Fatale
Posted by Derek Yu Fri, 23 Oct 2009 08:33:00 GMT
Fatale is the latest mystical experiment from Tale of Tales. It’s inspired by Oscar Wilde’s interpretation of the biblical character Salome, although, in my opinion, knowledge of the story is not required to enjoy the game. I wasn’t familiar with it before I played.
I think the game captures the spirit of the story very well. I don’t think it’s meant to retell the story, per se, but to give it a certain added richness by letting you explore a few of the critical scenes in interesting ways. It’s worth mentioning that Takayoshi Sato (of Silent Hill fame) did the character design, which is perfect considering the sensual and macabre nature of Salome’s tale. Overall, the graphics and audio are quite good.
I enjoyed Fatale and came out of it thinking about its implications and intrigued by its source material. However, I still feel that it’s a good game that’s shy of great. For it to be great would require more detail in the simulation, which sometimes feels clunky and uninspired. Whereas these flaws might go unnoticed in the games of “seasoned gamers” (a phrase playfully cribbed from the website), in Fatale they really stand out for the simple fact that looking around and taking in the environment is the game’s primary focus.
TIGdb: Entry for Fatale
It’s better than The Path, but I miss the expanded arsenal and alternate fire modes. If only it brought the sheer excitement of The Path to the table, this would be the perfect video game.
I don’t understand why they decided to tone down the complexity of their scoring systems for this one. The Path may have been one of the most stimulating and mechanically complex games of the past year, and even now I discover new techniques, rules, and facets to its many nuanced systems that take my game to unprecedented new levels. So what if it was a little hard for newcomers to grasp? The challenge is what makes the game, and the depth is what keeps me coming back again and again. That should never be sacrificed to make the game more “accessible”.
On top of that, the new power system means there’s no real bombing limit. I always considered bombs a last resort, but this combined with the shorter duration of boss special attacks makes me wonder if ToT is encouraging careless playstyles by allowing such frivolous bombing.
As much as I wanted to love this one, I can’t help but feel a bit disappointed that ToT expects so little from the players. I hope someday they’ll realize that a truly great game arises from depth of game design and careful balance of difficulty. Anything else might hold our attention for a week or even a month, but will almost certainly be forgotten as soon as something more exciting comes along.
Well, you win. By a lot.
Fatale is a terrible piece of shit. I moderately enjoyed The Path but this was a total waste of $7. Do not buy this.
Here is what happens in the game:
You are in an underground prison cell. Walk around and read Oscar Wilde quotes on the walls. Every time you read a quote part of a bar on the bottom of the screen fills up. When the bar is completely filled an assassin comes in and kills you.
You are in a moonlit courtyard. Salome is standing nearby. Fly around, look for candles, and then click on the candle to extinguish it. Repeat twenty to thirty times.
The game fades to white and ends. When you close the game and restart it you get a five minute cutscene of Salome dancing while topless.
The environments are not terribly interesting to look around and since you can’t do much BUT look around a large part of the game falls flat. The prison is 100% empty except for some crates and the courtyard, while more busy, just has a lot of generic middle eastern looking veils and candles and jugs lying around, nothing really interesting. Also the lauded Silent Hill character designs are mediocre and there is only one character (Salome) who has any graphic detail. The music is probably the best part of the game. What a piece of shit.
Also the whole thing is maybe 40 minutes long at the most if you really dawdle. Your second time through you could be done in less than five minutes.
If you want to showcase a bizarre arthouse indie game that actually has merit, go look up The Void, which came out today.
I just like the story of Salome because it just screams bullsh*t. She danced SO WELL that the king promised her HALF his frigging kingdom! And then when offered this immense amount of wealth bound by a promise that Herod TOTALLY couldn’t renege on, she asks for a smelly old severed head instead. And poor Herod was unhappy because he REALLY TRULY wanted to give this dancer half his kingdom, but she chose instead to have him kill a prominent figure who had crossed Herod in the past. Darn it all! At least he had an excuse, she made him pinky swear!
I bought the Path and found the endings becoming less horrifying and more hilarious as the girls got older. How can you expect me to still feel sympathy when we go from a child being torn to shreds by a wild animal to a teenager who regrets losing her virginity to a balding lumberjack? The image of the tree bursting through the bed had me ROLFing.
Oh, Steve, I wasn’t trying to one-up you, I was just trying to drive the point home. I was kind of expecting more people to roll with it.
I honestly can’t tell who you guys are making fun of… everybody?!
We were just being goofy. Acting like it was a real game, etc.
oh no another art game
So, can anybody tell me if this has any gameplay?
YuRiPa, read Seth’s comment above. There is no gameplay. It isn’t a game.
no
glad I’m a pirate, sry
hahah, you guys are eventually gonna drive derek mad with your comments
For me it’s really hard to see this as art. I meant to look at it as art. Maybe the art is just to weak for me (an Ipod, what the heck, some present day reference = this story is timeless? how artsy..). Or the gameplay sucked to much (felt like hack’n slay to move forward, took damn long to activate the candle scenes and blow them all out. And the flame-interaction was so little I did not feel like trying to click everything with every light.)
Glad there are art games, but this one failed for me
i think you’re looking too hard
to me the best part of the game was the control scheme. they tried to create a control scheme that would minimize motion sickness, and it seems to have worked; not sure it’d work in a longer game with a more maze-like environment, but i usually get motion sickness in fps games and didn’t get it here
This is great, except for the extended stealth/prison break section near the end. I have played Hitman, Thief, etc. but his is just unreasonable… I can sit back and study the patrol routes for 5 minutes and I still get pinched every time! So frustrating. Even worse because if you use bombs or your bow, you instantly fail the segment and have to restart the whole damn thing.
I’d really like to see games that try to sell on being “art” stop. Now. When you want to make a game that’s art, that’s fine, but when the entire selling point of your product is that it’s an “art game” (which seems to be the case with everything Tale of Tales makes), you haven’t succeeded at making art. What you’ve succeeded at making is trash. Trash that some critics will no doubt absolutely adore merely because they think liking software that labels itself as art makes them seem more cultured and intelligent, and trash that some gamers will like for mostly the same reasons.
I know I’m being harsh, but honestly, I’m tired of seeing terrible products with little or no merit or worth being sold on the basis of being art and for no other reason. Something being art should not be an excuse for a bad product.
I don’t like how Tales of Tales tries to “legitimize” games as if they cannot hold up on their own as art. Or the stigma they try to give to games as their reason for doing what they do.
If they want to make an movie, make a movie. Hell, even put it on DVD with multiple chapter stops and everything and you can make it interactive.
It’s like if someone were to in their mind try to “legitimize” movies as literature by making a movie where the entire film consists of someone reading a book.
I’d like to see them make a game and have more faith in the fact that gameplay can provide an artistic experience rather than just visuals.
Dumping the gameplay aspect is just as bad as making a movie where there are no actors being filmed and instead a book being read out loud.
I did enjoy this game. If you’re looking for something more exciting, it’s not going to interest you. And 90% of the time, that’s what I’m looking for, which is why I didn’t try Fatale for so long.
But if you’re in that mood, I think you could have some real fun. At the very least, it’s a really fucking weird way to approach a sexy horror story from the Bible, so that won a lot of points from me. I mean, not many games have a horny old man leering mechanic! And there are some cool details in there that struck a chord with me (like the various anachronisms scattered about).
In my opinion, art games are a lot like hardcore games… you have to approach them a certain way to appreciate them fully and anyone who’s more of a moderate game player will think you’re pretentious douchebag asshole trash for trying. Right? I think the majority of people have as much trouble understanding the point of 1’cc-ing Dodonpachi as they do understanding the point of Fatale or any of the other so-called art games.
I dunno, sometimes it seems the case that the people who dislike each other the most have the most in common… I think that’s kinda true of the art games/hardcore games camps.
Primary thoughts: Yay! Takayoshi Sato!
Secondary thoughts: It’s always kind of disheartening to see ‘gamers’ trash the potentials of their own medium of choice just because something doesn’t fit with their preconceptions or attempts to reach beyond the tropes and audiences standard to games.
(Though I do have a sense of humor and can appreciate the chatter above. I just don’t share the dismissive back-patting attitude some have towards art games.)
Tale of Tales aren’t really the first candidates to come to mind as luminary ‘games as art’ designers, but they do their own thing and sometimes the results are interesting. Usually their projects feel like they lack adequate direction, writing and development time, but it’s their choice to be the sort of reactionary studio that they are instead of focusing on growing as artists, and obviously they still push the right buttons.
Anyway, Tale of Tales might not be the first thing to pop into my mind when it comes to ‘games as art,’ but Takayoshi Sato is definitely up there. It’s good to see him getting back in the fray a bit.
Man, a 3 stage boss battle. What were they thinking?
No, understanding 1ccing Dodonpachi is easy. People do it for the challenge. Not everyone has the skill to beat a game in their first run through. In fact, people doing no death runs or speed runs is something that is very impressive.
