Page 77 - AC/E Digital Culture Annual Report 2016

from subverting or dodging the interaction rules in games with a complex structure. In this regard, multiplayer games and open world videogames provide spaces of freedom that are prone to this kind of creative action and emerging playabilities that are not escaping the notice of enquiring-minded players or independent creators. Although the concept of open world videogames was de ned in space simulators and a few role games of the 1980s, it was in the early 2000s that this feature became established in games such as Grand Theft Auto III (Rockstar Games, 2001). This formal quality is becoming a common ecosystem for players who enjoy basic mechanics such as walking or wandering around digital spaces. In recent years this type of pleasure has triggered the appearance of alternative games that defy the standards and conventions of mainstream products of the videogames industry and use the game space chie y as a means of developing di erent types of ludic experiences.possibilities, limitations and conventions of the medium and are pejoratively categorised as walking simulators by the more orthodox sectors of gamer culture.Fortunately, the independent artists, designers and creators who use game design as a means of expression from a more experimental and less categorical approach are evolving and using their formal elements (styles and systems of representation, progression rules, codes of conduct, reception contexts, paradigms of victory and defeat, modes of interaction) as basic building blocks for shaping new experiences that are less limited, less prescriptive – games that are more contingent and more open to players’ interpretation of them.Independent artists, designers and creators use game design as a means of expression from an experimental approach in order to shape new experiences open to players’ interpretation.The importance of incorporating divergent thought into the cultural industry of digital gamesThe antithesis of these creative attitudes is the act of instrumental play (Sicart 2011): actions embedded in designs in which the player must limit himself to following the game rules and structure devised by the creator, which generate a conditioned gaming experience, a type ofplay that is subordinate to the goals, rules and systems of the game and is unfortunately more common than might be expected in the cultural industry of digital games, especially the most conventional kind.As we have seen, in the past designing videogames was linked to designing computing technology and to the objective perspective of considering only the formal characteristics of games. This digital trap has accentuated their systemic and algorithmic nature and has led us to overlook not only their more performativeFIG. 7: Photogram from the game Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture (2015), by The Chinese Room.We could quote as examples reactive environments designed to be explored, such as Proteus (Ed Key, 2013), or narrative designs in which a story gradually unfolds as the space is explored, such as the novel-like Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture (The Chinese Room, 2015). Apart from open world, there are designs in whichthe basic mechanics consists of crossing the space through time jumps, such as Judith (Terry Cavanagh, 2009) and Thirty Flights of Loving (Blendo Games, 2012). These games probe theAC/E DIGITAL CULTURE ANNUAL REPORT 201677Smart Culture: Impact of the Internet on Artistic Creation