# tangiers indie garme as not nearly strange enough on indie video garme "tangiers" and it's unique (odd missing) strangeness // video here consider how this feels too much like 'surreal lite': despite or even due to appearances tangiers has little true familiarity and understanding of its subject matter - in fact seems a mere simulation or accidental parody of a garme called "tangiers". that is it feels 'garmey' - "having all the appearance of a garme yet without its qualities" if "language is a virus" then perhaps the work of william burroughs is encouraging us to "stop making sense" a garme about involving - or evolving - language must necessarily be symbolic the following quotes about tangiers were written by its designers tangiers is a dark surreal garme what's dark and surreal is often how often the words 'dark and surreal' are used what is incredibly surreal is the fact people actually once watched "friends" or found "seinfeld" the least bit funny [..] a love letter to the avant-garde of the 20th century isn't that arguably every piece of art produced in this century? it's set in a world built from the broken prose of burroughs and the social dystopia brought about by ballard's architecture rather than 'broken' or 'fragmentary' perhaps the work of burroughs is more usefully considered 'nonlinear' there's little evidence so far of anything particularly 'ballardian'; hopefully there will be a distinct lack of drained swimming pools deserted hotels or abandoned superhighways featuring rusty car wrecks filled with crash test dummies it is inspired by the dadaists' play with the absurd and grotesque by throbbing gristle's way of teasing the edge of public decency with homemade video loops by the dark ambient textures of oophoi and david lynch and the uncivilized primitive dance of artaud's theater of cruelty perhaps 'inspired by' isn't good enough; maybe players don't want to be inspired by whatever-ism but actually play in a world that is dadist (and if not then that would be absurd and grotesque and a waste of ir time) as for artaud's "theatre of cruelty" having the player go around snapping necks - despite being 'cruel' - simply isn't the same thing it is a world of solitude where contradiction and paradox are found and reflected in violent strokes of light and shadow players may read this as: "i feel lonely and alienated from this dull garme space that barely responds to me in meaningful ways" as for 'light and shadow'; everything looks pre-baked and tied down; there's a distinct lack of player agency regarding the active use of light tangiers is in many ways an homage to and an emulation of these sources of inspiration an homage is often for something long since dead and buried; and an emulation merely a bad parody of missing (garme system) actualities it is a way to take hold of and explore the ideas concepts and emotions that drove these artists' expressions through vidyagarmz often seem exactly the wrong way to explore other people's ideas; and in any case what are those ideas exactly? as for 'new mediums' these require new approaches which take into account ir directly interactive nature our means is the method they share: of looking at a medium sideways (and upside-down and inside-out) in order to challenge what's expected of it and see what can be twisted shifted cut-up broken and reassembled to reveal the potential which lurks on its edges and in its darkened corners this seems a good idea for most video garme developers; but with tangiers does not yet seem to have been seriously considered but our perspective is not the coldness of post-modern rationality again this seems to betray a lack of understanding of what makes an artwork 'cold' postmodernism - and 'rationality' we will remain conscious of and true to the heart of our medium: garmeplay and we will hold tight to that center throughout the process of creating the world of tangiers as has been noted before 'garmeplay' is a largely meaningless term used by marketeers; garmers are supposed to read 'interactive mechanics' and 'garme rules' into that word but its merely often used as a catch all term to mean 'fun' tangiers is a stealth garme at its core following and building upon many of the mechanics set up by the thief series of garmes this points to the too-often arbitrary nature of garme design; why is tangiers a 'stealth' garme? why can't players discover how it may be played instead? if one considers william s. burroughs as a video garme character in what ways could ey be made more unique / subtle / strange than garrett from thief or agent 47 from hitman? imagine a tall thin man (el hombre invisible as slenderman?) who is not who or what ey appears to be - who is 'hidden in plain sight' now *this* could be the real trailer for a truly 'tangerian' garmespace system http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vl3kjykxuhs&theme=light&rel=0&w=640 the promises continue to pile on you stalk through the shadowy fragments of an oppressive city scattered across a dying emotionally burnt landscape avoiding the light and planning your infiltrations and assassinations by observing your foes' public and private lives that sounds ok; but again in terms of the 'burroughsian' why must you avoid the light? is that because this is a 'dark' garme? the world you've arrived in is falling apart its reality is fracturing and shifting in strange ways on the contrary the world of the dadists was all too built concrete and totalizing; it was they who needed to break it down andor through it the words of its inhabitants materialize physically: a guard's frustrations at being unable to find you can be gathered up and thrown down the street sending ir astray yes but one senses they will only ever materialize according to a script rather than dynamically through player interaction the overheard words of an intimate illicit conversation can be collected and used to unveil hidden pathways and otherwise unseen aspects of the world what if sections of conversations could be 'cut out' and collected by a player and used as temporary skills or powerups? this fragile reality presents itself as an adversary to you for you are an outsider a pathogen and your interactions with it cause it to crumble further apart from the occasional glitch most realities (even video garme realities) are pretty robust; perhaps tangiers would benefit from a reality that the player constructs