Can games be art?

It all started back in October of 2005, when Ebert reviewed the film Doom and gave it one star. A few days later, a gamer wrote to Ebert and insisted that he had missed the point---Doom wasn't supposed to be a good, watchable film; it was supposed to be a tribute to a seminal video game. The Kurosawa film Rashomon was mentioned as comparable in terms of---shall we say---seminality to the game Doom. In response, Ebert planted the seed that would eventually grow into the vine that we are all still climbing. He wrote, "As long as there is a great movie unseen or a great book unread, I will continue to be unable to find the time to play video games."

A few weeks later, Ebert expanded on that point, claiming that books and films are better mediums than games. A few weeks after that, Ebert dropped his first explicit "games can't be art" bombshell, citing the lack of authorial control, due to player choice, as the hurdle that would forever keep games from catching up with art-capable mediums like literature and film.

Ebert kept quiet about games for a year or so after that. Then along came Mr. Clive Barker, who, somewhat clumsily, claimed that games can be art (a video of his full keynote would be nice---anyone got it?). Just last week, Ebert responded to Barker in mock-dialog style, somewhat revising his former position: games can be art, but not high art, as he understands it. Kotaku just posted a worthwhile feature that responds to Ebert's latest.

It's time for me to chime in here, and I'm going to continue the mock-dialog style. I don't know Ebert, but I feel like I do, because I've been reading his reviews for years. This man knows film, and I respect him deeply.

Read the full debate over at Arthouse Games.

Labels: ar0707, arthouse

Paradroid is a game by Andrew Braybrook that was originally released for the Commodore 64 in 1985.

Yes, I am writing a review of a 22-year-old game. Yes, this retro-review deviates a bit from standard Arthouse Games practice. I justify this deviation with the following two excuses: 1. I never played the game when I was a kid, so it's new to me (and probably new to many of you, too); and 2. there's very little modern grist for the Arthouse Games mill (art games are few and far between). That said, I'm not sure that Paradroid is an art game---more like an interesting landmark in the art of game design.

Okay, first things first: how can you play it? Paradroid was re-released as Paradroid 90 on the Atari and some other platforms. It has a few modern remakes for PCs (see http://paradroid.sf.net, http://paradroid.ovine.net/, and http://freedroid.sourceforge.net/). All of these remakes differ slightly from the original in graphics or gameplay, but they're probably the easiest way to get a taste of Paradroid on a modern computer.

This review covers the original 1985 version for the C64---you can download a disk image of that here: paradroid.zip. I played it on the VICE emulator, and I had to download C64 system ROMS separately (from this package), since they no longer ship with VICE for legal reasons. I unzipped the paradroi.d64 disk image, mounted it as a disk in VICE, and auto-started the program on the disk. I had a bit of trouble here and there along the way (Paradroid is looking for a joystick---or emulated joystick---on port 2), but I was able to get Paradroid running smoothly with a bit of perseverance. If this process sounds too involved, try one of the remakes linked above.

Read the full review over at Arthouse Games.

Name: Paradroid
Developer: Andrew Braybrook
Year: 1985
Platform: Commodore 64
Type: Abandonware

Labels: arthouse, c0607

I recently had the chance to interview Rod Humble, creator of the widely-blogged artgame The Marriage. Rod has been working in the industry since 1990 and is currently Head of Sims Studio at EA. In the interview, he discusses his reaction to the recent buzz, along with his views on games as art. He gives us a list of interesting games worth trying (Floor 13 is now on my to-play list), and even shows us one of his paintings.

You can read full interview over at Arthouse Games.

Labels: arthouse

Rod Humble just released his experimental artgame The Marriage for public consumption. With no sound, no music, and barely-there graphics, this game is clearly not meant to dazzle your senses, but instead meant to intrigue your mind (and its low-fi nature is not a cop-out---Rod Humble's day job is at EA, so he has plenty of experience making high-fi games). The core question: What does the game mean? Rod answers that question somewhat on the download page, but I suggest you play the game before reading his explanation.

I have played The Marriage quite a bit, and so has my spouse. We've spent some time talking about what it might mean. The game, and my experience discussing it, have reminded me of experiences at galleries of modern art---for each piece, I stare at it, scratch my head a bit, and try to mine the piece for meaning of some kind. I'm also reminded of watching a David Lynch movie with friends---we'd spend the rest of the evening discussing what the movie might mean.

