the art of play the art of play

Jimmy Tom Shirl Mitch Bunny Bunny Buzz Gunman

the art of play | symposium and arcade

March 31 and April 1, Carnegie Mellon University

Free and open to the public!

Games are now generally acknowledged as culturally significant, comparable with film or television in their economic strength if not their public mindshare. But can they be art?

In the mainstream, games are still often positioned either as the idle pastimes of sedentary children, or testosterone-fueled war arenas. But that tide is turning. Game developers and the game-consuming public alike have begun to recognize that games could be and say more.

The Art of Play brings together creators and researchers of games from multiple contexts - large AAA productions from major corporations, mid-sized developers completing work-for-hire projects, indies developed by small teams and released for free on the internet or for a small price on one of the many alternative distribution channels, and experimental games produced within an academic context. The aim of this Symposium and Arcade is to survey the games that brought us to this moment with their unique creative vision, and to frame the field moving forward, as game makers finally abandon the question "CAN games be art," and begin to ask ourselves in how many ways they WILL be.

Special thanks to Cactus for pixel graphics used on this site
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Schedule

The Art of Play will be held at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA
Attendance is free and open to the general public; free on-site registration is required for attendees under 18.
Click here to download a PDF of the event brochure, which has the schedule and a map.

Monday, March 31
Noon 5 PM Art of Play Arcade CFA 3rd Floor, and Ellis Gallery
Arcade of notable artistic games on multiple platforms, curated by Kokoromi Collective members:
  • Cindy Poremba, Concordia researcher/digital art producer and curator.
  • Heather Kelley – Kraus Visiting Assistant Professor, The Art of Play Symposium chair
  • Phil Fish – Chief Creative Officer, POLYTRON
6 PM 8 PM Speaker Presentations Breed Hall (Margaret Morrison)
Presentations by our invited speakers. 20 minutes each plus Q&A.
  • Heather Kelley - Game designer and multimedia artist, Co-founder - Kokoromi
  • Randy Smith - Game Designer, Electronic Arts LA, and columnist for EDGE magazine
  • Jason Rohrer - Programmer, game artist, writer and theorist – Arthouse Games
  • Jesse Schell – Faculty, CMU Entertainment Technology Center, and CEO, Schell Games
Tuesday, April 1
10 AM 5 PM Art of Play Arcade CFA 3rd Floor, and Ellis Gallery
Arcade of notable artistic games on multiple platforms, curated by Kokoromi Collective members:
  • Cindy Poremba - digital media theorist, producer, and curator; GameCode Concordia, Shinyspinning.org
  • Heather Kelley – Kraus Visiting Assistant Professor, The Art of Play Symposium chair
  • Phil Fish – Chief Creative Officer, POLYTRON
9 AM Noon Poetics of Gameplay Master Class CFA 310
Master class with Kelley, Rohrer, and Smith
12 participating students selected from the CMU community by portfolio review
5-minute presentations to be followed by critique from the Symposium guests
Class to be followed by luncheon for Master Class participants
2 PM 4.5 PM Tours of the ETC Entertainment Technology Center
Special PTC Shuttle schedule:
Departure point on Frew St. outside CFA, at 2:05 and 3:05
Return shuttles from ETC at 3:30 and 4:30
5 PM 6.5 PM Panel discussion Kresge Recital Hall
Moderator – Jason Rohrer Panelists: Phil Fish, Heather Kelley, Cindy Poremba, Randy Smith, Lynn Hughes
7 PM 1 AM Extra Life – the afterparty Brillobox
All ages from 7 to 10pm, and 21+ from 10pm to 1am
DJs: Hoof & Beek, Gemini Radio
Dynamic Light: Megamu

Speakers

  • Heather Kelley
  • Cindy Poremba
  • Jason Rohrer
  • Jesse Schell
  • Randy Smith

Heather Kelley

Heather Kelley is a computer and video game designer, and as moboid, she creates game-based artwork. For the Spring of 2008, she is the Kraus Visiting Assistant Professor of Art, and Adjunct Faculty at the Entertainment Technology Center, both at Carnegie Mellon University. Heather’s twelve-year career in the games industry has included AAA next-gen console games, interactive smart toys, handheld games and web communities for girls.

