metapet and game forum For the Love of the Game

I came across a really intelligent and interesting text about
artist-made games on the Web. It was from Artbyte Nov-Dec. 01, and was
in the format of a topic-based email dialogue led by the amazing artist
and teacher Natalie Bookchin. Participants are six really smart and
creative artists who comprise three game agencies– and all women!! The
text, which I am posting, introduces the artists, but I recommend
googling them to see more up to date work – I for one am a sucker for
Anne-Marie Schleiner's opensorcery.net.

Anyway, this roundtable gained even more relevance considering the May
1st release of Natalie Bookchin's Metapet version 1.0
(http://www.metapet.net). I've been playing – it's fun and really
smart. The training video is hilarious, and real biotech news and data,
which often strike me as unreal, are threaded throughout the game.
Basically, Metapet is what you've been looking for if you've been
interested in biotech art and artists' games, either separately or
together. It's funny, fun, easy to get into, informative and critical.
– Rachel




SIX ARTISTS. THREE TEAMS. ONE MISSION: CHANGING THE FACE OF PLAY.

From arTbyTe, November-December 01

Artists have always been fascinated with games. After all, art can't be
made without play-or without collaboration, despite the myth of the
artist working alone in the studio. As the Surrealists put it, "poetry
must be made by all and not by one." Some of the best works of that
movement were products of Exquisite Corpse, a game in which each player
contributes part of a drawing. Similarly, Net artists often work with
each other to create online games, which, by their interactive nature,
always involve the user as a "collaborator" as well.

We asked Natalie Bookchin, creator of the Web-based game The Intruder,
to moderate an animated discussion on artists' computer games. Acting
as an umpire, she assembled three teams of artists (each with games set
for 2002 release) to participate, via e-mail-as if playing a game. With
spirits high,the players gave it their all.

ActionTank:
An independent agency co-founded in 2000 by Natalie Bookchin and Jin
Lee. Bookchin is a 2001-2002 Guggenheim Fellow and faculty member at
CalArts in Los Angeles. Bookchin was a member of the Net art collective
RTmark from 1998 to 2000. Jin Lee, a Chicago-based visual artist who
teaches at Illinois State University, was an RTmark contributor from
1999 to 2000.

Playskins:
Co-founded in May 2000 by gamers and artists Melinda Klayman and
Anne-Marie Schleiner. Klayman is an art historian who works at the Los
Angeles County Museum of Art, and Schleiner has curated online exhibits
including Cracking the Maze: Game Patches and Plug-ins as Hacker Art
and Snow Blossom House . Originally a site that fea- tured free erotic
skins for characters in shooter games, Playskins is a female-run
operation that is cur- rently developing its own online multi-player,
role-playing game.


aux2mondes:
A collaborative project between artists Isabelle Massu and Martine
Derain. The duo live in France, where they work on public art projects
in various cities in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East.
aux2mondes is supported by La Compagnie, a Marseilles-based artists'
collective.


:start:

Subject: Re: Game Descriptions

ActionTank_NB:
MetaPet is a virtual pet strategy game set in the near future, at a
biotechnology firm. Players, in the role of managers, begin by
selecting a worker, (a.k.a. a pet) and choose between three offices in
which they and their pet will work. The firms reflect existing biotech
companies: a leading gene therapy company, a genetics diagnostic
devices manufacturer, and a biopharmaceutical company. As the stock
value of these companies fluctuate, so do the players' balances. The
challenge is to max- imize the performance of the pet to make as much
money as possible and to become the best man- ager. An additional
challenge is to figure out how to promote one's pet. Players overcome
the limi- tations of the pet's mind and body by using state-of-the-art
technologies such as genetic screening tests, the latest biochemical
pharmaceuticals, and body surgeries. This project is part of the DNAid
series, in which artists are working on themes related to genetics,
sponsored by New York≠based, non-profit public art organization
Creative Time. Additional support is provided by Hamaca, a new Net art
platform in Barcelona. We hope to make the players emotionally
experience these issues. The game emphasizes that biotechnology is
about business first, science second.

