Posts from ‘Games and Art?’ Category

Lack of Seriousness

By: Derek Yu

On: December 6th, 2007

I realize that some may be irritated that I’m not posting something that’s directly about games, although I think it’s very appropriate. But forgive me if it’s not to your taste.

Kurt Vonnegut

Dan “Data” Tabar sent me a link to this, a shortened version of Kurt Vonnegut’s final interview, and told me that he found it very much in tune with his experience as a game developer. With that in mind, I read the interview, and was struck by how right he was about that. Though Vonnegut did not mention games once, you can bet that what he says rings just as true for this creative pursuit as any other.

“I’ve said that to open a novel is to arrive in a music hall and be handed a viola. You have to perform. [Laughs.] To stare at horizontal lines of phonetic symbols and Arabic numbers and to be able to put a show on in your head, it requires the reader to perform. If you can do it, you can go whaling in the South Pacific with Herman Melville, or you can watch Madame Bovary make a mess of her life in Paris. With pictures and movies, all you have to do is sit there and look at them and it happens to you.”

That’s a really interesting analogy. I feel like games, to a certain extent, hand you that viola, but are also there to play with you, and guide you through the music. In essence, it is both happening to you and you are creating it. I wonder what he would have thought of that.

Anyway, I’ve always looked up to Vonnegut. His plain way of writing and speaking, his insight, and his sense of humor have all appealed to me as an artist and a person. I hope you find some inspiration from him, too.

(Photo Source: Grant Delin/Corbis Online)

Introspect

By: Derek Yu

On: November 27th, 2007

Introspect

When a trailer begins with the words “Awake now the sleepy artist / To an insane world of strife” and there is a vicious man cooing about finger painting in the background, you know it’s probably not going to be your average mod for Unreal Tournament 2004.

Introspect puts you in control of an insane artist named Gabriel. In the game, you’ll be exploring Gabriel’s demented psyche, a metaphorical world whose visual style is influenced by American McGee’s Alice. Despite the dark themes, the game is purportedly non-violent, and trades in the flak cannons and link guns of UT2004 for an artist’s palette, which you can use to manipulate your surroundings.

Unfortunately, I can’t play the mod, but for what is ostensibly an “arthouse” game, Introspect seems like it has some actual substance.

(Source: The Random Gnome’s Lair)

Rückblende

By: Tim

On: November 27th, 2007

Rückblende is a diploma project made by Nils Deneken for a visual communications course, and was submitted as a student IGF entry this year.

The game itself is a mix of Neverhood and Samorost, and has pretty rocking music. Its 600 MB file size accounts for room transitions and cutscenes.

Web site’s currently down, probably because there’s a 1GB monthly bandwidth or something. Guess you can chalk this up as one of those super-rare games that only three people in the world would have. I can host the manual, but definitely not the entire game. (Sorry!)

Another video in the extended…

Artsy Game Incubator

By: Derek Yu

On: November 16th, 2007

Art Incubator

I really like this idea:

The Artsy Games Incubator exists to help people in Toronto that have a drive to make games, artistic talents to bring to the table, but no programming experience.
We will be making game elements and games using the emerging array of point-and-click tools that require no coding, just a Photoshop level of computer familiarity.
Based somewhat on a writer’s-circle model, we will be meeting weekly for a four week period to share our progress and give feedback to each other.
We are all about making games now!

As much as I like talking about games, the real joy comes from making them. I wish there was one of these in every city!

(Source: GameSetWatch)

Knytt Experiment

By: Terry

On: October 30th, 2007

Knytt Experiment
There’s a good chance you’ve already heard the news by now: a week or so ago Nicklas “”http://nifflas.ni2.se/“>Nifflas” Nygren announced the Knytt Experiment, a totally goal-less version of Knytt with one level, built out from the centre of an empty world with user submitted maps. After working on that for a couple of days, he cancelled the project, along with the new Knytt Stories expansion. Apparently, he feels that the success of Knytt Stories has put a lot of pressure on him to produce something at the same standard, and that it’s affecting the quality of his work. On the future of his projects, he had this to say:

I’ll definitely keep creating games, but I need to find the way back to the spirit I had when I created Knytt, when nothing mattered except just the artistic expression. One step in this is probably to keep my future projects secret. You’ll probably not even know about them before the release.

(You can read the full forum post here.)

Nevertheless, Knytt Experiment is basically finished, and released. You can find it here, on his forums. At the moment it’s quite small, but it’s growing all the time – when you first start it up, you’ll only have access to the centre room. To get the latest maps, simply select the “update world” option under each of the level types.

