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Join host Jamin Warren on conversations with someone of the most unique and experimental artists, designers, and thinkers in the worlds of games, play and culture
Jamin Warren founded Killscreen and has produced events such as the Versions conference for VR arts and creativity, in partnership with NEW INC. Warren also programmed the first Tribeca Games Festival, the groundbreaking Arcade at the Museum of Modern Art, and the Kill Screen Festival, which Mashable called "the TED of videogames." Additionally, he has served as an advisor for the Museum of Modern Art's design department, acted as cluster chair for the Gaming category for the Webbys, and hosted Game/Show for PBS Digital Studios.
Jamin Warren (00:00)
Danny, how you doing?
Danny Snelson (00:04)
Hey Jamin, good to see you.
Jamin Warren (00:06)
Likewise, likewise. sorry to hear about your flat tire.
Danny Snelson (00:12)
Starting a little bit late this morning.
Jamin Warren (00:14)
Yeah, no, it it totally it totally happens. I got like a huge flat tire on my I ride like a utility bike. We take our daughter to school and like some like enormous screw. I don't know, the roads in Los Angeles, I feel like there's just like there's just stuff like all over the roads, like everywhere. Yeah. Yeah exactly.
Danny Snelson (00:29)
Same, where are these screws coming from? Who's just dumping screws into the streets?
Jamin Warren (00:34)
There's some renegade like screw dump truck or something that's just like cruising around. Like just just cruising around Los Angeles, dropping screws everywhere. So but yeah, they am. I'm Jamin Warren. This is Danny Snelson. We are here at the Kill Screen, Kill Screen podcast. Thank you so much for thank you so much for for joining us. All right, well, maybe let's get into it here. Okay. so Danny and I actually we had a good experience playing Clank last night, actually, right?
Danny Snelson (01:05)
So much fun.
Jamin Warren (01:06)
Yeah, it's is a deck building board game. deck building board game. it was yeah, it was really interesting. Really interesting like design wise to like think through all of these like different little subsystems. You basically have to steal different it was a Kickstarter. I didn't realize it was a Kickstarter project. But like yeah you had to you have to steal all basically steal all of these different items. So it's like a little bit of a mix of you have a little bit of a mix of you know a little bit of mix of like classic deck building games that you might associate with. You kind of like you build the little deck and And you have these different characters and then there's, you know, basically a two sided game board that you can test and descend into a dungeon. You know, there's not much like RNG like not much like you know, RNG like in the game. Basically like you have a health meter at the bottom. But I was impressed at the amount that they were able to get into like a single board game system. I you know, there's like a you know, there's this over maps, there's a little bit of like ticket to ride and also sort of like you have like some of these like encounters that are kind of designed along the way and Yeah, I was really really, really, really impressed with with White Blade.
Danny Snelson (02:12)
Yeah, it has this like one amazing mechanic. I mean it's like a stealth game, so you're sneaking into a dungeon and trying to like avoid this dragon. the the titular clank is the like these little blocks that accumulate every time you make a sound like you're you're clanging something and the dragon's more likely to notice you. it it's kind of like it's like alien isolation without any of the anxiety. I feel like yeah.
Jamin Warren (02:35)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I try not to I try I try to stay away from anxiety like as much as as much as
Danny Snelson (02:39)
Yeah.
Jamin Warren (02:40)
similarly possible when I'm playing when playing games. All right, well let's get into it. let's see, we have a couple things to cover today. I spoke to Cezar Mocan, who is a Romanian artist and he doesn't make games. He makes real time simulations with game engines while he was in Lisbon and he was straight off of this This residency at Nouvelle Bug, which is a machinema-based residency based in Italy, which is pretty cool. It's based in Revine Lago, about an hour north of Venice. really great conversation with him. He just finished this two-channel short staging. basically he's designed this this this satellite, this fictional satellite system that's kind of like talking to himself. We'll jump into that a little bit more, which should be which should be fun. yeah, and then a couple other things we'll we'll jump into the archive a little bit later with a piece about. Oregon Trail, there's a bunch of news to cover as well, but yeah, a lot to a lot to dig into. All right. So I think first things I think first things first. Cezar, you know, Cezar basically you know, Cezar Mocan he's ba he's based in Romania. he's a Romania-based Romania based artist and I I I think I discovered his work. Were you familiar with Cezar's work at all? I'm not sure if you'd like encountered encountered his his stuff as a as a yeah, as just a seeing it like floating around Instagram or something like that.
Danny Snelson (04:03)
Yeah, it's popped up here and there, I think in the kind of AI arts scene. but going having a deep dive through a field guide to orbit orbital melancholy was my first real encounter, which
Jamin Warren (04:16)
Yeah.
Danny Snelson (04:16)
I found very rewarding, yeah.
Jamin Warren (04:18)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. A hundred percent. Yeah, I mean Cezar is you know, the work is super interesting because he is, you know, he's basically you know, a lot of the work that I've seen that kind of like uses like quote unquote like uses AI is often I find as like not like not like super super interesting, right? Like it sometimes can be hard to figure out like what is the what is the interesting thing that you're trying to say. it's kind of like, I s I used X, I put AI into the system. And then it generated sort of like why response. And that to me has not historically been like, I'd say like super, super interesting. but you know, Cezar's been doing some interesting stuff. I encountered his work initially, it was called World Upstream, which is a a work that he a work that he did called World Upstream. one of the things that came up was really interesting was that Cezar has a background in in a background in photography, and that gave him an interest in gave him in like an initial interest in in landscape design. So the story, you know, basically the story that we we produced for for him this week was called, you know, Cezar Mocan's AI satellite cannot get cannot get its story straight. and you know the the the purpose of the story was kind of just to do like a big overview, kind of a look at like this this particular this particular work. here I'll pull I'll throw it up on the screen. I'll throw it up on the screen here. So this is Cezar's work. you know, Cezar's work, super, super interesting. he showcased it at, he was showcasing it at an exhibition that was called Solo Solo AI, which was basically an exhibition that was like focused on focused that he won this award called Solo AI. This is one of the installations right here. the way that work basically works is that there's multiple components in it. There's a real-time simulation piece here, which is this fictional satellite called Argus. And Argus is basically a constellation of 73 satellites. And Argus basically discovers that there was a a lake, a lake that he thought existed, and the lake had actually basically like disappeared. And you know, Argus is then goes back and does these recreations where sort of in the last moments of Argus's life, it's sort of thinking Argus about to be unplugged, it's kind of thinking through all of these different potential outcomes, that all these things that like could have happened along the way. This is like a little a little sequence here. And so it the Argus basically pulls all of these different characters, pulls them together, and then basically has this like interesting conversation. Basically these testimonies get labeled testimony number 12 C. And they're all fictional testimonies, they're all kind of like centering around this like this theme, around this thing and a map that happened that that that basically appeared and then it disappeared. So you can see like all of the all of the characters, you know, basically all of the characters all of the characters here. I had a great conversation with with Cezar in terms of like thinking through, you know, asking some of these questions around like sight and memory and how do we you know basically how do we approach how do we approach like our conversations with AI? But it was it
Danny Snelson (07:38)
Right.
