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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 (00:00)
Danny, hello. Welcome. As always. You are in
Danny Snelson (00:02)
Jamin, good to see you.
Jamin (00:05)
you are in Utah, I understand. So
Danny Snelson (00:07)
I am beautiful West Valley. My dad, who's right here, his old office.
Jamin (00:11)
Okay. d
do you have one one like titular like er memory of Utah? Like if there's like one thing that you could take with you into the great beyond from from from
Danny Snelson (00:23)
Ha ha ha.
Jamin (00:24)
Utah, what would that what would that be?
Danny Snelson (00:26)
God. I think, yeah, there's a core or memory. I I had horrible night terrors, but I was mostly like afraid of two things. One, I
Jamin (00:32)
Me too. I also had night terrors.
Danny Snelson (00:36)
I think I read a book about Hiroshima when I like way too young. And so every sunset, Utah has these vibrant sunsets, and I was like, the world's ending. Which, you know, growing up Mormon, as I did, kind of rhymed with that. My other great fear is I'd have to become like the prophet of the church or something. It was like like locked into to sort of so there's a lot of eschatological fear, which
I think we're gonna talk about a little bit toward the end of today, so maybe that that rhymes.
Jamin (00:58)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, of course. Well, let's d I'm Jamie Warren. this is the Kill Screen Podcast. I'm here with with Danny Snelson. as as always. Danny, do you have your one line one one line introduction?
Danny Snelson (01:10)
Associate professor at at UCLA, scholar of experimental media and increasingly video games.
Jamin (01:16)
Increasingly video games. All right, we got a couple
things to cover. you know, we do this every every two weeks or cut so going through a bunch of different things that were in the in the the kill screen on the website and the kill screen register. The one of the through lines for today was many of the things that we'll talk about today in this cycle, they were ostensibly built to last longer than the thing on which they were created, which is like an interesting legacy for video games. We'll talk a bit about Tomo Kihara, who's a Japanese game designer.
He is aspiring to make games that last thousands of years, you know, even though he's using artificial intelligence, he is thinking in a like a long
Danny Snelson (01:51)
Yeah.
Jamin (01:53)
term register. We'll talk a little bit about this game, Pigeon, that was designed by Riskwork, that was that rebuilt a dead game on open maps so that it could be no longer switched off. It's a big digital obsolescence, it's a big issue. And then we'll also talk a little bit about Keda, Takahashi. I've been digging through the archive. There's a 15 year old piece written by Ryan Bradley that I republished.
about you know, some of his attempts to give up on games entirely. Lots and lots of stuff. Christian Mark Clays the Clock, Cameron Granger, lots and lots of things to talk about today. I think to start, actually, I want to start with Tomo. I I was gonna start with I
Danny Snelson (02:27)
Yeah, cool.
Jamin (02:27)
was gonna start with with with Ryan Bradley. So Tomo Kihara is a Japanese game designer. I actually met him, he came out to UCLA maybe last year for a research project that he was working on and reached out to me.
as part of a grant project that he was working on. And we had a great conversation, mostly about like where Tomo sort of like fits. But the, you know, the setup here is that, you know, Tomo Kara, he trained as an interaction designer at TU Delft, and he was inside of their industrial engineering school. And that matters because you know, one of the things that you learn in industrial in industrial engineering is that teaches you how to design with objects and context as opposed to as opposed to just screens, and which is like an interesting context for him as he makes his way to games. He makes his first project.
It's called Street Debater. And it came out of interviewing more than two dozen people who were asking for money on the streets of London and Amsterdam. That kind of like stuck out to him. He said, you know, in Japan at that time, he didn't really see that as much, you know, growing up. And so he builds this coin scale. It's a scale that asks passers by to you basically to vote on a question rather than just give money. and in fact, like one guy that he set this up for.
was able to actually move off the streets with the, you know, the money that he that he deserved, obviously for for many, many reasons. But that little prompt encouraging people to weigh in on a particular social issue. the this is a little bit closer to like participatory like social sculpture compared to like straight like game design. but he was spent a bunch of that that was really inspiring experience for him as he was thinking about he he's joined this one person one person one person Tokyo board game studio called Gift 10 Industries.
And now he's been making a bunch of games. And so one of his new works is called What Plays You. it's called The Game of Possible Lives. And it was made for the Wapangi Crossing exhibition at the Maury Art Museum. And so it's this arcade cabinet, and it has this LLM that's running locally inside it, and it generates this the life of an you know, basically of a statistically plausible person. Like I just kind of pulled from all of the data.
All of the data basically of a from a Japanese census. And then you ext you steer this person through all these decisions. And then the twist is that you you can go back, but you can only go back one time. So you pick one decision and you can run everything
Danny Snelson (04:39)
Yeah.
Jamin (04:40)
like all over again. one of the things that he talks about from this experience is the sort of the freedom and the fear of having something that is not scripted, is not like scripted at all. So he talks about this like authorship problem.
he sort of raises this authorship problem that I think is very interesting. And that we sort of think of game designers as people who are, even if they're handing over agency to players, they don't know the outcomes. We do sort of think of that that that process of game design to be ostensibly fixed, it could be patched, but there is an authorial intention that sort of happens even when you build a game system. And so he kind of raises this question about authorship, you know, because he's he's using LLMs in this way, raising you LMs this way. I I think my question, my question for you is
Yeah, do you think like putting I guess raising this question in the context of an artwork, does that resolve this question about whether or not he is designing a thing? Or is it just like alighting it attire in sort of like elighting it
Danny Snelson (05:35)
Yeah.
Jamin (05:35)
entirely and you know, elighting it entirely? And maybe this is not something that ostensibly is like authored by a person. Doesn't make it less interesting, but it does it does maybe
Danny Snelson (05:43)
Yeah.
Jamin (05:44)
sort of change the way you talk about it. yeah, I want to hear your thoughts maybe some of like the authorship questions that are kind of raised by this particular work by Toma.
