背景信息

2025 年，我与 Simon Bachelier 在西班牙巴塞罗那举办的游戏艺术国际研讨会（Game Arts International Assembly）上共同主持了一场题为 “交互之外” （Beyond Interactivity）的对谈。在对谈前，我们多次讨论游戏展览中游戏与观众之间的其他互动可能性。然而，直到观看了两场他的长期项目“玩演会”（Playformance，由 Sous le Néon 主办）的演出，我才真正理解他所说的“玩家与观看者之间的互动”的真正涵义。我意识到自己此前的理解其实很浅显——有时候，果然百闻不如一见。

得知 Simon 同时也是独立游戏发行公司 Firesquid 的运营总监后，我不禁好奇他是如何在这两条路径上并行的。2026 年初，我代表 indienova 邀请到他进行一次分享，聊到了在艺术与商业实践之间切换的工作方式，以及它们如何彼此交织。我也因此重新思考了“失败”与“胜利”（当一个人在公共场域中暴露脆弱，这两者会有新的意义），并获得了一个新观点：除了游戏之外，任何创作也都需要某种形式的“试玩”测试。

采访正文

Rashel（R）：你能谈谈 Playformance 项目是如何开始的吗？最初是怎么想到把游戏、叙事和艺术表演结合在一起的？

Simon（S）：早在 2011 到 2015 年之间，我和一个叫 One Life Remains 的团体一起工作，他们在做实验性游戏。我们当时有很多关于设计的思考和疑问，比如：如果我们创作一款专门为了在舞台上、在观众面前玩的游戏，那会是什么样子？我们要如何去设计一款游戏，让它本身就能成为一场演出，一种“景观式”的体验？那是我第一次开始思考，在观众面前玩游戏到底意味着什么。

大约是在 2015 到 2016 年，离开这个团体后，我开始做自己的项目。我逐渐产生了一个想法：电子游戏其实是可以被“观看”的，可以被带到舞台上。过去，确实也有人做过类似的事情，但如果我们尝试拿已经存在的游戏在舞台上做点什么呢？不仅仅是“我们来玩吧” （Let's Play，一种在视频网站上常见的直播形式），也不只是谈论游戏。常有那种会议，一边有人玩游戏，一边有学者讲解，很有意思，但和我的想法不同。我真正想问的是：如果我们借着游戏来与观众分享一些东西，会怎样呢？

如果我邀请一群愿意上台的人，让他们玩一款对他们产生过深刻影响的游戏——无论好坏——一款真正触动过他们的游戏，然后通过这款游戏，与观众分享一些私密的、个人的东西，会怎样呢？2016 年，我开始把这个想法作为一个展览项目来实践，之后，我每年都把它编入 IndieCade Europe 的艺术节，邀请 6 到 8 个人，每人有 15 到 20 分钟展示时间。这样持续了 4 年，直到疫情爆发，项目被迫停止。

后来，我在法国遇到了 Nicolas Ligeon，他来自戏剧领域。当我讲述“在舞台上玩游戏”的想法时，他立刻就理解了这个概念。他说：好，我们一定要做这个，而且要尝试更多——我来找喜剧演员，你来找游戏圈的人，我们可以在舞台上实验，来推进这个研究。

于是，我们从 2021 年开始做各种实验，一直到今天。我们与不同的人合作，已经进行了超过五十次实验——五十场“玩演”（Playformance）。我们不断完善这个概念，最终写出了《玩演宣言》（Playformance Manifesto），明确了它是什么、不是什么，以及为什么要这样做。这个宣言的目的是厘清边界——因为你可以在舞台上用游戏做很多事情，但并不都是玩演。至少必须是通过“玩”的行为来进行叙事，才能算玩演。

R：Sous le Néon 的意思是“在霓虹灯下”吗？

S：对，在霓虹灯下。完全正确。

R：在我听来很像一个媒体艺术节。它是一个团体吗，还是一个什么样的组织？

S：是的，它是一个团体。最开始我们有四个人，现在是三位联合创始人，以及一群参与其中的游戏开发者和艺术家。创建这个团体的初衷是研究和实践“电子游戏的其他实践方式”。我们感兴趣的并不是游戏制作本身，而是去思考并展示电子游戏的其他的、替代性的实践。

比如说，观看电子游戏意味着什么？玩家围绕游戏会发展出哪些奇怪或特别的实践？我们该如何展示它们？如果办一个展览，主题是“在游戏里拍照”，或者“在游戏里写日记”，呈现出来会是什么样子？这些都是我们感兴趣的话题。当然，表演是我们重点关注和研究的方向之一：如何把一款电子游戏带到舞台上并通过“玩”来叙事？

R：你能谈谈玩演会、Sous le Néon 和 IndieCade Europe 之间的关系吗？

S：当然可以。Playformance 和 IndieCade Europe 的联系在于，我曾是后者的总监。在每年的活动安排中，我们通常会有两到三个小时专门用于表演环节，邀请嘉宾来尝试玩演。这是在 2016 到 2019 年之间，后来因为疫情，艺术节就停止了。

也是在那之后，我遇到了现在的同事、来自戏剧领域的 Nicolas Ligeon，我们才真正以一个新团体的身份来实践玩演。Sous le Néon 成立于 2021 年，也正是在那个时候，我们重新审视玩演这个概念，希望对它重新定义，并在研究和实验层面做得更深入。

在 IndieCade Europe 时，玩演更像是一种轻度实验。我邀请人来，给他们一些指导，但他们相对自由。而在 Sous le Néon，我们把事情推进得更远。每一场玩演之后，我们都会问自己：“这真的符合我们心中的想法吗？如果不，又为什么不符合？”

我们在这样的反复实践中逐渐塑造这个概念，最终写出了那份宣言。所以 IndieCade Europe 和 Sous le Néon 的真正联系只是：当我还在 IndieCade Europe 的时候——甚至可能更早一些——就已经开始在探索玩演的概念了。在新团体 Sous le Néon 成立后，我们把这研究推得更深，这尤其得益于我的同事 Nicolas 和 Diane 的参与。我想你在巴塞罗那见过 Diane Landais，她做了《蔚蓝》（Celeste）的玩演。正因为他们的加入……三个人的头脑总比一个更好，我们才真正把这个概念塑造了出来。

R：说到表演——在《玩演宣言》中，你提到了“展露身体”和“拥抱脆弱性”，这在我听来非常私人化。我也看过玩演，所以我完全认同这一点。但作为策展人，我有时会对突发状况感到害怕。我很好奇，你怎么看待每场玩演之间的差异，以及其中涌现出的多样情绪？每次有人上台，都可能会呈现出一个不同的版本，对此你怎么看？你会想去控制它，还是更倾向于让它自然发生——像一种即兴表演一样？

S：我觉得这其实就是表演本身的一部分。任何具有表演性的事情，每一次重来都会有新情况发生。无论是唱一首歌，还是现场玩一款游戏，都会有这种自发性，有时候甚至会失败。上周六我们在法国南特有一场玩演，其中一位表演者就真的“失败”了。他一边在玩《时空幻境》（Braid）的最后一关，同时讲着自己的故事——然后他一直在游戏里失败。这整场表演的主旨原本是，需要顺利推进到结尾，才能展开他的个人总结。但因为他卡在游戏中间，舞台上逐渐弥漫出一种绝望感。他说：“对不起，我先安静一下，专心打过这一关。”但他还是一直失败——大概尝试了八分钟之后，他说：“好吧，有时候你就是得放弃。”然后表演就这样结束了。

但观众其实很喜欢这一刻，因为它非常真实、真诚，让人感觉玩演里存在不确定性。就像在马戏团或剧场里一样，表演有时会出错，你不会带着“看它失败”的期待去看马戏，但因为是表演，它就可能会失败，或者发生一些即兴的状况。而表演者的任务，是如何利用这个时刻创造新的意义。在刚才的例子里，他说了计划外的东西，但反而变成了关于“接受失败”的表达，非常贴切到位，也很有趣——因为这一切并不是事先设计好的。

回到“脆弱性”和舞台上的偶发事件，我觉得那来自你对自己的展露。我的同事常用戏剧来解释这一点：当一个喜剧演员走上舞台，那其实是一场仪式的环节。他是在把自己“献祭”给观众。这个人把自己的身体、诠释和表演献出来，去创造某种东西。于是，作为一个个体的“你”消失了，变成了舞台上的另一个存在。

