One of me best friends goes by an on-line handle of "Shizukesa", which is Japanese for "serenity", a name he chose because he felt it best suited his temperament and life-goal. He consistently tries to find inner peace and to let the chaos of the world balance out into a relaxing state in which troublesome worries wash away. An interesting concept, another best friend of mine took on a similar name, one which he has long abandoned, but it played with a similar concept, and he chose the Japanese word "Rakusei" which is best defined as "completion", paralleling his own idea that life is a conquest with an end result and he must achieve that end and that would fulfill his purpose in life.
So in tagging along with this, I chose the word "Meikai", the best word I could find that compliments the idea of "clarity" by means of transcendence. I always thought my direction in life was to figure things out, to have things make sense in the grand scheme of things, to feel a sense of clarity and feel that sense of bliss you get when you have a revelation or an epiphany. To do this, I have incorporated analytical skills and lateral thinking into my daily habits, but I have a recurring enemy, one widely known as the Law of Gravity, built on the simple concept that what goes up must inevitably come down. On a similar note, Novelty Theory or 'Timewave Zero', which basically states that energy through novelty is an inherent quality of time and that it is reaching a climactic point, makes an argument that clarity might be a process to be achieved little by little until it hits a common singularity, and I like to think this theory nicely complements both the ideas of Nirvana (In that transcendence will break the cycle of rebirth and suffering) and the ideas of a Collective Consciousness which on this scale, would unite our planet on our conquest to discovering truth and clarity. Oddly enough, this whole philosophical fireball coincides quite well with my good friend's motivations as well, it's just a different way of looking at the same coin, albeit a coin with three sides.
But see, upon pontification, all of this jargon seems like pseudo-science to me, inter-laced theories while credible in their own right, seem to form something on the basis of wishful thinking, and has very little correlation with the real world, or at least the world as I see it. In part this is a bit of a shame because I can't attempt to explain the possibilities of the interactions of theories without disregarding a neutral point of view and credible sources as a basis for finding a universal truth. Rather it's based much more heavily on a sense of intuition and a sense of reasoning that makes more sense in my worldview than it would in anyone else's, and this is primarily because the whole idea of this theory is to find a model that finds its way outside the current western materialist way of thinking. I could go on to explain how I'm by far not the first to do away with the idea of thinking about "things" as anything other than "nouns" but by no means are they classified as "objects", I can take into account models such as the Big Bang theory and say that should that be the case, then we're all compromised of the same energy not necessarily interacting with each other, but giving the appearance of a harmonious relationship with the universe that seems chaotic to the individual, but is highly designed and pre-meditated before the burst of energy that started this all. I can get mystical about it or I can get scientific about it, but no matter what I do, it won't seem right because I'm talking about the whole thing from a very subjective experience, and for that reason I can't fully integrate or even take seriously the thoughts and theories of anyone else, though I do encourage them to speak their mind anyway in hopes that in a moment of pontification that one of us may actually stumble across something so irrefutable and true that a new age will dawn on us and everything will be wonderful in a sort of way completely unimaginable to the current worldview of things.
But in the end I'm just a dog chasing his own tail.
There's this idea that there is a universal truth to the universe, one that's worth discovering that will bring an end to the nonsense prevalent in the world today, but I think people might be thinking about this the wrong way, and I know to a certainty that it is healthy to at least question today's methodologies. Physicists today, for example, are looking for a unifying theory that explains virtually everything in an attempt to understand the universe by unifying all their theories into one to end the debate on the nature of existence and quantum mechanics and whatever. But I say to them, "Sure, maybe science will benefit greatly from this discovery, new technologies can be developed and a new era of science will ultimately benefit mankind, but... did you really explain the universe, or did you just create a model that makes sense in and of itself but has no real correlation to the true nature of the universe?" I would get all sorts of replies, sure, but I would imagine none of them would convince me short of satisfying my appetite for at least understanding the popular model for the explanation of 'everything'. In the end it's semantics, a general idea that can't truly be conveyed through language, instead we rely on metaphors to try to create a working understanding of what we 'need to know' about the universe so that we can move on with our lives together and still be able to ponder the little things in life that only the imagination can satisfy.