With The Marriage, we don't start that meaning-search empty handed. We've got the title, and we've also got Rod's one-liner: "The game is my expression of how a marriage feels."

I'm not sure if I will ever write a review of this one, because the game's success or failure depends so much on the player's personal temperament and taste. I'm posting it here as a point of discussion. Please add your thoughts in the comment roll over at Arthouse Games.

Name: The Marriage
Developer: Rod Humble
Category: Artgame
Type: Freeware
Size: 530 KB

Labels: arthouse

For those who are thirsting for more Braid coverage (hey, it's been 15 days):

or

For those who want to see a response to the recent comment debate straight from the horse's mouth:

or

For those of you who want to read something about Braid that contains far fewer spoilers than my recent preview:

I give you an interview with the creator of Braid.

Labels: arthouse

Jonathan Blow's game Braid has been much talked about but little played, since he has been keeping the game under very tight wraps. Braid won the award for Innovation in Game Design at the 2006 IGF, but no demo was posted. Braid was discussed at the 2006 Experimental Gameplay Workshop, but no demo was posted. Braid was entered into the 2007 IGF and Slamdance festivals, and still no demo was posted.

Braid was selected as a Slamdance finalist, and I was heading to Slamdance too, so it seemed like I was finally going to get to play this elusive game. Alas, controversy erupted (when SCMRPG was pulled from the finalist list), and Jon pulled his game from the festival in protest. I wasn't going to play-test Braid at Slamdance after all.

However, somewhere along the way, Jon was nice enough to send me a snapshot build for review purposes. That build, version 0.847, is the subject of this preview. The build is a little rough around the edges, with place-holder graphics still lurking in the later levels and some performance issues in the early levels that were nearly complete (on a 1.9 GHz machine with a GeForce4 graphics card, this 2D platform game saw major slow-down when played at it's ideal resolution). Even with this rough build, I was able to draw one simple conclusion without doubts or reservations: Braid is the most innovative and interesting game I have ever played.

Braid has the potential to change the way you think about reality. It will certainly change the way you think about video games. In this preview, I will explain why it has this power, using detailed examples from the game. However, part of the game's interest lies in it's surprise factor: there is great joy to be had in discovering just how clever this game is for yourself. In fact, I am glad that I never read a preview of this game before I was lucky enough to play it myself. All I knew, and all you should know if you want the full experience, is that Braid is a 2D platform game in which the player manipulates the flow of time. If you're willing to wait for an official release, you should stop reading here.

You can read the full preview at Arthouse Games.

Name: Braid
Developer: Number None
Category: 2D Platformer
Type: License not yet set
Size: 120 MB (download not available to public)

Labels: arthouse

Version 7 of my game Cultivation is available as a free download.

Cultivation explores the social interactions within a gardening community. You lead one family of gardeners, starting with a single individual, and wise choices can keep your genetic line from extinction. While breeding plants, eating, and mating, your actions impact your neighbors, and the social balance sways between conflict and compromise.

Cultivation features dynamic graphics that are procedurally-generated using genetic representations and cross-breeding. In other words, game objects are "grown" in real-time instead of being hand-painted or hard-coded. Each plant and gardener in the game is unique in terms of both its appearance and behavior.

For those of you who have found Cultivation to be confusing in the past, the game now includes an extensive in-game tutorial. The user interface has also been polished quite a bit, and one crash has been fixed. This is the version that I will be screening at Slamdance this coming weekend, so it counts as a "final" version.

Cultivation is certainly an unusual game, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's good. From my experience, some people absolutely love it, while others absolutely hate it. I'm pretty happy with this reaction (much better, I suppose, than everyone simply agreeing to shrug their shoulders about it). It's intended to be an "art game," after all, and mixed reactions go with that territory.

This seems like an appropriate time to explain a bit about what I was trying to do with Cultivation. You can read the full article at Arthouse Games.

Name: Cultivation
Developer: Jason Rohrer
Category: Social gardening strategy
Type: Freeware
Size: 426 KB

Labels: arthouse

This is the seventh in a series of Slamdance Finalist reviews (Tim posted a brief review of this game back in April 2006).

Steam Brigade is described by its creators as a 2D, side-scrolling real-time strategy (RTS) game.

Those who have played other RTS games are familiar with the 2d, top-down playfield that is standard for the genre. Even when RTS games "go 3D" (as most mainstream RTS games have in recent years), they are still fundamentally 2D games---you command units that move around on a planar terrain surface.

