[-empyre-] The Playsthetics of Experimental Digital Games: Week 1 Featured Guests and Questions

Wed Mar 5 15:38:34 EST 2014

Lots to respond to!
Skot raises an important point that all kinds of games have been experimental in some sense at many points in the history of the form, and experimentation isn't something that can be mapped on to any one sector of game development. Again, I think we need to look to specific contexts to undestand what it means for games to be experimental.
RE: Experimentation VS demonstration, it seems to me like rapid prototyping, game jams, and so on encourage an approach to game design that is experimental by necessity due to the constraints of the process (time especially, but also in terms of other resources). The games produced are unpolished, unfinished, and while in some cases developers will go on to polish and finish them, there is certainly an audience for the rough, open-ended, maybe even risky aesthetic of these games (see, for example, the UCLA Game Lab's Punk Arcade, which was featured at Vector). This relates also to Bart's comment about failure - for every game design experiment that produces interesting results, there are several beautiful failures or glorious trainrecks that can be appreciated in those terms. (We might think about Flappy Bird here.)
RE: Experimental games and the avant-garde, Skot is right to suggest that game art (or game-base art as I usually call it because people get confused) in its various permutations since the 1990s has been an important site of intersection between games and the institutions/practices of contemporary art. But like Skot says, game art has effectively become a somewhat cloistered art world unto itself, with its own artists, scholars, and critics (many of whom participated in last March's empyre discussion). We've seen new indie/DIY gaming aesthetics emerge in the last few years ("zinester" games and the "queer renaissance," the "New Arcade," and so on) that operate in somewhat similar conceptual space, but operate more or less separately from contemporary art, as well as current and historical game art practices. Although there are certain actors who traverse these worlds (including our moderator Sandra!), we're dealing with different art world assemblages with different ways of conceiving experimental or radical games.
I like the idea of games as experiments in "otherwise being," and experiencing things in different ways through rules and play. I've been interested for a while now in the different uses and meanings of extreme difficulty in games, which ranges from the construction of "hardcore gamer" identities, to the queer masochism of some of Anna Anthropy's games, to the bizarre and wonderful socio-technical contortions produced by stuff like Bennet Foddy's GIRP, QWOP, etc. In ultradifficult retro or "masocore" platformers, the difficulty is specifically through the lens of established gaming forms and conventions gameplay (ie: the platformer genre), and basically demands familiarity with those conventions (I Wanna Be the Guy and its descendants, for example. With GIRP and similar games, there are no established conventions to be found and so the extreme difficulty paradoxically makes the game more accessible, in that everyone, gaming enthusiast and novice alike, come to it equally ill-equipped.
Lastly, I wanted to note that experimental gaming can be a player disposition as well. I'm partial to the notion that playing digital games is often experimental, involving the testing of boundaries and trying out different actions and combinations of elements "just to see what happens." In some cases, this can become a self-reflexive means of "being off-kilter or doing-things-not-quite-the-same." I've written elsewhere about player-imposed rules and limitations as a form of aesthetic self-fashioning, and glitching would be another aestheticized example. Experimentally navigating a game's contours is something I think everyone does, on some level.
Felan
Date: Tue, 4 Mar 2014 17:50:02 -0500
From: mrghosty at gmail.com
To: empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
Subject: Re: [-empyre-] The Playsthetics of Experimental Digital Games: Week 1 Featured Guests and Questions

----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------

Hi all,

First of all a big thanks to Sandra for moderating this discussion, and for
posing a nice series of introductory questions, which I think as a curator
have provoked more questions for me than answers. I'll do my best in this
first salvo to talk about my position here, both as a scholar and curator,
with what I believe are a set of rather contentious terms, or at the very
least a set of categories for understanding games, experimentation,
independent production, and artistic discourse, which seem to be changing
rapidly enough that the deployment of such terms become problematic.

