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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)
That was Sagan Yee. We had a wonderful, wonderful conversation about all things, all things fish. yeah, I mean so much of you know this game that that Sagan has made is about mermaids who live like salmon. And so you go home, you you hook up with people you went to school with, and then the hot whole town dies. So today we're gonna be Talking about Sagan Yee's work on how you make a dating sim that won't tell you why someone said no said no. We'll talk through two composers on what changes when the audience is holding the controller. we'll talk through two architects who are drawing doom and other games like a building, a book about Lego, a skating game set along the separation raw in Palestine, and a homemade mech comp cockpit that we at Killscreen first climbed into twelve years ago. Welcome back to the Killscreen Podcast.
Daniel Snelson (01:07)
Yeah.
Jamin Warren (01:08)
I'm Jamin Warren. And I'm here as always with Danny Snelson. How are you doing, Danny?
Daniel Snelson (01:14)
Doing well, Jamin. Good to see you.
Jamin Warren (01:16)
So October has turned into like spooky season here. I'm not a huge fan of spooky
Daniel Snelson (01:21)
Yeah.
Jamin Warren (01:22)
things and I've forced myself to work through many, many horror things
Daniel Snelson (01:26)
Ha.
Jamin Warren (01:26)
for this month. We have got this like horror collection that's been going on, this talk series. We just topped off of this one that we did that was great with with Joanna from from the Mouthwashing team and Max from Housefire Games who did Eclipsium. And Sophie, who was the cinematographer for this wonderful movie, wonder wonderful and incredibly bleak movie called Aniara. yeah, I mean we just it's been it's been spooky all around. Do you have a a spooky tradition that you engage in? Is there
Daniel Snelson (01:52)
Yeah.
Jamin Warren (01:53)
something that when the season rolls around that you need to
Daniel Snelson (01:56)
Yeah.
Jamin Warren (01:57)
you need to tend to?
Daniel Snelson (01:58)
You know, I was never like a big horror person growing up, but my partner is. And so it's like it's like feasting season during October
Jamin Warren (02:07)
Ha ha.
Daniel Snelson (02:08)
where we but it's also very useful for me. She doesn't play a lot of video games, and so I we always have at least a good horror game each year. so that's been really nice. I think we're gonna be doing Resident Evil 4 in VR as our as our play
Jamin Warren (02:21)
Okay.
Daniel Snelson (02:23)
this year, I'm really excited about. and and I wanna also just applaud the conversation with Johanna and Max from Mouthwashing and Eclipsium is so so great. And their new work seem really fascinating. They're both have like moved
Jamin Warren (02:33)
I know.
Daniel Snelson (02:34)
from these like single player games to they're both doing multiplayer horror now or or friendslop adjacent type games. yeah, great. Yeah, I'll add that to the list.
Jamin Warren (02:45)
Yeah, I know. Max talked about this new game that he's gonna be developing. this new game for Housefire Games. that's called it's called like hail to the Hail to the King. Haul the King. Yeah, All Haul the King. Yeah
Daniel Snelson (02:56)
All Haul the King, I think. All Haul. It's like a it's like you carry a dead king.
Jamin Warren (03:02)
It's one of these things also like with games, like you don't always see the references up front. And he says it's you know it's based on or like inspired by Werner Herzog's film Fitzcarraldo, which is about h you know, hauling
Daniel Snelson (03:13)
Yeah.
Jamin Warren (03:13)
a a giant giant giant ship through the the rainforest. When you go to the All Haul the King page though, obviously it does not mention Fitzcarraldo.
Daniel Snelson (03:21)
Yeah.
Jamin Warren (03:21)
but it's one of these things I think with games sometimes you you see something that maybe at first blush like may not be your thing, and then you hear a creator talk about it and you're like, interesting. Okay. Okay, interesting. Your references like aren't even like other ar aren't even like other games. Games are just a a lens for what it is that you're trying to do. Yeah. Cool. Well, all right. So today we
Daniel Snelson (03:42)
Yeah, let's jump in.
Jamin Warren (03:43)
yeah, so our first first thing to talk about today is Sagan Yee's Last Call for the Redding District. I had the pleasure of going to see Sagan's work at New Wight Gallery on UCLA's campus. If you know the Toronto scene, then you probably know the name. Sagan ran the Hand Eye Society, which is the video game arts nonprofit there, and served as the executive director from 2016 to 2020. before games, you know, Sagan was focused on classical animation. They mentioned wanting to become a Disney animator or thinking of a Pixar Pixar animator. That was, I think that was the the path. And then alongside
Daniel Snelson (04:20)
Mm-hmm.
Jamin Warren (04:21)
of that became games and then speculative fiction as well. the project is called Last Call for the Redding District. It's a 3D narrative game. it's built for you know it's a 3D narrative game and it was built as part of part of Sagan's MFA in design media arts at UCLA and I encountered it as a four player there's two different rooms that Sagan had placed it in. One was a four player installation and then there was a the actual releasable game, I guess the shippable game that Sagan will be releasing. and so the the setup for the game is this one big question. So it's like what if mermaids had the life cycle of Pacific salmon and so You go back to your suburban hound hometown that you grew up in. in this case, it's modeled after Saskatoon, which is where Sagan is from. And let's say you catch up with everybody that you went to school with, you decide who to spawn with, and then everyone dies. or or not. You choose not to spawn and maybe you live forever.
Daniel Snelson (05:09)
Yeah. And that's yeah.
Jamin Warren (05:12)
it started as life is like a short story, it's still in progress. and Sagan hopes to finish it in a year. maybe the start, let me just say let me just play how Sagan described the game to me.
Daniel Snelson (06:35)
Mm-hmm.
Jamin Warren (06:36)
Danny, I understand that you have a close relationship to this game. Is that right? You wanna tell me about the first time you heard about it?
Daniel Snelson (06:42)
Yes. I had the the great honor and privilege of of being one of the thesis advisors working with Sagan over the last couple of years in the design media arts program. and I love this game. I love this game. But I also like, you know, it I also love I I think having this kind of I mean, one, it was one of the most rewarding pedagogical experiences I've had, but being able to like watch the whole iterative process that Sagan goes through. I think, you know, in your introduction, you talked about how, you know, Sagan's a very talented writer and illustrator, animator, artist, game maker. And and this game really went through all those phases. So, you know, reading the story and the ideas before it became a beautiful set of watercolors. Then there was a board game as a kind of like interstitial moment. there's a four-player mini-game.
Jamin Warren (07:25)
Yeah, we'll talk about that, yeah.
Daniel Snelson (07:27)
And then the 3D environment, which has gone, of course, through all the iterative stages of playtesting and and and changes. So yeah, I feel like so much of the game is about the life cycle of salmon. But I feel like I got this like unique window into the life cycle of the game in the same way that one might watch
Jamin Warren (07:41)
Yeah. Yeah.
Daniel Snelson (07:42)
watch the life cycle of salmon, like which which really is the you know, the the dominant narrative that that Sagan uses to to think about returning home and and a whole bunch of other issues, which I'm sure we'll get into.
