Bonus Feature: Interview with Pippin Barr

I love interviewing game makers for features, but a lot of interesting conversation ends up on the cutting room floor for various reasons. If you hadn't seen it yet, I wrote a piece for Kill Screen about indie dev Pippin Barr's collaboration with superstar artist Marina Abramovic for her now-successful Kickstarter campaign to construct and open a physical space for the Marina Abramovic Institute, dedicated to long-durational artworks. Barr is making several game adaptations of both the proposed building and past Abramovic performances and I spoke with him about games, performance art, humor, and working with Abramovic. I'm presenting my conversation with Pippin Barr in full below.

Barr is most known for his humorous, often satirical games, particularly The Artist is Present, a game version of the Marina Abramovic exhibition of the same name from a couple years ago. He's also parodied the Humble Indie Bundle with his own Mumble Indie Bungle, offering a pay-what-you-want purchase model and games like Carp Life and World of Glue. Barr's output is more than just a bunch of jokes (though he does procedural comedy better than anyone), as the satirical irony often pushes into reflections on the nature of institutions and ritual behaviors.

OK, enough preamble. Here's the interview.

–

LOW CUTOFF: For a long while now, it feels like there's the art world and the game world and never the twain shall meet, but projects like your collaboration with Marina Abramovic can be seen as directly challenging that notion. Where do you feel like your work fits in this continuum of games and art? Do you see the two as having different audiences? 

Pippin Barr: The "art versus games" thing has been going on for a good long while now. There are so many strands to it, and I certainly don't feel all that qualified to talk about it in general. My usual response is something along the lines of games as a medium clearly being capable of yield "art", whether or not we think of the things that have been made so far as artworks. And further that games are, of course, not obliged to be art or like art. So much of what we mean by art is tied up in institutions and processes and procedures associated with the art world –showing in galleries, being commented on by art critics, etc. etc. etc. The culture of the art world.

As to my own work, it's hard to say. I've never explicitly positioned myself as an artist making games, but I have of course played around with the idea of it, most explicitly in Art Game. I've had various of my games shown in exhibitions at galleries around the world, which technically means I must be an artist in the art-world cultural sense, or at least acknowledged as one. But it doesn't feel like that affects me personally in terms of how I proceed with making games (I may be wrong on this). My practice (to use an art world term) has simply been to have an idea and make it. Of course, that corresponds fairly well to what artists might say they do anyway, so the whole thing is rather blurry!

Collaborating with Marina Abramovic definitely takes it to another level of art-worldness. What I appreciate most about the collaboration, though, is Marina's willingness to let it be as much about games and what they are and do as it is about performance art or art generally. That's meant spending time thinking about the intersections of the two, and how performance art and Marina's take on it might "look" in the world of a game. That's been quite rewarding.

As to audiences, I'm not always sure who the audience for my games is. First and foremost, it's me, of course, finding it funny or wanting a particular type of game to exist. Ideally I'd like anyone to play them, I generally try to make them as accessible as I can in terms of controls and instructions, and I have my parents, who are decidedly not gamers, test them, to make sure things should make sense. Again, I don't see the games as specifically speaking to an "art audience" per se. If anything, I suppose some of the games do reference other games and game culture enough that they're more fully understandable by people with a gaming background.

LCO: On games and art, I agree with you about the blurry distinctions between art and game objects, but the worlds, that is the markets, press, and enthusiast and academic communities, for the most part seem to pay little attention to one another. Yet in small bits here and there, gallery shows with games, game designers employing more studio art methods of practice, there is some convergence. Do you think this middle ground will become something larger than the niche between worlds it currently occupies? 

PB: I think it's probably inevitable, right? If nothing else, people who've grown up with games are going to be more and more likely to be comfortable positioning (some of) them as artworks they might see in a museum or gallery context. And meanwhile I think a lot of the "smaller" (e.g. not the Smithsonian, not MoMA) galleries are working through the ins and outs of actually displaying video games in a way that complements their nature (most obviously interactivity). It certainly feels to me like it's a happily expanding part of the art world. 

LCO: Many of your games, even when dealing with more serious subjects, are quite humorous. Though Marina Abramovic has certainly incorporated humor in her work at times, she and the high art world in general are often viewed from the outside as direly self-serious, if not esoterically so. How do you see humor functioning in the games you're working on for the MAI project? 

PB: Yes, this is one of the revelations of actually meeting with Marina. I had, like most people I suppose, expected her to be kind of severe or detached or... something. But in fact she's very warm, excited, funny. The humorous aspect of my games (and particularly The Artist is Present) was a big part of what had attracted her to them in the first place, and she certainly sees room within performance art and the institute itself for humour.

It's a fine line, though. I'm making a game version of the Marina Abramovic Institute, for instance. Now of course I want there to be humorous elements to be in there, as is my inclination, but it can't be too funny or it will detract from trying to communicate something genuine about the exercises people will practice in the institute. So the process of designing/building the game has been a kind of negotiation of what feels funny in the right spirit and what might push across into parody, for example.

