Player-created gameplay

User-generated or player-created content has been a buzz in the games industry for a while. I guess it started with hackers modding shooters which culminated in developers offering free tools to modify their games. This idea saw a more democratic incarnation in Second Life and The Sims, which were designed to offer players the ability to create content with and for the games. The Movies was an extreme version of this trend. And Spore seems to follow the same path of easy access to manipulating the content of the game, and that manipulation being part of the enjoyment of the game.

The increase in assets required for Next Generation titles and the success of Web 2.0 have rejuvenated the idea of player-created content.

We, at Tale of Tales, have always been a bit confused by this desire of game designers to allow players to mess with their work. We have even accused them of refusing to take up their responsibilities as authors. It’s easy to hide behind the cliché that in interactive media, the audience becomes the author. The truth of such a statement rarely goes deeper than the marketing blurb, though. Changing the texture of a virtual t-shirt or the number of legs on a little cartoon critter hardly counts as shared authorship in my book. And in terms of creativity, it’s nowhere near the modifications that have been made of Quake and Unreal.

There is, however, another way, for players to be creatively involved in a game. Where the gameplay itself is the creation of the player. Where playing equals creation and what is created is gameplay. This is, I believe, the culmination of the interactive dream. And it is already here, in games like Garry’s Mod, LittleBigPlanet and our very own The Endless Forest.

Garry's Mod

Garry’s Mod is a sandbox mod for the Source Engine. Unlike normal games there aren’t any predefined aims or goals. Players are given tools and are left to entertain themselves.

In Garry’s Mod, you get to mess around with all the assets of Half Life 2, Counter Strike and some other Valve/Source games. You pose the ragdolls and turn all sorts of combinations of objects into little machines. But the most interesting aspect, I find, is the ability to spawn the Half Life 2 characters, including their basic Artifial Intelligence. This allows you to create little scenes with characters that respond to your and each other’s presence. Given that the source assets came from a war-based game, the intelligence of the characters is limited to knowing who their enemies are. But still it is somewhat magical to see Alyx take her big bazooka and defend you against some zombie you just put there. You can actually die in this mod, so it’s important that she does defend you.
What I find remakable about Garry’s Mod, as opposed to say The Movies or The Sims, is that what you create as a player takes place in the gameworld and within the game’s narrative. You’re not making your own movies or (ab)using the game for your personal expression. What you do is defined by the capabilities of the assets. In other words, you can only really create war scenarios with it. And that is great, because even though we can be extremely creative as players, we remain immersed in the fantasy that was so carefully constructed by the authors.

Little Big Planet

Characters have the power to move anything in this glued and stitched-together landscape; they have the power to design, shape and build both objects and entire locations for others to play.

Little Big Planet is a Playstation 3 game currently being developed by the makers of Rag Doll Kung-Fu. From the videos that have been released of it, the game seems to involve creating platform-levels with objects that respond to realistic physics simulations. And then moving through them with friends.
So again, no custom decals to express your inner self, but a game that explores the joy of being creative. In a universe that has interesting properties and characters with attitudes, things that you can connect to mentally and physically. Not a blank slate. Very much an authored environment in terms of aesthetic style, interactive properties, general atmosphere and character design. But the actual gameplay is left to you, the player.

The Endless forest

When your computer goes to sleep you appear as a deer in this magical place. There are no goals to achieve or rules to follow. Just run through the forest and see what happens.

I must admit that we did actually not set out to make a game for active player creativity back in September 2003 when we came up with the initial idea for The Endless Forest. For us, all that mattered was to create a believable environment filled with elements that inspired imagination, (passive) mental creativity. But since the game’s release in September 2005, we have been amazed by how creative the players have been in inventing games with the objects and actions that we have added to the game. This is especially interesting since most of the games that players have invented require multiple participants, and there is no chat in The Endless Forest.

Here’s a little list that was entirely created by the players themselves on the game’s webforums. For an idea of the building blocks for these games please see the Activities and Magic pages of the website. In short, there’s a bunch of animations that allow players to express emotions in body language and there’s magic that allows them to change another player’s appearance.