Jamin Warren (07:54)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, there's this one big thing that's hanging over hanging over the entire game, which is sort of set out from the jump. Let me play let me play a clip from of Sagan talking about that. it's interesting, you know, sort of having we we had this conversation earlier today about Aniara and this game Mouthwashing, which is Mouthwashing in you know, in both games, Mouthwashing is kind of set in a you know, it's it's set in a sort of some sort of near distant future. There's a spade, there's a a you know crew members on a on a sh on a on a ship and there's a crash and then sort of you know what's going to like happen, they sort of, you know, sort of sort of descend into the mouth of madness. This in Aniara, this Swedish film that we had the conversation with the cinematographer earlier today, you know, there's same sort of thing. The ship gets blown off course and then sort of reality sort of sets in. There's something very interesting about knowing what's going to happen, like when that's hanging over like a work. Like there's something really interesting about sort of starting. with the end in mind and with the end in mind, which I thought was really interesting to hear of kind of Sagan, because it's based on things from the natural world, you get this kind of like, I mean, I guess in Sagan's case, there's a 24 hour clock in the game. So you're spending a budget that you can extend. And so, you know, death is this, it's like part of the part of the part of the schedule. I was curious for you, Danny, like other work that you've seen where, you know, holding death at the beginning kind of like influences the way that you might like play or or experience it.
Daniel Snelson (09:49)
that's a great question. Yeah. Ha. I hadn't thought of it that way. But I think that is such an a animating feature of a lot of games. The start with death. I'm thinking of like Deathloop, I guess would be like the first thing, which is a kind of like
Jamin Warren (09:59)
Sure.
Daniel Snelson (10:00)
time loop game where you're you're kind of like playing through ways to like avoid a certain kind of death. I think that's usually the thing. or I guess maybe the the the closest analog that comes to mind is Obra Din, a game that starts with everyone dead and and it's really just about
Jamin Warren (10:13)
Right.
Daniel Snelson (10:13)
like what do you do like one in in that game you're trying to like map like how did we get there? You can't change. So you're not it's not unlike Deathloop, you're not trying like stop death from happening, which I think is the more common version. But it's like, okay, you accept you're going to die, or I guess Anna Anthropy's Queers in Love at the End of the World, where you know it the game everyone's gonna die
Jamin Warren (10:30)
Right. Yeah, it's a great example. Yeah.
Daniel Snelson (10:32)
in ten seconds. And so it's like how do you spend those ten seconds? And that that really seems maybe like a close analog to to Sagan's work where it's like, okay, you're going to either spawn, which is most of what everyone is doing at this weird underwater high school reunion among mermaids, just profoundly weird. or like you, you know, you refuse that spawning impulse and turn into a silver and and and can can live, but then you're not really part of the community. And and so yeah, I think like starting with a like certain death gives you a different way of telling stories.
Jamin Warren (11:03)
Yeah. I think the the other thing is for for me is like Sagan deciding to pick something from like s pick something from the natural world and then using that as like inspiration. You know, games I think often e even though it's set in this like speculative, you know, it's a it's a it's a it's a different universe where, you know, mer mermaids are sentient and you know, he it's and and and and Sagan Sagan had started really early thinking about Sagan started like really early about like thinking about like that. process from a writing standpoint and how it was going to like how the writing process was going to like open the door for open the door for like other ways other other ways to express storytelling. So I think starting from the natural world, like you see this with Alice Bucknell's work and like their attempt to, you know, go to CERN and you know study, you know, study black holes and using biomimicry. I think using the natural world as a template for what you want to explore, I think is a really compelling place to jump rather than try and create this whole other universe first and
Daniel Snelson (12:02)
Yeah.
Jamin Warren (12:02)
then try to work backwards. Like, there's this thing that happens in the natural world. Wouldn't it be interesting? I mean, we do say again, I talked about like, wouldn't it be interesting just as a starting point, like, okay, what if this type of this kind of mechanic actually existed in the in the natural world? I thought that was like starting from the natural world, I think like it seems
Daniel Snelson (12:17)
Yeah.
Jamin Warren (12:17)
like really natural place to natural place to play.
Daniel Snelson (12:21)
Yeah, and moving from like, you know, simulating those natural events, but like profoundly anthropomorphizing them. So and I think this is where you get to like the core of I think a lot of what's most fascinating about this is you know, taking this kind of taking like the the like natural life cycles and process of the salmon as a kind of like metaphor that can map on to like say what like what would happen if humans were living that life cycle. And and you know,
Jamin Warren (12:42)
Yeah.
Daniel Snelson (12:42)
we were bringing all of our social mores to that space and and there's all these interesting things that pop up, right? Like Salmon are relatively gender undifferentiated. And Sagan talks a lot about their androgyny until they get to this kind of spawning space and they their faces actually change. There's these really interesting physical manifestations.
Jamin Warren (12:58)
Yeah.
Daniel Snelson (12:59)
and so I think like, yeah, using those like natural processes as a way to like reflect back on mores that we take more or less for granted, like our gender differentiation or like our our our
Jamin Warren (13:10)
Yeah.
Daniel Snelson (13:10)
spawning or or or dating mores, which You know, they they really get turned on their head. And I think, you know, for for a second thinking about this as a kind of hookup game as opposed to a dating sim is like one really interesting way where like salmon are hooking up. They're not dating. Yeah.
Jamin Warren (13:23)
Hmm. Right. You're for a good time, not a long time, as they say. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. yeah, I mean, on that note, so you know, the the the dating sim genre, dating sim like as a genre, it's not it's not a genre I've spent like a ton of time, ton of time with. you know, this is a genre, you know, these games are these romance types games. they often often are in a visual novel like format, kind of like an interactive fiction format. There's a object of your desire, you bring them gifts, you sort of like go through a set of inter intra interactions and you know, and you sort of like win their hearts and affection. Obviously, there is like the more erotic flavor that's very popular on Steam where things obviously go in a a totally like graphic direction. It genre is incredibly popular on Steam as well. I I've not had a ton of experience like with the dating sim, with the dating sim like as a as an overall genre, I was kind of more familiar with these sort of like genre inversions. Where you sort of have games that sort of like take the the look and feel of like a dating or romance game, but inverts it in some way. There were games that Sagan and I talked about, Doki Doki Literature Club, which we've spoken about, which kind of inverts it in like a horror capacity, or Hatoful Boyfriend, where you play as a as a pigeon. Obviously it's a send up, it's you know total parody. what if you were, you know, dating pigeons instead of instead of humans? I that distinction I think was was was super super interesting. that hookup sim versus dating sim thing. Let me play a little clip here from what Sagan had to say about that.
Daniel Snelson (14:52)
Hmm.
Jamin Warren (15:28)
I I I thought that was really interesting and really astute from Sagan and kind of like comparing and contrasting. One of the things that that that they told me was you know, we sort of one of the critiques that we leverage against games with by we, just sort of like a collective cultural we, is that you know, games are a they're a power fantasy in some way. Like they're you're doing things that you can't do and shooting people that you can't you know, you can't actually shoot in real life. And Sagan made this great point about like, you know, dating sims are also like a type of power fantasy, right? Like where you get to control
Daniel Snelson (15:55)
Mm-hmm.
Jamin Warren (15:56)
the interactions with this person that humans are these predictable beings that if you just give them the things that they want, then they will return their affections, which is like anyone who's ever been in a real relationship with everyone. It's just very interesting we sort of think about like the critiques against games, it usually focuses on like violence. And there is another there is another very realistic critique, which I think Sagan is poking at here, which is like, you know, dating sims as a genre also are deeply, I don't know, problematic is the right word, but they they they they also fulfill a type of fantasy that doesn't get as much critical attention. And there's something Yeah, there's something there's something to be said about maybe that genre maybe mean I guess one way to look at it is like, yeah, we love romance, we love knowing that, you know, the couple will make it in the end or whatever. But you know, in some ways that moves us further and further away from from from real life. I was curious your thoughts on that, just on the dating
Daniel Snelson (16:41)
Yeah.
Jamin Warren (16:41)
sim genre. And yeah, I I I I thought that Sagan's critique, sort of subtle critique like through this game I thought was really was really interesting.
Daniel Snelson (16:48)
Yeah, yeah. No, it it's one of my favorite parts about this project. And I think it it brings the anti into anti dating sim. I think, you
Jamin Warren (16:54)
Right, yeah.
