Electronic Arts Sent Me an Email About My Game 20180317

Games are not art — they're amend. Information technology just depends on whom y'all enquire.

At that place's this on-over again, off-again argument within 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 accustomed fine arts, movies, take had at to the lowest degree a century to develop.

Conventional videogames–and I'thousand taking Pong, the equivalent of cave drawings, as my starting bespeak here–commenced less than 40 years ago. In that fourth dimension, games have mimicked movies, electronically emulated books, and tried their paw at playing on some emotional heartstrings. The big difference is that near conventional art forms are passive and two-dimensional experiences: You sit in front of and soak in whatsoever the creative person presents you with. Videogames try to create an interactive feel that puts the viewer/ player in control of the palette.

Enter Shanghai-born Xinghan "Jenova" Chen, artistic managing director of ThatGameCompany. Since earning his graduate degree from the University of Southern California Moving picture School's Interactive Media plan, he has helped craft several simple-but-surreal game projects that do more than cater to a twitch response. His thesis project, Cloud, floated forth, accumulating a post-obit on the indie gaming scene. Flow cast players as an ever-evolving single-celled organism–and that, no doubt, inspired the first stage in Spore. The all-time way to draw Chen's latest game, Flower: It's a first-person gardener. And it's well-worth the $10 request price at Sony'due south PlayStation Store.

The levels, if you lot choose to call them that, are the dreams of flowers. You are the wind, fulfilling bloom fantasies–yeah, it sounds kind of strange. But only try it. This is a Zen exercise with an occasional trophy for completing a task. A meditation puddle with an endpoint. More important, information technology passes my all-important "married woman exam": She was entranced as she watched me play, until finally she yanked the controller out of my hand to try her luck with it. The last time I got that kind of response out of her was when BioShock came out.

But back to the old "games-versus-fine art" statement (I'thousand looking at you, Ebert). I spent some fourth dimension chatting with Chen recently virtually the state of gaming and how (if at all) it's maturing. Here's what we came upward with:

A Boy and His Flower

PC World: How would you try describing Flower to someone? Is it a game, fine art, or something else entirely?

Jenova Chen: Flower is made with a different mentality. It's a rubber, warm experience. Information technology's like a poem or dance that uses symbolism and scenery to requite the player a comforting backdrop.

PCW: And I guess that this would make you lot the choreographer?

JC: [laughs] Yeah, nosotros're non level designers. We provide all these moves, and considering players are different, they will perform the moves differently. It's a game that is meant non just to play, but to watch.

PCW: A game that y'all sentinel–technically, that'd make it art. As for the person who grabs the controls, let's talk a little more nigh the game itself.

JC: The end goal of the player is to make the globe a meliorate identify. The histrion is the consciousness of nature. You're living through the dreams of flowers sitting in pots. Gamers call them levels, simply each of the dreams for the different flowers has different goals. The Rose, for case, sees a desaturated, drab world of concrete merely wants to add color everywhere. As y'all consummate the dream of ane flower, the 2d flower sprouts and fills in a certain attribute of life. The gameplay is that yous're this consciousness, this desire. You're bringing life into the world–non the guy killing aliens.

Nosotros idea of this like a movie feel. You could probably finish this in ii and half hours, but you really go a lot more than out of the game after you've finished and come back to revisit each blossom's dreams. Y'all notice more to explore and play more than. It will be a expert therapy–to heal yourself and reflect on things.

PCW: How did you come up with the idea of making a game virtually flowers, anyhow?

JC: I grew upwardly in a city, in Shanghai. I was surrounded past skyscrapers and people. I was never surrounded past nature. When I was on my style into Los Angeles, I saw this windmill farm. Grass fields, blueish sky–I'd never seen these things before. Where I lived the sky was purple. And then, as an urban man, I was attracted to these things I hadn't actually seen before. When you actually get into nature and go hiking, yous actually kickoff missing the metropolis and the people. So I wanted to create a space like a window from your living room, and yous get surrounded by nature. Meanwhile, you still feel safe and warm. It's a harmony between nature and urban life.

PCW: Ordinarily, games similar this don't appear on store shelves…

JC: That's because digital distribution allows for more run a risk-taking. It allows small-scale development houses to take chances without having to score funding to publish the game on discs. That toll forces you to make sacrifices along the way. It makes you cut costs, enforce deadlines and ship a game that you might not exist every bit proud of. Y'all just can't run that take a chance. For a game similar Flow, information technology only cost between 500 and 600k, non even a million. [Ed. note: And that'due south gone on to huge success.] Sony'south been great to work with in this respect and has been very supportive both with Period and now Flower.

Selling Games Short

JC: I think I'm pretty stupid to start a company. I left a lead designer job at Maxis working on Spore to found ThatGameCompany. I was trying to discover someplace that was doing what I wanted to do. Nobody was.

PCW: What was missing?

JC: I see entertainment as something that feeds y'all–like food or water, but for your emotions. Videogames used to be a software niche…merely it isn't fully mature notwithstanding. The difference between a new medium and a mature medium is based upon the variety–more than only one or two emotions. At that place aren't but scary books or movies. Or pitiful songs. Games are still largely seen as a toy and not just by the mainstream audience, but by some developers also.

