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[El Moppo]

You, peeps, are the Expressionists of Games!

I cmmend thee! Go forth, and prosper.
And make some damn great games, while you're at it, too, though. 

[Lurk]

Paul- I don' think short games are a misuse of the medium, I think Rohrer's "games" are.
And mainly because of the amount of exposure/narrative building the press makes of it. Here are some choice quotes

among the tens of thousands of people who attend is a burgeoning fringe of independent designers like Rohrer who hope to radically transform their medium. “A realization is dawning that games can be much more than what they are now,” Rohrer told me later. “They even have the potential to be meaningful in deep, fundamental ways.”

Rohrer himself is a kind of Thoreauvian game designer, a 31-year-old back-to-the-land programmer-philosopher who lives in Las Cruces, N.M., where he codes his eccentrically engrossing games, which can feel like digitally mediated poetic moods, on an ancient computer and makes them available free online.

This one I find a particular offender

Rohrer and dozens of other speakers discussed what you might call games for games’ sake.

“Other media are capable of masterpiece-level works of art,” Rohrer said. Behind him, a slide showed Picasso’s “Guernica,” a poster for the movie “Blue Velvet” and the cover of “Lolita.” “The question we have to ask is: How can we follow in their footsteps?”

This one had me laughing. Guernica is a masterpiece because the level of skill and understanding existing in Picasso. Rohrer is so far away from that, it's almost pathetic. If you want to follow in the footsteps of the masters, you have to master the basics first. In game terms, it would mean to make a pacman, a qbert, a space invader, something with the raw primitive gameplay that started it all. Then you can progress and deconstruct, once you've mastered the elements of gameplay/graphics/sounds that make the medium. This will be the result of long grueling years of practice and self-doubt, if you even achieve it. As an artist, it should be your aim to strive for it even if you never get there- the journey itself is the point, not reaching it.

If Chen is a sensualist, evoking feeling with focused graphics, Rohrer is the genre’s minimalist.

Why not use Cactus as a good example of minimalism in games? Or even Jazzuo for that matter?

I used the car surgeon( ) example as an extreme, to demonstrate a point. Everyone can become an artist, since art is all about communicating your point of view. But if you don't have the skills/resources to communicate it well, how is saying 'well, it's subjective' or 'you don't get it' whenever someone tells you your piece is bad or lacking helping you progress through critical analysis? Rohrer once stated that people who say bad things about his games make him laugh- that's a bit of a condescending attitude that will ensure he will stagnate happily where he is right now, artistically. A real artist/philosopher would get angry at the detractors, then get drunk, then cry, then pensive, then sleepy, then angry again, then would get all nervous from the realization that what he thought was a masterpiece might not have been as perfect as he thought, then spend long hours trying to understand what people saw in it, then seeing it himself (and seeing much more mistakes along the way), then think "I suck, I can't do anything good", then get drunk again, then sleep, then try to build a better piece on the ashes of what was once his inflated ego.

Also, Soulliard has the best quote ever.

[Paul Eres]

i'm not sure it's fair to say that rohrer has no experience in making standard games -- have you played 'idealism'? it's a fairly standard classical game with good level design, nice mechanics, and so on. it was even made in game maker. so i do think he does have the background in normal games required to expand to experimental games. just cause you haven't played those doesn't mean they don't exist -- idealism was certainly a better standard game than most of the standard games in the tigsource feedback section, at least

but more specifically, why do you think passage is a misuse of the medium? besides what the press makes of it, i mean the game itself.

[Lurk]

Paul- Passage has basic mechanics of control, but there is no real enjoyment to be gained from interacting with it. The whole point of it is to get through the 5 minutes or so, and then either get the profound universe shattering realization that life is finite with all it entails, or think 'wtf, this is not a game'. It would have been a message better translated through a painting or a sculpture(even a book or poem), because then the medium would have been sought by people wanting to reflect on the human condition and gain something deeper out of it. Presenting it in a 'game' format ensured it would be judged alongside other games for its various merits. As such, it fares pretty poorly.

Don't get me wrong, I like short, quirky 5 minutes bite-sized games; for example, I loved 'Today I die' which was an infinitely better game experience than Passage, with a better communication of the message, and a reflection inducing structure. I also enjoy the Lalaland serie, which usually have little to no gameplay.

