Videogames as art
Auriea Harvey and Michaël Samyn are the founders and owners of an award-winning games development studio, Tale of Tales. But this is not your typical games studio; as you’ll soon realise playing their games. Take ‘The Endless Forest’ for example. In this dreamy forest setting you are a deer. The point: there is no point; you simply wander around and meet other deer (players). No fighting, no goals, no scores. Or VANITAS, an iPhone app that is more art than game. Indeed, Michaël and Auriea’s creations expressly avoid the usual gameplay formats that gamers have become so accustomed to. And that is the whole point; Michaël and Auriea seek to harness the 3D interactive medium to create culturally relevant content, content that enchants people and enriches life. And this matters.
What is your view on the state of the videogames market/game development and how do you see it evolving in the coming 5-10 years?
We're not sure how attached we feel to the videogames industry. It doesn't really matter to us if our dream is realized within this industry or outside of it, in a new industry. It would be convenient if the games industry could evolve but it seems rather unwilling. And we don't need it to disappear for our purpose. We think that what we want can co-exist with games. We are independent developers. For us that means, in part, independent of the games market. We are trying to build up an audience that comes directly to us. An audience that doesn't need an industry, a market, or any other context to find us. In addition, we are artists. This means that commercial success is not our highest priority. We do hope to reach as large an audience as is possible. But it is even more important to us that we do the work that we feel we have a calling to do.
We continuously adapt to our environment. And this environment is also continuously changing. At the moment it's fairly beneficial to us to work within or alongside the games market.
But that might change. Changes happen all the time. Our latest adaptation has been to close our blog. It has served us well over the past 3 years, as a means to promote our work. But now it feels like the time of blogs is over. We have achieved a point where we feel we don't need it any more. And the effort of dealing with a blog didn't seem worth the trouble any more.
The funny thing is that while minute changes (with often considerable impact) happen all the time, big changes don't seem to happen at all.
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About
Auriea Harvey and Michaël Samyn are the owners of games development studio Tale of Tales, which they founded in Belgium in 2002. Auriea and Michaël are the designers and directors of all Tale of Tales projects.
http://tale-of-tales.com
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Beautiful expression of what is possible. Thank you :)
I see their point about games as a new kind of medium and agree with it. I also agree that video gaming should (nay, MUST!) evolve - but:
a) I'm not convinced that they can turn the tide by doing what they do - it simply doesn't gain wide enough acceptance while it remains driven by "artistic" aspirations and creativity for creativity's sake
b) It's too early from the technology perspective (and therefore financially (and there I agree) unfeasible
c) Evolution will come from a very different perspective
Personally, I think the future of gaming is convergence of what is now multiple forms of content towards gaming.
This conversion will happen around sticky content, not around artistic expression.
It has - in fact - been happening for decades, and Transformers is probably the best example. Toys ("experience" medium, by the way, where each player is a content creator - eat your heart out, you judgemental people at Tale of Tales), TV series, comic books, movies and of course video games (though Transformers the game was rubbish).
Rant Over.
Leo, I dont think you get their point. (but then I dont think i get yours when you talk about transformers and 'convergence' - in my view, transformers is 'sticky' because the core idea is original and well executed, all the rest is simply merchandising, not convergence). as i understand it, their point is somewhat akin to what seth godin talked about when he was in belgium.. Be an artist! but that isnt easy. it's bound to clash, to grate, to irritate. it is asking you to think, to confront strange emotions, to open the gates. (am I being judgemental here?) obviously it's much easier to follow the formula. and that's the problem with humanity, no doubt... 'stickiness', as you describe it, is the goal of every marketeer, but stickiness isnt necessarily good or valuable, no matter how massive the audience.
I'm grateful that there are artists; that there are people who aspire for a better and more beautiful world; and that they speak their minds, as judgemental as it may sound. you may not agree with their style, but just imagine if the world didnt have people like that... I'd rather not. thank you Tale of Tales!
p.s. Leo. download the endless forest, it's great :)
well, if you don't think the current commercial market will support a more artistic gaming environment then I think you need to spend some time looking at Natal. What I've seen of the interaction is both mind boggling, and suggests possibilities that would include the Endless-Forest-logic as described in the article - noncompetitive interaction.
Furthermore, I'd say the article misses the point by its very title: Endless Forest is not a game but an experience, and that is what Tale of Tales is creating: artistic experiences. After all, how many people would accept the description of 'game' if asked to wander around a real forest meeting other creatures? A misnomer, IMHO.
Downloaded Endless Forest. Played for a few minutes - before boredom got the better of me.
