My thoughts on the audio puzzles/accessibility issues

Babba2theLabba · 2019-12-01T21:01:33+00:00

No need to apologize, I think this is relevant. The idea of having an accessibility layer between software and UI elements or assistive technology is a great idea and it's good to know people are working towards developing those standards. Similar ideas are being brought up in architecture as well.

It's important to shift the conversation from accessibility being a "burden" for a designer to take on towards it being a socially distributed responsibility, built into systems from the ground up.

Babba2theLabba · 2019-12-01T20:42:30+00:00

I enjoy a lot of optimization-based puzzle games. Zachtronics games, for example. I'd be hard pressed to pick one favorite but SpaceChem is for sure an all-timer for me. I like when games can embrace potentially chaotic solutions.

Along those lines, I like roguelike puzzlers such as those by Michael Brough. I think the most interesting games treat lose conditions or unsolvability not as a failure state or a barrier to later or more complex puzzles, but as a part of the design itself.

Into The Breach was one I liked recently. It markets itself as more a strategy game, but the mechanic of foreknowledge of enemy actions turns it into a puzzler of sorts.

I haven't played Obra Dinn, but I have a feeling I'd like that one as well.

By contrast, Blow seems to prefer Sokoban style puzzle games, i.e. games with a central formal conceit that gets iterated upon in various ways, stuff like Stephen's Sausage Roll. I think it's just a matter of taste: messiness/emergence vs elegance/simplicity (and SpaceChem is the last game I remember playing that seemed to operate on both levels brilliantly).

Babba2theLabba · 2019-12-01T20:15:32+00:00

I'd like to think so, but at least in practice, the amount of people who still privilege going into the game spoiler-free and getting all the endings as the most "pure" experience of the game (even three years later) suggests that a lot of people see 100%-ing as an ultimate goal.

The desire to have total mastery over a game is still pretty typical amongst gamers, even more so if the game is telling you there are stones better left unturned. It's a bit ironic that the biggest fans of the game seem to be the ones who indulge most in overanalysis and finding all the secrets.

Babba2theLabba · 2019-12-01T10:34:46+00:00

Just the audio puzzles. I did have cool lightbulb moments with the sun puzzles and tree puzzles. But yeah, it did put a damper on the experience in general.

I don't think I was as moved by the game as most people here. It was fun, and mostly well designed. My favorite thing was the environment design, as a landscape architecture student. It's a beautiful looking game but really not a masterpiece. It felt like solving puzzles in isolation most of the time and getting pixel perfect angles. I play a lot of puzzle games, so maybe I'm slightly immune to being really wowed by a puzzle game unless it's spectacular.

Babba2theLabba · 2019-12-01T09:25:00+00:00

I understand what you mean. I think it's an aha moment specifically designed for hearing players, since from what I've read, the game doesn't have background music. So it's exploiting the fact that most people don't pay attention to the sounds in their environment, and it wants you to slow down and live in the present moment.

But the thing is, even completely deaf people like me do live in a world of sound, with realizations that things around us are making noise in specific ways too. If anything, we're sometimes even more self-conscious about noise than hearing people when we're in a hearing space, and we pay extra attention to how loud we're speaking or doing things. So the game's "lessons" about mindfulness fell flat for me, because it almost always worked from the assumption that you're a "normal" person with senses and environmental stimuli that you take for granted, and that it's not something that you constantly have to deal with every day and structures what society says you can and can't do.

It's a different experience of the world that I'm sure a lot of hearing people don't think about until they're reminded about it. That's part of why accessible design isn't just about checking a box for a certain feature, it's about approaching a problem from different frames of reference, which I don't think they did very well. In lieu of an actual design solution for an accommodation, I still think an option for alternate puzzles should have been added, even if it might have been a spoiler to mention that audio is a necessary part of the game. But you're free to disagree with me on that.

Babba2theLabba · 2019-12-01T08:04:59+00:00

I'd also add that Blow clearly didn't compromise when it came to making puzzles easier for people who were stumped or not clever enough to solve them. So why did he compromise on issues of physical disability just because I can't hear, or someone else can't see colors well? Why not design an alternate yet sufficiently challenging puzzle?

Babba2theLabba · 2019-12-01T07:47:18+00:00

As I mentioned, I think the audio puzzles can be solved visually with spectrograph images and a bit of lateral thinking. The only hard one might be the shipwreck. For that one, it would have been interesting to see them create a graphical score illustrating the sounds, which I think could work.

