A game of Abstract Expressionism?
Brandon Van Every
Abstract Expressionist paintings? It would be very much in the vein of
"multimedia slideshow" games, as I call them. Each scene would be a
completely abstract work of art.
Some stumbling blocks:
1) what would the goal of this game be? That is to say, if it's about
abstract stuff, how do you provide something for people to do, other than
watch a slideshow?
2) how do you keep it from being perceived as just another famous painter
retrospective? It's meant to be a game, not an interactive CD-ROM about the
life of Jackson Pollack.
3) Let's say you sorta copped out on (1) and made the paintings into
illustrations of something else. For example, take Zork I, retain the
textual descriptions, and now make an abstract painting for every room and
every significant state of action. Is it feasible to communicate emotions
and rising actions through abstract paintings? What kind of audience would
be receptive to this? Hard-core gamers? Older gamers? The general public?
Cheers,
Brandon Van Every
Czyrxis
> 1) what would the goal of this game be? That is to say, if it's about
> abstract stuff, how do you provide something for people to do, other than
> watch a slideshow?
As far as a goal, that can be just about anything. All you need to do is
make a game of almost any genre and give it a twist in the Abstract
direction. Perhaps create a world where things are abstract... can even
go all the way to abstract physics. Choose some plot (I'm not much of a
storyteller, so I can't help much with this part) that seems interesting.
I would suggest going through some literature in an abstract vein... try
various Fantasy or Sci-fi sources. Of course you don't want to copy story
plots because of all the delights of copyright, but perhaps if you contact
the author or the holder of the rights. Anyway, there are plenty of
stories out there which could be adapted to an abstract world.
Since it is an art style, the main influence of the art on the game would
obviously be graphics and background, the actual story line need not be
related to the art; though if you could find some way to link the two it
would probably create a tighter game.
> 2) how do you keep it from being perceived as just another famous painter
> retrospective? It's meant to be a game, not an interactive CD-ROM about the
> life of Jackson Pollack.
You really don't have to mention the artist at all, just do the game in
the style. If you want to give some credit you could say somewhere that
it was inspired by the works of whoever. I'm not really familiar with the
art myself so I can't give much more in the way of the ideas (one art
appreciation class just doen't go that far *smirk*)
> 3) Let's say you sorta copped out on (1) and made the paintings into
> illustrations of something else. For example, take Zork I, retain the
> textual descriptions, and now make an abstract painting for every room and
> every significant state of action. Is it feasible to communicate emotions
> and rising actions through abstract paintings? What kind of audience would
> be receptive to this? Hard-core gamers? Older gamers? The general public?
You could certainly express emotions and actions through paintings since
this is what they are supposed to express in the first place. The only
problem with using abstract art is that it's sometimes difficult for the
viewer to decipher the message you are trying to convey. As far as
audience, that's dependent upon the framework in which you place the art.
You could make something intellectual with puzzle solving to cater to that
audience, or you could make another Doom/Quake/Whatever clone to cater to
all those hard core gamers with such limited taste (ok... so I'm biased
against cheesy shoot-em ups *smirk*). Now that I think of it, you could
very possibly do something like Sim City with everything Abstract. That
would be a fascinating game.
Hope this helped. Sorry I couldn't give more specifics, but that's why
I'm not a game developer myself *grin*
*smell the sauce*
Trae
Jason Beaumont
Brandon Van Every wrote in message <6plg5c$u9h$1...@guysmiley.blarg.net>...
>I had a possibly wild idea the other day. What about a game based on
>Abstract Expressionist paintings? It would be very much in the vein of
>"multimedia slideshow" games, as I call them. Each scene would be a
>completely abstract work of art.
>
This is something i've been thinking a lot about. When film began to move
from strictly realistic representation to more abstract representation we
saw a lot of wonderful creativity spring up. Look at "The Cabinet of Dr.
Caligari" as an example.
>Some stumbling blocks:
>
>1) what would the goal of this game be? That is to say, if it's about
>abstract stuff, how do you provide something for people to do, other than
>watch a slideshow?
>
Why have a goal? Goal based games imply an ending. Why not create a game
which GENERATES?
>2) how do you keep it from being perceived as just another famous painter
>retrospective? It's meant to be a game, not an interactive CD-ROM about
the
>life of Jackson Pollack.
>
Well you can solve this by not even using the paintings :) after all,
Abstract Expressionism is a way to represent ideas - take that and run with
it. To represent your ideas (or plot, or whatever) in a game world try
doing it in a nonclassical way. Try representing the world itself in an
abstract expressionist way.
