A quick update

I want to share some recent- and overwhelmingly positive- developments.

I recently applied for, and was accepted in, the new Interactive Arts and Media Bachelor’s of Fine Arts degree program here at IAM Columbia. That means that Fall 2009 is my last semester as a Game Design major. This was a difficult decision to make, but I think it was absolutely the right one. And I want to talk a little bit about why.

First, I should qualify this by saying that I do want to work with games- indeed, I’m involved in two small projects at present (more details on at least one should be coming in early 2010). But I’ve come to the conclusion that formal education in game development can only take you so far- some would even argue it’s even counter-intuitive, though I would disagree.

I think that the big payoff for Game Design programs is that it connects you with colleagues who share your relative skill level, enthusiasm, and interests, while also connecting you with faculty and other mentors who both nurture and challenge. The reason why this is the single most important benefit is that it provides the context, supportive environment, and motivation to get out there and make games. The Game Design program at IAM does that, and much more. But over time, I’ve found my interests sharply diverging from that of my colleagues.  Through coursework and personal reflection, I’ve determined what my priorities are as a maker of games.

• Exploring the often-murky path of experimental gameplay while keeping the barrier-of-entry low.
• Developing new game interfaces- software UI, hardware, the real world, and more.
• Revisiting environmental, site-specific gameplay- an idea that’s been largely dormant since the decline of video arcades, VR venues, laser tag, BattleTech pods, etc.
• Games as exploration of weighty emotional themes, such as sadness, loss, etc.
• Games as a vehicle for social justice.
• Contributing to the development of a vibrant, sustainable independent game developer community on par with that of independent filmmaking.

I’ve come to the realization that my interests and priorities simply don’t match up with that of my colleagues enough to build and develop working partnerships. With a few exceptions, most of my fellow students have their sights set on landing jobs in the commercial game industry- they want to make the next Call of Duty, or World of Warcraft, or Bioshock. And rightfully so- the commercial game industry is immensely successful, and offers the best opportunities to do what many Game Design students want to do, which is get paid to make video games. But that’s not a priority for me. My priorities aren’t better or worse than that of my fellow students- just different. Unfortunately, this disconnect can make working with other students on game projects prohibitively difficult.

At the same time, I’ve been brainstorming projects to build, and most of the ideas I’ve come up with have fallen outside games. In particular, I’ve been wanting to work with responsive environments; gestural, haptic, and motion-based user interfaces; virtual and augmented reality; and generative art. By the time summer rolled around, and I found myself pitching my idea for an immersive,  interactive music visualizer to one of my professors and mentors, I realized that games really weren’t the only thing I wanted to do with myself- perhaps not even the main thing.

Around the same time, IAM announced the new BFA degree program, and were taking applications. I missed the deadline to start in Fall 2009, but they held another round to start in Spring 2010. I hemmed and hawed over it for a while, at one point convincing myself I just didn’t have the time (staying in undergrad an extra semester or two is, for a variety of reasons, not a viable option for me). But then I talked with some of my professors, who not only assuaged my concerns (Niki Nolin, the Associate Chair and coordinator for the new degree program, outlined a plan to let me complete the program and still graduate on time), but soundly convinced me that it was the best plan for my artistic and professional development.

With only 10 days before the deadline, I pushed my midterm-wracked coursework to the background and built a (rough, very rough) portfolio website showcasing some of my work to date. Thankfully, it was enough to get me in.

So what are my goals moving forward?

• Finish “Let The Music Move You,” my interactive music visualization.
• Explore light painting and long-exposure photography.
• Expand and deepen my web development skillset.
• Do some work in video remixing.
• Make progress on the XNA project I’m working on with Zach Breman.
• Graduate (obviously).
• Have one of my pieces shown in an off-campus gallery in the next year.
• Develop my portfolio further to have a substantive body of work to show in a year when I start applying to graduate school.

Overall, I’m really excited for the direction things are going. Now I just need to hunker down and get some work done.