Daniel Snelson (16:55)
know, with a lot of otome or dating sim games, specifically in the villainess genre, you're trying to avoid death, right? So you're you're dating people, but you're also dating people so you don't die. And and there's a way in which I think that previous previous, you know, thought about like, you know, beginning with this like when you hook up you then die. and and that's kind of like taken for granted. So I think there's a real flip there and and Yeah, this like power fantasy. I a lot of these games and and you know most of the genre I think is quite misogynistic. you know, a certain kind I mean, games are built for different types of audiences. And there are great queer dating sims, like I don't know, Date Everything! is is one of my favorites recently. And other really good critical games. So I think Angela Washko is a good interlocutor here, who released a game called The Game: The Game. which was about it was really a kind of critique of pickup artists. If there's anything that dating sims do, it's kind of like I think this is Sagan's critique is they're like training you to become a pickup artist who can manipulate somebody and and see into their interior, you know, life world in in some way that you can mobilize toward your own romantic advantage. Like that's deeply fucked. Like that's like a messed up situation to be
Jamin Warren (17:59)
Yeah, right. Yeah.
Daniel Snelson (18:00)
in. And and Washko kind of brings that into the real life, you know, kind of situation of of pickup artists. So I think, yeah, there there's a lot that Sagan's doing to kind of speak back. And I think like alongside Washko to like critique the the like dominant trends in that genre. but also to like, you know, work within that genre where there are you know lots of people that have tried to like turn that on its head, queer dating sims or thinking about like, you know, these kind like innocent like Monster High or something, where that there there's kind of like playful engagement with other characters. I think it's like one of those ways in which like the genre, you know, is a really rich and open space to kind of explore the the like power dynamics of of intimacy and romance.
Jamin Warren (18:41)
Yeah. I also was reminded of I I I had to look this up because I was I was as as as you were talking is there's a two thousand and three essay by Jessica Hopper from Punk Planet called "Emo: Where the Girls Aren't". I grew up listening to like Midwestern Emo. I was an emo and hardcore kid in in the nineties. And I remember when the sort
Daniel Snelson (19:00)
my God.
Jamin Warren (19:02)
of the third wave emo kind of like took off, you know, that sort of like you bands like you know, Fall Out Boy and Yellowcard and the the structure. the lyrics is kind of sort of presenting themselves as like you know, a boy with, you know, it's you know it's always I mean it's always it it's obviously always always hetero relationships, obviously. and it, you know, it's a boy who there's a girl who's, you know, unrequited affections. And there is this sort of like implicit, there is definitely this like implicit misogyny, objectification, this removal of like female agency and a lot of like emo lyrics. And so I I wonder if that is a little and obviously in you know reflection that, you we've seen this with like of incel culture and things like that that kind of like feed directly from these expressions in popular music that were uninterrogated. it is interesting, I think that maybe you sort of go through a period where dating sims are now kind of maybe receiving a similar type of they're they're ripe for that type of ripe for that type of ripe ripe for that type of exploration in the in a in the in the language in the language of games and trying to do it in a unique way. one of the other things, you know I guess then we can we can move on But one the, you know, one the huge themes here for Sagan, you know, one of the huge things for Sagan was the world building, like once you start in a place where, in this case, if you know, sex only matters at the end of your life, it leads you in some very like interesting, interesting questions. One of the questions is that queerness, for example, doesn't mean the same thing like in this universe that Sagan's created. as it what it might mean for like us as us as human beings. So Sagan asked this like different this different question, like who are the different people in this world? Let me just play a little quick clip a little clip from my interview with with Sagan. this was one of the things I, you know, really again, really enjoyed about this conversation with with Sagan is like if you use a natural world and you follow it through and say this is the thing that's happening, you know, for for Sagan's own Sagan's own own process, we talked a little bit about the game making work before they transitioned, a little bit of how they thought about their entrance into entrance into into games before. But if you're raising this question of like, okay, so what does this what is an expression of my identity mean in this speculative context? I thought was yeah, really I think led narratively
Daniel Snelson (21:44)
Yeah.
Jamin Warren (21:46)
to some really interesting questions. You mentioned the the silvers, who are this, you know, these characters like in the in in the game, for example. So again, it's like if you use the natural world and then you also bring these elements of the real world into it, it does raise, I think, narratively some like really unique, like a really unique in really unique storytelling environment. It's like one of these things like, I've never played or seen anything like this. And it does lead you
Daniel Snelson (22:08)
Yeah.
Jamin Warren (22:09)
into some really, really unique, really unique places.
Daniel Snelson (22:11)
Yeah, and it's another perfect like inversion of the dating sim genre where like the hardest part of the like it's the hardest, like the the success state to become a silver is like really difficult in the game. Like a a silver that like doesn't mate. And so like, you know, most dating sims you're just like trying to mate. here, like, you know, like the and and I think the game remains really quite open to what the player wants to do. but if you want to try to like, you know, ace your way through the game and like not mate with your other characters and become one of these like elders, it's like a real struggle. There's And and then there's always really fascinating mechanics for that. So I think you, you know, you included in the article the the surface meter, right? Like to surface to like so you like you're trying to like, I don't know, resist your your sort of like sex death drive. And so like you have to like
Jamin Warren (22:53)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Daniel Snelson (22:54)
surface to kind of like clear your head or whatever. And I was thinking like that's also like the flip side of like usually like in games, like if you're underwater for a certain amount of time, you the meter pops up, right? Like you run out of oxygen
Jamin Warren (23:01)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Daniel Snelson (23:03)
and say, like No Man's Sky or like any kind of like swimming scene. And so I was like, that's so
Jamin Warren (23:06)
Like literally all of them.
Daniel Snelson (23:08)
Fascinating to have like a meter that's like, you're too horny. Like you have to surface yourself if you want to survive and not be kind of killed off with the rest of the, you know, the high school class. so yeah, there's
Jamin Warren (23:19)
Right, right, right. Yeah, yeah.
Daniel Snelson (23:20)
there's just like so much, so much to explore here. And I'm really glad that yeah, this conversation unfolded with Sagan. and and I'm eager
Jamin Warren (23:26)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Daniel Snelson (23:27)
to see, you it's still iterative. I think, you I know Sagan, they're still working on it. So be really eager to see how all these things, you know, end up coming together and and and spawning. as it were, into the world.
Jamin Warren (23:38)
Yeah. Sagan credits the writer Ted Chiang who was at Clarion West, the writing, I guess the writing workshop that that Sagan was at in twenty twenty one, and Ted Chiang, the writer of the writer of the short story, The was it the the time, the time of our lives. Sorry. It's the it's what became the movie Arrival, the short story that's
Daniel Snelson (23:51)
Mm-hmm.
Jamin Warren (23:51)
based on it. I'll fix it in the show notes. th but but but Chiang introduced the idea that world building is just one premise. So instead of this like huge lore bible, right, that we're of all these different things that are happening, and trying to write out every possible permutation. You know, we're sort of familiar with that from like, you know, the Star Wars universe that world building is really just taking a single idea and then exploring it to its logical conclusion. And there's both a like a fixity that's really important and being committed to a specific idea and then exploring it and out of that emerges all of these other things. And I I I do think that does seem like the world building here that Sagan is doing really, really is an expression of that. And it really does I think I don't know, just I you do want to see more games that do that, right? Instead of having this like entire universe where like every object has like some environmental story hit telling feature and there's, you know, thousands and thousands of page of like in game lore or whatever. It's like, what if we just focused on a single single element, a single idea and then really explored it right through to the end. So that was really exciting.
