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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.
The Killscreen Podcast, Episode 37
Hosted by Jamin Warren with Danny Snelson
Danny Snelson (00:00)
you
Jamin Warren (00:01)
yeah, that is that is amazing. Did you see did you see this thing about P.T.? Did you see this? That there's been this guy, or I'm sorry, just a person, we don't know who it is. this person who's been working on it. There have been like different attempts to emulate this game. So for folks that don't know, you know, P.T. was this it was a Silent Hill, Hideo Kojima, the game developer was working on a Silent Hill kind of like reboot, with Guillermo del Toro, and it was released, like a chapter was released on
Danny Snelson (00:07)
Yeah.
Jamin Warren (00:31)
was released for the PlayStation Four, I believe. and then it just disappeared. And the issue was that like once it disappears, like there's no way to, you know, basically once they take it off, it's kind of locked to the machine. And so there was like secondhand markets and secondhand markets and people were trying to sell the the ones they had online. But it's like if you own it's like you have this software, it's on your machine, you can't access it. Cause I think you had to also like unplug it from the internet so it wouldn't disappear as well. It would like get totally, totally, totally deleted.
Danny Snelson (00:33)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Jamin Warren (00:58)
But it raises so this is this person has done like a very faithful, very faithful recreation working backwards. Like a real conservator, like a real this like a real media conservation project, checking things frame by frame to make sure that it works well. it does raise these like very interesting questions about like you know games that that disappear, like you know, there are certain games that like disappear, and then it's like, well, what happens to them? Who's responsible for them? If the companies that like, you know, originally responsible for them, like no no longer are responsible for them, you know. ha what what what should happen there. So I don't know. It's just very interesting, very interesting question, which I think dovetails nicely with the project that you've been that you've been working on.
Danny Snelson (01:35)
Yeah, yeah, just before I was telling Jamin about this ZipDeck. So it's a repurposed zip drive, which you might recognize from the mid-90s, that I've built a local file sharing network. So I think in that same idea, so you can download files. I also have it emulating, because of the blue, think, the era-specific Dreamcast. So I've been playing some old JRPGs in that same kind of dreamy, C-punk color scheme. on my local server, which has been really nice. I just launched that this week at Princeton. So I'm coming to you live from New York at the house of Avi Alpert and Anthea Bean, the co-founders of the Interdisciplinary Art and Theory Program here in the city. And they were actually kind enough last year to bring me out to talk about Walter Benjamin from a games perspective. So I was thinking about, you he's famous collector. So I was thinking about the collect-a-thon.
Jamin Warren (02:06)
Yeah. amazing. Yeah.
Danny Snelson (02:31)
in relationship to his collecting practices in the Arcades book. So I'm grateful to have a small studio to have this conversation with you, Jamin.
Jamin Warren (02:35)
Yeah. Amazing, amazing. Well, just for everybody who's you know, listening in, this is I'm Jamin Warren and this is the the Killscreen podcast. With me as always is Danny Snelson. yeah, Danny is on the is on the road this week. a lot of fun stuff to talk about this week. we've got a recording with a musician, Manchester based musician named Murlo. that I did earlier this month. His name's Chris Pell. We talk about he's never really done an interview like this before, a project that he's been working on called Something Beautiful. We've got some great news to kind of buzz through. And then yeah, two more interesting projects. a project that's based based on Guantanamo detainees story, working with a a longtime games media artist, and then one kicker about some of the MacArthur announcement news Surprise, surprise. Neither of us won it. So this year. So next next year, Danny. One of us. I I guess that is that true? All right. I didn't know. I'm applying next year. I'm doing it. I'm doing it. before I get started, I you know, I went to go see the the Resident Evil movie last night. we have a it was it was great. I really enjoyed it. We have a talk coming up next week with Ryan Holladay, who is the composer for that film and weapons.
Danny Snelson (03:29)
I guess you have to apply for it to win, don't you? Yeah, how was it?
Jamin Warren (03:53)
And he'll be in conversation with Jason Graves, who scored Still Wakes the Deep as well as Dead's the original, like Dead Space. so I'll be next week. Look, we'll link to it in the bio, but we'll have a conversation about the process of scoring fear. So I went more as a like as a preparation, like okay, I need to, you know, spend some time preparing for this interview. I made one key mistake. I went to the 4DX version. I didn't know the 4DX or the I I you know I have mixed feelings.
Danny Snelson (04:10)
Do your homework. Yeah, my god, I love 4DX. 4DX is the best. What are you talking about? With the flashing lights and the seat rumble and...
Jamin Warren (04:21)
I don't know. I mean the gunshots thing with like the flashing lights and whatnot. The sea rubble. The the puffs of air. Like I was just like, I don't know. Is this really there was one sequence like towards the end. There's like one sequence towards the end when he's like in the last stages of the tower and he's looking out and the sea the seat kinda like leans forward o over this like ledge. And that was one was like, that was kind of cool to sort of like you know, sort of create this like sense of that sense of like vertigo looking out like over a over a big ledge, but
Danny Snelson (04:51)
Yeah, it only works like every once in a while, like 4DX, like you'll get like, like I remember, like I remember a burnt rubber smell during a chase scene. I was like, perfect. We also saw, I think we saw like the new avatar and it was terrible. It was so bad. It was like, it was like trying to be mossy or like, you know, like, and also the gun, like the flickering of, of gunfire, think is maybe the worst part.
Jamin Warren (04:52)
I enjoyed it and Okay. Yeah, yeah. I mean, the thing is like what what it made me think of was like, you I I really enjoy the movie. you know, it it bears no resemblance to any of the previous Resident Evil movies, which I think is probably good. It made me think a lot about like Rogue One, which is my favorite Star Wars movie and how, you know, that is in the Star Wars universe, but doesn't it's not beholden to any of the it's not beholden to like any of the material from the Star Wars like franchise. And I think, you know, for that reason, you know, Tony Gilroy who wrote Michael Clayton and later did Andor, like I'm just a wonderful, incredible script writer.
Danny Snelson (05:33)
Mm-hmm.
Jamin Warren (05:42)
just being freed from the conventions, you can just sort of like sit in this particular world. And it did get me thinking, like, you know, and so it's very sparse, you know, that's the other thing too. There's not like a ton of exposition, there's not a lot of background on Raccoon City or the Umbrella Corporation, or you know, does it does away with all of that and just kind of focuses on this like single experience of this young man who's a courier and he's going to become a father, and there's a lot of themes of like fatherhood and regret and this kind of like looming this thing that's like looming over it, which is just like You already know what happens in that universe. You know, it's not going to break from that convention. It did get me thinking, you know, I think we often think about, you know, games, these adaptations of games as movies. it did get me thinking a lot. It's like, okay, well, I really enjoyed this. This is clearly better. It's kind of like maybe this is what I wanted the original game to be. Like maybe, maybe is that is the place where the game like should be. I I you know, so we we sort of think of these things as being like counterparts, but in some ways.
Danny Snelson (06:28)
huh.