Jamin Warren (07:39)
was really fun to think through some of these like bigger questions with bigger questions with Cezar. you know, one of the things that came came up is you know, one of things that came up was this idea of unreliability as a design decision. So he was pretty explicit in the conversation. pretty explicit that like sort of this uncertainty we sort of associate with AI is like part of is definitely like a design definitely a bit of a design bit of a design choice. I have a couple clips, but yeah, maybe first I kick it back to you, Danny. A anything that jumped out at you from the you know from the the initial article with with Cezar and initial article with Cezar and how, you know, maybe you were thinking about approaching you know Cezar's work.
Danny Snelson (08:14)
Yeah, I I loved it. I think the first thing that jumped out was the phrase auto-roshomonic, which I thought was like a a great way to describe, you know, like an unreliable narrator that's told from like multiple different directions. I dug into his website and he he calls this technological undetermination, which he says is a quote, a condition enabled by generative AI, in which the unknown is produced by a surplus of plausible explanations rooted in existing ground truths rather than by a scarcity of information. So Kind of like flipping that uncertainty from from scarcity to like hallucinatory abundance, or I've been thinking of as like the oneric, this like real materializations of dreams. but the whole project I found really fascinating. I mean, I think you know, from the satellite imaging perspective, the precursors, Hito Steyerl's How Not to Be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational .MOV File, which is you know required viewing in in terms of this like history of how satellites produce truth through the images and the resolutions that they're able to capture. so those things were sort of like the first point. But I also just love like I don't know like satellites as protagonists. I was thinking of the great 17776 by Jon Bois, this like amazing originary one. You
Jamin Warren (09:25)
Okay. yeah, yeah, yeah.
Danny Snelson (09:27)
know this one. But he's like satellites, it's like it's kind of about the future of football, but it's about these like satellites that gain sentience as they get further and further from the planet. and I I feel like this kind of like fits in a kind of rich tradition where satellites get to be the protagonists.
Jamin Warren (09:40)
Yeah, the Jon Bois' work is it's definitely a required required required. Is John Boyce or John Bois? It's D O I S, so I don't know, is it is there is there like a is there a French
Danny Snelson (09:48)
You know. I I go with the you know, W E B Du Bois. So I think that was my
Jamin Warren (09:53)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, no, of course. well let me play the first clip here, for my conversation with with Cezar.
[Clip from Jamin Warren's interview with Cezar Mocan]
Jamin Warren (10:35)
so one of the things that came up was that you know we have this idea with satellites in particular that they provide this objective sense of what's called ground truth. yeah.
Danny Snelson (10:44)
Jamin, I'm sorry to say, I think your your audio is is getting softer. I think you might be pulling from the room and not the mic.
Jamin Warren (10:50)
okay. All right. I will take a take a switch with that. the you know, one of the things that came up was this idea of of of ground truth, that basically when we there you go. When we, you w with with ground truth this idea that like we sort of associate we definitely associate a set of ideas around like what we look what we see in like maps, for example. That's one of the big things he was looking at doing a bunch of research on maps. We sort of think of maps as being these sort of like static these static things and we sort of think of satellites as being the arbiters for a particular type of truth. And that's not that's not that's not true. I mean obviously maps are incredibly political. We're living in an era right now. You know, we have presidents who's trying to rename things on on maps. For no apparent reason whatsoever. but it does have this historical precedent. He talks about this these concepts of phantom islands, which are these islands that were sometimes created accidentally by map makers, sometimes they were created like intentionally as well, by but by by individuals. There's a good example of some folks who wanted to claim a particular space, a comp a particular town. They just put it on the map and then an actual town emerged on top of it based on this like fictional place. and there's also these satellites they have these arbitrary I I didn't know this, but they have they have these calibration sites. They're kind of like spread out around the world where satellites determine their ability to calibrate, kind of like focusing on like an image, focusing on image or some of those like color cards, a color card correction things. It's basically a satellite equivalent of something like that. I thought that was super, a super, super interesting thing. And all that stuff basically goes into, you know, basically this like this real time simul this real time like simulation work. Is it have you s heard that concept like of ground truth before? Is that something that you've seen? I I hadn't thought as much about like the way that we sort of tune satellites to tune satellites to do the things that they they are supposed to do, but I I thought that was like an interesting concept to to jump at.
Danny Snelson (12:38)
Yeah, yeah. I I there's so much to to unpack there. And and and again I think Hito Steyerl is the first to really like think about those they're like little pixel coordinates that that got were were once quite large for for like analog photography and then get smaller and smaller as the resolutions get higher, those calibration mechanics. but I think that the view from nowhere is is specifically interesting in relationship to AI. I plugged this amazing article by my partner, Mashinka Firunts Hakopian Art Histories from Nowhere. on the coloniality of experiments in art and artificial intelligences. Where where she argues how you know, this like in the same way that that maps are are ways to structure the power of say nation states, or or increasing platforms. and and I think there are some suggestions here thinking about the way that maps change to to facilitate, say, ethnic cleansing or or I was thinking about the recoding of of Artsakh most recently. that that Those those structures of power that like there's a the idea of a view from nowhere, but it's never a view from nowhere, right? It's always from a kind of situated, embodied presence, even if it happens to be a satellite. But but for Mashinka, the idea of art histories from nowhere is really also about the the data sets behind AI models that are of course trained on Western, Eurocentric modes of seeing and and modes of aesthetics. And so there's like a specific kind of Western conception, say. Of a map or how a space should be mapped out that systematically excludes and overrides other ways of thinking about lands, other ways of thinking about space and how we orient ourselves in those spaces. So yeah, thinking through that article in relationship to this practice has been like a rewarding way for me to think about the intervention this is trying to make in terms of. what we think we know and and more importantly, how the the kind of epistemic question of of how is it that we think we know land based on the the maps that we make.
Jamin Warren (14:43)
day. yeah, I mean the the you know it that this piece it it deals with a lot of I mean I guess the other side of it is you know thinking about some of the conversations I had with Cezar about like uses of AI in in game engine driven game engine driven work like you know like this one. there are a couple of things that came up. One was that, you know, the way that the he builds these basically these individual sites. You can see this here. He builds these individual sites. And then he gives different weighting to there's different, you know, all the characters have different weighting. In World Upstream, I believe all the characters had a different, like different sense or different sort of relationship or value. They had interconnections and the characters would sort of and then inam and objects would all sort of like talk to each other. in this one, it's a mix of like this is this is what I'm showing is a little bit of a recording that he did of one of the playthroughs. So he kind of is is using the camera in a sort of like a different way where. He's both trying to set up this, you know, this this particular environment, but then the camera also kind of like floats around and it floats in. I I can jump forward here. It actually focuses on like different sets of characters kind of like throughout the throughout the piece, which I thought was super interesting, like a really, really interesting way. So here's like one of the sort of the recreations basically. You can see all these characters are sort of getting back into space. There's a camera that's like jumping along. There is a there's a there's a green screen. yeah, it's it's a really interesting way. I found it was like really interesting way to sort of think about like how we can use like in this case AI, like how can we use AI in like a sort of more c how artists can use AI in like a more compelling more of a more of a compelling kind of way. yeah, I don't yeah.
