Excluded from that life, by definition, is anything that will not lead to a positive outcome in the parent’s eyes (these of course are defined economically: getting a high-paying job, graduating magna cum laude at an Ivy League school, receiving educational awards). I have no opinion on whether or not Amy Chua (a professor of Law and economic commentator at Yale) is a good or bad mother, or whether her children are good or bad people. Those conversations have been had.

Instead, I want to know: if a family excludes play from the household or puts major restrictions upon its expression, what kinds of values are being ignored or denied to the child?

What is Playing Anyway?

Play, by its nature, is difficult to confine in any strict definition. It includes all kinds of activities, from pushing around Tonka toys in a sand box, to kids building a hidden fort in the forest, to jamming in an improvisational jazz session. There is something playful and unexpected in all of those activities: the child in the sand box is not moving around sand for any serious purpose, the children in the forest are not architects trying to erect an office building, nor is the jazz group trying to perfect a piece that they have all memorized. In all of these cases, people are exploring the limits of their expressive abilities, creating different kinds of social relationships with other people, or discovering new kinds of properties or relationships that things have. All of these involve re-imagining and transforming our spaces with or without other people.

What Kinds of Play are found in Minecraft?

Games, for some, serve as a means for play. Playing Minecraft with other kids in The Art Guild has taught me just how powerful play is as a form of expression. Over the last few weeks my guildmates and I have been building a community on our Minecraft server. Some of them play, each day, for hours – constructing elaborate fortresses and underground mines with no particular schematic or final product in mind. Others jump in and explore the map, poking around in dark corners and building staircases hundreds of feet high, just to get an overview of the place. Others yet mine obsessively, dwarven-fashion, delving greedily into the Earth for any coal, diamonds or redstone that it might yield to them, jealously guarding their treasures in secret tunnels and hideaways that their guildmates could not hope to find. Others play Minecraft simply to chat and be in the same virtual space as their guildmates, swapping stories about Guild life or talking about events in the game.

The Values of Play

In all these cases, a very complex and thick social fabric is developing where one did not exist before. Yes, some of these teenagers know each other from school. But in the vast number of cases, they barely know one another – they are just acquaintances. Minecraft, as with all the video games that we play together in the Guild, creates a space in which people can come to share collectively, or fight and argue, or love and cherish, or hide secretively, or obsessively collect, or laugh and jibe about. Some of these are more playful than others: those who explore and build for the sake of expression enjoy a form of play that is clearly more playful than those who log in and needlessly squirrel-away resources. But in all of these cases, children are becoming people of certain kinds – whether they are helpful, combative, secretive or impulsive – through the space that the players of the game create in their style of playing it. They are developing new friendships, discovering new emotions (one player recognized for the first time that he is “greedy” with his resources), or learning new social skills (i.e. bartering). The value of the game is precisely in offering opportunities (spaces) in which people can express, and in expressing themselves, become certain kinds of people with desires and motivations and styles of social relating of their own. Play-spaces (of all kinds, not just in games) create moments for social and personal enrichment primarily through expression, and not through institutionalized learning, education, and cognitive or technical skill-building. Play precedes, and is the forerunner to, all forms of adult institutionalized knowledge.

What is Lost?

This all being said, creating a household in which play (of all kinds) is denied serves to create a child who experiences their world in terms of means-ends, instrumental goals, and cognitive or technical skills. Lost in this, I think, are the tacit forms of understanding developed in playing with other people: expressing and dealing with one’s emotions, developing deep friendships, and interpreting the world in terms of one’s imagination rather than relying upon the stock images provided by parents or social institutions. In essence, denying play leads exactly to the kind of ruthless North American society in which we live in today: one defined by work, end goals, and social anomie.

Although many of you probably did not grow up in the 80s with text-based and graphical adventure games, my sister and I did. We practically grew up on a steady diet of King’s Quest, Quest for Glory, and Space Quest games. The days of huddling in front of the 13″ VGA monitor and solving puzzles together are gone. My sister lives an entire continent away, and we don’t play games together much anymore. Until today, that is.

Which would you prefer more:
A) being able to play your favourite Sierra On-Line adventure games in a web browser?
or
B) being able to play those games in a multiplayer environment?

A + B = Martin Kool’s Sarien.net

Much in the spirit of Jet Set Willy Online, this means that you can now play a handful of Sierra’s old adventure games in a browser-based multiplayer environment. Imagine having 100 Roger Wilco’s walking around, exploring the Arcada. Imagine solving puzzles in The Black Cauldron with a friend 1000 miles away.

And all done by one guy (with the help of a friend). Spectacular.

So head over to Sarien.net if you have a chance and enjoy the ride. The only thing I’d love to see would be names above the avatars (so we can identify each other) and perhaps picking different colors for our characters. It gets tough figuring out who’s who on a screenful of Roger Wilco’s.

“To me, part of the art is really understanding the story… to me, if you boil music down to one element that’s a really important thing when it comes to emotion… it’s tempo! Tempo is what conveys emotion and conveys energy. You find tempo in speech, speech is musical.”

I nod, encouraging him to go on with the thought, doing my best not to interrupt with the thousands of ideas he evokes in my mind as he speaks about his music. We order a couple more cappuccinos and try to concentrate on the conversation… we are becoming drowned out by the shrill cackling of the cafe patrons beside us. I slide the microphone a little closer to him, angling it away from the next table.

An hour passes. I ask him about his experiences composing the Outcast soundtrack, and how they compare to the Watchmen Motion Comic score that he completed earlier this year. I keep asking myself: what is it about music that compels him to compose?

“There is a spirituality with art… it’s sort of like you’re tapping into the divine. There are times when I feel like I’ve come close to it in my compositions.”

My heart flutters a bit as fragments of the Heaven on Adelpha track bubble into my mind. There are moments of his music that border on the sublime, and I tell him that. He humbly thanks me, almost embarrassed that I would mention it. We turn towards the subtleties of compositional techniques – 4/4 to 5/4 time transitions, sustains, and writing for 100 piece orchestras.

