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对话《Sissyfight》设计师Eric Zimmerman

发布时间:2013-06-08 17:50:00 Tags:,,,

作者:Michael R Brown

游戏设计师Eric Zimmerman有点像只斗牛犬,或者正如他的合作者Naomi Clark所说的:

“当我们正在努力构思新游戏时,他的脑子却一直在思考他正在做的游戏中尚未解决的设计问题和挑战。”自他们于1999年相识,她就经常与Zimmerman合作。“他只是用思想的牙齿,不断地啃噬那些问题。”

作为行业资深人士,Zimmerman已经当了20年的游戏设计师了。“我本来是要当画家的,所以我在大学里学习的是油画。但在我毕业时,我从事的工作更像是做游戏。”

在《SiSSYFiGHT 2000》中,Zimmerman第一次品尝到成功的果实。与Clark和程序员Ranjit Bhatnagar合作开发的这款游戏,是第一款使用即时浏览器聊天的游戏,这对游戏的玩法影响很大。在《SiSSYFiGHT 2000》中,玩家扮演一个在操场上跟同伴一起玩的小女孩,玩家要通过戏弄、告密等方式打击其他女孩子的自尊心。

当该游戏于1999年发布时,还没有人制作过这么依赖在线游戏内置聊天的游戏——在《SiSSYFiGHT》要取得进展,就要拉帮结派,陷害其他人。

然而,在最近几年,《SiSSYFiGHT》却停服了。因为Zimmerman的工作室Gamelab关闭了,该游戏一直处于法律纠纷中。没有人能够玩这款对于网页游戏具有开创性意义的游戏了。Zimmerman希望改变现状。

sissyfight(from tischspecialprogramsblog)

sissyfight(from tischspecialprogramsblog)

《SiSSYFiGHT》的复兴

让《SiSSYFiGHT》起死回生并不像发布一款新游戏那么简单。通过与自称“从电子游戏世界中发现美”的网站Venus Patrol的合作以及Kickstarter的融资活动,《SiSSYFiGHT》的开发团队计划重写游戏代码,并公开游戏的源代码,使玩家可以在Venus Patrol的在线游戏厅上玩到它。

Zimmerman表示:“我们正在努力借助Kickstarter的力量。我们不打算制作商业产品,我们筹钱是为了重制游戏,然后免费开放它的源代码。”

当《SiSSYFiGHT 2000》在Word.com第一次发布时,它宣告了网页游戏的新时代来临。Zimmerman宣称:“据我所知,《SiSSYFiGHT》可能是第一款使用浏览器的即时聊天的游戏。”现在还没有其他游戏与使用与它一样的方式体现社交斗争。“不只是关于小女孩的操场社交斗争;它成为一场社交战争——社交活动中的背后中伤、拉帮结派、欺上瞒下和阴谋诡计等它都有。”

在游戏中,你不只是会被其他人欺负;有时候,你也必须欺负其他人才能让自己获胜。Clark提出:“问题是:我们所做的事是可以接受的吗?我们互相欺负是对的吗?因为不是真的,所以就无所谓对错吗?如果我说了某人的坏话,我其实是对那个玩家做了不好的事还是说脏话就是游戏的一部分?”

看一眼《SiSSYFiGHT》,你会马上注意到,游戏中的女孩并非你头脑中根深蒂固的形象。如Zimmerman解释的:“女性形象单一,虽然在现在的电子游戏中可能不是这样,但90年代末的游戏确实是这样的——或多或少限制于两类角色:《超级马里奥兄弟》中等待被拯救的公主,或Lara Croft类型的美女动作英雄——这是为了吸引男性青少年玩家的花瓶角色。

“除了这两种极端,没有中间地带了,或者至少在热门游戏中没有深刻或个性丰满的角色了。所以我们希望能通过《SiSSYFiGHT》展现女性角色的另一面。”

在1999年,人们误解这款游戏是儿童向的,导致某些家长认为他们的孩子被游戏带坏了。Zimmerman解释道:“《SiSSYFiGHT》是一款关于儿童的游戏,但不是儿童游戏。它体现了游戏中的不良方面,让玩家从说脏话做坏事中收获乐趣。”