Follow the Leader
Copy someone else’s appearance. Gets better the more deers you have- see Tiny Twins of Terror.
The challenge of copying somebody else’s appearance is increased by the fact that you cannot change your own but need somebody else to cast a spell on you. And which spell gets cast is random.

I Want…
Try to change a new friend to the pelt/antler/mask combo they actually want. Then, figure out what game they want to play next!

Dance Attack
Gather as many deer as you can, begin to shake it down, and hope that the others get the idea.

Turn Everyone White
Someone prays at the Twin Gods and then turns as many others as possible white too before it wears off. Pass it around, etc, and keep it going as long as possible (AKA, until everyone goes off to chase butterflies instead).

Fly!
Find a tall area of land, and jump continuously while running off it. Best if you can pull it off so that you go over a group of others, or the pond if you’re feeling dangerous.
This is actually an exploit and never intended to be a feature. But we love it.

Tiny Twins of Terror
Become small, find or make other(s) look like you, and create mischief by following a larger deer and/or doing the same thing at the same time.

Leapfrog
Find a deer. Charge at them, full speed, and leap! It’s harder than it sounds to make it a perfect shot…

Chase
Just run around in a herd, trying to meet up with other people.

Stalk The God
If it’s Abiogenesis, STAMPEDE after the Twin Gods. Follow the little balls of light. Locate and dance with the big/golden deer. If it isn’t Abiogenesis, just try and spot Auriea (if you’ve figured out her pictogram) or Michael and go play with them.

I Can Breakdance!
Fiddle around with the laughing emote. Somersault, go round in circles, everything. Do this with someone else; see who can pull off the crazier stunt.
Another exploit that allows players to blend character animations in ways we hadn’t anticipated.

Hit trees
Charge through the forest and hit as many trees as possible.
When you hit a tree in The Endless Forest, you are not stopped and a pretty blue puff appears instead.

These are all very simple games, but they are extremely amusing nonetheless. And it’s a delight for us, designers, to see players making their own game. It feels a lot more rewarding for us when people create something new out of the things we made than it would to just have them understand the rules and do exactly what we expect them to do.

I believe when a game supports this kind of creativity, players get a lot more out of the story that you’re trying to tell. Because while players are inventing their own games, they are not breaking or abusing our design. Even when the deer start flying and they roll over (or even through) the floor in impossible ways, it still fits within the fantasy narrative that we have created.

Thanks to Endless Forest players Anduin, Stehuaa, Demayetay Taheris, Fincayra and Wildbluesun for compiling the list.

Games journalists and The New Games

The review of Flow by Richard Leadbetter on Eurogamer made me think. I’ll start by quoting the last line of the article:

If you’re looking for something more like a conventional game, I’d lop off a mark or two from the final score.

That score being 7 out of 10.

The largest part of the article describes the mechanics of Flow. In terms of objective, avatars, attacks, moves and levels. When it finally arrives at talking about the aesthetics of the experience, it calls the game a tech demo and goes on about HDR, HD and THX as norms to judge beauty by.

I have not played Flow on the PS3. But I have played the Flash version, seen some video footage and read about several players’ experiences with the game. It is quite clear that Flow is not a game like most. That its focus is not on gameplay as such but on a different kind of interactive experience, an experience that inspired its title. I’m happy that games websites report on products like this because I think they are extremely important for the future of the industry. But after reading the review, I’m starting to doubt whether games journalists should be the ones doing this job.

It’s a bit like having sports commentators criticizing a fine art exhibition. Not that I want to make a big issue about Flow being art or something. But it does seem to be designed with different purposes and require a different attitude than that of a games journalist (or a gamer for that matter). Not necessarily so these kinds of games could get better scores. But because their scores might be better motivated. Now it seems too much like judging an opera performance based on the cut of the dress of the soprano. It might be an ugly dress, but that’s hardly the point.

