& a blog

• we are tired of division: media, culture, society, law, meaning, humanity, and so on. these are interconnected terms, defined by one another. they must be re-united.
• explication has been held prisoner by written language for too long. as if we only understand words. as if true meaning were only possible to produce there. we do not throw away written language, we add to it. images. animations. film. interactive software. code. meaning through all forms, not one alone.
• the media humanist flows into the format that serves his/her message, s/he does not force it into a medium.
• we seek the multiple over the single, several over the individual, collaboration over competition.
• in the age of the global network, we believe in sharing rather than hoarding. do not shut away your work, for it will die if left alone, if left unable to breathe through movement in the network.
• the media humanist must share his/her work with the world, and let the world make things anew from it.
• the media humanist thinks about form and content in the same instance. neither is primary. neither is secondary. they are complimentary and co-producing.
• media humanism believes in the inherent humanity of media: made by man it is of men, for men, imagined by men. when it forms it is always the touch of some humanity in a machine (language, computer, projections, etc.) even when the touch is the trace on its reader/viewer/participant.
• the world needs media humanism because the world is mediated by humanity.
• media does not have to be educative, though it is wonderful when it is. instead, media must only provide a place for people and people’s ideas to meet. it is in this way that media is society and media is law and media is culture and all those things are, of course, media.
• we believe in production, and consumption in its ability to be productive.
• we are not a rupture or an end, we only ask for a new direction. we are not a break, we believe in books. but we also believe books can get better.
• the media humanist is not opposed to existing forms, s/he is not an alternative to the journalist, the scholar, the critic, the lawyer, the judge, or the priest. s/he is not a isolated type, but an attitude available to any and all.
• the media humanist wants media humanists.
• the media humanist is a friend to the past, a person of the present, a promise to the future.
• the media humanist is

It has become completely impossible to ignore the massive social, economic, and cultural implications of video games. It is an industry that has outsold cinema and publishing for years. Its myths and characters have escaped consoles and computers for popular culture at large. And more and more people are becoming “gamers” everyday. Revolutions in casual gaming through the Nintendo Wii and the iPhone have ensured that games are not just for geeks anymore, they are for everyone, and everyone is finally giving into to the joys of games.

Such a moment in the history of the video game offers a wonderful opportunity: why not begin an initiative to get people to think critically about games. By critical, I mean think about games as society expects us to think about films or books: to ask questions about how they are made, why they are successful (or fail), and what the reflect about us as players and society as a whole.

This “critical gaming” is hardly new, or even novel. Fantastic scholars exist in the United States (such as Ian Bogost at Georgia Tech, or Nick Montfort at MIT) and from around the world (McKenzie Wark and Jesper Juul) who have pushed the academic world to accept the vitality of games as spaces for study. But I am really trying to advocate for a more broad consideration of criticality in games. I am hopeful that gamers around the world could consider becoming “critical gamers” by committing themselves to thinking about games as exciting social texts.

What should a critical gamer do? Well, s/he should enjoy video games, and enjoy thinking about what they have to say and how they say it. The critical gamer should not be afraid to “think” about games, they should not fear “academizing” the activity of game play for fear of losing some sense of innocence, escapism and distraction. To the contrary, the “critical gamer” will love the conversation of games and the analysis of game texts. Which does not mean they have to write papers or read theory or have degrees in video games (though that might be nice) but rather that they communicate in language comfortable for him/her.

The Critical Gamer wants to play and think about play.

This midnight idea wants to change how people think about games, and how gamers think about themselves. I’ve chosen to call this a “critical gamer initiative” because it is about people not institutions, its founded on gamers not colleges or consoles or even countries. It is an international idea for individuals to be united under a common commitment to play games critically. So if you fancy yourself a critical gamer, link to this article, and/or send me an email, and let’s see what we can build together.

Anyone finished Mass Effect 2 yet? Thoughts?

Terry Gilliam is the last surrealist. His latest film, The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, confirms such an assertion with its dazzling and disorienting visual effects. In “the imaginarium” Dr. Parnassus brings visitors into a world of the dreams, an inversion of those intimate possessions as they are made an entire, external world. These spaces are disproportionately “surrealistic” in that they askew proportions and employ color schemes right out of a Dali. Though supposedly the dreams of the individual, all of Dr. Parnassus’-assisted-dream-spaces bend toward the surrealistic, complimenting the aesthetic and narrative predilections of Parnassus who is really just a proxy for the vision and desires of Terry Gilliam.

