CN: Anti-gamer sentiments, intellectual discussions of 'games', lots of reference quotations, Feminist sentiment
Stated Potential Conflicts of Interest: Kye is one of my closest friends at the moment, however, it's a non-monetary relationship. However, I do post all of my write up on games in her invitation only discord server as its one of only 3 places I have to share my write ups off site with people who might be users here (the other 2 being another invitation only discord, and twitter).
Policy
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reflects my favourite type of videoplay jank, you have a PNG image for a title screen with the minimum number of options to choose, and then you're dropped into a floating environment box in the middle of the sky unable to know how to interact with things, no exposition either. If you move the camera the trees will switch position and hang off the side. It takes a second to figure out what the controls are here for interacting bizarre objects. None of these are complaints against the experience though, it enhances the strangeness of the environment that much more. The Catamites' writes on the "computer memories" in play environments stating
"playing a computer game can be a strangely unmemorable activity - move here, move there, eat the cherries, etc. we keep track of a kind of vague gestalt impression of what's going on but it's hard to remember exactly what we've just been doing or why, in part because the game keeps track of that for us. in many of lilith's games this perpetual present is placed against a frozen and inscrutable memory world, and part of their power comes from playing with the back and forth between the two forces."
I think this videoplay intervenes on that usual fetchquest style of play by dropping you into a world without the grace of some expository explanation, and by the fetch quest itself being truncated. Most of play is in figuring out the nuance of controls, how to 'express' Kye.
After you get a hang of the controls, the endearing quality of this usually generic 3D RPGMaker asset type visual style sinks. Everything about these assets is bright, soothing, and melancholy. The camera panning to a fixed position on the other end of the environment box amuses you when you realize that 2/4 of them are obscured by trees.
princess/GirlSoftware argues in terms of channeling girliness that:
"if u can reimagine a game but make it girlier ur already contributing more to the medium than any guy as far as im concerned."
In this case, Kye has reimagined a feminine melancholy in what is often referred to as the 'joke game' or 'gag game'. Videoplay like You Have To Burn The Rope and Space Funeral are both games that amuse me, but quantify a more belligerent aura around their appeals of videoplay winstate hollowness.
I think this piece is snubbing false binaries of choice in games and leads to its punchline in a mellow enough way that its stings when it happens. It's a joke, but one that sees an anxious cruelty in losing a loved one and trying to find them again.
I recognize the perception as just paying lip service here, but I don't think that's the case. I think instead it's because I enjoy systems that enhance 'aliveness' and quell 'deadness'. This is a concept I've picked up from Alt Designer and professor Melos who defines these aspects as follows "An Alivegame is a game whose purpose is something to enrich the lives and humanity of those who play it. It can be as simple as a 1-hour game made for a friend's birthday." in contrast to a deadgame which is "On the other path of history, we have the endless, dead, self-consuming Deadgame Industry, exhausting the creative lives of millions on producing these empty games that might be ‘fun’ but are, mostly, just there for us to whittle away the time and leave ourselves unchanged." While I've abandoned all use of the term 'game' for the moment, as I believe its very usage advocates deadness¹ , advocating instead for something like 'play environment', 'piece', 'videoplay', etc. I believe the general idea of aliveness being found in experiences small in scale is spot on, though I disagree slightly with his humanitarian agenda. While the aspect of 'deadness' in a play experience can speak to aspects of monetization, crunch, minority hatred, etc. which are all hideous. The appreciation for aliveness has nothing for me to do with a 'human' connection. Instead, its a connection to a 'thrust' in the articulation of a play experience as doing something distinct and beautiful is usually felt here in the same way that it is for poetry in the written word. Regardless of if experience is ambiguous in function, or clear, the compactness of the form allows for all of the dangly bits to read out much more clearly. Simply put, I just think their formal quality of engagement is superior in every way, and the only reason people play 'dead' games is because of pleasure trickery and to be a 'part of the discussion'.
The play environments I engage with at this point are mainly from a site brimming of aliveness, Itchio. The aura in general there is in a more open trading of communal resources and function, with few if any of the financialized aspects that can create hierarchies that build towards deadness and gamification². I believe deadness in games can be valuable, but mainly as a reflection of current capitalist conditions in the arts rather than any innate appreciation in the 'hollowness' of the corpse. Functionally deadness can also depict to me a specific kind of lost melancholy but it has to be done very particularly. Regardless deadness is not a significant value in what I tend to pursue.
That said, aliveness doesn't completely explain my preferences either. People may wonder why I tend to like stuff like this, supposed bottom of the barrel videoplay jank because its 'obviously rushed'. Well, it's ultimately because these small PC throwaway experiences are consistently transformative and new, and allow for a large amount of comparative data to draw on in relation. I truly am getting something out of experiences like this, it's not just for show.
The only main issue I ever tend to take with small scale alive play experiences is aspects of writing, stuff like typos or weak word choice, excessive alliteration, etc. Those have been avoided here and that's good enough for me. I think its better to not see yourself as being 'tricked' or 'disappointed' by such small experiences. Nor should be any shame in conveying a world in 30 minutes or less. On the contrary, the thrust of that shame should go to audience mob vindictiveness over the grievance of 'expectations'. Anyway, I hope Kye makes more of these soon I thought it was really cute and has exactly the visual sensitivity I crave for these days.
----------------------
1. I recognize it's an extremely bizarre take on my part to throw out the term 'game' as if its a dirty word, but I think it might be useful to know I'm not alone. Iconoclast dev Chris Crawford says something similar when laying out the syllogistic logical network between 'game', 'play', and 'fun' before ultimately lampooning them, saying that
"The problem with this reasoning lies in the fact that the words "game," "play," and "fun" are in flux. They have historically been associated with the behavior of children, yet in the last century, with the creation of significant amounts of leisure time, adults have taken up play as well. This new, adult kind of play is still play by any definition, but the word "fun" doesn't quite fit the adult's experience."
He uses this analysis of the rampant fluctuation in the terminology to prod at the term 'fun' as destabilized, which I think is correct to do. This was mainly for the attempt to lampoon the 'Fun Factor' theory of design, but where does that leave 'game'. Well in my view this term is also a form of strict infantilization, if you frame such experience as a 'game' then you risk de-emphasizing their maturity into some isolated experience with no 'bioreality' (that you don't spend time sitting with it, or use your eyes to actually view it, etc). Furthermore that its also not something to be taken seriously or considered outside tabletop game functions like a win state or as if an experience is supposed to 'give' you something in particular, like you would a child. It also deemphasizes risk, traffic lights are a 'game' within the field of game theory but playing it as if its zero sum (valuing your own time at the expense of everyone else) will cause you to risk suffering and death. If everyone framed and treated traffic lights as a 'game' then people would try to 'game' the system and endanger themselves and others more in the process. In my view this 'gamification' of everyday life is a bad thing. By compelling myself to speak of exeriences as if they are games is to pull a highway robbery on what they are expressing to me. I take no judgement for people who continue to use it but I want to rid myself of it, at least for a while.
On the other hand, what about the word 'play'? Surely it's culpable of one in the same? For me, concepts of 'leisure' and 'play' at least only speak to the specific behaviors the audience has to engage in, a form of enhanced input. Flipping through channels is 'playing with the TV' you can 'play with' a movie by rewinding it, etc but neither is a 'game'. Just in the same way that I've come to a violent opinion within myself that there is no such function as 'the arts' the same is said for 'games'. They both reek of me of industry, trying to justify its habituation. That all said, in order to anchor down what we are specifically doing here is to call it a computer 'play environment' so that we can segregate it as an isolated function of experience. We can be even more word anal some other time.
2. If you would excuse the tangent, there's one exception: The GameJam. GameJam's are not in themselves a bad concept, but I take issue with the time constraints on many of them, often being only a week or two. Along with often the designation of a 'winner'. Meaning that what becomes rewarded from this structure is a small scale version of the 'crunch' hierarchy which praises the most 'polished' work of the bunch. Other parasitic process of play design, voting out all the aspects of a games work on a public pool for the 'best game'. All this crap ends up creating a lot of works on the platform with a profound amount of 'deadness' within them, while also causing an unfathomable amount of harm. At this point I find those jams utterly deplorable in function. I've explored this 'abandonment' of creative labor in my Yo! Noid 2 write up here if you're interested, despite my love of it I think it's deeply engaged with 'deadness' as they had to go back and make a more 'finalized' version of the game on its own later due to bugs etc. With that said, there are good GameJams, but they are far and few between as of now. It should also be mentioned that most games included into these more deplorable jams do end up being good games but they usually are not the 'winners' of those jams which tend inhabit the most 'deadness'.
-----------------------------
References:
Betsy Hospital Game FAQ by the Catamites http://harmonyzone.org/text/betsyhospital.html
video game feminization hypnosis by GirlSoftware
https://girlsoftware.itch.io/vgfh
Deadgames and Alivegames by Melos https://melodicambient.neocities.org/posts/2021-01-10%20Deadgames%20and%20Alivegames
Excerpt from Chris Crawford on Game Design
https://flylib.com/books/en/2.178.1.21/1/
Stated Potential Conflicts of Interest: Kye is one of my closest friends at the moment, however, it's a non-monetary relationship. However, I do post all of my write up on games in her invitation only discord server as its one of only 3 places I have to share my write ups off site with people who might be users here (the other 2 being another invitation only discord, and twitter).
Policy
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reflects my favourite type of videoplay jank, you have a PNG image for a title screen with the minimum number of options to choose, and then you're dropped into a floating environment box in the middle of the sky unable to know how to interact with things, no exposition either. If you move the camera the trees will switch position and hang off the side. It takes a second to figure out what the controls are here for interacting bizarre objects. None of these are complaints against the experience though, it enhances the strangeness of the environment that much more. The Catamites' writes on the "computer memories" in play environments stating
"playing a computer game can be a strangely unmemorable activity - move here, move there, eat the cherries, etc. we keep track of a kind of vague gestalt impression of what's going on but it's hard to remember exactly what we've just been doing or why, in part because the game keeps track of that for us. in many of lilith's games this perpetual present is placed against a frozen and inscrutable memory world, and part of their power comes from playing with the back and forth between the two forces."
I think this videoplay intervenes on that usual fetchquest style of play by dropping you into a world without the grace of some expository explanation, and by the fetch quest itself being truncated. Most of play is in figuring out the nuance of controls, how to 'express' Kye.
After you get a hang of the controls, the endearing quality of this usually generic 3D RPGMaker asset type visual style sinks. Everything about these assets is bright, soothing, and melancholy. The camera panning to a fixed position on the other end of the environment box amuses you when you realize that 2/4 of them are obscured by trees.
princess/GirlSoftware argues in terms of channeling girliness that:
"if u can reimagine a game but make it girlier ur already contributing more to the medium than any guy as far as im concerned."
In this case, Kye has reimagined a feminine melancholy in what is often referred to as the 'joke game' or 'gag game'. Videoplay like You Have To Burn The Rope and Space Funeral are both games that amuse me, but quantify a more belligerent aura around their appeals of videoplay winstate hollowness.
I think this piece is snubbing false binaries of choice in games and leads to its punchline in a mellow enough way that its stings when it happens. It's a joke, but one that sees an anxious cruelty in losing a loved one and trying to find them again.
I recognize the perception as just paying lip service here, but I don't think that's the case. I think instead it's because I enjoy systems that enhance 'aliveness' and quell 'deadness'. This is a concept I've picked up from Alt Designer and professor Melos who defines these aspects as follows "An Alivegame is a game whose purpose is something to enrich the lives and humanity of those who play it. It can be as simple as a 1-hour game made for a friend's birthday." in contrast to a deadgame which is "On the other path of history, we have the endless, dead, self-consuming Deadgame Industry, exhausting the creative lives of millions on producing these empty games that might be ‘fun’ but are, mostly, just there for us to whittle away the time and leave ourselves unchanged." While I've abandoned all use of the term 'game' for the moment, as I believe its very usage advocates deadness¹ , advocating instead for something like 'play environment', 'piece', 'videoplay', etc. I believe the general idea of aliveness being found in experiences small in scale is spot on, though I disagree slightly with his humanitarian agenda. While the aspect of 'deadness' in a play experience can speak to aspects of monetization, crunch, minority hatred, etc. which are all hideous. The appreciation for aliveness has nothing for me to do with a 'human' connection. Instead, its a connection to a 'thrust' in the articulation of a play experience as doing something distinct and beautiful is usually felt here in the same way that it is for poetry in the written word. Regardless of if experience is ambiguous in function, or clear, the compactness of the form allows for all of the dangly bits to read out much more clearly. Simply put, I just think their formal quality of engagement is superior in every way, and the only reason people play 'dead' games is because of pleasure trickery and to be a 'part of the discussion'.
The play environments I engage with at this point are mainly from a site brimming of aliveness, Itchio. The aura in general there is in a more open trading of communal resources and function, with few if any of the financialized aspects that can create hierarchies that build towards deadness and gamification². I believe deadness in games can be valuable, but mainly as a reflection of current capitalist conditions in the arts rather than any innate appreciation in the 'hollowness' of the corpse. Functionally deadness can also depict to me a specific kind of lost melancholy but it has to be done very particularly. Regardless deadness is not a significant value in what I tend to pursue.
That said, aliveness doesn't completely explain my preferences either. People may wonder why I tend to like stuff like this, supposed bottom of the barrel videoplay jank because its 'obviously rushed'. Well, it's ultimately because these small PC throwaway experiences are consistently transformative and new, and allow for a large amount of comparative data to draw on in relation. I truly am getting something out of experiences like this, it's not just for show.
The only main issue I ever tend to take with small scale alive play experiences is aspects of writing, stuff like typos or weak word choice, excessive alliteration, etc. Those have been avoided here and that's good enough for me. I think its better to not see yourself as being 'tricked' or 'disappointed' by such small experiences. Nor should be any shame in conveying a world in 30 minutes or less. On the contrary, the thrust of that shame should go to audience mob vindictiveness over the grievance of 'expectations'. Anyway, I hope Kye makes more of these soon I thought it was really cute and has exactly the visual sensitivity I crave for these days.
