Copy and pasted from my dev blog. To see the pictures, read it there
http://www.closuregame.com/blog/2009/1 0/indiecade_08.html

Prepare for a looooong blog post, filled with interesting pictures and stories from my week in Culver City.

Closure and Aether were both finalists in the festival. Because Edmund McMillen was listed first on Aether and I was listed first on Closure, there was a mix up and the two games were placed in separate galleries. The event was split up amongst 3 buildings, which I didn't realize at first or else I would have let them know. Not a problem, I thought, they'll supply the computers so I can leave my booth to walk around, and Edmund would arrive on day 2 so he could watch the Aether booth if necessary and I'd only have to cover both day 1. I'm foreshadowing disaster here. You'll see.

Anyway on Wednesday, I arrived in LA and spent the day with my uncle (who's also doing the music for the game). We talked about the atmosphere and mood and he worked on the music a bit, and we got something really great coming soon music-wise. On Thursday, he drove me into Culver City where I met up with Mike and Greg and Daniel Benmergui. We were splitting a room a few blocks away from the event so we wouldn't have to spend much money for a hotel.

Day 1 begins. I wanted to show off the new version of the game, despite submitting the flash version to the festival. They had mac towers to show off with (cause I didn't get the controller working with windows yet), but unfortunately they were older PowerPC macs, so I had to set up my laptop as the demo station. This was my station:

So, the room was kinda cool. I was right underneath a whole ton of original Disney and Simpsons animation frames. But unfortunately, since my laptop was now my demo machine, I couldn't leave it alone to go watch other booths or other people's stuff unless someone was there. Not a huge deal, really. Enough people were around that I could talk to and show the game to, but not too many, so I could take breaks.

The judges and press came around that day and I told them about the game. Then the opening party was that night. It was at a gallery a ways away, where art was hanging on the walls, music was playing, and the waitresses, dressed up as french maids, served us free food and drinks (delicious food too). The art in the gallery was pretty cool

But some of it was pretty questionable

I gave my "mini-microtalk" for Closure, which consisted of 12 slides at 16 seconds each. It was fun struggling to keep up with the slides but it went very well.

Day 2 was a normal day. It turned out Edmund was sick and might not make it to the festival, so Aether went unwatched that day. I tried to check up on it. The awards ceremony was that night. If Aether won an award, I was to call Edmund and he'd say some words through the phone, through the microphone. Jon showed up that day too, with Luis and Nick. Jon and Luis had a lot of fun at the award ceremony. Perhaps, too much fun?

Lots of free food at the ceremony too. Free food is always good. The Sony Pictures Building was massively huge, my camera couldn't take a good distance picture in it. Oh ya and Closure won for Gameplay Innovation. The trophy looks like a bong. And weighs like 20 pounds. And there's no way I was gonna get it on to the airplane.

My uncle was nice enough to ship it out for me. It's crazy how much family I have all over the country and how willing they are to drive me around and ship stuff for me.

Day 3 came. There wasn't much to say about that day, other than the fact that Tim Langdell showed up. He's infamous for suing the hell out of people that "infringe" on his "famous" trademark "EDGE", and fairly universally hated by the independent gaming community right now, so it struck everyone as a wtf moment when he showed up to INDIEcade. Maybe he's looking for more trademarks, considering EA is ripping him a new hole and using the courts to strip him of his precious trademarked words. I should register Closure sometime soon come to think of it. I have protection by default at least, and I can use the "tm" symbol whenever I want, so you may see that start popping up soon for my own good.

Day 4 was interesting. It was a short day, followed by a second awards party. I found out Edmund went into the ER in the morning. I had no idea what was going on. At the awards ceremony, Aether won an honorable mention, so I called Edmund to see if he was good enough to say something. His wife Danielle picked up, and said he was "unconscious", and everyone was a little worried. Later in the evening I got the call from Edmund, he had gallstones and his gallbladder needed to be removed. Not life threatening at all, but extremely painful. Also he doesn't have insurance, so if you want you can donate some money to help him foot the bill.

This was our prize. Not as cool as a 20 pound cast iron sculpture of death, but interesting nonetheless. I had to assemble it myself.

The game developers life is fun. Unfortunately these types of events can't last forever, or else we'd all be having too much fun to actually make games. So, back to work for me. Next major festival is GDC in march, so I have quite a bit of time to *yawn* actually do some work instead of goofing around with fun people.

Go team Closure GO!

Ok ya I had to wait a little bit to get FP post back after the first bit of PAX news.