This landscape, from the work of Rene Magritte, is clearly emulated by Gilliam's scenograpy.

Terry Gilliam has a long history of perpetuating the surrealist paradigm. As a foundational member of Monty Python (and the author of its iconic animations) Gilliam participated in the invention and popularization of surrealist humor. He complimented the zany antics of Python humor with bleak, dystopian, unexpected, and often Jungian dream animations where the unexpected was always the protagonist and a sort of Victorian stiff-upper life was brought down to mere bathroom humor.

From Python, Gilliam became an independent director with film adaptations of Jabberwocky, and Baron von Munchausen, works of literature some bizarre and fantastic, so cryptic and unnerving that they suited his surrealist proclivities perfectly. Later work, like Time Bandits, 12 Monkeys, and his Criterion Collection edition of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas simply perpetuated a certain aesthetic status quo. To say nothing of his immortal Brazil, which is firmly Orwell made surrealist, all of Gilliam work plays out like a dream you didn’t want to have, but can’t look away from. His penchant for the absurd, the grotesque, and the weird lends itself to new hybrid genres of narrative entirely his own: medieval surreal (jabberwocky) victorian surreal (Dr. Parnassus, Munchausen, Monty Python) and retrofuture surreal (12 monkeys, Brazil).

It’s not a great film this Dr. Parnassus, but it is proof that Terry Gilliam truly is an auteur, and one keeping lit a century old flame of surrealist art. In his veins pumps an aesthetic style conceived of by Dadaists and discontents, Dali and the French school, and made cinematic by Gilliam’s unique vision.

Parnassus tells a story of stories- claiming that if stories are no longer told, the world ceases to exist. And that may be the secret mantra of Terry Gilliam’s own production. For if he stops telling his stories, surrealism with its signature aesthetics, proclivities towards mirrors (how Freudian), and narratives that lack syntagmatic sense, will fade into a thing of the past, killing a whole approach to life and its creative subversion.

If Avatar has changed anything about then movies, then it has changed everything. Let’s begin by considering what depth means to cinema. Historically, depth has only existed as a perspective, the idea taken from painting and camera optics that all viewed reality merges at a ‘vanishing point’ somewhere behind the picture plane. The whole notion of a picture plane is something that has been foundational in Western art and visual regimes for nearly 500 years. But the idea of “depth” has only existed as a sign- a trick that suggests but does not manifest. Spectators, aware of the contradiction (how can depth be translated in a plane?), have willing participated in this signifying of depth, imagining some things “further back” than others even as they were represented on a single plane. Film scholars like Sigfried Kracauer have joyfully praised the idea of depth in films as something that makes narrative more complex. With “deep focus” techniques, two or more “levels” of narrative can share a single shot, thus relating two scenes that previously required montage. Deep focus has been a major part of cinema, and suggested that depth of vision complicated and improved the cinema’s ability to represent nature, and tell stories whose events might occur simultaneously.

Avatar changes the history of depth in Western visuality because it problematicizes the assumption that depth can occur in two dimensions. With the single hovering water droplet above our protagonist at the very opening of Avatar, we know that we can no longer believe in the technique of depth in two dimensional images. We can no longer let depth occur where it has not been earned by this new high technique, where our eyes are truly employed (as a biscopic mechanism) to preceive depth. It’s not that this technique is not also a trick, for indeed it is, but rather that it progresses a long stultified evolution of perspective that begins in the West with relief drawing and moves into a whole science of vanishing points. The depth of James Cameron’s Avatar changes our way of seeing, in that it creates new ways for the cinema to be seen, and thus re-informs our expectations of what is possible. This technological urge, to pursue new possibilities in the age of the digital, is something that the 21st century has been thoroughly caught up in, and now we have a film to mythologize our transition to digital culture. For Avatar’s plot is simple and its meaning translucent- in a world of new images and new technologies we are all the closer to identifying with images- the avatar of Second Life and other digital domains has entered cinema, where the out-of-body experience has long been present and is now re-invented.

Three dimensions also means that Avatar’s cinematography provides texture to the spectator in ways never before conceived. In one scene, Jakesully and his attractive love interest, swim beneath a neon brook, and we know they are swimming because the water is dimensional, with so much depth detail, that it feels real. It is some form of kineaesthesia or a visual tactility.  We know it’s water because it looks like water, not because it is a imagic sign of water. Depth changes the image, because depth escapes the picture plane, exploding its limitations however superficially.

