Polygon Fiction

No updates in a million years, true. I've moved to 'Boro', The North, to study interactive art for three years. To celebrate, here's my new, turbol33t alternative blog. It can be found at

www.samgoldwater.com

RSS users can just take the feed as this link:

http://www.samgoldwater.com/?feed=rss2

Brand new

The cabbie's making conversation, he's told you that work's been a bit slow today, and traffic was bad on the way to the airport, where he picked you up. Outside the grubby windows, implausably tall, gleaming skyscrapers disappear into the clouds, the sun flickers in the corner of your vision, a nearby suspension bridge's symmetric struts interrupting its gaze.

"You new around here?" He says, off-handedly.

You've only been playing the game for half an hour, this still feels like the playable intro. He's implying you are in the way he asks, but the UI brings up a discreet overlay - 'yes' or 'no'. Its the first time you've had a choice in dialogue from your otherwise silent character.

He's expecting a response. Smiling at the fact of it:
"Yes", you reply silently. Look out of the window again, "brand new" you think.

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A single optional choice dialogue, what the NPC responds with is appropriate, but only a line for either choice. In a sense, it's rhetorical, in that the actual choice is non-concequential. What's important is that the player thinks about the question for a second. And in a sense, that choice defines a binary attitude to the game that may stay with them. Bright eyed, hopeful, excited 'yes', or jaded, disinterested, deceptive, experienced 'no'.

Luminescence

The sky is an ashen wash, painted monotone. Get up late and feel like you'd never been to sleep. Cloud cover filters a low light, noon feels like five o'clock. Rain tip toes across welcoming foliage, watch from a window with the tungsten down. Greens are greener, soft shadows.

So much water - it takes you back there, hundred of feet beneath. Echoing chimes of the Electroplankton return, their blithe expressions a portrait of serenity. Passing by the glass, a jar, invading droplets spurred by the howling wind make dusty lagoons of the window sill.

The pitter-patter cacophony takes an intermission. Sun-Animalcules and Luminaria hum contentedly, basking in the luminescent haze of the ocean floor.

SL

500ft up, I took a drag thoughtfully, smoke rising in spheres. Foggy vistas far beyond made a rocky line graph of the horizon. Nearby, A man strutted back and forth, waving his arms and rotating his hips on thin air. I floated next to him for a while.
"I can't stop dancing", he said.
Quietly, in the background, Aphex Twin seemed to agree.

Procedural

Goosebumps of excitement wave over me as I consider the monumental impact offered by procedural elements of virtual worlds.

Remember when Will Wright destroyed that entire planet in the GDC demonstration of Spore? That planet was unique - the culmination of an unprecedented formula of fluid choices. There was a history to that spherical nation. Now it is gone.

In the same way physics introduce a piece of infinity to games, as will procedural elements. It is the elimination of a fundamental limitation we are bound to, and as a new starting point for content creation, it is one better based on reality. In the quest for virtual worlds in which every character is the result of a piece of genetic code, where the Sun is a physical entity millions of miles away, and all the accepted facades of gaming melt away, this could be regarded as the important milestone since 3D.

Perhaps gameplay

I feel better. On my left a woman with sandals and a large rimmed hat sits casually, virtuosically plucking a kind of mini harp. On my right, through a doorless opening, visitors discuss the Forest's most recent art installation. Behind me, through the heavy curtain, a free two man play is being staged. I choose to stay here, between it all, soaking in the woody smell and sipping grape juice. "Here's your grape juice, Sam." On the low table beneath this circle of couches - a Japanese to English dictionary, some wilting plants, an unbranded foil of pills. A charcoal coloured church, clearly visible through the cafe's glass front, provides a medieval backdrop, upon which top hatted Fringe performers and loosely clothed frequenters come and leave through the front door.

Perhaps gameplay can be defined in this way - the process of virtual learning, cerebrally and dexterously.

Watching the harpist, her enjoyment of playing comes from a satisfaction - a self recognition of skill. Also from the challenge of exploring the boundaries of that skill.

Good gameplay seems to share those traits. If the learning process involved isn't fun, it is bad gameplay. If the learning process isn't engaging, perhaps because you've learned a similar skill before, or it's too easy, this too is bad gameplay.

Progression through the game must be like the best harp teacher would guide their lessons - Challenging, but forgiving, varied, and with potential for the student to experience rewarding freedom and allowed opportunity for personal expression.

One angle

We are all products of our environment. I think games are generally as clinical and devoid of originality as they are because of the sub-concious influence of the deplorable 60htz portal on which they are born. The concepts of hotkeys, code bases and algorythms are less interesting than directing a film crew on set. Perhaps that's not the best comparison, but obviously the glare of the XP rectangles isn't the most inspiring environment for the creation of art. There's no alternative of course, but it gets me down to think that's how the majority of my time could be conditioned under. Shit, it already is.

That's one angle. Another could be that with a connection, the widest possible library of literature, music and visual art is instantly available. This might be the preferred take of Linden Lab's Philip Rosedale, who boldly stated that did he not think Second Life's players were coming away from the game emotionally richer, better people than they were without the experience, he would quit his job.

The rest of the MMO based panel of the social gaming discussion at EIEF today all seemed to, if not agree, at least place their games (Guild Wars, Habbo Hotel, Xbox Live) as a worthy alternative to prime time TV, that they argued players replaced the latter with. While I'd like to share Rosedale's confidence - which in Second Life, I do kinda - a friend of mine down the road dropped out of school for Wow. Another ended up joining the police following an academic u-turn, again, Azeroth driven. What do they come out with? Fond memories of Ironforge, not much more. Gaming seems less the pure, emerging creative format for cases like these.

Going to Cargo, industry party started an hour ago.