On the other hand, there is a lesson here for us, designers interested in new forms of games. Electroplankton is a similar game with one big difference: it has no traditional gameplay to speak of. Perhaps as a result of this, it doesn’t get criticized quite so negatively as Flow might. Perhaps, games journalists realize that a “pointless” experience like Electroplankton completely escapes their grasp.

This seems like a smart strategy. Stay away from gameplay. Don’t give them anything that would allow your game to be compared to Mario or World of Warcraft. Concentrate on what your game is really about. And leave out the redundant stuff. Even Richard Leadbetter can’t help but admit how good such a thing can be.

It’s disappointingly bereft of content, but I can’t help but like it for what it is, and its mere presence on the XMB often makes me load it up as a distraction during my working day.

They are not made out of stone. They are people. They can be moved.

I hope the future brings us journalists who can actually write a review about that side of their experience. Aren’t there supposed to be “New Games Journalists”? Or has that fad faded? Maybe the New Games Journalists should talk about the New Games. Makes sense to me.

Essay on The Endless Forest

Dutch Judith Dormans is bachelor student at the faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the Maastricht University, specialising in game studies. She participated in our Drama Princess Symposium and now she’s written quite an impressive in-depth essay about The Endless Forest. She criticizes Salen & Zimmerman‘s rules-based analysis of games as being limited and argues for broadening the horizons of game studies.

A case study of The Endless Forest shows that the theories about formal systems aren’t sufficient anymore. They give no room for the participatory nature of games and they put too much emphasis on the traditional forms of games. It is required to redefine what the formal system of a game is.

Read it here.

Gameworld virtual exhibition

Since Laboral hardly has a website for the current Gameworld exhibition in Gijon, I figured it would be nice for all of us who can’t go to Spain, to at least see some pictures of the games features in the “Current and Experimental” category of the show.
Since we’ve been debating art and games lately, this selection by respected curators Carl Goodman and Daphne Dragona, seems pertinent.


Flow
Flow (Jenova Chen, Kellee Santiago – Thatgamecompany)

Katamari
We Love Katamari (Keita Takahashi – Namco)

Braid
Braid (Jonathan Blow et al – Number None)

Domestic
Domestic (Mary Flanagan)

The Endless Forest
The Endless Forest (Auriea Harvey & Michaël Samyn – Tale of Tales)

Façade
Façade (Michael Mateas and Andrew Stern – Procedural Arts)

Super Columbine Massacre RPG!
Super Columbine Massacre RPG! (Danny Ledone)

2nd Person Shooter
2nd Person Shooter (Julian Oliver)

Airport Security
The Arcade Wire (Ian Bogost, Gonzalo Frasca – Persuasive Games)

Border Games
Border Games (El Fiambrera Obrera)

Furminator
Furminator (Fur)

Darkgame
Darkgame (Eddo Stern)

Emotive Actors
Once More With Feeling (Ken Perlin – NYU MRL)

Invaders!
Invaders (Douglas Edric Stanley)

AX|BX
axbx (Brent Gustafson)

TFT Tennis
TFT Tennis (Dirk Eijbouts)

Pongmechanik
Pongmechanik (Niklas Roy)

AR Tennis
AR Tennis (Hitlab New Zealand)

Animachine
Movie Sandbox – Animachine (Friedrich Kirschner)

Some more links via Abstract Machine

The problem of solving problems

There’s two nagging issues in the games industry that keep coming up: the desire to create more artistic games and the desire to access a broader market. Some would say these issues are related. They certainly are when we consider how the industry tries to solve them: by analysing the “problem” and then coming up with logical constructions that will lead to the desired result. In other words: they try to program the solution.

This should come as no surprise given that many leading positions in the games industry are filled by programmers. Programmers are very creative people. They can deal with immense problems, chop them down to little pieces, solve each one seperately and when they’re done a fully working product comes out. It’s almost like magic. I think they like doing this. It must be very satisfying. I think they like it so much that they see problems everywhere: problems they can solve.

But what if something is not a problem?

