Earlier today, I watched the below video from The Wheeler Centre in which Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows, discusses how digital and the internet is ‘rewiring our brains’. I agree with much of what he says with regards to the ‘what’ of this rewiring and I don’t know enough about it to refute his predicted outcomes, but then, at around the 11:10 mark, Gideon Haigh makes a cheap joke that gamers are ‘proverbially dull, inarticulate, social misfits’ which garners a smattering of laughter from the audience.
The need for rockstars
Last night, I was graciously invited to the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards by the Wheeler Centre. It was a fun night (although I wish I’d been in a more sociable mood) and because my head is in a games + culture space, I found myself looking at the experience through a slightly odd filter.
Some thoughts on games & culture – part 1
I’ve been asked to give a presentation on the cultural influence (although that’s not a perfect descriptor) of games in a few weeks and I thought I’d share my thinking on this (large) topic in a series of posts here, including the state of things, education, IP, how other mediums deal with their creative culture, the bleeding of games into other forms, and whatever else crosses my mind.
First up is to establish a bit of where we are, which was triggered by this post We’re not the clever country if we’re not a creative country on The Punch. It’s a look at the impact creative industries have on the economy, with a specific focus on games and the Interactive Skills Integration Scheme, and it got me thinking about a couple of things. In this post I want to look at some of the influences on our local industry in 2010 and the role of education.
Those who do not have imagination cannot imagine possibility.
Recently, the Australian Council for the Arts commissioned a number of pieces from four established performing arts organizations looking at the idea of artistic vibrancy. Three of the four pieces – On Orchestra, on Theatre, and on Dance, dissected their own practices as mediums and institutions, beginning what is hopefully a longer term conversation and evolution.
The fourth, which you can read in full here, was by Richard Mills, the Artistic Director of West Australian Opera, and it attempts to explore the wider issue of heritage rather than focusing on his company’s practice.
Read moreThose who do not have imagination cannot imagine possibility.
Critical failure…
The Wheeler Centre here in Melbourne recently ran a series of panels under the banner of ‘Critical Failure‘. These took in film, books, theatre, and the visual arts, and were designed to promote debate. And promote debate they did, with it spilling out of the Wheeler Centre and across the internet on Crikey, the ABC, in the Guardian, and on blogs.
I think these debates are incredibly interesting, both because they reveal the huge schism between those critics working in traditional print media and those working online (and, in fact, their opinions of online), and also because of what you can learn from them about criticism and how it might relate to games and the broader culture.
Click through for my thoughts…
Freeplay…
It’s been pretty quiet around here, not because I don’t have things to say, but because I’ve been working pretty flat out on pulling together Freeplay – which, if early accounts & the vibrant twitter feed are to be believed, was pretty succesful.
In the run-up, I wrote a fairly lenghty post about my own personal goals for the event, reflecting on the creative aspects of designing a festival. I might still publish that if I ever get time to edit it, but I wanted to share one of my favourite comments (from twitter) about what we did.
“#freeplay10 feels a lot like reading DanC’s Lost Garden, where many of the principles discussed can easily relate to any application in life” – GameTacoWall, 11:29 Aug 14
I couldn’t have put it better myself 🙂
Meanland: Reading in a time of Technology
Synecdoche: games, control, subtext, and art
Recently, there has been a resurgence on question of ‘can games be art?’, with the film critic Roger Ebert categorically saying that they can’t, and the writer Lynden Barber echoing Ebert’s position.
One of the cornerstones of their argument is that are defined as competitive pursuits built from rules and states and goals, and that within that definition, nobody has produced art. The call, then, is to reframe what we are talking about – that the word ‘game’ doesn’t properly encapsulate the evolution of the form.
Except neither do the descriptors ‘film’ or ‘novel’ or ‘writing’ or ‘comic’.
The Emerging Writers’ Festival…(& podcasts, interviews, and reviews…)
The Emerging Writers’ Festival just launched their program, so it’s time for the obligatory spruiking blog-post.
I’m running a 2-hour writing for games workshop with Express Media on May 22nd from 2-4. Details here. I’m going to cover the key similarities and differences between games & more traditional media and how to approach the process of games writing.
I’ll also be on the panel ‘Never Surrender’ on May 29th at 1:45.
Never surrender
Writing isn’t all about success stories! Join our writers as they speak candidly about rejection, creative risk-taking and projects that took ten years from creation to publication. Why do they stick with it, and is it all worth it in the end?
With — Paul Callaghan, Elizabeth Campbell, Sean Condon and Dee White. Hosted by Simonne Michelle-Wells.
And 20 minutes before the program launch, I was interviewed for the Arts Alive program about my experiences with the festival and why I think it’s a Good Thing(tm). (Summary: Writers > Readers for inspiration!)
Thanks to Lisa Dempster, I was at last month’s Format Festival in Adelaide talking about writing & technology on the Non-Paper Publishing panel. One of the other speakers, Estelle Tang, recently interviewed me about games writing for the Kill Your Darlings podcast. You can listen to it here.
And lastly, I reviewed The Pleasures of Computer Gaming for RMIT‘s Second Nature Journal. You can read that review here.