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[michaelplzno]

My counter to the idea that in games we can do whatever we want is that it is patently no₺ true.



If we could "do anything we want" as in Star Trek's holodeck (simply ask the computer for anything.) we would very quickly start limiting what we can do intentionally to make games.

I tend to enjoy game experiences with more freedom and less rules but pretty much every game experience is a more limited version of what we get in real life. Except perhaps things like Minecraft where you can build giant structures. (Probably why the game is so popular.)

Part of why I object to blurring the line between games and reality is because in games we are inherently not free. In reality I can make whatever drawing I want to make:



I do art itself to experience freedom as much as I can in this limited world. And if I were to constrain what I make to appeal to algorithms, or generally play political games to ge₺ known and seen it ruins the art as a celebration of the experience of freedom.

I'm told my use of color is incorrect, or that I should make art in digital form, or that I should use oils, or acrylic, or whatever, lots of people have prescriptions for how to make my art better. But freedom is what it's all about. And games are so profoundly constrained in the space of what you can do that it is easy to create an aesthetic experience.

[Golds]

I think, for me anyway, less rules + more abstraction can be good.

My most artsy game is probably Standard Bits, a game modeled after the low-level pixel blitter in the Macintosh. Here's a brief video:





I don't consider this game completely "done",  but there are no rules and no ending, just a lot of exploration and discovery to be had. It premiered at Kokoromi's Gamma 256 in Montreal, in November 2007. If anyone's interested or wants to play, the TIGSource thread for it is here.

People kept playing it after the event closed down for the night:

 

[alvarop]

I think, for me anyway, less rules + more abstraction can be good.

My most artsy game is probably Standard Bits, a game modeled after the low-level pixel blitter in the Macintosh. Here's a brief video:





I don't consider this game completely "done",  but there are no rules and no ending, just a lot of exploration and discovery to be had. It premiered at Kokoromi's Gamma 256 in Montreal, in November 2007. If anyone's interested or wants to play, the TIGSource thread for it is here.

People kept playing it after the event closed down for the night:

 

One of my favourite games ngl.

[michaelplzno]

It looks cool, and I love the aesthetic choices you are making for that kind of experience. I would say such an experience checks all the boxes of my own personal definitions of what art is.

Just to get pedantic, there are clear rules and limitations so the player canno₺ "just do anything." as Ebert would argue. A sculpture garden would not be art by that argument because the viewer can move around and see it from wherever they want.

Your game reminds me of "Problem Attic" by Liz Ryerson.

[Golds]

A sculpture garden would not be art by that argument because the viewer can move around and see it from wherever they want.

Yeah, that's what I kept telling him. It would also denigrate Frank Lloyd Wright's buildings as "not art', when I personally consider architecture to be one of the highest forms of art there is.

How can you look at this and say it's not High Art?

[michaelplzno]

If this building is art, then a game where you walk around in a sculpture garden with no goals or ending is also art, and if that game is art, then adding some kind of goal would surely not make i₺ less art, like a goal of blowing up a statue by collecting points. So, Minecraft, where you build monuments and interesting architecture is art. And CoD where you wander through pre-set buildings and environments (while shooting bad guys) is also art and pretty much all games are art.

Just like with buildings, some of them are less impressive than others: what is *good* art.

Not every building is Frank Lloyd Wright:


But it's pretty dead issue to me that games are art without the need for pretension or making them snooty or whatever affected baloney a lot of people think is needed to be AHHHHHRT.

[Golds]

McDonald's architecture can be Art too.



 

[michaelplzno]

oh yeah, the original version of mickey D was great architecture, you should watch the show "The Founder" with Michael Keaton as Ray Croc. Sort of a downer ending though.

[Spirit Galleon]

I don't get how art being interactive would make something LESS art considering how many mediums are about interacting with crafts on a direct level. puppetry is a HUGE deal for this reason, and nobody ever questions if it's art because merely making the puppet is about a quarter of the entire process.

To that end: I just wanna make things, I'm not exactly worried about expressing anything profound with art unless I have a specific objective in mind, and even that is "I want the viewer to think the things I think are cool/cute/hot are cool/cute/hot."
Which unfortunately has slowly become a harder sell because my interests are warping further towards things like "Winamp skins went hard" and "bring back Blobject and Y2k aesthetics god dammit." I've put alot of effort into bringing together robot artists in my discord server to better see how others design and think, and it's lead to me learning so much more about aesthetics than I would have if I'd ever stuck around the people I had hung around in the past.