These so called “art games” on the other hand just seem like a cop out. There usually is never a point to them other than a bunch of vague metaphors and worst of all there is no gameplay. They claim that they want to advance gaming but then they objectify and denigrate the medium and instead opt to make an interactive movie instead.
If games are to stand their own as being as significant as books or movies, I fully believe that they can do so on their own terms, not by attaching a stimga to and gutting out the whole aspect of gameplay.
It’s always fun to come and read the hatred for Tale of Tales in the comments on Tigsource. It must mean we’re doing something right. HAHAHA!
Anyway, while I agree that our work does not fit within a narrow definition of games, it is our opinion that videogames have already escaped that definition a long time ago. We’re just going with the flow that many of you are resisting.
It’s ok to dislike art. I personally couldn’t live without it, but if you can, fine. It’s not ok, however, to dislike a certain work of art because it confuses you, because it’s too obscure, because it’s too “artsy”! That’s missing the entire point.
It’s not difficult to enjoy Fatale. Paul Eres is probably right when he says “i think you’re looking too hard.” You need to approach it gently, with not too many expectations, trying working with it instead of against it. An unnatural reflex for gamers, I know. But try it and give yourself a beautiful experience.
a knawed knee mouse (and Michaël Samyn): I don’t have a dismissive attitude towards art games. I have a dismiss attitude towards marketing poorly made software marketed as such. I like art. I like games. I like art games. I don’t like when a person or company labels a half-baked product as art in order to push it, which is what a certain segment of art games is turning out to be (though Tale of Tales is the only company I can think of that does it commercially).
If your game is art then you shouldn’t need to say that it is. If your game is art then you should be able to defend it in ways that go beyond claiming that anyone critical of it is simply too stupid or base to understand, or simply too stuck in their ways for new things (and the fact that Mr Samyn’s come here and done exactly that and more, rather strongly implying that anyone who dislikes his game either isn’t capable of understanding it or else just absolutely hates art in general, doesn’t exactly make me think that Tale of Tales is capable of really doing that).
The simplest way I can put it is this: I have never seen a use of the defense that those who dislike something don’t understand it or can’t grasp it that was valid. Not when it’s been used by gamers who want desperately for their medium to be upheld as art without realizing that there are enough artistic games out there that things like this don’t need to be supported, not when it’s been used by art critics attempting to justify art, who would try to claim that the difference between something like a plain old painting and a work of art is something you “just know” if you “understand” art, and CERTAINLY not when it’s been used by the “artists” themselves.
Marcel Duchamp did not defend his shovels and urinals from criticism with “the public just does not understand”. Andy Warhol never went on about how soup is “too obscure”. Andres Serrano doesn’t talk about how people who don’t like looking at the pictures of blood, human waste, and corpses he takes “just don’t like art”. Real artists don’t do that. Michaël Samyn, representing his company, does.
And just for future reference, if you’re going to try and imply that the reason people don’t like your products is because they either hate or aren’t capable of understanding art, make sure you aren’t speaking to someone who’s actually familiar with the subject. It’s really helpful.
I love pretentious developers.
Not an indie game, but if you want an art game, go play Mother 3. Though I hear you can die in it, so it might not be your thing.
I don’t understand, Jon, why you are so passionate about this issue that you feel the need to twist my words to make them sound much more extreme than intended. I was sincerely trying to help.
If you think Fatale is a bad work of art, I would like to hear why you think so. But so far, the only thing I hear is pure hate with no justification. I can only imagine that people hate our work because they hate me personally because I said something at some point that they found insulting. But my potentially being not a very nice person does not really explain why our work would be bad. Or can good art only be made by nice people?
Anyway, I admit that Fatale requires patience and a certain calm attitude to enjoy it. It is far from the best work of art ever created. And probably far from the best artistic game ever made. But it is possible to enjoy it, given some patience and calm. And why would anyone dismiss the opportunity to feel joy?
I wouldn’t dismiss joy, which is why I’m playing Runman instead of this.
Michael Samyn, I know I’ve said this to you before and that you probably will never listen, but games that are true works of art are so because of deep mechanics and appropriate difficulty scaling. Games are not like movies, and games that are works of art are different as well. The most important aspect of a game is the player interaction (without which we would have no game), and it’s the games that can challenge us in creative new ways (immersing us in that interaction) that are great games, much less art. Games are not stories, they are small worlds. Do you know what I’m saying?
And for some reason you seem to think that being great and being art are mutually exclusive. That for something to be art, it has to be complete shit when looked at in any other way. This is a result of the bullshit hipsterism that has taken hold of our culture, that “the common man can’t comprehend art” (and this on top of the extreme content, culturally, that everyone seems to have for the common gamer, makes “art games” and extremely shitty discussion), but if you have any ability to understand me here, I hope someday you can see through that.
“Movie art is not the opposite of what we have always enjoyed in movies, it is not to be found in a return to that official high culture, it is what we have always found good in movies only more so.”
-Pauline Kael
And, well, the same applies to games. If you don’t like games, you might not be able to create great games.
I’m trying to keep from babbling here, so I’m going to leave off here. But by the way, despite my love of sarcasm and trollery, that last paragraph of my first post was not sarcastic.
The two are different, though, Derek. The first is an act of the player, and the second is an act of the designer.
Anarkex I was definitely engrossed in the interactivity of Fatale. Especially the part on the Terrace. The controls made me feel like I was the disembodied prophet. It felt a lot different than being in the Cistern as I was only vaguely interested in what was going on above me, but I was horribly entranced when he died and I was on the terrace.
Your definition of “games as art” is because of “deep mechanics” and “difficulty scaling” is laughable to me. Your “games are not stories” position is also quite laughable and absurd. Why such a narrow and close-minded position on video games? That is what is stagnating the marketplace nowadays, which isn’t only affecting mainstream games.
One could argue that Halo 3 has deep mechanics and great difficulty scaling, does that make it an art game? Going by your definition, it does.
lol. I dunno why. Foolishness I guess?
They aren’t. Aren’t a “medium” either. Games are simulations. And I think that means there’s a lot more that can be done with games than can be done in movies or books. Games are like smaller worlds, that the player can interact with in any way the rules allow. A deeper game means a more interesting interaction of rules resulting in a deeper possibility space, resulting in a more interesting, stimulating and exciting world. The “story” only exists after the player has finished playing. A 1cc of Dodonpatchi is a story. Dodonpatchi is not a story.
Actually, it’s the opposite. Everywhere games are being made that are only intended to function as movies. Tim Schafer does this all the time. His games have hilarious characters and scenarios as told through the cinema scenes and dialog, but the game mechanics themselves are passable at best and downright boring and shitty at worst. Tim Schafer should be making movies, not games, but no. HE of all people is the “breath of fresh air” that this industry is looking for. Not Aksys for releasing one of the most stylish high-profile fighting games since, well, Guilty Gear. Not Capcom whose Monster Hunter games actually reward careful planning and knowledge of the game mechanics. Nope, it’s Tim Schafer who’s saving us from them, by making hack and slash games about moving from point A to Point B, and waiting for bosses to expose their weak point three times, all so you can enjoy cinema scenes that remind you of when cartoons were still good. This is video games, dude!
I don’t understand why the Halo games get so much flak from the community. The original Halo was a pretty fantastic game. The only reason the later games were worse was because they added too much useless shit, they fixed one unbalanced gun to introduce like two more, dual wielding still sucks, the multiplayer maps got worse…
And they began to emphasize the plot waaay too much.
There can be games which try to put across subtle deep messages and feelings while playing, but that does not make these games art.
I’d class Katamari as an art game over any of the Tales of Tales games anyday.
Tip to ToT: Instead of just making small find-the-hidden-meaning romps, spent some time and, you know, wrap an actual game around it.
@Anarkex
I disagree with you, games aren’t judged by just difficulty or core mechanics, they’re judged on the whole package and how good everything is inside this package.
“And why would anyone dismiss the opportunity to feel joy?”
That’s a loaded question. Pretty low, you know. You can do better that that.
And why can’t games be both art AND gameplay? Tales of Tales should play Shadow of the Colossus. Now there’s a game that does everything that they’re trying to do and more. It’s not only a work of art but it has great gameplay with lots of interesting puzzles and varied boss battles. Not to mention the game is simply breathtaking and really moving.
I can honestly say I’ve been moved more by SoTC than any of ToT’s games. Maybe it’s because it actually makes use of the whole gameplay aspect to immerse you in the story. While in most Tales of Tales games I’ve played, it didn’t feel like I had any influence or control on what happened in the game at all and usually was left bewildered at the whole point of it all.
well, of course everything else matters, Corkscrew. Graphics are important, sound is important, hell, even plot is important. But depth and challenge are the lifeblood of the game. Without them, there would be no game! No amount of excellent graphics, sound, and writing is going to completely cover for a shallow game. It might give an individual a reason to play the game, hell, I’ll probably play through Brutal Legend once just to see what happens…but it isn’t going to make a shitty game great.
