The city of Manila is one of the most enormous urban spaces on the planet. Being a good contemporary metropolis, this theatre of some 20 million people displays the most savage inhumanity as a major characteristic. So, who better than a Filipino to discuss the problems of cities today. And more interesting still if it’s done through a game.

Vicent Ocasla, a very young architect from the island, has used the highly-respected SimCity 3000 to tell us about the city as the most perfect reflection of a civilization in crisis. After three years of obsessively studying the behaviour of the game, Vincent has managed to push the program to its limits and has built a system which he’s called Magnasanti consisting of six million people who know neither hopes nor rights. A finely tuned machine that generates, uses, and systematically destroys its inhabitants with the single goal of becoming the perfect city.

Magnasanti has a reticular design that resembles Le Corbusier’s most insane work, a semi-religious approach that chills and a presentation that, under the guise of being just another game hack, conceals a deeper reflection on just what the contemporary city is, and where the shameful pseudo-Malthusian social engineering policies which many now call welfare are leading it.

The creator has posted the file which contains the city on his webpage and even more interestingly, a whole series of photos and screen shots documenting the process of building this totalitarian delirium.

What’s really important here, however, is witnessing how a saga as important as SimCity, without breaking its own rule system, can be used as a tool for socio-political critique that is not only lucid, but also fierce and well executed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTJQTc-TqpU

First of all visit this page, download the game you’ll find there, run it and take five minutes for yourself. 

Have you finished yet? Rara Racer is the kind of thing that’s sure to make its mark on you. Not just because of its decontextualized interface, which imitates a computer full of cheap porn. Nor for its game system, which impedes the game itself. Not even because the game lasts barely three minutes.

Rara Racer grabs my attention because it brings a touch of brilliantly absurd humour to a market that all we know is addicted to the action/drama/fiction combo. Yes, that formula directly inherited from the more vigorexic, amateurish cinema. And don’t misunderstand me: I love this kind of cinema and those games. And I understand that anyone who consumes interplanetary fiction in a book will also look for it at the controls. But we can’t help but applaud an idea, however small it may be, that comes from that paradigm and is applied directly to one of the least acknowledged areas in the world of contemporary games: humour. 

The videogame is another of those products in the entertainment industry that started off and began to grow, without any complexes, exploring humour as an essential narrative component. We all remember the games from the SCUMM platform, Larry the politically incorrect saga or the macho comments of Duke Nukem.

Well, despite the obvious interdependency between humour and entertainment, laughter in games is still an underexploited goldmine. And that’s why although some praiseworthy examples are still being released within the genre, new projects like those by Stephen Lavelle are extremely attractive. Lavelle, one of the most prolific independent designers of the present day, very well-known for games like Judith (developed along with Terry Cavanagh), had already programmed a year ago, without any great pretensions, something that reminds us what the player of today is crying out for: more sense of humour please.

http://www.increpare.com/2008/12/rara-racer/

A year ago I dedicated my first article in this blog to one of the most interesting, daring and ambitious projects, of all those that have appeared in Spain in the area of academic studies into videogames: Estación futuro (Future station). 

This project is one of those opened by Intermediae (the Matadero de Madrid’s contemporary art program) and now closes an annual cycle of work with Javier Candeira as curator, featuring an attention-grabbing exhibition: "Inner life" (Vida interior). 

Inner Life is spot on, perhaps more so than previous projects, due to its interesting approach and the coherence with which its works have been selected. Works that share the same discursive tone: one of introspection. As Javier himself states in the curator’s notes that accompany the catalogue “...these games hook that part of us that is regarded as the thinking mind. Which, in a human being, is the same as a mind that plays games". Candeira suggests an unhurried stroll beginning with Korsakovia, an unusual MOD by Half-life 2 and finishing -at least conceptually- with the multi-award-winning masterpiece Osmos, by the Hemisphere studio. It thus offers an exhibition dialogue in six acts that, on the one hand is very rich (from the raw analysis of certain mental illnesses to the abstraction of the formal space of games) and on the other hand compact, coherent and full of conclusions. 

