Software: Entertainment, Creativity and Collaboration
I’m very interested in collaborative creativity (or creative collaboration) using Internet-enabled software. Lots of my ideas revolve around giving people tools to create and share their ideas, stories, art, design, code and the like. The Web is still the predominant means for such sharing, since the browser is such a universally available (and convenient) platform. I’d like something that is more immersive than the Web, yet to maintain the sense of individual space that users can make for themselves, which isn’t found in virtual world software like Second Life or There. I also think that the Web still suffers from a bumpy learning curve that turns a lot of people off. I think this might be as much a result of the nature of the Internet and the technologies which make it work, but there are ways around those problems.
Frustration with Commercialized Art
I’m exceedingly tired of the artificial distinction between “producers” and “consumers” in the entertainment industry. Creativity and entertainment are typically just not put together. What I mean is that you will rarely create and enjoy the results at the same time. First a group of creative “professionals” undertake a long, mostly secret process of developing some kind of creative artifact: a book, TV show, film, stage production, art exhibit or computer game. Then it will be sold to people who will indulge in its consumption. This is a tired formula, and the results are predictable.
I accept that for most artistically creative people, making a living is a fact of life as much as for anyone else, and that for people in general, their work (whether artistic or not) takes up most of their creative energies. It’s also unavoidable that creating interesting works of art is often time consuming and expensive, especially in the sorts of media which are popular. But I find that the specialization of creative production industries and production jobs is seriously limiting what’s possible. It’s stultifying. It’s dehumanizing. It’s discouraging. It’s boring.
Productivity Tools: Software as Creativity
Many successful software products reflect the specialization of tasks which is needed in today’s entertainment industry. They are the same tools used in the commercial art, advertising, industrial design and software development industries. Tools like Photoshop, QuarkXPress, AutoCAD, Maya, Final Draft, Final Cut Pro and Eclipse (an Integrated Development Environment—IDE—for programmers). These are for Doing Serious Work™, although many amateurs and hobbiests use them (often illegally, via “pirating”). Of course there are countless pretenders to the thrones held by the brand-name products, many being more affordable and less feature-laden, and some even claiming better ease-of-use, but these still conform to the basic idea of being “tools for work”. (Which makes me want to use the phrase “work for tools”, but only because it’s funny, and especially because its ambiguous.)
Computer Games: Software as Entertainment
I’m also interested in computer games, or at least the idea and potential which they represent. In contrast, I’m very jaded with the direction in which the commercial games industry is going. I do enjoy high production values, and can appreciate a classic genre game (adventure, action, shooter, strategy and the like), but I find that most of the current games do not excite my imagination in the least. I’m extremely averse to most efforts at blending gameplay with story-telling, which I find is an oil-and-water mix which usually fails to entertain me on either front, as the two usually get in one another’s ways. There are exceptions, but they are rare.
I prefer games that offer a back story along with an interactive virtual environment which allows a certain amount of experimentation. I adore games where I can change things permanently, but prefer if the game itself also constantly generates changes, which is to say I like to be able to push, but to be able to feel the game environment push back. This usually involves an element of artificial life of some kind, and/or characters which have at least marginal personality and behaviour, instead of just standing around 24/7. Which is to say, I prefer games which can surprise me, and within the bounds of which I can surprise myself. I like to contribute. I like to be able to observe the machinery which makes the game work.
Virtual Toys: Software as Exploration
One antidote to creating boring, serious software is to create fun, frivolous software. By which I mean, software for children—and not educational software, which is a horror. I mean, virtual toys. The market for virtual toys is virtually untapped (grin). I know they’re out there, but they’re pretty lame, and are usually either just bad games or bad educational products or some combination, with immature content.
It is still sadly common: most adults completely underestimate the sophistication of children’s minds. Adults inevitably pander to some kind of pseudo-person, as if children were just small simulacra of human beings with equally incompletely formed brains. Such an attitude is moronic; children’s brains are structurally almost fully formed quite early—all they lack is knowledge, most of which they will acquire completely independently, given a sufficiently rich and stimulating environment. If you were to judge children’s software objectively, your only possible assessment would be that it was designed to stunt children’s intellectual development as much as possible.
Children need freedom to explore options. Thus, software for children should be as open-ended as possible. It should be made of simple, tactile elements which can be combined together in countless ways. The rules of such combinations should not de inter-dependent; they should be orthogonal, a term which comes from the appearance of the axes of a graph. Orthogonality is actually a defining characteristic of all powerful tools and toys. Building blocks are almost perfectly orthogonal (except for the up/down imposed by gravity). Perfect orthogonality is actually not that desirable. Too much freedom is no better than too little. Minds require constraints—there must be something firm to build upon, and with which to gain conceptual leverage.
Virtual Worlds: Software as Environment
Play is equally important to all ages and levels of intellectual development (assuming one is interested in continued development). With maturity comes an understanding of higher levels of abstraction, of ambiguity, of the inevitability of contraditing goals and of the limits of our ability to achieve our seemingly limitless desires. Virtual worlds are software toys for grown ups. They have more and varied elements, and more subtle rules of combination. Some rules are orthogonal, while others are not. Inter-relationships are many. The environment is dynamic. Change occurs whether the subject initiates it or not. Virtual worlds simulate forces, like the forces of nature or economics or other social system. Virtual worlds have many participants, whereas virtual toys allow only one. (Intermediate software may provide for an experience somewhere along a continuum between a toy and an environment.)