Games and Autobiography: game design is my psychologist
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"Games and Autobiography: game design is my psychologist" by Alex Camilleri Game development is a powerful tool for self-expression. More and more game developers make games to tell personal stories that trigger a wide range of emotions. In 2015, I developed and released Memoir En Code, an autobiographical game about life events that shaped me. It was a tough, emotional journey in which game design helped me understand a lot more about myself and about my past. I wish to share what I learned during the design process and the release, and end with a call for more autobiographical games.
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Games and Autobiography: game design is my psychologist
- 1. Games and Autobiography: Game Design is my Psychologist Alex Camilleri ROME 18-19 MARCH 2016
- 2. DISCLAIMER THIS TALK IS CODE-FREE
- 3. DISCLAIMER THIS TALK IS NOT ABOUT • Programming • Making tons of money • Becoming “successful” • What games you SHOULD make
- 4. DISCLAIMER THIS TALK IS PERSONAL
- 5. WHO AM I? (the short version) • Alex Camilleri • Game Designer and Developer • Kalopsia Games • Memoir En Code
- 6. OVERVIEW • Who am I? (the extended (but still short) version) • Autobiography in Games • First Experiments • Memoir En Code • Game Design: a self-reflexive practice • Conclusion
- 7. WHO AM I? (the extended version) Born in Palermo, Italy
- 8. WHO AM I? (the extended version) Grew up in Sicily
- 9. WHO AM I? (the extended version) Played videogames since I was a kid
- 10. WHO AM I? (the extended version) Never been a particularly good student
- 11. WHO AM I? (the extended version) Started with game journalism
- 12. WHO AM I? (the extended version) Dropped out (twice) from Università degli Studi di Palermo
- 13. WHO AM I? (the extended version) Games, Art, Not Art, Not Games, Whatever Fatale (Tale of Tales, 2009)Nega Kon (Bahrami, 2011)The Marriage (Humble, 2007) Everyday the Same Dream (Molleindustria, 2009)I Wish I Were the Moon (Benmergui, 2009)
- 14. WHO AM I? (the extended version) Games, Art, Not Art, Not Games, Whatever
- 15. WHO AM I? (the extended version) Moved to the Netherlands
- 16. WHO AM I? (the extended version) Studied Game Design and Production
- 17. WHO AM I? (the extended version) Met Michelle
- 18. WHO AM I? (the extended version) Lots of conferences and game jams
- 19. WHO AM I? (the extended version) Moved to the UK
- 20. WHO AM I? (the extended version) Sony Guerrilla Cambridge - RIGS
- 21. WHO AM I? (the extended version) Moved back to the Netherlands
- 22. WHO AM I? (the extended version) Founded Kalopsia Games
- 23. WHO AM I? (the extended version) Michelle moved to Malmö, Sweden
- 24. WHO AM I? (the extended version) Long-distance relationship
- 25. WHO AM I? (the extended version) I moved to Malmö
- 26. WHO AM I? (the extended version) Worked in Copenhagen, Denmark
- 27. WHO AM I? (the extended version) Started working on my autobiographical game
- 28. WHO AM I? (the extended version) Day and night…
- 29. WHO AM I? (the extended version) Released Memoir En Code!
- 30. WHO AM I? (the extended version) Joined Codemotion 2016, Rome
- 31. WHO AM I? (the extended version) Why are you telling us all this stuff, Alex?
- 32. WHO AM I? (the extended version) Personal stories can be interesting
- 33. AUTOBIOGRAPHY IN GAMES But what is “Autobiography”?