So in a sense this is all a game, a game that can be played many different ways depending on your own method of perceiving the inner workings of the universe, and it becomes a product of your own imagination to determine what could possibly be 'meaningful' as opposed to 'true but so what'. The worst thing is is that no one is even sure if this game is a product of their own identity or a product of the environment of which the organism is spawned. One day we might know the real answer, but if we can only learn through metaphors, then how long will that metaphor remain relevant before we revert back to our current state of plasticity?
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Thursday, March 19, 2009
More on game design
I was thinking about forming some sort of game design blog where game theorists and like-minded people could all weigh in about the direction games should take and new methods that developers could use to turn the medium into something more sophisticated and respectable. It's a topic I tackle myself quite a bit, but it's been hard finding these like-minded people, so what I thought I would do is accumulate a collection of game design theories I have myself and build a small compendium that I can show to others who might be interested. Once I have support, I might continue further down this line of thinking and form the game design blog and perhaps further support for a more active approach, but before I get ahead of myself, I'm just going to stick with throwing any ideas I have on this blog in the meantime.
Two huge problems with the game industry today is lack of artistic achievement and numerous cliches and tropes. Yes, I'm aware of all sorts of artistic achievements in video games, but they're few and far between, and they generally have a long ways to go despite their achievement to being regarded as a serious medium. Sony for example, made huge leaps with ICO and Shadow of the Collosus, not to mention Capcom's Okami, Jonathon Blow's Braid, and Nintendo's Wind Waker. These would all probably be considered aesthetically pleasing to anybody considering their hardware limitations, but that therein lies the problem.
Film for example, doesn't use technology to produce it's art, it simply captures the living world and the film helps us understand it from a certain perspective. Paintings and drawings don't use technology either (at least not in the digital sense) but they use tools to help convey the image and the emotions the artist tries to depict. Games however, rely on technology and a programming language to convey its art, it's mathematical by nature, the art is limited by the restrictions set by the game's engine, and the artist is usually not left with much to work with except pasting a bunch of sprites and models together hoping that the engine's particle system can help liven it up a little bit.
In this regard, games have a long ways to go before a plethora of game development designs are more well known. People re-iterating gritty space marines or campy cartoons isn't going to help the video game as an artform nor do it any justice, therefore right now more than ever it is important to recognize artistic advancement in the genre.
For example, why not deconstruct the whole idea of an engine and have a game operate outside normal rules? Why not have the game take place in an oil-painting, seemingly two dimensional but given a third dimensional element as perspective is added to the picture, changing scenes and content and the player intuitively finds out how to control the changing perspective shifts. Sounds like a good idea to me, but the problem is technological limitations, something like this would be difficult to do inside a game engine, and yet art students create linear versions of this type of thing all the time. Maybe we just need a little push to help wrap our minds on how to turn this into a dynamic and interactive experience, maybe all we really need is the artistry and the rest will work itself out.
Come to think of it, stagnancy of perspective is a problem in a lot of games. So many games have you follow the same perspective of usually the same character that developers drastically limit their artistic and story-related parameters. The difficulties in creating an engine usually cause developers to stick to one idea and hopefully the game mechanic can draw the experience out to 20 - 40 hours of gameplay, regardless of whether that entire time is spent doing something even remotely interesting. I think the entire concept of video-games should be consistently re-invented, I think more development teams need to tell the current rules to screw themselves so that they can have some breathing space to try something that defies convention.
Seems hard to believe that people are running out of ideas, and yet it seems that everybody's new idea is to take a generic FPS and add a new twist to it, like having it take place in Egypt or something. Whatever.
