2 Reviews: Untitled Game and Ego Image Shooter

Untitled Game CD by JODI
Review by Anne-Marie Schleiner

Untitled Game is a CD (and web site) containing twelve modifications of
Quake by artist ensemble JODI. The first modification, "Arena", is
blinding white. All visible architecture has been eliminated. What
remains is interface components and sound. The following mods range in
interactivity and effect, from number stats flowing upscreen to ambient
warm toned 3-D environments.

Game Engine = Artist Tool

Like other artists including Nullpointer and Retroyou, JODI have
immersed themselves in exploring game engines as art generating tools.
(Different artists have been staking out different commercial engines as
their mediums–more recently the Australian web site, "Select Parks,"
has collected artist-made mods.) JODI have become intimately familiar
with the file structure of Quake 1, its code structure and algorithms,
and its loopholes and glitches. Time++ has been logged "playing" with
the system, just as Nato addicts and V.J.s spend hours tweaking sound
and 3-D/2-D visuals, happening sometimes on interesting accidental
effects.

Unlike ID Software, the original designers of Quake, JODI search for
beautiful bugs in the system, to make glitches happen that werent
supposed to, to tweak the game, even to demolish it. When I push the
spacebar to jump in E1M1AP instead the world rotates uncontrollably. In
G-R the screen refreshes non-stop with bright RGB colors, (no navigation
at all). In Ctrl-9 and Ctrl-Space, navigation and looking about generate
undulating black and white moire patterns.

Hacker Art Aesthetic

Despite the different ways that JODI "break" Quake, their work remains
in dialogue with the original game. Hacker art tweaks a system yet
retains ontological aspects of the system from which it mutated. In
their earlier SOD mod, a mod of the classic shooter Castle Wolfenstein,
JODI replaced Wolfenstein's Nazi castle with black and white Miro-like
panels. Yet they still chose to retain the original sound bytes of dogs
barking and soldiers yelling. Similarly, in the game mods included in
Untitled Game, many of the original macho Quake grunts are still
included. These original audio samples recall indexically in the
player's minds eye the original Quake levels and characters. A ghost
image of the original flickers behind the alteration, evoked by sound
and interface artifacts.

Created not only for art aficionados but also for rabid Quake fans,
habitual Quake players can even navigate "blind" through some of the
levels included in Untitled Game. In Slipgate, (slipgates are an
original feature of Quake), small blue cubes are formidable growling
opponents.

Revealing Algorithms

One aesthetic maneuver repeated in the Untitled Game collection,
reminiscent of JODI's net art, is to strip the environment of
"realistic" graphics, to reduce anti-aliased pixels and color palettes
to primary minimalist colors and shapes. Stripped of all pretense of
photorealism, game play is reduced to algorithms normally cloaked as
"representational" actions. ("Rez", a Japanese Playstation2 game, is
the only commercial 3-D game I have seen which emphasizes movement
algorithms and "cyber-representation" over "photorealistic"
representation.) And these bare algorithms can be quite stunning. My
most favorite mod on Untitled Game is "Spawn". In Spawn, shooting is
transformed into spraying showers of gray pixels over an inky black
background. Shooting becomes pixel painting, which in turn creates
environment.

Semi-automatic

Another primary component of JODI's mods is tension between user control
and program control. The relationship between user input and program
output has been tweaked. The time it takes for the program to execute a
command seems to have been elongated and refracted, so my smallest
actions become triggers of algorithms that then unfold semi-autonomously
from my input. Q-L is the most semi-automatic mod on Untitled. Once
the player views the preset level demo and actually starts to play the
game, the players movements trigger kaleidoscopic effects which
accelerate fast and taper off slowly. Similarly, in E1M1AP, when I hit
the space bar to jump, I summersault into an extended disorienting
twirl. Output far exceeds input. Or the program becomes the performer,
I am no longer player god in control–I must concede some of my agency
to the code.

Untitled Game is an exploration of the Quake system and some variable,
funny, playful, beautiful Jodiesque things it can be made to do.
Untitled Game also participates in a dialogue about 3-D gaming
environments and what they can possibly become. (Unlike recent game
inspired paintings or sculptures that speak exclusively to art
audiences.) Although singularly not every mod on Untitled Game stands
up on its own, when viewed as a complete package, (pak file ;) ), the
UG archive is impressive.

