Official Website @ Cyan Worlds | This link opens iTunes right to the application.

Myst is one of the trifecta of games that got me into this art form of interactive storytelling. It’s a body of work that helped shape me as an artist in new media and made me what I am today. Which is why I’m buying the crap out of this title. I have the Myst board game for goodness sake!

I hope that Cyan Worlds does a postmortem on bringing the game to the iPhone. A few immediate questions I have are what kinds of decisions were made to update the port. Was there a point where they pulled punches to make the game have the spirit of the 1993 release? I also want to know what they did with the LAV scenes. Can’t wait to play to look how they turned out on the iPhone.

On a forward-thinking note, I hope this will help Cyan Worlds fund a new project from their studio. Honestly, I hope it’s something not Myst related. Heresy, I know. I love the Myst franchise. I love the work Cyan Worlds has done. But I think it’s time to move away from the past and start with something new.

Note: I did copy the above image from the Boing Boing Gadgets article. I can also screencap it myself, but I’m lazy.

In all seriousness, I am very glad that an effort is being made. I only have their website to go on, so I have to go on a bit of speculation from the presented materials. They’re also starting off small but hoping to expand their collection and open a full presentation and space in 2012.

There are a few things I will be watching for. I don’t want to give the impression that I am looking down on this effort from the start, but I have deep concerns which I hope are addressed. I hope this center can make the history of our art form accessible.

Games as Toys vs. Games as Storytelling Objects

The largest concern I have is on intent and focus. The center is under the Strong National Museum of Play. What concerns me is that the center will portray all articles as an article of a toy and by extension only for children.

It is very true that in the early days of video games were marketed as toys rather than media texts. What I fear is that the context of games as toys would perpetuate in modern context. Would we consider the story line of Myst as a toy? Would we consider all movies only for children because there are Disney movies? I fear that this center would only perpetuate a misconception that video games are only for children.

Reading though the center’s Concentric Circles document [PDF], I don’t have the fullest of confidence. Most of the dialogue is about video games for children only, and mostly being male centric. I feel that the initial goals of the center are only about focus on children with video games, rather than a society which has incorporated electronic games though the years. While it does raise some broader questions, I feel that the center is tied down by being apart of a museum which goals are for children’s toys, rather than a broader discussion of a form of media and how different audiences have participated.

The toys vs. media text argument is certainly a mater of academic discussion. What I fear with the center is a lack of discussion in this area. The art form has evolved where video games are presented differently now than they were. Quickly looking over the documentation, I am left with little confidence.

Access to Collections

It’s obviously way too early to make a conviction of how these materials and research will be presented, but it’s the right time to discuss how the material will be accessible. The center is located in Rochester, NY. No matter where you decide to put a physical place, there will always be limits to people to come visit. This is the current statement from the center on their access to the collections:

All the collections are accessible to scholars for research. A small but representative sample of artifacts is on view in museum displays, and a few games are available to guests to play as components of exhibits on other topics. Plans are underway for a major, permanent exhibit projected to open in 2012. See below for additional information.

Which raises many questions for me. This statement is along the lines of access to the physical objects which have obvious access limitations. You wouldn’t want to put out physical artifacts in the effort to preserve the quality of the artifacts. What worries me is the accessibility of the information of these artifacts and other findings. It’s not fair to go into speculation, so let me present how I hope the center will proceed with the collection.

First and for most, I hope all text and images are released under some form of Creative Commons license, ideally Attribution 3.0. What’s the use of history research when no one can use the information?

Which leads into my next thought: How will the collections and presentation be transmitted? Nothing can replace the experience of viewing and interacting with the actual artifact, but I hope that each artifact is presented online with it’s relevance. Allow anyone to look though the catalogue and know the relevance of each piece. Allow anyone to start their own research with out the need to be pre-approved as ‘scholars for research’. While I fully understand and appreciate limiting pubic accessibility for the physical objects in person, there is no reason to provide digital copy and images of these context.

Here’s an idea out of the blue: Join up with MobyGames. Course, MobyGames doesn’t technically share their content freely being copyrighted content, making their mission not entirely philanthropic. This is a larger topic for another day, but my point is to have a catalogue of titles that is shared to the public for any use, matching with tangible objects.

How are they interfacing with the producers of electronic games?

What is the outreach effort for collecting the history? How are they going to deal with the significant presence of Japanese and other non-US roles in electronic games? How are they going to accept participation from current developers for preserving the current history? In other words, how people involved in the history help in preserving?

What’s the long-term plan?

