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la la land

communication is abstract; between what is communicated are spaces called ambiguity. it is within these spaces that what is communicated is interpreted. videogames, being inherently a form of communication (the player provides input, the game responds with output, the player responds to that output with further input), contain a great deal of abstraction.

the la la land games, of which there are (to my knowledge) five, are haunting and surreal short tales. in the way that static might draw attention to the pauses in a phone conversation, la la land emphasizes those vast between-spaces in the dialogue between player and game. it is here that the games take place.

la la land is highly regarded in my circle of friends but rarely-mentioned otherwise; i was happy to see la la land 5 in paul eres’s hundred game maker games video (and close on the heels of mighty jill off, too). i’ve known the games to be hard to find for a while, particularly the first (and fairly different) episode, so i’m hosting them here: all five la la land games.

13 comments

  1. sharc wrote:

    hot damn, i can finally play the first one. thanks for hosting it!

    incidentally, this series has absolutely transfixed everyone i’ve shown it to. i tried to email the creator once but to no avail. somebody find that guy and interview him!

    10/3/2008 at 11:16 am | permalink
  2. Hunter wrote:

    I had no idea there were so many interesting Game Maker games! Neat!

    10/3/2008 at 12:07 pm | permalink
  3. daphny wrote:

    god this is the most important thing you’ve ever posted

    tied with air fortress

    10/3/2008 at 6:45 pm | permalink
  4. Allen Collado wrote:

    Is there an ending to the first game, or does the number just keep counting up?

    Either way, these were really awesome. I don’t pay much attention to the GameMaker scene, so I never would have found out about these…

    10/3/2008 at 9:46 pm | permalink
  5. Jason Love wrote:

    One of the many magical moments at KE3: Andrew Toups has just rigged his laptop to display on the television, and he introduces us to La La Land. It’s an excellent way to experience the games; too bad those conditions are so difficult to reproduce.

    10/4/2008 at 1:41 am | permalink
  6. auntie wrote:

    as far as i know, there’s no ending to la la land 1. the other episodes all tell definite (if ambiguous) stories; the first is what costik would call a “tone poem”. rather than leading the player through a narrative, it imparts a mood. pretty effectively, too.

    10/4/2008 at 1:43 am | permalink
  7. Zaratustra wrote:

    If you get like 50 stars on La La Land 1, a fish head thing will appear that you can shoot. When it dies, the game is over.

    10/4/2008 at 4:57 am | permalink
  8. cactus wrote:

    The La La Land series is amazing. It’s really unfortunate that the creator has just disappeared.

    10/5/2008 at 10:30 am | permalink
  9. madamluna wrote:

    Whoa, these are great! Thanks for hosting these, I hadn’t heard much about them before now.

    10/5/2008 at 1:27 pm | permalink
  10. Benerhos wrote:

    I love the La La Land series. I thought I was the only one that had the first one.

    Fantastic games.

    10/8/2008 at 1:26 am | permalink
  11. Wall of Beef wrote:

    May there be a simple reason as to why these games won’t load for me in Vista?

    10/12/2008 at 10:25 pm | permalink
  12. auntie wrote:

    yes, and it probably is that games made in game maker six aren’t natively compatible with vista. you can use this program to patch them so they’ll run on your computer.

    10/12/2008 at 10:32 pm | permalink
  13. Bowser wrote:

    I’m really into this kind of stuff!
    Games with a weird atmosphere like La La Land, the Mother series, Yume Nikki, Neftelia (you can see videos of it on YouTube), Switch/Panic… I think this weird/inexplicable stuff is called “tanasinn” by the Japanese.

    BTW, these Hatsune Miku videos are also similar to La La Land:
    http://www.youtube.com/user/competor
    Be sure to see Fuzaino Mori Inside & Fuzaino Mori Outside.

    I hope you still check comments on old posts… :<

    11/22/2008 at 1:45 pm | permalink

7 trackbacks/pingbacks

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