Therefore, I stopped random players during the play, interrupt what they were doing at the moment, and asked them the question: “are you real?” People in Manyland were automatically “digitized” with a default character-look, and although looks could be changed, the idea of having a digital version of self is considered normal, and thus would be unnormal for people to stop their activies in this digital world and think about it.
There was a lot of time that I didn’t know what exactly I was doing, but the experiments and play above have taught me that any time spent in the game is playing, any action done in the digital game is treating the digital as a place of happenings.
I chose Manyland as my third and final game for a twitch live stream.
In other words, purposefully “not playing” or not knowing how to play could promote exchange. ( see some of the composites here)Ĭommunication mostly happens when another person needs help, not so much when every player is focused on solving a solvable task. Me and my teammate Tao Liu looked at the main attributes of the world, and collected then recomposited those attributes in speculating alternative game experiences. Human Fall Flat was the second multiplayer game I chose to play, because I was interested in developing the philosophy of falling. But is it a fall guy figure falling, or the player falling, or the player as a fall guy figure falling? And where does whoever’s falling fall from? Where do they fall into when failing? By asking these questions, I start to see the digital more than a platform or domain, as a place and a container of real-world related experiences.
The skin associations in the game defines a player’s level of success.
It does not really matter if viewers could see clearly what’s happening in the game in the background, since the gesture of gameplay for this episode serves as a special reminder to all: whatever happens in the digital could be truly ‘real,’ if we link it to those of the physical world and be critically engaged. The more complicated talk better ‘sit-’uates the often generic questioning and answering interactions in the game, while the use of this gameplay as a background ‘framed’ the real world conversation in a more omnipresent way. Those collisions are an intervention of the game within the host herself that are to be extended to the audience. Sometimes, interestingly, the pixelation of things and the glitching of the site provide a more real feeling than the relationships in real life that we seem to have. The host both playing (asking MANYLAND gamers ‘are you real’) and talking with a guest, is hereby creating intersections of reality formed by the juxtaposition of ‘real’ and digital conversations, and the collage of aesthetically-and-concept-matching visuals and sounds. This special episode brings viewers back to the same cozy yet eerie setting of the show, but with a gameplay of MANYLAND as a framed canvas backdrop. REAL talk REAL show is a live-streamed talk show that deals with the relationship between modern people in modern society.