The center is ramping up for a dedicated presentation space for 2012, but what are the future goals of the project? I see a center like this making a decision between two paths. Will this be a center which collects artifacts only to encourage visits to the center? Or will this be a center which presents their collection to the world, with the physical building only a starting point to a larger mission?

After looking though the Strong National Museum of Play’s website and other artifacts, I really don’t see how they are in a position to treat our history with the respect and context. Nor are they willing to put the resources in sharing history to the general public. I only get a very limited view of what might be presented at the main museum; I can’t even find what is in the collection with much detail. I can’t find much confidence for the electronic games division to be different. I do hope to be proven wrong.

Can You Name the Video Game Systems (Released in the U.S.)?

As someone who studies video game history, the test really kicked my ass. Under the cut (or huge spoiler line) are my analysis of my results, but a few tips. The auto-correction is very good and will take most acronyms as well as the official titles. So if it’s not firing off as correct, you are either wrong or need to be more specific. “Sega” alone doesn’t cut it. For reference, I got 25/68 and kicking my self for forgetting three of them.

OMGLOLBBQ SPOILERS BELOW!

I thought about putting this above the spoiler, but it would give away answers. The Game & Watch is a bit contradictory with the ‘single game system’ rule. G&W were a series of single game systems; No cartridges replacing games. There’s also things missing like Leapfrog systems which fit the definition. Just because the target audience is different doesn’t make it not a console system.

The three I bonked myself in the head for forgetting: Dreamcast, PSP, and 3DO.

The rest of what I missed were either me forgetting the exact number for the Atari systems, forgetting the word ‘Odyssey’ for the Magnovox systems, me not realizing that the Sega Master Systems were indeed released in the US, N-Gage was marketed as a game system, and forgetting to list out things that are currently on the Virtual Console for the Wii. Some of the rest of the entries are systems I never read about or were obscure enough that I never even heard of!

Needless to say, it’s time for me to do some reading on a few of these systems. Like the Nomad for example or the Mega Duck, if only for the name!

While there are a small assortment of titles I can point to, the largest influence in my career as a game developer and artist is Myst. Now that I am employed as a developer at Telltale Games, I wish Cyan Worlds a happy 15th anniversary of their landmark title. Thank you for all of your quality work though the years and inspiring me as an artist.

Mini History Lesson

While 7th Guest was released prior to Myst, 7th Guest was highly restricted due to adult content. I remember purchasing a Packard Bell which included 7th Guest, but wrapped in paper marked “ADULTS ONLY” before revealing what was inside. Myst on the other hand was all ages in the sense that any age can enjoy the title, not dumbed down for children nor exclusive to adults.

Myst really was the killer app for optical disks for data. While there were certainly CD-ROMs prior, they were mostly storing large amounts of data and the occasional postage stamp of video and audio.¹ Or (as the case of 7th Guest) restrictive in target audience. Myst was the first widely distributed entertainment product that fully utilized the space to make an enriched experience not emulated on other media.

It was also a time where a new generation of computers as multimedia centers were available. However, being able to watch non-interactive video was not as attractive on the computer when you have a TV and VCR. Myst was a new experience entirely, so consumers wanting a new computer would want their standard word processing and spreadsheet work, but also a computer that ‘played that Myst game’. Thus CD-ROM drives were quickly became a standard issue on a computer. The rest trickled down from there.

While a case could be made that something else may have come along, Myst was the app that got optical disk drives standard in all computers, which lead to DVD as well.

¹ Yes, Myst’s video was also postage stamp size, but it was embedded into full screen of photo, not a small window in the Windows UI. Thus the framing of content was full-screen.

Before I continue, I want to make extremely clear that I do not wish anything bad to Shigeru San. As you’ll read, this is a platform for me to talk about a larger context with a theoretical concept using him as a test case.

In the dream, I was an upper management of a video game history museum (a concept I covered before) which was prepared in the sense of being able to act quickly when a high-profile designer passes away. First there was a press conference, having timing it for after Nintendo of America made their statement. I was presenting the main statement by quickly reviewing the many accomplishments Miyamoto had done in his life time. While he is one of Japan’s greatest sons, he really is one of humanities’ greatest assets. This was followed by the museum having a memorial service and special visitations. A monument at the museum, already erected in his honor with a prior event, would become the focus point for visitors to pay their respects. The museum itself would be open, but in order to provide the context of Miyamoto’s work the admission would be waived for two days. In addition, three days there will be someone standing watch over the monument and public visitation at any time.