Daniel Snelson (24:47)
Yeah, and it's such a brilliant part of the the process. I think you can see that that approach, like starting, you know, like one sort of like one kind of like twist to to reality. I guess in science fiction studies we call like an extrapolation. where, you know, like okay, you're gonna extrapolate like one if like one thing changes, or like there's like this like core premise, and then you see all of the ways that it affects the world and like all of the like, you know, following it to its logical conclusion. It also enables you, I think, as a game designer to have a much more collaborative practice. And and so I so much of this was built out of these like playtests and like various iterations and it's like, right, if this happens, then what does that mean? Or, you know, okay, like if pla players are are, you know, responding to like this certain kind of like hookup, but not this one, like how does that, you know, reflect or or or distort our our understandings of ourselves, but also, you know, how to like keep following, keep swimming upstream, I guess, with the salmon and and and trying to figure out like what that would mean for for like a social relationship. Yeah. So I I think like so it's both like, you know, like in the Ted Chiang way, it's like a way to like s build a world without like having to do this like massive kind of world building lore space. But it's also of like if you're following something to a logical conclusion, you can bring companions with you. So I think that there's something like far
Jamin Warren (25:56)
Right, sure.
Daniel Snelson (25:57)
more collaborative about that process as well.
Jamin Warren (26:00)
Yeah. All right. Moving on. Got a little lightning pick here. Something that we covered in the last couple last couple of weeks. Let me just play this for you. this is based on you know, Studio Oleomingus is a studio that I've been following for for quite some quite some time. really excited about their work over the last ten, fifteen years. Dhruv Jani, in this case Sushant Chakraborty. They're working out of Chala in India. I had the pleasure of showing. showing Dhruv's work here in the US when I was operating the Gameplayarts space here. the piece was I mean the the the show was called The Concentric Fictions of a Generous History. so much of Dhruv's work and Studio Oleomingus's work is about creating these fictional histories for an India that doesn't actually exist in the real world, but in many ways is tied to the the the actual India that he's living in today. The V&A commissioned their game In the Pause between the Ringing, which is available online back in twenty eighteen. Let me just play a a little clip from this new work that he has, which is it's called Is It Any Wonder That I Hesitate Even at the Gates of Paradise? Let me just play this real quick for you. so this is a looping clip from basically from a longer animation that's being shown in Anyang at the eighth annual Anyang Public Art Project. It'll be up through November 29th. and the studio calls it a game about the perils of trying to find paradise on a map. Some of the exhibition text points to back to an old Persian word for an enclosure. And it makes a point that the more precisely people describe paradise, the harder that it is that it gets to find. yeah, initial reactions to this work. It's a collage based work, which a lot of Studio Oleomingus plays with textures, and we'll show some, we'll link to some in the show notes as well. Uses textures a lot. In this case, there's like sharper, sort of this kid, you know, masked character that's moving in and out of this impossible space. Yeah, any initial reactions to this piece before we jump to jump on and move move along. But I just want to point it out because I I love I Oleomingus' work.
Daniel Snelson (28:44)
yeah, I think there's the two like primary things I was thinking about. first is like the studios, one it's so beautiful. And and I'm, you know, again, you know, learning about the studio is really great. Who see there they they describe their work as finding erodum, like, you know, the these like bits of stories and histories that have been erased from public records.
Jamin Warren (29:02)
Right, yeah, yeah.
Daniel Snelson (29:03)
and then like bringing them back and I I I took this pull quote movies just because I I had just watched the Nathan Fielder documentary last night. And so I'm thinking a lot about the nature of truth.
Jamin Warren (29:08)
I haven't seen it yet. We'll talk about it next time when I get a chance to go see it. Yeah,
Daniel Snelson (29:11)
my God.
Jamin Warren (29:12)
yeah.
Daniel Snelson (29:12)
Yeah, no spoilers at all. But quote, the possibility of multiple records and opaque truths coexisting even as they conflict and intersect in myriad ways. Which I thought was just like so beautiful. And I think this project on paradise, like even, you know, they're basically describing how, you know, the the metaphors, the languages we have for the world kind of construct that world around us, whether it's say a clock or a painterly perspective. I just think that is, I mean, one, just like really fascinating as a as a practice. And so like thinking about like The way that this fits into like a longer trajectory of the works shown at Gameplayarts and and elsewhere. but with paradise in particular, I've really like I love this idea that like the the more you try to map paradise, the more it escapes your your cartographic imaginary. And and I was thinking this really goes back to our conversation, maybe about the backrooms, where it's like, like, you know, what like what's right, it always comes back to
Jamin Warren (29:58)
It all comes back to the backrooms, always. Yeah.
Daniel Snelson (30:02)
the backrooms, but like, you it's like is a like I had this like crazy thought where it's like, right, like the backrooms are hell, but like Can the backrooms also be paradise? Like, like the like hell and paradise are both like, you know, you can noclip into this space that's like beyond the map. And I'm thinking a lot about Chris Patterson's Open World Empire all the time, which is like, you know, how do we escape the confines of our open world empire? Like, how do you can you no clip through a space? Can you find something that's like just beyond what's been mapped or modeled? And so I think there's something really evocative and beautiful about what they're doing to try and think like, well, yeah, paradise has always exceeded the map. And so from a game's perspective, it's like what what exceeds the map and and like is paradise like is it not just hell? It's not just the backrooms, but does like paradise also live there, which I thought was just like a really interesting kind of counterpoint to the way that we typically think about, I guess, no clipping in a video game.
Jamin Warren (30:52)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, much of Dhruv's work is focused on maps. obviously Muslim erasure is a huge theme through through much of his work. you know, maps are political entities. you know, and sometimes paradise is constructed on a map artificially, as in the famous case of, you know, Greenland and Iceland, for example, or when we had this conversation with Cezar Mocan and some of the imaginary islands as you sort of like these cards sometimes the cartographic mistakes are are by accident, you know, sort of posing a place on a map that doesn't actually exist, and then sometimes it is intentional. so yeah if you know if if paradise can be constructed on a map it can also be like taken away. Yeah.
Daniel Snelson (31:28)
Yeah, yeah.
Jamin Warren (31:29)
All right. A couple other news items for this week. first up the studio You+Pea is Sandra Youkhana and Luke Caspar Pearson. They run a London architecture studio called You+Pea. And they started this incredible program called Videogame Urbanism studio at Bartlett School of Architecture. Have you seen on their Instagram they've been posting like some of the student work? I don't know if you've seen some of the student work coming out of there. but it's all architect, it's
Daniel Snelson (31:54)
Amazing.
Jamin Warren (31:55)
like all like these are games are made by architects. So they're playing with like space and rotation
Daniel Snelson (31:58)
Yeah.
Jamin Warren (31:59)
and just like it's such a really fascinating, really unique way just to to come to games. They have a new game that's out called Videogame Architecture: Building Virtual Spaces. And they take 12 games, Doom, Disco Elysium, Baldur's Gate 3, Elden Ring, and more, and then they draw them the way an architecture office would like draw a real building. So there's plans, there's sections, these exploded diagrams, axonometric, you know, point of view. yeah, I was curious, you know, w what do you think the section like this approach to drawing games as architecture, what does that maybe tell you about games that that maybe playing them like doesn't, right? Because it's it's non-interactive
Daniel Snelson (32:35)
Yeah.
Jamin Warren (32:35)
in that way. You're just looking at these. These drawings. Yeah, I was curious about like what an approach maybe expands our idea of like what happens when we move through video game spaces.