Another side of this is that I do keep meaning to make a game or two that aren't about comedy or humorous takes on subjects. So I'm seeing some of the other exercise games as something of an opportunity to tackle a different style as well.

LCO: Humor in the MAI games sounds like an even trickier challenge the just personal humor in games in general, where it's rare enough to begin with. Adapting something like "Complaining to a Tree" already sort of sounds like a kind of satire just by the title. How do you see using a non-pixel art drawing style as playing into this, if at all? 

PB: Yes, the humour thing is tricky. I really do prefer games to have a sense of humour, but humour can turn into or be interpreted as a kind of parody or mockery rather than adding lightness and curiosity to an experience. One good thing about the sorts of exercises Marina's interested in, though, is that they're really much more about what you bring to them - they're not inherently deadly serious or ridiculous, it's about the stance of the person experiencing them. I think that's a great perspective to take, and a good one to bring across into games more and more too. As such, while something called "Complaining to a tree", which is literally about complaining to a tree, might seem ridiculous to people, it's entirely possible, I think, to commit to or accept the experience and really get something out of it. A great thing about a digital/game version is that it's even easier to try it out without the "risk" of feeling embarrassed by talking to a real tree.

LCO: It would seem that video games and performance art have many things in common. Would you say that video game players are performers, or is there a distinction to be made there?  

PB: Absolutely. That's been one of the more fun things about making the games, working through the connections between performance art and games and players. I don't necessarily think that video games are necessarily always performers (in the sense of art), but I think that a game can probably be made in such a way as to push the nature of play toward performance. In the case of the project with Marina, the emphasis is less on "performance" for the player/audience and more on an experience of reality, or ways of being in the moment, so that tension isn't such a bit thing for these games.

But yes, I like the idea of players taking the mantle of performance more seriously, or rather being allowed to do so, to have it facilitated. That was definitely the core motivator of Art Game for instance –not for me to make a specific experience for the player to go through, but rather for the player to take over and enact their own artistic talents in the world of the game and to take ownership of it. 

LCO: Do you enjoy going to art galleries and museums? Do you think these are good places to show games or do you think the inclusion of more games in such spaces would necessitate some sort of change in the way those institutions function? The MAI project seems like it could be an interesting take on an exhibition space for interactive or long-duration works like games. 

PB: I do like galleries and museums personally –saw a great Lichtenstein retrospective at the Pompidou in Paris, for instance. I haven't seen many exhibitions that touch on games though. I remember a show in Amsterdam, but that was essentially video-art based on games. And I was involved in a show in Copenhagen that displayed games, many or even most of them playable. It seemed to work pretty well actually. It traded successfully on the pleasures of watching play as well as playing.

I don't know if games would require museums/galleries to change in some sort of fundamental way, but there needs to be continued effort to allow people to play games in the spaces. And I suspect that the kinds of games that will "make sense" in museum/gallery contexts will be kind of specific too, or their creators might need to be aware of the context and make the game accordingly... or something. Certainly approaching a game in a gallery space isn't the same thing as playing on your phone or on your couch, and it's not like that's going to change.

MAI is intriguing, I agree. I don't have a great fix on how games/interactive work might actually feature at the institute as of yet, but I'm certainly hoping to have some input! 

LCO: So, Marina Abramovic is one of the biggest, most visible names in contemporary art. What was going through your mind when she initially got in touch with you? 

PB: It really was quite a shock to see an email in my inbox with the "from:" field reading "Marina Abramovic". The subject line was, appropriately enough, "Hello from Marina Abramović". Pretty great. I didn't completely believe it was genuine to be honest. I kind of felt like it was the sort of thing various of my friends might do as a joke, and of course it's not hard to fake email addresses and so on. So I took it with a grain of salt, I suppose, but also responded quite wholeheartedly in the hope that it was real... which it turned out to be. When I was finally sitting face to face with Marina over Skype, well, that was surreal. 

LCO: Was she interested in working with you on the MAI project right away or did that come later? 

PB: Some kind of collaboration was really on the table from the beginning. She'd played The Artist is Present pretty much when it came out two years ago and liked it (and even spoke about it sometimes at speaking engagements), but hadn't contacted me. I guess that with the institute and its emphasis on different routes into thinking about performance, awareness, science, technology etc., it seemed like the time to actually get in touch and try something. 

LCO: How do you like being a part of a Kickstarter campaign? Has the crowd funding format forced you to change your process at all? 

PB: It seems fine to me, but I really feel like I have total autonomy and that I don't necessarily have a great deal of "ownership" over the Kickstarter itself. I want it to succeed of course (that's why I'm participating), but I don't feel pressure concerning whether I'm part of the make-or-breakness of it, and certainly not that the backers might be disappointed by my games. I don't think they will be, but it's also the case that particularly in more of an "art context" like this it's not the case that you have the same level of consumerist desire and entitlement concerning the rewards, I suppose. 

