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

Thu Mar 6 02:35:34 EST 2014

I was wondering how long it would be before we came around to the Experimental Gameplay Project! That definition is pretty fascinating, and draws clear battle-lines between what is seen to be experimental in AAA titles (technical innovation, fictional worlds, etc.) as compared to smaller-scale indie games. In a more subtle way, though, it also draws a line between what I would describe as the dominant conception of indie and other emergent game-making practices that don't necessarily fit within this conception of indie and/or experimentation. From the paper I wrote to accompany the "Indie Game Studies" workshop Bart and I organized at last year's DiGRA conference:
"The mainstreaming of a particular, narrow vision of indie games demands more in-depth analyses that highlight the complexities of indie gaming — [most] non-commercial, not-for- profit, activist, and amateur games, for example, are all written out of this narrative. This tension over the right to define what “counts” as an indie game has manifested in a kind of localized culture war. Anna Anthropy’s Rise of the Videogame Zinesters (2012b), for example, locates true independence in highly personal, amateur game design that is modeled on print zines and independent comics. Similarly, the recent controversy regarding the formal status of the new wave of “zinester” games as “games” (in particular small, personal games produced by women, queer and trans* people, often using accessible software like Game Maker, Stencyl, and Twine) demonstrates the instability of this dominant conception of indie, not to mention the contours of its ideology (see Ligman 2013 for a summary of this debate)."
I would argue that there's something kind of hegemonic about Experimental Gameplay, especially as its relationship to AAA production has stabilized as Bart argues, constituted in the particular sector of indie gaming culture it represents. The stipulations against "Novel content" and "games for under-served audiences" suggests that Twine games like porpentine's Howling Dogs and Soha El-Sabaawi's Penalties don't necessarily count as experimental in this context, but I would argue these games are experimental and radical in their appropriation and hybridization of familiar text adventure/hypertext conventions to articulate narrative "content" that is exceedingly rare in video games. The distinction Experimental Gameplay draws between "core gameplay" and everything else is pragmatic in this sense, as it is used to draw clear boundaries between different kinds of game-making.
What we've seen in recent years with the rise of a diverse range of zinester/queer/feminist/radical/punk/DIY/amateur/whatever indie games is a community or assemblage that positions itself against BOTH the mainstream industry AND this hegemonic conception of indie (which, as demonstrated by cultural texts like Indie Game: The Movie and Us and the Game Industry, is still overwhelmingly white, straight, and male). The recently-launched game criticism journal The Arcade Review presents a different vision of experimental games and is designed to sustain this new art world assemblage:
"We publish criticism on experimental games, and writing on craft, aesthetic, structure and narrative. What qualifies as an experimental game? If you think it’s an experimental game, then it’s probably an experimental game. We’re particularly interested in freeware games, cheaper indie games (less than $20.00CAD or so) and stable emulatable titles. It’s important the game you want to write about is easily accessible to the low budget. We also lean towards games infrequently written on."
Now, this isn't a particularly useful definition, but I think it clearly reflects the divide I describe above between dominant indie games (ie: small-scale commercial games) and this diverse new wave. I guess what I'm saying is that we need to talk about experimental gameplay(s), rather than Experimental Gameplay.
So, uh, I didn't get around to addressing Bart's salient final questions, but I'll save that for subsequent posts once we hear from Skot again.
This is fun!Felan
Date: Wed, 5 Mar 2014 09:37:54 -0500
From: simonb at algol.concordia.ca
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----------------------

On 3/4/2014 11:38 PM, Felan Parker wrote:
>
> 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.

Er... sorry for my mispost yesterday, it has indeed been a while :)

Great opening round of thoughts but now how shall we zero in without 
just generating conceptual confusion and/or chaos?  Sandra's opening 
remarks make me think that she is after 'experimental games' as both an 
analytic category and a genre category (ha... wouldn't it be nifty to 
see experimental games as a category in Metacritic).  If the rest of us 
start picking at this by showing how all games are experimental in some 
context then we have our work cut out for us showing what is, and is 
not, experimental.

Its also a bit of hubris I think to deny experimental games their 
cultural historical place in the sun. Concretely then, the term 
experimental games makes an important appearance in the context of the 
shifting politics of the IGDA Game Developer's Conference. The website 
for the Experimental Gameplay Workshops series is telling -

    "This IS Experimental Gameplay: Creating unexpected play experiences
    or promoting unique feelings within players through mechanics
    (Gravitation, Passage, The Marriage). Generative games, where the
    gameplay or world changes based on choices the player makes
    (Spelunky, flOw). Emergent gameplay, where the game systems interact
    to provide suprising situations (ROM CHECK FAIL, Portal).
    Interactive storytelling, where the plot or dialog changes in a
    fine-grained manner, as opposed to discrete "branching points"
    (Facade). Innovative user interfaces -- natural language processing,
    image recognition, gestural control, new hardware devices (Guitar
    Hero, RENGA). Novel multiplayer interactions (Journey)

    This is NOT Experimental Gameplay: Novel content, narrative,
    settings, character designs, artwork, audio or plots -- unless they
    affect the core gameplay in a major way. New hybrids of
    already-existing genres -- unless the resulting gameplay is
    unexpectedly more than the sum of its parts. Purely technical
    innovation, experimental business models or distribution mechanisms,
    or games for under-served audiences -- unless the game itself is
    experimental as outlined above." (see
    http://www.experimental-gameplay.org/)

