Pippin Barr 38 Curious Games

Abstract EU Abstract ES

Bideo jokoak gaur egungo adierazpen Los videojuegos son el más nuevo y excitante modu berriena eta zirraragarriena dira, medio de expresión de nuestro tiempo eta oraingo bideo jokoen joerak ohiko y actualmente tienden hacia estructuras egituretara eta interakzio estetikara jotzen convencionales y una estética de interacción. du. Baliabide horren potentziala bultzatzeko, Los diseñadores y jugadores deben mirar diseinatzaileek eta jokalariek bideo jokoen a la retórica y la filosofía del diseño de diseinuaren erretorika eta filosofia aztertu videojuegos para promover el potencial de behar dute. Artikulu honetan curious este medio. En este artículo, expongo la games kontzeptua azalduko dut bestelako noción de los juegos curiosos como forma bideo jokoak sortzeko aukera moduan. de crear otro tipo de videojuego. En el Ondoren, joko diseinuaren funtsezko alderdi texto se alternan el análisis de aspectos filosofikoez eta nire esperientziaz arituko naiz filosóficos clave del diseño de juegos y mi eta amaitzeko, curious games-ei dagokionez, propia experiencia, para terminar con una nire esperientziaren ezaugarriak azalduko descripción de mi propia experiencia en lo ditut. relativo a los curious games.

* Testu honetan curious games esapideak, jokoaz harago * El término curious games utilizado en este texto trasciende doan eremua ere hartzen du, bai diseinatzaileari eta bai en su ámbito de aplicación al propio juego, refiriéndose bere balizko erabiltzaileei dagokien jakin-minezko jarrera a una actitud inquisitiva e interrogativa, aplicada tanto galdetzaile bati ezartzen zaio, eta joko-esperientzia al diseñador del juego como a sus potenciales usuarios y konplexuago egiten duten galderen planteamenduan que funciona a partir del planteamiento de preguntas y oinarritzen da. Testua itzultzeko orduan ingelesezko complejización de la experiencia de juego. A efectos de lokuzioa bere horretan uztea hobetsi da, esanahiaren traducción se ha decidido mantener el término inglés para osotasuna hobe adierazten duelakoan. una correcta acepción del mismo. 38]39

Abstract FR Abstract EN

Les jeux vidéo sont le nouveau moyen Video games are the newest and most d’expression attrayant de notre temps exciting expressive medium of our time and et à l’heure actuelle, ils tendent vers des yet the trend in today’s games is toward structures conventionnelles et une esthétique conventional structures and aesthetics of d’interaction. Les concepteurs et les joueurs interaction. In order to live up to the potential doivent se pencher sur la rhétorique et la of this medium, designers and players must philosophie de la conception du jeu afin de turn to the rhetorics and philosophies of promouvoir le potentiel de ce média. Dans design. In this article I introduce cet article, j’expose la notion des curious the notion of curious games as one approach games comme une approche dans la création to take to the creation of a different kind d’un autre type de jeu vidéo. J’alternerai of video game. The article proceeds in ensuite l’analyse des aspects philosophiques alternation between examinations of key clés de la conception des jeux et ma propre philosophical aspects of and my expérience, en concluant par mon expérience own practice, ending with a characterisation dans le domaine des curious games. of my own practice in terms of curious games.

* Le terme curious games utilisé dans ce texte, dont le champ d’application s’étend au-delà du jeu lui-même, fait référence à une attitude inquisitrice et interrogative qui concerne autant le concepteur du jeu que ses utilisateurs potentiels et fonctionne à partir de questionnements et de la complexité de l’expérience de jeu. Pour la traduction, nous avons décidé de garder le terme anglais pour ne pas perdre le sens original. Curious Games ] Pippin Barr 40

