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A Mike Patton/Venetian Snares project. I think that'd be pretty fucking sweet!
Jan. 10th, 2007
So, as I was reading the game design book the other night (which so far, is really great... I'm still on the first essay (I only read it sporadically)) Anyways, as I was reading it, I began to wonder what a metagame would be like. Not in the sense of Calvin Ball or 1000 Blank White Cards (which I so fucking wanna do sometime with a good group of people... come one people, let's do it!), but more along the lines of sci-fi novels.
Metafiction in game form. A kind of game that really takes you in and twists reality. Certain novels, comics, and films do this quite well, but there has, to my knowledge, been no game that does such a thing. Sure there are great intricate worlds such as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myst>Myst</a> that maybe touch on some things like this. I must admit however that I've never played it, so I'm not sure how "meta" it gets. I then tried to imagine a game that would do this, and I'm not sure where one would even begin. You can't just translate a novel into game form and expect it to work. There has to be a real connection with the interactiveness of the player as participant and as designer. A game that can induce synchronicities, that is to say, a game that induces the player to perceive connections in the world around them. (may I just add that the built in Firefox spell check doesn't properly recognize synchronicity or it's variants). A game that empowers the player to not only play a game "in there" but "out there". Inspiring in the same way a Philip K. Dick novel would be, or something like the Invisibles. You would have to work on the theory of what a game is in essence, then expand outward. In the Invisibles, one of my favorite things was the metaphors and allusions (not so subtle, necessarily) of the author as god in a universe. He explored this in a magickal way. Could you use the idea of magic(k), especially our modern "chaos" variants, and theories behind it to work on this game design? How would you go about it? I'd really like to see something like this done, but it seems like such an impossible task. When I tried to picture how it would work, I realized then why Ebert says games are not yet an artform. They are, IMO, to a degree. But at this point, there is still nothing that has really touched and drawn in the user to such a degree that novels, films and comics can and have done, and will continue to do. Where is our PKD for the game world? Our Borges? Our Kubrick? Hell, where's our Morrison? Our Alan Moore?
Metafiction in game form. A kind of game that really takes you in and twists reality. Certain novels, comics, and films do this quite well, but there has, to my knowledge, been no game that does such a thing. Sure there are great intricate worlds such as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myst>Myst</a> that maybe touch on some things like this. I must admit however that I've never played it, so I'm not sure how "meta" it gets. I then tried to imagine a game that would do this, and I'm not sure where one would even begin. You can't just translate a novel into game form and expect it to work. There has to be a real connection with the interactiveness of the player as participant and as designer. A game that can induce synchronicities, that is to say, a game that induces the player to perceive connections in the world around them. (may I just add that the built in Firefox spell check doesn't properly recognize synchronicity or it's variants). A game that empowers the player to not only play a game "in there" but "out there". Inspiring in the same way a Philip K. Dick novel would be, or something like the Invisibles. You would have to work on the theory of what a game is in essence, then expand outward. In the Invisibles, one of my favorite things was the metaphors and allusions (not so subtle, necessarily) of the author as god in a universe. He explored this in a magickal way. Could you use the idea of magic(k), especially our modern "chaos" variants, and theories behind it to work on this game design? How would you go about it? I'd really like to see something like this done, but it seems like such an impossible task. When I tried to picture how it would work, I realized then why Ebert says games are not yet an artform. They are, IMO, to a degree. But at this point, there is still nothing that has really touched and drawn in the user to such a degree that novels, films and comics can and have done, and will continue to do. Where is our PKD for the game world? Our Borges? Our Kubrick? Hell, where's our Morrison? Our Alan Moore?
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I don't know if this is necessarily Meta in that sense, perhaps more metaphor, but I've thought, ever since reading some Jung, about how to interpret the Bible metaphorically. As many of you know, I grew up in a fundy church (Assembly of God, the same as Johnny boy Ashcroft and Elvis muthafuckin' Presley). So, everything was literal. But as I realized I didn't believe in that deity/belief-system, I was able to see the Bible in a different context. I wrote a thing a long time ago about "the fall" being symbolic of our fall from childhood innocence into adulthood and the onset of sexual awareness.
I also was aware of the metaphor of our body as "the Temple of the Holy Ghost"... This was one thing that we were taught. We should respect our bodies as that which holds the spirit of God. How very un-gnostic... Now, when I moved into pantheism, I could see that metaphor for the divinity within all life... The Prana, if you will... The universal force of motion, life, vitality. Not necessarily in it's biological sense, though, that too. I also recalled the Book of Revelation has a point where the Anti-Christ enters the temple and declares himself God. I realized that perhaps one could interpret that not in a literal way (OMG, the Jews are gonna build a new temple and that means we need to destroy al-Aqsa and then the antichrist will really go in there, and look out ARMAGEDDON!!!!), but rather, what is the anti-Christ and what happens if it enters the temple? If YOU are the temple, what do you need to guard against.
Again, this is quite elementary to pretty much any non-fundy, but it's still something I want to do sometime. Go back and read parts of the Bible in it's proper allegorical context (and maybe not so proper... that is... recontextualize it in my terms).
Anyways, yeah. And god... and the bible... and all that...
I also was aware of the metaphor of our body as "the Temple of the Holy Ghost"... This was one thing that we were taught. We should respect our bodies as that which holds the spirit of God. How very un-gnostic... Now, when I moved into pantheism, I could see that metaphor for the divinity within all life... The Prana, if you will... The universal force of motion, life, vitality. Not necessarily in it's biological sense, though, that too. I also recalled the Book of Revelation has a point where the Anti-Christ enters the temple and declares himself God. I realized that perhaps one could interpret that not in a literal way (OMG, the Jews are gonna build a new temple and that means we need to destroy al-Aqsa and then the antichrist will really go in there, and look out ARMAGEDDON!!!!), but rather, what is the anti-Christ and what happens if it enters the temple? If YOU are the temple, what do you need to guard against.
Again, this is quite elementary to pretty much any non-fundy, but it's still something I want to do sometime. Go back and read parts of the Bible in it's proper allegorical context (and maybe not so proper... that is... recontextualize it in my terms).
Anyways, yeah. And god... and the bible... and all that...
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