which I think we can all agree is not it at all, and that the artistic merit in video games lies primarily in the ways in which they can be played. I see what he was trying to do, but the metaphor is not applicable.
Guest speaker.
The speaker was a Cal alumnus named Mark who works for Nihilistic Software, which has shipped games such as Starcraft Ghost and Vampire Masquerade. He talked a lot about processes for developing games in the industry, but I found these points more memorable:
Innovation vs. marketability. Most game developers want to be artists of some kind (in terms of originality, not necessarily visual art). They want to make fun and interesting games. But innovation is often quashed early on because they won't get funding unless their idea seems marketable, and marketability frequently means falling back on a tried-and-true game engine or IP ("intellectual property," refers to series characters like Batman or Ratchet & Clank).
Settling for mediocrity. Sometimes, an idea seems good at first but the developers realize after spending most of their budget that the game isn't going to turn out well, and they don't have the money to rectify it. In an attempt to salvage what money they can, the producers tell them to finish it anyway, and that's why there are so many mediocre games on the market. So when you pick up a game and wonder how the developers and producers thought it was a good idea––they didn't. Everyone involved in making it knew it sucked; they just realized too late.
Working with IPs. Mark didn't put it this way, but it seems to me that working with IPs is like writing material for official merchandise ancillary to a TV show; the work is OK-ed by the IP owners (to an extent), but you're still working with someone else's characters. It's like approved fan fiction. And no matter how much you analyze and enjoy the characters and think you have a great story that will work with the character, the IP owner can come back and say, "No, the character wouldn't do that." Of course, they're justified in saying that because games are often The Canon, but it's frustrating for the developers, and I think if they're concerned about their characters, they should be more closely involved in, at the very least, the game's plot development, whereas Mark said it would sometimes be like, "Make a Ratchet & Clank game. Bye." (But I still want to work at Insomniac.)
After class.
Eugenia approached Ted to turn in her homework and to suggest a Rocky Horror Picture Show field trip, an idea he loved and said he will try to organize. He noticed that it was my first time there, probably since I'd been the second most participative student that class period, haha. I'd considered attempting inconspicuousness, but the topics were so interesting, and I had so much to say! When Eugenia told him I was a Spring Admit, he said that the class would be offered again next semester (yay!) but that I should keep attending this semester because they'd have different guest speakers, and if I did the homework, I wouldn't have to do it next semester. It's a bit of a hassle to keep going back (and costs $6-$9 a week to do so), but more likely than not, I will.
The assignment: Come up with an innovative gameplay mechanism or piece of equipment that could potentially revolutionize gaming.
I don't like this assignment. The really innovative ideas don't come in a week. Anything we come up with will likely have been done or would be unsuccessful, and being the brilliant students that we are, we would know they are unsuccessful and continue to rack our brains for ideas that would one after another prove unsatisfactory. And "revolutionize" is a big word.
That said, I have an excellent idea, which I will tell Eugenia about, haha, as soon as I figure out how to articulate it. It's a game idea I had intended to abandon, but the class changed my mind. The concept is extremely complex so that it would probably be a trial for even experienced programmers to pull off, but I'm stuck on the idea. I think it has a lot of potential, and part of its difficulty to explain is due to my never having played a game like it before, although it mixes elements from adventure games and, I guess, choose-your-own-adventure books. But more than anything, it's an experiment in the impacts of action and inaction.
I just returned from UC Berkeley, where I was sitting in on the class Video Games as Art (ENGL 98). It's a DeCal class taught by three (four?) students about, as you can guess from the name, video games as an artistic medium.
I'd decided to sit in after being invited by Eugenia. She said she thought I'd really enjoy the class, and as she explained to me some of the topics that covered, I had to agree. The time conflicted a little with Ohlone College's Game Development Club, where I've been learning to model characters in Autodesk Maya, but VIDEO GAME CLASS, HELLO, so at 4:30 PM, I packed up my things and went to Berkeley.
THE CLASS WAS AMAZIIINNNGGGGG. I wish I'd taken notes because the content was so interesting and I have so much to say about it. Here's what I remember:
Discussion on boycotting games based on the beliefs of the creator(s).
The context: Gamers have been boycotting Shadow Complex, a game created by Orson Scott Card (whom I dislike for other reasons related to his views on writing), because Card is a founder of an anti-gay organization, and it can be assumed that a portion of the money generated by Shadow Complex will go toward his organization.
The questions: How do you feel about boycotting games based on the creator(s) beliefs? What if the game doesn't directly support what you oppose? What if it does, but it's really fun? What if it's like the BEST GAME EVER?
