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It's Monday, then. Were you snowed in over the weekend? Did it give you an unexpected chance to play more games? Tell us all about it!

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Keith Stuart
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With an interface that is so controlled, can there ever be something truly original? Moreso, is there something that cannot be reproduced by someone else?

The hand of the artist is forever attached to the artist and is unlike any other hand and their brain unlike any other persons.  Yet, the computer and technology is made uniform, homogenous, so that the interface is the same for everyone that uses it.  Is that where it all differs?

Is there no moral hindrance from using someone else’s code and modifying it? No! People do this all the time in different art forms.  Animators draw inspiration and examples of gestures and movements from living animals and human beings.  Even traditional artists look at work done by other artists attempt to reproduce the works of art.  Artists can mimic what they find desirable in a piece of work and incorporate it into their own.

Perhaps it is that technology just makes it exponentially easier to mimic other artists’ work and thus eliminates this process for us.  If I were to try and copy the Mona Lisa and add something of my own creation, then I would need to understand key concepts of light and form and also have the tools and paints Leonardo Da Vinci possessed at the time of its inception.  This is immensely harder to simulate than it is to mimic a new media artwork since the both the tools and skills are easily accessible in digital art.

Some digital art tools, such as Processing and Maya, are actually free to users and students whereas paints and paintbrushes can run you a couple hundred dollars for a full set.  Also, the skills needed to reproduce works of traditional art are significantly unattainable compared to that of digital media skills.  There are many tutorials and help sites for programs such as Java, Processing, and Maya that allow users to learn and develop a skill set for reproducing digital work.  On the other hand, where there might be tutorials on how to paint like Monet, there are far fewer of these kinds of aids and the interface is still subject to the artist.  That is to say, there are specific codes and algorithms that have specific outputs, yet with a human hand, there is more subjectivity and chance for error.

 

The idea that the foundations of digital art are more objective and more easily accessible causes me to feel both anxiety and inspiration.  There is something unnerving about thinking that anyone can see the code you used, copy it, run it, produce you artwork, then change one aspect and proceed to call it their own.  I think that we live in a competitive era and it’s only natural to feel a little uneasy about this concept.  Yet, it is also extremely inspiring! The fact that I can reproduce a work on my own computer or in my own environment gives me a sense of power, even if it is someone else code or idea.  I think what’s important is that we remember that just because we can easily reproduce other artists’ works doesn’t mean that we are taking something away from them.  They created the original concept and that may inspire us to create something similar, but with a completely different feel. I don’t think that anyone can say that their idea or artwork is completely original because everyone draws inspiration from something that leads them to their idea.  In this day and age, everything around us is completely original, yet at the same time, true originality ceases to exist.

 

 

I’m very pleased to see the article Mia Consalvo and I wrote published in Loading…,
the journal of the Canadian Game Studies Association (CGSA). There’s an intriguing lineup of articles in Loading… Vol 6, No 9; ours is:

Montfort, Nick and Mia Consalvo. “The Dreamcast, Console of the Avant-Garde.” Loading… 6: 9, 2012. http://journals.sfu.ca/loading/index.php/loading/article/view/104/116

We look at the connections between the Dreamcast platform, five games in particular (Jet Grind Radio, Space Channel 5, Rez, Seaman, and SGGG) and avant-garde movements and work in art, literature, and other areas in the 20th century. By seriously considering and applying the idea of the avant-garde and looking into these fives games closely (in terms of gameplay, in interpretive ways, and with regard to players’ online discourses about them), we show some ways in which videogames, within gaming, have done the work of the historical avant-garde; the business situations and factors in platform technology that relate to this innovation; and what opportunities for radical exploration in console gaming remain.

When people say the words “Virtual world” people think of the digital world that mimics our own in many ways. However, artists are now creating installations which redefine what we think of a virtual world. In the works of Jeffery Shaw, we are confronted with a different type of virtual world, especially in one his pieces, called “The Legible City.” In this work, the artist recreated the architecture of real maps and cities in a virtual world in which the viewer was able to navigate through cycling. However, instead of buildings and landmarks, these monuments are replaced with words or phrases that were recovered from documents recording historical events. According to Christiane Paul, this work creates a connection between our physical world and the virtual, which we see through the introduction of the cycling. We were always removed or distanced from navigating the virtual world physically. We walk around in a virtual world usually by using the arrow keys on keyboards. However in “The Legible City” the viewer can incorporate his entire body to interact with this virtual world.