20th Century artist Marcel Duchamp is famous for saying “Il n’y a pas de solution parce qu’il n’y a pas de problème” (there is no solution because there is no problem). There is a lot of truth to be found in this enigma. For one thing, it tells us that if we can stop seeing an issue as a problem, there is no need to solve it. Programmers don’t like this. Because they love solving problems. Artists, on the other hand, are very good at looking at things from different angles. In other words: things that are a problem to some are an opportunity to others.

In the concrete case of there being too little art in games, the programmer’s solution is to develop constructions with all the ingredients of art put in their proper relationships that if set in motion cannot do anything but produce art. In other words: they attempt to create art-producing machines. Amazing! Except that what these machine bring forth, can only be considered artistically interesting by a very generous audience (preferably consisting of peers).

If we stop looking at this issue as a problem, however, and start seeing it as an opportunity, the “solution” is very simple. We don’t need to create art-producing machines. We already have art-producing humans! All we need to do is to ensure that more artists can make games. The same applies to broadening the market: ensure that more women can make games. Just let them in and give them the proper tools and we don’t need to worry our pretty little oh-so-smart programmers’ heads about it no more.

Art, art and games

There’s a strong desire in the games industry to see games as an artistic medium. You often hear questions like “Are games art?” and you get answers that go from a radical “no”, over to “some games are art” and “they might be, some day” to “yes, absolutely, all games are art”. And then, inevitably somebody brings up the notion of bad art

One of the things that confuses me when people in the games industry discuss this issue, is what kind of art they are referring to. It often doesn’t have much to do with what can be seen in museums and galleries nowadays. Perhaps, they are referring to “popular” art forms such as film and comic strips rather than to the highly conceptual constructions that are on display in museums of contemporary art.

Game developers, perhaps as a result of limited art education, seem to think of art as something that expresses an idea or an emotion. This is a concept from the nineteenth century that has long been abandoned by contemporary art. Only the other night, I heard an artist define art as “objects or situations that provoke cultural discussion”. Defined as such, games are most undeniably art! Especially games like Grand Theft Auto, Postal, Bully, Rule of Rose, etc. But that is not the point: the point is that, apparently, contemporary artists can simply make up any definition for the word art that suits them. So the question whether or not something belongs in a category that anybody can redefine whenever they see fit, seems absurd.

In games-related discussions about art, however, people seem to skip over that whole modern art era and stick quite closely to dictionary definitions like

“the conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects”
Merriam-Webster

“the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance”
Dictionary.com

“a visual object or experience consciously created through an expression of skill or imagination”
Encyclopaedia Britannica

“that which is made with the intention of stimulating the human senses as well as the human mind and or spirit”
Wikipedia

Don’t get me wrong: I personally am a lot more comfortable with notion of art as an expression of something, art as something that is beautiful and meaningful. I did have an art education. I have even produced art, lots of it, both analog and digital. Contemporary art, no less: ironic, clever, non-emotional, discussion-provoking, and all that. And I have abandoned that practice. One day, I consciously decided that I would just ignore most of the art made in the 20th century and find inspiration in a pre-modern art practice. Game technology seemed like the perfect tool for landscape painting and storytelling. Hence my choice.

But is that art?
In the contemporary sense of the word, it certainly is not. This sort of art practice only exists in popular and amateur arts these days. The “museum-quality art” is very very different. That is not to say that there is no interest: our Endless Forest has been shown many times in contemporary (media) art exhibitions. But it seems to be an exception: art curators and critics tend to prefer art about games over actual games.

This is nothing to be sorry about. The contemporary arts scene is a very marginal one, even if it still seems to act as a validator for culture. With our games, our popular-culture-games, we can reach a much wider audience of people who are actually paying attention to our work.

Interactivity wants to be free!

Point 6 of our Realtime Art Manifesto says Don’t make games and The rule-based structure and competitive elements in traditional game design stand in the way of expressiveness and summarizes with Express yourself through interactivity. While this has always been more of a guideline and a desire than a factual truth, we have recently found proof for this claim from an unexpected place.

