For the past year, I’ve been working on my own interactive projects that don’t involve game mechanics, so it was very relieving to find out there are others out there wanting to do things that are like games, but not quite games. And when ToT invited developers to join them, I saw an opportunity to be part of a like-minded community.

If the essence of what I loved about The Dig wasn’t the puzzles, why have them? Why not have only the essence of what I loved?

I’m not 100% convinced that videogames proper are holding back the full potential for expression, but I have the same gut feeling as Tale of Tales that in many cases they are.

I suppose this comes from evidence that some of my favorite “games” lately have been things that actually have very minimal game elements to them. It took some dissection of Small Worlds, Today I Die, The Majesty of Colors, and others on the notgames forum in order to come to an official conclusion on that. But if I follow the trend forward, it could be possible that by having no elements at all, the experience would be even more expressive as a creator and enjoyable as a player.

An even larger amount of evidence comes when I stop to consider the unique elements of art forms (or media if you prefer), and how videogames don’t really offer anything truly unique.  This point is part of a very long-winded essay I have yet to publish, but the short story is that the “games” part of videogames isn’t unique to videogames, and the “video” part of videogames isn’t unique to videogames.

The “video” part I’m referring to – what I like to call a virtual, fictional interactive system – is what I love most about videogames. Basically it would be fictional media that fully utilizes the computer, including its input, computation, and output. Games would be a fine addition, but from my experience playing and creating them, they often create various forms of dissonance, especially when it comes to the more artistic/story-driven ones. A game system integrated with an artistic interactive experience usually feels duct-taped on top to me.

For example, the fact that I never finished The Dig because the puzzles were hard and I got tired of them really frustrates me. The puzzles are not why I loved The Dig, although they were interesting in their own right for a little while.  To me, it begs this question: If the essence of what I loved about The Dig wasn’t the puzzles, why have them? Why not have only the essence of what I loved?

Thus, my conclusion is that it’s well worth my time to answer this fundamental question of my experience with games by doing. I will create The Dig minus its puzzles, or more specific to the game I have in mind: “Myst minus the puzzles.”

EDIT: This sounds a little misleading. I sort of got “microwaved” with a vision – a specific story idea – almost a year ago at a game jam. Since then, I’ve come up with a game idea for it, and after explaining the idea to Ted Martens, he told me what I was describing was basically Myst but without the puzzles. I realized the connection to my frustrations with The Dig after the fact.

As a final note, one of my goals as a developer is to make games (and notgames) for a variety of people, including those that are intimidated by or apathetic about games. I found this information graphic to be great motivation toward my goal, pulled from the notgames manifesto:

Make love, notgames.

Greg just wrote about Why do we do what we do? and eloquently summed up the hard-to-define reason for why we at Intuition create art:

These are all things that fester inside me and I desperately want to expel them.  Not that they’re demons of any shape, but it’s this compulsion to create that drives me.

I really like how he put this because it can be difficult to put into words.  He makes it look easy.  The only other thing I can compare this to is something from Judeo-Christian culture – the psalm.  This compulsion is why I created MEHC.  It’s not the kind of game I like to play, but I just needed to make it somehow.

Alec Holowka was kind enough to respond to Greg’s post and suggested we check out his recent post Why Art?.  I was inspired enough by both of them that my comment to both of their posts turned into this.  Check them out if you haven’t yet.

In Response To “Why Art?”

I’m very comforted and honored to be amongst such final gentlemen who can present a rational argument.  Alec makes a good point that anger about discussing art often comes from fear or misunderstanding.  I especially like the video he posted – that says as much about his point as the words that follow it.  We’re just a part of the continuum, communicating something about humanity to each other through time.  And because we are unique, the message will be different for each person.  I like that attitude.

What I got from his argument about why games are art specifically seems to be that art gives him something about life to relate to, and because games also give him something to relate to, that makes them art.  I would go even further and say that art is created (it doesn’t just happen), communicates something human (a story/idea/emotion), and is otherwise “non-functional.”  By that, I mean that the thing in question has no function other than the act of communication itself (thus separating the word from design).  And because video games have these properties, they are art, too.