Playskins_MK:
The working title is Anime Noire . It meshes Japanese anime and film
noir. The setting is Japan dur- ing World War II. A brilliant
scientist, Dr. Kitty, invented a genetic cocktail to weaken enemy sol-
diers; instead, it heightened the sexuality of anyone who took it and
mutated animals into sexualized humanoids. When the war ended, humans
and animals infected by the cocktail prowled the streets, seething with
sexual energy. Players select 3D avatars: scientists, detectives,
animal-humans, and then choose from actions such as kiss, whip, bite,
lick, and spank. Using a 3D map, they navigate the city. Players can
flirt and perform sex acts on each other in the chat space. The game's
goal is to find three sex toys that serve as keys to Dr. Kitty's
underground lab. The real goal is to have fantastic, erotic
interactions.

aux2mondes_MD_IM:
Our public and work space is located in the middle of Belsunce, a
neighborhood in Marseilles, mainly inhabited by northern Africans. City
plan ners and local politicians are in a frenzy building new homes,
boutiques, restaurants, and public amenities. We are both witnessing
the gentrification process and are implicated in it. Players will
embody different characters from Belsunce, negotiating and finding
solutions to resist gentrification in a variety of ways. We decided, as
artists relaying a story that does not always belong to us, to
construct some of the characters through a series of col- laborative
workshops with people from the neighborhood. Workshop participants will
create com- posite personalities through discussion about living in
Marseilles and sharing ideas on what it means to "play the game." These
workshops will also emphasize that the Net is a public space. The
intention is to collectively write another story, reiterating
everyone's right to the city ( droit de citE ).


Subject: Re: Business Unusual?

ActionTank_NB:
Developments in computer games have been guided by the commercial
market. There is barely a genre of artists' computer games; there have
been patches, modifications, variations on and cri- tiques of
commercial games, but until now, few are made from scratch. One can see
an economic reason for this-computer game development requires money,
time, and resources that many artists don't have access to. On top of
this, games require teams of artists, programmers, and designers, and
this goes against the grain of the art world/art market understanding
of artists as creative individu- als working alone. Then there is the
old high/low dichotomy; computer games are classified as "low." Aiming
for mass distribution through a commercial distributor is a different
challenge, where experimentation follows profitability.


Playskins_AS:
To make a profitable game according to the rules, most game developers
would advise that we scrap our project, spend years working our way up
as minions at rigidly hierarchical all-male game com- panies. And then
we still would find it difficult to make a game that fits within the
guidelines of what pre-established genre game publishing houses would
market and distribute. Anime Noire is the first potentially commercial
game I have worked on. If "the bottom line" were money, though,
developers would make it for only a proven market of hetero male gamers
or male porno aficiona- dos. It would contain graphic visuals, and
would emphasize flirtation. We are making the kind of game that we, as
women, would want to play. As a game created by artists, rather than an
art proj- ect with game-like qualities, we hope to reach a broader
audience of players.


ActionTank_NB:
A game, strictly defined, is a closed system with rules and obstacles.
It does seem that artists' online games have been concerned with
breaking rules both in the game form and in the means of distribu-
tion, usually free and on the Net. My project, The Intruder, does
both, as does the game modification SOD , by Jodi, and Trigger Happy,
by Thomson & Craighead.

Playskins_MK:
I work at LACMA, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and it dismays
me how games, and technol- ogy in general, are relegated to the corners
of this and other institutions. There are occasional interac- tive
computer displays, but they're inevitably shown under the auspices of
education or children's enter- tainment. I find the same problem at
other art museums. The recent show at SFMOMA, 010101: Art in
Technological Times , only had a few game-like pieces. And they were
the most popular and interesting, judging from the reactions I
observed, particularly "EphEmEre," the virtual reality environment by
Char Davies, "Ping" by Chafe/Niemeyer, "Tap Type Write" by John Maeda,
and "Floating Time" by Tatsuo Miyajima. Recently, I visited the New
Museum in New York City, where off in the dingy, rarely-visited back
room in the basement was some really nifty game art. I was the only one
back there for over a half- hour on a Saturday. So, while computer
games as art are getting some attention, primarily online and from
smaller institutions, the traditional art world has a long way to go.
But I don't think they're interested in catching up. It would require
redefining collectible art mediums, and that's a hassle.

