Dispense with the pleasantries! Bring more art! I’ll probably have a rant of sorts regarding the state of our image-consuming (read: .jpg DEVOURING) Internet culture next week. But there’s the distinct feeling of being kicked in the back. By a pro wrestler. Oww.
Even though Bob Gandy is a relative newcomer to the scene, he managed to hit the con scene at a good clip. Attending his first con last weekend, he got a fairly unique view of it- as an adult yet not one being dragged there by offspring. So, Bob, what DID you think of the con scene?
As an emerging artist, I’ve been told that going to cons is a must-do, not only to get an insider’s look at what is fresh off the boat for anime, comics, and manga, but meeting the artists, writers and publisher/producers behind it all. I got a chance to check out one of the DC area’s finest: Katsucon - open for their 14th year.
Before I could have any fun with the many costumed attendees, panels and videos, 7 1/2 trucks needed unloading. Speakers, pallets, and a small moon’s worth of grey bins are what build the con… but this was no small moon. It was Move Team. 24 hours in ahead of Opening Ceremonies, and 24hrs out afterwards.
Josh Elder, writer of Mail Order Ninja agrees with me that “The Industry” is very hard to break in to. He gave a panel with James Peay (Artist of the same comic) about pitching book and comic ideas to other artists, writers and publishers. They advised getting a foot in the door by looking out for story submission contests and trying to find internships in publishing houses you want to work with. In addition to being flexible with your style and subjects, they also advised getting submission packages together. Like a demo reel for an emerging band, Josh suggested a bundle of 5-6 pieces of sequential art, and James emphasized the importance of clarity of story, especially in short pieces. I was blown away by their professionalism, and that they treated everyone - even those just thinking about starting out - like they were well respected fellow industry professionals.
The Kaja and Phil Foglio of Girl Genius, gave a pair of panels on the art and science of Self Publishing. They were as delightfully entertaining as they were informative. For those that can’t (or won’t) deal with restrictions, manipulations and hassles of publishing through another company may find success in starting their own. They have been self-publishing Girl Genious for years, and had a number of works done before that. In addition to tips and tricks for getting ISBN numbers and barcodes for your work, they had advice on marketing, distribution - even finding the best printers for your money! Like Josh Elder and James Peay, I was again amazed by the Foglio’s professionalism, respect and encouragement of emerging artists and writers.
Con wasn’t all work, however. I got to learn more in 1 hour about Transformers than I had ever known. I watched (and occasionally heckled) some anime including Ghost In The Shell : Individual Eleven and Tales from Earthsea. There was even a sweet chance to take some kids back to school in the video game room.
I can’t thank the other staffers, guests and attendees enough for making Katsu a wonderful learning experience. I feel like my art career has found some secret power up!
First con, for teh Win!
Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!!! — uh..? huh? wha– Oooooooooh, it was LAST WEEK. Dang. Oh well, better late than never, right? I’d have had a good one, but lately the “love” shown by migraine headaches had me swooning.
I’ll spare long discussions in favor of random artwork. Everybody likes art!
Rediscovering old tools with new methods is exciting! (MS Paint)
[Demon Mage Tess, original character brought to you by Angry Viking Press]
And there’s nothing like that New Program Smell. (OpenCanvas)
[Casper, from a new arcade game, Deathsmiles] (c) 2007, CAVE/AMI.
But then, there’s always room for traditional fare.
[”Ciel“, a mage character class in the Disgaea series] (c)2005-2008, Nippon Ichi Software.
And that’s it for now. See ya next week!
Hello, folks! Here is a review of a new card game by new blogger Jason Cox! Take it away, Jason!
