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On The Untapped Potential Of Abstract Videogames
Thanks to the IGDA for their 'Ivory Tower' column discussing why abstract graphics and gameplay are often unfairly ignored when making today's videogames. The writer notes that: "Quite a few classic board games are fairly abstract in design, including Chess, Go, Scrabble, Checkers, and so on... it's what's at the core of the game that matters." He goes on to argue that "the figuring out of a game can be made as interesting as any puzzle the appears within the game itself", and references newer titles such as Rez and Frequency as carrying on the abstract aesthetic pioneered by games like Tempest and I, Robot.
You know, now that I think about it, with few exceptions, all the women I've ever known have always been really into abstract games, while all the guys I've known have been into realistic games. (Case in potint: I just finished a marathon 20 hour session with the Lineage RPG, while my wife was playing all kinds of weird flash games all day.) It would be interesting to see if tapping the abstract game market also resulted in reaching the female demographic.
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I can't think of any recent game that got as much publicity as Tetris, a game which comfortably falls into this category. There were stories saying how Tetris would make your children smarter, and how some people were playing Tetris 20 hours a day.
I attended 'Game-On', an exhibition devoted to the history of computer games, in London (it's now in The Netherlands) about a year ago and watched some of their 'games related features' in the AV room. One of them had some professor claiming to know why people played Tetris so much, and why it was so addictive.
Supposedly, certain people are conquerors, and others are solvers. The solvers like to solve puzzles and produce order from chaos. Their challenge is to get things running smoothly. These sorts of people like Tetris, SimCity, Black & White, and those sorts of ultra abstract games (Black & White being an extreme example of a recent abstract game).
The conquerors prefer to create chaos, explore, or achieve goals by using power. These are your Quake 3, and RPG players.
So, any new abstract games would need to recognise these personalities. For example, there's probably not much of a market for an abstract beat-em-up (although Grand Theft Auto was surprisingly popular for all its freeform ways). Likewise, there's probably not much of a market for an adventure driven puzzle game (Bomberman is a solid exception here).
Anyway, I have no idea what I'm going on about now, so I'll stop there without making any conclusion at all.
mogorific carpentry experiments
Rez is one of the greatest things ever, in my opinion; I absolutely adore the game. However, I know that it sold pitifully small numbers, and when shown to idiots regularly gets ridiculed because the abstract presentation is seen as a step back in comparison to the latest boring quest for realism.
A lot of these people reacted really negatively to cel-shading as well, so its not just Rez - we all know what 'real' should look like, so its a lot easier to say whether someone has done well at it, rather than you just not liking the aesthetic that has been chosen.
Mind you, this goes further than just visuals; a quick look down this week's chart shows it full of games like Medal Of Honor and Need For Speed - the fantastic seems less popular than the "realistic" in game setting as well.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
My two cents as a geek and (traditional) artist ...
As soon as 'abstract' and 'art' are mentioned, everything, for most everyone, gets muddy.
Abstract, in art generally, can mean:
an abstracted concept/theme/meaning
an abstracted representation
and the formal natural of the work
For that reason we generally stayed away from that (and other) ambiguous terms. It was either 'figurative', which was anything drawn from a model (a model being any object including a naked person) or 'non-figurative', which was a work with absolutley no representation of any model, the emphasis being entirely on the formal nature of the work.
So there are degrees of representation, and abstraction is another thing altogether.
This may help clear up that Minimalism stuff ~ Minimalism was an art movement with an emphasis on formal properties (the objective nature of a work) and simplicity.
"Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing." -- Salvador Dali
I don't know if it qualifies as truly abstract, because some of the imagery definitely seems to represent actual objects, but this article made me think of vib-ribbon. It has a great look, but it's one that I'm pretty surprised made it onto shelves.
Perhaps one issue is that classic abstract games like chess, checkers, etc. do not need to be replaced multiple times a year. Whereas a dedicated FPS game player might buy multiple games each year, a computer chess player might buy one game every few years. The fixed nature of these classics means there is less incentive for game makers to create yet another version of chess, for example. In fact, I have an older friend who has had the same electronic scrabble game for 10 years - it works fine for her, so why buy another game?
Therefore, classic abstract games have lower sales (but may have higher total install base) because there is less turn-over.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
I used to play an old arcade game called Qix when I was a kid and remember thinking how different it was at the time. Or perhaps I never quite understood it. I would still say that it was both a conceptually and aesthetically abstract title.
More recently, I would agree about Rez. Though the gameplay is rather formulaic, in this case, it's how the different pieces work together; the interactivity of the music both visually, aurally and physically adds a whole different dimension to the game.
Also, I found the recent Tron game (on the PC) wonderfully abstract visually speaking. Those levels are beautiful. Minimal, abstract and stunning!
It's hard to get any less representational than nethack ... in some ways it's not all that abstract though, given all the distinct objects with clear and obvious effects, unlike the more nebulous forms of board control in Chess or Go. Abstract would be the D&D combat system. Really abstract would be ProgressQuest.
I really wish I could still get excited about roguelikes though. I had this idea a while back to make a roguelike game using unicode characters to expand the tile repitoire without having to be an artist, but I just can't imagine anyone besides myself playing it. It's not for some idea of popularity or glory, it's that I'd really like to entertain and interest people. I guess unless I come up with something that totally breaks the mold instead of advancing the art, it's just never going to fly without 10K+ man-hours in 3D art at least..
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
You want abstract video game fun?
I've got your abstract video right here, pal.
Download tranquility from www.tqworld.com and give it a try.
As an experiment, I've made a single, free, slashdot communal account so you can see what the
game does beyond the demo levels.
login: slashdot
pass: tryit
With several people hitting the same account, the server might gripe about some things,
but let's give it a try and see what happens.
If you like shmups(vertical scrolling shoot'em ups with millions of bullets on the screen) you should check out:
ABA games
The graphics are abstract, but the gameplay is pure shmup. You can download the sourcecode and also modify the bullet patterns which he defines using an XML-like markup language called, bulletML.
Check this interesting article out... Sex in Games
Evan Reynolds evanthx@hotmail.com
Two peanuts crossed the street. One was assaulted.