Concerning 'Idealism', I found it had a pretty tedious pace(sluggish would be a better word for it, bad controls, slow response), lacking sound/music and the 'minimalistic' graphics a poor excuse to put something out quickly. When I talked about having a background mastering normal gameplay mechanics, I'm talking years of it(if you want games to be a valid artistic medium, you have to apply the same standards to it that are applied to artists).

[Christian Knudsen]

These kinds of discussions always seem to end up with people heralding Passage as the ultimate art game because it made some people cry. I didn't cry after playing it, but that doesn't mean I didn't like it, nor that it isn't an art game. I personally consider mood and atmosphere just at important to whether or not I'd classify a game as "art" -- which is probably why I'd herald Bioshock just as much as Passage.

But, anyway, what I wanted to post about is something I've recently read about for use in my master thesis, which is among other things about the definition of art film vs. mainstream film. There's a Danish professor called Torben Grodal who has a theory about how we as humans perceive and digest the visual input we get when watching movies (and playing games -- he's also applied his theory to video games). It's based on cognitive theories about the human mind and he's developed something he calls a PECMA flow, which is Perception, Emotion, Cognition, Motion and Action. The basic idea is that we see something, which triggers an instinctive emotion, goes on to trigger our cognitive abilities (such as memory recognition of what we're seeing and whether or not it is considered a threat to us), which triggers our muscles to perform motion, which then results in an action. When watching a movie, the motion and action parts are consciously blocked (most of the time), or we'd be shifting around in our seats and punching at the villians, or running out of the cinema like the people first introduced to cinema in the Grand Café in Paris 1895 that were scared shitless when a train came steaming towards them on the screen. According to Grodal we still simulate these motion responses when watching a movie, which is why we get a thrill from watching action and horror movies. That we're able to complete the PECMA flow by simulating these motion responses means that the experience is transient. It flows through or body and we can react to it with our "reptilian" fight or flee brains. When discussing high art vs. mainstream, his argument is that in high art, this PECMA flow is interrupted, since the conflicts and themes in high art cannot be reacted upon with a motion and action response. The PECMA flow stops at the cognitive response and is kinda stuck there, triggering memories, hopes, dreams and fears. He refers to this as a permanent state, contrary to the transient state previously mentioned. That's why art films will leave you in a certain emotional and often unresolved state, as the PECMA flow has been interrupted. You haven't been allowed a motion response to "cleanse" the experience from your body. Which is why, I suppose, a movie is more likely to be considered an art film if its conflicts can't be solved with might or force, or the good guys lose in the end, or the main character dies. It feels unresolved. Just like Passage, which is about the inevitability of death. We can't form a motion response against death. We can't complete Grodal's PECMA flow, which is why playing an art game like Passage will (for some people) leave us with a flurry of emotions stirring inside.

I hope any of that makes sense. It did to me at the time.

Also, chrknudsen: Holy shit, I just came to the realization that you're the developer of Privateer ASCII Sector. I wanted to tell you I love your game!  :D

Thanks!

[Paul Eres]

i think it's an overstatement to say that there's no enjoyment to be found in passage -- i enjoyed trying to maximize my score, and enjoyed walking around and noticing the difference between playing the game with the girl and playing it alone. if you haven't tried to maximize your score in passage, with multiple playthroughs, i don't think you'd get the full experience, which is why i don't think merely watching a video of the game would give you the same experience. at the very least, you need to play through it twice (once with the girl and once without) in order to get the full experience, so watching a video doesn't quite work

in any case, if you have time, go read through the comments about passage on kotaku and other gamer places -- it's actually amazing to see hardcore gamers touched by this game, while indie devs largely don't like it (probably due to jealousy of its popularity?).

e.g.
- http://kotaku.com/gaming/timewaster/weird-artistic-timewaster-of-the-day-passage-328926.php#comments
- http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2007/12/07/time-goes-by/
- http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=215988
- http://www.destructoid.com/-i-passage-i-the-greatest-five-minute-long-game-ever-made-58961.phtml
- http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2007/12/03/play-this-free-game.html

[Lurk]

Paul:

i think it's an overstatement to say that there's no enjoyment to be found in passage -- i enjoyed trying to maximize my score, and enjoyed walking around and noticing the difference between playing the game with the girl and playing it alone. if you haven't tried to maximize your score in passage, with multiple playthroughs, i don't think you'd get the full experience, which is why i don't think merely watching a video of the game would give you the same experience.

Well, can we agree that you're kind of a special case- your beliefs force you to give every game a chance and you think you're responsible for the enjoyment gained from playing.