The takeaway I have from this dream is what would happen now if one of the great pioneers of our industry were to pass away. For the amount of contribution certain individuals have made to the art form, I worry that their work doesn’t match the recognition they have made. Miyamoto has the benefit of representation from Nintendo, but what about Nolan Bushnell, Tim Schafer, and anyone with a Lifetime Achievement award?

What I’m trying to get at is the differences of when a high-profile artist of the entertainment field passes away and the differences between media. Movies, television, music and to a slightly lesser extent with books work within each other so that daily entertainment programs and news programs provide context to each other. Interactive entertainment is mostly avoided in a positive context as the impression video games are stealing audience away. Course, ignoring the situation doesn’t help matters. My aims are to make the art form I chose not loose it’s relevance to society. Specifically, equate the public perception of the work to the size of the audience. It’s not the death of the individual that we can make this case, but it’s the honoring of a person’s work that we can see where the art form has made an impact.

Before I continue, here’s a little review of recent weeks of highly publicized public gaming projects and research grants.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation announced the first round of recipients in their Health Games Research Project. Over $2 million to various institutions focusing on using video games for public health research. Some of these projects are research-only projects while others are focused on games for public consumption. For you NPR listeners, you may have heard their sponsorship announced for the past few months.

At Games for Change conference in NYC, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor announced her collaboration with Arizona State University with a game called Our Courts. It’s a piece that addresses the lack of knowledge of the American judicial system.

It is clear that there are existing venues of funding for public works of games. I can’t see how any foundation would say no to a well proposed video game project that fits their goals. I wish developers would take more interest in pursuing these grants. However, there’s a common thread among all of these projects that I think a CPM would will the need: Publishing Services.

Publishing and distribution of a title is not as easy. Even with titles that are free to play for a consumer via the Internet, the marketing of your game and distribution is wildly crazy. And don’t get me started on console development! This isn’t to say that it’s impossible for a grant institution to make a successful marketing campaign for a project, but right now that kind of effort needs to be invested per project. There is no central body that focus attention on distribution of public interactive media. With an organization that specializes in publishing services, the publishing line items can be assigned to a different grant institution, rather than demanding more costs to pay a third party for publishing.

Enter the CPM. While I would hope for a grand-giving wing of the organization, the primary role would be publishing services. This would be the minimum involvement for a title included in the CPM portfolio and include:

• Infrastructure investments (bandwidth, hosting solutions, etc)
• Quality Assurance
• Marketing of titles
• Customer Support / Troubleshooting
• Console publisher relations & console port development.

The CPM would have a goal of building a reputation as a solid venue of interactive content, just as NPR and PBS do with their content. Instead of building a marketing campaign from the ground up per title, the network reduces the marketing development for any new title. Using Our Courts as an example, the development from Arizona State and et all are paid for. The CPM’s roll can range up the web server architecture, pays the bandwidth bills, etc. In addition, the marketing wing includes Our Courts as apart of the CPM network. First-tier support handled by CPM, which is a huge reduction of burden on the developer!

Then there’s taking the project further to other venues. It would be great to see Our Courts on consoles using the exiting digital distribution channels for each console. Sadly, there’s no way a publicly funded institution can effectively launch such a plan and effectively negotiate with any one or more console manufacture for a freely distributable title. CPM would help to create a relationship with the big three and help to bridge the development and distribution gaps between. But that’s another post for another time

Wired Blogs: Games | Gaming, Real Violence Trends Tracked, Charted

It’s easy to claim that gaming violence has no correlation with real world violence, but those arguments are a bit hollow if you can’t provide data to corroborate; or even better, a fancy line graph.

The graph makes no direct claims towards a relationship between real world and gaming violence, though it’s interesting to see an inversely proportional trend of violent gaming releases and incidents of real crime.

For those doubting the graph’s figures, have a look at the data on which it was based: a relatively recent survey of national violent crime rates published by the U.S. Department of Justice.

We have to be very careful with how we state this information.

While it’s easy to jump to the conclusion, these facts can not prove that violent video games cause a REDUCTION of violent crimes. There are simply way to many factors at play to make this claim. This would be a separate set of studies to determine what the real factors are and even then may never be truly ‘solved’.

What this information does say is that claims of increases of violent crime over time are inherently false, regardless of what is being pointed to. We can safely state that violent video games have not increased violent crime at a national level for the reason that there isn’t an increase of violent crime to begin with.

