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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 (00:06)
All right. David, how are you? How was your ⁓ how was your weekend?
Danny Snelson (00:11)
Very good, very good. It's so good to see you, Jamin. ⁓ good weekend. We're we're wrapping up the quarter here at UCLA, so it's been a bit hectic. it makes me all the more excited to have a good conversation.
Jamin (00:13)
Yeah, yeah, likewise.
Yeah, no, it's ⁓ fun. I appreciate you joining me. We've ⁓ we've changed the format for I changed the format for the podcast. you know, in the past I've been like interviewing people individually and then I gotten some guidance that it was good to have something that was like weekly, repeatable, and we already have the newsletter every week. So it made sense to to try to do that. ⁓ yeah, Danny, maybe I guess for people who don't know you, do you wanna give like a brief introduction to who you are and yeah, what what you do, maybe why and why jo why I asked you to join me.
Danny Snelson (00:52)
Sure, I'd love to. ⁓ is the the sound happening? The the background sound is the overlap. ⁓ lovely. Okay, that's so great. I like, is this just on my side? ⁓ no, I I I love that. ⁓ so yeah, my name is Daniel Snelson, ⁓ associate professor at UCLA in English and design media arts, where I also work with the UCLA Game Lab, the digital humanities for environmental narrative strategies. ⁓ my work
Jamin (00:57)
Yes, there is sound in the background. Yeah, yeah.
All right.
Danny Snelson (01:20)
Broadly is just on on video games. I'm working on a book called Eerie Wonder about the apprehension of networks, ⁓ in in video game aesthetics and the prosody of discovery. ⁓ I think that's yeah, that's me in a nutshell.
Jamin (01:34)
Okay. All right. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Well, ⁓ you know, one of the things I was hoping to do was kinda go through, you know, I write this newsletter every single week and one of the things I was looking to do was to try to cover some of the items in the newsletter. I mean, I think the start, you know, I spent the last weekend, ⁓ this past weekend, I went to New York City. ⁓ when's the last have you been to New York recently? Have you been to I don't know if you've spent any time in New York in the last like year or so?
Danny Snelson (01:57)
Yeah, I'm back and forth, usually at least every year.
Jamin (02:00)
Okay. Yeah. mean, I don't know if it's like the like Mam Dami like Afterglow or it's ⁓ just like the it was Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, the Knicks. It was crazy. I was with a friend who was wearing ⁓ like Knicks gear and ⁓ he was just like high fiving people on the street. Like they're just like there's just like just there's just like a camaraderie and this is before the first game had started and people were just so, so excited. You don't really get that as much in Los Angeles. even when you know that we have we we have like successful sports teams here.
Danny Snelson (02:04)
The mixed ascendant.
Yeah.
Jamin (02:30)
There's
not it's almost like it's because we've been spoiled by like spoiled by like success at some level in sports over the last like you know five to ten years. I feel like people kinda there's no droughts, you know. You need like a drought to kinda you know, drought basically to to help help spur camaraderie. but
Danny Snelson (02:47)
Yeah, it's
been interesting like watching the I don't know, the the various responses to the World Cup and and some of the like ridiculous failings already on the United States' behalf, alongside the the success, the the return of the NBA as a kind of like focal point. there must be some kind of like yeah, there must be something about the the way that the cities are are ⁓ hosting and and thinking about those those different kinds of sports dynamics.
Jamin (02:53)
Ha ha.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I went to Demo Fest this weekend. ⁓ Demo is part of New Inc. New Inc. is a arts and tech incubator. It was started ⁓ about ten, twelve years ago. ⁓ I knew the first director, Julia Kigansky, who was there, and our first office actually used to be like behind the new museum. So we'll get this like reflected the reflected light from from like the from the exterior. ⁓ but they've done a lot over the last decade really to try to advance the
professional careers of a lot of artists that are making stuff with technology. And this past year it was super interesting because they actually had a whole significantly more, significantly more work that was like focused on focused on games, including quite a few talks that were curated by Rhizome, a panel with Theo Trantofolidis, who was a DMA, UCLA, digital media arts graduate, as well as some other stuff that was out like in the exhibition. They had a little mini exhibition
that kind of like moved the that that helped kind of like frame some of the things that were happening. I you know, I really got me thinking like ⁓ you know about the you know my experiences going to museums over the last few ten or so, you know, or longer than that, but certainly looking at get games in museum context over the last like fifteen years and it really is this thing where it's like the shape of the future is here. You just kind of need to know like where, ⁓ ultimately like where where to look. ⁓
Can you tell me maybe maybe a little bit like you know, one of the things that came up at the conference, there was a great talk by Mitchell Chan, who's an artist be based down in Toronto, was a playlist selectee for us recently at Kill Screen. ⁓ and he gave this great talk kind of like looking at games, artists artists who are making games and attempting to present a definition, because you know he was joking that like, you know, when something has sufficiently sufficiently gotten large in size.
it's sufficiently successful that of course the thing that we need to do is define subcategories. That's like the most important thing. It's like make sure that we've got the little the dashes in place, the little micro genres. We really gotta figure it out. ⁓ but I I felt like there was a real challenge in terms of like because we are in this place, ⁓ we are in this place that is it it does seem kind of unique. We there are more artists making games. How how have we thought about maybe some of the like the subcategory stuff in terms of thinking about like well how do these games sort of fit in because it's gotten so much bigger than just like
Danny Snelson (05:06)
Yeah.
You think.
Jamin (05:29)
indie games like as a as a category.
Danny Snelson (05:32)
Yeah, I I I I'm so interested in the way you wrote about that that historical change or this this question ⁓ of, you know, the the real predominance. I mean, the same I I you you covered this well in the letter, but also I think in LA, I mean it's it's rare to see a show that has anything to do with technology that's not saturated with with game forms or or references to game forms. And then the game forms also bleed into like other media like sculpture and painting in in ways that I find really fascinating.
Jamin (05:52)
Mm-hmm.
Danny Snelson (06:00)
As far as like the yeah, breaking those things into like subgenres, I I it's so like it it's almost like bewildering that maybe in like two thousand and eight you could like have like a documentary that is on indie games as a whole. Or, you know, that there's like, you know, two academic monographs on like art and games and and they tried to be kind of comprehensive, like here's the history, here's all of it. And I think that's impossible now. There's just far too much and it sprawls in so many different directions. ⁓
Jamin (06:26)
Yeah. I mean one of the things I do I do I do appreciate about the talk is that you know I had a background in in I had a background writing about music before I wrote for pitchfork many, many moons ago. And I'm obviously the micro gen j having genre distinctions was was such a huge piece of like what what I think about that like period of like internet writing like about music was like breaking out these little subsections because you had SoundCloud, you started to have you had SoundCloud, you had
digital distribution encouraged ⁓ people to sort of figure out and it is sort of pre-algorithmic so it's kind of before Spotify and it's all happening kind of organically. Artists obviously like hate all this what I thought was interesting. One is like I have found in the past that artists like hate categorization. Whereas like I feel like game makers are maybe a bit more comfortable with sort of thinking about their game in terms of genre. And then also, you know, for Mitchell, one thing that he was trying to outline was like advancing idea of like a gentle art as opposed to when you're thinking about genre
⁓ as opposed to like a mechanic descriptor, right? So this is a role playing game or this is a first person shooter, trying to use some categories that were more ⁓ more reflective of the core experience of the work as opposed to nailing it down. Cause a lot of artists are making games with like a wide variety of mechanics, but they now kind of like fit under some sort of umbrella. So I I thought that was I thought that was super interesting that maybe that kind of the next development is maybe more focused on
It's about their experiential factors or something that's a little bit more opaque as opposed to like what you do in a video game. ⁓ I don't know. What are your thoughts on
Danny Snelson (07:51)
Yeah, I think with the you know, the ubiquity of games. I mean, it's part of what drew me to games. So my background is in experimental art and literature and and I'm like reverse engineering thinking about rule based, constraint-based literature as as always being actually more involved with with games or or offering things to video game studies than than one might ⁓ one might have thought ⁓ twenty years ago before the ubiquity of games. But my I I I came into games because, you know, you really reinvent the field every time. Like, you know, the book is relatively stable and
We have like staple genres in in literary studies. there can be like hybrid forms, but you know, the novel, the romance novel, ⁓ and then like genre fiction is like how do you shelve a thing? Like this goes in sci-fi, this in fantasy, but they're they're often kind of like more mixed than one might think. And like games, they they keep having to invent new, like I don't know, like Metroidania, for example. It can be like an entire category or like the the varieties of like weird deck builders that have come out. ⁓
Jamin (08:25)
Right.
Right, right.
