The Oneiric Jonas Kyratzes Interview

Jonas Kyratzes, a creator this very Lair can't help but honestly and deeply admire, has already given us an eclectic selection of excellent games (think Phenomenon 32, The Book of Living Magic and Alphaland), some wonderful stories, quite a few insightful looks into the world of digital gaming, a screenplay and even a number of short movies. Now, he's also provided us with this most interesting of interviews:

Though I'm pretty sure the vast majority of Gnome's Lair readers (all one of them) are familiar with you and your work, would you mind providing us with your explanation of who you are? 

My name is Jonas Kyratzes, and I... well, I do all sorts of stuff. Mostly I'm known for my games, such as The Infinite Ocean and The Book of Living Magic. I'm part German, part Greek, and grew up in Thessaloniki, Greece. At the moment I live in Frankfurt, Germany with my wife and frequent collaborator, Verena.

And why are you designing and creating games? 

Because I love games! I love the medium and the enormous variety of experiences it can deliver. Because ideas for games come to me, and because I feel that certain types of games that I love aren't really being made much. And because I'm driven and obsessive and can't stop.

But why aren't you only designing and creating games? What's with the literature and films? What is this Oneiropolis Compendium? 

Above all, I've always thought of myself as a writer, and I think I've always known that writing would be a big part of my life, even when I was planning on becoming a marine biologist. (I never wanted to be an astronaut as a child, I thought it was too dangerous. But I was very much in favour of expanding the space program! Just not with me in it.) Now it is an essential part of my identity.

There's a novel that I've been working on for nearly a decade now, an immensely complex thing that I think is going to be simply fantastic, but I haven't had the time required to finish it. If you look at my work you will notice that one common characteristic is interconnectivity - one of my mottos is "everything is connected." The connections between individual story elements serve to pull everything together, giving it a sense of reality; you don't necessarily remember every detail about the Lands of Dream, but they feel like a place. Well, that novel is the ultimate expression of that idea: it's easy to read, but feels very real, and the more you dig the more connections you find. I think it's one of the best things I've ever done, and when the right people read it, they will experience something very powerful.

...all of which is wonderful, but kind of pointless given that the novel is unfinished and I'm having trouble getting a single short story published. So there.

Verena and I do have a children's book coming out in Greece soon, though, which I think will be marvellous. That's something I'm greatly looking forward to.

The Oneiropolis Compendium is a series of images and stories, presented as a sort of encyclopaedia of the Lands of Dream. It's part donation drive, part art project: people can donate money, and in exchange get original framed drawings. Every donation creates a new entry in the Compendium - a new image and a new story. It's been a fascinating process, because people can suggest themes for their images, but the themes are always interpreted in a way unique to the Lands of Dream, and so we've been exploring quite a few different aspects of that world. It also keeps us from starving, which is nice.

I'd do it all for free if I could, but unfortunately the economic reality does not allow that.

The wonders of the Compendium are many...

You have already based two games in the Lands of Dream and are apparently working on a new one and even a book. How did you come up with the setting? 

I don't know. I mean, the influence of H. P. Lovecraft and Lord Dunsany is obviously there, but I have no specific memory of coming up with the Lands of Dream. I think it all grew naturally out of making The Strange and Somewhat Sinister Tale of the House at Desert Bridge. But I can tell you that I'm absolutely in love with that world.

One day I will write a novel called Oneiropolis, which will be the center of this tapestry of stories I'm weaving, and which will be quite unlike any other book you've read; I already know that writing it will be one of the greatest challenges and pleasures of my life, and I get excited just thinking about it. I hope I really will get the chance to do it, because I know that I'm not going to write a lot of books in my life, and this is going to be an incredibly important one for me.

Mind you, Verena's illustrations are simply amazing. Do you guys work together on capturing the games' and world's feel? 

It's never exactly the same: sometimes I come up with a story and Verena draws an image for it, sometimes Verena draws an image and I come up with a story for it. We always talk and exchange ideas; we influence each other, and the result always bears traces of both of us. It's an organic process, like having a child. That's why I felt that The Book of Living Magic should be credited to both of us: I may have come up with the specifics of the story and the silly descriptions, but Verena's ideas are all over it.

Care to give us some hints regarding the next Lands of Dream game? 

The one we're definitely making is Ithaka of the Clouds, which will be the story of two gay trolls and their journey to the legendary city of the title. It's an adventure and a love story, partially inspired by the poetry of Constantine Cavafy, and it'll be huge (more than ten times the size of The Book of Living Magic). Unfortunately it'll also take a very long time for us to finish.

We're currently thinking about making another Lands of Dream game before that, but I don't have any details yet.

Now, how about a comment on the popularity of such a unique and text heavy game as the Book of Living Magic? 

I think it shows that the common ideas about what's popular are not quite right. Sure, the game didn't get millions of plays. But a lot of people would have thought that the players on Flash portals like Kongregate would hate it, and instead it got a massive outpouring of love that for a while pushed it to the front page. Imagine what could have happened if it'd had some proper support and publicity.

I think a lot of what is said about what's popular is just self-fulfilling prophecy: if all you make available is dumb games, people will play dumb games. If you keep insisting only dumb games are good, people will start to think that it's true. Then every now and then they'll play something else, and be surprised that they like it.

I'm sure some people would say Interactive Fiction is dead. But look at Andrew Plotkin!

Nexus City or when Terry Met Jonas.

Oh, and could you tell us a bit on that little something you are working on with Terry Cavanagh? 

I don't quite know where to start. Think a JRPG set in an alternate-history Arizona, a western written by an Egyptian on peyote. Not that I take drugs (or even drink alcohol), but I don't think anyone's made a game like this before.

And it's Terry fricking Cavanagh designing it, so you know it's going to be crazy and awesome. I have no idea when it will be finished - it's a big project and we both have much to do - but it sure as hell will be memorable.

And what are you working on right now? I seem to have noticed something about a shmup and a certain tribe of communist space cats. 

I'm in the polishing stages of a game called Traitor, which is a fairly straightforward shmup with a rather peculiar setting. Quite unlike any of my previous games, really - much less focused on story, in a way, much more typical of casual games, but hopefully interesting and subversive in its own way.

