The workshop explored the concept of Game Poetry hinted at by Ian Bogost, both in terms of its conceptual implications and from a practical, analytical game design perspective.

1. Slide No. 1 of 18GAP Summer School – Utrecht – August 19/20, 2014
Workshop: Reading and Writing Game Poetry: Day I
Dr. Stefan Werning (University of Utrecht)

2. Slide No. 2 of 18GAP Summer School – Utrecht – August 19/20, 2014
Connection to the keynote lecture: „Analytical Game Design.
Digital Game Studies between theory and practice.“
• Functions of design practice in
digital game studies
• Using prototypes to address
ongoing research questions
• Creating ‚Kuleshov experiments‘
for digital games
– Kuleshov already indicates the difference of
working within the medium rather than
using proxy materials

3. Slide No. 3 of 18GAP Summer School – Utrecht – August 19/20, 2014
„poetry (po-'i_-tre-) [NOUN] A prehensile form of ostentation that
erects turbulence, without remuneration, in the pursuit of yearning.
Replete with symbols, it is an ewer of extreme ecstasy; to enter it is
to turn riot, rupturing each maxim with its antithesis: hope.
Containing exuberance and emptiness, it burns under reality, its
ecumenical name a cordon to arrange the unclean into number,
neatly. Now called truth, it provides tumult as law to every
imagination.“ (Nick Montfort)
[http://nickm.com/poems/]
„[...] traditional poetry feels game-like to me not because it is
procedural, but because it is highly condensed—the encapsulation
of symbols and ideas is strong in both forms. I’m a comparatist by
training and all my literary background is in poetry.“ (Ian Bogost)
[http://quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jep/3336451.0014.205?view=text;rgn=main]
‚Defining‘ Poetry
• Short form
– High semantic ‚density‘
– Sometimes organized in collections
• Highly symbolic
• Playing with language
• Rhythmicized
• Subjective/idiosyncratic
• Perfomativity of reciting

4. Slide No. 4 of 18GAP Summer School – Utrecht – August 19/20, 2014
Computational poems (Nick Montfort)
• Exhibit the implicit playfulness
of digital media technologies
• Hybrid form between textual
and procedural rhetoric

5. Slide No. 5 of 18GAP Summer School – Utrecht – August 19/20, 2014
Using (primarily) literary genres to categorize games
• Interactive fiction
– Wonderland
• Drama
– Façade
• Scrap book
– The Sims, Wario Ware
• Autobiography
– Papo y yo, To leave

6. Slide No. 6 of 18GAP Summer School – Utrecht – August 19/20, 2014
Game Poetry (Ian Bogost)
• A Slow Year (2012)
– Won the Vanguard and Virtuoso awards at
Indiecade 2010.
– Described by Bogost as „one of his most
important works“
• General poem-like aspects
– Short form  ‚condensation‘
– Metaphor and symbolic communication
– Single designer/programmer as ‚author‘
– Internally consistent pattern
– ‚Collection‘ aspect
„Game poetry (or game-like poetry, or playable poetry, or
whatever you’d like to call such things) exhibit process insofar
as they embrace some behavior as their mode of expression,
and insofar as they can be operated by a reader/player in
order to explore that procedural expression.“ (Bogost)

7. Slide No. 7 of 18GAP Summer School – Utrecht – August 19/20, 2014
Game Poetry II
• Four games, each for one season
– Spring: Watching a thunderstorm
– Summer: Falling asleep at a river
– Fall: Collecting leaves / letting go
– Winter: Drinking coffee slowly during sunrise
• Hardware limitations of the Atari VCS used
for numerical symbology
– Standard cartridges store only 4 kilobytes of data
– Each game, representing one season, is 1 kilobyte (1024 bytes)
– Following a similar logic, there are 256 algorithmically
generated haiku for each season, for a total of 1,024 poems.
• CRT (emulation) for ‚fuzzy look‘
– Comparable to handwriting?
• Potential contingent design decisions or:
interpretations?