Danny Snelson (08:45)
that that also like do these hybrid forms that pick different mechanics. And I think resisting definition by mechanic is is actually a a really useful way to think ⁓ about games. and and it's inverse like focusing like there are games that maybe the mechanic is the game, ⁓ versus like games that have like wild hybrid mechanics across the board. ⁓ so I know I think that categorization is is useful to know like ⁓ to build like
genre communities as well. I feel like, you know, the more works that you have in a specific genre, those works can speak to each other. So you can make like an anti FPS, for example, and only because there are already a dominant set of first person shooter games. And and so like having dominant genres in say triple A gaming or or mainstream gaming enables artists to take those genres and then flip them on their heads or or do kind of like counter counter generic work.
Jamin (09:16)
Right.
Right.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it is it is very difficult, I find, ⁓ you know, for artists making games in part because you're sort of pulled between these two different like if you're a game maker that's just making games, it's so much more straightforward, right? Like you your community is other game makers, your distribution mechanisms are all focused on games. But for artists coming to the field from something different, they're ha often having to interface with these two different environments. Like one is a game making community, a game making audience's certain ideas and expectations.
And then you like an art making audience, right? And so that is ⁓ I think that is that there is some complexity, there is some complexity there. I think specifically for artists who are making games that ⁓ can be a little bit hard to to resolve, and you often find yourself sort of speaking between like different worlds. ⁓ and so maybe some of the categorization is a way to maybe it feels like maybe a way to kind of like widen the net so that artists don't to your point about community, they don't feel like they're so alone. So if you're an artist making games, you're like, my community is actually this little pocket of independent game makers or
this little pocket, maybe it's scene based based on your location or something like that. But yeah, it is really driven by I think to your point, yeah, it's really driven by a sense of a desire to be with others when you're when you're making games, which can be a pretty lonely pursuit.
Danny Snelson (10:48)
Well, and and genres also, you know, genres ⁓ produce reading expectations. so like the the genre kind of primes you like if you you you place a game within a certain context, you you read it and you think of it differently. ⁓ I think a lot about Xiung ⁓ Chu's ⁓ amazing Do Metaphors Dream of Literal Sleep, where where ⁓ she works with science fiction in particular and and thinking about how if you read the sentence, his head exploded.
Jamin (10:53)
Mm, mm-hmm.
Okay.
Danny Snelson (11:13)
⁓ if it's a science fiction book, it it reads quite differently than if it's like a I don't know, like a like a realistic teen ⁓ comedy, right? Like, you know, is it is it a metaphor? Is it like a high intensity form of like reality? And and I think that games do that same thing when they set up different kind of generic expectations for their players. ⁓ we run into this all the time at at the UCLA game lab where our students are kind of hovering between gallery practices and and game making practices. And so
Jamin (11:21)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Danny Snelson (11:39)
you know, our students will make like a game and it's like, should this live in a gallery? Does this live in Twitch? Like where do you place it? And and where you place it produces different expectations and different forms of engagement. ⁓ so I think all those questions are really also like I think exploding right now given how much production is happening at this intersection, this kind of experimental intersection of of art and game making.
Jamin (11:45)
Right.
Got it. Yeah, it got me thinking maybe there should be ⁓ yeah, a visual novel, some kind of like visual novel romance, romance game that does involve heads exploding. So with a sufficient amount of sufficient sufficient amount of romantic overtures may trigger ⁓ a scanner's scanner's ex a scanner's esque sequence. ⁓ well let's look at a couple a couple of the games. I got a couple of the trailers here for some of the things I saw when I was in York that got me thinking about it. the first comes from from Peter Nichols.
Danny Snelson (12:07)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Jamin (12:27)
this is a game called Crude Oil. A game called Crude Oil. Peter is actually I I actually was in a class I taught for New Inc. on games. class I taught was on games. ⁓ the context is really interesting because he's playing with these two different ideas. ⁓ one is kind of like a physics-based game where you play as this sort of like gelatinous, gelatinous blob. But the the background is obviously the sort of the sinister nature of crude oil, right? So it might sort of give the appearance of being this.
you know, sort of like cute object, but is the thing that is ultimately responsible for ⁓ ultimately responsible for you know, the is sort of like sort of like climate climate collapse. I really I liked the inversion. This is like a good example where like Peter is a game maker and an artist, but he's also like inverting some of the tropes that you might see with like wholesome kind of like wholesome, like cozy wholesome, like cozy games. 'Cause I think that which I think speaks to your point about this idea that, you know, artists often can
like play with like some of these artists can like often play with some of these ideas and kind of invert the invert those two two things. Ca is there can you think of another, I don't know, kind of cozy inversion example either like in the arts or sort of playing with softness, but like doing it in a very kind of like I guess it's kind of like a soil and green sort of like a sinister sort of a sinister sort of way.
Danny Snelson (13:47)
Yeah, I love this. I love this crude little blob. It's so adorable. But also like there's something so funny about like having this, you know, crude like I guess you would call it an antihero, maybe. But I think that, you know, the the the defining game, I guess, in that genre is Doki Doki Literature Club. ⁓ or or that whole genre. And I think horror horror games do this maybe more than anything else, where a me side is maybe more a more recent example where it seems like you're playing a kind of cozy sim or or a dating game. ⁓ and then, you know, the
Jamin (13:57)
Yeah. Right, right.
Right, okay.
Danny Snelson (14:17)
that that that mode of play like can like set up a a kind of like calm that is interrupted by by absolute horror or or things going terribly awry or you know ⁓ glitching out. so I don't know. I think it's like a yeah it's a it's one like really like direct way and and I think that ⁓ that's part of like the power of genres is like and and horror does this all the time where it's like if you set up like ⁓ I had a project once about
horror movies, ⁓ where I wanted to just like produce cuts of horror movies, ⁓ where the the credits rolled ⁓ like right before the first minor note. So so like it would be like something like, you know, ⁓ like hard on their luck families find a great house for a perfect price. and then like everything just ends happily. But like horse always like it gives you like a minor note and it like sets up this kind of like, everything's going to be better. And then it's able to like, you know, ⁓ parse through like
Jamin (15:06)
Right.
Danny Snelson (15:12)
there's actually like horror lurking inside. But have to set up that like coziness or or or that sort of like sense of like romance or calm so that you can break it. And that's kind of like where those like moments of horror come from.
Jamin (15:24)
Right, right, right. The average everyday experience and then something is just a little just drifts a little bit, a little bit, and then things maybe drift from there. It is always like a slight drift, right? So it's never like a explicit from the gate. Like usually it's like you know, you sort of have something I I do think as a marker, I think, of like more contemporary horror, which we'll talk to talk about a little bit later, I think, with with backrooms and and things like that. But yeah. One of the other great experiences I had was going to see ⁓ Leo Castañeda's work.
There you go. Leo Castañena is a Miami-based Miami-based artist artist. His his grandmother was a Colombian painter who ⁓ spent her formative years in the Amazonian rain basin. And he has spent gosh man, he's been working on this game for so long. I saw it as an MFA project that he was working on in 2011.
But it's a it's a game, it's called ⁓ Camou Flux Levels and Bosses, and you sort of play as this sort of figure ⁓ who's kind of operating inside of this like non-narrative space. one of the defining features I think for for Leo is texture, and he's done a lot of great work of taking his own paintings. He's he's an abstract expressionist painter, informed by Latin American ⁓ ab abstraction, and he's scanning them and then turning those into ⁓ maps and textures like inside of
inside of like the game itself. ⁓ also very heavily influenced by Kojima and Melcare Solid. He's trying to also invert stealth. That was one of the things he talked about ⁓ at the conference with Demo Fest. ⁓ is inverting this like context for stealth where stealth is not something like a kill or be killed, but is much more something about like blending in with environments and finding like harmony with environments, as opposed to trying to basically like save your own skin ⁓ so to speak. But one of the things I thought was ⁓ was tremendously cool was the fact that
he was selected for the Whitney Biennial as a as an art as one of the as one of the one of the artists ⁓ selected one of the artists like selected ⁓ as part of their part of their show. He got, you know, basically a big huge corn I mean, I would say relative to some of the other artists in the show, I mean a I'd say a pretty remarkable stage with with a background vinyl. I was curious, had you seen Leo's work before or I'm just curious if you had seen Leo's work before
Just any thoughts that you had on on on seeing it h you seeing it here.
Danny Snelson (17:50)
⁓ it's so stunning. No, and and like so many things, Jamin. I'm so grateful for your investigative reporting and your work in the field to bring these treasures to to my laptop. ⁓ I I I love I mean, I think that there's something so ⁓ fantastic about bridging the a kind of like analog painting practice with texture creation in in virtual environments. I think there's something like really poignant about you know fighting against both.
Jamin (18:13)
⁓
Danny Snelson (18:19)
generative assets, which of course is like a big discourse. ⁓ but also like like unreal engine fatigue, you know, where you have these like high-res things, but all the textures are the same. It's like you see the same tree in like five different games. and and I think that there's such a hunger for that that the like, you know, there's something about like the analog that still feels to us like quite human and and those moments when the analog gets converted to the digital, it feels like like more real than real in some ways. I I got this experience quite a bit playing ⁓ maybe like Expedition 33 or something.
