In case you missed it, we’ll be travelling around Britain for the next 12 days, hitting up Scotland, England, and Wales before returning to Ireland on the first of April. It’s an exciting journey, and one in which I’ll be forgetting all about academics, and trying my hardest to forget all about the Game Developers Conference, which I can only hope to attend next year. -sj

Update 1: Edinburgh is beautiful. It’s more radically different from Dublin than I could have imagined. The roads confuse me, because they overlap each other. You’ll think you’re on ground level, only to cross a bridge and discover more city beneath you.

Two busy, fun weeks.

Two Tuesdays ago, we hit up Howth, a bubble-shaped town on the east coast on Ireland. I had some delicious fresh cod (fried, with salt and vinegar; yum), and Bonnie and I went out on the famous cliff walks. After wondering amongst muddy hills, and prickly bushes, we discovered that we weren’t on the famous cliff walks after all, but rather a random path that wasn’t really meant for humans. We found the real path, but we were already wet from the rain, and muddy from the- well, mud. (Admittedly, it was quite fun.)

The Saturday before last, Bonnie and I went south to Waterford, a town best known for its crystal, for which it’s known worldwide. A tour through the facilities allowed us to see glass-blowers in action, as well as other elements of the process. We also saw a lot of pretty things we couldn’t afford.

On Sunday, we went on a tour through old Dublin with Bonnie’s flat-mate, Dee, led by an actor playing a blind man. He called himself “Zozimus.” We called him “the blind guy.”

Last Tuesday was for Kells, best known for the Book of Kells, which is in Dublin, and not Kells. Kells itself is a neat little town, with a fake lighthouse in the middle of nowhere, a few nifty cemeteries, and quite a few big celtic crosses.

On Wednesday, Johnny arrived with three of his Syracuse/London friends (Evan, Mike, Mark), and Mark’s friend Simone. Bonnie’s friend, Elaine, arrived on the same day, at the same time, on the same flight from Edinburgh, Scotland. They all met on the plane.

Leading up to St. Paddy’s were a few days of Dublin wanderings. Johnny and his cohorts hit up the classic Dublin sights (Jameson Distillery, Guinness Storehouse, etc.), while Bonnie and I took Elaine around to more humble, free things. On Thursday everyone made their way to Smithfield to see Grupo Puja, a bunch of acrobats and musicians from Argentina and Spain, who played repetetive, ambient rock music while others did aerial stunts on a giant metal ball moving a hundred feet in the air). It was pretty cool, unlike the weather, which was pretty cold. We went out for drinks afterward to warm up.

I’m supposed to have a lot to say about Paddy’s Day, but I really don’t. It was, however, a fun day. We made it in to town around 11 or 12, and tried our best to secure a good place to watch the parade. The streets were flooded with people, and lots of lots of green. In the Temple Bar area, the streets were just as crowded, and in the pubs, there was scarcely room to breathe. We did an admittedly minimal amount of drinking in Dublin that day, returning to Bonnie’s flat around five to order Pizza and watch Arrested Development. When I say ‘we’, I mean Bonnie, myself, and Elaine. Johnny and his friends made it a pint-filled day, returning to UCD around 11:30. All of our guests left Saturday morning, giving us a lazy day filled with Cheez-its (thanks to Andy, Michelle and Shayla!), and homemade vegetable korma (thanks to Uncle Ben and Patak’s!).

We leave for Edinburgh on Tuesday, and will be traveling around Britain for about two weeks. When we return, I’m sure there will be stories to tell (and photos to share). -sj

The following is reprinted from bard xy, where it originally appeared on 28 September, 2005. Although the weekly feature idea never really took off, I still feel strongly about this piece, which finds successful game design in a work of net.art.

I’m hoping to start a new weekly feature on xy, entitled “The Game/Art Problem.” Each week, I’ll be posting links to examples of the synthesis of art and video games, and discussing the issues demonstrated by these pieces. This week, I’m presenting Natalie Bookchin’s “The Intruder”, a hypertext/game interpretation of the same-named story by Jorge Luis Borges.

Bookchin, an L.A. artist and professor at the California Institute of the Arts, executed “The Intruder” in January of 1999. By visiting the site, the user (slash reader, slash player) is confronted with a series of simplistic video games, which he or she must complete in order to progress through the narrative. Each of the ten games unfurls a portion of Borges’s original story (translated into English from the Spanish original), with the unveiling of the text dependent upon the user successfully playing through the game (or, in the case of one game, failing to play). Though mostly modeled after classic Atari 2600 titles, each game is visually related to the portion of text it covers. For example, as Borges’s story talks about a woman who is shared sexually between two brothers, the user plays a version of Pong, where a female avatar replaces the ball.