Daniel Snelson (32:43)
Yeah, I think there's such a, you know, a a through line with the the kind of cartographic imaginaries that Oleomingus is thinking about to, you know, with games like when you're inhabiting one of these worlds and and they cover everything from like, you know, Doom and Grim Fandango, like back end, to like Genshin Impact or Baldur's Gate 3 or or, you know, Elden Ring. which like in in those games, especially I think in all those games, like, you know, as a player, you develop your own like mental map. Like you don't
Jamin Warren (33:08)
Right.
Daniel Snelson (33:09)
like you can these like you know, like in Elden Ring famous, you this like really minimal kind of map. But like that doesn't show you, you know, how to actually navigate the catacombs or like like what those spaces actually look like in like real maps. Like it's not a Ubisoft game. You know what I mean? And so I think
Jamin Warren (33:20)
Yeah, what they feel like. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Right. Right. Right. Right.
Daniel Snelson (33:23)
there's something so fascinating about like, you know, that kind of proprioceptive imaginary that you develop as a game player when you're like on the ground and in a space
Jamin Warren (33:30)
Yeah. Yeah.
Daniel Snelson (33:31)
versus the kind of like external architectural rendering from from like a bird's eye view that that kind of like maps it. And I there's something so uncanny and strange about that. I loved their first book. the The Videogame Atlas, which like there's just something really uncanny about like a place that you've like lived in. Like a lot of these games, you know, you've lived like dozens of hours and and have like built up a a kind of like memory palace of that space. And then to have it like brought back to you, it's like, wait, that's not how I remember this. But I
Jamin Warren (34:00)
Yeah.
Daniel Snelson (34:00)
guess that is what it was, but like that doesn't match with my proprioceptive. So yeah, it just this project is is so great. Yeah.
Jamin Warren (34:07)
Yeah. I I sorry I was looking for my I was looking for my copy back here. I have one somewhere. it's it's on the bottom. It's back here. It's underneath all my books because it is quite tall and does not quite fit on my shelf. that's such a good point about Yeah,
Daniel Snelson (34:14)
yeah. Except good foundation.
Jamin Warren (34:19)
yeah, exactly. it is such a good point about memory with games. you know, I think about this a lot that like, you know, I feel like increasingly more people there are many people who and I I get that there are economic reasons like why this is true, why someone might like watch a video game as opposed to play it. it's very useful for me as someone, you know, who creates media around video games to have documentation of like playthroughs of games at my fingertips. at the same time I'm always wondering like what are the things that are lost by purely engaging with games in non-interactive contexts. For certain types of games, very little. You know, I think for, you know, for for some games it's simply is sufficient for you to watch it. But that lit that sense memory, I think, is such it's it is one of these things that is it is impossible to recreate that sense of space or scale from playing games by simply watching watching them. And that is very real. And is it it does feel very specific to individual players, like what you remember or what stands out to you, what what what the signposts are along the way and those are incredibly unique. Even if the map is the same, your memory of these places, your perspective, the way that you look, at a particular point of view or something or, you know, I those are incredibly, incredibly specific. Those are yeah, those those are that is the the way we think of space in our own mind. Those are one of the things that really does make you video games like very very unique unique to players' experiences in a
Daniel Snelson (35:38)
Yeah.
Jamin Warren (35:38)
way that is very hard to capture in a in a static linear linear format.
Daniel Snelson (35:44)
Yeah, and I think there's something like magic about, you know, that process of translation from from these games. I'm thinking I guess what you're talking about, like Night City. And it's like, you know, I know my way around Night City and the from Cyberpunk 2077. And and like, but but I was just thinking like, right, like there's something I think specific about the kind of like speculative imaginary worlds that these games build and and what they can tell us about real architecture. So like the the other side of that looking glass. And and I think this has been like a big part of like speculative architecture from like you know, Archigram to like maybe the influence of like Blade Runner, like you know, I don't I don't know how many papers in architecture there are about the architecture of Blade Runner, but there are many, many papers. And and there's something about these like speculative game spaces that that might also like help us to not just like you know see games differently, but see the world that we're actually inhabiting differently. Like what if what if our homes felt more like Elden Ring? Or like what if the city was designed more like Genshin Impact, like what would that you know, what would that mean for for urban spaces or or you know, the built environment. So yeah.
Jamin Warren (36:48)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Is a question I think about a lot. Is like when will the physical built environment start to bear resemblance when will it sort of reflect the reflect the the proclivities, the you know, the tendencies of a game playing, you know, ludic generation. Like when will that be? Because that's true for film. Like if you go to Disneyland, for example, like it's so clearly the hand
Daniel Snelson (37:07)
Yeah. Yeah. Isn't that?
Jamin Warren (37:10)
of of a cinematic perspective. You force perspective and like, you know, that that that this idea of like what things look like on screen or in photography so clearly influences the way that architecture is like rendered in the real world. It's communicated through it's communicated like through these like still images and it makes me wonder what will be the first true like this is a video game building. Like what would that look like? what would that look like?
Daniel Snelson (37:33)
Yeah.
Jamin Warren (37:34)
Maybe it's not just like voxily Minecrafty, but maybe it will have
Daniel Snelson (37:37)
Yeah.
Jamin Warren (37:37)
it'll bear some other qualities that would be like pretty legible for someone who grew up playing games. That's my hypothesis. I'm just curious when that will happen. So
Daniel Snelson (37:44)
Yeah. Like those Arakawa and Gins's houses where they from I don't know if you've seen these, they're very gamey. They they have this whole project called make making dying illegal. But they built basically these
Jamin Warren (37:54)
Okay.
Daniel Snelson (37:54)
like weird, impossible playgrounds, which like so you like can't move through the space. Like it's as difficult as like a a level and a a challenging platformer. But like somehow by like living in a platformer it keeps you young because like you never can be oriented to a space. but I really love that
Jamin Warren (38:09)
Hmm. Yeah.
Daniel Snelson (38:11)
provocation. I I think that yeah, that like that. question of like what would what what are the many ways I guess in which architecture could be more game like and and then what would those kind of ludic spaces open up for us.
Jamin Warren (38:22)
Yeah, yeah, we'll have to ask Yara. Maybe we'll have Yara come on or show our dear dear friend
Daniel Snelson (38:25)
Yeah, we should.
Jamin Warren (38:26)
Yara Feghali who teaches at at UCLA in the architecture department. All right. Moving along here. We'll do one we'll do one more news item and then we'll talk about the the the the B segment, so to speak. let's see. We can talk about Lego, we can talk about P Palestine skating game. Which one? I'll let you choose, Danny.
Daniel Snelson (38:44)
Palestine I mean, I I love Legos and I did learn that there is an acronym for adult fans of Lego, AFOLs, but I would much rather talk about Palestine skating game, to be honest.
Jamin Warren (38:53)
Yeah, fair enough.
Daniel Snelson (38:54)
I know book sounds great, but you know, yeah.
Jamin Warren (38:56)
Yeah, yeah, of course, of course, of course. so Palestine's Palestine skating game. so if you haven't seen it, this is a game that's set in the jet set radio tradition. So you skate and spray graffiti through a futuristic Bethlehem. the early prototype has two kilometers of the real separation wall, which has been rebuilt in 3D, with two decades of actual graffiti. it's going to ha feature some scoring from actual Palestinian musicians. and they added some updates along the way. That's what caught my attention. that IDF
Daniel Snelson (39:24)
Mm-hmm.
