When you face a mirror with another behind, you get to see yourself at a lot of different angles. Sometimes you don't like what you see. But you are stuck in the middle all the same.
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I finished mapgen4 last week and wanted to "sharpen my tools" before I started the next project. My website is over 20 years old and spans 5 domains. The build process has grown over time, supporting all the different tools I've used over the decades.
There are a few features I've wanted to add to my static site generator:
Versioning of js, css resources so that I can increase the expiration cache time. This should improve load time. I've been doing this manually and want to automate it.
Dependency tracking, so that if something includes another thing, and that thing changes, the first thing gets rebuilt. This should reduce content mismatch errors.
Custom macros for each project that get expanded at build time. This should make it easier to write new pages.
The current system is mostly based on XHTML with my own custom tags. For example, <x:published> lets me mark a publish date at the top of the page, <x:draft> lets me mark the page as a draft/beta, and <x:nocomments> lets me turn off comments on a page. I use regular expressions and XSLT for transforming the XHTML into HTML, expanding the custom tags and also adding custom transforms for existing tags. I'd like to add project-specific tags to this.
I wanted to replace the sed + xsltproc bash script with a Python program. Once I have the XHTML read into Python, I can add versioning, record dependenies, and add custom macros. Also in Python, I can also manage the site build, including generating sitemaps for search engines, determining what to rebuild, and uploading to the server.
I decided to start with the code for processing a single XHTML file:
A bunch of sed commands to perform regular expression substitutions.
SmartyPants.pl for converting regular quotes to "smart quotes".
The xsltproc command.
What are the Python alternatives to each of these?
(1) The regular expression substitutions are easy to do in Python.
(2) For SmartyPants.pl, I evaluated the Python port, smartypants.py, which would allow me to run this step in memory instead of invoking a separate process. I like the library, and it offers many useful options that would be an improvement over the Perl script, including being able to exclude my custom tags. Unfortunately it doesn't produce the same output. Two examples:
instead of <tag>Name</tag>'s (close) it produces <tag>Name</tag>'s (open)
instead of "<tag>...</tag>" (open,close) it produces "<tag>...</tag>" (open,open)
When the character before the quote crosses a tag, it seems to not take that into account when deciding open or close quotes, and it ends up outputting an open quote when it should output a close quote. I looked through the Perl and Python code and couldn't figure out how the Perl code was handling these cases.
I decided to look through existing issues on the project page, and file one if there weren't any existing ones matching this situation. Unfortunately the repository has been deleted. The documentation says the maintainer is looking for someone to take over. So it seems like the project is abandoned.
I also started wondering if I can reimplement the algorithm myself. Before going down that rabbit hole, I decided to stick to abandon this change. This means I'll have to pipe everything through an external process, and I won't be able to handle custom tags.
(3) The next step was to look at an alternative to xsltproc. Python has a library called lxml that can do lots of nice things, including XSLT transforms. That means it should be able to take my existing XSLT file and apply it to the XHTML documents, producing HTML documents. But can it?
Yes! It worked beautifully. And it gave me back a parse tree which would allow me to easily add versioning and dependency tracking, the main features I wanted to add. Here's how I ran it:
# Load the XSLT, and allow it to use xi:includexsl = etree.parse(open(xslt_filename, 'r')) xsl.xinclude()# Load the document, and allow it to use xi:includebxml = etree.parse(open(document_filename, 'r')) bxml.xinclude()# Apply the XSLT to the documenthtml = etree.XSLT(xsl)(bxml) sys.stdout.write(str(html))
The output was exactly the same as using xsltproc. I'm very happy with lxml! It's easy to use and allows me to add the features I wanted.
Except …
Switching from sed + xsltproc slowed down the builds quite a bit, from 0.2s to 0.7s for a single file. That means it no longer feels instantaneous. The full build went from 65s to 200s. I'm sure I can speed up the full build, but I don't have an easy way to speed up the development builds. The startup is too long, and I didn't find any easy ways to fix that.
So I decided to abandon this change.
It's always hard to abandon things you spent time and energy designing and implementing. But it's sometimes the best thing to do.
I stepped back and looked at my main goals:
Versioning of js, css resources
Dependency tracking
Custom macros for each project
How important are these? Can I implement them a different way, while keeping the development builds fast?
I don't need versioning for development builds.
I might not need dependency tracking for development builds.
I haven't needed custom macros so far and can live without them.
My new plan is to keep the sed + xsltproc for development builds, and inject version numbers for the production build only. I'm undecided about how I'll implement dependency tracking. In part 2 I'll describe how I implemented these. I will leave custom macros for another time.
Confused by Reflex's mouse acceleration options? Completely understandable - there's a lot going on with all of the variables. Even worse - acceleration settings deeply depend on your mouse's DPI, so you can't just copy/paste someone else's settings and hope they work for you!
So, I wrote this little tool to give you a starting point. First, enter your mouse DPI and reflex game sensitivity (aka m_speed in console). Then go to into Reflex's "Options" menu, then "Mouse Settings" and copy the outputs this tool spat out (you'll need to check the box for "Enable Advanced Options").
Now that you've copied those settings into the menu, before you go in game do some quick wrist flicks and see if the little white circle can make it to the flat part of the curve at the top. Hopefully it can (and hopefully it doesn't reach it with very slow mouse movements). If not, tweak the acceleration value up or down until you can make it hit the flat part.