I’m getting a crash course in composing from Lennie Moore, video game and film composer. And I’m loving it.

6:17pm.

I am greeted at the door by a blonde woman dressed in a red hood, stitched roughly at the joints with thick black thread. She smiles and bites her lip sensuously, as the tip of her polished black shoe twirls on the concrete.

There is a photograph in her hand. I reach towards it, tentatively. The photograph leaves her hand, falling. The photograph is in my hand. It is a photograph of a young girl dressed in a red hood. It reads: “Robin. Age 9.”

I thank the red hooded woman and walk into the lobby of the Yerba Buena Center of the Arts and encounter a throng of well-dressed folks. I do not recognize any faces, and walk over to the bar, doing my best to fly casual. I spot a man in a suit, wearing a thick but carefully-groomed beard. If it were not for his slender build, I would think him Amish or Mennonite. Someone cracks a joke and he throws his head back, laughing wildly. Definitely not Amish.

He is standing at the top of a curved staircase, and waves at everyone: “Come up here! It begins soon!” His accent is subtle, smooth.

We follow him up the stairs into a small theatre, seated for 100 people or so. A stunning woman with braided hair walks to the stage.

“As you can see, I’m a bit nervous.” She laughs, relieving the tension.

She introduces herself as Auriea Harvey, and welcomes the bearded man to the stage, introducing him as Michäel Samyn. She introduces their newest creation, The Path, and welcomes us to the launch party. The Tale of Tales team introduces each of the six characters of the game in six short stories.

The lights dim, and a young girl with a slight limp appears on the screen. She wanders off the path and into the dark forest. I am mesmerized — my heart pounds as I anticipate some nameless horror. I am not afraid – but I am fearful.

There is a polaroid photograph of a nine-year-old girl named Robin in my hand. I am sitting in a theatre, watching Tale of Tales graciously demo The Path.  And I am loving it.

This is the GDC.

Some time ago, Anthony Flack and Sarah Quick, the lead designer/artist and artist (respectively) behind Cletus Clay, were kind enough to answer a few questions about their upcoming hillbilly-fueled side-scrolling action-puzzler game built for TunaSnax. Cletus has been nominated for the Excellence in Visual Art award at the 2009 Independent Games Festival, and from all signs so far is a strong contender. So read on to hear about some of the crafts(wo)manship that is going into Cletus.

Chris – How much time have (you, the team) spent working with clay (plasticine) animation? 

Anthony Flack – I did my first stop-motion animation at film school, with a 16mm Bolex camera. This would have been around 1996. The Bolex was great fun but I wasn’t too keen on waiting two weeks to see what I’d shot. I soon switched to digital, but the computers really struggled with crunching video data back then. I had to spend two grand on a hardware video codec card just so I could play back TV-resolution video in real time!  Everything works so much better these days, and it’s a hell of a lot cheaper.

Sarah Quick – I’ve been working properly with clay for a year now. Messiest year of my life!

Chris – Aardman Animations’ “Creature Comforts” is one of my favourite stop-motion shows. One of the reasons I think it works is *because* clay animation doesn’t render ‘photorealistic’ scenes/characters. What are your thoughts on photorealism – hell, any kind of realism – in games and films?

Anthony Flack -Well in a way, stop-motion is a photorealistic effect because it depicts real-life objects. That’s what makes it so hard to fake, and what makes our job so tricky. But it also has all the flexibility of cartooning, so it’s a great combination of the real and the impossible.

I’m interested in all kinds of films, from cartoon fantasy to bare-bones documentaries. So I don’t have any opinion there. But I do have some issues with the pursuit of realism in video games. I see video games as essentially abstract compositions; a set of mechanics and counter-mechanics all working in a delicate and unstable equilibrium. They are usually presented as a rough approximation of some sort of real-world activity, but that is just for context: the game of Monopoly really isn’t anything like being a real property baron. Making it more true-to-life probably wouldn’t help the game play better.
The more realistic you try to make your game, the higher you set the bar for suspension of disbelief, and the fewer options you have for messing with your game mechanics. That’s why I generally prefer abstracted or cartoony games. I also think that realistic human animation is fundamentally at odds with responsive controls. If you jump up in the air, it probably takes you nearly a second between starting the movement and actually leaving the ground. That’s probably not what you want to happen when you push the jump button in a game. So you can make your characters and environments as realistic as you like; the player character is still going to either move unrealistically or respond poorly. I’d rather have them move unrealistically.

Chris - There’s a surprising amount of consistency between your (Sarah and Anthony’s) clay modeling styles. How do you manage to do that, when you live a few thousand kilometres apart?

Anthony Flack - I actually think our styles are quite different, but Sarah keeps in close contact with me while modeling, and we have some agreed-upon methods for modeling certain things, like planks of wood for example. I also check over everything before we include it, and once the scenes are built we have to go over everything again and fix anything that looks inconsistent.

We also divide up our to-do lists based on what models we are better-suited to make. Sadly for me, that means I have to do a lot of the technical, structural stuff like floor pieces and sections of ladders, while Sarah is off making an Optimus Prime robot or a crashed aeroplane… 

Sarah Quick- Well it has been a bit of a challenge but all the work it takes to get our models to match is half the fun. This is the first time I’ve worked as part of a team that actually uses my artwork so it was always going to be a learning experience. Anthony has been schooling me through the process and we’ve now got a good system where he checks my work to ensure it matches with the look of the levels and his vision. Some tweaking still has to take place after the levels are put together but I think it is getting easier.

Poor old Anthony does seem to have drawn the short straw with the kind of models he has to make at the moment. I don’t have the competence yet to create some of the really technically complicated models and animations but hopefully in the future I can take on some of that so Anthony can make a few crashed aeroplanes of his own.

Chris – Why do you think it’s important that we not lose clay animating techniques in favour of CG?

