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Games are not art — they're amend. Information technology just depends on whom you ask.
In that location's this on-over again, off-again statement inside the intelligentsia as to whether games should be placed on the same pedestal as books, movies, music, and paintings. But even the newest of the accepted fine arts, movies, have had at least a century to develop.
Conventional videogames–and I'm taking Pong, the equivalent of cave drawings, every bit my starting point here–commenced less than twoscore years ago. In that time, games have mimicked movies, electronically emulated books, and tried their mitt at playing on some emotional heartstrings. The big difference is that well-nigh conventional art forms are passive and two-dimensional experiences: Y'all sit in front of and soak in whatever the artist presents you with. Videogames attempt to create an interactive experience that puts the viewer/ histrion in control of the palette.
Enter Shanghai-built-in Xinghan "Jenova" Chen, creative director of ThatGameCompany. Since earning his graduate degree from the Academy of Southern California Motion picture School'south Interactive Media program, he has helped craft several simple-but-surreal game projects that practice more than cater to a twitch response. His thesis project, Cloud, floated along, accumulating a post-obit on the indie gaming scene. Flow cast players as an always-evolving unmarried-celled organism–and that, no doubt, inspired the first stage in Spore. The best fashion to describe Chen's latest game, Bloom: It'south a outset-person gardener. And information technology's well-worth the $x asking toll at Sony's PlayStation Store.
The levels, if you choose to telephone call them that, are the dreams of flowers. You are the wind, fulfilling flower fantasies–yes, it sounds kind of strange. But but try it. This is a Zen do with an occasional trophy for completing a job. A meditation pool with an endpoint. More important, it passes my earth-shaking "wife test": She was entranced as she watched me play, until finally she yanked the controller out of my paw to effort her luck with it. The last fourth dimension I got that kind of response out of her was when BioShock came out.
Just back to the old "games-versus-art" argument (I'k looking at you, Ebert). I spent some time chatting with Chen recently virtually the state of gaming and how (if at all) it'due south maturing. Here's what we came upwards with:
A Male child and His Flower
PC Globe: How would you try describing Flower to someone? Is it a game, art, or something else entirely?
Jenova Chen: Blossom is made with a dissimilar mentality. It'south a prophylactic, warm experience. It's similar a poem or trip the light fantastic that uses symbolism and scenery to give the player a comforting backdrop.
PCW: And I estimate that this would make you the choreographer?
JC: [laughs] Yeah, we're not level designers. We provide all these moves, and because players are different, they will perform the moves differently. It's a game that is meant not merely to play, only to sentinel.
PCW: A game that you spotter–technically, that'd make it art. Equally for the person who grabs the controls, allow's talk a little more about the game itself.
JC: The end goal of the player is to make the world a better identify. The player is the consciousness of nature. You're living through the dreams of flowers sitting in pots. Gamers telephone call them levels, but each of the dreams for the different flowers has dissimilar goals. The Rose, for example, sees a desaturated, drab world of concrete merely wants to add together colour everywhere. Every bit you complete the dream of ane bloom, the 2nd flower sprouts and fills in a certain aspect of life. The gameplay is that y'all're this consciousness, this desire. Y'all're bringing life into the world–non the guy killing aliens.
Nosotros idea of this like a movie experience. You could probably finish this in two and one-half hours, merely yous actually become a lot more out of the game subsequently you've finished and come back to revisit each flower's dreams. You find more to explore and play more. Information technology will exist a good therapy–to heal yourself and reflect on things.
PCW: How did yous come up up with the idea of making a game about flowers, anyhow?
JC: I grew upward in a city, in Shanghai. I was surrounded by skyscrapers and people. I was never surrounded by nature. When I was on my style into Los Angeles, I saw this windmill subcontract. Grass fields, blue heaven–I'd never seen these things before. Where I lived the sky was imperial. Then, as an urban man, I was attracted to these things I hadn't actually seen before. When you actually become into nature and go hiking, you really start missing the city and the people. So I wanted to create a space like a window from your living room, and you get surrounded by nature. Meanwhile, yous nevertheless feel safety and warm. Information technology'southward a harmony between nature and urban life.
PCW: Unremarkably, games like this don't appear on shop shelves…
JC: That's because digital distribution allows for more risk-taking. It allows pocket-sized development houses to chance without having to score funding to publish the game on discs. That price forces you to make sacrifices along the manner. It makes y'all cut costs, enforce deadlines and ship a game that you might not be equally proud of. You lot just tin can't run that risk. For a game similar Flow, it merely cost between 500 and 600k, not even a million. [Ed. annotation: And that'due south gone on to huge success.] Sony'south been great to piece of work with in this respect and has been very supportive both with Flow and now Flower.
Selling Games Short
JC: I think I'm pretty stupid to start a company. I left a lead designer chore at Maxis working on Spore to found ThatGameCompany. I was trying to find someplace that was doing what I wanted to do. Nobody was.
PCW: What was missing?
JC: I see entertainment as something that feeds yous–similar food or h2o, simply for your emotions. Videogames used to exist a software niche…just it isn't fully mature yet. The deviation between a new medium and a mature medium is based upon the variety–more only one or two emotions. At that place aren't merely scary books or movies. Or deplorable songs. Games are still largely seen as a toy and not just by the mainstream audience, but by some developers as well.
PCW: Wouldn't yous say, though, that these days games are getting a little more sophisticated?