Obviously there are more complexities in the situation to say that any one factor is the deciding factor. But isn’t that the problem? There are certain lawmakers point to violent video games as a reason seem to be interested in investing time and money on appearances that they are solving existing social problems. Obviously these resources would be better spent investing in long-term solutions, but these solutions are not easily communicated to a voter.

Here’s a title idea for anyone to take on. Interactive entertainment is a very strong and powerful media that can make the depth of a subject matter more accessible to an audience. As SimCity provides accessible depth of urban planning and zoning, perhaps a title exploring social and economics to better illustrate the complexities of violent crime and related social woes would help create a better informed society. If you do this, or even address a microcosm of this situation, people will want you to work for them and you can pretty much ask for any grants to do similar work. No need to wait for me to approve the idea, just go out, do it, and do it well!

Editor’s Note: Hosting the image locally as to not leach bandwidth.

That particular day I visited the History Museum, a demonstration of the PDP-1 was being held twice that day. I admit that while I knew this was an important device, I was murky at the time as to it’s exact history. Going to the demonstration made me hurt myself for forgetting. The PDP-1 was the first ‘personal’ computer in the sense that one person could operate the machine rather than a team of computer engineers. This paved the way for the MIT Tech Model Railroad Club to make key software in computer history, including Spacewar!

What made this even more special was not just the presence of a working PDP-1, but that one could actually play Spacewar!, on the original hardware. While the control box was a modern fabrication (the original used telephone key switches), the controls were connected to the PDP-1 directly and used the PDP-1′s screen to play. That’s powerful for telling a historic narrative.

All of this leads me to an idea and/or wish I’ve had for some time:

I want to preserve this historical artifacts of this industry.
I want more than just a book to tell me these things (great book, want more).
I want to make sure every game on every platform can be played.
I want to make sure the story of developing these titles are told and not lost.

I want a computer and console game history museum.

Obviously this is the start of my thoughts on the subject, but expect more when I finally get around to making more posts…

Myst Online: Uru Live Season 2 Status

Hi Everybody,

I have some news that some of you have probably not been looking forward to. GameTap has decided to discontinue the operation of Myst Online: Uru Live.

< SNIP >

Ricardo Sanchez
VP of Content and Creative Director for GameTap

I’m upset that the eight year journey has come to a close, but I also think that it’s time for the experiment to come to a rest. Uru was a needed and welcomed experiment in a MMO based narrative, not on combat. The goal was not to level up or defeat the baddie with spells and swords, but to progress and the story line. From this, a very strong and tight-nit group believed intensely in the project and the community they built.

History of Uru

My journey with Uru started when the project was called MUDPIE. This was back in 1999 when the Myst fan site RivenGuild was still very much alive. The follow up to Myst and Riven, Cyan Worlds set out to anticipate the saturation of broadband internet services and release a MMO. The idea comes from people wanting to share the adventuring of worlds with others. Cyan wanted to capitalize this by providing a platform to explore with others together. In addition, the online distribution model would provide Cyan the means of distributing new content without the need of making a full boxed game.

In the fall of 2003, I was invited to participate in the beta test of Uru: Ages Beyond Myst. The title was being published by UbiSoft who obtained publishing rights of the Myst catalogue at the time. This would also be Ubi’s first venture into an MMO. As a huge Myst fan and working towards a career in this industry, it was an honer to be included. I tried to give as much feedback as I could, especially mixed with my college work. For years I have read about the places in the novels, and now I was experiencing them and contributing to one of the development companies I would give most anything to work for.

With out going into much of the details, the release wasn’t the best of releases. Ubisoft wasn’t sure about selling an online only game and forced Cyan to make the box an off-line version with the online component an add on. This would have been fine, but the process of getting to the online component, albeit free, was a complicated mess of invites, sign up procedures (yes, plural), and maybe then you’ll be able to play online. While the start was meant to give a free start of online capabilities and then later start charging, there weren’t enough people who bought the game that knew about the online capabilities, let alone pay for them. In February of 2004, the whole project was canceled and two expansion packs were released using already developed content.

But as the franchise states: The ending has not yet been written. In August of 2004, Cyan released the server code for free to anyone willing to host a server. While users had to pay a fee to obtain a user account, this kept the community going. I didn’t participate in this but I kept an eye on things. Suddenly in Feb 2006, Cyan revived the project by allowing others to join in on the public services thought an invite system. A new funder was there, sure, but who? The speculation was on GameTap. In May of that year GameTap announced they were going to restart Uru along with the news that Sam & Max would start as episodic. Basically, the single best press release ever.