I was a little confused by the statement about art being subjective, though.  Did he mean that the experience of art is subjective?  Or the work of art itself is subjective?  There is a distinction to make here, and it partially forms the basis to my answer of “Why art?”.

I believe that art can be perceived in a subjective way.  But isn’t the work of art itself – the video game in this case – an object?  It is a collection of code and binary data running on a computer of some sort with input and output.  That makes it material, existing in reality, which is objective by definition.

Furthermore, because art “speaks to us,” that seems to make it objective, too.  Something is doing the speaking, and I think the thing that speaks doesn’t really change.  It is we who change and hear different things.

Therefore, I’d say that a more specific argument would state that the perception of art is subjective, based on each of our life experiences and unique brains, while the work itself is objective.  That can explain why we can look at a film several years later and see or learn something different.  The film itself remains unchanged, but our perception of it changes.  It communicates something about humanity in a different way than before, because we understand humanity in a different way than before.

I think this distinction is important because it suggests that a work of art is unchanging, yet communicates on a level higher than normal understanding.  The fact that we can return to an object and subjectively learn something new suggests that we can’t fully comprehend the work all at once.

To me, that gives art a magical quality (in the emotional sense).  That is one of the reasons why I think it’s important to call games art.

Saving the World

In the comments of Greg’s post, Alex and Greg were discussing saving the world with art.  The notion may seem impossible to some, but I’d argue that we are living proof that it can work.  Inspiring people through creation seems to be one of the simplest (though still very hard!) ways to change the world with art.  Saving it is just a few steps away.

By making something of incredible quality that communicates to people and inspires them in a lasting way, you can inspire them to either change or to create themselves.  And them creating will often lead to change later.  Here’s a quote from Eva Zeisel to illustrate my point:

It’s very difficult to know exactly whether to live for an ideology or even to live for doing good.  But there cannot be anything wrong in making a pot, I’ll tell you.  When making a pot you can’t bring any evil into the world.

Just think about the games we’ve played that have inspired us to make games ourselves.  Those games have done good things because they have inspired us to create, and those acts of creation have changed us.  Those games have changed the world.  Saving it is just a few steps away.

In gamer lingo, it’s a 3d, physics-y, psuedo-pixel-art cannon-shooting game with a strategic probability management element.  Based on tester feedback, it seems to be pretty addictive, too.  Here’s the “official” description:

As a producer for the Japanese game show Megabank Executive Humiliation Challenge (MEHC), the nation is counting on you to keep them entertained by humiliating the best of the best in Western banking executives. Balance money-making obstacles and hire better executives to make the most profit you can in one season. Don’t let your nation down!

It’s an experiment in many ways, including emotional, commercial, and production..al, but not so much in gameplay. It’s kind of weird to look back at your baby after you’ve given birth. Sometimes you didn’t see yourself making that kind of game, and I can say that about this game.  However, I’m happy with the work I’ve done.  It’s quite a fun game.  I’d also like to thank the Gratton brothers from the Napkin Sketch collective for doing the sound.

Even though I didn’t originally see myself making this kind of game, I think in some ways I needed to make it, at least to just express my frustration with my current feelings on the nation’s economy and moreso on capitalism in general. I’ve grown increasingly dissatisfied with it as a system lately.  And maybe I needed a break from taking game design so seriously, too.

I’m hoping to find a sponsor for it by the end of the year.  And it should end up on FGL in some form or another soon for auction.  The sponsorship space seems pretty barren when it comes to Unity games, so who knows what will happen…

Hopefully this will be a big success, since we as developers really need more Unity portals out there.  I’ve been working on a couple small Unity games myself and have been a little uncertain if I would be able to shop my games around much.

I even considered e-mailing the guys at Blurst to propose putting something on their site, but it looks like they’ve already done the work required to set something like this up.

More and more, it seems like Matthew Wegner and Steve Swink at Flashbang are becoming the father figures of the indie games scene.  The IGF, the IGS, an indie games portal… What’s next, indie games philanthropy?  An indie games school?  At any rate, I salute the fine gentlemen of Flashbang for their work at building the indie community up.  A Blurst portal is simply the next step for them.

