[Mr. Toups]

Jason Rohrer (of Passage fame) has released a new game, Gravitation. Where Passage was a meditation on death and life's journey, Gravitation contemplates, in his words, "mania, melancholia, and the creative process".

It's arguable whether or not such a game can contain spoilers -- but since the game's creator has expressed desire that his game be played without any explanation, I recommend you go and do so before reading any further.

The subject matter of this game is more personal than Passage, and it expresses a more subtle emotion. As result, the mechanics are more involved and engaging (this game takes the form of a sidescrolling vertical platformer with variable jump heights), but the payoff is more ambiguous and not as immediately satisfying. In the creator's statement, Rohrer says that he wrote the game about the conflicting feelings brought about by working on a followup to the success of Passage while coping with the question of whether or not a close friend who fell into a coma due to neurological damage should have his life support pulled.

I don't want to say much else about this game aside from the fact that I really enjoyed playing it, and that it lends itself to replaying and interpretation much more than Passage did.
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[Ratoslov]

I like this a lot more than Passage. I feel like it's a more mature game. Still a art demo. Seems a bit more personal, this time. Very bold.

[Eudaimon]

Hate to keep banging the same drum, but it's kind of crazy coincidence how much Jason Rohrer's work mirrors Rod Humble's. Both of their first games involved love, and now their second games both have some examination of the creative process.

I also found this one more enjoyable than Passage. The flow of the game is a bit weird and unintuitive, but that kind of seems like part of the point.

[Levi]

This is not the content I would expect from a game named Gravitation.[/i]

[CubaLibre]

hm.

Much better than Passage, yes.
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[bleak]

I liked Passage more, though as stated before, it doesn't lend itself to replaying as much as Gravitation. I tihnk that Gravitation may be too subtle for me to fully grasp on a saturday morning, but it didn't hit me as hard as Passage did. The second time I played through I collected way too many stars andended up not being able to push them into the fire at all. That bit at 100 seconds where you go back and find that your inspiration is gone was pretty effective, though, it probably would have made more sense if you were only allowed to push blocks after that.

[tacotaskforce]

I say, these "art" game makers have it easy. All they have to do is stop halfway through and then claim the game has a message to fill in the gaps their lazyness left in the game.
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[sethsez]

It's still a piece of art-wankery that tries to pass off its flaws as points, but it's a little better than Passage. Still not great, though... if it were a book it'd be a couple platitudes written with bad grammar, but at least he's trying.

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

I disagree with every post above mine without having read the posts or played the game.
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[Dark Age Iron Savior]

holy shit!

I don't know what you blowjobs are doing but I just spent the past seven minutes doing fucking jumpkicks on that asshole bouncing ball from Commander Keen while on fucking fire! holy shit! I even did it backwards!

things got weird when I got a star to refill my badly-placed fireplace, though - the star turned into an icecube block puzzle and it turned out that the goalpost girl was actually a ghost because she just totally disappeared! fuckin spooky

A++ must download
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[bleak]

[Mr. Brooks]

I rather wish I was keen enough to understand what was going on in this (and, as I recall, Passage) without having to resort to the author's guides; my experience mirrors DAIS's.

[CubaLibre]

This guy should learn to make a game without a timer.

Although I suppose then you'd lose the whole sense of mortality.
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[bleak]

I didn't feel like I was dying in this game, though.

[CubaLibre]

Not existential-dread kind of mortality, the only-a-limited-time, every-choice-matters kind of mortality.
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[Koji]

The girl doesn't leave if you don't.

It was okay. I think it's way too hermetic to really transmit much meaning, or maybe I just don't feel like analyzing every aspect of it. Also it doesn't contain many visceral emotions, save from the girl leaving, so it's pretty dull to play, much like Passage. What sucks is that this guy seems to think that he's doing a great job at everything in his games, so it'll be hard for him to improve.
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The Ants Parade.

[bleak]

[Sushi K]

I don't get it.

At no point was it explained that I had to push the blocks into the fire. So I had a score of zero.