Jamin Warren (06:35)
I think it can be an indictment of how poor game stories can often be and how you can do so much with very little. so I don't know. I it feels a little bit more of like a warning shot in the sense that like you're starting to have directors like Zach Cregger, who grew up on video games, understand the medium of video games. And yeah, you can see I I just it just feels like it's not just going to be the adaptations. I think you're gonna start seeing more of that stuff the other way. Brandon Cronenberg is I believe he's making an FMV game, for example. Like I think that is probably the direction is like you know, it's not just making these adaptations, it's like wanting to get back towards the the source material and actually like make games themselves. And that part I think is incredibly exciting. Did you see did you see Resident Evil? I'm not sure if you you've seen it already or
Danny Snelson (07:17)
No, no, I haven't seen it yet. I'm looking forward, but I think that that point is actually really interesting about, you know, I think some of the rest, the best Resident Evil games drop you right into an environment without having to do lore dumps. And I think that there's like something kind of interesting where like usually these movie adaptations that so much of it's like fan service that is full of like Easter eggs and inside things for fans. But I think like, you know, just adopting good stories from those game worlds and saying.
Jamin Warren (07:29)
I know, right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Danny Snelson (07:44)
really playing to, guess, the specific affordances of film or game, you know, respectively. like that's what a lot of the reviews of the Cregger films like, yeah, this is like a very like faithful betrayal of like Resident Evil. It's like, true to the feeling of it, true to the like affect and true to the aesthetics, but like, you know, it's not trying too hard to like do a kind of one for one remake of a video game.
Jamin Warren (07:50)
Yeah. Yeah. Right, yeah. Yeah, I I totally agree. yeah, it's a good it's a good it'll be a good interesting question to see kind of what happens, what happens going forward. So I mean I think it also speaks to as you start having more game franchises that are entering their, you know, second and third decade, they do sort of maybe like transcend the source material because the stories are more generally familiar to a wider audience.
Danny Snelson (08:31)
Hmm.
Jamin Warren (08:32)
So something like Resident Evil, you know, you think about the adaptation of like, I don't know, like the great gat, you know, Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby, for example. You know, like is a story that is in pop culture. Many people have read it in high school, but for many, maybe it's it was a long time, maybe like, you know, decades since they had read that. And so, but you can still walk into that knowing enough about the story. And so I do feel like maybe that is a place that we're moving into with certain types of game fran franchises where it's like, yeah, I play Resident Evil game. It was like 15 years ago, 20 years ago, I was a kid, whatever. I don't need to be like up to date on every single like new release. There's enough there to carry me through. But my attachment to it isn't like you're saying is like it's not as a a purist, it's not as a fan. It's just being familiar enough with the story that you're willing to give it like time and attention and give director give a director the chance to do something new with it. So I I think that's that is yeah, kind of exciting. And yeah, I with like Rogue One, it's like it it is helpful that you are not releasing these movies after the original Star Wars movies. It's coming like, you know. decades later, you kind of, you know, people are familiar and comfortable enough like with the with that universe that you can start to experiment with it. So faithful betrayal. That's a great way. That's a great way to put it though. Yeah. All right. Cool. All right. Well let's get into it. so yeah, section one. I, you know, I had a great interview with a a Manchester, as I mentioned, a Manchester producer. and it's on leaving a
Danny Snelson (09:34)
Yeah.
Jamin Warren (09:50)
You know, leaving the club. He had spent time as a professional DJ and started building this game by himself. The game's called Something Beautiful and it has an album inside of it. has these like jukeboxes made of like flesh and they're like, you know, sort of like these instrumentation that's inside of like legs and hands. he also cites like William Blake as an inspiration. but yeah, Chris Pell, he records as Murlo. He's from Shepshed, which is a small market town in the East Midlands. we had a little chat about that as well, about the influence of like setting and place and the pastoral, in this case it's the the industrial. for him, it was like the industrial setting of these particular housing units that he was thinking of when he was when he's making this game. But he was the first person in his family to go to university and he spent about 10 years living off of shows and releases. But then he got this he got a sync check, like he there was, you a piece of his music got ended up in an advertisement, and he's like, This is the moment. I'm going to start making a game. So he stopped.
Danny Snelson (10:39)
Yeah.
Jamin Warren (10:44)
And he started building a point and click rhythm game by himself and it has his music inside of it. and I came across the work. I saw a little bit on Instagram, but then also Aviva Studios, which I believe is part of. it's inside of like FACT Liverpool. It's like one of their performance spaces. They hosted him to have a you know, sort of a a vertical slice of the game in Manchester earlier this spring. Let me play this like first first clip here from a conversation. He talks a little bit about why he ended up leaving, decided to start making games.
[Clip: Murlo, from Jamin's interview, on why he left performance]
Jamin Warren (11:34)
COVID being a big a big driver there. And apologies for the the quality of the audio on the interview I did with with with Chris, both mine and his where it was a little it was a a little a little a little spotty. yeah, do you wanna tell me a little bit about about your reaction to some of the work and maybe as well, like maybe maybe what what the influence of something like COVID might have had on, you know, game makers in terms of pushing them to think more less about the outdoors and more about the indoors. from you know, you know, just i I I thought that was an interesting for him to be able to so
Danny Snelson (11:36)
Thank no. Mm.
Jamin Warren (12:03)
clearly vocalized that as being like a reason why he was getting in the games.
Danny Snelson (12:06)
Yeah, this game looks amazing. I love, any game that references William Blake is like made for me. But if it's also got Cronenberg, I think you linked up to eXistenZ, like the great film about video games and flesh. He talks about Goya. I was actually thinking from the trailer more of like Hieronymus Bosch too, which of course also shows up in Metaphor: ReFantazio, but these kinds of like weird fleshy accumulations of body parts.
Jamin Warren (12:11)
Ha ha ha.
Danny Snelson (12:32)
that are also in this sense, like playable instruments, I guess, or playback devices. Like there's a lot going on in the game. So yeah, lots I wouldn't want to say about it. As for COVID, I mean, I think in your interview, you do this nice thing thinking about, you know, a DJ set. And when you're a DJ during, what happens to a DJ during COVID? I mean, there's... We had all these weird things where people would have like, went to some raves on zoom, which were some of the most depressing events of my life. So, so maybe like turning from, you know, like the lively, like, you know, four on the floor kind of like dance production towards, you know, similarly kind of like immersive private experience that you have with a video game, makes a lot of sense for somebody who's maybe oriented toward giving people, you know, affect, DJ plays with affect, right? Like it's a,
Jamin Warren (13:00)
Ha ha.
Danny Snelson (13:22)
tempo, rhythm, mood, really. And so, you know, I think the best video games we think about flow and rhythm and, you know, articulating a series of moods as you move through a virtual space. So I find that really fascinating. And I think that there are a lot of people during COVID that turn to these like weird experiments with immersion, with like how to have a connection when you can't be connected to other people. And I think that question still reverberates and I'm glad to see people still doing those kinds of experiments. I think a lot of us have just repressed it. And it's like, we all did that. Now let's like go back to like having our in-person meetings and whatever. But it's like, I liked the weird virtual shit that came out of that period. And I love that Murlo is keeping that alive.
Jamin Warren (14:07)
I did not I did not have a COVID hobby. I guess bird watching, that was my COVID hobby. I suppose I really, you know, it was like what else to do but go outside and look at birds. I got really into bird watching. I I mean the other part that I thought was interesting was like he sort of felt like he w didn't want like a like a bigger room per se. Like he wanted something more in a more intimate experience. He was saying like as a DJ, you could sort of get a sense like you s both can and can't get a sense of like in aggregate, you can get a sense of what someone's experience with your work is like as a DJ or as a live performer, but on like an individual basis, you lose that sort of control, at least the perspectives to sort of like control that experience. And so that was one of the things that was very appealing to him as a as a game maker. I mean, the other part is a little technologically driven. There have been some changes. I had a great interview with Vadim Nickel, who's a researcher at Concordia University. One of the things that he was telling me about was we had that conversation, I think, earlier this year about like deep listening in games. one of the things that he was talking about was. you know, Unreal has released this MetaSounds, MetaSounds, which is now it's like a plug-in. I believe it's like a way and it's made it much easier to create more like input systems for music-based games. And so you don't have to just have sound in the background. And Chris talked about that, about like MetaSounds being for him, meeting him where he was. It's like, I can do more interesting stuff. It's like I want to make a sequencer, I can now do that. You know, I don't have to build it from scratch. It's like, if I wanna y create some kind of like modular synth in you know apparatus or something like that. So for him there was like
Danny Snelson (15:23)
Yeah.
Jamin Warren (15:34)
a direct one to one in terms of how he was thinking about the game and also like what what the tool was allowing him to do as allow to tool was allowing him to do as well. I asked one of the things I asked him about was like what good interaction feels like. let me play that little clip for you right here. Like how to how what constitutes like a a good good interaction.
Danny Snelson (15:44)
Yeah.
[Clip: Murlo on what a good interaction feels like]
Danny Snelson (16:44)
I mean...
Jamin Warren (16:44)
this came up in my interview with Bennett Foddy earlier this year. He talked about this concept of being in good hands being really important for senior. It's interesting because he's a see he's a very seasoned game designer, the creator of Baby Steps and Getting Over It, Bennett Foddy. he's a very seasoned game designer and he's sort of like come across that as a concept. It's very interesting to see Chris actually start there. It's like, actually, if I add these like little flourishes or touches, that communicates that there's something meaningful about about this interaction.
Danny Snelson (17:10)
Yeah, yeah. I think you can see that even just from the trailer, like how much care goes into the production of like these moments. And there is like, the kind of like built-in trust there. But also I think like a bit of gasoline, as we were talking about, do good games taste like gasoline? Like there's some kind of difficulty, whether that's like aesthetic difficulty or I guess I'm thinking about the difficulty of mini games. Like even just like looking at some of the, like rhythm games are hard, like until you get good at them.
Jamin Warren (17:27)
Yeah. Right. Right. Yeah.
Danny Snelson (17:39)
practicing a piano, like it takes time to be able to play that tool. And then when you're, I don't know, like playing some kind of like weird fleshy piano inside of a video game, like that's really hard. And I loved his like emphasis on the, like, I think he mentioned two mini games, Pokemon slot slot machines and a Gwent and the Witcher, like some famous game. I think like the dominant form of video games are these like really hard music games. So I was thinking about like.
Jamin Warren (17:41)
Yeah. Yeah. Yes, yeah, that was the other one. Yep. Ha ha.
Danny Snelson (18:07)
I don't know if you tried to do karaoke in the Yakuza series or the Ocarina in Zelda, the shamisen in Ghost of Yōtei. There's all these like, guess, karaoke, I was thinking about Disco Elysium too, looking at this, the famous disco scene, disco kind of karaoke scene in Disco Elysium, which is very hard to at least get the checks right. So I was thinking about that level, like,
Jamin Warren (18:11)
Maybe not. Right, sure. Yeah.
Danny Snelson (18:31)
difficulty in mini games, because even games that are kind easy to navigate, quote unquote, will often have these really challenging mini games. That's kind of what brings you back to them. And I'm really interested in this, how there's this post-industrial environment, but also it seems like a lot of really interesting, challenging, rhythm-based mini games.
Jamin Warren (18:52)
Yeah, I mean the the the the the pleasure the p one of the pleasurable pieces of having mini games is that you can teach players very short interactions that they can master over a very small sequence of games. Vinny Roca was a student at DMA and has done some done some of his game-based work has been really focused on these like tiny cause he's teaching now at scripts. that has been a big part, I think, of his practice and looking more I think for him like coming out of like Fluxus and instructional, you know, these little moments. It's like, if you could take a page. Of you know, from Yoko Ono and just have like a s short instruction that you can give someone, a player. you know, I kind of do also wonder, I didn't ask Chris about this. I think there's something about him coming to games from a music background where, you know, you do get these like long durational sets, particularly in electronic music. But you talked a lot about like hardcore, so you know, bands like Mudhoney and Swing Kids, which is a band I listened to in high school. These like short interactions like in music, you have these. And I wonder if there's some part of him that's like, I can replicate the experience. I can focus like an album is comprised, like the album is total, but is comprised of these little units. I can maybe think about my game in kind of like the same way where it's like, I have this world that I'm building, but actually I want to focus on these like very small individual interactions, as opposed to say, like layering a more complex like mechanical system where you learn a skill and then the skill builds or whatever. He's like, I actually want to contain it. So I you know I kind of wonder if maybe there's a little bit of like music.
Danny Snelson (20:03)
Yeah, cool.
Jamin Warren (20:13)
approach there as a musician that really appeals to him as opposed to trying to build something that's like really, you know, you know, more more complex. not just because this is his first game.
Danny Snelson (20:23)
Yeah, modular, like like a mixtape, you know, full of tracks and each, each track develops its own little system of rules. And the game mixtape does that really beautifully. But I was thinking about these other kind of like music album games. Sayonara Wild Hearts maybe is like one of the most beautiful in that genre. Skate Story is really great. Or in metal, what is it, Metal: Hellsinger and Thumper, these like really like hard.
Jamin Warren (20:37)
Right, sure. yeah, yeah, yeah.
Danny Snelson (20:46)
rhythmic first person shooter games. I think in all of those, like, you know, there's something overarching when you're really trying to make like a music based video game that tries to think about rhythm. And then I think if you're really thinking about rhythm, there's different kinds of play styles that are quite different than I think like a lot of other games. I mean, I guess you fall into a rhythm if you're playing a FromSoft game and you're kind of like matching the like bosses movements, right? Like it feels like the rhythm or the like, yeah,
Jamin Warren (21:11)
Right.
Danny Snelson (21:15)
the flow that a player gets into is kind of like dependent on the mechanics. I think there's something really fascinating about starting with the music and then kind of like developing the mechanics that kind of like hit the beats in the right way.