When I'm done with that, I'm going back to Catroidvania: Communist Space Cats of Venus. I'd gotten quite far with that before, but I'm going to make some radical changes to my previous concept to make it more fun and less convoluted. As the title suggests, it's a Metroidvania-style game set on Venus, where the Communist Space Cats are rebelling against their evil oppressors, the Capitalist Dogs of Uranus. It's a silly, cartoony sort of game, which will hopefully bring a grin to the faces of the 99%.

Pigs and Dogs vs Communist Cats it is then.

How do you start designing a game? Do you first come up with a story? A mechanic? The visuals? Do you simply ask the cat? 

I ask the cat, but she always ignores me or suggests I make a game about dismembering mice, so I'm forced to come up with my own ideas.

It's a hard process to describe. Ideas don't come to me fully formed, but as... well, I'd say they come to me as cores. I get a central something, a vibe, a group of interlocking elements that define what the game is going to be, and then I build on that. The details are flexible, but the soul of the game is there from the beginning.

How fares the cat? 

Fine, fine. Except that I'm writing this on New Year's Eve, and she's starting to get freaked out by the fireworks. Soon she will probably start hiding under the table.

Something else I've been wondering about was the sheer variety of the games you've created. How can someone design everything from point-and-click adventures and interactive fiction to RPGs and platformers?

I don't want to repeat myself. That's very important to me - I discard entire concepts because they feel too similar to something I've already done, or to something I'm planning to do. Verena thinks I overdo it sometimes, but I believe very strongly in this principle. It feels absolutely essential to me, to who I am and to my work.

I've sat here for a long time, trying to find a way of articulating how I feel. It's not easy, and I don't want to make it sound like I'm condemning everyone who works in a different way. But personally, when it comes to the things that I make, I want each and every one of them to be itself. The measure of success is not whether something is appreciated by the maximum amount of people, but how well it succeeds at being that which it sets out to be. That's what I find interesting, that's what I enjoy and seek out - in people as well as in art. And I think that it's easy to lose that if you don't work hard to be true to each game individually.

There's another aspect - and this is where it gets painfully pretentious - that affects my choices, and that's my awareness of my work as a whole. I am very aware of the fact that time runs only in one direction, and the choices we make are permanent. Now we are in the world, but soon we will not be - soon everything we have done will be a whole, a completed story rather than one in progress. Whether we want to or not, whenever we create something, we are actually creating two things: the individual work, but also a part of the larger tapestry. Well, I want my tapestry to be quite mad, and to say in enormous letters: YOU CAN DO ALL THESE THINGS AND MANY MORE! NOW FUCK OFF.

Is there a common thread running along your creations? 

There are common themes: acts of creation, acts of defiance. History and our place in it, especially when it comes to war and oppression. The ways we divide ourselves against each other and trying to overcome that. And ducks. Ducks seem to crop up a lot.

As most of your games have some subtle or not-so-subtle political references, well, do you feel that gaming could work as a tool to engage people with things that matter?

If it's used as a tool, not very well - that's just propaganda, and propaganda is boring. If art is a tool for politics, that means that politics are extraneous to art (just as with "art games"). But I don't think politics are extraneous to art! In fact, I think the opposite is true. Art needs to have teeth, to be connected to the real world. It's those artists who see themselves as floating above normal people, as being outside history and writing only about timeless matters, who are the ones that produce ephemeral shit that doesn't last.

Artists have a responsibility. A lot of them don't like it. But being an adult is all about recognizing that you have responsibilities that you didn't choose; that you are part of something, part of civilization and society, part of humankind. The desire to pretend you are beyond that is as childish as the libertarian fantasy that your actions are not dependent on those of other people.

Any comments on the Wikileaks Stories initiative? 

It was an interesting attempt, and one that was certainly worth making. Was it a success? I wouldn't say so. Could we have done something different? Maybe. I think its real failure came because it didn't get enough support from the indie scene or from so-called "alternative" groups (we got more attention from the mainstream media, for God's sake!). I guess Games For Change aren't quite so comfortable when Democrats are questioned, and the indie scene is still a lot more infantile than it would like to let on.

Those may be harsh words, but harsh words are necessary when freedom of speech is being carefully dismantled and artists fail to speak out. People only realize that when it's already too late.

On to something completely different then. Are you optimistic when it comes to the future of mankind? Any insights? Some advice perhaps?

I go back and forth on that. On the one hand you've got clear signs of a population waking up: Occupy Wall Street and the Arab Spring show that not everyone is willing to surrender. But again and again I am left flabbergasted by the degree to which people have internalized the propaganda of capitalism, supporting the very people who exploit them and vilifying anyone who wants to inject the slightest bit of reason into the political situation. How do you argue with someone who thinks the United States are a socialist country?

The truth is that governments are getting more and more extreme, giving themselves the right to abduct, murder and torture at will and enforcing economic decisions that enrich a tiny minority while plunging the rest into poverty. There is not the slightest concern for democracy, human rights, or even system stability. And entirely too many people are still willing to go along with this, to blame scapegoats or even themselves. Some even relish finally having someone to hate again - be it Muslims or Turkish people or Greeks.

I don't know. There's hope, but only if people act, and act strongly. You can't gently nudge these governments into a better direction. You can't vote for a reasonable Democrat or a compassionate Conservative - it's nonsense, they're all going to continue the same policies. The only answer lies in genuine democratic processes and fundamental economic changes. And those can only be achieved by fighting for them.

Finally, what should we expect from you in the following couple or so of years? 

That's hard to predict. It depends on what takes off. If I had any choice in the matter, I'd like to focus on writing screenplays and books, but for now games seem to be the main thing. Depending on how the next few months go - Traitor, Catroidvania, the children's book - the situation could evolve in all sorts of directions. We'll see.

Related @ Gnome's Lair:

• The Cryptozookeeper Interview
• The Book of Living Magic (Reviewed?)
• Behind Closed Doors 5 
• Alphaland: The Prequel of a BETA

Oh video game pornography, where art thou?

What you are about to read, oh precious reader, is an edited and updated version of an article that appeared a few years back on the now defunct Game Cabaret blog. It also is slightly NSFW, but only if you work at some sort of weird ultra-conservative place where nobody has ever been to a demonstration for the past five years.

Let's get one thing out of the way first. I don't believe porn, or pornography as people in weird grey-ish clothing tend to call it, is evil. Or inappropriate. Or even inherently sexist. What I actually do believe is that -in all its varied guises- porn is both interesting and a frankly under-explored medium; or is that genre? Also, I quite love the idea behind it, and if you don't or have anything against mankind, sex, having fun and/or life in general, and thus feel offended, well, that's not my fault. I'm a bloody misanthrope too, you know (especially on Mondays).

