COMMUNITY (or ALTERNATIVE WAYS OF LIVING) #12

Video games are not something I claim to know anything about, I haven’t played one since Jazz Jack Rabbit on my huge whirring PC back in 1998 or so. I seem to remember a feeling of intense panic coupled with a fierce determination to do everything in exactly the right way. I didn’t particularly find it that enjoyable, although I did have an odd compulsion to keep trying. Despite my lack of empathy with those who love to game, when reading about Jason Rohrer and his tireless mission to take computer gaming where it has barely gone before, I feel hopeful that some day I may understand.

This Esquire article was passed on to me, and despite its slightly bile-enducing strapline ‘Jason Rohrer’s solitary and stubborn quest for a future in which pixels and code and computers will make you cry and feel and love’ it is a really, really good read. Since then I’ve been sucked inexorably into his world - the aims of which are so simple and the execution so beautiful and logical that it’s hard not to be charmed. As you can see above, his aesthetic is somewhat lo-fi. And his explanation for this is simply that if he makes something on a computer, it should look like it was made on a computer - he doesn’t want to immitate other art forms.

His games are all available for free download (as far as I know), and are innovative in the true sense of the word. They play on and react to fundamental aspects of the human psyche. Rohrer simply makes games from things he’s been pondering - a thought about a passing emotion.

“Tuesday, there’s an idea on a scrap of paper: “Mistakes you make, early on, haunt you through some game mechanic later.” Thursday, there’s a map of a maze. Later that day, the maze is populated with bunnies and squirrels; in the game, you have to feed the animals from a pouch full of different foods, and if you feed them the wrong food, they die, and you “regret it.” Rohrer adds some additional texture; the dead animals come back as “ghosts,” and you can either feed them or avoid them. If you feed them, they just come back later. Lesson: Regret is pointless. Move on. Friday, there’s a nearly completed video game. It doesn’t give an inch. It doesn’t tell you how to play it, how to get a high score, how to win. You have to figure that out for yourself. The game, in its own small way, is trying to reverse decades of infantilism in video games and culture, in which you get coins for doing stupid shit. It’s not going to coddle: awesome job!

And when you do figure it out, it’s a tiny epiphany, and maybe you understand something about regret that you didn’t understand before. You’re seeing its inner workings laid out before you, yet you still can’t figure out how he’s doing it.”

Within these games you are given responsibility and choices. Of his own game Sleep Is Death - in which one player creates the game in real time for another person to play - he says “It’s quite a bit more like theater or a puppet show or paper dolls than it is like an RPG. There’s no map or travel or party or any traditional RPG elements. Instead, just a stage with objects and actors on it.” And I don’t think it matters that I’ll probably never bother to find out what an RPG is. His hopes for putting art into games are tangible enough.

What fascinates me most is the fact he can be called up for consultancy work on a new game created by Steven Spielberg and EA games and yet live hand to mouth in a run-down house surrounded by his purposefully cultivated meadow, and survive on donations made through his website.

Reading about the cultivation of natural lanscape on his meadow blog Nature On Trial is truly touching. This man could become a pioneer of something we don’t even know how to quantify yet. Displaying a healthy attitude towards transparency, community and other human beings and their complexities - he can quietly lead by example and provide a counter to a lot of the world’s bad habits.

“Our meadow is filling in nicely, with beautiful tussocks of grass here and there, many now over two feet tall.

I planted sunflower seeds in a few places along our street frontages.

To my delight, we have several great mulleins that have sprouted up in the front yard. We had many in the back yard last year, but those did not come back.

The white clover that we planted is taking over in certain spots, forming dense green blankets.”