A vindicating read. I find working in an industry that constantly reinforces how lucky you are to be there - to serve - so soul grinding. And it's both difficult and taboo to articulate it, so I mostly don't. Thanks for writing and publishing this.
bore off. we don't live in a socialist society do we. even if we did i'd not want to make something for someone as patronising as yourself, and who says the state imposed paradigms of artistic style were good for those societies, or helped them at all. i always find the supposed communist who talks down like this to people without material evidence a great pain in the arse, like, great fun you're gonna be working with.
my great socialist artwork funded by the people 'jog on'
i do love the paragraph-by-paragraph presentation here (makes those sentences hit!) but the PDF is also much appreciated. thank you :) let's demand the impossible!
I REALLY REALLY REALLY LIKE THIS ONE!! The tyranny of the audience and making stuff 'for' an audience and being beholden to them was something I was trying to grapple with in my manifesto but couldn't articulate but I think you really nailed it. Extremely grateful (sorry) for this one :)
Me literally saying shit like “preach” and “hell yeah” and “100%” and “mmmhm that’s right” after every sentence. This is so, so powerful.
Thank you so much for writing it, and for organizing the jam.
this rules !!! especially loved the part about success stories. once institutions find some "break-through success" that they deem marketable, palatable enough to sell, and less "scary and weird" in a previously un-marketable scene, it's over; they latch on to it, try to make it The Image Of A Scene in popular consciousness, and dangle the possibility of their future patronage over everyone else try to keep them Producing Marketable Content
Yeah, the success thing… I’m currently reading Art after Money, Money after Art by Max Haiven so while writing this essay I was carrying with me the thought of the Art World (itself a branch of capital/neoliberalism) always seeking out the new and edgy ideas to colonise and absorb into itself. ‘Weird’ is the new frontier for them. It’s a fun book (if a bit heady) and you could replace ‘art’ with ‘games’ in it and everything would still ring true.
So yeah, it’s this book + my frustrations with some of the attitudes I’ve seen in my vicinity that made me channel the ungrateful dog in me. I’m glad it resonates.
oh, the book sounds fascinating, i'll have to look it up! the issue does seem to apply to so many scenes; that reminds me as well of fashion and the ways that even explicitly anticapitalist/anti fashion industry/underground fashion movements can get absorbed by institutions and eventually reproduced/mass produced in softened and less "challenging" forms. serves double purpose to earn the industry more money, and also as a bonus rob a form of potentially political creative expression of its meaning.
I feel like this beautiful essays ties into the current trend of seeing games as services, as implicitly bound-to-be forever games; the authors shackled to their creations that never release but ever update; always needing to grow, to accrue more value for the shareholder-players that did not pay to support an artist and a work of art, but made an investment into promises of future all-consuming CONTENT.
The authors, the artists should be grateful that the CUSTOMER graces them with their munificent time. But the time of the artist, their life that feeds their art, does not belong to the artist anymore. As soon as the work becomes successful, as soon as it reaches the dreadful audience and the global market and the top of the charts and wishlist and sales. They want to buy our humanity, I think.
And should the creator defy the AUDIENCE, make decisions that doesn't sit right with them, immediately it is followed by review bombing. People with hundreds of hours playing the game leaving negative reviews; taking the holy review score hostage as leverage in a power-struggle with the artist so that the game becomes their vicarious game, satisfying their specific pleasures, as if the ability to be curious, to listen, to observe art as something that stands on its own and that you build a relationship with, warts and all, has been lost between the wallet and the storefront. It feels like they're at war with art and with us.
Fuck the audience. Fuck players. Fuck the market, fuck the retailers, fuck the cascades of sandpaper trying to grind down every game into the smoothest marketability and RETURN ON INVESTMENTS for absolutely everyone except the artists. And in particular fuck anyone that said "dead game" about a work of art that was released and had stopped receiving the updates they're so entitled to. Them, I'll bite clean (not clean) through the whole skull.
Thank you for the manifesto and thank you for the jam.
I have to be honest, the elevation of "biting the hand" as a value lands rather awkwardly for me living in Australia's current political reality, as One Nation swells & threatens to overwhelm the political status quo. (For non-Australians - they our Trumpian/Farage-ian political party at federal level.) Politically, the Western world is very much in the age of biting the hand, and it certainly doesn't seem to be pushing things in a helpful direction!