Playskins_AS:
At a recent panel in San Francisco on art and games, Will Wright, the
creator of The Sims , compared the current position of computer games
to painting in the Renaissance-striving towards hyper-3D realism above
all else. He suggested, and I agree, that computer games could benefit
from symbol- ic, iconographic, and abstract forms of representation.
This would diversify and enrich the com- munication palette of computer
games. It's positive that artists are working with gaming, and there is
much unexplored potential. What I find less interesting is work that
incorporates game-like tropes into traditional forms like sculpture and
painting, yet this is the work that is making it into the museums and
galleries because it doesn't challenge the pre-existing system. It is
collectible. It does- n't contribute to gaming-at-large, and it is only
created for a smaller art world elite audience. Customization of games
is something I have noticed in the game-modification community. Players
often insert their own personalized characters and level add-ons into
pre-existing game engines, sometimes very geographically specific. In
aux2mondes , have you considered using a pre-built "game engine"?
Perhaps there is an editable version of the classic urban design game
Sim City ?

aux2mondes_IM:
I first thought of aux2mondes as a mix between Sim City and The Sims
, but I hardly see the parallel now. We want to invent new forms, and I
do not want to create an ironic mirror of The Sims that reproduces the
same power schemes. Sim City and especially The Sims are a
particularly American view of life relying on a set of homogenized
codes.


Playskins_AS:
I agree that the outward agenda of The Sims is to propagate
heterosexist capitalist consumerist "fam- ily values." But a game's
rules and ideology can be subverted (and to some extent even the
design- ers of The Sims intended this). Will there be room for
subversion in MetaPet ?

ActionTank_NB:
It is hard to know until we release it. There have been requests to
play the role of the pet rather than the manager. After all, it may be
more comfortable to taunt the boss than to assume that role yourself.
Dilbert is a good example. The comic strip is an unthreatening,
uncritical look at the corporate workplace. The boss is a silly
dingbat. Readers laugh, feel a little better, and get back to work.
They don't have to think about how this amusing dynamic is inescapable
in a corporate system that puts profit above everything else. We are
hoping to make people feel unease with our system.

aux2mondes_IM:
Masters become emotionally dependent on their pets, just as the pets
are dependent on the "mas- ters." Will you create the same sort of
scenario? Will your pet have any independence? Can it rebel?

ActionTank_NB:
Hopefully people will develop an attachment to their pets, making their
role as manager all the more uncomfortable. If pets are not "properly"
cared for, they will become increasingly unmanageable. They may steal,
quit, go postal, or refuse to do anything except play computer games,
becoming what they call in the human resources departments a "problem
employee."


Subject: The Need to Play

aux2mondes_MD:
Why do our societies need so many games? Games, as the Situationists
said in 1958, are-in their degenerate form-about competition,
elimination, and winning more life and money.


ActionTank_NB:
Is it the form itself that is corrupt or is it what is done with the
form? In the 1960s and 1970s the Swedish artist ÷yvind Fahlstrˆm
created a body of game paintings with the desire to build a popular,
democrat- ic art form and offer a critique of capitalism and the
Western political order. The Fluxus Group made games in part because of
their interest in reaching beyond traditional art audiences and
creating actions rather than aesthetic objects. Before them, the
Surrealists-who valued chance and collaboration over rationality and
individual aesthetics-invented games such as Exquisite Corpse .
Duchamp made use of game elements in much of his work, finally giving
up art to devote himself to playing chess. Many com- puter games, from
Tekken III to Doom , can be seen as games of conquest and aggression.
But there are numerous simulation games (including Sim City and The
Sims ) and some by Eric Zimmerman and by his com- pany gameLab that
emphasize play and creation over competition. Another aspect of games,
applying the col- loquial use of the term, are those that marginalized
groups and individuals play to outwit, maintain agency, or trick those
with power. This seems to me to be an extremely interesting aspect of
aux2mondes : making visible some of these games, whether they have to
do with getting through bureaucratic red tape or creating obstacles to
divert authority.

