KOOZ Can you tell us briefly what is Santa Ragione? In your website you write that “Santa Ragione's ambitions are to influence game design through new genres and to continue the tradition of Italian design.” What does it mean?

PIETRO RIGHI RIVA In terms of continuing the tradition of Italian design, it means that we do not feel like we exist in a vacuum but that we are obviously part of a bigger design universe that is expressed from practical web design to the border disciplines of art and design, and any physical or non-physical object. The latter are constructed starting from a design culture, that is the practice and discipline of designing a process starting from a concept, and understanding constraints and using the vocabulary of design to create an artefact that can be, again, physical or digital or anything in between.

I think a lot of our colleagues in game design, since they come from different backgrounds (technology, humanities, screenwriting in cinema) they do not directly see game design in the larger context of design. I did specifically study design at the Polytechnic in Milan, where even interaction design is heavily conceptualised into a tradition, so to me it was the natural extension of that thought process, and the people we started working with since the beginning share the same mindset.

Our first work ever was a board game called “Escape From The Aliens In Outer Space”, a game about escaping a damaged spaceship haunted by aliens, in the style of an Alien movie. That was the very first game that we commercially published and distributed, and the company exists because it was built around this game, around this product. Once again, the people that participated in that design all studied design at the Politecnico.

In terms of advancing and innovating video games, we felt that video games always had potential as an art medium. A potential thathas not been fully achieved for a variety of reasons. With every new product that we work on we try to innovate and challenge established conventions and games. We try to transform genres or invent new genres that could accompany new themes and new content in video games. For as long as we keep the current structure and the current paradigms of how games are played - such as problem solving, overcoming challenges or winning matches - then the number of topics that we can tackle remains limited, for instance, to conflict situations. We also need to extend the vocabulary of possible interactions; If you look at our games, they are never games that try to be the best of their kind in an established genre. It is always a game in a new genre that tries to create a new type of interaction and paradigm.

KOOZ I suppose that this approach also informed your contribution to “Unknown Unknowns'' at Triennale Milano. You curated “Game Collection Vol. 2” so in what way does the exhibition respond to the main curatorial theme “Unknown Unknowns”?

PRR I also curated volume one, so volume two was our second iteration. This year we had potentially a more focused theme to develop. Our understanding of what games are about and what games can be is this idea of processes; I am trying to provide a participatory experience where creators, players and audience join in a quest for the unknown. Gaming is a medium where, as an artist or a creator, you are unsure as to the direction that you are getting to, the destination. While that is very common with anything else that you can create and it is especially true for games since what game designers create is not just a linear experience, but there is a world of potential experiences that can happen within one’s work. There is also insecurity and unknown about what the players are going to do in that virtual space. This is one of the reasons why games are the medium that I like to work with, they create a space for the unfolding of the unknown. There is excitement in trying to forecast and imagine what players will do in a designed setting. One tries to get their attention and stimulate their imagination, their creativity, to have them explore a space that should not excessively guide interaction but should rather inspire it.

KOOZ In introducing “Game Collection Vol. 2” you state that video games “reach the accessibility and cultural depth of film, music and literature. The Collection presents the state of the art of the medium with a glimpse into the future.” This description somehow seemed to tackle some of the themes that are being presented at the MoMA exhibition “Never Alone” that “investigate(s) how interactive design informs the way we move through life and conceive of space, time, and connections well beyond the game screen”. So I was wondering what your position is about pushing the boundaries of game design and engaging with various disciplines?

PRR I do not know that exhibition, but from its description it seems a reflection on how engaging with games and adopting, either consciously or unconsciously, the structures on which games are based will eventually end up influencing our real-world interactions and our social structures. If so, I think it can be very dangerous, and can inform society in a potentially negative way:if one thinks of commodification, giving a quantified value to everything, then we are introduced to the dangerous pairing of capitalism and gamification. That is definitely a way in which games can influence a society, but not necessarily in a good way.

On the other end, this may speak to the power of the medium itself. There is a potential positive approach towards engaging with games that has to do with the abstraction and experimentation of simulated systems. For example the way a game can be a place where one can experiment and see how a system reacts to a change. If you are playing a game that is a political simulation that shows the interests of different stakeholders, and all these stakeholders need to be kept happy so that you can have a functioning society (it is a form of teaching through simulation and experimentation), it becomes a tool to assist critical thinking.

Going back to “Game Collection Vol. 2” and other art forms, I meant that ideally when one watches a movie (an important one) or reads an important book, one formulates a different outlook on reality and on oneself, but also on society and on politics, depending on the movie or the book. This is possible through character psychology, character development and conflicts that are described in the story. Games are very similar, but it is done through interaction and experimentation within the virtual world, as I explained with the example of the political simulator. I think that if you look at the state of the art of the latest releases that are coming out from admittedly a selected and small number of authors in game design, you will see the same meaningful engagement with the contemporaneity and with the human condition that one can find in other art forms.

