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Influences

October 9th, 2006 (Visited 2696 times) Tags:

Today I see this link to Limbo, a game which offers up a different visual aesthetic, but gameplay that looks like a clever elaboration of traditional platforming.

I’m going to be giving a talk at Project Horseshoe entitled “Influences.” It’s basically about pulling in different aesthetics from different areas, rather than relying solely on what might be called “the videogame aesthetic.”

I think there’s a lot of potential in presenting old gameplay (as in this case and in the case of Fl0w) in radically new wrappings. Beyond that, though, lies more unexplored territory: using the broader palette of aesthetics found in other media for the purposes of different gameplay.

In the book, I mention Minesweeper as an example of some of the elements of Impressionism taken into the real of systems modeling. Minesweeper, like Impressionism in art and music, is about modeling by absence, about the play of reflections on the surface, about understanding through repetition. There are many ways to play with this notion, and I am sure there are many other games that could be done with this general approach.

Just playing with the notion:

How about a game where you have to find spots on the screen by dropping pebbles on a water surface and observing ripples?
Or where you shine a small light on something and try to identify the shape hidden in the darkness by tracing its contours within a time limit?
Or where you have to find things by defining their negative space?

Even these, though, are still fairly conservative. If we went an picked an aesthetic from a radically different field and tried to bring it back to games, what would it look like? What would a game that embraced “jump cut”-ness or a game that embraced “cyberpunk”-ness (I don’t mean the trappings — I mean the actual ethos) or a game that embraced “religious ecstasy” really look like?

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Faith wrote on October 9th, 2006 at 3:09 pm:

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raphkoster_rss: Influences wrote on October 9th, 2006 at 11:33 pm:

[...] http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/RaphsWebsite/~3/35288326/http://www.raphkoster.com/2006/10/09/influences/Today I see this link to Limbo, a game which offers up a different visual aesthetic, but gameplay that looks like a clever elaboration of traditional platforming. [...]

Rufus said on October 9th, 2006 at 12:53 pm:

Okay, I took one look at the teaser trailer for Limbo and my first thought was ‘style over substance.’ My immediate second thought was ‘ooh, I wanna play dat!’

Brew said on October 9th, 2006 at 5:24 pm:

very reminiscent of Ninjai, art wise. (http://www.ninjai.com/) Has me a tad intrigued, actually.

Raph said on October 9th, 2006 at 5:33 pm:

Oh, I wanna play it too, don’t get me wrong. Sometimes, old wine in new bottles is just what you want.

magicback (frank) said on October 9th, 2006 at 6:15 pm:

Hmm, it seems that a lot of designers in the West are learning from the aesthetics of the East.

Limbo looks like a darker version of Loco Roco and fl0w looks like a version of Electroplanton. Moreover the concept of Katamari is being used in commericals as an associative reference point.

In the case of Minesweeper, I see you point about the elements of Impressionism and system modeling. I would like to point also to the use of basic system interaction as found in Minesweeper as toys: using Minesweepers mechanics to create interesting shapes; using UO to create interesting houses; and pretty much emergent aesthethics play.

The pebbles in the pond idea can start off as a game of Go. However, people can use the basic elements to do something different with it. Or just provide the system elements and let players decide what games they want to make out of it.

Thus, taking the game of Japanese painting like Okami to the next level, will there be a Cubist or Impressionist painting game?

Frank

Richard Bartle said on October 9th, 2006 at 10:56 pm:

>Or where you shine a small light on something and try to identify the shape hidden in the darkness by tracing its contours within a time limit?

This reminded me of the game, Black Box, which works by shining a “light” into the eponymous black box and trying to deduce from where the light comes out the configuration of the objects inside it.

Richard

Rufus said on October 10th, 2006 at 3:25 am:

I think, though, it emphasizes the whole ‘what draws someone into a game’ vs ‘what keeps someone there’, though judgement will have to be reserved for whenever this hits… well, where ever it hits.

I was done with platformers around the time of Pandemonium with rare exception (the first Ratchet and Clank comes to mind). That gameplay just doesn’t hold my interest.

It just looks amzing though.

Chip Hinshaw said on October 10th, 2006 at 5:16 am:

How about a game where you have to find spots on the screen by dropping pebbles on a water surface and observing ripples?

I don’t know if I played this or dreamt it, but I swear there was a game out not too long ago where one of the major puzzles required the player to view something reflected in a shallow pond or something, but the missing “puzzle piece” would only be revealed if the water was disturbed. Now that I think about it, maybe that was a (day)dream.