–
Ah, the inn… bastion of rpg’s, the alpha and omega to countless stories, and a lovely place to try to bash a mug over a strangers head in a good natured manner. If there has ever been a time when inn’s have not been identified with role playing games by geek culture, that time is lost to the ages. Even space genre stories have their hives of scum and villainy while modern day grim and gritty could not exist without the local dive to get pissed in after seeing things no man should see. What cowboy could hold his ten gallon head high if not for the saloon and what kind of deep space exploration would be complete without a clean cantina and a knowing bartender? Some inns and taverns, such as the Vulgar Unicorn, The Floating Vagabond, or The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, have reached such a level of fame that they are practically characters in and of themselves with a defined look, feel, and clientèle.
Into this mix comes the dice game Inn-Fighting by Rob Heinsoo, published by Wizards of the Coast. The game’s sole intention is to create a loose and free environment of ale and fisticuffs, where your character and your actions are not taken too incredibly seriously and where tides can turn in very short order. The mechanic is simple enough once you get the hang of it… basically you have several actions available to you, but the roll of the dice make certain actions and targets more viable or practical. Once you make your decision you roll a D20, add your attack, and hope for the best. Every time you hit a character the amount of damage you do turns into victory points for your pile, with a bonus for KOing another character. Winning the game is very fluid though, because the victory points you acquire can also often be spent activating special abilities or to heal a character.
The game does have a few downsides. Due to the fast paced multi-target mechanic of the game it is completely unsuitable for a two player game (the game itself says no less than 3) and it feels extremely awkward to play more than one character. The game relies on special dice for the most part, so if they are lost so is the game. Also while the game is fast paced and fun, the inherent randomness can be frustrating if you are the sort of player who prefers drawn out strategies to improvised mayhem. Lastly, the game requires a large amount of counters, roughly twenty or so per player, so those players without penny jars or glass beads may spend a lot of time ripping up paper.
This being said the fast and loose mechanic does do an excellent job bringing a light hearted barroom brawl to life, complete with tavern wenches, mugs improvised as weapons, and innocent bystanders used as shields. If your character is knocked out you simply draw a new one from the huge stack of other characters and play is such that everyone can expect to be KO’d at least once. The characters abilities, though not exactly balanced, are varied and for the most part make sense. The price is fair, if not exactly cheap ($14.99) and can be a quick and fun way to wind down with some friends.
Just remember to tip the waitress when you leave. She’s been good to you (and passed you that chair when you needed it) so now you be good to her.
So, in a very clumsy play of devil’s advocacy, I proposed last week that games are not art.
“Games aren’t art! Hah! Poo-poo to you! And your opinion!” -your author, last week.
Well, without getting into the hazy world of art philosophy (not yet anyway), I thought I’d spend this post stacking the deck with reasons to argue for the legitimacy of games as art.
I’ll do my best to be impartial & fair, but remember folks, this is just a blog post. 
*Ahem!*
STAGE 1 ===================================================
-Video games, as they’ve evolved till now, still fundamentally depend on the input of a user (player), and within the structure and rules of the game itself, interact (play) within this virtual space (levels, boards, stages, areas, etc. etc.) Ultimately, said player attempts to complete a specified objective (reach the flag at the end of the run, defeat other players, collect X number of items, etc.)
For example, the player in Tetris, organizes seven arranged shapes to fit seamlessly together as they fall from the top of the stage to the bottom, and [every horizontal line created is automatically cleared, as long as the stage remains clear enough for the player to place more shapes. When there is no more room, the game is over.]
The player in Halo 3 utilizes a selection of weapons and vehicles, with the aid of non-player characters to navigate an area of space, defeating enemies to [reach the next area checkpoint and/or complete the particular mission’s objective.]
You can fundamentally break down almost any game out there into a sequence of player & environment/parameters of play/[objective.]
So… what happens if you remove this dynamic? What happens if one of the links in this chain disappears? What if there’s no “reason”, no [objective] to achieve?
STAGE 2 ===================================================
The player in the Grand Theft Auto series is introduced to the virtual city through opening cutscenes, given a brief instructional tutorial on how to navigate the area, and is free from then on to choose missions, collect items, explore and open up new areas of the map, and interact with characters. The player can approach the game at any time, in any way they see fit, and can ignore even narrative-based objectives with no consequences that would end the game.