Jamin Warren (21:27)
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there is something maybe also a difference there. You mentioned Thumper. that was the I believe he's the guitarist. It's just only two guys in that band Lightning Bolt. but also, you know, David Canega, you know, who is a composer and a a pianist, you know, I sort of wonder also, like for Chris, there's something about like, you know, electronic music doesn't have that type of like freeform generativity. You it is like it's bound as this it's bound to a system and the system kind of dictates it.
Danny Snelson (21:39)
Yeah.
Jamin Warren (21:51)
because I know that I've heard from musicians that can sometimes be a constraint or they feel like, I want to build, you know, I I there's so much freedom in playing music. And I wanna give players that same I want that I want them to have that feeling of freedom, compared to something like say, like Rhythm Heaven, you know, which has these like little musical mini games and they're really fun, but doesn't allow for that same type of like improvisation. So, you know, I think there is a point of view that he has as a musician making games, which is really interesting. It's like, okay, I wanna.
Danny Snelson (22:05)
Yeah.
Jamin Warren (22:20)
kind of constrain and say, Okay, the way I want you to experience the music is much more narrow and specific versus, you know, as more expansive. And I don't think that's just a a sense of like, you know, it's not just because he's new to game making. I do I do kind of wonder if that's just like a a perspective that he has on what music should do, what engagements with musical systems games like ultimately like should look like. yeah.
Danny Snelson (22:41)
Yeah, cool.
Jamin Warren (22:41)
All right, one last clip. one last clip. We talked about some of his at the end of the interview. I did ask the chance to ask him about some of his references. Let's let me let me t I you know, he gave me a really interesting answer here.
[Clip: Murlo on Blake, Goya and the Luddites]
Jamin Warren (23:23)
Lot of references for him, William Blake, as you know, as you mentioned, Goya's black paintings, the famously violent and very very difficult paintings. May I Goya has many, many, many difficult paintings, but but also like this relationship to technology that is more I mean it's not that the Luddites were anti and t not it's not that the Luddites were antagonistic towards technology. It's just they they they had an ex expression of a particular like point of view about what machines should do for us. we should not serve the machines. They should, you know, serve us at some level. So I you know, I I think there's yeah, I got I was really impressed by like I think some of the references to him trying to work some of these ideas into games. I wanted to ask you about the William Blake thing. I am not like a Blake scholar by by any by any means. However, I do have the benefit of having a poetry scholar a poetry scholar with me. I did want to ask you specifically about the William Blake side of things, and if you could maybe shine a little light about what you might see from Blake in just for someone who is not super familiar with it, that you might see in, you know, something beautiful before we move on.
Danny Snelson (24:02)
Okay. Yeah. Yeah, okay, yeah. Blake in a nutshell. No, I'd love to think about Blake and I think, you know, just to bind it up and I guess to illuminate Blake in some ways in relationship to this practice. I think one of the things that's most distinctive about say like the songs of innocence or many Blake's works is that, you know, he worked as a printmaker in addition to a writer and an artist. And so he has these like this like fully integrated
Jamin Warren (24:26)
Big question, I'm sorry before we declose it.
Danny Snelson (24:51)
aesthetic poetic system for producing every aspect of those poems. So they're handwritten. They're actually they were handwritten in reverse because he had to he handwrote them in wax in reverse and so that he could print them on the page. And they're also surrounded by the imagery that he would draw and illustrate. And so like every step of the production was was like handmade, was was handcrafted. It was never outsourced to some other printer. The materiality of the letters like really matters, the shape and size or ligatures within the language. So I think that there's like, I think there's an inspiring model for like this really integrative practice where you, you you know, of your tools, which increasingly, I think this is part of the movement toward, you know, things like this, this little like cyber decks or people are trying to like unpack our black boxes right now that like contemporary Luddite movement, which is really led, I think by Brian Merchant, great scholar of the tradition from Luddism up to AI.
Jamin Warren (25:39)
Yeah.
Danny Snelson (25:50)
of people who, and we think about Luddites is just like, I mean, you can call like your grandma, like a Luddite because she doesn't know technology, but like Luddites knew the technology the best. Like they were the weavers. They knew how the machine worked. And so they knew where to put the gears. And I think that there's something about like being able to know every element of a game, the sound design, the like game engine, the like modes of interactivity text. Like there's something about that, that feels like a contemporary iteration of a Blakeian approach, to the page.
Jamin Warren (25:59)
Right, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, no, I that really makes a lot of sense. And I think we've kind of gone from like solo developers being it's not just you do it all, but it's but having not and there's there's some boundaries to being like a solo developer as well, because you know, you can only be good at so many things. And so I'm sort of interested in these like solo projects that are like an artist or a designer or a musician or an architect, and they go down this road of like trying to do everything themselves and the work does really become the expression of like what's going on inside of their head. yeah. Two quick lightning, just two click quick for further, further reading. two things we covered over the last couple of weeks, I think, kind of sort of rhyme with with Murlo's work. One is Sahej Rahal had a new work called Atithi. Sahej is starting at UCLA's DMA program, another great get. But it's these two engraved brass plates on wooden stands. It's facing this wall projection, and then you like drag your hands over the brass to interrupt this like tentacled creature. moving through this like ruined temple. so he just said that like like that he described touch as like at once assertive, aggressive, aching, averse, affectionate, adoring, and aimless. And that debuted actually last year at Lausanne. and I covered it because it was up at Art Basel earlier this earlier this year. I kinda like the tactility piece of it in game design. There's one more
Danny Snelson (27:31)
Yeah.
Jamin Warren (27:33)
CORPSE FARM by Berrysoft which is a game in process it's i mean it's a it's basically a play on these like cozy farming games except you are you're you're farming corpse you're you're farming corpses it's definitely so it's like you're what what you were farming is flesh so I I think there's there's something yeah exactly exactly exactly cool cool cool all right
Danny Snelson (27:40)
my god, yes, great. Cozy Diablo 4. And I think that tactility is so great. know, Sahej's background in sculpture, which I think like leads directly into that. You can really feel when, you know, game designer is thinking about tactility and texture. And yeah, I see that as a real overlap between Murlo and Sahej.
Jamin Warren (27:57)
Yeah. A hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah. 100%. All right, cool. Well, you can read the full essay, the conversation with Murlo. And there is for members, behind the scenes, well, the full conversation that the clips were pulled from. If you would like to yeah, you can just also search for Killscreen Murlo M-U-R-L-O online as well. But you know, one of the many, many great things I cover in the newsletter each and every week. All right, we're gonna do a little bit of news and then we'll talk close out with the last two things, a couple things here. The talk through. first news item, a game I've been looking at is Zhou Yichen's GRANDMA, which was originally like an itch.io title. there's a Kickstarter to press GRANDMA into 5000 CNC milled laser engraved Game Boy cartridges with a with a Hong Kong hardware hardware maker called PB Tails and it'll be playable on original hardware. Zhou made the game after his grandmother fell in twenty twenty four and then later passed.
Danny Snelson (28:44)
Yeah, so good.