Two huge problems with the game industry today is lack of artistic achievement and numerous cliches and tropes. Yes, I'm aware of all sorts of artistic achievements in video games, but they're few and far between, and they generally have a long ways to go despite their achievement to being regarded as a serious medium. Sony for example, made huge leaps with ICO and Shadow of the Collosus, not to mention Capcom's Okami, Jonathon Blow's Braid, and Nintendo's Wind Waker. These would all probably be considered aesthetically pleasing to anybody considering their hardware limitations, but that therein lies the problem.
Film for example, doesn't use technology to produce it's art, it simply captures the living world and the film helps us understand it from a certain perspective. Paintings and drawings don't use technology either (at least not in the digital sense) but they use tools to help convey the image and the emotions the artist tries to depict. Games however, rely on technology and a programming language to convey its art, it's mathematical by nature, the art is limited by the restrictions set by the game's engine, and the artist is usually not left with much to work with except pasting a bunch of sprites and models together hoping that the engine's particle system can help liven it up a little bit.
In this regard, games have a long ways to go before a plethora of game development designs are more well known. People re-iterating gritty space marines or campy cartoons isn't going to help the video game as an artform nor do it any justice, therefore right now more than ever it is important to recognize artistic advancement in the genre.
For example, why not deconstruct the whole idea of an engine and have a game operate outside normal rules? Why not have the game take place in an oil-painting, seemingly two dimensional but given a third dimensional element as perspective is added to the picture, changing scenes and content and the player intuitively finds out how to control the changing perspective shifts. Sounds like a good idea to me, but the problem is technological limitations, something like this would be difficult to do inside a game engine, and yet art students create linear versions of this type of thing all the time. Maybe we just need a little push to help wrap our minds on how to turn this into a dynamic and interactive experience, maybe all we really need is the artistry and the rest will work itself out.
Come to think of it, stagnancy of perspective is a problem in a lot of games. So many games have you follow the same perspective of usually the same character that developers drastically limit their artistic and story-related parameters. The difficulties in creating an engine usually cause developers to stick to one idea and hopefully the game mechanic can draw the experience out to 20 - 40 hours of gameplay, regardless of whether that entire time is spent doing something even remotely interesting. I think the entire concept of video-games should be consistently re-invented, I think more development teams need to tell the current rules to screw themselves so that they can have some breathing space to try something that defies convention.
Seems hard to believe that people are running out of ideas, and yet it seems that everybody's new idea is to take a generic FPS and add a new twist to it, like having it take place in Egypt or something. Whatever.
Monday, March 16, 2009
Intelligent design and game design... not related
Usually I don't take too keen of an interest in theologian studies, I always considered it a branch of philosophy that tried a little harder than the rest to take itself seriously. But the idea of some sort of anti-materialistic approach to science has always intrigued me, it's why I have studied quantum mechanics as much as I have, it's why I take a keen interest in lateral thinking, it's why I listen to speeches on creativity and eastern philosophy, it's because there's actual substance there, it's practical and it resonates with you and you don't have to work to deny or prove it because it's well situated into our humanity.
Truth be told, one of the biggest reasons I want to be a biologist is so that I can understand the scientific model of the world as well as I can so that I can then begin to think around it. I believe the universe is capable of being further understood beyond our current realm of understanding, and I believe that materialism is simply the current layer we're digging through. If there's any hope of prying open the nature of reality and ultimate truth or whatever 'that thing' we're looking for is, we need to question everything and even entertain ideas that aren't completely comfortable with us. It's all part of the process, y'know.