LCO: Since the sky's the limit, it seems, on scoring collaborations with superstars (you're in the company of Jay Z and Lady Gaga now), any other artists or game devs you'd love to work with? 

PB: Hah! Yeah, I don't know. It's definitely been an interesting experience, and it's led to some very fun source material for games. If Jay Z comes knocking I might be able to be convinced to collaborate...

Blips: Death From Above

Source: The creation of Missile Command and the haunting of its creator, David Theurer
Author: Alex Rubens
Site: Polygon

We talk about "expressive games" like they're a new thing, evolved from the simple time-wasting past of the early years of video games. In a recent profile of Missile Command creator, David Theurer by Alex Rubens for Polygon, this perception is given a counter argument. Missile Command is not a complicated game to understand: bombs rain from the sky, intent on destroying the cities and military bases at the bottom of the screen, and players must launch their own missiles to destroy the bombs in mid-air before they hit the ground. As Rubens points out, this is a game about defense, where most games, even today, are about taking the offensive. Also, ultimately the game ends when players fail to protect their cities and everything blows up. The destruction is inevitable, which was meant to reflect the prescient notion that once nuclear war had been initiated, there were no real winners.

Missile Command was produced in the 80s during the Cold War, and, as a sidebar in the article mentions, was originally titled Armageddon. While Missile Command was built to be a fun game, Theurer also speaks of its "message" –a cautionary tale about the then-constant doomsday threat. Theurer's nightmares about nuclear war actually inspired the game. Fear, then, was a driving emotion in its creation. For Missile Command, Theurer even substituted the typical "game over" message for "the end," as a means of drawing more parallels to the real world conflict and the finality of nuclear destruction.

I love hearing new perspective on older games like this, since I can better appreciate where they're coming from. It's amazing how much some of the earliest video games have in common with more recent titles, with similarly small teams.

Blips: Mark Cerny Madness

Source: Mark Cerny: The Man Who Drew Up Sony's Next Game Plan
Author: Simon Parkin
Site: MIT Technology Review

Unless something dramatic happens between now and the end of the year, I won't be getting a an Xbox One of Playstation 4 at launch. That said, I look forward to owning a PS4 at some point down the road, likely when it becomes a little cheaper and has a library of interesting games readily available. Why I'm interested in PS4 over the new Xbox has a lot to do with the man who designed Sony's next console, Mark Cerny. Not only does Cerny have a 30+ year career in the industry, he also made one of my all-time favorite games, Marble Madness. Now, the PS4 doesn't come with a trackball (though I mainly played MM on the NES anyway), but it is being presented by a man who knows what he's talking about and has demonstrated a passion and vision for what he wants his console to do.

Simon Parkin recently wrote a nice profile on Cerny for the MIT Technology Review, wherein he talks about Cerny's teenage career and the differences between working for Atari in the mid-80s and Sega Japan in the late 80s and early 90s. Mark Cerny was also a driving force behind Crash Bandicoot the original Playstation icon, and Parkin notes certain stylistic similarities between that game and Cerny's PS4 title Knack. Cerny has a fascinating child prodigy career arc that has sustained him in the industry for decades. It's that kind of staying power that inspires confidence, and it's the playfulness and innovation in a game like Marble Madness that shows Cerny as a creative force. I don't know how the next console war is going to shake out, and in many ways I don't care all that much, but Mark Cerny's involvement with the PS4 assures that there's a beating heart in there somewhere.

Blips: The Real World House

Source: Creative Restriction and The New Realism
Author: Matthew Burns
Site: Magical Wasteland

Regardless of critiques and interpretations of Gone Home, the game seems to be a title worth playing. Though I haven't played it yet, I certainly intend to in the near future. Before then though, a flurry of interesting writing has surfaced on the game, and I was particularly drawn to Matthew Burns take on the game as an example of literary realism. From what I've seen of the game (about the first 20 minutes or so), the literary realist label seems to fit the bill. As Burns notes, the narrative devices are not in service of systems as is the case with most game stories, but instead characters. There's a grounded consistency to Gone Home as well. Desk drawers must be opened to see what's inside among other rudimentary actions, and your role as a character who's returning home after an extended hiatus parallel's the player's curiosity to explore an unfamiliar place.

I'm glad games like this can exist now, but I do wonder how much potential there is to take on literary realism a second, third, or fourth time. Any process repeated over time will begin to reveal it's systemic qualities which could dull the strength of a game like Gone Home's unique narrative devices. However, even if games that use literary realism lose the newness that comes with doing something totally original, there's always a place and an audience for games of that sort. Consider black and white portrait photography which occupies its own niche in the photography world. While people who've seen photographic portraits before aren't likely to be wowed by the concept of pictures of people's faces, the content of the images is what continues to draw interest. What stories are held the subject's raised eyebrow, their piercing eyes, or their inviting smile? Perhaps Gone Home's exact format of house exploration would be stale a second time around, but the method of storytelling seems primed for new tales.