The magnitude of this is great. A project, dead as a doornail, is revived due to fans keeping up the fight. I really can’t recall any other situation like this besides MUDs. Again, I was asked to beta test Uru and gladly did.

The GameTap release had a slow trickle of content drops that were kinda random. Eventually Cyan borrowed a page from us at Telltale and took an episodic route where a plot line would happen one week in a month and a content drop occurring at the end of that week to last the month. However, this reduced the gameplay to reading on various websites what was going on in the cavern than actually experiencing events in the cavern.

The Project Itself

The project was not without it’s faults. Narrative based MMOs create a huge design problem: Provide enough narrative fuel to feed the beast. With a traditional MMORPG, once you have the combat structure, the villains to defeat are more-or-less drop-in. Not to mention extremely reusable. For a narrative, a lot of work goes into building assets with an limited reusable value and at times a very small audience. When content came down the pipe for users, it was great stuff! Sadly it didn’t happen very often if at all during the GameTap run.

The other fault were on the implantation of the game itself. While the control of your character was pretty OK, the other outside functions were required a manual at best. All communication, picture taking, and other functions were placed on an ‘device’ called a KI. Some in the community have argued that figuring out the KI was a puzzle. That may be fine for a single-player game you buy at a store. For a business model that needs new users to approach and stay interested, that’s a failure. Incorporating other users to share in the exploration? The very reason for the project? A confusing mess. To their credit, the community was extremely helpful to new users. These were the nicest people on the whole Internet! It simply wasn’t enough.

Wrapping Up

At the end of the day, there were unfortunate design choices made back in the early days of development. These issues couldn’t be fixed for the GameTap release. With the fact that the Cyan studio development cycle as the slowest in the industry, there simply wasn’t a good way for these design changes to occur. This is why I’m not angry at GameTap’s decision. It’s simply time.

What I do hope for the coming months are few things. I hope Cyan will release the server code again, but let the community handle usership on their own. I hope we have a really comprehensive postmortem. One that covers every single thing. In all, there are a lot of lessons to learn in all the years. Lots of things went right, lots of things went wrong, all of which are valuable material to learn from.

On a personal note, Uru has always been with my own work in getting into this industry. Cyan was one of two companies I wanted to work for, and now I’m working at the other one. In a way it closes a chapter for me. My development period for this industry is past it’s first chapter.

So long Uru; Thanks for all the fish.

When television and radio started, different countries took different choices in how the airwaves would be regulated. In England, taxes are levied on all radios and television sets to fund programming. Some countries have all media run directly by the state. In the US, a free market economy was formulated to let market take charge of content generation; A commercial system. But with the commercial system, there was a call for providing content that wasn’t commercially sustainable but culturally important. Content of instructional, educational, and cultural significance that it’s commercially viable but very important. The Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 among others did this for television and radio in the United States. I want to have an additional organization for electronic entertainment media.

I’m going to use the title Corporation for Public Gaming’ (CPG) to put a title on the idea. Barack Obama calls this initiative “Public Gaming 2.0″ in his technology initiatives. I’m not sold on either of these names, but I’m going to go with CPG for the time being.

My vision for a CPG is a roll mostly as a publisher for interactive media projects. The CPG won’t create much as the organization itself, but fund though the use of grants and other funding venues to developers of whatever size. Then the CPG would enact venues of publishing content for free (or at cost) to the public.

Development Funding Model

As I mentioned, the development of titles will be based off of grands to developers. If the developers applying propose a project that fits the mission statement of the CPG, and the developer[s] demonstrate that they are competent enough to produce a finish title, they get funding for that project with situations attached as outlines in this document. Well, a bit more vetting would be involved, but that’s the idea.

The funding would be on the stipulation that the CPG can distribute the game in the public. No up-sells; No Demo only modes; The full title for the public. This means that while the funds can provide the complete cost of developing a title including salary of the work, there wouldn’t be royalties of any sort since it’s all non-profit. That’s the trade-off. However, this would be a super awesome way for smaller independent developers to get some titles under their belt. Yea jobs!

Distribution Model

The goal of the CPG is to provide titles for the public. Because most of new media titles can be transmitted over the Internet, this comes as a no-brainer for distribution for personal computers. Obviously the CPG would have a platform for distributing games on their own website. As long as this site can promote itself and it’s content well, the costs of maintaining this site would be mostly around bandwidth. My only concern is making sure that the children’s section is on it’s on from the more not-children content, but otherwise it’s all in the implementation.