Jamin Warren (29:05)
and backers, one of the things I thought was interesting was backers can send a photo of someone they love and Zhou will redraw them as a pixel character that gets engraved on that particular cartridge. You know, I think sometimes like these like stretch goals or whatever sometimes can feel like a little bit forced, but this was one where like, if you're you really want to you know, create like sort of a quick kind of a memento. Danny, I wanted to ask you a little bit about like, you know, grief work in a physical, a physical cartridge, you know, in this instance. You know, it's not a collectible.
Danny Snelson (29:17)
Hmm. Yeah.
Jamin Warren (29:32)
Right, is the thing is like it's not a stretch quality, it's not like a collectible in that way. Like this is this is meant to be like like a it's it's an object to actually physically remember somebody in in in game in game form. Yeah, I just want to ask you a little bit about that, about the grief work side of it. Yeah, if you see anything similar, what that makes you think of.
Danny Snelson (29:44)
Yeah. Yeah, I love this. mean, this, your coverage of it, it's been been fantastic. And I'm so glad to have known about it. I think that there's lots to say about grief work grief and video games in particular, I've been thinking about a lot. My father passed during COVID. And, you know, I just played a lot of games about dead dads. It was how I recovered, you know, Gris, for example, I think is one of my favorites in that genre where you really play through the stages of grief. But gain, I mean, grief is expansive and
Jamin Warren (30:05)
Yeah.
Danny Snelson (30:15)
you know, in some ways you have to compress it. So think there's like a lot about compression and grief in this project. But it's also like, you know, it's something you want to memorialize. And I think that the standout line that Zhou Yichen says about grandma is quote, a story this permanent shouldn't live in plastic. She's done so like, it set my mind spinning because I actually had to like turn to Google. So was like, does metal last longer than plastic? And actually it doesn't.
Jamin Warren (30:43)
that's good question. Yeah. Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah.
Danny Snelson (30:44)
It seems like it should, right? Like it seems like it's weightier, but like aluminum apparently will oxidate and will be entirely rusted away in 50 to 200 years. Whereas plastic can persist from 450 years to a million years. And so think that there's like something really interesting and weird. And maybe this is also the structure of grief about something that feels more permanent, but maybe like feels more permanent.
Jamin Warren (30:55)
Right.
Danny Snelson (31:10)
to us based on its weight, its tactility, its memorial value when in fact, plastic will outlive humanity. But it feels cheap. It feels cheap and it's annoyingly toxic. I think there's something wholesome about aluminum. Since I read this, my brain has been sculpting itself around questions of plastic and aluminum.
Jamin Warren (31:24)
Right, yeah. Yeah, yeah. There's there's a great this podcast. what is it called? It's called it's about big questions. It's called Unexplainable. It's a Vox Media Podcast. And in this great episode about like how do we know that we're the first like how do we know there hasn't been a previous civilization? Like how would you know that? It's a thought experiment and reality is like we don't. Well, it's like we don't. Like Earth has been around long. Like it is possible that there have been other
Danny Snelson (31:53)
Hmm. No plastics.
Jamin Warren (32:00)
And so it's about this you know researcher and he's you know he sort of poses this question and he goes to look. But yeah, plastic ends up being the for our for the Anthropocene for our what will what our marker, our final marker, what would appear, everything else would get carved away, but if some alien civilization comes a million years from now, the only thing that they will find is a a thin strata, which will be like all the plastic, and that's it. That's the only as the only thing that gets left behind. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly, exactly.
Danny Snelson (32:20)
Yeah. Game Boy cartridges from the 80s will outlive humanity.
Jamin Warren (32:29)
the next little news item on the very much on the other end of the spectrum, the other affect-wise on the emotional register wise. reason. sorry, Reason and Rhyme. it comes out actually, it's coming out actually in a couple days, October 15th. is designed by Tim FitzRandolph, who works at Toyful Games. It's online co-op puzzle adventure. You play as two flightless birds. We're stranded on island. It's built just for two people and each player controls one of the birds. one of the things we talked about was about the design is about, you know, emotional communication rather than logic. And, you know, we he's talked about the the other player is like most of most of the game, some hand-drawn animation there. you know, I love birds, I love flightless birds here. yeah, just curious what you thought, just taking a look at that one. I I really enjoyed taking a look at, you I'm a big fan of like a co-op.
Danny Snelson (33:10)
You
Jamin Warren (33:17)
titles. we've been seeing a lot of like, you know, multiplayer games for two, you know, for two, three, mostly four quartets seem to be very popular. I'm not sure why we've settled on the quartet as like the optimal model. I feel like maybe it's like a a kickback to like there were four ports on, you know, the on the Dreamcast and Yeah, I don't know. It's just funny. It's like with a lot of the friend games, it's like, it has to be four players. So I I I it's an interesting, an interesting question. But two is nice as well.
Danny Snelson (33:25)
Yeah. yeah, you can have the four simultaneous screens and GoldenEye.
Jamin Warren (33:46)
Just curious your initial thoughts on the game and I just I I thought it was a nice nice little palette cleanser or something that looked a little different than what I'd see.
Danny Snelson (33:53)
It looks so lovely. Yeah, I was thinking about Untitled Goose Game or these like two player against split screen, or it takes two, these kinds of like, you know, games really designed for two people. And I didn't know about Push Me Pull You, which you also linked to, which, my God. Like the other side of that, like co-op. And I think, I was thinking about that and the work that I think maybe is most again, is something that Bo Ruberg writes really beautifully about, Realistic Kissing Simulator.
Jamin Warren (33:58)
Right. Right. Right. yeah, yeah, yeah. That's like body horror like Push, yeah.
Danny Snelson (34:20)
It's a really simple game. always teach it. There's basically just these two heads and they've got these like floppy tongues and you're just kind of like flopping your tongues against each other. And the game just kind of stops whenever you stop, you know, flopping your tongue around. It's just like a single kiss and it's called the realistic kissing simulator, but it's like the most ridiculous kind of floppy jiggle physics in that game.
Jamin Warren (34:21)
Okay. I think I've seen this one. Yeah, yeah. Two players are enough. Yeah. I mean I think you can do s yeah.
Danny Snelson (34:42)
Two players are enough. And I think that there's like an intimacy to those kinds of games. So like, think that's a big part of the kissing simulator. And I, you know, I love having that opportunity. I'm really excited for Reason and Rhyme to be able to, you know, build these like, you know, personal one-on-one kind of like gameplay. think we it's, great to see more of that.
Jamin Warren (34:46)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Last little news hit. game called Lofsöng, which showed at Tribeca earlier this year. it's directed by Alessandro Durando at Unrelated Studio in Turin. it's a wordless adventure. There's no map, there's no readable text, and it's set in this exclusion zone on a dead earth in a permanent nuclear winter. it's a puzzle based game. You teaches you an invented language. It's buried in these like brutalist monuments through like sound and Geometry. it was also at the Gamescom opening night live. it is this game about this real problem of like marking nuclear waste sites for people who will not speak any language that we were talking earlier about what would be left behind. nuclear waste is, you know, is one of these things that will decay over, you know, a long enough period, but let's say even like a hundred years from now, you know, it's very possible that there will be sites where there's nuclear, there's nuclear material that's buried.