So, what is porn really? Or, to rephrase the question, is every depiction of sex pornographic? Well, no, though admittedly the answer could change depending on the society within which the matter is discussed. 18th and 19th century Europeans for example were so shocked by the perceived obscenity of ancient Greek and Roman nude statues, that literally went on and chopped their dicks off (the statues', not theirs unfortunately), whereas pornographic depictions of sex were pretty standard in the practice of a variety of more humane religions. Personally -obviously influenced by contemporary society, too- and while cunningly avoiding narrow puritan definitions, I do tend to define any attempt at intentionally, sexually stimulating ones audience as pornographic.

I'm so proud of this little collage, I think I'll print and hang it outside the Lair HQ. It so NSFW, it is.

Whether I (or anyone else) is actually stimulated is another matter altogether. It's the creator's -perceived or actual- intention I care about, in a way not dissimilar to what I would use to classify a horror movie. Or game.

Were I actually discussing cinema, I would definitely not consider any uncensored sex scene as reason enough to classify a film as porn. Baise-moi for example does sport quite a few sexually graphic scenes that are definitely not meant to arouse. The contrary rather. Then, there are films like Novecento where one or two sex scenes are merely added as just another story element or for purely realistic/artistic/whatever reasons. Wouldn't call that porn either.

Proper porn movies, on the other hand, the garden variety of dirty flicks if you wish, usually fail on everything else besides the sex scenes, and one could even argue that most of them aren't that good or varied to begin with. It was Clive Barker I believe who actually tried to define quality porn, as something that manages to captivate its audience even after said audience has climaxed and, sad as this sounds, the only porn movie I think managed to achieve such a lofty goal was Deep Throat with its -at times- brilliant humour (mind you, humour and porn do work quite well together it seems).

Thankfully though, quality porn is more than a theoretical construct or merely a wish. It can be found -among other places I'm sure- in literature, and as most should be familiar with Marquis/Citoyen De Sade's works, indulge me while I go on and briefly focus on Andreas Embirikos. Embirikos, you see, besides being my favorite surrealist poet, a pioneer in Greek psychoanalysis, a photographer of beautiful girls, an excellent writer and, when in the mood, a socialist, was also a great pornographer. And an immensely proud one too. His greatest contribution to porn, Megas Anatolikos (The Great Eastern), was an epic novel spanning one hundred chapters, taking place on the titular cruise ship and eloquently showcasing the glory of almost every imaginable perversion. Frankly, absolutely nothing was considered taboo or perverted enough to be left out and, were the book released in our dark and ultra-conservative era, the censors would be having an editing party. What's more, the sex scenes were at once poetic, funny, arousing, plot advancing and brilliantly complemented with giant penises rising from the ocean or extensive descriptions of the ship's library. Oddly, it was quite a publishing success too.

Let us now move from literature to video games (a humongous leap indeed), where the story so far is rather sad. Pathetic even. To begin with, sex, let alone pure gratuitous porn, is virtually absent in the mainstream and to such a degree that a semi-naked woman is easily considered scandalous, whereas -say- a mutilated corpse goes largely unnoticed. Standard puritanic medium-wide ethics aside, even when sex is present, it usually is presented in a ridiculously sexist/immature way and lazily treated as a reward for gamers. Interactive sex, truly arousing scenes playing on the medium's strengths and thus proper video game porn is, for the time, nigh-on unthinkable.

Cataloging every attempt at sexy games is of course beyond this article's scope, but briefly discussing a few of the niches in porn games most definitely is not. First of all, we have the virtual dollhouse games a la 3D SexVilla or the less germanic Virtually Jenna, that besides their grotesque attempt at realistic graphics don't offer much of a gaming experience either. Pathetic and marginally more fun than undressing your children's dolls or something is what they are. Then, we have more or less proper games that tend to vaguely stick to a genre or another, while cunningly introducing an erotic theme and a few sex scenes, just like the Lula series that eventually spawned the atrocious Lula 3D, or a variety of Tetris-clones and chess games that sort of reward the player with the odd video of a tit being all titty. Slightly better are the Japanese choose-your-own story offerings, which aren't totally unlike watching a hentai porn DVD with a marginally less than obvious chapter selection feature. Finally, and after ignoring such bizarre masterpieces as the wonderfully nonsensical Sex Station 7, we do have games (in name only) that are nothing more than glorified adult chatrooms. Oh, yes, and a myriad of games like Leisure Suit Larry that never claimed to be pornographic, never tried to, but were still horribly misunderstood by the sex-starved gaming audience (and this of course does not include our readers; male or female). In a nutshell: video gaming porn is and has always been in dire straits. At best.

The only exception that springs to mind is the 2010 release Ute, but the question remains: Could it work? Could there actually be a video game that manages to be arousing? Well, I'd say yes, but only in theory and in the realm of the indie scene, as I just can't see anything interesting happening in the world of children focused consoles or mainstream PC gaming. Quite obviously an erotic text-adventure/piece of interactive-fiction would be a nice start, and a rather easy one too, especially if one were to follow -as is rather typical for this kind of games- classic literally rules while adding a touch of interactivity. Interestingly, and that could be a positive sign indeed, women have been -up to now- more interested in the sexier side of gaming (have a look at the Sexy Videogameland)... This could probably spare us the sexist bits.

Oh, and on an absolutely unrelated and definitively closing note, let me remind everyone that Woody Allen (I think) was correct: being punctual is a very lonely experience indeed. On the other hand, I'm absolutely positive Mr. Allen was the one to also insightfully notice that sex between two people is a beautiful thing. Between five, it's fantastic.

Related @ Gnome's Lair:

• Wikileaks Stories: The Website
• Games of Empire - A book review
• Featherweight: a postmortem
• The Interactive Storytelling Sanitarium

Being Creative with a Sinclair ZX Spectrum

The ZX Spectrum was, and gaily still is, a brilliant little computer and a working class gaming machine with a truly huge game library. But why should you care for such a relic of the 80s and why should you try to contribute one more game to the 20,000 already available for the thing? Well, nostalgic and historic reasons aside, the Spectrum does have a variety of advantages: a) it doesn't need to be upgraded/replaced every few years; the Spectrum *is* and Rilke would love it, b) it imposes a series of limitations that help artistic and programming skill thrive, c) it allows for small and focused games, and d) there's a huge and active community that will happily show its amazing spirit of camaraderie.