Clark类比道:“如果你写的是一本书,那么人们可以重复阅读它;如果你做的是一款单人游戏,人们可以反复玩;但在线游戏就不是这么简单了。”

Zimmerman对Kickstarter的融资活动表达了相同的情绪:“这对我们来说是一次让游戏重生的机遇,我们认为这是一款有趣的游戏,对游戏历史和网络历史都具有重要意义,对于现在的游戏争论和独立游戏的内容、文化和玩法都有所启发。”

但是当然,自《SiSSYFiGHT》第一次进入玩家的视野,局势有所改变——比如,免费游戏的崛起,这种游戏强调通过游戏内消费来进展剧情和获得装备。Clark指出,《SiSSYFiGHT》的复兴只是为了粉丝:“我们只想把它作为一份礼物。现在的网页游戏这么多,简直就像路边商店——你一家店一家店地逛,每一家店都竭力让你用虚拟货币买他们自己的东西。我认为我们想把《SiSSYFiGHT》做成一个公共公园,里面有一座雕像上写着‘生于1999年,复兴早期的网页游戏。’”

引领新文化形式

1993年,Zimmerman在一家位于纽约的游戏开发公司R/GA开始自己的设计师生涯。那家公司的代表作是《Gearheads》——一款国际象棋和西洋棋的变体游戏。1996年,Zimmerman离开公司成为自由职业者。1999年,他与Clark和Bhatnagar合作开发了《SiSSYFiGHT 2000》。随着游戏成功,Zimmerman与游戏设计师朋友Peter Lee一起创办了自己的工作室Gamelab。

Gamelab制作各种类型的游戏,包括乐高积木类游戏和大获成功的《美女餐厅》。Zimmerman认为工作室在2009年关闭以前,为休闲游戏的流行做出了贡献。

Zimmerman(from polygon.com)

Zimmerman(from polygon.com)

现在,Zimmerman是纽约大学的游戏中心的全职教授,还是各种游戏设计师社团(如Local No. 12)中的一员。

他表示:“我对游戏的美学、游戏剧情等具有浓厚的兴趣,但实验性玩法才是我的心头好,才是真正让我兴奋的东西。”

《SiSSYFiGHT》与Zimmerman的许多其他游戏一样,是根据实验性玩法这个概念做出来的。正如Word.com的主编所说的,他是一个严肃地思考游戏设计的人,把游戏当成文化。“我记得Marisa Bowe(游戏邦注:1995年至2000年任Word.com执行制作人)告诉我,她很高兴能遇到这样一个理解游戏制作技艺的人。我一直在做游戏,理解交互设计、游戏逻辑和规则,但我还要在文化的层面上思考游戏。”

Clark说,Zimmerman总是把他的游戏知识和他对游戏的爱传递给周围的人。当第一次制作《SiSSYFiGHT》时,Clark还是一个行业新人。很多游戏设计知识都是Zimmerman传授给她的。Clark感激道:“他是教我游戏知识和设计方法最多的人。在那时,在大部分学校都找不到游戏相关的课程。”

“这么多年来,我从他那里学习到许多思考游戏、构思游戏、发现灵感的方法。我把他当作我的游戏启蒙导师。”

Zimmerman发现不同玩法的创意和能力要追朔到他的童年。“还是孩子时,我花了很多时间做游戏。我做过桌面游戏。我设想了几条军人游戏的法则,可以在地下室玩。”

“刺激我成为游戏设计师的部分原因是,这是一个引领前所未有的新文化形式的职业,另一部分是童年时代就对制作游戏充满热情。”

这股开创新文化形式的动力也促使Zimmerman成立Gamelab的原因。他说:“我确实想创造一种环境,让我能从事原创的、实验性的、创意的游戏。”

“我不想做主流的大型3D游戏;我不想做那些针对客户、类似赌博的游戏;我想做小游戏,所以我和Peter Lee、 Michael Sweet(游戏音乐人)一起做了一款叫作《BLiX》的(益智)游戏。”在2000年的独立游戏节上,《BLiX》荣获最佳音频奖。

《BLiX》是一款使用Adobe Shockwave插件制作的网页游戏。因为《BLiX》的成功,Zimmerman和Lee就该游戏与Shockwave.com达成授权协议。“那款游戏的首期定金足够我们开一个工作室了,那从以后,我们发展很快。”

