Designer Notes

The human superpower, it has been said, is pattern recognition. The average simian has what has been charmingly dubbed "the monkeysphere": the absolute numerical limit of fellow monkeys that any given simian can conceive of as being part of their identity, of friends, family and shared fate. Humans evolved a powerful workaround for the monkeysphere: invent a sign, a signal, a pattern, an image, that says "this is us". It may then be millions upon millions of individuals, cross all manner of land and ocean and borders, intersect different cultures and religions and habits and beliefs, but in the end, the signal unifies the tribe. And because morality ends at the end of the tribe, the sign also becomes a weapon. These things here are alpha, those things there are beta, and beta is different. 

So it is that whenever we define anything, whenever we even describe anything, we create a weapon of exclusion. This is true even if our goal is to create inclusion. Every classification must be layered with tranche of disdain. They, goes the saying, are a tourist, but I - I am a traveler. They are a drooling fanboy, I am an aficionado of the classics of sci-fi.

And of course never more so than in the world of art. That is a low art, this is high art. Lichtenstein famously parodied this while also buying into it by taking comic art and tracing it into gallery art with works like WHAAM!; Lichtenstein died a millionaire legend,Irv Novick who created the original drawing and was one of the greatest comic artist of the last century, died poor and forgotten. Artists of the early 20th century fundamentally understood how artificial divisions were entirely artificial, so we have the Found Objects movement made so famous by Duchamp and his work Fountain. If you sign it, it becomes art. Of course, if someone else does it, it is cheap. If I do it, it becomes genius.

I'm talking about lyric games.

Like all classifications, it can be useful, even powerful. It allows us to escape terminology that might indeed be limiting, and others have indeed railed at definitions in games. I believe it was Richard Garfield who tried to help things along by dividing the large world of playfulness, the expansive definition of a game that Wittgenstein might have approved of, and narrow it down into something we might agree includes chess and bridge and not other things: he coined the term orthogame for "a competition between two or more players using an agreed-upon set of rules and a method of ranking," leaving rise to terms outside that as paragame and idiogame. In essence, lyric game as a term seeks to do the same from the other direction: to free us of the limitations of the orthogame and allows us to make games that only appear to be games but might in fact not be, or work more like abstract art than games, or don't look like games but are. This is certainly the space I occupy; I like to make games that are art and art that are games; games you could find in an art museum or a gallery; games that are inspired by the modern art that inspires me, that is whimsical and strange and questioning. If I can be so bold, I'd like to be the Marcel Duchamp of games. 

But at the same time, I don't ever want to be dismissed because of this. Just because some of my games are hard to play or not designed to be played doesn't mean they aren't also serious games. That was the point of my opening preamble: I would be horrified if certain designators were applied to my work to make them appear lesser. Two Faces is a game that could have a lot of designators placed on it: lyric game. One-pager. Micro-game. Free game. Others might tunnel down into things such as rules-light or narrative heavy perhaps. Labels have their uses. Particularly the latter, as they can help to understand the components of a game; but labels of category can be weapons. Lyric games, games that are one page, games that are micro games, games that perhaps abound across the internet because they are (arguably) easier and (definitely) shorter to make... these are terms that can be used to dismiss or to lessen.

I am sure I will be accused of protesting before the fact, lest critics call my game names. So let be fair: Two Faces did come together quite quickly; it was also only a few words; it fits on one page; it can be played in under half an hour. It could be considered in some ways a trifling thing for some of these reasons. I am also not the first artist to insist that the Ring Cycle is not better than John Cage's 4:33 because the former has more notes in it. This is hardly a revolutionary view. 

I suppose what I am asking in my long-winded way is for you to look closer at smaller things. Two Faces is simple, but it is not simplistic. It shows off one skill I believe I have a strength in, which is boiling down a large genre to its essential elements and particular the thematic, emotional elements rather than the more concrete elements of setting or character role. I have been praised for doing this back when I wrote the Matrix game There Is No Spoon, which is a game I tried to make about faith in self-determined reality a universe built on self-deceit from outside. Viewed like that, it is easy to see what the Wachowski's have now revealed about the film's metonymy. 

Of course the artist is not the critic; it is not for me, ultimately, to say that There Is No Spoon successfully explored faith vs self-deceit. I can say it was my intent, but even then nobody need care. The author is certainly dead by now, and beginning to stink. I can be extremely thankful that this wonderful review saw some of what Two Faces is about - that it is, despite its smallness a thoughtful game about the gothic genre that can, in a few simple coin-flips, make you feel things in the same way that The Hunchback of Notre Dame  or the Cabinet of Dr Caligari may also make you feel. That was my intent. As an artist, you don't get to say anything more than that. If you are lucky, somebody enjoys it. If you are much much luckier, somebody notices the intent, as they did in that review. And even more luckier: perhaps a similar eye has fallen on itat the ENnie awards; perhaps they see the depth I tried to put into that one page. I cannot say for sure. 

What I can say for sure is I want you to play this game. Don't just read it and have a chuckle. It was not designed simply for that, and it may be that its size and appearance and the categorization of it as micro or lyric may put you off. If you think lyric games are designed less to be played than to be thought about, then this is not that. It cannot be played for as long as a campaign of Dungeons and Dragons, but I intend it to be just as much a part of your life, just as potentially powerful, as emotionally resonant, to create characters as potent and stories as bold. To be played over and over; to be savoured; to be fun. And hopefully also to make you feel, to make you cry, to make you think. 

I am, with Two Faces, at a disadvantage to Dungeons and Dragons: I am not sold in stores. I am one page only. I am free. I am short. I am small. In a world where we value size and price and market presence, you might overlook me. You might be tempted not to look. Or looking but in seeing smallness, choosing therefore, not to play. Please resist that temptation, just as you would not judge a painting by its square footage, or whether it was in a comic by Irv Novick or hanging on a gallery wall. See me as more than just small. I may be small, but it is not the determining factor. I may appear to be a mouse, but I have a mighty roar.