Jamin (18:22)
Right. Yeah, sure.
Danny Snelson (18:47)
where you have these like, you know, fantastical painted landscapes. ⁓ and that being immersed in them made me feel closer to painting than I I might feel to an actual painting in a gallery. Like there's there's like something about that like proprioceptive, like living inside a painting that I think is ⁓ really like awe inspiring here.
Jamin (19:06)
Yeah. I mean we use that phrase like this you know, work is like painterly. A game is like painterly, but I think that often describes I I think that is like language that sort of get used to sort of shorthand for like you know, beautiful as opposed to like the actual like texture of paint, like the actual like you can sort of feel like Leo's background, like as a painter, like really coming through. really coming through. And yeah, it's such a good point about the process side of it. I just yeah, I think we see a lot of unreal stuff that ends up unreal unity that ends up
having the same sort of like look and feel. And it's a nice reminder that you know so I think sometimes as players, we can be bound to think that the way that things are are the way that things have to be. And ⁓ it's a nice reminder that if you're coming with from a different practice, you may bring a different set of skills, a different set of concerns for the visual language. I think that that's ⁓ that's a lot I mean I think that is also something that you know for an artworld audience they are also going to respond to. One of the other things I thought was interesting about ⁓ about camo
Camo Flux recall grotto was that there were two different modes. The one you can see here on screen, you could sit and play through a short vertical slice with a sculpture that he had designed, like a critic acrylic sculpture sculpture that you could sit on, the best gaming furniture is a best gaming furniture that money could buy. ⁓ But there was also a ⁓ a vertical, basically machinima ⁓ video clip that he had d designed. It's sort of like you could sort of zoom and zoom out of this kind of like sequence and loop. And it that to me felt like
Danny Snelson (20:17)
Yeah.
Jamin (20:33)
Also one of these like accommodations for putting work in gallery spaces where for people who have controller anxiety, they still can experience the work in a meaningful way without having to like pick up a pick up a controller. But I thought Leo's decision to Leo working with the curatorial team, the decision to the decision to to do that, I thought was was a really was a really good curatorial, really curatorial choice. ⁓
There was one other piece. This was by accident at the at at DB. Let me see if I can find it. There was one other piece that ⁓ that was not explicit. here it is right here. So there's some work by Isabel Francis McGuire, who is a sculptor. ⁓ she focuses mostly on ⁓ American myth. And so she had a sequence there, a a sequence of of sculptures there. ⁓ this is from Artnet.
But a sequence of sculptures that at first glance, so these are all there's two sides to this wall. On the one side you have these like hooded figures. ⁓ but all the character models were all pulled from from Doom. ⁓ like it just it's in the exhibition text. And that got me thinking about like, you know, how Isabel came to Doom as a place to pull individual figures, ⁓ and also w what that might say about what she's trying to suggest about the work, about like the nature of like violence in American history.
Danny Snelson (21:36)
Mm.
Jamin (21:52)
but this one this work is focused on the Salem, the two different sides of the Salem Salem witch trial, which I thought was which I thought was super super interesting, these hooded figures that sort of bear resemblance of maybe sort of like video game characters, but ⁓ but like not quite in a way that's like legible. ⁓ yeah.
Danny Snelson (22:03)
Yeah.
Yeah, I love that bleed.
I think that's so and and I think that's one of the things where you can take the the meaning making system of a game and then port it into the into like some other kind of sculptural practice. I mean, we and and and culture at large, right? So we keep saying like I mean, are these N N PCs, for example, and like like what you know, what is the baggage that an NPC holds when you put it in context with like, you know, a sculptural practice or or like the history of the Salem Wish trials. there there's all kinds of ways I think that that ⁓ yeah opens up ⁓ this kind of like
Jamin (22:24)
Right.
Danny Snelson (22:39)
dual portal where where I and this is one of the things I I worked on in my my first book, The Little Database, ⁓ which is like when you digiti like the the movement between analog and digital practices like has this mutually illuminating effect where like what like there's an obvious thing to say like okay you have to understand these sculptures through Doom. But I think like the more provocative thing is ⁓ how does a sculpture like this transform our understanding of Doom? Like if if this is like part of like this like, you know, ever growing kind of canon of of fandoms or or whatever that are
reworking those materials. ⁓ I feel like next time I I do open up Doom, I'm gonna like hallucinate some like Salem witchcraft thoughts, which I think is is like, you know, a nice, a nice experience of like living cultural property and and the like, you know, ⁓ like ongoing kind of shuffling of references.
Jamin (23:28)
Yeah, yeah. This this character on the right is the one that really jumped out at me. I was like, this looks so familiar. It's like it's one of these things like it is familiar if you have played games, but it does not explicitly like ⁓ position itself as being ⁓ as being like a game-based game-based work, which I thought was ⁓ which I thought was like pretty, pretty remarkable. ⁓ cool. I mean, there were a couple other things that kind of jumped that jumped top of mind for me as I was thinking about these, as I was ch as sort of thinking about my experience, experience in New York. It came up in
The newsletter in some other ways. I didn't get a chance to, you know, I didn't get a chance to make it sound like there's there was an opportunity available to me to go to the Venice Biennale this year. ⁓ you know, the big, obviously big, big arts festival that happens every year in the city that bears its name. ⁓ but there were a couple game-based things that showed that showed up there that I thought were super interesting. ⁓ the first was ⁓ I guess another ⁓ DMA grad, Adrian Abella's Declaration of Dependence.
Danny Snelson (24:05)
Yeah.
Jamin (24:27)
⁓ which is a let me see if I can find it here. Okay. ⁓ decoration dependence, it's actually on a different website. It started as a 2023 work, but it was selected for the the it was selected for the Maltese pavilion. and they worked with Falsework, which is another a lot of crossover with ⁓ UCLA's DMA, DMA department, but it was a like an engine-based, engine-based work where there's three different, basically three functional zones.
Danny Snelson (24:46)
Yeah.
Jamin (24:55)
and a character that represents basically the spirit of Malta that you could interact with. I believe it's AI powered. So it's like, you know, powered by this like conversational, you have a conversation with this like individual, this individual character over time. ⁓ you can see down here on the on the right hand side. So that was one that I thought was like a super interesting, ⁓ super interesting ⁓ integration of like game engine based work. I think ⁓ Abella doesn't have like that in his locker, so to speak, and to work with external, an external partner.
And then the other one was ⁓ significantly stranger. so the at the at the I heard about this from ⁓ from a friend of mine ⁓ about the about the Chinese pavilion. You know, let me show this to you. I'd love to get your thoughts on this. ⁓ so in the in the Chinese pavilion ⁓ at the BNL, it was you know they just had like a non-playable version of ⁓ a non-playable version of Blackmith Wukong Wukong.
Danny Snelson (25:26)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Fantastic.
Jamin (25:53)
I'd love to get your take on this. I like I was a little confused by it in the sense that, you know, there are other great you know, Chinese artists working with games. I was a little confused by how this ended up there. ⁓ what do you make of something like what do you make of something like this kind of like showing up kind of like without context like in a in a place like the like in a place like the the BNL?
Danny Snelson (26:14)
my God. Jamie, I feel like I could talk about this for an hour. There's so much going on here. And you know, of course, yeah, I think the last time I was at Venice for the BNL, I Liu Yang had like a major, you know, major works. And so, like, yeah, like this is like a there there's a lot of artists, but I I think you what you compared ⁓ the the Poland giving Obama the Witcher, which was kind of like national cultural export. And and you know, of course, like this like invokes that whole history with like the the release patterns of Wukong.
Jamin (26:17)
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah, ex yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Danny Snelson (26:42)
And and sort of like the bans on certain kinds of criticism. ⁓ that like, you know, it seemed like the the game itself as it as it circulated had had always had I don't maybe propaganda is too strong a word, ⁓ but like a strong kind of like a a strong set of w of expectations of how the world would receive such a game. And and it makes sense. I mean, Journey to the West, which, you know, the game is a kind of retelling of is is sort of like
you know, a national treasure of of a narrative and it shows up in in so many works. I'm reading through Omniscient Reader's viewpoint right now, where where it has like a very prominent role. And and so I think that there's like both this kind of like deep history of like national identity around like the great epic or something. Like I don't know what we have in the states that's similar, maybe like Passion of the Christ. But like, you know, that and at the same time this kind of like, yeah, ⁓ like
Jamin (27:28)
Ha ha ha.
Danny Snelson (27:34)
Identifying it as an artwork ⁓ in the BNL is is such a like it's it's a weird, it's a weird move. It's a weird move on so many different levels. And ⁓ I I think also it's like that like it it feels like in in so many ways we're talking about like artists making games and and how artists navigate being in art or or game contexts. There's something really puzzling about a pavilion representing a nation taking something that is clearly a game, like a triple A video game.