Danny Snelson (05:50)
Yeah, that's such a great starting point. You know, I he ended and I loved this this interview. he ended with this great line that I'm ultimately I think I'm interested in rules as a medium as an artist. So I was thinking like, you know, so like
Jamin (06:01)
Yeah.
Danny Snelson (06:03)
you know, that authorship question, like authoring rules is something that, you know, we think about with like people who design TTRPGs or or games in general, where you're basically creating a system for emergent play or or like emergent stories or or things that can come out of those rules.
in this case, w one of the players happens to be a large language model. Right.
Jamin (06:21)
Yeah.
Danny Snelson (06:22)
You know, but I don't see like that different. Like rules have had like a long history in in authorship and in art, right? So this goes back to like Dadaism or or constraint-based literature from the sixties, where rather than thinking about the the writer or the artist as somebody who produces the final work, they produce a series of rules that might be a work. Or, you know, I think
conceptualism is like a you know the conceptual art movement and conceptual writing after it from the poetry side made these same kind of arguments where it's like you know you can kind of point at something and then you know that that like by producing a kind of like system that other people can can engage with you are thereby the author or the artist. But you know maybe the the author is already dead or was always already dead, I guess people say. But I I like this question. I I love this this work.
the the branching decisions that the players get to to navigate. And of course there's also, you know, there's so many design decisions. Like he's he's built this as like gravestones. you know, the the like very tight design of the the branching trees with that black and white s minimalist kind of structure. Like all of those little choices are are, you know, highly, highly authored events, I think.
Jamin (07:28)
It's interesting, you know, one I was reading Mik Miguel Sickard, who's he pr teaches at ITP, ITP in Denmark and in Copenhagen. And he authored this paper maybe like two or three years ago, specifically looking at he was looking at prompt injection as a form of improvisational play with an agent. And I one of the things I I like about what you're saying is like maybe if we like the way the AI gets like sold, I think to us as players is that the AI will
Design the system as opposed to the AI being a like a participant designer. You know, it's it's like kind of like you know, we were talking about fiasco the other week, right? That is a game where the the rules are set up. There's not really a DM, right? But the D or the person explaining the rules becomes a participant in the rules. and it occurs to me that like maybe this is a more interesting way for is like don't think of the don't think of the LLM as like designing the experience.
But is a participant in the experience. And that's a much more interesting way to sort of like think about what's a relationship is as opposed to kind of like anthropomorphizing it, giving it this like godlike quality. And so Miguel talks about, you Miguel kind of looks at it in the context. He thinks that that's one of the more interesting things about about LMs to play, he calls them play things, right? As opposed to tools. He's kind of trying to he's trying to juxtapose them as like they're not tools. These are things that are designed to be played with. And Tomo's kind of taking that to its logical extension. It's like, I just I'm I'm I'm playing with this thing.
And it's generating an outcome for the player, but it's not like it is not re it has not receded from the experience. It's kind of like coming down from all high and giving you this thing, but it's like is an active participant. I I thought that was I thought it was an interesting twist on maybe the way that AI is kind of like sold to people who play games.
Danny Snelson (09:03)
Yeah, and it's like you know, it's an NPC, maybe. Or like, you know, or or maybe like in gaming parents like it's the it's the final boss, right? Like the LLM is the final boss. And I like
Jamin (09:06)
Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, right, right. Right.
Danny Snelson (09:13)
that that phrase you use it, you know, from on high. I was just thinking I I love the the Maury Art Museum if if you know, I don't know if you've been to this site, but it's it's
Jamin (09:19)
I haven't, no.
Danny Snelson (09:20)
on the fifty third floor of the skyscraper. So you're like so I was trying to imagine like, you know, I I didn't get to see this installation, but you have these gravesites and you have this little LLM and we think about LMs, they have this kind of like God's eye view.
on on all of us, right? Like they know everything. They also kind of know nothing. And you know, census data has always been like a kind of like, you know, highly surveillant mode for state to regulate people. So I was thinking like, man, it would be so amazing to play these little arcade gravestone boxes on the fifty third floor of a building as you're looking at the sprawl of Tokyo around you. And I think that that
Jamin (09:52)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Danny Snelson (09:53)
kind of like context like does something different to that role of the L O as well.
Jamin (09:58)
Yeah, that was one that one of the other things that came up was you know, you get you get generated all these different people. And so one person was assigned to be one assigned person was like a woman from Okaido who ended up becoming a prime minister in her sixties. Another person got this salary
Danny Snelson (10:10)
Mm-hmm.
Jamin (10:11)
man in Tokyo exporting oysters to Australia. It is this kind of like mix of like it's very quotidian, right? I think that's one of the things it's not it does not have to be
Danny Snelson (10:19)
Yeah.
Jamin (10:20)
again, breaking with maybe some of the perceptions about games being about about acquisition
Power fantasy, this kind of like inverts it. It's like, no, you're just like a normal, you're a normal random person. One of the things that Tomo talks about
Danny Snelson (10:31)
Yeah.
Jamin (10:32)
is that the cabinet doesn't know which is like the good outcome, and neither does the player. And I think again, it's like thinking about this like stochastic element with LLMs being something that you can kind of play with. And that can be like a very exciting development, a very exciting development. It's like, I don't know what's gonna happen, and the player doesn't know what's gonna happen, and the LLM actually doesn't know what's gonna doesn't actually know what's gonna happen like.
Danny Snelson (10:51)
Yeah.
Jamin (10:52)
We're all kind of like in this thing together. And that is that is kind of like exciting and that's exciting a new way to exciting a new way that even though the rules are set, the outcomes are really, really, really open ended. And that feels like something, a type of game that could only be produced like with a with an L L And that that to me also felt like a a really exciting, a really exciting piece of the the the process.