于是,Gamelab诞生了。

Gamelab的历程

Gamelab一开始是一个小工作室,当独立游戏还不普遍时,该工作居然主要从事独立游戏开发。Zimmerman表示:“我确定不能不强调这一点,因为我们经常忘记——‘独立游戏’就像一个人们一直在使用的术语。但是2000年Gamelab成立时,我们曾经在媒体报道中说自己‘我们是游戏的独立制作者’,听起来很怪异,但正是从我的表达中,人们悟出了‘独立游戏’这个词。”

短短几年,Gamelab保持着快速发展的势头,成为一个成员达30人的团队。该工作室因为制作了多款游戏而闻名,如实验性游戏《Arcadia》。在这款游戏中,殖家必须在分区屏幕上同时玩四个Atari式的游戏。又如教育软件《Gamestar Mechanic》,教年幼的玩家学习游戏设计的概念;在不朽的休闲游戏神作《美女餐厅》中,玩家操作餐厅服务员Flo完成食客的订单。因为它的创意,《美女餐厅》又推出五部续作和各种克隆游戏。在Word.com于2000年8月关门其门户网站后,Gamelab又把《SiSSYFiGHT 2000》买回来了。这些事迹都体现了Zimmerman的实验性玩法对该工作室的深刻影响。

diner-dash(from pc-games4free.com)

diner-dash(from pc-games4free.com)

“我为Gamelab感到骄傲,我认为Gamelab的意义不仅体现在我们制作的游戏和在休闲游戏的革新中,更重要的是,塑造了独立工作室的形象和开拓了本地游戏的视野。”

Zimmerman补充道:“许多曾为Gamelab工作的实习生、员工、合作者和自由职业者,现在分散到纽约城的各个工作室中。”

然而,回顾Zimmerman所说的工作室遇到的困境。“我们努力实验游戏,但也努力保持商业生命力。当你的员工达到30人时,制作小游戏也需要很大笔的日常费用。”

为了保持活力,Gamelab于2009年9月决定改变它的方向。该工作室决定专注于它的一款教育软件《Gamestar Mechanic》——一款教8-14岁独立儿童通过游戏学习游戏设计的游戏。带着新目标,Gamelab开始进行改组。“不幸的是,在我们做出改变——整顿员工和专注于多人游戏,仅仅一周后,股市突然崩溃了。”

作为2008年经济危机的结果,关于Gamelab关闭的报道并不多。“经济危机对我们的打击确实很大,我们又勉强坚持了5个月,但最终不得不关门大吉。我们拉不到投资,找到新客户,找不到赖以生存的生意。”

“这可能是自21世纪以来最糟糕的投资环境。基本上每个人都这么说。因为股市的崩溃,没有人愿意投资需要好几年开发时间的新游戏或新创意。”

Gamelab于2009年4月关掉工作室大门。甚至在那些收入寥寥的日子里,Zimmerman回想起员工们讨论他们多么喜欢在这里工作。“在Gamelab的离职面谈中,许多人告诉我们,这是他们职业生涯中的亮点——换句话说,它提供了真正的合作、创意的空间,让人们觉得自己可以放飞思维的翅膀,这在严格的、设计导向型环境里是不可想象的。”

Zimmerman表示:“放弃工作室是很艰难的,但我必须告诉你,作为一个对游戏设计而非商业充满热情的人,我很高兴自己再次成为独立游戏人。”

重获独立

关闭Gamelab以后,Zimmerman开始与许多不同的游戏设计团体合作,包括Leisure Collective,他与之合作了一款关于1986年巴黎暴动的游戏。Zimmerman还是Local No. 12的一员,该团体制作了《Metagame》。

《Metagame》一开始是为2011年游戏开发者大会制作的一款卡片游戏。在游戏中,玩家们使用游戏和比较卡片来辩论哪一款游戏是某个问题的最佳答案——比如“哪一款游戏给玩家的自由最多?”《Metagame》大获成功,于是有了它自己的Kickstarter融资项目,并且也成功融资了。

Zimmerman认为:“《Metagame》的想法来自社交经历,如游戏粉丝和游戏玩家争论最喜欢的游戏,然后把这个争论变成一种游戏机制,我认为这是《Metagame》作为游戏设计的有趣的地方。”