Jamin (27:42)
Right.
Yeah.
Danny Snelson (28:03)
And then
like they're the ones are like also art. This is like this is an artwork that exists. ⁓ and yeah, I I like I said, I think I there would be there would be far more time to parse this than we might have in our conversation.
Jamin (28:16)
Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, you know, I do think some of it is these you know, all of these th these types of events are they are f they are a stage for like cultural diplomacy. Like that is the that is the subtext for them. you know, the fact that you're divided up by countries, right? And the idea is to bring the world's artists. They represent in the countries where you have to be a p we have see in the United States, had huge issues with our pavilion ⁓ this year and who gets to represent, you know, who gets to represent who and
So these are obviously like by definition like political questions. At the same time, it does sort of to me reflect that the I there's like what is the word? Like there is like it's like there's a concern on on the on the on the on the part of the on on the part of the Chinese pavilion that they need to showcase those things out in the world. Like blackmail, like the the demonstration of blackmouth's success as a cultural product is that it's sold like tens of millions of units. And so
Like it I think that turn to say like, this also needs to be taken seriously in an artistic like in a in a different context entirely. I thought was was a nice was an interesting juxtaposition with what I'd seen like at the at the at the Whitney, which was like selecting a game, presenting it in the context of these other artists, but selecting a game that sort of like fits or is ⁓ in discourse with a theme for the show, whereas this one just kinda felt like just kind of like just kind of popped in. But
Danny Snelson (29:42)
Yeah.
Jamin (29:42)
I'm very curious about people making working their way pred and because it was non playable, again, doesn't make any of those kind of like concessions to ⁓ a gallery context where, you know, they didn't design a version of it that would be playable for audiences and games were by definition interactive. And so the whole thing felt extremely, extremely strange. ⁓ yeah.
Danny Snelson (30:00)
Yeah. And then it's just
like an image like an you know, you know, you called it like an ad, but it's like this like kind of like index or it's just this icon that's like this this game is not here, but it exists and it's like the whole thing is the work. Like it in some ways, if if it were edited down to like a machinima or a video, and of course like the game is undeniably beautiful. And I think as a culture we're still trying to figure out like how do we make sense of these multimedia objects that we call games. there's a tremendous amount of artistry ⁓ in the game.
Jamin (30:25)
Right.
Danny Snelson (30:29)
but I think that there's something weird about like just indexing the like like it's not like usually when you go to a pavilion, like you see the art, like the art is there and this is just an index for an art that lives somewhere else. there. Yeah.
Jamin (30:42)
Yeah, damn.
a question for you, Danny, is like who who's who's getting the better end of the arrangement? Is the art world or the video game world getting a better the better end of the arrangement when something like this like happens at a at a pavilion?
Danny Snelson (30:57)
I have a few different responses to that. My better end of the bargain. ⁓ I like you could think of that in sort of economic terms. ⁓ of course like, you know, ⁓ and
Jamin (31:07)
Right, sure, sure. Arrangement.
Let's say r arrangement might be a better ⁓ more value neutral. More value neutral.
Danny Snelson (31:14)
Yeah, well like when
when you call something like an art, ⁓ it it also enters into like a different kind of economy of of objects. So I mean, games cost sixty dollars if they're you know, on this level, like triple A games, or they used to, I increasingly they're costing seventy dollars or whatever. ⁓ but you know, like artworks can be, I don't know, ⁓ millions of dollars featuring a banana taped to a wall. like the the like market economy.
for an artwork is just on on a completely different level. And and so ⁓ I feel like there there might be, yeah, there's there's like branding a game as an artwork that one might I don't know, can someone collect Black Myth Wukong? Like is there like some kind of like and and it and I think that's part of the like the core tension between a popular form that circulates on our devices or our consoles, like video games, versus the the like ⁓ like a rarefied commodity in the art world, which is ⁓ you know, its value is built on its scarcity that there's
Jamin (31:45)
Right, right, right.
Right.
Right, right.
Danny Snelson (32:11)
just one of them or or there's just like a limited number of them. And and so I think it's the play of like economic scarcity that that might be most interesting to think about in that really kind of context.
Jamin (32:20)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I mean it does speak to this unique place that games sort of like sit in. They can be both things simultaneously. And ⁓ they can be things that are like that that that check two different two different boxes. And I think that's kind of like a special it's kind of like a special place. I I mean it does speak to also maybe sort of the strange place that games sit in because those are characteristics that you would sort of think of as like design objects that think sometimes sit in that in-between category where, you know, a meme's chair or something like that can both be
Something that belongs at a museum, but also something that can be owned by like millions and millions of people. And so, ⁓ y you know, so I I think that is some of it too, that games are this like interesting intersection because it's a visual medium. Usually it's usually a visual medium. It can sort of be considered in a visual art context because it's an interactive medium, it could be considered in a ⁓ like a digital a digital commerce context, like other things that you can buy on your phone. but then also because it is a design object, it has the potential to, you know, have a
the scale, so to speak, of of of ⁓ it's able to have a scale of of of reach and impact that is sort of unique as well. So it is an interesting, it is like a really I think interesting question for like where games kind of like games kind of can sit and be multimodal in that way. They sort of can be in a bunch of different places simultaneously. And that is ⁓ what it draws me to them, but it is also very strange. ⁓
Danny Snelson (33:28)
Yeah.
Yeah, and Yeah. I was thinking
like alongside the economics, there's also like the temporality of like, you know, ⁓ you can't sit in the the Venice, ⁓ you know, in the in the Chinese pavilion and play sixty hours of Black Myth Wukong to get to the end of it. And so like, you know, artists that do have these hybrid practices like have to design with like, you know, the the temporality of a gallery in mind. ⁓ whether that's like if you have like a long form media like I don't know like Christian Marclays clocks or something.
They can run, you know, for twenty four hours and you you you know, you you only see the the moments that you see. ⁓ or you you have to like shorten these really long things into like short clips that somebody who's like idly strolling through a gallery is gonna see like the three minutes on ⁓ on a loop that that you might want them to see. ⁓ and I think with interactive media that becomes that much more difficult. Like, can you have a meaningful experience interacting with an object ⁓ over like three the three minutes that you might give it? ⁓ I mean, three minutes wouldn't be enough to get through like
the for like just figuring out the basic functions of playing Black Myth Wukong. And so there's something about like the like inherent kind of like time demands I think that the different spaces produce.
Jamin (34:37)
Right, right, right, right.
Yeah. All right. Well, moving on. ⁓ one of the other things that we l I looked at this week was just an absolute banger of an essay ⁓ by Domjon Jovanovic, who I believe teaches at Cyark, is a game designer themselves. ⁓ Domjong wrote a ⁓ an essay called Collision Mess Collision Mesh of the Real, but it's really about backrooms. It's really about backrooms, the concept and the movie. ⁓ I I thought this was just like a fascinating piece to read.
Danny Snelson (35:05)
Yeah.
Jamin (35:11)
⁓ the you know the argument that he follows is basically that you know the usual ⁓ the usual filing, the way we think about what we think about what makes something like this image of the backrooms, which was ⁓ image of an empty office building, i office room somewhere that showed up on 4chan and kind of like developed its own mythology online, ⁓ is that we think about these we think about the empty offices, the damn carpet carpet, the fluorescent hum. And what
Duanwick argues is that the this ⁓ the way we talk about backrooms is that's only like the atmosphere. Like that is the way that we is sort of like this mood and the setting. ⁓ but he persu presupposes that that backrooms as a as a concept, this idea that there are these places that no person should go is premised on this idea of something that's familiar for people who play games, this idea of like the no clip, like when you are playing a game and you
Danny Snelson (36:05)
Mm-hmm.
Jamin (36:08)
pass through a wall or something like that. The wall is never really a wall. It's just like it's it's this liminal space that you can kind of pass through. And that there's sort of this implied engagement with games when we think about backrooms like as a as a con as a concept. ⁓ I loved I love this essay. He draws in this lineage from Solarist and Annihilation, the the book Annihilation, kind of jumps in and out. Obviously he's you architect or is an interested in architecture and so kind of jumps between a lot of different ⁓ a lot of different places. But
I the the the big idea here was that the backrooms are this like internet native folk cosmology and it's built across all these different wikis and videos because the world allows for itself to behave like a like a gay a game game environment. yeah, could you tell me a little bit about I mean your experience with the backrooms mean? I I mean I remember seeing it kind of like being passed around like over the years.
So, you on one hand I like a little surprised that it become a a a film at some at some level because it is just it there was a short video, but you know, i on on its face, it does seem like a it does not seem too unlike ⁓ you know, too unlike like the battleship movie or like, you know, on its face it's like, this is just another example of Hollywood looking for like anything that might resemble IP and then trying to turn it into something. But clearly I'm I you know, clearly I did not see the potential, but
Danny Snelson (37:15)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Jamin (37:26)
Can you tell me a little bit your experience maybe with this backrooms concept and then we can talk a little bit more about the essay as well.