我觉得玩演也是类似的。它是一种我们共处的象征性空间。但为了让参与者能够进入这个空间，你必须先“献祭”自己的舞台，接受你的脆弱——不仅是作为一个人，也是作为一个表演者。这也是表演迷人的地方：任何事情都有可能发生。你在玩一款游戏，就可能会在游戏里遇到惩罚时刻，你可能会赢，也可能会输。这不是在读一段文本，你是在操作一个系统，而系统里随时有事发生。

R：我很喜欢你用“献祭”来形容表演。这让我想到“策展人”这个概念来源于负责照看仪式档案的古埃及祭司。这很有意思：一个角色是在照看遗留之物，而另一个角色，表演者，则是在献祭。

S：是的。这不是我发明的说法。很多研究戏剧、尤其是政治戏剧理论的人，都把表演视为一种献祭或仪式。像行为艺术家玛丽娜·阿布拉莫维奇（Marina Abramović）或小野洋子（Yoko Ono），也创作了许多参与式艺术。有时表演者甚至会变成一个“物件”，或变成观众体验的一部分。我觉得这和戏剧非常相似，而游戏也提供了这种可能。我又要重复了，游戏本身就是一种具有表演性的媒介：它们要求你去“玩”它们，而一旦开始玩，你就成为了它们的一部分。

R：太真实了——小野洋子的《Cut Piece》就是一个关于在表演里“献祭”的经典例子。

S：《Cut Piece》，对。完全没错。

R： 我也很好奇——玩演都是有固定脚本的吗？还是只有一部分人会写脚本？

S： 因为这本质上是一种叙事形式，所以通常会有一个起点和一个终点。它从某处开始，走向一个最终时刻或结论。一般来说，有些玩演者会从头到尾写好完整的脚本，但也有一些人只是带着一个想法，更依赖即兴发挥。我们并没有一套严格的方法论，但每个人至少都有一条要遵守的“红线”。他们知道自己的目的或希望呈现的东西。

因为这是叙事，它不只是那种“嗨，我们就玩玩，看会发生什么”的状态——除非你的表演本身就是关于即兴、意外或失败，那另当别论。通常来说，玩演者都是带着某种想表达或分享的内容来的，他们通过在观众面前玩游戏的过程去抵达那份表达。

但它也可以非常即兴。比如 Diane 的《蔚蓝》玩演就是这样。她有一个清晰的出发点，并设计了三个与观众互动的主要步骤。但与此同时，也有大量的即兴成分，因为观众可能玩得很好，也可能玩得很糟。不过，她始终清楚自己的目的。表演有开头，也有结构，只是因为她必须对当下做出回应，所以每一次的过程都会因为现场发生的事而有不同的呈现。

R： 我看到你最近在社交媒体分享的那场玩演。有一位玩演者一边玩《Flock》，一边画水彩画，一边还在讲述。

S： 那一场非常特别，也很实验性。这位玩演者 Delphine Fourneau 本身是一名插画师和艺术总监。她想通过这场表演来讨论“过程”，也讨论如何在本身很复杂、很有压力的事情中寻找平静。

对她来说，这场表演本身就非常有压力。光是“在观众面前一边玩一边做事”这件事，就已经让她很紧张了。于是，在表演过程中，在同时做这么多事情时，她试图在压力之中找到一个安静的时刻，结果她真的做到了。大概五分钟后，她变得越来越平静，她一边画画，一边在游戏里移动，她有时会需要双手来表演，所以她用一个腕带来固定手柄的摇杆，让角色持续移动。

因为《Flock》不是那种会因为掉下悬崖就失败的游戏，所以这种方式非常契合。当她还在画画时，鸟群会继续移动，她画完一段后会再回到手柄上继续操作，整个过程非常有意思。

R： 还有什么其他实验性的例子吗？

S： 其实有很多都围绕“失败”这个主题。曾有一位喜剧演员用《暗黑地牢 2》（Darkest Dungeon II）做玩演。这款游戏非常难，而他的设定是在最高难度下挑战最终 Boss。整场表演带着一点单口喜剧的感觉——他一边玩，一边谈“失败”这个概念。每次表演时，你都不知道他到底能不能赢，因为那是最后一关。他可能十分钟后就会挂——一次操作失误就可能导致团灭，而有时他又真能成功。

但有意思的是，当他失败时，反而更耐人寻味。现场会出现一种紧张感，观众会想：好，他刚刚失败了，那接下来这次呢？当他输掉时，观众会产生很强的共情，你会真的变成玩演里的一部分。而整场表演的核心，也是对“胜利”观念的反思：为何我们总在祝贺赢家，但很少谈论输家？

胜利到底意味着什么？谁才真的“值得”赢？是那个第一名的人，还是那个虽然拿了第二、第三名，但背后承受了更多限制的人？也许他昨晚没睡好，也许他生活很艰难，也许他没有接受与其他人同等的教育。到底谁更应该赢？在那种情境下，赢家真的就是赢家吗？

这样一来，“失败”的概念则像是：一个人不断失败却不断尝试，在某种程度上难道不是更接近真正的赢家吗？以上正是这场表演想表达的：失败并不是对“你是否应该失败”的标识。有时候，失败只是意味着你真的去尝试了，而且非常努力，也许这反而让你比别人更值得被肯定。此观点与这场表演非常契合，因为所选的游戏极度苛刻——一次失误，甚至只是一点坏运气，就会让你满盘皆输。

表演中，他还会穿插很多幽默的评论，既调侃事物，也调侃自己。人们的情绪在观看过程中逐渐升级。你一边笑，一边又感到紧张，你会想：他到底会赢还是会输？我们做过太多各式各样的玩演，我一讲就停不下来了。

R： 你们选择玩演的标准是什么？整个流程是怎样的？

S： 大多数人通常都是在看过玩演之后才交提案的。我们常说，如果你没看过至少一两场玩演，其实很难真正理解它是什么。很多人会以为，“哦，就是玩游戏而已”，但它既不是随便玩玩，也不是简单地让一个人在台上打游戏。

通常来说，意向参与者会带着想法来找我们，然后我们会要求他做一个原型，并一起开会讨论他们的预期。原型不需要非常成熟，但我们需要判断它是否符合我们的期待。最近，因为有很多人想尝试，但又不想一开始就承诺 20 或 30 分钟的表演——这对于不熟悉的参与者来说强度太大，所以我们开设了一个“开放麦”环节。当我们每三个月举办一次玩演之夜时，会提前一个月发出报名表，大家可以描述一下自己的想法及想用的游戏，申请一个 10 分钟的时段。

对于短时长的模式，我们会放宽标准，以让参与者亲身实验为目的。如果效果不好，或者最后发现那并不算玩演，也没关系——毕竟它只是活动里的十分钟插曲；如果效果很好，我们通常会邀请表演者把它发展成更完整的版本，或进一步打磨。当我们觉得某个表演或表演者有潜力更进一步时，就会提出更紧密的合作。因为我们会在不同地方（至少在法国）呈现玩演，所以会尝试在未来的节目安排中把他加进来。这基本上就是我们目前的工作方式。

R：现在我们进入采访的第二部分，与前面的话题完全不同。你也是一位经验丰富的游戏制作人，你是如何在商业制作人与艺术活动策展人这两个身份之间保持平衡的？

S：我觉得这两种工作其实都建立在一套非常相似的技能基础之上，比如组织、规划、预算管理等等。但从具体工作内容来说，它们其实完全不同。在商业语境里担任制作人，和我在策划活动时做的事并没有直接关联，我在两边会分别接触完全不同类型的游戏，与不同的团队或人合作。当然，它们的共同点是都围绕电子游戏展开，但就像在音乐领域一样：制作音乐和组织现场演出并不是同一回事。

我常用法语说，我有一份日工和一份夜工。日工是当制作人或发行人——是非常商业导向的那种。商业很重要，因为如果赚不到足够的钱，就无法支付团队成本、维持工作室运转，无法让任何事情持续下去。而当我在组织活动、策展或做与表演相关的工作时，它们更实验性、艺术化，不具有商业性，而且由于实验性，它们也几乎不存在一个稳定的商业模式。我当然希望可以靠它们生活，但它们并不能产生足够的收入，而且这个领域本身也不太容易被金钱驱动。

这就是主要的区别，但并不是说我是在“工作”和“我热爱的事”之间切换。我其实对两者都很享受。一个显然是商业工作，另一个则更多是在实验和研究，它们互补，彼此契合，但没有直接关联。比如，当我在 Firesquid 制作一款策略游戏时，和我在柏林或别处筹备下一场玩演会完全是两回事。团队不同、预期不同，工作范围也完全不同。所以，是同一套技能，但应用方式非常不同。