他还提到Local No. 12正在制作新手机游戏《Losswords》,它的玩法以文学名著为基础。“它是一种文学作品决斗游戏,但其实你是使用出自《白鲸》或《绿野仙踪》等名著的文本片段作为游戏域,你和朋友在其中穿越。”

这么多年,Zimmerman和Naomi Clark已经合作了一次又一次,无论是当Clark作为Gamelab的员工参与制作《乐高积木》时,还是两人都是独立游戏开发者时。Clark表示她与Zimmerman形成的密切关系大大促进了他们自《SiSSYFiGHT》以来这14年来的专业合作。

Clark感叹道:“跟一个保持这么久的合作关系是一件了不起的事,你们知道彼此的怪癖,了解对方的优缺点。”

“我真的很佩服他,这么多年来,Zimmerman确实对身边的人很好。对于不了解他的人或没有机会与他合作的人,他似乎就像一部源源不断地产生新想法和推动新项目进展的发动机。从外看是斗牛犬,从内看是火车头。“

“但透过一切表面,他确实有一颗金子般的心,那正是我想告诉大家的。”

在2009年,也就是Gamelab关闭后不久,Zimmerman开始在纽约大学的游戏中心任兼职教授。一年以后,他当上了全职教授。教学生设计游戏似乎也是他的天赋。当把他的知识传授给其他人时,他提出一些建议:“最重要的是理解为什么要重制,如何合作,用批判的眼光看自己的成果。”

“在开始你的项目时,不要设想最后的结果;成为一名优秀的设计师意味着在设计、测试和重制的过程中始终不放弃即兴发挥。”

重新变成独立设计师似乎对Zimmerman最有利。然而,并不是说作为自由职业者的他,生活中就没有新挑战了。“我认为寻找平衡点是一个更大的挑战——平衡个人生活、学术生活、教育生活、游戏设计师的创意生活和作为项目合作者的生活。可能也会令人焦虑。不要问我的女友我是不是工作狂,因为你能想象她的回答是什么。但我确实非常非常喜欢我的工作。”

Zimmerman表示,探索人们的游戏方式和发明新类型游戏是让他感兴趣的东西。“游戏是一种古老的文化形式,但数字游戏仍然是一块新大陆,还有很多地方等着我们去探索。我认为作为一名游戏人,我应该努力寻找新的游戏形式。”

这让人想到他在Gamelab时的目标,制作实验性游戏。

“因为制作游戏使我的生活变得更有意义、更充实,所以我仍然对我正在做的事感到快乐。”(本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,拒绝任何不保留版权的转载,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

The Rules of the Playground Have Changed: Taking Time with Sissyfight Designer Eric Zimmerman

By Michael R Brown

A game development veteran is trying to revive one of the industry’s first social games.

Game designer Eric Zimmerman is a bit like a pit bull, or so fellow colleague Naomi Clark says.

“He gets his mind on an interesting design problem or a challenge that needs to be tackled in a game that he’s working on, or when we’re trying to come up with a new game,” says Clark, a frequent collaborator of Zimmerman’s since they met in 1999. “He just clamps on with his mental teeth and sort of shakes it back and forth.”

An industry veteran, Zimmerman has spent 20 years working as a designer. “I was trained as an artist, so I studied painting as an undergraduate,” he says. “But by the time I graduated, I was doing things that really looked like games.”

Zimmerman’s first big successes came in the form of SiSSYFiGHT 2000. Developed with Clark and programmer Ranjit Bhatnagar, it was one of the first games to utilize real-time browser-based chat that heavily influenced gameplay. In SiSSYFiGHT, you play as a girl on the playground with her peers; the catch is that you’re trying to bring down all of the other girls’ self-esteem points by grabbing, scratching, teasing and tattling.

When the game was released in 1999, no one had created a game so reliant on online in-game chat — SiSSYFiGHT is all about forming alliances and backstabbing others as you prepare to make your next move.

For the last five years, though, SiSSYFiGHT has been offline. Since the closure of Zimmerman’s studio Gamelab, the game has been in legal limbo. No one has been able to play the groundbreaking title that redefined how we play on the web. Zimmerman hopes to change that.

