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• 1 2018-03-08T03:16:29-08:00 Elizabeth Swensen Interview! 40 plain 2018-03-14T20:47:31-07:00

   

  
  UCSC Assistant Professor of Art and Design: Games and Playable Media 
  (she makes games)

  by Alicia Rice

        I first reached out to Elizabeth after discovering she taught a Foundations of Play course in the Games and Playable media program, which encourages students to think about play in the physical world.  At the time, I was thinking about ways to incorporate in-person playful interaction into my thesis documentary screening and hitting a bit of a brick wall in the process.  She agreed to meet and our discussion sparked my quest to think deeper about what a medium like documentary film might learn from the game design process.
  
       In taking a game design course myself, I have discovered a new way to look at my creative process.  I often struggle with the idea of story as something with a beginning, middle, and end.  For me, story exists everywhere.  It exists in single moments, where I can see branches of story simultaneously spreading out into the world in different directions.  The process of trying to guide and contain that can leave me feeling alienated creatively.  The constraints and struggles my practice contends with in documentary might just be avenues of possibility within game design.  Reframing this from problem to potential is liberating.
  
      With this in mind, I took this interview as an opportunity to ask Elizabeth, who has valuable experience in the independent game movement, more foundational questions about a field that feels very new to me.
     
   

  What Makes a Good Game?

  Immersion vs. Self-Analysis

  The Game is Listening, part 1
  (this character will remember that)
  
  

  The Game is Listening, part 2
  (health vs. sanity)

  Amnesia: The Dark Descent

  
  Collaboration

  
  
  Are You Working on Anything?

  
  ​The Witch

  Recommendations?

  thatgamecompany
  
  More Recommendations?

   

  Photopia 

  ​IndieCade