Anthony Flack - I love CG too, but stop-motion has its own magic, just as hand-drawn animation has its own magic. I think it’s important that we keep some diversity.

Chris – Sarah: Prior to beginning work on Cletus, what was your background in artwork? Your influences?

Sarah Quick –  After secondary school I worked as a freelance artist for a couple of years in my free time. I decided University was not for me but I was determined to get into art somehow. For a while I became a bit of an art hustler and took any art job I could find. Before joining Tuna I’d designed tattoos, painted pub murals, coloured architectural plans and sketched portraits in pubs. Tuna gave me my first big chance at doing something creative in the field of video games. That was a dream come true for a geek like me!

I suppose over my art career there have been many artists that have influenced me. The biggest would be Roman Dirge, a comic book author and artist. His Lenore comics saw me through my teenage years. Animation wise, I lived near Bristol where Aardman is based so I always loved their stuff and was proud of living in their vicinity. Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas was my favourite film growing up and the animations of Kihachiro Kawamoto are my current source of inspiration in the animation world. He uses these very beautiful dolls in his films which are enchanting to watch.

Chris – Any decisions on what kind of music that would suit Cletus Clay, if any?

Anthony Flack - Somewhere in-between frenetic video game music and a crackly old bluegrass record. I wouldn’t claim to be a banjo player but I have enough instrumental skill to do a reasonable imitation of one, and I wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity to make up some dinky fingerpicking stuff for this game. I like having the excuse to work on music, and video games are a wide-open canvas for experimentation. Unfortunately there’s not much time to play around with it when we’re in the middle of production and I’m in charge of the art and design as well, but I have written some tunes and I’ll have to get around to finishing them at some point.

Chris - What kinds of inspirations influenced the modeling process?

Anthony Flack - Whenever I get stuck, I go on the internet and look for photos of the things I’m trying to depict. I should really do it more often because it always turns out better for it. Recently I’ve been looking at videos of things blowing up on Youtube, trying to get a feel for the way an explosion moves.

Sarah Quick – I do pretty much the same thing. There are times where I’d be lost without Google image search. You can’t go wrong with good reference material.
 

Chris - What about the gameplay, design, and revision processes? Do you listen to music, watch TV, or concentrate on what you’re doing with autistic precision?

Anthony Flack - If it’s using the visual part of my brain, I’ll keep the rest of it amused by listening to the TV or podcasts while I work. There’s some interesting stuff on the BBC Radio 4 website sometimes, and I always listen to Mark Kermode’s film reviews. I like working on the visual stuff because it leaves my ears free to do whatever I like.
But if it involves the thinky parts of my brain, reading and writing and doing maths, then I really have to concentrate. If I listen to music then I’ll start thinking about music instead.

Sarah Quick – I can’t work in silence, even when I’m using the thinky part of my brain. I end up concentrating on the lack of noise instead of getting on with my work. Apparently even as a child my Mum could only send me to sleep if she turned on the vacuum cleaner in the corner of my room because I don’t like silence. Hence I listen to a lot of music and sometimes watch the odd documentary whilst I model. I’m a bit schizophrenic with my choice in tunes. One day I’ll be listening to composers like Hans Zimmer or James Newton Howard and the next it will be a bit of Disturbed or Nine Inch Nails. I’ve just discovered the band ‘The Knife’ which has been the flavour of the week so far.

Chris - Cletus Clay has been nominated for an Excellence in Visual Art prize at the 09 IGF. Let’s pretend that you have no sense of humility here … why do you think Cletus Clay outstrips the other (admittedly spectacular) finalists?

Anthony Flack - I haven’t played the other finalists’ games yet; I’ve only had a brief look at their Youtube videos. So I’ll get to take them all in fresh when we get to the IGF. I’m looking forward to checking out Machinarium in particular; I really enjoyed Samarost and I’m hoping it’ll be awesome. I’m looking forward to seeing all of them actually – they’re probably all going to be awesome.

Sorry, but other people’s work is always going to be more exciting than your own stuff that you’ve been staring at for way too long. We’ve put a lot of work into this game and there’s a lot of work still to do. I think it’s turning out well, but I’m way too close to it right now to compare it to anyone else’s. I don’t really feel like we’re in competition with each other anyway, since everyone is doing something different. I just want to make sure we get the game looking as good as possible before the festival, because it’s not fully assembled yet. And it’s always painful showing work that isn’t quite finished.

Chris - Anthony: You mentioned a horrible fire during the creation of Platypus. I cringe asking this, but … is your current domicile now insured?

Anthony Flack - Um, to an extent. We really need to up the coverage some more actually, now you mention it.
 

Chris - Anything to say to my partner’s junior high school art class students who absolutely adore Cletus Clay so far? They’re going to get their chance to work with clay soon…

Anthony Flack - I think this is better answered by Sarah, who is still flush with enthusiasm. I’ve been working with clay for so long I can barely remember what it’s like when you’re starting out. Having said that, I recommend having a jar full of plastic eyeballs of different sizes that you can stick into your models – an easy and fun way to build cartoony characters.

Sarah Quick – Don’t play with clay near a carpet. I always get in trouble for clay being walked into the carpet at work. Also, if the weather is hot, bung your model in the fridge, stops it getting to squishy.

Most importantly, let your imagination run wild. You don’t need much to make a good model, just some clay, a bread knife and if it is a big model; something to use as an armature (core). Having an armature or something inside your model, acting as a core, saves you a lot of clay. A number of my models are stuffed with crisp packets, polystyrene and one even contains a scented candle.

Thank you so much for your thoughtful and friendly conversation! I’m looking forward to seeing Cletus Clay in action at the ’09 GDC, as well as meeting you both in person. Safe travels, and good luck with the IGF!