And yet, great games are made with aesthetic shortcomings all the time. God Hand has pretty terrible graphics, a stupid story, and terrible voice acting, but because it’s a great game, it makes everything else work. Dwarf Fortress doesn’t even HAVE graphics or cinema scenes or kickin’ theme music, but it’s an excellent game!
So yeah, aesthetics are important, because we’re judging the whole package. But games that are nothing but aesthetics are just flashes in the pan, forgotten as soon as something more interesting comes along. Like summer action movies.
Good point, Gameplay comes first and foremost in a game.
I guess that’s the major criticism for Tales of Tales. Your games aren’t games because they lack this major element.
Here is a quote from their website, from their American McGee interview:
“I’m very happy that you put art and narrative before game play. Too many game designers put too much focus on gameplay, in my opinion, while indeed, it is only one aspect of games, and as you point out, not necessarily the most important one.”
Then explain Roguelikes.
They have no narrative, no art (only standard ASCII characters like the ones I’m using to type this message), and are purely gameplay.
And yet, I think they are way more successful at immersing the player in the experience than any of ToT’s games are. And judging from the success of RL games, I don’t think I’m alone in thinking so.
They’re a great example of how the player can be immersed in a world without any overarching narrative or art but purely on gameplay and the actions of the player alone. Just through the actions of the player, they are able to form their own narrative.
Which is why I can’t help but to feel frustrated at ToT’s approach of deriding and grossly underestimating the aspect of gameplay.
ToT should have more faith in the importance of gameplay. I feel they could be twice as successful at conveying their messages if only they would give gameplay a chance. Give the player the ability to create his/her own narrative through the actions and struggles they experience through playing the game. Don’t just spoon feed it to them and have them sit and do very little.
It’s like the Dodonpachi example. Dodonpachi itself doesn’t have any story. But 1ccing the game itself is its own story. A tale of the player fighting an army of countless airships and fighter jets and nearly avoiding as he/she saves the day without a single causality. All this through the power of gameplay alone. Yes, it sounds silly but it’s possible. Whatever you do, please, have more faith in the power of gameplay as a means of giving the player a meaningful experience.
*nearly avoiding death
(Apologies for my poor English in advance)
Here’s the thing though Michael: I like art games, especially of the sort that you make at Tale of Tales that definitively declares itself as an art game the moment you load it up. I thought The Endless Forest was interesting, The Graveyard was memorable, and The Path was brilliant. I have enjoyed and appreciated many other art games which I will refrain from namedropping but understand that I am well versed in art games, I think they are a large part of the innovation that is crucial to the development of the game medium, and I look forward to every new artgame release.
I did not think that Fatale was terribly artistic. I am familiar with the Salome story from extensively studying the Strauss opera (adapted from the Wilde play, so its very similar to what you were working with). I didn’t think it was boring but I did get a sense of “so what” afterwards. It felt like it was leading up to something except it never got there.
What was I supposed to learn while reading Wilde quotes and accumulating veils while walking in circles about the prison cell as John? Or extinguishing candles? Did I really need to do the candle minigame about thirty times? Was that just to showcase the world you had designed? Because aside from some few things, like the veils and lanterns, the three people, and the curious anachronisms like the matchbook, the courtyard was pretty much bare. I am really curious as to why we had to blow out candles for so long and with so few effects on the world. And what was I supposed to get out of the 5 minute long topless dance sequence at the end? It was nice to finally see Salome move and it was a beautifully creepy dance considering why she was dancing, but five minutes of tits was just sort of off-putting.
In the end I am not mad because I think artgames are worthless. I am mad because I was expecting to experience something and was instead presented with a story I already know with very little added to it. I don’t know how to say this right, but it feels like you ought to have just painted a picture rather than programmed a game if this is all you were going to do with the subject. I think a very small amount of additional substance would have made Fatale great but right now it feels dull and muted and uninnovative.
Best of luck for the next time, still looking forward to 8.
Runman is art. Spelunky is art. Link to the Past is art. Friggin Super Mario Kart is art.
Computer Games are an art form. Good computer games are art.
I don’t think we should be asking “is this art?” but “is this any good?”
I haven’t played this particular game, so I don’t ave an opinion either way, but I do get a bit pissed off with the question “is it art?” whatever medium it’s asked of.
Thank you, Klaus, for being the first to express some real criticism on Fatale. I understand what you mean. And actually, you hit the nail on the head when you conclude that we should have made a painting. Because this was in fact exactly what we wanted to make: a painting in realtime 3D. That was the core of our experiment. We love looking at paintings and playing around with them in our mind, and we wanted to see how it would feel to realize some of those fantasies in a almost tangible form.
This is probably, as you have guessed, the reason why Fatale feels a bit distant and perhaps opaque to some. I personally feel this is appropriate for the story we wanted to tell. It’s a story where looking at something, at someone, is problematic and can mean the difference between life and death (John was decapitated because of Herod’s desire to look at Salome, and -according to Wilde- because of John’s refusal to look at her). On the terrace, John is -finally- free to look but, being dead, is powerless to do anything else. Maybe he regrets this. Maybe this is the first time he really looks at his environment. But it’s too late.
I admit that the extinguishing of lights is rather weak in terms of gameplay, but I personally like the ritual that its repetitiveness represents. To me it feels like John is saying goodbye, goodbye to earthly life. As you progress, the whispers of Salome go through the story, so you repeat -in your mind, as it were- the emotions that lead up to your demise -and extended beyond it. Maybe John understands these emotions now.
Anyway, I could go on and on about my take on Fatale, but I don’t want to ruin people’s personal interpretation.
Fatale seems to become the most divisive piece we have made so far. It was very much an experiment for us. And one that was made in a very short amount of time (sadly we don’t have access to the kinds of budgets that Sony has). As long as there are people who deeply enjoy it, I’m fine with that. And despite of the seeming consensus in the comments on this site, I’m happy to say that many people do.
I understand that some people prefer real games over our work. And that some feel that games as such are an artistic medium. That’s fine. There’s many developers who agree with you. We just don’t. So we do something else.
I appreciate the encouragement to put some real gameplay in our work. And I actually agree that that would make our work more interesting for many people. But we don’t feel comfortable designing games. I think it’s a very hard thing to do and not something we would be particularly good at. And our interest goes out to other types of interaction anyway, other ways of using this medium, other types of experiences. This is a huge and almost barren terrain that very few designers are exploring. So we need to experiment a lot.
I understand that some of you might think that we’re experimenting with the wrong thing. But to them I’d say, why don’t you experiment with the things that you feel are important, and let us do something different. Diversity is not a bad thing, is it?
Danman is the voice of reason. Listen to the voice of reason.
it didn’t play the game. and it doesn’t know much about the game. but it thinks: to be different is okay. but, different is better, when radically different. to be good is okay, but a game without any good gameplay is bad. no good game, but what then? pieces rather than games? interaction to explore, rather than to play? sculpture? interactive painting? just more radical about your approach. no market. aha.
How can you know if you’re not good at it unless you actually try? Have more faith in yourself. There are plenty of ways to experiment with gameplay. Gameplay itself isn’t a road that’s been trodden to death. Only certain types of gameplay. Judging from the amount of creativity you have, I could only imagine what kinds of amazing ideas you could think of if you tried experimenting more in the gameplay aspect of things.
Just try it. You’re already experimenting as far as everything else goes. What is there to lose by doing the same with gameplay?
Unless you don’t like games with gameplay and actually have something against the whole aspect of gameplay depth, then maybe I’m wasting my time. Although I do wish you’d have much more of an open mind about the subject and try to embrace it as a possible means of conveying your message even more effectively than you are now, rather than shunning it altogether.
I mean, look. I’m really not a good writer at all. I suck at writing. I would much rather avoid putting a story in my games. But I also realize that having one is important and that it even including a basic plot in the game overall gives the game more depth and more of a reason for the player to enjoy it.
All aspects of a game are important. You can’t have one without the others. You can try, but at the same time you really can’t act surprised when people don’t like it.
Michael: I don’t have anything against you, personally. Also, I’m not bringing any specific criticisms against Fatale up here, or even giving it specific mention, because that would be entirely unfair - I don’t actually own Fatale, so going after it specifically would make no sense. However, I do own The Path, and that gave me a rather strong sense for the kinds of games that you make. Seeing Seth’s comments on Fatale, combined with the screenshot at the top of the page, strengthened that perception of what you do with your game. And if you really want specific criticisms, well… I actually did give a few (not directly related to the games themselves, but more to the way they are sold), but if you want a solid run-down then I should probably be more thorough. Be ready, because I’m going to explain this from the start.
Basically, at some point (and a rather recent one, when media attacks on video games started exploding), a lot of gamers started craving acceptance for the medium. “This doesn’t happen with art, like paintings and books and film!” they said. “If only everyone could realize video games were art, then this would never happen!” Ignore the fact that popular mediums like film still deal with that, or that comic books got over the public stigma of “they cause violence” without ever being publicly accepted as an art form… but I digress. Gamers wanted to prove games are art.
