Uncommon Assembly » oddity

The Odd World of Vasily Zotov

Uncommon Assembly — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 01:08:36 +0000

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The games of Vasily Zotov are in the puzzle adventure genre, with fantastical overtones and somewhat autobiographical narrative themes… or, as Zotov calls it: “a little bit of truth reflecting through the fiction.” Zotov, a Russian immigrant who lives in Los Angeles, has been involved in a deportation struggle with US Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services, and his real-life struggles have proven very influential to his games. The series, consisting of the games SpaceSpy, Refugee, and Refugee: The Second Hearing, tells the story of a homeless “alien” character who emerges from the sewers in Hollywood, is admitted to a psych ward and escapes, and eventually appears before and escapes an extradition court, all under the gaze of the ominous “Director Canavati”.

Zotov’s games are awkward, dark, confusing, David Lynchian. The art is seemingly unplanned and wildly inconsistent, and it is an amazing collage of colorful, disparate imagery. His games have been called “either insanity or genius”. A ten minute video of SpaceSpy, in its entirety, followed by Refugee: the Second Hearing:

The raw, unpolished feel of Zotov’s games recalls a stream-of-consciousness aesthetic often found in art brut and outsider art (also see: vernacular art, naïve art). These types of art are generally created outside the boundaries of the official culture of the medium. The value of art brut as contemporary art was first recognized and cataloged by French artist Jean Debuffet in the late 1940s. Debuffet believed that mainstream culture tends to consume and incorporate all new developments in art, therefore removing from them their genuine power and expression. He believed that art brut was resistant to the influences of mainstream culture, since the artists were unable or unwilling to be assimilated.


Page from The Story of the Vivian Girls by Henry Darger	Grotto of Redemption by Paul Dobberstein, photo by Ben Franske

One would certainly feel less likely to find such pure expression in a medium as complex as game development. But Zotov’s games seem to exhibit a design sense of such raw execution, while still completing the tedious, even if imperfect, production role of programmer. I can’t say that I fully understand what goes on in the man’s mind, but the results are intriguing.

I interviewed Zotov back in February about SpaceSpy. We spoke a day before a court proceeding that, according to Zotov, threatened to extricate him back to Russia… a situation reflected in the climactic final scene of the SpaceSpy (sometimes to startling accuracy… including dates, names of participants, and addresses). I asked him about the game’s peculiar appearance, and his process constructing it:

Uncommon Assembly: Thanks for taking some time to talk with me, Vasily. Let’s start with a little background. Can you tell me a little about yourself, and how you began developing these games?

Vasily Zotov: Well, I auditioned / was interviewed for a decent number of game companies… Did not make it - was turned away always on the first interview. Oh, I participated in the student game competition, and turned out to be the 7th, got the prize. It was 1999, before the psychward (a couple of months before). I am the mental patient for 10 years with the most recent diagnosis of schizophrenia. I am not mentally sick and I am currently the asylum applicant in the United States, as a misdiagnosed paper. Basically like many other mental patients I allege that doctors are crazy I am not. You know if you would consider mental ward for opinion, I would say 95-99% of mental patients would say that they are OK, doctors are crazy. This is the truth. I am In the town of Hollywood, 20 min from downtown, trying to put together papers against the deportation. Originally is a secret - it is they who are to depart should prove it, I will not help them.

I found myself in the process of filling application for asylum in the United States because of the police incident which started in early April 2008 and it was developed to most likely the court warrant of mental matter in December 2008. Then DOJ did not grant my asylum, I was thinking like how I could influence their decision by my art.

So tell me about SpaceSpy.

This is the story about the flight of the human spirit ( flight from mental doctors to freedom). And this story was not interesting till the very moment all of sudden on the chapter I made this turn in the screenplay - Space Spy (who is a mental patient) was looking for a love. It was a great piece found, I had much more integrity (with the story) from this point. It was chapter 2. As any story about the flight of the human spirit it is something big and inspirational. The Hollywood piece of story is also important. It’s almost a religion this way - Oscar ceremony of chapter 2, crazy director of chapter 1, the development of culture above the culture

The art and level design in SpaceSpy seem very unfiltered… as if it all came right out of someone’s mind and appeared in a game. Its imperfection is one of the more compelling things about the game. Do you have anything to add to that?