What the heck is it about? You have high points in your life that allow you to reach better and better goals that then block you off from the ones you love that you must destroy to find your original muse that got you those places in the first place, who will leave you no matter what in the end unless you devote all you time to them?

?
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[Cycle]

[CubaLibre]

[kzkb1]

I liked Passage more because it was less obtuse ie. I actually understood it without having to read the author's notes.

Also I'm aware that that was a pretty ignorant thing to say. However I think that in the case of a newly developing art form where we don't yet have the language to qualify things the one that achieves its goals in a more tangible fashion is more...useful?

[Rya.Reisender]

Haven't read the author's notes yet, but I had the impression that it's about a working man and his daughter. If he plays with his daughter, he gains constantly happiness and could live up happy like that forever, however, if he has enough motivation he can also go to work, if he goes to work he gets "sudden happiness boosts" (salary), but that happiness doesn't last long because all the money isn't worth anything if you are not with your daughter (or anyone else you love), so eventually you will get really depressed and can only think of going back to your daughter. When you go back, you'll see that the place has turned cold without you. You can remove the ice again and play with your daughter again, but if you decide to leave your daughter alone again she'll stop being there even when you come back. Eventually you lost everything and don't even see a point in going to work anymore and just wait until your life ends.
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Select Button
Push Eject.

[Tokyo Rude]

his daughter looks like she's a 20 year old dude that loves Iron Maiden and lives with his mom.

[bleak]

[L]

Quick, someone tell me where this game fits on the Pongism chart.

[!=]

I do not understand if I am supposed to feel rewarded by score vs exploration.

[CubaLibre]

To be honest, I assumed the goal was simply getting to the top. On my first playthrough I didn't make it because I was still figuring out how the stars worked and everything. On my second playthrough I got all the way to the top - if you haven't, it just sort of ends - and then decided to go all the way back down, at which point I discovered the girl was gone and the ice blocks and the score and everything else. So it is possible (to get to the top without going back for the ice blocks, that is).
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[!=]

I also assumed I was supposed to go up. (Maybe it's conditionning via the mighty jill) When I reached the sealed top I just waited for death to come.

[Rya.Reisender]

Consider yourself lucky, getting to the top means you've reached the maximum popularity a normal human can ever reach.
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Select Button
Push Eject.

[Mikey]

[Cossix]

[Mikey]

[P1d40n3]

Am I the only one who preferred Passage?

Don't get me wrong, I liked this one, but it just didn't resonate with me as much as Passage. Maybe Passage is just more universal.

On the subject of 'goals' one of the thing I think makes this game (and Passage) so special is that everyone takes away a different goal. Some people just stick w/ the girl, and some want to go higher. Is this related to skill-players v. tourists? But then again, I'm seeing that shit everywhere now, so wtf do I know?

I feel the timer was unnecessary for this game. Passage needed it to give the sense of life passing on, but this one? Nope. Not needed. Let people get to the top, even if it takes forever. Let them ask, was it worth it?

[CubaLibre]

Well I think the timer actually constricts the range of possible goals, and makes the game say something a little more substantive, rather than just being an open canvas for your own goals - a description that really applies more to "sandbox" "toy" games like SimCity.

Like Passage, the game is about choices and mortality: what do you do with your limited time? What does it say about what kind of person you are?

This is why I say the guy should make a game without a timer. The whole "limited time" thing necessarily carries all this baggage about mortality etc. I'd like to see what else he has to say.
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[Cycle]

I also enjoyed Passage more. Well, this is a better game, but I felt more with Passage. I didn't really feel much with this one... sure, I was like :( when the chick dissapeared (even though I was only gone for like TWO SECONDS, which probably didn't help me feel anything) but other than that, eh.
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Man’s maturity: to have regained the seriousness that he had as a child at play.

[parkbench]

[CubaLibre]

Saying the move for all arts should always be toward abstraction is - pretty ridiculous.