Danny Snelson (11:13)
It
it's a good use, you know, and I I think a lot about, you know, AI AI Dungeon kind of in this mode, like using an LLM in like a way that kind of makes sense, that's kind of interesting. That AI Dungeon, of course, is this game where the LM basic LLM plays your your DM for for adventures you go on. And there's problems with it. But it's not like the like the horror like the like bad LLM use that we think about a lot, I think, or sort of like, you know, generating assets or writing story beats or or all these things. I think about or like the AI MPCs and where winds meet.
which are like notoriously annoying and just sort
Jamin (11:44)
Right.
Danny Snelson (11:45)
of like it's just like this like vexing engagement with something that's like too stupid to operate. Where here I feel like there's something kind of interesting where like, you know, LLMs are also built out of these massive accumulations of data. And like, you know, an LLM can sort through and come up with like all of these quotidian lives from census data that would be kind of impossible. I mean, imagine how many lines of script a human would have to write to account for like.
a fisherman in Hokkaido and a prime minister, like and like
Jamin (12:10)
Right, right.
Danny Snelson (12:11)
everything in between those two. So I think that yeah, there's there's something inspiring about this to me that that really kind of opens up what what what we might be able to do with these kinds of algorithms outside of I think some of the more normative use cases.
Jamin (12:24)
What are there like process like have you seen this like in your work on the like literature poetry and literature side? Is there an analogous kind of procedural process that you have seen that's like sense of unknowing, like I don't know what's happening, I don't know the inputs or the out like or I know some of the inputs. Well, in this case it's like the he doesn't even know what the inputs are. He's like doesn't know what it is going to give you and you don't know the choices. And that's like part of being a game designer is not knowing what choices they're gonna make. And in this case, like the outputs are also the outputs are also randomized as well.
D is there an example that you can think of of yeah, just an example you can think of that that kind of maybe reflects that sense of like nobody nobody knows what's going on?
Danny Snelson (12:59)
Yeah, I mean, I think like there's a canonical example by Raymond Cano. but like you know, Raymond Cano has this great poem, Million Billion Sonnets, which is this kind of procedural poem. It's like a it's a book where like he's written 10 sonnets and sonnets are 14 lines, and then you he cuts every single line so you can fold the book.
To write like literally a million billion, like there's it's like a permutational poem where on a certain level, like, you know, he's written the rules, like this is a structure, there there are all these like combinatorial possibilities, but every single poem is going to be completely different based on what you pull. and there there's a, you know, a long history from that in in code poetry as well, where I think poets have been experimenting with this really from the origin of of computers in the 50s, where you get these kinds of stochastic poems where you give you know, a
a a large data bank of of words, a database, a set of rules and instructions to structure language, and then it kind of like outputs something different every time you refresh the page. yeah, th there's a a a ton of examples that I won't run into, but I I do think that, you know, it's one of those things maybe because you know, words are smaller and like easier to work with than
Jamin (14:09)
Yeah.
Danny Snelson (14:09)
than like artworks or or like gr computer graphics that that a lot of this kind of
combinatorial algorithmic production, computational poetry, I think has been explored for for a long time and has a lot to say to some of the developments that are happening in in art and games now.
Jamin (14:26)
Got it. Yeah, yeah. Well, I think the last thing, I guess the last thing, you mentioned this earlier. The, you know, the object, it's inside this gravestone. It runs locally on a machine there, which makes it very portable, right? It means it's something that that that from an institutional standpoint, it's something it travels, it doesn't require like internet connection necessarily. It's all done, it's all done basically on this on you basically on a on a single machine.
The the context is really interesting, right? Because it changes depending on like where it is located. The Maury Art Museum, obviously you mentioned that as being a place where it could be played. but now I believe it's like in a hotel lobby, he said. And so you sort of get people kind of like wandering through and
Danny Snelson (15:00)
Okay. Yeah, yeah.
Jamin (15:03)
like wandering through. It does make me think about, you know, this is a game about like life and death and choices. And so he, you know, Tomo is interesting. He said that he he sort of liked this this
this itinerant ne like this sort of like itinerant nature to it, this sort of like that people are kind of passing through. Like, you know, hotels in a lot of ways, hotels, hospitals, airports, like these are places where lots of type of types of people kind of like like pass through at many different stages of life. And it there is something kind of museums, it's unfortunately, maybe not so not so much. They maybe select a
Danny Snelson (15:32)
Yeah.
Jamin (15:34)
little bit more for someone. but you know, train stations, like these kind of these are places where like, you know, sort of
quote unquote ordinary people like move through these spaces. he liked that element of it. How how do you think that like the context, like that social context maybe changes the understanding of the work for someone who's sitting down and and playing it?
Danny Snelson (15:50)
Yeah, I think that yeah, there's something really interesting about juxtaposing those two places. I'm gonna do them like you know, from like the bird's eye view of like the fifty-third floor of the Maury Art Museum in this kind of high cultural space, to yeah, what you're describing like a hotel lobby or or like an airport or something, which yeah, the architect Mark Auger would call like a non site or a non place. Like these kinds of like which are like you know you know, kind of like core to postmodernism in some way.
but but I I think that there's something really interesting again to return to like the census data. And you know, that like these are also like highly surveillance spaces. Like these are like those kind of not like when you go through an airport, you're being tracked in in all kinds of really specific ways that that maybe the privacy of the museum is is a bit more rarefied. And so I think that this this question of like life and death and and tracking who's alive, how many people are alive, what are their jobs, this kind of like invasive.
state apparatus that that's typically used to to manage a nation really like is at home in those non-places, right? Like that that like maybe is like the non-place is the place of the state. And so you know putting this
Jamin (16:52)
Ha ha ha.
Danny Snelson (16:53)
putting this gravesite right in the middle of that I think raises a lot of those those questions and and makes you, you know, you're not just like playing these lives from from life to deck, but you're thinking about, I guess, your own life. And and
Jamin (17:04)
Yeah.
