# non-designed architecture in video garmes a response to denna van buren's gamasutra's article consider the ideology of architecture in video garmes that of the still ongoing mis-relationship of garmes to players; there are too many garmes people simply don't need to play. likewise the introduction of even more specialized experts brought in to consult on garme design seems a pointless luxury > garming with gravitas sounds awful. "for my new garme i got famous architect x to tweak some of the levels." yeah well i hired your granny for the cost of a werther's original and they said your incredibly well designed architecturally exacting video garme sucks > (..) as i look at the architecture of most video garmes i feel let down by what i see then you've not been looking hard enough. perhaps from a professional architect's viewpoint garmes may not be up to standard(tm) but then some people also wonder what role architects and ir glittering technological visions have in the actual construction of edifices to modern hyper-capital > i wonder why do we not see more collaboration between experienced architects landscape architects and video garme developers the problem is one of ever increasing over-specialization which is another way of saying the compartmentalization of experience into ever smaller ever more finely defined (easily controlled) boxes. the same process occurs in professional counterstrike - 'professional garmers' designed to act ever more like pseudo-autonomous strike drones in an endlessly repeating (scientifically reproducible) blind mechanical system. this is directly manifested in the 'dusty' level design consistency exactitude stability a 'sense of proportion' and 'the right measure' - perfect timing precision - are all examples of a machine-like killer instinct that is both common in garming's competitive aspect - and clearly visible in the anonymous steel and glass buildings of high (power) finance > architects often don't play garmes or see how they can be of service well they'll soon start when they start imagining how much money they can earn in the great video garme industry. but never mind how architects can shoehorn themselves in as consulting middle managers in garme development - precisely who andor what is architecture in service of? > my experience is that most garme developers including artists just don't understand architecture or landscape design. this is not a surprise given that it is a highly specialized field where people study for up to seven years in college to absorb and develop design skills maybe garme developers / artists shouldn't need to spend seven whole years training themselves in highly specialized fields > we bring great depth of knowledge to the creation of 3d environments that can foster deeper immersion and enhances garmeplay "(norman) fostering 'deeper immersion' and 'enhancing garmeplay' sound exactly like the kind of effortlessly shallow corporate buzzword bingo people who exhibit play through garmes - not 'garme designers' - should actively avoid > it is always helpful to remember that landscapes and architecture are based in the temporal physical and institutional constraints of the real world **+** and that's precisely what's wrong with them - they're institutional and therefore not nearly human enough. indeed some developer-artistics are becoming increasingly interested in non-photorealistic rendering. so why not just take an extra step and experiment with entirely non-realistic garmes? "the real world(c)". thing is "realism" often appears a heavily (culturally) constrained concept more to do with underlying moral precepts of right and wrong - what is strictly allowable / definable within a system; what it appears to suggest are seemingly immediate and obvious truths regarding what's-really-there; a should-be rather than what could here van buren discusses ir work on the witness > inside factory equipment integrated with the religious frieze panels provide teh garme artists with additional opportunities to tell a deeper lever (layer? -rob) of narrative perhaps a more well considered adjustment of religious frieze panels might well provide (minor) opportunities to tell - not evoke - narrative. yet as synthesist brian eno has repeatedly stated over the years modern (in this instance garme design) tools simply do not encourage bold experimental strokes but instead bog down users in endless micro-managed choices > many garmes suffer from what i call the "cut and paste" look - where buildings or materials are deployed without any rigor or understanding of ir properties many modern so-called 'well designed' buildings suffer from a pseudo diversity are seemingly big and bold in ir design but in fact display a distinct poverty of conception and consideration being deployed without any rigour or understanding of the humans who are actually forced to build live or work inside ir massively over budget leaky poorly ventilated postmodern dead-tech bs > in the witness we tried to develop a palette of materials that supported the narrative and helped the artists to understand them such as the ways concrete is formed. they are now experts themselves and are able to develop the textures in a thoughtful way that aligned with the garmeplay style. we also worked on the textures to pull out the essential quality of the material to you could understand what is was without diverging from the art style of teh garme this sounds so overblown excessive - except when it's necessary but even then.. 'the way concrete is formed'? the witness was previously just another puzzle based wasd walking simulator but now it also has to be a defining statement on the merits of industrial scale construction and the micro-dynamics of materials aesthetics at the consultation stage? no damn wonder these (still essentially simplistic) garmes take millions of useless dollars and countless thousands of wasteful collective hours to make. (one solution therefore is not to 'make' or 'design' them but allow them to grow or emerge; yes this is another case for the still woefully ignored area of procedural generation) > often the architecture is covered in texture maps from wallpaper to bricks but then the intersection between surfaces is left out - creating an incongruent condition between the detail of the materials and the assembly itself. i see this almost every garme i have played. it is turning architecture as an expression of political ideology to be one of the most important levels of refinement we have been doing in our final pass on the witness what seems incongruent is the mind-numbling level of 'aaa-polish' seemingly needed on modern garmes. refinement here seems a belief reserved for teh garme development elite > for example the gone home entry foyer in plan is massively out of proportion with the height and the scale of any suburban home as viewed from the outside. the assets are floating in the space in ways that feel out of context with the real experience of domestic space pulling us out of the immersive reality like anyone cares or really should. in any case what is this 'real experience of domestic space' anyway - and how is it 'immersive'? here's ben abraham on immersion // video here > i would also like to conclude by presenting a bigger vision for this collaboration. i believe that everything we do creatively influences our larger cultural context. as more members of our society begin to play garmes in well-designed digital environments we will ultimately improve the visual literacy of our population. in doing so i believe there is a reverse effect where we will start to expect more from our physical environments rather than ignore them as we often do now. we will start to question the strip mall the big box stores suburban landscapes filled with mcmansions and the bland colorless panelized architecture we crank out in the united states at least "well designed" feels like a by-word for "culturally (garmes industry) acceptable" and 'visual literary' an easy substitute for 'well trained in the correct way to read' art / aesthetics rather then just question the strip mall boxy stores - which do need questioning - perhaps we might also critically examine this bizarre alleged 'we do this for the greater good' mythic utopian dream of modern architecture > maybe through the immense creativity found in the creation of digital environments we can envision better physical environments that foster imagination community sustainability and well-being. in doing so i also hope that we have moved further down the road of accessing the power of video garmes to change the world around us for the better not much evidence of that denna. perhaps if things like "poor doors" were designed 'better' - more professionally - people would enjoy walking through them more // video here alternatives to designed garme architecture here's developer joe wintergreen succinct hypothesis on the negative effects of ubiquitous modular mesh based level design // video here that is instead of endless anal tweaking (sounds painful) joe seems to be pointing toward the direct (realtime) computer / player based generation and manipulation of 'video-garmespacetime' or vgst - seen in the kind of warping that occurs when a half life 2 "strider" activates its warp weapon // video here all that's required is that players start re-viewing garme architecture as more actually embedded in/as the very spacetime matrix of a digital worldspace - that is imprecisely as not-real // republic of bob