I like this definition actually mostly because it privileges gameplay 
and not game design as such. Yet the history of these workshops from 
2002 also tells the tale of upheaval in the game industry (at least as 
represented by GDC) and a growing dissatisfaction with the market 
determined design imperatives of the major game studios.  What's 
interesting to me is that this definition is also normal paradigm 
defining and provides both players and designers with a language for 
orienting themselves to what can be perceived as industry imperatives.  
Experimental Gameplay is first and foremost a rhetoric (or narrative 
frame) for collective action.  Indeed, experimentation in the context of 
the big money AAA studios is now harder to conceive of, in part, because 
of these workshops.  There is a nice case study waiting to be written on 
Ubisoft Montreal's 'Child of Light' project 
(http://childoflight.ubi.com/col/en-GB/home/index.aspx) in the sense 
that it has been cynically read as an attempt to cash in on the indie 
mystique and an ethos of experimentation.  Who doesn't love 
experimentation?  That should worry us.

This totally fits with Felan's art worlds model but the next step is to 
articulate how the actual practice of experimental gameplay supports (or 
not) existing and yet-to-exist mobilizations. Obviously, experimental 
gameplay is a lovely rubric for indie self-fashioning and even relative 
economic success (and this is how the experimental gameplay workshops 
have evolved) but is there more too it than this?

cheers,
Bart

-- 
=================================================
Bart Simon, Associate Professor of Sociology
Director, Technoculture, Art and Games (TAG)
Concordia University, Montreal

bart.simon [at] concordia.ca
http://www.tag.hexagram.ca
=================================================

    On 3/4/2014 11:38 PM, Felan Parker
      wrote:

        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.

    Er... sorry for my mispost yesterday, it has indeed been a while :)

    Great opening round of thoughts but now how shall we zero in without
    just generating conceptual confusion and/or chaos?  Sandra's opening
    remarks make me think that she is after 'experimental games' as both
    an analytic category and a genre category (ha... wouldn't it be
    nifty to see experimental games as a category in Metacritic).  If
    the rest of us start picking at this by showing how all games are
    experimental in some context then we have our work cut out for us
    showing what is, and is not, experimental.

    Its also a bit of hubris I think to deny experimental games their
    cultural historical place in the sun. Concretely then, the term
    experimental games makes an important appearance in the context of
    the shifting politics of the IGDA Game Developer's Conference. The
    website for the Experimental Gameplay Workshops series is telling -

    "This IS Experimental Gameplay: Creating unexpected play
      experiences or promoting unique feelings within players through
      mechanics (Gravitation, Passage, The Marriage). Generative games,
      where the gameplay or world changes based on choices the player
      makes (Spelunky, flOw). Emergent gameplay, where the game systems
      interact to provide suprising situations (ROM CHECK FAIL, Portal).
      Interactive storytelling, where the plot or dialog changes in a
      fine-grained manner, as opposed to discrete “branching points”
      (Facade). Innovative user interfaces – natural language
      processing, image recognition, gestural control, new hardware
      devices (Guitar Hero, RENGA). Novel multiplayer interactions
      (Journey)

      This is NOT Experimental Gameplay: Novel content, narrative,
      settings, character designs, artwork, audio or plots – unless they
      affect the core gameplay in a major way. New hybrids of
      already-existing genres – unless the resulting gameplay is
      unexpectedly more than the sum of its parts. Purely technical
      innovation, experimental business models or distribution
      mechanisms, or games for under-served audiences – unless the game
      itself is experimental as outlined above." (see
      http://www.experimental-gameplay.org/)

    I like this definition actually mostly because it privileges
    gameplay and not game design as such. Yet the history of these
    workshops from 2002 also tells the tale of upheaval in the game
    industry (at least as represented by GDC) and a growing
    dissatisfaction with the market determined design imperatives of the
    major game studios.  What's interesting to me is that this
    definition is also normal paradigm defining and provides both
    players and designers with a language for orienting themselves to
    what can be perceived as industry imperatives.  Experimental
    Gameplay is first and foremost a rhetoric (or narrative frame) for
    collective action.  Indeed, experimentation in the context of the
    big money AAA studios is now harder to conceive of, in part, because
    of these workshops.  There is a nice case study waiting to be
    written on Ubisoft Montreal's 'Child of Light' project
    (http://childoflight.ubi.com/col/en-GB/home/index.aspx) in the sense
    that it has been cynically read as an attempt to cash in on the
    indie mystique and an ethos of experimentation.  Who doesn't love
    experimentation?  That should worry us.

    This totally fits with Felan's art worlds model but the next step is
    to articulate how the actual practice of experimental gameplay
    supports (or not) existing and yet-to-exist mobilizations. 
    Obviously, experimental gameplay is a lovely rubric for indie
    self-fashioning and even relative economic success (and this is how
    the experimental gameplay workshops have evolved) but is there more
    too it than this?

    cheers,

    Bart

    -- 
=================================================
Bart Simon, Associate Professor of Sociology
Director, Technoculture, Art and Games (TAG)
Concordia University, Montreal

bart.simon [at] concordia.ca
http://www.tag.hexagram.ca
=================================================

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