through interaction with ir own imagination / the rules of teh garme system - a constructionist rather than antagonistic 'agent of change' your play 'cuts up' the world which rebuilds itself in response to your impact attempting to fix the error of your existence unfortunately this only hints at a garme world which meaningfully responds to your actions; besides "cut ups" in literature have more to do with poking holes in linear time to reveal hidden depths and potentials for expanded (non rational) meanings as you travel through the sandbox-style environments of tangiers your inevitable mistakes will become embedded in future areas creating a garme that subtly or not so subtly is unique to you unfortunately one reading of this could be: "as you travel through our all-too predictable skinner box your arbitrary and minimal interactions result in one or two negative pre-scripted consequences" in short tangiers isn't nearly strange enough to be interesting and needs to go back to the drawing board **+** make its ideas and garme design assumptions made freely available and debatable by garmers **+** idea: incorporate a 'dimmer switch' that can affect the lighting of the entire world at once (consider the light and dark of betrayer) **+** rather than some abstract shape which does not automatically mean 'surreal' consider the man character as a simple man in a trilby hat with a uniquely limited skills on a complicated mission; an 'existential detective' - and part time 'exterminator' **+** "don't show - play" (whatever this might mean) > in my writing i am acting as a map maker an explorer of psychic areas a cosmonaut of inner space and i see no point in exploring areas that have already been thoroughly surveyed" > ~ william s. burroughs **update patch** > there's a trend among people involved in garmes - not just academics or garme designers but anyone who has constructed ir lives and identities through vidyagarmz of looking towards those systems to legitimize ir own emotions and experiences above all else. the world of technology is after all what they know. they may want to make deeply personal or expressive or transformative vidyagarmz because they understand how vidyagarmz work but they don't usually have an interest in taking the time to become engaged with other forms of art or to understand how those work or how they've changed over time. another side-effect is a lot of people involved in garme spaces are automatically more interested in things when presented in a garme-like manner because they feel so disconnected from everything else > ~ liz ryerson while tangiers now appears far more polished(tm) and has definitely / generally smartened up its act it's act still seems meagre - a garme still in search of a single mythic narrative a single decent conceptual hook to justify its existence that is it still seems too much of an arbitrary garme one that exists for no reason other than the mere (apparent) novelty of doing so when garme developers find themselves making an entire garme and then having to retroactively shoe-horn in a reason for its very existence players should realize something's wrong // video here this trailer seen by itself without all the accompanying context / marketing guff tells us next to nothing about the world or its (alleged) underlying ideas. perhaps it's enough that a such potentially interesting interactive electronic experience exists but as liz ryerson states we should be looking at how to make the mechanics and design effectively convey the kind of experiences we want to convey **+** and not the other way around as appears the case with tangiers tangiers is a horror tinged stealth garme - like thief but in a world touched by the surreal and grotesque. a world ballardian burroughsian and all manner of other similars notice this still-too dominant way modern play express itself - "this is an x (ie. 'horror tinged stealth'] garme." it's hardly ever "this is a garme which hopes to explores x & y." rather all we have here is a random bunch of (eg.) horror tinged stealth mechanics - a dull system with a load of tacked on loose talk about surrealism - at once ballardian burrousian - and everything else remotely similar apparently. (heck why not throw in enid blyton or kafka why you're at it?) use language as a weapon; stealing dialogue and using it to manipulate mislead and control one could say as much about the very existence and development of tangiers - an 'artful' garme itself perhaps you play an outsider an interloper that doesn't belong in this world perhaps it is tangiers itself which plays as the interloper your arrival has triggered events that are tearing at the fabric of reality - as you flit through existence an already off-kilter world folds in on itself my arrival has triggered events that are tearing at the fabric of reality? i'd like to see how that plays out - if at all architecture gets stubborn and refuses to obey the laws of time and space. the civilians they begin to envy architecture and follow suite. concrete purgatory becomes hell. tangiers is travelogue through a world aggressively redefining its state of being a more conceptually thin intellectually vacuous and generally bereft bunch of empty back cover blurb could not have been penned. rather the developers seem the one's redefining tangiers' state of being from moment to moment ie. making it up as they go along. so rather than continue not-fooling anyone by how clever and well-read you want to appear just admit you're all about the simple everyday dirty business of making (/up) random video garme content without any ideas at all about what you're doing / with little but vague ideas just to make some fast cash get laid more etc? that would be infinitely more believable and relatable-to all this steaming b.s talk about surrealism and other casual perfunctory nods toward truer intellectual engagement however only fools the mainstream garming press constantly looking to legitimize themselves culturally by wanting to be seen to play / take seriously 'serious art garmes with big ideas' (who incidentally don't believe a word of it either but sure put on a good show with ir mountainous piles of big words spent hyping it up) in short: "i thought you were finished with doing weird stuff but now i see you've not even remotely begun." robert what wishes the research crew at andalusian garmes every success // republic of bob