Here’s a description of Spelunky from Spelunky World:

Spelunky is a cave exploration / treasure-hunting game inspired by classic platform games and roguelikes, where the goal is to grab as much treasure from the cave as possible. Every time you play the cave’s layout will be different. Use your wits, your reflexes, and the items available to you to survive and go ever deeper! Perhaps at the end you may find what you’re looking for…

Don’t be afraid to die! But also don’t be afraid to live! Happy Spelunky-ing!

The game has received a lot of buzz for being a great game and doing such a good job of using procedural algorithms for replayability.  Taking a look at the TIGSource forums, the feedback thread has dwarfed all other threads in terms of views by more than an order of magnitude – nearly 490,000 views (as of now).  So I’m assuming there are a sizable amount of gamers that are interested in trying to run Spelunky in OS X.  Those gamers can now rejoice.

Before I get started, I have an important disclaimer:

Skip step #6 if you’re on Snow Leopard, and try the game first in step #5 before moving to step #6 if you’re on Leopard. Step 6 requires special care, so perform it at your own risk.

Overview of How to Run Spelunky in OS X

Here’s a short rundown of the steps needed to get Spelunky running:

1. Download Spelunky
2. Download and install CrossOver Games (8 or higher)
3. Set up CrossOver Games
4. Run the Spelunky config
5. Set the Spelunky settings config file values to 1,1,0,0,1,15, and 15
6. Download and install X11 2.4.0 (skip for Snow Leopard, and try running the game first)
7. Play Spelunky using CrossOver Games

Detailed Instructions

First of all, in order to run the game, you’ll need an Intel Mac. More info after the jump.

Get Spelunky

Download Spelunky and unzip it to a convenient location.

Get CrossOver Games

Download CrossOver Games (8 or higher). Double-click the DMG and drag the CrossOver app to the Apps folder (or wherever).

Set up CrossOver Games

Launch CrossOver Games.  You need to create a Windows bottle first in order to run applications. Choose the menu option Configure > Manage Bottles. Then click the + (plus) button in the lower left corner above the ? icon. Name your bottle and choose a type – I chose WinXP, but feel free to try something else and let me know if it works.  Click Create and CrossOver will take a minute or two to create a new bottle for you.

Select the Control Panel tab in the top right of the window and then select winecfg from the list.  Click the Launch selected item button under the list. Select the Graphics tab and check Emulate a virtual desktop (it will likely be unchecked). The Desktop size field will be enabled, so set a resolution that is less than your desktop, and preferably a standard resolution for compatibility with other games.  I chose 1024×768 since my laptop screen is only 900 tall. Then click OK.

Run the Spelunky config

Select the menu option Programs > Run Command. If that’s not an option, don’t worry! Select the menu option Configure > Refresh Programs Menu first. Select Run Command and it will pop up a window. In that window, click Browse and then select the config exe in the folder that was created when you unzipped Spelunky. Click Open, then click Run in the lower right of the window. You should see a window with a black background that’s the size of the resolution you set earlier. Then most likely you won’t be able to do anything.  So close the large window, which will bring up some error dialogs, prompting you to Terminate Process or otherwise click OK a lot. You should come back to the Run Command window.

Set the Spelunky config settings file values

Running the config app will have created a settings.cfg file in the same folder as config and Spelunky. Just like on Linux, you’ll want to change the values in this file.  Open settings.cfg in a text editor. There will be one value per line, most likely 1,1,0,0,3,15,15 right now.  You want to change the 3 to a 1 such that the values are now 1,1,0,0,1,15,15. Save and close the file.

I installed a newer version of X11 before double-checking that Spelunky works after this point, so feel free to try running Spelunky.  Click Browse in the Run Command window and select the Spelunky exe and Open it. Click Run and see if it works.  It will most likely run, but only show part of the screen.

Make sure to let me know if this works without X11 2.4.0 or with Snow Leopard!