Watching Avatar, I came to the conclusion that when 3D filmmaking becomes cheap enough for the avante-garde to try it, we will have some truly incredible objects of cinema. What would Godard do with 3D filmmaking? How best to unravel its techniques? How best to subvert the spectator in a world of depth?

Whatever the avante-garde does with 3D, the history of the image is changed, the expectations of the cinema spectator challenged, and the nature of cultural production complicated. For as powerful as 3D will be in producing new immersive worlds, even the 2D world changes now as it may take on a patina of authenticity and simplicity that black & white film continues to exert in a color world.

At a recent Philadelphia Flyers game, in which I saw no less then eight goals (and no more than four fights) I came to the conclusion that not all sports are created equal. In some, scoring is something routine and expected, something that defines the pace of the game. In others scoring is something extraordinary, inspiring, and eventful, something which provides landmarks for the story told by athletes in each game. In these sports, the scoring moment becomes a moment of salvation or damnation, a critical juncture through which the passion of the athlete is bound to that of the spectator.

This why I will always be fan of soccer and hockey over sports like basketball. Basketball suffers from the plight of long distance racing, the only thing that really matters is the end, and on the professional level, teams are rarely out of winning distance by the fourth quarter when the spectator really starts to care. At any instance during the rest of the game, one can get up, hit the bathroom, pick up some popcorn or make a phone call, confident that no single action (save a catastrophic injury or ejection) will alter the course of the game. Instead, baskets will be exchanged, runs will be made, and feats of expertise demonstrated.

But there will be no goals.

The goal is the greatest concept in sports. It is because of the goal, that any minute of a soccer game or a hockey game becomes pregnant with potential to alter the course of the game. Any fan of soccer knows that a game may finish with no goals, so it is a great gift (or horrible calamity) when a goal occurs. It is history, and it always feels like it. A single goal may be all that occurs. And that goal may occur at any moment, creating a sense of time in hockey and soccer that is unique- a sense of time in which virtually all time is equal in the possibility of achieving or witnessing the scoring miracle.

This has always been the attraction of soccer, and conversely what makes it impossible for the American sports fan to understand about the sport. In the US, sports must serve always serve entertainment and leisure over devotion, which means that American sports must create space within the game for concessions to be purchased, reflections to be made, bathroom facilities to be visited. Baseball has nine innings, with breaks between every half inning for the small things that Americans like to do at sporting events. At soccer games, people only leave during the half. At hockey games, people only leave during intermissions. At least every pitch in baseball (for it is the pitch that defines the pace of baseball, and thus the amount of time between pitches is policed by baseball leagues) comes with the promise of a hit, a play, an out, a home run. In basketball, by contrast, no event can take place in any one possession that ensures a victory. In basketball, there is only time and the score to play against.

It has been said that in soccer, the goal is an orgasm. The goal is a climax of exchanges and progressions, and true soccer fans “feel” the game in a way that betrays a certain sensuality. Because the only way to win is to score, teams become unified organs pulsing with passes and possessions leading toward that overwhelming conclusion.

Hockey proves more fascinating than soccer percisely because it complicates the idea of perfectly equal scoring time with strategic advantages and disadvantages- the power play. With an extra man adding advanatage to a team, hockey creates a time schema not unlike that catholic christianity, which divides the year into ordinary time (in which any team may score with equal potential) and extraordinary time (wherein a goal becomes even more likely). And yet goals are still ever present in hockey, and because of the sport’s speed, we are always just seconds away from the next one.

And then there’s the goalie. Between the goal and the play, he is the mediation between one man’s jubilation and another’s defeat. He’s not quite the anti-hero but he’s close. Because he makes “saves” and “saves” are actions of heroic proportions precisely because they are anti-goals. The goalie is the foil for the goal-scorer, who is always the hero. Except when he’s the villain.

I’ve decided that sports with goals are better. Because you can’t walk away from them, because they don’t have situations like two men on with no outs, or first and goal. Because they are always too dynamic to fall into situational rhetoric where one can distinguish between the importances of moments in a game. Some sports build towards a moment where you know something has got to give, it’s either a field goal for the win or a miss for the loss. That’s cinematic bullshit. Real sports are as organic and unpredictable as life itself. And that’s the way I like them.