The search for perfect in arts has the eternal history. This reminds me of the time I had this white paper psychological issue - when you are sitting for hours with the white paper and don’t know what to do with it. What would be the next step - in entertainment like that - Alone in the dark / Myst type of entertainment based on stills - to figure out the role of dynamics - like it is done now it is much more picture gallery than a motion picture.

Can you tell me a little about how the art was created and/or acquired for this game?

I did it almost all on my own occasionally for period of 10 years, except of a couple of models I bought for very cheap.

You use a combination of collaged 3D and 2D elements… the point where one stops and the other starts is sometimes hard to distinguish. Can you tell me anything about your technique of building these levels?

Well, I was underequipped and still had to proceed with ‘field’ equipment because there was no desktop computers at home (as sometimes there was no home). I mean if 5 people came out of the bus in the Level 5 of the game, and those were the figurines developed by me in 2003 when I had no idea at all of modeling (I mean each figurine is of 15000 polygons), of course you need to substitute each figurine by the still image, or it will make your cheap old Compaq laptop freaked out right away.

The different art elements in the game (characters, props, backgrounds) appear very different to me. Some are 3d models, some are 2d art. Some of the models are robotic, some are very organic. Some of the 2D art is photography, some of it is graphic design. Was it intentional for the pieces to appear so different from each other?

I thought I would be capable to keep audience interested if I would change styles. And the character is a schizophrenic. I met a lot of people like him in the ward. He lives in the permanent break. Things around him are being changed permanently by the power of his own fantasy.

Vasily, thanks for speaking with me about SpaceSpy.

Thanks.

A Flash image gallery should be here. Please visit Uncommon Assembly to view.

If you wish to learn more about Vasily Zotov and his games, there is a fantastic interview on TIGSource by Jim Rossignol, and there are mounds of various entries on Zotov’s own site, QuiteSoulless.com. Some of the site is difficult to navigate, so here are some links:

SpaceSpy official site
Feedback on SpaceSpy from IGF judges in 2009
Refugee official site
The Making of Refugee: The Second Hearing
Various Documents

Hazard: The Journey of Life

Uncommon Assembly — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 12:55:01 +0000

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Hazard: The Journey of Life is a “Philosophical First Person Single Player Exploration Puzzle Art Game” where the player must work their way through a succession of byzantine corridors, solving a series of spacial problems along the way, in order to liberate themselves from captivity. Each challenge rewards the player with a simple lesson, and the promise that they are just that much closer to freedom. The journey serves as an analogue for the types of problems one inherently encounters throughout life, and all the unpredictability that goes along with it. It’s a game about choices and experimentation, and an existential meditation on how very few problems in life are able to be solved with the benefit of hindsight.

By appearances, Hazard is a peculiar, stark white world punctuated with areas of intense color… an oddly engineered, beautifully minimalist, and occasionally stunning rat maze:

Hazard: The Journey of Life is a grand finalist of Epic’s Make Something Unreal competition and a finalist and presenter at Sense of Wonder Night at the 2009 Tokyo Game Show. Creator Alexander Bruce spoke with me recently from Melbourne, Australia about the bizarre art of Hazard:

Uncommon Assembly: Thanks for taking the time to answer a few questions, Alex. Let’s start out with a little introduction. Can you tell me a bit about your experience modding, and game-making in general?

Alex: Sure. Firstly, on the point about modding, I’ve never considered myself a modder. I started working with the Unreal Engine back in 2006 whilst I was studying a degree in Games Design in Australia, and we were using UT2K4 as a toolset to start learning how to apply principles we were learning.

Back then, we were just working on simple things, like making mutators, but I really loved what I was doing and took what the course was teaching us and just ran with it. I actually started working on the dynamic geometry system for Hazard as the second thing I had ever done with the Unreal Engine, because I wanted to make Snake, but didn’t want it to involve a snake. It’s strange, but there’s history about it on my website. I’m a little odd when it comes to games design, and I like to think outside the box. So I’ve been doing that for the past several years in my own time, and have also worked in industry as a programmer in Australia.

So, you are the sole developer of Hazard. Are you responsible for the overall visual style of the game?

