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American Mcgee's Alice (Score)

Written by yanglu on April 02, 2009 16:08
We've talked about AI before hereIn fact, it was the subject of the first postCory has cited the Hawkins book a couple of times, and properly so, for its new interpretation of thinkingFascinating stuffThe best way to put the assertion (and this is all it is at this point; and again, please keep in mind that there are a number of familiar exceptions) is that the practice of game software development generates a way of seeing and defining problems (as essentially precise, logical, and algorithmic), and creating solutions (through linear, text-defined code) that makes other ways of accounting for what happens in VWs seem at worst nonsensical and at best irrelevant or quixotic.  

The inventor of my Treo wrote a persuasive book about how brains think, with one scary chapter about how to make machines think the same wayWhat's scary about it is this: Hawkins doesn't seem to grasp the way AI and people interact outside the context of handheldsIt gets intimate, you knowAnd that makes a big difference.

They looked friendly enough--at least, no one had fruit ready to throw at usIt was simply kind of surreal, after reading the comments on TN this past week and hearing other things at the conference about the problems with game studies and developer/academic relations

After our "high energy" presentation, the questions were even strangerSomeone asked why humanities research got left out, and we had to say that we couldn't find it to be directly relevant on our top 10 list of bulleted pointsIan made the point, and I agreed, that doing the research for this panel made us think differently about academic researchWhile I'm not going to say that what we've done personally has no value, it was a definite challenge to try and make it *directly relevant* in a BULLETED POINT for developersAnd there are huge gaps in what we don't knowWhere is the research about sports games, to take just one example? Anyway, the point is, I enjoyed the exercise, and learned a lot from itI hope the audience did as well




Album Description

With the soundtrack to American McGee's Alice, Electronic Arts' new video game, Chris Vrenna (formerly of Nine Inch Nails) provides musical menace to accompany the heroine's adventures in a Wonderland gone to hell The sounds of dilapidated toys and ghostly machinery converge with the haunting ambient electro-soundscape produced and composed by Vrenna.

Amazon.com

Chris Vrenna's soundtrack to the American McGee's Alice video game is fittingly twistedSounds created with toy instruments and percussion, music boxes, clocks, doors, and sampled female voices (including Jack Off Jill singer Jessicka) are manipulated into nightmarish soundscapesA harpsichord and a clock ticking over a bed of rhythmic effects invoke a sense of Victorian horror, while also playing off of modern motifsFans of the game and connoisseurs of dark and spooky music will be delighted by Vrenna's surreal score--Bryan Reesman