Event Entertainment

Two things happened lately to make bring me back to a keyboard. First up the Curiosity game/app/experiment ended. For those that don't know it was an iPhone app where you tapped away at the cube coverings of a very large cube. Once all the little cubes were gone another large cube appeared underneath. The idea was that you tapped away layer after layer of this cube to find out what was inside. The trick was that it collaborative and the whole world tapped at the same cube. People wrote messages out of removed cubes, drew dicks and competed to be the one to reveal the grand secret.

The second was the eagerly awaited return of Arrested Development. As far as cult TV shows go Arrested Development is highly regarded but seemed intent on being different enough to get itself cancelled in it's original run. You don't produce very intelligent comedy laced with jokes about politics, incest and Iraq without knowing that you aren't going to be a big hit in the States. DVD sales and it's persistent popularity on the internet brought it back via Netflix who have dumped a whole fourth series on at once leaving viewers to choose whether to binge or reign back. Most chose binge.

What's interesting about both of these things is they clearly prize community entertainment. Curiosity's roots as entertainment is perhaps dubious but it set itself up as a game. You entered input with the hope of winning the prize, the secret in the center of the cube. But the real joy of Curiosity was the community aspect of it. Finding people carving out drawings and messages into the cube, going to Twitter and talking about what you've seen, looking at ideas of how to play on that blank canvas. And then you had as a layer was about to fall your Twitter feed would light up with people alerting others to it. Suddenly no matter where you were you could load up the app and participate in this event. What would the next layer look like? It didn't matter that there were websites documenting this stuff, you didn't want to miss the group excitement of finding out together.

Arrested Development approached it in a different way. Netflix hyped the hell out of the return and everyone got swept up in it. Launch parties, cosplay, banana stands in the US all marketed it but it was the inevitable post mortem which brought people together. Because most watched the episodes all at once they took to the internet in the days afterwards and participated in an epic debate on the series as a whole and it's quality. Half of the enjoyment of the series was viewing, the rest was being crowded around the modern water cooler and being part of the groundswell movement. Whether it's writing blogs or sitting on Reddit and trawling through the memes, it's an inherent part of the experience.

My problem is that I missed both of these. I didn't start on Arrested Development until a few days after it launched, a lifetime on the internet and the debate is now largely done. The window within which to consume media and then be part of the discourse has shrunk to the point where unless you are a day one adopter then you miss out on a large part of modern entertainment consumption. Curiosity is an even worse case when I drifted away and now that experience is gone forever. I'll never be able to capture that essence again.

Which leads me to wonder where the solo experience is headed. Xbox One debuted it's view of the future of TV, an ever connected place where you can tweet during shows and be polled to ask your view. If you watch a repeat will that experience be there? Doubt it. Games are headed the same way. Fez is a puzzle game which had a huge community effort to solve the harder puzzles of the game. The majority of the fun was being part of that group effort. If I bought it now though I'd find empty forums and completed walkthroughs.

And you miss so much if you just plug into this idea of event entertainment. The joy of finding media for yourself rather than just heading to the next thing because there's a hashtag for it. Approaching things because you are at a time in your life when you need it, sharing things you love with friends instead of all heading to where the BBC told you to be. Or even coming to your own decision on a show/game because it's very easy to get swept away in mass condemnation or praise. The idea that modern entertainment has to connect you with others detracts from the very notion of entertainment being able to have a personal bond with the viewer. I fear for a future where rather than write for the one viewer we have pieces which write because they know it will go viral and make a fortune. Fear is the wrong word, it implies I don't know if it'll come. It's coming, it's already here in some respects and I think it's taking away our ability to choose what to watch. After all, who Tweets about a four year old show?

Games I Think Explain Why I Like Gaming.