Next, go in game and see how it feels. It might feel like it's terribly high sensitivity. If so, change both of the post-scale settings to something like 0.6. If it's still too high, change it to 0.5 or something lower. Basically, tweak those values according to your preference and try to leave the other values alone. The "x" value is for horizontal movement, and the "y" value is for vertical. I have come to appreciate higher vertical sensitivity (I have 0.31 X and 0.5 Y) for easier rocket jumps.
If you end up liking the in game mouse acceleration options, keep in mind that povohat wrote an awesome driver that lets you have the same feeling in Windows and any other game. And this tool will let you copy your Reflex settings directly to the driver for the same acceleration curve and feeling.
Those mutinous bastards left me here to die. I don't even know where here is. We dropped out of hyperspace long enough for them to drop me on the nearest planet with breathable air, and frankly, that was their mistake. They should have killed me. At the very least, they should have pried this matter manipulator off my arm, or taken my arm off at the elbow. They may not have agreed with my decisions as their captain, but they have no idea how resourceful I can be. I am stranded on this deserted planet, but I will not die here. Those thieving bastards better pray I don't get my hands on another ship because I will hunt them to the ends of the universe to make them pay for this transgression.
Revenge aside, food and shelter are my biggest concerns. The first thing I've learned about this planet is that there is no shortage of rain. I beamed down into the middle of a tremendous rainstorm with winds so fierce I'm surprised my molecules weren't scattered upon entry into the atmosphere. Angry and wet, I took out my aggression on nearby trees so that I could pull some kind of shelter together to weather the storm.
The rain didn't last all day. Once the storm had passed over, I managed to scout the surrounding area. To my east there is a tall mountain, and to the west there is a shallow canyon. I plan to conquer both in time, but before I can venture out on excursions, I need to make sure there's enough food and water to last me the entire week. At the very edge of the western canyon, I found an old storage capsule chest from some forgotten previous excursion. I managed to drag it out of the canyon and back to my lean-to. I plan to store whatever food and seeds I can scavenge from the nearby area.
So far today I managed to find 2 ears of corn, 2 potatoes and roughly 4 servings of rice. It's almost enough to get me through an entire week if I ration it right. Enough rain has accumulated in the shallow recesses along the canyon that I have a decent supply of dirty water to drink for the next day or two, but tomorrow I need to work on something better.
Week 1 - Day 2
Today I dug out a shallow drinking well not far from the lean-to in order to catch some clean drinking water with the next rains. I reinforced it with stones that I hauled out of the mountain in the east. There are some expansive caves running through the mountain that I can see from the foothills, and it didn't take long to find enough loose stone to build a small ground cistern. Once it rains, I should have a decent supply of fresh water.
I found no more fruits or vegetables in my travels between the mountain and the canyon today. The local wildlife could be a good source of protein, but I haven't tried to eat one yet. I'm sure the bastards aboard the Indomitable would like to think these beasts have gotten the better of me. To be fair, I've had a few scares. Beasts I can't even begin to describe right now are coming at me like ravenous wolves, or territorial jumping slugs as it were. I've been able to beat them back with a bent piece of metal I found near the canyon, but a real weapon would be nice. I managed to carve a couple steaks out of the ones I've managed to kill with the sharpened end of this metal rod. The steaks aren't pleasant to look at, but once I throw them on the fire I'm sure they'll taste all right.
Oh, speaking of - I built a campfire. I've also taken a few moments today to reinforce the lean-to a bit. Ultimately, I will need something more sturdy to keep the damn wildlife out of my hair. If I can't find shelter from them soon, they will wear me down one day at a time and they will have the last laugh - or the last meal.
Week 1 - Day 3
I'm discouraged because the cistern doesn't appear to be collecting much water. It rains everyday so I'm not dying of thirst, but it would be nice to build up a reservoir and not worry about the day it decides to stop raining. I've made some improvements to the rock wall lining the cistern. I also transformed the lean-to into a true shelter. I put up walls and doors which help protect me from the elements and the local fauna. The ground around the shelter is not arable, but it's clear I will need to start growing food in order to survive. I needed to venture out beyond the canyon or over the mountain, and the canyon seemed the lesser of two obstacles.
It was a bit shallower than I previously thought. I managed to get to the other side quite quickly. I noticed several caves leading deeper underground and a crevasse or two as I made my way across. Beyond the canyon, I found some pearlpea plants. It's not my favorite food by any stretch of the imagination, but food is food. I can't afford to be particular right now.
I found a cave in the foothills of a western mountain that looked like it had been occupied by a vagrant like myself not too long ago. Unfortunately, a bottle of some sweet-smelling rum was completely empty. However, after a wash in the cleaner pools of the canyon, the sleeping bag I found is quite serviceable.
I decided that one man's cave dwelling aught to be another man's farm. The ground here is less rocky and I assume a bit more fertile than on the other side of the canyon. I'm not really a farmer, so I don't know much about it. Nevertheless, I spent the rest of the day leveling out the land and clearing out the rocks. In days to come, I may relocate my own abode to these new farmlands.
Week 1 - Day 4 & 5
Yesterday (4th Day) I ventured into some of the mountain caves in search of resources. There is an abundance of coal which I used to fashion some rather rudimentary torches. I saw a bit of copper and iron in those caves, but without proper tools they are currently useless to me. My matter manipulator can move wood and small stones, but will need serious repairs before it can do any true mining. As I mentioned before, the canyon is also full of nooks and crannies waiting to be explored and my inner child wants to map out every cave and tunnel, but I don't have the time for that right now if I'm going to survive. I have to focus on what matters most - revenge. After spending - perhaps wasting - most of the day exploring a few caves in the mountain and tunnels in the canyon, I set back to work on the new farmhouse and surrounding farmlands.