PCW: Wouldn't y'all say, though, that these days games are getting a picayune more than sophisticated?

JC: Well, the people who accept a new technology are the younger ones — the ones willing to adapt. That'south why the first games mostly catered to kids. In social club for the business concern to succeed, they've needed to focus on the kids. To a degree, information technology's still that way. Kids similar flashy imagery and colorful cartoons. And equally they become older, they like more competition and to be more than powerful. Many games are based on this empowerment.

PCW: And I guess that feeds into the stigma still attached to games…and being a gamer.

JC: Aye, no one asks you if you're a flick watcher or if you're a reader, but when it ever comes to games, you lot're a gamer. That'southward considering we've got a ways to go. People utilise phrases similar "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 blot something from it. Something mentally stimulating that they volition exist able to use elsewhere.

PCW: At to the lowest degree some games strive to do more, but I'd accept to agree that there's nonetheless a lopsided focus on something like graphics.

JC: If yous retrieve well-nigh information technology, 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 up of game design equally a bucket. Crytek created a beautiful engine and Crysis looks realistic and practiced. But if the story doesn't rising to the aforementioned level as those graphics, it feels like an uneven effort and things in the game spill over the sides. If the gameplay isn't every bit good, information technology doesn't experience right. Considering [ThatGameCompany] is small, we don't take the luxury to pile upward one feature like, say, graphics or story and focus on the whole bundle. Nosotros need to keep things concise.

PCW: Concise is i way to put it. Hither's how your games work: Tilt the PS3's Sixaxis controller to move and printing a single button. No instructions, no tutorial, yous just drop players into the world.

JC: We need to provide content exterior the cherry zone so that adults and people that normally wouldn't think to grab a controller, would. And when they practice catch the controller, make information technology simple to understand. At starting time, we tried unlike gameplay with complex controls–fifty-fifty with wellness points–but that didn't experience right for the emotions we wanted to convey. The music and ambiance combined with the visuals and controls convey more than. That's why at that place are no voices, no words, and no instructions.

Games, the New Movies

PCW: Since you lot're coming from the perspective of a USC Moving-picture show Schoolhouse graduate, where would you say games are at present compared to, say, movies?

JC: When films first appeared, it was this brand-new medium that started every bit a technology innovation. Sophisticated storytelling came later. It's easier to sell a applied science if you evoke primal feelings. If you wait at some of the earliest films, like a French one that captured a train coming through a tunnel, it scared people out of their seats. Don't games sometimes get those same reactions?

PCW: No arguments virtually games borer fear and adrenaline. That, they've got down. But using that film comparison, take we at to the lowest degree fabricated it out of the "talkies" stage?

JC: The game manufacture started in the '70s and has grown very quickly. The very first generation of filmmakers who grew up with films equally 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 schoolhouse for film. Now, people are reacting that same style to game schools. In schoolhouse, we studied all these mediums–storytelling, psychology…and I recollect, as a result, when I mention some ideas to current game designers, they'll say, "Oh, this sounds cool, only is information technology fun?"

I guess my respond would exist that we're at the point where George Lucas and Steven Spielberg are coming out of film school.

PCW: You lot heard it here first–THX1138 and The Duel, coming to a panel near you lot before long! Seriously, though, at that place is this dismissive attitude toward gamers. Do you recollect this next generation of designers will change people's minds about games?

JC: People coming out of game design schools are now thinking about games differently than those that've come earlier. We hope that games volition become more than respected. In Japan, anybody reads manga–it's a national art form. Successful businessmen and teenagers read them on the trains. In America, comic books are viewed as some nerdy activeness. Why so different? The content matured at a different step–and I don't want to see games get lumped into that same, immature category.

PCW: Deplorable for the clichéd question, but can a videogame make you cry yet? Besides if the game is too tough, that is….

JC: There are moments in gaming where you'll understand with a character and maybe experience a little deplorable. Well, videogames take made people cry. It's piece of cake to cry if you've experienced something deep and emotional. A office-playing game in Prc I played made me cry–even if it's cliché–just as a kid, if you're exposed to something for the start time and conveys a story. If you've never read Shakespeare and someone slips Romeo and Juliet into a game, the commencement fourth dimension you see it somewhere is spring to make y'all cry. The medium improves past the kids who get moved and are motivated to brand their own games.

PCW: How many times has information technology backfired, though? That the game gets in the way of a practiced story?

JC: I force myself to play some games…similar Terminal Fantasy XII. I had to struggle through because of all the [endless quests]. Even though I really wanted to know how the story ended, after a couple weeks I had to just give up. The chore of making your grapheme gain more experience to consummate the game had no relevance to real life. And that is where a lot of games lose people.

PCW: Thanks, Jenova.

Maybe function of the trouble is that they are called "games." Snobs plough their nose upwardly 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 meliorate name for videogames? Let me know!

Until next time…

Need even more nerdity? Follow Casual Fri columnist and PC World Senior Writer Darren Gladstone on gizmogladstone on Twitter for more than time-wasting tips.

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Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/533505/games_not_art.html

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