I’m not much for hyping up news, but I came across quite a few exciting stories this week. Because writing ‘feature articles’ is so darned difficult, I thought that an occasional ‘Artful Times’ newsletter might be a fun way to end the week

GDC ’09

The 2009 GDC begins next monday, and I’ll be there! If you’d like to get together for a lunch or coffee, please drop me a line. This is my first GDC and I plan to document the whole thing as well as do a handful of interviews while I’m there. I’ll post whatever I can here during the week!

Lovin’ Rhythm

Jamie Love posted a very enjoyable interview with japanese rhythm master Masaya Matsuura, otherwise recognized for his brilliant PaRappa the Rapper series that initiated the whole ‘rhythm game’ genre. Matsuura does not appear often in interviews, and his insights into Western (and japanese) gaming culture are poignant. In response to the idea that we, as gamers, tend to idolize certain characters and games from our past that are nonetheless exploited commercially in sequel after sequel; sacrificing our personal values for profit, he says:

We should talk about cultural values and proprietary values separately. Nowadays, nobody really has the idea that “Copies” are worse than the “Original” anymore. When I think about that, it is no wonder that new ways of thinking about possession will be eventually spreading and changing. When, for example, we have a million seller game, it is difficult for us to decide if there is only one main character, or a million of them, but for now we should appreciate that both assumptions can be held as valid.

I think companies and/or producers have a tough mission to bring imaginary characters to life both culturally and proprietarily. Also the imaginary character will doubtless become increasingly realistic and tangible in the near future. Then we will be forced to rethink how we treat them once again.

(Apologies for the news image – I couldn’t help myself)

New Bible Unearthed; Church of the Mushroom Cloud Believers Deny Existence

Over at the IDGA Game Preservation Mailing List, Elliot Davis mentioned that someone has posted a scan of the complete design document for the cancelled Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel 2 game. We all know that Brotherhood of Steel was a terrible followup to Fallout 1 and 2, but apparently BoS was only intended to cover the costs of the game engine. BoS 2 was the game that Interplay wanted to pursue – but filed for bankruptcy before production could begin. The design “Bible” reads like a D&D campaign manual and features a lot of previously unseen sketches and artwork consistent with the Fallout universe. I suggest getting it while it’s hot – who knows how long it’ll be before the nasty C&D letters are fired off.

“Ifnkovhgroghprm” actually means “Nikstlitselpmur”

AGDInteractive let me know that their amazing re-makes of King’s Quest I and King’s Quest II have been once again remade! The artists have went back to them and redrawn all of the background art at high resolution, and made improvements to the music and speech packs. (Not to mention that their website was re-designed and re-launched by the wonderful Eriq Chang). After investing thousands of hours in these projects, their efforts have finally been ‘rewarded’ and recognized by Activision (the company that swallowed up Vivendi & Sierra On-Line’s properties): in a newsletter AGDI said, “We were informed that Activision would honor our outstanding agreements with Vivendi by allowing us to finish our pending contractual projects, but that we will not be granted permission to start any new Sierra remakes in the future.” Bad news: we won’t see a King’s Quest IV or Quest for Glory remake. Good news: we’ll see Himalaya Studios work on their own original ideas and hopefully see a new adventure game in the next couple of years!

(and if you recognized the title of this news item, you’ve played too much King’s Quest)

A History of LucasArts – Thankfully not written by George Lucas

Although the book was released in December 08, I somehow missed it! Rob Smith, the editor of PlayStation magazine, writes the history of LucasArts and fills it with amazing (previously unseen!) production artwork and paintings. I have some strong attachments to LucasArts, despite their 10 year dive into obscurity. The years between Maniac Mansion and Grim Fandango punctuated some of the best gaming experiences of my adolescent and post-adolescent life. Even now, when I load up Loom and Sam and Max Hit the Road on my Nintendo DS (thank you ScummVM!) I am reminded that true mastery involves insight and constant revision. I’m looking forward to reading this book; if you have read it, please chime in with your (dis)recommendation. This seems like a nice coffee table book, especially with the glossy photos inside.

Home of the Underdogs Revived After Being Euthanized

And I wasn’t planning on announcing this for at least another two weeks, but my good friend gnome das Gnome’s Lair beat me to it After Sarinee, the old curator and creator of Home of the Underdogs (a site devoted to posting ye olde abandoned games) lost HoTU due to a mixture of disinterest and her web host dying, a few folks from the community decided to lend a hand and get it back up to speed. There are several ongoing revitalization projects, but the one that has caught my attention the most is HOTUD.org – a complete revision of the site using Joomla and community-driven content. The site is currently in an ‘alpha’ stage and you should not yet start posting reviews/content, but if you’re as excited as I am about the project, head over to the forum to keep an eye on the site development. We’ll let everyone know there when it’s ready to rock’n'roll.

Just when we were beginning to fear that Japanese-style console RPGs (JRPGs) were going to go the way of the dodo, Water Melon studio has opened up pre-orders for the best console RPG I’ve played since Chrono Trigger for the SNES: Pier Solar and the Great Architects.

I first got wind of this game in issue #49 of Retro Gamer mag which had an impressive two-page feature on it. The game began as a fan-based project by a handful of folks from Eidolon’s Inn message board (a Sega forum with a long history). The project has been in active development for around 4 years, with the assistance of a dedicated eleven member team that’s passionate about the Sega Genesis (Mega Drive).

So what’s so impressive about this game? First, the entire game has been developed for the Sega Genesis/CD using a fan-developed SDK – that means that the game is truly a console RPG! It is going to be released for the Genesis on cartridge and in CD-format for those with a Sega CD. (At this point I’m unclear if buyers will receive a ROM image of the game to play on their PC, however.) Second, the team released a working beta demo of the game to give us a taste of the final game. Third, this is one of the few JRPGs with a fantastic script/dialogue – it’s witty and charming, and has a way of pulling you right into the game. Finally, I’ve never seen a fan-developed project of this calibre. Even though the demo is a beta (with some bugs), you can see the love and sweat that went into making the game, and the final product looks like it will rival some of the ‘big indie’ commercial releases like Braid.