What's more for those of us that feel that assembly can be incredibly intimidating and Sinclair's BASIC ridiculously slow, there are more than a few game creation utilities that can help get things started. This post is a selection of four of the best and simpler to use utilities of the sort I'm aware of and have even actually tried. Mind you, searching around will definitely provide you with further options.

Professional Adventure Writer: This is probably the best text adventure creation system available on the Speccy that will let you pen pretty huge pieces of interactive fiction and -provided you are so inclined- add graphics to them. More than a few classic commercial adventures have been created with it and though I'd suggest you grab a used boxed copy of the thing (I do like my manuals printed, you see) you can download a copy of everything you need from the World of Spectrum. The PAW Reservoir might also come in handy.

SEUD (Shoot-em-up Designer): A Jonathan Cauldwell creation and an easy to use (really) program that will allow you to create fast scrolling shoot-em-ups on the Spectrum. Having already created a few tiny shmups and having already reviewed SEUD I can't help but suggest anyone interested should grab a copy from Cronosoft. And here is another review.

Arcade Game Designer: Another powerful utility, though this time one geared for the creation of simple arcade games. You can download it for free and thank the prolific Jonathan Cauldwell for it. Keep in mind though that this does require a bit of programming as -despite being much more powerful- it does feel a lot like BASIC.

Platform Game Designer: Shockingly, this is another Jonathan Cauldwell offering and another game creation utility you can buy from Cronosoft. It apparently is very easy to use and will allow for the creation of a variety of platform games provided they are in the style of Manic Miner or Jet Set Willy. Judging by what the community has come up with this, it is a platforming powerhouse and your one chance at creating Manic Miner II.

Related @ Gnome's Lair:

• A Spectrum of Beauty
• Meet Manic Miner
• The free ZX Spectrum book
• A Featherweight Postmortem

Games of Empire - A Book Review

Remember books? Remember their smell? The way they made you think and question stuff? Well, you really should dear reader. The times are desperate and knowledge can indeed make you powerful, kind, beautiful and heroic. And since, dear reader, I know how much you like games, let me present you with the key that will help you understand what they are all about: Games of Empire - Global Capitalism and Video Games by Nick Dyer-Witheford and Greig de Peuter. It apparently is a book and smells lovely. You can and quite frankly should order it from the University of Minnesota Press, though I'll admit to ordering my copy from Amazon. Anyway, here's the UMP link.

Unlike most gaming books I've read so far Games of Empire is neither a game creation guide, nor a retro gaming essay, though it admittedly does cover most of video gaming's history, yet in a way you've definitely not been accustomed to. Instead of finding some sort of childish glee in the birth of Mario and Space War the authors prefer to look at the nation-bombing military complex that allowed for the first video games to be created, being especially interested in pointing out the obvious antithesis of the joys of playing and being creative to the ultimate horror that is war. Unless of course war is slowly being turned into a plaything or games -like, say, America's Army- are used as recruitment tools, which also happens to be a subject Games of Empire isn't afraid to tackle.

Then again, this is a book that tries to completely lift the fetishistic veil covering the games industry, tackling everything from the militaristic propaganda of Full Spectrum Warrior and the racist/sexist overtones of most mainstream games, to the underpaid people working in the industry or even the wars the production of consumer electronics has fueled. Yes, the wars. The interesting little stories about money laundering via Second Life and the informal economies of gold farming aren't left out either.

History and shocking facts aside and despite the book's fascination with Negri's not particularly impressive imperial theory, Games of Empire does manage to come up with an extraordinary -impressively, quite entertaining too- critique of video games. It shows how a World of Warcraft player is indeed both a consumer and a producer of value, discusses the representations of actual space and spatial relations in games (mostly GTA IV) and even helps us hope that indie and radical games can fight the good fight, while avoiding any kind of conservative moral hysterics. Games of Empire is an eye-opener. And you too dear reader have to read it. 

Here's the back of the book blurb to further intrigue you:

Video games have become an integral part of global media culture, rivaling Hollywood in revenue and influence. No longer confined to a subculture of adolescent males, video games today are played by adults around the world while also serving as major sites of corporate exploitation and military recruitment. In Games of Empire , Nick Dyer-Witheford and Greig de Peuter offer a radical political intrigue of such video games and virtual environments as Second Life, World of Warcraft, and Grand Theft Auto, analyzing them as the exemplary media of Empire, the twenty-first-century hypercapitalist complex theorized by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. The authors trace the ascent of virtual gaming, assess its impact on creators and players alike, and delineate the relationships between games and reality, body and avatar, screen and street. rejecting both moral panic and glib enthusiasm, Games of Empire demonstrates how virtual games crystallize the cultural, political, and economic forces of global capital, while also providing a means of resisting them.

Oh, and fuck off banal internet-man. Video games are not just games. 

Related @ Gnome's Lair:

• Enough with the Gaming Industry!
• The Book of Graphic Adventures
• Little Wars by H.G. Wells
• The Wind That Shakes The Barley

Death and Destruction in Gameland

According to Gamasutra and an article I didn't bother to read, it seems that The News Of Console Gaming's Death Has Been Greatly Exaggerated. How very shocking. I mean, really, who'd have thought? Consoles aren't dead? Oh, dear, what's next? Space camels? The again, all hope is not lost. Shock aside, it happily seems that news on the death of PC gaming have also been quite exaggerated, as have been news on the death of adventure games, the western RPG, the strategy game, games in boxes and oddly the death of Tetris clones. Actually, I'm pretty sure that each and every bit of the gaming world has been proclaimed dead at least once in its, err, lifetime.

But, really, what is it with overpaid "analysts" and gaming's parasitic golden boys and their morbid fascination with extinct genres and platforms?

Simple really. First of all, these people tend to talk right out of their arses, which -as most scientist will tell you- does little to help any discourse. Secondly, they only care about profits (rising profits or rising profit percentages to be exact) and units sold. They can't seem to grasp the simple fact, that even after all these years both the ZX Spectrum and Interactive Fiction are alive and kicking, though sadly not producing any (or at least not any worthy of a true bastards inhuman appetite) profits whatsoever. Thirdly, it's the simplicity of the declaration.