The arguments: You can play a game without advocating what it or its creators support, but boycotting is taking a position and can be an effective method of getting a message across. It wouldn't be fair to the other people who worked on the game.
My opinion: It comes down to what you feel comfortable with. Let's set gay marriage aside for a bit and say that a portion of the money made from the game will go to shooting babies (or stabbing people with knives covered in AIDS-infected blood; this class is hilarious). No matter how much fun the game is, no matter who else worked on it, I would not feel comfortable purchasing the game. In the end, the game is a game, and it would be awfully selfish to leave it at, "BUT IT'S REALLY FUN," knowing you're contributing to infanticide/stabbing/AIDS. Then again, I'm very pro-boycotts looool. And I have huge concern for moral decisions based on a matter of principle, whether or not it accomplishes anything.
Lecture on art history. (It's like history –– but less important.)
Remy had a sore throat and could not lecture, so he made an amusing PowerPoint presentation, which was not about visual art but about post-Enlightenment philosopher-poets' views on what art means. It was really confusing and had a lot to do with people's perception of reality and spirit and how freedom equals the ability to appreciate beauty. One philosopher-poet was a platypus. Another wrote the first two seasons of Scrubs. A third had CRAZY AWESOME HAIR. Kind of love Remy now, haha, even though I didn't understand most of it.
Discussion of innovation in game mechanics.
The fifth and sixth dimensions: In order to properly introduce us to certain game mechanics, Wentao explained the fifth and sixth dimensions. If the fourth dimension is time, then the fifth is a possibility that did not occur, and the sixth is a dimension in which multiple possibilities occur simultaneously. The fourth dimension is played with in Braids, in which you can move back and forth in time (recent time, watching things move backward and forward, not big leaps in otherwise chronological time like in Chrono Trigger) to complete each level. A lot of games fiddle with alternate realities, too. (Chrono Cross comes to mind.)
But an upcoming game, The Misadventures of PB Winterbottom, uses the sixth dimension as an innovative gameplay mechanic. In this game, you must perform tasks several times, interacting with alternate selves, in order to solve puzzles and advance through the game. It's difficult to explain, but a trailer can be watched here. (It's a bit disturbing and reminiscent of The Prestige how he deliberately screws himself over to get ahead.)
Brain controllers?: Wentao also showed us a new game controller that reads signals in your brain, but pointed out that rather than responding to your thoughts about moving the ball left or what have you, the controller acts as any other controller with preassigned buttons, and you train your brain to activate in specific areas to press those buttons, so in terms of practical gameplay, it's not much of an advancement. Devices that actually react to motor neurons have been invented, but Wentao said those could not be used on humans yet.
Discussion on sandbox vs. linear games.
The context: A lot of recent games seem to pride themselves in being sandbox games––that is, providing the player with an environment in which they can do whatever they please without having a set direction. Examples include the Sim series and Little Big Planet, as opposed to games that tell you do this, go here, hit this boss at this point.
The questions: Do you think telling a player what to do adds to or takes away from a game's artistic value? If you could play only sandbox games or linear games, which would you choose?
My opinion: I would definitely choose linear games. Sandbox games give you the paper and the markers, so to speak. They provide the materials, and you create your own art, which can be fun, but you end up experiencing your own ideas over and over. Plus, sandbox games feel to me like a waste of time because they don't work toward any end. They also lack a story, which I consider an important part of video games' artistic value. Linear games allow the player to experience the creators' ideas. They take you outside of yourself and into someone else's world, which is what a lot of art is about. They're also generally more visually, musically, and literarily stimulating because no plot = no emotional fodder for artistry.
I do think it's important to balance linearity with nonlinearity, however. The beauty of games is their interactivity, and part of that is making it so that the player's actions have consequences beyond "game over" or not. I brought up Silent Hill 2 as an example, to the delight of another sit-in student, although I don't even remember what type of actions determine the endings, haha, hmm.
But more emphasis placed on the story inevitably means a greater sacrifice of nonlinearity. Compare Final Fantasy VII to Tales of Symphonia, for example. In the former, you don't have a lot of say in the direction of the plot. You are allowed some choices in Disc 1, but I read an excellent essay about how this is all an elaborate hoax intended 1. to emulate Jenova's Mimic ability and 2. to delude the player into thinking s/he knows Cloud and is in control of the situation. After some vital plot points at the end of Disc 1, this decision-making disappears almost entirely. In Tales of Symphonia, on the other hand, you get to decide the second most important character. As much as I love the plot, I fully admit that it really only works if this character is Colette or Kratos, and even the Kratos path results in some storyline changes that are perhaps less fitting. And if you make this second most important character Regal, then that makes no sense at all because nobody gives a fuck about Regal. Fortunately, you're only likely to get Regal if you try very hard to do so, in which case you're aware that you're disturbing the plot and the sacrifice of story can be forgiven.
