I've been making use of that somewhat silly apparatus they call PlayStation Move. Datura came first, and I was impressed by the creative liberties its authors clearly benefited from. Took me a whole week to make sense of it but the joy of seeing beyond the surface was most rewarding.

At this point I find myself mesmerized by that organic canvas of PixelJunk 4am. There's something about having a live audience cheering when you get something right. A completely unique experience with a strangely intuitive interface; not to mention a chance to listen to a genre of music I otherwise tend to frown upon. It's amusing when you're on the other side of the turntable, so to speak.

I envy those here who are playing Silent Hill for the first time.

What are the non-financial factors for Silent Hill 2 (and Ico) not steering videogames towards a mature medium? Simply being misunderstood? By developers?

I believe so. The truth is that Silent Hill 2 generated considerable profit. In a market where every big budget game production dreams of selling over a million, one would expect SH2 to be a standard to look up to. And it was, in fact. The popularity of the first two episodes practically justified the existence of the remaining. But there's a question of talent here which cannot be reproduced no matter how much money Konami and other studios were willing to invest. We can't dissociate this discussion from the fact that there are true people behind the brilliance of Silent Hill and Silent Hill 2, who weren't present in subsequent episodes - people like Toyama who created the original Silent Hill, or Takayoshi Sato who left Konami after the sequel. Not to mention the episodes produced outside Japan which, in themselves, provide a clear illustration of what I'm talking about.

Again, it's crucial that we learn about the people behind the games so as to understand what made them unique. If we only attribute these creations to a company name and industry-related factors alone, it's impossible to understand what went wrong. Games are only as good as the creative vision of the people behind them - something you know far better than I do. Not everyone could have made a game like Ico. It took an Ueda and a Kaido and a series of other contributors to achieve that. It took their unique raw talent. It took people with different priorities, with different ideas and cultural references. We can't assume that everyone could have achieved an equal result, even in some utopian market where investors would prize inventive projects over formulaic ones. Talent is something singular and impossible to replace, just like you said before.

It's possible to use these titles as a reference, however. Some developers were able to assimilate their substance. The Path is a perfect example of how to allude to Ico without wanting to be, let alone become Ico. You truly understood what is at the root of that game, what made it different from all others; what it showed to players and proved that could be done. Unfortunately, not everyone is capable of interpreting these games on a similar level - Jenova Chen is another example of a designer whose ingenuity is positively influenced by Ueda and several others (wink wink). Still, think of the many Ico-wannabes released in the last ten years. Think of how many games used colossal level bosses after Shadow of the Colossus was released. How many games tried to recapture the fog, the noise, the visual moods of Silent Hill, in spite of having no characters and no narrative whatsoever. There was a tremendous failure from developers in interpreting the essence of these games.

The reason why I believe this is so relates very deeply to video game culture, education, academia, the clash between Eastern and Western perspectives, prejudice and, of course, tradition.

Sometimes I'm under the impression that it was Silent Hill 2 that went wrong, and not the other way around.

Perhaps the reason why it failed to inspire other game developers has to do with their inability to interpret it, to understand what made it exceptional; or why it took them years of playing pretty much everything else under the sun before they even felt the need to try it. I can hardly think of a game that sold so well (more than a million as I recall it) and was so misunderstood by so many at the same time. ToT clearly learned from it; as did a few others, here and there. But that's it.

Regardless, Krystman does hint at a pivotal change in the industry which does begin to explain why creativity peaked during that generation of hardware. Let's not fool ourselves. We all know, more or less, why Silent Hill 2 was not an example to be followed in subsequent years. We all know how Japan surrendered to the immediacy of casual games, as did the rest of the world. We all know how the entrance of Microsoft to the market disturbed a very unique and fragile creative environment which existed in Japan, and in which several authors had unusual liberties to create unusual games. If we look carefully at the development of SH2, we'll find that part of what is so remarkable about the game derived from rather fortunate accidents - see the case of Takayoshi Sato and how he became more involved in the production over time.

Personally I don't believe any of the original Silent Hill games were made specifically for new audiences like The Sims was, as suggested here. I'm forced to agree that these are games - like so many others produced in Japan at the time - made for an audience of adults who grew up with a control pad in their hands but began to pursue other interests later on. Everything sold relatively well back then. Studios as small as Love.de.Lic, Skip, ArtDink or Vanpool were able to create multiple releases, to publish their titles outside Japan and even turn profit on occasion. They were the indie developers of the time by today's standards.