[michaelplzno]

let me know if I can join up with your robot friends, I like robots.

[Golds]

I would contend that Space Funeral is the most "it's art" kinda game from the indie scene.

[michaelplzno]

I'm not sure why any "Earthbound Like" game isn't just as "Arty" (Or just earthbound itself for that matter)





This one is a lot more fun, not to be dismissive of depressing stories that are more cynical, but my general agenda is to find art that fills the hole left by a reality that ... well... is at best poorly designed. And I know a lot of the stuff I like isn't really considered great art, none of my favorites will win an Oscar or award for being truly ART.





Generally, I try to focus on the thesis that Art is Fun, but I know that is even less popular a definition than my synthesis of logic and emotion schtick.


"Cheif Dikinmahfase"

[michaelplzno]

https://twitter.com/leighalexander/status/1835207640055464047



I once hired Leigh to help me make my game "Speedway Heroes" Better. Mostly she (and her friend who did most of the talking) said add little coins to pick up and a mini-map, stuff like that. I didn't disagree with their advice, which did make the game better, but "Speedway Heroes" has yet to dominate the charts. I'm not sure if she would say it is childlike or not.

However, as with any good tweet, Leigh is sure to get some corners of the net riled up. But it's also somewhat contradictory? If I'm understanding, games are both childlike and imitated by the rest of culture. Played out and also borrowed from. TikTokers are posting imaginary games that are better than what's out there? I'd love to see an example of that phenomenon.

Thoughts?

[Golds]

My Leigh story is that one time when I was in Brooklyn, some of us indies and Leigh went to some divey but slightly trendy bar, and I remember hanging out and chatting. This must've been like 2011. That's the end of the story. I have some amount of respect for what she's trying to do, but she is up her own ass herself to some degree. That said, I guess I would mark myself a general Leigh supporter.

I agree that games in general could do with more experimental and daring aesthetics.

[michaelplzno]

The ven diagram of anyone who talks about "what is art" and people who are "up their own ass" is pretty much one overlapping circle.

But is this tweet just circular/self-contradictory click bait, or something more meaningful? "Games are childlike and non-aesthetic, look to tik tok, of all places, for the opposite of that?"

[Golds]

I've mentioned this is other threads, but I'll say it again. Video games are somewhat shackled commercially by the audience that most frequently plays them: adolescent boys. So games are very often designed around the kinds of things that this audience likes: exploratory play featuring a lot of cops & robbers-style scenarios.

More than that, they're technically shackled by the kinds of things that can be done easily with imperative programming . This may be changing a bit soon, I hope, but we'll have to see.

There is a lot of creativity on TikTok, but I would also say that there's tons of creativity in the micro-indie scene that I follow and try to highlight occasionally on Twitter. It's a pity we don't have a lot of good journalistic outlets on the web that report about these kinds of more experimental games, often targeted at adults (albeit mostly young adults). The best of what we do have is stuff like FreeGamePlanet, Weird Fucking Games, Warp Door, and, sometimes, Rock Paper Shotgun. I wish there was more, and I miss indiegames.com/blog/ and TIGSource when they regularly posted cool indie freeware games. It was discovering the TIGSource blog in 2007 that started my whole indie career!

[michaelplzno]

For the hardcore Shit-Game fans I made a ven diagram:



@Golds - Yes, my games don't get much press. I'm told that they are "Difficult to write about" by one of the Game Developer dot COM editors.

It is a shame that there is no place to talk about the artsy stuff out there, if my stuff even counts as that. I tried to revive the front page of tig but never could get to the end of that conversation. It gets into some kind of political war about who has the right to be heard and seen, which apparently, I'm not entitled to be involved with directly.

[Golds]

Well, I guess the two of us agree and, and this is actually a great opportunity for anyone who happens to be reading this who likes to write: start up a new indie game news blog, focusing on the more experimental shit. There's a wealth of cool stuff being worked on that I would personally love to read about.

The world needs it. It deserves it.  

[michaelplzno]

I've covered about 30 or so games on my youtube channel. Apparently, I'm no good at this because my view count is in the toilet. It's tough to get the algorithm to actually show people stuff that goes against the grain sadly.

[Golds]

This isn't experimental, but I did find one girl on YouTube from Europe that is doing a good journalistic job covering indie games. Here's a recent video: