Gaming on my Mind

Are you done with the picture yet?  Are you?  Great, on to the words.

We started an activity in class where we had to think of people who influence our work in various degrees.  In general, me ‘Grandparents' ‘ work have had a somewhat noticeable affect on my own work.  Parents, et al have a more noticeable affect, and siblings are those people who are working within the same spheres.  Here’s a bit about each draft pick:

Grandparents:

Walt Whitman - Dude lived in New Jersey, like me and Bruce Springsteen.  No for real, though, he pioneered free verse poetry, which flew in the face of the other, more stilted forms.  I love purposefully questioning and/or breaking form.

Stanley Kubrick - A masterful framer.  Literally every time I take a picture, I wonder how Kubrick would frame it and why.  I particularly like how he employed symmetry as a subtly off-putting force.

Spike Lee - Spike’s panache is evident from the get-go of every film he’s made (just look what they’re called - Spike Lee Joints ™).  He spotlights people who aren’t typically the main event on camera (while avoiding tokenism), something I hope to do as earnestly as I possibly can.

Mel Brooks - Redefined the comedy genre in film by unabashedly cracking jokes at many people’s expense.  His humor is both smart and juvenile (satirizing racism and unleashing loud farts in the same damn film).  I think my humor is along those lines.

André Breton - He wrote the Manifesto of Surrealism, a guide for a seemingly guideless artform.  Surrealism isn’t just about being weird or different.  There’s a purpose to it that is infinitely interesting to me.  I try to bottle a little bit of surrealism in most things I do.

Parents, Aunts, Uncles

Orson Welles - Welles is more than Citizen Kane.  The guy led a remarkable life punctuated by wildly creative bursts.  According to all of the clips I’ve seen of him and the hefty This is Orson Welles that I’ve been working my way through for a while, he was a tour de force.  I’m paraphrasing here, but one of the things he said about creating art (to Gregg Toland) is “if you want to know how to make something, ask someone who has never done it.”  I can’t agree more with that sentiment and relish any opportunity to break away from conventions.

Ogden Nash - He worked within defined poetry forms to create bitingly witty, usually short poems.  Here’s an example:

“Reflections On Ice-Breaking”

Candy

Is Dandy

But Liquor

Is quicker.

When I was still actively writing poetry, I too aimed to boil all wit down to a few poignant lines.  Hopefully in games I can do the same thing.

Groucho Marx - Like Brooks, he manages to straddle the line between raunchy and high-brow humor.  Whenever someone tells me I’m quick-witted, I disagree, mostly because Groucho existed and set the benchmark for that quality.

Siblings

This part was especially tough for me because I’m fairly humble.  I had to think hard about what spheres I am working in and whom I’d have the easiest time having a mutually enlightening conversation with.  I also felt it weird to put Ramiro Corbetta or Andy Wallace in this category, even though they’re my main game dev professors/mentors and a large part of the reason why I’m attending LIU Post.  I do feel I’m working within similar spheres as them, but these other folks are more closely related... I think.

Ben Esposito - aka Torah Horse, aka part of Arcane Kids.  Jane Friedhoff (someone whose work I respect) once tweeted that Ben would like Marble Madness 2: Cerny’s Revenge: Tournament Edition.  That meant a LOT to me, because I think Ben’s work is incredible and I also love the Sega Dreamcast.  Yeah, I totally take inspiration from Arcane Kids and I’d be honored to ever be in the same literal or metaphorical room as them/him/Ben/@TorahHorse

Necrophone Games - Luis and Jess made Jazzpunk, a game I wrote about at decent length last year for my Funny Games research paper.  It’s a game I come back to a lot while designing my own work because it hits the head on the comic nail almost perfectly.  The jokes come in many different varieties, but the thing they have in common is that they’re relentless.  From Point A to Point Z, there’s enough humor to keep the player occupied.  Then there are the 24 other jokes to discover if you wander off the designed path.