Gallery Showing: Eschatology/APOCALYPSE

The Interactive Arts and Media Department at Columbia College Chicago is hosting a new exhibit called Eschatology/APOCALYPSE. As part of this year’s Critical Encounters theme, “Fact and Faith”,

Eschatology/APOCALYPSE will be an exhibition dealing with the issues of technology and the end of time. Often depicted in video games, science fiction and popular culture the fantasy of the end of the world arises either as a direct cause of technology, aided by technology or uses advances to depict these prophecies to us on a more direct level.

The exhibit will feature an installation piece I worked on with Laura Thompson called “Faces of Death.”

Humans have always struggled to come to grips with their own mortality. Many works of art and literature have been produced throughout history depicting our desire to challenge death’s inevitability- and the tragic outcomes that follow.  The apocalypse is a magnification of this struggle, as it represents not only the death of our mortal incarnations, but our families, our legacy, and the very world we call home. It’s a Total Death, and a condition all the more trying to confront. This piece encourages people to face that fear. Our project, written in Processing 1.0.5, parses live video from a webcam and renders it to the screen. The image is altered to make guests standing in front of the camera appear ghastly and corpse-like. The intention is to bring guests face to face- literally- with their own mortality.

Eschatology/APOCALYPSE runs Thursday, October 27th, until Monday, November 30th.  The exhibit opening is this Thursday from 4pm-7pm at The Project Rm.- 916 S. Wabash, Room 111. For more information, email me.

Meta-Communication for Sport and Profit

The Map is not the Territory.

This is one of the big problems we face in rhetoric and critical analysis. Communication always requires some degree of abstraction. The word that represents your name is ultimately a abstraction of the name itself. And the name, itself, is a highly abstracted representation of the thing it references- i.e. you. The difficulty, it seems, lies in trying to maintain a balance between how much needs to be abstracted to communicate versus what gets lost in the abstraction.

Play is a pointed example of this meta-communicative tension. A game, or a play-experience, is just a stylized abstraction of another activity. Tag is an abstraction of hunting. RPG’s are an abstraction of social interaction. Call of Duty is an abstraction of modern warfare. But they’re not the things themselves. It’s a signification. An abstraction.

A game.

So:

* How ‘meta’ can you take this before it gets ridiculously postmodern? Can you do a game about games?

* Robots and 3D models of humans can be seen as abstractions of humans. They also suffer from the uncanny valley. Can a similar phenomenon apply to abstractions or simulations of non-human objects?

Game walkthroughs are also abstractions. Really, they’re abstractions of abstractions- like a rough sketch of a map of a place.  They usually read like, “be sure to only go through the middle door once you’re in this room.” It implies a certain degree of knowledge coming in, and a presumed awareness of space and context. In rhetoric, the author will usually try to illustrate some points and background information to frame the argument. Now, you might say that walkthroughs don’t make arguments- they just provide advice for beating a game. However, there are examples of walkthroughs making arguments and advocating a point-of-view. They can be highly critical of the game it’s depicting. And though the degree of sophistication can vary, we still have some form of critical analysis of a work- which itself is an abstraction. This is mediated by at least two levels of abstraction between the critic and the work. So, abstractions of abstractions, which are then abstracted. Then put down in words- which itself is a collection of abstractions.

It’s okay. My head hurts too.

Which begs:

* If you incorporate walkthrough-esque gameplay guidance into the work itself (i.e. really detailed tutorials), is it then part of the work itself (and thus no longer an abstraction of it)?

* Is critical analysis an appropriate device to use in a walkthrough?

There Is No Tyranny In The State Of Confusion: Game State Management.

I’m reading Art of Game Design by Jesse Schell. In Chapter Ten, Schell talks about a “hierchy of knowing,” detailing a transitive progression of the information that game entities are privy to, ranging from the micro (players) to the macro (the game state) and beyond (random chance, as represented by the Fates). In theory, the game state has access to the same information that the players do, and some they don’t- a sort of meta-entity.  Computer games rely on the software to manage the game state- and while the algorithms that manage the game state are different from the algorithms that manage the NPCs, the end-user sees the two as incontrovertibly linked, thus giving rise to the perception that computer games “cheat.” Which they do, but usually for the benefit of the player (if designed well).  I can’t think of an instance where game state management in computer games is written explicitly to capitalize on its own lopsided advantage. I’d like to see something like this in the wild- a game that openly cheats on its own behalf. I want to see that it’s possible to make a game like that, that still engages an audience and keeps people hooked.