It wasn't until today that I feel like I finished my work on the house itself and actually began toiling in the fields. The house isn't much to look at, right now, but it will serve its purpose. It will protect me when I'm working or sleeping over here, and it will eventually make a nice place to store some food. Before settling in for the night, I planted several wheat seeds and pearlpea seeds. I only found one potato seed. I'm not quite sure what I'll do with the wheat since I'm no baker - nor do I have an oven for that matter - but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.
It rains several times a day which makes for lousy working conditions, but at the very least the crops and I will stay well hydrated. The small cistern I dug out is actually filling up now, so my fears are abated somewhat. I'm really pleased that it's finally holding water in and I have a relatively clean and steady supply of water now.
Week 1 - Day 6 & 7
I spent two full days exploring and unlike last time, I don't feel like they were wasted. I'm not alone!
Just beyond the farmhouse is a steep cliff. I tried my best, but I simply can't scale it without proper tools. There are also some pretty deep caves just beyond the farmhouse leading into the face of the cliff. I thought about sealing them up to protect me from anything lurking in that darkness, but I'm so glad I didn't. I got up early two mornings ago and made my way into the caves with nothing but a handful of unlit torches to light along the way. I had to widen a few passages, and keep from falling into a deep darkness occasionally, but eventually I made it through the cliff to the other side of this western mountain. As I stumbled out into the light, I couldn't believe my eyes. There was another house just sitting there in the foothills - not unlike the farmhouse I'd built on the other side!
I made the acquaintance of a Glitch woman. She calls herself Margaret Haddaway and she's been living alone for quite some time. Although she was initially frightened by my sudden appearance in her backyard, she was eventually grateful for someone to talk to. We exchanged stories. I told her briefly of the mutiny and the marooning. She told me that she had no memory before awakening on this planet herself. From what I understand of these self-aware Glitch, they are often hunted by their own kind as some kind of abomination. I surmise that Margaret became self-aware and was similarly abandoned on this planet, but there's no real evidence to support this assumption. She has been content to live a simple life tending her garden and working on her skills as a seamstress - a profession she believes she had prior to her awakening.
The trip through the cliff caves is not easy. It is cramped, dangerous and wholly unpleasant. That said, I'm happy to have a new neighbor and someone to talk to from time to time. Margaret and I made a promise to help each other out with food and supplies whenever we had need of one another. We took comfort in not being alone - she more than I, perhaps, but I do not quite know the ways of the Glitch.
Margaret told me that from her side of the mountain, it is not that difficult to scale. She also said that at its peak she had built a small, but beautiful, lake gazebo where she often went to relax. I promised to return so that she could show it to me, but I wanted to get back to my side of the world before dark.
I slept in the farmhouse last night. It was cozy. I set out today to try and climb the eastern mountain. The trek up was not bad and there is a beautiful view from the top. I found some old camping equipment at the summit. I would have to inquire with Margaret if she knew who lived on this side of things before me - she made no mention of anyone else. Unfortunately, the eastern face of the mountain is just as sheer a drop as the eastern face of the western mountain. Again, without proper equipment moving forward is impossible, I fear. Despite these setbacks in the east, it has been a momentous week. I am confident now that I will survive on this planet as long as I need to. Hopefully I will figure out a way to get back into the stars before too long.
- Excepts from the Journal of Edge Valiant on the Founding of the Valiant Empire
Earlier in the month I was at Lyst Summit in Copenhagen. While I was there I worked on a playful performance called Being There, which I've talked about in an earlier blog post.
At the same time, this happened…
I say "happened," because unlike the other games made during the weekend, Homunculus emerged practically fully-formed.
The rules of Homunculus are simple. A participant dons a morphsuit and becomes the homunculus. The player closes their eyes, while a volunteer chooses a "pleasure point" on the homunculus - a hand or an elbow, for example, or an ear. All other parts of the homunculus' body are "pain points." I call this "programming" the homunculus.
The player opens their eyes, and must find the pleasure point by touching bits of the homunculus' body. The homunculus must, through physical movement alone, convey whether the point they have touched is a pleasure point or a pain point.
As you can hopefully see from the video the experience is both awkward and hilarious! Witness, for example, Sabine Harrer (PhD student and member of Copenhagen Game Collective) in stitches watching a player grope around for a pleasure point on a homunculus' belly.
There's a whole bunch of interesting interactions going on in Homunculus, and that's what I want to talk about here. It may be a rough-and-ready game, but there's a certain depth to it because of the sheer amount of control the homunculus has as a performer. It's testament to how much complexity can come from the human element of games.
Several jammers, over the course of the weekend, had a go at being a homunculus, and everyone had slightly different responses. One of idea that was up for debate was who has the power between the homunculus and the player.
Power Dynamics
Conventional wisdom would say that it is the player who has the power. They can cause pain to the homunculus. They are active, choosing where and how to touch the homunculus. The homunculus, by comparison, is passive, waiting to be touched.
However, I and some of the other homunculi felt a great sense of power. We had the power to really freak out the player, to surprise them. We could make them worry about hurting us. We could approach them, coax them into touching us. We could respond suddenly and without warning. The squeals of "I'm scared to touch it!" from players were obvious. We had the power to control the emotional journey of the player.
