Aaron Oldenburg

ABSTRACT This paper will discuss the past and potential future intersections between game design and theories within contemporary sound art. It will look at methods for broadening the ways in which videogames engage with the world of audio. The author will describe his design process in the creation of several experimental audio games. These range from music composition based on chance game events to silent games that simulate aspects of sound. Future experiments and applications are suggested.

Documentary filmmaking and the design of videogames have often converged in the form of “docugames”, games that aspire to the form of documentary. This paper looks at a related strategy for creating content and gameplay: that of using documentary processes, such as interviews and on-location evidence collection, for games that involve varying levels of fictionalization. It will discuss abstract approaches to the idea of realism in docugames as well as traditional documentary film. It will also detail an original design project that begins with documentary evidence collection and ends with an impressionistic fictionalized narrative. It will discuss the benefits of this approach, and the seemingly paradoxical creation of a form of realism through fictionalization. Playtesting results of this experiment will be detailed and related paths will be suggested for continued exploration.

Seer (KOR), Thinning and Brief Excursion (2016) are three videogames that attempt to proceduralize characteristics of the experience of the hallucinogenic chemical Salvinorin A, the active component of the sage variety salvia divinorum. The purpose of these experiments is to explore the boundaries of representations of space and self in digital virtual worlds, as well as to attempt to convey the intangible emotional (as well as anti-emotional) and philosophical aspects of the experience. The goal is to evoke in the player sensations of discomfort, loss of direct control and a sense of being outside of assumed videogame space.

This paper will discuss the past and potential future intersections between game design and theories within contemporary sound art. It will look at methods for broadening the ways in which videogames engage with the world of audio. The author will describe his design process in the creation of several experimental audio games. These range from music composition based on chance game events to silent games that simulate aspects of sound. Future experiments and applications are suggested.

This article surveys various differing approaches to religious simulation in gaming and interactive art, and reports on the design of a specific faith-based game from the designer’s perspective. It looks in-depth at one of a series of short experimental video games that explore the use of game mechanics to simulate various aspects of religious faith. A number of serious and casual games have been produced over the years by companies catering to religious audiences. These often merely add religious themes to mechanics appropriated from popular games. An example of this would be Cougar Interactive’s Zoo Race (2007), which thinly drapes the narrative of Noah’s Ark over a racing game. Although there are a small number of independent games that have begun to approach religious and spiritual ritual, such as Ian Bogost’s Guru Meditation (2009a), most religious games do not attempt to simulate the internal cognitive processes of faith. This article argues that there are opportunities that these games are missing in creating original gameplay that adds to a deeper understanding of their subject matter. The author demonstrates the idea that games, which through their rules have shown that they can provoke emotion and reflection in the player, can also simulate certain processes of faith.

The purpose of this project is to create new images of West Africa, through an interactive environmental narrative informed by philosophies of game design. The content draws on my two years as a development worker in Mali. The imagery revolves around the hybridization of traditional Malian and Western culture, and overlaps between magic and technology, with an interface designed to allow the player to find the magic in the mundane.

My process involved creating a three-dimensional environment in Flash that the player could explore non-linearly. Within the environment are characters with whom to converse, and conversation is based on a fluid navigation system similar to the environment's exterior exploration. Stories are based on my diary entries and letters home and were chosen for their personal, surprising, and multilayered nature. Rather than use traditional game design methods I chose to start with narrative and imagery first and create the game structure from them.

During play the user discovers narratives that build on one another throughout the course of the experience. The player uses these to form a meaningful picture of the environment as a whole. The order selected to experience the narrative changes its interpretation, as reading an event over another influences the understanding of subsequent events. The surprising and non sequitur nature of the narrative makes the non-player characters as well as the environment itself seem more plausible.

This paper will briefly discuss the history of sonic experimentation in digital game design, and describe one of a series of games the author is in the process of creating that directly address ideas in sound art theory.  These projects focus on the world of audio with the intention of distancing video games from the rational and concrete.  Video games in turn facilitate the exploration of relatively new paths in sound art.

This paper discusses the results of several original digital game design experiments where generative landscapes are created to reference states of consciousness. Their designs take inspiration from hypnagogic states, geographically-located psychic trauma and dream-states, unconscious player input, dissociative worlds, and landscapes as autonomous, emotional entities. This series is a work-in-progress that points to future paths in expressive generative landscape design.