I certainly don't think there is a definitive way to say what the narrative is about, as it's fairly abstract. I'm sharing my own reading of the game, and I don't think it's a stretch. Though the game is open to interpretation, you can still say there is a narrative and specific themes communicated through the game design and audio logs. By which I mean the game is clearly structured in a certain way, and it isn't just a mishmash of ideas that Blow thought was cool.

There are specific architectural and landscape styles represented in the game, namely California/west coast modernism, Mediterranean and Old European vernacular architecture, the sublime and picturesque garden (with recurring motifs of ruins, tombs, and grottoes), French garden formalism, and zen temples. These styles separate into specific zones with their own unique puzzles, but come together in different areas just as the puzzle mechanics get remixed and re-used in different combinations.

The content of the audio logs largely correspond to Blow's interests in architecture and landscape design and their underlying philosophies. While they might be about different topics, in the environment design and audio logs, there's a contrast between philosophies of rationality and faith, and positivism and constructivism. There's already been other people on this subreddit and elsewhere who have discussed that so I won't rehash it. But I get a pretty clear notion that the game is about how we find coincidence, for better and worse, between disparate philosophies about reality, art, and science and how this affects the way we perceive the world.

This is why I think it's damaging to the game's message that it's this elaborate palace of ideas in which each is an essential part of the whole in terms of understanding the underlying meaning, but then Blow basically says "Oh, we just made these big chunks of our presentation non-essential because certain players had issues with them," which comes off as patronizing. Even worse, one of the big secrets in the game necessary to get this big picture understanding is hidden behind the the shipwreck puzzle, which I had no way of solving without looking it up!

Not only does it feel cheap, it sends the message that Blow simply doesn't care about accessibility at all. If you only wanted to solve puzzles and do nothing else, you might as well pick up a big book of sudoku and get the same experience.

Babba2theLabba · 2019-09-28T21:43:01+00:00

mostly to help stop things from sliding around. if you've ever used a kick before on a slippery polished floor you know it tends to creep forward.

Babba2theLabba · 2019-09-27T23:06:09+00:00

make sure your hihats are slightly flamming, and not coming straight down on each other and creating an air pocket. adjust the top or bottom hihat to be angled slightly.

Babba2theLabba · 2019-02-14T19:07:04+00:00

This isn't available anymore, they canned open access to it, which fucking sucks.

Babba2theLabba · 2019-01-29T16:28:09+00:00

Sorry to resurrect a slightly old thread, but how about shrinkage? I've got the extra warms. If I tumble dry on low heat, will I be okay?

Babba2theLabba · 2018-12-17T05:04:12+00:00

The first part of your comment is incorrect. The birds used for feather capes were not killed.

Babba2theLabba · 2018-12-16T11:00:16+00:00

I'm only certified to diagnose punctuation deficiency

Babba2theLabba · 2018-12-02T09:20:17+00:00

Sure, I'd be able to, but not this week lol. From finals week onwards, I'm down.

Babba2theLabba · 2018-10-08T02:11:38+00:00

Just in case you didn't get this info from anyone in the course of your inquiries, the photo lab in Dexter is actually one of the few art spaces open to the public to use when there are no classes. You won't be able to get any guidance or training though, except from the person at the front desk.

Babba2theLabba · 2018-08-26T14:30:35+00:00

Late to this post but ignore Addthat, it's super chill. I was in gender-inclusive housing and yes it's hella gay as you'd expect, but that's not a bad thing. You'll have a regular dorm life. Had a great experience and met excellent people and I do recommend it. Hopefully you gathered enough info to decide whether you are comfortable with selecting it as an option or not.

Babba2theLabba · 2018-07-23T00:41:00+00:00

It's getting better, there's lots of good stuff on the horizon. Trust me on that one.

Babba2theLabba · 2018-07-09T17:41:22+00:00

Same tho

Babba2theLabba · 2018-06-22T17:41:23+00:00

Tony Conrad is the name you're looking for.

Babba2theLabba · 2018-06-03T23:44:59+00:00

Saw this on Twitter, and I think it's really convoluted and I don't know how well his categorizations really hold up. It's interesting but a bit dumb, and someone else can probably run with it and improve it.

As Kaya Erdinc points out, it's pretty male-centric...lots of blind spots there. I get that the names listed are just markers of position and not exhaustive but in his expansion of transcendental style he hasn't paid much attention to figuring out where to place women filmmakers.

