Can a Game Art Degree Get You a Concept Artist Job?

Games are not art — they're better. It just depends on whom you inquire.

In that location's this on-once again, off-again argument within the intelligentsia equally to whether games should exist placed on the same pedestal as books, movies, music, and paintings. Merely fifty-fifty the newest of the accustomed fine arts, movies, have had at least a century to develop.

Conventional videogames–and I'1000 taking Pong, the equivalent of cavern drawings, as my starting point here–commenced less than 40 years ago. In that time, games have mimicked movies, electronically emulated books, and tried their hand at playing on some emotional heartstrings. The big divergence is that most conventional art forms are passive and ii-dimensional experiences: You sit in front of and soak in whatever the artist presents you with. Videogames attempt to create an interactive experience that puts the viewer/ player in control of the palette.

Enter Shanghai-built-in Xinghan "Jenova" Chen, creative director of ThatGameCompany. Since earning his graduate caste from the University of Southern California Film School's Interactive Media program, he has helped craft several unproblematic-but-surreal game projects that exercise more than cater to a twitch response. His thesis project, Cloud, floated along, accumulating a following on the indie gaming scene. Flow cast players as an e'er-evolving unmarried-celled organism–and that, no doubt, inspired the first stage in Spore. The best mode to describe Chen's latest game, Flower: It's a first-person gardener. And it's well-worth the $10 asking toll at Sony's PlayStation Shop.

The levels, if you choose to call them that, are the dreams of flowers. You are the wind, fulfilling flower fantasies–aye, it sounds kind of foreign. Just just endeavor it. This is a Zen exercise with an occasional trophy for completing a task. A meditation pool with an endpoint. More of import, it passes my all-important "wife exam": She was entranced every bit she watched me play, until finally she yanked the controller out of my hand to try her luck with it. The last fourth dimension I got that kind of response out of her was when BioShock came out.

But back to the quondam "games-versus-art" argument (I'thou looking at you, Ebert). I spent some time chatting with Chen recently almost the country of gaming and how (if at all) it's maturing. Here's what we came upwards with:

A Boy and His Flower

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

Jenova Chen: Flower is made with a unlike mentality. It's a prophylactic, warm experience. It's like a poem or trip the light fantastic toe that uses symbolism and scenery to give the player a comforting backdrop.

PCW: And I guess 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. Information technology's a game that is meant not simply to play, but to sentinel.

PCW: A game that yous sentry–technically, that'd brand it art. As for the person who grabs the controls, permit's talk a piddling more than near the game itself.

JC: The end goal of the player is to make the earth a better place. The player is the consciousness of nature. Yous're living through the dreams of flowers sitting in pots. Gamers call them levels, just each of the dreams for the dissimilar flowers has different goals. The Rose, for case, sees a desaturated, drab world of concrete simply wants to add together color everywhere. As you complete the dream of one flower, the second blossom sprouts and fills in a sure aspect of life. The gameplay is that y'all're this consciousness, this desire. You're bringing life into the world–non the guy killing aliens.

We thought of this like a movie experience. You could probably cease this in 2 and half hours, simply you lot really get a lot more out of the game after you've finished and come back to revisit each bloom's dreams. You find more to explore and play more than. It will be a good therapy–to heal yourself and reverberate on things.

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

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

PCW: Ordinarily, games like this don't announced on store shelves…

JC: That's because digital distribution allows for more hazard-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 lot to brand sacrifices along the way. It makes you cut costs, enforce deadlines and transport a game that you might not exist every bit proud of. You lot just tin can't run that risk. For a game like Menses, it simply toll betwixt 500 and 600k, not even a million. [Ed. note: And that's gone on to huge success.] Sony'due south been great to work with in this respect and has been very supportive both with Flow and at present Flower.

Selling Games Brusk

JC: I think I'k pretty stupid to kickoff a company. I left a lead designer task at Maxis working on Spore to establish ThatGameCompany. I was trying to observe someplace that was doing what I wanted to do. Nobody was.

PCW: What was missing?

JC: I see entertainment as something that feeds you lot–similar food or water, but for your emotions. Videogames used to exist a software niche…but information technology isn't fully mature even so. The deviation between a new medium and a mature medium is based upon the variety–more than just one or ii emotions. There aren't just scary books or movies. Or sad songs. Games are nevertheless largely seen every bit a toy and not simply by the mainstream audience, just by some developers too.

