Art Mechanics: An interview with Mitchell F. Chan

Introduction

Mitchell F. Chan is an artist working in Toronto. Chan’s work spans public sculpture, conceptual art, and in recent years, video games. He has been an active voice exploring art games (video games created as art objects) through works like Boys of Summer and Winslow Homer’s Croquet Challenge, in the collection of the Buffalo AKG. Like in his public art, anyone can interact with these games and play them on his website.

In November of 2022 Chan released a series of process sketches from the development of Winslow Homer’s Croquet Challenge on Ensemble, Beggar’s Belief Sketchbook. We reached out to Mitch two years later to ask about how the series has continued to develop and more.

Interview

What is your pre-visualization or sketching process like before starting on the development process?

MFC: Usually, my first sketch isn't really a sketch at all, it's just a vague idea for a type of interactivity that has symbolic potential. For example, in Winslow Homer's Croquet Challenge, my starting point was to imagine: "what if there was an arcade game, but it's just a distraction from another game layered just underneath it?" For Boys of Summer, my starting point was to imagine "what if there was a management simulation, but the thing you're managing keeps getting more unwieldy?" The piece I'm working on now, titled Zantar, is based on the idea of a single long camera move, and the question "how much can I change the meaning of this game just by moving a camera?" I usually don't write these ideas down; they just bounce around my head until I feel like I have to do something with them.

However, those initial ideas often don't come with a vision of the narrative or aesthetic content will be placed inside that mechanic. To start actually manifesting those ideas, I need to start sketching.

Sketch from Zantar, Mitchell F. Chan.

When I started actually building Zantar, the first thing I did was create some character sketches. All of a sudden I could imagine how my clever little camera mechanic could reveal different aspects of a human's condition. Then I drew a room for him to sit in, and all of a sudden I could imagine a whole world that would be unveiled through that same clever little camera mechanic.

Both Winslow Homer's Croquet Challenge and Boys of Summer can be considered Art Games. How does the role of the artist conflict with that of a game designer?

MFC: Well, one of the reasons I'm drawn to games and game mechanics is because I think that "art mechanics" -- and by that, I mean: the very specialized and now-standardized intellectual pathways we’re expected to travel in order to convey meaning in art -- are kind of bullshit more often than not. And that's to say nothing of the broader social and economic structures through which "art" is deployed itself. And I feel I can solve a lot of the problems of art through a measured application of game design. 

Games have created this incredible repertoire of moves to engage people in new ways. Games make it possible to actually drop players into a model of a social or economic system, and let them explore its boundaries, instead of just drawing a flow chart on a wall, titling it "CAPITALI$M", and calling it an "interrogation." Shit, some games literally have an "INTERROGATE" button! Games are chock full of generative aesthetic moments, where the viewer gets to have more input than simply pulling a slot machine lever. I could go on and on. The bottom line is that I want to employ those techniques towards "artistic" ends, because art ideas really need to break out of their stale art mechanics.

But this is hard as fuck! Let me just say: it is really hard as an artist to make an artwork that actually says something that is specific, valuable, intelligent and original. Also, it is really hard as a game designer to make a game that is actually engaging and fun. 

The Game, Out of band render / sketch from Winslow Homer’s Croquet Challenge, Mitchell F. Chan.

And the way I work, I don't just want to do both of these things well, I want to do both of these things well in a very specific way wherein these two elements complement each other. I always want my game mechanic to be the conceptual core of my artistic statement. For example, if I'm making an infinite runner game, I want that infinite running mechanic – the idea of constantly moving forward and collecting treasure – to be the basis for a broader statement.

So doing both of these things at the same time is like trying to carve a perfect sculpture of a bull while actually riding a bull.

It is incredibly fucking hard. I just had to scrap a project that I was working on for four months because every time I made it a better game, it became worse art; and every time I made it better art, it became a worse game.

What do you feel a high level of difficulty in a game brings to the artistic experience had by the player? How do you approach difficulty in your games?

MFC: On the most surface level, I try to make my games as easy as possible. From a conceptual level, this is necessary because I'm always trying to model some larger social or economic system, and those systems work by making it as easy as possible to enter. Platform capitalism works largely by setting the barrier to entry as low as possible. Amazon is successful because it makes it incredibly easy to deploy the most complicated global logistics network society has ever seen to deliver a 24 pack of toilet paper to your front door. You spend 15 seconds on the Amazon website, and you will intuitively understand how to wield the awesome power of a global supply chain! That is how the world works, and I'm trying to make art about the real world, so my game also needs to be that simple to use.

But on a deeper level, every game I've ever made is completely un-winnable. Because that is also how the world works, and I'm trying to make art about the real world, so my game also needs to be that impossible to beat.

Most games in a series are direct sequels to previous games, but in the first two games in the Beggar's Belief series you offer two very different experiences of the sports simulator. What are the core tenets you see tying the Beggar's Belief Series together as you move onto your third game in the series?

MFC: I had two complementary visions for how all these games would be consumed years from now, after I've finished them and packaged them up together. One vision was: "Wario Ware, but make it art." The second vision was: "Black Mirror, but make it video games." 

I think of all these games as an anthology series. There's a central theme that runs through all of them. These are all artworks about the ways that our lives are structured according to game logic. These are artworks about the ways that our interpersonal relationships are gamified, about the ways that our understanding of ourselves are gamified, and about the ways that our roles in the economy are gamified. And in all these games, we are led to believe that we are the playable characters. We are not.

Could you tell us about a time you had an artistic experience when playing a game?

MFC: Right now, I'm re-playing Kentucky Route Zero by Cardboard Computer. Again. And I'm going to double down on my assertion that it is the single greatest artwork produced in my lifetime. Not the greatest art game, not the greatest digital artwork; it's the best artwork, period. If you're asking for a specific experience, or a moment within that artwork, I'll give you one. In the game, there's a brief interlude in which you're sitting in a theatre, watching a short play. The play itself is beautifully written. The central character is a barkeep who has sold his patron's debt as a financial product. The (virtual) set design and lighting cues are gorgeous. If you are evaluating this artwork based solely on how beautiful the image on your screen looked at any given moment, it blows away 99.9% of the "digital painting" that's been popular in the past 5 years. Strictly as a digital painting, any frame of KRZ makes a David Hockney iPad painting look like a diarrhea smear.

Screenshot from Kentucky Route Zero, Cardboard Computer.

But of course, there's more. Over the course of observing the play, you discover that you, the player, are in fact an actor in another play which is being staged simultaneously. This is the kind of experimental theatre which is only possible to execute under very strict and controlled conditions, and the game designers are taking advantage of the fact that a virtual world is a place where an artist can control conditions strictly and perfectly. 

And there's more still. As you keep looking around, trying to stretch just outside your limited role in this parallel script, you can also see the author's notes, the director's notes, and multiple (fictional) critic's reviews of the play you are currently in. All of the channels through which an artwork travels, from the author's mind, through to the performers, through to the "critical discourse" are all collapsed in this virtual space. They're all presented simultaneously. I've never seen that done anywhere else and I don't think it's possible to do something like that in any other medium.