We were aware that we were anonymous, and that we looked really disconcerting. It's certainly true, that these nude, faceless, silhouette figures are disconcerting - especially when you touch them and they look right at you. We knew we were freaky and that inspired us to perform. We made the player squirm and we made on-lookers laugh.
Perhaps, however, the element of trust allowed us to feel powerful. When I was in the morphsuit I was with good friends. If I was with strangers I would be making myself much more vulnerable. Strangers are unpredictable. Strangers may not respect your boundaries. Perhaps that's what the performers who felt differently had cottoned on to.
Homunculus, meet Homunculus
We also tried a variant with two homunculi. The homunculi closed their eyes, and separate people chose their pleasure points. Then the two homunculi had to find each other's pleasure points, while an audience crowded and watched. There was something disconcerting about it, between gladiatorial and voyeuristic, but combined with the costumes the result was rather comedic.
In spite of this, the experience wasn't quite as strong as the original version, because it was missing the contrast of roles. Both homunculi had the same status, the same knowledge, and the same set of responses. So there was no power dynamic. That made it harder for personalities to shine through.
Gamifying and Humanising
We'd come up with a great starting point, but there were still some questions. Most notably, if the homunculus always responds with pain to all but one touch point, how is the player supposed to find it, other than just guessing over and over?
An obvious solution, particularly at a games event, was to build some rules into it. We added a "warmer and colder" rule, with the homunculus moving away if the player approached them in a place that would obviously hurt. The problem with this was that the player never needed to touch the homunculus.
If the player never touched the homunculus, they would never get the magic moment, where the homunculus springs to life. That sudden snap when, for example, the homunculus grabs its foot in agony and turns its head to you as if to ask "why did you do that?!"
Rather than formalising this, it seemed that the stronger solution was to leave it to the homunculus to improvise. The performer in the costume could act out a personality for the homunculus. When I was the homunculus I enjoyed starting out static, barely moving, like a mannequin or a lab specimen. I'd become aware of the player after the first touch, tracking them with my head as if I was trying to figure out what they were doing. The more they hurt me the more I'd appear to fear them. But if they became reluctant to touch me, I'd start approaching them, as if driven by a dangerous curiosity. Eventually I'd begin moving the pleasure point vaguely towards them, to help them out.
Every performer can take on the role of the homunculus differently, and to me that's the magic of the game. Because it's so open-ended, the experience is unique to each player-homunculus pairing. It's unpredictable and it's personal.
So what would be the benefit of formalising Homunculus? The benefit is that it allows people who aren't natural performers to feel comfortable in the role. Perhaps the right set of rules is not a list of "what the homunculus should do," but "how the homunculus should feel" over time.
Play with the Materials
The final big take-away from the experience is just how important it is to play with the props. You need to play with them to truly feel how to use them. I'm sure this could be said equally for game systems. It certainly chimes with the "I can't understand it until I've watched someone break it" mentality I've taken when designing games like Codex Bash.
I brought the morphsuits to Lyst having originally used them for Go! Power Team! in Berlin. I didn't know what the suits were for but thought someone else might want to use them. People asked what they were, so I put one on to show them, and so did another developer. We started batting ideas around for how to use them. Someone floated the idea of giving a player a secret pleasure point, so I hopped on a table and said "let's do it and see what happens!"
We'd never have reached that point if we hadn't put the costumes on. We needed to wear them, see how bizarre they looked, notice their weird second-skin texture, in order to make the connections for a game about touch. We needed to get on the table and start playing before we saw that the morphsuit could become a character.
The Boy With Tape On His Face, a physical comedian, was interviewed for the Comedian's Comedian Podcast. It's excellent and I suggest you listen. He uses a lot of props in his work, and in the interview he talks about how much of his time is spent playing with props that he's bought. You don't think of a funny idea and hunt down the corresponding prop. You play with the prop and it will show you what makes it funny.
So what next? I have come back from Copenhagen inspired, and have already acquired my sixth morphsuit, this time in white. I have a lot of plans for things to try, games to make and games to break. Perhaps this is only the beginning…
It's been incredibly rewarding, and I'm very proud of the reception it's had. I've loved creating and performing the show, so seeing audiences respond so well with it fills me with joy. In a lot of ways it's a culmination of the ideas I've been exploring throughout my career so far, and one of my favourite things I've made.
I wanted to wrap up the year by writing down the lessons I've learned along the way. This is a very long article, cut down from a leviathan first draft, so bring a coffee or read it in parts, and thanks very much for taking an interest!
For context, here's the trailer shot at the Bristol Improv Theatre, in December 2016.
If there's one major lesson I've found in the show it's to be unafraid of things breaking. Often the lessons came out of changing part of the show on a whim, or to figure out why part of it wasn't working - and understanding why the changed worked only came from comparing all the attempts that led up to it. None of the lessons learned came because I got things right first time.
But before getting onto that, let's start with the most important question:
Why Make a Playable Stage Show?
Back about two years ago I saw a show at the Bristol Improv Theatre, and ended up chatting to the performers about their craft. I was so excited by improv, and went on to regularly go to the theatre to see shows and take part in jams. Friday night at the Improv became a major fixture of my week.
What really struck me was how much they talked like game designers. They talked about their fellow performers and their audiences just like we talk about players. We want to give players a bit of rope but still offer them the satisfaction of having filled in the gaps themselves, or of coming up with their own unique response. The performers used the word "game" in roughly the same way we use the word "mechanics."