I love video games. That's a statement that brings out a variety of reactions. Some people share the passion and are happy. Some don't share the passion but still respect it and smile politely. Then you get people who are utterly baffled by it. They tend to think I'm either an overgrown child (maybe valid) or an idiot throwing his life away. I wholeheartedly reject the latter. Video games output swings from mindless blockbusters to the most pretentious artistic endeavours you can imagine. In this blog what I hope to do is discuss a few of the games I've found interesting which aren't hugely mainstream in the hope even one person who thinks I'm an idiot for playing games can start to understand why people play them and the kinds of experiences you can get in 2013. We've come a long way from shooting ducks and playing Mario on a Nintendo console on Christmas morning.

Dear Esther

Dear Esther is not really a game at all in that there is no playing it. You control walking and looking around with no other real interaction. The focus is on the narration which discusses the story of the island you are set on and of a man who has written letters to “Esther” and whose life involved the Hebridean island the game is set on. The last few years has seen a rise in art games thanks to it being easier to distribute games to consumers electronically and Dear Esther is one of the better examples. It looks gorgeous and has terrific sound design. The narrator is particularly superb and manages never to be irritating or overly expressive. It's cheap and a short ride but shows how games can give this experience in an evening which leaves you genuinely lost in thought. Dear Esther is closer to literature than a film, given games chase to be more cinematic it's nice to know some games chase the lure of a good book.

Botanicula

Have you ever wanted to play a fever dream from the Czech Republic? Enter Botanicula! Here you play as five creatures who set out to save the home tree from some evil spiders. This is a point and click adventure, you move from screen to screen clicking on things to effect the environment and solve puzzles. The puzzles are rarely taxing and this is easily a game you could play with anyone from children to your partner with little worry of everyone getting frustrated and giving in. The game has a charm which is utterly magical and brings a charm to this Pixar hating face. The visuals are vibrant and the sound is brilliantly bizarre thanks to the and DVA who do the music and also all the sound effects often with silly noises and odd instruments. The effect is charming and often hilarious. The humour of the game is the star though and the scrapes the characters get into have you giggling away whilst bringing you closer to their plight. You could easily call this a children's comedy, and like all good children's entertainment it appeals to adults as well.

Universe Sandbox

This is easy to sell. They create animated recreations of the universe and you can muck about with the attributes of the celestial bodies to see the effects. Make Earth eighteen times larger? Send a Jupiter sized asteroid into Mars? Make the Sun smaller and watch the orbits of the planets fly out of control?Just watch how our solar system works? Easily done and with a gratifying level of statistics behind it. Educational software is largely garbage but Universe Sandbox just puts the tools in your hand and let's it raise interest rather than actually try to teach you. It's the ultimate way to waste ten minutes and a very well made thing to have sitting on your PC. Also did I mention you can make huge asteroids smash planets out of orbit and into other planets?

Papers Please

So this isn't strictly out yet but the still in progress version you can download is still well worth a look. You play an Eastern European style (it's all fictitious countries) border crossing official in the early 1980's who have recently opened up and allowed people to cross. Your job is to follow the bureaucratic rules set by the government and to ensure those who are allowed entry have the right papers. You use the interface to identify any problems with the documents and if you miss anything you are docked pay. Your pay is needed to keep your family in food and medicine whilst paying off rent. The look and sound of the game is very evocative of the setting but the genius is in the story. The snippets you receive from those who pass imply large political changes in the area and soon enough the danger of the fluctuating politics leads to more complicated requirements to enter. This takes you longer to check and is a big deal seeing as you get paid per person processed. It also will have mini stories which give you a moral choice. Someone comes in and passes you a note saying a certain name has kidnapped her and is planning to sell her into a human trafficking ring. The certain name appears next but his papers are in order. Do you let him in or send him back knowing you will be docked pay your family badly needs. The game is still in development but early indications is that it could discuss some interesting themes over authoritarian societies and the position of people working within them. The manner in which it could discuss this whilst asking morality questions of the gamer personally is fascinating.

I'll leave that there and I urge you to try one. Even stick it into YouTube and have a look. Games have started to deliver a broad array of experiences and if I can get one person trying a game they never would have tried before then I'm happy. I'll go back to non-gaming chat next blog. Until then stay safe.

"That's the second biggest monkey head I've ever seen" Guybrush Threepwood