Danny Snelson (17:04)
you know, I would be thinking, you know, how is my
my input in the census data maybe being used in this game, ha the the choices I've made, are those influencing the LLM in some way? and I think those
Jamin (17:15)
Right, right, right. Yeah.
Danny Snelson (17:16)
like quotidian spaces really like bring that like ordinary engagement with with surveillance, technology, the state, tracking, all these things have to come to the
Jamin (17:25)
Yeah. you could well, I guess if you had to pick I guess if you had to select I don't know, is there a a random outcome if you had to select like a a random a random person? Is there a a a life that you think would be interesting? If you were to like spin sp yeah, yeah, yeah.
Danny Snelson (17:37)
interesting to make the the choices for.
Jamin (17:39)
Spin the it's spin that big old wheel and like,
Danny Snelson (17:41)
Mm-hmm.
Jamin (17:42)
you know, the big old reincarnation wheel, is there like a like an interesting an interesting outcome?
Danny Snelson (17:47)
And you you know I'm obsessed with Isekai. I've been teaching a lot of Isekai. So that like the
Jamin (17:50)
Yeah, of course.
Danny Snelson (17:51)
the core idea of like being, you know, reborn into like some other other body, something I think about a lot. but this question is really hard. I don't know who I would want to play. I think I would want to play someone I know. maybe I'd play you, Jamin.
Jamin (18:03)
Ha ha ha.
Danny Snelson (18:05)
See what what got you what why are you here?
Jamin (18:06)
It's more it's more more fun more fun.
Danny Snelson (18:09)
Yeah, there'd be like personal stakes, you know. I don't want to play some. I want to play somebody
Jamin (18:11)
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Danny Snelson (18:13)
I know and and say like
I don't what if what if what if Jamin had taken this left turn instead like is there
Jamin (18:18)
Right.
Danny Snelson (18:18)
a certain alternate reality where you were a Fisher person and and maybe I could like craft that for you?
Jamin (18:22)
I d
I do think there is something about the allure, at least for me, like as someone who sits in front of a screen all day, is this kind of like that kind of like, it'll be you know, in some ways like something that's purely a purely manual a purely manual pursuit and maybe something that occupies like a different part of your your brain or your ability. I feel like so much of my so much of my time is spent like thinking and inside of my own head and like something where it's like, there's a discernible output that gets completed over a period of time.
like being a plumber
Danny Snelson (18:48)
Yeah.
Jamin (18:48)
or something like that. It's like, my work I don't get something. I guess maybe the the analogy is like maybe something I don't something occupationally that I don't have to take my work home with me 'cause I'm always
Danny Snelson (18:56)
Yeah.
Jamin (18:56)
kind of like taking my work home with me in my head. I don't know. I think that would be an interesting and a very
Danny Snelson (19:00)
Can I one more thing? I
mean, because my my dad over here who passed during COVID is like looking at me. I think that there's also maybe in a more poignant way to to really like, you know, reflect on this work and and some of its depth. you know, I'd love to play my dad's life differently. And and, you know, like maybe if there were different decisions, he'd still be here. Right. Like the that
Jamin (19:17)
Right.
Danny Snelson (19:17)
there might be these you know, really serious ways to think about like how to play out someone's life and and how to might, you know, how you can imagine that life unfolding differently.
Jamin (19:27)
Right, right, right. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting Tomo decided you can only make make a single choice, right? And so that's an interesting way to reflect like if you were to sum up someone's life into a some a series of choices, like what is the one choice that maybe you feel like might alter might alter the course of their life in a way that's going to, you know, in in you know, sometimes we can point to a single thing, like you married this person or you took this job or you made this move
Danny Snelson (19:50)
Sidding doors.
Jamin (19:51)
or
Yeah, exactly. And Tomo's very specific about like, no, I'm going to give you the opportunity to make one choice. And yeah, I mean, in some ways it's like there's sort of us also like an unknown there. Like maybe you would end up you make that one choice and you kind of end up in the same in the same spot that you always were. We want to believe that, you know, our choices matter, but maybe they maybe they matter a lot less than than we think that they do. But yeah. Yeah.
Danny Snelson (20:11)
Yeah. Yeah.
Jamin (20:13)
Anyway, all right, moving on. Thanks, Danny.
All right, all
Danny Snelson (20:15)
Cool.
Jamin (20:15)
right, let's see. We'll do a couple quick hits here. There are a couple of things that we covered in the a couple of things that we covered in the news here. Let me look at what I check, make sure I sent you the right ones.
Unless Danny, there's one that you would like to start with.
Danny Snelson (20:29)
I mean I can point to a bunch of things. I loved the news from this last week. I was really excited. your notes on on Marklay I thought were really, really compelling.
Jamin (20:37)
Let's talk about that. Yeah, that was fun. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
yeah, the the the preamble is I went to go see the clock, which is a is a durational work. It's a 24 hour work by the artist Christian Marclay. it is a composite work. It takes it stitches together a different scene from a lot of different movies, and all of them, the the the commonalities, they all run on the time at which you're watching it. So you look at your watch and it's four thirty-five.
And then, you know, you look at your watch, it's four thirty-five. And then you look up on the screen and there's something that's happening in the background that's at at four thirty-five. It's kind of a love letter. It's a in LA's a great place to show something like this because you know, so many of the films, they're mostly American films. There are a couple of French films, they're kind of like sprinkled in, but there are like hundreds of films. I mean, it's it's like a it's
Danny Snelson (21:23)
Mm-hmm.
Jamin (21:24)
a pretty profound, pretty profound like project to go through all of these individual films and find something that happens at
2 30 AM or whatever. And he does an interesting thing where, like, you know, he does some interesting editing stuff where he's kind of like pulling sound in from one sequence to another. So it's not it doesn't, it's not like it's not like Instagram or whatever. It's just like like hard cuts
Danny Snelson (21:42)
Yeah.
