Yesterday I described the distinction between (i) an actual artistic process, and (ii) games that create an illusion of artistic creation. Whether we’re talking about “Spore” or “Guitar Hero”, essentially it’s the difference between creating a picture and playing color-by-numbers.
By the way, one of my favorite examples of such an entertaining illusion was one of the very first Java applets to appear on the Web back in 1994, Paul Haeberli’s delightful The Impressionist.
But a much more interesting question is how a game might employ such an entertaining illusion as a scaffolding device, to gradually lead the player from mere entertainment to true artistic creation. For example, imagine a game that starts out – in its first levels – as color-by-numbers, and then gradually changes through successive levels, eventually becoming a platform for the true creation of original artistic work.
Similarly, one could imagine a game that starts out guiding its player through simple melody matching challenges on a musical keyboard, and gradually morphs into an experience in which the player is called upon to create truly original music. In any case, we are talking about a sort of “training wheels” for easing the novice artist into a true creative experience.
I could see this general rhetorical device as an approach to learning that could be both fun and effective – if properly designed. Is such a thing really possible? I’ve been trying to think of examples, but so far with little success. One problem is that software designed to entertain and software designed to teach are generally very different. The former promises a maximum of engaging fun, whereas the latter is supposed to be “good for you”. The two agendas are so different that they are rarely if ever combined successfully into a single package.
Maybe we can change that.
Would the examples of people stacking blocks in crytek fit this? I always found it fantastic that gamers take an environment structured for gameplay – specifically in this case with its physics engine and interaction options – and begin out-of-the-box activities, like stacking scene items (how high can you go?) or cliff-jump skjydiving (using exposives to block the fall).
Argh… I’ve been trying to find one of my favorite with no luck.
There was a professor I believe at NYU who created a tool with which visitors could design their own walking structures and put them into competition. It was really fun.
There were sliders for structure rigidity and gravity, etc. and some creatures did better under certain settings than others.
Anyone know what I’m referring to? It’s been around at least 10 years… can’t find it anymore…
I’ll ignore the danger of becoming a one-man show with this stream of posts, but… I FOUND IT!
sodaplay: http://sodaplay.com/
Have to admit that I actually liked the old version a bit more, or .. I felt more a part of it. But this has many of the elements I feel you discuss, Ken. There’s a quite simple scaffold, world rules, so to speak. And the “play” is an experimentation and discovery, with competitive elements. Granted, this isn’t really taken to the “I’m a game” level, but it stops not far from that threshold.
Was this on your radar? What do you think of it?
Okay, these may not be great examples, but I thought I’d toss them in.
You may have played or at least heard of the card game Mao. Players invent rules one by one until the game becomes either a wanton mess or a creative endeavor, depending on one’s viewpoint.
Another is Cube/Sauerbraten, an FPS in which players may dynamically edit the map while playing.
Don’t know too much about the other games out there, but, I must say, it does seem like what you are getting at, Dr Ken, is this: games do not make great use of input. The Wii is fun, but a webcam and a prop with markers would be fine for a lot of games. For a music performance game, one would only need the instrument, a microphone, and some sound processing. Is it the new device that gives the user the feeling that they have something new and different?
The example you gave of “creating truly original music” would be difficult to score points for, it’d seem.
Actually, it is strange that you mentioned painting by number, because the other day I was messing around with playing mathematical patterns, and had reffered to it as “quilting by number”. Maybe as a game, hmm..
David, feel free to comment as much as you want! I very much appreciate the thoughtful ideas you add to the conversation. It’s interesting about sodaplay. I like it too, and I enjoy playing with it. And it definitely seems to be teaching something, but I’ve never been sure exactly what it is teaching.
Dan, that’s an interesting point. Is there something antithetical between the dynamic of “game” and the dynamic of “creating something original”? I can see that if somebody other than yourself has decided which choices have more value, that might be in conflict with your own creative process. Perhaps it would be better to replace the word “game” with the word “toy”.
“Toy” would seem to mean a little animated playspace, wouldn’t it? There would probably be some open-endedness in how one interacts with the game elements, but is that necessarily true? Some persons find plenty of open-endedness in Scrabble, but wouldn’t think of board games as toys.
Chris Crawford wrote an article titled “The Art of Computer Game Design”, published all the way back in 1984, and currently found here..
http://www.vancouver.wsu.edu/fac/peabody/game-book/Chapter3.html
He classes many types of games, including race-and-avoid-obstacles and adventure games as “puzzles” – and means it pejoratively as uncreative game interaction.
The article seems to consider games that combine adventure and action elements to be a bit bipolar:
->Adventure’s problem is that it is too constrained to the designer’s will.
->Action’s problem is that there is too-little personal relation to an opponent.
An adventure-action game is too controlled by the mind of the designer, but at other times too impersonal and lacking in depth.
But no one watches a movie and says, “That was so uninteractive! It’s almost like they just made the story up themselves”. Perhaps there is some energy overhead saved in being able to entirely “turn off” expectations of involvement and follow the events, or maybe one expects a more-engaging storyline in movies.