My LGWIV keynote now online
(Visited 6287 times) Game talk, Gamemaking
Feb 062009
A movie of my keynote at Living Game Worlds IV is up now. You can learn about the weird connections I see between The Old 97, banjos, copyright lawsuits, pop music, cellphones in Kenya, and molecular biology. Oh, and virtual worlds, of course.
Towards the end, I show a lot of pictures of Metaplace worlds from a few months ago. 🙂
There are also lots of presentations and sessions and panels up — I highly recommend the pioneers panel, but honestly, it was a great conference, they were all good.
3 Responses to “My LGWIV keynote now online”
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Raph, really enjoyed your talk. Spoke to a lot of stuff I had been thinking about but had trouble articulating with examples.
I’m curious though as to your thoughts about storytelling and the experience of a peach and ambiguity in gaming that you talked about during the Q&A in relation to the recent wellspring of “art games” like Passage (and everything else from Jason), I fell in love with the majesty of colors, The Graveyard, etc. Games that try and approach the ambiguity of a poem or novel and emulate the experience of something that isn’t just a metric goal.
Watching a lot of people’s reactions to Passage was interesting, because so many people DID read it mechanistically.
Don’t get me wrong, I do think that with the right marriage of mechanic and metaphor, you can in fact get across something powerful and emotional. But I don’t think it is the same as writing a story or a poem in the traditional sense. It is its own medium.
More on this whole topic is in my talk “Influences.”
I watched your keynote presentation. As a long time player who also started out coding within MUDs and fighting the nasty college vms systems, the views you expressed resonated with my own.
Over the years, I’ve played most of the big budget and high-production games. Yet always in my consciousness is the gut feeling that these games don’t matter or are only fleeting.
In all of my gaming history, the memories created within strong online communities in these virtual worlds having been the lasting elements. The experiences in MUDs and even in UO I still think about today due to this.
You don’t have to pour massive amounts of money and developers on a game project to make it better. You need to help give the community tools to blossom and connect with each other.
I’ve found myself wandering the internet, coming across very interesting and creative independent games and projects. They’re usually created by only one or two people, yet I can get just as much or more lasting enjoyment from their work than the WoWs out there.
It’s the same for me with music and movies. (I don’t watch TV)
Anyway, it was just interesting to hear what you had to say.
Thanks!