Jamin (21:43)
every so he does a really good job in making feel like there is a thing that is happening. the the work I found, you know, it's interesting. Also, by virtue of there being a clock in the background, it does create a it does create a like an attendant mood because
you know, sequences in which a character is looking at a clock usually signifies something is about to happen or something has just happened or they're waiting. There's a lot of these sequences where people are waiting for someone to happen. there are some kind of like more like passing examples like Big Ben, for example, you really know how often Big Ben is like kind of used. And then they kind of range back and forth between sort of like subtle, I'm sorry, between like very obvious. So there's a sequence from the natural
where Robert Redford hits a home run and like into the clock at Rickley Field and
Danny Snelson (22:23)
Mm-hmm.
Jamin (22:24)
explodes or whatever. You see the time, it's like very obvious. Like, I get it. And then there are a lot of other ones where it's like it's a desktop desk clock in the background or a sequence of pass like, I don't remember if I saw a clock there. That was the piece that resonated with me. That you know, we often think about, you know, films in a ludic capacity being ones that explicitly express game mechanics in some way, like living and dying, or
living and dying or multiple lives or it's an IP or something like game IP. And this one is ludic in a different sense in that it activates this sense of like looking through the process of playing. And so my my friend Alex says it's like where's Wal it's like where's Waldo? You're always like every sequence, you're always
Danny Snelson (23:03)
Yeah.
Jamin (23:04)
kind of in the back of your head, you're like, where's the clock? Where's the clock? Where's the clock? Extremely active way of viewing a film. You I mean I could have sat there all day.
Danny Snelson (23:10)
Yeah.
Jamin (23:11)
I had to like I guess I need to get up and eat. I like I feel like I could
Danny Snelson (23:15)
Yeah.
Jamin (23:15)
watch all
twenty four hours because it is that to me it was that engaging. but I had a really fun time like thinking about the film afterwards. I didn't walk in thinking about it this way, but kind of like sitting and watching like all of the sequence kind of kind of like watch over me. I felt like was really powerful. have you seen the clock? What are your thoughts on the clock? And maybe some broader thoughts about like like ludic architecture in in film, I suppose, is maybe the places I'd like to go.
Danny Snelson (23:37)
Yeah, great. I love Journal. I yes, I've I've seen the clock. Well, I've seen some of
Jamin (23:41)
No one can see that's the thing. No one can actually see the see the clock.
That's it. I'm sure someone has, but like that that in and of itself would be a performance. It's like sitting through all twenty four hours of of the clock. yeah, yeah.
Danny Snelson (23:53)
Yeah, but I like what you're just saying right now about, you know, the clock as as like the protagonist of the film. In some ways, you it reminds me of our conversation we were having about the about Resident Evil, not to compare his high and low stuff. But like, you about like the typewriter. So like when you get to a save point, Resident Evil, you know something's going to happen. And the clock has this a character, right? Like it's it's a memento mori, or it's like, you know, commemorating something, or if it's a suspense film, the clock is sort of like ticking down the seconds before like some kind of big event happens. And so I think like by having this whole archive, this whole database really
of cinema that the the the clock plays through, you get a sense of like what the clock does as a character, which I thought was really, really kind of fascinating.
Jamin (24:33)
Mm. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Danny Snelson (24:34)
I've also thought about this. I you also called it well I was thinking about the collectathon. We were talking about the the pigeon game is a collectathon. I was like, wow the clock is like the ultimate collect a thon. So it's like both like I was thinking, yeah, in game terms, so like both like on the construction side. So like making the clock, like you can imagine like a collectathon like
Mark Clay, or Mark Clay's assistants, probably,
Jamin (24:54)
Right. Yeah. I mean that's yeah.
Danny Snelson (24:57)
spent how many hours hunting each one of those clips, right? Like like and and
Jamin (25:01)
Right.
Danny Snelson (25:02)
also like, you know, like you would have in like you know, you have to like check off the things, like in blueprints or something. Like you're like collecting, like, okay, I got four fifty-three, I really need to find four fifty-four, or you know, I need to like get every minute because it, you know, covers every minute of the twenty-four hour cycle.
Jamin (25:17)
Yeah.
Danny Snelson (25:17)
So I thought
that was really interesting, then like, you know, so like the collect a thon for the creation of this thing where you're calling from cinema, and then the collect a thon on the the viewer side where like as you're watching it, you're like, okay, I'm collecting this this essence of the clock. And then like here's the like baseball essence, or or here's the, you know, the like time of death. There's a lot of those in in the clock as well, right? Like, like from a medical from all of the medical procedurals where it's like time of death, 754 right? So you get like
Jamin (25:42)
Right. Right, right, right.
Danny Snelson (25:45)
all of these all of these moments and I think they are like, you know, it's it's a it's a viewership that is, you know, whereas Waldo's maybe the original collected thought. It's like, you know, you're collecting each of these like, you know, discrete moments and trying to make sense of them.
Jamin (25:58)
Yeah. I it's interesting for like for I I'm very curious about like from a process standpoint, because it's kind of like if you set out, it's like, we have a gap from this time to this time. I think if you set like if you set out to do it, I don't know. I mean, it may just be it's no, it might be just one of these things where it I don't want to under undersell this, but it is possible it's just we just sort of underestimate how many clocks there are in cinema. And, you know, there's that there's that kind of like that riddle, which is like, you know, I think it's something like
How many if you have a group of people, how many people do you need to have to guarantee that they're gonna have that someone's gonna have the same birthday? And it's only like 25 people or something like that. Like it's a
Danny Snelson (26:32)
Mm-hmm.
Jamin (26:33)
it's a very small, I can't remember the exact number, but like I I sort of wonder, it's kind of like if you just turned on TV and just like charted every time you saw a clock, would you end up like they have more things to work with? more things to work with from from a process standpoint. the the other thing I thought was interesting.
watching the film was there is that sense of like there's a little bit of trivia in it like you sort of recognize the characters like what movie is that because he kind of goes back and forth between like really famous things that you probably are familiar with and then sometimes it's like actors actors you've seen so there's like a sequence when we were there from with Billy Bob Thornton and Francis McDormand from The Man Who Wasn't There, which I'd seen, I don't know, maybe like I know, 15, 20 years ago. But it was like in my head, I was like, gosh, like I know, I this is a Cohen Brothers film.
