Weekend watching: even further Into the Night with Jason Rohrer, Chris Crawford

Inverse Square

#1 – 4:24 PM July 10, 2009

I find it horrible to think that Chris Crawford could ever think of his life as a failure, especially hinged on something like money. I'm not an influential person, but to me he is one of the most important people in the world, one of the most benign that the 20th century squeezed out.

I'm not sure how far he can take the idea of games which do not depend on "space". It's a fascinating perspective - for me it summarizes a lot. If games are about interaction, what interactions can we use? How many ways can you think of for two objects (or, perhaps, not objects) to interact? We hold up the marriage as a great step for games, and it is. But it represents everything with space. It is all about space.

It would make no sense to say that because it was about space that it did nothing new. It shows us how much we should celebrate space, what we can do with it. But can we "think outside the space"? I just opened up my Steam list to look for games that weren't entirely about space, and saw none. The only games I can think of that has a meaningful actions that go beyond space are Scribblenauts and The Gostak. Scribblenauts has one thing (the creation part) that goes beyond space, and that just ties right back in to space.

The Gostak... can have space, in a way. It's an interactive fiction written in a made-up language which you work out as you go along. Often you have no idea what is going on, but can progress anyway so long as you understand the language enough. It isn't about space, but about words. It has an adventure-game way of doing things, and that's about space, but the game's system has nothing to do with it. Other adventure games use riddles, but they're all about space. Hmm... maybe Professor Layton isn't spatial, as its riddles are abstract. I dunno, "riddles" are not a great alternative to spatial problems.

We've been trying to talk to computer games, or in them, for ages. What we have now isn't great - Fallout 3 and Deus Ex have consequences of dialogue options which are meaningful in theory, but dispassionate in practise. Perhaps Chris's thing shall change all that. All the games I'm currently thinking about making are based around space, so I find that interesting but intimidating, the same way I feel about "Milo", except without the crushing suspicion. I'd be ok if it turned out interaction was always going to be spatial. I think that we can still do enough with that to ascend the pantheon of art forms. But non-spatial interaction would definitely be a plus.

Zavorio

#2 – 1:07 AM July 11, 2009

Brilliant. I wonder what Crawford has to say about a game like Braid. I just wish there were more documentary approaches to gaming such as this.

Inverse Square

#3 – 11:29 AM July 11, 2009

I just thought of another interesting one. I used to be a big fan of a game called "Dragon Warrior Monsters". It was a pokemon ripoff in the style of Dragon Warrior, but it brought in one very interesting thing: breeding. You could breed monsters together to get new ones, and the better monsters you got, the more interesting your breeding decisions became. I think pokemon does this too now (I only ever played the original), but I don't think breeding was spatial. In a way I was breeding for the sake of getting better monsters with better moves, but I after I played it a lot it wasn't about that. The VERY best monsters and the most important moves had more interesting breeding requirements, and that fascinated me - but in fact I forgot about what they did, and I just bred for breeding's sake, using those things as benchmarks. I can still recite many of the most desirable monsters by heart (I often use it in place of counting sheep).

Actually it has occured to me that the spatial thing ties into something Ralph Koster gave a presentation on here: http://www.raphkoster.com/2006/11/10/project-horseshoe-influences/, which is maths. That ties RPGs like Dragon Warrior Monsters into the whole thing. The whole disturbingly shallow thing.

Fiddler

#4 – 11:50 AM July 13, 2009

Greatly revealing! In fact this was by far the most interesting discussion on game design in general I have ever seen, thank you for posting! I'm from Germany, but missed the film.

It's nice to see how the indie game scene and digital art / new media art get more and more attention. Imho Jason Rohrer is one of the most important developers nowadays. His perspective on game design is so refreshing.

I hope you don't mind that I linked your article at http://fiddler.over-blog.de/article-33769743.html
Awesome website btw, love it!

John Cleave

#5 – 12:25 PM July 17, 2009

That was one of the best gaming conversations I've ever had the pleasure to listen to, and I feel bad for the cameraman to have listened to them all day without being able to interject. I've followed Chris' musings for 15 years, and regard him as an intellectual force in the industry. Regardless of the commercial success of Storytron, that fact remains. I think his constant goading of the industry to break out of their spatial, moto-coordinative mindset is admirable. I think that it is up to the later generations, Jason among them, to make it a reality.