JC: Well, the people who accept a new engineering science are the younger ones — the ones willing to adapt. That'south why the starting time games mostly catered to kids. In order for the business concern to succeed, they've needed to focus on the kids. To a degree, information technology'south even so that manner. Kids like flashy imagery and colorful cartoons. And as they become older, they similar more contest and to be more powerful. Many games are based on this empowerment.
PCW: And I approximate that feeds into the stigma withal attached to games…and being a gamer.
JC: Yeah, no one asks you if you're a film watcher or if you're a reader, just when information technology always comes to games, you lot're a gamer. That'south considering we've got a ways to go. People use phrases like "cool" and "fun," but seeking a more sophisticated audience means doing more. People read a book, for example, but there's this thought that they will absorb something from it. Something mentally stimulating that they volition be able to use elsewhere.
PCW: At least some games strive to do more than, but I'd have to agree that there's still a lopsided focus on something like graphics.
JC: If you retrieve virtually it, most movies are divided by feelings. Games are divided by technologies–or the skills that they test. That often casts games as dismissible pastimes. Call back of game blueprint equally a bucket. Crytek created a cute engine and Crysis looks realistic and good. Merely if the story doesn't rise to the same level as those graphics, it feels like an uneven endeavour and things in the game spill over the sides. If the gameplay isn't every bit good, information technology doesn't experience right. Because [ThatGameCompany] is pocket-sized, we don't have the luxury to pile up i characteristic similar, say, graphics or story and focus on the whole package. We need to keep things concise.
PCW: Concise is one fashion to put it. Here's how your games work: Tilt the PS3's Sixaxis controller to movement and press a single button. No instructions, no tutorial, you just drib players into the globe.
JC: We demand to provide content outside the red zone so that adults and people that usually wouldn't think to grab a controller, would. And when they do catch the controller, make information technology simple to understand. At offset, we tried different gameplay with complex controls–fifty-fifty with health points–but that didn't feel right for the emotions we wanted to convey. The music and ambiance combined with the visuals and controls convey more. That'southward why there are no voices, no words, and no instructions.
Games, the New Movies
PCW: Since you're coming from the perspective of a USC Film Schoolhouse graduate, where would you say games are now compared to, say, movies?
JC: When films get-go appeared, information technology was this brand-new medium that started as a engineering innovation. Sophisticated storytelling came afterwards. It's easier to sell a engineering if y'all evoke primal feelings. If you look at some of the earliest films, like a French one that captured a train coming through a tunnel, information technology scared people out of their seats. Don't games sometimes go those same reactions?
PCW: No arguments most games tapping fright and adrenaline. That, they've got downwardly. Only using that film comparing, accept we at to the lowest degree made it out of the "talkies" phase?
JC: The game industry started in the '70s and has grown very chop-chop. The very first generation of filmmakers who grew up with films every bit kids–they went to universities and studied how to craft films. The George Lucases and Steven Spielbergs.
When George Lucas went to film school, people were surprised that there actually was a school for film. Now, people are reacting that same fashion to game schools. In schoolhouse, we studied all these mediums–storytelling, psychology…and I think, as a effect, when I mention some ideas to electric current game designers, they'll say, "Oh, this sounds cool, but is it fun?"
I estimate my answer would be that we're at the point where George Lucas and Steven Spielberg are coming out of film school.
PCW: You lot heard it here beginning–THX1138 and The Duel, coming to a panel near you shortly! Seriously, though, there is this dismissive mental attitude toward gamers. Practice y'all recollect this next generation of designers volition change people'southward minds almost games?
JC: People coming out of game blueprint schools are now thinking about games differently than those that've come before. We hope that games will become more respected. In Japan, everyone reads manga–it'due south a national art course. Successful businessmen and teenagers read them on the trains. In America, comic books are viewed equally some nerdy activity. Why so different? The content matured at a different step–and I don't want to see games go lumped into that same, immature category.
PCW: Sorry for the clichéd question, but can a videogame make y'all cry yet? Likewise if the game is too tough, that is….
JC: There are moments in gaming where you'll empathize with a graphic symbol and maybe feel a niggling lamentable. Well, videogames take made people weep. It's easy to cry if you lot've experienced something deep and emotional. A role-playing game in China I played made me weep–even if it's cliché–but equally a kid, if you're exposed to something for the first fourth dimension and conveys a story. If you've never read Shakespeare and someone slips Romeo and Juliet into a game, the first time yous encounter information technology somewhere is bound to brand you cry. The medium improves by the kids who get moved and are motivated to make their own games.
PCW: How many times has information technology backfired, though? That the game gets in the style of a good story?
JC: I force myself to play some games…like Final Fantasy XII. I had to struggle through considering of all the [countless quests]. Even though I actually wanted to know how the story ended, afterwards a couple weeks I had to just surrender. The chore of making your graphic symbol proceeds more feel to complete the game had no relevance to real life. And that is where a lot of games lose people.
PCW: Cheers, Jenova.
Maybe part of the problem is that they are called "games." Snobs turn their nose upwards and think of Pac-Homo on the Atari 2600 or something–and instantly file it in the category of mindless diversions. Their loss. You got a better name for videogames? Permit me know!
Until next time…
Need even more nerdity? Follow Casual Friday columnist and PC Globe Senior Writer Darren Gladstone on gizmogladstone on Twitter for more fourth dimension-wasting tips.
Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/533505/games_not_art.html