Danny Snelson (16:32)
And I think with a with the critical edge too. I think so it's like a compelling way, but I think that there's a real critique of you know, I think the trust that we're already throwing into AI and and this like you know, this hallucinated lake, I think is a good like emblem for you know what what what AIs have in their data sets and what they fabricate based on their data sets. So there's certain models that you can ask say about Tiananmen Square but not Palestine and and vice versa. Right? Like the the these models have like violent gaps in in their training data based on, you know, structures of power. And I think this this work i is both compelling but I think very critical in the way it's presenting yeah, AI in relationship to to truth, ground truth and otherwise. Yeah.
Jamin Warren (17:14)
Yeah. Here's another clip from from from Cezar.
[Clip from Jamin Warren's interview with Cezar Mocan]
Jamin Warren (17:53)
yeah, I thought that was super interesting him asking some of these questions. I mean, you definitely see this with you definitely see this with things like on Google Street View, for example, like it pulls some things, but not other things. The the map is like constantly being like updated over time as they send more cameras out. So I think we definitely take for granted. I I think we're sort of went through this period where like we sort of think of the world that's being presented digitally is like fixed in some ways, and it's fixed and it's accurate, and it's definitely something that can be contested. contested over time. I was talking to I was talking to an artist. no, so I was talking to someone at the at the Whitney yesterday. And one of the things that he was saying on the digital development side is like, you know, he used to be able to release you know, rely on like government data for some of the, you know, some there's many projects often pull from like GIS or service data serve data or, you know, NOAA data or all that kind of stuff. We sort take for granted that these things we sort of are that are meant to be depictions of the real world will stay stay constant and Yeah, we're definitely entering an age where like a lot of that is definitely like up for up for debate. Yeah. let me let me play one more clip from Cezar. Let me see here.
[Clip from Jamin Warren's interview with Cezar Mocan]
Jamin Warren (19:43)
that was like one last piece that you know, one of the things that I I found was, you know, I often associate satellite imagery or this view from above. These are often like very martial terms that we use them in a way that is used it's almost always for me like associated with like war. That's usually the way that we I I think about them. And you know, see Cezar seemed to agree that that was like often the case that sort of this top down point of view. is one that's either used for surveillance, but it's also used in video games as well, right? We often think of we often think of video games as being a place where you get this kind of either like isometric view or top down view or whatever. Definitely, you know, definitely there is that shared history between shared history between games and shared history between like games and the military, but even the in terms of like perspectives that I think sometimes we take for granted in games are ones that I think are often associated with like military applications. I thought that was I thought that was super interesting. Super interesting as well. Mm-hmm.
Danny Snelson (20:37)
Yeah. And that view from nowhere, it's a yeah, there's I think in games it's often a kind of power fantasy, right? So you get these views, especially when you're say like, you know, playing like a four S game or or or you know, you're like settling a a a land or or fighting like a large scale battle or something, that that you have this kind of this like illusion of omniscience or or this kind of like, you know, this like capacity to to run the board, as it were. And I think that, you know, by putting that in direct dialogue with like real satellite imagery with the the history of satellite warfare, drone strikes, and so forth. there's a I think a really potent way you can think about that like gaming perspective as one that can both mirror, but I think maybe critically interrogate some of those like presumptive visual positions that that power operates. And and of course,
Jamin Warren (21:24)
Yeah. Yeah.
Danny Snelson (21:25)
you know, surveillance, the the, you know, the giant that is that is watching us, being able to like inhabit the giant's eyes, and like forcing forms of like I guess identification and disidentification seems to me like a really useful strategy.
Jamin Warren (21:37)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cool. Cool cool cool. Well, let's let's move let's move on here. Yeah, yeah.
Danny Snelson (21:43)
Can I plug one more thing in relationship to that before we move on? Because I I would I would, you know, be so sad if I didn't mention that 1000xRESIST, which I was thinking about so much. so in in that game, which is a a playable game about a distant future, with a series of clones that are operating kind of like these characters, like these satellites, and and recovering the the history of the Hong Kong protests. I just thought, you know, if if we're mentioned I I think it like One, it plays in like really interesting relationship and to to this one and and two, I guess this like trend or or or you know cluster of works that that use kind of like anthropomorphic embodied agents to try to unravel and understand these impossibly complex technical systems. is something I just I hope I see more of. And
Jamin Warren (22:29)
Yeah.
Danny Snelson (22:30)
just wanted to yeah, put that out there.
Jamin Warren (22:31)
A hundred percent. cool. Well, that piece is available on killscreen dot com. You can read you can read it in its entirety. yeah, and on on kill screen. yeah, and it it I I'm looking forward to Cezar's next work. I'm hoping to be able to do something special with it actually tomorrow. So stay tuned. Stay tuned there. All right, cool. All right, next up, let's I've got quite a bit of news here. quite a bit that we can that we can run through. I think the first thing that I wanted to the first thing we wanted to talk about was the first thing to talk about is we have a you know that game company, which you know I think a lot of people are familiar with, is a Los Angeles-based game company, it's responsible for the games Journey and Sky: Children of the Light. they were one of the first, you know, I wrote about independent games maybe about 15 years ago in the Wall Street Journal. And at the time I was kind of making the illusion that that, you know, these types of these types of games were very similar to what was developing with the new Hollywood movement in the sixties and seventies. That didn't exactly maybe play out the way that I had sort of like hoped. like it was you know, it it like that was what I thought was going to happen. And you know, one of the one of the big reasons why is one of the one of the biggest reasons why, honestly, is a very is very practical one, which is that you know, in games, they're just are not people just are not well they don't get wealthy the same way that they often they do not get wealthy. And that is a newer development, I think, in the history of games that you have individuals like notch who made Minecraft and sold it to to to Microsoft or certainly any number of like popular Steam games, blueprints or whatever. It's like you have life-changing amounts of life changing amounts of money. It's not like Star Wars money for like George Lucas. Like, you
Danny Snelson (24:16)
Yeah.
Jamin Warren (24:16)
know, no one's no one's gonna be making a, you know, museum of narrative art like anytime, anytime soon. But those are the first steps that you might have towards developing this like independent wealth. One of the things that we've been seeing more of is game companies with their frustrations around like getting their games published have turned to become like publishers, publishers themselves. And you know now it appears that that basically that game that that game company has moved down that path themselves. They announced this week that they were, I believe it was la maybe like a maybe two weeks, like 10 days ago, let's say. they announced that they were going to be opening their own game publisher called That Game Publisher, which is a very cheeky, cheek, very, very
Danny Snelson (24:54)
Mm. Great.