"Death!" -so absolute, so shocking, so inline with all those mindless top tens, worst evers and next gens. So inline with mainstream scientific thought, where everything has to be either good or bad, 0 or 1, yes or no. So boringly, stupidly, apolitically positivist. And always simple minded and obvious-seeming enough to cater and help reproduce a mindless, consuming, apolitical audience that can easily be dazzled.

Please stop being dazzled. Thank you.

Related @ Gnome's Lair:

• Enough with the Gaming Industry!
• A (ZX) Spectrum of Beauty - digital exhibition
• The Super Fighter Team Interview
• Re: Video Game Reviews

The Special Effect Gamebase

Creating -and consequently playing- truly accessible games, games that everyone can enjoy, is not only a noble cause and a true designer's test, but also a very feasible goal. Especially now that the rather excellent, rich and particularly impressive Special Effect Gamebase has gone live, gathering and showcasing a wealth of information on game accessibility. Mind you, you can read more about it over @ Retro Remakes, where you will also find out what Special Effect is trying to achieve. Oh, and please do help spread the word...

Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board: A Featherweight Postmortem

Ben Chandler (ben304.blogspot.com), also known as Ben 304, is one of the most prolific creators of indie freeware adventure games and a truly amazing artist. What follows is the postmortem for Featherweight, a dark and beautiful game you should all download here. On to Ben 304:

I've been making short point and click adventure games for a while now, and doing so on a regular basis for about 12 months.

During this time, I've learned a whole bunch of things about writing, illustration, animation and game design in general, but if my experiences to date count for anything, I've got a whole bunch left still to learn.

Some time ago I released a short game called Featherweight. The effort I put into the graphics, story and interface went above anything I'd ever tried to put into a game before – and yet... I can't help but feeling that through all of this I lost sight of the main purpose of a game. Feedback showed that despite all of this effort, the game just wasn't that fun.

We'll start with the good stuff, though.

Project Origins:

Like any project, Featherweight started as an idea. I was at work one day when I heard an older man say to another person “I dreamed that we lost another one last night.” Whilst I can guess the specifics of what this meant, I didn't bother asking. What interested me was the way it was said. I instantly started turning this sentence over in my mind, and very soon story ideas were coming forth and presenting themselves to me.

Initially I had a rather complex story, but for the sake of clarity and focus I ended up dividing this story up into two separate stories. At the time this story had begun to shape itself in my mind I was listening to what was a new album for me – local band Karnivool's 'Sound Awake', and the songs conjured up epic and mysterious science fiction worlds in my mind.

With these images in my imagination I actually created a background for a competition which, upon finishing, I realized would be perfect for this story. And thus, Featherweight was born (incidentally, the title 'Featherweight' was taken from an older Karnivool song by the same name).

Project Goal:

I went into the project with some interesting goals. My primary goal was to create a world that was believable – I wanted to immerse the player into the story by both drawing an environment that captured the imagination and also writing a story and characters that the audience could relate to and sympathize with.

I also wanted to try putting in some elements of tension and danger; something I haven't used very much in the past. Finally, I wanted to create some challenging puzzles, but with a simple and intuitive interface to stop the player getting too frustrated.

Putting it all Together – The Positives:

I've spent enough time using the AGS editor that I'm quite comfortable with sitting down and building an adventure game. The scripting is generally quite roadblock free, and even things such as bug finding and fixing are all very user friendly. Although there were some struggles getting everything just how I wanted it, I ended up with an interface that I am very happy with, and feel it's probably the most intuitive standard adventure game style interface I've created to date.

For graphics I went with the Photoshop 'painted' backgrounds I'd relied on for the last few games. I'd spent a lot of time looking at Oddworld graphics a few weeks prior to putting the game together so a lot of the graphical elements such as strongly coloured light sources, dystopian setting and heavy sky gradients were inspired by these games. The characters are still done with a pixel by pixel style, however unlike most of my games I used a fairly dark palette for them. This graphical style seems to have been fairly well received by most players, despite a few comments that the pixel style doesn't mesh perfectly with the softer backgrounds.

For the story, I wanted to present a fairly standard Hollywood style science fiction story with some more mysterious spiritual elements thrown in. Eventually the only real spiritual element I used was the fact that one of the characters talks about her prophetic dreams, however this was enough to satisfy me.

Writing Thadd's (the main character) lines proved quite a challenge for me as I had to try and emphasize the fact that he was in a tense situation. At Sebastian's urging, I rewrote all of his lines about 2/3 of the way through development, and upon showing these to him, he urged me to rewrite them again. I did this, sat down and played through the game, and then went and rewrote them all again from scratch.

As I usually write comedy, it's very rare that I'll spend so long writing character lines (one complete rewrite is unheard of for me, let alone three!). However, to try and get the 'feel' that I wanted for the game, it was very important that I made Thadd a believable character that players could sympathize with and the story actually seems to have been fairly well received. I consider myself a fairly weak writer, so this is quite a satisfying result.

For audio, I usually give Sebastian a fairly broad idea of the concept I am approaching each game with and then give him fairly free reign. Sometimes I'll make suggestions, but most of the time I let him play a scene and let him do what he feels is right. For Featherweight he created a futuristic and otherworldly score that fitted the concept of what I was trying to do with the game, and used items around the kitchen to make the sound effects for the game.

The last element to look at in Featherweight is the puzzles. And here's where the big cracks start to emerge...

Where I Slipped:

No game is ever going to be a perfect game. There are always going to be elements that make one think “I wish I hadn't done that” later on. For Featherweight, it was the actual gameplay itself.

In the past I've read countless comments about my puzzles being too simple. I hit what felt like a good stride with Shifter's Box – Outside In, and then seemed to veer off the mark again. Creating a satisfying puzzle is challenging, and I really wanted to create some for Featherweight.

Sadly, while some of the puzzles seem to work well, a lot of them do not. I worked very closely with the testers when making the game, but somehow some horrible puzzles seem to have slipped through. There's one that relies on item combining that, in hindsight, is just plain silly, and many of them are combination puzzles that are tedious and not always as clear to the player as they should be. In my attempts to challenge the players, I forgot some of my core beliefs about puzzle design and the end result means the game was less satisfying than it could have been.

For me, creating a good puzzle means that I can get a player stuck for a few minutes and then have the solution present itself once they notice a certain element – creating the “Eureka!” moment. Here, however, I relied too heavily on hiding this element, and therefore the solutions to puzzles are not as clear as they should be. This means that players get stuck for longer than I intended them to, and leads to people giving up on the game.