\Ancient Greek Punishment . Pippin Barr. 40]41

Introduction operate according to highly conventional standards of morality. As a teacher and critic of game design, I play a lot of games. In critically reflecting on their In constructing this kind of «best practice», design, though, it is easy to be disappointed. we constrict what video games can be. On playing yet another beautifully realised first-person shooter or cleverly tuned So How Do You Make a Game About the platformer, we see that video games, Meaning of Life? especially mainstream video games, are bound by highly conventional understandings I began to make my own video games at the of the interactive and aesthetic potential of beginning of 2011 both as a form of expression the medium. Such conventions are now so and as a critique of these limits. taken for granted that they threaten to define the medium itself. To push against these self- My first game, GuruQuest, presents players defined boundaries, we must not only talk with a world in which they can traverse a about what video games are and can be, but landscape of rolling hills in order to consult must actively work to create games that move with a guru on the meaning of life. Players the conversation forward. talk to the guru by typing in their questions or thoughts and then reading the response. Best Practice This process is made possible by a modified version of the ELIZA chatbot (Weizenbaum, Without much critical thought, contemporary 1966), which I adjusted to speak like a guru video games have adopted traditional rather than like a psychoanalyst. Players software usability as a central and desirable can therefore discuss any issue they choose feature. This has proved a limitation. with the guru, from the nonsensical to the Usability, characterised by Jakob Nielsen as profound. «a quality attribute that assesses how easy user interfaces are to use» (Nielsen, n.d.), Alternative Games brings with it a focus on making games easily learnable, efficient, memorable, tolerant Numerous designers who work with games of error, and pleasing to use. Games thus have pushed against the «best practice» present us with challenges that are not too tenets of conventional usability and fantasy. challenging, with the tools to succeed ready , for instance, presents us with to hand, and the ability to try again until a navigable first-person world in which a we succeed. Video games also inherit from disjointed narrative is told in voice over. traditional games concerns with fairness, Unlike in traditional first-person games, the balance, and fun. We should have equal player has no gun, just the tools needed to opportunities, the game system should avoid traverse space and to interpret what they extremes, and the experience should be one see and hear. The game Beautiful Escape: that is entertaining. Dungeoneer pushes fantasy in another direction, against conventional propriety to Along with usability, video games have situate the player as a modern day torturer. adopted very conventional representations Subverting traditional usability, Painstation of fantasy. We generally play in a situation makes players physically suffer in the course where we are the most powerful agent of play. None of these games conform to best in the world, with direct control over the practice, but, rather, stretch the boundaries of environment, and a high of narrative the medium. significance. We are the strongman, not the weakling, the hero, not the villain, and we Curious Games ] Pippin Barr 42

Can Your Own Game Surprise You? workplace: concerns for clarity, efficiency and productivity» (Gaver, 2008, p.2). These My second game was Let There Be Smite!, work-oriented concerns, Gaver suggests, inspired by the game-like image of God can obstruct more aesthetic or «poetic» «resetting» the world with the great flood after possibilities. despairing at the sins of mankind. In the game you take on God’s «day job», monitoring sins In the world of game design specifically, on a computer screen, and deciding who to «abusive game design» (Wilson and Sicart, «smite» and who to «forgive» via a dialog box. 2010) serves as one avenue for evolving a different direction. Douglas Wilson and Miguel At first, when there are few people, this process Sicart critique positioning the player at the is straightforward: you read the sin and then centre of the design process, suggesting this choose. As the population increases, more and leads to a kind of «player narcissism». They more sins are committed, and your interactions advocate a design process focused on creating must change. First you have to read and decide a form of agonistic dialog between designer faster, then when you don’t have time to read and player, with the game as a facilitator. you must decide whether to be a vengeful or a forgiving God by always smiting or always What Can You Say Through and Around forgiving. Finally, sins are committed at such Games? a rate that you have no choice but to blindly click any button close to your cursor. Though My third game, Safety Instructions, helped the game was conceived as a simple jest, the me understand dialogic design better. In this experience of making increasingly compromised speed- you type the «safety moral judgments under time pressure yielded instructions» commonly encountered on an an interesting way to explore moral decision airplane in order to survive a crash. Typos lead making. to immediate (and amusing) death. As part of the game, I created a final, unbeatable Alternative Design Philosophies stage. On release, however, players promptly beat the final stage by cheating and then told The conventionality of designed media is not me: the most basic form of game dialog. In an uncommon concern and there have been response, I created a final final stage. many attempts to counteract it. In industrial design, Anthony Dunne presents a vision In similarly «dialogic» exchanges, I met players of «critical design» as a challenge to the who recorded a voice-over for the game, and conventional aesthetics of designed objects. others who had become obsessed with beating Dunne observes that «perhaps with aesthetics, the hardest level. Safety Instructions showed a different path must be taken: an aesthetic me the relationship a game maker can have approach might subsume and subvert the idea with players, particularly in small scale games of user-friendliness and provide an alternative on the internet. model of interactivity» (Dunne, 2008, pp.23- 24). Alternative Game Design Movements

Within traditional software and electronic One intriguing movement in video games object design itself, a similar reaction to is the « game». Often a catch-all term usability has been voiced by Bill Gaver along for unconventional design, the is with a response he calls «ludic design». perhaps best exemplified by Jason Rohrer’s Gaver notes that «as computing has Passage. In this reflective game, the traversal emerged from the office and laboratory, it of space and its difficulties is used as a seems to have brought along values of the metaphor for our passage from birth to death. 42]43