PCW: Wouldn't you say, though, that these days games are getting a little more sophisticated?

JC: Well, the people who take a new technology are the younger ones — the ones willing to accommodate. That's why the beginning games mostly catered to kids. In order for the business to succeed, they've needed to focus on the kids. To a caste, information technology's still that way. Kids like flashy imagery and colorful cartoons. And as they become older, they like more competition and to be more powerful. Many games are based on this empowerment.

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

JC: Aye, no one asks you if yous're a film watcher or if you're a reader, merely when information technology always comes to games, y'all're a gamer. That'due south considering we've got a ways to become. People use phrases like "cool" and "fun," but seeking a more than sophisticated audience means doing more. People read a volume, for example, but in that location'southward 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 practise more than, only I'd have to agree that there'south still a lopsided focus on something like graphics.

JC: If yous think most it, nigh movies are divided by feelings. Games are divided by technologies–or the skills that they exam. That frequently casts games as dismissible pastimes. Think of game design as a bucket. Crytek created a beautiful engine and Crysis looks realistic and good. But if the story doesn't rising to the same level as those graphics, it feels like an uneven effort and things in the game spill over the sides. If the gameplay isn't equally good, it doesn't feel right. Because [ThatGameCompany] is small, we don't accept the luxury to pile upward ane feature like, say, graphics or story and focus on the whole package. We need to keep things curtailed.

PCW: Concise is one way to put information technology. Here'south how your games work: Tilt the PS3's Sixaxis controller to motility and press a unmarried button. No instructions, no tutorial, you but drop players into the world.

JC: Nosotros need to provide content outside the cherry-red zone so that adults and people that normally wouldn't think to grab a controller, would. And when they do grab the controller, brand it simple to understand. At first, nosotros tried unlike gameplay with complex controls–even with health points–but that didn't feel right for the emotions nosotros wanted to convey. The music and ambiance combined with the visuals and controls convey more. That's 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 Pic Schoolhouse graduate, where would you say games are now compared to, say, movies?

JC: When films first appeared, information technology was this brand-new medium that started as a technology innovation. Sophisticated storytelling came later. It's easier to sell a engineering if you evoke fundamental feelings. If y'all await at some of the earliest films, similar a French one that captured a railroad train coming through a tunnel, it scared people out of their seats. Don't games sometimes get those same reactions?

PCW: No arguments well-nigh games tapping fear and adrenaline. That, they've got downwardly. Just using that movie comparison, accept nosotros at least made it out of the "talkies" stage?

JC: The game manufacture started in the '70s and has grown very quickly. The very starting time generation of filmmakers who grew up with films as kids–they went to universities and studied how to craft films. The George Lucases and Steven Spielbergs.

When George Lucas went to movie school, people were surprised that at that place actually was a school for motion-picture show. Now, people are reacting that same manner to game schools. In school, we studied all these mediums–storytelling, psychology…and I think, as a result, when I mention some ideas to current game designers, they'll say, "Oh, this sounds cool, but is it fun?"

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

PCW: Y'all heard it here commencement–THX1138 and The Duel, coming to a panel near y'all soon! Seriously, though, there is this dismissive mental attitude toward gamers. Practise you think this next generation of designers will modify people's minds about games?

JC: People coming out of game pattern schools are now thinking most games differently than those that've come earlier. Nosotros promise that games will become more respected. In Japan, everyone 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 activity. Why so dissimilar? The content matured at a different pace–and I don't want to see games get lumped into that same, young category.

PCW: Sorry for the clichéd question, but can a videogame brand you weep even so? Besides if the game is likewise tough, that is….

JC: There are moments in gaming where you'll sympathise with a character and peradventure feel a little sorry. Well, videogames have made people cry. It's like shooting fish in a barrel to cry if you've experienced something deep and emotional. A role-playing game in Red china I played made me cry–even if it's cliché–but as a kid, if you're exposed to something for the starting time time and conveys a story. If you've never read Shakespeare and someone slips Romeo and Juliet into a game, the first fourth dimension y'all come across it somewhere is leap to make you weep. The medium improves by the kids who go moved and are motivated to make their own games.

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

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

PCW: Cheers, Jenova.

Maybe office of the trouble is that they are chosen "games." Snobs turn their nose upwardly and call up of Pac-Human on the Atari 2600 or something–and instantly file information technology in the category of mindless diversions. Their loss. Yous got a better proper name for videogames? Allow 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 time-wasting tips.

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

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