Hi, hypernarrative is a blog by Wilbert Baan about Art, Media and Technology with a focus on interactive storytelling. If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed with Google or Netvibes. I'll post a few messages a week. Thanks for visiting!

Infosthetics writes about the game audio-surf a racing game where the song you pick decides the course and speed of the game. This game uses rhythm as an extra navigation layer. Music is build from small loops and these loops are easy to learn and predictable, making it possible to navigate faster because you are using more than just your eyes. You know what will happen before you see it.

Music producers are connecting with the game industry for a while now. Producing game music is a genre by itself. The music gives that extra boost of adrenaline when it’s changing along with the gameplay. The music goes faster or louder. Audio design makes the game more exciting.

The last years we have seen the rise of a new genre of audio games. Where the audio in a game is used as navigation. Guitar Hero became very popular with this. Based on the everybody-can-be-a-popstar culture the game makes it possible for everyone to be a guitar virtuosi. You control the game by learning rhythms and loops using your eyes, ears and fingers.

The follow-up on Guitar Hero is Rock Band, making it possible to play with friends and more instruments. At the same time the developers of one of the most interesting games released for the Playstation Portable; Loco Roco come with a new game titled Patapon. In Patapon you are a tribe navigating and fighting based on the music you make.

Do we need more complex stories?
All these games use audio not primarily to emphasize emotion but to navigate. In Everything Bad is Good for You, Steve Berlin Johnson talks about how movies and television series changed plotlines to keep it interesting for the viewer. He compares old movies (cinematic milestones) with the Sopranos. No matter how good Gilda or Rear Window are. Compared to todays movies and series the are kind of slow and simple.

We need ever more complex stories to be entertained. We are getting used to media. As an example Steve Berlin Johnson uses the Sopranos, the television series combines a story throughout all the seasons, a story through a season, a story through multiple episodes, a story through one episode and all this for different characters as well. This is a story we simply wouldn’t have understand or liked in the fifties or sixties.

Is the same thing happening with games?
We are speeding up games for years. Ask your mother or grandma to watch you playing a game, it’s just too much information for them. They block it and see it as an unorganized chaos and can’t understand what you like about it. At the same time these games aren’t challenging players enough. We need to play faster, use other input devices and gestures for navigating. Our eyes, mind and culture is getting used to the speed. We need more complex games, more stories, elements, control options and speed. We need a bigger challenge.

Is the auditive component helping in this? Is the loop based structure used in music making our games more challenging? Does it allow us to play games at a higher speed? I don’t know this is all just a wild guess, but based on history we know stories and games will only get faster and more complex.

Last week the new game Assissin’s Creed was launched. It is a game developed by the makers of Prince of Persia and Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell. Two very popular game series, with extraordinary gameplay.

From ps3.ing.com “The setting is 1191 AD. The Third Crusade is tearing the Holy Land apart. You, Altair, intend to stop the hostilities by suppressing both sides of the conflict. You are an Assassin, a warrior shrouded in secrecy and feared for your ruthlessness. Your actions can throw your immediate environment into chaos, and your existence will shape events during this pivotal moment in history.”

Yesterday there was a music video for the game on Dutch television. It’s is always interesting when Dutch artists make music for major game releases so I searched YouTube for the videoclip. I didn’t find the videoclip I had seen on television, what I found was an enormous collection video clips made from the same trailer footage and edited on different music.

This isn’t machinima where you take a game engine and compose your own story with the game characters. The video clips don’t add anything new or extra to the game or the trailer, the clips are just forms of expression.

People are making their own video clips because they can and love it. Everyone with access can edit, like everyone with access can write. You need basic knowledge, but that’s about it. This is how people show what kind of music and games they like. It’s a tribute to a game that isn’t released yet. This is a culture that only exists around the collective waiting for a game release.

This is how we entertain ourselves, by telling stories with and about the things we like. I don’t know how to call this, it’s a mix between game culture, video clip culture, and waiting. But above all it’s cultural expression. Unfortunately still illegal (due to music copyrights), but a great phenomena.

Brainpower & Intwine (the music video)

The original game trailer

The YouTube remixes

This Coca Cola commercial - already for one year on the web - is running on Dutch television. It’s amazing how they have used a cultural youth icon like the ten year old Grand Theft Auto into a commercial. This commercial can only make real sense to you if you know the game.

If you, as a company can assume that every teenager (target group) knows GTA, the game has become an icon of its time. It’s a typical commercial you will show ten or twenty years from now when you’re telling someone how game culture became part of an entire generation.

And the commercial makes you feel good too, great job.

I got introduced to Grand Theft Auto through the very good and very cheap drum ‘n bass CDs they advertised on, released by the Moving Shadow label.

Ronnie and Piotrek performed a great concert on a gameboy in Katowice, Poland.

More about the concert

The Get the Glass Game is a great example of interactive storytelling. It combines a story, great lay-out and a game all in one. Oh, and it is a commercial.

Now you can also see the making of Get the Glass.

Europeans Reject the PS3 Due to High Price (www.playfuls.com)

vs.

PlayStation breaks sales records (news.bbc.co.uk)