I also relied too much on combination puzzles. While most of my games feature these, I usually try to make them occur in a manner that makes them all feel different. Here I have a lot of combination puzzles that all feel quite samey, and that makes a game tedious and uninspiring. I firmly believe that varied gameplay is good gameplay, and slipped up here quite a bit.

The graphics, as well, despite being some of my best work are still full of weak points. Areas that could have been/should have been refined were left, making it clear upon close inspection that the work is still very much that of an amateur. In some cases items were not made clear to the player, meaning that players got stuck merely because they didn't realize there was something they could have clicked on – which is absolutely unacceptable.

Whilst looking nice is important, it shouldn't override the need for functionality. This is a game, not a painting, and if it looks nice but doesn't play nicely, then the scene is a long way from perfect.

Moving Forward:

Featherweight has been, to date, my most popular game; receiving a fair bit of exposure in various communities and more downloads than any of my other own games. With each project I learn many new things, and from this perspective Featherweight was most definitely a success. Although there are elements that disappoint me in hindsight, I'm still proud to say that I made the game.

Like any game developer, my goal is to reach a place where I can consistently create pleasing graphics, inspiring stories and enjoyable gameplay every time I sit down to make a game. I haven't reached this stage yet, and Featherweight has shown me some areas in which I have some major weaknesses. I walked away from the project feeling like I'd made a game worthy of the player's time, and even though it is hard to focus on the strengths rather than the weaknesses looking back, I'm glad that people enjoy it.

In the future, I hope for people to play the game and think “Look how far he has come since making Featherweight”. Until then, I'll be here, drawing, coding and writing to improve my skills as much as I can.

Related @ Gnome's Lair:

• Behind the Scenes: HHGttG AGS remake
• A Guide to the world of the Indie Adventure Game
• Fahrenheit Postmortem
• Broken Sword: Director's Cut Wii review

Enough with the Gaming Industry!

Before I start ranting away, I have to come clear -or at least attempt to; the army isn't the place for productive thinking you see, and brains do tend to rot- regarding the subject of selling games. I've got nothing against it. I, instead, fiercely believe that people creating them should be able to live off their craft, provided of course they choose to do so. There is nothing unethical in selling a game one -or a group of people- has created, though admittedly that's not the case when companies enter the equation. That's when the creative minds get exploited. This later view though, demanding a rather theoretical piece mostly on the production and exploitation of surplus value, will be wisely left for another blog post. You might as well ignore it for the time being.

Now, let me move on by reminding everyone that gaming wants to be considered an art form; an art form comparable to painting, cinema, theater, music and literature; above all a sellable art form. Gaming after all, especially mainstream gaming, is an art form that shockingly tries to justify its importance by showing everyone the huge revenue it generates, and by convincing mommies and governments they have nothing to fear from it. And herein lies the problem.

Art, the way I see it, has to be thought provoking and at times dangerous (remember the beat generation?), and definitely doesn't have to be a commodity. Art, you see, simply cannot flourish when directed by market research and consumer needs, as these demands necessarily lead artists to self-censorship and, more often than not, banality. Art can be sold, but almost always at a cost.

Art simply does not need industry. I mean, look at the hundreds of late Picasso paintings and compare them to Guernica. Sad, eh?

Well, things are even sadder when it gets to gaming, where market forces were powerful from the very birth of the medium and where even some indie developers can't help but speak for and about the industry. As if the industry were one homogenous whole. As if The World of Goo and the radical games of Molleindustria have anything to do with Nintendo's WiiFit and such militaristic offerings as Gears of War. As if something is worth creating only to be sold. As if money is all an artist should care for. As if the sole yardstick for judging anything were its profitability.

Profitability is what companies care for and the force responsible for strangling myriads of brilliant ideas and even a few almost completed games. And believe me, it's gonna get worse. Perceived popularity and safe choices will get an even stronger grip on gaming and digital expression in general, just like they already did in cinema, literature and music.

Popularity of course, just like the need to be liked, appreciated and accepted is something most artists also crave (usually, that is). They always did so apparently and, admittedly, I think it's an almost noble cause, provided they remember they only have one obligation: be true to ones self and vision. And in the case of game creation, an artist or a group of artists, has only got to make something he/she/they would actually want to play. Something unique. Something interesting. Something with a modicum of passion. Not something that they could become rich from. And, well, if the money comes, so be it.

Just don't let the industry get it. Let the creative minds enjoy it and be freed to further provide us with quality games. Not that I wouldn't enjoy the struggling artist concept, mind. Passion and intense experiences can bring forth masterpieces all the money in the world wouldn't be able to buy. A Rimbaud of gaming would be truly amazing.

So, uhm, why don't you go read the Scratchware Manifesto?

Related @ Gnome's Lair:

• The Wind That Shakes The Barley
• Discussing video game reviews
• The (early) history of the FPS in pictures
• Dead Like Ants?

Spectrum of Beauty (a tiny digital exhibition)

Anyone interested in game design will tell you that graphics and sound should be complimentary to the way a game plays. That gameplay comes first. That, despite the enduring success of Dragon's Lair, the essence of gaming somehow lies somewhere beyond the realm of the visual arts. That there is to it more than mere eye candy, impressive gfx or a thundering soundtrack.

These people would of course be right. Well, mostly really.

On the other hand, the vast majority of game creators, and that would include both graphics specialists and any kind of visual artist working on games, would fail to see that the visual quality of a game, its beauty, is actually platform and technology independent. They can't, you see, seem to grasp the simple idea that hardware imposed limitations can actually inspire artistic innovation and show off ones talent, and keep asking for more power to express themselves. They stubbornly ignore the fact that the abstract beauty of Kandinsky is far more interesting than the latest photorealistic 3D depiction of the Death Star and keep striving for realism; not art.

To actually illustrate the point that visually beautiful games can be created on the humblest of platforms, I've decided to present you with some glorious screens the ZX Spectrum managed to display, using nothing more than its meager (and quite frankly odd) 15 colours on its tiny 256 x 192 display, while simultaneously battling with the computer's inherent colour clash problems. And no, I'm not referring to anything technically impressive the Speccy demoscene has managed to force out of the hardware.