In hypertext and net.art communities, this piece is heralded for its use of video games to affect one’s read of the classic story. This sort of view, however, strictly looks at game as assisting the read of the text. A description of the piece on Rhizome.org exemplifies this view of game as supplementary to story: “Playing transforms former readers into participants who are placed inside of and implicated in the story—-Borges’s short tale of a tragic love triangle.”

I refer to this issue as the Game/Art Problem, or specifically the issue of discerning whether - in a specific instance - a game is art, or whether art is using game: Game as Art, or Art as Game?

In the case of Bookchin’s “The Intruder,” the standpoint of the literary community is that art utilizes game in order to convey meaning. Instead, however, let us look at “The Intruder” as game before art. Consider, in a series of ten different games, how the inclusion of Borges’s story alters the goals of gameplay. Without the element of story, each game is played with the goal of defeating a computer opponent, or avoiding obstacles. When narrative is introduced, however, each game is played specifically with the purpose of furthering narrative, of completing story.

A player strives to complete each game in order to further the narrative. At the same time, the player is aware of their activity in relation to the narrative. The game is no longer game for game’s sake, but an extension of story. Players can not help but be made aware of the symbolic relevance of their actions in gameplay, whether they be participating in a series of duels over possession of the girl, controlling the girl and forcing her to fall repeatedly to her death, or simply holding a targeting reticule over her floating image in order to hear the entirety of the tale’s horrific conclusion. Bookchin’s piece draws distinct parallels between the importance of gameplay and the progression of story, while gaining popularity over the years not as an example of game utilizing story, but as story utilizing game. How has the gaming community passed over this work for so many years?

The Game/Art Problem presents: “The Intruder”

I had a superfun birthday in Ireland. The snow let up fairly quickly, then it snowed again, then it stopped minutes before we departed for city centre. The rest of the day was beautiful.

On Friday we went back into town and visited the Glasnevin Cemetary. A tour that was supposed to happen, didn’t (big surprise), so we simply wandered around, admiring the wide variety of tombstones. Afterwards, we met up with Dee for dinner at the Metro Cafe, and the three of us saw Capote. I’ve officially seen more movies in my short time in Ireland, than I have in the five or six months preceding. Let’s go over the list:

1. Breakfast on Pluto
2. Brokeback Mountain
3. Memoirs of a Geisha
4. Walk the Line
5. Jarhead
6. Capote

I blame the damn movie trailers. Every time I think I’m seeing the last interesting movie playing in Dublin, some trailer pops on the screen and looks really interesting. Now, it’s V for Vendetta. Yes, I know it’s the Wachowski Brothers, but it looks really cool ^_^

Capote was goood, by the way.

On Saturday, Bonnie and I went to Cashel, best known for the Rock of Cashel, and the ruins which sit atop it. We stayed over at a lovely hostel (made lovelier by our lovely room, with a lovely view of the ruins of Hore Abbey), and bussed to Cahir the next morning, to see Cahir Castle and a beautiful old cottage which was (surprise surprise) not open this time of year. Still, it was pretty from afar.

A long bus ride home, followed by a long(ish) night on Skype, chatting with James about the new direction for Scratch. I think the name is staying. The best part of working with James is when we agree on something name-related. He still hates the name sqube, but it’s here to stay.

Big Games have the social networks going on.

It’s understandable why. When you’re dealing with a games on the scale of person-to-person relationships, the social networks created are some of the most concrete and compelling outputs of gameplay. As such, there’s a desire to utilize them in new and creative ways. Plus, there seems to be a rising cultural interest in the digitization of the social network. Communities like Facebook and MySpace illustrate this quite plainly, and area/code’s SuperStar shows how this cultural interest translates seamlessly into a successful gameplay concept. It’s 2:15am on a Sunday, and I wish I could start playing SuperStar right now. The only thing stopping me is my lack of a cameraphone.

Why do I feel this tug to throw myself so quickly into social networks? More importantly, how can I take advantage of this energy? Not in big games, but in their tiny, digital brethren: video games.

James and I have now thrice reimagined the gameplay mechanics of Scratch, and this time I think we’re on to something. Previously, the most complex element of gameplay was that of movement, which worked through an ‘orbit’ concept. We’ve put the orbit concept aside, simplified movement mechanics back to where they originally started, and are now considering the potency of data visualization in gameplay.

If I’m being cryptic, it’s because I’m about as paranoid as a Poe character when it comes to game design. Call me crazy, but I have a need to talk about these ideas, while at the same time keeping them all to myself. Is this a problem, or something everyone goes through? Should I just keep my mouth shut and wait until the game’s completed to give a post-mortem? If so, what’s the fun in that?