Tim Fowers - The boardgame designer responsible for Paperback and Burgle Bros.  I love how tight, clean, and modular his design principles are.  I also take inspiration from how utilitarian his board/box design consistently is.  Not only do Paperback and Burgle Bros. look good; they also take up a minimal amount of space on my gameshelf, something that is not totally simple to design for.  When making Highlandia, I always kept in mind how small I could possibly keep the overall package while containing a large amount of gameplay variety in the rules/components.

The Sheep’s Meow - Partly because of the surreal pun in their name, but mostly because of what they do, I consider myself ‘siblings’ with GJ and Brian.  For years I’ve tried to establish a game day once or twice a month with all of my friends.  I created a shared calendar, I emailed people, etc.  Brian and GJ create events the same way I would - with personal interactions, local flavor, and hummus and vegetables.  I know I may sound crazy in belaboring the food part of their events, but offering tasty, non-pizza snacks is something I do every time I have company, regardless of whether it’s to play games or not.  So in their design of friendly, game-centric spaces, I consider myself siblings with these fine folks.

Final thesis question:

Can interactive storytelling tools be used in a 3D space to enhance players’ understandings of intersectionality?

Description/Methodology:

Why Ink?:

At the moment, the interactive storytelling tool I’m planning on using is ink, by inkle Studios.  Ink is the scripting language behind 80 Days and Sorcery!, and has also been used in games like The Banner Saga.  I’m sticking with ink right now for a few reasons.  First of all, it’s free and open source.  That leads to my second reason, which is that it’s flexible.  The folks at inklestudios have created an asset to allow for seamless Unity integration.  It works nicely.  My challenge will be to use these tools in a three dimensional environment.  I don’t want to make a simple text-based game.  I probably would have used Twine or another program if I wanted to do that.  I want to see what this tool is made of and how it can be twisted, stretched, bent, and probably broken.  Specifically, I’m likely going to have to understand what the hell a JSON file is and how I can get it talking to C# scripts.  One day I hope to look back on this post and smile at how naive I was regarding the magic black boxes of game making.

(Another reason for using ink is that it’s easily testable.)

(Another reason still is that besides for the aforementioned games, there aren’t really many critically acclaimed (or even acknowledged) ink games.  That’s a market that’s a lot less crowded than the Twine zone, an important aspect for someone new to the field.)

Three.  Dee.:

Ramiro Corbetta, Jane Friedhoff, and K Anthony Marefat made The Second Amendment because, according to Corbetta, a text adventure was the dumbest thing the team could think to make in a 3D engine.  I’m not trying to make something comic or silly, but rather to earnestly explore what’s going on between text and three dimensional spaces.  Can interactive storytelling be meaningfully used in a 3D space?  I plan on using canvases in interesting ways.  Perhaps you pass a tree whose leaves have words on them.  Maybe the puzzle is to order the leaves in a specific manner?  I’m not positive on the details yet, but I want the text to be literally interacted with, not just clicked on or ignored.

The Overlaps:

Right now, my main idea is that a pointillized figure is standing at the center point of the game space, where all of their intersections are overlapping.  The farther away from the center you go, the farther back in time you travel to explore different experiences.  Maybe you can walk 10 units away to deal with something that just happened, or 100 units away to grapple with being away at college for the first time, or 100 units from the center in another direction to deal with a lifelong pet’s death.  Again, the idea here is a bit fuzzy, but I’m imagining a hemisphere that the player can walk around on.  Maybe it will be the opposite, where the vertex of the hemisphere is actually birth, and time goes outward toward the rim, which is death?  In the latter case, I could use branching storylines to have the player experience new things each playthrough.

The idea of the character being blurry at the outset is that over time, as you learn more about them, their likeness will come into sharper view.  I still don’t know if I want to do several stories (several people) or just one.  Fictional or nonfictional?  Autobiographical?  These are questions I’ll have to answer throughout the creative process.  Since they’re integral to the design of other parts of the project, I should probably answer them as soon as possible.