Anyway, I've come across two links that have stirred my philosophical juices, and made me re-question my spiritual orientation. The first is an essay that explains the nature of consciousness and why we view it the way we do in modern society. Very enlightening. The other is a lecture given by Keith Ward on how misguided our viewpoints really are concerning different schools of thought. It is very outright inspiring to see people discussing intelligent design in an educated fashion, using actual reasoning to inspire and encouraging people to think for themselves. In that regard, I hate to say it, but a part of me hopes that religion would just kind of die, and in its ashes be reborn a passionate and vigorous reshaping of spiritual ideals. I don't like living in a society where people spend their time debunking other people's beliefs rather than building on their own, so I kind of wish we could do away with fundamentalism so that we can continue to evolve science and religion's relationship with each other. Anyway... there's nothing I can say that those two links don't say already, so just click them. :P
In other news, I'm interested in game design again. I actually wanted to be an AI programmer once, it was my first career choice, but I quickly opted for other fields that I felt were more adequate for my thinking style, but I learned a few things from my temporary foray into programming and I still regret not becoming more familiar with it, because game design is one of those hobbies I have that all I can do is think tank on without ever actually being able to test my hypothesis on. It's a shame because I highly admire independent game designers that think outside the box concerning interactive entertainment because they know more than most how much of an unrealized medium games actually are. It's a shame because video-games today, I feel, are viewed upon as juvenile and counter-productive. The game industry as a whole is doing very precious little to change its reputation into something more respectable, and I believe that ultimately has to do with nobody really knowing how because people are kind of 'stuck' on perceiving games in a certain way that the mold has hardened to a degree that's hard to break out of. The state of our current economy sure isn't helping, but I digress, that's not the point I'm getting at...
So I was trying to figure out what exactly constituted a 'game', so I took the simplest game I could think of and thought of its components. Pong, right? You need a control mechanism with clear established limits, (the paddle's ability to either go up or down) you need a game-play system that responds to the controls, (the ball's very simple physics engine) and you need a reward system. (the points that accumulate when the ball breaches the opponent's paddle) I continued this line of thinking until I realized I was falling in the same trap every other game designer falls into, I was following a specific mold, not actually analyzing the core of game-play.
As a kid, I remember my funnest hobbies being exploration, going through the woods and wetlands, treating it as some sort of large sandbox where I could pretend to be anything I wanted, part of any world I could imagine. This was me 'playing' but I wasn't limited by game-play mechanics or being rewarded with a meaningless point system. The reward was in the experience, the act of discovery, the act of figuring out the 'system'. I realized this type of playing differs from traditional games like sports is because the reward isn't in the competitive aspect, but the creative aspect, the process of discovery and understanding.
Anyway, I thought I was on the right track so I searched for games that followed similar approaches. I was already inspired by two games by Jason Rohrer: Gravitation and Passage. Make sure to read the notes after you play them, it will help give insight into what kind of experience you just had. I don't want to spoil anything, but these two games were different in that the game isn't about reaching some type of goal, but trying to understand what the game-play means in a deeper and emotional sense. They're reflective in nature, meaning at first you're just dicking around but when the game reveals something to you, you take a look back and analyze your own actions, you realize there's meaning there, and it makes you contemplate the premise in mind.
Then I came across this pecular site, Towlr, which turns out explores the same basic idea but in more of a mechanical way. There's no theme or underlying message in these games, but the idea of using the process of discovery as a game-play mechanic is right there in its rawest form. The point is not only to win the 'game', but to figure out how to win the 'game'. Interesting method, because it plays with the idea that most of what constitutes a game actually occurs inside the player's mind, and not necessarily just his ability to do everything the game tells him to do. I still think something's not fully realized in these games though as they're entirely logic-based and don't deal with any serious themes, so something medium transforming would have to take this process and figure out a way to make it strike a chord with the players. Like in other art-forms, it's never about the actual product, but how it inspires the person viewing it.
Anyway, this is a work in progress, more as it develops.
Truth be told, one of the biggest reasons I want to be a biologist is so that I can understand the scientific model of the world as well as I can so that I can then begin to think around it. I believe the universe is capable of being further understood beyond our current realm of understanding, and I believe that materialism is simply the current layer we're digging through. If there's any hope of prying open the nature of reality and ultimate truth or whatever 'that thing' we're looking for is, we need to question everything and even entertain ideas that aren't completely comfortable with us. It's all part of the process, y'know.
