Games and Oulipo

I’m still perservering with the Tulse Luper Journey. I’ve played 4 games through to completion and opened 4 suitcases to view the weirdness within. The little game-lets you play to open a suitcase are like very simple computer games but with very beautiful production values and pretty creepy subject matter. In one you have to guide little children through a maze filled with evil teddy bears; in another you examine frog specimens in an xray machine and in a third you are a WW2 border guard stamping passports and arresting anyone with forged papers. The effect is both bizarre and beautiful: think a remake of Picnic at Hanging Rock created using Pacman and directed by David Lynch and you’ll get the idea…

Not all the games are self explanatory. I find myself thinking I’ve completed a challenge but not getting the suitcase fragment I think I’ve earned so I’m spending more time on the forums to figure out what’s going on. They are full of earnest Dutch and Belgian guys who are keen to help out, so that’s useful.

I realise that just as the “Sopranos meet Everquest” paper in our reader describes Everquest as forcing social alliances, the Tulse Luper game is deliberately obscure and confusing, presumably to make players use the forum to find out what’s going on. From now on to save time I consult forum posts about each suitcase before attempting that level.

I also realise that this game is fundamentally unlike Graal and Everquest. Although there is space within the game to meet other users and swap suitcase fragments, Greenaway isn’t letting the user create the narrative in quite the same way that these games do.

There is some room to control how the game goes for me, such as when I meet other players to swap or trade items from the suitcases, but because the game is really about uncovering the secrets in a film, the film’s narrative in its entirity is there for me, or anyone else, to discover. I will of course discover it in the order that I choose, but it really reminds me more of Oulipo books than anything else.

With all this talk about whether games are narratives, I’m a bit confused that no one has mentioned Oulipo. This is a literary movement from France in the mid 20^th century which I think poses some of the same questions about what narrative really is.

Oulipo arose as a way of creating constraints within which artists could work. Practitioners hoped that the constraints would force greater creativity. For example, one practitioner wrote a book (in French) without ever using the letter “e”.

The basic premise of Oulipo was to create “potential literature” using random elements like throws of dice or some other way of randomly generating which line of text (or other narrative element) comes next. One Hundred Thousand Million Poems, for example, is a children’s book of poetry where the pages are cut into strips and each strip contains a line of poetry, so the reader can choose which lines are displayed and therefore create their own poem. An interactive version here shows how it works.

I think Oulipo raises really similar issues to games. Is a narrative that consists of elements that are accessed in any order really a narrative? I would say that of course it is – because the same overall amount of information is present for the reader/user to discover as there would be in a linear version – it just has more possible paths through the information.

 

Tetris Machinima

I really enjoyed the lecture on machinima. Although it’s an art form that has pretty obvious limitations, the films we saw were kind of charming in their own way.  I suppose it is really the idea of having access to animation technology that makes Machinima attractive.

 I liked the whimsical little films of Jim Munroe, the guy who made My Trip to Liberty City. I watched some of his other work too, such as Mario’s Pain, in which elements of a game are intercut with real video footage. The storyline is simple – Mario has a consultation with a specialist about some back trouble he’s been suffering from. The character bounces onto the examination table the same way he bounces along in the game, so it’s a funny little juxtaposition of elements from the game in a really boring, everyday setting. Mario ends up talking about the stress of his job, his recurring nightmare that he’s underwater “with nowhere to jump to, and I just stay there till I drown” and his fears that if he takes time off he might be usurped by Luigi.

Machinima – or what I’ve seen of it, which isn’t much – seems to be all about in-jokes, mostly based on the constructs of the games themselves. The joke in both My Trip to Liberty City and Mario’s Pain is that the 2-dimensional (in both senses) character actually has a lot more normal and complex feelings than the footage from the game alone would suggest. It’s pretty funny to think that Mario doesn’t just mindlessly run and jump but is working hard “for a million bosses” and is plagued by doubts and insecurities as well as arthritis from all the physical work he has undertaken.

That got me thinking about really really simple games, like Tetris or Pacman, and whether you could do something funny with these.

I tried hard to think of some Tetris machinima. Maybe the little blocks are thinking to themselves as they fall? Maybe they can speak, but we just can’t hear them? Maybe the other blocks aren’t so keen to have the new blocks fall on top of them after all.

The best scenario I could come up with was a very slowed down speed, where a block falls into place and says to the other blocks “Hi there, I’m the new guy, I guess this is where I’ll be sitting?” and they all get chatting: “Well, let me show you around…it’s a pretty good level ot work on….this is the coffee machine…you need to buy your own milk…I hear you’re going to be working on an exciting new project…Hopefully you’ll fit right in.” Then they all get cosy, there’s a bit of shuffling around as it slots into place: “Sorry, I’m actually allergic to water coolers, is it ok if I sit over here?” “HR hasn’t said anything about this.” “I hope I don’t need to insist?” “Fine then, have the spot, I’ll move.” “Does anyone know how to add up in Excel?” “Well, yes, you select the rows you want to add up, type in this formula…” “Wow, the new guy is really good.” “I’m so glad he’s sitting on our level.” “There’s so much we can do now, I just wish we had someone who could do stocktake.” “I hear they are recruiting.” “Really? I haven’t heard anything.”

