I'll grant that Gibson didn't know much about computers or networks when he wrote Neuromancer. I'll also grant that other novels have been far more prophetic and accurate.
But let's give Gibson his due. His "Sprawl" fiction (Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive, Burning Chrome) had more "surface area" than any of those other novels. He sold oodles of those books, and they entered the collective consciousness like a mainline heroin shot. He folded in MTV sensibilities that ensured his books would break the "geek" stigma which plagued SF to that point.
Gibson's prose, and his understanding of human nature, are unrivaled in the annals of SF. To read Neuromancer is to become one of his hapless characters, strugging to stay afloat in a Tofflerian Future Shock of sensory and technological overload.
The other great thing about Gibson's novels is what I call the "Lure of the TechnoGoddess": that is, he portrayed a technology (cyberspace) so sexy that hordes of computer-science geeks were compelled to labor to bring it about -- despite Gibson's relative naivete concerning all things computational. And this despite the fact Gibson saw his own work as both humorous and dystopian.
"Art" derives from a word which means "made". Art is the use of technology for communication, be it the use of paint in Lascaux or moveable type for printing books or chemistry for making movies.
In fact, videogames are perhaps the leading edge of communications technology, as it actually provides a direct visual (and with force-feedback) tactile experience.
Admittedly, the stories being told through videogames are not as inspiring or sweeping as "Lord of the Rings" but give us time... we're still learning this new toolset.
Last year I wrote a piece on this very topic, sketching out some of the major features of the current paradigm shift (from a zero-sum to nonzero-sum world-view) and suggest them as design criteria for a new kind of game. Then I asked for suggestions for games that meet these design goals. A friend of mine provided a really clever proposal.
...The best, most "classic" games are little snapshots of a culture's mindset at a given point in history.
Chess is a toy version of medieval life,
Monopoly is wish fulfillment for people living through the Depression,
Go is a manifestation of the eastern understanding of negative space, timing, and synergy.
(I'm lazy so I'll assume three examples are enough to sell my basic theory).
I want to make a game that encapsulates the
emerging culture of the early 21st Century.
You will have your own thoughts about what that culture is, precisely, but I'll sketch out the trends I see. Read through them before you begin to think about how to materialize the concepts. Avoid becoming fixated on a single "solution".
Concept 1: Gaia The new paradigm is one of complex, metastable, self-organizing systems.
Each age has its dominant metaphor: fire, water power, steam power, electricity, electronics, cybernetics. Now we see the world as interlocked self-organizing systems of diverse types: biological, technological, informational, and cultural. The most accurate label I can think of is the James Lovelock's term "Gaia".
Game design implication: A game such as I propose would involve:
elements of chance (unlike chess),
filtering by selection,
feedback loops, and
creative input from the players.
Concept 2: Onward and Upward Life is evolutionary, not entropic.
Most games involve the slow degradation of the enemies' capabilities until only one player is left alive. Evolution is more about increasing functionality, interdependence, and dynamic equilibrium. Sure, conflict and death play a part, but death's utility is getting the old out of the way of the new. These ideas are equally true in the Darwinian and personal/business/technological sense.
Game design implication:
Players build a thing of increasing complexity,
They prune out dead ends, and
Conflict can exist, but cooperation is dominant.
Concept 3: Something for Nothing The zero-sum world is giving way to a world of boundless wealth.
Physics has come a long way since Newton. Quantum mechanics is beginning to show space-time as a seething matrix of "zero-point energy" waiting to be harnessed. "Quantum bits" promise to hold an infinite amount of data, and "quantum tunnelling" hints we may find a way to move that data instantaneously. Synchronistically, the stock market is in an unprecedented "Big Bang" mode caused (I believe) by the market's shift from dependence on finite material resources (gold, oil, real estate) to an appreciation of the limitless creative potential of people.
Game design implication:
Components of game play (pieces, rules, players, etc.) could be added either by pure creation or the interaction of other game components (generating new pieces, new rules, children).
Concept 4: The New Gold Standard You can't measure infinity with a meter-stick
With the advent of the Net's fast, free exchange of ideas, the monetary standard of the 21st Century won't be money (tokens to represent how much of the world's finite material wealth you command) but rather a person's ability to produce new ideas by creativity, augmentation, or synthesis. We ourselves have become the gold standard.
