FUCK AROUND & FIND OUT

I learned how to drive by playing Grand Theft Auto III. Katie was tired of being the only driver in our new family. We were wanting to take some exploratory road-trips into Oregon & I needed to drive also.

I grew up in parts of east Oakland where I should have driven. But money for gas, insurance, repairs was not something that was in my life. These would still not be affordable until after I learned how to drive.

Growing up, it took me at least an hour to get anywhere I actually wanted to go on public transit & I would have rather spent the buck fifty bus fare on something else. If San Francisco was my goal, it cost even more & took more time, usually a couple hours, to get there. Bus to Bay Area Rapid Transit under the bay & then a ticket on the SF MUNI public transportation. Getting anywhere was a slog. 

Back in 2002, I was 22, freshly married & had my first steady employment at the Oakland Public Library. I loved that job, working around all those books. I used to take my lunch break & speed through the microfilm collections of old newspapers & magazines until I was dizzy.

One of the things I did with my spare time was playing video games with Katie. We would play through story-heavy games… & then I got Grand Theft Auto III. The driving mechanic was so good.

Games have been an integral part of my life forever. I used to play-test educational games for the company my dad wrote music for. However, because of the way I perceive the world, I always want the games I’m playing to bleed into the real world.

Most games are designed to just exist in their own corner. To remain safely in their boxes, to take up a couple hours of your time, to then be shuffled away into the closet with the other games.

To me, that kind of game that respects boundaries & stays in its lane is boring. I want the game to thoroughly blur the line between the game & reality.

This could be an argument for LARPing, but I find that to be even MORE boring. LARPing takes the box of the game & extends it into reality so it goes with you & everything is converted into a low-stakes, low-returns, safe space. Boring.

I am not interested in games that just help me pass the time. This life, this time on Earth needs to be used & not just diddled away. Because of this, games need to give back.

I wrote a bunch for the Alternate Reality Game, “The Games of Nonchalance” which was made into the 2013 Film “The Institute”. I liked the idea of pushing the game into people’s real lives, or “gamifying reality”.

Through that experience, it became clear that people wanted a game to be a game & for those separations between the hobby & the real world to remain. This gets into a whole question about boundaries & my newfound ability to respect them.

So, in this, I have developed the insistence that escapism must be informative & ultimately transformative. Games must be more than just a good way to pass the time. If games are going to be as pervasive & time consuming as they are they must be designed to give the players real-life things that they can use when game time is over.

I designed the experience system for my role playing game LowLife, to reward trying, not just success, not just killing. I want people to come away knowing that life requires you to Fuck Around & Find Out.

I'm designing games that bleed into reality. The LOWLIFE Kickstarter pre-launch is live.