R：这两个职业共享的那套技能具体是什么？

S：管理人员、给事务下准确的定义，以及确保沟通清晰，尤其是在对预期的管理方面。当你制作一款游戏时，你需要确保你在商店页面上描述的内容，或你对玩家承诺的内容，真的和游戏里实际呈现的一致，这样每个人都清楚你将要交付什么。我觉得这和你把一个表演或展览推介给博物馆或剧院是一样的。你需要确保对方真正理解那是什么，否则，当最终呈现的内容和他们的预期不一致时，就会产生问题。

清晰的沟通需要贯穿始终——对项目团队来说也是一样。无论你是在筹备一场活动、一场展览，还是其他项目，沟通必须非常到位，并且在需要的时候进行调整。

R：你能简单介绍一下 Firesquid 吗？包括你们的发行会侧重什么方向。

S：Firesquid 是一家位于瑞典的独立游戏发行商，不过团队是完全远程协作的。我们主要专注于策略类游戏，尤其是那些试图重新审视这一类型的作品。我们非常喜欢意图创新的那些游戏——不是简单复刻经典策略玩法，而是尝试打开新式交互或新规则体系。

我们常说自己是“以开发者为中心”的发行商，因为团队里的每个人都有游戏开发背景，会用开发者视角来看事情。这也是为什么我们会和合作团队保持非常频繁的会议沟通，去了解项目进展，并在需要时提供支持。

在开发的任何阶段，只要有我们能帮开发者达成目标的地方，我们都会支持。不仅仅是资金、QA 或本地化服务，我们会尽可能从各方面提供帮助——要么通过我们工作室内部的资源，要么在需要时为他们对接其他专业人士。

R：Firesquid 做发行服务，同时也自研游戏。你们会和公司外部的开发团队有非常紧密的合作吗？

S：不会——除了我们内部工作室开发的游戏。对于内部项目，我会参与一些执行制作（Line Producing）的工作。但总体来说，每个外部工作室都自行管理他们的制作流程，我更多是监控和跟进，确保一切顺利，这更像是发行商和开发工作室之间典型的合作关系。对于我们签约的工作室，我们可以在他们真的需要支持的时候介入，但那一般是例外情况，不是常态。

R：从我的理解来看，如果你要为其他工作室承担制作工作，这听起来有点像策展人的角色——因为每次和不同的创作者合作，质量其实很难预测或控制。

S：对，这个理解非常准确。实际上，我们并不直接介入制作，不会告诉他们该怎么做游戏，更多是提供反馈，并确保项目进展在正轨上。每一个我们签约的项目，都会有周会，我会和项目团队沟通进度，看看有没有遇到问题，是否需要更多时间，是否需要调整，或是否应该安排一次试玩测试。

通过这些定期交流，我能对项目有非常清晰的整体把握。但与此同时，我不是来遥控他们如何制作游戏的，我也不是他们工作室的制作人。作为发行商，需要确保项目的愿景被尊重、我们仍然在按照最初达成的共识推进。如果有任何变化，我们就需要讨论——你不能在没有和合作伙伴沟通的情况下随意改变方向。作为发行商，我们和开发工作室是合作伙伴的关系。

R： 你们对签约游戏有类型偏好吗？

S： 我们主要聚焦在策略类游戏，但并不会限制在某一个具体的子类型上。我们不会说“只做城市建造”，或者“只做即时战略”，目前我们的取向还是比较开放和宽泛的。所以你会看到我们既有 RTS，也有像 《猎人之首》（XenoPurge） 这样的即时战术游戏。我们希望能和不同形态的策略游戏项目合作。不过，在 2026 年，我们确实会有一个相对更集中的方向：在推进的几个项目，大多是回合制战术类游戏，但这并不意味着未来我们只会做这一类。

目前，我们已公布的三款游戏都是回合制，整体气质也偏黑暗、成熟风格。比如《疫区档案》（Vultures: Scavengers of Death），是一款 Roguelite 回合制战术游戏；《Prelude: Dark Pain》，有点像《暗黑地牢》和《火焰纹章》（Fire Emblem）或《最终幻想战略版》（FINAL FANTASY TACTICS）的结合；还有 《血色序曲》（Ex Sanguis），这是我们内部工作室的项目，是一款硬核回合制战术 RPG。

但如果有人带来一款很酷的 RTS，我们也可能会感兴趣；如果是卡牌构筑类游戏，也未必不行。归根结底，我们真正关心的是：这款游戏是否带来了新的东西？是否对既有类型做出了某种实验或突破？如果是，那我们还会看——在制作支持和目标受众触达方面，我们是否真的能够帮得上忙。

R： 站在这两个领域的交界线上，你会觉得它们其实能互相鼓励或启发吗？你是否从这两种身份的转换中获益？

S： 其实并不那么明显。因为这两件事的目标不同，受众也不同，制作或发行游戏和组织活动是非常不一样的事情。举个例子，如果我要为我们自己的工作室或发行部门组织一个活动，那会很容易——我以前做过，而且通常效果都不错。但反过来，从活动或策展经验中直接反哺到发行工作，就没那么直观了。拥有一个由工作室和发行商组成的强大人脉网络，确实能让我在办活动时获得一些支持——也许是时间、资金或资源上的帮助，但这种联系其实更偏向商业层面。从探索、实验或者创作健康度层面来说，我不确定这是不是最有意思的一种关联。

这个问题并不容易回答。理论上它们是可以互相关联的，但实际上并没有那么自然地连接。正如我之前说的，它们对我个人来说是互补的，但我不太确定其中一个是否真的能直接让另一个受益。我也会想——Sous le Néon 是否从 Firesquid 获得了什么？或者 Firesquid 是否从 Sous le Néon 获得了什么？我其实不太认同。大概也就仅限于能让那些同时参与两个项目的人建立联系吧。

R：回想一下你制作过的游戏，你觉得其中有哪一款可以被改编成一场玩演吗？

S：可能吧，我觉得基本没有真正的限制。有些游戏在舞台上展示起来肯定更容易，但我相信我们制作过的任何游戏，在某种程度上都可以被改成表演。

问题是，策略游戏的界面通常很复杂，可读性并不高。面对广泛的观众——有时候有人甚至平时都不玩游戏——他们需要理解屏幕上到底发生了什么。如果你展示的是非常复杂的内容，信息量很大，也不是不行，但对表演者的要求就更高了。你需要引导观众的视线，帮助他们理解哪些信息比较重要。

比如《暗黑地牢 II》的表演，你能看到画面上的角色和他们的动作，但如果想完全理解所有数值、技能和系统，几乎是不可能的，除非你已经玩了几百上千个小时。不过，作为表演者，你可以通过叙述、讲解和评论你在做什么，让它变得更好懂——这真的很有帮助。我有信心，我制作或发行的一些游戏，可以作为玩演来展示。至于这真的会发生吗，我不知道，但绝对是可行的。

R：你会给玩演艺术家提建议吗？即便他们已经有了概念或剧本，有时候把想法转化成实际表演仍然很困难。作为一个偏制作型的策展人，你会偶尔介入提供指导吗？

S：会。我觉得有件事是显而易见、你我都从游戏开发中学到的：不要害怕先在朋友、家人或任何人面前演练一次。表演需要观众才能存在。就像游戏需要玩家一样，表演需要有人看。

在某个阶段，你可能已经有了一个想法、剧本、游戏，也知道自己想要达成什么效果。但你需要一位观众来帮你理解它带给人的实际体验，也需要学会在游玩、表演过程中对观众的反应作出回应。自己排练是一回事，在人前操作又是完全不同的事。那些细微的反应——从一次呼吸到一声笑声、掌声、惊叹或片刻的沉默——都是你可以回应的情绪。即便很微妙，你也可以用回应推动某个情绪、某个瞬间、某个想法。你不只是在玩游戏，还是在和观众一起玩，这某种程度上也像是一种引入了观众的试玩测试。

关于 Simon Bachelier

Simon Bachelier 是一位长期关注数字游戏实践多样性的独立策展人。在他的展览工作中，一个重要方向是探索玩家与（处于观众之中的）观看者之间的关系空间。自 2016 年起，他开始尝试连接戏剧、表演艺术与数字游戏，并发展出一种被他称为“玩演”（Playformance）的表演形式。2021 年，他参与创立了法国艺术团体 Sous les néons，召集来自戏剧与独立游戏领域的创作者，探索舞台表演与在现场观众前进行游戏表演之间的可能性连接。

Background

In 2025, Simon Bachelier and I co-hosted a panel talk, “Beyond Interactivity,” at the Game Arts International Assembly in Barcelona, Spain. Before the panel, we had many discussions about alternative forms of interaction between games and audiences in game exhibitions. Still, I didn’t fully grasp his idea of the “interaction between players and watchers” until I attended two shows in his ongoing project Playformance by Sous le Néon. I realized my understanding had been too shallow: sometimes countless words do less than seeing something once.