For the art-making side, I like Godard's metaphor in Contempt for the film director: the artist needs to be cunning like Odysseus, in the face of uncaring gods! Flatter when you need to, betray when you need to ... plenty of good art can be cooked over the fire of commerce. (Or outside of it, of course).
If anything, I feel envious on behalf of Hollywood for the give-and-take video game culture still has with its audience - something Hollywood gave away a long time ago...
Great read. I was a bit taken aback by the title, general people pleaser that I am, but I've found myself agreeing to most of your points. There's a certain yuckiness about it, the way how games are commodified, how they must be "marketed" with a "hook". Can't my heart be enough?
On the other hand, I do get it. While every game has a right to live, as soon as a game gets published, I don't think that game belongs solely to the author anymore. Of course, ideally it shouldn't be made *for* an audience in mind, but at the end of the day it's still an experience communicated to a player. I do think of the audience when making games, how it's going to be perceived, how a plauer might react to this or that. The craft of the experience is what attracts me to this medium, to speak in lines of code and notes of music, and while singing alone in the shower is definitely fun, nothing beats singing along with an audience. I hope I haven't misinterpreted your point.
Thank you! Very much agree that any piece of art once released does not belong to the author anymore (maybe that’s why it’s called release, because we’re free from it), conversely I think the only time the author has sole ownership of their work is when they’re working on it, hence why I like to underline the importance of having agency over process, and any inclusion of ‘the audience’ in process should be backed by real intention and not by the prescriptive and preemptive self-censoring pressures of ‘the market’ or even just the idea of ‘being known’.
← Return to manifesto
Comments
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL IS GOING TO HAPPEN. thank you. i love you.
A vindicating read. I find working in an industry that constantly reinforces how lucky you are to be there - to serve - so soul grinding. And it's both difficult and taboo to articulate it, so I mostly don't. Thanks for writing and publishing this.
i’m just saying everyone (including the ‘most common denominator’ people) deserves better 😎👍 sorry you’re bad at reading
bore off. we don't live in a socialist society do we. even if we did i'd not want to make something for someone as patronising as yourself, and who says the state imposed paradigms of artistic style were good for those societies, or helped them at all. i always find the supposed communist who talks down like this to people without material evidence a great pain in the arse, like, great fun you're gonna be working with.
my great socialist artwork funded by the people 'jog on'
i do love the paragraph-by-paragraph presentation here (makes those sentences hit!) but the PDF is also much appreciated. thank you :) let's demand the impossible!
ahh awesome! i had typeset the PDF as a zine so it’s cool to see it printed. i should print a copy…
i just know that something good is gonna happen!
i dont know when.
but just saying it could even make it happen!
like the Sun coming out :)
I REALLY REALLY REALLY LIKE THIS ONE!!
The tyranny of the audience and making stuff 'for' an audience and being beholden to them was something I was trying to grapple with in my manifesto but couldn't articulate but I think you really nailed it. Extremely grateful (sorry) for this one :)
Me literally saying shit like “preach” and “hell yeah” and “100%” and “mmmhm that’s right” after every sentence. This is so, so powerful. Thank you so much for writing it, and for organizing the jam.
i knew it was a good idea to deliver the essay paragraph-by-paragraph. thank you!
Fuck yeah
this rules !!! especially loved the part about success stories. once institutions find some "break-through success" that they deem marketable, palatable enough to sell, and less "scary and weird" in a previously un-marketable scene, it's over; they latch on to it, try to make it The Image Of A Scene in popular consciousness, and dangle the possibility of their future patronage over everyone else try to keep them Producing Marketable Content
Thanks Violet! I appreciate your entries a lot.
Yeah, the success thing… I’m currently reading Art after Money, Money after Art by Max Haiven so while writing this essay I was carrying with me the thought of the Art World (itself a branch of capital/neoliberalism) always seeking out the new and edgy ideas to colonise and absorb into itself. ‘Weird’ is the new frontier for them. It’s a fun book (if a bit heady) and you could replace ‘art’ with ‘games’ in it and everything would still ring true.
So yeah, it’s this book + my frustrations with some of the attitudes I’ve seen in my vicinity that made me channel the ungrateful dog in me. I’m glad it resonates.
oh, the book sounds fascinating, i'll have to look it up! the issue does seem to apply to so many scenes; that reminds me as well of fashion and the ways that even explicitly anticapitalist/anti fashion industry/underground fashion movements can get absorbed by institutions and eventually reproduced/mass produced in softened and less "challenging" forms. serves double purpose to earn the industry more money, and also as a bonus rob a form of potentially political creative expression of its meaning.
bark bark
yes!