A generally agreed-upon part of game is "yes, and" - that you should always accept what a fellow performer has added to a scene and add to it. This struck a chord as it reflected my existing approach to making installations, where instead of another performer it was the player.
Great improvisers know when they can break the rules of "good game" and still have it work. Great improvisers understand when it's funny to say "no" to a performer without killing the performance and still giving them a bit of rope to work with. If you say yes to everything you end up on the moon in a rocket powered with jam - the best reaction you can get from the audience is "wow, so random!" Great improvisers know that a truly resonant performance means building a world, desires, personalities, tension, expectations, and a believable context ready to be subverted.
What they were getting at was that good design is not about adhering to the rules, but about knowing what goals those rules are trying to achieve.
This was hugely inspiring, and I was hungry to explore what could be achieved by using the audience and human performers as a resource for games. The theatre provides not just a new kind players with unusual expectations, but a whole new space. It's a physical object which I'd rarely seen used for games before.
When I talk about an object being really used for games, I mean that the game made use of the unique properties that that object offered. Robin Baumgarten's Line Wobblerreally uses a door-stop because the analogue degrees of motion it has map one-to-one with the motion of your dot, and twanging it - the most interesting thing about the object itself - is a key part of the experience. You can't twang and move the dot because of the physical properties of the stopper: the door-stop can't wobble if you're clutching it.
A conga line of Power Rangers in the Bristol Improv Theatre
To really use the theatre I couldn't have people sat in seats watching stuff going on. A good game would have players running around between the seats, climbing over and between each other, stretching to hand objects to the row in front of them, and running back and forth between stage and seating. If there's a hundred people, all sat shoulder-to-shoulder, I want them to feel like they're in the middle of the game, and that their being there matters.
That summer I demoed some of my games at the Bristol Improv Theatre, which was popular enough to convince me I had enough material to build on. So I pitched the idea of a complete 45-minute show to the organisers of the GameCity festival in Nottingham, who generously offered me six time-slots to run the show.
With that, I spent the subsequent month creating new games and variations so that I'd have plenty to experiment with during the run. The first Incredible Playable Show debuted on 26 October 2016.
Building Trust
Trust is one of the most important resources a developer has. Trust is the answer to "why should I buy your game?" "Why should I download your game?" "Why should I persevere through the dull bits?"
Trust is certainly the answer to "if I get up on that stage you're not going to embarrass me, right?"
Getting excitable hosting one of the very first shows - photo by Samathy Barratt
Trust is why "yes, and" works. "Yes, and" reassures your fellow performer that you are on their side - that they can let loose and you will have their back. If I'm inviting people onto the stage to pretend to be Power Rangers then they want to know that they're not going to be the butt of a joke. My job is to convince them that coming on-stage is an opportunity, not a trap.
I learnt this the hard way. On the very first show I opened with Go! Power Team! - popularly known as thePower Rangersgame. My first audience was twenty first-year students who'd all been told to go there by their lecturer and were expecting a "getting into the industry" talk. I needed five volunteers, and it was a struggle to get even one. When the game started and the mighty voice of Zordon began booming its commands, they just stood and shuffled. The magic of the game - where four human buttons are running around doing random stuff while a player is desperately trying to operate a game using them - just wasn't happening. The act was a stone-cold wreck.
An early version of Match Me If You Scan, where the team huddled at the front of the stage - photo by Gemma Thomson
Here's what I'd done wrong: I'd put the most physical, most expressive, and most "it works if you just go with it" game at the very beginning. I hadn't earned their trust in the idea that being physical would be rewarding. I hadn't nurtured the idea that this was an opportunity to make their friends laugh. I hadn't made them believe that I'm a professional and that, while my games sound a bit weird on paper, they pay off if you play along.
The current 1-hour set list is a much better reflection of build-up of ideas. In order, it goes as follows:
Match Me If You Scan- one player running around a seated audience while the audience shouts out to help
Codex Bash- four seated volunteers on-stage while the audience clambers around their seats passing around clues
Buoy Racers - four players on-stage fumbling around with props, the audience passing around inflatables
Go! Power Team! - five players on-stage, running around the auditorium, performing silly actions and interacting with the audience
There's a clear thread of increasing physical activity and room for an individual to interpret the rules as it goes on. Being a Power Ranger is a more intense version of fumbling with inflatables. Fumbling with inflatables is a more intense version of running around with a barcode scanner.
Of course, the very first game begins with running around, and this can still be a big ask for the majority of spectators. So to get to that point, my job as host is to warm them up.
Warming Up
Even in a room of card-carrying extroverts you can't open your act by asking for a volunteer and expect a response. The introduction of the show is the part of the show where I need to inspire the audience to get involved. At a bare minimum I need one enthusiastic first volunteer.
The way I do the intro is largely improvised, but some features are fairly consistent. I have two ideas I want to establish: the exciting spectacle that says "come to the stage and be a star!" and the down-to-earth friendliness that says "don't worry, Alistair's got your back."
The four Power Rangers pose as their power animals at Play17, Hamburg - photo by Initiative Creative Gaming
The Incredible Playable Show always kicks off with a big opening speech about the wonders that are about to unfold. Throughout this speech I'll be asking the audience to clap and cheer and make some noise, over and over again. This part is really important.