Blips: Grunge Games

Source: Grunge, Grrrls and Video Games: Turning the dial for a more meaningful culture
Author: Leigh Alexander
Site: Gamasutra

"Gamer culture" is nothing if not off-putting, and I like video games, so I have to imagine there's not much incentive for those disinterested in the medium to want to join in. In a recent piece by Leigh Alexander, she states that the culture that surrounds video games needs to change if it's going to be a culture worth remembering. The parallel she draws is the grunge music counter-culture of the early 90s which was a reaction to the glam and excess of the 80s and hair bands in particular. Alexander speaks of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Rage Against The Machine, but also of Riot Grrrl bands like Sleater-Kinney and Bikini Kill, and how the spirit of that movement is carried on in the feminist DIY game scene: perhaps the medium's first true counter-culture.

Though grunge music and personal games have their share of differences, not the least of which is the change in environment from mainstream monoculture to the fragmented subsets of specialized niches we have now, there's an "against the grain" tone in both. I firmly agree with Alexander that this counter-culture is the most interesting thing happening in the games space right now, and it's disheartening the degree to which young people would rather in-fight over corporate loyalty than embrace the rebellious element.

In my opinion, this comes down to what's cool, and what's not. Grunge music was cool, but in a way that youth latched onto and adults largely repelled. For a long time, games in of themselves fulfilled the same purpose. Adults didn't understand them, and though they weren't cool in the high school clique sense, they were cool within the circle of people that appreciated them. Now, even though the grunge fad has passed, games haven't changed all that much, except for how they look and a refinement of mechanics. In games, instead of each new generation growing up with their own unique counter-culture like grunge, punk, goth, metal, or dare I say dubstep, they each get their own iteration of Mario Kart. In music, these movements are driven by youth and ambition, which stagnated in games around the time of grunge. There is an alternative scene in games right now though, and it's one worth championing.

Blips: Everybody Calm Down

Source: Plague of game dev harassment erodes industry, spurs support groups
Author: Brian Crecente
Site: Polygon

Brian Crecente has written up a great piece on the recent rise in game industry departures spurred in part by online harassment from fans, often including death threats. The article is flat-out depressing in its mini-profiles of several figures in the development community, and comes out at the end with a none-too-hopeful message. Will this problem become less of an issue over time or will it continue to get worse? Can anything really be done?

Pointing out the actions being taken by sites like Kotaku and IGN to moderate their comments and forums is a good start. Even if these are private websites, they're some of the largest game enthusiast communities, so if hate speech can be tamped down there, it sends a message about the image the gaming community is trying to project as positive.

Still, the one thing I found missing from the Polygon article was hearing from harassers. Maybe that would require a separate piece so as to not detract from the stories of the victims of this abuse, but I think getting insight into the minds of these knee-jerk hotheads would prove a helpful perspective to have. I can't fathom uttering threats like this at all, much less in the context of rebalancing a video games multiplayer mode. What triggers it? Top-down solutions are only going to get us so far. We have to sit down and speak to these *shudder* gamers. Otherwise we're just moving the class to another room and hoping the "problem kids" don't find us.

Why are the "problem kids" problematic to begin with? It might have something to do with games and the Internet, but tons of people, especially young people, engage in new media without these kinds of issues. How much of this outlandish behavior can be attributed to the nature of the medium, and how much is the result of outside factors like socioeconomic status, family/household environments, and mental health? How much is that young people have defined their own rules for online behavior because parents and other responsible adult parties don't have the experience of growing up with social media to teach proper behavior? I don't know, but I'm willing to bet that it's a factor.

Blips: Life is Short and Death is Cheap

Source: Playing With Death
Author: Rob Gallagher
Site: The New Inquiry

This piece by Rob Gallagher for The New Inquiry's Games issue is a thorough examination of how games are uniquely equipped to discuss the concept of death, yet much critical discourse on the topic is framed in literary or cinematic terms. Gallagher points out how games that use rouguelike mechanics are pushing players away from seeing life as precious, and instead as a means to some other end beyond simply staying alive. He uses Tokyo Jungle as an example, where keeping a single animal alive in the dangerous urban wasteland is futile, and the point of the game is about carrying on the bloodline. Failure to produce offspring is the ultimate death in the game, not the worldly death of a single creature.

This is an interesting point to make in light of the recent strand of "empathy games" that have popped up in the past couple years. Though admittedly a unfairly reductive term, empathy games keenly focus on the repetition and suffering of characters as they struggle to make ends meet or operate on a basic human level. The empathy game and the rouguelike aren't in direct conflict, but typically handle the death of the player character differently. XCOM: Enemy Unknown doesn't aspire for players to comprehend the personal struggles of your international collection of anti-alien mercenaries, yet players have been reported to feel tremendous remorse for the loss of combatants on the battlefield, where death is permanent and the game keeps moving forward. The attachment comes through gameplay, not the narrative of struggle.