First of all, I'm wary of the term experimental games, and will mirror
Bart's opening comments in terms of 'games as experiments. The category is
a problem, because the medium itself is a site for all manner of
experimentation; through aesthetics, game mechanics, play with interfaces
etc. I think the distinction between mainstream vs indie games in terms of
exploring the experimental in games isn't very useful, because
historically, we can see all kinds of experiments tracing back to the early
days of development in games. Warren Robinett's addition of a secret room
in Adventure, Howard Scott Warshaw's experiments with mapping multiple
functions onto a single button in Yar's Revenge, Raiders of the Lost Ark,
and E.T. Nana On Sha's play with the player's relationship to music in Pa
Rappa the Rappa and Vib Ribbon. So historically, we can see minor and major
experiments with the tropes, genre conventions, and the form of games, both
in large scale development environments, as well as the smaller scale teams
of the indie realm.

In terms of understanding these works as part of a larger avant garde
movement, I think that Felan's comment on a series of art world assemblages
is an apt one as well. The medium has grown to include the creative
endeavor's AAA studios, small scale studios, artists, fans and hobbyists.
Perhaps the best way to think about these then is through an understanding
of different movements (avant gardes Vs. avant garde), and enter into
discussions on how certain experiments speak to our larger understanding of
a specific strata of the medium, and whether or not these new experiments
provide us with moments of rupture or catalyze new creative trajectories.
 In my experience, however, I find that the works that I would most align
with previous avant garde art movements is the practice of Art Modding (a
practice employed by artists experimenting with games, rather than game
developers), the history of the appropriation of and re-contextualization
of the medium through these works is documented, but there is still some
contention in these discussions, requiring us to work through them through
more scholarly discussion.

The art world vs/ game world vs/ indie games question is one that speaks
directly to myself and others (such as Isabelle Arvers, who's previous
contributions to last year's discussion I have read over) who curate and
work within the realm of "Game Art". Which is to say, the artistic
experimentation with games and their technologies. Isabelle made a post on
the listserv which struck me right away. And that is the strange
interstitial space which game art occupies. The art world and the game
world (as Isabelle discussed, which I wholly agree with) do not dialogue
with one another. One of the reasons that I founded the Vector Game Art
Festival in Toronto, was to try to bridge this gap. However, it should be
noted here that neither indie game makers, nor members of the art world in
Toronto chose to engage, rather it was people who were already engaged in
this liminal realm of game art, or those completely uninitiated in either
who became our audience.

Finally, on the whole term "indie game". The world of indie development has
changed so rapidly, that what began as a term to describe an ideological /
aesthetic position of game makers working outside the "mainstream" to make
experimental or offbeat works on their own terms.. well I don't think the
term applies anymore when framed as something alternative to mainstream
games (not as a blanket term anyway).  Rather the term seems to apply only
when discussing small teams or studios working outside of the larger studio
system (which is a similar trajectory to the whole Indie film phenomenon in
the 90s). Indie is no longer something that distinguishes itself from other
facets of the game industry, save smaller budgets and smaller teams. The
reason I believe this is due in large part to the rise of in-game
micro-transactions (invented largely by indie developers), witnessing small
studios taking on branded/ licensed properties and developing games for
them. I have no problem using the term to describe the distinctions between
large scale studio productions and small scale studio productions, but to
talk about indie as an aesthetic or ideological alternative, at this point,
is rather erroneous to me.

But for fear of ranting.. I will stop there.

Looking forward to this discussion!!!

Skot. aka mrghosty.