There’s no hard defined way for a player to fail the game of Grand Theft Auto. The narrative opens up only when the player chooses to interact with that aspect of the game. “Sandbox gaming” encompasses this idea. A player loses a match in Tetris if they fail to clear lines of blocks. A player loses in Halo if they are defeated by the enemy before they reach their mission result. But that aspect of gaming without borders, leaving the player free to approach it as they wish, is what makes this and similar titles truly notable. Let’s explore that further, and take the player ***out*** of the virtual world…
STAGE 3 ===================================================
In the MTV Music Generator series, the virtual studio space allows the importing (and exporting) of samples into a series of sound channels, assigning a sequence of notes on a scale. [Musical compositions ranging from classical, modern, to experimental ones can be created, saved and even used as non-copywritten stock in a professional production.]
While there is a “virtual studio”, there is no player avatar. There’s no representation of a character or facsimilie of the player, unless one counts the cursor that allows a player to select their options & save their work. There’s technically an objective of creating sound or music, but this is a game devoid of a mascot or symbol that directly interacts with the game enviroment. Furthermore, the enviroment remains fixed, no matter what the player does. There’s no destructable walls, there’s no timed event scripts where a secret passage opens or a non-player character appears. A creator in Music Generator can plug-and-play with samples, and script out music, but there’s no way for that user to alter the interface directly. Mario smashing bricks with his head, obtaining powerups from question blocks and kicking turtle shells into enemies and obstacles *and defeating or destroying said obstacles* is a drastic influence of player + environment – a hallmark of interactivity.
So, let’s complete the trinity, and take the environment ***out*** of the equation — or can we?
STAGE 4 ===================================================
Magic Pengel & Graffiti Kingdom allow you to virtually construct new avatars, and remarkably accurate player characters completely from scratch… that won’t work…
Fable offers [drastically changing sequences of objectives] and influence over other non-player characters, as well as the effect on the player themselves… no…
Now, in the realm of homebrew & doujinshi gaming… Fraxy allows the player to craft an array of enemy machines, assigning weapons and power cells, and even affecting their schemes and frequency of attack. The player is only able to select their own weaponry loadout and is largely attempting to defeat their own creations. Though there is an “environment”, it’s extremely loose in definition — there’s only a backdrop that the player can select from (up to three.) [There’s no obstacles outside of the enemy and projectiles themselves, and as long as the enemy creation remains within range of the player’s ‘radar’, the game ends only when the player or enemy is destroyed.]
The SimCity series gives the player an absolute blank slate or at least a raw “environment” on which they attempt to attract citizens, assign and build city zones and provide resources for this virtual city to grow. External factors such as riots, disasters, bankruptcy and disrepair affect the city, but [the starting wilderness given to the player is up to them to forge into a metropolis], and they have a fair degree of control over excavating new areas or building up natural resources as well.
Interesting, isn’t it? There are games that can eschew the ‘fundamental’ structures of their design; games that don’t depend on or rely on all three aspects of a player, a set of rules or an environment in a rigid definition. But then, all these games still have an arguable structure in place to maintain their interactive nature. But…
STAGE 5 ===================================================
Imagine a game of Mega Man wherein he fights the enemy robots without ever setting foot in ANY stage. They tumble endlessly in a gray void, where only their attacks separate success or failure. Any attempt to navigate just moves them around in aimless directions. No environment, no level structure, not even a stage selection.
Imagine a game of King Of Fighters where there are no fighters. The player has control over the foreground and background elements… but can’t directly interact with another fellow character. Even in a less extreme case, how about a vs. fighting game where you only watch two selected player avatars fight and have no direct control over the match. (Many genres of games actually have a mode dedicated to this, or at least have an option wherein two ‘bots’ could be posed against each other.) A game that has no players (can it play itself then?)
