Whenever I watch a really good movie, it could leave a mark in me for days. It’s present in me, the plot, story and characters churning in my mind. This is now happening with Mass Effect. Only this time, I am tormented because of decisions and story line paths that I, myself, chose and experienced. “Could I have done this differently? Did he really have to die?” “Could I have done more to help out?” Lives, careers, even whole worlds are left in my command, making it an immersive experience that movies aren’t able to reproduce.

Waking up this morning and the first time that pops into my mind is the unfortunate death of one of my crew members in a faraway galaxy is a utterly positive thing. It makes me want to play through the game again, and see if this could be avoided. In a computer game, you are required to spend dozens, maybe hundreds of hours in the game world, and that makes it possible for the game developers to make a universe so much more filled with life, meaning, stories and characters than the 2-3 hours experience of a movie.

Anyways, it does of course require massive amounts of work to do this, and making games is expensive. I want to stress that emotionally immersive games isn’t an entirely new phenomenon. Games like Fallout, King’s Quest, A Mind Forever Voyaging, Final Fantasy VII and Gabriel Knight did this in the 70s, 80s and 90s as well. Computer games tell stories, but differently than movies. Hopefully, developers will look to games like Mass Effect to be reminded of the power of the computer game as a medium.

I first tried at Dice in Stockholm, however their internship positions were already long gone. On my second attempt, however, I had more luck. The games developer and published Daedalic Entertainment in Hamburg, Germany gave me the opportunity to do my internship there. My motivation to applying there was not at all random, as they had a wide range of very interesting-looking, old-school 2D adventure games, my favourite genre of computer games since the very beginning.

I have now stayed here for nearly three months, and it has so far been a very rewarding experience. Ony of my personal goals here was to improve my scripting skills, especially in relation to gaming, something that I have been able to do through the use of the Wintermute engine. I have worked on their in-game engine, I have been responsible for mini-game designs and I have even got some of my puzzle designs integrated in one of their high-profile titles. The two games I have worked on so far are the adventures The Whispered World and 1 1/2 Ritter, a game based on a German Warner Bros. movie. The largest portion of my work has been focused on the latter, doing everything from general engine work, integrating animations, fixing walk-to-points, cut-scenes and close-ups and, of course, testing and bug-fixing.

There aren’t too many weeks left of my stay, and I will focus on making this last time here count. I believe that I have already learned a lot. To use gaming terminology, I have gained +10 in experience and +10 in confidence, and feel more motivated than ever to work more with games and the industry.

I would’ve lied if I said that my “new life” here in Germany had turned out to be a completely painless matter. I tend to think of the gaming industry and the modern media world as a extremely globalized and anglospheric place. Sometimes, I even forget that there exist such things as language and cultural barriers between the countries in Western Europe. That might also be why I got a little culture shock as I first sat my foot on Hamburg soil, experiencing that speaking English here was, in many cases, a lost cause. Even many young people here refuse to speak English, and I don’t even bother to try uttering “sprechen Sie Englisch?” when I talk to older adults. Luckily, the people at my company are all fluent speakers in English.

The thing is, that it is not the German’s knowledge of English that is the real issue here. It is their willingness to speak it. From my experience, young people here are just as good as Scandinavians in the language, but many are simply not used to speaking it. In Norway, people are very fond of the English language, even using it in times when it is not strictly necessary. People like to speak it, and they like to have the opportunity to speak it.

Earlier this autumn I was a weekend in Utrecht, Netherlands, visiting a friend. Netherlands lies only a mere 5-hour train trip away from Hamburg, but I noticed a completely different attitude against their willigness towards the English language. Also, my friend did not relate at all to my experiences in Germany.

So why these differences? I guess it might be so easy as the fact German is a “world language”, and that their entire culture is based on people speaking German. It is not an easy task to find a English newspaper or magazine, nor an English book or an English TV-programme in this country. The Germans don’t need it, everything they need has already been translated, or they have a German version to replace the English one. Not to mention the perhaps most horrifying exemplification of this: “synchronfassung”, or dubbing, of television, movies and games. If I was to point at one major reason to why English is not such an integrated part of the German culture it would be that. In my childhood, the difference between the kids who knew good English and the kids who didn’t, were their media consumption. The kids that were into computers, computer games, movies and books were the kids that also learnt English faster. Of course, everything was basically in English, you needed to learn it!

My advice to people seeking an internship in countries such as Germany or France is that they should be aware of the fact that they should learn the language first. Or, at least, they should have a basic knowledge of the language before even trying to apply. I know that without my basic knowledge of German, I doubt that my stay here would’ve even been possible. Also, if you’re not a fluent speaker of the local language, you should be sure to check if there’s an international staff in your company. If not, there’s a chance that you would feel as a bit of an outsider, and eventually not learning and experiencing as much as you otherwise would.

During this time, I have also played a lot of the brilliant Audiosurf, a rhythm-based “racing” game that creates tracks out of music files on your computer, and many of the mechanisms that are described as good design choices could directly be applied to Audiosurf. The game doesn’t get static or boring, as one basically have access to an infinite number of tracks. Players are able to get into the game straight away, with minimal training, but it would take a great deal of training to be able to compete with the elite. The game’s core mechanism is extremely easy, just moving your vehicle to the left or right, and the the gameplay is easily discernable and visible through the use of colors.

It’s easy to apply Raph Koster’s notions on mastery, and the learning of patterns to Audiosurf. Indeed, the game is mainly about creating said patterns by collection blocks of different colors, making matches and training the brain to handle more and more complex tracks. If we were to look to LeBlanc’s typology of “fun”, we could say that Audiosurf is “fun” due to the challenges it provides. The pleasure of mastering the challenge, not to mention the social aspect when you see your name on the top of the high score list of the song! LeBlanc also speaks of submission, the game as “mindless pastime”. Bring me one of those as well.

Also Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow term is something that we could use in this context, taking into consideration Audiosurf’s challenging activities and clear goals and feedback.

I asked a friend what he found funny with Audiosurf. Of course this is not an easy question to answer, but he first described the diversity of the game, as the tracks are dynamically created by the software and a music file. He did also mention the social aspect and the thrill of hitting the top of the high score lists, as well as the fun of playing with a friend on the same computer. He didn’t really describe any further game mechanics as such, but these are often hard to express in words.

Another game that shares much of the same characteristics is Tetris, also a mindnumbingly addictive and extremely fun game.

Chris Crawford talks about the evolution of taste in his book, Chris Crawford on Game Design. His point is that when people grow up, their tastes change in several ways. As children, we had the habit of enjoying things with a very high intensity. This could take form as the childish fascination for candy, comics and cartoons. These are all things with very high-intensity features, like the tingling sensation of candy to the tongue, or the strong, clear colours and style of comics. Although these things could just as well be enjoyed by adults, most adults develop a sense for the more subtle and sophisticated as time goes by. The sweetness of candy and pastel colours tend to become less tempting, and we are drawn to more intricate and more slow-paced material.

Crawford draws a parallel from this to video games. Crawford goes so far as to state that “videogames are in the same league with candy, cartoons and comic books… and they appeal to precisely the same audience”. He argues that video games became too popular too fast, and that the earliest game designers made games with the simplest possible designs – designs with simple, intense conflicts. Much of this design is still present in modern-day games, and the market makes it difficult to turn this effect around. Few publishers and distributors dare to gamble on concepts that are new and innovative, due to the fact that they are not safe sources of income.

If we are to follow Raph Koster’s line of thought, we know that what makes games fun is, to a large extent, learning and training mind patterns. From nature’s point of view, a young child is supposed to learn features that make him more likely to survive in nature, since they are “new to life”. The logic behind this is that, games are in essence just abstract, quantified models that are to be tackled by the logical mind, thus should be perfect for young boys that are eager to learn. But girls are beginning to play more and more games. And, according to Koster, research has shown that girls who play typical boys’ games are more likely to break out of gender stereotypes.