RETURNING TO THE PLAYGROUND

Bringing SiSSYFiGHT back from the dead won’t just be a simple re-publishing of the original code. Through a collaboration with Venus Patrol — a site which describes itself as “in search of beautiful things from the world of video games” — and a Kickstarter campaign, the SiSSYFiGHT team plans to re-code and release the game open-source, as well as make it available to play on Venus Patrol’s online arcade.

“We’re trying to use Kickstarter in an interesting way,” says Zimmerman. “We’re not making a commercial product there; we’re raising money so we can re-code the game from scratch and release the game for free as open-source.”

When SiSSYFiGHT 2000 first released on Word.com, it ushered in a new era of web games. “SiSSYFiGHT, as far as I know, may have been the first game that had real-time chat in a browser,” says Zimmerman. The game was also about a social conflict that hadn’t been talked about in the same way that it is today. “It’s not just about little girls on a playground in a social war; it becomes a social war. It is about that backstabbing, forming alliances, deception, bluffing and outsmarting your opponents on a social level.”

In essence, it’s not just a game about being bullied; sometimes you have to bully others to win. “There are all of these questions about: is what we’re doing here OK?” says Clark. “Is it really all right for us to be bullying each other? Is it OK because we’re pretending? If I’m saying something nasty about someone, am I actually being mean to the player because we’re in an online chat room or is it all just trash talk that’s part of the game?”

One look at SiSSYFiGHT and you’ll immediately notice that the girls in the game aren’t your typical female tropes. As Zimmerman explains, “Representations of women in video games — perhaps it’s a little bit less true now, but it certainly was true in the late ’90s — were more or less limited to two kinds of characters: you had princesses to be rescued, as the kind of Princess Toadstool; or you had the Lara Croft-style pinup action hero, which was eye candy for a presumed adolescent boy audience.

“There was sort of nothing in between, or at least no deep or rich characters or alternatives in popular games. So what we wanted to do with SiSSYFiGHT was just present a different kind of female gendered character.”

In 1999, it was often misunderstood as a game for children, leaving some parents to think that their children were learning how to be bullies. “SiSSYFiGHT is a game about childhood, but it’s not for children,” Zimmerman says. “It embodies the aspects of play that are transgressive, where it’s fun to be naughty and be inappropriate and do and say the wrong things.”

“If you write a book or you create a single-player game, that can just sit on a shelf and someone can pull it off to play it or read it again, but an online game is trickier,” Clark says.

Zimmerman expresses the same sentiment about the Kickstarter campaign: “It is an opportunity for us to keep this game alive, this important game that we think is interesting in the history of games and the history of the internet and has something to say in contemporary debates and indie games about content and culture and gameplay.”

But of course, things have changed since SiSSYFiGHT first entered the gaming scene, the rise of freemium games — free games that are based on in-game purchases to advance the story or acquire equipment — being an example. Clark stresses that the SiSSYFiGHT revival is solely for the fans: “We just want it to be there as a gift for the web. So many web games these days are kind of like a strip mall — you’re going from shop to shop and everyone is trying to sell you something with their own little micro-transaction currency — and I think we would like to make SiSSYFiGHT more like a public park with a statue that says ‘Created in 1999, back in the early days of web games.’”

CREATING NEW CULTURAL FORMS

Zimmerman began working as a designer in 1993 at R/GA, a New York City-based developer known for the game Gearheads — a variation on chess and checkers where you play as toys — and left to start freelancing in 1996. In 1999, he created SiSSYFiGHT 2000 with Clark and Bhatnagar, and following its success, Zimmerman went on to found his own studio, Gamelab, with Peter Lee, friend and fellow game designer.

Gamelab went on to create a variety of games including properties for Lego, as well as monster hits like Diner Dash. Zimmerman believes the studio helped create the popularity of casual games before its untimely closure in 2009 — but more on that later.

Today, Zimmerman is a full-time professor at New York University’s Game Center, as well as a member of a variety of game designer collectives, such as Local No. 12, the creators of the Metagame, a card-based debate game about video games.

“I’m super into the aesthetics of games and game storytelling and things like that, but really experimental gameplay is my modus operandi, that’s what’s exciting to me,” he says.