So, how do they prove something like that? Simple: find games that are art. Problem being, of course, that the argument gamers are trying to put forth is that ALL games are art, so trying to find a few specific examples of “games as art” actually would push their idea of the medium back, limiting the games that qualify as art to a select few. Other problem being that gamers are not always entirely intelligent, and they sort of flailed around for a while claiming that anything unique in any sense is the best example of an video game that’s art. Good example:
“Okami, now there’s a game that’s art!”
“Why?”
“Graphics are cool.”
“And… the rest?”
“Oh, it’s a Zelda clone… but look at those graphics, it’s like a painting!”
“So basically, it’s art because it has graphics you like.”
“Yes.”
Now, here’s where things get fun, because at some point some developers (I think it started with freeware devs, really) saw a bunch of people saying “we need to find a game that’s art!” and they said “hey guys, we’re making games that are art!” Since gamers are so utterly starving to find art in their medium, they hear that and they see a product that’s different from the rest and they say “finally, no one can deny that this is art!” And since it’s now their de-facto definition of games as art, they are likely to both buy the game (if it’s for sale) and tell absolutely everyone they know about it every time the “games as art” discussion comes up. Free sales, free marketing.
This is, of course, where Tale of Tales comes in, because Tale of Tales does this. Do they do it intentionally? I don’t know. But whether or not they do, selling their games on the basis that they are art is selling them on the desperation and ignorance of gamers who are willing to grasp at anything even art-esque as validation for the medium, and that’s a big part of what I have a problem with. There are other developers who make artistic games and sell them without declaring them to be art. David Cage has never said that Heavy Rain is art, though it’s certainly pushing the boundaries of what a “game” is and delving into the realm of interactive fiction - there is no game over and you do not win, it is simply telling a story. Fumito Ueda never once claimed Shadow of the Colossus to be an artistic achievement, though it’s one of the most powerful examples of emotional manipulation in ANY medium and it provokes thought like few other games can. Tale of Tales could simply make surrealist and somewhat abstract games that are rife with metaphor and strong themes, and then sell them on the basis that that’s what they are… but what they seem to be marketing them with is the fact that they are art, and that’s the first problem I have with them.
The second’s where I can go into The Path more specifically: it was crap by every objective measure available. By “objective measures”, I mean technical ones. It ran poorly given what it was. It was glitchy and felt unfinished. There was an UNBELIEVABLE amount of load times. The controls, even given the excuse of “well, they were meant to add to the experience”, seemed to have the bare minimum amount of thought and effort put into them. Basically, it felt like something that had been roughly tossed together. This is a problem I’ve had with more than a few indie games, but The Path had these issues to an even greater extreme than I’m used to. If you’re making an artistic painting, you don’t accidentally rip a hole in the canvas and decide not to fix it. If you’re making an artistic film, you don’t forget the lens cap on and decide “screw it, it’s good enough”. If you’re making an artistic game, you still have an obligation to at least make sure it’s a sound piece of software that actually works.
And then comes number three: everything OTHER than the “artsy stuff”. The Path seemed to be focused more on metaphor, general symbolism, and the themes it was trying to put forward more than anything else, which is okay, but it didn’t feel like they bothered too much with anything else. The visuals were really bland and repetitive, and a ton of the variety that they did achieve just seems to have been filters. Other than that, it’s a really hideous low-resolution road that looks like it’s been vomited down a path, a lot of extremely bland terrain, and lots of really, really similar trees, with only the unique spots really offering anything else (and even those often failing to really offer much in the way of visual stimulation). And then the sound… well, I THINK I remember heavy breathing in the house, and aside from that I remember nothing, which is definitely not a good sign. I can appreciate that these aren’t the most important parts of the experience, but even then they shouldn’t be neglected. Seth mentioned The Void, I gave it a look, and it seems like the perfect example. It’s apparently focused pretty strongly around life and death and the narrative that it’s trying to put forward, but it still has a stunning presentation and style (both in terms of the visuals and the sound), to the point where even if you removed all the “artsy” stuff outside of that I’d still want to play the game just for the experience of the world they’ve created. Tale of Tales simply fails here. I would never play a game for the experience of a bland road, a repetitive forest, and a mediocre house.
And that brings me to the last thing, that being the parts that actually try to be art. Problem number one: they try to be. Really hard. And you can tell. A pretty large part of the enjoyment of a lot of art comes out of the illusion that the creator wasn’t trying - that he made something and then voila, art. But when I played The Path, I got the constant sense that the game was really trying hard to be art. Does that mean that it’s not art? Trying and succeeding is hardly rare. It does, however, make it feel extremely pretentious, which vastly lowered my ability to enjoy it. Eventually I pushed through that and dug into what it actually had to offer. Seemed like… an extended metaphor of life, of growing into adulthood, toss in some trauma and rape and sex and maybe a bit of death and blah blah blah. It felt like the game thought that the fact that it didn’t say things explicitly made it really deep and complex, but the fact is that it just felt really… shallow to me. Shallow, simple, and on every level (the artistic one especially, which is a surprise because the actual gameplay is utterly terrible and almost unbearable) extremely boring. It didn’t make me think. It didn’t make me feel. Even people who did feel things with it always seemed to feel discomfort if anything, and little else (I certainly felt discomfort, but mostly from the realization that I was still playing the game). It just… even as art, there just wasn’t very much to it, and what it did offer simply wasn’t very interesting.
Now, obviously, all those things on their own should only be enough to kind of bother me a little, make me dislike the game and company and maybe tell others to buy it. Certainly not enough to lead into a 1500+ word essay about how terrible it is. But you need to consider all of it together. The Path is without question the worst game I own (fairly difficult, since we’re talking about a collection that numbers in the hundreds - even on Steam alone, I’ve got about 80) and certainly one of the worst I’ve played (again fairly difficult, because now we’re dipping into thousands), and I see the “art games” label as something that they used as an excuse to be able to make and sell it. I don’t think it could have competed as a product without it. I don’t think it could have existed without it. More importantly, I think if gamers themselves had already accepted that games are art, I think that something like The Path would have fallen flat on its face. And really, that’s about it. It doesn’t deserve to be successful, and the reason that it is just seems to be proof that gamers aren’t really ready to accept the video game medium as an art medium themselves, which is going to make it pretty hard for them to convince others that it is one.
It’s disappointing that people can’t separate their opinion of Fatale from their opinion of art games in general. I don’t, however, know whether the defenders or the detractors are more guilty of this. But ultimately art games aren’t going anywhere if every criticism is interpreted as an attack on all art games.
I think there’s a lot of interesting things going on in Fatale. But there’s a lot of things in it that feel Contingent rather than Necessary. It’s not that there isn’t some meaning you can attach to spending all that time aimlessly among boxes or putting out candles. It’s that I’m not convinced that one couldn’t find as deep or deeper a meaning doing something else in place of those activities. When I look on great works of art, I get a “just so” feeling–things had to be thus or the piece would collapse. I never got that feeling in Fatale. Whether it’s because I missed something or because it has, in fact, collapsed is an exercise for the reader.
Just because a piece of interactive art is interesting to talk about doesn’t mean that it’s interesting to interact with. To make art games that are actually meaningful, you’ve got to be on the right side of that line.
Though you still have to admit, the term “art game” is a misnomer. I agree with what Jon said, it’s a very clever marketing ploy. And completely unnecessary. Something becomes a work of art through its own means. Not necessarily because someones says it is.
Perhaps if Tales of Tales had more faith in their games and made an effort to make them stand alone on their own terms rather than using the blanket excuse of “it’s art, you don’t understand it,” people would be able to criticize it on its own terms.
To me, the term art game is a very loaded term. It’s a huge part of the problem. I think it would be better for both its detractors and those defending it would both just stopped using it. Then perhaps it would be easier to judge Fatale or any other game of this nature by itself, on their own terms, rather than compared to the predisposed notion of an “art game.”
sorcerian, we agree there’s a problem, but not on the cause. Things shouldn’t be immune from criticism because they’re “art games”. But they should be criticized as art, not as games.
Consumatopia, what in the hell does that even mean.
If we agree that games are an art form, then game criticism is art criticism.
Are you trying to say the way we criticize games isn’t adequate? Should we use words like “ethereal” and “visceral” more?
!!!!Danger, games as art debate present!!!!
lol ignore me i’m a troll sorry
Woah, this thread exploded!
Not an indie game, but if you want an art game, go play Mother 3.
I fully agree with this. Mother 3 is one of the highest examples of games as art out there right now. Machinarium, in the little time I’ve spent with it, holds a pretty lofty position for me, too.