Why videogames are also for adults

I do, to a large extent, agree with Crawford and his notion about the limited evolution of videogames from their birth and until today. The market is quite limited due to the commercial forces, and the 13-year-olds are, in fact, a huge target group for game publishers because of the aforementioned reasons. However, there are several exceptions.

There are lots of examples of games that do not fit in the description of videogames as provided by Crawford. For instance, in the 70’s, 80’s and early 90’s, when only a few, dedicated individuals owned a personal computer, we saw several examples of games that did indeed appeal to an older, more sophisticated crowd. At this time, people owning computers were often resourceful, well-educated adults. In these early years of gaming, we saw the birth of interactive fiction, the adventure game and the digital role-playing game. We saw games with potential as a powerful narrative media, even as a crossover between art, literature and even film.

An example of one of these games is Infocom’s seventeenth game, A Mind Forever Voyaging, released in 1985. As an unconventional adventure game with almost no puzzles at all, players took on the role as PRISM, the world’s first sentient computer. The game had a serious tone and a political theme, and the title itself is taken from a book by William Wordsworth. AMFV was an interactive fiction, which means that there are no graphics at all, and all descriptions and interaction is presented through text.

Ten years later, we saw the release of A Mind Forever Voyaging, an adventure game based on a novel by Harlan Ellison, who also co-designed the game. The game handled provocative psychological and ethical themes, and forced the player to take ethical and moral choices in a world where an evil computer has destroyed mankind except for five people. Through their ethical choices, the people have to prove to the computer that they are better than machines.

“When Cyberdreams approached Ellison about creating a work of interactive literature, he was intrigued by the challenge of taking on one of the few mediums for which he had never before written. No fan of conventional computer games, Ellison wanted to create an adventure that would enrich players even as they are challenged by the storyline and fantastic concepts that move the characters, coming away as sharper-edged human beings than when they began.”(Taken from Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Have_No_Mouth%2C_and_I_Must_Scream_%28computer_game%29).

But we do not need to go back to the 80’s or 90’s to find examples of videogames with adult themes. Funcom, a Norwegian games company, released Dreamfall in 2006. The game was the sequel to 1999’s The Longest Journey, and were a hugely story-driven game, and did receive some criticism for its lack of typical gameplay. As an adventure game in full 3D, the game takes players through a moving story that touches issues such as politics and religion, proving that a game could take its rightful place in contemporary fiction.

These games are to me clear examples that games could be just as important as movies, especially as the medium grows older. We have to remember that games as we know them today have only existed for about 30 years, and that other mediums, suchs as films, also needed several decades to take the form we know today. In fact, as a movie experience is over in a mere two hours, a gaming experience could last for maybe 30-40 hours, enabling the game designer to create bigger and more comprehensive worlds for the player to delve into.

I don’t believe Crawford’s point is that all digital games are made for kids only. For instance, adventure games, as the ones mentioned above, are examples of games that target adults in the same way that a novel would. Both Koster and Crawford seem to have a rather pessimistic opinion on stories in games. Koster claims that that by and large, people don’t play because of the stories, and that games often teach the brain to ignore the fiction and focus on the underlying patterns. Crawfords take on the subject is that people working on games don’t have what it takes to make a game that touches human emotions. Also, he seems to have problem with the term ‘interactive storytelling’, as stories seldom really are interactive. They do have their fixed beginning and ending.

I don’t share this pessimism on behalf of stories in games. As an avid gamer, I have had many touching and emotional game experiences. These experiences are not at all unrelated to the storytelling in the game, even though the nature of their ‘interactivity’ could stand contested. Even platformers like Psychonauts or Beyond Good and Evil can tell a moving story in satisfying ways. I do not have the same problem with the notion of linearity as Crawford expresses, and I do not agree with Koster’s claim that “games are not about stories”.

It might be true that it’s difficult for a game to reach the literary level of a truly great novel. But don’t games have features that a novel won’t be able to reach? In spite of being a medium still in its infancy, games do already have the power of creating powerful emotions in the player. Creating fear, compassion and love for the world and characters. My claim is that games can create emotions as effectively as any other form of art, and that we will see this happen in the next years of game development.

Even though Koster expresses some pessimism on the story’s importance in games, he also states, later on in his book, that games are art in the notion that they are means of altering people’s views on the world around them. They are a powerful tool in power of being an interactive medium with a virtual world that reacts to your choices. In other words, he recognizes video games ability to achieve the level of art.

Say what you want about the iPhone or its bastard child, the iPod Touch, but you cannot escape the fact that it’s pretty damn sexy. It’s got a sleek design and a great interface, as well as a number of innovative new features. What could game designers do with features such as the accelerometer or multi-touch screen?

Consider the enormous success of the Nintendo DS. Then add accelerometer. And multi-touch. And VoIP, camera and proximity sensor!

Both the iPhone and iPod Touch sells like there’s no tomorrow apparently, and could be a very exciting new platform for games. Better yet, the SDK is surprisingly cheap, with Apple only charging 99$ for the whole thing. Also, if you pay a 99$ extra, you’ll be able to sell your game on iTunes, leaving you with a 70% revenue from sales.

I have been testing out a few concepts for the platforms myself, as part of a school assignment. I have had a few ideas for a couple of racing games, as well as a dancing game. I’ll probably post them here later.

I have not yet seen a iPhone/iPod-game that utilizes the platforms’ innovative features. Have you? If so, please let me know!

I want to focus on the elements that work as guidelines for great game design. However, I might also include some topics that are meant to reflect on game design, the designer’s role and games in general. I have found a great deal of literary sources, and found that I have really taken on a very big task. I think I’m going to focus on design elements that are of use to a “rookie” game designer, such as myself. I’ll try to gather the very core elements of game design, and reflect on these. Also, I’ll try to connect them to our production Trollblod.

Here I present a few of the core topics that’s presented in Raph Koster’s A Theory of Fun for Game Design:

Patterns, patterns, patterns
Our brains specializes in learning patterns and chunking them into our subconsciousness. When we sit down with a new game, playing it, our brains will immediately begin searching for the rules of play – the patterns. Most of us has played computer games before, and we will look for patterns that we are used to from other games. This process is otherwise known as learning. As patterns are learned, we need new ones to keep our interest up. Practicing could extend the gaming experience, however we will reach a point where we’ll move on to other things. Perhaps unless the game is dynamic, like an online game that gets new content, most games will become boring at one point.

Fun is learning, learning is fun!
Yes, learning, although not in the edutainment sense of the word. We feel good when our brains get their fixes of endorphines. This could happen at several occasions, among them the feeling of triumph or accomplishing a task.

Fun happens when it absorbs certain patterns, learning them. The feeling of wanting to learn more and enjoy new things triggers the brain. Fun is challenges that are at the margin of our ability, to quote Koster. Our brains experience little “jolts of pleasure” when we master the patterns, although it is very important to keep the level of difficulty on a adjusted level. Having too easy or too difficult patterns would result in our brains not getting their desired jolts. In ideal gameplay, the player will get these jolts of pleasure throughout the whole game, thus reflecting the importance of having a good flow in the game.