In 1993, Cyan published a game called Myst marooning the nascent gaming world onto a mysterious island whose parts interacted like some sinister engine waiting to re-stoked after countless years un-used. The cover featured a perspectival overview of the island, with a shadowy man falling down towards it. The island was the game, the player the shadow- a suggestive paradigm for the adventure genre of gaming in which the world of the game was something to fall into and become immersed in. Other games had immersed players in fantasy worlds before (since at least Zork! ) but none had used the state of the art 3d renderings that the Miller Brothers used for Myst. Today’s Avatar world owes some of its lush, fluorescent environment to Myst because Myst established the ideas that futuristic virtual worlds should be colorful and immersive.

Still from Avatar

Still from Myst (Compare with Avatar)

But none of this is what haunts me about Myst. Instead, I am suddenly awakening to Myst’s importance on a cultural semiotic level, where Myst becomes a sign for a series of changes in computer programming paradigms and societal ideas about the power of video games to be

1. literary
2. challenging, and enigmatic
3. a space of reflection on the very fabric of video games and computing that were essential for its construction

narrative decodes media structure

Like the cahiers du cinema’s belief that certain films had tropes which deconstructed the fabric (and thus ficitious engines) of cinema, I believe that Myst contained a focus on a trope- the trope of linking or hyperlinking- which in review reveals the very fabric of Myst’s player experience. In Myst, the player is allegedly transported by a link in a book to the world of Myst. Later we discover that this is part of a secret art- an art of writing books that build portals to new worlds whose attributes are controlled by the books author. The tension in Myst, is between two family members who have each abused this skill to isolate themselves from the other, attempting to gain control of the other by mis-linking their kin into an inescapable world. With intertextuality thus made a central theme, the player is invited to navigate the puzzles and “ages” of Myst as thought he were a reader, moving through lines of signs (textual and ludic) in this game space.

hypercards & hyperlinks

Reading Myst as a story of links brings us to the very construction of the game itself. At the time it was developed, Myst employed a cutting edge technology called HyperCard which essentially used still images of Myst landscapes in related progressions or stacks. Clicking one area of a two path fork for instance would bring the player into a new child stack of the fork image, creating a ludic structure not unlike Borges’ Garden of Forking Paths (and the critical reading of this short story for hypermedia by Waldrip-Fruin & Monfort). In short, the game was a series of images (which could be read as signs) which were really just links to other images- hyperlinks more specifically, which were gaining great importance to the computer world in e-literature and in data browsing (soon also in web browsing).

links as computer tactic made ludic

Thus a game about linking and making worlds within links and through links was also a game comprised entirely of links. We must wonder if Myst has any value without the inherent schema and structure provided both narratively and conceptually by linking. What, if any value should be assigned to the individual signs (images) which are only valuable as a progression from or to something else. In this reading, a classic conclusion of semiotics surfaces- that the meaning of any individual sign is co-produced by contextual signs (previous and future signs) which are all part of the signs that this image is not. The world of Myst cannot be represented by a screenshot, for it is always movement through the screenshots that gives the game its purpose and signature experiential mise en scene.

They announced that Boston would be hosting the 2010 Winter Classic back in April. I was ecstatic. Never a fan of hockey in high school, a few years of intramural ice time at Brown has made me a devoted fan of the sport. I have gone from hating hockey in every and all permutation to actually catching Bruins games whenever I can. I saw my first B’s game with my Dad just 3 years ago, and even got gifted some tickets from Professor who couldn’t make a game this past November. That game turned out to be a 3-0 upset of Sidney Crosby and the Pittsburgh Penguins.

There was no way I was going miss the Winter Classic. I grew up just a mile from Fenway, and from my Dad’s house you see the lights of the park. I entered the lottery for tickets, not that I could afford them, remembering all those times my Dad and I had managed to get tickets off scalpers. When I finally got a chance to bid on tickets the only ones left were … expensive.

But it was all good. Cuz as a college kid, wandering around the park on game day is often enough to get me stoked for the competition. And that’s what I did for the biggest game in Bruins history ( I mean attendance, of 38,000 or so, but also in terms of prestige and national visibility). On New Year’s Day, I woke up in Boston and headed down to the Park with my friend Ryan to take in the festivities. We wandered around the park, shooting photos, thumbing thru the memorabilia, and scouting out bars. When we finally got to Jillian’s on Lansdowne we knew we were in the right place- no cover, no line, and hundreds of TVs greeted our entrance.