On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 10:11 AM, Felan Parker wrote:

> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> Hello world!
>
> Thanks to Sandra for the invitation to join in this discussion, and to
> empyre for hosting.
>
> My interest in these questions is on the socio-cultural side of things,
> and how the concept of experimental games (or artgames, or weird games, or
> honest games)  is mobilized in different empirical contexts to different
> ends. What does it mean for something to be experimental in a given time,
> place, community, etc.? For me, this is not just about game-making
> practices, although certainly production is important. I also want to look
> at how these practices are taken up by players and critics, and how they
> help constitute what exactly is experimental (or artistic, or weird, or
> honest) about them. As Sandra's intro suggests, critics and scholars in
> particular play a crucial role in discursively framing and sustaining what
> might be called the taste publics for various kinds of experimental games,
> but we might also consider the social-material networks of distribution
> through which these games circulate, and the wider cultural frameworks
> outside of gaming culture specifically that constitute ideas of
> experimentalism and weirdness ("paracinematic" communities of reception for
> B-movies and trash cinema, for example, form the basis for the appreciation
> of amateurish, broken, or otherwise "bad" games as exemplified by Glorious
> Trainwrecks http://www.glorioustrainwrecks.com/). Collectively, these all
> constitute what I call in my own research an art world assemblage, a
> contingent and always-shifting system of interactions between diverse
> elements that produces aesthetic experiences, cultural and/or material
> capital, and social legitimacy for those involved. I'll leave it there
> for now, but I hope as the discussion proceeds we can start discussion
> specific experimental game assemblages in greater depth.
>
> Felan
>
>
>
> From: s.danilovic at mail.utoronto.ca
> To: empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> Date: Tue, 4 Mar 2014 04:30:54 +0000
> Subject: [-empyre-] The Playsthetics of Experimental Digital Games: Week 1
> Featured Guests and Questions
>
> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>
>
> Week 1 (March 3-9): Bart Simon, mrghosty, Felan Parker. I would like to
> introduce the first three guests of this discussion, Bart Simon, mrghosty
> and Felan Parker. Questions of the week: Experimental games - tensions 1.
> Is the conceptual category of 'experimental games' a productive category of
> analysis? What are some inherent assumptions, biases, challenges? 2. What
> are some fruitful ways to think about experimental games in the context of
> problematic and already problematized institutional understandings of
> experimental and avant-garde art/practice? 3. How are experimental digital
> games troubling mainstream games culture and/or game studies scholarship?
> 4. What are some intersections between experimental digital games, indie
> games and art/digital media art? Bart Simon (CA) is the current director of
> the Centre for Technoculture, Art and Games (TAG) and Associate Professor
> in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Concordia University in
> Montreal. His areas of expertise include game studies, science and
> technology studies and cultural sociology. His game studies research
> crosses a variety of genres, platforms and modalities looking at the
> relation of game cultures, socio-materiality and everyday life. Some of his
> work is represented in journals such as Games and Culture, Game Studies and
> Loading. His current research on social imagination and gameplay and
> cultural economies of the indie game scene are funded by the Social Science
> and Humanities Council of Canada and the Canadian network on New Media,
> Animation and Games (GRAND NCE). mrghosty (aka skot deeming) (CA) is an
> artist, curator, researcher and doctoral student in Concordia University's
> Individualized Program in the Humanities. As a key figure in the Canadian
> video game art scene, and a researcher at Concordia's Amplab, andTAGlab,
> skot draws upon a wealth of practical experience and theoretical knowledge
> while investigating the intersections between gamer cultures, hacker
> cultures and new media art practices. Felan Parker (CA) is a PhD candidate
> (ABD) in Communication & Culture at York University in Toronto,
> specializing in digital game studies and cinema and media studies. He holds
> an MA and BA Hon. in Film Studies from Carleton University. His
> dissertation examines the cultural legitimation of digital games as art in
> a variety of different contexts, and other research interests include
> transmedia franchises, genre, authorship, paratexts, and canon formation. ??
>   Week 1 (March 3-9): Bart Simon, mrghosty, Felan Parker.
>
> I would like to introduce the first three guests of this discussion, Bart
> Simon, mrghosty and Felan Parker.
>
>
>  Questions of the week: Experimental games - tensions
>
>  1.     Is the conceptual category of 'experimental games' a productive
> category of analysis? What are some inherent assumptions, biases,
> challenges?
>
>  2.     What are some fruitful ways to think about experimental games in
> the context of problematic and already problematized institutional
> understandings of experimental and avant-garde art/practice?
>
>  3.     How are experimental digital games troubling mainstream games
> culture and/or game studies scholarship?
>
>  4.     What are some intersections between experimental digital games,
> indie games and art/digital media art?
>
>
>  Bart Simon (CA) is the current director of the Centre for Technoculture,
> Art and Games (TAG) and Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology
> and Anthropology at Concordia University in Montreal. His areas of
> expertise include game studies, science and technology studies and cultural
> sociology. His game studies research crosses a variety of genres, platforms
> and modalities looking at the relation of game cultures, socio-materiality
> and everyday life. Some of his work is represented in journals such as
> Games and Culture, Game Studies and Loading. His current research on social
> imagination and gameplay and cultural economies of the indie game scene are
> funded by the Social Science and Humanities Council of Canada and the
> Canadian network on New Media, Animation and Games (GRAND NCE).
>
>  mrghosty (aka skot deeming) (CA) is an artist, curator, researcher and
> doctoral student in Concordia University's Individualized Program in the
> Humanities. As a key figure in the Canadian video game art scene, and a
> researcher at Concordia's Amplab, andTAGlab, skot draws upon a wealth of
> practical experience and theoretical knowledge while investigating the
> intersections between gamer cultures, hacker cultures and new media art
> practices.
>
>  Felan Parker (CA) is a PhD candidate (ABD) in Communication & Culture at
> York University in Toronto, specializing in digital game studies and cinema
> and media studies. He holds an MA and BA Hon. in Film Studies from Carleton
> University. His dissertation examines the cultural legitimation of digital
> games as art in a variety of different contexts, and other research
> interests include transmedia franchises, genre, authorship, paratexts, and
> canon formation.
>
>
>
>  
>
>
> _______________________________________________ empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>