SiSSYFiGHT, as well as many of Zimmerman’s other games, are based on this concept of experimental gameplay. As the editor in chief of Word.com noted, he is a man who thinks seriously about game design, as well as games in culture. “I remember Marisa Bowe, the executive producer [of Word.com from 1995 to 2000], telling me that she was happy to find someone who understood the craft of games,” he says. “[That I] had been making games, [that I] understood interactive design and game logic and the rules of games, but I also thought about games culturally.”

Zimmerman has always been keen to pass on his knowledge and love of games to those around him, says Clark. When SiSSYFiGHT was first created, Clark was relatively new to the industry. She credits much of her knowledge about game design to Zimmerman. “He was one of the people who taught me the most about games and how to design games back when there were virtually no academic programs,” says Clark. “You couldn’t really find a program to learn about games in most places.

“I have osmosed so much from him over the years about how to think about games, how to approach coming up with a new game, how to find the fun when you’re trying to come up with a game idea. I consider him one of my foremost teachers.”

Zimmerman’s creativity and ability to see different types of play goes back to his childhood. “I was one of these kids who just spent a lot of time making games. I used to make up board games,” he says. “I made up little rules for army men for playing on the basement floor.

“While part of my motivation for being a game designer was this modernist drive to make new forms of culture that no one had ever made before, it also was returning to a childhood passion.”

This drive to create new cultural forms is what led Zimmerman to open Gamelab. “I really wanted to create a context where I could work on original, experimental, innovative games,” he says.

“I didn’t want to do big, heavy, 3D mainstream games; I didn’t want to do this kind of client-based adver-gaming work; I wanted to do small-scale games and I ended up creating a [puzzle] game called BLiX with Peter Lee and [game music composer] Michael Sweet.” In 2000, BLiX won the award for Best Audio at the Independent Games Festival.

BLiX was a browser game built using the Adobe Shockwave plugin. With the success of BLiX, Zimmerman and Lee made an agreement with Shockwave.com and licensed the game. “The initial down payment on that allowed us to open an office and we kind of rolled forward from there,” says Zimmerman.

Gamelab was born.

GAMELAB, INTERRUPTED

Gamelab began as a small studio, focused on independent game development at a time when it was relatively uncommon. “I really can’t emphasize this enough because we often forget — ‘indie games’ just seems like an obvious term that people have been using for forever — but when Gamelab opened in 2000, we used to say in our press materials ‘We are an independent filmmaker of games’ and it sounded weird, but that was the way to phrase it so that people got a sense of what we meant,” Zimmerman says.

The studio quickly began to gain momentum and in a few short years grew to a team of 30 people. Gamelab became known for creating a variety of games, from experimental games like Arcadia, where players had to play four Atari-style games at once on a split screen, to educational software like Gamestar Mechanic, which taught younger players concepts of game design, to the monumental casual game hit, Diner Dash, where the player works as diner waitress Flo fulfilling customer orders. Since its creation, Diner Dash has spawned five sequels and a variety of clones. The studio also acquired SiSSYFiGHT 2000 after Word.com closed its doors in August 2000. These sorts of ventures go to show how influential Zimmerman’s mantra of experimental gameplay was at the studio.

“I’m proud of a lot of stuff at Gamelab,” says Zimmerman. “I think Gamelab’s importance isn’t just in the games we made and helping invent casual games, but also helping to define what an independent studio was and also in helping create the local game scene.”

“Many, many people passed through Gamelab as interns and staff, as partners and freelancers, as employees, and those people are now running a lot of the studios in New York City,” he continues.

However, looking back, Zimmerman discusses some of the struggles the studio had. “We were trying to experiment with games, but also were trying to stay alive as a business. When you reach 30 people, that’s a big overhead to be making little games for.”

To try and stay afloat, Gamelab decided to change its direction in September 2008. The company decided to focus on one of its educational properties, Gamestar Mechanic, which teaches kids ages 8-14 principles of game design through play. With a new objective in mind, Gamelab went through some restructuring. “Now, unfortunately, literally a week after we made that change to the company — we kind of rearranged our staff and decided to focus the company on this multiplayer game — the stock market crash happens,” says Zimmerman.