Learning that Simon is also the Director of Operations at the commercial indie game publisher Firesquid, I couldn’t help but be curious about how he manages to keep these two tracks running in parallel. In early 2026, I interviewed him for Indienova. During our conversation, we discussed his artistic and business practices and the ways they intersect. I also gained insight into a different perspective on failure and winning—one that embraces vulnerability in public—as well as the new idea that every creative work, not just games, benefits from a form of playtesting.

Interview

Rashel (R): Can you talk about how you started the Playformance project? How did the idea of bringing games, narrative, and artistic performance together first emerge?

Simon (S): Back in 2011 to 2015, I was working with a previous collective called One Life Remains, which was doing experimental games. We had a lot of thoughts and design questions around the idea of: Hey, what if we create a game that is meant to be played on stage, in front of an audience? What would it be? How can you design a game specifically to create a show, or a form of spectacular experience? That was the first sparkle of thinking about what it meant to play a game in front of an audience.

After I left the collective, around 2015–2016, I worked on my own projects and came up with this idea that, okay—video games can be watched. They can be seen on stage. There were definitely things that had already been done in the past. But what if we take games that already exist and try to do something with them on stage? Not just a “let’s play.” Not just talking about the game. Because there were conferences where researchers talked about games while someone was playing it. It was cool, but it wasn’t really the idea. The real question was: What if we use a game to share something with an audience?

What if I ask a group of people who are willing to go on stage to play a game—a game that marked them, whether in a good or bad way, a game that really left an impact on them? And through that game, they could share something intimate or personal with the audience. I started this as an exhibition project in 2016. After that, I programmed it every year at IndieCade Europe’s festival. Each year, we invited 6-8 people. Each had about 15-20 minutes. I did that for four years, until COVID happened. Then I stopped the project.

Later, I had the chance to meet Nicolas Ligeon in France, who was working in the field of theater. When I pitched him this idea of having a game played on stage, he immediately saw the concept. He said, Okay, we need to do that and try something—because I can bring a comedian, you can bring people from the game world, and let’s experiment on stage and push the research.

So we started experimenting in 2021, and we’ve continued up to today. We’ve made more than fifty experiments—fifty playformances—with different people. And we refined the concept to the point of establishing a Playformance Manifesto to define what it is, what it’s not, and why. The manifesto was a way to really nail things down and define the perimeter—because you can do a lot of things with games on stage, but that doesn’t mean it’s a playformance. At the very least, there has to be storytelling through the act of playing.

R: Does Sous le Néon mean “under the neon lights”?

S: Under the neon lights, yeah. Absolutely.

R: It sounds very much like a media art festival to me. Is that a collective, or what exactly is it?

S: Yes, it’s a collective. We were four at the beginning, and now we are three co-founders, with a bunch of other game developers or artists. The meaning of this collective initiative was to work on and study what we call the “other practices of video games.” What interests us is not so much creating games. It’s more about thinking about and showcasing other or alternative practices of video games.

Basically, what does it mean to watch a video game? What kind of weird practices do some players develop around games, and how can we showcase them? What would an exhibition look like about, for instance, taking pictures in video games, or journaling in video games? Those types of things are topics that interest us in general. And performance, of course, is one of the main topics we’ve been working on and thinking about: how can you bring a video game on stage and use the act of play for storytelling? That’s one of our main fields of research.

R: Can you talk about the relationship between Playformance/Sous le Néon and IndieCade Europe?

S: Yeah, of course. So the link between Playformance and IndieCade Europe is that I was the former director of IndieCade Europe. In the program every year, we usually had two or three hours dedicated to performance, and we invited guests to come and try playformance during the event. That was from 2016 to 2019. After that, the festival disappeared because of COVID.

It was only later, when I had the chance to meet my colleague Nicolas Ligeon from the theater world, that we really owned Playformance as a new collective. Sous le Néon was formed in 2021, and that’s the moment when we revisited this concept of Playformance in order to redefine it and give it more research and experimentation. At IndieCade Europe, it was more like light experimentation. I was inviting people, giving them instructions, but they were quite free. With Sous le Néon, we really pushed things further. When we were experimenting, after every Playformance we would ask ourselves, “Is this really fitting what we had in mind, or is it not—and why is it not?”

We were trying to shape the concept in order to eventually write this manifesto. So the only real link between IndieCade Europe and Sous le Néon is that I started exploring this concept back then—maybe even a bit before—but during IndieCade Europe, we already had playformances. After that, with the new collective, Sous le Néon, we pushed the research much further, thanks especially to the work of my colleagues Nicolas and Diane. I think you saw Diane Landais in Barcelona—she was doing the Celeste playformance. And thanks to them… three brains are better than one. Together, we were able to truly shape the concept.

R: Speaking of performance—in the Playformance Manifesto, you talk about exposing the body and embracing vulnerability. That feels very personal to me. I’ve seen the playformances, so I completely agree with that. But as a curator, I’m sometimes very afraid of the unexpected. I wonder how you see the differences between playformances, and also the different emotions that emerge. Every time someone performs, there seems to be a different version. How do you feel about that? Do you want to control it, or do you prefer to let it happen—more like an improvised form of acting?

S: I think it’s part of what performance is in general. Anything that is performative means there is something new every time. Whether it’s singing a song or playing a game live, there’s always this spontaneous thing that can happen. Sometimes it can even fail. We had a playformance night in Nantes, in France, last Saturday, and one of our playformers literally failed. He wasThey were playing Braid, doing the last level while talking about their story—and then he was constantly failing at the game. HisTheir whole performance was supposed to go to the end in order to deliver the conclusion. But because he wasthey were stuck in the middle of it, there was this feeling of total despair on stage. He wasThey were like, “I’m sorry, I’m just going to be quiet and try to beat this stage.” And hethey kept failing. After maybe eight minutes of trying, hethey said, “Okay, at some point, you need to give up.” And the performance just stopped.

But people really liked it, because it felt real, genuine. It felt like, okay—there is uncertainty. Just like in a circus or in theater, something can go wrong. You don’t go to the circus expecting something to fail—but sometimes, because it’s a performance, it can fail, or impromptu things can happen. And it’s up to the performer to use that moment and create something out of itto say something. In this case, hethey managed to say something different from what hethey originally wanted to say, but it ended up being about the need to accept failure and things like that. It was quite on point—which was funny—because it wasn’t planned like this.

Coming back to vulnerability, to what happens on stage, I think it’s because you expose yourself. My colleague often talks about theater like this: when a comedian goes on stage, it’s part of a ritual. They are sacrificing themselves to the audience. The person is offering their body, their interpretation, their performance, in order to create something. So you, as an individual, disappear in order to become something else on stage.

And I think performances are a bit like that as well. It’s a symbolic space that we are sharing. But in order to enable a participant to enter it, you somehow have to sacrifice your own stage and accept your vulnerability—not just as an individual, but as a performer. That’s also what’s interesting in performance: anything can happen. You’re playing a game, so there are moments that can be punishing, moments you can win or lose. It’s not just a text you read—you’re playing a system, and things can happen.

R: I love the way you describe performance as a form of sacrifice. It makes me think about the concept of “curator,” which comes from the Egyptian priests who took care of the ritual archives. That feels very interesting to me. One role is about taking care of what remains, while the other, the performer, is the one who is sacrificing.

S: Yeah. I mean, it’s not something I invented. I think a lot of people working in theory—especially around theater and political theater—consider performance as a form of sacrifice or ritual. Even artists from performance art, like Marina Abramović or Yoko Ono, have worked extensively with participation. Sometimes the performer can even become an object, or a part of the participant’s experience. I think there’s a strong similarity with theater, and in the same way, games offer that as well. Once again, games are a performative medium: they ask you to play them, and once you do, you become part of them.

R: That’s true—Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece is a classic example of sacrifice in performance.

S: Cut Piece, yeah. Exactly.

R: I also wonder—do playformers have a script to follow, or do only some of them work with a script?