Anyway, I've come across two links that have stirred my philosophical juices, and made me re-question my spiritual orientation. The first is an essay that explains the nature of consciousness and why we view it the way we do in modern society. Very enlightening. The other is a lecture given by Keith Ward on how misguided our viewpoints really are concerning different schools of thought. It is very outright inspiring to see people discussing intelligent design in an educated fashion, using actual reasoning to inspire and encouraging people to think for themselves. In that regard, I hate to say it, but a part of me hopes that religion would just kind of die, and in its ashes be reborn a passionate and vigorous reshaping of spiritual ideals. I don't like living in a society where people spend their time debunking other people's beliefs rather than building on their own, so I kind of wish we could do away with fundamentalism so that we can continue to evolve science and religion's relationship with each other. Anyway... there's nothing I can say that those two links don't say already, so just click them. :P
In other news, I'm interested in game design again. I actually wanted to be an AI programmer once, it was my first career choice, but I quickly opted for other fields that I felt were more adequate for my thinking style, but I learned a few things from my temporary foray into programming and I still regret not becoming more familiar with it, because game design is one of those hobbies I have that all I can do is think tank on without ever actually being able to test my hypothesis on. It's a shame because I highly admire independent game designers that think outside the box concerning interactive entertainment because they know more than most how much of an unrealized medium games actually are. It's a shame because video-games today, I feel, are viewed upon as juvenile and counter-productive. The game industry as a whole is doing very precious little to change its reputation into something more respectable, and I believe that ultimately has to do with nobody really knowing how because people are kind of 'stuck' on perceiving games in a certain way that the mold has hardened to a degree that's hard to break out of. The state of our current economy sure isn't helping, but I digress, that's not the point I'm getting at...
So I was trying to figure out what exactly constituted a 'game', so I took the simplest game I could think of and thought of its components. Pong, right? You need a control mechanism with clear established limits, (the paddle's ability to either go up or down) you need a game-play system that responds to the controls, (the ball's very simple physics engine) and you need a reward system. (the points that accumulate when the ball breaches the opponent's paddle) I continued this line of thinking until I realized I was falling in the same trap every other game designer falls into, I was following a specific mold, not actually analyzing the core of game-play.
As a kid, I remember my funnest hobbies being exploration, going through the woods and wetlands, treating it as some sort of large sandbox where I could pretend to be anything I wanted, part of any world I could imagine. This was me 'playing' but I wasn't limited by game-play mechanics or being rewarded with a meaningless point system. The reward was in the experience, the act of discovery, the act of figuring out the 'system'. I realized this type of playing differs from traditional games like sports is because the reward isn't in the competitive aspect, but the creative aspect, the process of discovery and understanding.
Anyway, I thought I was on the right track so I searched for games that followed similar approaches. I was already inspired by two games by Jason Rohrer: Gravitation and Passage. Make sure to read the notes after you play them, it will help give insight into what kind of experience you just had. I don't want to spoil anything, but these two games were different in that the game isn't about reaching some type of goal, but trying to understand what the game-play means in a deeper and emotional sense. They're reflective in nature, meaning at first you're just dicking around but when the game reveals something to you, you take a look back and analyze your own actions, you realize there's meaning there, and it makes you contemplate the premise in mind.
Then I came across this pecular site, Towlr, which turns out explores the same basic idea but in more of a mechanical way. There's no theme or underlying message in these games, but the idea of using the process of discovery as a game-play mechanic is right there in its rawest form. The point is not only to win the 'game', but to figure out how to win the 'game'. Interesting method, because it plays with the idea that most of what constitutes a game actually occurs inside the player's mind, and not necessarily just his ability to do everything the game tells him to do. I still think something's not fully realized in these games though as they're entirely logic-based and don't deal with any serious themes, so something medium transforming would have to take this process and figure out a way to make it strike a chord with the players. Like in other art-forms, it's never about the actual product, but how it inspires the person viewing it.
