Games as Studies

Posted byTex BarnesPosted inGardenTags:, , , ,

Hello there,

Recently I’ve been trying to frame a lot of my work as Artistic Studies.

That is to say, in the same way that a painter might paint a still life to gain a deeper understanding of light and shadow, I’m developing games to explore ideas.

This helps my practice in a few ways:

Snaiku – a game where you play Snake, trying to eat words to produce haikus. This was the first game I ever made (made as part of a weekend game jam). It was also the start of my attempts to explore artistic expression as player interaction, but I think I went too game-y in a lot of points, with scores and an endless mode.

Part 1: Brain Crack

Thinking of all work as experiments and explorations stops me from over-thinking ideas. It is easy, in any artistic field, to become held back by the weight of your own expectations.

If you spend enough time thinking, and talking, about an idea it can become so monumental in your mind that, no matter what you do, you’ll never make something as perfect as what is in your head.

This phenomenon is referred to as “Brain Crack” by the multi-media artist and proto-vlogger Ze Frank. He adds that:

“Most ideas kinda suck when you do em’, and, no matter how much you plan, you have to do something the first time.

You are almost guaranteed that the first time you do something it’ll blow!“

Midnight Ceiling – a game about fishing up messages left by other players, and responding to them. I made it in a month or so to explore asynchronous player communication. Ultimately, I think the writing system was too simple and direct to be that interesting, while the movement through the world was so complex as to be distracting

Part 2: Rapid Iteration

As pointed out above, the first time you do something it’ll most likely be bad.

And that’s fine!

  1. Sometimes the idea is fundamentally flawed in someway, and you won’t know until you make it!
  2. Sometimes you just need practice!

That’s the point of studies!

If you go through the world terrified of failing you will either:

  1. Be sad, or…
  2. Never make anything interesting.

Failure isn’t just an option, failure is a requirement!

Everything you make builds on what came previously. What you learned from exploring these themes, and mechanics, and ideas.

So when you remove the baggage of needing every work to be a complete packaged product, and just focus on the ideas you are exploring and experimenting with, you can develop and iterate much quicker, and ultimately produce more unique and interesting art.

Reed Doo – a game about trying to give haircuts to fussy pot plants. I made it in a weekend surrounded by other game devs, and was laughing almost the entire time. It’s intended to explore player artistic expression when given no clear rewards, and the meaning players ascribe to largely meaningless interactions. While fun, I wanted to go further into player-driven meaning and bring back some of the asynchronous communication elements from Midnight Ceiling.

Part 3: Mental Health

As stated above, your first attempt will likely fail to live up to your expectations.

And full commercial games can take years to make!

Treating works as studies helps keep me sane by:

  1. Granting more ability to deliver better, more thought out, games when I do make larger scoped projects. I can put into practice the understanding gained from numerous smaller explorations into the themes and ideas.
  2. Keeping me aware that nothing ever truly fails. Ultimately, even my larger works are exploring themes and ideas. If I get to the end as a better designer, better artist, better equipped to make future works (and to understand how we think and play and interact with each other), then the project was a success!
“Untitled” (Community Gardens) – a game where players walk through an art gallery, and paint on the canvases, with prompts from the plaques and objects in the rooms. I made this in a few months for the Play//Space exhibition, and as it was in-person subsequent players would walk through the same galleries seeing and painting over each others work. I was super happy with how it turned out, though I wanted the next game to provide more tangible interaction between players, and to have greater focus on player expression over exploration.

The End is never The End is never The End is ne…

So that’s why I’ve been framing my games as studies.

Let me know what you think, or if you have anything to add!

Everything you make builds on what came previously.

I thought You would write – a game about taking photographs, and then writing little poems on them with a random selection of available words. I made it in a few months for the second Play//Space exhibition, and the in-person event allowed me to have players finding letters created by previous players.

This achieved what I wanted, with a higher focus on player expression over exploration (compared to Community Gardens), but without being so broad that it stops being a game (like Midnight Ceiling). I plan to explore these themes further, hopefully providing more diversity of world design for players to be responding too, but while maintaining this level of player agency.

Note:

I’ve scattered some screenshots throughout this post, detailing my experience making a series of games exploring Asynchronous Player Communities and Making Art.

However, these are not the only games I made over the past 5 years, and the ideas in this post don’t just apply to artsy experimental games.

The major project I’m currently working on, Key Fairy, comes as a direct result of a previous smaller works made by me, and my co-developer Niosis, in the years leading up to it:

  • Tesselator was my first attempt at a bullet-hell without the ability to shoot
  • The floaty, frenetic, movement focused gameplay is evolved partly from games like Niosis’s Spiral Mage, and my (terribly named) Ultra-Neon-Inter-Spacial-Soul-Drifter
  • The aesthetic comes from Niosis’s personal art-style developed over years
  • The theming and vibe was explored in Niosis’s games Micoruin and Zantzagore, as well as in both of our experience with TTRPGs
  • Ultimately the game exists as a combination of Niosis’s explorations in hand-drawn art and ttrpg theming and world design, and my explorations into movement-focused action and non-violent protagonists.
Key Fairy, a hand-drawn, folkloric, pacifist bullet-hell. The game has a heavy focus on frenetic movement, with your non-violent protagonist needing to dash and grapple to avoid attacks and collect the stars monsters drop to de-escalate conflict.

The point is, this isn’t just an artsy thought experiment, it’s a framework that helps me be a better, more thoughtful, designer.

Final Note:

I have a lot more thoughts about this topic. At some point I may write something longer and more thought out. I’d like to further explore:

  • How it’s not just making games that help you explore game ideas. I find it really helpful, for instance, to write about it!
  • How sometimes you are deepening ideas, and sometimes you’re broadening them
  • Micro-game design and the values it brings
  • How devs struggle to develop jam and student games in ways that further their practice
  • “Dream Games”, and how the idea of them destroys your ability to make anything
  • Rapid iteration on complex game ideas
  • The idea of “Wasting Work”

But, in the spirit of studies, I figured I’d write something quick to explore these ideas!

Lots of Love,

Tex

One thought on “Games as Studies”

  1. Pingback: On Destruction – Tex Barnes

Leave a comment