Toast Easily

thenewinquiry:

Dys4ia didn’t win at the IGF, which traditionally celebrates young white guys experimenting with the language of design through well-liked but increasingly familiar twee, retro aesthetics. (Disclosure: the festival is run by the same organization that owns one of my longtime employers, industry news and features site Gamasutra.) But this year the festival’s grand prize winner was another harbinger of a new, deeper way of viewing what game experiences can mean. Richard Hofmeier, another independent game designer, madeCart Life, a grueling simulation of the daily life of someone relying on a sidewalk cart’s income to survive. Its bleak grayscale art and the ruthlesness of even its smallest rituals, like showering, buying food, and remembering to pick your child up from school, represented a shift in the “life sim” genre, highlighting the humble heroism in simply facing the world every day without privilege rather than the power fantasies with which games are usually associated.

Hofmeier took a further step once he received the award: He turned over his booth on the well-trafficked show pavilion to his friend, critic, writer, and text-game creator Porpentine so she could showcase her game Howling Dogs, a fascinating, brilliant text experience in confinement, depression and escapism.

Since then, the individual games movement has exploded, attracting curious creators and new experimenters in droves. It’s also attracted its share of detractors, veteran game designers who look at the narrative-driven personal-storytelling games as “cool, but ‘not games.’ ” They may see a betrayal of their sanctified best practices of systems design, player agency, and reaction driven by conditions. Their resistance has begun to seem as political as it is professional, a desire to close a door to under­represented voices just as they’ve begun to step through it.

-“Playing Outside” by Leigh Alexander

The Honeymoon Killers, 1969