And I I'd like I could see it in my head, but I don't remember I could like could not remember the films. There's a little bit of that too, where you're like, you know, constantly trying to remember, you know, like can I check off the in the trivial trivial pursuit kind of fashion? Do I know
Danny Snelson (27:27)
Yeah.
Jamin (27:28)
all the films that are being shown to me? yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Danny Snelson (27:31)
Yeah, there's just
like light resonance, right? Like so like each of those clips carries its like context and its scenes and like so it's also like each of those discrete moments has like some meaningful thing to say to the film it comes out of. And so you are kind of like hallucinating the whole film each time one of those clips gets summoned. But I I'm also thinking, you know, the the there's cinemas always had such a profound relationship to time. And I think this is what, you know, a lot of people who've who thought about the clock have have written through. thinking of like Leslie Thornton's tw death twenty-four frames per second.
or like Deleuze's thought on like time and cinema, right? So like cinema is this kind of time-based medium that that like is is you know, it's fundamental in intervention is that like it's still images that like produce the the hallucination of movement through their accumulation. And so I think that like that like hallucinatory effect of cinema itself rhymes really well with what you're saying about trying to like, you know, hallucinate a whole film into a tiny clip. And and and you know, like sometimes that really works where you're like, right.
I remember that shot from, you know, Fritz Long's Metropolis. Like, of course. But then it's like, yeah, what was that b Billy Bob Thornton movie? I don't know what it is.
Jamin (28:35)
Because the shots are yeah, like the shots don't mean anything
a lot of times. Like there it's not that like every shot is important to a director. I know every to you know, every cinematographer and every director, every shot is meaningful because you only have so much time, et cetera, et cetera. However, there are obviously some sequences that are more important than other sequences. And so that was the other part too. You're sort of like thrown around because the sequences are like, I remember the movie, but that was like not not the part of the movie I remember, like even remotely. And yeah, it's yeah, it's is a very
Very strange, very strange work and feels also like something that could not be made in a a post AI era 'cause it does feel like the kind of thing that would be like, I felt I fed all these films into an L L and asked it to give me back the frames and like the process piece of the work is kind of is kind of completed. So the fact it's done before AI, I think in some ways is part of the is part of the charm also, which is weird to think about. But yeah.
Danny Snelson (29:27)
Yeah, and it has that history. I was thinking, like, could you adapt that to a video game? Like, could you make the clock the game? I'm like this is like a challenge for Pippin Barr or somebody, right? Like does this kind of thing. or you know, we're talking about like other adaptations. Like would there be some way to to to gamify this and turn it into like an actual collected thought, which I think would be kind of interesting too. where where you really have that like that bridge between the like you're saying, these like high-key moments.
of like real significance and then like the ordinary and the mundane. And I think that's one thing that like I I get a lot of from video games. Like, you know, you're doing a fetch quest and it's like the ordinary. You're just fetching clock fetching clocks. but then you also have like these like really important moments where like a clock is going to like, you know, turn the plot on its head. so pitching
Jamin (30:07)
the the the
Danny Snelson (30:09)
pitching the adaptation. Go ahead.
Jamin (30:11)
There is a game by Nikolai Trishinsky called Loop Record, which came out maybe like 15 years ago. do you do you know this game? It
Danny Snelson (30:18)
No, what's that?
Jamin (30:19)
is a it's like a video editing puzzle. you basically are presented with all of these different sequences, it's pulled from like stock imagery, and you have to link the the movement of the clips. So that's your so you basically work as an editor. It gives you a short clip, and then you
Danny Snelson (30:32)
cool.
Jamin (30:33)
kind of have to sort of get it to sequence, which is about like sort of getting these.
individual it's all real, you know, this there's not from anything famous. It's all like stock stock stuff. But it has the it has that like it it's it's based on his experience, I believe, as a as a film editor. He was trying to like translate that into something that would work in a in a film capacity. It's like the only it's a one of one. I don't feel like I've really seen anything like this before, but
Danny Snelson (30:54)
Yeah,
maybe immortality on the other side. So it's not like building it.
Jamin (30:57)
Right, okay.
Danny Snelson (30:58)
I wasn't thinking about until you just mentioned loop record, where you like immortality you have these like three films and you're trying to solve the the death of this this actress by clicking through
Jamin (31:05)
Right, right, right.
Danny Snelson (31:06)
the background objects.
Jamin (31:08)
It does speak to I think that there's just a lot of unexplored territory, like with film as a if with film, with live action, like there's there's a lot to play with there. Obviously games are you know, video games are digital technology and so the inertia has been behind creating digital characters, but there's still quite there's still so much that you can do with like actual like film, film. So it that which is very exciting.
Danny Snelson (31:28)
yeah.
Jamin (31:29)
So
Anyway, all right, moving along. We've got some news items for that. Was my feature for this week. We've got a couple news items before before we head out today. I think I'll pick a couple of these. One is wristwork, which rebuilt
Danny Snelson (31:43)
Yeah.
Jamin (31:43)
this game called Pigeon a Love Story. It was designed during the 2021 lockdown, and you are a pigeon who is searching to scale London, New York, Tokyo, Paris, and Amsterdam to find your soulmate among like, you know, thousands of autonomous birds. And
when the commercial map service that they were running it on shut down, they had to rebuild it. it's on Steam, the App Store, Google Play, et cetera, et cetera. really interesting, really interesting concept for really interesting concept. One is like playing as a pigeon, the, you know, one of the our fate one of the one of our favorites of cities, one of our favorites of cities. But like, yeah, it's an interesting, an interesting, interesting idea that like you're kind of like in this like sort of
flock. There's sort of like a it's like an infrastructure joke a little bit. Like it's
Danny Snelson (32:29)
Yeah.
