Nightmares and Dreams · 1422 days ago
I posted a couple plans over at GarageGames talking a bit about what I’ve been up to lately with Doppelganger (aka Evil Twin) and UnEarthed Games
but onto thoughts at hand!
I was struck a while ago with the idea that games are realized dreams. I know I’m not the first to think of this, probably the last of you. But I love this thought, and it strikes me that we are missing the chance to fully realize this…well not missing the chance, but not grabbing it by the balls.
Most of the games I play seem to be nightmares realized in one form or another, the world being destroyed, the dead walking, being torn apart by wild wolves, oblivion at hand. Maybe I’m just drawn to nightmares, and chose these games. I’ve always loved horror movies, horror books, horror comics, and horror pen and paper games.
Maybe I should be looking further at other games. This is true I’m sure. It’s not that I have anything against horror games or nightmares. I love them. Some of my nightmares have taught me so much…like not to cut my hand off. I will never do that in real life now that I’ve done it in a dream.
Nightmares are so vivid, so shocking; I guess it’s understandable that we dwell on them. Then again maybe the things I see as nightmares others don’t see that way. All the war games, we’ve been living with. Even Battlefield 1942, when playing, it feels like anything but a horror game, it’s just a game, and we are having fun. It’s one of my favorite FPS type games, love the strategy. Love the large team play. But in the end it does boil down to playing in the middle of a war where we blow each other to pieces, put bullets in each other’s heads. Throw hand grenades under tanks that we use to blow up 10s of people at a time. These are all horrific things when you look at them like that.
Dreams are strange….trying to think of dreams right now that weren’t nightmares is hard. They are odd things. But I think it would be wonderful to explore people’s dreams that aren’t nightmares as well. Wander through your surreal imaginings. The Longest Journey comes to mind… Everquest comes to mind in a strange way. I would love to see some of the amazing surreal landscapes from the demo scene taken and turned into games. I want to jump around on your spinning cubes and hyper light bloomed radial blur pulsating squids. I want that to be part of the game.
Where are the games like this that I’m looking for?
ah hah…I just remember Portal
See this is something amazing…like a strange dream that I can run around in and share with the dreamer. Something that would be very difficult to describe in text, or show in a movie…hmm well what did I link to then? Interesting…Ah yes, so you can see it but I can imagine it will be a very different thing to play it. Like your thought patterns would be permanently altered by playing this. Something unique that you experience, that can’t really be shared in any other way. Its like crystallized imagination. I can read Tolkien and see a clear picture of what the world is like. But that image is my own imagination. If Tolkien made a game himself, then we would be able to see something much closer to what he saw in his head….exactly. This is in no way better than a book but something interesting and unique about games. We get to go inside the person in the dream and experience what they envisioned as they envisioned it.
Another game that comes to mind :Seiklus
I’ll keep track of my dreams, and see how I can work them into the game.
~Clint