I think, if Anarkex won’t feel picked on, the argument that the strength of games as a medium is how well oiled their mechanics are is pretty much contrary to my own view, and probably a lot of people who haven’t been with games their whole lives, but it’s something that’s easily understood with a little context–games are made primarily by programmers. (I can just hear all of you gasping right now.) Not writers. Not artists. Not architects or sculptors. Games usually incorporate some synthesis of arts, but they’re typically given a low preference, if they’re even valued at all.
This is backwards! Ideally, developers mesh narrative, aesthetics and mechanics together in ways that make sense, and work, as a whole. Give me a game with an interesting, well written script or an arresting visual style over something that’s mechanically fun but otherwise uninspired any day.
Are you trying to say the way we criticize games isn’t adequate?
Yeah, basically. Games are usually judged by “fun,” which always means mechanical fun. Which is fine, for games going for that sort of thing, but not so good when a game’s strong points are its aesthetics or narrative or something. It’s probably more useful to judge something like Fatale as an, I don’t know, rendered art installation than pick it apart looking for mechanical fun.
I guess some of the fun poking vitriol rubbed me the wrong way, because it always seems that people who are enthusiastic about video games are the last to see the potentials of games as a medium, or how frankly easy it is to achieve those possibilities.
Jon: I have nothing to add except to say your posts here are great. That was a brilliant piece of gaming folklore and I’m with you 95%. The other five percent is in my deciding that I actually liked The Path, after giving it some thought. Your criticisms are pretty accurate, but the work put into the game seemed to primarily be in aesthetics and mood. Tale of Tales strike me as sculptors working with games, and the common criticisms come from those expecting them to be engineers or writers. I think Michaël’s comments here reflect that. Arguably more work could be done, but that’s forgivable without a big budget.
(Plus, hey, Takayoshi Sato!)
“Yeah, basically. Games are usually judged by “fun,” which always means mechanical fun. Which is fine, for games going for that sort of thing, but not so good when a game’s strong points are its aesthetics or narrative or something.”
They’re not! Christ on a strawman’s bike. Games are usually judged on what people get from them or whether if fulfills a gap in peoples wants or any myriad of things from person to person. That might be fun, but it’s not a prerequisite for appreciating a game and nor is it an especially laboured point in most of the reviews I read, nor has it ever been. Instead they tend to discuss what works for the reviewer and what doesn’t.
Maybe I’ve just been reading the right journalists for many a year or something, I don’t know, but the “you judge it by fun” argument is tiresome. People tend to judge games that are meant to be fun on whether they’re fun, and that’s fair do’s but folks don’t have an across the board “it’s fun or rubbish” mentality.
Or, y’know, it’s entirely possible that people think that the work falls on its arse on its own merits not because it’s “not fun”.
“I guess some of the fun poking vitriol rubbed me the wrong way, because it always seems that people who are enthusiastic about video games are the last to see the potentials of games as a medium, or how frankly easy it is to achieve those possibilities.”
With all due respect, you’re talking condescending rubbish.
Games have the potential to do many a thing and damn right, they should be able to achieve it. And they will. However, talking of “the potential of games as a medium” and ignoring what games are as if it’s some sort of second rate thing to aspire to is insulting and stupidtalk and infinitely more damaging in the long term to games than any cock art game or cock fun game will ever be.
Wanting beardy stroke games or games that make you cry or games that have little game but pretty emotive pictures is one possible hair strand on the great Phil Spector’s wig of games. It’s not, however, the be all and end all of what games could and should be nor is it “the superior thing to aspire to”.
More importantly, I still think that Ikaruga did the dark/light switching way better than Fatale and the pixel perfect leaps of faith on the platforming sections were totally rubbish ;)
A knawed knee mouse, I’m convinced that you haven’t read everything I’ve said here today. Chances are you read the first three sentences of my second post and just “decided” you disagree with me.
I have taken great pains to be as clear as possible. I clarify just about everything I say, as I realize an opinion like mine might be a little unpopular. I have cited examples for every claim I make. And yet, you come here and, without any attempt to rebut any of my cases, you out and say
Well, shucks, brother. As much as you’ve given your little “with all due respect”s, I can’t help but feel a little put out. Nice to know my views are “easily understood with a little context”, though. I just wish the context you’d chosen was the things I’ve said already, so I wouldn’t try to say them again.
I have explained ad nauseum that what makes a game truly great is not the same as what makes a book or movie great. I have also explained that what is “art” is only what is “great”, as great as it can get. What makes a game great is what makes a game more than a movie (more than a medium, as well): interactivity, depth, and challenge. The rest of it, the aesthetics, they are valuable, but here is the kicker.
A game with exceptional depth and shitty aesthetics can still be appreciated by anyone, but a game with shitty mechanics and excellent graphics, plot, sound, etc. can only be enjoyed by people willing to play through an awful game to enjoy its aesthetics. This is to say, that I can ignore a bad plot in a game, skipping all the dialog. I can ignore the music, by playing the game muted. Even shitty graphics have a very negligible effect on the experience (as we’ve said before, DOS-based roguelikes basically have NO GRAPHICS AT ALL). All of these things I can completely disregard and still enjoy the game. But I can’t for the life of me play a game and ignore its mechanics, because the game is the world I have entered into, and its mechanics are the laws by which I and everything around me operates. Under all the smoke and mirrors, the mechanics ARE the game. Can’t you realize that if all of the skins in Fatale were swapped out with shit from Team Fortress 2, it would still be the same shit?
So you can go ahead, man, and take the chess set and listen to the sound of the pieces clack against the board, and admire the shape of the pieces, and the great themes of kings and queens and soldiers riding into battle, but you still won’t be appreciating the game. And you would never figure out how little it really matters if it’s “art” or “culturally legitimate” or a “medium” (which, BTW, it’s totally not a medium). At the risk of destroying my entire argument for the sake of an ending phrase you have no chance of understanding: fun is more important than that.
As a few parting notes: Believe it or not, I do like the Mother series. However, it’s a case of a series of games that I can just barely tolerate for the sake of their stories, and I’d trade them all in a heartbeat to be able to read some of Itoi’s written works.
As for Machinarium, I just finished it the other day. Damn good game, four stars. But it supports my argument so well! There’s no agenda in Machinarium! There’s nothing to interpret, there are no messages from the author to me. Hell, there’s only barely a plot! And it’s an excellent adventure game BECAUSE it doesn’t do any of those things! Fucking Telltale games can make a story and have funny dialog and cute music and shit, but they’ll never come close to Machinarium because they’ll never move past “which random fucking item goes to which random fucking character to get me the shit I want”.
Anyway, this is a ridiculously long post already, so I’m done here. If you still don’t get what I’m saying, at this point, you probably never will. That goes for pretty much everyone else, too.
Okay, I played the game and honestly I didn’t like it.
The problem isn’t a lack of gameplay. It’s unnecessary gameplay. Gameplay that doesn’t mesh with everything else at all. Michaël Samyn is correct when he says gameplay is “not something we would be particularly good at.”
But then why is it there?
The gameplay just seems like something that was tacked on in order to make it still count as a game. But by all means, if you don’t feel comfortable creating game play then please don’t.
For example, the first part of the game consists of waiting for a time meter to fill up with various intervals showing Oscar Wilde quotes. Then eventually an assassin kills you.
What I don’t understand though is why was there the ability to walk around in a first person viewpoint, when doing so does nothing at all?
The scene could have easily worked as a cutscene with the camera being controlled automatically. Doing so would convey the same exact thing and nobody could criticize it for having bad gameplay.
Then there is the part where you have to blow candles. This honestly was one of the most tedious tasks I’ve ever had to do in a game.
There are numerous problems with this part. The first one is that it’s a pain to move around. The second is that there were way too many candles and the whole thing felt like a tedious grind which killed the immersion.
By the time I blew the 5th or 6th one, I already was thinking more “how many more times do I have to do this?” And soon, it no longer felt like I was immersed in a scene but instead doing a chore, something I just wanted to get over with. By the time I blew out the last candle, I didn’t care anymore and didn’t know why I was doing any of this.
And then suddenly the game ends, and it quits to desktop. Just like that. No transition to ease it out, just a sudden quit.
If it didn’t involve me hitting a close button, I could easily have intepreted this as the game crashing.
So then I opened the game again, and watched the part with Salome dancing.
Now this is the only part that I actually can say I understood or felt was actually executed well. But only because it doesn’t have you trying to play with haphazard gameplay and instead allows you to sit back and watch.
I feel that the other parts of the game could have easily been just as enjoyable if you didn’t try to add gameplay to them.
You say that the candles represent “John […] saying […] goodbye to earthly life.”
Sadly this was not conveyed to me when I was playing, and instead it felt more like a tedious chore.
If you had actually conveyed John (or whomever) blowing out the candles through your strong point of narrative skills rather than gameplay, which you admit being weak at, I probably would have understood the scene beyond “this is taking too long. I want to stop.”
To put it simply, it’s just as you admitted. You’re not good with gameplay. But then, why do you still try to include it into the game?
