{"id":31,"date":"2019-05-13T00:08:16","date_gmt":"2019-05-13T00:08:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fmx499.santiago.bz\/jcryan\/?page_id=31"},"modified":"2019-05-13T19:55:04","modified_gmt":"2019-05-13T19:55:04","slug":"artist-statement","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/fmx499.santiago.bz\/jcryan\/","title":{"rendered":"Artist statement -FMX 499 Final Project"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-youtube wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"780\" height=\"439\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/yGc3WxWhkX0?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>I made this game with the core intention of trying to understand the technical proficiency necessary in making a game and the perseverance necessary to pull all the elements that define a game into one. I tried hard to wrap my head around the fundamental elements that define the creation of a\u00a0<em>good<\/em>\u00a0game \u2013 one which is both fun and respects the dignity of the player. First, I tried to learn the rhetoric underlying games that grab a person\u2019s focus and tempt them to keep playing, but I also wanted to respect their time and their perception of the real world. My hope for the game was that it could evoke genuine \u2018creative intensity\u2019 from the player \u2013 that they would feel compelled to learn the more complex mechanical elements of the game despite the inherent difficulties &#8211; but I made sure the first modes of play were approachable and easy to understand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I made the game approachable by, first, making the game familiar and readable. I borrowed from traditional concepts usually present in top-down rogue-like shooters. The game for all practical purposes reads as a basic top-down shooter; except that the object shooting is a disconnect little cube, and it moves with a strange kind of physics-based behavior. In the tutorial, I made sure the first time the player sees the cube (I call it an assistbot in the game), it would spawn away from the player and deal damage to objects as it makes its way to its \u2018heel\u2019 position near the player. This way, the player knows that if they can get the assistbot to move at a certain momentum, it can do damage. I made sure that the assistbot in club form does a lot more damage than the bullets; so although it\u2019s more difficult to learn, using the assistbot as a damage dealing club will reward the player. This mechanic was also simple to understand, but the invisible opportunity it provided was left up to the player to discover. I made it comparable to the hat-throwing technique present in Super Mario Odyssey. What I especially embraced about this mechanic style was that its benefit doesn\u2019t occur in a way that is necessarily number-crunching or can be measured easily. Its strength lies in an invisible space removed from clear axioms and depends mostly on experimentation and intuition. That is, the game-feel caters towards the player utilizing creative intensity in order to overcome challenges that otherwise would feel near impossible if they thoughtlessly tried to approach the main elements of progression in the game without being curious about optional mechanics. They also would not properly approach the mechanic if they tried to optimize the game according to specific number-relations inside a spreadsheet. They would have to creatively define new gameplay axioms to measure \u2013 and this is much more easily done with intuition, and so compliments creative intensity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; However, I did not want to game to be demeaning. I tried\nto make all the dialogue with failure to be opportunistic or to not even\nreference failure at all; this was to suppose that failure is a necessary\nelement of growth and that it doesn\u2019t have to be ruminated on. The great joys\nof my experience working on this game involved the failures and crises I had.\nIt made me rethink what communication was. It made me consider with urgent\ncuriosity what kind of Wittgensteinian-language-games were allowed by gameplay\nmechanics and puzzles and articulations of virtual space. And it makes me feel\nlike it\u2019s just the beginning of what I\u2019m trying to understand. In trying to\nclarify to myself how to sort the relationship between code and gameplay, I encountered\na moment of clarity when I encountered this quote by Blaise Pascal: <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; \u201c[Philosohpers have] <em>confused\nideas of things, and speak of material things in spiritual &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; terms, and of spiritual things in material\nterms. For they say boldly that bodies have a &nbsp;&nbsp; tendency\nto fall, that they seek after their centre, that they fly from destruction,\nthat they &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; fear the void, that they\nhave inclinations, sympathies, antipathies, all of which attributes &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; pertain only to mind. And in speaking of\nminds, they consider them as in a place, and &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; attribute\nto them movement from one place to another; and these are qualities which &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; belong only to bodies. Instead\nof receiving the ideas of these things in their purity, we &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; colour them with our own qualities,\nand stamp with our composite being all the simple &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; things which we contemplate.<\/em><em>\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; I realized that what\ngames tend to do is sometimes intentionally muddle the \u2018ideas of things in\ntheir purity\u2019. This, at first, disturbed me greatly \u2013 but it challenged me to\nrealize more fully how interesting and mysterious it is that there is a disconnect\nbetween the experience of a game and the literal underlying systems driving\nthat experience. And that games offer a dialogue between specific logical\naxioms and the wholistic axioms of being and existence which can lead to\nresults that are very interesting and \u2013 if the dignity of the player is taken\ninto account and not exploited in pay-to-win or micro-transaction based game\nsystems \u2013&nbsp; potentially horizon opening in\nterms of artistic conception. I think it\u2019s important in terms of analytic\nphilosophy to be clear about the differences between types of ideas \u2013 but games\nare about fragmenting the world in ways which are interesting. In ways that are\nconducive to \u2018play\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; However; exemplifying\nthis realization of this wasn\u2019t the goal of this project. It\u2019s just the course I\u2019ve\nset into over the process of burdening myself with developing every element of\na video game starting from the ground up. I believe I accomplished what I set\nout to do though \u2013 which was utilize a unique core mechanic that could provide\ndepth of gameplay, to draw the player in and make the game inherently fun, and\nalso to respect the dignity of the player and their perception of the real\nworld by demanding creative intensity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I made this game with the core intention of trying to understand the technical proficiency necessary in making a game&hellip; <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/fmx499.santiago.bz\/jcryan\/\">Read more <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Artist statement -FMX 499 Final Project<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-31","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fmx499.santiago.bz\/jcryan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/31","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fmx499.santiago.bz\/jcryan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fmx499.santiago.bz\/jcryan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fmx499.santiago.bz\/jcryan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fmx499.santiago.bz\/jcryan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/fmx499.santiago.bz\/jcryan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/31\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":220,"href":"https:\/\/fmx499.santiago.bz\/jcryan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/31\/revisions\/220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fmx499.santiago.bz\/jcryan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}