We really do nee to be more ungrateful, thank you for your beautiful words
I feel like this beautiful essays ties into the current trend of seeing games as services, as implicitly bound-to-be forever games; the authors shackled to their creations that never release but ever update; always needing to grow, to accrue more value for the shareholder-players that did not pay to support an artist and a work of art, but made an investment into promises of future all-consuming CONTENT.
The authors, the artists should be grateful that the CUSTOMER graces them with their munificent time. But the time of the artist, their life that feeds their art, does not belong to the artist anymore. As soon as the work becomes successful, as soon as it reaches the dreadful audience and the global market and the top of the charts and wishlist and sales. They want to buy our humanity, I think.
And should the creator defy the AUDIENCE, make decisions that doesn't sit right with them, immediately it is followed by review bombing. People with hundreds of hours playing the game leaving negative reviews; taking the holy review score hostage as leverage in a power-struggle with the artist so that the game becomes their vicarious game, satisfying their specific pleasures, as if the ability to be curious, to listen, to observe art as something that stands on its own and that you build a relationship with, warts and all, has been lost between the wallet and the storefront. It feels like they're at war with art and with us.
Fuck the audience. Fuck players. Fuck the market, fuck the retailers, fuck the cascades of sandpaper trying to grind down every game into the smoothest marketability and RETURN ON INVESTMENTS for absolutely everyone except the artists. And in particular fuck anyone that said "dead game" about a work of art that was released and had stopped receiving the updates they're so entitled to. Them, I'll bite clean (not clean) through the whole skull.
Thank you for the manifesto and thank you for the jam.
A+
"One does not have to relate to connect" reallll
Love this!
Beautiful
I have to be honest, the elevation of "biting the hand" as a value lands rather awkwardly for me living in Australia's current political reality, as One Nation swells & threatens to overwhelm the political status quo. (For non-Australians - they our Trumpian/Farage-ian political party at federal level.) Politically, the Western world is very much in the age of biting the hand, and it certainly doesn't seem to be pushing things in a helpful direction!
For the art-making side, I like Godard's metaphor in Contempt for the film director: the artist needs to be cunning like Odysseus, in the face of uncaring gods! Flatter when you need to, betray when you need to ... plenty of good art can be cooked over the fire of commerce. (Or outside of it, of course).
If anything, I feel envious on behalf of Hollywood for the give-and-take video game culture still has with its audience - something Hollywood gave away a long time ago...
one nation is part of the hand. hollywood is part of the hand. i am going to bite you!!!
Now THIS is a manifesto! Fuck yeah, it rules!
100%! Gratitude is a psyop! Any creation worth our time is an act of defiance.
Please point me in the general biting direction.
bite the hand that fucking feeds you. now and always.
This rocks. Thanks for writing it.
Hell yeah dude, this fucking rules
🦷 🦷
Yes! So good!
I feel like you wrote this just for me, your audience ;)
Great writing.
the elusive g?rl reading this… you are welcome 🫡
in the first page: "I refuse this indignation" - Maybe you meant indignity?
against grammatical precision
No one has to endure thunders of the gods cast from the abounding light of heaven... Not even Dhaos.
Great read. I was a bit taken aback by the title, general people pleaser that I am, but I've found myself agreeing to most of your points. There's a certain yuckiness about it, the way how games are commodified, how they must be "marketed" with a "hook". Can't my heart be enough?
On the other hand, I do get it. While every game has a right to live, as soon as a game gets published, I don't think that game belongs solely to the author anymore. Of course, ideally it shouldn't be made *for* an audience in mind, but at the end of the day it's still an experience communicated to a player. I do think of the audience when making games, how it's going to be perceived, how a plauer might react to this or that. The craft of the experience is what attracts me to this medium, to speak in lines of code and notes of music, and while singing alone in the shower is definitely fun, nothing beats singing along with an audience. I hope I haven't misinterpreted your point.
Thank you! Very much agree that any piece of art once released does not belong to the author anymore (maybe that’s why it’s called release, because we’re free from it), conversely I think the only time the author has sole ownership of their work is when they’re working on it, hence why I like to underline the importance of having agency over process, and any inclusion of ‘the audience’ in process should be backed by real intention and not by the prescriptive and preemptive self-censoring pressures of ‘the market’ or even just the idea of ‘being known’.