We picked up a prime spot at the bar and watched the first two periods. We winced at the Flyers goal, which was clearly a result of Tim Thomas’ over-anxious check and failure to watch the puck, and applauded the fight. We sat on edge with our Winter Classic souvenir cups praying that Tim Thomas’ miraculous skills would stop the constant Flyers’ threat. And our prayers were answered.

When Recchi scored the game tying goal with 2:31 left, Jillians went crazy. Across the street we could hear the 38,000 at Fenway even louder.

A few minutes later, when Marco Sturm scored the winner, we went absolutely ballistic. Pouring onto Lansdowne, we joined our jubilant Bruins brethern puncuated only occassionally by a Philly fan or two who were taking the loss pretty well (see photos).

While looking for this awesome commemorative hat (which I did not find and cannot find anywhere) I followed the advice of a fellow fan and actually walked into Fenway. I was looking for a souvenir shop, but finding it lacking my desired hat, simply continued down the concourse into the heart of the stadium. There was no one there to stop us, so we walked out into the grandstand. And there was the rink, perched in a stadium of snow, looking like magic.

Hockey has never looked so beautiful.

he's still pale and pasty, but sherlock 2.0 boxes, parkours, and takes his shirt off.

scholarship on sherlock holmes has always been preoccupied with two themes: the question of the sleuth sexuality (or, what’s all this about Watson then?) and the idea of Holmes as a rational, modern individual who is frequently made to deduce (and thus digest) what appear to be irrational, supernatural, and terrifyingly pre-modern cases. in guy ritchie’s adaptation of the legendary british detective, both themes are pursued with the kind of clever cinematographic zeal and speed that one has come to expect from man who gave us snatch and lock, stock, & two smoking barrels.

it is exciting to see sherlock holmes receive the 21st century upgrade that characters like James Bond received with Casino Royale, and Batman received with The Dark Knight. Re-inventing character-driven franchises has indeed been a major movement in cinema right now, with studios eager to have stagnant cultural empires reawoken with an introduction to a new generation. in shaking hands, the millenials meet a character who they have already heard of, but in a form that is just for their ideas of heroism, cunning, skill, and honor. the millenial moviegoer finds an ‘avatar’ of these lingering cultural signs which has shifted and reformed itself to become more compelling and complete for a world at a societal inflection point.

robert downey jr.’s sherlock holmes is as curmudgeony and irrate as holmes as always been. he is as wise and brilliant as holmes as always been. he is as aloof and insular as he has always been. but, he also a capable fighter, boxing in london’s underground when he is feeling down and he knows parkour, scrambling through london’s victorian urban environment with the adroit skill that one would expect from a nike commercial. holmes is clever and heroic in that he represents a superman- an individual of superior skill and intellect. which is not to say he’s perfect, for indeed, he suffers a childish psychology, which prevents him from knowing the bounds of society. he is rude and selfish, centering the world around him and expecting the orbit of friends, clients, and even his enemies. it is this selfishness that approaches homosexuality when holmes positively pouts over dr. watson’s (jude law) impending marriage and move out from 221b Baker Street. one could almost suggest that in ritchie’s vision 221b is the romping gay days of watson and holmes, a relationship of deep intimacy and caring. when holmes shrugs off a long time love interest (rachel mcadams) at the end of the film, doubts about his sexuality re-emerge. what is it that holmes wants? watson. with no doubts.

is the storyline original? yes and no. yes, in that it doesn’t make use of any of a hundred plus available holmes adventures, but no in that it doesn’t break new ground. instead, the film uses plot material taken from a host of contemporary popular entertainments; this is sherlock holmes unraveling the pop culture mystery of harry potter and twilight.

this film is outstanding because everything is done well, and some things are even done exceptionally. the acting is superb, the writing fun and fast, and the plot not too j.j. abrams-y to require intense speculation and confusion. the narrative runs straight and true- tension pushing the film forward, a climax bringing us to our feet, and a conclusion resolving our doubts and disbeliefs. the conclusion is a holmes tradition, a detective tradition even more broadly. you simply cannot have a mystery without its complete intellectual deconstruction. in this film, like in all holmes stories, we are brought to unmask mystery and superstition with logic and reason.

