Shader is a game I’m making and stranding on one laptop. Stephen Totilo wrote a great article on his brush with Shader, he relates his personal experience with it as well as my own in making it. It’s a great article because he doesn’t spend time talking about what Shader might mean or should mean. He focuses on what it means to him.

The comments are also pretty great. There are many many people on this article and others calling Shader pretentious and not-novel and dumb and for one reason or another think Shader is bad. And the haters might have a point. There is an argument that commenters haven’t hit on but that I think is important. An argument that Shader could be helping to destroy things I love, that is: the power of clued-in-art to destroy approachable-art.

Lets talk for a minute about everyone’s favorite piece of Dadaism: Duchamp’s Fountain. Fountain is pretty hated, then and now, and I think that makes sense. Say you pay a little money to wander into an art gallery in 1917, you’re used to seeing representational art like this but instead are presented with Fountain, or this or, god help you,  this. Of course you don’t get it, Fountain in 1917 is exciting to thousands of people, epic representational works are exciting to millions. Unfortunately for you, early 20th century casual art fan, you ain’t seen nothin‘ yet. Modern art pretty much kills representational art.

You’re not really supposed to get Fountain. Duchamp isn’t talking to you, he’s talking to the art world. He’s saying “dude, what does the word art even meannnnnn?” but you’re not super interested in that question. You don’t spend every waking moment of your life thinking about sculpture and painting like Duchamp does. You want something that moves you, something that hits you in the face and makes you say “wow”. You want art that speaks to you. Unforunately for Fountain to speak to you you have to know what’s going on in the art world in 1917. You have to read about and care about art to appreciate it and that’s not something representational art requires. Fountain is just too damned inside baseball for you. But this new kind of art, art that requires a deep understanding of the art world, kind of takes over. It shoulders representational art off the main stage and takes over. You hated Fountain and railed against it, but you lost, and now art sucks for you.

Now you walk into the NY MOMA and are just like “wtf“.

Of course there is great contemporary art that you don’t need an education to appreciate, I wrote a whole blog post about that. Unfortunately a lot of modern art does require deep engagement with the art world and in my oppinion the NY MOMA does a particularly bad job of stuffing itself with unaproachable art. In a way, those of us without an art education lost art. It was stolen from us by the likes of Duchamp and Jackson Pollock.

And so Shader comes to exist. A game (possibly) exciting to thousands instead of millions. Shader is exciting to me because of how it is different from writing a game that might be released. If you don’t write videogames for a living those reasons will not resonate with you. Stephen Totilo plays a lot of games and he plays a lot of games as his profession, but he has a different relationship with Shader than alllll those games he plays so it’s interesting to him. If games aren’t a big part of your life then Shader is probably not going to be interesting to you (i’m not saying that the obverse is necesarily true though).

Shader is too inside-baseball for most people to like, which is not a reason to hate it, but it also might be a tiny shot at populist games. It might be one little piece of kindling on the fire of games that are only interesting to those with a deep understanding of games. And could that fire eventually burn so furiously that it snuffs out beautiful games that everyone can love like World of Goo and Super Meat Boy?

No actually it can’t, because unlike painting and sculpture there is a popular market for games which means that the weird-abstract games will happily exist alongside populist gold just like books and movies and music.

So get over it forum commenters! People are gonna make games you don’t get. You can’t stop them!

Shader is playable! I wrote about this kinda weird project I’ve embarked on here and now it’s a playable thing, it’s not quite done but it’s pretty cool.

It’s a game that will only ever exist on a single laptop. I’m writing it on a cheap netbook I bought here in Buenos Aires and when it’s done I will destroy the usb/internet/bluetooth capabilities of the netbook and super-glue it’s harddrive in place so Shader can’t get off the netbook (at this moment it’s still un-saobtaged so I’m writing this blog post from it).

In Shader you manipulate an image to make some specific visual effect using buttons and sliders. It can also be played sandbox-style to make whatever weird, trippy visuals you want. It has about six levels right now that that kind of ease you into the experience. The sandbox mode works really well too, that’s my favorite way to play. I think Daniel Benmurgui and Agustín Cordes both like the levels more, it may depend on how much you’ve had to drink which you prefer.