All in all, I believe the whole experience would have been better off if you conveyed it all strictly through narrative.
er, I meant “narrative rather than game play which you are admittedly not good at.” Sorry for triple post I’m tired and not exactly thinking straight.
The thing I haven’t explained yet is our frustration with the fact that none of our friends play games. We can’t make them see what we find interesting about them. And, frankly, we do understand their objections. So, to a large extent, we’re trying to make games for them, for people who, basically, don’t like playing games (at last not the games that are currently on offer). As such, I feel that, perhaps, we’re trying to open up the medium to a new audience.
We started this project (7 years ago) with the idea that gamers would never be interested in what we do. We just wanted to use the medium and try to address another audience, an audience of people who don’t play games yet. But as it turned out, lots of gamers did show an interest in our work. So slowly, we are trying to incorporate them into the kind of audience we imagine our games for. I don’t think we need to give them more gameplay though. There’s already plenty of that around. But many gamers have broader interests than just gameplay. Some of them like music, or paintings. Or types of interactive projects that are not games.
When we call our work art, it’s not to put it above anything else. It’s simply to point out our intentions. We don’t like calling our work “art game”. Just art is sufficient. Good art or bad art? That’s up to the viewer.
Thank you, lemeza, for the criticism. I agree. We should stay away from gameplay as much as we can. That doesn’t mean we should only work with static narrative, though. I think there’s an enormous amount of things that can be done with interaction that is not structured as gameplay.
The big difference between our designs and those of others, as I see it, is that almost everything in them is voluntary. I’m starting to think that this may be a bad design decision. It requires too much effort from the player. It’s fine to do this in an art gallery where people expect to be confused and are amused by that. But when you want to reach a broader audience (and we do), you have to do a bit more work as a designer, I think. I think we will try and do just that in a future piece.
It you are’t going to put in gameplay, then don’t market your art as games.
Wow, 64 is more damning than anything else in this thread. If you don’t like interactivity, then you have no reason to be making interactive works.
I guess there’s some confusion here as to whether “gameplay” refers to interactivity in general or a sort of entertainment-focused structured interactivity, but it’s pretty clear that Michaël Samyn is more confused by this than anyone else here–he’s using “game” in both senses.
(“gameplay”, btw, is simply what one does with games. If you don’t want to call what’s going on Fatale gameplay, then you don’t want to call it a game.)
Interactivity is a broad term that encompasses everything from something as simple as clicking on a menu screen to in fact, yes, gameplay.
They’re two sides of the same coin. Or maybe it’s more that gameplay is a subset of interactivity. Either way you cannot really separate the two. Gameplay pretty much is how the player interacts with the game.
Or how they “play” the “game.” Thus “gameplay.”
Now the problem isn’t that there isn’t enough interaction. It’s that there is a lack of meaningful interaction.
For example, when I am blowing out candles over 30 or so times, what is this supposed to mean to me? Perhaps if it only were a few candles, and the interaction didn’t feel so much like a grind that the scene would have had a deeper impact on me.
Although really, I think it would have been better if the scene were just told through your narrative skills rather than leaving it to the player at all since gameplay is not your strong point.
Also, though not as bad as the second part, I am still puzzled as to why was there a scene with a first person engine with walking around (and even a nifty FPS style physics engine with physics crates) when it wasn’t even used in the first place? It just didn’t seem to have a point to have that kind of gameplay, this sort of meaningless interaction, in there when it’s not utilized and all you have to do is wait for the scene to end.
I mean, it’s fine that you wish to experiment with interaction. But understand that interaction is a broad term that also encompasses gameplay. If you want to experiment with interaction, you’ll inevitably be dabbling in gameplay as well. Since gameplay is in fact interaction, or at least one part of it.
I’m really glad Derek posted this here. By introducing the community to less-game-like interactive work, it has the potential to swing the pendulum in a more complex direction and to make us look past gamey-games. This could inspire developers to create new and interesting stuff. Isn’t that a good thing? What if games are just the tip of the iceberg?
The whole point of a curated blog is that you get exposed to stuff you don’t necessarily like, or at least wouldn’t have pursued information about on your own. If all the genes are too similar all you get is incest; it’s bad for genetics.
Lastly, it seems most of you dissenters view game design as mostly a science, which is quite different than art. Everyone coming from the “games must be fun, games must have a challenge/goal, etc” perspective should either learn to adopt a different perspective when approaching an artistic work, or at least be aware that you’re coming from a different perspective and not let that bias your judgment of the work artistically.
Let me put it another way: Improving a game through playtesting is a matter of science, not art. Improving a game through better expression of life’s experiences is a matter of art, not science. (Obviously there’s overlap, but I’m making a point.)
Don’t bash their art when you’re trying to bash their science. ToT is trying to express emotions and a message, so bashing its reward systems misses the point. Try to search for meaning instead of pleasure.
Ah! I can see how Fatale might be confusing. The interaction in the first scene is pointless on purpose. To reinforce the feeling of being trapped and the inevitability of your fate. In the second scene, the extinguishing interaction is also not very meaningful in and of itself, but it serves the purpose of punctuating and structuring a certain thread (that is only really clear when you pay close attention to the audio). I can see how we kind of messed up combining two relatively meaningless forms of interaction with highly different narrative functions.
That being said, I don’t understand why interactivity and gameplay seem so inextricably connected to some of you. There’s so many forms of interactions that have nothing to do with games (any type of software that is not a game, e.g., or a conversation with a friend, for that matter).
Also, I cannot stress sufficiently that for us, interaction is only one part of a whole that consists of equally important parts. I understand that for some of you the interaction is more important than everything else. But for us it is not. The visuals, the sound, the animations, the effects, the emergent elements, the autonomous elements, the text, etc, etc, are all equally important for us. If you play Fatale for the gameplay only, you will indeed be bitterly disappointed. Much like if you play it for the sound only. Etc.
But that doesn’t change the fact that you will still encounter it. I mean, I didn’t want to play it for the gameplay. However, the gameplay was there and was in the way. Blowing out all those candles seemed like chore. Something I had to do to get the narrative part of the game flowing again.
Believe me, all those other elements you’ve listed. You’re great at those. However, the gameplay you put inbetween in order to reach those things is very weak, extremely tedious and doesn’t seem to serve much of a point.
Also, if you want to call it interaction that’s fine. Being able to blow out candles is indeed interaction. Same goes for manipulating any other kind of object.
But when you have it so you need to do these things to advance and effectively “beat the game,” then it’s gameplay.
Tale of Tales might be a newcomer to the erotic click adventure scene, however the production values for their newest game, Fatale, are high compared to others in the 3D erotic click adventure genre. There are shortcomings though, as Fatale’s execution lacks punch. Firstly, the story pacing is poor compared to it’s inspiration, Flimsy Dress Turbo v1.4, with even poorer character empathy and development. The visuals are bland and environments rather dull compared to last weeks reviewed copy of Macho Elves In Bear Forest. The gameplay is also rather weak and simple, and quite tedious, even for an erotic click adventure with an extended length 40 minutes of gameplay time. This is for too long for the payoff scene. This would be excusable if Tale Of Tales would take the time to develop all elements of the game more, such as in more refined games, like in the Leisure Suit Larry series. Overall, elements ion Fatale are a bit underwhelming and the payoff, not so great.
We give this mediocre erotic clicker a 2 out 5 Stars - TITSource Review
sorry im a dumb troll ignore me
Instead of impersonating me, you should take my critique to heart. I suggest you copy some gameplay elements from predecessor erotic games. Like, stacking and rotating John heads, which are then sliced from the puzzle board, revealing Salome’s naughty bits.
Sincerely, Nobody2 TITSource Editor
I don’t think it’s wrong to try to develop , for want of a better description, “interactive narratives”; that is, “games” with no real game function. I think there are aspects of video games that make them a different - even occasionally more suitable - medium for telling a story, even if in doing so, they don’t function as a traditional game at all.
I also don’t mind that art game experiments by small indie groups are a little thin and sketchy, and tend to focus on one or two things and neglect others. That’s kind of the nature of working with small teams and small budgets. I don’t necessarily think that trying to sell such games is the best idea - probably an arts council grant would be a more appropriate method of funding such things - but there’s nothing wrong with trying I guess.
Still, I happened to replay Ico last week, and I couldn’t help thinking that here was a game that does everything that experiential art games set out to do, and does so very successfully. And it still manages to function as a “game-game” as well (although I think it’s fair to say its focus makes it more of an art game than a game-game).
Ico was made in 2001, bitches.
I have to say this totally makes sense, but take it to its logical conclusion. If someone says “I would have liked/found meaning in interactive work X, but really annoying sounds got in the way and didn’t seem to serve any purpose”, no serious artist would just dismiss that with “sound is only one part of a whole that consists of equally important parts”. If anything, it only makes the presence of something annoying even worse to hear that it it’s presence isn’t even particularly important.
An artist would have to either defend the presence of the sounds, admit that the sounds were a mistake, or hold their peace.