Download and install X11 2.4.0 (or higher)

Assuming only changing the settings file didn’t work for you, you’re most likely in the same situation I was.  You want to download X11 2.4.0 and install it following the instructions. Keep in mind that 2.4.0 does not work in Snow Leopard. If you upgrade to Snow Leopard in the future, you’ll want to make sure X11 is installed correctly by the upgrade disc.

Play Spelunky using CrossOver Games

You should now have everything you need to play Spelunky.  You can double-click the exe in the finder, or run the game from the Run Command window.

If you want to play Spelunky in sexy zoom mode, load the System Preferences app and then click on Universal Access. Then turn the second feature Zoom on, then click Options to the right. I’ve found the best settings are to set Maximum Zoom (at the top) to 3 and Minimum Zoom to 2. Uncheck Smooth images halfway down the dialog. Toward the bottom of the dialog under When zoomed in, select the second option Only when the pointer reaches an edge. Click Done.

Now you’ll be able to zoom in using Option-Command-[=] (equals) and out using Option-Command-[-] (minus). It should zoom between 2x and 3x magnification and not using smoothing.  If smoothing is turned on anyway, just press Option-Command-[\] (the slash above the return key) to disable it.

One last note: I’ve noticed that the game runs very slowly when text is being displayed on the screen.  The game seems to run fine otherwise (so far). Have fun!

I’ve taken a few minutes here and there in the past few days to play Star Guard by Vacuum Flowers, after being introduced to it by my partner Mike via twitter. It just got frontpaged on TIGSource. Here’s an excerpt where Xander mentions his one qualm about the game:

Where as typically mines/traps would require caution and dexterity, these will simply not respawn so even if you die you can just get through the section without worrying about the consequences.

One of my favorite things about the game is Xander’s problem – i.e. it’s not a big deal at all when you die. To me, that made dying in the game fun in itself. I reveled in the fact that I could carelessly blast forward with glee, knowing that if I would die, I’d come back to the same spot in a matter of a couple seconds.

The character design is amazing, considering they’re expressed in just a few pixels.  The player has a surprising amount of life through the animations, and the Zomboid and charging rhino characters have a very distinctive personality.

Also, the game’s sound design is superb. I’m not saying that just because it’s created with SFXR, but because the sound choices made within that 8-bit limitation were very tasteful. Jumping is noticable, yet not obnoxious. The explosions are just right, the lava sounds are charming, and timer-based platforms give you a perfect feeling of urgency before they blow up.

The character design, sound design, and effects combine to form a polished feel from an otherwise minimal, low-budget aesthetic. For the past few months, I’ve been trying to take the same perspective on art direction. Vacuum Flowers has nailed it and made it look easy.

The story is presented in a minimal and pleasing way. As the image above suggests, it is simply displayed in the background of the level. There’s rarely more than 12 words to read. And the level design usually suggests what the words of the story are trying to express. It works so well that I’m sure we’ll see more of that in the future.

It’s an excellent game all around, with solid tuning to the platforming. I just wish I could get to the 8th and 9th level since there’s a random level-loading bug with the OS X version.

We’ll probably be playing Pong in tennis outfits. Actually I don’t know what would be appropriate – maybe Eliss on a Tablet PC? But I have neither an iPhone nor a tablet, so how about you show up and bring something cool.

Also, if the concept on its own wasn’t enough to bring you here, FLATFORM, an awesome DJ/VJ duo will be doing an audio-visual mix-up of the films along with records of music from the various soundtracks. Even more notable is that ReadyMade magazine will be at the party documenting how awesome it is. If enough of us show up, I bet we could convince them to publish an article about how DIY hipsters should decorate their rooms with indie gaming merch from Attract Mode.

I Always Wanted To Be A Tenenbaum is October 17th at 8pm at 1705 Pleasant St, Apartments #1 & #2.  There will be rooms themed to each film, lots of quality free food, free drinks, and free prizes. Cover is $5 if you get a freaking sweet ticket (pictured above) in advance. Send an e-mail to iheartwesanderson [at] gmail [dot] com. I’ll be going as Bert Fischer, Max Fischer’s dad in Rushmore.