- 34. AUTOBIOGRAPHY IN GAMES Autobiography “An account of a person’s life written by that person” (Oxford dictionaries, n.d.) “from birth to “death”/fame; chronological, linear, factual narrative; purports to get the facts right; involves research and factual accuracy – “history” as opposed to how one remembers one’s own life” (Alden, 2011)
- 35. AUTOBIOGRAPHY IN GAMES Memoir “Originates in memory, in personal experience. And the contract with the reader is that you’re telling the truth as you know it and have discovered it and believe it to be true. Usually takes a portion of a life; childhood, for example, or deals with a specific theme or experience – and disregards the rest of the life” (Alden, 2011)
- 36. AUTOBIOGRAPHY IN GAMES Heavy Rain Quantic Dream, 2010 Papo & Yo Minority Media, 2012 Passage Jason Rohrer, 2007
- 37. AUTOBIOGRAPHY IN GAMES Heavy Rain (Quantic Dream, 2010) Authorial figure Team size David Cage, Writer/Director ~100 Autobiographical trait Story inspired by Cage’s experience of losing his son in a supermarket. Settings and characters are fictional. “The starting point of Heavy Rain is, what would've happened if I didn't find my son again” (Ohannessian, 2011, para. 1)
- 38. AUTOBIOGRAPHY IN GAMES Papo & Yo (Minority Media, 2012) Authorial figure Team size Vander Caballero, Designer 12 Autobiographical trait Game based on Caballero’s experience of having an alcoholic father. The game fully embraces metaphor to tell the story “To my mother, brothers and sisters with whom I survived the monster in my father” (Minority Media, 2012)
- 39. AUTOBIOGRAPHY IN GAMES Passage (Jason Rohrer, 2007) Authorial figure Team size Jason Rohrer, Author 1 Autobiographical trait Game based on Rohrer’s thoughts on life and death after a friend passed away. Strong metaphorical component. “And if you're wondering, I do have light hair and blue eyes, and my spouse does have red hair and green eyes. […] That's me and my spouse in there, distilled down to 8x8 pixels each” (Rohrer, 2007b)
- 40. AUTOBIOGRAPHY IN GAMES Memoir En Code (Alex Camilleri, 2015) Authorial figure Team size Alex Camilleri, Author 1 Autobiographical trait Game based on a several personal life events. Steers away from metaphor.
- 41. FIRST EXPERIMENTS Some of my autobiographical prototypes
- 42. FIRST EXPERIMENTS Bloom •Relationship between me and my brother •Dynamics inside my family •Mechanics as metaphor
- 43. FIRST EXPERIMENTS Bound •Feeling lost •Feeling confused •Mechanics = Message
- 44. FIRST EXPERIMENTS The Mirror •Leaving friends/family behind •Being alone •Mechanics and aesthetics holding meaning
- 45. FIRST EXPERIMENTS The Walk •Inspired by a walk with Michelle •Joy of sharing a moment •Feeling a bond
- 47. MEMOIR EN CODE Autobiographical game album
- 49. MEMOIR EN CODE Autobiographical game album? • Collection of games (tracks) • All of them autobiographical • Bi-directional linear progression • ~30 minutes playtime (basic)
- 50. MEMOIR EN CODE Autobiographical game album • 0. Pieces • 1. Øresund • 2. Oranje • 3. Laurana • 4. Otoloop • 5. S.S.S. • 6. Precisione • 7. Silippo • 8.
- 51. GAME DESIGN: A SELF-REFLEXIVE PRACTICE Game Design is my psychologist
- 52. GAME DESIGN: A SELF-REFLEXIVE PRACTICE Otoloop ORIGINAL IDEA A game about my childhood complex
- 53. GAME DESIGN: A SELF-REFLEXIVE PRACTICE Otoloop UNDERSTANDING Carrying a childhood complex
- 54. GAME DESIGN: A SELF-REFLEXIVE PRACTICE Laurana ORIGINAL IDEA A game about struggling to study. Dealing with expectations.
- 55. GAME DESIGN: A SELF-REFLEXIVE PRACTICE Laurana UNDERSTANDING Lack of personal space.
- 56. GAME DESIGN: A SELF-REFLEXIVE PRACTICE Silippo ORIGINAL CONCEPT Bedtime story my dad used to tell me.
- 57. GAME DESIGN: A SELF-REFLEXIVE PRACTICE Silippo UNDERSTANDING Solitude and distance from parents and family
- 58. CONCLUSION Game Design can help you
- 59. CONCLUSION
- 61. CONCLUSION Memoir En Code on Steam (soon)!