Here's some videos, starting with gameplay of the demo I showed off (minus 2 levels to fit into 10 minutes). While the video shows a 10 minute demo, most people played for 30-45 minutes trying to figure out puzzles. We got a good list of points where people got stuck, and a lot of misc. glitches and other things to fix. Here it is though:

Also I was on G4:
http://g4tv.com/videos/41247/Brutal-Le gends-Tim-Schafer-Does-PAX/

If you're in the LA area around October 1-4 be sure to go to the Indiecade festival. Closure and Aether are BOTH finalists. I will be manning the closure booth and showing off the new version if they let me. Also, bring your friends. They didn't do too good of a job promoting the event but I still want it to draw a crowd. please don't leave me alone... Also Will Wright is gonna be there so there's some celebrity endorsement if that's your thing.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=
37254
There's a photo collection for you to see.

I'm incredibly tired and sick right now, so I don't have much to write about today, but I'll post the whole summary sometime this week.

10 DAYS TILL PAX! OMFG

I plan to show off the new Closure. Of course, the game is not quite... presentable yet... and we have 10 days to get it presentable. 10 days. You know what that means? It's SUPER CRUNCH TIME GO!! for me and Jon.

YOU BETTER SHOW UP AT PAX or else all this effort is WASTED

also vote for closure

Closure Promo Art (i drewed it myself! :D)

http://www.paxsite.com/pax10.php

If you're going to PAX, be sure to stop by and try out the New Closure

Or if you're lame, have fun with the Old Closure.

IN MEMORY OF THE LATE BILLY MAYS, KEEP YOUR CAPS LOCK ON ALL WEEK!

"Art Games", I was introduced to these when I first played Braid, or rather, when I first started reading discussions online about Braid. It's amazing how people could analyze that game as much as English teachers analyze literature, but damn, no book has ever made me care as much about symbolism and meaning as Braid did. It was an interesting experience and it made me realize that games can be more than what they appear on the surface, that they can have deeper meaning to them, but also, more importantly, that so few games have done this, and most of the ones that have never really get any sort of mainstream press. I realized that if I want to make a splash in the gaming industry, then exploring more original storytelling mechanics could be the way to do so, in addition to a fun core game, and I was itching to test the waters on this.

Coincidentally, Edmund asked me about 2 weeks later if I wanted to work on Aether with him. I was currently working on a project that I was slowly losing interest in, partially due to Braid raising my standards for everything, so I decided to go for it, and abandon that old project which was turing out much worse than I originally thought. Edmund described what he wanted for gameplay and I mocked up something quick, then expanded on that. He never told me what the game's meaning was until near the end of development when we were polishing up the whole thing. It worked out well for this because it felt like I could add my touches all over the game's world and design the game's mechanics how I thought they would go, and Edmund could work on his vision of the game, and then combined them and touch up the seams, and it worked, and became my favorite project (until Closure).

It was a fun experience, and came at just the right time for me, but at the same time I was still looking around at these other art games people had come out with and were still coming out with, and I was still in an "arty" mindset. Development on Closure began with me in this mindset, but I shifted out of it because I wanted to focus on the puzzles. But the art was still on my mind. I played through some small art games I could find, Passage, I wish I were the Moon, The Majesty of Colors, Gravitation, and others. They all seemed to have low-res pixel art in them. It was kinda cool at first but it seemed to be a trend, cause others that came out recently, (don't look back, fathom, jumpman, gray) also had low res art. I was getting involved in the independent game dev community too, and a lot of people seemed preoccupied with low res art. I am very partial to flash-like vector art myself after so many years of staring at it, but I appreciate the occasional tribute to our past. I was curious as to why pixel art was so popular amongst this group of people, as it was a stark change from the flash-based communities I was used to. I basically got these reasons:

1. Low res is easier to make look good than high res
2. Nostalgia
3. It lets the player "fill in the details" of the artwork, therefore growing a stronger connection with the characters.

1 and 2 are valid, but it was 3 that intrigued me the most. Was it just a way of justifying "laziness"? Or did it have value to it that I didn't originally see at first. Could the same concept be applied to other aspects of game development or other fields entirely? Thinking about this too much made me enjoy art games less, cause rather than see meaning in them, I began to see holes. "The creator just left this blank and wants ME to fill in the meaning for him!" I'll admit, people do generate more of an emotional connection to things if they (inadvertently) inject a bit of themselves into interpreting someone else's work. But, there's a balance to be struck.