and holmes’ conclusion in this film is the moviegoer’s own: there is no magic needed to create the greatness, only intelligent tricks, artistic flair, and masterful delievery.

over the summer, i got a chance to see gustav klimt’s beethoven frieze nestled in the basement of the architecturally stunning (but otherwise uninteresting) secession building. having had no idea before of the mere existence of the beethoven frieze i was totally stunned by the beauty and scale of frieze. measuring at least 6 feet tall and somewhere over 120 feet long, the frieze was a true gesumptkunstwerk.

particularly enchanting for me was the image of beethoven, as a knight in shining armor, being hailed into a certain creative-genius-as-hero archetype, and staring a hostile cast of problems and woes facing humanitiy.

recently, i began a study of the frieze by re-intrepreting it for the digital age. drawing over the frieze, i have re-imagined the symbols and characters of the narrative, even interpolating the digital artist/designer as a new creative hero. take a look at this early draft. i have a lot of work still to go, but i think this should turn out as something interesting to print out at massive scale. if not, it will still look good as a small printed fold-out like the one i bought at the secession building gift shop.

my dream of assassin’s creed

when my a good friend of mine first got assassin’s creed, i was enchanted by its premise. as a serious lover of medieval history, particularly the crusades, the concept of gaming a 12th century jerusalem was immediately attractive to me. when i finally saw the game, i realized that the power of its art matched the ambition of its premise: here was a vividly cinematic rendering of the historical levant. i found out more: the game featured something called a “open map”- essentially, one could take the player anywhere in the game’s world. there were no fixed paths or specific platforms with ‘painted backgrounds’ suggesting the infinitude of the space, but rather a ‘true’ sense of space, and an allowment for movement. i also discovered that the introduction to the game suggested that the “player” was actually a relative of the game’s eponymous assassin. with the help of a dangerous technology (called something like the “animagus” machine) this descendant was allowed to “play” the life of his genetic origins. gaming your DNA so to speak. how cool! finally, i could not escape the thought that assassin’s creed had a fascinating reflection on contemporary society. at a time in which the west was again at war in the middle east, how provocative was it for a major game publisher (ubisoft) to make a game about the crusades? except of course, that this was not a game that glorified crusaders, but rather a game that lauded their most elite and elusive foes- foes that had more to do with suicide bombers than marines. in short, i found the choice of making a million or so western kids play assassins strikingly bizarre, but highly suggestive.

this is not the game i played

the game that i played was not nearly as profound and inspiring as the console version had been. in place of vivid graphics i found myself in a medieval flea circus, moving a tiny postage stamp character over goofy obstacle courses. instead of a “open map,” i moved along tedious “levels” journeying from left to right, and never straying far to the top or bottom of the screen. i was in an ant farm version of assassins creed.

produced by “gameloft” for ubisoft, this port of Assassin’s Creed could be considered an original game. it’s full title is “assassin’s creed: altair’s chronicles” and according to the game’s box, it is a “prequel” to the console version. whatever that means.

in fact, “altair’s chronicles” is really like assassin’s creed: the mini game. sure it is ostensibly in the same game world, and it aspires to the same premise (templars are evil, assassins are good) as the original, but in point of fact the game is really something like “the complete works of william shakespeare (abridged)” or the “1-minute titanic,” a satire of reduction.

hoping that this game would allow me to dig into the glory of assassin’s creed on my new ds was completely idiotic. a friend correctly responded to my complaints: “zack, what did you expect? it was designed for xbox and ps3!” i should have thought about that more thoroughly, as it forces me to confront the meaning of the medium. though “game content” may be translated to any platform, playing a game like assassin’s creed on the ds would be like watching ben hur on an iPod, it simply misses the point. and so, while i must tip my hat to the game designers who enabled my assassin’s creed habit, i must berate them for not knowing better than i did. why would someone reduce titles that require immersion and graphic power and serious computation to sketches that fit in a smaller platform. playing this game makes me realize why professor layton & the curious village works so well. the ds is a platform of intimacy- it is for games that seek individuals, and challenge them. ds games must be designed to capitalize on this intimacy- to tell stories through simple, vivid animations, and keep gameplay visible not microscopic. ds games must be the short stories of game literature, which is not to say that they will be weaker, but instead more potent in their simplicity.