omeara.d

For my final project, I knew what topic I wanted to do. Something that’s consistently been on my mind since I started college – monotony. It’s honestly my greatest fear – ending up in a cycle of just boring-ness every day. I don’t want to go to a dead-end job from 9-5 doing something completely unrelated to what I want to do just to go back and do it the next day. Therefore, I wanted to make a game based around the concept of “breaking the cycle.”

I found inspiration in several places, but mainly three. The first was a fellow classmate’s project, Kieran Sheldon’s “Fathom Society” ARG. In it, Miriam speaks of questioning the world around you, of poking holes in the universe, and of finding new realities. This tied in very well with my theme, as I wanted to experiment with finding new realities instead of consistently seeing the same one. The second was an ARG we learned about in class, the Jejune Institute ARG. In it, once again, we see a high focus on odd occurrences and off seeing the world around us in a different light. I wanted to channel the feelings of mystery and wonder it gave its participants into my own game. In it, the lines between reality and fiction are often blurred, so I wanted to create a game that distinctly makes the character wonder if what they see is real. The third main inspiration was a game titled “Every Day the Same Dream,” a small game based around the exact same fear I have in the future. In it, a man wakes up, goes to work in a cubicle like all the other wage slaves around him, goes home, and repeats. If you go far enough, you can make it on the roof, where you’re prompted with “Jump.” However, doing so puts you right back where you were, implying a cyclical hell. My desire to avoid this is what prompted me to try and make something that does so, and breaks that cycle. I also took inspiration from random other sources for various aspects of the game, such as Sword Art Online and Divergent.

As for the game’s medium, I eventually settled on making a Minecraft adventure map. I did this because I believe the game’s aim cannot be expressed well as a tabletop game, and because I don’t have the coding or artistic skill to make the game work in a traditional, coding based environment. Therefore, I chose something I do know how to work in well, Minecraft. It took a lot of Command Blocks and Redstone, but it serves its purpose well, at least I believe.

The game acts as an unofficial sequel of sorts to Kieran’s ARG. It takes place long after the events of our class, and you learn what has happened in the meantime, as well as the origins of Miriam and the Fathom Society.

I’ve linked a video of the map being played, as the world file is too big for WordPress.

For my intervention, I planned on doing something related to my card games that I play so much. However, at the tournament I was at, I ended up playing nearly the entire tournament. So, I decided to take it to CSGO, and let my opponents choose my weapons. I hopped onto a smurf account of mine (an account deliberately ranked lower than the player’s actual skill level) to test this.

It ended up providing very interesting results, with some matches resulting in a plethora of weapons, some in one or two, and some ended in me getting kicked by my team. The results can be seen here.

I decided to do this because I wanted to see how many people would blatantly abuse the system to gain an advantage. Of course, the easiest way to do this would be to tell me to buy nothing or buy a small taser. In two games I was asked to buy a taser, one where I was kicked by my own team for it. Most games, the opposing team just had me use a pistol or something so as to not abuse the system entirely, which I saw as interesting as it showed that players wanted an advantage, but not an auto-win of sorts.

This project speaks on how the strides players will go to to win and how much they actually care about winning versus how much they value their pride. For example, in the first game, they valued their pride far more, refusing to tell me a gun to use for an entire half until I racked up nearly 25 kills in a single half. Then, in a dire situation, they complied. So in a pinch, the win often matters more. Most players valued their pride to some degree, just having me use a pistol or something, but some didn’t care about it at all, giving me a taser that essentially turned me into a useless asset.

I took inspiration from this from Yoko Ono’s “Cut Piece” work. Although not necessarily an intervention, since it was on a planned stage at an event, there are some parallels. Yoko left it up to the “players” whether to abuse the system or not for personal gain, having the option to deliberately reveal private areas of Ono’s body. This would test to see who would abuse the system, and who would just have a little fun with it. Like Ono’s, the players had the opportunity to completely abuse the system for personal gain. In both scenarios, most people didn’t, having at least some sort of pride to hold on to.

For my appropriation game, I designed a game I dubbed “Telling Lies?” it’s a card game played with a standard deck of cards revolving around deceiving your opponents and collecting pairs of cards. Sound familiar? If so, you may draw parallels to this and games like Go Fish, BS, and Coup.

