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Via Boing Boing, Xeni Jardin, Brad King and host John Moe discuss women and gaming on KUOW (Seattle)'s "The Works". That's less than half an hour to download iPodderX Lite (but otherwise, fortuitous timing-- the show starts at 8pm PST...or 9pm...ack, I'm such a podcast newbie). Also airs Saturday at 7pm!

Posted by cloo @ 06:24 PM EST [Link]

Out of all the big things I have to prep for the DiGRA conference, I'm still working in the little things: like pulling together a compilation of game tune remixes from the likes of ocr remix and vgmix. frivolous funk (a Super Mario Bros. rendition by the Frivolous Funk) is now stuck in my head, and every subsequent head I encounter. Go on...I dare you!

Posted by cloo @ 07:47 PM EST [Link]

Kim Moser's collection of quotes from video game ads makes me want to run very far away from videogames. But I won't. Just yet.

Posted by cloo @ 04:39 PM EST [Link]

An interesting and ambitious project encountered at Entermultimediale 2, agoraXchange. The game is in a sense several projects: an experiment in community game design and building, and a proof-of-concept environment for alternative social and economic structures. This will be an interesting one to keep an eye on as it evolves. How do you balance good theory and good gameplay? Is the process as utopian as the product?

Posted by cloo @ 11:19 AM EST [Link]

My experiences and conversations over the past few months have got me thinking about the role of so-called "art" games. Part of this comes from the challenge of organizing a game art exhibition: which I'm now convinced is this strange hybrid bastard creature of unknown affect and pupose. Consider:

1) Duration. How long does it take to really play a game? How long do you play a commercial game to get a feel for it? 10 hours. 40 hours. 200+ (thanks, WOW). How long do you play a game, have you EVER played a game, at an exhibition? 5 minutes? 20 whole minutes!!! Is that really playing a game...god forbid, is that research?

2) Completion. OK, point 1 was a bit unfair. It assumes the games you'd encounter are complete to the extent you would find a commercial game. And lets be honest. They're demos. They're levels. They're prototypes. Not all the time...but it seems more and more...Of course, what are the incentives to complete an art game? Curators (myself included) seem more than willing to show them at varying levels of completion...they are viewed, they are discussed, the point is made. By the time a game is "complete," it's yesterday's news. And how else are these games disseminated? Where is the EAI, or Criterion Collection for art games?

3) Mods. Now, I love mods, and have seen some wonderful, wonderful works that are mods. My concern is this: if art games are supposed to lead the pack, and truly innovate as games, shouldn't there be more fully original works? These game engines contain their own rhetoric and dictate play structure-- it seems dangerous to rely so heavily on their use.

4) Excuses. Sure, games are time intensive and difficult to make. A common response to 2 and 3. But is this an excuse in say, independent film? Would you go to a film festival and see unfinished works? Would you see festival goers walk in half way through a film, and walk out 10 minutes later?

In this context, what is the connection between art games and games in general? How are they supposed to impact, influence? Are art games becoming mere anecdotes... something we once saw, or an idea someone once had? And if so, why make them at all?

This is not a flame...it's a serious question. Where are we going with this? How can we fix this? Help!

Posted by cloo @ 07:25 PM EST [Link]

Just returned from two events in Europe: Entermultimediale 2 in Prague, and Playful Subjects in Bristol, so I have a bit of game-chat bliss right now (or jetlag: they both present the same). I think both events were successful, at least from my perspective...although I probably got a bit more out of the Prague festival given my trip to Bristol was plagued by allergies (ah well). Nonetheless, for what I hung in for, I thought there was some interesting work presented at the symposium-- not anything strongly related to game rhetoric or reality genres, but things to think about nonetheless. I quite enjoyed Helen Kennedy and Seth Giddings work on games/players as a system, and the future-scenario presentations were an interesting alternative way to present some ideas that could have just as easily been read off a paper. Which I suppose leads to a critique: written discourse is so very different from spoken discourse; why read off a paper? If the ideas are engaging enough to have written about in the first place, is it really so hard to just talk about them? Sorry, must be a cultural thing, and certainly relates to both events.


(creepy babies on Zizkov tower; kristian lukic, robert praxmarer, florian berger, and denisa kera at Entermultimediale 2; t.l.taylor sets up in the sneezy room in Bristol)

Entermultimediale 2 had it's moments of madness (and a map to venues would have been nice), but fabulous post-presentation discussion. These mixed festivals are nice, as you get a bit of a grab-bag of attendees from a range of disciplines, practices, and perspectives. I'm still mentally ranting from some of these festival discussions, so I'm sure I'll be blogging heavily over the next bit.

Posted by cloo @ 12:40 PM EST [Link]

A great post on the Playtest blog on the rhetoric of game structure, in relation to Escape from Woomera:

"This may be a little spurious, but pehaps there is an allegory here between my experience of the game and the plight of asylum seekers in my country, in the sense that the machine logic of a computer game is not unlike the cold logic of bureaucracy, it doesn’t make much sense in a human way, but is perversly rational in another."

Posted by cloo @ 03:10 PM EST [Link]

Interactive art is irritating. So begins this New York Times review of the Boston Cyberarts Festival-- and it sounds dead-on. I'm starting to liken attending a digital art exhibition to reading the initially brilliant Adbusters magazine-- after your first 3 issues, it would seem you've seen it all. To a certain extent, I know how it happens: a truly innovative work baffles the newb audience; yet another (and another and another) shiny rehash bores to tears the old crowd. Yes, the tech is finicky; but the audience is also impatient and unimaginative in engaging the works. Perhaps, as Alan Kaprow found, audiences are still just "culturally unprepared" to interact responsibly with art. And perhaps art is just culturally unprepared to interact with an audience.

Posted by cloo @ 01:36 PM EST [Link]

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