On the other hand, you have games where game state management is handled by humans. This is most common with tabletop and live-action roleplaying games. The game state is handled by a Game Master, Dungeon Master, Storyteller, or one of similar peerage, and occasionally assistants. Unlike computer games, where few things happen in the game that the software doesn’t know about, the GM is beholden to the other players for collecting and parsing the information he/she needs to manage the game state. This is a little easier in tabletop roleplaying, since everyone’s seated around a table and everyone can see and hear each other. With LARPs, it’s a little more tricky. The players move around in a big space, ranging from an apartment to an open loft space (which is where I used to run White Wolf LARPs) to a wooded area. It’s physically impossible for a GM, or even a team of GMs with assistants, to keep track of everything that goes on. Invariably, there will be some game information that the GM, as manager of the game state, won’t have available. As might be expected, savvy LARP players use this to their advantage. (Compare to the earlier observation on computer games and their advantages.)

This isn’t a bad thing. It’s just another permutation to be aware of when tuning for balance (yes, one more thing game designers need to worry about). Meanwhile, we’re presented with opportunities to explore gameplay where the presumably-omniscient game state manager doesn’t know everything that’s going on. Imagine a game where the players know everything and the game itself knows nothing. A cooperative gaming experience where, instead of players starting at a disadvantage and working together to change the game state to something more agreeable to them, the players start with the upper hand and work together to press the advantage while the game frantically tries to forge its own path to victory.

A game where you already have the princess, locked in your tower. You just need to keep her there.

Absence

I think the reason why I haven’t been posting content to this blog is because I overthink it. I feel like if I don’t have a substantive, insightful article to post, it’s not worth posting.

One of the things we learn in my Fiction Writing courses is that output trumps quality. Not to say that solid turn-of-phrase is useless- but simply that you shouldn’t let the fear of not getting something perfect stop you from getting something posted at all.

One or two paragraph posts are okay. I understand this now.

So expect more- and, hopefully, more consumable- posts to come.

The Economics of Vested Meaning

I just read Castranova’s treatise on the Economics of Virtual Worlds.

As academic and professional disciplines, Game Design and Economics have shared something in common for quite a while. In economics, a transaction between two parties is predicated on what I’ve come to label “The WIIFM Rule.” WIIFM, of course, being an acronym for “What’s In It For Me.” It’s in the forethought of both parties, and, if both aren’t satisfactorily answered, the transaction doesn’t go through. Ludology follows a similar path- at every decision a player makes, from buying the game in the first place, to opening that door, to taking on that side-quest, the player first asks “What’s In It For Me.” It’s the job of the game designer to have an answer at the ready.

Tied into this is the idea of invested meaning. We want to buy something because we’ve attached value to it. We want to run this instance because the potential outcome holds value to us. We determine that one thing is worth more to us than a resource we currently hold- in market economics, it’s money; and in games and virtual worlds, it’s time.

Either system works because people opt-in. The economy grinds on because we do determine things are valuable and worth having and worth giving up something else. Games and virtual worlds are successful because the experiences they offer are well worth the invested time. We choose- enthusiastically, even- to invest some part of our personal satisfaction on these artificial constructs.

As an aside, this reminds me- in a partly ironic, partly frightening way- of The Matrix Trilogy. The Redpills- the people who refused to accept the programming- constituted only 1% of the total population. The other 99% knew, even if only subconsciously, that the Matrix wasn’t real. And they chose to plug in anyway. If you keep this in mind when you consider the rate at which VW’s are growing- in number, in GDP for the world they describe, in complex social behavior that emerges- one can’t help but give pause.

