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22 Comments
Either the mac build is broken, or you are quite depressed, or this is not actually particularly sincere.
Drat; it’d be the former. I’ll look into it.
drat: i accidentally marked your comment as spam…grr..
also: i think the game is fine? if it didn’t crash outright, and looks like it does in the (new) screenshot, then that’s it.
Really, that’s it? Why?
i can’t recall exactly what led up to it; some discussion about what constituted a game, or whether such-and-such was an adventure game or not. I guess I just wanted to try and make a game that had a minimal, but present, sense of space (perhaps like GirlFlash’s trapped in a dark room, which I found quite beautiful).
I don’t know.
As you know, I take a very liberal view on ‘what is art’, or ‘what are games’. But.
Some of my favourite paintings are Yves Klein’s series of blue canvases titled IKB.
Those blue canvases were explicitly a commentary on sincerity in art. He exhibited three identical blue canvases together in the one exhibition, priced $100, $1000 and $10000. It’s kind of a cutting commentary in a world where paintings are traded and exploited and commoditized.
But I’m not sure I like what a *game* like this is saying though. Free indie games aren’t exploited or commoditized (especially not yours). There’s nothing insincere for you to be satirizing. So it seems more like if you make something this minimal, it’s you who is being insincere.
I don’t think I’d have reacted this way if you’d produced a sense of space like you wanted to (and like GirlFlash did). All it would have taken would be something to scroll past. As it is, the guy in this game can’t move! I’d say it was more like he’s cast in stone, but actually the overriding sense I got was that the game wasn’t working. I got to the point where I downloaded the source to see if it was meant to be doing something else.
So yeah it was a game, and yeah it was a piece of art, but I don’t think the context you’re working in actually supports this kind of minimalism. It made sense for Klein, and for John Cage. But it seems like maybe your audience is different – it’s quite small, and our expectation of our computers includes brokenness and blackness. Minimalism of this kind doesn’t challenge this expectation at all. In fact, in the context of your other recent games, this is just the endpoint of a very gentle straight line.
Am I taking this too seriously? Definitely. But I would quite like it if you’d do something maximalist again. Go for baroque.
Anyway, I’ll be curious to see how other people react.
that you had no sense of motion maybe scuppered things. To have something move past, even to have the camera lag slightly ‘behind’ the player, would have destroyed what I intended (and, what I perceive in it).
“There’s nothing insincere for you to be satirizing.”
There’s a part of me that desires to respond to the (seemingly) cynical works of people like Glail. To this extent, it’s (consciously) reactionary, but, it’s not at all intended as satire.
I…have a desire to work up the complexity of my games slightly in the coming weeks; Berlin wasn’t the time to start doing it, though. I don’t know if I will, and I wouldn’t mind too much if I didn’t, but it’s my intention (at the very least my project with dock will be a slight step in that direction).
Thanks for your comments and considerations. I do appreciate them.
I’ve been looking forward to your collaboration with Dock, because I always wish he would get a bit *less* focused on detail and polish. This should be the perfect collaboration.
And I can’t work Glail out, either.
this is great. i love it.
Gotta be honest. Seemed more like a waste of my time. I completely agree with Bennett. Perhaps this is taking the “minimalist” aspect a bit too far.
Thinking about this in terms of Minimalism is way off. It’s not about how much is happening, but about what is happening (or not happening).
This is to video games what John Cage’s “4’33” is to music.
It’s about time someone made it, too.
The problem is that it isn’t fun and this is why we play games. I find it so odd that anyone would buy a blue painting for a thousand dollars – that is when the bloody insane go too far with supposed expression.
> The problem is that it isn’t fun and this is why we play games.
‘Fun’ is a blunt weapon used to injure and exclude. Please take your ‘fun’ elsewhere.
It’s the postmodern condition. It’s all been done before. Why would you want to do the same I-IV-V-I retardedness all over again just because it was the formula that “worked”.
The only people who are a credit to their art(s) are those who push the limits of what can be perceived as art.
It’s amazing that people can even operate in this universe, let alone complain, let alone create.
>> The problem is that it isn’t fun and this is why we play games.
>‘Fun’ is a blunt weapon used to injure and exclude. Please take your ‘fun’ elsewhere.
Are we allowed to hope to enjoy something? Or if “enjoy” is too specific of a standard, how about this: Should we expect to gain something, whether meaningful or trite, anything at all, out of a game?
I agree that games as a medium can be used for something more meaningful and interesting than the base thrill of “fun.” But just because something defies expectations doesn’t make it meaningful. Does this game have a meaning, or a purpose, or does it convey anything at all?
I don’t think I’ll ever understand “art.” Sometimes it seems all a peice of art is trying to accomplish is defy the boundaries of what someone calls “art,” which is recursive and, outside art itself, meaningless. Art begins to lose any sense of leverage on the world outside art, and becomes a null entity.
I just realized: I don’t think I’d object to this at all if the word “sincere” wasn’t applied to it. If this were something you just did as a random thought, an interesting little experiment, then it’d be just that. But I think in order for something to be sincere, it has to have a meaning, whether emotionally, intellectually, or in any way. What about something pointless can be sincere? I mean this question at face value, and if it really does apply to this situation, I’d love to know the answer.
“If this were something you just did as a random thought, an interesting little experiment, then it’d be just that.”
“But I think in order for something to be sincere, it has to have a meaning”
From what you’re saying, I don’t see how the second statement precludes the possibility of the first.
I guess I don’t see what meaning this could have. Perhaps it’s my own lack of understanding or empathy, but I really don’t comprehend what message, feeling or purpose this is supposed to convey.
I outlined my intentions in reply #5. It was made with the intent of conveying a particular spatial sensation that I find rather difficult to describe.
“It was made with the intent of conveying a particular spatial sensation that I find rather difficult to describe.”
I know I’m coming in way after the fact, but think it was successful. I also wondered about the jumps. At first it felt like the jumps were forward moment as well, but after a time, I began to feel as if I was playing one of those infuriating games where you can only jump straight up (while the running still gave a sense of movement). Finally, that all broke down and there was just the movement (doubled, as my eyes started to lose focus). Then I quit. I thought it was satisfying.
Can you try describing this spacial sensation again? I think I find it interesting, but there’s some piece not quite in place yet.
I’d rather not try – I don’t think it’ll come out right. (That is to say, I tried just there, but wasn’t convinced by what I said).