29th January, 2009: This Gaming Life…
Hope everyone is having a great January. Personally, my 2009 seems to be continuing along last year’s theme of ‘hardly any time spent at home’, with the last few weeks having seen me in Milan, New York, and now, in Boston for a couple of weeks (I’d returned home from San Francisco in late December). It’s been during these travels that I’ve finally read two things I’ve been meaning to for a while. The first of these was President Barack Obama’s (how amazing does that still sound!) Dreams from My Father, blown away as I was by the beautiful, and also personally for me, somewhat resonant narrative of a man exploring issues of his heritage and identity.
The second was Jim Rossignol’s 2008 publication, “This Gaming Life”, which, aside from being an exploration of gaming culture across three very representatively different physical landscapes, is also a look at the positive life-changing effect that gaming has had on the lives of many enthusiasts, with the author himself as a notable example. It is a great argument suggesting that not only the act of gaming itself, but the structure that the culture creates and helps to foster the real talents and passions of it’s players. In short, gaming can act as the catalyst, if not the vehicle, to help to make us more satisfied, more fulfilled people.
Further to this, This Gaming Life also serves as something of a manifesto for the potential value of videogames, a glimpse into what games have meant for many, and also what they could mean to us in the future. Games as vehicles for meaningful impact are touched on, as well as hints of a future ludosociety of sorts in which games integrate into more of our everyday lives.
These are of course, the highlights of what this particular book meant for me as a reader. You can read Jim Rossignol’s own comments on it as the writer over on this blog post at RPS. However, reading is inarguably something of a personal experience at times, and I certainly couldn’t help noticing the budding parallels between some of Rossignol’s travel-worn passages and my own feelings as I sat reading most of it, thirty thousand feet in the air.
I think I’m still trying to figure out exactly what my own personal journeys, and a wider world view is beginning to teach me about people, culture, and games. I don’t know what it is just yet, but I know the lesson is certainly there. May this rambling post be one step on that fuzzy journey too.
Posted at 8:33 pm | View Comments
8th November, 2008: The floor here will kill you…
I couldn’t let this most auspicious week pass by without breaking my (unintended, let me assure you) blogging silence.
The truth is that life has been rather crazy these past couple of months, and I am now in San Francisco, CA. I’m personally rather happy about that fact. ;) Anyway, details on why and what I’ve been up to will have to come in subsequent entries (I have a backlog of things I’ve been meaning to post about), but instead I’ll post a word cloud of keywords summarising my absence.
I just wanted to say a huge, huge thank you to everyone that sponsored me to run the US Half Marathon last weekend. With your help, I’ve so far raised over £600 for Right to Play, and it’s not too late to keep donating! You can do so at http://www.justgiving.com/mitu. Everyone, thank you so much for your support. I couldn’t have done it without you!
Normal blogging service is about to resume, please hold on…
[P.S. Really, the title of this entry is down to the fact that I was originally entitling this entry as 'Still Alive' but then couldn't think of a single more cliched thing I could do...]
Posted at 10:00 pm | View Comments
25th August, 2008: Transformers! London Buses In Disguise… ?
Once again, I spent the weekend up London way, though this time it was in the company of the rest of the ex-Kauffman Global Scholars, as George hosted the first of our reunions. It was great catching up with everyone, seeing how everyone’s progressing and re-adjusting to “real life”, and generally spending time with the old crew again.
Yesterday, a few of us headed into central London for the Olympic Closing Celebrations/Handover, which was fun. I do think it’s great we’re hosting the Olympics in 2012, though I’m personally just a little bit cynical (warning: may be an understatement) about how we’re going to do as hosts. Maybe my cynicism is entirely misplaced; I certainly hope I’ll be proved wrong!
I did rather enjoy our delightful little 8 minute slot though. A funky little video (much later edit: this one, in fact), a bizarre interpretive dance, a sweet little girl, an inaudible Leona Lewis, and David Beckham. What more could I ask? Okay, so it wasn’t completely brilliant, but it’ll do. (Though how British is that attitude!)
![[Watching the Olympic Closing Celebrations / Handover from Trafalgar Square, London]](http://mitu.nu/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/dsc04686.jpg "handover 2012")
I especially liked the transforming bus. I was, however, disappointed it didn’t turn into a giant robot. Now that would have been cool.
Posted at 1:50 pm | View Comments
20th August, 2008: i’m doing this, you should too.
Blog Action Day 2008 – October 15th. Theme: Poverty.
Posted at 10:45 pm | View Comments
20th August, 2008: design fragments #1
Recently, I rewatched Makoto Shinkai’s Hoshi no Koe (‘Voices of a Distant Star’), for what may be the five billionth time. I find it incredibly touching, it’s probably one of my favourite pieces of anime, and along with the extra short on the DVD, Kanojo to Kanojo no neko (‘She and Her Cat’) has always managed to make me feel very emotional and pensive afterwards. Anyway, I had this thought afterwards: “I want to play a game that can make me feel how that film makes me feel“.
My next thought was what if a game were actually adapted from Hoshi no Koe – would the play experience elicit the same emotions as the watching experience? It does have elements which would traditionally work well in a game (mech space battles anyone?) – but really, that’s inconsequential to the point of the film. Therefore, the real ‘meat and potatoes’ of the game would have to be huge cut scenes, would they not? And, whilst I haven’t quite figured out where I ultimately stand on cut scenes (though don’t mind playing games where cut scenes are used sparingly), having huge great big stonking ones are not where games should be headed.
Okay, so what if the interactions between the protagonists (Mikako and Nobaru) were, well, interactive? Could there be some sort of manipulation of choices one or the other makes? Well, the answer to that, if we’re trying to end up with “a game that can make me feel like the story of Hoshi no Koe does”, is no. This is because to get those emotions, the choices would have to lead to the ‘correct’ ending, thus, you’re only providing the illusion of choice. Which, although it is a typical concept in many games, is again, not where games should ultimately be heading. You’re left with this entirely linear experience which really has no point. In short, you might as well just watch the film, right?
So this then got me thinking – moving away from the direct story of Hoshi no Koe, how could a game “make me feel like that”? There needs to exist something in the play mechanics itself that can give rise to those particular dynamics. Of course, part of this involved breaking down what emotions the film was making me feel, exactly. Good thing my research makes me think about emotions a lot; I’m getting quite good at doing that! Anyway, so I started writing some brief private notes about what could give rise to those emotions and that experience.
(I just realised what I’m describing here is a kind of crazy internalised version of the MDA process where I’m both the designer thinking about the mechanics and and the end user looking at my aesthetic experience wondering how to work backwards towards the dynamics. Hmm.)
Then tonight in my procrastination, I re-happened upon Steve Gaynor of Fullbright’s Call to Arms 2008 to design a game to convey some kind of meaningful experience or expression. Therefore, I’ve decided I’m going to not only design but also actually prototype a game to do just that. I took my existing brief notes and reshaped them slightly (it’s not necessarily that Hoshi no Koe-esque anymore!), and wrote some more ideas down.
I’m not revealing exactly what the theme is yet (and I realise I’ve been very fluffy/fuzzy/whatever in describing what I’m trying to convey – but that’s intentional!), but I will do soon enough.
My working title is Collide.
Posted at 2:08 am | View Comments