Would the Iliad be better if it were about - fucking I dunno - paint smears? Not that the Iliad is realistic, though it could certainly be more abstract. Would that make it better?
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[parkbench]

No, I don't think so. I didn't call for the "elimination of everything but abstraction." I'm saying too much art is caught up with being a mirror that it doesn't realise that it can be moreso by trying to be less so. Do you see what I'm saying? We are no strangers here to the idea of a particular work which distills/uses the tools of its form most adroitly, and my claim is that Gravitation does this. Moreso than Morrowind, or Call of Duty 4, or...(the only games I can think of are FPS games for a reason, this is the genre of games most obsessed--for obvious reasons--with realism).

I'm not relegating all past art that isn't abstraction to the fireplace, far from it. I'm trying to save the art that would be relegated to this same fireplace.

But you also use a bad example, since the Iliad is poetry and allegory, which is...yes, abstraction. But I think we're just muddling everything up by bringing the Iliad into it. The issue isn't Jason Roher's existence against Jackson Pollocks (which I guess you may have vaguely been alluding to...? forgive me if I'm wrong). I'm not concerned with negation. I don't fault Monet for not being Pollock or vice versa, regardless of any preference I might have (and as of right now I have no idea which I'd pick in a fight or on a desert island or whatever the hypothetical question). The only thing I could possibly stipulate is that one "does more" (according to the arbitrary criteria I've established) than the other and perhaps for this reason I like it more/less.

Either way it's just an aside and a personal idealised vision--I don't expect it to do so any more than I expect to see Stan Brakhage in theaters tomorrow. It was a roundabout way of saying "I am more supportive of and interested in art that does things this way," which is basically what 90% of the conversations on this forum are about anyway, whether they're conscious of it or not.
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metafilter vs. youtube comments

[CubaLibre]

Well I can't disagree with that, but you have to see that saying "all art should always be moving toward abstraction" is not what you just said.

I think there's room for all levels of abstraction - they have their uses in expressing different concepts that have differing levels of abstraction-solubility. Making Hotel Rwanda more of an "art film" wouldn't help it.

It's too bad you keep harping on Morrowind and COD4 because those games are great :( I would say that it is precisely where they decide to abstract and diverge from reality that makes them intersting.
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[parkbench]

[CubaLibre]

To be honest, a lot of it comes down to - for me - this "soul test," which is sort of irrelevant to the amount of abstraction. It's true that Morrowind, taken on its own, seems to suggest a kind of "kitchen sink" approach to design that is obviously unfruitful if taken to extremes. But its predecessor, Daggerfall, was even more kitchen sink, which means its designers were conscious of exactly what they were keeping in and what they were throwing out. Meanwhile, Oblivion is even more streamlined, and simultaneously, utterly soulless. Morrowind is a labor of love. Warcraft III is not. It is a labor of extreme competence, and while I can appreciate the Pentagon for its functionality I'm not about to say it's as artful as the Pantheon.

As evidence of this very thing, I would say that The Sims is in fact far less interesting than Morrowind - it purports to be value-neutral (a "toy" in Wright's own words) while smuggling in substantive values by the very choices it makes in what to abstract, and how to abstract it. Morrowind is at least more honest with the player.

This brings me back to my original point. I would never want to preclude the kinds of things that thoroughly abstract games can tell the player. I don't think, however, that a) those are the only things worth saying or b) all things worth saying can be said best at a high level of abstraction. COD4 presents an experience that Tetris could never replicate. COD4 presents an important experience, beyond "entertainment." I would not want to preclude it, either.

Insofar as the medium sort of blindly marches to the "realism" drum, you're right perhaps that COD4-esque games demand more scrutiny, to make sure developers aren't unthinkingly following a norm rather than making a decisive choice as to what level of abstraction best serves their purposes. (Here the discussion begins to echo my old e.megas HL2 thread.) But it doesn't follow that abstract games are a priori more interesting, or more worthwhile.

I realize also that your post was originally intended as a defense of abstract games to the "art games yawn" crowd. And I'm with you as far as that goes. You might want to consider, however, that it's not that art games are a target, but that Gravitation isn't much of an art game.
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