Katie Rose Pipkin’s MFA ’18 article “A Video Game Immerses You in an Opera Composed by Dogs” on David Kanaga’s latest game Oiκοςpiel is published in Hyperallergic.
In David Kanaga’s latest game Oiκοςpiel an immortal Donkey Koch (of the Koch brothers) commissions a group of dogs to produce a digital opera for an arts festival scheduled for 2100. Pipkin writes, “it would be hard to imagine a more demanding first subject than a full-length opera, but here it is.This note about firsts is important, as Kanaga’s newness to development tools seems to directly influence the content of the game. Oiκοςpiel is an asset store, exploded. Rather than build each element by hand, Kanaga has almost entirely used prefabricated components, including camera movement, animal models, crystal-shaders, and transition effects, each purchased for a small sum and sewn together with a deft hand. In interviews, Kanaga has said that these scripts and models are what made it possible for him to put Oikospiel together on his own, but the asset store aesthetic is also immediately, unassailably political.”