Realtime Art Manifesto – The old Blog of Tale of Tales

Art History of Games presentation online

We have posted the text and slides of our presentation at the Art History of Games symposium last Saturday in Atlanta.

Videogames are stuck. Despite of the ongoing technical evolution and the continuous calls for a new medium, videogames have stopped evolving. They have found their comfort zone. Videogames are happy. Happy being exactly what they are. Fun activities that nurture our inner child.

While our inner grown-up is starving!

We need a new medium that can help us cope with the complexity of our post-historic universe. The interactive, non-linear and generative capacity of computer technology offers such a medium. There is no need however to limit what we create with this technology to the format of games. The possibilities are endless.

There’s a lot of work to do.

Videogames have taken computer technology hostage. It is time to liberate the medium and start feeding our starving hearts and minds. We need to stop making games and look further, go farther, step into a new world. Create interactive entertainment for all instead of squeezing people into oppressive sets of rules and goals. We have the technology. We have the desire. So let’s get to work!

Enjoy!

Deutsches interview

Achim Fehrenbach has turned a telephone interview into a nice article and got it published in both Zoomer and Der Tagesspiegel. It’s about The Path, but also about some of our other projects. In German. Hopefully this helps getting the word out in the German speaking world.

They want to play…

Michael Abbott reports on an interesting observation, illustrating something that we’ve been saying around here for years. That games, basically, are a terrible waste of a perfectly fine medium.

Talking about trying to get his non-gamer friends to play Braid, he says:

The tragic thing is they want to play. The music, the visuals, the opening text – all hook them and pique their curiosities. They didn’t know games aspire to explore the human psyche. They didn’t know games can look like paintings. They didn’t know game music can feature a cello. Braid invites them in, and they willingly enter. Then, just as quickly, Braid boots them out and slams the door in their faces. They discover that the game is as inaccessible to them as an unknown foreign language.

From “Is this what we want?” on The Brainy Gamer.

Exhibition: Mediaterra, Athens

The Endless Forest was featured as an installation at Mediaterra a festival of Art and Technology, October 4-8th, in Athens, Greece. This year their focus was on alternative games.

During the festival we also had the opportunity to present our Realtime Art Manifesto, a provocative set of guidelines for artists and game designers. Much of our philosophy on how we use the Realtime 3d medium has been developed during the making of The Endless Forest. We are pleased to be able to discuss these ideas publicly.