(click on the following screenshots to see them properly)

Automata, Deus Ex Machina, 1984, WoS

Russell Comte, Mugsy, 1984, WoS

The Pixel Brothers, Russel Comte, David O'Callaghan & Mike Robinson, Mugsy's Revenge, 1984, WoS

Ste Pickford, Amaurote, 1987, WoS

Mike Robinson, Terrormolinos, 1985, WoS

Denton Designs, The Great Escape, 1986, WoS

Sandy White, Ant Attack, 1983, WoS

Microsphere, Back to Skool, 1985, WoS

Now, I could of course go on and show you a dozen other screens showcasing a variety of Speccy-centered art styles, rave about Batman or link to some rather impressive videos, but, well, I won't do that. I'll just hope you understood what I meant to say and that the Artful Gamer soon gets his hands on one of Sinclair's beautiful machines in order to comprehensively tackle the subject.

Related @ Gnome's Lair:

• The Wind that Shakes the Barley
• Reunion Art
• Designing Arcade Game Graphics
• 3D Ant Attack

Resident Evil 5: Discussing racism

What follows is an article Father Krishna sent me via this amazing new contraption called the e-mail, and one the good Father also posted here. What's more, it's about the lovely non-discussion of RE 5's rather obvious racist imagery. Have a read and speak your mind.

If the trailer for Resident Evil 5 released at E3 this year caused consternation among gamers, it was largely due to the frustrating absence of any footage from the game itself. Indeed, for the vast majority its new, apparently African setting seemed to be a refreshing and evocative change in location for the franchise, and easily the most interesting thing about an uninteresting promo. A few days after the shows conclusion however, the game’s developers were greeted with accusations of casual racism.

In an article for the blog Black Looks, Kym Platt claimed that, intentionally or otherwise, the imagery in the game’s trailer was highly contentious. “The new Resident Evil videogame depicts a white man, in what appears to be Africa, killing black people. The black people are zombies and the white mans job is to destroy them and save humanity,” Platt observed. “This is problematic on so many levels, including the depiction of black people as inhuman savages, the killing of black people by a white man in military clothing, and the fact that this videogame is marketed to young adults. Start them young…fearing, hating and destroying black people.”

GamePolitics reported on the complaint and was immediately inundated with angry complaints, many of which were laced with the sort of racism their authors insisted was not present in the Resident Evil trailer. “Never have I been so harassed and insulted, and all because I questioned the imagery in this game,” Platt replied. “The response has been horrifying… They called me names like ‘nigger’, ‘bitch’ and ‘whore’.”

While this kind of ignorance doesn’t categorise gamers in general, any regular visitor to the medium’s more popular forums will no doubt have witnessed it before. Another blog, the Young Black Professional’s Guide saw the reaction as no great surprise. “Trying to talk about the sensitivities of race to a gaming demographic is extremely difficult,” it explained. “The majority of readers are young white males who are either too immature to have a clean conversation about it, or too illogical to draw comparisons. I understand the angle some of the mature gamers are taking. Resident Evil has always been about a white guy killing zombies, why should killing zombies in Africa be any different?” it continues. “On the other hand, the images used in the game- already disturbing because its Resident Evil- also reflect hateful images that were real and meant to evoke hate towards black people in the not too distant history of America .”

This seems to be the relevant point, and one that angry gamers are apparently missing. The imagery may not be not be intentionally offensive towards black people, but it is inherently offensive and that should be avoided with just as much diligence. Perhaps if it were a game asking you to guide a plane into a pair of large symmetrical buildings in New York City there would be a greater attempt at understanding. Perhaps if it were a man in military dress gunning down while, shaven-headed emaciated zombies in a Poish field those offended would be shown more compassion.

If Kym Platt’s cautionary words appeared to be reactionary at first, the the response they received was far more so. As the blog Microscopiq commented: “If LocoRoco’s Mojas were a kind of high-tech blackface, Resident Evil 5 takes blackface into the high definition era. Its horror alright, just not the kind of horror Capcom intended.”

Related @ Gnome's Lair: The Wind That Shakes The Barley, On video game reviews, Appropriately sick video games

Go on, name that casual video game of yours!

You've worked your arse off for 25 whole hours, managed to come up with an ingenious and subtly innovative clone of Bedazzled, ripped a few public domain tunes (or graphics) and are about to conquer the world 20$ a piece, but can't find a proper name for your mega-hit casual game? Well, fret no more dear shovelware developer, for both this and this place will help you come up with a properly pretentious name for your casual masterpiece. You'll be rich in no time!

Warning: The first link will probably even provide you with an idea for a game (in case you opt to walk the wild none-Bedazzled road), thus further minimizing designing time and development costs. You might not have to work at all. Tsk.

Related @ Gnome's Lair: The Wind That Shakes The Barley, Discussing video game reviews, Fahrenheit postmortem

The Wind That Shakes The Barley

It's not often I mention movies in this blog, but, The Wind That Shakes The Barley by Ken Loach, a film I watched a mere few hours ago, was such a storytelling & visual masterpiece I just couldn't ignore it. So, please, bare with me as I incoherently rant, even though -hoping to keep you interested- not on the film's theme, neither on the struggle of the Irish people, nor on just how rare such great films have become. No, this a pure video games related rant.

You see, dear readers, The Wind That Shakes The Barley is a very strong and brutal film that poses -and only partly tries to answer- serious questions regarding politics, human weakness, morality, love, history, socialism, independence and war, but doesn't resort to a Hollywood-esque black or white point of view. It's instead a dialectical movie and watching it definitely can't be described as fun. Or entertainment. It's thought provoking, enraging, and one of those films that urge you on the streets to rectify society's evils, but definitely not fun in the mindless 300 way. Oh, and it got me thinking silly stuff, like when was the last time we saw a video game like this? Frankly? Never.

Video games are still far too un-evolved as a medium to tackle such issues or even attempt to enrage us, and as long as they remain in their sanitized mainstream environment, where corporate ideology reins with an iron fist, they'll always be all about shiny graphics, smart mechanics and cute plumbers jumping around surreal worlds. Their stories, even the rare good ones, will never dare challenge anything of any importance and most probably -as worldwide democracy seems to be suffering- turn into mere pathetic tools of an anti-Arab, anti-Left, gung-ho, sexist propaganda, or -at best- vaguely support such easy to manipulate ideals as the abstract and very obviously good freedom Jade is fighting for in Beyond Good and Evil. What's more, and with the notable exception of Deus Ex, games have yet to provide any real sense of involvement in any of their stories, let alone a sense of truly and meaningfully interacting with their plot; yet this has been technically feasible since the early 80s.