Not much has been written about the closure of Gamelab, which came about as a result of the financial crisis of 2008. “It really hit our company hard and in the end we went on for about five more months, but we had to close our doors,” says Zimmerman. “We weren’t finding investment; we weren’t finding new clients; we weren’t finding the business we needed to survive.

“It was probably the worst investment climate in the history of 21st century. Literally, that’s what people were telling us. Because of the huge stock market collapse, no one was investing in new games or new ideas or anything like that for a couple of years.”

Gamelab closed its doors in April 2009. Even during those tenuous final months, Zimmerman recalls how the staff discussed how much they had loved working there. “In our exit interviews for Gamelab, many people told us that it was really the highlight of their professional career — in other words, it was a genuinely collaborative, creative space where people felt like they could flex their creative muscles, but in a rigorous, design-oriented environment.”

“It was hard to let the company go, but I will also tell you as someone who is passionate in game design and not business, I am in many ways happy to be [working as an] independent again,” he says.

REGAINING INDEPENDENCE

Following Gamelab’s closure, Zimmerman began collaborating with a number of different game design collectives, including the Leisure Collective, where he is working on a game about the Paris riots of May 1968. Zimmerman is also a part of Local No. 12, the group behind the Metagame.

The Metagame was originally created as a card game for the Game Developers Conference in 2011. Players would use game and comparison cards to debate amongst each other which game fit the question best — an example being “Which gives the player more freedom?” The Metagame became a huge hit and launched its own Kickstarter campaign, which was successfully funded.

“The idea that the Metagame takes an existing social experience, like game fans and game players arguing about their favorite games, and then turns it into a game mechanic is, I think, part of what’s interesting about the Metagame as a game design,” says Zimmerman.

He also mentions that Local No. 12 is working on a new mobile game, Losswords, which uses public domain literature as the basis for gameplay. “It’s kind of a literary dueling game, but you’re actually using little snippets of text from Moby Dick or Wizard of Oz or something, as the playfield that you’re passing back and forth with your friends,” he says.

Over the years, Zimmerman and Naomi Clark have collaborated time and time again, whether it was when Clark was working for Lego, as a part of Gamelab, or even since the two have been working as independents. Clark says that the familiarity she’s developed with Zimmerman has helped to foster their professional relationship over the 14 years since SiSSYFiGHT.
“That’s the great thing about working with someone for a long time, is that you know each other’s quirks, you know what each other’s strengths and weaknesses are,” Clark says.

“I’ve really come to appreciate over the years the fact that [Zimmerman] does care deeply about being good to people around him and doing the right thing,” says Clark. “I think to people that don’t know him very well, or who don’t have a chance to collaborate with him, he seems like a dynamo steam engine rushing around yelling his opinions about this or that and promoting his latest project and you see the sort of exterior pit bull locomotive of his persona.

“But underneath all that he really does have a heart of gold, and that’s what I try to tell people.”

In 2009, shortly after Gamelab closed, Zimmerman began working as an adjunct professor at NYU’s Game Center. A year later, he began working as a full-time professor. Teaching students about game design has seemed like a natural fit. When passing on his knowledge to others, he offers some tips: “It’s really about understanding how iteration happens, how collaboration happens; it’s about how to be critical of your own work as it’s evolving.

“The starting place where you begin with a project is not going to resemble the ending space, and being a good designer means being open to the kind of improvisation that happens through the act of design and playtesting and iteration,” he says.

Being an independent designer again has been mostly beneficial for Zimmerman. However, that’s not to say that there aren’t new challenges in his life as a freelancer. “I think finding the balances can be more challenging; the balance of my personal life, my academic life, my life as an educator, my creative life as a game designer and collaborator with my colleagues and co-workers on all these projects. That can also be worrisome,” he says. “Don’t ask my girlfriend about whether or not I’m a workaholic because you imagine the answer that she gives. But I really, really love what I do.”

Looking forward, Zimmerman says exploring the ways people play and inventing new types of play are what’s exciting to him. “Games are an ancient cultural form, but digital games are still so new there’s still so much left for us to explore, and I feel as someone working in games I should be trying to find new forms of play.”

This goes back to his days at Gamelab and his goal of creating experimental games.

“Making games helps my life to be more meaningful and rich and in that sense I’m really happy to be doing what I’m doing.” (source:polygon)


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