Jamin Warren (39:25)
soldiers can now surround your characters, swing batons, do damage, and you have the ability to fight back. the Bethlehem beta level is expected to be available in December. the team is six developers and artists across Gaza, Lebanon, Europe, and United States. They're anonymous for reasons that you can probably guess. One of them is actually programming through the war, through the war. it's crowdfunded and so most of the money goes towards hiring Palestinian and Lebanese additional additional support. you know, Danny, we talked about this a little bit last time about you know games about in this case we were talking about Guantanamo, and that games about occupation kind of like ten you toward occ occupation and oppression push you towards complicity or taking your agency away. this one kind of focuses on locomotion as a as a form as a form of protest. I was curious about, you know, just initial reactions like to this game. I have some thoughts also about yeah, it's been interesting to see it's been interesting to see this along with some other games, focus on the ongoing genocide in in in in Palestine to see games actually being responsive to like what is happening there. Curious about your responses to your your thoughts and initially seeing this game and locomotion being like the main driver of the way to sort of like express to express protest or sort of express the the lived reality for this team that's working through.
Daniel Snelson (40:39)
Yeah, I mean, yeah, I I I'm so so interested in this game. and you know, I I'm also thinking, you know, about the the cartographic through line in our conversation today about these like built spaces and environments and how games can give you access to them. So these these spaces which are, you know, inaccessible and and many of them destroyed, being able to navigate those. I mean the the the development of this game goes back until I I think, you know, pre twenty twenty three. And so there's a really fascinating kind of archival aspect to it. So this like reconstruction of the separation wall, which has always been like a big a touch point, I guess, in in Europe and because of Banksy, which is maybe the worst thing on that wall. but also I think like, you know, Palestinian artists like I don't know, Taqi Spateen, and others, but also Palestinian hip hop, which like animates the the score for this, that there's something about like inhabiting this space and and you know really opening to a global audience like You know, here here are the the cartographies or here is the the like the the the built environment of this space which has been under erasure and and and subject to genocide. but but also like to to surface the the like vibrancy of of street art and and the vibrancy of the hip hop scene in Palestine, Asifeh and and others that are in the recording. I think there's something really forward thinking about a game that that is you know, engaging with like the the standard genre, like jet set radio is like the last thing you would think about when you're thinking about a game set in Palestine. And and yet I think that, you know, surfacing those dimensions in addition to to all of the others, and I I do want to plug, for example, as a counterpoint, the Phoenix of Gaza XR, there's an event for those of you in in LA November 2nd at UCLA. It's a virtual reality exhibit on on the the day-to-day life and struggle of Gaza. in Gaza. And and that that mode of storytelling I think is is really essential. And and there's but but you know a thousand flowers bloom, right? Like the idea of like a a Palestine skating game as as another way to to to invite people to think about the lived reality and and the real spaces that that that have been subject to this oppression and their their tagline I'll just end with is so point like perfect it's quote Five women and infinite paint against military occupation. Like like pitch perfect kind of tagline. So yeah, those are my
Jamin Warren (42:55)
Yeah, yeah.
Daniel Snelson (42:56)
my kind of scattered opening thoughts. But I'm I'm so eager to to play this and and excited to see the the continuing you know, transnational collaborative, solidarity building collaboration that that it has established.
Jamin Warren (43:07)
Yeah. I mean t you know, it it's it's it's interesting y you know, you you you started talking about your Jet Set Radio, which is you know, it's just sort of futuristic skating game. I mean, just you you take for granted like if you if your if your movement is policed so heavily, then like movement free movement, a core games concept, that
Daniel Snelson (43:24)
Yeah. Yeah.
Jamin Warren (43:26)
is pl like that is a political a political act. I saw No Other Land last year when which one best documentary feature. at the Academy Awards, and I saw at the Academy Museum here. And, you know, it's very har obviously very hard to describe in words what's happening there. But you could see how, you know, I do you do I do sometimes wonder about these things about like, how do games how do games like meet the moment, you know, how do games talk about these big and challenging things in a way that only games can, whether that's, you know, climate change or you know, climate change or, you know, the war in Ukraine and how they do it in a way that feels liberatory. And yeah, I think this idea, like if your movement is so policed that the idea of just being free of that or dreaming that that could be something someday, that that that could be something that you could do, something as simple as like skateboarding, which also has its own political valence, obviously, as well. So I just there's there's something, yeah, I think the other part of it, yeah, it's like that that memory piece of it as well. You know, I I think Google Maps is now like dated, like you can look at what Palestine looks like now. And
Daniel Snelson (44:25)
Yeah.
Jamin Warren (44:26)
so, you know, some of these things do only exist in memory. And so it does this serve this like dual duty of this like idealized version of a self that's free. But also like there's this the important work of like, we want to remember what this place like once once once looked like and yeah remember what it once looked like in you know in in the in yeah I in in a world where maybe you don't get to return to the place where the place that you love or it never gets rebuilt in the way that you would have imagined like the games could provide some kind of memory. I think that sometimes can be hard, just 'cause games carry such an unserious connotation for many people. It's like, why would you make a a game about this? And that games can rise to the occasion of, you know, being made in a way that maybe opens Yeah, just does something that only games can. I th I th was really was really powerful for me.
Daniel Snelson (45:11)
Yeah. Yeah. And that's that that you that that thousand flowers point. Like it I think there's a kind of Janus faced logic to these kinds of preservations, like preservation, you know, preserving a kind of space, but so looking backward to to kind of like you know, offering us a a kind of like digital access point to to a space and time. but also I think like, you know, the speculative side of that is looking forward to to a vision of futurity. Right. So like in this kind of like sci fi scenario or this kind of like futuristic skating game, you know, that there is a future for Palestine and and there is a future in this space where those futures are being eradicated and and erased. And so I think, yeah, there's there's many valences to to the kind of liberatory action of of a work like this.
Jamin Warren (45:54)
Yeah. one last thing I would add is I've been thinking about this, you know, that there are you know, I've been seeing more there's a game that's being developed called about the Nakba. It's called Dreams on a Pillow written about it as well.
Daniel Snelson (46:06)
Yes. Yeah.
Jamin Warren (46:08)
you know, I do it does seem like this is starting to maybe congeal a little bit into like a like a body of work. Just like a body of work to document what is happening, that is happening right now. You do see more games being developed in the context of war zones. I saw one recently, you know, different different feel, but this is one being developed in coordination with the Ukrainian drone pilots. so I you know, it's been interesting. I th and some of it's generational too, that, you know, these are both conflicts that affect like very young populations that are spending a lot of time watching, thinking, playing video games when they can. and so the C is so I've been thinking a lot about like, okay, maybe this is a like generational moment, I think for games as well that like that you were seeing this like you know diasporically Palestinians spread across the globe that they are approaching this moment by responding to it by making games about this moment and that feels really, really powerful, really powerful as well. yeah, I I it's probably something I'm gonna keep returning to and thinking about like, okay, what is this? We talk a lot about place, you know, we talk a lot about place
Daniel Snelson (47:05)
Yeah.
Jamin Warren (47:05)
and being a being a driver and this does feel like something where yeah, this d definitely feels like there's a moment here that's happening as well where you're having this is not just documentary, not just music. But that games can be a part of part of that drum beat. That drum beat for the future, for protests, for you know, to to kind of beat this moment. So yeah.
Daniel Snelson (47:23)
Yeah, and like the games that, you know, like this is the role of the arts in these moments to to be
Jamin Warren (47:26)
Right.
Daniel Snelson (47:26)
able to and that that, you know, and so much of our conversations, like, like how do the arts address the same issue differently? Like what can you do in a poem that you can't do in a novel, that you can't do in a film, that you could maybe only do in a video game? And so, like, you know, thinking about games and in in the same kind of aesthetic and poetic regime as these other art forms, you know, that that deploy, for example, hip hop and and street art just within this one
Jamin Warren (47:48)
Yeah.