Danny Snelson (35:37)
Yeah.
Jamin Warren (35:52)
I had a conversation with someone at the Long Now Foundation, gosh me, like twenty years ago. And I heard about this this this design problem. the Long Now Foundation very famously is building, I believe have built this 10,000 year clock. and so they're often thinking about these long term things. This is this is a real challenge that like, how do you design what are the ways that you would design for is where the warnings beyond beyond language? So I think they'd settled on like these kind of like ominous black sort of geometric structures that would sort of like create the feel of like danger, like jagged and just like some way to communicate that to people. It was interesting to see this like in a from a games context, because games can be an excellent way to sort of like workshop some of these, workshop some of these ideas. yeah, I don't know. I thought it was like a really interesting approach, you know, is sort of a game that is is subtly it's like also one of these things. It's a game that is about nuclear war without being about nuclear war, right? Or about be about desolation without necessarily having to
Danny Snelson (36:25)
Shag it, yeah.
Jamin Warren (36:49)
kind of like hit the nail on the head. but yeah, I don't know. Curious what you thought. I I I I I thought it was another interesting, interesting and just yeah, just a really fascinating way to approach this and it's I th it's still in development. So I I just I I love the look and feel obviously as well. That kind of like grayscale grayscale patina that really made it kind of sink.
Danny Snelson (36:51)
Mm. Yeah. You know, it's interesting to see these like, certain kinds of materials come in waves. And I feel like we're in a real concrete moment. It's not just because, know, I'm playing Control Resonant, which is finally out. know, famously brutalist, from the famously brutalist control series, but, know, I think just last week or the week before we talked about volume. and I wonder if there's like, what is it like, I guess I was kind of curious, like, why is there so much concrete right now? Like, what is it about? you know, and you.
Jamin Warren (37:15)
Yeah.
Danny Snelson (37:35)
I think in the write up, you have this really poignant line about listening to concrete. Like, what does it mean to listen to concrete? Concrete's relationship to like this kind of like flimsy, I guess to go back to like flimsy materiality, like concrete, like metal we think of as this kind of like solid, meaningful thing. And that there's something, I don't know, maybe really compelling about having these like short virtual experiences or these kinds of like dreamlike, bizarre virtual environments having.
Jamin Warren (37:46)
Yeah.
Danny Snelson (38:03)
concrete structure of the space instead of say some like neon like in Tron or some kind of like, you know, plastic like material that just feels like, yeah, like it doesn't have stability or solidity. And that play of like, you know, virtual objects are, you know, you can no clip through any of them, right? But like the simulation of weight and heft of concrete, I think right now has to say something about how game designers are thinking about our point in the present, especially as
Jamin Warren (38:07)
Right.
Danny Snelson (38:28)
present relates to some kind of future and as it relates to the kind of like ongoing technologies that are just rapidly advancing in this kind of like, again, these like black boxes that are at once so flimsy and so pervasive.
Jamin Warren (38:42)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's I interesting. I'm curious what what might be going on there stylistically. Cause it's not necessarily something that you see in the built environment. There hasn't necessarily been like a revival of like like brutalist architecture real structures in the real world. So in digital and also, you know, like you have so much available to you in terms of like textures and texture of I mean, I look at so many games that do so much with like, you know, that do so much with textures and so to kind of like
Danny Snelson (38:54)
Yeah. Yeah.
Jamin Warren (39:09)
you know kind of free solo, you know, basically like, okay, I'm gonna make these structures basically naked. You know, before it'd be like, I I didn't have the ability maybe to adorn them the way that I might like and now you absolutely do and so to make some very specific decisions.
Danny Snelson (39:22)
Yeah, maybe it's like a resistance to the Unreal library of textures. Yeah.
Jamin Warren (39:26)
Right, yeah, bet yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah, I like, well, sure, I have all these options, but maybe maybe I don't I don't necessarily want to do that. or there's still so much to be explored with things that are very simple. So anyway. I will link to all three of those games in the show notes. yeah. All right, moving on. I came across and you know, we I've been writing about Joseph DeLappe's work. Joseph DeLappe is is a media artist, very has done quite a bit of work over the last, you know, gosh like twenty years or so. He was in the No Fun, the very first No Fun issue that that I published back in two thousand and two thousand and eleven. but Joseph sent me a a note about this, about this project that he had been working on. so Mansoor Adayfi was was detained at Guantanamo for 14 years without charge and is a co creator on this game.
Danny Snelson (39:58)
Yeah.
Jamin Warren (40:16)
And interestingly, not the subject. So is is working on the project. is working with Joseph DeLappe, who's a professor of games and tactical media at Abertay and doing it with Biome Collective. there's also Antonio Aiello, who co-wrote Adayfi's memoirs on the team. There are two art historians, Jenna Altomonte and Darshana Jayemanne. actually Darshana actually I believe there's some stuff in Darshana has written for Killscreen many, many moons, many, many moons ago. You know, the context is, you know, that that gu Guantanamo is still actively holding people and there are renewed expansion proposals. you know, I it is a really interesting approach in terms of one like you choosing a real world real world setting. I think that's a place we've talked about this in the past about you know, games being pretty allergic to dealing with things like in the in the real world. but yeah, I mean I think this question that they they they quote unquote want to develop an experience. That could be shared in a way that only a video game might do is exciting but also very treacherous as well, right? Like I think that's always that's always the concern that games don't have the just won't be able to carry the gravity that Guantanamo and the continuing existence and abuses that happen at Guantanamo clearly deserve. I think that's always the always the worry. Curious, Danny, what your initial thoughts are. There isn't like a ton, ton of information like about the game. I mostly wrote about the concept, but I I I thought the, you know, I thought it was a good jumping off point, so maybe some
Danny Snelson (41:29)
Yeah.
Jamin Warren (41:39)
w some other themes, some other themes to explore like inside of like what games can possibly do.
Danny Snelson (41:45)
Yeah, you know, I'm glad we've moved past some, some of that discourse around empathy games or, or, you know, or even having to make a case for serious games that like, of course, of course games can address these, these kinds of topics. and, and they're, they're all the more urgent for it. And, know, I was thinking about how, how many games are at sites like this that are like first person shooters, like the call of duty universe where you're like in a real site where, you know,
Jamin Warren (42:09)
Right. Right.
Danny Snelson (42:13)
historical battle happened or a prison or something that's recreated, games like Chernobylite or, you know, these kinds of games where you're like in these kinds of spaces. But what I like about this, what I'd be interested is like, you so often with those kinds of things, there's a kind of cognitive dissonance where you're doing something terrible that you don't want to do, but that game is kind of forcing you to. And so really curious about how they'll go about, you know, because it's so early, how they'll go about achieving
Jamin Warren (42:32)
Right. Right.