Danny Snelson (37:31)
Yeah, I've been thinking so much about the backrooms because I'm I'm working on the eerie and it is like, you know, I think it's like the defining kind of eerie space in the present. And part of my my interest in the eerie is ⁓ you know, feel like things like that. I one of the reasons why I think the backrooms is is so persistent and so inspiring. I mean, my students are all obsessed with the backrooms. ⁓ one of them made a project where they recreated our classroom as a final project. but of course you could no clip through the wall of our classroom and find yourself in the back rooms.
Jamin (37:34)
Ha ha ha.
Danny Snelson (37:58)
So like there's something like, okay, so it it's related to like institutions, it's related to these like digital networks. And I think, you know, in particular, this kind of like empty, haunted space. ⁓ part of what I I one of the reasons why I'm turning to games to think about ordinary media, like ⁓ increasingly the internet feels like the backrooms. That there's something about this kind of like it feels like there there might be people there, but it's also like hollowed out and and empty. And you know, increasingly like what is it, like some sixty percent of internet traffic is run by bots.
Jamin (38:27)
Right, right, right.
Danny Snelson (38:28)
So like,
you know, like w it feels like we're living in this kind of space that used to be inhabited, that used to have a purpose. I know you've been thinking a lot about offices and severance, which is a kind of backrooms adjacent property. But like you know, like these spaces used to have like meaning and and like they're like it feels like the the meaning has evaporated. But what we have left over are these like empty haunted infrastructures where real experiences used to happen. And so I think it like taps into like a like a profound kind of affect ⁓ for for for our our current moment.
Jamin (38:38)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. Yes, yeah, yeah.
Danny Snelson (38:58)
⁓ but I'd love to talk more about the essay in particular, which I yeah, w go ahead.
Jamin (38:58)
Yeah, yeah, I mean
Yeah, I mean of the things that I liked ⁓ about the way that he had structured this is you always sort of think about like empty spaces like that as ⁓ he talks about this difference between like spaces that ⁓ have like have not been inhabited versus formerly inhabited and they have a different kind of like register and so we often think of like the heat so this like spooky image or something like that is a place that no one's ever gone to. You know, it's the it's the
It's the haunted house. It's the as opposed to a space that sort of implies that someone was just there and the door just closed behind. And you've now you've walked into the space and it leaves you with this question about like what just came before. Because it's not, these images are not, they're not run down, you know, they're not ⁓ these are not like dilapidated. They there is a crispness to them that implies that there is something that just like just on the just on the other edge. So I I love that distinction in the essay. I thought that was I thought that was a super interesting way to kind of think about it.
Danny Snelson (39:54)
Yeah. And I and you know that's how, you know, Mark Fisher talks about the eerie is like, you you expect something to be there ⁓ and it's not there and and there's something that like like an empty mall or or or the back rooms. But what I loved about this, I and you you cited, I think, you know, the most interesting part from the essay, ⁓ about ⁓ the exhaustion of grandeur, ⁓ or the an in an infinity that has no majesty, which I I love. ⁓ but also you you know, that that it's like a maintenance space. Like these these back rooms, like the lights still work.
Jamin (40:11)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Danny Snelson (40:22)
And they're they're often they're like they're quite clean. It's like, did somebody vacuum the carpet in the back room? Who's fixing the lights? ⁓ and and ⁓ so there's something about like the like like the ordinariness, like that there's something like banal and and and like familiar. ⁓ but but also it's like yeah, it's got this kind of like you wonder to its like lack of grandeur. So like the back rooms are also just like simultaneous to each other that you can you can be, I don't know, chased by Shrek through the back rooms.
Jamin (40:22)
Yeah.
Right, right, right, right. Yeah.
Danny Snelson (40:51)
And and which is one popular mod. And you know, like every hallway looks more or less the same. So you get this kind of like disoriented, but also like kind of like hollowed out, again, like banal, but like yeah, the loss of grandeur and the loss of majesty, I I I find really ⁓ important to to thinking about the background. I'd love to hear yeah, your thoughts on on like that aspect and and yeah, how that like how that clip showed up in the the the newsletter this week.
Jamin (40:58)
Right.
Yeah, this is the I guess this is the the little section. This is what makes this a back room such an important image. They are one of the clearest forms contemporary culture has produced of infinity after the exhaustion of grandeur. They still imagine an infinite world, but this affinity has no majesty, has given up every claim to the celestial, the divine, the abysmal, the oceanic, the and the properly ruinous, and is lit instead by fluorescent tubes and covered in carpet. The absolute has become maintained space. ⁓
I you know, what it got me thinking about a lot is ⁓ you know, we live in a I think we live in a very like interesting and ⁓ sort of precarious moment, particularly living here in the United States, where ⁓ I do think that we are you know, I had somebody tell me that described like Amsterdam this way. And they sort of when you come to these cities, these places that were former sites of like global power.
⁓ they there are places that have that have abandoned any sort of like pretense of grandeur. So is this fellow is Dutch and he's like, I feel Amsterdam is that way you can sort of like feel it in the air, like the buildings are slightly out of list. Like this is place that like used to be the center of the universe and is no no longer no longer it's I feel that way you go to Buenos Aires. I feel like the same way is like the center of, you know, Latin American economic power, as these all you know, these beautiful. But if it's like
⁓ beautiful buildings that are sort of like slightly in disrepair. And you know, in some ways, you know, living here in the United States, it does get me thinking about like maybe that is the backrooms is a resonant image because it is ⁓ is like a projection into the future, is a way of thinking about like these things that you know, these things that might be ⁓ might be someday these like moments of American like American greatness or grandeur or whatever that might be like slowly like falling into slowly it falling into disrepair. I think that is what got me interested.
Danny Snelson (42:58)
Yeah.
Jamin (42:58)
I mean,
the other part of it was that really struck me was, you know, his idea of like a game engine uncanny. I think a lot about ⁓ I think a lot about the ways I have this hypothesis about, you know, the games that like you know, we sort of think of games as being this discrete thing, but if we think of them as an arch form, then maybe we'll find them in all of these like a hundred years from now. We may have all of these things that bear the resemblance of fingerprints of a ludic century, but we won't be able to necessarily distinguish them that way. And so
That was what I think would jumped out at me is that like backrooms from a film context, as an image as a form of like folk media, but also the fact that it's now become a very extremely popular, very popular film. Sort of like ⁓ Edge of Tomorrow, that the the Doug Lyman film where you know sort of Tom Cruise is playing this character that it kinda takes a very, I think, ⁓ in some ways, a very effective, I I really like that movie, but a very sort of crude way of thinking about games. Like you die and then you get to repeat what could you but what if you could repeat your life over and over again?
in an action movie context. This is like a much more sophisticated engagement, I think, with games. ⁓ and I you know, game joint game speaks to to what I think is the extremely high degree of literacy that exists in internet communities with games as a form, as a conversant form of language. And that's what propels backwards. So you don't have to say this is a video game movie, which is what you know the essay is about, but that is implied for people who watch it, they are familiar with these ideas because they've spent
the majority of it was like playing games. That was what really jumped out. I think that was the piece that really jumped out at me and why it was so it fit in that intersection category, intersection category for for for me. ⁓
Danny Snelson (44:25)
Hmm.
Yeah, I love
this like yeah, reverse engineering of ludic reading. ⁓ like I I was thinking about the manga All You is All You Need Is Kill, I think, which is the edge of tomorrow. But I'm ⁓ with backrooms, I I think a lot I've I've been trying to think alongside Nihai's Blam, which is this like kind of like big, haunted, empty kind of like Dyson sphere, where they're like there used to be culture, but it's all gone and you just get these like big, haunted, empty corridors all across the work. And I think, you know, thinking about that through games actually would changes the way that you, you know, might experience that.
I also think that, you know, the backrooms ⁓ like remind me quite a bit of what happens with large language models right now, where you know, like ⁓ gen like there's nothing that feels more like the backrooms than getting an email that is like clearly written by AI or or worse, like an essay or a thesis written by AI. Like, you know, like large language models are made up of of all of the productions of real humans, mostly ⁓ on our culture, our books, like.
Jamin (45:18)
Yeah.
Danny Snelson (45:29)
There there used to be humans there, but but they're, you know, regurgitated in this kind of like hollowed out, undead, zombified form. And I think it's that like, you know, and and the internet also, like just replete with its ads and everything, increasingly feels like a kind of like undead, empty space. That's like there used to be people here, but now there's just like these like weird robots that are chasing you and and watching you, like surveilling you everywhere you go. Like that's part of the uncanny too, is you walk through the back rooms and you have the sense like,
Jamin (45:51)
Yeah. Yeah.