S: Because we’re in a form of storytelling, there’s often a beginning and an end. It starts with something and it reaches a point, like a final moment or conclusion. Usually, some playformers have a script written from beginning to end, but others just have an idea and rely more on improvisation. We don’t have a strict methodology around this, but everyone has at least a red line to follow. They know where they want to go, or what they hope to reach.

Because it’s a form of storytelling, it’s not just, “Hey, let’s play something and see what happens”—except if your performance is specifically about improvisation, accident, or failure, in which case that can make sense. Usually the playformer has something to share or to say, so they come up with an idea, and they want to reach it through the experience of playing the game in front of the audience.

But it can also be improvisation. For example, Diane’s playformance with Celeste starts from a clear idea. She has three main steps that involve playing with the audience. At the same time, there’s a lot of improvisation, because the players can play very well—or not very well. But at the same time, she knows where she’s going. There is a beginning, and there is a structure. Everything in the middle, though, shapes differently in every performance, because she has to react to what happens in the moment.

R: I saw the recent Playformance you shared on Instagram. One of the playformers was playing Flock, doing a water painting, and talking at the same time.

S: It was a pretty unique one. Very experimental. The playformer Delphine Fourneau is an illustrator and art director. Basically, she wanted to play a game and create a performance about process, and about finding peace in things that are sometimes complicated and stressful.

For her, the performance itself was very stressful. Even the idea of playing and doing something in front of an audience was stressful. Through the performance, she was trying to find a quiet moment in the middle of that stress—while doing all these things at once. And she did. After about five minutes, she became calmer. She was drawing, moving things around. Sometimes she needed both hands to perform, so she used a wristband to pull the joystick of the gamepad and keep the character navigating.

Because Flock is not a game where you can lose by falling off a cliff or something like that, it worked very well. The flock kept moving while she was still painting, then she would come back to the controller and play a bit more. It was interesting.

R: Any other experimental examples?

S: I mean, there’s a lot about failure. We had a comedian playing Darkest Dungeon II. The game is very hard, and the whole point was that he was playing the final boss in the hardest mode. The performance was something a bit funny—almost like stand-up comedy. He was playing while talking about the notion of failure. Every time he did the performance, you never knew if he was going to win or not, because it’s the final point. He could die after ten minutes. One move can kill the whole squad. Sometimes he managed to succeed.

But what’s funny is that when he failed, it was almost more interesting. There’s this tension, and people are like, okay, you just lost this character—are you going to die or not? When he loses, people become very empathetic with the performer on stage. You’re really part of the thing. And the whole point is also about how, at the end of the day, we’re always celebrating winning—the notion of winning. There is a winner, but we don’t talk about the losers.

What does winning actually mean? Who really deserves to win? Is it the person who comes first, or maybe the person who comes second or third, but had way more constraints—maybe they didn’t sleep last night, maybe they had a hard life, maybe they didn’t have the same education as someone else. Who deserves the most to win? Is the winner really the winner in that situation?

And the notion of failure is like—someone who keeps failing but keeps trying. Is that not the real winner somehow? That’s really the point of this performance: failure is not an indicator of whether you deserve to fail or not. Sometimes failure just means you tried, and you tried very hard. Maybe that makes you even more deserving than someone else. And it plays very well with this performance because the game is very hard. It’s punishing—one bad move, or just bad luck, and it’s over.

He was also making funny comments about things in general and about himself. The emotions slowly escalate. You’re like, okay, is he going to win? Is he going to lose? You’re laughing, but it’s not that light. We’ve had a lot of various playformances. I could talk for a long time about all of them.

R: What are your selection criteria for Playformance? What does the process look like? Do participants submit only a statement and instructions, or do they also provide screenshots or video recordings?

S: Until recently, when people came to us, they would usually pitch an idea after having seen a playformance. We always say that until you’ve seen at least one or two, you don’t really understand what it is. A lot of people think, “Oh yeah, it’s just playing a game,” but it’s not really a let’s play, and it’s not just someone playing a game on stage.

Usually, people pitch us their ideas and we ask them to present a prototype. We have a meeting to talk about what they expect. It doesn’t have to be fully developed, but we need to understand whether it fits our expectations. More recently, because many people wanted to try without committing to a long format—20 or 30 minutes can be quite intense when you’re not used to it—we made an open mic session. Every three months, when we host a playformance evening, we open a form about a month in advance. People can apply for a 10-minute slot by describing their idea and the game they want to use.

For this short format, we’re less strict. The goal is to let people experiment. If it doesn’t work or turns out not to be a playformance, that’s fine—it’s only ten minutes in an evening event. If it works really well, we often invite them to develop a longer version or refine it further. When we feel a performance—or a performer—needs to be pushed further, we propose working together more closely. And because we present playformances in different places, at least in France, we try to find a way to include them in a future lineup. That’s basically how we work at the moment.

R: And here we move into the second part of the interview, which is a completely different topic. Since you’re also an experienced producer in the game industry, how do you maintain the balance between being a commercial producer and being an artistic event curator?

S: I think the bridge between the two activities requires more or less the same type of skills. It’s about organizing, planning, budgeting, etc. So, both are fed by the same skill set. But in terms of the actual activities, they’re really not the same. Being a producer in a commercial context isn’t directly related to what I do in events. I can work on games that are not the same genre, not the same teams, not the same people I collaborate with when I curate or organize events. It’s really a different field. Of course, the connection is that they’re all video games, but it’s like saying you work in music: producing music is not the same as organizing a live show, and it’s similar here.

I often say in French that I have a day job and a night job. The day job is being a producer or a publisher—which is very commercially focused. Business is important because if you don’t make enough money, you can’t pay the team, you can’t run a studio, you can’t sustain anything. It’s very commercial-driven. When I do event organization, curating, or performance-related work, it’s much more experimental and artistic. Most of the time it’s not really commercial, and because it’s experimental, there’s no real business-model sustainability. I’d love to live from it, but it doesn’t generate enough money, and it’s not a field that can easily be driven by money.

That’s the main difference. But I'm not saying I'm doing my job and then I'm doing what I love on the side. I really enjoy both. One is clearly a commercial job, and the other is more about experimenting and researching. They’re quite complementary. They fit together, but there’s no direct connection. For example, when I produce a strategy game for Firesquid, it’s completely different from working on the next Playformance lineup in Berlin or somewhere else. The teams are different, the expectations are different, and the scope is very distinct. So yeah—same skills, very different ways of applying them.

R: So what is the same skillset that these two professions share?

S: Managing people, defining things, and making sure communication is clear as well, especially around expectations. When you create a game, you need to make sure that what you describe on the store page, or to the players, actually matches what’s in the game, so everyone knows what you’re going to deliver. I think it’s the same when you sell a performance or an exhibition to a museum or a theater. You need to make sure they really understand what it is. Otherwise, when you deliver things different to their expectation, it becomes a problem.

So clear communication is needed all the way through—and it’s the same for the team working on the project. Whether you’re producing an event, an exhibition, or anything else, communication has to be on point, and you need to adapt when necessary.

R: Can you give us a brief introduction to Firesquid, including your publishing focus?

S: Yeah. Firesquid is an independent game publisher based in Sweden, but the team is fully remote. We focus mainly on strategy games that try to revisit their genre. We really like games that aim to be innovative—not just reproducing classic strategy formulas, but opening up new interactions or new rules. We often say that we’re developer-focused, because everyone on the team comes from a game development background, so we have the developers’ eyes. That’s also why we have very regular meetings with the teams we publish—to see how things are going and to offer support.

If there’s anything we can do at any stage of development to help developers succeed or reach what they want to achieve, we try to provide it. It’s not just about funding, QA, or localization. We try to support them in any way we can—either through our internal studio or by connecting them with other experts when needed.

R: Firesquid has publishing services, but at the same time also produces its own games. Do you work closely with the development teams outside of your company?

S: No—except for the games developed internally in our studio. For those, I do a bit of line producing. But in general, each external studio manages its own production. I mostly monitor things to make sure everything is going well, which is more the typical collaboration between a publisher and a studio. For the studios we sign, we don’t directly handle production for them. I can step in if they really need support, but that’s more the exception than the rule.

R: From my understanding, if you produce for other studios, it sounds a bit like a curator’s job—because every time you collaborate with different artists, it’s harder to estimate or control the quality.

S: Yeah, you’re totally right about that. Basically, we are not hands-on with production. I’m not going to tell them how to make their game. What we do instead is provide feedback and make sure things are on track. With every project we sign, we have weekly meetings. I talk with the team to see how things are going—if there are any issues, whether we need more time, if something needs to be adapted, or if we should do a playtest.