To compare it to painting, look at Picasso and Dali. Look at how incredibly detailed and surreal their works are. They were great painters and knew how to convert what was in their minds to pigment on canvas. Yet, their work was surreal enough to let other people determine multiple meanings for it. They all had a specific mood though, which helps guide people into interpreting the works in a similar way, with some room for deviation. But at their core, the paintings were amazing. Dali especially. Some of his stuff is photorealistic but with a surreal twist. This certainly wasn't laziness. Now look at some of the more "abstract" artists, Mondrian and Pollock. Where does the meaning in their work come from? Do people only enjoy their work because they're told to enjoy it? Whatever theme for their works comes out of what someone says it is, rather than any specific element in the work itself. It's abstraction. Cave paintings are more interesting to look at than a Mondrian piece. Simplicity is one thing but some of these abstract works just go way too far with it.

I realize there is meaning intended with these pieces, but if you can't communicate that meaning or message through the work itself, and rely on a piece of paper stating your intent, then the work is about as useful as the wall it's hung on.

Back to games now. It's a trend to do "art games" now. Games are art because "art" is a term that can be expanded to fit anything you want into it. Are they on the same level of art as books, paintings, or other "fine art" yet? I don't think so. We're making strides there. Problem is, "art games" are currently caught up in the same trend that a lot of modern art is: the more abstract your work is, the easier it is for someone to accept it as "good art" because they don't understand it. Bonus points if you're already famous, or have someone famous backing you. If Leonardo da Vinci came back from the dead, spat on a napkin, pointed at it, and said "This is art", people would stare in awe and try to "understand it", but there's nothing to understand. If Joe Blow did the same thing, people would laugh and walk away.

I still think Braid is the best we've got for showing how a game can be art right now. It's not perfect, but it embodies what I like most about artists like Picasso and Dali: It is GOOD at its core, but at the same time leaves a little bit of itself open for interpretation. People can enjoy it without thinking too much about the artistic aspect, but they they can go back and dig deeper if they want. But there is a definite mood to it which helps guide people's interpretations. It's not perfect though, and many complain about how the books sorta separate the story out of the game. Oh well, it's still better than other attempts at "games as art" (distinctly different from "interactive art" mind you).

Now, I may sound cynical at these other art games out there (passage, fathom, gray, etc), but I don't mean any offense to the creators of these games. I think that this type of experimentation is extremely important to evolving the medium, and a necessary step in getting people to value games at the same level as other forms of art. But we aren't there yet.

I did a game called "Pilgrimage" recently which was meant as a satire of this recent "art game" trend. What was interesting was the responses too it. They varied widely, but all proved my point in one way or another (except the people who thought that the pixilation was a "glitch" or "laziness", those were just comical. If anything, the mario gameplay was laziness, not the bitcrush effect). People liked the game when it was roughly an 8-bit graphic style, then complained when it went to large blockiness. Well hey, there you go. Too much abstraction is bad, but a little abstraction is good. Good luck finding the right balance though, its different for everybody. And that's the point of the game, but have fun digging for symbols and filling in the blanks as to what it means and what happens near the end, it only proves my point further. Also, the "artist statement" was 100% randomly-generated nonsense, scrolling a bit too fast for people to pause and try to understand what it was saying, so they thought they were reading something intelligent. The game is satire, and it's interesting to see people get angry at for being too much like what it's trying to poke fun at. Hey, that's the POINT of satire!

Anyway, those are my thoughts on the state of games as art. I have a love-hate relationship with them. I love the idea, but recent experiments have been pretty "meh" to me. It's good to see people trying though.

Also, I learned you can't question art. If you do you get flamed because everything is art, and who am I to decide it isn't? That's not the point. Just because something is "art" doesn't mean it implicitly has value to it.

YO YO YO WHASAUOP MY SHIZZNITS I JUS GOT BACK A FROM DA HOOD WIF THIS SMACK POPPIN' BITCH SLAPPIN' FINGER LICKIN' POP SMACKIN' CHICK DIGGIN' KID LYNCHIN' FIG NEWTIN' CAR CRASHIN' BABY SHAKIN' SOCIAL FOPAHIN' BREAST FONDLIN' SHOOPDA WHOOPIN' WIFE BEATIN' RACIAL SLURRIN' CRUNK NAPPIN' FUNKIN' DUNKIN' SMUNKING' SHIZZIN' NEW VID YO
HD:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSBwBSx 0AYs&fmt=22

Also, subscribe to my blog
http://www.closuregame.com/blog/

And my twitter
www.twitter.com/tylerglaiel

Just a bite-sized game though

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/
498177