It’s much closer to the original Knytt than to Knytt Stories: the only differences are that the map now scrolls, that your Knytt is invincible (in fact there’s nothing to hurt him), and that he can float in the air with a balloon (making exploration a lot easier). Unfortunately there’s no music (which is a big part of the Knytt experience for me), but I guess that’ll only add to the atmosphere for some people. I played it with the Silent Hill 2 soundtrack in the background, which worked pretty well, heh.

In summary, nice work, Nicklas! I for one can’t wait to see what you come up with next, regardless of what direction you go in.

Indie Movie: We are the Strange

By: Derek Yu

On: September 10th, 2007

Wow, I’ve watched the trailer for “We are the Strange” a few times now, and it’s more bizarre with each new viewing. A blend of claymation and 3d and 2d computer graphics, We are the Strange is heavily inspired by retro gaming and probably a good amount of psychotropic substances. It also features the voice of Korean American artist David Choe and a soundtrack by a number of notable chiptunes artists.

Reminds me of The Desolate Room and the whole “B-Gaming” phenomenon! Buy the DVD, if you wish! I might!

(Source: Insert Credit)

Shadow Monsters

By: Xander

On: September 8th, 2007

shadow monsters

Kotaku have an awesome piece of footage up at the moment from GC07 which was really quite impossible to pass up posting here too. Not strictly an Indie Game, but then not exactly a game at all.

Phillip Worthington’s Shadow Monsters is essentially the greatest peripheral in the world. You simply make shadow puppets in front of a projector, and then the projector itself adds sound effects and animations to your actions. Something that in writing sounds a little underwhelming, but in action is so ridiculously cool I may actually quit my efforts for a film degree and become an official Phillip Worthington Stalker here and now. It’s pretty damn amazing, and with all the Wii’s efforts to innovate with a remote control so well chronicled, it’s pretty unbelievable that this is the first time I’ve actually heard of this. Impressive stuff.

(Thanks Kotaku for your continued greatness! Also the video is their own footage so it really didn’t feel right to just embed it here. Also I have no idea how to do that. So I guess you have one more click to make, but it’s probably the greatest click you’ve ever cluck. For True.)

Kokoromi 2.0

By: Brandon McCartin (BMcC)

On: July 30th, 2007

KKRM

On the topic of Phil Fish, Montreal-based experimental indie game development collective Kokoromi (profiled here in This Magazine) just launched their new site. It’s nice — you should check it out!

As for Fez, Phil linked me to a corrected version of the infamous “somethig” screenshot. (Which, I agree, deserves to be a meme.) Fix your lookin’ balls on it here.

…I liked the old one better.

Fifty

By: Derek Yu

On: July 1st, 2007

Squidi Numba Fiddy

Squidi has ended his “”http://www.squidi.net/three/index.php">300 game ideas in 300 days" project at 50 ideas, citing irreconcilable differences with his audience as the cause.

I feel for him, I really do, but hey, if you’re going to make something legendary, you have to be willing to put up with people. No matter what, there’re always going to be the ones who don’t like what you do or don’t think you did it right… that’s the nature of art and it will never change! You gotta have a thick skin in this business.

In the end, for every person who criticized him about the project, there were probably hundreds that really got a lot out of it and were excited to see him reach 300, myself included. It’s too bad.

EDIT: Squidi’s reply in the extended…

Hi guys. Just wanted to clear up some misunderstanding. I did not quit the three hundred ideas because of the audience. For the most part, I’ve never had a more supportive and attentive audience. I quit the three hundred because I posted a an old blog without doing a real entry (#49). At that point, I had failed the challenge by my definition of what that challenge was. So, I decided that it was now time to start working towards implementation.
However, I was planning on sharing that implementation process with people, so they could see my progress and get some insight into the development process. But I realized really quickly that I could not share that process without the process becoming affected by it. I could not even announce my intention to use Objective-C without a dozen people trying to talk me out of it. Doing something this complex is difficult enough without have to defend every decision made along the way.
I’ve decided to create in silence.

Interview: Rod Humble

By: Derek Yu

On: April 5th, 2007

Humble

Caption: “Marriage ain’t easy.” —>

You guys ever take a philosophy course in college, and there’s always that one student that liked to spend 10 minutes of explanation and name-dropping before asking the professor a really, really simple question? Just to show how many books he’s read?

This interview kind of reminds of that, but it’s actually quite interesting. Whether The Marriage succeeds as a game is questionable, but there’s no doubt (in my mind, at least) that it is a fairly important piece of indie gaming. I hope Rod continues his experiments.

Also see: The Divorce