Computer games are much like books, in that they portray another world, an imagined world. Of course, there are large differences as well - the world is interactive, there is an interaction between the inhabitants and settings of the unreal world which does not happen to the same extent in a book, where the reader is essentially a passive observer. M, J and P are all keen gamers, entering these other worlds, which are experienced via image, and sound. The purchase of a 3D television in 2011, with the ability to run 3D games, has introduced new levels of immersion.
For this project though, the fascination that M and J have shown for a game called ‘Minecraft’ is particularly relevant. Minecraft is an “indie” computer game, “a game with really big pixels” which is “about placing blocks to build anything you can imagine”. The game-play is “emergent”, so the experience is generated by a series of local rules or agents interacting, rather than an imposed top-down narrative or structure. M and J typically play it in a shared world from separate computers connected on a network, allows them (via their virtual representatives) to build collaboratively, often referring to their interventions in the existing, pre-generated world as their ‘houses’. It is just this kind of creative, collaborative, emergent, flexible - and above all, spatial activity which I have tried to capture in my ‘Memory House’ proposition.
Quotes are from a Guardian article on indie games - 'The Indie Dozen' Series, and the Minecraft website. I intend to expand the discussion on emergence slightly, with reference.
Image: http://timespentgaming.blogspot.com/2010_08_01_archive.html