Perspective and World-Building:

First-person.  I can’t rig a 3D model and don’t truly care to learn how to.  I could use the Unity standard 3D model, maybe?  First-person is going to be more immersive, I think.  Besides for the technical challenges that await me on this project, the thought of building a 3D world is a bit daunting to me.  I’ve only once used Unity’s terrain building function, and it crashed my old computer, which left a bad taste in my mouth.  I have a new computer that should be able to deal with dropping trees and pulling up mountains, etc. but I’m still wary of what it means to make an interesting 3D environment.  I plan on making the explorable areas metaphorical - a rainy zone for a tough time in life, a sunset hill for a zen period - but I’m unsure whether or not they will be populated by animals (including humans) or just be natural.  I’ll probably use symbolic objects to represent elements of the story (a lock, a leash, a bottle, etc.).

Bibliography

“Empathy” by Karsten Stueber, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2016 Edition) - http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2016/entries/empathy/

This comprehensive look at empathy includes historical and contemporary studies on the topic.  Thought the whole work is of interest to me, the section on Empathy and Altruistic Motivation is especially important because it looks at empathy as being motivated by self-guilt or self-gain vs. empathy in a purely altruistic context.  When someone empathizes with another person in need, is it for their own good or for the other’s good?

“The Basics of Philosophy - Phenomenology” - http://www.philosophybasics.com/branch_phenomenology.html

An intriguing, if slightly tangential look at a branch of Philosophy that I know nothing about and that could potentially add to this project as a whole.  I haven’t done a ton of research on it yet, but I have a feeling there is a strong link between Phenomenology and playing videogames.

“Simulation Theory” by Karen Shanton and Alvin Goldman - http://fas-philosophy.rutgers.edu/goldman/Simulation%20Theory.pdf

Mind reading may not be my topic, but the idea of how memories are formed and how we can experience others’ mental processes is pertinent, if on the fringe, of what I’m interested in exploring in this project.  Also, videogames are simulations.  Part of the subtext of my thesis question is “can experiencing another’s experiences enhance an understanding of intersectionality?”  I don’t know if this is true, of course.  I attended a talk where one of the speakers blatantly shunned experiential games as being tools for boosting empathy.  I’d like to take a look at that.

“Intersectionality 101” by Olena Hankicsky, PhD - https://www.sfu.ca/iirp/documents/resources/101_Final.pdf

I’ve skimmed the paper and it seems like a great primer for understanding the myriad studies of the topic.  The PhD also convinces me that this person likely knows what she is writing about.

“Why I canceled my Wii U game” by Brandon Sheffield - http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/BrandonSheffield/20160331/269430/Why_I_canceled_my_Wii_U_game.php

I like Brandon and have had a really good talk with him.  Though the talk was about his PS Mobile Game Oh Deer! Alpha and not intersectionality, I gleaned that he was a generally good guy.  It’s clear that he cares about these issues and has taken a stance.  It also may be good to get word on the subject from the perspective of someone in the games industry.

Cibele by Nina Freeman - http://ninasays.so/cibele/

An autobiographical game that recognizes past experiences as being a part of the current self.

Dys4ia by Anna Anthropy- http://www.gamesforchange.org/play/dys4ia/

Though the main topic of the game is the frustrations of hormone replacement therapy, the minigames exist within the context of “cultural challenges and personal hardships of being a transgender person.”

Proteus by Ed Key and David Tanaga - http://twistedtreegames.com/proteus/

An example of abstract exploration that I may take some artistic or world-building inspiration from.

80 Days and Sorcery! by inklestudios - http://www.inklestudios.com/80days/ &&  http://www.inklestudios.com/sorcery/

If I’m going to use their language, I should dive deep into what it can do.  I’ve played a bit of 80 Days, but I should really finish it in order to see how it loops and think on what specifically is going on beneath the veil.  Sorcery! looks especially interesting because it’s fairly gamey.  Though my game is intended to be unconventional, I may need to rely on some conventional game design methods in order to enhance accessibility.