I think in the case of 'hardcore gamers' being touched by the game, while indie devs don't like it, it might be because many indie devs wanted to go the indie way because they got disgusted/bored with the empty-sugar coated games the industry is churning out right now. Why would they then like an empty- not even sugar coated - pretentious attempt at 'redefining games' thing? I also think many people jump on the bandwagon because they read somewhere that someone popular within the game industry press was crying at the end, so they don't want to look stupid saying they found it was a big waste of bytes. It's the emperor's new clothes syndrome going around, with a good dose of self-deception, imo.

But as long as some people enjoy something, it makes doing it worthwhile. I just refuse the media narrative that Rohrer-type games will redefine video games, and that it's the way of the future. I think they left out a slew of REAL games, made by indie people, beloved by many, that would be a better example of the direction gaming should take(again, in my humble opinion )
 

[Paul Eres]

i think that if you reject the idea that people can enjoy any game with the right mindset, you also have to necessarily reject the idea that people can self-delude themselves in an emperor's new clothes way into enjoying a game, right? i mean, you can't simultaneously say that it's not true that people can enjoy any game (even bad games) if they set their mind to it, and say that vast numbers of people (everyone except a few enlightened people) can fool themselves into enjoying bad games through a media-induced trance -- those two positions seem to contradict

[Andrej Vojtas]

I like how the original article actually has it's fact straight. I also like the discussion here, shows that people actually care about meaning in games.

My personal take on it is: a game trying to express meaning without narrative (conveyed in text/speech) is like a mute movie (not talking about games where meaning/narrative is not the focus). It works, but it's a limited form of the medium. It's over a year that Jonathan Blow spoke about inherent conflict in story based games. He pondered on how to grow simple art games (gameplay rules with symbolic meaning) into something that tells a story like Metal Gear Solid 3. His conclusion was, he can't imagine how to do it. Well, you can't make 'Twelve Angry Men' as a mute movie. Even the artistic film Hunger 2008 has a single central dialogue to give more depth to the work. I had the impression from Blow's blog posts, he is exploring the potential of interactive dialogue, so I hope, at least he is not trying to go the 'mute' road with his next game Witness.

So if someone enjoys being a minimalist in creating games, and advocate how that helps the meaning to shine, he is welcomed, but minimalism is just one approach/school of art.

I personally did enjoyed Passage. For a few moments. It's just like the one sentence poem Paul mentioned. It's nice, delivers a simplistic message. I felt disappointed in the end, as the potential of this medium has more to offer. Well, like waiting for a dialogue in a mute movie.

[Lurk]

Paul- I think in the emperor new clothes case, it's not a delusion as much as a public lie. Everyone knows he's naked, but they don't speak out, because they don't want to appear as idiots. I think it's different from setting your mind to enjoy a game; in this case, you will try so hard ignoring the flaws, you will really convince yourself that it was fun, you might not even have a shred of doubt about it. So it would not be a lie, in the sense that you would really believe it to be true. But it would be a false truth if you applied to it the standards of the genre: for example, having 2 booths, one with passage, and one with call of duty street fighter something something. Put them far apart, and let's see which one has a big gathering around it.

Andrej- You know, the chinese poems translate poorly into english. Very often, it's a play on ideograms, calligraphy, mandarin tonality. You might like the translation, but it's not really representative of the real effort that has gone into creating it at the time.

[Christian Knudsen]

So, if you don't like the game that someone else likes, it's because they're deluding themselves?

[Paul Eres]

re lurk: oh, i didn't realize you meant that most of those comments were lying, saying they enjoyed and appreciated the game when they in fact did not? that's a much more suspect claim -- what is your evidence that they're lying, other than the fact that they obviously can't really like such a game?

[Lurk]

Paul- I did not say the comments were lying. I just think many 'hardcore gamers' who said they were touched by the game might have felt something more because of the hype surrounding it than from the actual playing of the game itself. I said many people were jumping on the bandwagon (not everyone who claim to like the game, mainly journalists and 'big industry folks') because they were afraid to look stupid if they judged the game by the standards they apply to other game related stuff. Sorry if that wasn't clear, I was not taking a potshot at people who liked it, I'm just asking you to really look at it in a vacuum.

[Captain_404]

probably due to jealousy of its popularity?

Oh if only we could go back to a time before its popularity to see how the indie community reacts to it.

Albeit, it's not a very large sampling of the crowd, but I still think this is interesting.

[Valter]

But Captain, popularity changes everything!