I don't think one way of handling death is better than another here, and am glad there exists such a variety of options, but I think it's worth acknowledging how games can look at the way they inherently cheapen the reverent nature of life and death, yet understand and use those qualities to say something about the subject in ways that can't be done in other mediums.

Blips: Early Access

Source: The strange, sad anxiety of Jason Rohrer's The Castle Doctrine
Author: Leigh Alexander
Site: Gamasutra

Well, Jason Rohrer's home invasion/security game The Castle Doctrine is certainly proving to be quite the conversation starter, and it's not even out yet. The game, which centers around the titular Castle Doctrine, which is an American legal principle wherein individuals are justified in using lethal force against perceived threats inside their home puts players in the role of a paternal figure who must both fortify his home to protect his family, and break into other players' homes to steal from them. The concept of "perceived threat" is a politically charged issue with a great deal of visibility right now due to the Trayvon Martin court battle and the state of Florida's "stand your ground" law. However, Rohrer seems less interested in making public comment on this hot-button issue and instead focusing on his own personal experience as the de facto "defender" of the household.

In an enlightening profile in Gamasutra, Leigh Alexander discusses Rohrer's motivations for making The Castle Doctrine, as well as his reactions to the controversy stirred by media around his unreleased game. I feel the unreleased nature of this title is a huge caveat in the criticisms that have been leveled against the game so far. By the sound of it, players are supposed to learn to care about their family of characters though repetitive play, which is a concept that only exists and succeeds or fails in theory until we can actually play it. Likewise, Rohrer feels that critics of his game are misreading what the game is saying, and I'm inclined to refute that statement on the principle that meaning is not bound to the singular track of authorial intent, but if these critics are going off of interviews and small gameplay samples, they may indeed be misreading the work, because they're judging based on literal or conceptual fragments.

By all accounts, The Castle Doctrine seems like it'll be a pretty disturbing experience, and I'm curious to find out how prescient or out of touch it ends up being, once I can actually play it for myself.

Blips: Shhh! We're Playing Video Games

Source: At Libraries Across America, It's Game On
Author: Sami Yenigun
Site: NPR

In many libraries across the US, you can play video games as part of regular library services. In some, you can check out games to play in the library on public systems, but others allow you to old-school rent games (for free, of course) as if they were books or DVDs. This is a fascinating development and one that I hope continues to gain momentum. Video games are at a sort of crisis point as far as preservation and access to previous generations go. Having public repositories for games is a great first step. It helps to give games a historical physicality, though, from the NPR report I'm citing, libraries are mainly focusing on current hardware.

Some may object to libraries adopting games, claiming that they're just using them as a tool to bring young people to the library in hopes that they look at some books while they're there too, discounting the potential educational value of games. I don't think this is the case though, and have no problem with using games as a entry point to visiting the library. If anything, having both games and books available within the same facility then offers a more well-rounded curriculum for learning, particularly with multiplayer games or games that are played in a social context, something that the solo experience of reading rarely offers.

When I worked at the Hirshhorn Museum, this was a major goal of incorporating games into the teen center curriculum. I picked games for our collection that showed unique artistry, but also knew that just having 360 and PS3 setups on huge gorgeous screens was going to be a powerful attraction tool. The end goal was never to just get teens in the door, playing games though; that was just step one, a vital and recurring part of the process, and not simply a stepping stone. Still, we had a ton of other digital media tools that teens who would come for the games could then check out between matches and potentially, in a best case scenario, discover a passion that they never knew they had (also maybe visit the art museum proper). Our approach was to cultivate all-around new media literacy, and these forward-thinking libraries are definitely on the right track.

Blips: The Ludonarrative Dumpster

Source: Ludonarrative dissonance doesn't exist because it isn't dissonant and no one cares anyway.
Author: Robert Yang
Site: Radiator Blog

I'd highly suggest giving Robert Yang's new blog post discounting the relevance of the term "ludonarrative dissonance" a read. I provided a link above, fancy that. It's an at-times hilarious description of the dissonant nature of Bioshock Infinite that few who reviewed the game seemed to care about. Yang goes on to argue that critics and players at large don't seem bothered by ludonarrative dissonance at all anyway. We've adopted processes where we recognize "gameisms" (borrowing a term from Tom Bissell) as exceptions to the rules that would otherwise be labelled "dissonant."

One example Yang offers in Bioshock Infinite that stood out for me was the game's supposed commentary on the concept of poverty, yet as the protagonist you find money in trash cans all over the place. Now, I haven't played Infinite, so I can't comment directly on the game's execution here, but it's very effective at illustrating Yang's point. I'll be writing about the game Crypt Worlds soon, which tackles the subject of currency, including finding money in garbage bins, in an extremely thought-provoking way. In short, dumpster diving for cash isn't something most people do, but many video games make it seem normal. Crypt Worlds made me step back and consider that I was spending multiple "days" in in-game time exclusively making the rounds through town, searching garbage cans for money. I really felt like I was a scrounger in what is, in every way, a messed up place. Crypt Worlds didn't tell me it was thematically about poverty or financial systems (among other things), I perceived that through playing it.