>3) Let's say you sorta copped out on (1) and made the paintings into
>illustrations of something else. For example, take Zork I, retain the
>textual descriptions, and now make an abstract painting for every room and
>every significant state of action. Is it feasible to communicate emotions
>and rising actions through abstract paintings? What kind of audience would
>be receptive to this? Hard-core gamers? Older gamers? The general
public?
>
>
No one. And thats why most computer games bore the piss out most people :)
>Cheers,
>Brandon Van Every
>
>
Ciaran
Brandon Van Every wrote in article <6plg5c$u9h$1...@guysmiley.blarg.net>...
>I had a possibly wild idea the other day. What about a game based on
>Abstract Expressionist paintings? It would be very much in the vein of
>"multimedia slideshow" games, as I call them. Each scene would be a
>completely abstract work of art.
Interesting. The girlfriend of a guy I used to work with was a multimedia
arts student and her final project thing was kinda like a art/interactive
game thing. It was quite interesting but more focused on the art side rather
than being a game. What you could do is click on various "images" on the
screen and that would take you into specific bits of the piece. This is
kinda difficult to describe but there seemed to be many plots and subplot
type "stories" within it that you could explore. Ideas were put across using
images, pictures, sound bites and stuff.
As a programmer that knows little about art I liked it a lot.
It was done as a Director thing on a PowerMac.
I went to the exibition of it... and I must say the funniest thing was when
I was watching some art students fiddling with it and trying to interpret
the meaning it all(and saying fairly wanky things I might add). Suddenly the
the Mac died and brought up its little bomb error box thing. I think it took
the art students a minute or two to actually realise that this was not part
of the piece and was in fact an error. It was good to watch then try and
interpret the meaning of the little bomb icon though :)
Cheers,
Ciaran
Brandon Van Every
Ciaran wrote in message <90183914...@hubble.dialix.com.au>...
>
>I went to the exibition of it... and I must say the funniest thing was when
>I was watching some art students fiddling with it and trying to interpret
>the meaning it all(and saying fairly wanky things I might add). Suddenly
the
>the Mac died and brought up its little bomb error box thing. I think it
took
>the art students a minute or two to actually realise that this was not part
>of the piece and was in fact an error. It was good to watch then try and
>interpret the meaning of the little bomb icon though :)
And there you have it. Significance in seeming randomness amuses some,
confuses others.
Cheers,
Brandon Van Every
Brandon Van Every
Jason Beaumont wrote in message <6pq3eu$qn4$1...@charm.magnus.acs.ohio-
>
>Well you can solve this by not even using the paintings :) after all,
>Abstract Expressionism is a way to represent ideas - take that and run with
>it. To represent your ideas (or plot, or whatever) in a game world try
>doing it in a nonclassical way. Try representing the world itself in an
>abstract expressionist way.
So, like, what the hell do you mean? You just repeated my very own question
without answering it, I think....
Cheers,
Brandon Van Every
Bjoern Guenzel
<vane...@blarg.net> wrote:
>I had a possibly wild idea the other day. What about a game based on
>Abstract Expressionist paintings? It would be very much in the vein of
>"multimedia slideshow" games, as I call them. Each scene would be a
>completely abstract work of art.
>
>Some stumbling blocks:
>
>1) what would the goal of this game be? That is to say, if it's about
>abstract stuff, how do you provide something for people to do, other than
>watch a slideshow?
Perhaps figure out a way to prevent the artist from committing suicide
?-) (== finding indications to his psychological condition in the
paintings)
>
>2) how do you keep it from being perceived as just another famous painter
>retrospective? It's meant to be a game, not an interactive CD-ROM about the
>life of Jackson Pollack.
It could be some kind of weird dream journey (as are, I guess Myth and
Riven, but haven't played them...)
>
>3) Let's say you sorta copped out on (1) and made the paintings into
>illustrations of something else. For example, take Zork I, retain the
>textual descriptions, and now make an abstract painting for every room and
>every significant state of action. Is it feasible to communicate emotions
>and rising actions through abstract paintings? What kind of audience would
>be receptive to this? Hard-core gamers? Older gamers? The general public?
>
>
>Cheers,
>Brandon Van Every
>
>
Bjoern
Brandon Van Every
Bjoern Guenzel wrote in message <35c4a71...@news.lrz-muenchen.de>...
>
>Perhaps figure out a way to prevent the artist from committing suicide
>?-) (== finding indications to his psychological condition in the
>paintings)
That's actually not a half-bad idea. The game could be about influencing
the emotional state of the artist, through paintings. I'm not exactly sure
how an amateur would accomplish the transformations, though. Seems tacky to
give multiple choice. Well, maybe you could let the person try different
things via their interaction with the painting, and then commit to one of
them later. Or go back....
Cheers,
Brandon Van Every