For this final writing
assignment I wanted to choose artists that in someway connected with something
I was either interested in or wanted to do. As such, the two artists I chose
are game artists. The way in which they approach these games are very different
though, both different from eachother and different from what one would
typically consider to be a game. Eddo Stern creates games that are both
physical and digital in nature, his bio explains it as exploring the uneasy and
otherwise unconscious connections between physical existence and electronic
simulation”. His games are as detailed and as realistic as he can get them,
requiring an installation to play. Pippin Barr,on the other hand creates simple
flash games. His games only take him a month or so to code and then he
unleashes them on the interwebs. Both of these digital artists, however, have
an interesting introspective aspect to their games that is quite different, and
the reason I chose them. The games I chose to focus on were Waco Resurrection
by Eddo Stern, and War Game by Pippin Barr. These games caused me to question
the accidental meanings found in games as well the level of detail necessary to
create an engaging game.
Eddo Stern has made a few of
these partly physical and partly electronic games, but the one I wanted to
focus on was Waco Resurection. Waco Resurection revisits the 1993 Waco, Texas
standoff between members of the Branch Davidian cult and federal agents, which
lasted 51 days and ended with the deaths of at least 86 people, including the
leader of the cult David Koresh. In Waco Resurection the players play as the resurrected
David Koresh. Each player wears a “specially designed voice activated, surround
sound enabled, hard plastic 3D skin” designed to look exactly like the animated
Koresh. Players voice texts from Koresh’s writings on the book of Revelation to
wield weapons and influence the behavior of both followers and opponents, even
turning opponents into converts. After ten minutes Koresh dies, either in a
fire similar to the one that killed him in real life, or he is killed by hordes
of FBI agents. Either way, the game ends and the scores are tallied. Players
earn points based on how many converts they have “dropped off”.
Pippin Barr has many games
to choose from, all very simple flash type
games. The one that seems to stand out the most though is called War
Game. War Game is based off of the old LED games, complete with stages, a boss
level, and a psych evaluation, only where as time goes on the game starts to
glitch and replaces characters and bullets with the wrong character or bullet.
Well, maybe that psych evaluation part is somewhat less typical. For him as a
game designer, he says that “In
some ways every decision I made about the game was for a kind of detached
aesthetic effect.” After either “five confirmed kills” or being shot the player
is sent to the a psychiatric evaluation. The psych evaluation asks the player a
question, such as “How do you feel about your mother?” or “what would you like
to talk about?” or “how do you feel about your country?” and then after the
player types 100 characters the game abruptly says “Everything seems to be in
order, you’ll be fine, return to active duty” and places the player back in the
war stage. Eventually the game just ends, with a screen saying “war is over”
and a vague feeling of purposelessness.
There are many things
that make these two games very very different, but one thing that makes Pippin Barr’s
game very different from Eddo Sterns is the amount of meaning intentionally
vested in the game. While Eddo Stern’s games can, somewhat intentionally, seem
a little heavy handed with the meaning, Pippin Barr’s games are unintentionally
very subtly vested with meaning. In Waco Reserection the player is David
Koresh, the cult leader that molested and married children and was responsible for
many deaths. This creates an odd sort of antihero situation, where the player
knows that the person they are playing as is a terrible person, and yet they are
put in a situation where they will try to make him win. According to Stern’s
description of the game it “draws on the rhetoric of conspiracy theory, cult
activity and apocalypticism to investigate the Waco siege as a cultural
milestone. It addresses the multi-layered dynamics of a 51-day media-event that
served to mobilize the militia movement, radicalize Timothy McVeigh and cause a
reevaluation of the role of religion in society.” 
While some of Pippin
Barr’s games, such as Jostle Bastard, address maybe one of these things at a time
(Jostle Bastard addresses the antihero concept), the meaning is often almost an
afterthought. After writing up war games and posting it, Pippin Barr wrote on
his blog about how he had noticed “this
phenomenon by which bits of code and art and game mean things you didn’t mean
them to, whether you like it or not.” War Games ended up being a very
introspective piece. The 100 character limit on the psych evaluation was for
Pippin Barr initially simply a lazy coding decision. However, in game play, it
ends up being a commentary on whether or not the government really cares about
the psychiatric health of the soldier. The occasionally relentless and
undodgeable waves of bullets were neither coded for nor prevented, and yet they
provide comment on the hopelessness of war. Even the name was chosen simply for
its generality, however, as Pippin Barr noted, it sounds “falsely weighty… [like]
the final word on games about war”.
