Reverse Performance

(This blogpost serves as a companion post to a presentation I gave on Increpare. Though Increpare was a crucial stepping stone to reach the ideas talked about here, this blog post is more about the concept of Reverse Performance than it is about Increpare.)

Reverse Performance.

Reverse Performance: The phenomena which occurs in playing a video game where the player is asked by the game to act out a series of actions in a narrative. (as coined by me)

In a way most games are reverse performative, in that even in the most basic sets of interactions a game is asking the player to perform some sort of interaction. However, the phenomena I'm talking about it more specific. I am thinking more precisely of theatre/filmic performance; characters taking concrete actions furthering a narrative (most of the time). A similar thing happens in written stories, however the performance is played out through the dance of the words.

In games that practice reverse performance the stage has been set, but the play will not continue without the player's input - the player's performance. There are games where the stage is set, but the action plays out in front of them. I'm thinking about game's like Telltale's  The Walking Dead where the player watches the action unfold, and is only occasionally asked to make a decision that will effect the next cut-scene.

Episode 1 of Telltale's The Walking Dead (Warning: violence and blood)

 This is not a reverse performance, this is a straight up performance that the player watches, and occasionally decides how the next stage of the performance plays out. I am interested in games where the player is really forced through the motions of the performance in order to progress in the game.

Where, instead of sitting back and watching in-game character perform for them, the player must put on their own performance.

I would argue that most modern games are some mixture of player performance and game performance, whereby the player watches characters in a cut-scene, and then they are asked to go out and complete a task - perform. This the standard structure of most First Person Shooter single player campaigns - as well as like, every other game.

This is well and dandy.

However, what I think makes Cooking for Lovers by Increpare so effective (for me) is that it is entirely performative. It is like a tiny one act play. However, you are never given stage directions, instead you must stumble through the actions of cooking dinner alone, and once you slump to the floor at the end you're given time to contemplate - contemplate the name of the game for instance.

I'm still trying to tease apart whether this distinction I've drawn is helpful on a broader level of analyzing games. However, I do think it helps me wrap my head around many of Increpare's games.

https://www.increpare.com/2014/11/cooking-for-lovers/

https://www.increpare.com/2015/06/blackness-and-stars/

https://www.increpare.com/2017/07/a-story-about-a-cat/

https://www.increpare.com/2012/12/slave-of-god/

https://www.increpare.com/2014/10/having-said-goodbye/

https://www.increpare.com/2017/09/worst-guest/

https://www.increpare.com/2009/10/home/

Progress Update #3

Progress oh progress.

My favorite thing.

But actually, we've made some pretty nice progress.

I think that we've finally found more stable footing on the narrative side, thinking about and representing Leo's memories. The memories will be presented in a non-linear fashion, though perhaps lightly structured fashion. According to Leo the inspiration initially came from the way that rouge-likes spawn items from item pools. So, for example, in Binding of Isaac items spawn semi-randomly when you explore the dungeons. The reason it's semi randomly is because the item that randomly spawns isn't selected form every item possible, but from a specific pool of items depending on if you're in a basic dungeon room, or an area, or the shop, or in a boss room, etc...

Here's a little image to illustrate.
 

Leo's idea was to translate the random yet structured nature games like this dole out items, and use it to structure a narrative. The game moves through scenes - memories - chosen randomly from the current pool of memories. As of now there are going to be three pools: very early abstract childhood memories, more grounded+specific memories from later in childhood, and memories/reflections from current Leo. As we're talking about it now each memory will be paired with an audio clip, but one that doesn't necessarily relate to the current memory. - but maybe relates to a different memory. Leo is interested in how this narrative structure relates to how he actually remembers things - very specifically, but in non-linear ways. And how abuse has shaped the way he does and can remember things.

Leo compiled a bunch of memories and we started sketching out how a couple of them go. We've pretty much finished one scene, and have story boarded and starting working on four others. We don't know exactly how many there will end up being, but we're aiming to have at least a couple (3, 4, 5??) for each memory pool, so the randomization element works. However, the scenes are going to vary in scale, so some might be more involved, and others very short.

We haven't started doing any voice over for the scenes yet, but we've booked a recording booth for this weekend and plan on starting then.

Here's a very rough sketch of a scene that Leo made on a post it.

 

Here's what the scene ended up looking like three days later in Unity.










I think we're finally in a place where development can happen more quickly, and I'm excited to see how these next scenes start taking shape.

That's all for now!

Progress Update #2

As work continues, it continues in a non linearly wibbly wobbly way.