Shouting and cheering is an action that anyone can do from the comfort of their seat, without singling themselves out. For some audience members, shouting and cheering is enough to feel involved in the show. For others, they want to be more active, and getting them used to making loud noises gets them hungry to do something bigger.
Once they know there's audience participation, people are asking themselves "do I want to get involved?" Shouting and cheering is a dry run to test how it feels. So by the time I ask for a volunteer, the people who are excited to get up have already made that decision.
A stage full of volunteers at IndieCade 2017 in Los Angeles - photo by @seraphki
I also get the room to choose a team name, which will be repeated throughout the show. I'll wander around the audience asking for suggestions, and the winner will be decided by which one gets the loudest cheer. This process seeds a number of ideas. Firstly, that the games are cooperative, and that there should be a sense of camaraderie in the room. Secondly, that anyone from the audience can shout and pitch in, engage their creativity and be funny. And finally, that this show is unique and their experience of it will be different from any other team's.
Most of this intro is delivered not from the stage, but instead while wandering around the audience. I want people to feel like I am silly but not intimidating. I want them to feel like I am on their level, so that pitching in feels like playing along with me, and not singling themselves out. I also want the people in the front rows to turn around and look behind them, to seed the expectation that the show uses the whole space of the auditorium.
All of these goals and strategies have evolved from shows where the audience hasn't connected. One time the stage was so high up that coming on-stage looked intimidating. Talking through the show afterwards helped me see that that was the problem, and realise that not being on the stage was a solution.
For a long time "Sonic the Hedgehog controlled by shouting" was my most successful opening act, because it got everyone shouting. Shouting built energy in the room, but I realised I could get the same effect through a good intro and it didn't actually need a game to make it happen.
Yes, And
One of the selling points of the show is that it's unique every time, that everyone can get meaningfully involved and make their mark on the experience. Trust is essential here too: the audience needs to trust that their unique input will be valued.
So the host needs to say "yes, and" to the suggestions of the players. Sometimes, for example, someone will suggest a team name and it will get absolutely no cheers from the audience. There's always a way to respond in a way builds on this input and adds to the room.
If they look like they could be upset then "well, it was my favourite!" is usually a successful response. You soothe their bruised ego by pushing the idea that they're great for having chipped in.
If they look like they find it funny that they got shut down by the room, you can joke with them about how they need to try harder, and try to embarrass them. The message is "you made an effort and I'm going to reward you by playing with you."
This kind of interaction is always spontaneous, but I've found having this kind of rapport has come with practice and a positive mind-set.
I've learned to be unafraid of letting the show get derailed in an unpredictable direction - for example, if I get more volunteers than the game supports I'll often get them all on-stage anyway. If the chaos is funny and the audience is getting something unique then it pays off.
A volunteer turns performer while being kitted out in Karlshamn, Sweden - photo by Sebastian Bularca
If every audience suggestion is treated as funny and imaginative, and everything that people shout out from the back is treated as worthy of a response from the host, it creates a sense of camaraderie, where everyone has the right to be heard and the ability to be funny. The same goes from thanking all players who are brave enough to come onto the stage, and getting the audience to applaud them.
You'll probably notice that a lot of these details come from the role of the host, and I've barely talked about the content of the games. In many ways that's reflective of a project that has been born out of spontaneity. But the host is also a stand-in for the writing, environment and tutorials that would feature in traditional games.
Like most of my previous games, the driving force is not in the nuts and bolts of computer code, but in the social dynamics going on outside the machine. Being a living breathing human component in this game experience has allowed me tremendous freedom to experiment while these dynamics are in motion. It's allowed me to engage with the mood and personality of my work in a much more nuanced way.
The Incredible Playable Man
Right from the first performance I have been on-stage not as myself, but as "The Incredible Playable Man." As in, I'm performing as a character, and character is literally called "The Incredible Playable Man." He has a top hat, ringmaster's jacket and a deep "welcome to the circus of wonders!" voice because that's what the show was always meant to be: the video game equivalent of circus.
A personality emerged naturally, based purely on how it felt right to interact with the audience. The Incredible Playable Man is amazed by everything, and is enthusiastic and excitable. He thinks the games are incredible, the audience are incredible, but also that he's incredible. He's fantastic, and for these wonderful people in the audience, he's prepared games as a reward.
An excitable host is an obvious way to build up excitement and anticipation. But it has a subtler secondary effect that makes the audience feel safer about coming to the stage. The host raises a high bar of excitability and expressiveness, removing some of the fear of embarrassment: volunteers know that they will never draw more attention to themselves than the host, unless they choose to match his energy.
The Incredible Playable Man is vain and loves attention, inserting his face into his games and handing out signed photos of himself as prizes. His ridiculous vanity and love of the spotlight means nobody has to worry about being more ridiculous than The Incredible Playable Man - again, unless they make a conscious effort to do so.
Once I was in character, breaking character became a powerful tool. If something went wrong I'd lose the deep voice, so that Alistair would be the one apologising and nervously fixing the equipment, not the Playable Man. It earned me trust by exposing the gentle human being behind the bravado, and encouraged people to volunteer out of camaraderie with me.
Eventually I stopped using the deep "showman" voice entirely. I now deliver the show in my natural speaking voice and just project more. This wasn't a conscious decision - rather, I kept on forgetting to do the voice. I think I simply got more confident on-stage, and I didn't need it as a prop anymore.
Being on-stage as The Incredible Playable Man has been personally very rewarding. As I look back now The Incredible Playable Man is the kind of person I've always wanted to be: imaginative, excitable, confident, friendly, generous, fearless and capable of making people smile. Seeing an audience respond well to him has always been a fantastic feeling.