I recently re-installed American McGee’s Alice on my PC and played through it again. One of the puzzles in it involved reflections where you otherwise could not determine the information you needed. I was also pleasantly surprised at how well the game held up (for me) after … 6 years?

Andy Havens said on October 11th, 2006 at 7:15 pm:

I’ve always wanted to play a game based on the basic Christian concepts of mercy and grace. Not the shallow, cartoonish versions we get through the fog of televangelism… but the real spiritual center of the idea.

Because so many games, especially RPGs, are based on the opposite; the idea that the main character — you — is “the one.” The center of it all. The sine qua non, the answer, the person who has the right to go, to do, to kill, to revenge, to win, to love, to pick the locks, to steal, to vanquish.

I’m not interested, necessarily, in mercy and grace being implemented as game mechanics in an explicitly Christian manner. In fact, I think it would be disappointing. But the definitions are kind of as follows:

Mercy = Not doing that which is in your best interest, simply because it is in your best interest, but doing that which is “right” because it is “right.” Now, in whatever game this is, “right” is certainly open to a big, wide world of suggestions. In Christian ethics, “right” = love for fellow man, charity, peace, etc. What becomes more interesting is…

Grace = The possibility of rewards that are far greater, for all players (and the system), when merciful acts take place as opposed to selfish or just acts.

Justice, which is the tool of law, is the main mechanic of many games (both in computers and the world). An eye for an eye. That’s justice. Mercy is the tool of grace. You steal from me, and I forgive you. In fact, I go farther than that, and try to understand why you stole, and how I might improve your situation so that you don’t need to do it again.

In a “just game,” I start with 1 unit of something. You steal it. I somehow recover it, and apply 1 unit of justice to you for your misdeed. We end up with the following equation:

1 unit of stuff – 1 unit of punishment = 0 total units of ??JOY??

Who knows what to call that. I was never good at calculus. In a merciful game, though, we have.

1 unit of stuff + 1 unit of forgiveness = Panda Bears

How did that happen? I have no idea. But the whole point of grace is that when you stop trying to apply rigid codes of “you did X bad thing, therefore you deserve an equal, legal helping of X punishment,” you can breed positive results.

So… what kind of game would embrace this model? Again… not explicitly Christian. That would make me kinda itch, even though it’s my chosen dogma. But a game where the results weren’t tied to the ego-me of the player/controller thing-a-ma-bob’s ability to directly control (destroy, navigate, whatever) events based on a 1-to-1 ratio of “I do stuff and so stuff gets done,” but an environment of “when I engage in acts that benenfit the system, I will prosper in a sympathetic way.”

There are elements of this in Sim City and the Civ games. But it’s still a bit linear… a bit “you push the middle valve down.”

Pay no attention to me… It’s late and I’m rambling. But Raph asked, “If we picked an aesthetic from a radically different field…” and so I went off… theologically based game mechanics… go figure.

magicback (frank) said on October 12th, 2006 at 6:13 pm:

Following on Andy’s thoughts there is a lack of spiritual or philosophical exploratory element to current crops of games.

In the 80′s when Kung Fu was popular, there were games that explore the spiritual and philosophical aspect of that journey. Regardless of the fact that the game was “go and kill everyone to get your revenge” there were always some moments of reflection as part of that journey.

We still see these aesthetics, but has meld into the background.

No back to Raph’s original thought: how about a game of quantum mechanics. I’m a bit fuzzy on this, but the game would use the concept that by observing a particle, you change the direction and speed of that particle, so have to use flashes of visual observation to direct where you want the particles to go.

Ah, it’s still fuzzy…

Andy Havens said on October 13th, 2006 at 8:43 am:

@Frank… Interesting. Reminds me of the Ben Bova novel, “The Dueling Machine.” It featured a person-to-person, mind-to-mind, link up that created a virtual world in which people engaged in duels in order to settle disputes. The challenged party got to pick the environment, and most were standard fighting arenas; westerns, space ships, pistols at 20 paces, James Bond settings, etc. One scientist type, though, when challenged by a high-end duelist, picked a physics lab as the enivronment, and they fought among giant experiment equipment; spinning discs, inclined planes, Faraday cages, etc. The scientist’s knowledge of physics meant that he kicked the crap out of the other guy, of course. Fun book, fun scene. Interesting idea for a game; what else could be “weapons” besides “weapons?”

Influences

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