----------------------
1. I recognize it's an extremely bizarre take on my part to throw out the term 'game' as if its a dirty word, but I think it might be useful to know I'm not alone. Iconoclast dev Chris Crawford says something similar when laying out the syllogistic logical network between 'game', 'play', and 'fun' before ultimately lampooning them, saying that
"The problem with this reasoning lies in the fact that the words "game," "play," and "fun" are in flux. They have historically been associated with the behavior of children, yet in the last century, with the creation of significant amounts of leisure time, adults have taken up play as well. This new, adult kind of play is still play by any definition, but the word "fun" doesn't quite fit the adult's experience."
He uses this analysis of the rampant fluctuation in the terminology to prod at the term 'fun' as destabilized, which I think is correct to do. This was mainly for the attempt to lampoon the 'Fun Factor' theory of design, but where does that leave 'game'. Well in my view this term is also a form of strict infantilization, if you frame such experience as a 'game' then you risk de-emphasizing their maturity into some isolated experience with no 'bioreality' (that you don't spend time sitting with it, or use your eyes to actually view it, etc). Furthermore that its also not something to be taken seriously or considered outside tabletop game functions like a win state or as if an experience is supposed to 'give' you something in particular, like you would a child. It also deemphasizes risk, traffic lights are a 'game' within the field of game theory but playing it as if its zero sum (valuing your own time at the expense of everyone else) will cause you to risk suffering and death. If everyone framed and treated traffic lights as a 'game' then people would try to 'game' the system and endanger themselves and others more in the process. In my view this 'gamification' of everyday life is a bad thing. By compelling myself to speak of exeriences as if they are games is to pull a highway robbery on what they are expressing to me. I take no judgement for people who continue to use it but I want to rid myself of it, at least for a while.
On the other hand, what about the word 'play'? Surely it's culpable of one in the same? For me, concepts of 'leisure' and 'play' at least only speak to the specific behaviors the audience has to engage in, a form of enhanced input. Flipping through channels is 'playing with the TV' you can 'play with' a movie by rewinding it, etc but neither is a 'game'. Just in the same way that I've come to a violent opinion within myself that there is no such function as 'the arts' the same is said for 'games'. They both reek of me of industry, trying to justify its habituation. That all said, in order to anchor down what we are specifically doing here is to call it a computer 'play environment' so that we can segregate it as an isolated function of experience. We can be even more word anal some other time.
2. If you would excuse the tangent, there's one exception: The GameJam. GameJam's are not in themselves a bad concept, but I take issue with the time constraints on many of them, often being only a week or two. Along with often the designation of a 'winner'. Meaning that what becomes rewarded from this structure is a small scale version of the 'crunch' hierarchy which praises the most 'polished' work of the bunch. Other parasitic process of play design, voting out all the aspects of a games work on a public pool for the 'best game'. All this crap ends up creating a lot of works on the platform with a profound amount of 'deadness' within them, while also causing an unfathomable amount of harm. At this point I find those jams utterly deplorable in function. I've explored this 'abandonment' of creative labor in my Yo! Noid 2 write up here if you're interested, despite my love of it I think it's deeply engaged with 'deadness' as they had to go back and make a more 'finalized' version of the game on its own later due to bugs etc. With that said, there are good GameJams, but they are far and few between as of now. It should also be mentioned that most games included into these more deplorable jams do end up being good games but they usually are not the 'winners' of those jams which tend inhabit the most 'deadness'.
-----------------------------
References:
Betsy Hospital Game FAQ by the Catamites http://harmonyzone.org/text/betsyhospital.html
video game feminization hypnosis by GirlSoftware
https://girlsoftware.itch.io/vgfh
Deadgames and Alivegames by Melos https://melodicambient.neocities.org/posts/2021-01-10%20Deadgames%20and%20Alivegames
Excerpt from Chris Crawford on Game Design
https://flylib.com/books/en/2.178.1.21/1/
3 Comments
No worries dear. I had a lot of fun with this one but you'll probably like a lot of my discography. In particular you might like this Presentable Liberty Remake writeup and this Eco one. First one is a bit more a crywank and the 2nd is a similar meditation on social design. Both take on that more 'polemical' quality you might have picked up on here.
There no rush tho, just glad to see I performed this websites mental illness in a way you dont find burdensome XD
There no rush tho, just glad to see I performed this websites mental illness in a way you dont find burdensome XD
Thanks for the comment! It was nice to see. Stick around.
FemboyGenius
1 year ago