Well... if I were to say anything at all positive based on my experience, I'd say it's like walking between action areas in Fallout without an occasional mutant to shoot at. Pleasant to look at and different from the typical commercial games - but that's not unique by any stretch of imagination.
Go to Steam (www.steampowered.com) and have a look at other indie games there - http://store.steampowered.com/app/40930/ or http://store.steampowered.com/app/40700/ or http://store.steampowered.com/app/40720/ - they bring innovative(ish) gameplay and visuals, but that doesn't mean they are short on content.
If I were to say something else positive based on my experience, I would say it's like Malevich's Black Square. If you don't read his Manifesto, and if you don't see other supermatist paintings, the somewhat crooked black square on off-white background ain't going to float your boat. It's there to make a point. Which is why I've always preferred Rodchenko http://bit.ly/anS4Fs to Malevich.
Anywho - arguments about art are best held over a glass of beer in real life, not over the internet.
Back to Crysis:warhead.
PS Frank, please install at least some ability to punctuate/insert lines into the comments, otherwise structure gets lost. For your reference: http://westartup.eu ;)
indeed, thanks for the links. I'm not equipped to get into art criticism here. but I do think that Auriea and Michaël are making a very important point that I had missed, or hadnt been aware of, until I came across their work and blog. they're making the point that the digital medium also needs to be understood as a cultural medium. it is a medium that shapes who we are. culturally. and maybe even cognitively. for example, Ron Tolido (upcoming interview for TECH topic) pointed me to a book by Nicholas Carr ‘The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains’ -Carr seems to argue that we're becoming more superficial thinkers.. we're more connected, can find info easy, but are losing depth. makes sense. point is not to make a value judgement here (we're not about to kill the internet) but to be conscious of what is happening to us. digital media and communication tech are a run-away train at present. we need to reflect on what is happening here, at a cultural level, even at a cognitive level, and not just technologically. there are more articles coming up that touch on these issues.. Ron Tolido coming up on Slow IT. Laurent Haug (Lift Conference) also touches on it. here's a link Ron pointed me to http://www.realsnailmail.net/ get your head around that!
I concur with the shallow thing - have been noticing it about myself lately :) I have also been trying to prove the "video games are a cultural medium" point (with just a touch of foam at my mouth) to anyone who'd listen for about a decade now.
People spend enormous amounts of time playing video games - and that a lot of people my age (let's say mid-thirties) grew up with them. Most gamers I know play more than they read books for non-professional purposes, and I am sure for younger generations the balance is even further skewed towards video games. The role games they play (and will play in the future) in the socialization process is not to be underestimated!
Recent data from Belgium (FR - but you can also find NL versions) compiled by Mediaedge from CIM data http://www.rtlinfo.be/info/magazine/media/310079/un-tiers-de-la-populati....
I find myself agreeing with strongly some of this article, but vehemently disagreeing with other portions of it.
Yes, games are currently commercially driven, and this has lead to a limitation of the artistic merit of the venture (the best analogy here I've seen is that games are heading down the road of comic books: entertaining and successful, but not noted for their artistic merit). This leads to a definite shallowness, where gameplay hours overrule most other concerns. And yes, I agree that we need truly independent developers with creative strategies to overcome this.
But I find it rather insulting to the breadth of the medium to say that no-one should make 'games' as opposed to 'contemporary content'. Games, as a long-standing, evolutionary tradition, are a key aspect in the way that we learn, understand, and socialise (as Leo says). To completely ignore this aspect is to ignore some very real and important cultural value that games can represent: the educational and competitive aspects that we find in sports and board games (would you, for instance, say that chess was a waste of time?).
In this aspect, the commercial realm sometimes lines up with the creative: social and competitive games are often more addictive, and while developers often go to far (I've heard that WoW's economic model is based somewhat on the same addictive principles of gambling), there is certainly some importance to these games in their role in society. Yes, in this, developers and publishers need to show more restraint, and I don't believe that we've really nailed how to make game mechanics properly adhere to these goals or which goals games are best suited for, but that doesn't make the pursuit of this unworthy.
My particular take on games as art is that the medium is artistic, but we, both as developers and consumers, need to start treating it that way, and demanding the same depth that we demand from other art forms. In my blog (www.pdyxs.org), I'm starting to explore what this means, and why games don't currently reach that depth. In your pursuit of greater depth and meaning in games, I applaud you. But please don't think that games should ONLY be art.
Wow... paragraph breaks don't work here. Sorry to anyone reading that for the lack of new lines...