And I think that's also part of the issue here. Games, particularly big-budget games with significant PR pushes, build up hype and preconceptions that are meant to sell the game, and these statements are given credence when it comes to critique. The "authorial intent" ingrains itself over time, even before the game is released. Games don't say, "this is about poverty," they say something about poverty, usually about the how it's unjust, conveyed by building empathetic relationships with impoverished characters. However, marketing says "this game is about poverty" in hopes that critics and players will look for it in the game. Again, I haven't played Bioshock Infinite, but I could rattle off half a dozen themes that the game supposedly wrestles with that will be impossible to unknow when/if I decide to play it someday.

I agree with Zolani Stewart's reaction in the comments that the division between "game" and "story" parts is wholly arbitrary and falsely frames critical discussion, and that the problem isn't that games need to rid themselves of dissonance or that dissonance in and of itself is enough to warrant damning critique, but if a game is, through whatever procedural means, presenting a thematic opinion that is undercut by other elements of the game, it's worth pointing out. By the sound of it, according to Yang, Bioshock Infinite undercuts itself constantly. If no one seems to notice, is it because dissonance doesn't matter or just that games and game media are proficient at drawing most players' attentions away from such discrepancies?

Blips: Final Reaction

Source: Taking A Risk
Author: Stephen Winson
Site: re/Action

The news is about a week old, but if you hadn't heard, re/Action, the video game criticism website that aimed to provide a platform for voices not heard elsewhere and pay their writers well for the work they create, did not reach their crowdfunding goal before their deadline. This means that the re/Action project is not going forward since the editors would only have proceeded if they could pay their writers what they saw as a fair rate ($200 per article). In a sort of post mortem, technical editor Stephen Winson penned a look back at the re/Action campaign, thanking all involved and continued to advocate for decent pay for writers.

I was really hoping re/Action would succeed because I thought they were onto something pretty great. Yes, they did publish a piece of mine, but I'm not speaking out of self interest here. I wouldn't have sent them a pitch had they not impressed me with their initial batch of articles and inclusive mission statement about seeking minority voices and opinions. I was just excited to be a part of it. I'd also like to note that my experience going through the re/Action editorial process was quite pleasant, and the feedback I was given was tremendously helpful in focusing an article that I struggled to keep from digging too deep into several pools of minutiae. Also, like Bit Creature, which also went under this year, I thought re/Action's website was pretty and had some nice design touches that complemented the essays contained within.

If it's any consolation, at least re/Action is still online, which gives me the opportunity to read some of the articles that I never got around to checking out. I hope people remember the re/Action campaign in the future when they consider voids in games criticism, but hopefully not as a detraction from trying something similar; on the contrary. In their IndieGoGo video, Managing Editor Andrea Shubert referred to re/Action as a "grand experiment," and in that spirit, I think even the results of an experiment that didn't turn out as planned can be useful in continuing to test the original hypothesis. So, let's pour one out for re/Action, but then, let's raise our glasses to the continued pursuit of the ideals for which it stood.

Blips: Playing It Safe

Source: Can a Playground Be Too Safe?
Author: John Tierney
Site: The New York Times

I witnessed my grade school playground transform over the years, incrementally older, simpler equipment (balance beam, rings) was replaced with more complex, safer designs made of plastic and rounded metal. Since I attended the same school from pre-kindergarten through 8th grade, I had a full 10 years to witness these changes, and while some replacements were due to decrepit equipment, particularly components made of wood, others seemed to have been made primarily with safety in mind. Injuries did occur, though mostly minor cuts and scrapes, but there was always well-known risks with the more dangerous kinds of play. Take the swing set for example. Not much harm comes from simple back and forth swinging, but using the seat as a kind of human sling to fly out at a peak angle was another matter, a risk everyone was keenly aware of.

By the sound of John Tierney's article in The New York Times, the saftifying of playgrounds has been taking place on a national level. Apparently you can't have merry-go-rounds or seesaws here in New York, which is too bad. Seems everyone is afraid of lawsuits from injuries these days, and the resulting safety upgrades have significantly cut down on the number of suits filed. However, psychologists site other negative effects of this kind of ultra-safe playground environment: without risk-taking, kids have more sheltered play experiences and are more likely to develop phobias of things like heights. Also, even though safer surfaces like rubber and wood chips reduce concussion rates, people tend to over-trust the safe nature of the surfaces and sustain minor injuries as a result.

I know this stuff isn't video games, but it is play, and it is games, and I just find the very nature of playground design fascinating. I don't think Katamari Damacy designer Keita Takahashi got to witness his playground designs come to fruition, but I'd have loved to see what he came up with.