Tales of Symphonia does pretty well to ensure you get the intended story unless you're trying otherwise, but in other games with multiple possibilities, like Chrono Cross, it's pretty disappointing when you defeat the final boss the normal way and then are just like, "oh. .____." In the end, I think all games should have an epic-ass ending (a la Final Fantasy X) that's easy to get, and then maybe other endings can be possible in replays.
Okay, wow, rant. I love video games. <3
The metaphor: Ted used music with lyrics that tell the listener how to dance ("Hokey Pokey," "Crank Dat," "Time Warp") as a metaphor for games that tell the player what to do, but I don't think the metaphor applies very well. When it comes to music, that type of direction takes away from the artistic value by sacrificing potentially more meaningful lyrics which would be up for greater interpretation as much art aims to be. But comparing those songs to linear games and other songs with no such instructions to sandboxes is claiming that the artistic merit for music lies solely in the ways to which it can be danced, which I think we can all agree is not it at all, and that the artistic merit in video games lies primarily in the ways in which they can be played. I see what he was trying to do, but the metaphor is not applicable.
Guest speaker.
The speaker was a Cal alumnus named Mark who works for Nihilistic Software, which has shipped games such as Starcraft Ghost and Vampire Masquerade. He talked a lot about processes for developing games in the industry, but I found these points more memorable:
Innovation vs. marketability. Most game developers want to be artists of some kind (in terms of originality, not necessarily visual art). They want to make fun and interesting games. But innovation is often quashed early on because they won't get funding unless their idea seems marketable, and marketability frequently means falling back on a tried-and-true game engine or IP ("intellectual property," refers to series characters like Batman or Ratchet & Clank).
Settling for mediocrity. Sometimes, an idea seems good at first but the developers realize after spending most of their budget that the game isn't going to turn out well, and they don't have the money to rectify it. In an attempt to salvage what money they can, the producers tell them to finish it anyway, and that's why there are so many mediocre games on the market. So when you pick up a game and wonder how the developers and producers thought it was a good idea––they didn't. Everyone involved in making it knew it sucked; they just realized too late.
Working with IPs. Mark didn't put it this way, but it seems to me that working with IPs is like writing material for official merchandise ancillary to a TV show; the work is OK-ed by the IP owners (to an extent), but you're still working with someone else's characters. It's like approved fan fiction. And no matter how much you analyze and enjoy the characters and think you have a great story that will work with the character, the IP owner can come back and say, "No, the character wouldn't do that." Of course, they're justified in saying that because games are often The Canon, but it's frustrating for the developers, and I think if they're concerned about their characters, they should be more closely involved in, at the very least, the game's plot development, whereas Mark said it would sometimes be like, "Make a Ratchet & Clank game. Bye." (But I still want to work at Insomniac.)
After class.
Eugenia approached Ted to turn in her homework and to suggest a Rocky Horror Picture Show field trip, an idea he loved and said he will try to organize. He noticed that it was my first time there, probably since I'd been the second most participative student that class period, haha. I'd considered attempting inconspicuousness, but the topics were so interesting, and I had so much to say! When Eugenia told him I was a Spring Admit, he said that the class would be offered again next semester (yay!) but that I should keep attending this semester because they'd have different guest speakers, and if I did the homework, I wouldn't have to do it next semester. It's a bit of a hassle to keep going back (and costs $6-$9 a week to do so), but more likely than not, I will.
The assignment: Come up with an innovative gameplay mechanism or piece of equipment that could potentially revolutionize gaming.
I don't like this assignment. The really innovative ideas don't come in a week. Anything we come up with will likely have been done or would be unsuccessful, and being the brilliant students that we are, we would know they are unsuccessful and continue to rack our brains for ideas that would one after another prove unsatisfactory. And "revolutionize" is a big word.
That said, I have an excellent idea, which I will tell Eugenia about, haha, as soon as I figure out how to articulate it. It's a game idea I had intended to abandon, but the class changed my mind. The concept is extremely complex so that it would probably be a trial for even experienced programmers to pull off, but I'm stuck on the idea. I think it has a lot of potential, and part of its difficulty to explain is due to my never having played a game like it before, although it mixes elements from adventure games and, I guess, choose-your-own-adventure books. But more than anything, it's an experiment in the impacts of action and inaction.
no subject
Date: 2009-10-21 08:04 am (UTC)8D
cant wait for rocky horror!!!!!!!!!