Gaming: Homework
After a bit of a delay, the Essay Club will return on June 25th. We’ll be discussing the topic of Gaming, and hopefully doing a little real-time gameplaying. Our moderator is Jamin Warren, the founder of Kill Screen, a video games arts and culture company. They publish a brilliant magazine and website and create exciting events for MOMA and other organizations. Most recently, Killscreen hosted Twofivesix, a hugely successful conference about games, play, interaction, and creativity.
Jamin has put together a list of readings to get us started, ranging from a The New Yorker profile of Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto to Tom Bissell’s first-person account of his addiction to Grand Theft Auto. Discussion questions to come, but I guarantee these will all be excellent reads.
Essays
He’s Still Alive, Jenn Frank
An Unwinnable post about That Dragon, Cancer, an improbably hopeful game that takes place in an ICU and is based on the real-life story of the game designer’s son’s battle with terminal cancer.
Sim City is a Textbook in Modernist Architecture and a
Playbook for Future Builders, Michelle Young
Taking urban planning lessons from SimCity.
Air Guitar, Dave Hickey
This is a fabulous examination of what rules “mean” from art critic Dave Hickey. I think it also describes so eloquently what high-level play looks like and why it’s meaningful. Dr. J touches the very boundaries of what’s possible (and “allowed”) and creates something new in the process. We do the same thing every time we rack up a high score.
Master of Play, Nick Paumgarten
Creatively, Nintendo is one of the least understood companies in the world and Shigeru Miyamoto, a man who’s our generation’s Disney, is even more mysterious. Nick does an excellent job drawing out exactly what makes Miyamoto tick, but more importantly what type of game designer he is. As it turns out, Miyamoto is quite distrustful of player’s own feeling and tendencies and only trusts his own intuitions. (Steve Jobs, anyone?) We rarely assign creative personality types to game designers and we should. Who makes games is just as important as what they make.
Video Games: The Addiction, Tom Bissell
Tom was actually responsible for the name of our company and he’s honest and open about what makes his inner life of play tick. I just love his style.
MoMA Has Mistaken Video Games For Art, Liel Leibovitz
I believe we’re well past the “Are games art?” debate if only because it was an impossible question to begin with. However, Liel’s argument comes from someone who loves games’ dearly and for that, I believe he intends to spark a different discussion — how should we think of code in the gallery?
Where Do Dwarf-Eating Carp Come From?, Jonah Weiner
Another irascible game designer and one of the most satisfied. Games need more angry auteurs.
The Most Dangerous Gamer, Taylor Clark
Dwarf Fortress is a game that people love to talk about, but not one many people actually play. For that reason, I love reading about the scope of the Adams’ brothers work. It will consume their entire lives.
Why Killscreen?
This is the first thing I ever wrote for Kill Screen.