Normally I avoid raving about new games, but this one has me pretty excited. Is it just me, or is anyone else into the idea of breaking out their Genesis and popping in an old-school Chrono Trigger-esque RPG? If so, head on over to the official Pier Solar web site and download the ROM (playable in any Genesis/Mega Drive emulator). And let us know what you think of it!

Update (Sept. 30th): One of the Pier Solar developers replied officially that the final version of the game will *not* come with a ROM image:

Don´t worry, the game will be well [copy-] protected; that is absolutely possible on MD.
And about releasing a ROM….no, sorry. Just like Zebbe said it would spread and I doubt people would buy the game for a ROM image they can get for free. Also, there will be no emulator being able to play the game even if someone does manage to dump it. We really think that a Mega Drive/ Genesis is so cheap everywhere that it is no big issue getting one if you really want to play the game.

A Virtual Console release would be nice at some point, but the chances we are allowed to do that are rather slim I´m afraid.

Unfortunately that means that if you don’t have a Sega Genesis/Mega-Drive you won’t be playing the full version, nor is it likely to make an appearance on the Wii VC. Bummer. Guess that means I’ll be hauling my Sega CD/Genesis duo from the basement and hooking it up in a few months for some gaming goodness!

Normally I avoid posting news, but I found this bit o’ information a little too tasty to keep to myself. First reported at the Dark Castle News blog, a Return to Dark Castle trailer video (Youtube version here) has been posted over at the publisher’s web site. The gameplay looks hilarious, and definitely captures the spirit of the original. I can’t wait for this classic to hit the Super Happy Fun Fun online store.

If you missed my earlier coverage of Return to Dark Castle you might want to take a peek at the article.

ChipWits was an edutainment game that was released in the early days of the Macintosh. One part puzzler and one part GUI-based programming teacher, ChipWits used an icon-driven programming language (IBOL) to command a miniature robot on rollerskates around a room. Through combinations of operators and arguments, the robot would traverse the room picking up, eating, or frying objects at your maniacal whim. I don’t doubt that games such as The Incredible Machine, and more recently Chibi-Robo, gained much of their inspiration from this classic.

Dark Castle was a mixed action/puzzler/platformer that put you in the shoes of the bumbling adventurer Duncan in his quest to defeat the Black Knight. The game featured eery waveform sound effects and wonderful character animation reminiscent of later ‘rotoscoped’ animation. (Interesting side note: Co-developer Jonathan Gay later came to pioneer the now-ubiquitous Flash animation software. The designer and illustrator Mark Pierce later became the co-founder of software giant Macromedia. Holy jebus!) Full of slapstick humor and frustrating puzzles, Dark Castle is probably one of the least known indie masterpieces of the 1980′s.

Unfortunately, neither of these games have been playable on modern systems without frustratingly clunky emulation software. That is, until now! I was very pleasantly surprised when I found out that both have been remade into modern sequels by indie developers:

Return to Dark Castle (Mac OS X only) has been in production for the better part of 7 years. Originally developed for Mac OS 9, the game engine had to be completely reprogrammed for OS X, and the art had to be redrawn for a 16-bit color depth. Since then, the game has went through years of bumpy roads; finally making it to an immanent final release through its publisher, Super Happy Fun Fun. For now, I strongly suggest downloading the latest demo beta (link courtesy of the Dark Castle forums) and playing it through. The demo is rather short, but demonstrates the potential the final release of the game will have, especially considering that the full version will include all of the levels from the original Dark Castle, Beyond Dark Castle, the new levels for Return to Dark Castle and a level editor. The production quality is simply stunning and demonstrates the kind of polish that is possible when a game receives nearly 10 years (!) of attention. The final release of the game is definitely on my 2008 must-buy list. Now, someone just has to convince ZSculpt to port this to XBOX 360 Live Arcade…

Edit: If you want to keep up on the latest news for Return to Dark Castle, head on over to the Dark Castle Blog.

After stumbling upon Doug Sharp’s blog a few months ago on an unrelated search, I found out that a beta of ChipWits II has been released! The original programmers, Doug Sharp and Mike Johnston, re-wrote the entire game from scratch using the Adobe AIR Flash framework – meaning that it’s playable on both Windows and Mac! The sequel very much captures the enjoyment of the original, and it’s great seeing these oldschool designers back on the saddle. So head on over to the ChipWits II web site and give it a try. Even 25 years later, it’s still great edutainment software since the goals have stayed the same, so if you have kids let them take a crack at some procedural programming. The only criticism I have is that I miss the old ChipWits interface… there’s something slightly clunky about this one. Hopefully that gets resolved for the final version…

Update: The original ChipWits was remade for the Windows platform by Klaus Breuer. Klaus painstakingly reprogrammed the entire game from start to finish, and it’s available as freeware at his web site. I highly recommend playing the original, and this is the next best thing.

The first, Privateer: Ascii Sector, is an impressive ascii-based interpretation of the original. The graphics are colorful and almost completely faithful to the gameplay of the original … minus one dimension of course. While the interface shares many similarities with roguelikes, there are many interesting enhancements that give the game a completely unique style. Most of the time I was absolutely stunned that a single developer – Christian Knudsen – built the entire game – ascii art, gigantic maps, fluid and colorful animations, and in-game economy algorithms – his work is absolutely polished. The game is currently at v0.2, and Christian is hard at work at bringing v0.3 to completion. If you play the game, please send Christian some encouragement, either over at his forums or at his Great Games Experiment page – I’d love to see a final release candidate of the game get released some day. Download it here.

The second project, Privateer Gemini Gold, is a 3d platform-independent remake of the game for Windows, Linux and OS X using the Vega Strike game engine. If you’re looking for a way of playing the original Privateer with high-res 3d graphics without running Dosbox – this project is definitely the way to go. A very large team of 3d artists, programmers, designers, playtesters and audio engineers have created a truly faithful reproduction of the original game. The development team is die-hard dedicated to the project, and respond to suggestions and comments on the forums regularly. If you were a fan of the original game, you will be immediately at home with this remake – it is probably the most detailed remake of a 3d game I’ve ever seen. If you haven’t played this classic, I strongly suggest heading over to the download page and giving it a shot.