KOOZ Thank you so much for raising these important points. We spoke about literature and cinema, so I would like to move to architecture now. KoozArch is tackling the importance that virtual world-making has in the development of critical thinking. This is not just about entertainment, of course, but it is also about envisioning new scenarios that are connected to the real world and consequently stimulate critical thought. You mentioned earlier the dangers behind capitalism and its gamification. What is currently happening with architects and artists in the Metaverse does not seem to detach much from what you described. On a positive note, instead, imagining new words that emerge from a critical approach towards the present could help us answer some important questions. Architects are, for instance, gradually engaging with storytelling in the virtual world in order to produce alternative histories or futures that shed a light on the contradictions of contemporary living. I was, therefore, wondering how game design can positively contribute to virtual worldmaking in architecture?

PRR I would like to raise two points on this matter. One is that I have always worked with architects, even since before I started my own company. When I started working in the field of game design I was 17 years-old and I was an intern at a game design studio in Milan called Milestone. There was one of their lead level designers, possibly an art director, who was an architect. He had a very traditional, fully technical preparation in architecture. So even then - and we are talking about the early 2000s - it was already custom that people with an architecture background were working in games.

So when I work on game design I often engage with architects. Our art director for our latest game (a horror game that we will publish very soon, in October) is not an architect, but she is a scenographer, a stage designerwho is very well versed in architecture. She brought in principles of architecture in our design, and her knowledge ended up informing how our game would be played, so we gave her creative freedom by letting her create the spaces in which the game would take place. These spaces are not real, they were not conceived with real life implications, so she created a sort of expressionist architecture where buildings are designed to convey a feeling, they are able to host a particular scene in a particular moment that would entice players to a certain behaviour. In this case,because it is a horror game, we want players to feel claustrophobia, the need to escape, to feel unwelcome. So, if you look at these buildings, they have the typical stairs that go nowhere, spaces that become narrower, and they are built in a village that does not quite make sense in terms of structure and gives you this unnerving feeling.

In short, I feel that game design that engages with 3D world creation always has an inevitable relationship with architecture because it is about creating a space of potential and how this space informs feelings and behaviours. As more genres develop and as we extend the notion of what games can be, then more and more architects will be free to explore interesting parts of their practice and see how they can be used inside interactive spaces.

On the other hand, I am very sceptical of the Metaverse. I am one of those people that say that the Metaverse does not exist;it is mostly a buzzword to sell services. A lot of the Metaverse’s applications and thinking are exclusively profit-driven, with the main focus being: how do we monetize this technology? The concept itself of the Metaverse is turning digital 3D worlds – a medium that is in itself free and available to everyone – into a limited space of scarcity. Unlimited copies of everything can exist for everyone in the digital space, and it can become a social equaliser, so the market logic immediately moves towards changing it into a structure of privilege, social classes and simulated ownership and scarcity.

The Metaverse evangelists want to create a space for profit by closing the space, naming it, creating an entity that can give permission and can certificate ownership. They want to convince people that some virtual objects have more values than others, and that social status can change by owning these virtual items. I do not see any positive value in these ideas, I only see people turning art and culture into property and consumerism by subjugating everything to the laws of capitalism for the sake of making profit.

People also need to know that there is no single Metaverse. There is not a single platform or protocol, or technology that exists and is usable by creators or users. There is a great number of online 3D virtual worlds that are marketed as a common space, but they are not connected to each other and will never be, because the technologies they rely on are different and not made to allow this interconnection between applications.

Marketers are trying to sell to big brands ideas of future marketing opportunities without really having established or demonstrated a true, meaningful advantage to existing in the Metaverse, even if it existed.

KOOZ Sounds as if gaming oftentimes uses the virtual world to stimulate a critical approach towards reality, whereas the Metaverse is a virtual replica of real structures and economic systems. Could this summarise your points?

PRR I think so. It is even possibly worse, like trying to get the worst about the real world and making it virtual and replicating it. I might be very limited in my thinking and imagination, but I really struggle to see a useful, inspiring application of the Metaverse that is technically feasible and sustainable. An application that makes people’s lives better. Think of health care, social justice, culture, art.You can enrich people's lives in many ways using technology, and I think that selling them virtual goods is not where we should be heading.


Read the Italian translation of the interview on the Triennale Milano magazine.

Bio

Pietro Righi Riva is the co-founder and creative director of Santa Ragione, an independent studio that produced award-winning video games such as FOTONICA, MirrorMoon EP, Wheels of Aurelia and Saturnalia.Righi Riva holds a PhD in Interaction Design at the Politecnico di Milano.He has taught at the Politecnico di Milano, the California College of Arts in San Francisco, the Shanghai Theatre Academy, NABA, and IULM.His design philosophy aims at developing non-goal-driven games to make video games accessible to a wider audience.His works have been exhibited at the Venice Biennale and at the MCA in Chicago.In 2017 he was one of the four authors selected for No Quarter, the annual experimental game design exhibition organised by the NYU Game Centre, and was the winner of the Innovation in Experience Design Award at IndieCade 2018. He is the curator of the “Game Collection” project at Triennale di Milano.

Francesca Romana Forlini is an architect, Ph.D, editor, writer and educator whose research is located at the intersection of feminism, cultural sociology and architectural history and theory. She is an Adjunct Associate Professor at the New York Institute of Technology and Parsons The New School in New York. She worked as chief editor at KoozArch, where she is currently a contributor. She is a Fulbrighter ed alumna of Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) and the RCA.