She is co-founder of the Kokoromi experimental game collective, with whom she produces and curates the annual Gamma game event promoting experimental games as creative expression in a social context. Her game concept Lapis won the 2006 MIGS Game Design Challenge on sex in games.

As moboid, she has created interactive projections using game engines such as Quake and Unreal. Her most recent work, with the Hexagram Institute for Research and Creation in Media Arts and Technologies, integrates gameplay into full-body interactive gallery installations. For seven years, Heather served as co-chair of the IGDA’s Women in Game Development Special Interest Group. She holds an MA from the University of Texas at Austin, where she is an alumna of the Advanced Communications Technologies Laboratory.

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Cindy Poremba

Cindy Poremba is a digital media theorist, producer and curator researching documentary and video games through Concordia University's Doctoral Humanities program. She holds a Master of Applied Science degree in Interactive Arts from Simon Fraser University, as well as a Hon. BA from the University of Waterloo in Rhetoric & Professional Writing. Her work focuses on rhetoric, feminist and documentary theory as it intersects with cultural memory, recombinant poetics, creative constructionism and aesthetics through digital practice - particularly in the context of games and robotics.

Cindy has recently taught digital media as a Lecturer in Simon Fraser University's School of Interactive Arts and Technology (SIAT). She has presented work at the Digital Games Research conference, the New Forms Festival, Living Game Worlds and Entermultimediale; and has published work in Games & Culture, The Meaning and Culture of Grand Theft Auto, Space Time Play, and Games as a Sociocultural Phenomenon. She also served as one of the curators for Vancouver's 2003 New Forms Festival, was on the Organizing Committee for the 2005 Digital Games Research Association conference, and is on the Board of Directors of the performance art collective TEAS (The Escape Artists Society). Cindy has produced and curated non-traditional exhibitions such as the CGSA Artcade, PoV Alternative Games Exhibition and eyeTEASers: Art Podified; and most recently, gamma 256, as a member of the Kokoromi game art collective.

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Jason Rohrer

Jason Rohrer is an independent game artist, programmer, and critic. With game designs that explore complex and subtle aspects of the human condition, his work has bolstered the acceptance of games as a serious art form. Rohrer's games have been shown at festivals and art exhibitions in Park City, Toronto, Montreal, and Lleida, Spain. His 2007 release, Passage, received widespread critical and industry acclaim, with God of War creator David Jaffe calling Passage "one of the most emotional video games I've ever played." Parallel with his design efforts, Rohrer's review and interview site Arthouse Games has served as the lone hub of artgame criticism since 2006. Rohrer lives with his spouse and two children in the rural town of Potsdam, New York, where they pursue a simple, frugal lifestyle.

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Jesse Schell

Jesse Schell has been on the faculty of the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University since 2002. There he teaches Game Design, and leads several innovative research projects. Jesse is also the CEO of Pittsburgh's largest video game studio, Schell Games, and he is the former chairman of the International Game Developers Association. In 2004, he was named one of the world's Top 100 Young Innovators by Technology Review, MIT's magazine of innovation. Before coming to Carnegie Mellon, he was the Creative Director of the Disney Virtual Reality Studio, where he spent seven years as designer, programmer and manager on several projects for Disney theme parks and DisneyQuest, as well as on Toontown Online, a groundbreaking massively multiplayer game. Before that, he was a software engineer at IBM and Bell Communications Research, and prior to that he worked as writer, director, performer, juggler, comedian, and circus artist for both Freihofer's Mime Circus and the Juggler's Guild.