Dragon’s Lair has always drawn serious polarities from gamers – some people (like me) have fond memories of dumping $20 worth of quarters into it at the local arcade; others find the game unforgiving or simply unrewarding. According to the source of this news clip, the game has both a “classic” 1983 mode that is identical to the original game, and a new mode that makes use of the DS’s stylus and microphone.

Happy Halloween from the Artful Gamer!

This year I had the opportunity to carve some very gamesy pumpkins. Unfortunately, the trick-or-treaters we had were almost all under 6 years old, and didn’t recognize most of these games/characters (one kid recognized the pumpkin on the far right though!). We had 45 kids this year – definitely better than last year when it was 15 below celsius and snowy.

That being said – the Artful Gamer is holding a special Halloween contest. If you can guess the three games represented in my pumpkins correctly, I’ll enter you into a draw. The winner of the draw will receive one of three downloadable games from the Introversion Software online store (valued at approximately $20 USD). You can choose between Defcon, Darwinia, or Uplink. I own all three of these games in fact… and each definitely has a unique charm. Let’s continue to support indie game developers – especially the good ones!

Entries will be accepted from now until Midnight, Friday, November 2nd (GMT – 7). That gives you 2 full days to figure this out. E-mail your contest entry to: chris {@t} artfulgamer {d0t} com

The winner will be announced on Monday, November 5th. Thank you for continuing to read AG – your support and comments keep this site alive and well.

Most people who grew up playing The Oregon Trail played it because their teacher had an Apple //e hidden in the corner of their grade 4 classroom along with a host of other MECC games such as Odell Lake and Number Munchers. But the real draw was always the Oregon Trail: five kids would pile around the green-on-black Apple monitor and yell commands to the wagon driver, then anticipate who would die of cholera or dysentery first (and subsequently fight over what would appear on the tombstone). I remember someone saying that if you purchased only spare wagon wheels and no food (or bullets), you could kill your whole wagon train within a few days on the trail.

In The Thule Trail, the developers got everything right – from the dithered color graphics, to the 1-bit mono sound, simple yet clever game mechanics, and a sense of humor that does justice to road trips. The only thing I really miss is watching andy die of dysentery (peperony and chease!)

I sent an e-mail over to the folks at Periscopic asking if any of their team would have time for a quick interview – hopefully we’ll hear something back! In the mean time, I’m going to continue writing a short article on The Oregon Trail as both a great game and an educational tool.

Why don’t mainstream media outlets like Time and the NYTimes get video games? Why do they so regularly and predictably fail to get beyond the worn out Pong / Pac-Man / Mario reference points?

I think it’s because most of them rely on a 19th century model of journalism that continues to define what the news looks like today. Journalists and editors tend to use three basic criteria when determining what they will deem “newsworthy” – conflict, novelty, and prominence. J-School 101 dictates that a story about a video game is worth writing only if it meets one or more of these standards. {more here}

And not to mention prolific! Somehow he manages to pump out an article every day. His articles cover the entire gamut of video game culture – from mainstream games, to indie games, design and production, artwork, storytelling, politics, and (you’ll find) … his loathing for Halo 3 (agreed!). And mostly importantly – it’s refreshing to find an academic who actually has a history of playing video games [and still plays regularly] and is not just a ‘ludological theoretician’!

Anyhoo, I’m not trying to up-sell you here – The Brainy Gamer speaks for itself and I’m enjoying the reading so far.

As for the Artful Gamer – I apologize for the large lag between posts. I’ve been recruited to serve as the Best Man at a wedding for a friend of mine, and those duties (aside from marking 10000 midterm exams) have obliterated my opportunities to write. Coming soon is my review of Ultima VIII: Pagan, an interview with the creator of now-defunct indie MMORPG “Omega Syndrome”, and a short article on pencil’n'paper roleplaying games.

I recently came across a post over at Jeff Tunnell’s blog that reminds game designers how important it is to have many design ideas in mind, rather than just relying on a single idea. It made me think about one of the central problems in modern mainstream game development: a lack of fresh, innovative games. As I was writing this article, GameSetWatch posted footage from the Independent Games Summit of an “Innovation in Independent Games” panel consisting of Jenova Chen, Jonathan Mak, Kyle Gabler, and Jonathan Blow. After listening to the hour-long discussion, I decided to integrate many of the comments into this article, because they were inherently relevant and profound for any discussion of the creative process.

While many people assume that independent game developers, by virtue of being unconstrained by publishers, auto-magically have creative, interesting ideas. However, as I hope to demonstrate – creative innovation is far from guaranteed simply because we’re ‘indies’, and requires a certain kind of developer or team to come up with something worth playing.

First off, I want to be very upfront about the nature of this piece: If you’re an indie game developer (like myself) this article is not meant to take the wind out of your sails – it’s meant to encourage, challenge and implore you to hone your creative ideas before you start working on your next platformer, arcade shooter, or Zuma clone. Pursue a game that you’re passionate about – something that you want to play – and not something that you imagine your audience might want to play. And if you want to play Zuma meets Bubble Bobble – by all means go for it.

On any given day, you can head over to TIGSource, Indygamer or JayisGames and find a great majority of indie-made games with minimal creative insights. These are often attempts at producing something ‘innovative’ or ‘artistic’ and become formulaic: they either (a) ape pre-existing genres without any creative insight, or worse (b) try to break all design conventions just for the sake of breaking them and end up with an uninteresting mess.

Creativity and Indie Developers

So if you do want to work creatively, and produce games from ideas that you are interested in, here’s how according to some of the current indie developers (my comments are in grey):

According to Jeff Tunnell:

“You should have literally hundreds of them floating around in your head. Even better, you should have hundreds of them written in your own design portfolio or journal.”

