Interview with Gry

There’s a nice interview with us, mostly about The Path, on the Polish website Gry. There’s also an English version.

Read it here.

Flower is beautiful!

At the occasion of E3 lots of new video footage has been released for upcoming games. Most of it is just more of the same. But there’s at least one exception. From our “sister company” thatgamecompany. We had the pleasure of trying out an early build of their upcoming Playstation Network game Flower earlier this year. And while that was a very memorable experience, the new clips show that the team around Jenova Chen and Kellee Santiago have not been sitting still.

It’s so nice to see some designers being really creative and inventive. And not just applying the standard cookie cutter approach to whatever content comes their way. Let’s contrast the glory above with the absolute “horror” below.

It’s common knowledge that the Silent Hill series has been in decline since version 3. So why continue down the same path of “improving the combat” and adding more “cool features” when you know that the fans don’t appreciate this much at all? Lack of inspiration? Lack of love? (not lack of budget, that’s for sure…)

Crosshairs in Silent Hill? What is this a first person shooter? And that stupid blinking-on-screen-quick-hit-that-button-VCR-controls-in-disguise-whoever-invented-that-and-thought-it-was-a-good-idea interaction that nobody likes? Chasing enemies?? (Whatever happened to “RUN AWAY! RUN AWAY!”?) And no, I will not mention the character design. What character design?

Let’s just forget that ever happened.
Wash it all away with more Flower.

Really love those windmills. It grounds the game firmly in our contemporary world rather than offering a simple escape. More of that, please!

The Endless Forest player survey

Together with PhD student Eva Kekou, we’re taking a survey of players of The Endless Forest. If you have ever played the game please go and answer the questions on the Community site (log in with your deer name and password). Even if you’re not particularly fond of the game, or of surveys, or even if you’re male, we’d love to hear from you!

We will publish the results of this survey at a later date (without divulging the names of the participants, of course). I think it will be quite interesting…

Long interview on GameSetWatch

We’ve been interviewed by Alistair Wallis for GameSetWatch.

Possibly one of the more interesting things that came up during this interview with Belgium based indie development duo Tale of Tales was the idea that they are, effectively, experimental outsiders in the games industry simply because of their focus on story based, artistically motivated work.

Isn’t that weird? Can you imagine what the film industry would be like if narrative works were substantially less popular than action based films?

If you have half an hour to kill, have a read!

Abiogenesis: The aftermath!

but wait… theres more! view the slideshow.
Great party! My head’s still swimming ;D
Biiig thanks to everyone who was there!!

ABIOGENESIS: Pool Party. Let’s cool off.

Tuesday, July 15th at 9PM GMT we are holding another one of our (in)famous ABIOGENESIS performances inside The Endless Forest. This time we suggest, all you deer, take a swim in the pond. You will turn into a frog and shed your costumes, but in this heat that will feel so good! Now that you’re all cooled off, leave your deer behind for an out of body experience with the Twin Gods. Enjoy the party and spectacle in a whole new way by switching to ABIOGENESIS CAM mode with CTRL+W. Be carried through the forest and witness colors and forest magic like you haven’t before! Find out what time it’s happening in your area.

This performance will also be playing and playable at the E3 Expo in Los Angeles as part of the Indiecade Exhibition of Independent Games! We hear they’re also showing a giant art print of a still moment from TEF. If anyone happens to see it, and can send us a photo ;) thx.

The Path development journal

We have opened a new blog
The Path development journal
where we will share all the ins and outs of the ongoing production of The Path. Look forward to teasing and spoiling, but above all to the inspirations and day to day joys and worries of the creative team behind The Path.

To celebrate the occasion, we are revealing the silhouettes of the main characters in the game: the Red Girls. Soon, we will start highlighting them, one by one.