- 62. REFERENCES Ludography • Bahrami, M. (2011). Nega kon. [PC], Iran: Self- published • Benmergui, D. (2009). I wish I were the moon. [PC], Argentinia: Self-published • Camilleri, A. (2015). Memoir en code. [PC], Sweden: Self-published • Humble, R. (2007). The marriage. [PC], USA: Self- published • Minority Media. (2012). Papo & yo. [PS3], Canada: Self-published • Molleindustria. (2009). Everyday the same dream. [PC], USA: Self-published • QuanticDream. (2010). Heavy rain. [PS3], USA: Sony Computer Entertainment • Rohrer, J. (2007a). Passage. [PC], USA: Self-published • Tale of Tales. (2009). Fatale. [PC], Belgium: Self- published Bibliography • Alden, P. B. (2011). What exactly is a literary memoir? Retrieved June 12, 2015, from http://paulettealden.com/articles/what-exactly-is-a- literary-memoir-2/ • Autobiography. (n.d.). In Oxford dictionaries. Retrieved June 10, 2015, from http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/ autobiography • Ohannessian, K. (2012). A conversation with ‘Heavy Rain’ creator David Cage continues [Spoilers]. Retrieved May 25, 2015, from http://www.fastcompany.com/1558728/conversation- heavy-rain-creator-david-cagecontinues-spoilers • Rohrer, J. (2007b). What I was trying to do with Passage. Retieved June 13, 2015, from http://hcsoftware.sourceforge.net/passage/statement. html
- 63. Thanks! ROME 18-19 MARCH 2016 Alex Camilleri @AlexKalopsia All pictures belong to their respective authors www.memoirencode.com
Editor's Notes
- Hi everyone, thanks for joining my talk today. It’s called – as you can see – Games and Autobiography: Game Design is my Psychologist and it covers some aspects on how making an autobiographycal game helped me understanding more about myself. I have to start with a disclaimer though.
- This talk is Code-Free (I suspect unlike the majority of talks at the Codemotion)
- This means that is not tech-oriented, it’s not about programming, about how to become millionares or «successful», and I’m not here to tell you what games you SHOULD be making.
- It is a personal talk that I hope you’ll find interesting and perhaps will inspire you to make personal projects. This said…
- My name is Alex, and I’m a game designer and developer. I have a one-man-company called Kalopsia Games, I recently released the game Memoir En Code and people apparently liked it (which is the reason why I’m here today)
- This is an overview of the talk, I’ll start with an extended version of my introduction, talk about autobiography in games and then move on to present few autobiographical project I made and eventually Memoir En Code. The goal is to explain how game design became a self-reflexive practice or how I learnt more about myself through game design.
- So who am I? I’m Alex and I was born in Palermo
- I grew up in Sicily
- As probably the majority of you, I played tons of videogames since I was little, Indy with my dad, this awesome Batman game on the Atari LYNX with my brother, or MYST when I was visiting my aunt here in Rome when I was a kid.
- This is a nice way to say that I was quite bad at school, if you can read italian you can see that these are not great grades for a highschool student. And I think one of the reasons why I was not good is because I was VERY MUCH into videogames
- and I start my career as a game journalist for many years (pretty much until GDC 2011).
- Before that I dropped out twice from university, since I was too busy reviewing games and spending my time learning the basics of game programming and prototyping.
- developed a strong interest in unconventional games, or notgames or whatever they’re considered. I was so tired of analysing and writing about games that I felt like it was time I would start making games for real
- I went to few events and met some indies that wanted to make new kinds of games
- So I moved to Breda in the Netherlands
- Where I studied Game Design and Production
- I met Michelle, my girrlfriend, and we’ve lived together since then.
- I attanded lots of game conferences and gamejams – this is probably very familiar – and this allowed me to
- To move to Cambridge in the UK. So me and Michelle went in the UK
- During an internship I did game and level design on the game RIGS at Sony Guerrilla, after which
- We moved back to the Netherlands.
- I decided to open my own tiny one-man-company called Kalopsia. And I mean I really had a great time at Guerrilla but I think I felt like I wanted to devote my time onto more personal projects.
- While I was finishing my studies, Michelle Moved to Malmö doing her master in Interaction Design
- And we started a long-distance relationship, which totally sucked. It was really frustrating and we were both quite unhappy, so we traveled back and forth a lot (like once a month).