Jamin Warren (24:56)
obviously like cheeky, cheeky play on their on their name. One of the things that they've said in the in the announcement is that, you know, most publishers are built around genres or market opportunities and we're built around the conviction that emotionally meaningful games matter matter. They didn't publish any fund size, how much money they're committing, no name projects. but we did talk, you know, Kill Screen did publish back in twenty twelve some of their decisions to walk away from Sony. So, you know, I think that that they have experienced that long and difficult process of trying to make games that don't look like other games and trying to get them funded. And It does seem like they're in a place that they're gonna they're gonna pay it forward. I was curious about, you know, Danny. I think this question, you know, Danny, for this studio, for for that game company, like their whole their whole argument is often that emotionally games are resonant, that they matter, like emotional, you know, I think that's a broadly construed terms, but their games
Danny Snelson (25:43)
Hmm.
Jamin Warren (25:46)
definitely have a certain like feel to them. flower, you play as a flock of flower petals
Danny Snelson (25:50)
Yeah.
Jamin Warren (25:51)
in Journey. It's a cooperative game that you sort of have this mountain in the background, you sort of can cooperate with other people to try to get there. There's no There's no it's a multiplayer game without any audio whatsoever. So it builds definitely real sort of real nonverbal relationships between like individual characters. I don't know. What do you think that this portends for like these types of games? maybe how does this like mark something special like in the development of games of this type? be maybe seeing more of them out there in the future.
Danny Snelson (26:22)
Yeah. You know, I'd one, I love the change in title. I think a lot about publishing in my academic work and you know, like
Jamin Warren (26:28)
Right.
Danny Snelson (26:29)
traditionally, right, like publishers make things public. Like they they they so it's not just like making something available or funding it, it's like doing all of the work to to get the whatever the published material into the public's hands. I think this is a real challenge just in the games industry across the board. Like there are many, I think that game company style games that get released. To Steam like almost daily. Like there's just there's too much, right? There's like thousands of games being released by all these companies. And so when someone like that game company offers, I say, like, you know, a a its its imprint, I think what it's mostly doing, and and you know, funding is important, support, you know, all the structure that that comes with the publisher. but really, I think just like lending that like credential. You know, Annapurna, I think was this for a long time. This kind of credential, like these are like. emotionally resonant, award-winning, sort of meaningful game-like experiences. and so like I'm I'm excited, I guess, to to see what comes under that umbrella and if they stretch some of like the the kind of core aesthetics of of what that game company's known for, how it expands, like what kinds of works they they want to support. I I I see that as like a really exciting thing. But I also, you know, I think that it's it's a challenge of survival in a world where like, you know, increasingly, and we'll we'll talk maybe later about like you know, turning players into makers and and as the tools to make games become ever more democratic, ever more open, I think we just see an explosion of like weird little games that emerge. And so it's really like who can who can we trust to cut through that noise? it's one of the reasons I turned to like publications like Kill Screen, but it's also why, you know, I like I I track publishers, like say Annapurna or or in the future, that game publisher.
Jamin Warren (28:08)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. We'll keep an eye on on that game publisher going forward. Yeah, I mean it's an interesting it's like an interesting question, I think. I think you know, one of the th the problems that they are ostensibly solving, one of the big ones is just simply finding an audience. And that is something that I think game makers more or less have taken for granted that they're all that it would be easy to find your audience or that would be a problem that would solved by like some other party. And now we're in the scenario where, you know, Steam, you know, basically in addition to Steam. You have like the video game console makers. You know, in some ways it's always been difficult. There's always been like, you know, real gatekeepers. But one of the things that always made me sad was that there was never a sense of you know, never there was never really a sense that you should try to develop your own audience. And if you look at like the history of other types of independent media, music, film, there's always a sense that DIY ethos, part of the ethos was always about forming some form of like independent funding, independent distribution. Something that sits outside of like the sits outside the mainstream. And and that that that consciousness is, I feel like just like starting to emerge. You know, it's interesting. I was reminded of a a talk that Auriea Harvey gave, I guess back in two thousand three. It was kind of these ten points that they were get, you know, that that Auriea Harvey gave that was looking at some of the some of the things that game makers should be independent game makers, particularly like artist games, game makers should be thinking about. And one of the points was about developing punk economies that was like what really important to them is like thinking about independent distribution. Thinking about owning your audience. And but the financing piece is one is one of these like more elusive pieces. If it's not like a a federal or state grant, or you're independently wealthy and happen to run into somebody, that that other question of like, well, how do things actually get funded, even in independent film and independent media? There's still someone who is putting that first whatever, you know, putting that twenty five thousand dollars in for recording time or you know, a million dollars for that short film or whatever. It's like the money still came from somewhere. And I feel like that has been like an evergreen problem in games where it's like it's Kickstarter or the problem gets kicked off the players or audiences. And I do feel like these kind of like smaller publishing outfits, as you're saying, as the cost of productions go down, maybe that is kind of like a way through funding smaller checks and getting more work that's out there and maybe one of them ultimately hits. But I do think having a brand is really important. Like if you if you're making games of a certain type, that has also been like a real realization that I've seen with You know, growing realization that like, you need that like players like knowing who they're coming, like when they're when they see a game being published, or they want to know that it it fits in the universe. I mean, one of the best to do it is you know, rockstar games. I mean, they like everything
Danny Snelson (30:43)
Yeah.
Jamin Warren (30:44)
that rockstar makes, even their ping pong game that they made, whatever, you know, 15 years ago, it all fits into like that rockstar oeuvre and it that's you has a particular style and a particular focus, music and culture focused. So I think, you know, game publishers, like these smaller indie game publishers learning from that and saying, like, hey, we have a perspective and that perspective is resonant with people, I think is I think is a really it's a really, really smart thing to really, really smart thing to do. So yeah.
Danny Snelson (31:10)
Yeah. And you have these bigger publishers that, yeah, like like, you know, CD Projekt Red or or or like FromSoftware that have like developed these kinds of like legendary reputations. But but yeah, I think like having like smaller publishers, which is, you know, coming out of poetry, like you
Jamin Warren (31:23)
Yeah, exactly. Right. Yeah. I mean
Danny Snelson (31:25)
see something like Something Else Press from the sixties, and like it doesn't matter what the book is. I just talking to derek beaulieu. He he was like, I found this book. It was something else press, I immediately got it. It was by Al Hansen, who it turns out is Beck's father. But it's like, you know, you can trust that press and you want to find everything on it. And it it it it creates a community or a coterie or or you know, a a cluster, I guess, of like writers or practitioners. And and and that's just like a useful thing to like be able to to address like a crew of game, like, you know, even as you're describing Journey and Flower, which are kind of like distinctive, right? Like you could call them emotional or like affective or kind of like they're multiplayer but not, they're often non-human. But like they they they feel like outliers because there's less community around them. So I feel like the the more the publisher's able to create that community, it also enables us maybe to have a richer vocabulary for talking about each of the works.