Untitled Game Site



+ + + + + +

Ego Image Shooter by Marion Strunk and Deanna Herst
Review by Anne-Marie Schleiner


Ego Image Shooter is a new game by Marion Strunk and Deanna Herst
(concept/design) created for Gender Games, an Swiss research initiative
for exploring gender in relation to computer games. Of the five "games"
created for Gender Games, which are available from their web site, Ego
Image Shooter is certainly the most entertaining and the most "game-
like". (Others severely stretch the definition of computer game and are
more akin to hypertext net art.) Ego Image Shooter critiques the genre
of shooter games in a number of playful ways.

At game start-up, a blond American avatar with a strong hick accent
announces that he will be your guide. Reminiscent of white trash
backwoods characters in shooter games like Duke Nukem, this boyish
avatar is relatively less macho, sporting a pasty smile permanently
glued to his face. The game consists of five levels, which the player
selects by rotating the bullet chamber of a gun-like interface.
Alternately the player can click on the weapon in the bottom left of the
screen to choose a level–each level has a different weapon identified
with it, ranging from shot gun to automatic. Clearly, from the outset,
the game draws the player's conscious attention to shooters and their
weapons.

Each of the five levels is an entirely new environment. In one level the
player faces a bleak hallway recalling the tunneling architecture of
shooter games. However, as s/he shoots, instead of bullets, frogs stream
out of her weapon. Eventually a frog prince appears and morphs into a
giant pair of kissing lip. In another level, in a burning apocolyptic
blaze, a hoard of translucent cybernetic mummies slowly advance toward
the player. They are truly frightening. But when they reach the player
two of the mummies turn their heads towards each other and lock
themselves into a mind altering homoerotic kiss which even melts the
environment behind them. (Very dreamy!) My favorite level is an
imitation Quake level, replete with the deep grunts and echoes common in
violent network shooter Quake. The level also uses the typical warm
desert sienna color palette common in the Quake Series. But when the
player shoots his gun, purple flowers come out instead of bullets,
covering the screen and obliterating the Quake-like environment.

Although Ego Image Shooter is created with Macromedia Director as a
Shockwave Movie, it implements the "find and replace" subversive logic
of game modifications. (game-programming: Alex Schaub). Game mods allow
players to selectively replace elements in a pre-existing game, from
architecture, to textures, weapons, characters, sounds and so on. By
consistently replacing bullets with unexpected frogs, flowers and
kisses, Ego Image Shooter seems to be critiquing the testosterone-laden
world of shooter games by inserting "feminine" signifiers which
substitute for the spray of "semen-like" weapon discharge. (An
interesting comparison is a "Sailor Moon" modification of Doom. The
Sailor Moon "wad" recolored the walls and floors in pink, replaced the
gun with a magic boomerang, and replaced the ammo littering the
environment with cupcakes and bunnies.)

But it is also undeniably fun to spray frogs and, in a different level,
soccer balls out of a gun. Shooting is painting the environment. Perhaps
another intent of Ego Image Shooter is too stretch the boundaries of the
often too rigid shooter genre–not only to critique but to mutate into a
new kind of shooter game. Often the game engine takes control away from
the player–after shooting off a few rounds of frogs, a movie of a
morphing frog prince appears. It is as if the game demands us to be
aware of the conventions of game play by working against them. It wrests
control away from the player just at the moment she is warming up to a
shooting frenzy.

The remaining levels in the game are less open to interpretation,
departing even further from the conventions of shooter game play. (They
also seem to require more development and beta-testing in terms of game
play.) In one level, the player watches passively as a pair of men kick
a soccer ball back and forth and a woman sits working alone at a
computer workstation. In another level, a string of laundry displays T-
shirts that say pride, fear, happy, shame and other emotions. The
laundry is quite an uncommon domestic signifier in computer games. In
this level a male and female jogger compete with one another and it
seems the T-shirts are intended to effect their relationship.

Ego Image Shooter is an interesting experiment. In pushing the
boundaries of a game genre it thereby assumes the risks of experimenting
with new forms of game play. If I were to view it as a beta test I would
recommend it focus in more on the effects of subverting the shooter
genre, which are quite successful in terms of game play and genderplay,
and let some of the other experimental game play interfaces go. Its main
shortcomings are what all independently funded games lack, a development
team of at least fifteen or so 3-D modelers and programmers, to push the
production value higher. Nevertheless, it simulates 3-D space
efficiently enough to get the idea across and employs some very nice
interface tricks. The use of sound and music is effective. (sound-
design: Alex Schaub) I would like to see it developed further.

Gender Game Site http://www.gendergame.ch
Ego Image Shooter
http://www.cyberhelvetia.ch/public/images/gendergame/egoshooter_down.html