Danny Snelson (42:40)
You know, the, you know, what sounds like, you know, this very like meaningful mode of survival, you know, passing time by playing games when you're subject to grotesque, you know, exercises of power and torture and isolation that like, you know, games as a kind of survival technology. I'm really fascinated by and also to thematize as, know, I think Aaron Trammell has come up in a few of our conversations, but you know, thinking about how humans play with other humans, right? The history of torture is a kind of game-like structure. And how do you make a game that is both true to, and it's like a design question, right? Like, how do you make a game that's true to the mode of survival by playing games to pass time and to recognize the, like, you know, the horrifying forms of play that the state exercises in these kinds of non-sites? So I'm just really, really excited to see how that unravels and...
Jamin Warren (43:10)
Yeah.
Danny Snelson (43:32)
I'm really glad that this kind of work is being made.
Jamin Warren (43:35)
Yeah. Yeah. I mean the two avenues that games often explore is kind of like either, yeah, you make you make the player complicit in doing terrible things, or you are helpless. That's the two is like you rob them of their agency and they just have to witness and it kind of inverts the the inverts what games allow you to do, which is they allow you to do things and so you take that away from players and that creates implications for you about how you're helpless. you know, I I feel like there must be other ways to express this. So I'm curious how they will go about. I'm curious how they will go about doing that. I was trying to think of like other media that you know, I mean you know, other media that maybe does a good job. I mean some in some ways maybe just the setting is sufficient enough and you don't need to you don't necessarily need to do more. You don't need to do more. you don't necessarily need to do like more and make it to
Danny Snelson (44:25)
Hmm.
Jamin Warren (44:27)
didactic. I think having artists and historians and all these different parties involved, I think is a is a really good sign. But yeah, I will be very curious about what is the what is the solution that does something unique for games given the setting, and maybe breaks out of like what the sort of available options like normally normally are.
Danny Snelson (44:45)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And games as you know, games have always been a big part of war and domination. I was thinking about that Zones of Control collection by Pat Harrigan and Matthew Kirschenbaum. You know, thinking about the history of war gaming, which goes like directly into the present, right? Like the military, the drone pilots use Xbox controllers and the military is like, you know, develop like specifically Xbox controller coded objects for the like real exercises of power by the state and by the military. And
Jamin Warren (44:56)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Yeah.
Danny Snelson (45:14)
So I think that that space is always so potent to explore. And yeah, I think just like you're saying, like would be very, I'm very interested to see how they navigate that. And it seemed like there's new ways to do it, that we're not locked in, I guess, those two positions that you're saying, that we're not locked in, you know, either cognitive dissonance or powerlessness or, know, yeah.
Jamin Warren (45:24)
Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. All right, last item for today. Christine Sun Kim was named 2026 MacArthur Fellow. Christine, really interesting, really interesting artist. does a lot of work for a lot of work around like sound and the citation names Game of Skill 2.0. That was her 2015 installation at MoMA PS1 that has played. She also made Up and Away. It's a it's a browser game commissioned by the Hyundai Artlab that reworks 1980s speech therapy program called Up, Up and Away. and also in the citation was her drawing series, Degrees of Deaf Rage. like as she's as she's someone who is who is deaf. and the browser piece, she describes it as a small space, quote this is her quote, her words, a small space where my voice does not get corrected.
Danny Snelson (46:13)
Thank
Jamin Warren (46:21)
A lot of her work deals with these questions of like anger and how deaf community is often treated and trying to find ways to express that. I had actually reached out to Christine last year about trying to interview Christine about her work and it wasn't able to work out. I suspect I'm that that is not going to be an option. I've missed my I missed my window given the the MacArthur MacArthur grant. So the the MacArthur Prize is given out to about two dozen artists every every single year.
Danny Snelson (46:38)
I'm sorry.
Jamin Warren (46:47)
believe it's like five hundred thousand dollars. It's unrestricted, so they can use it for whatever, whatever they like. And one of the things I've I've been writing about this for like a the every every time the the the the MacArthur nominees come out every year I'm like, when is someone who makes games gonna be honored? And I wrote about this 10 years ago and I watch it like every single year. And this is this is very this is very close. Like she doesn't she doesn't describe herself as like a game designer per se. But having an artist who makes games as part of the practice, having those games be name be named, does the does the habituation process it does that pathfinding that's really important? And, you know, kind of opens this question for me, which is like when you know, when will we see like a full out and out game designer be honored with a with a with a with a genius with a genius grant? Will this be an ongoing thing? I mean, my hope is my hope is that yes. But that was what piqued my interest about it, aside from Christine's aside aside from Christine's like very unique work, at this bigger question about, you know, another institutional gatekeeping milestone that's getting broken. it just feels like we're tiptoeing towards like each one of these little things kind of like starting to starting to to fall away. but yeah, I was curious about your response your your reaction to the MacArthur news with Christine. I because I also feel like it was like sort of they didn't announce it as like, a person who makes gains is an artist. It wasn't like that wasn't part of the news cycle, but obviously me being me and being very focused on on games every year I'm like, all right, let me go through it. Let me go through it. yeah, curious your thoughts on that before we before we before we call it for today.
Danny Snelson (48:10)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, great. should correct something. I double checked. Of course, you have to be nominated for the MacArthur. You can't apply. So I, you know, set the record straight. Yeah.
Jamin Warren (48:23)
Okay. All right. Well, thank God. It can we can we nominate each other? Can I nominate can I maybe we can do yeah. Yeah.
Danny Snelson (48:32)
We're gonna get our foot in the door somehow. But no, is, mean, great news and I'm such a fan of her work. It's actually just meeting with one of her publishers, James Hoff, who publishes her great book, Deaf Material, on Primary Information. And that book too, the book is so playful. Like her practice, I she has these sharp critiques. She works through a lot of like deaf rage and from a kind disability activist perspective in her art practice. But the book is like a Tumblr feed. It's funny. It's got these anecdotes. He's really kind of like playing through a collection. And so I guess in relationship to some of the conversations we've been having about games kind of bleeding into the art world where we have right now, Coyote Time is up, right? We have like major exhibitions with game language in their title. We have so many artists who are using either game-inspired sculptures or direct playable games in the gallery.
Jamin Warren (49:15)
Right.
Danny Snelson (49:29)
infusions, like the work of Sahej Rahal, that there's something about like games being like adopted by the art world, maybe still that like made this happen. It's like, you know, Christine's work. So like these things, I mean, up and away, Hyundai art lab is very much like an art context. It's not, you know, it's not like, steam, it's like a steam and, and, you know, game of skill 2.0, like that's a MoMA PS1 show. So like it, in some ways it's like a rec, like MacArthur is recognizing an art practice that is game-like.
Jamin Warren (49:37)
Right. Yeah, it's such a good point. Right.
Danny Snelson (49:57)
that's like highly ludic or making games in our art world spaces. And I think like the hurdle is still like, what day one steam release game is going to be, creator of those kinds of like a different, like working within the, guess the more specific context of games outside of art would receive the same kind of recognition. And it goes back what we were saying about some Mookong, I guess a few weeks ago, like being in the Venice Biennale has just like.
Jamin Warren (50:18)
Yeah. Yeah. Right.