Rod Humble, an executive producer at Electronic Arts, has made a game. Or more to the point, he has constructed a work of art with game rules. It’s a very simple game but is has captured the imaginations of at least half a dozen bloggers ( Arthouse Games, Joystiq, Indygamer, TIG Source, Man Bytes Blog, Raph Koster, Jonathan Blow ). Probably precisely because of its explicit purpose of trying to express something -a story, a set of opinions- through game rules only, and its apparent success at doing just that.

I, however, beg to differ.

The first response we had here was to feel pity for Rod’s wife. In his game, she is represented as a pink square that gets bigger when she collides with her husband while the latter gets smaller. This may be a naughty reference to human sexuality but nevertheless, it made us worry about their marriage. Later this was confirmed by Raph Koster saying that “He did report that his wife didn’t like the rules.” I bet she didn’t. He just made her look like a self inflating idiot in front of the whole world!

I’m sure that’s not what he meant. And this is the core of the problem.
Game rules, by their very nature, live on a very abstract plain. They are mathematical expressions of relationships between objects. These relationships are completely and utterly logical. They have to be. Otherwise the game breaks. This severe logic is detrimental when trying to express something about the human condition with its inherent messiness, contradictions and ambiguity. As a result, game rules are only capable of expressing a very specific story, a story without layers of meaning or freedom of interpretation.
And it gets worse. Because of their extreme abstraction, game rules are only capable of telling this very specific story in very general terms. When you do that, all poetry gets lost and with it all depth and aspiration to universality.

That being said, I applaud the attempt. I want to see it as one step in the right direction. The direction of telling stories through interactivity. And I hope that the failure of The Marriage (which is the name of this game) to express anything but a banal generalisation of something that is obviously of very deep concern to the author, stimulates us to take the next step. To abandon this strange obsession with games and their rules.

Interactivity is capable of so much more than games. New media artists like Lia and Dextro have been working with this for years. And while they share a formal language with Rod Humble to some extent, the work of these internationally renowned artists provokes a lot more rich and diverse emotions.

Not that I am advocating any kind of puritanism in art. I don’t think laying bare the very concepts of art and limiting art to its very core is a good idea. The computer gives us a an unprecented array of media that we can all use simultaneously to express things in the most sensuous and spectacular ways ever imagined. Why limit ourselves with this wealth at our disposal?

So as a final example, I want to leave you with the work of Alex Mayhew. Way back in 1997 already, he made a CD Rom in Peter Gabriel’s Realworld Studios called “Ceremony of Innocence“. Like The Marriage, it uses interaction as a form of expression to talk about a relationship. However, it does not limit itself to the mechanics but touches all your senses at once. Ceremony of Innocence does not limit itself to gameplay either. It allows interactivity to be free. Playful interactions that express so much more than strict game rules can. Alex is still very active today. Visit his website for more information and some beautiful little experiments with interactivity.

GDC 2007, Monday & Tuesday

It was the first time that we attended the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. But we had attended the London version before (in 2002, 2003 and 2004). In fact, I had a personal ban on visiting the USA. For obvious reasons. But BGIn offered us an opportunity that we couldn’t pass on. We could have some space in their booth to show our work for almost no money (thanks to governmental subsidies), including access to the conference. It would also be a good opportunity to meet up with some friends.

countrycottage_b&b_sf So I had my privacy violated by the American customs in ways that would be illegal in my own country, while telling myself “this is for business, stay calm, don’t think, it’ll be over in no time”. A good thing we ended up in San Francisco, the most pleasant of American cities I have visited so far. A spring breeze and very un-Belgian sun shine eased the pain together with the marvelous American breakfasts Eva prepared for us every morning at the Country Cottage bed & breakfast -a very inspiring Grandmother’s House.