Jamin Warren (32:15)
Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah, that doing so small and you still got, you know, even if it's small, it's like you got an advance and there was still someone who was like helping you market in or interfacing with, you know, book distributors or so I I think this idea that you have an independent game maker and that they're wholly responsible for everything from funding, financing, marketing. They all have they have to do all those things and then get it on Steam and it has to
Danny Snelson (32:35)
Mm-hmm.
Jamin Warren (32:35)
sell and recoup. And I I just think I just feel like they're the like there just has to be now the flip side is I think you have to make smaller things. I think that is to to me that
Danny Snelson (32:42)
Yeah.
Jamin Warren (32:43)
is the that is the flip side, is like You just maybe things just need to be smaller and that helps de risk it, I think, for you know, for independent for like these smaller indie publishers. Like, I'm building like a one hour, one hour experience, a two hour experience, something that's really tight or has a really short like play cycle or something. It's like, it's built on these like fifteen minute play cycles. So I think that is the flip side of it for game makers is like, no, the flip side, you're gonna able to make these huge expansive things that you spend ten years working on and like, no, that's
Danny Snelson (33:09)
Okay.
Jamin Warren (33:10)
probably it's probably not gonna happen. So trying to get something out like every year should be should be the goal. which I don't I don't think is, you know, it's not the worst thing in the world. So anyway. All right. Moving along. one other item, I mean, this is a this is an area that, you know, I continue to be like interested, continue to be interested in. let's see, there was a a game that came across. Adam Yates had posted you know, a carousel about this, posted a carousel about this this new book title. It was a carousel from it's called h Holyvoid from it runs a hundred and sixty-eight pages from from The Mansion Press. Here, let me pull it up here. yeah, so the it's called it's it's captioned Holly ho holyvoid.exe. And it's this book where, you know, people basically it was posted and then people were asking about like, hey, where can I like play this this game? Right. Because the book is sort of positioned as like a set of game art. you know, it's gold stamped and then it has all this kind of like occult architecture, occult architecture kind of like mixed in. you know, figures kind of like coming undone. You have these different like sort of like weapons, you know, these different like characters as well. and the deal is like, you know, this is a very similar, similar types of thing as Vermis, which was a book that was that was
Danny Snelson (34:29)
Yeah.
Jamin Warren (34:30)
put out, which is a guide to this like souls like that was never like programmed. you know, games routinely like make art art books after as like residue. And you know, here the you know, sort of like you have this artifact that arrives first. And then the game is kind of like this negative space that sort of gets like gets like created. It has been a really interesting theme, I think, particularly on you know visual first media, like Instagram or TikTok, to see more 3D artists or other types of artists basically like posting more kind of like concepts. We talked about Miles Buckle a couple years ago. I'm sorry, a couple weeks ago. and he was making these, you know, sort of fake games based on popular films. But it's interesting to see this develop as like a like a really rich space. for other types of visual designers who are thinking obviously about games, deeply about games, but there's no part of them that wants to like make the games or sort of starting with the end product first. yeah, I was just curious about like you know, is whether this is like, is this a production Bible? Like how should we think about these types of these types of objects? should they become games someday? Are they like a signpost? Like they it's just it's such an interesting form of yeah, just a very interesting form of of media.
Danny Snelson (35:42)
Yeah, I love these. I love, you know, Hollow Press has been doing this for a little like those Vermis books come out on through Hollow Press. and and I know they have like a a whole series of these kinds of speculative, imagined, or potential games, where you just get the books. And and I think, yeah, on one hand, you know, it like it does summon like that rich history of like the guide the video game guidebook, which is almost from like a bygone era. Like people just, you know, search online rather than, you know, having to like purchase like a beautiful guidebook. or or games aren't really shipped with physical media at at all anymore. And so I think there's like a real like there's like an interesting thing about the analog, I guess, in in such a like digital moment and and the choice to like produce a book, which is always like it's not an obvious choice, right? Like books aren't like the way we typically access information anymore. And so like why is it a book and not a website? And that like creates, you know, a certain kind of value or a certain kind of aesthetic experience and like a tactility. as though that game really exists. So I I really like these as like I mean they're like speculative media projects in the way that you know speculative architecture is like drawings of architecture that really would be like impossible to produce. and and you know I I find that that that space is a really useful one for for trying to think about like the virtual in general or or like you know to to I mean to go back to our previous conversation around AI is like You know, to like inspire in us the hallucination of a game that doesn't exist. And and I think that like
Jamin Warren (37:06)
Right.
Danny Snelson (37:06)
that like hallucinatory effect of like good speculative media is like as powerful as like, I don't know, or maybe more so than than if holyvoid.exe really existed. Yeah.
Jamin Warren (37:17)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. A hundred percent. All right, we got let's see. All right, well let's jump before we we close out with a couple quick hit items. let's see. Do you want to talk about the the the Witcher 3 thing from the archive or the Oregon Trail thing from the archive? I will let you I will let you decide.
Danny Snelson (37:31)
they're both so good. Jamin's archive is it's just an endless an endless source of delight. I wanna talk about them both, but whatever you prefer.
Jamin Warren (37:39)
okay. All right. Well, we can start
Danny Snelson (37:40)
Mm-hmm.
Jamin Warren (37:41)
with your we can start with your wheelhouse because I cause I feel like you could start with Dickens and the impossible romances of video games. I feel like that is like very much, very much up your up your very much up your alley. so this was a piece that was run back in twenty twenty fifteen. twenty fifteen. It was based on a it was written by Joshua Calixto. Here, let me let me pull it up here and share this. is a run by Josh Joshua Calixto and it's focused on this very specific encounter from the game Witcher 3. I didn't I started Witcher 3, I I didn't get like super, super deep into it. but Joshua had a really interesting approach. He had a very specific encounter. Basically, like in the sequence of the in the sequence of the game, you basically have this encounter with this character named Rosa Var Attre. Rosa Var Attre. And and basically it's like it's really strange encounter because the Witcher is sort of, you know, sort of renowned for the Witcher is definitely like sort of renowned for for basically, you know, you have all these romantic, romantic, you know, romantic encounters with characters. And so, you know, it basically starts the the way that the way that like a lot of those encounters. And then you have this duel and then you sort you sort of let Rosa down. And then she basically disappears. Like she sort of like basically like disappears entirely from disappears entirely from from the from the from the game entirely. and so that left a lot of quite you know players were wondering like, what is the deal here? Is this character ever coming back? why would you why would you basically take these like fencing lessons from this character? fence fencing lect lectures from these characters who'd never really appear. And so it comes up that is basically that there's this narrative technique called side shadowing. I I don't know if, you know, Gary Saul Morson, the literary critic, was the person who invented this concept. But like this idea that author can fill in their work with moments of seeming insignificance in order to conjure a literary world of possibilities could have that could have happened, even if they did not. And so it's a way of explaining like sometimes you have characters. And there's something I love about like a lot of great TV where you're introducing characters, the characters come through, and then they they they disappear very, very famously in the Sopranos, for example, the the the Russian issue where Paulie Walnuts goes searching for this Russian in the forest and the Sopranos and the Russian. disappears and never find the Russian, but also the Russian never like comes back. I thought it was what a really interesting way to sort of like think about some of these encounters that we have. We have such an expectation, I think, when we have character based encounters and games that there's some kind of like resolution. And this was kind of one of the more one of the more interesting ones. Maybe Danny, I could kick it back to you. Can you tell me a little about this concept of side shadowing? maybe it's connection to to maybe some of the connection to Dickens. And then yeah we could talk
Danny Snelson (40:22)
Yeah.
