" Within this game are three stages:
A physical search. A visual search. And a mental search. "
Introduction
Games are a form of storytelling; they kindle communication and relationships through shared words, emotion, and action. Both enable a safe space of comfort and experimentation, like a designated safe zone in a game of tag. It’s an experience and place of discovery, opportunity, vulnerability, and imagination. Certain games however encourage deceitful social behaviors: whether it be performing unconventional morality roles or participating in actions that in real life would be frowned upon, such as lying, bluffing, peer pressure, or persuasion.
Games nonetheless embody and facilitate the positive, community- building side of game play and storytelling, bringing people together through play, empathy, and interaction. Within this duality of positive and negative roles and influences is a coexisting nature, an exposure to human behavior through that experimental gameplay that is reflective of life: of trust, honesty, information, deception, and belonging within the social structure of gameplay. As painting allows for storytelling, ambiguous interpretation, and mental interaction, I aimed to make games like paintings, inciting conceptual thought, emotional response, and intellectual analysis.
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This project is informed by my research in game theory, interactive art, social practice, fiction, creative writing, and modern and ancient board games. Within this project are several core elements of games: role taking, time constraints, interaction patterns, and game progression through script, discussion, and performative gameplay. It serves to investigate narratives within games, audience interaction with art and each other, and the practice of having fun when making and sharing art. The Seeker Games is presented as art, a story, and a game itself.
Game Play
The Seeker Games is an experimental, social, and interactive game in which the audience is encouraged to participate, question, and play. Within the game and script are different tasks to complete as a team, puzzles and principles to solve, and stages of self-reflection and recollection in a timed period. Players must work together to solve the Seeker’s riddles and deceptions and complete the philosophical and conceptual games within the story. In order to “win,” players must broaden the way they think, expand objective beliefs, and embrace self-discovery and vulnerability. In the end there is no true right answer to last game, allowing the players to realize that combative discussion and personal opinion, while playful in this context, can be subject to change and is not a finite belief settled in the ground. However, the main purpose of this game is to have fun and be fully immersed into another world.
Characters
The Seeker, within The Seeker Games, is the main, fictional character and acts as an unreliable narrator and host of the game. He embodies the use of deception and trickery in games: social dynamics of bluffing and lying that are only “safe” and acceptable within gameplay and not in real life. Throughout the game are tricks to throw players off course and games that require more thought than action. Mystery, uncertainty, and deception allow for creative problem solving, timed teamwork, and immersion into another world. The narrative role of the Seeker explores how one’s identity can become changeable through role taking as sometimes the players act as the deceiver and sometimes, they are those being deceived. In this exploration of different personas there is a vulnerability of the player’s role being converted into the Seeker’s role, through engaging in different perspectives and characters.
Materials
The process of writing, painting, and drawing is an active conversation happening between medium and message, and between myself, the art, and the audience. Like tennis, air hockey, checkers, and many more games that revolve around the back-and-forth motion of players, this game relies upon push and pull of dialogue, conversation, discussion, and contemplation to form an engaging plot of discussion and storytelling. Oil painting, writing, papier mache are flexible, metamorphic, and forgiving. They allow for color to change effortlessly with the fluidity of mineral spirits and pigment, for form to take gravity with the layering of paper and paste, and for words to take different meanings with pacing and tone. These materials guide the game and storytelling through its improvisational and organic nature, allowing for twists and turns of human interaction, social behavior, and intimate response.
Author's Note
Without people, games are just material and form, with little meaning. It is the experience people have when playing a game that is most important and not the actual game itself even though games house those experiences. Certain players allowed for more lenient rules while others followed a stricter guideline; in some games players went into further inspection of possibility and discussion than I thought while some were predictable and planned. Seeing someone approach the game alone, they were unsure of the actions to take, read quietly, and looked around for others to join them.
Groups of two to three took more time with the riddles, but in mid-sized to larger groups (anywhere from four to ten people), the tasks were done with ease from the increased speed of cooperation and conversation. Players in both situations laughed, joked, and conversed about the riddles and games, but most importantly, they were having fun, I believe, since they were not playing alone. This is what I strived to accomplish: this sense of community and positivity while still engaging in complex, conceptual ideas and thoughts in and of art and life.