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< News & gossip ~ Mention of your Manifesto |
| rinku |
 Posted: Wed Mar 28, 2007 4:30 pm |
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Joined: 14 Sep 2005
Posts: 128
Location: Paterson, NJ
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If you guys hadn't seen this, it's from: http://www.northcountrynotes.org/jason-rohrer/arthouseGames/seedBlogs.php?action=display_post&post_id=jcr13_1175084349_0&show_author=1&show_date=1 and it's an interview of the guy who did "The Marriage".
JR: Games are are clearly a sub-field of interactive media. Why focus on "art games" instead of the more general realm of "interactive art" (as suggested by the Realtime Art Manifesto)?
RH: To me the distinction is obsolete. We desperately need a great critic or philosopher to emerge and make sense of the muddle, that person will probably be more important than any single artist.
I picked game rules because I believe they are powerful artistic tools which have not yet been fully used.
The Real Time Art Manifesto is not for me I am afraid. It mistakes technology for invention, places combination art above pure art and insists that games rules cannot be art. You can imagine that as someone who makes art using game rules as the fundamental message, who believes that art is ever more inclusive not exclusive and who thinks instrumental music is as good as opera, I don't much care for it, and I doubt they will care for my work either. However manifesto's are judged by the work they inspire in their authors and others, not whether they are factually correct, so it may yet lead to a work of interest. I look forward to seeing what they can come up with. |
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| Auriea |
| Posted: Wed Mar 28, 2007 7:51 pm |
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ha!  |
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| rinku |
| Posted: Wed Mar 28, 2007 11:06 pm |
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Joined: 14 Sep 2005
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I disagree and agree with him; I agree that rules are powerful artistic tools but I disagree that they have not yet been fully used. I don't know what he means by mistaking technology for invention though, and I didn't come away from the manifesto thinking you favored combination art over pure art. However regarding the rules thing I think the mistake is just a too-narrow use of the word rules in the manifesto; but I talked about that in the other thread (about how rules are to games as letters of the alphabet are to novels, and you can't understand a game just from its rules, just as you can't understand a novel just by knowing how many of each letter it uses).
My main problem with your manifesto though is not really the rules thing, but it's that it's biased toward 3D. I don't see why 2D computer games can't be as artistic as 3D ones; that's to me like saying that statues and sculpture are better than painting. You might mean 3D movement as opposed to 2D movement, but even that: you can have 3D movement rendered in 2D (like, say, fl0w with its "depth" of the water), or you can have 3D which looks 2D (like Okami or Wind Waker). It's not that 2D is flat, it uses tricks of perspective to render a 3D world, much like painting does.
I like a lot of the rest of it though, there are great parts in it too. |
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| Michael |
| Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2007 12:53 am |
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The fact that it's about 3D is just because we work with 3D ourselves. The whole manifesto is more like a personal checklist than anything else. A list of tips, if you want.
In any case, the "realtime" aspect is the crucial one, not whether it's 2D or 3D. Jonathan Blow had the same remark. We may attempt a rewrite that removes the references to 3D.
Again, our bias only comes from the fact that we personally feel very comfortable with 3D (at least conceptually) after a decade of trying to fake it in 2D. |
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| rinku |
| Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2007 1:02 am |
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Location: Paterson, NJ
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Understandable, I think I can agree about the real-time being too, I hate when the game world just sits there and waits for you, rather than doing things. This doesn't just apply to turn-based vs. real-time "battle engines" but even to things like just sitting there you should see the people and things around you actively doing things on their own.
If you haven't played it, Majora's Mask did this in an interesting way, the game took place over a period of about 90 minutes which were infinitely repeated, like in the movie Groundhog Day, and during that time the people did different things at precise times. |
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| Wildbluesun |
| Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2007 1:00 am |
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Joined: 12 Dec 2006
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Location: London, Land of Tea and Top Hats
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Manifesto noun
a written statement declaring publicly the intentions, motives, or views of its issuer
So in theory, the Realtime Art Manifesto can ignore 2D altogether because Auria and Michael don't use 2D. It's not exactly Creating Alternative Games For Dummies. |
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| rinku |
| Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2007 4:03 am |
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Joined: 14 Sep 2005
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Location: Paterson, NJ
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| True, but it doesn't really come off as the "personal manifesto of tale-of-tales", it's usually used (that I've seen) as a recommendation for what game developers in general should strive for. But maybe I'm wrong. |
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| Michael |
| Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2007 9:18 am |
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You're only wrong in that it is not intended for game developers.
It was written for both multimedia artists and game designers to encourage them to take their work to what we feel is a next level. A game developer should only embrace the manifesto in so far as he is ready to give up his normal practice. The Realtime Art Manifesto is more or less useless for those who (still) want to make games. |
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| rinku |
| Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2007 9:27 am |
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| Hmm, it still does refer to it as games in a few places though. For instance "Make short and intense games". |
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| Michael |
| Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2007 12:23 pm |
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Indeed. We sort of insist on appropriating the word "game" for what we do. Even if it is the wrong word, it is a very well established one and I don't get the impression that the audience cares much about whether the "game" actually has rules or goals and all that. They seem to have a much broader definition than developers and theorists might.
Much like we still call a movie a "film" even if it is stored and even recorded on video or dvd or hard disk.
Over here, in Flanders, people use the English word "game" to refer exclusively to computer games. For normal/real games, they use the Dutch word "spel". |
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| rinku |
| Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2007 12:34 pm |
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Joined: 14 Sep 2005
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Location: Paterson, NJ
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| I'm not sure you can have interactivity without rules (broadly speaking). For instance, your Drama Princess system is a set of rules defining behavior. Or do you mean rules in a way in which those aren't rules? If so, what would the distinction be? |
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| Wildbluesun |
| Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2007 8:29 pm |
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rinku wrote: True, but it doesn't really come off as the "personal manifesto of tale-of-tales", it's usually used (that I've seen) as a recommendation for what game developers in general should strive for. But maybe I'm wrong.
On the other hand, in theory bumblebess can't fly. XD |
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| rinku |
| Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2007 11:35 pm |
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Joined: 14 Sep 2005
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Location: Paterson, NJ
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| In older or incorrect theories maybe... But I believe that what there's no such thing as "good in theory but bad in practise", if it's bad in practise, it's a bad theory. |
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| Wildbluesun |
| Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2007 11:57 pm |
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Location: London, Land of Tea and Top Hats
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No. Seriously. Physics has proved that bumblebees can't fly. Not enough wingspan, too much body.
This is one of the many things that has led phycists to conclude that Einstein and Newton were wrong, or at least presented incomplete models of the world. That's why they want several billion pounds to build a new particle collider, so they can smash atoms up and see what the pieces say. A bit like Romans reading sacrifical bulls' entrails only a lot more expensive... |
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| rinku |
| Posted: Sat Mar 31, 2007 12:00 am |
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