Danny Snelson (45:57)
Somebody is watching me. And I think we can't escape this kind of sense that we're always we're always being surveilled. Like every time we click on a link or or or move through the world, ⁓ that it picks up on it. Yeah.
Jamin (46:06)
Yeah. Yeah yeah.
Well, that's actually I think a good seg. I think it's actually a really good segue to ⁓ a last little p piece. I did a feature this week on a game designer named Cat Milk. I didn't ask Cat Milk why ⁓ I didn't ask them about why they're called cat milk. The person is on is unnamed, but I did conduct an interview with them. Presumably this is not an AI figure on the on the internet. But cat
Danny Snelson (46:30)
Okay.
Jamin (46:31)
Cat milk, I it's part of a series I've been doing called Currently Making. ⁓ very interesting games in development. It's such an interesting ⁓ public process. I th something I think is really unique about games is that so much of the production does happen so much of the production, increasingly more the production happens in plain sight in a way that is like legible and visible for for people over a longer period of time. That really does not happen. Like when someone's writing a book, they sometimes they'll write like, you know, they'll release an excerpt, they'll write an essay. But, you know, game makers are often releasing
prototypes, they're releasing demos, they're releasing images, they're releasing ⁓ short little videos. So I'd come across his work I think on Instagram and then reached out for an interview. Let me I'll just play the let me just play the trailer here. ⁓
Danny Snelson (47:10)
Yeah,
please.
Jamin (47:50)
Just a couple days, I guess. I I didn't realize that. I forgot. Steam Access is coming right up. So the ⁓ the essay is the the the the feature I wrote on Catmell was called What Violence Look What Does Violence Look Like in Pink? And Catmickle's been working on this game for the last four years. It's a first person shooter ⁓ that takes the office really seriously as a site ⁓ of hyperviolence through a sci-fi lens. ⁓
Danny Snelson (47:52)
Yeah.
Jamin (48:16)
Climate flooding has shrunk the land, cities have stacked it everyone into single corporate towers that are defended by these private militaries, and you play as a corporate peacekeeper. A deal goes wrong, you fight your way out. You know, they're still working through the kind of the plot. But I, you know, I thought of this as being in this ⁓ this office as pressure chamber, like kind of kind of like lineage. my wife and I have been watching Jacques Cotti's playtime, ⁓ which at the time was like the most expensive.
Most expensive French film ever made. it's titular character, kind of like wandering through this man in the graysuit, kind of like dreamscape. Office space is a good example. Severance, ⁓ Criterion recently did a great like corporate thrillers collection with with the deal and ⁓ with with the deal and the firm and ⁓ the deal, the firm, and then there there are a couple, a couple others. There's this this closure, ⁓ just a lot of great films that kind of Michael Clayton obviously is a great example.
Danny Snelson (49:11)
Yeah.
Jamin (49:12)
And there's this irony that you know, game companies, I think there's also this irony that like game companies themselves are also made in these like extremely boring like office parks. If you live here in Los Angeles, you'll see like the Square Enix office, which is right by the LAX, is like just the most I mean, given, you know, how unusual Square Enix's games typically are, is ⁓ the the exterior really belies sort of like the madness within. ⁓ that anyway, so all these things were kind of like buzzing in my head before I I sat down and interviewed, interviewed, in interviewed.
Danny Snelson (49:33)
Yeah.
Jamin (49:41)
cat milk. let me just let me just play a quick clip here from the from the interview and then we can kinda we can kinda talk about it. This is cat milk talking about corporate militarism as a as a as a concept for the interview.
can you tell me little bit what what do you think about like this this is a setting for setting for a game? it's kind of this mix of both like near future, ⁓ distant future, not so distant future with climate stuff, you know, recent past with ⁓ you know, late stage capitalism. I don't know. Tell me a little bit wha what what speaks to you maybe thematically, maybe thematically about the the space that Cat Milk has decided to inhabit, like for a game like this.
Danny Snelson (51:44)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. ⁓ yeah, I think there's so much there. And to to your inventory of of office movies, I'd add, you know, the these contemporary like Secession or or you know Mount Mountainhead, right? Where they're not in the office, but they're like determining the fate of the world from a, you know, a company retreat, more or less. ⁓ but I think, you know, there's there's models for this in games too. I I I I think about in relationship to to say, you know, the corporations in Cyberpunk twenty seventy seven, ⁓ or or the like the remaining corporations, the foundational corporations and the the outer worlds, which I think does this.
Jamin (52:05)
Right. Yeah.
Danny Snelson (52:26)
kind of skewing well. I I love that the like the role of candy in this one ⁓ is is kind of amazing. And I want to talk a lot about trash and waste, I suppose. but ⁓ I think that yeah this there's something about that that imaginary this like militarized corporate future that that ⁓ again I think ⁓ and this is Jameson and others that like you know speculative fiction always tells us more about our present moment and and we see the the dominance and the power that core you know these like big tech companies or these like you know core conglomerate
like mega companies already have and ⁓ the the violence that they produce is maybe less on the surface. And so I feel like a game like this can like tap into like, you know, these like the the the otherwise invisible structures of violence and harm that these corporations are producing. And this one's just like right on the nose. Like you're like ⁓ you know, I think you're you're a security guard that's like, you know, going through this like hellscape of an office and very, you know, I think the back rooms is a good transition. ⁓ but I like also that like there's something a little bit more ⁓
Jamin (53:13)
Right.
Danny Snelson (53:25)
closer to our present, less ⁓ bizarre maybe than its closest analog, which is obviously ⁓ cruelty squad. ⁓ where like cruelty squad is this kind of and and maybe we can parse their their aesthetics ⁓ a bit more ⁓ as we as we talk. But I I do feel like yeah this whole trend of of like the militarized corporate future is like A, like, yeah, that feels like a real extrapolation from where we're at. ⁓ but but B, like maybe can help us reflect on ⁓
Jamin (53:31)
Right. Sure.
Yeah.
Danny Snelson (53:53)
What companies try to do, which is to make their violence invisible.
Jamin (53:57)
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think it's an interesting turn for games. Also, you know, sort of think of like first person shooters as a as a genre. ⁓ either focus on these like fantastic environments, so you know, Halo or you know, there's like the sci-fi and violence, ⁓ sci-fi, ⁓ sci-fi, or you know, occasionally there's like kind of like some steampunk. You're sort of bound by like having a projectile, right? And so that maybe sort of like limits some of the places. And so ⁓ I think the idea of like bringing that stuff like more
in-house, so to speak. ⁓ yeah, I think it does. I do think it speaks to like a specific moment that we're that we are living in, you know, when, you know, ⁓ you know, data centers and, you know, both data centers and ICE are looking at like office parks, looking at office parks as places to like be their home location. it does seem like very fitting, but also just very like extremely, extremely, extremely sad.
Danny Snelson (54:38)
Back room.
Yeah, and I've I
I loved in ⁓ I I think it was in the the funland zine. ⁓ well one, like, you know, Catmilk talks about their their father being ⁓ a security guard. And so there's this kind of like intimacy to to the kind of security work that that that one does for like a haunted corporate park. Like usually you're working late at night where everyone's gone. So that's like a kind of backrooms. ⁓ but also I think Catmilk in the interview with you mentioned that they're currently working in IT.
And like there's no one who knows the backrooms better than somebody working with IT who has to go to like some random room to fix like some broken device or some connection that's not working. ⁓ and and you know, that like you have to like actually like visualize the infest the technical infrastructure of a space ⁓ to to work in IT. So ⁓ part of my my you know, when I was was reading through and and listening to to your your great conversation with Cat Milk, ⁓ a lot of it was like, ⁓ right, like.
Jamin (55:29)
Yeah, yeah.
Danny Snelson (55:46)
I can place this. Like this like this makes sense. And like, you know, it it feels like a lot of the the approach here comes out of a a lived experience. ⁓ yeah.
Jamin (55:53)
Yeah. ⁓
the key you mentioned the aesthetic piece earlier. One of the things that jumped out, I mean I think some of this is maybe some of the conventions, the ways that games are, you know, sort of distributed and marketed, ⁓ having a there was a texture, I I spoke to him a little bit about this, that like the this kind of like a like lithographic kind of style I thought was really inter was was really interesting to me, this kind of like stipple, the stipalization
stilization, this stipple effect. But then also the color palette as well. ⁓ you mentioned Cruelty Squad. I think that is definitely a clear jumping off point. But I do think that the just the use of pink in the work itself is did stand out to me is I what I thought was like I did stin s did definitely stand out to me. It's you know a color that exists and yet we, you know, it it there is a a a legacy of ⁓ pink games that is ⁓ highly gender constrained and
I did really like that Catmilk had made this like very conscious decision, like this is gonna be a game that like very heavily features a color. and and not like a like a not it's not it's not like in a it's not being used in a it's not sarcastic like in a sarcastic way, but more just like, this is a color that really could like mark the mark the experience. I didn't get that sense from talking ⁓ to Catmilk that that was, you know, that they were trying to s say something.