The Graveyard post mortem, part 4

In the fourth chapter of The Making of The Graveyard, we have a talk with Laura Raines Smith, who animated the character of the old lady. For all intents and purposes, Laura is the unofficial third member of Tale of Tales. She has created most animations for 8, including those for the Little Deaf Mute Girl in the Pretty White Dress (based on motion captures of my daughter, then aged 6). She animated the deer avatar in The Endless Forest. And at the moment she’s breathing life (and death) into the girls and wolves of The Path.

Without Laura, Tale of Tales would not be what it is. So it’s high time for us to pay some attention to her, here. Read on for some remarkable answers to our newbie questions in…

Spotlight on character animator Laura Raines Smith

Big in Germany

Art games are on the rise in Germany. They’re even introducing a new name for it: “emogaming”. Though we have a feeling that the term will go the way of the “handy” (the German word for cell phone) in the rest of the world.

Neverthelless, the interest is genuine.

Last week, we participated, by video chat, in a symposium, taking place in Munich, called Emotional Gaming, about the “relation between gaming and emotionality”.

A few days ago, we were interviewed about The Graveyard for Zündfunk, a Bavarian radio show. The theme of the show was “emogaming”. They even had a professor talking about love in games. Have a listen, if you understand German:

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And finally, also in German, is a long article about our work, how it is art and how that’s a good thing we need more of, on the popular Krawall website, entitled Spielekunst.

Die meisten Entwickler würden die Frage, ob Spiele Kunst seien, reflexartig bejahen, denn der Kunst haftet in unserer Gesellschaft schließlich ein positives Image an. Die Firma Tale of Tales macht Kunst-Spiele hingegen aus voller Überzeugung.

(rougly translates as “Most developers would answer the question whether games are art with “yes” by reflex, since art has a positive image in our society. Tale of Tales, however, make art games out of determined conviction.”)

Meanwhile, in the USA, Pullitzer prize winning game aficionados cast their doubts in mainstream newspapers about the artistic value of best selling games:

Narrative art of that caliber is distinguished by its ability to re-organize our preconceptions, to shift us into a world that’s always been there but that we’ve been afraid to acknowledge, and I’m not convinced that GTA IV pulls off that miracle.

and

Successful art tears away the veil and allows you to see the world with lapidary clarity; successful art pulls you apart and puts you back together again, often against your will, and in the process reminds you in a visceral way of your limitations, your vulnerabilities, makes you in effect more human. Does GTA IV do that? Not for me it doesn’t, and heck, I love this damn game.

Maybe we should invite Junot Díaz to have a look at our “emogames”… :)

A single button and the sky is the limit

We tend to watch video game trailers and the like during tea time lately. I know it’s kind of pathetic to work on games all day and to look at other people’s work on games for leisure. But anyway. One thing struck me when we were watching bits of the Fable 2 Dev Diary on Eurogamer TV. Something Joss Moore, Senior Combat Programmer (they all seem to have funny titles like that at Lionhead), said about the “One Button Combat” in their game.

For Fable 1, we had loads of different ideas about how we wanted to move forward with the combat. And we always would come up with a new thing and there’d always be the standard problem of how we work this into the controls. It was so limiting thinking “Well, we’ve run out of buttons for that. How will the player actually make this happen?” By stripping back to just using one button it seems the sky is the limit all of a sudden. Anything we can think of based on the context that it’s appropriate, we can do. Just with a single button press.

Sounded very similar to our own rejection of even the “single button press” for The Path.

I believe that this is more than a matter of restrictions stimulating creativity, though. Oddly, video game designers often seem to forget that they are working with computers and that computers can do a lot of things for you. Games often seem to be programmed as complete systems in which the player is asked to perform a function. So, in essense, when playing, we are working for the game, helping it to become complete.

But weren’t computers invented to work for us? Let the computer do the hard work! Even in games. Not only does that free us up to enjoy the art and the story better. This way, the computer can also become an active and creative element in the experience. The computer can become your ally, your friend, while together you explore this strange new virtual world.