“One idea won’t cut it. What if you can’t get other people on your team to buy into your one idea? What if the technology is not available to get your one idea done? What if you can’t find a publisher if your idea is too big to fund yourself? There are many, many reasons why you need a LOT of game ideas.” And finally, Tunnell suggests that designers must always be on the prowl for creative inspiration from other artists.

Game designers can naturally find their inspiration in other games – but Tunnell makes us think a bit broader and implicitly suggests that all forms of creative expression are valid sources of inspiration. Often, I find that this is the weakest point among many developers, a fundamental lack of creative depth caused by:

1. A lack of experience with more than a single game genre (ie. arcade shooters).
2. (More broadly): A lack of familiarity with other forms of entertainment (ie. film, music, theatre).
3. (And even more broadly): Too few personal experiences to draw upon period – what we might call a ‘sheltered life’.

Turning back to Tunnell’s suggestions, where do creative ideas come from? Creativity is inspired by other creative works and creative people, and more generally from a broad array of (meaningful) personal experiences. For the moment, this may sound a bit too unspecific, so let’s move on to another developer.

Jenova Chen from the Innovation in Independent Games panel:

Jenova’s comments and presentation focus primarily upon the role of ‘feelings’ in game development. In his presentation, he turns to modern film and shows how the genres have developed into broad categories all separable by the general ‘feeling’ that they express: action, dramas, comedies, etc. He suggests that video game genres follow a different categorization system, one based in technological differences: First-Person Shooters, ‘Shmups, MMORPGs, etc. With that in mind, Jenova suggests that instead of designing for technological innovation, designers must instead “design for feeling” and “design for entertainment”. And in terms of his personal style, he prefers to design with a very broad audience in mind and not necessarily ‘art’.

If we accept the argument that video games and films are inherently different on the basis of their underlying genre metaphors (‘feeling’ vs. ‘technology’), we at least can make a distinction between games that have been designed for a technological appeal (ie. BioShock) and games that were designed to capture a certain feeling (ie. X-COM: Terror from the Deep). In that way, the audience playing your game is separable into two kinds: those who are entertained by technological innovation and those who enjoy emotional expressivity. (Keep in mind that these distinctions are only conceptual, because of course all games are a mix of technology and expression – but the idea is to work with the concepts he’s presented us with)

Pictured above: Screenshot from X-COM: UFO Defense courtesy of Mobygames.

Returning to Jenova’s argument – he suggests that if we design games they must be unified or created in terms of the feelings the author her/himself feels. For instance, to capture ‘fear’ or ‘terror’ in the X-COM series, the designers/artists/musicians had to all understand the underlying feeling of the game: the aliens have attacked Earth, and their only goal is the complete annihilation of humans. In that way, the entire game is designed around fear: the music is dark and brooding, insect-like aliens sneak up on the player using the ‘fog of war’, your UFO strike team can lose morale – panic and drop their weapons, and so on. Games that were developed with a unifying feeling in mind often inspire the same feelings in the player – and in that way are successful (anyone can remember the terror of playing DOOM with a pair of headphones on in a dark room).

Is that enough, then? Are ‘creative’ games simply only mediums for the expression of a single personal feeling for the entertainment of an audience? Now, I don’t think Jenova is suggesting that only one feeling should underly a game (since he said “feelings”) – but the large majority of modern films are dominated by single feelings. I’ll come back to this in later comments, because I believe that setting Hollywood films as the gold standard for ‘feelings’ in games leads us down a garden path to emotional superficiality and didactic storytelling.

Jonathan Mak from the Innovation in Independent Games panel:

Jon, in his markedly passionate and direct Torontonian style, turns us toward the importance of “individual expression” in game development. He suggests that worrying about [technological] innovation does not matter, since the technologies that are used in games are simply tools used to further an expressive agenda. In that way, he says that if games are designed with a technology as the focus of the development, “the game won’t be about you anymore.” He then suggests that if games are a form of individual expression, you must “follow your own inspirations” and trust your own personal judgment and tastes when you design your game. What if other people don’t like your game? Fuck ‘em – “You can’t be afraid to piss people off. You have to piss someone off!” because then (he suggests) your work cannot be ignored. To thine own self be true.

Finally, in terms of practical advice – Jon simply says that you should “Go home. Don’t innovate. Play lots of games. Find the ones you like, and make a game based on that.” And as a side note, it is interesting that Everyday Shooter was developed as a blend of his interests in music and games – albums and arcade shooters.

So, what can we learn from Jon? Are games really only about “me” the designer? Should the audience be ignored? This is a rather different style than Jenova, who says that he prefers to work with an audience already in mind when he makes a game.

Pictured above: Still frame from Frank Miller’s Sin City.

According to Jon, innovation doesn’t matter. He says that indie games are about the developer themselves – and not about their potential playability by the unseen masses. Unfortunately, this is where the details become sticky, because (according to edenb in the TIGsouce article comments section), while “innovation shouldn’t be the end goal, it does help us accomplish feelings that we couldn’t otherwise portray“. After all, certain camera techniques and graphic art styles did give Sin City an overall feeling that would be unportrayable using say – a handicam and pencil crayons. However, there is a grain to truth to Jon’s challenge, because there is no such thing as anything completely ‘individual’ in the world. We all exist as persons – we all eat, sleep (well, most of us), shit, laugh and cry. By focusing on our own personal humanity, we can necessarily (and accidentally!) strike a chord with other like-minded human beings; after all, Jon is a gamer and a music lover – his tastes are inherently human tastes. What he cautions against, I think, is treating a game like a product and forgetting that the person making it is themselves a living, breathing, joyful creature with their own interests.