-- 
skot deeming
http://www.theghostarcade.tumblr.com
http://www.teamvector.tumblr.com
Hi all,
First of all a big thanks to Sandra for moderating this discussion, and for posing a nice series of introductory questions, which I think as a curator have provoked more questions for me than answers. I'll do my best in this first salvo to talk about my position here, both as a scholar and curator, with what I believe are a set of rather contentious terms, or at the very least a set of categories for understanding games, experimentation, independent production, and artistic discourse, which seem to be changing rapidly enough that the deployment of such terms become problematic.�

First of all, I'm wary of the term experimental games, and will mirror Bart's opening comments in terms of 'games as experiments. The category is a problem, because the medium itself is a site for all manner of experimentation; through aesthetics, game mechanics, play with interfaces etc. I think the distinction between mainstream vs indie games in terms of exploring the experimental in games isn't very useful, because historically, we can see all kinds of experiments tracing back to the early days of development in games. Warren Robinett's addition of a secret room in Adventure, Howard Scott Warshaw's experiments with mapping multiple functions onto a single button in Yar's Revenge, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and E.T. Nana On Sha's play with the player's relationship to music in Pa Rappa the Rappa and Vib Ribbon. So historically, we can see minor and major experiments with the tropes, genre conventions, and the form of games, both in large scale development environments, as well as the smaller scale teams of the indie realm.�

In terms of understanding these works as part of a larger avant garde movement, I think that Felan's comment on a series of art world assemblages is an apt one as well. The medium has grown to include the creative endeavor's AAA studios, small scale studios, artists, fans and hobbyists. Perhaps the best way to think about these then is through an understanding of different movements (avant gardes Vs. avant garde), and enter into discussions on how certain experiments speak to our larger understanding of a specific strata of the medium, and whether or not these new experiments provide us with moments of rupture or catalyze new creative trajectories. �In my experience, however, I find that the works that I would most align with previous avant garde art movements is the practice of Art Modding (a practice employed by artists experimenting with games, rather than game developers), the history of the appropriation of and re-contextualization of the medium through these works is documented, but there is still some contention in these discussions, requiring us to work through them through more scholarly discussion.�

The art world vs/ game world vs/ indie games question is one that speaks directly to myself and others (such as Isabelle Arvers, who's previous contributions to last year's discussion I have read over) who curate and work within the realm of "Game Art". Which is to say, the artistic experimentation with games and their technologies. Isabelle made a post on the listserv which struck me right away. And that is the strange interstitial space which game art occupies. The art world and the game world (as Isabelle discussed, which I wholly agree with) do not dialogue with one another. One of the reasons that I founded the Vector Game Art Festival in Toronto, was to try to bridge this gap. However, it should be noted here that neither indie game makers, nor members of the art world in Toronto chose to engage, rather it was people who were already engaged in this liminal realm of game art, or those completely uninitiated in either who became our audience.�

Finally, on the whole term "indie game". The world of indie development has changed so rapidly, that what began as a term to describe an ideological / aesthetic position of game makers working outside the "mainstream" to make experimental or offbeat works on their own terms.. well I don't think the term applies anymore when framed as something alternative to mainstream games (not as a blanket term anyway). �Rather the term seems to apply only when discussing small teams or studios working outside of the larger studio system (which is a similar trajectory to the whole Indie film phenomenon in the 90s). Indie is no longer something that distinguishes itself from other facets of the game industry, save smaller budgets and smaller teams. The reason I believe this is due in large part to the rise of in-game micro-transactions (invented largely by indie developers), witnessing small studios taking on branded/ licensed properties and developing games for them. I have no problem using the term to describe the distinctions between large scale studio productions and small scale studio productions, but to talk about indie as an aesthetic or ideological alternative, at this point, is rather erroneous to me.�

But for fear of ranting.. I will stop there.
Looking forward to this discussion!!!
Skot. aka mrghosty.�

On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 10:11 AM, Felan Parker <felan.parker at hotmail.com> wrote:

----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------

Hello world!

Thanks to Sandra for the invitation to join in this discussion, and to empyre for hosting.

My interest in these questions is on the socio-cultural side of things, and how the concept of experimental games (or artgames, or weird games, or honest games) �is mobilized in different empirical contexts to different ends. What does it mean for something to be experimental in a given time, place, community, etc.? For me, this is not just about game-making practices, although certainly production is important. I also want to look at how these practices are taken up by players and critics, and how they help constitute what exactly is experimental (or artistic, or weird, or honest) about them. As Sandra's intro suggests, critics and scholars in particular play a crucial role in discursively framing and sustaining what might be called the taste publics for various kinds of experimental games, but we might also consider the social-material networks of distribution through which these games circulate, and the wider cultural frameworks outside of gaming culture specifically that constitute ideas of experimentalism and weirdness ("paracinematic" communities of reception for B-movies and trash cinema, for example, form the basis for the appreciation of amateurish, broken, or otherwise "bad" games as exemplified by Glorious Trainwrecks�http://www.glorioustrainwrecks.com/). Collectively, these all constitute what I call in my own research an art world assemblage, a contingent and always-shifting system of interactions between diverse elements that produces aesthetic experiences, cultural and/or material capital, and social legitimacy for those involved.�I'll leave it there for now, but I hope as the discussion proceeds we can start discussion specific experimental game assemblages in greater depth.

Felan

From: s.danilovic at mail.utoronto.ca
To: empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
Date: Tue, 4 Mar 2014 04:30:54 +0000

Subject: [-empyre-] The Playsthetics of Experimental Digital Games: Week 1 Featured Guests and Questions

----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------

Week 1 (March 3-9): Bart Simon, mrghosty, Felan Parker.

I would like to introduce the first three guests of this discussion, Bart Simon, mrghosty and Felan Parker.

Questions of the week: Experimental games - tensions

1.     Is the conceptual category of 'experimental games' a productive category of analysis? What are some inherent assumptions, biases, challenges?

2.     What are some fruitful ways to think about experimental games in the context of problematic and already problematized institutional understandings of experimental and avant-garde art/practice?