Anyway, this is a work in progress, more as it develops.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Tidbits of mind-shattering stuff
I registered to go back to school for Spring quarter at Seattle Central Community College, the only essential class I could take was in math, but I decided to take Introduction to Chemistry as well as Human Genetics to keep up with science-related classes, as well as to brush me up for chemistry for summer quarter. Not too interesting, huh, the quarter doesn't even start until April 6 so this seems like useless information, but whatever, now you know.
So I was browsing the internet today, and, as I often do, I started thinking about what the internet truly means, you know, in the broader scheme of things. I always appreciate these lines of thinking, because not only can I think about new ways of using the internet, but I can actually use the internet to help broaden my views on whatever subject matter I choose to pursue. This led me to a line of thinking that maybe it's time the internet began to shift into a model that more closely imitates the human mind, and treat the internet more like what it is, a sort of collective consciousness.
Anyway, I started playing around with ideas in that vein, thinking about doing away with analog time and implementing weather and sun-positioning into a user-interface, things of that nature, but I quickly got bored and started browsing the internet for other cool, new, and innovative ideas, so one of my obvious stops was TED. I stumbled across two interesting talks this time, one being about the creative process, which I found personally quite stimulating because Elizabeth Gilbert didn't take the usual route of explaining the creative process as an innate power to be stirred on command, but the traditional ancient Greek method of treating creativity as a heavenly muse, a spiritual genius of sorts.
However the second talk really got to me, where Juan Enriquez pretty much sums up my entire viewpoint of how the future is going to play out. I don't want to spoil it, go ahead, watch it, I'll wait.
I wanted to think about the future in a realistic sense, and yet I'm starting to take a holistic approach to it. After all, everything I know comes from my own ability to perceive the world and make my own judgments, and I realize how easily one's own judgment can be swayed. My intuition tells me we're heading into a world that is quickly going to become one we can't really understand at this point, so the best thing one can do is at least try to prepare for it.
Oh yeah, in related news, turns out eating less improves memory. Good news for an information-hungry generation, I hope the research pans out.
So I was browsing the internet today, and, as I often do, I started thinking about what the internet truly means, you know, in the broader scheme of things. I always appreciate these lines of thinking, because not only can I think about new ways of using the internet, but I can actually use the internet to help broaden my views on whatever subject matter I choose to pursue. This led me to a line of thinking that maybe it's time the internet began to shift into a model that more closely imitates the human mind, and treat the internet more like what it is, a sort of collective consciousness.
Anyway, I started playing around with ideas in that vein, thinking about doing away with analog time and implementing weather and sun-positioning into a user-interface, things of that nature, but I quickly got bored and started browsing the internet for other cool, new, and innovative ideas, so one of my obvious stops was TED. I stumbled across two interesting talks this time, one being about the creative process, which I found personally quite stimulating because Elizabeth Gilbert didn't take the usual route of explaining the creative process as an innate power to be stirred on command, but the traditional ancient Greek method of treating creativity as a heavenly muse, a spiritual genius of sorts.
However the second talk really got to me, where Juan Enriquez pretty much sums up my entire viewpoint of how the future is going to play out. I don't want to spoil it, go ahead, watch it, I'll wait.
I wanted to think about the future in a realistic sense, and yet I'm starting to take a holistic approach to it. After all, everything I know comes from my own ability to perceive the world and make my own judgments, and I realize how easily one's own judgment can be swayed. My intuition tells me we're heading into a world that is quickly going to become one we can't really understand at this point, so the best thing one can do is at least try to prepare for it.
Oh yeah, in related news, turns out eating less improves memory. Good news for an information-hungry generation, I hope the research pans out.
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