It was it did seem like it was purely like this is this is there's something unique here about this color and seeing it in this game context is kind of a a kind of unusual.
Danny Snelson (57:19)
Well, they did say they'd start and I think, you know, one of the most interesting features is the the eyes at the top. You have this kind of like rear view mirror of yourself as as you're moving, which I, you know, is also like a an old game mechanic. ⁓ but but you know, they they mentioned that they started there and and I I was thinking a lot, I guess, about pinkness in relationship to whiteness. ⁓ like you know, like instead of like a white default character, like the character's skin is pink. And and and and that's you know, the the ⁓ the the catmilk built the game around
Jamin (57:23)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Right, right.
Danny Snelson (57:47)
color of the skin of the main character. And it so I think that there's something about like, I don't know, like ⁓ denaturalizing or or like removing like the default whiteness to have like like that the like the pinkness of the character makes its like white racialization to me ⁓ far more like present. And and like and and I think that I I don't know. So I was I was kind of but also I was like thinking of ⁓ the pinkness of the walls in that Wuthering Heights movie
Jamin (57:58)
Right.
Yeah.
Danny Snelson (58:17)
I don't know if you saw this. It's like wallpaper based on this like very pink skin. And and so like there's this kind of like so the the idea of like rooms being actually like almost made out of flesh, or there's something kind of Cronenbergie in there or or something, but like and you can see in this one, you know, the one image that like the the color of the the face and the color of the floor are like the exact same color. And so like are you like you see your own eyes, but you're also like maybe walking on some kind of skin. And and and that feels like really weird and uncanny to me, which I like.
Jamin (58:43)
Yeah.
Yeah,
yeah. Well the last thing I want to talk about ⁓ with with cat milk was the was the the dreaded the dreaded F word. ⁓ let's I'll play the I'll play the clip from from this conversation.
Danny Snelson (58:57)
Yeah.
Jamin (59:52)
The F word, I I've had this conversation with many people over the years, whether or not games need to be fun. I I my my feeling is that there's a boundary of language here. We simply do not have a word, at least in English, that describes what it is and the legacy of fun because it's so deeply tied to like amusement, ⁓ it sort of belies difficulty at some level, some level, some degree of challenge, some degree of friction. ⁓ and that is
Yeah, my feeling is it's an onerous burden for games, that games are required to be fun in some way. I think for people who play games, I think they understand that there's like texture to that. they understand that fun games can be very much like unfun. ⁓ but it was interesting to hear him kind of like vocalize that as a ⁓ as a design as a design as a as a game designer. And there's quite a few unfun games. And so yeah, I was curious about like your experiences with that, with that word, how you think it reflects on maybe the work that he's trying to do.
⁓ but yeah, that is for me like a real constraint I think for games as an art form is this idea that they they need to be that they need to be fun because that's the default language for like how we describe what it is that happens there.
Danny Snelson (1:00:58)
Yeah, I think that's, you know, it's a good question for like the maturity of the medium as well. Like, you know, we don't expect novels to be fun. Or like, you know, like great works of literature aren't supposed to be fun, right? They're supposed to do other things or maybe like, you know, show us something about ourselves and our place in the world or expand our horizons. And and so like you know, obviously like that that I think is a kind of starting point that like games never needed to be fun. ⁓ I also think that the you know the definition of of a game, which for so long has been rooted in this kind of whizinga sense of like
Jamin (1:01:05)
Right.
Danny Snelson (1:01:27)
consensual play ⁓ has been usefully complicated by folks like Aaron Tremel who, you know, who argues, you know, play like games haven't always been fun and they haven't always been consensual. And like, you know, like you can play games, say, with other humans or or, you know, he opens up to to questions of say ⁓ torture or or sex play. Like there are things like sex play isn't fun. Like it's it's doing a different kind of thing. ⁓ and so I think like ⁓ yeah I think removing that onus from games being fun. And and so much of that's about like the discourse of like
Jamin (1:01:37)
Right.
Danny Snelson (1:01:57)
I don't know, Steam reviews or like IGN or places that are like, this game is not fun. Like, don't, you know, don't spend your ten dollars on it or or whatever. ⁓ but I think like this game is also like one, it looks fun to me. And it's also funny. Like it's very funny. Like that floppy hand that you use to like reload your gun, and also you have to like feed yourself. It's got this kind of like wobble physics that that I I find like just always kind of like mildly hilarious. ⁓ but it also has this like
Jamin (1:01:59)
Right, right, right.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Danny Snelson (1:02:25)
very funny relationship to trash where it's like every time you eat a candy or or expend a shell, it like builds up this kind of like trash register at the the window, which is just so funny. And like, so you can imagine this very funny gameplay. Like, you know, once the demo's out, to to like like there there's something, you know, ⁓ sense of like comedy is is like running against a wall. Right. And so like you you like can't quite do something. And so like there's something like fun or funny about like attempting to reload a gun because you've got some enemies coming at you and and like
You can't because your trash is in the way. Like that. So like it yeah.
Jamin (1:02:57)
Right, right. Yeah.
Yeah, the the yeah, d I mean this the this idea of fun did come up this week. We didn't cover it for I didn't have it planned for today, but you know, I pulled something from the archive, an essay about this game called Chiller, ⁓ which is a game that was done in the eighties, it was not very popular because ⁓ used basically like a torture simulator. I mean basically like it's it's like a horror you know, I sort of thought of it as like it's this B movie, it's sort of this B movie horror game, but without any of the
kind of the attendant ⁓ maybe like silliness or camp that you sort of like sort of associate. It's just like a game where you can shoot people's limbs off and and and and of course it was not very popular because nobody bought it. And you know, this essay was written by Mitch Kropata, gosh almost like 15 years ago. ⁓ but yeah, that was one that I think being you know in a weird way, kind of like ahead of its time in a sense that it's like challenging some sort and you this is this is work that was not meant to be like pro it was not meant to be like
experimental or provocative, like in that way. It was not an art statement to sort of like make commentary on, you know, commentary on on violence during, you know, the Reagan years or something like that. It was just like just some, you know, ostensibly like dudes making a super violent game. And but yeah, but it does kind of play with this idea of it's because there's such a discomfort, like I'm not even gonna show it 'cause it's is extreme I found it to be like gross even in like an eight bit form. it's like very uncomfortable to like a
Danny Snelson (1:04:19)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Jamin (1:04:25)
trauma like a trauma style like level like violence and but it does kind of like play at that idea that like games can be a certain way ⁓ even if there wasn't like a direct lineage that stemmed out of it in that in that in that way. So yeah, there has been a line there have been like sort of people pushing at the edges, but maybe not like in intentional not in an intentional way. ⁓ I I don't think of that as being particularly intentional. Yeah.
Danny Snelson (1:04:46)
Yeah.
Jamin (1:04:48)
Okay. All right. One last piece. ⁓ we got one more trailer. I had a conversation this past weekend with ⁓ a game urbanist and game designer from Chile named Jose Sanchez. ⁓ we've profiled him. I'll link to i in the show notes. ⁓ he's done a couple of different games around like collective architecture, one called Blockhood. Anyway, we got to talking, you know, he's from Chile. we got to talking about
the balance I was asking about localization, like how do you make those changes? You know, how do how do you make a decision as a game designer making a game for a global context or a game that can be experienced, kind of to our point earlier, like games do have this ability to spread across borders in a really profound way? How do you find that balance between having something that focuses on like hyper local routines and customs? ⁓ what concessions do you make when you try to expand the boundaries for like what's possible? And so
Danny Snelson (1:05:35)
Mm.
Jamin (1:05:42)
⁓ I came across this across this game called Rocky. ⁓ you play as your let me just play the I'll just play the the trailer for ya.
Okay, so I just have to say, like out the gate, I am not a big cozy whole wholesome game star. I we can vis revisit this. I think there's like an important political dimension for those games that we can talk about at like at another time that I respect and totally understand. particularly as it relates to people who do caregiving and wanting to find comfort in games in a different context. That is not the type of player that I am. I more respond to like the visual language. That is a totally separate thing. For this game in particular, I was super interested, like how hyper specific the
The location is like Goa, India, 1992. That is a very then you're basically you're playing as a as an auto rickshaw driver who picks up characters along the way. that dynamic I think is like a really universal one, like using the vehicle as a as a as a the vehicle as a vehicle, so to speak, for for for ⁓ for narrative, for storytelling. It gives you this ⁓ this ability to pick up different characters in different ways. Each character has a different story.
Danny Snelson (1:07:11)
Mm-hmm.