When does a game become boring?
According to Koster, here are some ways in which boredom might strike in a game design:

– Too easy. The players fully masters the game from the beginning. “Child’s game”.
- The players might recognize some depth, however it isn’t interesting enough to keep them playing.
- The patterns aren’t apparent to the players. They simply don’t know what to do.
- Variations in patterns arrive too seldom. The players gets the feeling that the game is just repetitive and boring. They crave more “jolts of pleasure”.
- The patterns are unveiled too quickly. The progress in the game goes too fast, and players lose control. They get the feeling that game got too hard too fast.
- The gamer has mastered all patterns – the game is over. This is probably something that it’s hard to not encounter – unless you’re making an MMORPG…

Reward is one of the key components for successful game activity
There has to be a quantifiable reward. If there’s not an advantage of doing something, there’s a chance brain will discard it. The players simply won’t feel the need to accomplish a task if there is no reward for doing it.

Successful games tends to incorporate the following elements:
-Preparation
Before the actual game sets in, the player is often able to affect their odds of success. This could be as practicing, healing up or making team tactics before the actual game sets in.

Examples: in Team Fortress 2, the medic is able to heal up his team members before battle begins. Demomen can place around their sticky bombs, and engineers will build their sentry guns. All these factors will affect the outcome of the round.

-A sense of space
Could be as concrete as a level or a chess board. Or as the network of relationships between the players of a bridge game.

-A solid core mechanic
Core gameplay. Half-Life 2’s mechanics could be aiming and shooting, vehicle maneuvering and physics puzzles. A game could have several of these mechanics, or just a few very good ones. A trend in modern gaming is that games feature more and more of these mechanics, or “ludemes”. Koster points out that in order to push gaming forward, we need to stop focusing on graphics and technology, “the dressing”, and invent new ludemes that are able to alter people’s views on the world around them.

-A range of challenges
Each challenge operates within the rules of the game, and does not change them. A boss enemy in a shoot-em-up is a different challenge than regular enemies, however the core mechanic remains the same.

-A range of abilities required to solve the encounter
One should be able to solve problems in several ways. An example of this could be in a strategy game, where the player will be able to choose from many types of units to attack his/her enemy. The game will be dull if there is no variation in how to play. The several classes in Team Fortress 2 could also be a good example of this.

-Skill required in using the abilities
Skill should be essential. If you play badly, you should get a negative reaction, as opposed to when you play good, where you should be rewarded. Not requiring skill from a player should be considered a cardinal sin in game design. But not too much skill. Then the player will choose not to play.

These are just a few topics that are adressed in Koster’s book A Theory of Fun for Game Design. I will work more on extracting the essentials of this and other prominent books on game design in order to accomplish my task in “Selvbestemt Pensum”. Finally, I can recommend Koster’s book to anyone that is remotely interested in games or game design.

I was a bit surprised to see that the second part of the book, which is by far the largest, is simply a dictionary of game design patterns. Each pattern’s use and consequence is described, as well as their relations to other patterns. I see no need at this point to read the book from cover to cover, but rather consult it when I need to solve a problem, or just the need of some inspiration or help.

An interesting aspect about this book is that it addresses the advantage of having of having a common language in game design, not just for analyzing games, but also for designing them and communicating them to either fellow team members or publishers. It has been common to use theories from typically narrative medias, such as film and television, in order to analyze games. However, games are an interactive medium, and should therefore be treated differently, in spite of also having narrative qualities.

One can use the book as a tool of problem solving, for example if the designer needs to get rid of an unwanted element from his/her game, and is unsure how to do it, or one can use the patterns to add a new, wanted element to the game. One can use it to stimulate one’s creativity by adding a new pattern to the existing game design and see what difference it makes, or, if the designer feels the need for more tension in the his/her game, he can look up the tension pattern, and learn which elements he can use in order to achieve this.

Whew. I can see the usefulness of these patterns as regards to our prototyping of the Trollblod-project, and hopefully, I will be able to use some of this knowledge in my game design task as well. I would have to show in which settings such a system would be useful. Of course, this system will have to be adapted to each and every project, and in collaboration with other means of game designing. Time will tell. Next up, I’ll read Koster’s A Theory of Fun in Game Design.