Performing for Kids
I've often claimed the show has taught me to be fearless, throw myself into an unknown situation, and be happy to get things wrong. Performing for an audience of children encompassed all of these things.
In December 2016 I did a run of four shows at the National Videogame Arcade, for a crowd almost exclusively in the 8-12 age bracket. I'd done shows for a mix of kids and adults before, and was happy with how they'd gone, but an audience of mostly kids? That's a whole other ball park.
A mix of kids and adults at the first run of the show at the National Videogame Arcade - photo by Samathy Barratt
The first show was an absolute disaster. It ended with eight children on a stage fighting over the Codex Bash buttons without a single puzzle having time to appear. The NVA staff were quite encouraging and understanding. They knew that sometimes live performance doesn't go to plan, and they were confident in the show based off of how popular the GameCity run had been.
But I knew I was capable of better. The reasons it wasn't working were flaws in the show and not in the audience, and I was determined to make it work. Fortunately, after each show I had time to reflect on where it had broken down, and figure out new strategies for the next one.
The final show of the run was an absolute belter and is one of my proudest moments.
Kids in front of the alt-control Sonic the Hedgehog game. Still from BBC Click, 26 November 2016
It's very easy to lose the confidence of a room of kids. If they don't get it, or they get bored waiting for you to faff around, they're not going to give you any rope. It's very hard to win them back once you've lost them. In fact, for many of them their natural response when it all goes wrong is to plow on independently - I'm just some silly grown-up who doesn't know what he's doing, after all!
When children feel like they've figured something out, they are convinced they are right and there is no convincing them otherwise. From their eyes, video games are about winning, and being the best as an individual. If they've decided that the way to win Go! Power Team! is to press their own power belt over and over then that is what they will do for the rest of the game.
So it's important that kids aren't given anything interactive until you've demonstrated what it is, and what the rules are. Part of the comedy in the adult shows is equipping volunteers with interactive props but leaving it as a total mystery what they're for. Kids come up with their own solution to that mystery so the gag doesn't work.
Another aspect of being a kid, especially given that they view games as synonymous with winning, is that they try to one-up each other. They want to be sillier than each other, funnier than each other, and more rebellious than each other. When this one-upmanship overflows it descends into arguments.
But if I invited three kids and one adult to the stage the kids would, for whatever reason, try to one-up the adult. They'd try to be sillier than the adult, and more rebellious than the adult, and smarter than the adult. But the adult wouldn't try to one-up them. The result was that the kids still got to be imaginative, rebellious, and expressive, without risk of them winding each other up.
Forming a conga line with some of the younger volunteers from the original run. Unfortunately I didn't get any photos of the December 2016 run at the NVA! - photo by Gemma Thomson
Perhaps the joke of the show is lost on children, who don't have the prior experience to read that the games are subversive. But what is lost is gained back tenfold in their boundless enthusiasm. Once the games are rolling the kids find them really fun at face value. They don't need a joke to be in on.
Lessons from the Games
Rather than list out every minor change to the games - and there have been many - I've picked out some notable ones. These ones were indicative of issues unique to performative games, or lessons that crossed the boundary between multiple games.
Props that didn't work
In an early version of Buoy Racers, one of the props was a set of plastic balls with barcodes attached to them. The idea was I'd throw them into the crowd and, when a symbol popped up on the screen the audience would need to throw the corresponding balls to the players that needed them.
The problem was that most members of the audience wouldn't throw the balls back. Even though I'd explained what they were for in the intro, most people held onto their balls and asked me "I've got the ball, when do I use it?"
Once people have been left alone with a prop they naturally think "this is mine" and that they'll get to use it for something - especially if it's something they can hold in their hand.
By contrast, pool inflatables worked in the same game because they were too big for one person to own. It was visually obvious to the audience that the players were sharing the inflatables between them, and it was hard to conceive of how to use something that big without a buddy.
One twist at a time
I've been through many many versions of "classic Mega Drive games with unusual controllers." I love the idea of taking something familiar, adding a twist to it and seeing what unexpected gameplay happens as a result. I love the way it turns a game of skill into a game of communication, and makes the avatars look clumsy and inept.
The four Codex Bash buttons. Still from BBC Click, 26 November 2016
Originally I played around with using the Codex Bash buttons as a controller where the buttons kept swapping, but it was obvious that the spectators had nothing to do. I tried using Micro Machines but it was too complicated a game. I tried doing stuff with the Mega Drive glitches I'd created but nobody understood what was going on.
In a home environment all of these had worked out well because we had time to fiddle around them. But on the stage each one was too complicated for the audience to figure out just by watching. I wanted the audience to get behind the drama of the game, not trying to suss out what was going on.
The best version for a time was the Codex Bash buttons set up so that shouting "jump!" made Sonic jump. But I could tell that the audience didn't understand how the buttons worked.
With the improved controller at Play17, Hamburg. Notice the buttons have been removed! - photo by Initiative Creative Gaming
In a half-hour break between shows I made the world's simplest alt-controller, to replace the Codex Bash buttons: I opened up a USB joypad, and took out all the buttons, except the D-pad.
Now there's a narrative reason to shout. The volunteer's controller is broken, so Sonic can only move left and right. The audience is shouting "jump!" to fill in the gaps and help the volunteer.