8. Slide No. 8 of 18GAP Summer School – Utrecht – August 19/20, 2014
A critical perspective on A Slow Year
• Limitations of A Slow Year as poetry?
• Implications of the product form
• Packaged and sold
• Aspect of performativity
• Writing (poetry) as a cultural technique
• E.g. reusing quotes from poems in other contexts

9. Slide No. 9 of 18GAP Summer School – Utrecht – August 19/20, 2014
Passage (Jason Rohrer, 2007):
An alternative ‚game poem‘
• What makes Passage
describable as a game poem?
• Part of the first collection of video
games at the Museum of Modern Art
(MoMA) in New York
• ‚Playable metaphor‘ on life and the
transitoriness of personal values
• Autobiographical undertones
• References and subverts the
traditional genre of labyrinth games
• Condensed gameplay and semantics

10. Slide No. 10 of 18GAP Summer School – Utrecht – August 19/20, 2014
Variations on Passage: An Example
• Increasing sensibility towards
potentially meaning-making design
elements
– Boundaries of the playing field?
– Omission of the fish-eye visual effect
– The heart appears between the characters
• During the first experiment, I instinctively placed
the heart on the woman
• Prototyping fosters quantification
– Similar to Kuleshov (cf. keynote)
– Design elements need to be translated into
code and at least tentatively quantified
• Screen resolution (100x16)
• Success rate and frequency of chests

11. Slide No. 11 of 18GAP Summer School – Utrecht – August 19/20, 2014
The limits of non-digital prototyping
• Why use software instead of pen &
paper?
• Paper prototyping: advantages and
downsides
• Advantages of digital prototyping
– Growing sensibility towards the ‚design bias‘ built
in the tool and scripting language
– Metrics
– Reusability of components
– Contingencies of the interface
– Pacing

12. Slide No. 12 of 18GAP Summer School – Utrecht – August 19/20, 2014
Examples/Inspiration
• Gravitation (Jason Rohrer)
• Marriage (Rod Humble)
• The End of Us (Chelsea Howe, Michael Molinari)
• Madrid (newsgaming.com)
Recreating existing games can serve as a useful starting point!
• For further playing
– http://www.casualgirlgamer.com/articles/entry/1/Five-games-that-make-you-think-about-life/
– http://www.casualgirlgamer.com/articles/entry/22/Ten-games-that-make-you-think-about-life/
– http://www.casualgirlgamer.com/articles/entry/87/ten-more-games-that-make-you-think-about-life/
– http://www.casualgirlgamer.com/articles/entry/48/Another-20-games-that-make-you-think-about-life/

13. Slide No. 13 of 18GAP Summer School – Utrecht – August 19/20, 2014
Practice session
Today
1. Create one or more concepts in small groups (2-4 people)
– Define a complex sentiment or perception  Break it down into procedural elements  Create connections between these elements  Eliminate ‚dirt‘
2. Briefly present and discuss concepts
3. Begin to implement concepts (together or in groups)
Tomorrow
1. Introduce physics and its metaphorical potential
2. Refine the existing prototypes
3. Reflect on observations from the practical experiment
4. Discuss methodological issues of integrating prototyping into games research

14. Slide No. 14 of 18GAP Summer School – Utrecht – August 19/20, 2014
Workshop: Reading and Writing Game Poetry: Day II
Dr. Stefan Werning (University of Utrecht)

15. Slide No. 15 of 18GAP Summer School – Utrecht – August 19/20, 2014
OUTLOOK:
Game poems as an
example of deep remixing
• Practical application of deep
remixing, i.e. remixing methods
rather than content (Manovich)
• EXAMPLE: Everyday shooter
– Video game music album
• Other examples
– Video game music video
– Video game photograph

16. Slide No. 16 of 18GAP Summer School – Utrecht – August 19/20, 2014
Remixing A Slow Year
• Remixing and deep remixing
(Manovich) as a form of knowledge
production
• How could A Slow Year be (feasibly)
varied or remixed?

17. Slide No. 17 of 18GAP Summer School – Utrecht – August 19/20, 2014
Introduction to Game Maker: Studio physics
• Elements:
– Properties (mass, ‚elasticity‘, gravity)
– Linear and angular forces
– Joints
• What can be done with
physics?
– How can physics systems be used
metaphorically?
• EXAMPLE:
The Cat and the Coup
– Semanticization of physics as a normally
standardized and naturalized element of
the game engine

18. Slide No. 18 of 18GAP Summer School – Utrecht – August 19/20, 2014
OUTLOOK: Methodological issues of using
game poems for analytical purposes
• What kind of questions can
these prototypes ‚answer‘?
• How can and should the
answers be used and
elaborated upon?
• Example: Github and
wonderfl.net
– Both use ‚game mechanics‘ to
encourage user participation