This piece of art not only changes the way we connect to the virtual world, but how we think of the locations and places we have been. Shaw also turns the physical into conceptual data. In the virtual world of Shaw, we are given a new way to navigate the history of a place. Instead of reading it in a book, we now physically navigate it. Also the history of the city is no longer linear, we experience the history by what and in what order we desire. The viewer can make a decision consciously or spontaneously about how he or she wants to navigate the cities. It also make us think differently about the monuments and the architecture that surrounds us. Some buildings and architectures have more complex histories and stories than what we are able see when we look at them. In a sense we are also able to conceptualize the value and importance of a city as well as the aesthetic qualities.

According to the New York Times “Mimicking the real is generally not what interests artists. Altering perception is.” what are other forms of artwork that play with our perception virtually? Artist Bruce Truman’s “Spinning Spheres” introducesh the physical in a different light. In his project, he uses four projectors to show a ball that has been placed on a glass plate, which is spun quickly creating and blurring image in the viewer’s mind. Here with this project our physical world seems distorted and unrealistic mimicking some of the concepts we apply to the virtual world. This world is created through simple repetition.

The art of Shaw was created in the late eighties and the early nineties. Now we are more able to interact with the virtual world with the development of technologies like the kinect. In playing a video game, we can be transported to a virtual world were we physical control our data input with our physical movements. There are other developing technologies that will change our perception of the physical and virtual worlds, one such device includes the Aurasma. This application. was made as an Apple product; it ingrates virtual content into the real world.

Paul, Christiane. Digital Art. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2003.

http://www.clevelandart.org/exhibcef/light/html0/8251629.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/06/arts/06iht-rush.html?pagewanted=all

http://sophia.smith.edu/course/csc106/readings/Penny_interaction.pdf

http://www.itworld.com/software/203575/aurasma-bridges-physical-virtual-worlds-demo-fall-2011

http://www.jeffrey-shaw.net/html_main/show_work.php?record_id=83

http://www.virtualart.at/database/general/work/the-legible-city.html

When I noted that Linden Lab's private estate revenue in SL has fallen to 2009 levels, famed steampunk land baron Desmond “the Guvnah” Shang stopped by to offer his thoughts in Comments: "Cutting back on land mass is actually a... SLHamlet Comment of the Week Linden Lab News & Analysis

The following is a response, or perhaps companion, piece to Olia Lialina’s My Boyfriend Came Back from the War.

I didn’t go- none of us did.
They thought we went, but we didn’t.

Here.

We were here.
They didn’t think so, so they screamed at us
and shot at us
and wanted us to die.
“Maluus zebr” they said about
each of us in turn.

But here it is, I still have it.

And this- see the dust
still caked into the fibers?
I shouldn’t have it, they have rules about trophies,
but this is from when we were bombed
out of bed-
well, I wasn’t in bed.

I couldn’t sleep, so I was bare and wet
in the cement shower house.
I knew I was going to die.
I sobbed under one of those
crummy metal sinks, waiting for the walls to cave in
on me or a mortar to drop into
my lap or my crazy heart to just explode.

But they didn’t and it didn’t and it didn’t,
but maybe I still did. Die. I feel dead.
I’m not a man anymore.

Please don’t look like that.
I don’t mind.
I’m good at what I do.
I’m a killing machine.
I’m a god.

This is what they make of us, and they’re damn good at it.
I was in basic with this
scrawny, nerdy wimp from
Minnesota.
Ethan. Ethan Brown.
Most boring-ass name ever.
He’s a sniper now.
He could hit you right between the eyes-
equal distance from each-
from 2000 meters.
You wouldn’t hear a thing,
and then you’d be dead.
How about that scrawny nerd from Minnesota?

Babe, don’t cry.

Yes, I like your dress.
But you know I like green on you
so much better.

White, hell, I don’t know how to
keep anything white.

I would touch you,
but you look so beautiful.
My hands are dirty.
Yes, they are. Look at them.
LOOK AT THEM.

I’m not shouting.
Ok, I’m sorry. Please don’t cry.
The dress is beautiful.

Then why are you crying?

…HIM?!

THEY KNEW?!

You didn’t write.
I wrote to you.

No.

No.

No.

…I remember.
I’m not sure than I can, either.
Not since.

Please don’t ask
me now.
I’m so tired.

Who knew that the dead slept?
I always imagined we would torment
the world of the living after nightfall.
Who knew that it was the other way around?

I’m tired.
I’m so tired.
Here, hold me.

What’s the boundary between “virtual” reality and actual reality? Virtual reality’s original meaning, according to Christiane Paul in Digital Art, is “a reality that fully immersed its users in a three-dimensional world generated by a computer and allowed them an interaction with the virtual objects that comprise the world” (p. 125). As technologies improve, the boundary between alternate realities can be faded and hard to discern. This phenomenon is effectively used in digital art and can bring an entirely unique experience to participants.

 

One piece of digital art that stood out to me was “Beyond Manzanar”, an interactive virtual reality installation created in 2000 by artists Tamiko Thiel and Zara Houshmand. A video of this piece is shown here:

 

 

What attracted me to this piece is that it functions in a way similar to a video game platform: participants use a joystick to navigate in a virtual recreation of Manzanar, an internment camp for Japanese Americans during World War II. The installation is projected onto a wall and is life-sized, adding a touch of reality to it. The realistic size of this piece and its three-dimensional environment allows the participant to feel as though he or she is actually walking within the space created by the work and looking through the eyes of someone actually present in that alternate world.

 

The content of “Beyond Manzanar” is unique and interesting as well. Although the piece is titled “Beyond Manzanar”, on a larger scale it is referring to the ostracism people of a different race face in America when their native countries are on unfriendly terms with the United States. This piece uses both the Japanese American internment during World War II and the similar fate Iranian Americans faced during the Iranian Hostage Crisis of 1979-1980 as the basis for this message.

 

Iranian garden

As the participant moves around the internment camp within the interactive installation, he or she is able to move within two worlds. First, the participant starts out in the barren landscape of the internment camp, filled with military barracks. When the participant navigates his way into the barracks, images of family life and pictures reflecting cultural identity appear on the inner walls of the barracks. Approaching certain pictures may allow the participant to see additional, hidden images or landscapes. For example, in one of the barracks, when the participant walks toward a wedding photo of an Iranian man and a Caucasian woman, images of armed extremists in Iran suddenly appear. After backing away, the participant has the option of walking out of the barracks through an Iranian garden. Also, upon entering one of the other barracks, the participant suddenly finds himself looking out from the doorway of a traditional Japanese house into an elegant garden, and is able to walk through the Japanese garden. From the outside of another barracks, one can see images of Japanese Americans under internment by looking in through the windows.

 

Image of Japanese Americans' life in Manzanar

Thiel and Houshmand effectively juxtapose images in “Beyond Manzanar” to “[illustrate] a chasm of cultural identity, contrasting a dream world of cultural heritage with a reality of political injustice” (p. 130 in Digital Art, by Christiane Paul). The artists’ transformation of the barracks’ interiors into images and simulations of cultural identity—traditional gardens and pictures of family ancestral history—suggests that the Japanese Americans and Iranian Americans were treated unfairly based solely on their racial background: they were under internment for their heritage, not because they personally committed any crimes. Hence, Thiel and Houshmand use “Beyond Manzanar” to convey the emotional and psychological trauma persecuted and outcast peoples face. The fact that “Beyond Manzanar” is an interactive virtual reality art piece allows participants to experience firsthand what it feels like to be ostracized by the society one thought he belongs in. The three-dimensional nature of the piece makes the participant feel like he or she is actually present at the internment camp. The bare, desert-like environment, as well as the crude, plain barracks, gives the participant a feeling of depression and gloom, much like how the Japanese Americans and Iranian Americans must have felt when they were targeted by political injustice. The images within the barracks remind the participant of what the “American Dream” should look like, but upon leaving, the participant is once again exposed to the harsh camp environment. Each participant for this piece may visit different barracks and choose their own path, but regardless of what path he may choose, he will always end up with the same ending: watching from the point of view of a fighter jet swooping down upon the camp. This invokes a sense of horror within the participant because the internment camp he had just visited, containing barracks filled with cultural identity in the form of pictures and traditional gardens, is about to be destroyed by the fighter jet.

 

Point of view of a fighter jet over the camp

“Beyond Manzanar” instills the feelings of those who were unfairly treated due to their cultural background within the participants of the art piece. This reveals the uniqueness of interactive digital art in changing the way in which people experience art. Such a feat would not have been possible with more traditional forms of art that do not involve the use of digital media. The participants’ perception of an alternate reality of the “American Dream” within the alternate reality of the internment camp blurs the line between our physical existence and that of the virtual realm.

 

 

References:

 

Paul, Christiane. Digital Art, 2nd Edition

http://www.mission-base.com/manzanar/index.html

http://www.mission-base.com/manzanar/demos.html

Thiel, Tamiko. “Beyond Manzanar: Constructing Meaning in Interactive Virtual Reality”. http://www.mission-base.com/manzanar/articles/cosign/cosign.html

http://eyebeam.org/people/christiane-paul

http://www.nps.gov/manz/index.htm

http://www.smithsonianeducation.org/educators/lesson_plans/japanese_internment/index.html

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/general-article/carter-hostage-crisis/

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/american+dream

 

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The SL Bloggers group is back in business, thanks to Tymmerie Thorne, who has all the details here, including an in-world hang-out, and a group Twitter account. "We take 'em all," says Ms. Thorne, "news bloggers, fashion bloggers, badly dressed... SLHamlet SL blogger link

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Much thanks to Karl for guest blogging in January. He not only offered some insightful posts about how “gamification” is affecting the world of learning, he kept us abreast of happenings at ASTD TechKnowledge 2012.

In February, the LC Blog invites Connie Malamed to take the helm. Connie is a frequent contributor to Learning Circuits, and has spoken at several ASTD events about the fields of online learning, information design, and visual communication. She is also the author of Visual Language for Designers, which presents visual design principles that are based on cognitive science. In other words, it explains how to design for the human mind—something that’s very important in e-learning.

However, Connie is probably most well-known for The eLearning Coach (http://theelearningcoach.com), which is her own blog where she shares actionable strategies, practical content, product reviews, and resources to help practitioners design, develop, and understand online learning. Indeed, with degrees in Instructional Design and Art Education, she energetically pursues ways to improve instructional and information graphics.

Following Karl’s lead, Connie promises to pass along to readers what she learned at ASTD TechKnowledge, as well as lend her thoughts on visual design and discuss current trends in our field.

Are we reaching the tipping point at which the downloading of games begins to dominate the industry? And will it be more about old games than new ones? Some interesting events this week suggest we're close

During a conference call to investors and analysts on Wednesday, Electronic Arts revealed some rather impressive – and telling – figures. Apparently, the company's revenue from digital games exceeded $1bn in 2011.

Its controversial download service Origin generated $100m through the year, its social and casual games performed well, and its online multiplayer release – Star Wars: the Old Republic – managed to attracted 1.7 million paid subscribers barely a month after its launch.

Of course, the publisher's boxed big-hitters – Fifa 12 and Battlefield 3 – did good business too, selling 10m units each, but the thrust of the company's attempts to claw back into profit are coming from the digital sector.

Meanwhile, fellow publishing veteran THQ is reported to be in dire straights, cutting staff and facing a Nasdaq delisting.

Although the company was one of the first publishers to recognise the rise of mobile gaming with its THQ Wireless arm, it has not succeeded in transferring major brands such as Saints Row and Darksiders to mobile and social platforms. In fact, it sold its Wireless division in February 2011, while a lacklustre Facebook version of Saints Row did little to take on the likes of Mafia Wars at its own game.

THQ's problems no doubt run deeper than failing to exploit the rise of digital downloading, but it seems as though the future of traditional publishers is going to rest on how well they're able to explore the online, mobile and downloadable possibilities of their brands.

Physical media, though beloved of hardcore gamers, is generally suffering. The high street chain Game is facing its own major difficulties – financing problems have led to rumours that its stores would be unable to stock the week's new releases; though the company has since confirmed that the likes of Metal Gear Solid HD and Final Fantasy XIII-2 will be on sale this weekend, and that it has secured new deals with lenders.

Meawhile, digital newcomers are flourishing. Freemium publisher BigPoint announced on Tuesday that it now has 250 million users of its free-to-play online games; on the same day, web gaming company Spil Games, revealed that it now boasted 170 million unique users, with many of its customers spending up to £38 a month on virtual goods. A recent report by Juniper Research claimed that in-game purchasers would be spending $4.8 billion by 2016.

"My basic argument for digital generally is that, first, it allows the publisher to reach a massive audience at no marginal cost, by going free," says games industry analyst Nicholas Lovell.

"Secondly, it allows you to let the people who love what you do to spend lots of money – for example, the Bigpoint users spending €1,000 on a drone.".

Unsurprisingly then, smaller developers are increasingly adopting digital-only agendas. On Monday, the UK game developer trade body, Tiga, released a report showing the impact of digital downloads on British studios.

Apparently, 102 British games companies are currently developing browser and download-based casual online PC games. These studios released more than 600 titles in 2011 and employed nearly 700 development staff, contributing £70m to the UK's GDP.

"We are fast approaching the tipping point," says Tiga managing director Dr Richard Wilson. "UK retail sales figures for video games have been in decline for several years now, but all the indications are that digital consumption of games is increasing.

"Tiga research from 2011 shows that 50% of UK developers regard retail as the largest monetisation mechanic for their games. However, 47% say their games are also sold via online stores such as XBLA and the Apple App Store. 13% generate money from subscriptions, 26% via micro transactions and 29% use free-to-play mechanics.

"Additionally, almost half of UK developers are now self-publishing online or on mobile. The shift towards digital distribution is enabling developers to become self-publishers and reduce their dependency on publishers. It should also allow more innovation and choice for consumers."

But more telling than new titles and fresh ideas are the possibilities for older brands in the digital space.

Earlier this week, the veteran MMORPG Everquest became a free-to-play title after 15 years as a subscription service. Long past its incredible peak as a massively multiplayer phenomenon, profit can still be made via a freemium model that will make the game more attractive to casual users.

Meanwhile, publishers such as Ubisoft, Konami and Capcom are busy filling the online stores of the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Wii consoles with spruced up versions of classic titles, as well as fresh additions to nostalgic lines such as Rayman.

While the ability to sell DLC and create free-to-play titles is enticing, it might be that the real driver into a digital-first business is the ability to exploit that old internet chestnut, the long tail.

In packaged-goods retail, games have a very short shelf life and need to make all their money in the space of a couple of weeks. After that, titles get shoved into the back catalogue. Years ago, there was another opportunity to make money here via special cheaper editions of old games – the PlayStation Platinum range, for example.

However, that market has been all but destroyed for publishers by the rise of the pre-owned sector. Go into any branch of HMV or Game and you'll usually only see a chart display of new titles, and then a huge area dedicated to second-hand titles.

That's because retailers make 100% of the revenue from these second purchases – there's little benefit for them in providing shelf space to first-hand copies of older titles.

In the digital space, though, publishers can keep flogging old titles indefinitely. When the title is out of the charts, it can be kept alive with DLC; after this, there are price reductions on digitally distributed versions of the original games. And then, on titles like Everquest and Lord of the Rings Online, there's the option to convert to a freemium model.

For new titles, the digital arena is more complex. As Lovell points out: "Chris Anderson's original definition of the long tail is that in a world of infinite space, everyone can get on the shelf. But the App Store shows that just being on the shelf is no guarantee of sales.

"The App Store has hundreds of thousands of apps, and the long tail players are not making much money." Indeed, research released last autumn by developer Owen Goss showed that 50% of game apps on the App Store make less than $3,000 (£1,900).

And over in the social and casual gaming spaces, it's not old brands that are being regurgitated, it's old ideas. Zynga's release of Dream Heights on iOS has prompted a furious response from bloggers who feel it is effectively a rip off of NimbleBit's hugely successful iphone game Tiny Tower, merely adding a social layer.

The cloning of games has become a huge issue in the sector, but with little in the way of legal recourse, it is running amok.

And really, the digital gaming princples behind continually re-inventing old brands for new business models and continually "borrowing" other studios' successful ideas are the same.

It's all about mining proven concepts for all they're worth in a marketplace that allows swift development, easy distribution and lightening fast iteration based on rapid customer feedback.

Those who imagine that the tipping point from physical media to digital distribution will herald a new era of fresh innovative gaming experiences could well be hugely mistaken.

We may be about to enter a new epoch in which the digital sector transmogrifies into one giant thirft store – your favourite game ideas served back to you in different forms on different platforms by different publishers, forever.

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Keith Stuart
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We all like it that games such as El Shaddai and Child of Eden still exist, but how many of them do we really play and thoroughly enjoy? How many do we go back to? No, really, I'm asking you...

As long as there have been video games, there have been weird video games. In the burgeoning days of the arcade scene we had the likes of Q*bert and Joust, but then weirdness really took off with the home computer era. Bedroom coders, locked away for months at a time, with no genres to work from, no sense of a development 'community'... no wonder they came up with titles like Deus Ex Machina, Sentinel and Jet Set Willy.

Weirdness persisted into the PlayStation era with the likes of Polaroid Pete, Mr. Moskeeto and No One Can Stop Mr. Domino, and we do get glimpses today thanks mostly to Suda 51, Tetsuya Mizuguchi and a million indie devs.

But what strange games have entertained you the longest? Which have you played beyond the initial 'wow, this is really strange' moment? Are there any truly odd titles that make it into your favourite games of all time list? Really?

For this Friday, let's think about the offbeat titles that we genuinely do love, rather than just sort of pretend to love so that people think we're weird, too.

I'll get us started...

Gribbly's Day Out (Andrew Braybrook, 1985)

This seminal Commodore 64 title involves a character named Gribbly Grobbly navigating a surreal 2D world attempting to track down his missing children – or 'gribblets'. The controls are wonderful, the landscapes richly detailed for the era, and the Defender-like gameplay thoroughly compelling. Braybrook would go on to write two bona fide C64 classics, Paradroid and Uridium, but this was a game I just played and played.

Incredible Crisis (Polygon Magic, 1999)

An early progenitor of the mini-game collection, this PlayStation oddity followed a Japanese family though a disasterous day, with each complication captured by a strange mini-challenge. It's a sort of Japanese game show, rendered into eccentric interactive life complete with office dances, stressful supermarket shopping and hellish elevator rides. But all of them worked well, tied together with a decent family-in-crisis plot – and you just had to keep playing to find out which bizarre flight of gameplay fancy you'd be steered down next.

Rez (United Game Artists, 2001)

Tetsuya Mizugushi's masterpiece has been accepted into the canon of truly great games, but back in 2001 it was very odd to be controlling a hacker's avatar through a super computer while crafting techno tunes out of defeated enemies. Odd, but also astonishing. I'm not really sure if any other game has ever captured quite so well Mihály Csíkszentmihályi's theory of the flow state – that sense of utterly focused immersion. Hypnotic and compelling, and still wonderful.

The Rub Rabbits (Sega, 2006)

Okay, it's another mini-game collection, but I played this freaky take on the dating sim for hours and hours when my first son Zac was a (particularly demanding) baby – it got me through many sleepless nights. Like its predecessor, Project Rub, this crazed game uses every input facet of the Nintendo DS in a range of teeny tasks designed to get you together with the girl of your dreams. Stylish, strange yet utterly intuitive and fun. I was deranged with lack of sleep though.

• Games

Keith Stuart
guardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Xbox 360/PS3; £37.99; cert 18+ Atlus/Deep Silver

Catherine is two puzzles games, really: one of the heart and one of the mind.

In the first, shabby protagonist Vincent – a 32-year-old who is aimlessly stumbling through life – must choose between two women. His long-term girlfriend Katherine is career-minded, focussed, and eager to formalise their commitment in marriage. She mothers Vincent but with an edge of despair that sometimes cuts into disdain and resentment.

By contrast, Catherine – a girl he meets at the local bar one evening – is flirtatious, vivacious and, following a drunken tussle in Vincent's claustrophobic apartment, teasingly jealous.

Vincent feigns horror at his actions the morning after, confiding his indiscretion in his three drinking buddies before expressing hand-wringing regret. But at the same time, he refuses to give Catherine's contact details to a friend who expresses an interest at this mysterious, uninhibited siren.

Likewise, night after night Vincent returns to his local, the Stray Sheep, where he inevitably runs into his so-called mistake late at night – actions that call his declarations of regret into question.

We play as Vincent and, while the broad strokes of the story are laid out for us, there is some flexibility to fill in the details. In particular, an elegant – if inevitably imperfect – system allows you to reply to the text messages that Catherine and Katherine try to grab your attention with, selecting sentences one by one to establish the tone as you either play with their hearts, or try to negotiate your way out of the problem as honourably as possible.

Most actions in the game are assigned a moral value, tipping a needle on a pop-up meter towards good or evil – eventually dictating which of the game's eight endings you secure.

This narrative layer puzzle is counterbalanced by a more traditional series of game-like cerebral puzzles that play out at night, while Vincent is sleeping.

Here, in Vincent's nightmares, he must climb a tower of sinking blocks, attempting to reach the summit in order to escape to the next level of the tower before being sucked into oblivion.

Tower blocks can be pushed and pulled in order to create rudimentary stairways upward, with complexity introduced via blocks of different properties – such as being breakable, laced with spikes or plain immovable. Special items collected en route offer the ability to create a block where there is none, or to climb levels two at a time instead of one.

The logic tricks required to create pathways where there are none must be learned till they become second nature as the pressure to keep moving at speed is intense.

Likewise, you must climb a new ledge every 10 seconds or so in order to keep a score combo meter rising, a necessary requirement if you're hoping to score a gold trophy for each stage.

Despite the ingenious design of these nighttime sections, the learning curve is as steep as the tower you are asked to climb, and it's easy to set the blocks in such a way as to make progress impossible.

As a result, the game at the core of the wider Catherine game is too punitive to be truly enjoyable, reflecting the stressful sense of pressure to make snap-decisions that infuses the rest of the experience.

Some of the most interesting moments in the game come when the heart puzzles and the mind puzzles intersect.

In between each section of the tower-climbing stages, Vincent is invited to sit in a Lynchian confessional booth where you're posed yes/no moral dilemmas.

Some of these are childish and straightforward ("Is it OK to lie if nobody will find out?") but others – such as whether you believe life begins or ends with marriage, or whether your ideal marriage partner is younger or older than you – can be harder to answer, especially if you're playing the game within earshot of a curious real-life partner.

After you answer, a dynamic pie chart shows the split between players' responses, drawing data from the servers to reveal how firmly you sit within the minority or majority.

Interesting and gently innovative, nevertheless when judged purely on the quality of its interactions, Catherine is a mediocre game. But the strength of its narrative drapery elevates the experience to something that's both compelling and enduring.

Video games rarely explore the complexities of human love, lust and the decisions that are made in the tug of war between heart, mind and base desire.

Catherine is a Japanese curio that sidesteps black-and-white moralising, and thanks to its weird, dream-like qualities, sidesteps neat pigeonholing to boot.

It's rarely an enjoyable experience, but within that, Catherine perhaps poses its greatest puzzle of all: does a video game always need to be enjoyable to be worthwhile?

• Game reviewed on Xbox 360

Rating: 3/5

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Simon Parkin
guardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Readers will know that as part of the MRes in Advanced Spatial Analysis and Visualisation, here in CASA, we are exploring new methods and techniques for visualising data. As part of the course we are looking at collecting data from the Twitter API and using the resulting .csv file as an input into a variety of software, including Processing and ArcMap. Data so far has been focused on displaying the output from ArcGIS as a slightly more traditional map, albeit in 3D via Lumion:





Taking a step back it is possible to take a more abstract view of the data visualisation and use the Twitter data collected to create a digital elevation model for direct landscape visualisations.


As we have mentioned in previous posts there are of course many arguments on the pro's and con's of visualising data in such a way, indeed the visualisation is developed to open up the debate as part of the MRes course allowing various visualisation techniques to be compared from the same data set. 


Sometimes however an abstract route to visualising data can quite liberating in a world of visualisation dominated by more traditional and academic output, the screenshot above illustrates Kingston Peak with Soho Mountain dominating the background. The movie below details the landscape as a fly-through:







In future posts we will explore issues of scale as we take the landscape and move it into an online exhibition space.


Update  - see Data Space: Agent Based Models, SketchUp, Visualisation, ArcGIS and Lumion for the exhibition space developments...

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Phew, it's Friday. What are your weekend gaming plans?

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Keith Stuart
guardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

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