What is important about Rohrer’s game, and this rule breaking, The Artist Is Present was art games like it, is the use of the procedural an enormous success, covered by numerous and interactive nature of the games medium high profile publications and even endorsed to convey meaning, a form of expression Ian by the Museum of Modern Art itself. This Bogost refers to as «proceduralist games» game, more than any other, helped to break (Bogost, 2011). any preconceptions I had about the possible content and audience of a video game. The In an entirely different way, Auriea Harvey audience for The Artist Is Present extended and Michael Samyn of Tale of Tales, have beyond traditional and attracted those championed the notion of «notgames» more interested in it as an unusual form of (Harvey and Samyn, 2011). They come from experience. the visual and are disappointed by the use of the games medium so far, particularly Curious Games the conventional nature of fantasy discussed earlier. Instead, they have made «notgames» In seeking to frame my own practice, I have which use certain elements of the medium, built the idea of «curious games». «Curious» such as world building and character means inquisitive activity rather than a static development, but jettison the specific ludic aesthetic perspective or a conventional heritage of video games. interaction. A curious game may leverage conventions in some way, but is not obliged to Finally, the notion of «serious games» has been adhere to them. Another implication is a kind used to describe games which «have a purpose of prying or meddling, injecting a needed sense beyond entertainment» (Winn, 2008). In serious of provocation into design. game design the objective has generally been to take advantage of the inherently motivating The notion of a curio is also generative of elements of video games, such as their goals, potential properties of a curious game. A curio narratives, and rewards, and to pair them with is usually small in scale, suggesting that curious more socially acceptable expressive goals, such games ought to be the same: curiosity with as education or political speech. high density. Curios are also collected, implying the existence of a collector with a personal What Happens When You Make The Most aesthetic holding together the collection. In Boring Game Imaginable? the case of curious games, the collector could be the players or the designer themselves. My fourth game, The Artist Is Present, is a retro-styled game mirroring the performance Central to the process of creating interesting artwork of the same name by Marina and novel video games, then, is the idea that Abramovic. The player/visitor arrives at the the designer is curious about all elements of Museum of Modern Art in New York during game making. This includes a willingness to opening hours, buys a ticket to the show, and develop games around unusual subject matter, waits in a lengthy queue to have a chance to sit to pay attention to the development process opposite the artist and look into her eyes. itself as it influences the aesthetics of a game, and to be surprised when the experience of The game was designed to accurately reflect play differs from the vision. the experience of visiting the real show, including the frustrations of waiting. This Today’s games are also fortunate to have puts the game in direct conflict with best curious players. As my own experience has practice emphasis on the player’s pleasurable shown, our assumptions about the kind of experience and the «fairness» of the game. people who will play a game, as well as the One does not wait in a video game. Despite kind of games they might play, are often Curious Games ] Pippin Barr 44 mistaken and limited by our own prejudices. References The ideal of the «curious player» can serve Bogost, Ian (2011). How to Do Things With Videogames. as an ideological stance: we should all strive University of Minnesota Press. to be curious players, accountable and interested in our play. calunio (2010). Beautiful Escape: Dungeoneer. Y http://rpgmaker.net/games/2068 (last accessed 9 December 2011) Finally, game design and creation do not take place in a vacuum. Instead, we Dunne, Anthony (2008). Hertzian Tales: Electronic Products, can see game making as a key part of a Aesthetic Experience, and Critical Design. The MIT press. larger conversation about games and their Gaver, William (2008). «Designing for Homo Ludens, Still». In potential. While there are important critical Binder, T., Löwgren, J., and Malmborg, L. (eds.) (Re)Searching voices writing about games and what they the Digital Bauhaus. London: Springer, pp 163-178. can mean, there are still too few people Harvey, Auriea and Samyn, Michaël (2011). Notgames Fest making games that join in. Keynote. Y http://notgames.org/blog/2011/08/23/notgames- fest-keynote (last accessed 9 December 2011) Curious games can be a part of that conversation. They ask rather than tell, Nielsen, Jakob (n.d.). Usability 101: Introduction to Usability. Y www.useit.com/alertbox/20030825.html (last accessed 9 explore rather than assert, and tease rather December 2011) than please. Rohrer, Jason (2007). Passage. Y http://hcsoftware. sourceforge.net/passage/ (last accessed 9 December 2011)

thechineseroom (2008,2012). Dear Esther. Y http://dear-esther.com (last accessed 9 December 2011)

Weizenbaum, Joseph (1966). ELIZA.

Wilson, Douglas and Sicart, Miguel (2010). «Now It’s Personal: On Abusive Game Design». In Proceedings of FuturePlay 2010.

Winn, Brian (2008). «The Design, Play, and Experience Framework». In Handbook of Research on Effective Electronic Gaming in Education. Richard Ferdig (editor). Information Science Reference.

//////////fur//// art entertainment interfaces (2001). Painstation. Y www.painstation.de (last accessed 9 December 2011) 44]45

\Let There Be Smite! . Pippin Barr.