@lemeza: Honestly, we though we were doing gamers a favour by putting in that bit with blowing out candles. But I can see now that it is just distracting and makes it harder not easier to focus on the things we really find important in Fatale. So next time, I promise, there won’t be any gameplay! ;)
@Anthony Flack: We charge money for our work out of principle, to offer the audience a chance to support the artists whose work they enjoy and to get people used to a new economy without publishers or galleries. The amounts we charge are very low. Nobody who has a computer that can run our work should need to think twice about spending so little.
@Consumatopia too: I’m here admitting that the gameplay in Fatale was a mistake. Mea Culpa. Next time: no gameplay! :)
“We charge money for our work out of principle, to offer the audience a chance to support the artists whose work they enjoy and to get people used to a new economy without publishers or galleries.”
@Michaël Samyn: You are, i take it, aware of the “pay what you want” system, which is basically designed to allow your users that exact type of freedom you argue about? While i would never argue against your freedom to choose whatever payment method you want to use, that’s up to you of course, i would just like to make sure you’re using the right arguments yourself ;)
“Next time: no gameplay! :)”
Good, don’t spew nonsense that it’s a game, then.
after reading this entire comment thread i have one point:
early on in the conversation someone quoted michael saying something like ‘gameplay is just one aspect among many’, and then proceeded to say that michael should trust gameplay more and not hate on it
i just want to point out that thinking that something is just one aspect among many isn’t equivalent to hating it. if you don’t think something is the ‘best’ part of games, that doesn’t mean you don’t like that part. as an analogy, if you don’t see whites as the ‘best’ race, that doesn’t mean you hate whites, it just means you think they’re equal to the others. similarly, thinking the other elements of a game are just as important as gameplay doesn’t mean you hate gameplay, it just means you don’t worship it, it just means you don’t see it as the only thing you should focus on, or as the only way possible you can do anything artistic with a game
relatedly, people who think okami is great art because of the visuals and not because of the gameplay or the story are absolutely right: okami had amazing visuals and okay-ish gameplay and a pretty poor story. that’s just as good as having amazing gameplay and okay-ish story and poor visuals, and that’s just as good as having amazing story and poor gameplay and okay-ish visuals.
the ‘art’ part of a game can be anywhere. it can be in the visuals, in the writing, in the gameplay, in the music, in the setting, in the characters, or even in other things like the box art (guardian legend) or the control scheme or the monster designs or anywhere else. it doesn’t have to be only in the gameplay. and saying that doesn’t mean you hate gameplay.
I’m not sure why you want to appeal to the gamer demographic anyway (especially the “seasoned” hardcore kind), when you’ve made it clear that your games are made for those who wouldn’t normally play games. You can’t have one’s cake and eat it too.
Your games already have a dedicated audience as is. And anyone in general who is intrigued by the idea of someone trying to do something different (as I was) is bound to check out your games out of curiosity. So I don’t see how you’d be losing out on anything if hardcore gamers didn’t play your games. In fact, if anything it would actually help.
Also, you really need to think about your advertising. On that page, you mention seasoned gamers, whom really should be completely out of the question for a game like this.
You also say to think of it as a role playing game, which is a huge misnomer, considering what RPG actually means as far as games go.
Here, think about the opposite for a second. Imagine if someone were to make a game with a deep combat engine that had movement canceling and various hard to execute jump techniques that only hardcore gamers would find and then marketed it as a game not meant for gamers but instead for the casual crowd?
You’d most likely end up frustrating those who’d end up playing it simply due to the fact that it was marketed towards the wrong demographic.
I see the same thing happening here. My advice is just to stick to what you’re good at.
Unless you really want to attract the hardcore gamer crowd, but then you’d have to work on gameplay, which again is out of the question.
i’m a pretty seasoned gamer and enjoyed it; so is derek i think, so it’s possible for seasoned gamers to enjoy it, although probably rare
yes, but that wasn’t my point. I didn’t say that it wasn’t possible for a seasoned gamer to enjoy it, just that it’s ill advised to market it to that demographic. or try to include gameplay aspects to the game when obviously it’s not their forté.
the focus should be more on those looking for something different in general rather than gamers, I think they’d be more successful if they took that approach in marketing their works.
As you probably know, the marketing done by us, indie developers, is a bit ad hoc. We are not sure how to address a specific market segment. So we just take what we can get. Our main mission continues to be to make games for non-gamers (or “not-yet-gamers”). But while doing that, we have learned that some gamers are also interested in what we do. So we welcome them.
It’s very difficult to reach a market of non-gamers for a small independent studio like Tale of Tales. Gamers are a very well organized community of people who are eager for news. So it’s easy to reach them. Should we reject the -hardcore- Steam audience, e.g., because 99% of them is not interested in our work? That would be unwise, considering how important an audience of 1% of such a large group is for a small developer like us.
For future projects, I think we may rely on our belief that many seasoned gamers have other interests next to pure gaming. And some of these interests might be satisfied by our work. It’s kind of a new approach for us. But we tend to adjust these things continuously. Every project is an experiment.
That sounds like a good idea to me. And no, don’t abandon Steam. I don’t mean anything that drastic. But the idea you suggested sounds good.
But yeah, the idea that even hardcore gamers have other interests besides gaming is brilliant actually. Sounds perfectly logical to me. Maybe then you could even emphasize the other finer parts of your game, the the narrative and art and thus maybe not feel as compelled to have to include gameplay in order to satisfy even seasoned gamers. But again, go with whatever you think will work. I think it’s worth a try anyway.
er, I meant seasoned gamers not hardcore. heh my bad
same thing really
Really need to sit down and take in all knee jerky in this thread, however @thexders comment about Fatale being a ‘cop out’ is interesting in so far as, are not game designs which echo ye olde “get from A to arbitrary B; usually to collect a star or flag” a similar ‘cop out’ as well?
I don’t think it’s fair to criticise Tale of Tales while being hypocritical about the dearth of ideas in your own game designs. Just as Greenaway rants on about the death of narrative in films, and how that is possibly one of the best things to happen to the medium it seems games are going through much the same thing.
[ Insert “Greenaway makes boring films comment here” ]
To which I would say, take a step back and think about what we’re really working with, or towards. The game-iness is nothing but a construct to keep a player close, to close the loop of interaction, however indie games tend to hew to this bare bones approach quite conservatively whether due to ability or being unable to see any further out of the box.
Perhaps when we throw away the maze, the mouse will run away but well let’s see it, let’s do it instead of building the same fucking maze with different shades of pixel graphics.?
– Chuan
Apologies for being a cont’d, one more question that I’ve been thinking about: whether there is a hard limit on what kinds of expression we can enact with pure gameplay?
Chess has a really deep set of static rules which enable a rich permutation of outcomes, which may map to a kind of narrative for a player. Is it this() or the context, say imagination of the chess players which makes engaging with the game and their vast experience of the histories of openings, closings, famous moves where the significance of the experience really resides? I’m feeling that we need to open up the bandwidth on this stuff to at least have an emotional response.
We keep mentioning ICO and Shadow as touchstones for artful gaming yet both evoke feeling through the craft of animation, not gameplay. Ueda himself comes from a character animation background and his games brilliantly convey nuance where before game characters would stand around with dead eyes opened. Not saying this is a bad thing and as far as emotional realism the final scene from the Last Guardian trailer [ with the dozy beast + gentle breeze ] is amazing and I can’t stop thinking about the feelings it evokes in me. However to champion Ueda’s games for the game design might be a bit off the mark. If you were to play a remake of ICO done by game animation graduates, how would it feel?
Maybe Dwarf Fortress is a much better example of a kind of ‘over-unity’ game design in action, where the output exceeds the system or inputs. Like the old Borges story about Don Quixote and his life-sized map, a game system seeks to simulate it’s equivalent in reality though this may not have to be constrained to just physics either.
Point being, a re-creation can only aspire to it’s origin and perhaps an easier way out would be to extrapolate beyond mimicry and into the abstract representation [ though we ain’t talking Rez-like red shoes for Dorothy here ]. If the mouse could leave the maze, and procreate with other mice, or even venture out into the real world where shadows move and play. “Now I’d buy that for a dollar.”
– Chuan
I think if you play Ico again, you will notice that it’s actually full of “experiential” art-game techniques - ie getting the player to perform particular actions, not for “gameplay” purposes, but more in order to create a certain kind of feeling in the player from performing these actions.
Pushing boxes, pulling levers, getting from point a to point b… they are used as a very basic structure to build the experience on. Most of the “gameplay” is actually not challenging at all. The combat, for instance, really offers no challenge. It is, for the most part, a game that simply involves looking carefully at everything.
Whoa, steady on. It’s not a mistake.
The candle-blowing-out-bit forces you to deal with the (intentionally disruptive) interface(s). As the interface is crucial to the experience of Fatale, you need to draw attention to it. The best way to do this is to provide some kind of mission or goal, however slight, and the candles are an effective way of doing this.