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Randy Smith

Randy Smith is the creative director of a video game collaboration with Steven Spielberg at Electronic Arts in Los Angeles. He writes a monthly column about video games as an art form for UK game magazine Edge and DJs dance music as Gemini Radio. Formerly, he was the project director of Thief: Deadly Shadows at Ion Storm, served design and level building roles at Looking Glass Studios on Thief: The Dark Project and Thief II: The Metal Age. More recently, he was a freelance design consultant specializing in emergent gameplay, design formalization, and innovative interaction working with developers such as Ubisoft Montreal, Arkane Studios, and EALA.

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arcade

  • Rückblende
  • And Yet It Moves
  • game, game, game and again game
  • Façade
  • The Endless Forest
  • Crayon Physics [Deluxe]
  • Cactus Arcade (assorted games)
  • Stars Over Half Moon Bay
  • Braid
  • Samarost 2
  • Society
  • flOw
  • Passage
  • Dwyn
  • PARSEC47
  • Play with Me
  • Moondust

  • Rückblende

    Nils Deneken

    http://gutefabrik.com/

    A man is confronted with his childhood memories while walking around a summerhouse in the woods, where he used to spend the holidays with his parents. Rückblende has a unique visual style combining drawing and hand-crafted models that fits perfectly with simple gameplay and dreamy music to create a combination of both melancholy and unease. The game's title can be loosely translated as "flashback".

  • And Yet It Moves

    Christoph Binder, Felix Bohatsch, Jan Hackl and Peter Vorlaufer

    http://www.andyetitmoves.at

    A platform/puzzle game that gives players the ability to temporarily suspend physics and rotate the world in order to solve puzzles and escape tricky situations. What is equally engaging is the game's unconventionally collage aesthetic, that places you within an extraordinary, richly textured world of torn paper.

  • game, game, game and again game

    Jason Nelson

    http://www.secrettechnology.com/gamegame/game.html

    Jason Nelson's frantic, disturbed, low-fi game/poem is the closest games come to punk rock — a celebration of bad art done well. Underneath the idiosyncratic scribbles, text fragments and flashing lights is an exploration of failed belief systems, from consumerism to monotheism.

  • Façade

    Procedural Arts

    http://www.interactivestory.net

    Façade is an artificial intelligence-based experiment in interactive narrative, where the story emerges based on your moment-by-moment interaction, what has happened so far, and the need to satisfy an overall dramatic arc. You play a friend of Grace and Trip, during an evening get-together at their apartment that quickly turns ugly. By the end of this intense one-act play you will have changed the course of Grace and Trip’s lives – motivating you to re-play the drama to find out how your interaction could make things turn out differently the next time.

  • The Endless Forest

    Tale of Tales

    http://tale-of-tales.com/TheEndlessForest/

    In this enchanting persistent world game, players take up the role of a deer in the endless forest. Communicate with other deer exclusively through sounds and body language, and explore the unique scenarios and gorgeous settings. There are no goals to achieve or rules to follow— deer (and dreamers) care not for such things!

  • Crayon Physics [Deluxe]

    Petri Purho

    www.kloonigames.com/crayon/

    For everyone who has ever dreamed about drawings magically come to life, Crayon Physics Deluxe lets you solve puzzles by combining your crayon drawing talent and creative use of physics. The unique interface allows you draw out the solutions to various puzzles, which then seem to materialize within the game world.

  • Cactus Arcade (assorted games)

    Cactus

    http://www.cactus-soft.co.nr/

    Cactus has provided the world with game after game combining a unique visual aesthetic with well-tuned, clever and challenging gameplay in a variety of genres. Ranging from surreal adventure puzzles to frenetic, kinetic shmups (2D shooters), this visually diverse collection of games belies its origin at the hand of a single artist and designer, the enigmatic Cactus. Tuned to the skill level of their creator, many of these games are neither easy nor forgiving, but they reward the persistent player.