So I have a very clear overview of the project through regular production updates. At the same time, I’m not here to control or manage how they produce the game. I’m not the studio’s producer. But as a publisher, I do need to make sure the vision is respected, that we’re following what we agreed on, and that if something changes, we talk about it—because you can’t just do anything you want without discussing it with your partner or collaborator. We are a partner as a publisher.

R: Do you have a genre preference when signing a game?

S: I think we are mainly focused on the strategy genre, but we don’t limit ourselves to one specific subgenre. We don’t say, “We only do city builders” or “only real-time strategy.” We’re quite open and broad at the moment. That’s why we have an RTS, we have real-time tactics like XenoPurge. We try to work with different games. For 2026, we do have a more specific focus. Most of the games we’re working on for 2026 are turn-based tactics, but that doesn’t mean we’ll only do that going forward.

The three games we’ve announced so far are all turn-based and also a bit dark and mature. We have Vultures: Scavengers of Death, which is a roguelite turn-based tactics game. We have Prelude: Dark Pain, which is kind of a mix between Darkest Dungeon and Fire Emblem or Final Fantasy Tactics. And then Ex Sanguis, which is our internal studio project—a hardcore turn-based tactical RPG as well.

But if someone comes up with a cool RTS game, we could be interested. If it’s a deck-building game, we might be interested too. In the end, what we really look at is: does the game bring something new? Is it experimenting with the genre in some way? And if yes, is it something we can help with—in terms of production and also in terms of reaching the right audience?

R: As someone standing at the intersection of these two domains, do you feel they can actually encourage or inspire each other? Do you benefit from moving between the two?

S: It’s not obvious, because once again, the objectives are not the same, and the audience is not the same either. Producing or publishing games is very different from organizing events. For example, if I had to organize an event or something special for our studio or publishing branch, it would be easy—I’ve done it in the past and it usually works well. But the other way around is less obvious. The good thing is that having a strong network of studios and publishers can help you get support—maybe time, maybe funding, maybe logistical help—for an event. But that connection is very business-oriented. I’m not sure it’s the most interesting one in terms of exploration, experimentation, or even creative health.

It’s not an easy question, because in theory they could be connected, but in practice they don’t connect that easily. As I said, they are complementary for me as an individual, but I’m not sure one really benefits the other directly. I don’t know—does Sous le Néon get something from Firesquid, or does Firesquid get something from Sous le Néon? I don’t really think so, except through the connections that people involved in both could have, but that’s it.

R: Thinking about the games you've produced, do you think any of them could be turned into a playformance?

S: Yeah, probably. I don’t think there’s any real limitation. Some games are definitely easier to showcase on stage than others, but I’m pretty sure any of the games we’ve worked on could be used for a performance in some way.

The thing is that strategy games are often very interface-heavy, and they’re not always the most readable. When you have a broad audience—sometimes people who aren’t even used to games—they need to understand what’s happening on screen. If you’re showing something very complex, with lots of information everywhere, it can still work, but it requires more from the performer. You have to guide the audience’s eyes and help them understand what actually matters.

Take the Darkest Dungeon II performance, for instance. You can see the characters and what’s going on visually, but if you want to fully understand all the numbers, skills, and systems, that’s almost impossible unless you’ve played the game for hundreds or thousands of hours. As a performer, though, you can make it more accessible by explaining, commenting, and narrating what you’re doing—and that really helps. I’m quite confident that some of the games I’ve produced or published could work as playformances. Will it actually happen? I don’t know. But it’s definitely possible.

R: Do you give advice to artists who perform a Playformance? Even when they already have a concept or a script, it can be difficult to translate an idea into an actual Playformance. As a producer-type curator, do you sometimes step in with guidance?

S: Yeah. I think something that feels quite obvious—and we both know this from game development—is: don’t be afraid to perform it in front of a friend, a family member, or anyone, really, as a first audience. A performance needs an audience to exist. Just like a game needs a player, a performance needs people watching it.

At some point, you might have an idea, a script, a game, and you know where you want to go. But you need an audience to understand how it actually feels, and to learn how to react to their feedback while you’re playing. It’s one thing to rehearse on your own. It’s something completely different to do it in front of people. All those tiny reactions—from a breath, to a laugh, to applause, to a “wow,” to a moment of silence—those emotions are things you can react to. Even when they’re subtle, you can use them to push something further: an emotion, a moment, a thought. You’re not only playing with the game anymore—you’re also playing with the audience. It’s like a kind of audience playtest, somehow.

About Simon Bachelier

Simon Bachelier is an independent curator exploring the variety of practices in digital games. One of his main focus in his exhibition work has been to experiment about the spaces between the players and the watchers (among visitors). He has also been experimenting around the link between Theater, Perfomance Arts and Digital Games since 2016 with a format he called Playformance. He has cofounded the French collective Sous les néons in 2021 gathering people from Theater and Indie Games, where they explore the connection between stage play and performing games in front of a live (and on-site) audience.

引言

世界是一个巨大的游乐园。这是我去年从 GAIN 支持的活动里学到的。

GAIN（Game Arts International Network，游戏艺术国际网络），是一个支持游戏策展人、社群组织者、教育者的非营利组织。去年，我在多伦多见到了 GAIN 的两位联合创始人 Marie LeBlanc Flanagan 和 Jim Munroe。用 Marie 的话说，GAIN 的主旨是“将策展人、教育者、社区组织者，以及所有在玩家与游戏创作者之间发挥中介作用的人聚集在一起。”

GAIN 不是一家游戏公司，也不是一个行业协会，它支持的是那些 “站在游戏开发者和玩家之间，让游戏被看见、被讨论、被放进更大语境里的人”。它的两个主要项目，一个是多伦多游戏周（Toronto Games Week, TGW），一个是两年一届的游戏艺术国际研讨会（Game Arts International Assembly, GAIA）——一个把世界各地游戏艺术策展人召集在一起的小型研讨型聚会。

去年六月，我参加了多伦多游戏周的大部分活动，并主持了一场故事共述的工作坊，接着在秋天，我又去了在巴塞罗那庞培法布拉大学举行的 GAIA 2025。在一连串围绕“玩”这个主题的活动筹备、出行、交流与玩耍中，世界作为游乐园的这一隐喻，越来越具象化了。

Play、Fun、Game

尽管对“游戏与玩”的概念讨论早已是老生常谈，但所有和游玩有关的会议都不能免俗地要从此聊起。在 GAIA 的第一天，来自芝加哥独立游戏实验空间 Night City Games 的策展人、游戏开发与教育者 Emily Koonce 组织了一系列热场游戏。在其中一场，GAIA 参会者们被按桌分组，每组都有英语母语者和非英语母语者，一起用“所有能想到的语言”翻译三个词——“Play”、“Fun”、“Game”。

在我那组，除我之外分别有西班牙语和意大利语母语者。翻译进行得相当顺利，直到碰上“Fun”这个词。它是最难翻译的，它太抽象、太口语化、太有情绪了。“好玩的、有趣的”？不完全对；“开心的”、“享受的”？也不完全对。好像没有哪一个中文词能形象贴切地表达 “Have some fun” 的那种随缘与讨好自己的感觉。我想了很久，想不出来，于是脱口而出：“Chinese people don't have fun.”