Think of a Sonic the Hedgehog game where there is no enemy, no Dr. Eggman to antagonize or Chaos Emeralds to collect. Sonic has the ability to run and jump seamlessly across ALL his levels at any time, limited only by the player’s choosing (and the speed at which Sonic can tear through a level.) Because the environments themselves are highly dynamic, there’s still an element of interaction, but with no objective, that clearly would change how the game is approached — or regarded.
Metroid and Castlevania are built more around the exploratory aspect of gaming, but they still function with a clear objective. Even a series of subquests in those games drive the player to an endpoint. A game without an objective at all, becomes observation and experimentation instead of narration.
A piece of art however, only needs a viewer to interpret the sensory signals (sight, sound, touch, smell, taste) given. Art easily has a participant (player), and be it a canvas or sound stage, has a place or time in which it’s displayed (environment.) But does the Mona Lisa have an end-of-stage marker? Does Duchamp’s installation of a toilet seat support multiplayer or online play? A player could set up an HDMI TV and a PS3 in a Franklin Lloyd Wright house, but the consequences of destruction and death in the latest Warhawk only go as far as the screen and not in the real world…
STAGE 6 ===================================================
Interaction in the arts is a realm of postmodernism, where the creators challenge the nature of a gallery space (allowing visitors to actually “invade” the secure distance between works, forcing the viewer to be a physical part of the piece, etc. etc.) But there’s a de-emphasis of any sort of narrative goal. Instructions and or definitions of the “rules” in an interactive gallery space are left to the viewer to stumble through and determine on their own terms. Games do offer options to customize and craft their own control schemes, levels of difficulty, and more… but a game that eschews a cohesive virtual world for a nebulous, subjective one? Is there such a thing? Ever played a “game” that was entirely up to the “player” to interpret, their actions impacted the nature of the “game” itself — defining the parameters in real time? Or maybe seen a “game” that eschews all manner of player/environment/rules — a game that refuses to be played, conquered or interacted with? (A doujinshi flash game, “The Life Ending Adventure” is pretty close…)
Sit back & think about this for now. The Art of Games is next week.
Dood, it’s President Nixon’s birthday today! Hahah, I rock! I turned 30 today too!
</double V sign from Airforce One>
So, I was thinking… I’ve been an artist all my life, and for 60 to 75% of that time, I’ve been a gamer… And with the current culture of gaming, striving and scraping for the legitimacy of film and music and television, I think to myself…
”Games aren’t art!”
How could they be? They’re… games! Yes, they rely on a level of artistic direction; visual and audio media create the sensory palette in which the game world is painted, directors live or die (figuratively) by their command over the narrative and the interactive…
But… art is something fundamentally different. And games, no matter the aesthetics, bring a very different sensation than art does. The development process addresses different goals & obstacles; the intention of a game can be almost directly opposed to what art attempts to achieve. Even the words (even THESE words) carry contexts that gamers or artists don’t see eye to eye on.
Or at least, that’s my position. And as something I’ve thought of very heavily, I figure this would be the perfect forum to voice that position, or give way to a change in opinion.
So, from here till doomsday or next wednesday (whichever comes first), let’s think about this for a minute…
Video games… art? What do you all think?
“A moment of silence, for Optimus Prime, who gave his life in 2005…”
And that was how my new year of 2008 was kicked off. A nice social gathering and a toast at midnight, with that reminder that here we are, still at the dawn of the 21st century. And eight years in, we’ve not (yet) been assailed by robots from a robot planet, subject to some time-shattering horror clawing up from the Earth’s core, and STILL we’ve not had the request for flying cars or giant space elevators satisfied… (Well, we’re at least DAMN CLOSE to a modern Babel Tower. Thanks United Arab Emirates!)
Readers rejoice, for science fiction (hard or soft, whatever your fancy) is slowly but surely making a ressurgence! We’ve had plenty of time to enjoy all that the Lord of The Rings trilogy spawned, and I’m sure all the spoilers for Harry Potter have been spoiled. Magic and swords and fightin’ polar bears continue to be cool, but it’s about time for classic space opera revivals, dimensional super powers and the dependability of plot-holes-via-time-travel-dysfunctions.
