.................................
To leave Commie, hyper to
http://commie.oy.com/commie_leaving.html
.................................
hey I'm just posting this,
it sounds kind of interestingly weird,
like Dali got into game design.
----- message from anne-marie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -----
From: anne-marie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2002 13:57:53 -0800
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Reply-To: anne-marie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: <nettime> 2 Reviews: Untitled Game and Ego Image Shooter
2 Reviews: Untitled Game and Ego Image Shooter
Untitled Game CD by JODI
Review by Anne-Marie Schleiner
Untitled Game is a CD (and web site) containing twelve modifications
of Quake by artist ensemble JODI. The first modification, "Arena",
is blinding white. All visible architecture has been eliminated.
What remains is interface components and sound. The following mods
range in interactivity and effect, from number stats flowing upscreen
to ambient warm toned 3-D environments.
Game Engine = Artist Tool
Like other artists including Nullpointer and Retroyou, JODI have immersed
themselves in exploring game engines as art generating tools. (Different
artists have been staking out different commercial engines as their mediums
-- more recently the Australian web site, "Select Parks," has collected
artist-made mods.) JODI have become intimately familiar with the file
structure of Quake 1, its code structure and algorithms, and its loop-
holes and glitches. Time++ has been logged "playing" with the system,
just as Nato addicts and V.J.s spend hours tweaking sound and 3-D/2-D
visuals, happening sometimes on interesting accidental effects.
Unlike ID Software, the original designers of Quake, JODI search for
beautiful bugs in the system, to make glitches happen that werent supposed
to, to tweak the game, even to demolish it. When I push the spacebar to
jump in E1M1AP instead the world rotates uncontrollably. In G-R the screen
refreshes non-stop with bright RGB colors, (no navigation at all). In Ctrl-9
and Ctrl-Space, navigation and looking about generate undulating black and
white moire patterns.
Hacker Art Aesthetic
Despite the different ways that JODI "break" Quake, their work remains in
dialogue with the original game. Hacker art tweaks a system yet retains
ontological aspects of the system from which it mutated. In their earlier
SOD mod, a mod of the classic shooter Castle Wolfenstein, JODI replaced
Wolfenstein's Nazi castle with black and white Miro-like panels. Yet they
still chose to retain the original sound bytes of dogs barking and soldiers
yelling. Similarly, in the game mods included in Untitled Game, many of the
original macho Quake grunts are still included. These original audio samples
recall indexically in the player's minds eye the original Quake levels and
characters. A ghost image of the original flickers behind the alteration,
evoked by sound and interface artifacts.
Created not only for art aficionados but also for rabid Quake fans, habitual
Quake players can even navigate "blind" through some of the levels included
in Untitled Game. In Slipgate, (slipgates are an original feature of Quake),
small blue cubes are formidable growling opponents.
Revealing Algorithms
One aesthetic maneuver repeated in the Untitled Game collection, reminiscent
of JODI's net art, is to strip the environment of "realistic" graphics, to
reduce anti-aliased pixels and color palettes to primary minimalist colors
and shapes. Stripped of all pretense of photorealism, game play is reduced
to algorithms normally cloaked as "representational" actions. ("Rez", a
Japanese Playstation2 game, is the only commercial 3-D game I have seen which
emphasizes movement algorithms and "cyber-representation" over "photorealistic"
representation.) And these bare algorithms can be quite stunning. My most
favorite mod on Untitled Game is "Spawn". In Spawn, shooting is transformed
into spraying showers of gray pixels over an inky black background. Shooting
becomes pixel painting, which in turn creates environment.
Semi-automatic
Another primary component of JODI's mods is tension between user control and
program control. The relationship between user input and program output has
been tweaked. The time it takes for the program to execute a command seems
to have been elongated and refracted, so my smallest actions become triggers
of algorithms that then unfold semi-autonomously from my input. Q-L is the
most semi-automatic mod on Untitled. Once the player views the preset level
demo and actually starts to play the game, the players movements trigger
kaleidoscopic effects which accelerate fast and taper off slowly. Similarly,
in E1M1AP, when I hit the space bar to jump, I summersault into an extended
disorienting twirl. Output far exceeds input. Or the program becomes the
performer, I am no longer player god in control--I must concede some of my
agency to the code.
Untitled Game is an exploration of the Quake system and some variable, funny,
playful, beautiful Jodiesque things it can be made to do. Untitled Game also
participates in a dialogue about 3-D gaming environments and what they can
possibly become. (Unlike recent game inspired paintings or sculptures that
speak exclusively to art audiences.) Although singularly not every mod on
Untitled Game stands up on its own, when viewed as a complete package, (pak
file ;) ), the UG archive is impressive.