Danny Snelson (50:25)
just the poster of the game, in the, I love that anecdote, but I think that it is, it's an interesting time. And I think like there's something about legitimacy that art, like capital A art can stamp onto a game that still is kind of like lagging otherwise. And I'm thinking about the summer moment maybe when Bob Dylan won the Nobel prize. And so it's like, right, like it took a long time for like a lyricist and then like, you know, it had to be somebody who broke all the molds like Bob Dylan did.
Jamin Warren (50:36)
Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah.
Danny Snelson (50:52)
to get the kind of literary recognition for what is otherwise seen as a vernacular form, right? It's not like published in books, yeah.
Jamin Warren (50:57)
Right. That's such a good point. Yeah. I gave a talk at CalArts last week for their experimental animation program. And one of the things I looked at was gatekeepers. 'cause I I think a lot about gatekeepers and I'm someone who started as a gatekeeper at the Wall Street Journal and and you know, decided to brick away and do my own thing and you know, I think as I approach sort of you know, halftime of my own life, I think a lot about how slow gatekeepers can be. to move and how important it is when there are these milestones, I think people take for granted that like it takes a long time. I I've I I've grown to appreciate more the slow process of like secular ideological change that just like opinions you can do you can have all this great work that's out there and it just it just takes time sometimes, you know? It's just like changing of the guard and just these kinds of things. And so, you know, even if the work is good, it's just
Danny Snelson (51:38)
Hmm.
Jamin Warren (51:51)
It just sometimes it just it just takes time. They can't like force the Yeah, it's very hard. Sometimes sometimes it happens very quickly, but you know, oftentimes it is just like a slow march of a bunch of different things and it becomes this like interconnected web of references. And so now that Christine has done it, that makes it easier for younger artists to be able to So I I've also grown to realize I'm like, I think a lot of the work that I'm excited about or the th the world that I wanna see as it relates to games is a world that I will inherit when I'm like a much older a much older man. I get to look backwards on the great things that get done. but I do like that I've been able to witness some of these things just in my short time working in games over the last like fifteen, twenty years.
Danny Snelson (52:19)
Hahaha Yeah. Yeah. And I'll add one other thing just on the, mean, the full title is the MacArthur Genius Grant. And, like, you know, so there's still, no, no, no, not, not to correct you, but to like, highlight the word genius. I was talking a lot, Avi Alpert, who I'm staying with has a great book called The Good Enough Life. It's kind of against genius that we have this kind of like fixation on like the greatest, not to echo our president, but like, you know, on greatness. that like, you know, it's hard to think of like, what is collective genius? And so many games are made by studios, by collaborations.
Jamin Warren (52:34)
Excuse me. Yeah, yeah. Ha ha That's yeah, it's very true.
Danny Snelson (52:57)
And so like, can't isolate a single genius within those spaces as easily. And we don't have often the kind of award infrastructure, the funding infrastructure for people who work collaboratively. And so I think that like this question, I love that you're asking this question and it is like wonderful to see games getting this kind of recognition. But I think that question also has real political stakes to think like, you how do we as a culture value and elevate the work of collaborations and maybe devalue a little bit. the kind of like fixation on the singular genius.
Jamin Warren (53:30)
Yeah, geniuses grant or something along those lines. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I I mean, I do think that's a place where, like, again, thinking about like, we want these big things to change, like how do we recognize like a collective genius? And, you know, I was doing work with MoMA and there's the design department, so much of the work that they've taken in, it's often these collectives at corporations or these design objects that required a lot of different hands. It's inside of this modern art context. and so
Danny Snelson (53:32)
Yeah, not to take away from Christine, who I love and music genius, but you know what mean.
Jamin Warren (53:57)
I will say one one development, I think one of the reasons why the art world is starting to have more artists make games, I think it is in part because you can't have one artist or a pair of artists that can have a idea for a thing and it doesn't require like 70 people to and it's not that it's not you can't do things with 70 people, but it's like to do things that are experimental and daring I think sometimes it does require like a much smaller
Danny Snelson (54:15)
Mm-hmm.
Jamin Warren (54:22)
much a much smaller team, like whether or not, you know, whether the MacArthur folks will at some point accept like a collaborative duo or a trio, I think is a good, it's a really good, interesting question. But I think there is something, you know, this is, you know, there's been we've been thinking about individuals making art for for quite some time, having a person that you can attach it to. And some of that is you know, a public problem as well. Like the public doesn't respect things in groups or they don't think about design in that way. So I I will say, you know, because we were talking about Chris Pell just to bring it full circle.
Danny Snelson (54:39)
Yeah.
Jamin Warren (54:52)
One of the real opportunities for games is the fact that you can have a sing a s one or two people make something that is an expression of a point of view that at least is more like what you might see with you know, with poetry or with, you know, writing a novel or composing a piece of music or that you can you can point to a single individual and say, this is something that kind of like came out of their head. Even though all of those works, they always require other people. There are always editors, there's always you know, book jacket designers, and there's always You know, there are other people who are involved in this process. There's studio engineers, there's all these other infrastructure. and so that's not to I think not to minimize like what you're saying about, you know, the need to recognize like collectives. I do I I for me it's just because of like this is you new territory for games, I do get excited. I was like, we can have a person who is a game designer and that checks the box off and then we can deal with maybe some of these other bigger, thornier questions about how do we give credit to multiple people on a single project. baby step.
Danny Snelson (55:44)
Hehehehe Baby steps. We'll start the campaign for Bennett Foddy to get one of these.
Jamin Warren (55:51)
Yeah, ex exactly, exactly. All right. Well, that is everything that we have for today. everything that we have for today. thank you so much, Danny. so we have a great conversation today. We talked about Chris Pell, we put a sequencer in your arm. We talked about Sahej Rahal, may you drag your hand over brass. We talked about Christine Sun Kim's work, with kind of finding space for both Deaf Rage and also for like
Danny Snelson (56:00)
Thank you.
Jamin Warren (56:17)
the ways that games can also express express joy. we still talk through Zhou Yichen's milling 5000 ml cartridges and the you know the the persistence of plastic long after the Anthropocene. Danny, thank you as always. You can find Danny on all the socials. We'll we will plug plug his work. We'll link to all of the many, many things that we talked about in our conversation today. you can always sign up for the newsletter
Danny Snelson (56:25)
Thanks so much.
Jamin Warren (56:42)
killscreen.com and we have this great Killscreen horror collection that we're working through that you can sign up for that has a collection of about 10 different games that I've handpicked that are in the horror genre with with discounts for them kind of expressions of it like indie indie horror that is presented by MUBI which was really exciting that they were willing to give a hand on getting some of these getting get giving 30 days free if you are a MUBI, MUBI's great so
Danny Snelson (57:05)
Fantastic.
Jamin Warren (57:08)
if you're if you're a MUBI person. Between MUBI, Criterion, Eternal Family. Yeah, all of these like, you know, small man, there's so much good like you don't have to go to Netflix people. It's like there's there's like lots of great stuff that you could you can put something on your screen. That should be one of them. All right, great. Thanks everybody and we'll talk to you soon. All right, bye Danny.
Danny Snelson (57:10)
yeah, I'm in. We're eating good. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Bye, thanks, Jamin.