I think the mistake we made with Fatale (and did not make with The Path) was to give all the responsibility to the player. As such, it’s been a good experiment.
I feel you need to play Fatale for 1-2 hours to really experience it, but we don’t force the player to commit so much time. It is entirely possible to complete the task in the game in 20 minutes. If you play this fast however, you will have missed everything. But I understand that it is an urge that is hard to resist. And we don’t exactly tell you that completing the game task is not the point of Fatale. I think we need to communicate such things better if we want to reach a wider audience (preferably through design, and not through instructive text).
The thing I enjoyed most about Ico was standing still, holding hands with Yorda and looking at the leaves on the trees moving in the wind. :) The second best thing was to leave her alone and see what she would do. And call her once in a while. Aah. Good times. :)
another thought: ico was good yeah, but you can’t expect every art game to be ico or shadow of the colossus. they’re just indie developers after all, not a huge team. besides, just repeating what ico or sotc did wouldn’t be very interesting; it’s like you’re saying ‘do new things, but do them in the way ico did them’ – kind of contradictory
Michael Samyn: Being completely serious here, I find your description of your favorite parts of Ico very interesting. As you probably could guess, my favorite things about Ico were the puzzles that took simple actions like crossing a gap and developed them into elaborate challenges, and the unbelievable feeling of power when you get the Queen’s Sword and fight the final boss. Just about anyone on this site would say that both of our opinions are valid; I could argue this, but it’s actually irrelevant. What you should take away from this is that Ico was able to satisfy each of us in different ways.
Paul Eres: Why shouldn’t I expect quality of Ico’s level from indie devs? I’m not talking about graphically, I mean overall. We should not pull punches when criticizing indie games just because “give me a break, it was only made by one guy, ice cream sundaes all around”. First of all, indie games are not limited by marketing trends. They don’t need to find publishers. Hell, half the time they don’t even ask for any money. We should expect quality indie games simply because no stupid old man in a suit is censoring or thumbs-downing the dev’s ideas because the demographic isn’t profitable.
There is another reason why criticism of indie games should be precise and harsh: unlike commercial game developers, an indie dev such as Michael Samyn right here is very likely to actually hear you, and listen.
The reason I brought up Ico is because it’s nearly a decade old now, and it is still, I think, the high quality benchmark for art games. It’s not just the graphics and animation; every part of the game is working harmoniously to create feelings in the player (the audio, for instance, is very strongly evocative).
When I played it originally, I just thought it was an amazing game. But when I played it again last week, I couldn’t help but notice that it had already, very elegantly, and almost before people even really gave much thought to such things, exhibited most of the principle characteristics of the “art game” as we now commonly understand it, while all-but-abandoning the standard conventions of the “challenge game” (there are plenty of standard gaming conventions in there, but they aren’t really used to challenge you - if you get stuck in Ico it’s usually simply because you haven’t looked around carefully enough).
It’s true, we can’t expect small indies to turn out work of that level of scope and polish. But in terms of all parts of the game working harmoniusly together, it sets the standard for an art game to be considered a fully-realised work, rather than just an interesting experiment.
I welcome criticism, especially when it is precise -otherwise I would not be participating in this thread.
But I think you are overestimating the power of independent development, Anarkex. There’s two things that commercial companies have in abundance that we don’t: time and money. Whether or not there’s a “stupid old man” involved in the process is a minor detail compared to this. I am familiar with the romantic notion of the indie developer making his genius work at night after his day job. A while this may be the reality of many -I have no idea- it certainly is not ours.
Making games is incredibly difficult. It takes a lot of time to get everything working and to fine-tune the design. I’m not even talking about graphics (which I admit demand a lot more time when you choose to work with realtime 3D like we do). As a result we can’t afford to have a day job. We live for our work, day and night, 24/7. And still we don’t even come close the kinds of resources that huge companies like Sony (the makers of the admired Ico and Shadow) have laying around.
That is not to say that I don’t admire Fumito Ueda for his persistence to make his work within such a mega-corporation. But I do think we need to cut indie developers some slack. Hey, if we can’t charge AAA prices, don’t expect AAA quality, ok?
That being said, I agree that we should be critical of independent game design. The current climate of continuous back patting is not really helping the medium move forward. But the criticism needs to be reasonable. And comparing an independent developer to Sony is not reasonable.
If you don’t have any job besides game development, that’s all the more reason why you should be capable of doing it well. I’m not talking about Ico’s graphics in an indie game. I’m not expecting vast multimedia experiences with fecking orchestral soundtracks or something. I’m talking about creating games that are deep and multi-faceted from a design perspective, which is something that western commercial devs accomplish only by accident, and only very rarely. And I know it’s possible, because Japanese doujin developers do it all the time. Suguri is aesthetically kind of crappy, but it’s a magnificent game because of the thought put into the powerful abilities of the player character and the careful balance of attack patterns. Same goes for ZUN’s Touhou games and their awesome scoring systems and bullet formations. To my knowledge, no western group, commercial or indie, has ever even attempted to make a decent competitive 2D fighting game. This stuff is leagues ahead of a good 70% or more of commercial game design, and it doesn’t take funds to make. It takes genius.
It’s not all bad, I mean, we’re getting there. I know our people are capable of some amazing things, but I can’t help but feel like we don’t have our priorities straight. I looked forward to Blueberry Garden since the day I heard about it, and it was one buggy level that I beat in an hour. Cute. And this thing WON AWARDS. I understand that game design is hard. That’s why I don’t design games. But when everything in the western indie scene feels like it was a rushed weekend project for Game Design 101, I think we need to set our sights a little higher.
And by everything I of course don’t mean everything. Maybe I’m getting too into this. I’m sorry, guys.
I’ll just add that not everyone agrees with you, Anarkex. Just for your information. Many people (including myself) found Blueberry Garden a wonderful experience. Some people enjoy whimsy and cuteness more than bullet patterns. They are not wrong. Just different.
yeah, it just sounds like a matter of taste. i play a lot of indie games, both western and doujin games. and i don’t prefer doujin games at all. they tend to have much more polish, and more attention to detail, but lack creativity, experimentation, or variety. for instance, shoot the bullet was a great game, but zun has nothing in terms of creativity and variety over cactus’s shooters.
Need to play ICO again, just picked up a PAL copy recently so it’s probably time to blot out some time and dose up; got to break this habit of being such a gaming magpie picking at shiny bits + pieces ..
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However, am finding the term “art game” a bit of a misnomer in that art is predicated on being an “open” system where the participant actively responds to create much of the experience, whilst a game in the classic Huizinga burger sense is all about a “closed” system and enactment of rules as it’s generative force. That’s not to say that one is inherently lesser than the other.! The abundance of bad art and good games speaks volumes.
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As for thoughts on development: it’s worth noting that Ueda’s core team is usually about 10-12 people with other people coming on board later to help with crunching out assets and helping polish. Same with Keita Takahashi at Namco JPN when he made Katamari.
For what it’s worth, I really don’t think a truly creative game would actually benefit from a team that’s bigger than that since delegation brings with it an act of “interpretation” or “translation” of the ideal that may not be beneficial in creating a unique statement.
Of course, this doesn’t explain how people like Kubrick or Tarkovsky are able to get their stuff done with a persistence of vision; without being complete tyrants. Personally, I can’t wait to see more games created by a single person [ respect to Paul Woakes + CC speaker of dragons ] as in theory at least it’ll mean we get more richly nuanced experiences. Unless everybody mindlessly copies each other - ho hum.
Prodigious-ness of certain Japanese game designers is also an inspiration and intimidation. Just thinking of how Yu Suzuki could have come up with the fighting and 3D systems for Virtua Fighter in 1990 without any precedents just melts th’ mind.! I can understand how he must’ve approached it from studying martial arts and applying the Sega-technique of distilling the experiential; however the rest is just some scary talent at work.
Particularly with respect to say game balancing in VF2, and all the emergent complex gameplay [ crouch dashing, Akira’s knee, move buffering ] they managed to eke out of quite a simplistic premise. Suzuki’s frame + hit detection system in VF2 is a thing of real beauty and we just don’t see that kind of ungodly attention or consideration paid to crafting gameplay mechanics in alot of western games.
Perhaps part of this reason is cultural too, for the minutae of game design especially that of fighters is disseminated through magazines like Arcadia, and gets magnified tenfold through application in social and competitive play. One is always testing and teasing out knowledge of game design s in such a situation and this must feed back into the attitude of game creators there.
That said, from speaking to those who have worked professionally in Japan their company and production structures are pretty horribly rigid, so when given the chance I can see how the likes of Ueda, Takahashi, Eno definitely run with things and push hard against convention.
– Chuan
one point regarding ico’s team size: money goes into more than just team size. it also goes into software, hardware, contract work, paid playtesting, and all other kinds of things, so even given an indie team of 6 people voluntarily working in their spare time with no budget, and a mainstream team of 6 people with ten million dollars at their disposal working full time for a salary, the second team is always going to have the advantage