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.