Jamin (32:29)
you know, we sort of think of think of pigeons, but you know, there is this kind of interplay between between like pigeons. Pigeons are exploiting the natural architecture of human built systems. They are, you rock doves, they're they they they nest in rocks, and they're sort of exploiting that. And this game in some ways is maybe trying to find some ways to hijack the architecture of like digital cities in a in a in a different kind of way.
Yeah, I know. I just it's an interesting I think interesting interesting way to explore interesting way to explore cities in a way that does not necessarily lean on you having to go like street by street. And it's very directed, like you're just finding you're just looking for another pigeon to fall in love with. So yeah.
Danny Snelson (33:07)
And just one,
right? Like that you like it's kind of like well, this is I'm gonna go back and we're talking a lot about where's Waldo today. It's like you're just trying to find like the one pigeon, which is like it's like
Jamin (33:15)
Right, the one fidget.
Danny Snelson (33:16)
the opposite of the collectathon. Like, you know, in some ways, like you know, like the clock I like following the clock with this where you have like clocks everywhere. And then like you have pigeons everywhere, but you're looking for like that one single pigeon, which I I think is just like so like poignant. Like it's it's really like this like kind of like I know it's kind of funny and I think that you know the
The city infrastructure, and I think you wrote really beautifully about the depth of the API that was initially built on, now it's built on open source. And I think that there's some really interesting stuff there. But like hunting for like one thing feels like yeah, like a really interesting way to to re-render a city and and think about, you know, this kind of like more than human engagement with like how cities are navigated, and and what that can look like. I they have a co-op mode.
Which I had a lot of hours. It's just
Jamin (33:59)
Yeah, it's
Danny Snelson (34:01)
like one of my favorite. Where you get to speak to Koo and then you mention the Koo up mode, which I think is just like well I'm a sucker for puns. But that one is just perfect. Like like Chef's Kiss, perfect pun for this pigeon game.
Jamin (34:12)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's yeah, interesting concept. interesting concept. I believe it's out. You can go go check it out. Last thing, I think last thing for today, last thing for today, we'll take a look at there's a you know, we we talked maybe a couple of weeks ago, I think about scenes about like I think with Calp we talk kind of talked about some of these like hyper regional scenes. earlier, I believe it was during the summer.
For its 10th birthday, there's a Paris-based immersion events company called Diversion. They didn't just throw a party, they sort of marked the occasion with with an exhibition. I've I've had the pleasure of like watching the work from distraction.fun. It's a it's a Paris-based arts and games collective. And the centerpiece is this game called The Host, which they shared some installation lists. I I think less the work and I think more the context here that I thought was interesting.
is there's all these like there's a definitely like a Parisian friend there's like a definitely a Parisian artist game scene that feels very like vibrant and active with folks like Melanie Courtenois, Vincent Molnier, Stelle Jacob, there's quite Jonathan Corin whose game that I you know who's whose game player non-player I just absolutely adored. I think my question for you is like it you know as I'm thinking about
some of these individual game scenes. What are some of the things that as players we could be looking at that might help identify a game being from a particular place, even the subject matter, even if the subject matter doesn't necessarily like scream it the same way that you might have with like expedition like Claire Obscura, like expedition thirty three. Like, that is a French video game. That's a French video game. but maybe in some of
Danny Snelson (35:40)
Yeah. French game.
Jamin (35:44)
these more like subtle ways that you would see with like the say like the French New Wave or
you know, Italian futurism or Italian neo realism in film or you see this a lot in cinema, but I I was curious I was curious of like what maybe some of those characteristics might be when we're looking at like these individual game scenes. yeah, if you were to if you were to highlight what those
Danny Snelson (36:03)
Yeah.
Jamin (36:05)
what would what would be a lens to look at for something like
Danny Snelson (36:08)
Right. How do you tell it's a French game if you're not carrying a baguette over your shoulder?
Jamin (36:11)
Right, exactly. Is that not like a very explicit like
I'm I am in the moray and
Danny Snelson (36:16)
Yeah. Well
at first I just wanted to say, you know, one, just like you know, some gratitude for the kind of work that you do. I think, you know, so much of game studies can get really myopic and especially here in the States. where it's, you know, I I think there's linguistic barriers, there's all kinds of of you know, access issues with with trying to like I really wanted to see the host, but you know, it's an installation and I'm not gonna be able to fly to Paris. And so I think like doing this kind of you know, this work to to to really construct a a a global understanding of how how games are connected.
is a really important thing to do. So I just wanted to start there.
Jamin (36:46)
Thank you, Danny. Thank you, Daddy.
Danny Snelson (36:47)
and then yeah, French games well, you know, I was thinking like, you know, the counterpoint maybe to to Claire Obscure, which I love, is Stray. Like Stray, which initially was called HK Project. It's clearly set in Hong Kong, but it's made by, you know, a couple in brands, like in the in the the French countryside. So like, you
Jamin (37:03)
Right.
Danny Snelson (37:03)
know, Stray is a deeply French game, but but all of its markers actually dislocate it maybe from from
Jamin (37:10)
Yeah.
Danny Snelson (37:10)
its site of production.
so I don't know. I think there's there's interesting ways in which, you know, when you think back to like the the French New Wave, like a lot of that's about coteries and and and and about like, you know, internal conversations that usually you know occur in publications like telkel was like, you know, a major venue for for both French theory and thinking about cinema, Kahirdu cinema, like you know, these kinds of sites where it's really like discursive frameworks, I think, that like put these works in context with each other. So i
Jamin (37:37)
Mm.