Jamin Warren (40:22)
about like like what you think maybe video games can learn from this particular this particular interaction.
Danny Snelson (40:28)
Yeah, yeah. it's so it's such a rich term. I mean, I I really like Sideshadowing. I think it really applies like I loved this reading of Witcher Three. and it's a good moment to think about Witcher Three. I just I just booted up The Blood of Dawnwalker, which is, you know, written by by the narrative designers behind Witcher Three. And so like I'm like I'm cued up to see like where are the dead ends, like where's this where is sideshadowing in that game? but yeah, I liked that so there's a contrast between Dickens and and like Tolstoy or Dostoevsky in the article. So Like in Dickens, and this quote I loved, in novels, when bread is cast upon the waters, it comes back manifold, but in life it often just drifts away. So so there's this idea that like, you know, whatever you encounter in Dickens is gonna come back around, it's gonna be important, it's gonna help the kind of build on Draman continue to develop. And and this is in contrast to the structurelessness in in the the kind of novel of ideas, say by Tolstoy or or Dostoyevsky, where they, you know, the and I like the way this was written. who create quote realms where all contingent possibilities are theoretically open. You know, by like by not following, you know, down the road, by not, you know, fully fleshing out this character and and The Witcher 3, the contingent possibilities that could have happened are open and it makes the world somehow more real for that. and this was, I think, useful for me in in thinking about the games that I love the most that have come out in the last couple of years. Baldur's Gate 3, I think, is like the prime example where You know, you can choose the characters that that you want to spend time with and you get their full life story. Or, you know, you can just like abandon abandon Gail at the very opening of the game and never have to encounter him whatsoever, which I did. or you know, any number
Jamin Warren (42:06)
Yeah.
Danny Snelson (42:07)
of characters that you encounter that you just kind of like move through. Elden Ring is this way, d you know, depending on what you decide to attend to, which kind of storylines you want to follow, Disco Elysium. I think similarly it's like you can You can meet this dice maker and have one of the most meaningful encounters in your life, or you just miss it entirely. And and like the game doesn't require you to make those branching decisions. when this article was written, I think the the comparison point was Mass Effect, which you know at the time was like, you know, there's a lot of discourse around choice and decision making and and Mass Effect, the series. but at the same time, it was very railroaded and and just how railroaded those kind of decision trees are when you have to get to the ending. And there's maybe just like a couple of small variants at the end, which always felt kind of like unsatisfying. so if anything, I feel like this trend, the side shadowing trend, is has really just been like intensified and and amplified as as games have gotten bigger. But I think as they've tried to like yeah, I guess, speak to or or offer things for people that are looking for like precisely this kind of like reality effect that one gets when you get to choose how much of an encounter you have and and you see real outcomes based on those choices.
Jamin Warren (43:13)
Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah, there was one thing's Joshua pointed out as well was you know, there's whole like Reddit threads and it becomes this kind of like lore. There is this element that like players I think do have these expectations that things are kind of like wrapped up and they create all this lore around like you know, it's interesting because you don't have that with TV shows or other media where it's kind of like if a character doesn't come back, then they don't come back. Like that's just like there's no other but with games, it's like there's always this possibility that it's like lingering out there somewhere or I did something incorrect, or maybe other players or You know, so the games do have this like funny thing when things do become unresolved. You could, you know, you heard about this, you know, you could bring, you know, Aerith back to I heard that you could bring Aerith back to life, or there's a Bigfoot and Grand Theft Auto. Like, you know, there's something about these virtual environments that do players just they cannot start the process of like grieving the decisions that they've made. They never you can just like never let go because it's like it's possible. No, I heard, maybe it's this, or if you do that or whatever, maybe the devs hit it somewhere and like you know, a world that big it's always does it always does sort of seem possible. yeah.
Danny Snelson (44:15)
Yeah, finding finding the cryptid in Disco Elysium, I think, is one of those moments. Yeah.
Jamin Warren (44:19)
Right, right, right, right. well, the the other side of it, you know, I guess we'll we'll move on to another piece from the archive, which was one an interview that I did.
Danny Snelson (44:28)
Okay.
Jamin Warren (44:29)
yeah, I gosh, maybe yeah, this was you know, ten, fifteen years ago. It's called Carolina has dysentery. It was an interview with Don Rawitsch. the he's a you know, he he created Oregon Trail, he's not the sole creator. He worked with two others on the like the initial design for basic, but it's a long sprawling interview with with Don. I think it's I don't know, might be the l longest, longest interview that Don ever, ever, ever did. like, you know, it was a long, strolling interview. I I I think that Don, I think he actually he ended up passing passing away. This was like one of the weird kind of like one of the weird things. We
Danny Snelson (45:03)
Yeah.
Jamin Warren (45:03)
had a couple interviews like in the in the pocket one with Ralph Baer, the creator of the Magnavox Odyssey. And you know, that first generation of game makers, you know, they're getting quite old and many of them are you know, it is interesting. We are starting to lose some of that that sort of ground floor ground floor history. The Oregon Trail is a is a game that that many millennials many millennials played the during their childhood. You bas it's very straightforward in a sense, you basically you basically like get a wagon, you get a crew together, you have your family, and then you make your make your way make your way west. I loved doing this interview with Don in part because it was like one of these things like you have an experience in your childhood and then you have questions. And Don was like very, very giving with very, very giving like with his with with his time and really going through like the whole the whole the whole process. I mean, some of the things that jumped out at me about the Oregon Trail. So in the Oregon Trail, you you basically have a wagon train and you head towards Oregon. There were a couple of things that jumped out at me. One was Don pointed out that there was during the process of playing Oregon Trail, he found that students were often like, collaboratively playing together. That wasn't something they designed for. But there's something about, you know, you don't have any multiplayer games and you just have one screen and having so many students. It's not coach, it's not couch co-op, but they're all huddled around this screen and they're all like basically doing different things and how like that was an unintentional byproduct. That was one of the big things that jumped out at me. the other one was you know, I think there's a, I think a very reasonable political critique of this game, like of this category, of this genre of games. I was less keyed into it. I think you know, I did this interview, you know, 15 years ago. I'm much more sensitive, I think, to this now, but the whole concept, the idea of like go west and this like narrative of westward expansion, left the obviously like a lot of like bodies in its wake, that expansionist tendency and that this was given to children to sort of be presented as as a version of American history. Obviously, there are quite a few problems with it. that said, you know, Don was a he was a you know Vietnam War. he was you know, he's he was a conscious objector during the Vietnam War. And I think, you know, for his to, you know, sort of I guess to give him credit for at his time, you know, he one of the things he did was like, you when one of the encounters that you have is often that they're Native Americans that they give you things along the way and that the Raiders are other people. And he was trying to counter this like Western idea that, you know, that that Native Americans were the ones who were attacking. And if you look at the history, which he did, he spent a lot of time looking at history for this to make the game like, you know, historically accurate. He sort of inverted that. So I think there are these ways that, you know, it was there there are some ways in which it was maybe attempted to be a little bit more progressive than the time period in which the game is being made, you know, the late 70s, like early 80s would have would have would have certainly required. But it's definitely not the sort of thing that you could like release today without like ample critique. It doesn't make you wonder what something like this might look like. My wife is a history teacher. So it does make you think
Danny Snelson (48:00)
Mm-hmm.