What becomes difficult about analyzing this difference, is the question
which is better. In the end I think this is a question that would be answered
differently for everybody. Personally, I find that the accidental nature of the
meaning in Pippin Barr’s games make me think more about every aspect of the
game. I find the need to “[ensnare players] in the custom ‘Koresh skin’”
heavy-handed. I think that if the game needs to be more detailed to be good and
meaningful, then it really isn’t all that good or meaningful in the first place.
However, I also think that that might be a matter of personal taste and opinion,
and higher levels of detail and content can add to a piece. Given that the “Koresh
skin” is a barrier to my being able to play the game, I really can’t say that
it detracts from the game, only that it means I cant play it and find out.
This leads me to
another thing I wanted to talk about with these two games, the physical
component of Eddo Stern’s games and the very basic pixel art of Pippin Barr. These
two game artists have very radically different approaches to the medium. Eddo
Stern’s games have a physical component, such as the mask or “Koresh skin” one
wears while playing Waco Resurection. These games strive to take on a hyperreal
aspect. They are as realistically animated as the technology can easily allow,
and create heavily detailed games. The mask of Waco Resucrection is meant to
increase that level of realism, with the surround sound within the mask, as
well as the mental association with putting on the mask, and a new identity for
the players. Eddo Stern was not able to create the game alone either, but made
it in collaboration with other artists in C-Level.
Pippin Barr is able to
achieve a similar, if not higher level of meaning with far less effort and far
less detail. In War Game your character takes up roughly 50 pixels, if that. However,
the simple mechanics of the fact that you are controlling him causes the player
to associate themselves with him. The direct nature of the psych evaluation
questions, inspite of the lack of gameplay effect, further places one within
this so-called war. The very flat and completely unrealistic graphics in no way
detract from gameplay or the gameplay experience. The fact that these games can
be so absorbing without even halfway decent graphics create an interesting
question about the obsession with ever better graphics and ever more
complicated gameplay within the gaming industry. Good writing is worth far more
than good graphics in many ways.
To conclude, Eddo Stern
and Pippin Barr are both very different game artists. Most of Eddo Stern’s work
involves a physical component to increase the realism of the games, however,
all of Pippin Barr’s games are extremely simple and make no attempt to be
realistic, yet are fully engaging. Their games Waco Resurrection by Eddo Stern
and War Game by Pippin Barr when viewed together create an interesting look at
the nature of meaning in games as well as raising the question as to how much
detail is needed in a game to make it engaging. I veer toward the side of less
is more, however, that is also in many ways merely an aesthetic concern, and
would be a matter of taste. While I wanted to ask Eddo Stern and ask him about
the physical component and his reasons for using it in so many of his games, I
was unsuccessful in contacting him. I also wanted to ask Pippin Barr about his
game design process and what gives him the ideas for his games. Sadly, that was
unsuccessful as well.
Bibliography
Stern, Eddo. "Waco Resurrection." Eddo Stern. N.p., n.d. Web. Apr. 2014. <http://eddostern.com/works/waco-resurrection/>
Stern, Eddo. "Eddo Stern BIO – Updated October 2006." Eddo Stern. N.p., n.d. Web. Apr. 2014. <http://eddostern.com/texts/ESTERN_BIO_CURRENT.htm>.
Barr, Pippin. "War Game." Pippin Bar. N.p., n.d. Web. Apr. 2014. <http://www.pippinbarr.com/games/wargame/WarGame.html>.
Barr, Pippin. "Pippin Barr. War Game Blog." Pippin Barr. N.p., n.d. Web. Apr. 2014. <http://www.pippinbarr.com/blog/?tag=war-game>.
Hannaford, Alex. "The Standoff in Waco." The Texas Observer. The Texas Observer, 18 Apr. 2013. Web. Apr. 2014. <http://www.texasobserver.org/the-standoff-in-waco/>