Returning to Jon’s final comment (Go home, play games, make a game), we can now appreciate the importance of finding creative inspiration in things we ‘like’. While I certainly agree that a game designer must have a passion for gaming, it does not seem so wise to simply play games that we ‘like’. If I were to only watch films like that ‘like’, I would be off to see the next craptacular Jerry Bruckheimer marathon on TV. This may seem like a petty semantic distinction, but my ‘likes’ are often much different from my ‘loves’ or my ‘passions’. And furthermore, doing only things that you like (aka. hedonism) is a sure way of producing shallow pieces of art, since we truly do need a broad array of experiences to draw upon in order to give our works some depth. Want my advice? Play some games that you’ll hate. Play games from genres you’d never normally touch. The ones that stick out in your memory as being meaningful in any way are the ones you should have in mind when you make games.

Jonathan Blow from the Innovation in Independent Games panel:

Jonathan starts with the idea that no “great work” was great because it was innovative – it was because of something “deep inside the work”; those who aspire for innovation often produce creations that are ‘gimmicky’ or shallow. His overall argument is that while technological innovation can become more and more refined, it does not provide us with the “depth” necessary to become “relevant to humanity”.

In terms of practical suggestions, Jonathan tells us that “good” ideas should be thrown away because it’s the “great” ideas – the ideas that we become enamored with – that should be explored and deepened. He also says that “You know you’re doing something right when you end up discarding the idea you started with, and doing something different that you got to by following that idea.”

Similar to the previous panelists, Blow tends to focus on a divide between technological innovation and depth. What he does not do, unfortunately, is tell us what he means by “depth”. The depth of feelings? Stories? Concepts? Thoughts? Ideas? People? Experiences? All of these concepts involve depth, I’d argue.

The idea of designing for “depth” is controversial. According to Lyx (in the TIGSource article comments), “You need to understand how to express this deep meaning efficiently to others. As already shown in the previous example: it is not enough it to the player on a conceptual level. It is not enough to transmit a concept – you must be able to transmit what it feels, smalls and looks like…. not just by simply drawing it on the screen, thats not what i’m talking about“, and, “unless the receiver of the message accepts the message, it wont work.” Lyx seems to suggest that meanings/feelings are first ‘selected’ by the designer, identified, and then must be ‘transmitted’ to the player.

This kind of philosophy treats artistic works as an engineering problem, and puts the complete power of the work in the artist’s hands – turning the wayward designer into a god and the audience into his followers. This is, of course, non-sense. When artists beat their audiences over the head with a concept or ‘message’ they have to tell, audiences find it preachy and insulting. I often find films that engineer feelings for the audience shallow and uninsightful, something that acclaimed directors like Steven Spielberg are horrendously guilty of: treating the audiences like puppets. What does this mean for game designers? If they shoot for this level of depth, their games may have some feeling to them (ie. DOOM was scary!) but that’s all that they will ever have – they never end up penetrating much deeper into the human experience. However, if designers allow themselves to survey a broader emotional scenery, they hand over the interpretive responsibility to the audience instead of hoarding it for themselves. This is the pinnacle of creative achievement, in my opinion – because it stimulates the audience’s imagination and allows them to feel in ways that were not necessarily intended by the author. This is a truer ‘depth’. More on this topic must be said, but for now it should be enough to say that depth comes from the imagination of both the player and the designer, and not from simply from clever engineering.

My Unsolicited Thoughts on Ideas and the Imagination

Pictured above: poster for Satoshi Kon’s Paprika. Not pictured: Any indie game that I can think of with as much imaginative depth.

I often find that maintaining a creative critical-mass only can happen when I’m thinking actively about game design, and allowing my mind to freely roam. Sometimes I entertain silly ideas; ridiculous ideas; boring ideas. Other times I’m reading more serious material, and I find myself thinking about the human condition and the circumstances of our existence. Sometimes I find myself reminiscing about meaningful childhood memories, and imagine the kinds of games that I would have wanted to play as a child. But whatever the circumstances, I’ve always found myself tying my trains of thoughts back into games and how games can be experienced.

One of the problems with this kind of free-associative mode was that I used to lose track of inspired design concepts as I was working them out in my head. That’s why having a notebook or voice recorder is handy – they allow you to explore your associative thoughts on paper (or out loud), and eventually commit them as more formalized concepts. And later, those loose design concepts can then be further refined, and committed to a design document – eventually resulting in a full game design.

Some of my best ideas have come from mundane situations like washing the dishes, brushing my teeth, watching The Simpsons, listening to music, and playing retro games. Potentially any human activity can be modeled into a design concept, but the designer’s emotional sensitivities must ultimately decide if the design concept is enjoyable, meaningful, or downright fun. This is why having a broad array of experiences to draw upon is so important – because the collective fusion of all of these experiences is what goes into a game whether we realize it or not.

Finally, I cannot stress the importance of finding other like-minded folks to bounce ideas off of – this is something that wasn’t mentioned by any of the aforementioned developers. In my case, I’m lucky to have met my creative doppelganger in graduate school and we spend many hours each week discussing potential design concepts, storylines, and programming models. We free-associate together and take turns playing with our imaginations, freely trading ideas back and forth. Eventually both of us end up at a place where we say “This sounds fucking great! Let’s make this game right now!” The ideas that we both find promising or interesting are then committed to the company wiki, and later can be tweaked or rewritten. Sometimes these concepts begin to expand and aggregate with other concepts, and eventually we have a full-length design document. Other times these ideas just sit for months on the wiki, neglected or ignored. Either way – as Tunnell said – hundreds and thousands of ideas are floating in the air at any one moment. In the end, we don’t discount or disparage any single idea, because while it may seem silly or meaningless alone, it can sometimes become integrated with other ideas to become part of a larger game.

Making meaningful games is not so much about making games that we ‘like’ or we find ‘entertaining’ necessarily (since feeling angry or depressed doesn’t fit into either of those categories very well) – it’s more generally about finding meanings that accord with human experience. Engineering, tweaking, and re-design all come after we allow our imaginations to roam freely.