Danny Snelson (37:38)
in that regard, I really love what distract.
fun does which, you know, is to really highlight the work of the collective. you know, that you go to their website and they have all of these games. And so there's something about like just having that website and like producing a collective that then I think structures like a kind of cohesion or a kind of movement. So, you know, playing through those games, looking through and seeing like, what do these things have in common that that maybe are different than than other kinds of game scenes.
Jamin (38:04)
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean it's a good point about the dislocation part. Cause I do feel like games have often felt like they're not from a place. With the exception of, you know, I feel like Japanese RPGs, for example, like those are those are they're very clearly like there's a style. Even if they're not made there, there's like a particular style. Yeah, games I feel like have really rejected really rejected that kind of really rejected that kind of that kind of frame.
It's a good point about the discursive networks, about there being like that these that these scenes in other media often grow out of, you know, it's a university program or is a specific venue, right? It's a cafe, it is a physical place, it's a magazine. And I haven't really seen that as much. I I mean I'm seeing that a little bit. You have like Boshi's place in New York City and Wonderville, New York City, and you do get a little bit of you do get like a little bit of that. But in this case it does seem like it's sort of these things are running ahead of
game making piece of it is kind of like running ahead like a permanent a permanent location. So I think maybe that that is a little bit of the hope that, you know, that I had the pleasure of having dinner with some of the members of Distraction the Summer. And, you know, it's just very difficult. I think just given the the cost of the cost and the relative cost of living in in Paris. It was like, we, you know if we could open a storefront or have something physical, I think that would really help. But then someone has to step away from the work and like, you know, it's like if you want to be a filmmaker or do you want to run a movie theater. So it's like it's, you know, it's hard to do
Danny Snelson (39:25)
Yeah.
Jamin (39:26)
both of those things. I've been thinking a lot about that. It's like, okay, what are all the different interconnections that sort of like need to happen to support this work? It's not just financial, it's not just relational, but it is also having a specific venue where these things are that could be a gallery or a university or something like that. Like there have to be all these different pieces of the puzzle that sort of like align. I do find like with independent games sometimes or with you know artist driven games, they're still lacking some of that infrastructure piece that could make these things
make these things a bit more lasting. You still have to do everything yourself. So yeah, yeah, yeah.
Danny Snelson (39:56)
Yeah. But
what what inspires you or what you want to make it really comes out of community. I mean, I think like so many of us, like, you know, we make works for our friends and our peers. And and you know, I want to like if I made a word, I would want to like I Jamin to really like this one. Right. But you know, so
Jamin (40:08)
Mm-hmm.
Danny Snelson (40:09)
it's like it's it's also these like local communities where, you know, in LA we have this really rich media arts ecology,
Jamin (40:14)
Right.
Danny Snelson (40:14)
places like Rip Space, the the work you did at game play arts, the the students that come out of the UCLA DMA program or USC. Like
Jamin (40:20)
Yeah, a hundred percent.
Danny Snelson (40:21)
there's like a specific and and like, you know, so
There's like certain kinds of educators, but also certain kinds of galleries and spaces, which is like, you know, quite different than maybe, you know, what one gets out of like the NYU game lab and and and you know, attending the the Wonderville, the the you know, all of the Wonderville events. so I think that there's something really interesting that and and then you do get these like, you know, France is sort of like in the middle. Like there's a kind of I guess I I think there's like a European vibe the games have. And you can see this with like artists who like will go and have these like residencies. Alice Bucknell, I think, is a good example.
who's making these like really beautiful and profound works that are you know deeply located, like thinking about California wildlife in some ways, but they feel very European, like they feel like they they kind of fit within a kind of European arts ecology. and you can think about the difference between, you know, the game ecology coming out of Japan, which you you said, JRPGs, but also like a whole range of genres, versus like the Chinese game ecology, which is is like I think like, you know, quite different and and focused more on on you know
massive multiplayer online games, you know, historically, but but I I think increasingly, you know, developing its own kind of like national or community based style. So I think that question's really interesting to to tra to track. And then and then once you have those styles, sorry, I I don't mean to go on too long. Once you have those styles, what's what's great is you can see them like cross over, right? So like you can
Jamin (41:39)
Right. Yeah, yeah.
Danny Snelson (41:40)
see like a French game designer making a really moving JRPG. and I think it's like
Jamin (41:45)
Right, right, yeah.
Danny Snelson (41:46)
Those moments of like, you know, intersection where where like a lot of magic happens.
Jamin (41:50)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The value exchange like across yeah, the value exchange I think is really, really, really important for making making these things for really making these things sing. Well, that is all the time that we have. We'll link to everything that we discussed in the show notes today. And as well as a couple other things. There's some great stuff from the archive, a piece with Ryan F. Bradley, wonderful writer and friend, on Nobi Nobi Boy and playing games with toddlers from the
from our from our back to school issue from many, many, many years ago. But Danny, where can people find your work if they want to keep up with you? yeah.
Danny Snelson (42:25)
I'm on the internet You
know. I'm on the internet I'm yeah, I'm at DSS dash edit dot com primarily, though I don't update it and I'm probably making some websites as we speak.
Jamin (42:38)
I guess it's like i you only ask that if your name is like John Stevens or something and that question of like how do you find me might be a little bit more pointed but
Danny Snelson (42:47)
I
have one doppelganger in London who's a graphic designer. There there's
Jamin (42:50)
Okay.
Danny Snelson (42:51)
another Danny Snells. and someone just got arrested a couple weeks ago, I found out in my Google searches. Yeah. I did not
Jamin (42:55)
if you type Danny Snelson games, I think then you'll be you you'll be
Danny Snelson (42:59)
I did not get arrested this year. Thanks, Jay Man. This was really lovely.
Jamin (43:00)
Okay. For the record, it's here. Get it on Wikipedia. Danny is here with us. Knock on one. Knock
on one, you make it to the the end of the year without getting arrested. So god gods got godspeed. All right. All right. Thanks, Danny.
Danny Snelson (43:10)
right, I don't don't make a liar out of myself. All right.
Bye.