As they are saying this of course a new block is very slowly falling from above ready to slot in. I think maybe it would work if the audio was on several levels and you could hear old conversations fading away as the new levels were built up around them.

I think I would call it “Welcome, Wonderkid”

Unpacking Suitcase 9

 Today was the day I entered the world of the Tulse Luper Journey.

Tulse Luper is a character from previous Greenway books and films such as The Falls and various short films he made in the 70s. There is also a complex and astoundingly long new film out about him called “The Tulse Luper Suitcases” which I haven’t yet seen.

For a bit of background i first visited Tulse Luper Suitcases site, which is basically a promo for the new film. The premise of the film is that Tulse Luper was a ‘professional prisoner’ who moved around from prison and prison and was present at many key events of the 20^th century. Greenaway has always used a lot of archival material for his short films and in this film and game, Tulse Luper is a kind of archivist too, who collects material to do with his own life and stores it in suitcases. In a lot of Greenaway’s art and films, there are often random photos or archival material that he makes into part of his story – I guess he is exploring the idea of context.

Next I moved onto the game site itself. Tulseluperjourney.com, invites you to sign up as a volunteer researcher. The site is something like a library project. There are 92 suitcases around the world and the players have to open the suitcases and find out their contents. As soon as you join the game you are assigned to one of three laboratories and afterwards if you want to travel between them it will cost you points, so my first task is to open some suitcases and get some points.

Each suitcase has a fiendishly complex game attached to it. If you complete the game, you get access to a “fragment” or “layer” which is a bit of disembodied film that you can then trade with other players to construct an entire film sequence for a particular suitcase.

The game is even offering a free round the world trip to a player who could submit the best new media content for the game. As far as i could tell the winner would have to use the trip to further research elements of the game!

The game assumes some familiarity with the film and book world of Greenaway’s previous work. This is a fiendishly complex set of narratives that build on the traditions of visual art such as painting, sculpture and architecture. For someone who thinks narrative is rubbish - “I try to find a way to make a cinema which is non-narrative. Narrative belongs in books. It doesn’t belong to cinema” says Greenaway – and has said so many times, there is an astounding amount of narrative detail in his work.

Each suitcase is either locked or not present. Those not present are presumably in the other laboratories. If a suitcase is locked, you can play a game in order to gain access to it.

I select Suitcase 9 and play a small mini-game based on fireflies. You had to click 9 fireflies as they appeared and disappeared to create a shape and make sure the lines did not cross one another. If you failed, dawn came without you being any the wiser. When i finally achieved success, i was given some information in the form of a reference to The Angel of Moroni. A google search informed me that this is a figure in Mormon mythology who appeared to Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism.

Then I realised that this was only level one and I would have to keep playing – damn!

I wonder how many levels there are in total?  The mini-game gives me no way to find out, so I turn to the thriving forum – containing dozens and dozens of sub forums – attached to the game where players swap information. I gather that clues can be “bought” using some kind of credit which I suppose comes from passing tests within the game.

On the forum i search by suitcase to see if anyone has any advice to offer regarding Suitcase 9. I find out that there are at least 5 levels to play, and i can’t get past level 2!

At first I am depressed, but then I become addicted to the slightly creepy little game and play steadily.

The whole thing has a lot of references which i think are to Salt Lake City and Mormonism – the reference to the Angel, images of digging and of a white lake.

Over the course of the afternoon, I progress through the levels, always sliding back to start again but getting further each time. I reveal the following clues:

“He’s coming from another world!”

“It must be your lover, passion”

“I think he wants to see you naked”

 I think “This is bizarre!” but I’m hooked.

FINALLY after about 2 hours I complete the game and get the final line of information:

“You have to kiss him. He is our destiny, yours and mine.”

Back in the labaratory, this success entitles me to view a movie fragment inside the suitcase, which seems to be a kind of disembodied angel statue.

One suitcase down, 91 to go…..i think playing this game to any satisfactory conclusion would take me the rest of my life, but it would be a pleasant way to spend that life.

The Tulse Luper Journey

One of the things that I have found challenging about this course has been the online game requirement.

I’ve always had pretty mixed feelings towards all forms of video games and online games. Xbox means nothing to me. Playstation passed me by. Video games remind me only of the smell of cheesy socks and teenage boy feet and overlarge serves of drive-thru takeaway bought by someone only just old enough to have a licence.

