Always Watching is now available to download from iTunes, amazon, 7digital, juno download and songrilla — buy it now!
If you’d like to remix the song or video, you can get the parts under a Creative Commons Sampling Plus Licence via BitTorrent.
Read more about the making of the track and the encroaching survellance state here.
A couple of years ago, Aleks Krotoski and a group of friends spanning the web, games and technology fields decided to bring the FOOCamp and BarCamp model of unconferences to the world of games and invited me along. I had a great time at the original GameCamp and missed it last year, so when I heard about the return of GameCamp a couple of months ago I jumped on a ticket and eagerly got on the train early on Saturday morning to participate in another inspiring mind expanding day. I wasn’t disappointed.
The cultural differences between the worlds of games and the web we touched on in a couple of sessions. “The PC Is Dead, Long Live The PC” quickly turned in to a discussion of open platforms like the PC versus closed, console like channels. While the long term view was that in 50 years open will prevail, the present sees controlled channels like XBLA, the various Apple stores and Steam in the ascendant. Some people will wait until titles are available on a particular channel, suggesting that they offer some advantages in terms of convenience, support or peace of mind. While this may be OK where there is competition between channels, games cannot be as easily distributed via multiple channels, with platforms like Steam requiring relatively invasive changes to be made to allow things like overlay menus to be displayed over game UIs. Where choices between channels is not possible the whims of platform controllers can make development extremely risky when policy changes or simply under staffing can delay or scupper a release.
Steven Goodwin asked why open source can build Linux, but not games. While the first answer is that Linux is a platform that can be shared by anyone whereas games are more individual expressions of creativity, that still begs the question why aren’t there more open source game platforms? Games seem to slowly be moving towards more shared and open infrastructure, but still lack the equivalent of the LAMP stack, HTML, CSS and JavaScript provide a shared web platform that allows web developers to share tips and tricks at BarCamps.
Luckily, the inability for game developers to give talks on the equivalent of squid configuration leaves room for lots of interesting talks on higher level game design concepts. 2 of the most interesting were hosted by Margaret Robertson, the first was on Curiosity — an urge which is hard to explain in classical or behavioral economics, and which is more powerful when the unknown is close and definite, a closed box on a table that must be opened, than when the unknown is distant and amorphous. The session turned in to an interesting comparison between risk, where outcomes are known and curiosity when the outcome is unknown, how both can be manipulated to make games more compelling and whether that manipulation could be a force for good as well as evil. The second of Margaret’s talks was about a forthcoming audio only binaural iPhone game and the challenges of navigating a world without light, which sounds fascinating, if hard.
Tom Armitage hosted a session which asked “What Do Cows Call Thermodynamics?”. The answer is, probably nothing, but it still affects them. So it is with games, which are ultimately defined by their rules and mechanics which can be used very creatively. The rule that Yorda is afraid if you don’t hold her hand dramatically shapes your relationship with her, the rule that you aim better while doing a stunt is what turns action quake in to a John Woo simulator.
Another arc that ran through GameCamp 2 was a discussion about creativity. Pictionary and Scrabble were used as examples of games that foster creativity while players of World of Warcraft show amazing creativity despite the game in a session that had many echos of the Playfish talk at Develop last year. At the other end of the spectrum, a session on procedurally generated content asked could algorithms create good content and if they could, how would they know?
My “Social Music Composition Games?” session at the end of the day continued this arc. I first played Rock Band at the first GameCamp and since have played it so much that I ended up starting 100 robots with Max. Since then I’ve been playing with tools like Ableton that have very game like interfaces and games like Lumines that have very sequencer like interfaces. Could you use interfaces like these to build games that do for music composition what Rock Band does for music performance? If so, how would you judge the compositions? Something that combined the interface of Lumines or the Tenori-On and Digg like filtering and tagging might be very interesting here…
On May 17th, the first 100 robots single, Always Watching, will be released online via Amazon, iTunes, emusic, Rhapsody, napster, spotify and many more digital outlets.
Always Watching has been one of the most satisfying projects I’ve ever worked on. Using a commodity PC and the incredible Ableton Live music production software, Max and I were able to compose, record, arrange and produce the track, sharing versions online using the free and open source Subversion revision control software and downloading freely reusable samples from the amazing freesound online sample site.
With the music done we were able to produce a DIY video for the track, filmed and directed by our friend Chris Cole again using digital technology that would have been out of reach of anyone but film studios a few years ago. After an incredibly fun day running around Brighton recording shots we could again get additional material from the internet, in this case footage of internet luminaries Chris Anderson, John Battelle, Sherry Turkle and Lee Tien interviewed about online privacy for the BBC virtual revolution series which were released online with a permissive license that allowed us to reuse them.
With the video in the can it was time to promote the track online using the social network sites MySpace, Facebook Sound Cloud and Last.fm, make a remix pack available via Bit Torrent and sell the track via Zimbalam, a site that that makes music available for sale on all of the major online stores, using artwork that we found on Flickr and that Rainer Messerklinger kindly let us use.
It really has been an amazing and eye-opening experience. Using cheap digital technology, the internet and a DIY spirit we have been able to create, promote and sell our music to the world and while I don’t expect to make a ton of money from selling the track, being able to sell it is important.
Computers and the internet have put the means of production back in to the hands of musicians, creatives and other workers in the digital economy. Whereas musicians in decades past would have had to rely on recording facilities and production and distribution chains owned and controlled by major labels, musicians now can choose to do it all themselves and potentially get much better deals. Historically record deals have been incredibly unfair on artists who have to pay for their recordings from their royalties but still don’t own their recordings once they are paid for. Right now sites like Zimbalam, TuneCore and CD Baby are fiercely competing to provide the best deal to musicians who are doing it themselves.
The last time ownership of the means of production changed hands from workers to factory owners the disenfranchised rose up to smash the machines until they were suppressed by the government. This time the disintermediated are turning to the government to defend and enforce the old business models by crippling the new machines that are handing back the means of production to the workers.
Always Watching is a song about biometrics, click tracking, online privacy, Phorm, governmental data loss, corruption and the increasingly Orwellian surveillance state. Even while we’ve been recording it the state has rushed through the Digital Economy Bill which further endangers our digital rights and freedoms. With a general election coming up, it’s even more important to always watch the watchers.