:image credit Replicant Dreams:

Blips: Apple Bans Again

Source: Apple bans Joyful Executions iOS game that satirizes North Korea
Author: Stuart Dredge
Site: The Guardian

I can't say this is much of a surprise. Apple has rejected Joyful Executions, a satirical game where you play the leader of a North Korean execution squad, from sale in its App Store. Seeing as games like Phone Story and Sweatshop didn't pass Apple's archaic test, it was likely that Joyful Executions would be turned down as well. I really have to wonder how long Apple is going to go before changing this policy of viewing games as less appropriate venue for personal expression than other forms of media on its digital shelves. I'm sure it's burning through some goodwill from the development community even if it's not currently impacting the corporation's bottom line.

Though I assume developer 8-Bit Underpants would have loved to see their game available to the vast iOS market, these days, being rejected from the App Store brings it's own kind of publicity as well. I mean, I might not have heard of the game had it otherwise just been released quietly into a crowded marketplace. Who's to say, though as this kind of news becomes more frequent, I'm curious how perception of banned games will change. I think I smell a banned games Android Humble Bundle in the works...

Blips: The Artist's Dilemma

Source: The Talk of Magicians
Author: Elizabeth Ryerson
Site: \\...........//

There's an interesting discussion occurring around the game Corrypt by Michael Brough. The conversation, started by game dev/composer/blogger Elizabeth Ryerson, centers on the game's aesthetics, which have largely been ignored by critics in favor of talking about mechanics. Ryerson goes on to give a descriptive analysis of how Corrypt's unassuming visuals embody the spirit of the game and are perfectly fitting. She presents comments from other indie game designers like Jon Blow, Zach Gage, and Greg Wohlwend as a sort of counterpoint, that if Brough had polished his graphics a bit more that Corrypt would have been a more marketable game, and could even have become a big hit. Blow and Gage have since defended their statements on Twitter and the comments section for Ryerson's article, saying that they did not mean to advise Brough to change what Corrypt looked like, but to more generally point out how close he is to having a commercial smash if he'd so choose.

I'm not a game designer, and I won't pretend to know best practices in that marketplace, but I am an artist who's been producing work for quite a few years now, and am personally familiar with the conflict between artist integrity and marketability. I've never sold a piece of art, as much as I'd have liked to. Sometimes I've produced artworks that are purposefully impossible to sell, like site-specific installations. Anyone want 10 6' gradient prints? I'm sure you've got a empty 35' stretch of wall that would be perfect for them. Art academia has taught me to be skeptical of the art market, if not to outright despise it. This is the perceived difference between choosing an "art" or a "design" path; "fine arts" or "visual communications." It becomes easy to pin designers as artists who have sold out, given up their dreams, and sacrificed their integrity to make some money.

This is a lie, of course, but it's a lie that I've told myself in the past as I look for answers as to why what I'm doing artistically cannot sustain me financially. Serialization is an issue as well. Even if I produce a work that is totally uncompromising, producing more works using that same idea in multiples or as a series can take on an aesthetic of factory production that could be perceived to undercut the market-agnostic concepts behind the work. However, curating a consistent aesthetic is key for building an audience that can recognize my art on sight as mine. It's the same reason I have trouble taking most graffiti artists seriously; it's not that they aren't producing visually interesting work, but rather often their output is meant to be anti-establishment, yet they're entirely defined by their own unabashed brand identities.

Art games always seemed to be coming from the other side of the spectrum, as the ugly ducklings in a market-driven community that never expected to make money, but it's cool when they do. Like the painters and sculptors before them though, they're be faced with the same ethical dilemmas about which moves compromise or do not compromise a work's artistic integrity. It's the reason big-budget games about revolution or "fighting the system" always ring a bit false. They've commodified revolt into a fun ride that ultimately encourages complacency, the opposite of insurgency. Knowing this, it's only logical that I'd seek to avoid making the same mistakes.

There's got to be a middleground though, and for each person, that may be a different place. For whatever reason, I'm more comfortable producing marketable writing, and while I still like to make art out of broken golf clubs and air mattresses, I like to take pictures too, which are far more market friendly. I don't write and take photographs because those products and services are easier to sell; I just enjoy doing them. I can imagine a similar thought process in games where accessibility is a pleasant happenstance, not a soul crushing mandate. But maybe that's a bit of a dream that only a very select few people can actually capitalize on. After all, I still haven't sold any photographs and am not getting paid to write this.

Blips: Press X to Rosebud

Source: Against Kane
Author: Matthew Burns
Site: Magical Wasteland

I kind of hate that "the Citizen Kane of video games" is still a phrase game critics are wrestling with, even those who are quite adept at ripping the analogy to shreds. It's an overused metaphor that is almost always implemented lazily. For someone looking to take criticism to heart, the label of Kane-ness is an empty gesture, essentially a buzzword. Your game should innovate. Your game should change the conversation. Your game should be both of its time and timeless. You should make the Citizen Kane of video games.

