(para o texto em Português clique aqui)
Bruxólico: released today, april 8 2023
Bruxólico is now released, free and loose in the wild world. You can purchase the game on my website, using PayPal or on Ich.io for $10.00 USD. It took me eight long months of almost daily work, dedicating 8 to 14 hours per day, sometimes feeling extremely exhausted at night due to tendinitis (a legacy from previous jobs in my life). I emphasize this because this time I will write a slightly different text, and I want to touch on a taboo subject, which is the pricing of the game, because I believe it is time to do so.
But before the "controversy" (in quotes, because I don't really consider it controversial, it's a matter of survival for me, and a taboo for most people in the independent "game industry"), I want to talk a little bit about what this work is and what I intend to achieve with it.
A game... a book... a legend!
Bruxólico aims to do justice to all the cultural references, folklore, and works of Franklin Cascaes, Peninha, and other artist friends whom I mention in this work. Cascaes and Peninha need to be known in the rest of Brazil and the world, and I humbly hope to help them reach at least my small audience. But I will publish here on the blog the text that accompanies the "readme.txt" file of the game, where I talk in more detail about these inspirations. I want to focus here on what concerns this idea of game+book+storytelling.
Bruxólico is a video game, but it is also an illustrated book and a legend that I created based on other legends and stories, "truths told by liars," to paraphrase the title of one of the books by our late Peninha (RIP). Those who buy the game will not only receive the files to play it, which work on the ZX Spectrum, an obsolete computer from 1982, or on emulators, programs that allow games from these old machines to run on modern devices such as mobile phones, computers, or even through the internet browser. No, in addition to the game you will also receive a 50-page illustrated book (in PDF for the digital version), with a narrative that permeates the story behind the game. Also, six Audio Narratives, which, together with ambient sounds, tell six of the tales that are part of the book's text.
I am happy with people's reactions to the Bruxólico graphics, which are generally considered beautiful and impressive. Many people notice the "stage" effect, the illusion of perspective created by the screens, and the simulation of "scrolling" in various parts of the game. When I created these parts, I thought about the lessons of Georges Méliès, one of the inventors of cinema. The creator of the first films was a stage magician and knew that creating illusions for the human eye is possible by only modifying the focal point of the scene. You attract the viewer's gaze to a specific point, and that's where the "magic" happens. Creating a focal point is almost natural in a video game.
Therefore, even though I did not have the means to create a true scrolling effect on the ZX Spectrum, I used the available resources to my advantage. Even with few elements, most of which were created with limited sprites (only 12 at most, with a size of 16x16 pixels in MPAGD, including the player), and an effect of having a "digital sign" on only one horizontal line of tiles (8x8 pixel squares), I was able to create programming that created the illusion of movement on the screen. It is a relatively simple idea, but complex in its elaboration and implementation of the relationship between these elements. The "false 3D" effect, with its theatrical stage visual, not only helped convey the idea that this is a narrative, a story being told, but also reinforced the effect of movement, scrolling, and parallax.
Some time ago I heard Marcus Garrett (Bitnamic/Teknamic) talking about how important instruction manuals and covers were for games that had very simple graphic elements, like those on Atari 2600 or Odyssey2. In these systems with very limited memory and processing power, the game characters and scenarios were so "abstract," with their large pixels, that the covers and manuals became a complement to the player's imagination. It would be possible to write an article just about the relationship between game covers, which were totally futuristic in the early 80s, and the games themselves, mixed in the imagination of players of that time. I have been reflecting on this for a few years, and in Bruxólico, I am finally putting into practice some of my partial conclusions.
My intention and ambition are to create a multi-language art project, where the game, book, illustrations, and storytelling complement each other. Of course, I have made an effort to ensure that all these facets of Bruxólico work independently: someone can decide to just play the game and ignore the audio narratives or the illustrated book, or vice versa, ignoring the game and just reading the book. "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law," as sayd Aleister Crowley. However, only those who make the effort to appreciate the multi-language approach will have the complete experience, or at least a different type of experience than they may be used to.