When I close my eyes and think of video games I hear the words “Hurry, baby, next pick up!” as I remember endless games of Smuggler’s Run played by my boyfriend with one of his mates in Scotland. In this game the players are couriers driving contraband across the Mexican border, and the words are spoken by the gangster’s mole sitting in the passenger seat who seems to be the only female in that entire game’s world. I always used to say “Hurry, baby, let’s go home, I’m bored!”

Online games have always seemed to me like an extension of the same thing. Online games, I always thought, are surely played mostly by obsessives like this or else by armies of Chinese guys in stonewashed jeans in midnight web cafes, paid by the hour to play fat New Jersey high school kids up to the next level by dawn.

So I’ve been putting off the course requirement to play Graal, or any other online game. Why would I want to be a pixelated simulation of a little dwarf-man stepping across a grid when I could do stuff like…my job? Or the shopping? Or read a book or even surf the web for weird bits of trivia. It seemed stifling and boring to shuffle around a tiny, man made world when you could be out in the actual world or could be using the internet in a more enjoyable way.

But then I discovered that one of my favourite film directors, Peter Greenaway, has been busily expanding into the online medium. I read an interview with him on the weekend and he was saying he believes cinema is dead and the future lies in multimedia.

One funny result of this was that he has taken up VJing, which is kind of mind boggling – the idea of rocking up to some sweaty rave in Amsterdam and looking into the VJ box and there is this austere 64 year old filmmaker musing about the purity of the visual medium and arranging long lists of stills according to their vertical features. Apparently his VJing goes off though!

But another result of Greenaway’s shift in direction is that he now has an online game, the Tulse Luper Journey. Tulse Luper is a character in a favourite book/film of mine, The Falls I’ve loved this book and film ever since high school as it has a nice narrative trick. It is presented as a compilation of case studies of people affected by a ‘Violent Unknown Event’ which turns them into birds in varying degrees and also creates new languages. For someone who professes to be too cool for narrative, I’ve always found Greenaway’s narratives pretty cool.

So in one instant, this revelation changed my whole idea of online games. I can’t wait to go home, get online and start playing the Tulse Luper Journey!

There is also an exhibition at ACMI which runs until 28 October where installations based on the Tulse Luper Journey are set up. Hopefully I’ll manage to catch this at some point as well.

Flash

Flash has caused me a huge amount of hassle in the last few months. When I first powered it up on the Macs at uni, I found the program completely un-intuitive. Nothing seemed to make sense, despite the vaguely familiar Powerpoint-esque features like grouping objects and the slight hint of graphics programs like Photoshop and Fireworks.

I realised I also had a residual amount of scorn for Flash. I associated it with ads, annoying over-designed sites – basically stuff that kept you away from the content of a site rather than anything you would actually visit a site to access.

I made my ball bounce in class with help from Dean and that made me start to be aware of the possibilities.

I work for a green organisation, the Australian Conservation Foundation. We have a joke at work that when we don’t know what to do, the management always asks “Well what is Greenpeace doing?” The answer to that question is, using Flash in a low key way to draw your eye away from the static central content of their homepage and towards little ads associated with campaigns in the side bar of their site.

I started to see how this could work for our site, which has always been way too static on the homepage. That led me to make some rash promises. “Sure, I’ll design some banner ads for our site!” I told everyone. “I’m learning Flash at uni.”

The first banner ad took me a week to produce (in between obviously doing the other stuff I need to do at work). I had hassles with ordering events, preventing endless looping, making links work, getting the format right to be uploaded onto the site.
And it wasn’t a very ambititous banner either, basically just some text fading in and a link through to the appropriate page. Fortunately the IT guy at work just happened to buy us Flash recently as part of a software package so I had the software in PC version at work so I could muck around with it whenever there was a pause. But there were a few late nights and frantic phone calls to various IT types before this rather average banner made it onto the site.

The next time I ended up designing a banner was by accident. A passing head honcho had asked me to make these pages to celebrate our 40th anniversary and the hassle of trying to stretch my skills to make the video stuff had meant I was very pressed for time. When I finally got them up, she happened to mention that a Flash banner that pointed to them ‘would be nice.’ I was basically too wussy to say “No way, I’m crap at Flash and I haven’t got time.” so I faced the prospect of having to create another banner.

But this time things were much easier. I had solved most of the issues I had had with the simple stuff like looping, linking and getting the file type right. I even managed to add some layers with more interesting stuff happening, like these balloons that rise in the background. Very nifty! Here is the second banner.

However this banner still has some problems. I realised after I uploaded it that it lacks any “click here” or “do this action” type information to let the user know that clicking the banner will take them anywhere. I’m too lazy to think of a way to fix this issue so I’m going to let it stand, but I’ll have to take that into account next time.

This raises an interesting point about interactivity, which is that I can’t assume that everyone who comes to my site has the same ‘literacy’ in interactivity that I do. I would assume that if i saw something done in Flash moving on a site, there’s a good chance I could click through it to something else. But a lot of people complain to me that it isn’t clear certain things lead to other things.