Alex: Yes. I’m solely responsible for everything that has gone into the game so far. I have done all of the design work, all of the programming and all of the art work. I’ve had a lot of people involved over the last couple of years when bouncing ideas around, but they were never officially involved with the project, just people that I was talking to.

How would you describe the appearance of Hazard to someone who has never seen it?

Alex: I’d have to describe it as others have described it. It’s got a very simplistic vector art style. Though one of the main points I’d make about the game is that it’s incredibly vibrant, which isn’t something you see as much of these days unless you’re looking around the indie scene.

Obviously the most striking visual quality of Hazard is the minimalist environment and selective use of color. What drove this decision to use bold colors to highlight certain areas of an otherwise bleak world?

Alex: It looked interesting, and really just made the game stand out from other games. I needed every aspect of the game to be unique, and it was something that you didn’t really see around the place. The art gallery is probably one of the most striking uses of colour, but honestly, all of the colours in the game are there either because puzzles specifically needed them, or because I got sick of too much white in the game. There are still too many areas that are too open and white, and that’s some of the feedback that I’ve received. People like colours, and my darks are a way of giving them that without requiring textures.

So what was the inspiration for the overall look of the game?

Alex: That’s an interesting one, and realistically the same answer applies to every other aspect of the game. Firstly, the game started out as being about dynamic geometry, and when you’ve got thousands of individual tiles in the game and you start using textures, you end up with a whole lot of repetition, and the game starts getting a very dirty look. There were also a lot of technical considerations with how tiles would react when being shot at. In early versions of Hazard, they would fade away, which you can see in very old footage of dynamic geometry. However, in the transition to Unreal Engine 3, you couldn’t do that anymore, because they don’t do depth peeling with their translucency.

So I started working on new transition effects, and ended up messing around with additive materials, masking, etc. Eventually I ended up with the masked effect that you see in there today. But that really worked best when you had lots of solid colours.

So, given that the tiles had to be solid colours, I then had to try and somehow make this entire world that fit with them. In earlier projects I was working on, I ran into the problem of not wanting lighting in the scene, because I wanted vibrancy. I wanted the inverse of lights. I wanted to say “everything starts off 100% lit, and then I start subtracting colours”. So, I went off and made what I called “Darking”, which was removing colours. With how I’d implemented that, I started getting really strange colour schemes going, when I’d subtract too much colour from the scene. For a very long time, Hazard was a prototype ground for any crazy ideas that I had, many of which I’ve now saved for later projects. Darking was one of the ones that made it into the game.

I was going to ask about that. The area above the infamous “Walk/Jump” chasm, for instance, appears to be colored by the absence of certain colors of light.

Alex: That’s correct, and people responded well to it. So, there were technical reasons for how the game looks, but I also needed something that didn’t look like “just another Unreal game”.

Realistically though, there’s not many things going on with the visual style of the game. There’s darking, which is really just phong lighting without being capped at zero, so that you can start getting negative light values going. The Unreal Engine already handles that, but by default the lighting doesn’t deal with negative values. And the edge detection routine, well, that was purely custom out of a lot of experimentation. There were many other edge detection post processing shaders out there, but they didn’t deal with large flat surfaces very well, and unfortunately, that’s what all of Hazard is. The only other material stuff that you’ve got happening is the effect on the tiles themselves, which is just a straight dither.

Can you tell me more about the art gallery? For those who haven’t seen it, there are a series of rooms set up like a museum or storage room, with rows of bizarre and colorful sculptures.

Alex: Sure. So, when I got the edge detection post processing going (the vector art style look), I was able to remove the tiled texture look from the entire game, as seen in this example:

Without textures, I was able to start getting more complex geometry in there. I found it really interesting to jump into standard UT3 levels and turn on outlines only, and see how complex geometry showed up. When I started throwing random geometry together and then adding darks to them as a test, you started getting things that looked quite unique, but unfortunately, they didn’t really fit in with the very simplistic world of Hazard.