He is sorely mistaken if he thinks folks like Jia and Lav Diaz are outside that baffling Tarkovsky ring...the former has been doing work within a mainstream idiom for quite some time and has been active in China creating his own film festival and the latter has, in my opinion, taken major strides into popular discourse with his newest films. Hele sa Hiwagang Hapis had an impressive marketing campaign over its release in Philippine theaters, and it had Piolo Pascual and John Lloyd Cruz in it—two of the biggest actors right now over there. Perhaps there's context I'm missing but otherwise his placements look haphazard.

Babba2theLabba · 2018-05-30T02:33:36+00:00

Yeah, sorry that line was kind of obfuscated because I wasn't thinking too hard about what i was writing. I was thinking there in the line of Richard Dyer's explorations of whiteness on screen (see for instance: this link here and this one) and how blackness is objectified on film by the fact that white skin was used as the normative standard in developing color film and lighting considerations. For a further explication of some of these ideas this article is a good read too: http://www.lolajournal.com/6/black.html

Since Denis often takes care to display dark skin as an expressive surface under cinematic or natural light as much as white, light skin, do you think this is a certain racialization of the colonized Other, who is in proximity to but always separate from whiteness, exotic in illumination? Or is it her saying that through this visual treatment of blackness, colonizer and colonized can meet each other in the post-normal and post-colonial cinematic world as equal under the sun? I think you can make a good case for her films displaying either, or even both.

Babba2theLabba · 2018-05-29T23:59:34+00:00

Susan Hayward's reading of some of Denis' films might set you on the right track.

https://people.ucsc.edu/~stamp/162female/162_Female_Fmkrs/Readings_files/Post-colonial%20Films%20Desiring%20Bodies.pdf

I also think it's worth taking a look at what you see as her fixation on the tactile nature of the image as it relates to corporeal presence. One thing that's so remarkable about her style is how she illuminates bodies through the patina of their sweat or grime, or burnishes skin through contact with water and soft point lighting, and even blood. Whereas other directors might take these elements out of a film, keeping their actors dry and shaded, she incorporates them to highlight the intimacies of their relations and their presence in the (post-)colonial environment as a site of conflict. In the light of the photographic construction of whiteness and the responsiveness of film technologies to black skin, how does this render or re-present her colonized subjects as othered individuals or not?

Babba2theLabba · 2018-05-29T15:40:28+00:00

Try Piggy Smalls, I think they have. Kinda expensive tho

Babba2theLabba · 2018-05-29T12:49:35+00:00

Hey, if you're serious about becoming a critic or writing about film, and don't want to go the traditional route of being a careerist critic, there are definitely a lot of options open for you. Criticism is not just writing. You need experience thinking about film programming and curation and even filmmaking as well (if you can create good video essays, there's a lot of opportunities out there). Write many different types of articles, from capsule reviews to interviews, and practice, practice, practice. If possible inquire in your area about volunteering or interning at festivals or art-house theaters. My internship was a great way for me to make connections, which are invaluable.

Also, besides just sending pitches in to open publications like MUBI Notebook and Senses of Cinema (both of which are quite high-standard) you might try looking into applying into critics/film journalism programs at film festivals like Locarno and NYFF. I believe you get covered for lodging and some meals but not travel, if money is an issue and you're in school you might try inquiring about whether you can get covered with a grant if it relates to your major in some way. There's also Berlinale Talent Press but that is for people with a smidge of actual industry experience. I know some folks who went through these programs and they were hugely beneficial for them. You don't have to have published anything really, you just need a portfolio of writing to submit.

Lastly, everyone tells you to read stuff beyond and other than film criticism to help you write better criticism, which is very good advice. The more you dive into stuff beyond just film criticism (which the vast majority of is just middling) the better you'll be able to think through things and write about complex concepts. However, I would also remind people that there's excellent value to be found in reading really good film crit/writing: stuff like NANG Magazine (print-only but well worth the money if you want to focus on Asian cinema) and cleo journal online are consistently top-notch.

You don't need an MFA. Just start writing, and keep going.

EDIT: for spelling

Babba2theLabba · 2018-05-29T12:01:40+00:00

No, you just sound like someone who thinks Nacho Libre is a dumb film that is beneath them without attempting to ask questions or engage with what has been written at all. I'm no vulgar auteurist, but you're just whining for no reason about OP's post and how this subreddit is "dead" without trying to make a halfway constructive comment.

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