组员们哄笑，然后七嘴八舌地尝试给我找一条解谜出路。
“那你们怎么说 Fun Park 呢？”
“噢，我们会说‘游乐园’。拆开来其实是‘play, happy, park’。”
“所以你们对 Fun 的理解是‘快乐’？”
“对……其实我们有个词叫‘找乐子’，和‘Have some fun’有点像，这里的‘乐’也对应‘happy’。”

在这场游戏的总结环节，有人提到，“Fun”的西班牙语“diversión”的词源“divertere”有一种“偏离原本路径”的意思。

“噢，类似于偏离原有规则、逃避，这确实不是我们传统文化鼓励的。我从小学的是‘玩物丧志’、‘误入歧途’、‘一失足成千古恨’……并且‘玩物’、‘歧途’和‘失足’的定义都非常宽泛。每天都在担心自己有没有‘失足’，更别说漫无目的地生活并享受其中了，难怪没有对应的词，”我想。

一旁负责会议记录的 Sara 把平板电脑递给我，展开的笔记上有一行引用我的话：“Chinese people don't have fun。”

“你努力用中文翻译一下，”她说。

我想了几秒，只好写下“中国人不想玩”这句话，同时脑子里闪过脱口秀演员张骏的一个段子——“因为我是个中国人，我不能纯玩的。”心里咯噔了一下：嗐，我又加重了一个刻板印象！

游乐园里都有什么

我曾认为自己是一个玩家，但我现在无法那么自信地声明这点。也许“玩”的可能性可以宽泛一些。以前去游乐园玩，我会认真计划路线，衡量“在哪些项目前排队是值得的，绝对不能错过什么，几点前要出园……”如今我想更即兴一些，允许自己有机地探索，会在游乐园里发现往常被自己习惯性忽略的好玩的事。

世界游乐园里的有些游戏并不以“优质”作为评判标准。在 GAIA 的“全球南方策展人”（Global South Curators）模块里，来自马尼拉的 Agustin Crisostomo 对我们讲述，他从小在菲律宾的生活经验如何塑造了他对盗版、MOD 游戏（Bootleged and Modded Games）的品味与对网吧文化的依恋，以及这些东西最终推动他组织“坏游戏创作马拉松”（Bad Game Jam），并从中发展出一个粘性社群的历程。Agustin 希望这个活动成为“门槛设限”的反面——把锁砸开，让所有人都能进来！他还列举了一些“无门槛参与”的例子，比如，鼓励零开发经验的参与者用 PPT 制作游戏、享受漏洞与故障（Bugs 与 Glitches）、重概念而轻完成度，等等。

有些游戏用一组小规则去映射、调侃另一组更大的规则，并呼吁其他人对之重视。游戏设计师、策展人、记者杨静在 GAIA 也主持了一场活动，她把在公共部门和非政府组织（NGO）里工作的环节转换成游戏规则，邀请大家分组模拟，最后分享各自在与基金会、文化机构协调时的“生存技巧”。这场模拟中，随机抽卡获得的事件引导着每个组织的命运走向，这些事件包括：策划活动时如何考虑人员组成、团队如何管理、对外如何宣传、署名与致谢怎么安排等等。在分享环节，虽然 GAIA 成员来自全球各地，但我们听到的经验却惊人地相似：如何协调机构的要求与游戏社群的需求，如何把一个没有先例可循的项目写进申请，如何在预算紧张时决定放弃或保留哪些项目……看来，游戏策展确实是一个小众但其玩法放之四海而皆准的领域。来自不同文化背景的策展者们，在与机构沟通时共享相似的困境。

有些游戏需要你在玩的时候施展出最大的负荷力。GAIA 的第二晚，来自法国的团体 Sous les Néons 在庞培法布拉大学举行了两场“玩演”（Playformance）。两位玩演者分别用《蔚蓝》（Celeste）和《火线猎杀：野境》（Ghost Recon: Wildlands）来表演，在台上边玩游戏边展开独家叙事。玩演的发起人 Simon Bachelier 在接受 indienova 采访时告诉我，玩演这一形式的核心并不是评论游戏或带大家一起来玩游戏，而是用游戏说出它本身无法单独说出的话。而且，玩演者需要熟谙这款游戏，并在表演过程中极度认真，才能在玩的同时也做到别的事。

还有些游戏的维度被拓展到一个广阔的范围，与你的生活交融，潜移默化地引导你从前所未有的角度观察原本很熟悉的环境。在去年多伦多游戏周的几天里，从海柏公园（High Park）内的自然沉浸式寻蝶游戏、克里斯蒂公园（Christie Pits Park）内由各年龄段观众一起用一只巨大降落伞来 DIY 创作的互动游戏，到图书馆里的游戏设计工作坊——几乎所有活动都借助公共地点和社群来强调游戏节的本地属性。

就连整个游戏周极具仪式感的开幕，也选在了当地具有文化意义的加拿大麦芽公司筒仓举行。这栋于八十年代停用但被作为文化遗产保留下来的大型建筑伫立在安大略湖边，隔壁就是位于市区内的多伦多岛机场。GAIN 挑选了几款由多伦多本地团队设计、开发的游戏，投屏在筒仓的大墙上循环播放。

游戏周的整体形式很自由。策划活动的机构与嘉宾在方案获选后，确定好时间、地点、流程与所需志愿者人数，只要准时现身，就可以开展活动。GAIN 所做的是在每场活动背后撑起一把游戏大伞，让多元事件在伞下同时发生，给彼此互相看见与交流的机会。

我在游戏周里主持了一场“召唤彼此女神”的共同叙事工作坊《搜妽记》，来参与的几组玩家通过工作坊相互认识，随后结伴继续逛游其他游戏活动。“女神召唤者们”在社交媒体上发帖：“今天召唤出来的女神就是我们彼此！”

这种温馨的互动让我看到，“玩”是有地理性的。你在哪里玩，决定了能遇到谁一起玩，也决定了这场玩的意义会在多大范围内流通。

Have Some Fun

与多伦多游戏周的精神相似，GAIA 也有一个具有地理性和共时性的环节，也是我在整个行程里最喜欢的部分，叫做“非会议”（Unconference）。组织方决定把这个讨论模块挪至户外的海滩进行，打破普通会议常见的固定、线性流程，希望通过尝试新会议形式，把议程决定权交给大家，让现场更自由，也给参会者的即兴想法留出空间。

在这个模块里，大家讨论的内容特别自由、发散，最后却都落到实处——如何在拒绝社交媒体入侵生活的同时又能宣传作品与展览、有什么省钱又好玩的策展模式、下一次 GAIA 在哪里组织更有意思，等等。

有人提问，会议结束后想去圣家堂，但没提前订票，现在仅有的门票非常贵，该不该买。熟悉巴塞罗那的另一人答，在下午三四点进建筑内游览，光线确实很美，但同时游客也非常非常多，花这么多不划算。他们也解答了我的疑问，因为我也忘了须在一个月前预定。圣家堂当然值得一看，但是，当“Have Fun”变成了一种负担，它就不 Fun，我可以选择放弃。

这个想法贯穿了我随后的行程。我和友人在黄昏时恰巧经过圣家堂附近的街区，就靠栏杆站着，迎着夕阳仔细地欣赏了那座当时马上就快封顶的高迪名作。我们沿街找墨鱼饭，走进一家叫“著名酒吧”（The Famous Bar Restaurant）的小店，虽觉听着像宰客店名，但还是随缘坐下了，结果墨鱼饭非常好吃。第二天，我们赶到蒂比达博山顶时，教堂已快关门，没来得及上去打卡最美机位，旁边著名的山顶游乐园的门票价格也让人却步。于是，我们只好站在露台上眺望，顺着小小的游乐园，我们看到了整个巴塞罗那华灯初上的美景，以及与城市相接的绵长海岸线。波光粼粼，海水向外游去了更大的世界。

关于多伦多游戏周

多伦多游戏周（Toronto Games Week）是全球最大型的庆祝“玩耍艺术与文化”的节日之一，是一个由多家（位）组织、公司、策展人、创作者和社区各自独立发起、共同协作而形成的活动集合体。它由 Marie LeBlanc Flanagan（曾任职于柏林艺术游戏节）和 Jim Munroe（GAIA 游戏艺术国际网络执行总监、Hand Eye Society 联合创始人）共同统筹协调。2026 多伦多游戏周将于 6 月 11 日至 17 日举行，现已开放报名。

关于 GAIA

游戏艺术国际研讨会（Game Arts International Assembly, GAIA）是一个面向游戏艺术社群职业发展的国际智库与组织，成员主要聚焦于在电子游戏文化领域工作的策展人、制作人、活动组织者以及学者。GAIA 目前由 María Luján Oulton （策展人、制作人）、Marie LeBlanc Flanaga（艺术家、组织者）、Jim Munroe（小说家）和 Shalev Moran（设计师、艺术家）共同运营。

Introduction

The world is a giant theme park. This is something I learned from events supported by GAIN last year.

GAIN (Game Arts International Network) is a nonprofit organization that supports game curators, community organizers, and educators. Last year in Toronto, I met GAIN’s two co-founders, Marie LeBlanc Flanagan and Jim Munroe. In Marie’s words, GAIN’s mission is to “bring together curators, educators, community organizers, and anyone who acts as an intermediary between players and game creators.”

GAIN is neither a game company nor an industry association. It supports those who stand between developers and players—people who help games be seen, discussed, and situated within broader contexts. Its two major initiatives are Toronto Games Week (TGW) and the biennial Game Arts International Assembly (GAIA), a small symposium that gathers game art curators from around the world.