- So I said, screw it, I’m moving to Malmö too.
- After moving I worked for half a year in a game company in Copenhagen (which btw is just 20 minutes away from Malmö)
- And I eventually started working on my thesis project and commercial release Memoir En Code.
- Day and night – note the desperate look at the bottom right. For part of the development Michelle weekly filmed me and questioned me about the game, it was a very interesting practice, and I’ll get back to it shortly
- And I eventually released it, and people liked it!
- And then people took a flight to Rome and now I’m here talking to you.
- So why are you telling us all of this?
- It’s because my project is very personal and so is most of what I do. I think that all of us have stories to tell, personal one, that can be interesting and shared with other people in different ways. And through games we can also do that and that’s what I try and do.
- One of this ways is through games, where autobiography exists in different forms
- By definition, an autobiography is an account of a person’s life written by that person, and usually is conssidered to be from birth to death, chronological, linear, with factual narrative. I think what we call «autobiographical games» are more in line with the literary genre of Memoir.
- A memoir originates in personal experience and usually takes a portion of a life, disregarding the rest of the life. I think my work and many other projects published by other developers are more in line with this definition, but I guess is a semanthic problem to some degree. It’s definitely the reason why my game is called Memoir En Code though.
- But autobiography in games doesn’t appear in one single form, it’s not black and white, so I’ll shortly show how three very different games, Heavy Rain, Papo & Yo and Passage have autobiographical elements in different measures.
- Heavy Rain, developed by Quantic Dream on PS3, was developed by a team of around 100 people lead by David Cage as Writer/Director. In an interview, Cage explained how the story was inspired by his experience of losing his son in a supermarket. He said that «the starting point of Heavy Rain is, what would’ve happened if I didn’t find my son again?». So with such a huge team and project scope, the production moved towards fictional characters and settings.
- Papo & Yo was developed by 12 devs at Minority Media, lead by Vander Caballero as a designer. In this game the autobiographical component is much stronger since the game is based on Caballer’s experience of having an alcoholic father. Even in this case, the game fully embraces metaphor to address the narrative for many reasons, one of them is because such a tough topic and story is hard to digest in its raughest form.
- Then there’s Passage, but I could have taken many others of Rohrer’s games to be honest. It was a solo project based on his thoughts on life and death after a friend passed away. It has a strong metaphorical component in terms of game mechanics, but in the manifesto he wrote «…» This is exactly what I loved about his project. There was a clear and direct connection between the designer and the player, and there was no other layer between the two.
- So this was my aproach to Memoir En Code, which is very much similar – in terms of autobiographical component – to Rohrer’s work. What I tried to do with my project, though, was to steer away from metaphor, I didn’t want mechanics or aesthetics to be a symbol for something else. I wanted to create something rough and direct that would put my personal story in contact with the player.
- Memoir En Code was not my first experiment though. For many years, even before I moved to the Netherlands, I played with the idea of making very personal games.
- Bloom was supposed to be a game about the relationship between me and my brother. After highschool I think I was having some problems sharing my space with him and I wanted to show this through a game in which you showed two different realities of specific events, so using mechanics as metaphor. Then the project transformed into a bigger picture of the dynamics inside my family and I eventually never worked on it (and that’s probably for the best)
- Bound was made during a Game Prototype Challenge, and I think it was right before I decided to move to the Netherlands. In this case I wanted to use emchanics to express a specific feeling, feeling lost or out of place, while at the same time feeling stuck, so using mechanics as direct message
- The Mirror was heavily inspired by The Graveyard and Passage, and I made it I think when I knew I was about to live to the Netherlands. It’s a game about leaving family and friends behind and the fear of being alone. In this case the aesthetics gained a stronger importance in carrying the meaning of the game.
- The last one and for sure the most experimental one, was The Walk. It’s probably the one with the weakest autobiographical component, it was just inspired by a walk with Michelle. One evening we were walking on this sort of countryside street, and it was all calm and we were holding hands and I felt this joy of sharing a very simple moment. So I said «why not, let’s make a game in which players ACTUALLY have to hold hands». Thsi was made during the GGJ 2012 I think.