  • Stars Over Half Moon Bay

    Rod Humble

    http://www.rodvik.com/rodgames/

    Who hasn't turned over thoughts in their mind while looking dreamily up at the stars in the night sky? Stars Over Half Moon Bay uses the drawing of constellations as a metaphor for creativity, expression, and meaning making. A simple, beautiful game that manages to capture the wistful quality of a familiar experience, and spin it into an elaborate meditation on the creative process.

  • Braid

    Number None, Inc.

    http://braid-game.com

    Why should artificial worlds be bound by linear time? Braid allows players to manipulate game time to solve various puzzles and challenges. In some cases time can be reversed or rewound; in others, it flows in different ways, and can have different affects on different objects. But the game is not simply an experiment with a unique game mechanic— it is richly conceived, uniquely visualized, and inventive.

  • Samarost 2

    Amanita

    www.amanita-design.net/samorost-2/

    The Samarost games are offbeat little adventures that take place in beautiful, detailed environments enhanced with surreal montage visuals, funky music, and charming sound effects. The forgiving point-and-click puzzles and simple navigation allow relatively untraumatic passage through the game's quirky narrative, which this time out, involves rescuing a little gnome's dog from marauding, fruit lovin' aliens.

  • Society

    Panoplie

    http://www.panoplie.fr/society/society.html

    In this (originally multiplayer) game, players progress through four worlds, each with its own theme that runs through both visuals and gameplay. Although players are not required to play the worlds in any particular order, they are numbered to suggest an evolution from the cute/grotesque aesthetic and survivalist play of id1, to the abstract, geometrical look and play of id4. What each world represents, and how this relates to both "society" and the player's place within it, is left open.

  • flOw

    thatgamecompany

    http://www.thatgamecompany.com/flowps3.html

    In flOw, players guide an abstract creature through an aquatic environment: consuming other creatures, avoiding danger, exploring, evolving — but most of all, experiencing an elegant, blissed-out feeling of fluid motion. The game adjusts its difficulty to the player, in an attempt to create that optimal level of engagement: flow.

  • Passage

    Jason Rohrer

    http://hcsoftware.sourceforge.net/passage/

    Passage is a compelling memento mori game presented in a tiny, pixelated package. In five minutes, players experience a lifetime, from youth to death, making decisions along the way about exploration, companionship, progression, value and reward. The overwhelming public response to the game shows that well-constructed, simple game can still evoke a powerful emotional response.

  • Dwyn

    Grennan & Sperandio

    http://www.kartoonkings.com/dwyn/

    DWYN is the Welsh word for take, redound or produce. The game is intended as a mirror and a portrait of Cardiff, Wales, an ancient and thriving capital. DWYN is a six suited deck, the suits are divided into three colors, red, black and green. In addition to plain numbered cards, the figures represented in each suit are drawn from Welsh history and popular culture.

  • PARSEC47

    Kenta Cho

    http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~CS8K-CYU/windows/p47_e.html

    PARSEC47 is an abstract top-down scrolling shooter in which a player must destroy enemies while avoiding their projectiles and collecting green clusters of boxes for points. It embodies the visceral qualities that make this genre popular — speed, tension, overload and intensity. If games can say something on a purely somatic level — this is it.

  • Play with Me

    Van Sowerwine

    http://www.vansowerwine.com/installation/playwithmeint.htm

    The darkly humourous Play with Me lures the player into a delightful, whitewashed world of female childhood play, only to violently unsettle player expectations. In doing so, it shows just how quickly the innocent and the cute tends to reveal a darker, twisted edge — and questions how much control we have of our interactive experiences.

  • Moondust

    Jaron Lanier

    Moondust — sometimes regarded as the first “art” video game — explores interactive and generative music concepts on the Commodore 64. It was written by Jaron Lanier, virtual reality pioneer and musician, using algorithmic compositional methods and intelligent melody and harmony generation. It is a compelling reminder of the experimentation and creativity of videogaming's early pioneers.

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