This allows -- no, requires -- a sort of a "Grand Unification" of Ayn Rand's Objectivist philosophy. She understood the infinite potential of creative minds but mistakenly tried to measure it with a finite number (gold). "Wealth" is now not something you own (you can't own people these days). Philosophically this means you can have endless wealth once you abandon the compulsion to bottle it up.
Game design implication:
This runs counter to the three games I mentioned before (chess, Monopoly, and Go). They rely on competition and destruction of everyone's assets. I'd prefer the players cooperate in the gradual construction of some odd structure, be it mathematical, geometric, logical, representational, or even social.
Concept 5: Matter is the servant of Information The difference between a diamond and carbon dust is the way it's assembled.
Our world is made almost entirely of only a dozen or so elements (with a tiny sprinkling of the rarer elements). Our alphabet has just over two dozen letters, yet Western literature is an inexhaustible flow of words. What creates diversity is the arrangement of these elemental pieces.
Game design implication:
The ideal form of the game should rely more on rules than on physical manifestation.
Put another way, the flow of the game (toward a more "winning" state) is one of rearrangement, synthesis, and timing.
Concept 6: The world is fuzzy Fuzzy logic is supplanting binary logic.
The new science of fuzzy logic allows us to see beyond simple black and white, positive-negative, or win-lose states.
Game design implication:
There is no final "win" or "loss", but degrees of each.
The amount of "winningness" will depend on the consensus of the players.
The rules and pieces of play may be of variable and/or uncertain ownership.
Possible manifestations:
Life, of course, is the ultimate expression of "the game" and we're already playing it. I'm looking for something less ambitious.
This article, asking for your help in creating a new thing out of no-thing, is itself a manifestation. Interestingly, we will "win" this iteration of "the game" by spawning another incarnation of the same principles. That almost qualifies it as a Dawkins replicator.
"Dungeons and Dragons" is also a good candidate. It's social, win-win, and involves the creation of entire worlds through an act of collaborative imagination. Unfortunately it is well-charted territory, and more time-consuming than I'd like.
The Winning Entry (so far):
"Collider Cuisine"
My friend Chris Richardson (in a stroke of brilliance) suggested a cooking game wherein players agree to meet and make a meal from random ingredients brought without any coordination. It precisely fits the spirit of my design parameters.
Gaia: Few things are as synergystic as cooking. The individual dishes strive to complement each other.
Onward and Upward: Lots of evolution (random mutation, natural selection, increasing complexity) occurs as a meal takes shape.
Something for Nothing: The old "stone soup" story is a perfect evocation of cooking as an emergent, creative event.
New Gold Standard: The creativity of the group is the major dynamic of a cooking game.
Matter is the Servant of Information: It's the emergent recipe that rescues a hopeless hodge-podge of ingredients and spices.
The World is Fuzzy: The pieces (food components) and suggestions for cooking become mixed into a collective resource, whose fitness is judged through a consensus process (the eating).
Slashdot Mirror
I'll grant that Gibson didn't know much about computers or networks when he wrote Neuromancer. I'll also grant that other novels have been far more prophetic and accurate.
But let's give Gibson his due. His "Sprawl" fiction (Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive, Burning Chrome) had more "surface area" than any of those other novels. He sold oodles of those books, and they entered the collective consciousness like a mainline heroin shot. He folded in MTV sensibilities that ensured his books would break the "geek" stigma which plagued SF to that point.
Gibson's prose, and his understanding of human nature, are unrivaled in the annals of SF. To read Neuromancer is to become one of his hapless characters, strugging to stay afloat in a Tofflerian Future Shock of sensory and technological overload.
The other great thing about Gibson's novels is what I call the "Lure of the TechnoGoddess": that is, he portrayed a technology (cyberspace) so sexy that hordes of computer-science geeks were compelled to labor to bring it about -- despite Gibson's relative naivete concerning all things computational. And this despite the fact Gibson saw his own work as both humorous and dystopian.
"Art" derives from a word which means "made". Art is the use of technology for communication, be it the use of paint in Lascaux or moveable type for printing books or chemistry for making movies.
In fact, videogames are perhaps the leading edge of communications technology, as it actually provides a direct visual (and with force-feedback) tactile experience.
Admittedly, the stories being told through videogames are not as inspiring or sweeping as "Lord of the Rings" but give us time... we're still learning this new toolset.
Last year I wrote a piece on this very topic, sketching out some of the major features of the current paradigm shift (from a zero-sum to nonzero-sum world-view) and suggest them as design criteria for a new kind of game. Then I asked for suggestions for games that meet these design goals. A friend of mine provided a really clever proposal.