Recently, I've begun asking Leo questions about our game; tell me about this video game, how does this video game end, how does this video game begin? Each time I take out my phone and record the question and answer. It started out kind of as a joke, I would ask him to tell me about it, and he would respond with something ridiculous: this video game is the Dark Souls of Finnegans Wake. (which this game both will be, and also I don't know entirely what that would mean).

I ultimately found the process of making of the recordings worthwhile, the ridiculous answers slowly petered out into more tempered, if still not entirely serious, answers. 'The game ends when you want to stop playing it'.'The game will only be FMV from now on'. While I'm not sure if these voice recordings will make their way into the final product, I think they struck on a couple of different thematic chords that Leo and I have been reaching for. First of all, I like the shifting view of the game they provide. Each time I ask the same question - how does it end? how does it end? - I would get a different, though often equally valid response (we still don't know how it's going to end). This constant moving under the players feet, and shifting of expectations is something we've talked a lot about exploring.

I think these voice recordings also achieve something that we've been talking about since our early sketching out phase: direct communication with the player. I know it sounds like a 'duh' kind of thing - if you want to talk to the player directly, talk to them! In lots of our early ideas Leo kept coming back to the sticking point that no matter how interesting a world or narrative we'd built up around the player, they were still a couple levels abstracted/removed from the game. That they were not directly being talked to, instead it was an avatar. So now, with these recordings, it was kind of a revelatory moment for me when I realized that, ya know, we could just talk to them.

It reminded me of a game I'd played a while ago, The Beginners Guide. Here's a trailer for it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBK5Jheu0To. The game unfolds as a narrator/game developer talks you through a series of short games/experiences made by a friend of theirs. Though the thematics of the game are different, I realized that the delivery mechanism for the story was by far the most direct of any game I'd played in a while. The narrator is the developer (more or less, it ends up getting a little complicated) and I am myself playing through these games as the developer talks to me about these games. Anywho, Leo and I recently played through the first couple levels in the game to get a sense of the narration style and delivery, and I think it might end up being a helpful touch stone for us as we move forward.

So yeah. We've spent a fair amount of time with conceptual work recently, but here are some of the tech and development progress we've made.

I've been learning two different tools inside Unity; Timeline and ProBuilder. The first is a tool that allows one to align events that happen inside the game on a timeline, it's particularly helpful for aligning events to an audio track - which is something we're thinking about doing if we go down the voice recording track. The other tool I've been learning - ProBuilder - is a Unity asset that allows for the creation of flexible in engine meshes (ie, creating the 3D level geometry inside of Unity instead of having to use an outside modeling program). Below is a screen grab from a mockup of an abstract scene I created to test out using Timeline to score a song with geometry made with ProBuilder.




I think I would also be remiss if I didn't mention S C A R E   F A C T O R Y before ending this blogpost. So Leo and I were prototyping the skeleton of a clicker style game to maybe be used as a vignette in a part of the game. (Clicker style referring to games like : Cookie Clicker, Space Plan, or A Dark Room). Our prototype for this project accidentally spun out into it's own monstrous monster based clicker game. While it's very likely some of the tech driving SCARE FACTORY might end up in our game, it's probably safe to say it's now another project (something we'll finish maybe after this class). Anywho, if you have more questions about SCARE FACTORY, just ask, in the comments maybe? I'd be happy to elaborate, but as it's not directly related to this project anymore I think that's all for now.

I think that's all for now!

Pulped Under Pressure Talk Response

Last week there was a talk given by two of the artists who collaborated to put on the current paper exhibition in Wriston - Pulped Under Pressure. While parts of this talk were perhaps a little less than stimulating, there was actually one part that really stood out to me - the process of collaborative paper making.

The two speakers commented that because the process of making paper is labor intensive, often requiring many hands and various steps along the way, it naturally lends itself as a community activity. Thus, many different groups and organizations have either centered themselves around paper making, or utilize paper making as a form of brining together members of the community and empowering them through the process of making art. As someone who's interested in both art and intentional communities (as seen in my involvement with SLUG, CORE, community gardens in the Manhattan, and collaborative video game development communities), this piqued my interest. It made me think about what parts of the process of making video games naturally lends itself to large scale community practices. While I don't have any answers right now, I found it a worth while question to pursue. 

This wasn't the only question this talk led me to. I was also curious about the relationship between authorship and community art builder. Much of the art world is driven my the idea of authorship, of a singular creator producing something. Or even in the case of collaborations, the work is still understood as something firmly 'owned' 'created' by the distinct (other small set of) collaborators. But I find the idea that group of 30, 40, people, most of whom aren't necessarily artists, collaborating together to create a bunch of artistic paper as a challenge to this clear cut notion of authorship. I dig this challenge. I think it's awesome. 

I think that's about all for this lecture. 

Until the next one.