Jamin (1:07:20)
obviously in games, there's a lineage there, games like Neocab, for example. ⁓ but even outside of even outside of games, I feel like that is a very like universal way to tell a story. At the same time, this is a very specific place, that's in a way, very specific theme that did not make an attempt to say, like, this is a game that could be in a fantasy environment. This is like a very specific, very specific hyper-local kind of like theme. I yeah, I was curious for for for for you, Danny, how you've kind of like seen
hyper hyperlocal themes like work in in your work? Is that a I mean I guess maybe to put it provocatively, like is that a is that an opportunity or do you risk kind of like losing the, you know, losing the this is not my position, but like, you know, did is there something that you give up by making something like hyperlocal if you're not from that not from that specific time and place? I have thoughts, but just trying to think of a way to frame it in a maybe a more provocative way. More provocative way.
Danny Snelson (1:08:12)
I think this is
such a lovely way to to kind of you know get to the end of our conversation. It's like we've been looking at all these like speculative spaces. Like, you know, backrooms are kind of like every corporate park, but they're also a no like literally a no place that you have to noclip into. And so like the flip side of that is these like hyper specific and contextual spaces, which I think there's a real hunger for. I mean, mixtapes success, for example, it's like specific moment in time, specific place in the the Pacific Northwest, ⁓ that that I think is is part of what makes that
Jamin (1:08:18)
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Yeah, yeah.
Danny Snelson (1:08:41)
work is is like that like specificity of location which like I think adds to like a different kind of fantasy like it it it like it reads more like you know historical fiction or something right that it produces like a a real kind of simulacrum or or some kind of thing that you can like go back into and usually that tapped into nostalgia in some ways. but also like it feels like traveling. I I think that's why I love games that have really accurate reconstructions of cities like playing I don't know Yakuza Infinite Wealth. I've never gone to Hawaii
Jamin (1:09:05)
That's good point. Yeah.
Danny Snelson (1:09:11)
But I've I spent a lot of time in Yakuza's Hawaii, which is a pretty accurate model of that of that that area. And and so ⁓ I I think that there's something really ⁓ I don't know, ⁓ meaningful about being able to move through that world and in that way and that like power of games, that you are exploring spaces that are that are often fantastical, but you you build a kind of mind map of of whatever space you're navigating. And and to like know that like, this is a very specific place from a specific point in time, I think is really
⁓ powerful and especially for underrepresented areas. I I'm thinking about Chia, which is like a fantastical version of New Catalonia, ⁓ which did this really beautifully as well. ⁓ that that game designers are able to maybe yeah open their doors and and share cultural experiences that would be ⁓ hard to access otherwise. This is something film's done for a long time. Like, you know, we don't like film, like that's how you know the world is like, there's like, you know, world cinema is how you can know these places or or know stories.
Jamin (1:10:00)
Yeah. I know, right?
Danny Snelson (1:10:10)
that you wouldn't otherwise encounter and and ⁓ I love to see games that that are able to do that that kind of work.
Jamin (1:10:15)
Yeah. I mean my more more more like cynical take I guess is that we've simply exhausted a number of unique stories that can be told with like ⁓ w European mythology.
Danny Snelson (1:10:22)
Yeah.
Well that's true too.
Jamin (1:10:27)
Like
we just we just have run out and space has no place and time and culture. So like, you know, I like I think and because fantasy has been so narrowly focused on ⁓ like basically on European fantasy. I mean, we talked about Black Myths Wukong earlier, which is said in like a Chinese mythological world, like there's both a commercial reality, which is like zig when other people are zagging, but then there's also this creative reality, which is simply like you just you know, you just run out of things that you can say. I mean, you know, I I was camping a couple of weeks ago and we stopped by this
Western there's this l Western film museum outside of in the Eastern Sierras that you can go to. It is ⁓ it you know, it is a very specific idea like of the West and it's focused on lone pine where there's a lot of activity. You think about the Western like as a as a genre kind of like lived and died with a very specific idea of the Western. ⁓ and then you kinda like basically run out of the number of stories that you can tell. I think that's some and then audiences get fatigued. And so ⁓
I do think it's like maybe you just sort of need this one thing to come first, which is this first like forty years of video games. And now this next thing is coming, which is like people who grew up with those types of things, they become conversant in the language, and then there's a hunger and a desire to just like express the place where you where you you where you live. I mean, the funny thing is that like
This model for games has been like hiding in plain sight with Grand Theft Auto, which is one of the most popular franchises on the planet. I mean, I get it, it's not based in a real place, but it's very much based on a real place. And it is so funny to me that that has not like necessarily inspired like a like a wealth of people making like even hyper-local games like in the United States, like New Orleans or Chicago, or like your little hometown neighborhood. So I just
I'm very interested and you do see it sometimes, you know, in terms of like Allen Wake and the Pacific Northwest and things like that. But yeah.
Danny Snelson (1:12:08)
Well yeah, and I mean, you know,
academics love to talk about Assassin's Creed, so I I won't do that. But also, you know, games that that I know a game that we both love, Despilote, ⁓ which you know occurs like in a a really specific moment in time, includes like actual footage from from soccer matches, ⁓ and and and has like a a kind of like realism to it that that like is clearly comes through as as a lived experience.
Jamin (1:12:15)
Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, yeah.
Danny Snelson (1:12:36)
And so I think like as
games are are trying to be meaningful and and give us meaningful experiences, that old adaj, what is it, write what you know. Like like maybe it's like game game what you know and and and that that adds so much like texture and nuance to the kind of characters you build, the kind of world that you build, and and you know, the specific time in in which those like characters and and spaces ⁓ yeah can come together.
Jamin (1:12:44)
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, and also the constraints of being an independent game maker just means that you have to narrow the scope. And I think that could be like tremendously, tremendously powerful. ⁓ thinking of you know, ⁓ Jean Dilman, you the the this film Jean Dilman's is three and a half hours, mostly takes place inside of this woman's apartment. ⁓ and then occasionally like in the streets of I think it's ⁓ I believe it's it's in Belgium, I believe. Or ⁓ but you know, you can do something really profound with something that's very, very small, and I think games have often
Danny Snelson (1:13:12)
Huh. Yeah.
Jamin (1:13:29)
the desire for kind of that thing we were saying earlier about this like exhaustion of grandeur. Maybe there's a little bit of that at play as well, where it's like, I don't need any big space epics. I don't need these giant worlds. What I want is something that's like actually like is pretty small and pretty narrow. it's pretty small and pretty narrow and there are opportunities there. And if it's short, that's my other big thing. I love I love short games. So under under under five hours, that's like, you know, the key to the key to my heart. Okay.
Danny Snelson (1:13:37)
Hmm. Okay.
Yeah. Play a game one shot a game. It's really nice.
Jamin (1:13:57)
Great. Well Danny, thank you so much for making time. ⁓ where can people find your work, I guess? Where do you ha what what do what what should we point people to to see what Danny's up to? 'Cause you also have books to promote as well. So you're I I appre I applaud your restraint for for for not plugging not not plugging.
Danny Snelson (1:14:11)
This is just
such a delight. Thank you so much for having me, Jamin. I I love to have this kind of conversation. I'm pretty easy to Google. my website's DSS-edit.com. ⁓ I I have a book that's out ⁓ called The Little Database Supportix of Media Formats that's about digital archiving and and ⁓ also these like questions of like an older internet that's maybe rapidly disappearing. ⁓ the thing I want to plug though, is I I'm just finished teaching a class.
Jamin (1:14:35)
Mm.
Danny Snelson (1:14:40)
it's got a great title. ⁓ that time I was that time I got reincarnated as a UCLA creative writing seminar Isekai Experiment. where I spent 10 weeks with my students thinking about portal fantasy the long lineage of portal fantasies that that isekai represents from Alice in Wonderland all the way up to to experimental games like Baby Steps, which is an Isekai. And the the the students and I we we started the class like taking the premise seriously, where we all got killed at the same time. We all got isekai.
Jamin (1:14:47)
Yeah.
Danny Snelson (1:15:09)
And then 16 of us had to inhabit a shared body. We decided that shared body was a video game system that would give out quests. And so then we like over the course of the quarter, we made like dating sims and bitsy games and you know a whole a whole range of things that that built out this like shared mythos of of what happened to these students, only at the end to to discover that we died by PowerPoint. ⁓ you know, death by PowerPoint is one way, ⁓ and and then returned to ourselves at the end of the quarter. ⁓
But that cour that course, like everything I teach, the the syllabi is ⁓ available ⁓ online for free and has a lot of resources in that field. So I I like to be able to share those whenever I can in these kinds of circumstances and ⁓ we'll we'll post the link ⁓ alongside the conversation.
Jamin (1:15:52)
Sounds good. And if you listen to us for the last like hour and fifteen minutes and you made it all the way through, that you know you can subscribe to the Kill Screen newsletter. It comes out on Tuesdays and Fridays. ⁓ usually. Although I'll be going on vacation. So it's a pre vacation warning. So we'll there will be a a brief a brief hiatus. ⁓ but this was wonderful, Danny. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you. appreciate you you you making time.
Danny Snelson (1:16:15)
Thank you. Thank you so much.