We have the here-and-now monster movie jangling of Cloverfield, a new Star Trek revamp in production (Sylar as Spock?! Choice.) The Terminator is on prime-time television (and hey, that beats a generic Bionic Woman remake!), and even next-generation games like Too Human, Starcraft II and Everyday Shooter are making headlines and whetting appetites.
Rock/Mega Man celebrated his 20th anniversary this past Christmas too – that should immediately warm the steel-plated geek’s heart! And for the Gradius fans out there, hey another (spinoff) game can’t hurt! Of course, there’s also the venerable Transformers on Cartoon Network… in one form or another. Be glad though. It’s not Master Force.
But, again rejoice and celebrate! 2008 looks to set the pace for another glimpse into the future, be it tomorrow or 2356AD. And something to look forward to is always, always a good thing.
Man, what a difference a week makes, eh? Crybringer here, for your Wednesday update.
It’s really tough to pin down any one thing to talk about, since a number of events and activities are centered around this time of year. It’s a funny sort of gravitational effect, from the cemented traffic lanes, crowded stores, busy busy busy blog posts, new releases, re-releases, private and personal get-togethers, and then of course the Big C. I mean, Comiket. Did I mention how excited I was for Comiket?!
So, coining my blog stylings from the esteemed Sports Guy of ESPN, here’s a geek’s bullet list of random events and points-of-interest. I might actually use text bullets!
(Be back with a festive pic in tow later today! >_<)
The holiday season has arrived, readers! Wake up with a lighter step! Take things with a warmer stride! And do your part to fight back against the Christmas-can-die-in-a-fire callousness.
(Seriously folks, you get semi-free stuff and certainly free food! Lighten up!)
But I’ll tell you, I personally am looking forward to something better than my Amazon Wish List. (If I had one anyway:)
COMIC MARKET 73* is on Dec 29th through the 31st in Tokyo! A motherlode more than your existing motherlode of doujinshi awaits!!!
*[The quick & dirty explanation is that Comic Market (Comiket) is a bi-annual Japanese small press convention of independant comic creators & cosplayers, offering primarily independent comics called “doujinshi.”]
As an artist & manga fan, I’m reminded around this time of year just how lucky we are to be able to reach media like this. Even if one hasn’t set foot in Japan, to think that one can actually sample, buy and communicate with the myriad creators at Comiket courtesy of the Internet is just mindboggling! And more so than before, there are individuals like the writers at Heisei Democracy, bold bloggers like Danny Choo, or able-bodied and strong willed artists and fans who are making their way to Comiket and experiencing the event firsthand. Someday, I hope to join them, and see the faces behind my favorite circles as well. I’ve GOT TO meet Himukai Yuji.
But, for now as I approach a real milestone of my life (30 years on this planet!) I look to Comiket news all over the net, steeple my fingers and itch for deliveries to my favorite mail order catalogues, and prepare to do what comes natural to me — geek the heck out. Add on the defensive buffs of Christmas holiday fever (+5 Happiness, Luck & WellWishes) , New Years Eve drunken schenanigans (+10 charisma, -6 agility) and my birthday to cap off the winter (30% critical up), and I personally can’t help but be a bit… jolly!
Likewise, more than new Iphones or 1080p TV’s… what events this holiday season are you all looking forward to?
From the desk of a wayward Crybringer:
-Derelict posts will be countered by doing them a day in advance. HAY GUYS I FIGURED IT OUT! So, pulling from my stable of sketches, here’s a winner:
Every so often, an artist has to step away from their slavish fandom of all things bishoujo PVC figures, side scrolling shooting games, doujinshi collecting, hometown football teams, and Law & Order SVU reruns to actually challenge themselves to do more. Thank Pocky for the next topic as well. Because maids are relevant to my interests. And where are you going to get ***drow*** maids? Who would think of such a thing?!
(Linked so as not to offend. I mean, it’s on lined paper. That’s offensive.)
-CB
