Notgames Forum

I still think we can use the visceral appeal of interactive work to our advantage, to the advantage of culture. Maybe there is a way to experience artistic ecstasy without having to suffer through education. Or maybe we can learn through virtual visceral experience (as we do through life experience).

Our enemy is not human biology. It is a culture that celebrates banality. Physical sensations are not evil. But they too can be refined. And refinement is what's lacking.

I think the common argument for this is that if staring at a blank wall like this would produce such an effect, we would do it. I know the 'you have to learn how to eat it' argument is sometimes countered with 'you can learn how to eat dirt and like it', but the effort is too great.

Like the aforementioned mathematics, there are things which are too much effort for me to learn. But I do believe nobody is born with a natural taste for 19th century English folklore music; but I am happy I acquired it.

A friend and I would say it is somewhat like having spare time, and investing that spare time in making future spare time better by learning a new appreciation skill. Learning how to appreciate a blank wall would cost more spare time than it delivered (so to speak). And some element are incompatible with your beliefs and would damage your enjoyment of life rather than aid it.

I see no problem with education - I would actually say that it is biology which we train; the untrained biology is our enemy, the refined biology our ally. We have to domesticate ourselves to get the most out of ourselves. I do not think I was born liking Beethoven, but after many years it is an inseparable friend.

(But then I am English enough to like a good bit of stiff upper lip.)

Otherwise known as... meditation.


It's called meditation. Some of us do it. I'm happy I've acquired the taste for it.

I think you guys might be reading a little too much into this. I think that after playing a few specific indie titles he's simply really into the concept of challenge in videogames right now, and thinks it could be interesting to explore how that challenge can be made more expressive. And he's simply trying to be a persuasive debater and lead people in the same direction.

I guess it seems to me that, like many of us, he has new ideas of things to explore every couple of years, and this is his latest. I don't share his overall view, but I can respect his goal of suggesting that the mainstream explore game concepts more expressively. This time he just seems to be meeting them more where they already are. My overall response is a sincere "good for him."

To me, though, it's much more exciting to think about directions being explored by other videogames that are recently released or will soon be: Dinner Date, Amnesia, Dear Esther, Proteus, even To The Moon. It is an exciting time.

I did not realize I described meditation, and that we then of course do stare at a blank wall (so to speak) .

@God at play
I am happy to hear you mention To the Moon, it was a real dark horse for me. Never expect that technology, style or idea to work, but it really quite caught me in a certain way!

I haven't even played it myself, thought it's on my list. But watching the video it struck me as a JRPG minus the RPG elements, and that's what excites me about it.

...hey, what do you know, it's on Wired. Takin' this to a new thread.

Heh. The blank wall is optional, of course. But it's the same sort of thing.

No one answered my question: Why should we care what Jason Rohrer thinks?

Because he has lots of fans?

Because he's a fairly prominent art and games things person, I think. He also has some pretty progressive ideas about games, or at least I believe they were progressive at the time.

What games has he done?

He is probably most well known for Passage, and he's also done Gravitation, Sleep is Death, and Inside a Star-filled Sky. At this year's GDC he won the Game Design Challenge with a pretty awesome idea, which I would argue is very much a notgames approach to the challenge: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Rohrer

The entry doesn't fully do the idea justice because of the elegance of the rules, but hopefully as a designer you can think ahead to what would come about from those rules.

You certainly don't have to care what he thinks, but he is a thought leader. Therefore, by definition, he contributes to "the state of the art."

Oh yeah, Passage. It was ok, I guess.

I read the article. He's stuck in the games as games headspace. He called The Graveyard a game and said it was boring. It's not a game at all. And slow isn't the same as boring. He may be a thought leader in games but nothing he said here is applicable to notgames and experiential interactive art. Quite the opposite. He is an iconoclast. He wants to push the boundaries of games but he clearly can't see beyond that barrier.

I think simply because we are "relatives", maybe not the closest ones but still, our work will always be related to his becuse he gained the status of being "the art games designer". Like it or not, whoever tries to push video games into the art domain will be compared to his achievements.

And anyway, maybe he has a different approach but we share interests. I personally think that "Sleep Is Death" is a brilliant notgame.

Yes.