Jamin Warren (48:00)
about like what a game like this would look like for kids today. How would you want to structure a game like this? But yeah, it was a really it was it was really fun going back through this interview. I hadn't thought about it too much and you get a lot of little inside detail about like, you know, making, you know, making games on on you know, making games on terminals and what it was like to design
Danny Snelson (48:17)
Yeah.
Jamin Warren (48:17)
a game like in the late 70s.
Danny Snelson (48:19)
Yeah, making a game for for education. I mean, this is so, so like mesmerizing to read and what a charmer Don is. I think, yeah, one of the things I really took away was, you know, like so much about, you know, this game was like built to teach that history. And and like you said, I think, you know, he countered some of these like prevailing notions of of, you know, you know, overtly kind of like racist depictions of indigenous folks. but but that he went back and tried to like actually like build the probabilities of the game based on the actual statistics from history. So like rooting and like where like, you know, it wasn't it was most often just robbers like like other other settler robbers that that were, you know, accosting you know, pioneers. but so so you learn that, but he also said that like, you know, that like the The Oregon Trail, I think, for so many people wasn't about teaching you history. I think it was like the first thing that taught you how games work. That like the more you
Jamin Warren (49:12)
Right. Yeah.
Danny Snelson (49:13)
play it, and he said this, I thought was in a really like, you know, smart, reflective way, that the more you play it, you start to question like, how do the probabilities function? How do these decisions work? Like, how is the model weighted? Like you're actually learning the model, the probabilities themselves, more so than maybe the, you know, I don't know, best way to avoid dysentery. and I think like, or like you learn the best way to avoid dysentery in a kind of game-like fashion. And and so like I I just think that there's like a really and he mapped it onto also like the the gaming of the trail itself, where you know pioneers who had made the trail would send back home information to others playing it. So like building
Jamin Warren (49:49)
Right.
Danny Snelson (49:49)
up community knowledge about this like I don't know, like the the FromSoftware game that was the Oregon Trail, like this like highly difficult traversal of a landmass where only fifty percent of the people survive. that there's like something like game like about it from its origin. And I thought that those layers of history were just so fascinating and and so wrapped up with like how yeah, how games are able to do different things with with like history and interaction than than other forms of media.
Jamin Warren (50:16)
Yeah. Yeah, a hundred percent. All right. Well, we got a couple of things. I guess we'll kind of zip through lightning round, lightning round style. the the first this one was was kind of interesting. I sent this over to you. Mexico was joining a a seven game policy policy program, the Centro de Cultura Digital. is the that's the point of entry. this was I don't cover a lot of like industry. It's not like a thing that like I make
Danny Snelson (50:41)
Mm-hmm.
Jamin Warren (50:42)
a point of. make a point of come covering. I the only reason I the only reason I was interested in it, I mean the bit the the the long and short of it is basically, you know, Mexico is entering this broader consortium of other game makers, sorry, other countries that are investing in games. The interesting part is that it's being it's being handled by a public culture center rather than like a by a trade association or an export agency. And it is the lar I'm you know it is one of the largest video game markets you know, in the in you know, in in Latin America, you know, in the Americas. and so I I just it's interesting that like, you know, the the the regional policy body is gonna be people who run exhibitions and the games lab and not necessarily like they're looking at it like through the lens of like art and culture. you know, we've we've talked a lot about, you know, in the past about just over the past couple of weeks about this sort of like the regional character or the hope that you the budding regional character. And I I thought that was like you know, interesting, you know, interesting place that maybe games could go that interesting place that games might go to see more like sort of public support, more public resources for things that because this exists for like film, for example, or or for literature, like these these sorts of things exist. And so to see to see basically, you know, Latin American countries taking advantage and saying like, hey, we want to fund our own, yeah, like we want to fund our own future. We can't be fully reliant on fully reliant on like basically Western, you know, sorry, not w games from the from America and Europe, basically just like those are the games that we play. We need to find some other ways to generate things from the from the ground floor. So that was one that like jumped out. I don't know if you had any thoughts on on on on that particular that particular one, but yeah.
Danny Snelson (52:12)
I mean, just quickly, you know, like I liked the stat that, you know, Mexico makes up like 10% of the market of of game players. And so the idea of like, you know, moving from like player to maker, I I found really, really kind of fascinating. but I think this this movement to have these kind of creative technology centers. I was working with TUMO in in Armenia this summer, and they have a free, open access, kind of creative facility for for students to to work with these technologies and and develop these skills. I think it's that kind of like infrastructural support in particular, for for making games or making digital media where where maybe you need specialized equipment, that these kinds of spaces I think are just so important, both to like onboard people into these practices, which again are are becoming increasingly democratized, and really to just empower, I think, like younger students, especially in the global south, who might not have the the the have have imagined they were able to make things, to be able to make things and to have support for those kinds of productions on on larger state or corporate levels.
Jamin Warren (53:13)
Yeah. a hundred percent. All right. Let's see here. All right. One other one other thing that been a couple other things. We'll we'll kind of zip through a couple of these. Léonard Lemaitre, who with his brother developed playlist, recent playlist selection, BABBDI, great game from twenty twenty three. they have a new game out that's called called VHOLUME. the Lemaitre Bros, they they've developed this like very distinct, I'd say. It's a spar like extremely sparse style. very interesting designers. You know, the first game, BABBDI, is really a game about like despair, despair and longing. You play you basically play someone who's trying to escape this sort of like Eastern European Eastern European style town sort of modeled after like the kind of post Soviet tower blocks. Those the panel sided buildings and everything. And so that's really crafted a lot of the look and feel. They made a very well received first person shooter last year. And so this one is much more focused on parkour, but it still has a lot of the same kind of like themes. You play as a man named Robert who's just trying to chase paperwork. So it's like sort of the sort of the serpentine pathways of VHOLUME are also sort of it also sort of matches the attempt that he's trying to basically make his way through the bureaucracy of the city, the city as well through these like monumental you know, concrete mansions. Anyway, parkour style style games, I feel like they kind of like come in and out. they
Danny Snelson (54:39)
Mm-hmm.