After having visited "inner Life" one gets the feeling that we’re experiencing one of the key moments in the future history of videogames, a period of critical momentum and lucidity when it comes to using a medium that doesn’t yet have a final shape. Far from the highly eclectic and generalist kind of exhibitions we’ve seen in the past couple of years in Spain, "inner life" and particularly the "future Station" project confirm themselves, despite my initial doubts, as being among the most respectable spaces of reflection and criticism concerning the contemporary videogame.

http://tinyurl.com/2wjth54

One of the big changes that the videogame industry is undergoing, is a move towards other forms of distribution. Big companies are now turning over enormous sums thanks to digital platforms targeted directly at those who once downloaded illegally the same titles that today they are willing to pay for. 

To prevent this loss of sales revenue, the ever-larger independent industry has for some time now been analyzing the dynamics of piracy in order to try, at times successfully, to subvert it. Saving some previous noble undertaking and applying the example beyond the world of videogames, the most influential milestone in this sense was the release in 2007 of the album "In Rainbows" by Radiohead.  Aware of the relentless piracy of their previous works, they decided to sell their disk online at the price the buyer considered fair.  The result, according to their sources, was over a million copies sold in just one day (that doesn’t include the hundred thousand-plus luxury box sets that were sent to the most generous customers).

The success of this model, based on the logic of non-material production and the repercussions within the media of this daring move, should be enough to conquer the fear of "everything free". Unfortunately we’ve had that to wait till now to enjoy a proposal, this time in the world of videogame, that’s similar both in format and reception. 

Some days ago, under the name "The humble indie bundle", the Wolfire studio offered the download of a pack of five popular independent games at literally any price, for a limited period. At the closing of this article the initiative had already collected almost a million dollars from some hundred thousand downloads, showing once again than the phenomenon of technological readjustment known as piracy can be neutralized by applying common sense. 

The figures reflected a positive economic outcome. The purchase of the package held many surprises: the first came when deciding who to send the money to: developers, the EFF or the NGO Child' s Play. The second, the discovery that they had included an additional game: the multi-award winning Samorost 2, which came together with other amusing titles like Gish or World of Goo. 

In barely two weeks "The humble indie bundle" went from being an interesting investment to a bargain for its sponsors. A bargain that has become the best example of the bravery needed by a business like the independent game sector, which until very recently seemed to have been born a non-starter.

http://www.wolfire.com/humble

Only recently have we become witnesses to the constant evolution in ways of interacting in games systems. We followed the advances of Nintendo with their DS and Wii very closely, and then Microsoft’s daring Project Natal and now, puzzlingly, the birth of what I consider to be a new paradigm: the Apple iPad.

If at first glance the fashionable new gadget doesn’t add anything revolutionary, technologically speaking, nor anything else that we hadn’t already experienced before, it’s only upon second evaluation that an important factor is revealed, one that is certainly radically new: its scale. 

First of all, a statistic: 300,000 units sold during its first day, in the United States alone.  A figure of such magnitude puts the iPad in the same popularity league as the latest consoles from the big three (Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo).  If we add to its incredible popularity, the most successful digital software distribution platform in history: the App Store (150,000 applications and more than THREE billion downloads in two years) we suddenly appreciate that the iPad phenomenon is, above all, a question of proportions. 

In fact another of its main features is just as big: the screen. During the last few months we’ve all read criticisms of its style "it’s an enormous iPod " or "it’s worse than an iPhone and doesn’t fit in your pocket". In fact its scale, yet again the determining factor, hasn’t been taken into account. Seen from a games perspective, the iPad and its super screen are in the no man’s land between portables and arcade machines. I only need one example to illustrate its possibilities: the fact that the gadget is autonomous, tactile and free of technical distractions lets us imagine a whole series of new media games on a screen that turns horizontally and thus becomes a familiar game surface that we know very well: a board game. Yes, that immensely rich tradition that, unfortunately, has been rejected by the IT world. 
 
We’ll have to wait some months to see all of its possible consequences, but for now I think any game designer should applaud the arrival of this popular, powerful and radically new invention. Why deny it? I’m already saving up for mine.

http://www.apple.com/ipad/

It’s very clear: this is a time to revive old classics. New distribution platforms and an ever-growing community of fans are responsible for the retrogamer craze, which we’re also victims of here in this section. 

Many titles are returning to thrill us with their original simplicity and many more with some added detail that would not have been possible back then. They couldn’t leave out the several-times winner of the award for the most influential cartridge in history: Tetris. Alexey Pajitnov’s combinatorial hobby is still the most adapted videogame of all times and even today is having similar success to thirty years ago. 

As an example, take the fascinating recent reinterpretation of that classic: "First Person Tetris". What at first seems to be a recreation of the more traditional ideas of the NES version, quickly surprises us with a novel innovation: we’re the ones that rotate, not the pieces themselves!

I find it very amusing to see how a seemingly trivial change can cause such a disconcerting, such a ground-breaking, effect in a game that’s already so highly appreciated. Also, as if that weren’t enough, the designer adds an additional version, in which not only do we rotate but we do it in a setting without reference points. Though we end up getting used to the effect, for several minutes the degree of spatial abstraction is such that what was a Tetris suddenly becomes entirely different game. A game that’s dizzying, unpredictable and that we certainly couldn’t play if we didn’t already know its distinguished ancestor. 

"First-Person Tetris" is the perfect example of how fertile a visit to the most classic of the classics can be and a chance to consider the lack of autonomy of almost all contemporary games. And that’s no mean feat!

http://firstpersontetris.com/

Speed excites. This is an undeniable fact. Many of us just can’t get rid of old games, simply because the feeling of vertigo they provoke becomes addictive, unbeatable. Looking no further, I reward myself from time to time with one of WipeOut’s uncontrollable races or one of Quake III’s "Hardcore - Free for alls" which are over in ten minutes. 

Today the dizzying effect of all things fast also sells; titles like "Prototype" or perhaps more obviously "Mirror's edge" allow us to swiftly and indestructibly plough though spaces previously assigned to the land of the imagination. That’s exactly the uncontrollable speed followed by my suggested game of the month this time: Canabalt. 

Do you remember when we couldn’t handle a Sonic, as it got increasingly faster thanks to its loops and springs?  Well, Canabalt is much worse. The protagonist of the game of the month has one sole objective: to escape as quickly as possible from a city that robots have threatened to destroy. And to do that, as you can imagine, there’s just one single course of action: to jump using the space bar. In fact the interaction is so simple and the execution so difficult that the experience is quite insulting.  Attractive for sure, but insulting. 

The stirring music, action-packed horizontal movements and detailed retro-style graphics, all guarantee, as you’ll see, several hours of explosive addiction. Canabalt can be played free-of-charge here -in a deluxe high-definition version- or can be downloaded on the iPhone for those mornings when everything seems to be going more slowly than it should.

http://adamatomic.com/canabalt/

Anyone who lived through personal computing’s prehistoric phase will remember Lode runner.  This mythical platform game made its name not only for of its brilliant strategic element but also because it could be extended with scenarios developed by the players themselves; it was one of the first games to feature a level editor. In this way, an interesting and complex theme was brought to the table: the mutability of the area of play. 

Just imagine a chess game in which the rooks could be reorganized. Modifying the spatial element of a game generally subverts its system of rules and allows us to work out a series of possibilities that many, throughout the history of videogames, have had no hesitation in taking advantage of. 

That is the road taken, to a certain extent, by this month’s title: Continuity.  With an established plataform and highly synthetic, it’s reminiscent of little contemporary jewels like N. Nevertheless, two major differences stand out. First, its space. In Continity, rather than moving about, the idea is to organize the place where you’re supposed to move. Secondly, its extraordinary simplicity, far removed from other spatial experiments like Levelhead, by Julian Oliver (whose technical gadgets undoubtedly deserve a separate article) or the groundbreaking Echochrome and its dazzling muji-style look. 

Continuity, simple and slow, without any points system or clocks that force us to rush through it, but with enough complexity to make us want to reach the end NOW, is such a fresh proposal that it’ll make us waste the whole afternoon. You’ve been warned!

http://www.continuitygame.com

From the moment a new way of transmitting knowledge arises until it its true nature is revealed, until it finds its own language, there’s always a period of uncertainty with people debating whether it can facilitate a certain type of discourse. As happened with photography and cinema in their day, these days videogames are the subject of heated discussion as to whether or not they make a suitable vehicle for artistic projects. In their favour they have the support of everyone who thinks that there has never been a tool that -using Bazinin’s terminology – has come closer to the "myth of total art". Arguing against are all those who see the future forms of a large number of contemporary videogames as simple simulations of other systems which, like films, are considered art. 

Luckily, now and again our favourite subject is used for purposes that clearly are artistic. The most recent and brilliant example that comes to mind is the final-year project of a student who really pushed the academy’s limits and caused an interesting debate. The game is called Lose/Lose and its creator is Zach Gage. In an obvious homage to Space invaders, in Gage’s game each spaceship is a random file on our computer and each player a suicide with his back against the wall.

In Lose/Lose the enemy spaceships advance without attacking.  Nevertheless, to win the game we have to shoot, thus bringing into question the traditional mechanics of war games, in which one always responds to a prior attack (or at least is subjected to a response attack). And if that weren’t enough, once we shoot, the programme starts erasing those files without which there would be no game, thus progressing, self-destructively, towards what will obviously end up in defeat.  

Does a game that leads to inevitable defeat make any sense? Can you take a passive role in a game, even if it means your own destruction?  What does a game become when, with this infringement of a game’s purpose, it starts to compromise our integrity?  Why do we still keep on playing it? 

Questions like this aren’t easy to take on for a market that’s used to entertainment that’s both easily accessible and quickly consumed.  Although some of us applaud the visionary lucidity of works like this, in a world that has more and more videogames, unfortunately they’re likely to go unnoticed.

http://www.stfj.net/art/2009/loselose/

That videogames have become a versatile communication tool is in no doubt at this stage. What’s more, we’d go so far as to say that it’s exactly for that reason that they’ve become one of the most important cultural events of recent years, surpassing, in consumer terms at least, other phenomena of the twentieth century like cinema or music.

If we look at the classic definition of a game, which describes it as a voluntary activity subject to rules, which takes place in an enclosed setting and seeks the achievement of an objective, we realize that it can be understood as something that goes far beyond the typical living room shooter. We realize that we can use the medium’s inherent communicative capacity to take us on a journey that has nothing to do with just having fun. Take politics as an example.

‘Against all Odds’ looks at shameful acts of political repression. It was developed by the Swiss studio Paregos for UNHCR (the United Nations Refugee Agency). The game puts us in the shoes of someone who, persecuted for his political ideas, sexual orientation or faith, is given no other choice but to flee his country. Raids, beatings and forced confessions feature in a game that’s both easy to play and shocking for its proximity to real life, confronting us with a problem which, like many others that happen far from our shores, suffers from a serious lack of visibility. 

In fact the area of political activism has been an especially fertile one for videogames. Far from being mere entertainment, these games have become known as serious games, and among the most popular titles in their catalogue are "Virtual Battlespace", military flight training simulators for the Commonwealth armies, "Darfur is dying", a warning about the Sudanese crisis, or America’s abject recruitment system "America's army".

Having played "Against all odds" and viewing the consequences, it’s encouraging to think of the videogame as a tool that, in the search for a language of its own, has become an incisive tool for political change.

http://www.contravientoymarea.org/

In the Georgic, Virgil was the first person to fully describe the legend of Orpheus and Eurydice. He tells us that Orpheus, the son of Apollo, falls in love with and marries the nymph Eurydice, who dies dramatically. Encouraged by the Gods, he descends to Hades and with the aid of his lyre attempts to rescue his beloved, whom he finally loses forever. 

Since then there have been numerous reinterpretations of this tragedy. Like the version by Terry Cavanagh, who with "Don’t look back", his first game, gives a master-lesson in simplicity and entertainment sensitivity. 

Terry is one of the so-called Bedroom coders, creators who independently design their own videogames and later distribute them through Internet. 

"Don’t look back" was launched in March 2009 on the Kongregate games platform, which even now can still be used free-of-charge.

The game’s quality was obvious. It was immediately lauded by public and critics alike, who unanimously applauded the game’s great simplicity and effectiveness. 

Its clear formal simplicity is an obvious retrogamer touch. With "Don’t look back" Terry Cavanagh offers a delicate revision of the tragedy of Orpheus using an 8-bit key. Its graphic design and exquisite soundtrack, the uncomplicated way it’s played and the subtlety of its mute narrative direction (this perhaps being the best thing of all) make it worthy of being played time and time again. 

"Don’t look back" is, in my opinion, one of the most pleasant surprises of the year and a genuine tonic for those of us who believe that pleasure often goes hand in hand with simplicity.

http://distractionware.com/blog/?p=672

Over the past five years a series of very small gadgets have become popular, with quick Internet connections that help us to locate each other by using GPS. PDAs, iPhones, UMPCs and several other devices have made it possible to create a civic network for exchanging real-time information wherever we may be. But that’s not all: the ubiquity of this technology and the magnitude of the phenomenon offers software developers the chance to innovate in a field that they had never before been able to explore. Nobody could have predicted the possibilities that would open up with an explosion of constant connectivity like this. 

There are many practical and theoretical consequences to this trend, in very diverse fields: new forms of community organization, tools for redefining public space, social cartographic instruments... And among all these, naturally, a whole new world of gaming opportunities. Several lines have opened up in this field.  The most interesting, at least in my opinion, is called MMTRG, or the "Mobile multiplayer trans-reality game". The setting for these games is wherever the player finds himself, with full use being made of said setting, thus compromising the defining dogma that dictates that "a game should take place in an enclosed setting". 

Last year, the IMGAwards, the most respected mobile gaming awards, introduced the category "Real world game". On that occasion the award went to "Fast foot challenge", a simple but fun game of urban pursuit. In this game the players, located by GPS, take part in a hunt throughout the entire city.

Since then other games like "Parallel Kingdom", "iTycoon" or "Wifi army" have appeared in this new world of ubiquitous mobile videogames, using the application pervasive (from the Latin pervadere: penetrating, affected by everything). Although some of them are definitely lots of fun, they generally ignore the ability this technology has to create a new community. A community which, as such, produces something. And with the setting being the public space and the intention providing the fun element, what better idea than to create not just a game, but a platform for the common production of transreality games. 

"JOYity", from the German studio "Zelfi", was created with just that in mind.  Although announced last year, it has only recently reached that critical mass that any community needs in order to become functional. Conceived for every device that reads applications programmed in Java and include an Internet connection and GPS reception, JOYity allows its players not only to participate in all the available adventures, but also to create and share with others as many as they’d like. A platform for the game generation that represents the antithesis to predictable and lineal games, to the disposable application. 

When you run JOYity for the first time it lets you participate in a series of games with your own city as the setting, which share a common location: they’re all variants on the traditional "treasure hunt". Moving through streets and parks we discover clues, in the purest "geocaching" style, which will help lead us to the end of the story. A story that, as we’ve already said, another person has thought up and shared with us. 

The future of this application and its foreseeable successors is promising: its use far surpasses personal entertainment, becoming a public communication tool via games, which simply doesn’t have any known precedent.

http://www.joyity.com

Going by the alluring title "Believing the invisible", the latest work by Spanish studio Novarama, directed by Daniel Sánchez-Crisp, was launched last July. I’m referring, of course, to Invizimals.

A deserved prize-winner at the last edition of the famous E3 fair, Invizimals is a game where one or two participants have to trap a series of hidden creatures and then protect them as they battle other similar creatures. If readers thinks this story sounds like other previously existing ones (e.g. Pokemon or Digimon) that’s because they don’t yet know that invizimals are flickering luminous creatures that live in our houses, waiting for someone armed with a console to try and communicate with them. 

In fact this game, which uses the PSP, has several unique attractions. Firstly, its narrative space. The title develops by sharing time and splace with the player.  The magical protagonists, the invizimals, are trapped thanks to an EyeToy –included in the package- that we use as we carefully wander around the entire house. With a little bit of patience and skill we can manage to find some of the hidden monsters. Only by using the camera can we enter that other invisible world, that playful -almost esoteric- zone that despite its obvious cosmologic limits is extensive enough, running parallel to our apparent reality. 

Leaving occultist fanaticisms aside, vox populi suggests that the advances made in the last decade in the area of artificial vision provide fertile ground for future developments within the videogame industry. Especially a series of data processing visualization techniques that allow us to superimpose real-time digital elements into real environments, which goes by the name "augmented reality". Although these spatial restructuring tools were already being investigated in game-academic study environments for some ten years, it wasn’t till the 2007 E3 that Sony presented a first commercial title for PS3 that made use of the technology: "Eye of judgement". This was a card game where, just like in Invizimals, leviathans of every kind had to fight each other on a tangible surface. 

This new gadget can, however, offer a lot more. I’ve already talked about Invizimals shared space-temporality. If you aim at the floor with your PSP, you’ll find your creatures there; if you play using the palm of your hand, you can even enjoy a battle there; if you dare to look at night, you’ll only see strange nocturnal creatures. If space is seen as being dependent on our body, it’s quite logical to see the latter as being able to affect all the invizimals that share our space. In what is partly an outstanding movement and partly the normal evolution of the tool, the creators of the game have invented a magnificent set of control mechanics that exploits this idea. With Invizimals we control our little monsters by touching and shaking them, blowing on top or even blocking the light that shines on them.  Beyond the movements exported from Wii and far beyond the "trigger" metaphor you’ll find Invizimals. Hopefully they represent a significant new landmark.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbTJw_2E-Ww

Last April saw the opening of the "Estación futuro" project at Intermediae, the famous centre of contemporary creation at the Matadero in Madrid. Right in the middle of one of the institution’s enormous halls stands a small dome of inspiration - as its creators point out, reminiscent of a Buckminsterfullerene, if I may allow myself the word, where this new project’s various events are scheduled to take place. 

"Future station" was conceived as a space where activities involving games and free-time could be developed, not only from a practical point of view (in other words, providing a place to play) but also a discursive one. As they say: "A space devoted to the experience of games and the investigation of free-time processes as a creative and critical activity (...)". Just when Intermediae was beginning to be seen as a more and more rigid institution, they host one of the most innovative initiatives, not only at national but also at European level. 

In fact, in recent months this centre has been strongly involved in what’s become known as "Game studies", theoretical studies on games and more specifically on their latest manifestations. Take for example OpenArsGames, two days of discussion on art and videogames which took place during April and May this year. 

The first event at "Future Station" is the show "The Euclidean dreams of Kenta Cho", organised by the multi-talented Javier Candeira. Kenta Cho, better-known under his pseudonym ABA Games, is a prolific Japanese creator of independent videogames. His works are fast, compact and extremely entertaining, and have gained him the recognition of many of his colleagues and, more importantly, of a community that’s getting increasingly more interested in this kind of development. 
 
This complete Japanese creator comes up with the idea, then programmes, designs and puts music to his games, from beginning to end, in order to offer them later under open code licenses. This facilitates their portability to other platforms (there are already versions for iPhone and even Google Android) and also makes initiatives like "Future Station" possible.

"The Euclidean dreams of Kenta Cho" can be visited at Intermediae (Paseo de la chopera 14, in Madrid) till September this year. Definitely recommended.

http://intermediae.es/

If games like Pac Man had any impact in our generation then we would be chasing each other through dark rooms, eating magic pills and listening to electronic music ¿isn’t that the case?

Believe it or not, games can influence our lives. Visit retrosabotage, play and find out about the effects that playing Pac Man has on you - and don’t blame it on any chemical.

Every Thursday a new game, ready to start?

http://www.retrosabotage.com

Samorost 2 is the necessary sequel to the first on line game that showed how to live an immersive experience using any flash navigator.

The game was developed by Czech artisans instead of a multinational. Jakub Dvorsky from Amanita Design.

Samorost 2 transports the user into a beautiful and bizarre universe aligned with the Czechoslovakian drawing tradition. A universe full of mazes and a set design that competes with the game itself. One can also enjoy a delicious soundtrack that perfectly fits this surreal adventure. So, enjoy this little piece of art that sets a new benchmark into on line games.

http://amanita-design.net/samorost-2