Matthew Burns offered up a welcome critique from the other side of the story, where Kane-like games have been produced for years and where the film might not be the best role model for games going forward anyway. The post is brief and to the point, so I won't rehash it all here except to say that I'm mostly in agreement with Burns, but I'm also hesitant to dismiss the technical prowess of Kane in pursuit of the film's purpose.

The first achievements that come to mind when I think of Citizen Kane are indeed technical: cinematography, lighting, editing, special effects, etc. Welles pushed the studio set in directions that were truly innovative at the time. I'm still amazed by the newspaper office set, particularly the ceiling. What looks like a solid surface is actually muslin, which allowed for hidden boom-mics and low-angle indoor shots. It's incredibly clever.

Categorizing technical achievements in film as separate from what a film is about is a fallacy though, the same as it would be in game design. What is the meaning of any film minus the expressiveness of key technical components? To remove the qualities of editing techniques is to remove adjectives from a sentence. Camera-centric technical aspects of film are as much a part of the language of film as acting, if not moreso to differentiate it as a medium from live theater.

If we want to compare the expressiveness of the procedural rhetoric of games to Citizen Kane or dismiss the comparison entirely, we best understand how the film conveys meaning in every frame. It's much more holistic than just acting, dialogue, and s twist ending.

That said, dear God, let's just put this analogy out of its misery.

Blips: Jenova Chen's Journey

Source: A Journey to make Video Games into Art
Author: Laura Parker
Site; The New Yorker

Looking for more video game talk in mainstream publications? Check out The New Yorker where Laura Parker has written a delightful profile on Jenova Chen and his studio thatgamecompany's fight to complete the critically-acclaimed Journey. It's a story of struggle and going all-in on a risky idea, a company driven to bankruptcy in pursuit of an artistic vision. I'd heard about some of thatgamecompany's troubles during Journey's development, but the triumphs of the game, and the inspirational talks of now-former developers always outshone the behind-the-scenes hardships. It all kind of makes sense now though that developers who became much more well-known names because of Journey, Kellee Santiago, Chris Bell, Robin Hunicke, all left thatgamecompany once their work was finished. A company with no money can't sustain livelihoods.

I'm also delighted to hear that Jenova Chen and company have rallied new financial support and are hard at work on their next title. As someone who saw Journey as the refinement of ideas represented in thatgamecompany's two prior games, flOw and Flower, I'm eager to see which direction they go next. The question of how to improve from Journey leaves me stumped.

It's a pity the commenters on Parker's article are so hung up on continuing to debate whether games are or can be art. The article itself isn't out to stake any sort of broad claim, merely to contextualize the aspirations of Jenova Chen and his team. That's the story of Journey's development, and it's a pretty interesting one at that. Don't let the mere mention of words like "art" and "Ebert" distract you from considering the human story at the heart of the article.

Blips: Cheaters Are The Real Players

Source: Cheating: Video Games' Moral Imperative
Author: Michael Thomsen
Site: Fanzine

Cheating remains one of the most fascinating issues in video games. Where do you draw the limits between "cheating" and "following the rules?" Everyone seems to have a different answer. You've got the laws of the game world that are bound to hard code, and then you have the more flexible rulesets that are socially determined that establish a level playing field for competitive environments. Rocket jumping in first-person shooters is exploiting the game's physics system, but doing so is strictly within the original tools given to the player, which hardly seems like cheating. However, competing with a modded character that has infinite rockets or some other advantage that other players do not have, would be cheating. The differentiation for me is that the act of bending or breaking the games' laws and boundaries in itself is not cheating, but when you violate the social contract between competitors, it becomes cheating.

Michael Thomsen sees cheating, as it's more broadly defined as a general disruption of a game's restrictions, as the most ethical way to play video games. Cheating in video games is about testing boundaries, which is what humans do when they play in every other setting. Most games don't actually encourage play though, instead asking willing participants to adopt a prescribed set of actions and to execute those actions when the game tells you. Playing video games without making attempts to subvert their rules is a tremendously submissive activity. Though linear, restricted play has opportunities for developer expression and player interpretation, most games take this opportunity to force players into a time-intensive struggle that makes players perceive their rewards as sweeter because of the effort required. However, the expressive and interpretive possibilities of these struggles are limited and rarely justify the considerable time and effort required to achieve them. Thomsen argues that cheating demonstrates just how cheap these rewards are, since players can acquire them all the same without undergoing significant struggle.

Now, I've previously defended JRPG Xenoblade Chronicles' immense duration (90+ hours) as an experience that builds an empathetic relationship with characters that is not achievable in short games, and do think that had I cheated my way through the game that I would have lost that connection to the characters. Cheating makes video game playing a first-person narrative experience, and subverts the story that has been written by the game developers. Sometimes the stories told by developers are actually worth experiencing in their unaltered form, but I'd like to ammend my Xenoblade defense by stating that I can only play a game like that once every few years. Struggling through hour after hour of predetermined roadblocks is not a healthy lifestyle, but I'm willing to submit to vice every once in a while. I don't know how MMO players do it.