In the game, each player asks for cards from another player’s hand. That player may give them the card, or deny that they have it. A player may call someone’s bluff though, and ask them to reveal their hand to prove it. If they’re caught lying, there’s a punishment. But, if they were telling the truth, the accuser gets punished. The goal of the game is to collect as many pairs of cards as possible before the deck runs out. Feel free to read the full rules here: Telling Lies

I took a lot of inspiration for the game from the chess appropriations we learned about in class, namely White Chess and Saito’s chess series. The concept of taking a game that is so cemented in place as a classic game and making it something new seemed enticing to me, so I decided to choose something classic that most players could instantly think of while playing the game, Go-Fish. Of course, this is a little different, since chess appropriations make an entirely different game with a board and chess pieces which is different, while different card games pop up all the time. That being said, does that make all card games appropriations of each other?

Playtesting went very well, as the game had a massive amount of strategy that I wasn’t ready for when I started playing. I got destroyed, and realized that several aspects of the game were important, most of all being mind-games. You could fake a card in hand by asking for that card from someone, leading the rest to believe you have a copy of that card to pair with it. Reading body language, eye contact, and more was important. All these levels of play that were outside of the physical game themselves made the game highly competitive and fun. The players enjoyed playing, as did I. A few changes were made over time, such as covering some edge cases where players would accuse with no cards in hand to pay for the possible penalty, and the penalties were messed with a bit for balancing so there wasn’t accusations every turn or none at all. However, not much was changed, and the fundamentals of the game were the same throughout the game’s existence.

One thing that’s always interested me is music. I’m a very musical person, with my constant tapping on desks, chairs, etc. always being mistaken for sheer restlessness, but it’s usually just me tapping out a rhythm. So, I decided to take some of that random noise that I tend to make and turn it on its head, making it the objective.

The final score after a couple iterations that I decided on was as follows:

Collaboration Between an Artist and Whoever Wants to Be One

Find music.

Play it loud.

Start a recording.

While it plays, play your own notes.

Stop and listen to what you’ve made.

My thought process behind this is fairly simple. It seems to speak on two things:

• Musical collaboration and its absurdity at the top level
• Arguments

As for musical collaboration, the title calls this out. It’s a collaboration between an artist and whoever feels like they want to be one. These top artists of today only collaborate with people of similar stature. I’m sure most will agree that the artists at the top of the charts right now aren’t the best in some cases; there are people no one’s heard of that are far better and more talented. Collaboration at the professional level is based solely on stature, not on the quality of product. This score allows those with no stature to essentially collaborate with top artists, or whoever they feel like collaborating with. It’s open ended, meaning you could take it as seriously or jokingly as you want. Someone could record a beautiful vocal duet using the background music’s vocals as well and really try and make something great, or, as you’ll see, someone could just bang on a bunch of tables and make a ton of noise.

As for the argument side of things, this could also be seen as a fight between two voices, each talking over each other with neither prevailing. If two songs (or collection of sounds) go against each other at the same time, do either of them really get fully appreciated? It’s the same for arguments: if both people keep talking over the other, neither will ever get their point across. That being said, sometimes we should step back and let each voice speak independently.

Test Results –

I ran my playable iteration of this in class with everyone involved. I expected most people to be shy about the idea and most to not be involved. Boy was I wrong. I don’t know why I expected art school students to hold back but they sure didn’t. We never got through the full score, as the last step was cut short due to time, so for those who were in class at the time, here’s the last step.

https://youtu.be/ts2Mfn0XWqw  – It’s sideways, sorry. The audio is what matters most anyway

At the beginning, only a couple people went at it, with one drumstick and the trashcan. Eventually, everyone was involved in one way or another either hitting things, using surroundings, or using their own belongings to just create noise. Most people managed to stay with the correct tempo, which surprised me. People seemed to enjoy just letting lose and hitting things though, which was good to see.

Overall the score was a success, as the result of letting everyone bang on everything while a track played in the background resulted in a mess that was neither the song playing or just the noises, demonstrating the argument analysis of the score. In addition, I recorded a drum cover over the weekend, and looking at the score, does that not fall into an iteration of this? That cover would describe the opposite side, the actual musical collaboration part. So, with all objectives covered, I’d call this a successful score and something to look into performing sometime, musician or not.

-Darin O’Meara