Sarah and I celebrated new years 2014 in Buenos Aires at the house of Tembac with his friends. It was a great night and we didn’t get home until 6:00am which is the second time that’s happened to us in Buenos Aires, these people like fun! New Years in BA is a lot like New Years in Canada except that everybody spills into the street because it’s summer and warm then lights off fireworks. It was amazing to see all these little kids running around at 2:00am lighting off explosives. Most of the fireworks people were lighting off are illegal in Canada because kids are always blowing their fingers off, thankfully no one around us was hurt and everyone had a good time. Turns out fireworks can be a really lovely expression of community.

After the fireworks died down (3am or so?) we headed back inside and I pulled out Shader and nestled it onto a table among the wine and beer bottles. Everybody had a go, we always played in sandbox mode because that’s more fun for the audience of people watching. It worked a lot like the fireworks had, there was always something interesting going on on screen and when someone found a particularly good effect it elicited appreciative oohs and ahhs.

It was really cool that I was there, right next to Shader, and that I will always be right there. It’s fun to point to a button and tell someone “this makes it go faster”, like it’s a three way conversation between me and the player and the game. When you’re playtesting commercial games you have to never explain or give encouragement to the player because you won’t be there to do those things when it’s released. With shader I can suggest things and laugh appreciatively at the cool things they do, if they get confused I can steer them in the right direction.  It’s like I’m part of the game and I really like that. The joke is often made that you should ship a copy of yourself with every game, with Shader I’m actually doing it.

Maybe when you get to play it you’ll be able to feel that night when you press the keys, the carefree night of explosives and friends staying up late playing video games.

Yesterday I went out and bought a cheap netbook. I’ve downloaded onto the netbook the as3 development environment I use to make games and started writing. I’m going to write Shader entirely on the netbook.

After I finish writing it I’m going to destroy all the usb, bluetooth and internet capability of the netbook and superglue the harddrive in place. Shader will be stuck forever on this little netbook I bought in Buenos Aires.

The game will be about using math and programming to make trippy visuals. It will have levels, a difficulty curve, a friendly UI. It will not have a tutorial. It doesn’t need one because I can explain to you how to play, because unlike most games there will only ever be one copy so I will always be there to show you how to play.

I’m not actually totaly sure why I’m doing this. I have a strong urge to do it. Ever since I thought of the idea about a month ago in Panama I’ve been itching to start. Here are some things I like about Shader, although I hesitate to say these are the reasons I’m making Shader. I know I want to make it, and that’s reason enough.

-Shader can never reach a large audience. Games can reach a massive audience, my game Fantastic Contraption was played by tens of millions of people. Because of the possibility of reaching an audience in the millions it is hard to ever be truly satisfied with how many people have played your game. Traditionally the audience’s experience is the entire point of the game but it is impossible for millions of people to play Shader. There is only one frail netbook, and when that’s gone, Shader is gone. This is weirdly freeing. I will never feel the hope, yearning, and stress of releasing Shader. This is also different from simply never releasing the game because merely the fact that you *could* release it will sit in the back of your mind. You will feel cowardly for not seeking an audience. After I sabotage the netbook it will be impossible to release it so there will be no stress.

-I get to see the game’s entire life. Usually the vast majority of a game’s life happens outside its creator’s view. You get to spend the formative years with a game, nurse it to life, help it stand, watch the first few people play it. But then it explodes away from you. All you get is tendrils of people’s reported experience. The game is now it’s own thing and you don’t really know what its life is like. I will get to see the entire life of Shader. I wont sit, staring out the window, wondering what the game’s life is like now. I will know. I will be sitting next to it watching.

-No need to attain standards but my own. Since Shader can’t find an audience there is no reason to consider what anyone else will love or hate about it. I will never nervously click on a review link or get an email about how much someone doesn’t like it.

-No tech support. No Tech Support!

-The feeling of creating one piece of art. I’ve always wondered what it would be like to paint a painting once and have only that. I’m so accustomed to being able to copy infinitely, I want to know what it feels like to have one of something. To sweat and work to create something and only have that. I want to know what a painter feels like when they finish a painting.

-Blurring the line between the game being easily-copied bits or a solid physical thing. In some sense the netbook will *be* Shader and vice-versa. I’ve never made a physical thing of value before. The laptop becomes my canvas and paint, I now have a materials cost like a sculptor or painter. The ease of copying has a vast impact on the perception of games. I can put a game up on a forum and have hundreds of people dismiss it in two minutes, the standard price for two years of my work on the app-store is 3$. I want to see if I, or other people, think about Shader differently.

I’m certainly not going to stop making audience-seeking games (I’m working on one of those now as well). Games being easy to copy and share is vastly better than the opposite. But for this one project I kind of want to see what it looks like on the other side of the reflection.