During the week we stayed, we divided our time between “standing on carpet” in our booth, meeting with friends and attending sessions. The schedule, as we knew from the London conferences (only even more so), was designed in such a way to make sure that session times inevitably conflicted with each other, making the conference feel extra hectic and busy. But in reality, while there were moments when there were at least five simultaneous sessions we wanted to attend, there was also ample time when nothing interesting was going on.

Oh, and we bought a cell phone for the occasion!!! We usually pride ourselves not needing such a thing as we’re always at home and very happy with our Internet communications. But since these days nobody seems to be able to make appointments any more, we decided to be assimilated. We got a cheap Virgin phone that did the trick. Though I never got used to it, really (I apologize to all the people who had awkward phone calls with me).

Michael Mateas and Andrew Stern -notes by Auriea On Monday, 5 March, the conference was trying hard to fill up the oversized Moscone center with huge banners and flags in preparation of the crowds on Wednesday. We attended only one session: Andrew Stern‘s and Michael Mateas‘s talk about conversational characters in serious games. We were familiar with their excellent work on interactive drama, so it was surprising to hear them promote their technology for use in training similations and the like. But Michael made some good points and was very honest about the limitations of the application in casu. It was interesting to hear how modular the Façade concept seems to be. Obviously I was shocked to hear that Andrew had used the system in a serious game for the American military: to teach American soldiers to shoot communicate with Iraqi terrorists militants fundamentalists evil demons citizens. Shame on you!
During Thai lunch the next day, he begged for forgiveness and promised to never do it again.

On Tuesday we saw Jonathan Blow talk about prototyping. We wanted to attend this talk to learn why his almost released game Braid was getting such extremely positive response. (“Braid has the potential to change the way you think about reality.“)
Jonathan’s playful experimentation with prototyping seems like a lot of fun. But his focus is very much on gameplay. And I for one find it hard to get excited about gameplay. Whether a little guy jumps over a platform in one direction or in another direction, doesn’t make much difference to me. Braid looks like an excellent game, very well made, with good artwork. But it’s just a game. And I guess I don’t believe a game can be art. I don’t believe gameplay is sufficiently expressive. Interactivity wants to be free!

Next we heard Jenova Chen and Kellee Santiago talk about the making of Cloud. I wish they had expanded a bit more on their pr and marketing than on the game itself, which, while interesting as a student project, I don’t see as such a major break with old play styles. I’m sure their heart is in the right place, though, so if they can focus on the emotional Direction they kept speaking of and not get distracted by game mechanics, I can envision a great future for them.

It’s good to know that people like Jenova and Kellee and Jonathan exist. And that they are getting some recognition. Even if their work hasn’t convinced me yet, I’m very excited about what all of this might lead to.

In general, the GDC seemed like a conference for independent games developers. The big publishers and developers seemed to just hang around a bit, if they were even there, with nothing much to say. But the indies displayed the vitality of their scene throughout the conference. And even though the famous speakers still attracted big crowds, nobody had much to say about their talks afterwards. Aquaria winning the Independent Games Festival was on everybody’s lips. And the interest of distributors in indie games contributed to the general excitement. Now all we need to do is make some games that are truly different…

More about the conference tomorrow…

“game for emo lesbians lol”

We’re getting some hilarious comments from the 20.000+ people who have been looking at our teaser for The Path on gametrailers. com ( here and here ). There’s nice and positive comments. Even sanely critical ones. And people do seem to understand what we’re going for. But the funniest comments are, as always, the negative ones.

“Will you take the path of pins…OR NEEDLES! Lol, goths would love cutting themselves up for this game.”

“I wish the grass on the path was emo- so that it would cut itself. Lol, I’m not sure what to think. :p”

“ooo finally a game for emo and goth chicks!”

“I’m confused. What’s with the lesbians holding hands in the woods?”

“Can you say weird as something that my grandmother thought off.”

“i bet ill find this game in the value bin @ walmart next month(itll appeal to the wanna-be goth kids that think green day is sooo rad)”

“i will get it if the two girls walking down the forest get it on at some point in the game!”

I don’t know… Should our children really be looking at this? They obiously can’t handle it. ;D

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