With Steam Brigade, the dimensionality is reduced by a notch. In fact, I see it as a 1D RTS game. Your units move on a linear playfield comprised of a single platform, like what you might see in a side-scrolling platform game. In a traditional 2D RTS, the "front" for the battle is often a line or a curve (with red units on one side of the front, and blue units on the other, for example). In Steam Brigade, the front is reduced to a single point on the battle platform.

Design limitations can often clear fertile ground for creativity, and such limitations were certainly fruitful in the design of Steam Brigade. I'm fond of pointing out that jumping to 3D adds nothing to strategy games (or most other games, for that matter). Quite often, especially in RTS games, a 3D presentation simply gets in the way (as the camera's view is obscured by terrain elements). After exploring Steam Brigade, I'm moving toward the belief that a second dimension is unnecessary, too. Here, we have real-time strategy stripped down to the bare minimum: picking the best group of units to thwart your enemy's group of units.

The creativity lies in the innovative mechanics that have been built on top of this basic foundation. For example, balloon bombs float silently toward the enemy line, but if they are shot down prematurely, they may drop their payload on your own ground units. Another example of great mechanics is found in the bunkers that are fixed on the battle platform. Control over a bunker is determined by a majority rule: your passing infantry units are pulled into the bunker until it is full, incrementally raising a flag of your color above the bunker. If enemy infantry enter the bunker, they lower your flag, notch by notch, and then raise a flag of their own. A bunker held by one color prevents rolling ground units of the other color from proceeding or firing past the bunker, leaving them completely open to attack.

Read the full review at Arthouse Games.

Name: Steam Brigade
Developer: Pedestrian Entertainment Inc.
Category: Strategy
Type: Demo
Size: 23.5 MB

Labels: arthouse

This is the sixth in a series of Slamdance Finalist reviews.

Super Columbine Massacre RPG! (SCMRPG) is Danny Ledonne's attempt to explore the 1999 Columbine High School massacre with a video game. In his artist's statement, Ledonne writes that he "wanted to make something that mattered" and that he "wasn’t willing to put months of scant free time into an easily forgotten adventure set in a mythical realm of dragons or spaceships." You can read his statement in full if you wish (and I would recommend that you do), but I'll distill one point from it for the purpose of this review: he was apparently aiming high with SCMRPG.

What Ledonne has given us is a full walk through the morning of the shooting, but one in which we are doing the walking as Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. You start out in Harris' bedroom with a wake-up-call from Harris' mother. Then you head to the basement to gather your gear (picking up duffle bags and propane bombs). At that point, Klebold joins you in the basement, and you move through most of the game controlling both boys as a team.

I see the game as being comprised of three distinct "acts." During the first act, the goal is to gather the gear, drive to school, and plant bombs in the cafeteria without getting caught. This act plays much like an adventure game---you pick up necessary items, bring them to prescribed locations, and avoid run-ins with hall monitors and security cameras. None of the standard role-playing game (RPG) elements, such as experience points, are prominent during the first act.

I would say that this first part of the game is the most successful in terms of emotional power. There's something quite disturbing and moving about carrying out these preparatory actions yourself. I've watched a movie that explores Columbine (Elephant, 2003, d. Gus Van Sant), but it didn't snag me in the same way. Just hitting the spacebar to pick up those duffle bags in Harris' basement---there was an inescapable feeling that I was doing it. The sadness, loneliness, despair, and fatalism of those preparatory activities could not be ignored. Perhaps nothing could really put us inside Harris' head on his final morning, but SCMRPG sure comes close.

Read the full review at Arthouse Games.

Name: Super Columbine Massacre RPG!
Developer: Danny Ledonne
Category: RPG
Type: Freeware
Size: 27 MB

Labels: arthouse

This is the fifth in a series of Slamdance Finalist reviews.

Plasma Pong is Steve Taylor's remake of Atari's 1972 arcade game Pong, but it's a remake with a very interesting twist. Instead of batting a ball back and forth in the 2D, gravity-free vacuum of the classic, Plasma Pong moves the game into a 2D fluid field.

As the ball bounces and the paddles move, they interact with the field through simulated fluid dynamics. The state of the field is presented with both a color map (showing---I'm guessing---the fluid pressure at each point in the field) and particles that are suspended in the fluid. The suspended particles help to reveal currents, eddies, and other features of the flow. The ball is also suspended in the fluid, and its motion can be affected dramatically by the flow. As the fluid gets stirred up, the ball's motion can become quite unpredictable.