Daniel Snelson (47:48)
game. That those artworks are kind of nested within the game, like what what other forms of of of knowing, of of like world building, of of kind of expanding our understanding, I I think, you know, is is has always been one of the roles of of the arts. And I'm, you know, again, also so glad we're past the kind of like empathy game discourse, which like would be quite you
Jamin Warren (48:08)
Right, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Daniel Snelson (48:09)
know, I think this this isn't, you know, another example of like the limitations of that discourse, but but also that, you know, these art forms allow us to see the world differently and I think importantly to imagine other futures. while while also recollecting the past in in different ways. So yeah, I'd love to keep keep talking about this. But I I know I think we could keep talking about this for the another full hour, but I I know we have to move forward.
Jamin Warren (48:30)
Okay. moving on. We'll do one more lightning pick and then we'll jump over to the the the last piece. the last little piece. I want to talk about Blood Dungeon. we shared a short little thing this week. Mark Essen, also known as Messhof, released a game called Blood Dungeon earlier, earlier this fall. I'm gonna have some things to write about actually this week about it. but there's an animated intro that's by a Baltimore artist named Dann Beeson, and Beeson posted a making of the day the game came out and some of the behind the scenes process, behind the scenes process, drawing these little tiny panels on a pad of sticky notes. shuffling them, crossing them out. then you have these like loud, flat, hand drawn characters, a camera that swings around the jun dungeon. I didn't have a ton to add. I just thought it was like a in like a just a I I love seeing a little bit of like the inside baseball process on like animation and also because, you know, that game in particular and all of Mark's work is it has this very distinct like visual quality to it, these like character designs that are you know sort of bizarre and inhuman and that's
Daniel Snelson (49:34)
Mm-hmm.
Jamin Warren (49:35)
been true since you know he worked on Nidhogg and it's been nice to see it it was nice to see him sort of paired with with an animator that an animator who kind of shares the same like sort of like sense sensitivities. this was also I guess the first game that that that first Messhof game since Nidhogg that featured
Daniel Snelson (49:51)
Yeah.
Jamin Warren (49:52)
Mark's own work back on the screen. I didn't realize that. but you can really tell like which one of the Messhof games.
Daniel Snelson (49:57)
Yeah. Yeah, totally.
Jamin Warren (49:59)
you know, which w which ones are the ones that he's really, really driving the look and feel. So didn't have a ton to add about this. I I just thought it was pretty cool.
Daniel Snelson (50:06)
Yeah, I'll just add, you know, I think because we're thinking so much about place, like you you see this and it's like, this is a Baltimore game. Like I I was just hanging
Jamin Warren (50:12)
Ha ha ha.
Daniel Snelson (50:13)
with like I like this I love the Baltim I the Baltimore scene is just kind of amazing. Thinking about like Dan Deacon and Jimmy Joe Roche and and all those folks.
Jamin Warren (50:20)
Right, right.
Daniel Snelson (50:21)
I was just hanging out at at Banff with Marnie Ellen, the the great filmmaker, and and thinking about like this specific scene and what it's generated. And I think, you know, we we were thinking about like, you know, what makes a a a French video game? Or like what are the defining features? And and I think like we can also like think about the locality of like, yeah, what makes a Baltimore video game? Or like coming out of this kind of like space that has this like really distinct kind of visual identity, but also I think clearly comes from a a certain kind of, you know, yet noisy aesthetic milieu. And and so yeah, I'm just I'm I'm I'm filing it away in my like I don't know, my like Baltimore Rolodex as like a really pristine and and beautiful example.
Jamin Warren (51:00)
All right, last item on the docket for today. I want to finish with a story that sort of been following for twelve years. That's not totally true. It's not like I've been following following it actively for twelve years. it's about this game called Steel Battalion.
Daniel Snelson (51:13)
You've been living in this box.
Jamin Warren (51:16)
Yeah, yeah, exactly. So just a little preamble here. So Steve Steel Battalion is a two thousand and two Xbox game from Capcom, where you pile you pilot this giant mech. I've never played like I've only seen pictures. I've only seen it was a bit of lore about this game. It shipped with its own controller. It's like $200 controller that had like 40 buttons on it and two joysticks and foot pedals, a real like one man band like kind of feel.
Daniel Snelson (51:40)
Yeah.
Jamin Warren (51:41)
it was very famous for being like almost impossible to learn. And then back in twenty fourteen, I sent Michael Pedersen, who was in Brooklyn. I was based in Brooklyn to Dave Shuff's house. I got introduced to Dave. I can't remember. I I think through some other film people he was working as a I believe it was an editor, a film editor at that time. And he had built this thing called the Big Steel Battalion box. And it was a refrigerator box made into like a cockpit. So there's lights and switches, and it was in his kitchen in Brooklyn, very Brooklyn mid aughts, Brooklyn like kind
Daniel Snelson (52:09)
Yeah.
Jamin Warren (52:10)
of project. and you know, it there's there's this military surplus headset and everything. And he you know, so Dave emailed me, or he's like, Hey, look, I'm like doing I've been working on this. And 12 years later, the box is gone from a refrigerator box to the permanent collection of The MADE, which is the Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment in San Francisco. and in September, he took over a corner of Maker Faire in the in the Bay Area and won editor's choice from the editor chief in in in in of Make. this time totally different experience. So you go through this like fake boot camp. There's like stamps and initials
Daniel Snelson (52:43)
Yeah.
Jamin Warren (52:43)
and a clipboard, and there's like volunteers who really get into it. There's a coach on your headset to kind of like walk you through.
Daniel Snelson (52:48)
Yeah.
Jamin Warren (52:49)
This like startup sequence, even though Dave has admitted that he's like never gotten past like level two. and yeah, Dave credits you know, it's it's it's it was it was super, super interesting to get reconnected, reconnected. The the thing that occurred to me is, you know, is that you know, what people remember about this experience is not the game itself. It's like the other people around you. It's like these other people who are kind of like ushering you into this experience. The game when it came out was a single player experience. You're supposed to do this at home. And I think what Shuff like wisely figured It's like, what's interesting about this is like the social dynamics of trying to get somebody to like walk through a very difficult video
Daniel Snelson (53:22)
Yeah.
Jamin Warren (53:25)
game. that's like a much more inter as a social experiment that is much more interesting than the actual like game, actual game itself. I yeah, I I had a lot of fun like just emailing with with with with Dave about this about this about this individual project. yeah, curiously like I guess my question for you is like What does it say about this initial and like this initial like game release? It was such a weird thing to come out. like who's
Daniel Snelson (53:48)
Yeah.
Jamin Warren (53:48)
gonna buy a two hundred dollar single use controller that only works
Daniel Snelson (53:51)
Yeah.
Jamin Warren (53:51)
on a single video game? and yet it sort of persists in this new life. what do you what do you think that the like yeah, what do you think the right context for understanding like what this thing actually is, should be?
Daniel Snelson (54:01)
Yeah, I I love this coverage and I loved reading the the historical record too from twenty fourteen. I think that there's something interesting about a game that is not that maybe only becomes interesting based on a playing it wrongly. Or like the
Jamin Warren (54:17)
Yeah.
Daniel Snelson (54:18)
like you know, like the the like this game, this like incredibly complicated game was like not maybe fun as a single player game as it was meant to be played, but like is kind of like the perfect environment for like a kind of like immersive theater like like installation object social game.
Jamin Warren (54:34)
Right.
Daniel Snelson (54:35)
And and you mentioned like the VR game like Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, which is like it's really fun because
Jamin Warren (54:39)
Yeah.