Now, try to imagine a video game version of The Wind That Shakes The Barley, that would attempt to truly immerse the player in its world. Imagine putting the player in a position to choose between compromising under the threat of annihilation and heroically but possibly without hope continuing his/her struggle in a world where no superhuman one-man-army heroes exist. Imagine having the player not only shoot enemies, but being forced to shoot a 16 year old traitor and childhood friend. Imagine willingly letting oneself be led to execution. In a game. Interesting, innit? And the possibilities would frankly be endless, what with the empathy the interactivity of the medium so readily provides...

Anyway, rant off. More elaborate thoughts might someday follow. Opinions?

Related @ Gnome's Lair: Discussing video game reviews, the Needle & Thread interface, Game Design Wikiversity

The Power-Up ludology, art & gaming PDFs

You do remember Mike Bithell, don't you? Well, if not, you really should, you ungrateful bastards, you (and Mr.Elderly, please, do stop the stalking)! The man, a most talented young game designer and visual artist with an impeccable taste, has already given you the brilliant Visiting Day PSP freebie and the beautiful and quite freeware web-based Reunion game. Now, he's offering some insight into how he came up with and designed said video games, along with some fine artwork and a brilliant example of an aspiring professional's portfolio.

Where? Over at the Power Up blog and in pure PDF format. To be more precise the portfolio PDF is available here, whereas both the Reunion artbook and the concept document are available here.

Related @ Gnome's Lair: Decker, Star Wars: Bloodlines, Discussing video game reviews, more free e-books and PDFs

The guilty pleasure of discussing video game reviews

Discussing video game reviews is a very cheap and highly amusing way to pass one's afternoon, provided of course there's no football on TV and everyone involved has more than a passing interest in video (or -and that's being truly anal- computer) games. Extra amusement is guaranteed to those familiar with the repetitive use of adjectives such as fantastic and ..uhm.. fantastic in the long and frightening tradition of the Greek gaming press. What's more, the whole thing can get pretty serious, as current web discussions keep getting closer to being an almost proper discourse of the subject or, to say the least, a pretty mainstream chat of the wider gaming community, as David Jaffe's latest reviewing of reviews showcased (hit the link for an example).

Some random blog post eye-candy

Then again, beside Mr. Jaffe's well justified wrath, a simple cyber stroll through the gaming halls of Digg should convince you that everyone has an opinion on how games should be reviewed and seemingly everyone is interested in finding out what said opinion is all about. Obviously, these oh-so-popular opinions tend to touch on a colourful variety of subjects, ranging from the ways games should be graded and the scale that should be used, to whether a game's price or length should be taken into account, or even to whether innovation is a value each game should possess. Interestingly, but seemingly not so obviously, the huge percent of review related opinions are actually opinions regarding video games per se, as each author, podcaster, vlogger, whatever, is pretty damn sure of what games should be like and accordingly shapes his/her attitude towards reviews and points to what reviewers should be looking for.

Trouble is, a game should be nothing in particular, as, let's face it, neither god has ever sat down and emailed mankind with a concrete set of rules, nor has nature shown the way to proper game design. As for the equally existing, omnipresent, abstract and conscious market, let's just say it historically hasn't had an eye for quality and leave it there.

Happily, every form of art (which, I'm convinced, nobody has succeeded in definitively defining) be it cinema, music, dance, literature or any of the visual bunch, faces the same lack of divine, natural and/or capitalist direction, but I digress. Better stick to games. Even better start with what the video gaming society thinks games should be like. Astonishingly, most answers, varied as they are, are equally valid. Storytelling and writing definitely matter, but Tetris isn't such a bad game, is it? Oh, and the audiovisual bit of each game is definitely important, but what about Zork, Leather Goddesses of Phobos and NetHack. As for length, well, excuse the sacrilege, but would anyone in their right mind dare to think of comparing Ulysses to a poem by Rimbaud? And, really, what is it that makes World of Warcraft something more than a glorified chatroom and Wii Sports such an astounding success? Not so easy to decide, is it? And quite a bit contradictory too.

As good as they get...

The buyers, are a contradictory lot too, and better not forget that a video game, just like a movie, a novel or a painting, is both a piece of art and a commodity to be traded. This, after all, is capitalism, which is definitely kinder than Sparta ever was to its slaves, but doesn't care much for quality (or mankind, but that's another subject altogether). Anyway. Everything is a bloody commodity, and vulgar as this might be, commodities can be judged from a consumer's point of view, even though things can get a bit tricky when it comes to anything related to art or personal taste, as the silly positivist quantification of virtues isn't so easily applied.

So, what's a reviewer to do? Well, actually, there's no wrong or right here. It's only a matter of taste and culture, that's heavily influenced by the fact that some reviewers actually ..uh.. review stuff for a living and are thus required to follow certain guidelines. Judging a game by its price can be such a guideline. Or taking its intuitive interface into consideration. Or even originality and art direction. Whatever a magazines or website's stance though, there's a definite lack of standard yardsticks of gaming quality and anyone trying to come up with objective ones, is bound to run into some pretty tough theoretical problems. Proving that a mature and flawless implementation of an already tried idea is less important than a promising but rough new gaming innovation would be such a tricky little thing, mind you.

But, theoretical woes aside, what is the role of a review? Is it a consumer's tool? Is it a critique, and if yes, does it aspire to helping video games evolve in the way -say- Lovecraft's Supernatural Horror in Literature attempted to guide a certain literary genre towards progress? Can a games journalist separate between high-tech and beautiful? Do you, dear readers, believe the average reviewer would be able to notice decent writing even if it wore a wig and danced while juggling three dildos in front of him, when he (the reviewer; less usually a she) believes that Duke Nukem 3D is a genuinely funny experience and that Half Life's banal storyline is monumental? What of the fanboys? Don't you think that the fan base of a game and the inherent populism of big gaming sites can influence a review? How about the game's expected sales? And what if a professional reviewer's honesty is not always taken for granted, which, judging by the average Doom 3 reviews, shouldn't be such a preposterous thought?

Answers on a postcard please (alternatively -preferably even- in the comments section, provided any of the 15 people frequenting the Lair are interested in further discussing the subject). Oh, and vision doesn't sell copies.

As for me, well, any review that's well written (preferably funny), tries to honestly describe the game and treats it at least as seriously as it would treat a mainstream movie is good enough...

Related @ Gnome's Lair: The Interactive Storytelling Sanitarium, FPS history: a pictorial, Fahrenheit Postmortem