You can affect the state of the fluid with more than just the motion of your paddle, however. The left mouse button sends a stream of fluid out from the center of your paddle, while the right button sucks fluid into your paddle. The suction is strong enough to attract and retain the ball. Once the paddle fills with fluid, releasing the right mouse button creates shockwave in the fluid that hurtles the ball back into the field.

The game is visually dazzling. Yeah, it's very 2D, but I still found my jaw on the floor---it's hard to believe that a computer in 2006 can actually produce such a display.

Read the full review at Arthouse Games.

Name: Plasma Pong
Developer: Steve Taylor
Category: Classic Remake
Type: Freeware
Size: 7.41 MB

Labels: arthouse

This is part of a series of Slamdance Finalist reviews and interviews.

Book and Volume is an interactive fiction (IF) piece by Nick Montfort. If you're wondering what IF is, think of an old-school text adventure and then turn the literary craft up a few notches. This particular piece deals with information-tech and geek culture, and it has a bit of a cyberpunk flavor.

For me, reviewing IF is tough: I'm so new to the genre that almost all of it is 100%-pure magic. Here's my take on it: an almost palpable world comes to life right inside your head. Because you can explore the world actively, it feels even more compelling than what I've ever experienced while reading non-interactive fiction. The result, for me, is incredibly powerful---almost to the point of making me feel like my mind is coming unhinged.

Of course, it's what the creator does with the medium that really counts. Mr. Montfort is obviously a solid prose writer, and his descriptions are what bring the 24-block city of nTopia to life. Within this artificial world, he tells a relatively simple story, at least in terms of surface-level plot points: Some servers in the city are down, and you need to reboot them; a user needs tech support; another server is down. Beyond completing the various maintenance tasks that are assigned by your in-game boss, the rest of the story---I'll call it the sub-plot---seems to be optional.

The piece plays on a fixed in-game time schedule, and it always comes to an end eventually, no matter what choices you make. Thus, you can't get "stuck" at an obstacle half-way through that will keep you thrashing for many real-world hours. You always get an ending of one kind or another after reading for a while.

One ending, it seems, is the "winning" ending, although the piece does not make this very clear. That ending ties the whole work together with a some nice prose flourishes and a heavy dose of post-modern self-referentiality. I'm still thinking about the piece, mining the experience for meaning. Issues such as illusion, reality, creators, creations, and corporate culture are explored nicely.

Nick Montfort is not only an active IF creator, he's also the field's chief theorist. His book Twisty Little Passages was the first to analyze IF. I recently had an opportunity to interview Nick by email, and we discussed, among other things, the importance of storylines to successful games.

Read the full review and the full interview at Arthouse Games.

Name: Book and Volume
Developer: Nick Montfort
Category: Interactive Fiction
Type: Freeware
Size: 221 KB

Labels: arthouse

This is the fourth in a series of Slamdance Finalist reviews.

flOw is a game that defies genre classification. Actually, it might not be a game at all, depending on what definition we use, because there is no explicit goal. We can look at it instead as a work of interactive art, or as a digital sculpture. In fact, I can imagine it working well in a physical installation with a flat-panel, touch-sensitive screen.

In flOw, your mouse clicks control an aquatic, segmented, worm-like creature. The world is divided into a number of depth levels, and you start out near the surface. The deeper your go, the darker the water becomes.

At a given depth level, there are various small creatures (they look like diatoms or plankton) that you can eat. Each edible has a slightly different effect on your creature (some cause extra body segments to form, others cause existing body segments to expand, still others cause limbs to sprout or mandibles to become temporarily enlarged). Along with the easy-to-eat are other worm-like creatures, similar to your creature. Deeper levels contain larger creatures, and even some creatures that will try to eat your creature.

The presentation is stellar, with smooth, geometrical renderings of all the creatures. My words "segmented" and "worm-like" above should not mislead you---the feel is not creepy-crawly, but rather translucent, graceful, and flowing. I'm reminded of a jellyfish exhibit at the aquarium. All the activities in the game are accompanied by musical sounds that blend into an ambient soundtrack. Thus, we could also view flOw as a kind of experimental musical instrument. This one could make Brian Eno proud.

Read the full review at Arthouse Games.

Name: flOw
Developer: Jenova Chen
Category: Experimental
Type: Flash
Size: 8.4 MB

Labels: arthouse