Questions:

1. Like VWs, Social Networking sites are drawing more and more of our time-capital. Facebook may not have the same kind of immersive first-person-view interface that a game or a VW has, but it’s still rather successful in not only capturing users’ time, but capitalizing on it to. Would Facebook, Myspace, Livejournal, et al be even more successful if they became Virtual Worlds unto themselves?

2. With VW’s, MMO’s, etc. so obviously The Next Big Thing, what of “retro” games that are still unplugged? Does the burgeoning secondary market for old and retro games need to be restructured in order to compete? Or is the quality of being unplugged providing enough value to stay viable?

Disconnection

My apologies for the lack of new content.

My laptop died about a month ago (blown motherboard). It coincided nicely with my department moving to new facilities, thus leaving me without a backup plan and, thus, no meaningful net access for the better part of a month. I’m not quite sure how I survived.

Regardless, I’m back online now, and meaningful content in forthcoming.

Weekly link-dump

Caveat: I’m intend on making this a weekly thing, but I may end up moving this to another day of the week.

A new hobby beckons.

On the hypocrasy behind criticism of designer DNA (note: I don’t have a firm opinion on the matter yet).

The trend of parsing literature into social media is gaining steam.

Dual-screening has come to laptops.

Thoughts on how seminar courses should flow.

A Flash game based on A.I. programming.

Shadowcasting: Toward a New Expression of Intermedia

I wrote this paper this past semester for Media Theory & Design 2 with Patrick Lichty. I may end up expanding on this later on (there’s certainly enough material). Prof. Lichty also suggested I make this the topic of a presentation at Midwest PCA- making it very clear that doing this sort of thing as an undergrad was most assuredly A Good Thing. I’m tempted.

Nothing ever ends… except when it does

I think it’s rather inauspicious that I begin this blog as one of my recent favorite blogs decides to go dark.

At a superficial glance, The College of Mythic Cartography can seem a bit outside the scope of a blog focused on new media. Indeed, a fair amount of its subject matter can seem decisively analog.

But from the work I’ve done so far, it seems to me that one of the great struggles for anyone who works with new media (be it games, web, code, or something else) is to determine to what extent mythology- or any other pre-built solution- factors into the work.

Mythology is a framework. A cultural mythology- Celtic, Norse, Hellenic, etc.- can be likened to an API. It’s a pre-built solution that saves you the trouble of starting completely from scratch. It’s a shared vocabulary.

Yet, to a certain degree, a great deal of work in new media (and intermedia, I suppose) is done expressly to forge a new framework, a new vocabulary. We can write our own libraries, thankyouverymuch.

Of course, if you take this too far, you end up with something outside the experience scope of many people beyond a privileged few (namely other new media scholars, and even that may be a stretch if it’s sufficiently obtuse). Few people end up relating to your work- they just can’t grok it. Which I suppose is fine, if you’re only doing research or making art or writing software for your own benefit. If you’re trying to reach out to other people, on the other hand- if you’re trying to offer some insight and make an intellectual connection with others, it behooves you as a scholar/artist/software developer/what-have-you to draw on certain pre-built solutions in an effort to relate to your audience (users?).

It’s a balancing act, of course. And new media producers struggle constantly with it, I would imagine. (Though in the case of game developers, it would seem they’ve already placed their bets.)

But one thing is clear- when we work, when we create, intention is everything. When we draw from influential source material to contextualize our work- whether the Poetic Edda or Understanding Media- we must fully understand what we’re saying and why. And if we cast aside the chains of convention, we must also do so intentionally, lest we be labelled amateurs and bomb-throwers (and even then, there’s something to be said for actually learning the rules before you go out and break them).

Incidentally, one of the more recent articles from the aforementioned blog makes some interesting observations about social interaction and Dunbar’s number, which I think can lead into some pretty spirited discussion of the social web.

In fact, let’s get that ball rolling. Dunbar’s concept of ’social grooming’ and Facebook. Do wall posts and SuperPokes qualify as intimacy for Dunbar’s purposes?

Go!