3.     How are experimental digital games troubling mainstream games culture and/or game studies scholarship?

4.     What are some intersections between experimental digital games, indie games and art/digital media art?

Bart Simon (CA) is the current director of the Centre for Technoculture, Art and Games (TAG) and Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Concordia University in Montreal. His areas of expertise include game studies, science and technology studies and cultural sociology. His game studies research crosses a variety of genres, platforms and modalities looking at the relation of game cultures, socio-materiality and everyday life. Some of his work is represented in journals such as Games and Culture, Game Studies and Loading. His current research on social imagination and gameplay and cultural economies of the indie game scene are funded by the Social Science and Humanities Council of Canada and the Canadian network on New Media, Animation and Games (GRAND NCE).

mrghosty (aka skot deeming) (CA) is an artist, curator, researcher and doctoral student in Concordia University's Individualized Program in the Humanities. As a key figure in the Canadian video game art scene, and a researcher at Concordia's Amplab, andTAGlab, skot draws upon a wealth of practical experience and theoretical knowledge while investigating the intersections between gamer cultures, hacker cultures and new media art practices.

Felan Parker (CA) is a PhD candidate (ABD) in Communication & Culture at York University in Toronto, specializing in digital game studies and cinema and media studies. He holds an MA and BA Hon. in Film Studies from Carleton University. His dissertation examines the cultural legitimation of digital games as art in a variety of different contexts, and other research interests include transmedia franchises, genre, authorship, paratexts, and canon formation.

??

Week 1 (March 3-9): Bart Simon, mrghosty, Felan Parker.�

I would like to introduce the first three guests of this discussion, Bart Simon, mrghosty and Felan Parker.�

Questions of the week:�Experimental games - tensions

1. � � Is the conceptual category of 'experimental games' a productive category of analysis? What are some inherent assumptions, biases, challenges?�

2. � � What are some fruitful ways to think about experimental games in the context of problematic and already problematized institutional understandings of experimental and avant-garde art/practice?

3. � � How are experimental digital games troubling mainstream games culture and/or game studies scholarship?

4. � � What are some intersections between experimental digital games, indie games and art/digital media art?

Bart Simon (CA) is the current director of the Centre for Technoculture, Art and Games (TAG) and Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Concordia University in Montreal. His areas of expertise include game studies, science
 and technology studies and cultural sociology. His game studies research crosses a variety of genres, platforms and modalities looking at the relation of game cultures, socio-materiality and everyday life. Some of his work is represented in journals such as
 Games and Culture, Game Studies and Loading. His current research on social imagination and gameplay and cultural economies of the indie game scene are funded by the Social Science and Humanities Council of Canada and the Canadian network on New Media, Animation
 and Games (GRAND NCE).

mrghosty (aka skot deeming) (CA) is an artist, curator, researcher and doctoral student in Concordia University's Individualized Program in the Humanities. As a key figure in the Canadian video game art scene, and a researcher at Concordia's Amplab, andTAGlab,
 skot draws upon a wealth of practical experience and theoretical knowledge while investigating the intersections between gamer cultures, hacker cultures and new media art practices.

Felan Parker (CA) is a PhD candidate (ABD) in Communication & Culture at York University in Toronto, specializing in digital game studies and cinema and media studies. He holds an MA and BA Hon. in Film Studies from Carleton University. His dissertation
 examines the cultural legitimation of digital games as art in a variety of different contexts, and other research interests include transmedia franchises, genre, authorship, paratexts, and canon formation.

_______________________________________________
empyre forum
empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
http://www.subtle.net/empyre 		 	   		  

_______________________________________________

empyre forum

empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au

http://www.subtle.net/empyre

-- 
skot deeming 
http://www.theghostarcade.tumblr.com

http://www.teamvector.tumblr.com

_______________________________________________
empyre forum
empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
http://www.subtle.net/empyre 		 	   		  
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