Fable - I haven’t played it, but it may be worth looking at the vision for the game vs. how it turned out.  I know the game is way out of my scope, but I think Molyneux’s before and after thoughts on the game may be worth dipping into.

A Sunday on La Grande Jatte - http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/27992

Games with good fetch quests?  To study motivating players to go and read/do things in order to progress?

Refocusing - Can interactive storytelling be used to promote empathy between humans?

Last post, I found myself in a fog concerning my specific thesis project topic.  I spent a lot of time thinking about it, and I have refocused and gotten back to work.  I think that what fascinated me about my old journal entries is the multiple existences we all lead on a daily basis.  The drunken, sleep-deprived, overworked college student I was in 2009 was Eric Guadara.  I’m still Eric Guadara, but now I wear collared shirts every once in a while respect others’ opinions as much as, if not more than, my own.  I visualize my lives as a Venn Diagram.  There are times where this new, more mature Eric and the old one collide.  Ghosts of my past self show up every once in a while in interesting ways.  But in my case, these intersections are not incredibly interesting.  Sure, it’s funny to learn that I was part of a rap group in high school who wrote, recorded, produced, and released a full length album.  However, there are other people with way more interesting intersections that myself.

Ride Along

Cops.  Whenever I think about a job that I would absolutely not ever want to do, I think of being a cop.  Teaching is rough, but being called to places where the shit is already hitting the fan is ridiculous.  What really piques my interest about cops is that they are also civilians (every once in a while).  When they doff their uniforms and go home to their families, the crazy shit they saw on duty that night (or a year ago, or ten) is still with them.  I’ll have to research PTSD and how it works, but I’m fairly sure what I’m interested in is not necessarily PTSD, but more the intersections that make each person’s narrative unique.   I’m close with a few cops, and while we seem to get along decently well, there’s no question that they typically prefer the company of other cops.  The same is usually true of veterans.  I presume the reason for this is that there is literally no other group of individuals who deals with the duality of existence as they do.  So they swap stories, they commiserate, they laugh ‘em off over a drink or ten.  But there are also times when they have to pick their kids up from school or attend a social event with a lot of people crammed into a small space (very unsettling for someone who is trained to be on guard).

I went on a ride along the other night, and while it wasn’t terribly eventful, I got to see some shit and talk to some cops about the shit that they have seen/dealt with.  I won’t spoil many of my adventures in this blog, but even the initial donning of a bulletproof vest was off-putting.  I knew I was going to have to sign a waiver and get asked if I had a living will and all that, but the weight of the vest really drove home the fact that I was potentially going to be in a place where a goddamn gun was fired in my direction.

Inklewriter

I’m using ink by Inklestudios to write my stories for a few reasons.  First, it’s relatively easy to learn and start storytelling with, especially if you’re versed in programming logic.  Second, and this is a big one, ink integrates very nicely into Unity.  This means that if I choose to make my project more visual, more aural, more interactive, I have that door unlocked for me down the road.  Twine is fine, but this just seems to have more potential for elevating past the genre of Interactive Fiction.

Squarespace

I had built up these notes in my mind to be something profound, or at the very least profoundly embarrassing.  The allure of reality TV,  besides for the trainwrecks who ‘star’ on the shows, is the voyeuristic notion of peeking into others’ lives.  I thought maybe sharing my private inner monologues would hold the same allure.  After reading through them all, I have a feeling that’s not true.  I’m at a crossroads, as I’m supposed to have a testable prototype for class on Wednesday.  If I do decide to keep going with this idea, I’ll test it with the question being “is this at all engaging/of interest?” and the expected answer being, “no.”

Luckily, what I’ve done so far is not all for naught.  I do think it’s important that I mapped out what fascinates me about certain existing works.  What I want to explore is on the tip of my tongue.  I just need to refocus my lens.

Will update again once that happens.

Till then, anonymous masses, enjoy some of these: