Last Friday night i attended the keynote speech of the Game-Time Conference here in Melbourne. Tetsuya Mizuguchi, creator of “Rez” was the key speaker. I previously hadn’t heard much about this game, most likely as i’ve tended to play PC game rather than console games – not having a console being the central problem. The presentation Tetsuya gave of “Rez” had me mesmerized (in fact i was pretty much under his spell when he revealed that he had worked on SEGA Rally!). Tetsuya combines player dependent sound with a distinct and stunning visual style thats a joy just to watch. Unfortunatly i was unable to attend any of the other events on the program due to work commitments, but am looking forward to checking out the Experimedia exhibition “Reactivate” on games and game’s effects on interactive media.

I’ve just finished reading Friedman’s article Civilization and Its Discontents: Simulation, Subjectivity, and Space. He dicusses some ideas about the pleasure of games like Civilisation in terms of ’spatial stories’ (a term i’m sure i’ve encountered elsewhere, should of kept better notes on my research =/).

I find exploration to be one of the more enjoyable elements of Morrowind, and games more generally, and Friedman’s explanation of this process in terms of the transformation of abstract ‘place’ into concrete ’space’ through a process of being acted upon by narrative agents is an interesting account. Also of interest is Friedman’s discussion of the player’s interaction and adoption of computer conciousness and the application of the concept of cybernetics to computer games.