- I’m showing you these project to clarify that games can be very personal and can show that in very different way, and there’s not one way of doing that (it’s actually the countrary). And I doubt that without these small experiments I would have ended up making Memoir En Code.
- Here’s a trailer of the game so that you can finally understand a bit more about it.
- While developing Memoir En Code I was listening to a lot of music albums and I felt kind of jelous of the music medium. Music albums are devided in tracks, each one giving different feelings, and they are not demanding to the listeners (at least on a superficial level). In 20-40 minutes you listen to an album andeveryone, like EVERYONE can do that. So I got obsessed with the idea of creating a hybrid between a music album and a videogame, so I made a game album.
- So I made a collection of small games, all of them autobiographical (because that was my focus) for a total of around 30 minutes of basic playtime. This means that to actually finish and understand the game you’ll probably have to play it many tames. I also designed Memoir En Code to have a bi-directional linear progression, meaning that you don’t have a menu from which you select the game that you want to play, but you can move from one to the other because the actual sequence is part of the design. It’s basically the same thing as using a music cd.
- There are a total of 9 tracks and all of them have different gameplay, looks and mood. So let’s get to the point of the talk, which is what game design taught me about myself?
- Otoloop is probably one of the most personal tracks of the game, and it’s based on my childhood school-fear of being bullied because of my ears. It’s something that with time you stop caring about and eventually overcome, but definitely a huge huge problem for many kids and teens, often overlooked by friends/family. Even right now, you are probably thinking «oh yeah not a big deal» but it’s difficult to grasp the psychological impact that it has. And I thougt «ok, I will make the game about the fact that I used to grow my hair to cover them up, and my fear to go to the barber-shop to have a haircut», so I made it. And while I was designing it and playing I realized that, look at me, I still grow my hair despite the fact that I don’t even think about it.
- I realized that the game was much more about carrying a childhood complex that the depiction of it, so I eventually made Otoloop the only looping track of the game, to underline how it’s difficult to get past childhood a childhood complex.
- Laurana is another interesting example on how designing the game allowed me to understand more about myself. So the idea was to make a game about how difficult it was to study in our house in Palermo, and how annoying it was to see how my parents were always disappointed despite my best efforts. So I made a game in which you have to find a quite space in the house, and there are different sources of noise, and you can move and close doors to optimize the silence around you, and it’s kinda silly but also beautiful because I designed the simple Ais to behave exactly how my family members would (so for instance my brother has a higher chance of leaving door opens and so on). But despite this, by making the game quite difficult I found out something.
- I found out that I just needed my personal space. I could spend all my effort moving in the house, moving here and there, but the result would always be that it didn’t work. And regardles of the school results, the constant was a lack of personal space, which I hopefully solved by moving to the Netherlands.
- The last one is Silippo, wich is (nbut not entirely true) the closing track of Memoir En Code. I thought that I wanted to make a game about a bettime story that my dad used to tell me when I was little. So one day I called my dad and asked him to write the story down, and it was actually quite funny, because to some degree the character of that story (Silippo) I guess he was a future version of me or my brother, so it was kind of an inception between me as a designer, the player as me, my dad as the designer of the story, and me as Silippo. In this case I wanted to create this feeling of innocence and at the same time of safety and bond that you can feel when you are close to a loved one.
- And only after designing the game and the interactions, I realized that the feeling that I ended up recreating was the one of eventual melancoly of not being close to parents and family, but knowing that the beauty of memories is that they connect people and they’re timeless, they live in the past, present and future.
- In other words, game design helped me – and can help you – understanding more about myself and my own life, even if you don’t really know about it.
- In other words, game design helped me – and can help you – understanding more about myself and my own life, even if you don’t really know about it.
- And I’d like to remind you that there are an infinite amount of types of games that we CAN make, games that are personal and that can tell simple stories about simple people with simple lives. Each one of us has memories and stories (even the simplest one) that are shared among thousands of people and that can be expressed through games. So like many other developers who keep inspiring me did and are still doing, you can also work on something personal that can leave a trace of you.
- Now I’m preparing for the Steam release of Memoir En Code in May, but if you’re curious you can already get the game and you’ll receive the new version when it’s out.