Untitled Game Site http://untitled-game.org/
Untitled Game Source Code http://untitled-game.org/source/
Nullpointer http://www.nullpointer.co.uk/-/fskn.htm
Retroyou http://retroyou.org/
Rez http://www.u-ga.com/rez/e/game/index.html
Select Parks http://www.selectparks.net/
Opensorcery.net http://www.opensorcery.net
+++++++++++++
Ego Image Shooter by Marion Strunk and Deanna Herst
Review by Anne-Marie Schleiner
Ego Image Shooter is a new game by Marion Strunk and Deanna Herst
(concept/design) created for Gender Games, an Swiss research initiative
for exploring gender in relation to computer games. Of the five "games"
created for Gender Games, which are available from their web site, Ego
Image Shooter is certainly the most entertaining and the most "game-like".
(Others severely stretch the definition of computer game and are more akin
to hypertext net art.) Ego Image Shooter critiques the genre of shooter
games in a number of playful ways.
At game start-up, a blond American avatar with a strong hick accent announces
that he will be your guide. Reminiscent of white trash backwoods characters
in shooter games like Duke Nukem, this boyish avatar is relatively less macho,
sporting a pasty smile permanently glued to his face. The game consists of
five levels, which the player selects by rotating the bullet chamber of a
gun-like interface. Alternately the player can click on the weapon in the
bottom left of the screen to choose a level--each level has a different weapon
identified with it, ranging from shot gun to automatic. Clearly, from the outset,
the game draws the player's conscious attention to shooters and their weapons.
Each of the five levels is an entirely new environment. In one level the
player faces a bleak hallway recalling the tunneling architecture of shooter
games. However, as s/he shoots, instead of bullets, frogs stream out of her
weapon. Eventually a frog prince appears and morphs into a giant pair of
kissing lip. In another level, in a burning apocolyptic blaze, a hoard of
translucent cybernetic mummies slowly advance toward the player. They are
truly frightening. But when they reach the player two of the mummies turn
their heads towards each other and lock themselves into a mind altering
homoerotic kiss which even melts the environment behind them. (Very dreamy!)
My favorite level is an imitation Quake level, replete with the deep grunts
and echoes common in violent network shooter Quake. The level also uses the
typical warm desert sienna color palette common in the Quake Series. But when
the player shoots his gun, purple flowers come out instead of bullets, covering
the screen and obliterating the Quake-like environment.
Although Ego Image Shooter is created with Macromedia Director as a Shockwave
Movie, it implements the "find and replace" subversive logic of game modifica-
tions. (game-programming: Alex Schaub). Game mods allow players to selectively
replace elements in a pre-existing game, from architecture, to textures, weapons,
characters, sounds and so on. By consistently replacing bullets with unexpected
frogs, flowers and kisses, Ego Image Shooter seems to be critiquing the testos-
terone-laden world of shooter games by inserting "feminine" signifiers which
substitute for the spray of "semen-like" weapon discharge. (An interesting
comparison is a "Sailor Moon" modification of Doom. The Sailor Moon "wad"
recolored the walls and floors in pink, replaced the gun with a magic boomerang,
and replaced the ammo littering the environment with cupcakes and bunnies.)
But it is also undeniably fun to spray frogs and, in a different level,
soccer balls out of a gun. Shooting is painting the environment. Perhaps
another intent of Ego Image Shooter is too stretch the boundaries of the
often too rigid shooter genre--not only to critique but to mutate into a
new kind of shooter game. Often the game engine takes control away from
the player--after shooting off a few rounds of frogs, a movie of a morphing
frog prince appears. It is as if the game demands us to be aware of the
conventions of game play by working against them. It wrests control away
from the player just at the moment she is warming up to a shooting frenzy.
The remaining levels in the game are less open to interpretation,
departing even further from the conventions of shooter game play. (They
also seem to require more development and beta-testing in terms of game
play.) In one level, the player watches passively as a pair of men kick
a soccer ball back and forth and a woman sits working alone at a computer
workstation. In another level, a string of laundry displays T-shirts that
say pride, fear, happy, shame and other emotions. The laundry is quite an
uncommon domestic signifier in computer games. In this level a male and
female jogger compete with one another and it seems the T-shirts are
intended to effect their relationship.
Ego Image Shooter is an interesting experiment. In pushing the boundaries
of a game genre it thereby assumes the risks of experimenting with new
forms of game play. If I were to view it as a beta test I would recommend
it focus in more on the effects of subverting the shooter genre, which are
quite successful in terms of game play and genderplay, and let some of the
other experimental game play interfaces go. Its main shortcomings are what
all independently funded games lack, a development team of at least fifteen
or so 3-D modelers and programmers, to push the production value higher.
Nevertheless, it simulates 3-D space efficiently enough to get the idea
across and employs some very nice interface tricks. The use of sound and
music is effective. (sound-design: Alex Schaub) I would like to see it
developed further.
Gender Game Site http://www.gendergame.ch
Ego Image Shooter
http://www.cyberhelvetia.ch/public/images/gendergame/egoshooter_down.html
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