I had the philosophy written down for “Absorb The Atmosphere” long before I had even made the puzzle for it, and I came up with the idea of having 27 boxes, 1 of which contained another room, to really enforce the idea of looking around when you didn’t really need to. I made the art gallery to fit the needs of that puzzle, and as a way to show off the abstract geometry to people without seeming too out of place. However, because I needed to develop so many pieces, I started using it as a means to make statements about art. So, for example, one of the pieces in there is scribble, and I put that in there because it’s a statement about what you can classify as art. Some will say that scribble isn’t art, others will argue that it is. I know I’ve seen things like it in art galleries. You’ve also got statements about modern art in there, which is the collection of random structures that don’t really mean a lot. I know that if you drive through the city of Melbourne, you will see lots of examples of this, and some of them are real eye sores, but they serve a purpose. They catch your attention, and are interesting in their own right.

So again, it comes down to partly technical reasons, partly philosophical reasons, and partly to demonstrate more uniqueness

I went around to each sculpture, on each floor. I probably spent 10 minutes just checking those out. They’re amazing.

Alex: Thanks.

How much of the art assets were created for the game, and how much are re-used art from Unreal?

Alex: They’re all just random UT geometry slapped together to seem interesting. I didn’t model any of them myself. Everything you see there is somewhere within Unreal Tournament 3. So, for example, there’s some kind of deer beast in there. I thought the UDamage made a good Deer Head, and then found a bunch of gibs and turned them into the creatures body. Without textures, any model could fit with any other model.

The sheer lack of context for some of those pieces just made it all the more compelling. So how much previsualization went into the look of Hazard? At what point in the development did you realize the final style of the game?

Alex: That’s a really odd question to answer, and my response to that question, and other questions about the game in general will seem like everything about the game was done in a very haphazard way, but that’s not true at all. I work very iteratively, and at a very subconscious level. I can’t honestly say that I put a lot of thought into how the game should look, and then had to work to get there. I kept changing things as I was going along, until eventually it all just felt “right”. It’s not the most conventional way to develop a game, but I tried so many times to really write design documents, flesh things out for the game, but I’d always get other more interesting concepts come up, and have to change things.

So I started just working with the flow of development. I’m a true believer in just following your heart, and it only stopped me when the game looked like it did.

So which came first, the vector art style with bold colors built by subtracting light, or a great puzzle game? Or did they both just come to life at the same time?

Alex: The dynamic geometry system came first. The way I approach games is by finding the absolute smallest game design concept which is different to what else exists out there and then building up. Dynamic geometry was fun, but dynamic geometry within deathmatch didn’t really demonstrate what the system could do. Once again, there were also technical issues with having thousands of tiles being updated across a network, so I moved over to being a single player game, and started getting puzzles going with dynamic geometry. Then, I figured it would be much cooler if you could have a gun to interact with geometry, and at some stage, the dynamic geometry wasn’t even the major point of the game anymore.

It was just about making interesting spaces. At one point, it took a turn into being about player expectations, and then philosophy was added. The art style came about when the game first moved to Unreal Engine 3. However, the pure vector style of only seeing edges was more recent. Sometime around May perhaps. I needed to do Edge Detection for another project I was working on, and spent about 40 hours getting the perfect shader going. I applied it into Hazard, and it really just made the game look that much more visually appealing.

Would you ever consider working with an artist, or would that get in the way of the experimental appeal of your work? Have you worked with artists on your experimental games?

Alex: I’d consider getting involved with an artist as far as remaking the gallery and the icons goes, but not for the overall look of the world. I really don’t think that more detail makes the game more special. I’ve done lots of experiments with that myself, and it just starts getting distracting. Simplicity is one of the things that makes it look very different.

Agreed.

Alex: There are other people in my course who are great artists, and I’ve worked with them on a number of projects, but I’m a designer at heart, and unless my game really needed art for a very specific reason, then I would see what I could do myself first. There are other things that I have developed that could do with an art pass, and when it comes time for that, I’ll get someone else involved. But my view is that there are enough projects out there that are interesting because of the art involved that I can purely focus on making games that are interesting for the design. I feel that there are fewer people doing that these days than there used to be 10 - 20 years ago.

So what does the future look like for Hazard?