Making art is not about pleasing people, perhaps in a certain way seducing, but also intentionally creating some friction with the reader of the work. I am, maybe in a way, creating the situation of "forcing" someone who is only accustomed to playing, to read the illustrated book. Or, to someone who has never played a video game but is interested in the book, to try the game even if only for a moment. Perhaps even some parents, "hobbyists" of old video games, will play and read the book together with their children, why not? I did my best to make the text interesting to both "the learned and the schoolchildren", as Historian Marc Bloch said. Or as authors like Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in The Little Prince, Lewis Carroll in Alice in Wonderland, among others, seem to do in their work, even though I don't even come close to their level.
Dialoguing video games, storytelling, and illustrated books is also a way to put into practice the principles of Anachronistic Art. Those who have read the "Anachronistic Art Manifesto" (click here to read) can recognize that the dialogue between these different era languages is not casual. A video game made for an outdated computer, a forgotten way of storytelling in the times of radio, and the greatest representative of the cultural revolution of the press, the book, are the resources that come to us here in the third world. Someone like me, without capital and with access to few equipment, can appropriate what is within reach and thus create contemporary art. A type of art that, despite being a video game, calls on the player to stop playing for a few moments, read the book, or listen to the narratives.
This experience is different from if, for example, all the text of the book were inside the game. It is common to have game genres with a lot of text, such as RPG games, or even any other genre in "cutscene" screens. The player will read and delve into the narrative, but still be playing within the game, without breaking that "environment". What I propose is different because I am intentionally breaking that relationship between the player and the game, but keeping he/she with me. The Illustrated Book, or even the audio narratives, require an active role, not passive, from whoever plays the game. It demands the player who wants to delve into the story to, whether during game intervals, between chapters, loading parts since the game is divided into more than one cassette tape in the physical version, or after the game is finished, to in a way "exit the game". I am purposefully doing what most game developers try to avoid as much as possible, which is this “break the mood”, what takes the player out of the game. At that moment, he is no longer my player, but my reader.
What exactly will this experience of the book complementing the game be like? I don't know for sure yet, beyond what I've explained above. I believe that it will be the people who play and/or read and/or listen to Bruxólico who will gradually tell me, with words and/or their reactions to this work, whether positive or not. As always, the feedback I receive from people will be of great value to me and will feed me ideas for future works. I still have a lot to experiment and do in this regard, and I have no shortage of future ideas, I just hope to live long enough to produce half of them. Tell me, what has this Bruxólico experience brought to you?
Now, the "controversy"...
$10.00 dollars? For a digital version of a game made
for a computer from 1982? Are you crazy?
Heheheh, joke aside, the question above is one I asked myself while looking in the mirror for many months while developing the game (figuratively speaking, I'm not that lonely or crazy yet). I know that the average prices for digital versions of games for the ZX Spectrum are around $3.00 (dollars). Many people already complain about a price of $5.00 dollars, and I know that well. But I have my reasons for asking for more, and I'll be frank about this.
This is a handmade work, not done by a factory in an industry. The true video game industry, for example, can employ 300 people in a project that lasts 4 years to create a game, and then sell it for $30.00 in digital version, with all production costs, or even more in physical version considering the cost of manufacturing and distribution, which is not cheap for the player, because they will gain in the "scale" factor. It's a basic rule of financial mathematics (not economics, because economics is something bigger that involves social and political factors), something that is done on a large scale has lower costs and a final value, and can still generate huge profits for the company owners. I am not a company, and I won't gain huge profits, I am just an individual trying to make my existence minimally viable.
No Game company that can produce on a large scale will be interested in making new games for ZX Spectrum, or even the Mega Drive, for example, because there is no consumer market, and it is not likely to return, as it was in the 80s and 90s. I know what I'm saying is somewhat obvious, I'm not calling anyone ignorant, but it's important to remember. And that's one of the many “why” we, video game artisans, make games for these "obsolete" systems (another topic that could be written about a lot, how obsolete they really are). Some of these independent producers do it as a hobby and distribute the game for free, others, even if they don't need the financial return, charge something because it is fair that they are minimally rewarded.
The fact, and I'm being very frank, is that I am unemployed, at best an unsupported and precarious worker, someone from the new "precariat", and please don't give me that "entrepreneur" talk. I make a living doing odd jobs in the low tech gaming industry, or as they say in the field, freelancing, and earn some from my own games, which give me a tiny return, very small, compared to the time and work I dedicate to them. I earn much more when I have a freelance job, but I do much prefer to spend my time making my own games.