You can read the article here.
Here's the meat of the article:
=====
...The best, most "classic" games are little snapshots of a culture's mindset at a given point in history.
(I'm lazy so I'll assume three examples are enough to sell my basic theory).
I want to make a game that encapsulates the emerging culture of the early 21st Century. You will have your own thoughts about what that culture is, precisely, but I'll sketch out the trends I see. Read through them before you begin to think about how to materialize the concepts. Avoid becoming fixated on a single "solution".
Concept 1: Gaia
The new paradigm is one of complex, metastable, self-organizing systems.
Each age has its dominant metaphor: fire, water power, steam power, electricity, electronics, cybernetics. Now we see the world as interlocked self-organizing systems of diverse types: biological, technological, informational, and cultural. The most accurate label I can think of is the James Lovelock's term "Gaia".
Game design implication: A game such as I propose would involve:
Concept 2: Onward and Upward
Life is evolutionary, not entropic.
Most games involve the slow degradation of the enemies' capabilities until only one player is left alive. Evolution is more about increasing functionality, interdependence, and dynamic equilibrium. Sure, conflict and death play a part, but death's utility is getting the old out of the way of the new. These ideas are equally true in the Darwinian and personal/business/technological sense.
Game design implication:
Concept 3: Something for Nothing
The zero-sum world is giving way to a world of boundless wealth.
Physics has come a long way since Newton. Quantum mechanics is beginning to show space-time as a seething matrix of "zero-point energy" waiting to be harnessed. "Quantum bits" promise to hold an infinite amount of data, and "quantum tunnelling" hints we may find a way to move that data instantaneously. Synchronistically, the stock market is in an unprecedented "Big Bang" mode caused (I believe) by the market's shift from dependence on finite material resources (gold, oil, real estate) to an appreciation of the limitless creative potential of people.
Game design implication:
Components of game play (pieces, rules, players, etc.) could be added either by pure creation or the interaction of other game components (generating new pieces, new rules, children).
Concept 4: The New Gold Standard
You can't measure infinity with a meter-stick
With the advent of the Net's fast, free exchange of ideas, the monetary standard of the 21st Century won't be money (tokens to represent how much of the world's finite material wealth you command) but rather a person's ability to produce new ideas by creativity, augmentation, or synthesis. We ourselves have become the gold standard.
This allows -- no, requires -- a sort of a "Grand Unification" of Ayn Rand's Objectivist philosophy. She understood the infinite potential of creative minds but mistakenly tried to measure it with a finite number (gold). "Wealth" is now not something you own (you can't own people these days). Philosophically this means you can have endless wealth once you abandon the compulsion to bottle it up.
Game design implication:
This runs counter to the three games I mentioned before (chess, Monopoly, and Go). They rely on competition and destruction of everyone's assets. I'd prefer the players cooperate in the gradual construction of some odd structure, be it mathematical, geometric, logical, representational, or even social.
Concept 5: Matter is the servant of Information
The difference between a diamond and carbon dust is the way it's assembled.
Our world is made almost entirely of only a dozen or so elements (with a tiny sprinkling of the rarer elements). Our alphabet has just over two dozen letters, yet Western literature is an inexhaustible flow of words. What creates diversity is the arrangement of these elemental pieces.
Game design implication:
The ideal form of the game should rely more on rules than on physical manifestation. Put another way, the flow of the game (toward a more "winning" state) is one of rearrangement, synthesis, and timing.
Concept 6: The world is fuzzy
Fuzzy logic is supplanting binary logic.
The new science of fuzzy logic allows us to see beyond simple black and white, positive-negative, or win-lose states.
Game design implication:
Possible manifestations:
Life, of course, is the ultimate expression of "the game" and we're already playing it. I'm looking for something less ambitious.
This article, asking for your help in creating a new thing out of no-thing, is itself a manifestation. Interestingly, we will "win" this iteration of "the game" by spawning another incarnation of the same principles. That almost qualifies it as a Dawkins replicator.
"Dungeons and Dragons" is also a good candidate. It's social, win-win, and involves the creation of entire worlds through an act of collaborative imagination. Unfortunately it is well-charted territory, and more time-consuming than I'd like.
The Winning Entry (so far):
"Collider Cuisine"
My friend Chris Richardson (in a stroke of brilliance) suggested a cooking game wherein players agree to meet and make a meal from random ingredients brought without any coordination. It precisely fits the spirit of my design parameters.
=====
I welcome comments.
Clay Dale