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.

I’ve been visiting blogs of people I respect, and one of them linked me to Chris Hecker’s website, which is infrequently updated and more of an archive at this point.  I remember hearing about his rantings given at various GDC talks, so I thought I’d poke around a bit to see what I could find.  One page was particularly interesting.  Entitled Can a Computer Make You Cry?, it featured an intriguing essay on exploring the emotional and expressive possibilities that computers can provide.  In fact, I would go so far as to say it is a manifesto.

EA Had a Manifesto?!

I was shocked to find out that the manifesto was actually an ad for Electronic Arts.  EA?!  This blew my mind.  I felt like I had stumbled upon a dusty but rare classic at the record store.  Apparently, EA had aspirations of exploring the essence of humanity using technology.  That’s definitely something I can relate to!

The Manifesto

Let’s take a look:

Why do we cry? Why do we laugh, or love, or smile? What are the touchstones of our emotions?

Until now, the people who asked such questions tended not to be the same people who ran software companies. Instead, they were writers, filmmakers, painters, musicians. They were, in the traditional sense, artists.

We’re about to change that tradition. The name of our company is Electronic Arts.

That is pretty deep for a company who devotes itself to sequels and franchises based on veteran gameplay systems.  I wonder what happened to change their course.  And what’s so striking to me is the pure truth that this ad speaks.  In fact, it’s still true today that the people who run software companies don’t usually ask those questions.  Continuing:

SOFTWARE WORTHY OF THE MINDS THAT USE IT.

We are a new association of electronic artists united by a common goal—to fulfill the enormous potential of the personal computer.

In the short term, this means transcending its present use as a facilitator of unimaginative tasks and a medium for blasting aliens. In the long term, however, we can expect a great deal more.

That first statement is interesting to me because it assumes that prior to this, software wasn’t worthy of the minds that use it.  That it was a lowly servant of its master, the human, or that it didn’t fully stimulate the human mind.  It’s amazing how things have come full circle now.  EA in general is considered something like the Wal-Mart of the games industry, almost like some necessary evil.

Notice the goals listed next.  The short term goal is to “transcend its present use as a … medium for blasting aliens” and the long term goal is something that is “a great deal more.”  At some point, EA ended up actually taking a step back from even its short term goal.  It certainly didn’t make it close to the long term goal.  Maybe they set their sights too high?  One last quote:

We’re providing a special environment for talented, independent software artists. It’s a supportive environment, in which big ideas are given room to grow. And some of America’s most respected software artists are beginning to take notice.

We think our current work reflects this very special commitment. And though we are few in number today and apart from the mainstream of the mass software marketplace, we are confident that both time and vision are on our side.

Again, it seems that EA ended up taking a pretty big step backwards.  EA is the company that has one of the worst reputations when it comes to a “special environment.”  Now certainly, much of the hate developers direct to EA is unwarranted.  But I’ve heard plenty of horror stories that confirm it can be far from special.  In addition, this section and the accompanying photo presents EA as supporting a collective of indie game developers.  If one were to take a photo of 8 popular indie game developers today, I bet it’d look pretty similar to the one in this ad (accounting for change in fashion of course).

What Happened?

All of these things beg the question:  What happened to you, EA?  This manifesto presents you as a publisher who supports a collective of indie game developers who aspire to realize the true potential of using computers to explore the depths of humanity.  Something happened along the way to derail this goal, and I’m dying to find out.  This warrants some historical research, and I hope to come back with some information of why they changed their focus.

The Word “Game”

Lastly, I’d like to touch on something that Chris Hecker picked up on in his comments about this ad.  He mentioned that the title is Can a Computer Make You Cry? and not Can a Computer Game Make You Cry? and that games aren’t mentioned much at all in this ad.

This is something that I feel pretty passionate about, which is the problem with using the term “game” all the time.  When one is developing an interactive experience, I think it’s really important to only think of the word game in the semantic sense, sort of as a necessary evil, and try to remove one’s self from all the baggage associated with games in the past.  It’s surprisingly difficult.  Depending on the idea, turning an experience into a traditional game might be a bad idea.  According to Tale of Tales, you should specifically avoid making a game if you want to reach the true potential of interactive experience – assuming that’s your goal.  I’m not really going into any more detail than that, since I’ll return to this subject more later.

However, I wanted to point out that this is another example of not assuming a good interactive experience automatically means you have a game.  I’ll continue to refer to interactive experience as “game” because the term is only four letters long.  But I certainly intend on pushing the limits of interactive experience and changing people’s perception of what that word means to them.