Alex: Well, I’m now a grand finalist in the Make Something Unreal competition, so I’ll need to do any final touches to the mod as it is right now for that. I’m also looking to enter it into the Independent Games Festival and the Experimental Gameplay Workshop. I want more people to experience the game, just because I feel the philosophy is something that is just different to what you find in other games I’m also working on making the game standalone so that I can sell it sometime next year. One of the biggest hurdles is that not many people have Unreal Tournament 3, so I feel it’s worth it, because people are definitely interested in the game otherwise.

And what’s next for you?

Alex: I’ve always got a long list of other games I need to develop, but right now, Hazard is going to be taking up too many months of my time to really start considering them fully. I’m just taking things one step at a time, and after Hazard is released, I’ll work out which project is best to get started on. I think I’ll get some of my smaller game designs out of the way first. Hazard has been an enormous effort to get done. I never intended to take it to the level it reached, but again, I was just following my heart, and that’s where it led me.

Overall, though, at this stage I’m looking to get full time into the indie scene. I’m not going to jump straight back into the work force within Australia. Hazard has been well received, and I really need to get it out to a wider audience. We’ll see how that goes, but I’d love to keep working on my own projects.

Well thanks again for giving me a few minutes, Alex. Good luck with IGF 2010, I hope to see you there.

Alex: Thanks.

Hazard: The Journey of Life is an Unreal mod and requires Unreal 3 (Windows) and the 2.0 patch. Check out Alex’s site to download Hazard, and to see his other amazing games and experiments. There is also a great video of his presentation of Hazard at Sense of Wonder Night (warning… some major spoilers here).

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The Absurdity of Golf?

Uncommon Assembly — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 15:07:22 +0000

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I was first introduced to Golf? at the Independent Games Festival at GDC2005 in San Jose, and again later that year at the IndieGamesCon in Oregon. This game has since found a place in my mind as the ultimate holy grail of bizarre game art, sealed by the fact that it was never officially released.

Created by a joint effort from Detective Brand and Chronic Logic, Golf? is in fact a golf game that features a sort of macabre, misplaced, French art noir film-meets Alice in Wonderland art style. Artist Luke Hetherton stated in a 2006 interview with Gamasutra: “I just tried to think of what [Little Nemo illustrator] Windsor McCay would do if he had to make static objects you run around and stare at.” You play as robot with interchangeable contraptions for a head, cursed with a lazy, drunken caddy who is adorned with the image of Franklin D. Roosevelt. So much of this game makes no sense whatsoever that it’s surprising to find that it’s actually a simple, working golf game at its core.

At the time of this posting, Golf? in a beta form is still available from the Golf Question Mark website. Fire up Golf? for a great example of how fantastic and absurd gaming can really be.

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4 Minutes, 33 Seconds of Uniqueness

Uncommon Assembly — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 08:10:39 +0000

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One of the more notable results of the 2009 Global Game Jam, was 4 Minutes, 33 Seconds of Uniqueness. It was developed by Petri Purho (and team), who also created the clever indie breakout hit Crayon Physics Deluxe under his Kloonigames moniker. The game was created within a 24-our window and was provided by the competition with the theme “As long as we have each other, we’ll never run out of problems“.

Purho’s solution was to create a black screen that slowly fills up with white, from left to right, taking 4 minutes and 33 seconds. There are no controls, and no user interaction. If the screen fills up with white, you win. But if another individual anywhere in the world starts up the game, you both lose. You can only win if you are the sole unique player of this game for 4′ 33″.

The game takes it’s name from a controversial musical composition for piano created in 1952 by experimental composer John Cage. Cage composed a score that was completely silent, lasting 4 minutes and 33 seconds. Sometimes called Silence, 4′33″, or 4′33″ of Silence. The inaugural performance was carried out by famed pianist David Tudor, who sat in front of a piano with a stopwatch, with the keyboard closed, periodically turning the pages of the score. Cage’s 4′33″ was generally intended to challenge the very definition of a “performance”.

I found the graphics for 4′33″ the game to be reminiscent of abstract expressionist painter Mark Rothko’s “Multiform” paintings from the same era… striking blocks of opposing colors and values. Though, being dynamic, the game gives an additional sense of urgency:


	Works by Mark Rothko

4 Minutes, 33 Seconds of Uniqueness can be downloaded at the Nordic Game Jam site. In the Global Game Jam tradition, all games created for the competition are free. Just wait a few minutes, so I can finish my game.

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