I’ve started to look into books and articles that I can use, and did already come across this interesting article over at GameCareerGuide.com. Brenda Brathwaite, the author, is a 25 year veteran in the gaming industry, and is also hosting a blog here on WordPress, called Applied Game Design. Interestingly enough, her article at GameCareerGuide specifically mentions setting up a blog and writing about games as a smart thing to do in order to create a game designer portfolio. She also mentions two books: Koster’s A Theory of Fun for Game Design and Bjork and Holopainen’s Patterns in Game Design. I had already planned to check out the latter, but I guess I should also check out Koster’s book as well.

I’m still a bit unsure of exactly how I should pursue this task. Which topics should I pay most attention to, and how? Also, I have to avoid just citing various sources, I’ll also have to reflect on them, and add something new. I guess I’ll start by reading some literature. Hopefully, something will come to me.

None of these ideas were very good. One of the projects I spent a lot of time on was the concept of a book accompanied by sound. I wanted to create certain feelings out of the visuals and sound. However, the idea lacked substance, and I found myself spending lots of time walking in circles, eventually feeling that I wasn’t able to find that one project I wanted to see finished. I generally think of myself as a creative person, so I couldn’t understand why I had such a hard time getting this right.

That state of mind felt useless at the time, but was actually an eye-opener to me. I had to think “out of the box”, to be able to discard the ways I usually work, to trust myself and the idea that I eventually came up with. It was a learning process and a interesting time. Amanda gave me a deadline to come up with my final idea, so I sat down on a coffee shop in Trondheim, and decided that I would not leave before I had come up with something that I wanted to work with. And here I came up with the idea of a brochure that would celebrate the life and death of Aeris Gainsborough.

From there, the idea was further developed into the shrine that was presented on the final viewing last Friday, where “The Flowergirl” was shown for the class and curator Per Platou. This time, I had made the installation bigger, as I had put the cloth over two tables instead of just one. Also, I had lots of candles and two lilies for decoration and to make the setting more sacral and dramatic, something which was further enhanced by the emotional music. In addition, I had got my brochures fresh from the printing works, and they definitely looked better on professional paper.

As the class had already seen the video and brochure before, they were now more reluctant to stand in front of the table to watch the video and read the brochure. I had turned the lights off, and the room was quite dark, so the audience would have to stand in the light from the candles in order to read the brochure comfortably.

As last time, the audience watched the video twice before starting to read the brochure. I had handed them out during the beginning of the session, so I was sure that everyone got the chance to read them. The moving pictures on the laptop took much of the attention, so I wanted to “force” people into reading the brochure. After all, it is the main ingredient in the installation. This time around, I had kept the audience’s cheering at the end of the music, something that provided for an interesting “glitch” in the memorial service, maybe reminding people that this is actually not a real service.

Per commented on the video and said that it was maybe a bit too revealing to show the actual death scene in the video. He meant that the brochure would be more interesting without knowing how the death actually happened, and that people would perhaps check it out for themselves afterwards. He is probably right that the installation would be more mysterious this way. On the other hand, the death scene is what made Aeris and FF7 so famous and important, and that’s why I deliberately put it there, and probably would like to keep it there. Of course, I know that showing someone’s death in a memorial service probably isn’t very “correct”, and there are many elements that were supposed to be not “correct” in “The Flowergirl”. The first impression of the brochure is that it is a funeral brochure. However, when opening it up, it comes clear that this is no regular funeral brochure, but rather a collection of internet quotes, fan art, screenshots and conspiracy theories concerning Aeris’ death. At the same time, the physical installation in itself could look perfectly normal at first sight. Just as the emotions we could feel from the death of a “false”, virtual character, the look of the installation and brochure could be described as deceiving. Is this a genuine memorial service, or is it also something else?