Subject: re: Role Playing

aux2mondes_IM:
I have to admit to you all I am totally hooked on "Lara's polygons!"
[in Tomb Raider ] Never did I think I would be so into a game. My
favorite moments are when I play with my pal in Paris. You don't see
time pass…three hours, five hours…you have to solve the puzzle
otherwise you feel lame for the rest of the day. The amount of patience
we have with Lara amazes me! She never has her period; she is always
in a good mood, in shape, strong, available, and never says a wrong
word. Yet I wish Lara would express herself more, talk to me, interact
with me, ask me for help, beg me to save her, protect her, guide her. I
love Lara, and Lara loves me.

Playskins_MK:
In Snow Blossom House -an online exhibition I put together recently
about erotic games and digital art-I included screenshots of gay and
lesbian movies made with nude Sims Skins. Gaming has become a digital
folk art medium. Within their online communities, gamers play the roles
of critics, curators, and artists, distributing their own game mods and
collecting and reviewing others.


Subject: re: power struggles

aux2mondes_MD
The game is a form that reflects the details of everyday life. It is
used to qualify a political move, a behavior, or an action. Whether the
player will lose or win is not the point. We decided to adopt this form
because we are in such a strategic place within the gentrification
process. We want to "replay" it with the people in the neighborhood
and, in a creative way, to give us some distance. There is also much
within the game structure to reinvent as artists. Our game does not
have an obvi- ous outcome or goal other than reinventing certain
situations. This might not create enough excite- ment for some players,
but while we accept the risks of a new form, we invent new rules and
new ways to approach games and play in general. It's similar to the
evolution of movies. There used to be movies with plots, characters,
and happy endings. Then other forms emerged and challenged these
conventions. The audience was small but slowly grew, and some even
embraced these new forms.

Playskins_MK:
All of our games describe power struggles within different contexts.
That turns me on: massive multi- player games developing microcosms
that recreate real world power struggles. People often fall right into
existing patterns, but sometimes they devise creative and rebellious
alternatives. Anyone care to explain the appeal of games designed to
recreate our existing lives?

ActionTank_JL:
It may seem strange to play a game about work, but as revealed in the
huge popularity of Dilbert , we want and need to see humor in our
daily lives. What makes something fun is hard to define. We worked with
unexpected elements, various narratives, strong internal logic,
interesting obstacles, and cool visuals. "Issues" are not something
we're addressing in the game, but we reflect the real corporate and
scientific world that we find so perversely fascinating. Our hope is
that workers will play this game and see the absurdity of business
culture. We hope that deciphering the lines between the real and the
imagined, and the present and future, gives the game its edge, fun, and
meaning. While creating game characters and narra- tives, how do we
deal with stereotypes? Evil, uncaring managers, for example, or Japan
as an exot- ic, hyper-sexualized place?

Playskins_AS:
We chose Japan because we shared a fascination with Japanese anime ,
and we had read about the demise of Geisha girls with the influx of
Western culture after World War II. The time period is critical because
it is when Japanese culture fused with Western culture in certain ways.
Cultural appropriation can be tricky, but even Japanese anime
characters have a very Western influence in their eyes and appearance.
We mix things up and borrow back.

aux2mondes_MD:
One of the main ideas of aux2mondes is to work with the local people
to eliminate stereotypes about migrants, Muslim women, and so-called
passivity of the poor.


ActionTank_NB:
In MetaPet , the manager's personality is not predetermined but formed
through the player's choices. If managers are ethical, they may lose
the game. But who's to say that losing is necessarily a bad thing?


LINK LIST:

METAPET:
http://www.metapet.net

THE INTRUDER:
http://calarts.edu/~bookchin/intruder

SOD:
http://sod.jodi.org/

TRIGGER HAPPY:
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/slade/slide/th/title.html

GAME LAB:
http://gmlb.com/



Umpire's Assessment: Our game ended, as games often do, with a desire
for more. We stalled with thoughts of discussing the hazards of game
addiction and halfheartedly withdrew, with plans to meet again
somewhere, sometime, for a second round. -N.B.