Last Tuesday afternoon was a stimulating time for prospective game designers, artists and writers at UCR. "Art, Entertainment, and Video Games", an event presented by the Mellon Workshop on Affect, Technics, and Ethics, featured Jenova Chen, a 28-year-old up-and-coming game developer, creator and co-founder of thatgamecompany.
Chen, a first-generation video game design graduate from USC School of Cinematic Arts, Interactive Media Program, is the designer of the award-winning "Cloud" and "flOw", as well as the creative director of "Flower" (pictured above), all three of which are original video games for PlayStation 3 and PC.
The event began with a hands-on experience with Chen and company's latest work, "Flower". The first thing one will notice about "Flower" is its immediate beauty and its contrast between urban cities and nature. There is something soothing about the art direction, the music and the motion-controlled game play. In fact, the whole point of "Flower" is to immerse the player into a welcoming field of grass and flowers "inspired by the fields leading to San Francisco," Chen would later explain. The objective of the game is to guide a sole flower petal through the various fields in the game while hitting other flowers, and causing them to bloom. There is no death, no "Game Over" screen, no failures; it is best described as a silent interactive film, and even that description cannot give justice to the game's amazing allure.
After several people gave the game a try, Chen arrived along with a few more students and professors eager to hear his presentation. He began by asking how many gamers sat in the audience, and looking around mostly everyone raised their hands, save for a few Humanities students. "Well, this should be an easy presentation then," Chen laughed, and the audience laughed along with him. Chen went on to note that, thanks to innovations like Nintendo's Wii and DS, more than just young kids and adults that grew up with the Atari and NES are trying video games.
Chen's main focus when developing games was on creativity and innovation. He admitted that he and his team of student developers at USC had to think outside the box when working on their games because, Chen said, "we didn't have much time. Our games were developed on weekends, during the summer and any extra time we had between classes." He then moved on to comparing film with video games, and showed that, like film's early days, games are still fairly niche, but not for long.
Chen explained that as graphics and other game technology hit their peak, game developers, just like film producers, will have to create more emotionally stimulating games in order to satisfy players' appetites. He maintains that his company, thatgamecompany, is focused on filling the emotional void by creating games that are "safe, free, filled with love, peaceful, harmonic and carry a positive feeling."
His presentation ended with a question and answer session. When asked what some of the more important concepts, courses and philosophies for prospective game designers were, Chen responded with a diverse set of recommended courses like psychology, history, traditional media philosophy, computer programming, basic art and screen writing. Chen proved to many in the audience that game design is not a straight-forward sedentary job, but one that involves the entire range of popular studies in order to create something as special and impacting as "Flower", and to fans of his games, he noted that his next game, currently three months into production, will be "revolutionary," and would say no more about it.
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