The prop of a broken USB controller does not need to be understood - it makes natural sense. The only thing different to normal Sonic the Hedgehog is shouting to make him jump. The audience immediately knows what they're getting behind and get invested a lot faster.
Changing the staging changes the game
Often a successful change to a game has nothing to do with the content of the game itself, but rather how you frame the environment.
Originally in Codex Bash the four players pressing the buttons could see the screen. The issue was that the players could do the first couple of puzzles without needing the audience. Then, when the audience became necessary for finding clues in the room, everyone got confused.
Getting everyone out of their seats and working together is the magic moment in Codex Bash
So I made the players face away from the screen and made the audience shout out the colours they needed to press. So even before they had to search for clues the audience was actively propelling the action.
The resulting communication challenge is really interesting - the players need to listen for colours from all these disparate voices, and the audience need to agree on what to shout out!
— Zachary Johnson is reading about guillotines (@zacharyjohnson) October 8, 2017
When a prop should just be removed
An early problem with Match Me If You Scan is that while the initial surprise was lots of fun it would lose momentum as the same volunteer kept running around zapping the same groups of people. I wanted to randomly select new players from the audience each time a new puzzle appeared, to keep the energy in the room moving and build a feel of "you could be next!"
I went through so many failed ways to do this, so I'll pick out a notable one. At the beginning of the act I'd throw plastic balls into the crowd, and each ball had a letter on it. After each round there'd be a letter on the screen, and the person holding that ball had to come up and get the barcode scanner.
Running with a barcode scanner at Play17
Some people wouldn't want to come on-stage when selected. A lot of the balls went missing under chairs. Most pressingly, between being given a ball and being shown the first letter the reason for having a ball was of no consequence. People forgot what the balls were for.
A ball is not a letter. A ball does not identify a person. A ball is a ball. What was going through the heads of most people holding balls was "when do I get to throw it?"
A much better way to get the random selection I wanted to put prompts up on the screen: "Step up if your name begins with the letter A" or "step up if you are wearing green." Nothing new needs to be made sense of, and it doesn't single out anyone who doesn't want to be singled out.
What makes the Incredible Playable Show funny?
I always intended The Incredible Playable Show to be funny. In fact, going back to Greedy Bankers vs The World I've tried to make people laugh with most of the games I've made. So, just like the games that came before it, I've worked very hard at making it funny. If the volume of laughter at IndieCade was anything to go by I managed to meet that goal!
A comedian friend of mine told me that he'd always seen The Incredible Playable Show as always a comedy show. I had never crossed my mind that it was comedy, but it didn't cross his mind to call it anything else. He made me realise how much there was I could learn from stand-up comics. Listening to comedians' podcasts, reading about the craft, and watching shows, has been a staple of my 2017.
Presenting to the crowd! Screenshake 2017 in Karshamn, Sweden - photo by Sebastian Bularca
My job as host is, in many ways, a double act. As long as I've built energy and trust in the crowd, the games always get big laughs whether or not I'm a funny individual. If I can make people laugh on my own then that's a bonus.
I think most of the laughs I get as host are not from telling jokes or using clever language, but simply reacting to what the audience give me. A good reaction seems to be less about being witty but highlighting the absurdity of what the audience has thrown up. If I can feed the audience with prompts that allow them to respond in unpredictable ways, and react to them in a way that makes people laugh, it adds to the spectacle: a show that seems shambolic but somehow comes together. As I've performed more and got more confident my ability to find these reactions on the fly has grown.
Jimmy Carr, on the Comedian's Comedian Podcast, shared a theory about why jokes are funny. You take two concepts that are disparate, and show that they are connected, and the brain rewards the newly-formed connection with laughter. This is fascinatingly close to the theme of Raph Koster's A Theory of Fun for Game Design: that the reason that video games are fun is because we learn from them.
All the games draw on some mystery object which makes you go "how do you make a video game out of this?" and then pay off when you see it in action. You go "aha, that's how you make a video game out of that!" and a new connection between "inflatable banana" and "video game" is made. Perhaps that's why the games are funny and that so many alt-controller games are naturally funny.
The Biggest Lesson
Running The Incredible Playable Show has felt like a natural next step from I'm used to creating - the thing my games have always wanted to be - and yet the way I've delivered the experience has been a massive departure. The adventure is still going on - I already have bookings for 2018 and am always making improvements to the show.
At the same time I'm hungry to explore the next step from here that builds on what I've learned - be it as a game, performance, installation, some kind of mash-up, or something entirely new. My goal for the coming year is to keep on pushing forwards and be fearless.
Fearlessness: before stand-up comics do their knock-out Edinburgh show they do preview after preview where the material just doesn't work. Standing in front of a room full of people who just don't find you funny is not easy. But only by saying it on stage can they figure out how to turn something that showed promise on paper into something that gets laughs from a live audience.
For everything that works about The Incredible Playable Show there has been a version of it that has not worked. I needed to see it not work before I could understand what didn't work, why it didn't work, how to fix it, and what "working" actually means.
Indeed, very often when something's failing is when the best solutions emerge. Perhaps it's the adrenaline, or perhaps it's knowing that the only way to make a better show is to do something different to what I did list time. Perhaps it's about looking for those opportunities with a spirit of positivity.
Perhaps it's about not just saying "yes, and" to those players playing your game, but also to yourself. When that little voice pops up with an idea, do it in the here and now, if only for the benefit of knowing what would happen if you did.
Because when things click with your audience it's the greatest feeling in the world.