Then I ask myself, what is my true contribution as an artist? Doing freelancing jobs on other people's projects, or creating my own work? I have no doubt about the correct answer. To earn at least something that gives dignity to my creation is also a political act. I should have a return in the end, with Bruxólico, of no more than about $300.00 dollars, after a few months of digital + physical sales of the game. This after working on it for 8 months, full-time, with no capital, just my labor power. The $ 300 almost (almost) pay for one month of expenses here at home (food, water, electricity, internet, transportation for me and my wife). Let me ask you, would you work for 8 months for one minimum wage?
I only do it for the love of art. And I can do it because I spend 1 or 2 years prioritizing freelance work, pixel art commissions, or other jobs in the gaming industry, saving money in the bank, watching my body physically deteriorate and time pass, so that maybe later I can dedicate another year to one of my special projects, like I did with Bruxólico. I would love to be able to focus solely on my own work, and it's not for lack of trying - I'm doing it right now - but it's very difficult, especially in third-world countries. It's not that we're here culturally inferior to countries with "first-world" economies, but money is scarcer here, and because people have to constantly worry about what to eat and how to pay rent, there's little interest in art, let alone paying for it.
No, I'm not looking at the market side, I know. I'm familiar with these financial laws (not economic, as I mentioned before) that if, on the one hand, making games for a niche market also means small demand, consequently there aren't many people willing to pay, which regulates prices downward to some extent. But I'm human, and it couldn't be otherwise, because I'm also an artist, and art is a distinctly human thing. An AI (inappropriate name) can create images, but it's just a simulacrum of art, unless the person behind it can skillfully (and there are probably appearing those who can) create real art with it. But in this case, the “automatic image creator app” (a more appropriate name) is only a tool in the hands of an artist who is attuned to their time. Art is a human thing, too human. But that's also a topic for future conversation.
To my audience, I say the following: those who truly value my work, want to see me creating more things like the ones I do, and have the financial means to pay the price I'm asking for, will provably buy the game. Those who for some reason cannot or are not willing to, can ignore or pirate, "do what thou wilt". I live in the third world, without money or access to most of the cultural products that I see people consume around the world since childhood, and I've been pirating games all around ever since. I even know where my games are pirated on the internet and I don't care, it's part of show, I'm even happy that someone has the interest to pirate my little games, I feel really honored with that in a certain way.
I also have clarity, all of what I've talked about and are partly my struggles as an artist, and the result from a choice I made. Nobody asked me to do this work, and nobody has an obligation to help me sustain myself in it, that's also obvious. If I wanted to have a stable financial life, I wouldn't have quit my banking job 15 years ago to attend college and study arts. This is not just a venting session, and I haven't (yet) become a resentful person towards society for thinking that it doesn't give me the return I consider fair. Fortunately, I have intellectual tools to understand all of this in a slightly more complex way. But I consider the moment appropriate to bring these things up.
This is the reality of many artists, especially in the third world, where art doesn't have much value and very few artists can survive on their own work. Here, the tradition is that most artists who are in art history books were either children of industrialists, farmers, descendants of slave owners, or government employees, who created their art in their spare time or within their own department, because if they didn't, they would die miserable and discredited.
I apologize if this text seems too aggressive to you. The truth is, in my incomplete 3-year history degree, almost 20 years ago, I learned that the debate of ideas doesn't necessarily have to be a fight. If my text sounds a bit angry, it's just me trying to be clear and assertive. Also, any aggression that I express here is not against you, or even against those who came to complain about the price of the game. If I'm angry, it's against oppressive systems, their managers, and the true beneficiaries who are very specific people with well know names and surnames, as well as a lot of power in this world. Hatred is also a human feeling, and it's healthy to have it to some extent, but against the right targets.
Well, have you ever heard anyone who makes games be as frank as I have been on this issue? I Think that in fact, everyone in the industry is terrified of revealing their "failure" in the market because they believe it would tarnish their product. It seems to be the logic of marketing in the decadent capitalism of post-truth. In my own terms, I don't consider myself a failure, just someone who chooses and "pays" to maintain a certain freedom of creation. A little, tiny bit of creative freedom in this world. Yet I don't want to starve, so I charge what I consider to be fair for my work. Maybe my "advantage" is that I'm not a game developer, I'm an artist who happens to develop games.
Enjoy, reflect, and have fun with Bruxólico.
Amaweks