Daniel Snelson (54:39)
it it really becomes a game about communication and the failures of communication and how do you talk to somebody in and out of a box in this really complicated situation. And so I like I really love this idea that like that game was like destined to become an immersive theater work. But like that's like the the ultimate the
Jamin Warren (54:54)
Before immersive theater, it was like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Daniel Snelson (54:57)
Yeah. Yeah, but it just didn't know that. It didn't know that until like, you know, whatever, twenty years later. or twenty four years later, I guess when that was twenty three, two thousand three. Yeah,
Jamin Warren (55:04)
Yeah, seriously. Yeah, two thousand two. Yeah, jeeze, right. Yeah.
Daniel Snelson (55:07)
so it's like, right, like it's finally coming to fruition. And I think that there's something really interesting about like the life of a game that's not just like how it was meant to be released and and the environment it was released into, but like how it gets picked up and used later, like I don't know, Kaizo Mario scenes or like all these modern communities that like take these older games and then like produce something kind of like quite different and quite interesting by like, you know, building their own modes of play and their own modes of interaction around these games.
Jamin Warren (55:32)
Yeah, I was just trying to think of other games that like you play wrongly. I mean, I guess you do have this like this equivalent with like house rules in card games, right? Like community based rules that adjust the existing rule set in card games. And you know, obviously like free parking and Monopoly is like a good example or any of the the many variations, house variations of poker or spades. But those aren't quite the same as like playing a game like deliberately wrongly. I'm really hard pr I'm like really hard pressed to think about. I mean, I guess maybe the closest might be like like the speed running community and like Awesome Games Done Quick and things
Daniel Snelson (56:08)
Mm-hmm.
Jamin Warren (56:08)
like that. but this feels different, right? Because it's not meant to
Daniel Snelson (56:11)
Yeah.
Jamin Warren (56:11)
be repeat it's not like you know, with those types of games, those are really about like breaking those game systems, you know, and trying to optimize them in a in a way that sort of decontextualizes what they're supposed to do. This is like very faithful 'cause you're playing the game itself. You're just like what's changed is all of the other stuff around it. I mean, I guess there's that great book that
Daniel Snelson (56:29)
Yeah. How you
Jamin Warren (56:30)
my I come back to a lot, Michael Nitsche's Video Game Spaces, where he talks about the the five ways that we play games, these different contexts, the code, the
Daniel Snelson (56:38)
Mm.
Jamin Warren (56:38)
the image, the you know, the imaginary context, and then the social context. We and so it's just very interesting if you change the social context around and nothing else changes, but if you just change the
Daniel Snelson (56:47)
Yeah.
Jamin Warren (56:48)
social context, the the game takes on this whole new meaning. It feels pretty unique. I'm trying to think of like another good example
Daniel Snelson (56:53)
Yeah. Well, I I was thinking maybe like
Jamin Warren (56:55)
Of what that might what that might be.
Daniel Snelson (56:56)
maybe like Twitch Plays Pokémon or something. Where it's like, you know, you you have like the entire internet playing
Jamin Warren (57:01)
Maybe, yeah.
Daniel Snelson (57:02)
it's like an unmodded version of Pokemon, but you just give the controls away to the whole internet. Or like, you know, giving it away. I think they had a version of that
Jamin Warren (57:06)
Right. Right, right.
Daniel Snelson (57:09)
where a fish a fish played it. I think that became kind of interesting. But yeah, it's a theatrical. I was or maybe like
Jamin Warren (57:14)
Yeah.
Daniel Snelson (57:15)
I guess like, you know, you could think of the TV show The Traitors as like a very theatrical version of Mafia or Werewolf or something. And that there's something about like the production value or
Jamin Warren (57:24)
Sure.
Daniel Snelson (57:25)
like the the staging of it that like makes the game more interesting. I'm gonna yeah, I'm gonna keep thinking I think this is a good like, you know, puzzler to to leave off on to think about these other like games that like
Jamin Warren (57:33)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I for anyone listening or in the comments, if you have good examples, yeah. Hmm. All right. Well, all right, cool. Well, Danny, I think I think we're almost at time for today. just a couple of housekeeping notes. I started an events page. it kind of grew out of like my like daily like research process of like going through things, and also out of a personal desire to try to go to more things. and you can find it at killscreen.com/events. you know, Alice Bucknell's Ground Truthing was here at art/space in LA for a couple of days and I came across that and then Isabelle Frances McGuire who showed work at the Whitney Biennial has a game you can only play it's like first time ever. She's developed a game that's playable at Bel Ami in Chinatown through November twenty eighth. some of it was a desire for me that like I I don't think it's like set in for people, artists, etcetera, that like social media has broken like the two core tenets of social media, which is things are not shown in chronologically and that the people who ostensibly follow you do not receive your information. And so what ends up happening is that all this stuff gets like thrown into the void and it doesn't go anywhere.
Daniel Snelson (58:39)
Yeah.
Jamin Warren (58:39)
It does it does not appear in a way that makes sense for how people live their lives. It it makes sense for Instagram, like as a platform that keeps you on the app. But for things like announcements, like just announce you just like I am having a thing and you should go to it. like that information now gets lost and it's very hard. So some of it for me was a desire to try to take some of the chaos that exists in social media and try to get it into a centralized place. and then I think the other was to kind of demonstrate like the diversity, how many things that are happening globally at the intersection of like games, arts and culture, significantly more than like grabbing
Daniel Snelson (59:13)
Yeah.
Jamin Warren (59:14)
more and more things. I'm like, my gosh, there's so much going on. Around the world and that's really exciting for me. so anyway, you can find it at killscreen.com/events, if you have an event, you know, and there's one we're gonna be having actually coming up on November thirteenth, here in LA. We're gonna be throwing a party with Hologram
Daniel Snelson (59:30)
Yes.
Jamin Warren (59:31)
Opera for the Blippo+ soundtrack on vinyl at Revenge Of in Eagle
Daniel Snelson (59:34)
Yes. So excited for this.
Jamin Warren (59:36)
Rock. yeah, I Claire and Jonah have been good friends of Killscreen for, you know good friends of mine since moving here in Los Angeles. And so anyway, it got me thinking a lot. It's like, you know, games do have this IRL component. And what are some ways I can encourage more, I don't know, engagements for people to actually go and find the things that like I want to send people like the Whitney had a video game in this year with Leo Castañeda's
Daniel Snelson (59:59)
Yeah. Yeah.
Jamin Warren (1:00:01)
work and two video game related works, the other one being Isabelle's like if you're a games person, you may not know that that's what's happening. And there's little things like that happening
Daniel Snelson (1:00:07)
Yeah. Yeah.
Jamin Warren (1:00:09)
all over. So anyway. Yeah, yeah.
Daniel Snelson (1:00:11)
All over. Yeah, and I'll plug right next door to Revenge Of, the Great and Destroy kind of extension, the coffee shop. And and Ryan is a amazing
Jamin Warren (1:00:17)
True.
Daniel Snelson (1:00:18)
game master who runs like I th their calendar is packed and and it he's running one-shots of D&D almost every day of the week. So, you know, get some coffee and play D&D and then
Jamin Warren (1:00:28)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Daniel Snelson (1:00:29)
buy some comics at Revenge Of. It's like one that's my loop. That's like one of my if I'm my if my life was a roguelike, that's where I would be living. but I love this. I love this event.
Jamin Warren (1:00:37)
Yeah.
Daniel Snelson (1:00:37)
panning and and want to just plug once more the folks are local, to come out to UCLA on November second for the Phoenix of Gaza XR, which should be quite spectacular.
Jamin Warren (1:00:46)
Hmm. Well put day. Well, thank you all, everybody, members. The full Sagan Yee interview is in your feed this week. If you'd like some of the excerpts, we've got the full thing up for you and everything we talked about is on killscreen.com and in the newsletter. Danny, we'll see you in two weeks.
Daniel Snelson (1:01:03)
See you then. Thanks, Jamin.