Last June, I participated in many events at TGW and hosted a collaborative storytelling workshop. Then in the fall, I attended GAIA 2025 at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. Through a continuous flow of event-planning, travelling, communication, and play centered around the theme of “play,” the metaphor of the world as a theme park gradually became more tangible to me.

Play, Fun, Game

Although discussions about “games and play” may feel overfamiliar, no gathering about playing can avoid revisiting them. On the first day of GAIA, Emily Koonce—a curator, game developer, and educator from Chicago’s indie experimental space Night City Games—organized a series of warm-up activities. In one of them, participants were grouped at tables, each including both native and non-native English speakers. We were asked to translate three words—“Play,” “Fun,” and “Game”—into as many languages and words as possible.

In my group, alongside Spanish and Italian speakers, the process went smoothly until we reached “Fun.” It was the hardest word—too abstract, too colloquial, too emotional. “Interesting”? Not quite. “Happy”? Also not quite. No single Chinese word seemed to fully capture the casual, self-indulgent feeling of “have some fun.” After thinking for a while, I blurted out: “Chinese people don’t have fun.”

Everyone laughed, then tried to help me solve the puzzle.
“How do you say ‘Fun Park’ then?”
“Oh, we say ‘you-le-yuan’, literally ‘play-happy-park.’”
“So your understanding of ‘fun’ is ‘happiness’?”
“Sort of… we also have a phrase ‘zhao-le-zi (to find happiness),’ which is closer to ‘have some fun', and 'le' also means 'happy'.”

Later, someone pointed out that the Spanish word "diversión" comes from "divertere," meaning “to deviate from the original path.”

“That makes sense,” I thought. “Deviation, escape—these aren’t exactly encouraged in traditional Chinese culture.” I grew up hearing phrases like “indulgence in play leads to loss of ambition,” “straying onto the wrong path,” “one misstep leads to lifelong regret.” The boundaries of what counts as "indulgence in play," "wrong path," and “misstep” are broad. When you’re constantly worried about whether you’ve gone astray, it’s hard to live aimlessly and enjoy it—no wonder there isn’t an exact word for "fun."

Sara, who was taking notes, showed me her tablet. On it was a quote from me: “Chinese people don’t have fun.”

“Try writing that in Chinese,” she said.

After a pause, I wrote in Chinese: “Chinese people don’t want to play.” At that moment, a stand-up joke by comedian Zhang Jun flashed through my mind: “Because I’m Chinese, I can’t just play.” I winced—had I just reinforced a stereotype?

What Exists in the Theme Park?

I used to think of myself as a “player,” but now I’m less certain. Maybe the possibilities of “play” can be broader. When I used to go to theme parks, I planned everything carefully: which rides were worth lining up for, what couldn’t be missed, when to leave. Now I want to be more spontaneous—to explore organically, to notice the kinds of fun I used to overlook.

Some “games” in this world-theme-park aren’t judged by conventional standards of quality. In GAIA’s “Global South Curators” session, Manila-based curator Agustin Crisostomo shared how growing up in the Philippines shaped his affection for bootleg and modded games, as well as internet café culture. This eventually led him to organize the Bad Game Jam, cultivating a tight-knit community. Agustin described the event as “the opposite of gatekeeping—breaking open the lock and letting everyone in.” He encouraged participation without barriers: making games in PowerPoint, embracing bugs and glitches, prioritizing ideas over polish, etc.

Some games use small rule systems to reflect or critique larger ones. Game designer, curator, and journalist Allison Yang also hosted a session at GAIA. She transformed workflows from the public sector and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) into a set of game mechanics, inviting participants to form groups, simulate scenarios, and ultimately share their own “survival strategies” for working with foundations and cultural institutions. In the simulation, randomly drawn event cards guided the fate of each group’s organization. These events touched on issues such as how to structure a team when planning a program, how to manage internal collaboration, how to handle external communications and promotion, and how to arrange credits and acknowledgments. During the sharing session, although GAIA members came from all over the world, the experiences we heard were strikingly similar: how to balance institutional demands with the needs of game communities; how to write grant proposals for projects with no clear precedent; how to decide what to cut or keep when budgets are tight. It seems that game curation is indeed a niche field—but one whose “rules of play” hold true across contexts. Curators from different cultural backgrounds find themselves navigating remarkably similar challenges when communicating with institutions.

Some games demand intense focus. On GAIA’s second evening, the French collective Sous les Néons presented two “Playformances.” Playformers played Celeste and Ghost Recon: Wildlands while delivering personal narratives. Curator Simon Bachelier told me in an interview for indienova, playformance is not a form of commentary or shared play, but using games to express what they cannot express alone. It requires deep familiarity and total concentration—playing while simultaneously doing something else.

Other games extend into everyday life, blending with environments and shifting perception. During Toronto Games Week, activities ranged from an immersive scavenger hunt for the brightwng butterfly through High Park, a playful game DIY group activity with a giant rainbow parachute in Christie Pits Park, to a game design workshop in the library. Public spaces and local communities became integral to the festival.

Even the opening ceremony of TGW—rich with a sense of ritual—was held at the culturally significant site of the former Canada Malting Company Silos. This massive structure, decommissioned in the 1980s but preserved as a heritage site, stands along the shore of Lake Ontario, right next to the Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport. GAIN selected several games designed and developed by local Toronto teams and projected them onto the towering walls of the silos, where they played in a loop.

The overall structure of the game week was highly flexible. Once their proposals were selected, organizers simply confirmed the time, location, format, and number of volunteers needed; as long as they showed up on schedule, the event could go ahead. What GAIN provided was a kind of overarching framework—a broad canopy for games—under which diverse activities could unfold simultaneously, creating opportunities for visibility, exchange, and mutual encounter.

I hosted a collaborative storytelling workshop in TGW titled In Search of the Godmama. Some of the participants met each other in my session and then continued exploring the festival together. Later, they posted on social media: “Turns out the godmama we were searching was each other!”

That touching moment made me realize: play could be geographical. Where you play determines who you meet—and how far the meaning of that play can travel.

Have Some Fun

Like Toronto Games Week, GAIA included a favorite segment of mine: the “Unconference.” Held on a beach, it broke away from fixed schedules and handed agenda-setting over to participants.

Discussions ranged widely yet landed on practical concerns: how to promote work and events without letting social media consume life, how to curate game shows affordably yet meaningfully, where to host the next GAIA, etc.

Someone asked whether it was worth buying a last-minute ticket to visit the Sagrada Família after the conference. Without booking in advance, the only tickets left were very expensive. Another person familiar with Barcelona said that while the light inside the basilica around 3 or 4 p.m. is indeed beautiful, it’s also when the crowds are at their peak, making it feel less worth the price. That answer also resolved my own dilemma—I had forgotten that tickets need to be reserved at least a month in advance. The Sagrada Família is certainly worth seeing, but when “Have Fun” becomes a burden, it stops being fun. I can choose to let it go.

This idea carried through the rest of my trip. At dusk, a friend and I happened to pass through the neighborhood near the Sagrada Família. We leaned against a railing and quietly took in Antoni Gaudí’s masterpiece, then nearing completion, glowing in the setting sun. We wandered the streets looking for arroz negro and stepped into a small place called “The Famous Bar Restaurant.” The name sounded like a bit of a tourist trap, but we followed our instincts and sat down anyway—it turned out to be delicious.

The next day, we reached the top of Tibidabo just as the church was about to close, so we missed the chance to go up to the most iconic viewpoint. The ticket price for the nearby Tibidabo Amusement Park was also enough to give us pause. So instead, we stood on the terrace and looked out. From the small fun park, we saw the whole of Barcelona lighting up at dusk, along with its long coastline stretching into the distance. The water shimmered, and beyond it, it felt as though the sea was already flowing outward into a much larger world.

About Toronto Games Week

Toronto Games Week (TGW) is one of the largest festivals celebrating the art and culture of play. It is a collective coordination of events organized independently by dozens of organizations, curators, companies, creators, and communities. It is coordinated by Marie LeBlanc Flanagan (previously at A MAZE. / Berlin) and Jim Munroe (Game Arts International Network executive director and co-founder of the Hand Eye Society).

About GAIA

The Game Arts International Assembly (GAIA) is an international think tank and network for professional development in the game arts community, focusing on curators, producers, organizers, and scholars. It is currently run by María Luján Oulton (curator, producer), Marie LeBlanc Flanagan (artist, organizer), Jim Munroe (fiction writer), and Shalev Moran (designer, artist).