Ultimately, I don’t see much distribution in a traditional retail sense for any platform. Selling physical objects is extremely expensive! With the Internet as a viable distribution model, there’s no real need for physical objects. That isn’t to say it is forbidden, just not likely and that’s OK. I could see a combo pack of a DVD of a collection of titles for anyone really wanting physical media. This is similar to how shows on PBS tag an offer for DVDs at the end of a program. Cost involved, but certainly not the only means of distribution.

What about the consoles?

The difficulty would be console development. I think it would be a sin to exclude console systems in this initiative. However, the console platforms aren’t exactly the most open and public-friendly things to deal with. About the only one that comes close would be Microsoft’s XNA where one can at least develop on their own, use any Windows PC, and develop a console game (albeit with restrictive licenses). The other players (Nintendo and Sony) don’t come close to this development availability but are trying to catch up.

The problems are when developers are applying for projects. A proposal that places a title for more than one platform would certainly give more points for being able to repurpose a title in more than one venue. For personal computing, this isn’t much a problem and I would even go so far as make PC/Mac/Linux requirement for personal computer platforms. But consoles aren’t very cross-platform in a number of ways. Not to mention that there are a host of NDAs, restrictions, and enormous costs involved in any development on a console. It may mean that console development will be more along the lines of porting the personal computer titles into console titles. This would mean the CPG would need to fund developers purely on porting efforts as only a select few would have the viability to develop. Though the most efficient would be targeting for the platform at the start.

As far as distribution, this would be much easier and actually attractive to the consoles. Each console in this generation has some form of Internet distribution of game titles. If the CPG can convince each console to distribute CPG games for free, then it’s win-win for everyone. The public who have these consoles can obtain CPG titles for free and each console can claim more titles on their service.

Industry Response

The only major reason I can see for a position against a CPG would be the idea CPG projects will take away from commercial development. The purpose of the CPG is not to make the same kinds of games the commercial market is already handling. While there’s a bit of a case with children’s games or companies like Leapfrog that may have some case, I don’t believe that the CPG would completely dominate that sector completely. Simply put: PBS didn’t kill commercial television programing. PBS provides content not provided by other commercial means. This is the roll that CPG plays: Providing content not commercially viable but worth funding.

Closing Thoughts

I realize that this idea focused on video games, but I wouldn’t want such an organization to limit only to making flash based games that migrate to consoles. This is but one of many sectors which a different approach of funding projects warrants a public venue of funding that isn’t fit by current mandates. Nor is this approach meant to ‘replace’ the existing Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Ultimately, this is just a starting point. I’d love to know what you think about this topic. There’s more nitty gritty details I can put up, but I still don’t have a solid mission statement. So please, share your thoughts!

* Yes, I’m quickly passing over the history of public broadcasting to a paragraph. There’s a lot more that went into public broadcasting!

Case in discussion point: Top 10 Game Innovations 2007 by James Portnow on Next Generation. Right point 10, Mr. Portnow seems to describe his own short comings on the topic by not having the language to describe fl0w by thatgamecompany.

flOw starts off our countdown because I have no idea where to put it. I love the “game” but I’m not even sure if it’s fun.

Since I can’t decide if flOw is a genius revolution in gaming, the first of a totally new form of “interactive experience”, or just a near miss that fails to incorporate the experience it’s presenting into a game, I’ll let it round out the list at number ten. On a different day it would have been number one.

Innovation has nothing to do with fun. I know plenty of movies that aren’t under the category of entertaining but are great movies. I know great works of paintings that I wouldn’t find fitting to put up on my walls at home. Why must games, especially when the intended circumstances are to outline the murky concept of ‘innovation,’ meet a level of ‘fun’ for consideration?

Deeper to that, what is constituted as innovation? Is it a new piece of software or hardware? Is it a new concept that changes the entire perception of the media itself? This list and most discussions about innovation in interactive entertainment starts with this implication that innovation will future the industry and the experience of gaming; That we highlight these actions as a general way of doing things. But the discussions seem to be more about tricks rather than higher levels of the art form. Why can’t we talk more about games as how all the pieces work together? Talk about how a piece influenced the art as a whole, not the specific tricks to achieve a specific task. There’s more to be learned how all the pieces fit together than looking only at the parts.

At GDC last year, Jonathan Mak said that innovation is killing the industry. In my view, he’s correct. If our only effort in games is to just to accomplish this ‘innovation’ bar, then we’re doing nothing to further this industry. Only by understanding our work and knowing why aspects of a title worked (or did not) can we really start to further this art form more than one-up-ship can accomplish.

I think James Portnow needs to pick up a copy of The Language of New Media.