RE: [-empyre-] play versus gameplay

["Helen Stuckey" <hstuckey@acmi.net.au>]

Andy I agree that play does not have to be competitive and many highly successful 3D world style computers games reflect a goal which about exploration or puzzle solving (Myst + Longest Journey for example). What I find interesting is that artists tend  to focus on the implications of player agency whilst many commercial games just seem to be focused about achieving a final goal. This may be a simple matter of scale as most artists using games play are not creating on the scale of a commercial games so focus on the detail. I suppose I am thinking about art works such as Van Sowerwines - "Play with Me" and C Levels "Waco Resurrection"

I can't help feeling that a successful art game still needs to have an 
interactive hook in some way, especially if it is going work within and 
utilise that genre. But I think that this can be playfulness rather 
than competition and this, often, is what separates the art game from 
commercial competitive game (not exclusively though). Playing (in the 
playful sense as opposed to competitive) is often a reflective 
activity, which is probably why it works so well as a pedagogical tool, 
so it lends itself to delivering a little more meaning.

Sound works like Masaki Fujihata's "Small Fish" illustrate this well

I have another thought to throw to the list. A criticism of a great 
deal of interactive/installation art is that there is often far too 
much focus on the enabling technology than the ideas or interaction. It 
is easy (or has been at least) to wow curators and audiences with some 
fancy tech. When you see these pieces a few years down the track they 
really age terribly, whereas those that rely on a good idea are still 
engaging. I'm wondering if utilising videogame engines helps relieve 
this tension because they are now such a common cultural form? So the 
excitement comes not from seeing a full-motion realtime 3D world, but 
the subversion of a genre.

It is a very real criticism against interactive art as being often too strongly driven by a "gee wow" technology factor and when that technology is not so special it is apparent that there is no content to the work. As you have suggested games culture offers its own underpinning to much work made using games technology. In the case of Troy Innocents work this is very apparent in "Semiomorph" but less so with "LifeSigns" where the work does not resemble closely game interface or graphics but game technologies enable Troy through the Middleware engine Renderware to create the complex interactive world the work requires.

It is interesting how driven the commercial industry is in trying to achieve mimetic 3D worlds - there is talk amongst those working in the games development industry that when the happy day comes when graphics are as 3d as they can be that can start to focus on content. 

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