I mentioned to Per that I saw the installation as a prototype, and I had been thinking about other elements and props that could eventually be added to the installation. His comments were that he’d rather see the installation without these elements, and that it was a good thing that I had not dressed up as a funeral agent. He said that he felt that such elements would be too obvious, and leave nothing to the audience, just as showing the death scene gave away too much. On reflection, I absolutely get his point. The installation probably works best on a more reflective level, and the brochure already explains in detail what my work is about. If I had put the installation up on a public place (like Outland, which Per suggested) with no further explanation, I would’ve liked the audience to explore “The Flowergirl” for themselves, walk up to the shrine, watch the video, flip through the brochure and make up a mind of their own what the piece is about.

For what is it about? This have already been explained in the brochure and on this blog. First and foremost, I see “The Flowergirl” as an exploration of the feelings and obsession certain people could feel for a virtual character. My Twilight Zone is where fiction, and more exactly, interactive fiction touches into our very real hearts. The feelings of hopelessness when realizing that she can not be saved or resurrected, and that we have just as little power over life and death in this computer game as we do in the real world. However, there’s hope to be found as some decide to hack the game in order to bring her back into the gaming world, finding out that she actually has some dialogue lines even after her own death! An interesting aspect, indeed, one could almost draw religious parallels to such an act.

Apart from the in-game screenshots, every image in my brochure is actually fan-art, and the quotes are all selected from a few of the many pages speaking of Aeris’ death on the internet. The brochure is thus a tribute to computer games and their unique worlds, the culture of the internet, and its language and aesthetics. It’s a documentation on the amount of work that regular people are willing to put into what they’re interested in, and that the “nerds” out there are not a faceless, cold-hearted mass with no regards for others than themselves. The internet is an abstract place, but is also a place where very real people meet, interact and communicate. It is a twilight zone between our digital and physical lives.

As a conclusion, I have to say that The Twilight Zone has been a very interesting and rewarding process for me. I have learned a lot about myself, how I work and my creativity, and it has been interesting working on a project that is very different compared to what we’re usually working on in OPIM. Judging from the comments on the first and final viewings, the audience captured the essence of what I wanted to communicate, and that the installation worked on a reflective level, so the audience would have to use their minds in order to interpret it. Also, I am satisfied with the feedback, and that the installation captivated and stirred people’s feelings. It’s interesting to see that something this “fake” is perceived as serious, sacral and moving.

To become emotional in a memorial service for a virtual character from a computer game – that’s gotta be called a Twilight Zone, eh?

To enhance the emotional impact, I will decorate the shrine with flowers and candles. I will also add some of the original sound from the video, in order to make it more interesting and less static. The response I got from last time was that the shrine made an almost sacral feeling, and I hope to that these new additions will make the installation better.

Some suggested that I’d put more footage from Aeris’ life into the video. I don’t think I’ll do that, as I believe there’s enough focus on the video already. Also, it’s the death scene that has been described by the Internet audience as particularly moving, and that’s why I’d like to focus on the death and funeral scenes alone.

I’d need a separate room to hold the installation, as I’d like to stand by the doorway, giving out the brochures before they enter the room. I’ll try to keep the room rather dark and gloomy, to make the shrine look even more “sacral”. I’ll make sure that at least the music has started before I let people in. I’m not sure yet if I’ll wait until people have entered the room before I start the video.

The reason why I’ll keep the brochure and the video as it is today, is because I’d like to keep the installation mainly on the visceral level. What is the installation about? As were mentioned on Thursday, people had a hard time understanding the concept before they had read through the brochure. Some saw it as a piece simply about Aeris and Final Fantasy VII, others saw it as a tribute to video games, and their current status as a “lower” form of art. This is partly true, but the piece is also about the Internet culture and aesthetics. How much people can care about a virtual character, someone who never existed, taking it to the point where they’d want to hack the game in order to bring her back. I’d also like to point out that much of the brochure is actually fan-art, drawn by fans on the net.

Friday’s viewing will sure be interesting. I’ll be sure to point a post mortem on how it went.