The second party is called MOVEMENT BASH, held at Impromptu Studio (300 SW 5th St) on October 22nd at 6pm. The idea behind this party is to celebrate the local entrepreneurs that are doing cool stuff in the area.  Other people from around the Midwest will be coming to Des Moines for Highlight Midwest, so this is intended as a party to get them warmed up.

I figured we should show up to let them know there are devs around making games.  Like the previous party, there will be free beverages, free food, and free entertainment.  No cover either.  My friend Matt Shwery hand-screenprinted the posters I designed for MOVEMENT BASH.  It was a fun project, and I hope to put those skills to use on some game posters in the future.  Maybe it’s just me, but I fantasize about guerilla marketing antics plastering posters and stickers of indie games all over the city.

This site unfortunately doesn’t have a plant-growing Conway’s Game of Life simulation like the Flash version was going to, but it does have more accessibility and a faster way to get to the content.  I’m scratching the plant-growing itch by making a musical gardening game anyway.  More info on that in the future.

It’s a bit nostalgic/embarassing looking through the wayback machine at my site circa 2002.  I had a “news archive” since there wasn’t really the word blogging in use yet.  Heh.  And I wanted to make it like makeoutclub…oh man.  I’m much more happy with the direction I was going in June 2003. It was going to be a Flash site with little sci-fi/sleek modules that you slid out and stick in the content section to load the content. I was soooo inspired by the Zion “white room” scene in the second Matrix movie with all the switchboard people.

But hey, this site is actually finished and will actually allow people to view my work quickly.  So go check it out if you are so inclined.

In this video, I recorded myself playing through the interactive environment, which I created in Unity.  The interactive parts are triggering scenes, blooming flowers, changing gravity behavior of the spheres/particle systems, changing the brightness of trails, and moving the trail thingy during the chorus.  In hindsight, I think I have a ways to go in terms of adding more interactivity in this.  I suppose that’s what prototypes are for, though!  But I’m pretty happy with how it turned out in the end.

The music is Branches by Finn Miles, and this last weekend I performed the visuals using a gamepad while Paul Gratton of Finn Miles played the song live at our church.  Paul is a part of Napkin Sketch, a creative collective of which I am also a member.

I’m really looking forward to the next two weekends.  This coming weekend is TIGJam Midwest #2, which is a game jam event where those of us from Intuition, in addition to other developer friends, try to make games in a weekend.  The name comes from TIGSource, our favorite gaming community.  Rumor has it some of the other guys are interested in making something in Unity, so that got me even more excited than usual.

The weekend after that is the Des Moines 48 Hour Film Project, and those of us from Napkin Sketch will be participating in it once again.  That event is where we try to make a film in 48 hours after given a genre, character, line, and prop on Friday evening.  It should be a blast once again.

It has been a big struggle trying to get an acceptable visual style going. I wanted to progress from the pretty rough interactive sermon prototype. I decided to go 2.5D, and by that I mean planes/sprites in 3D space. I’ve also been learning to write my own shaders a little, though at this point I’m mostly hacking ones I find on the Unity forums.

This screenshot was taken in the editor and shows grass dynamically moving away from a cube. It’s based on a script by metervara who kindly provided it to the Unity community. I’ve shared my version, which ports his shader to Unity 2.5 and adds the ability to grow the bending effect radius when you press a key/button. The intention is to allow the player to use that ability as one means of expression for a visual instrument.

The original context I imagined this being used in is during worship at a church. So the band would be playing musical instruments and people could play visual instruments as a complement. In fact, the first usage of this prototype will be at our church. The deadline is July 12th, which I will probably (hopefully!) make. Of course, this could be used in any live music setting, and in fact the three of us are planning to do that for a future project.

Oh! To continue the visual instrument analogy, I was thinking that the Wii remote would basically be like a tambourine in that the primary action would be percussive. This led me to think about other parallels, like a melodic device. And now I have dreams of circuit bending some sort of guitar thing to use for this idea, hopefully with the help of someone more engineering savvy. Just think how sweet it would be to have a circuit bent Guitar Hero guitar that played music and visuals!