Anne-Marie Schleiner interviewed by Pedro Soler for SonarOnline.

1. How did you get interested in games and their modification?
I wanted to make my own game and realized it made more sense to start
with a game modification on an existing game engine. While working on my first mod I would search on the Internet for shareware apps to do various things and became aware of other game modders and the whole spectrum of various mods.

2. You, along with other artists, did a series of counterstrike
modifications .. can u tell more about these ? did they get adopted by counterstrike gamers?
They were both adapted by counter-strike gamers and, alternately, hated by many. I have never done a project with so much negative feedback. We recieved death threats and hate mails from every concievable direction. I think a big part of the negative reaction
to "Velvet-Strike" was anger over a woman becoming involved in what
has become a very male culture. Another faction were "patriotic"
American boys who percieved our project as an affront on America.
Our project was a series of anti-war protests and interventions. Of
course others were positive or at least interested. And even the
negative feedback I consider a success because it forced people to define their positions and also forced some strange people to come out of the woodwork.(The sorts of people you see in Michael Moore's "Bowling for Columbine") Like Brody has said, I think one of the most interesting parts of the project is the "flamer gallery" on our site with samples of hate mail.

3. What led u to develop your own games ?
I developed Anime Noir with Melinda Klayman because I wanted to try developing a game from scratch for once instead of a mod. With mods I usually feel like at some level I am accepting a paradigm set by the preexisting game engine and we wanted to start with our own rule systems and make a game that was not entirely bound to a preexisting
genre, reacting against it, or in some kind of closed dialogue with
it. Also Melinda was the perfect partner for the Anime Noir project
cause she brought performative art and erotic fetish expertise to the project. (Anime Noir is an erotic role playing game set in a
Japanese Anime Universe.) We also had this idea of turning it into a commercial success, (another reason for developing our own game as opposed to a mod), but, although we had a lot of outside interest in it and a few potential investors, neither of us has had time to leave our artistic and academic interests enough to devote ourselves to being business type people. (Not that this is entirely out of the question still.)

4. Do games modifications or "artists games" only circulate in
artistic circles or do they get adopted in the gaming community in general ?
Game modifications are often made by people who dont necessarily consider themselves artists so much as wanna-be game designers. (For example Counter-strike which is a Half-life mod.) Some mods become very popular for numerous reasons, game-play(Counter-Strike), interesting thematic environments(Pencil-Whipped), funny curiousities
(Chicken Doom). I think it also depends on how open-minded gamer communities are. Some people just want to play the same type of games over and over again with slight variations in environments and characters. Other people are hungry for new types of games.
"Artist games" as opposed to mods are sometimes quite popular outside of the art community. Eric Zimmerman's "Sissy Fight" is a good example. Also, we get 20-50 requests to play our game "Anime Noir" every day... unfortunetely we havent had time to run the servers for it lately.

5. Do you feel that the concept of computer gaming is changing, that maybe we are getting closer to a new vision of what is or could be a computer game?
Yes, I think computer games are becoming an adult creative medium, like film or literature. As people grow up playing games they dont just stop at a certain age. Creative people who live and breathe games also want to make new kinds of games.

6. How do you feel about your double role of artist and curator, are they complimentary or opposite roles?
Often I feel like being a curator is sort of like being a meta-artist
in that I come up with a specific theme for a show and then try to
find art to fill it in, which may not even exist yet, (which is why on occasion i have made art under pseudonyms for shows that i have
curated.) I think being a net curator gives you more flexibility to blur these roles. In some sense I am a collaborator with the other
artists in the show more than their curator. I am a little conflicted lately though. For instance Velvet-Strike, what was I?

7. What are your 3 favourite commercial games ? 3 favourite artistic games / modifications? and why?

Three favorite commercial games:

Rez--beautiful fluid movements and representation in a highly
advanced non photo-realistic way (so many games pursue the holy grail of photorealism and neglect to explore other forms of visual
representation.)
-> Rez
Alice --Nice psychodelic level design. Plus I love the thumbalina
level where everything is oversize in relation to Alice(why arent
more games influenced by fairy tales?)
->Alice
Counter-Strike--exciting fps team game play.
->Counter-Strike

There are other games I could put in this list, (and also inbetween
artist and commercial like su-tools new game) but since I have
sometimes only seen demos, not actually played them yet maybe I
shouldn't.

Three favorite artistic games/mods:

Retroyou--R/C you couldnt ask for a better artistic use of racing games
->Retroyou
Jodi--SOD Classic Jodi mixed with a classic FPS (Wolfenstein)
-> Jodi
Brody Condon --Adam Killer-- Beautiful explorations of violent digital carnage.
-> Brody Condon