Jamin Warren (54:39)
sort of like come you know, in and in and out. I see them like kind of like popping in and out. Obviously Mirror's Edge is the that's the sort of the originator of like this particular style of gameplay. And then you see it in Call of Duty and other things. but yeah, I thought it was really, really interesting approach, mostly because of like the visual language that they've really established. And again, it's a good example. It's just like it's just the two of them. So It's really, really small team. There's a soundtrack from a thousand eyes. But yeah, I was curious about I guess I don't know if you were to think about like brutalism is this does br I guess my question is like, does brutalist architecture like lend itself to parkour in like a like kind
Danny Snelson (55:13)
Yeah.
Jamin Warren (55:13)
of a unique way? In the way that like in the way that you know, Le Corbusier Le Corbusier arch architecture lends its lends itself to skateboarding. I guess maybe that would be what I would be thinking about.
Danny Snelson (55:26)
That's a nice way to think about yeah architecture as a whole. I mean absolutely. And I think, you know, the the the gaming analog here is control, which is also like shifting brutalist architecture, the the game by remedy entertainment. where you are also hunting for documents. Like you're you know, a big part of that game is looking
Jamin Warren (55:42)
Right.
Danny Snelson (55:42)
for for documents and and the you know, the biggest parkour moment is maybe the ashtray maze. But I I don't know. I think that there's something, yeah, really, really fantastic. I I love this game. I love the look of it. and the idea of like I guess putting like these parkour games are built around speed, right? Like you're moving like really quickly through an environment. And and putting that like that like s the speed of of navigating the virtual space in relationship with like what we think of as like the slowest things, like documents. Like there's something like I don't know, it's like Kafka on crack. Like it's like this like It's like the bureaucratic documents that are also like bound up with this like like intensity of of like speed and moving the environment. I think is like really, really fascinating and feels like has some kind of connection to to the way documents have been transformed online, but I won't go too far into that.
Jamin Warren (56:34)
Fair enough. I guess one more, I guess one more game to look at is a game called Inkblood, which is an occult detective game. occult detective game called Inkblood. yeah, super interesting concept. Basically, you play as a detective. It's a detective game where you could interrogate time itself. it's being released by Critical Reflex, I believe, a little bit later. So you're playing as an Inquisitor. carries a magnifying glass and it doesn't like enlarge the present. It opens a window like into the past. And so you're trying to figure out basically like solve these different murders that are sort of all these different murders by holding a lens to sort of see like what it is that like actually actually happened. it's you know, really interesting look. The look is like super vintage, like airbrush, vintage like airbrush, which I thought was super, super interesting. and Yeah, I mean this idea of like using like looking back through time, like games sort of like presenting themselves as like a lens, I think is I it's bit of an evergreen like bit of an evergreen way to sort of like think about to think about games. I I think it's just a really, really interesting way to sort of like approach, really, really interesting way to think about like approaching like games as yeah, the think about approaching like games, that we sort of provide these like windows into the past.
Danny Snelson (57:50)
Yeah, I love love this and and thank God I've been like desperate for I don't know what would you call this, like Return of the Obra Dinn like for for ages, right? Like to
Jamin Warren (57:57)
Right, sure. Yeah.
Danny Snelson (57:58)
go like navigate time. But also I was thinking about Richard McGuire's here, the the comic, and also I think he built a VR installation, where where you just have these like windows that opened into time from like a s like the same space. And and there's just something so like I don't know, like the the comic is so successful at doing this in the book and it's like so bound up to the media format where I think like there is like this like really like, you know. potent capacity to to move through time and space in a way that you have the control over it in these kinds of like detective games like Case of the Golden Idol, et cetera, that feels yeah, like really empowering. And like I'm I'm A kind of like surprised that there's not more of them. And and B, like really excited to start seeing yeah, I get and again, I think with the explosion of like these kinds of like experimental independent games, that that we get these like weirder experiments that that might not work on a kind of triple A. level.
Jamin Warren (58:50)
Yeah, yeah. No, a hundred percent. Yeah, there are some of these genres. You know, it's it's but you if you talk to like marketing people or whatever, they say that there's like all these certain genres you're supposed to stay away from. that you're supposed to empuzzle in puzzles. That's like one of definitely that's like one of them is like don't do puzzle games. mostly, I
Danny Snelson (59:03)
Mm-hmm.
Jamin Warren (59:05)
mean, the the argument for staying away from puzzle games is it because streamers streamers don't like playing them because they don't like being confused on air. So that that's like
Danny Snelson (59:12)
Mm-hmm.
Jamin Warren (59:12)
the so you so right. So
Danny Snelson (59:15)
That's so funny.
Jamin Warren (59:16)
Right. So that's like that's like the argument is like but you know then the forecloses like certain types of games for being made for that for that category. And so, I mean, I don't necessarily agree. I think it's wonderful to make games like this. I think like using and it is this old lineage for games, obviously adventure games are a big big piece of this as well. Anyway.
Danny Snelson (59:36)
Yeah, or I guess Alan Wake 2 kind of does this, but it has to do it in a different way. And I really like that. Yeah. Yeah, cool.
Jamin Warren (59:40)
Right, right, right. A hundred per a hundred percent. All right. Well, that is all the time that we have for today. so much on the website this past week. We didn't get a chance to talk about Ambrose Trataris. Ambrose Trataris and and Ambrose's stage performance called Daisy Chain Star Connection that premiered at Gray Area back in August. It's like a mix of Drag, contemporary choreography, motion capture, live VR, Seven Musicians, holographic projection. Hopefully it's cut VRChat pulled from the lineage
Danny Snelson (60:12)
VRChat.
Jamin Warren (60:15)
of VRChat. I I I hope we're able to I hope we're able to. I hope I hop I hope that Ambrose is able to bring it to Los Angeles. I'd love to be able to be able to see be able to see it. yeah, cool. All right. Well, thank you so much everybody for for for thank you so much everybody for for listening in. If you want to check out Danny's work, obviously you can Google Danny Snelson,
Danny Snelson (60:35)
Yeah.
Jamin Warren (60:35)
many, many things like the little database and follow Danny's work. Killscreen.com. We've got a couple things cooking, the Friday playlist, which goes out tomorrow, makes a recommendation for one thing that you should spend over the weekend. They I focus on short, experimental, independent, and visually compelling games. as well as this radar newsletter, which is a newer thing, which is just like three interesting things that I kind of like see around the web that you should pay attention to. All right. Well. think that is a hundred percent about it. Danny, anything that you would like to add before we before we take off?
Danny Snelson (61:09)
No, this has been really lovely. Thank you so much, Jamin.
Jamin Warren (61:12)
All right. All right. Thanks everybody. We'll see you soon.