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I was chatting with folks on the HDF Discord over the weekend and - I think we worked out what I don& #39;t like about lyric games, or game poems, or games that are primarily designed to be read rather than actually played, whatever you want to call & #39;em
It comes from going to SLEEP NO MORE, Punchdrunk& #39;s immersive Macbeth/Hitchcock mashup, in NYC. I& #39;d just come out of the artsy Australian LARP scene; we& #39;d just put on a show where players walked around Melbourne CBD at night and summoned the lost gods of the city
And I& #39;d heard so much about SLEEP NO MORE! I was revved up for it. But what I was revved up for was Interactive Theatre, not Immersive Theatre. I& #39;d got my wires crossed somewhere along the way. The audience participation was broadly limited to choosing what to look at
And: I get it. Different thing from LARP entirely. But with SNM, and with other high-end immersive stuff, I& #39;ve felt like an intruder into the space. The performers don& #39;t want you there; the show goes on with or without you. Often you& #39;re actively *in the way.*
("But what about the one-on-one intimate sections?" I hear you ask. I never saw hide nor bloody hair of one, let alone took part. The audience numbers involved ensure that a lot of people don& #39;t. All I experienced was a load of ballet I couldn& #39;t see properly.)
And that, I think, is my issue with lyric games. Not that they& #39;re avant-garde, but that they& #39;re often not designed to be played. They happen (or... don& #39;t happen) with or without you. They don& #39;t want your involvement in the process.
That goes against the nature of the medium for me - and what makes RPGs so intoxicating as a designer, because they& #39;re toolkits for other people to tell stories and built experiences together. They& #39;re these bundles of *stuff* that don& #39;t work unless someone else gives them life.
I& #39;ve written game some myself; jokes, often, that use the medium of games to poke fun. Art pieces. But something about them didn& #39;t sit right with me and I& #39;m glad that I could start to puzzle it out rather than convincing myself that I was out of touch and I ought to just like & #39;em
