Notes on GAMETHING

Here are my notes for the photography season of GAMETHING.

Introduction:

The camera as a social instrument is fascinating. The sexy dance is a great anecdote. This also highlights play separated from mechanical implementations.
I think that photos are not necessarily something that you look back on when you are old, but rather something that in the moment feels like something that you can look back on when you are old.
More than documenting a memory to be revisited, they are the statement in the present that this is a moment that you feel is special and that you would like to be something that you will revisit in the future.
If they were actually the documentation of memories that I would revisit, I would only photograph the moments I cringe at.
It’s fun to be a harmless fool.

I’ve only played the one on the Switch, but it’s worth noting that it is really a puzzle game masquerading as a photography game.
You miss a lot of the game if the Pokemon are not intrinsically rewarding.
Snap is positioned as scientific in conflict with playful. Science doesn’t need to lack playfulness though.
Comparing the experience to shooting the Eiffel Tower is a great point.
Snap as choreography is very interesting.
Truly the real million dollar game idea is Pokemon Karaoke where you imitate Jigglypuffs
I think the idea behind apple-shaped Pokemon food was so that people didn’t try feeding apples to their pets. I think most pets can eat apples anyway, but I’m not actually sure.
I want my Men of Science to care about composition

I spent five very confused minutes before I realized that I was actually thinking about Black and White

It being fun to shoot the cutscenes is interesting. This is how a game designs intrinsic fun in a photography game.
On the ghosts, I do think that games don’t really trust that photography in itself is enough mechanically to carry a full game.
Traditional photography also doesn’t seem to give enough autonomy to the subject of the photograph. Maybe games would do better to remedy that.
Photographing food for Instagram might be closer to a screenshot than a photography mode?

Much of the point of photos in the game is to push you to inhabit the world more fully, which sometimes is the point of photos in real life too.
Photographing the greenery in the cyberpunk world is a very interesting subaltern play
Diane Arbus is interesting to bring up as a point on the arbitrariness of photos as I went to an Arbus exhibition once and a lot of her photos feel unnecessary. She was fascinated with what would have been called the freak show at a carnival and it’s a very dated statement

considering the photos as trophies needs thinking about
Having the option to shoot an animal changes the game, even if you choose never to use it. Also see, playing the dark side in an RPG.
Does this have to be surveillance? If I take a photo of my wife, that’s not meaningful surveillance
Is part of the fun of photographing the animals that you outwit them to do so?
The threat of the camera and gun being the same to the animal is very interesting
The allure of panicky photos is similar to the idea of intuitive decisions instead of calculated decisions

on the giant projector - how different is it to take a photo of the game with your phone or a physical camera rather than the game’s camera?
If much of the point of the photograph is the intentionality of the photographer, what does it mean when the computer does that instead? There’s a lot of trying to figure out the game’s intention, but a computer does not think the way a person does
This gets more interesting when you think of them as photos taken by the characters of the game rather than by the game itself
Much of photography is erotic but games are so often sexless
That’s a great point on photos of the game evoking nostalgia for an earlier time in the game

it’s interesting that I can’t take a picture of my wife or a picture of me and my wife
Space photos are a great parallel for photos of places you can’t visit
I agree that I’ve been to some places in games - Yakuza but also Bernbad
A point on animals as machines - honestly by the time the game is released, a coded animal is often going to do things that the coder doesn’t understand. Just because it is a machine that someone made, that doesn’t mean that it can be approached like a machine, if that makes sense. It can surprise you like a real animal, even if you made it.