The moment Sony ceased to occupy a leading position in the market, these studios were dissolved, their creators disbanded. That medium class, as it were, of game developers ceased to exist and with them the games we now begin to value. No major studio production in Japan is made these days without the deep concerns as to how it will be able to sell in international markets, which is why Konami refuses to pay top dollar for anything other than a new title in the Metal Gear or Pro Evolution Soccer franchise. Production costs have risen, evidently, but there also exists a wider market for non triple-A titles in portable systems and online game services. However we choose to look at it, it's about more than just money.

Still, among several decisive factors related to this discussion, I'd like to underline how the current state of affairs has its roots on a very profound and widespread bias towards certain Japanese games. To which I would add unwillingness: a refusal to pay heed to the specificity of their culture, to respect their many authors and their unique visions, well beyond pocket monsters and scales that measure our weight. It's most unfair to reduce a large and continuous effort to a few catchy names - sometimes even no names at all.

It certainly wasn't a coincidence that games such as Ico and Silent Hill 2 were created there and then. Though it is also true that these aren't even the first games to express these concerns which seem to remain so current and contemporary: they're only the most celebrated ones, the most sophisticated examples which some still care to visit or revisit nowadays. In that sense, the question at hand is also an answer to itself.

(I've long wanted to show this to Michael and Auriea.)

ISABELLE is an all-French production released in 1999 and the winner of the Möbius award in the categories of Critique and Fiction in that same year. It was quite popular in French media at the time, even hailed as an artistic game - which was not a very common expression in the late nineties, believe me.

The premise is rather quirky: George is wounded in an incident and wants to convince the entire town, including his girlfriend, that he was the victim of a conspiracy organized by a local despot - to whom Isabelle is slightly attracted to. Being blind, he can only trust his younger brother to help him expose this villain for what he is.

There are very interesting aspects to this experimental game. First of all, it was designed by Thomas Cheysson, a little known director and writer who collaborated with Michel Piccoli in the film Alors voilà (1997).

There doesn't exist any dialog between characters, only gestures and indistinct gibberish. But when the player visits certain places, we hear remarks from either George or his girlfriend Isabelle: sometimes they argue in a subtle French Nouvelle Vague sort of way, which is rather refreshing; on other occasions, we simply hear George complaining about how he feels pity for his mother, hates his stepfather, or that he is the product of a dysfunctional family.

The city space in Isabelle is seen from two perspectives. One is that of George, who is blind, slow and therefore trusts only on his pessimistic memories of the town to move around - colors are dark and gloomy like his mood. The other is that of his younger brother who is joyful and mischievous and sees the world filled with color. But the difference lies not only in color, but also the camera angles and how certain spaces and objects are perceived. In order to advance it is necessary to realize how that which may constitute an obstacle to one of the brothers can be overcome more simply by switching to the other.

The images I posted reflect how the tower seems larger in the eyes of the young child than it does to his older brother. Characters and their personalities are not expressed through written or spoken words alone, but through animation and by transforming the very game environment so it may reflect different perspectives of life. It's a very singular concept that has hardly ever been used in any other games, as far as I know.

I hope you find this to be of interest.

Hey Shane, how's the game?

Greetings to one and all.

I was kindly allowed to participate in this forum in spite of not being a game developer myself. I occasionally play games and from time to time I even try to write about them, whenever there exists something I feel needs to be said. None of my pieces were any good, though.

As much as I may have learned in the past, I believe that some new grounds are being explored in this community by a whole new wave of (not)game developers. I truly hope to discover something new and unseen that may help me regain some confidence for the medium. I could certainly use some, believe me.

It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance!


I wish you all the very best,

Bruno de Figueiredo
Portugal

I once asked Tracy Fullerton about LSD and she acknowledged it as being of some influence to The Night Journey. Also, the project didn't get canned at all: Viola simply decided not to release it to the public, unfortunately. It was available to play in several art exhibitions - one of which in New York, just last year - side by side with his video art displays.

As for LSD, it's one of the most significant non-videogames ever made - in some regards, an anti-game. The problem is that it is always referenced/played out of context which is rather unfair, since it is part of a greater work of postmodern art including ten years of research, the publication of an art book and a music album. Of course, we look at these stills nowadays and chuckle at how maladroit it all seems compared to what has been done recently.

It wasn't created to please or to be enjoyed. In fact it was made, on purpose, to be an excruciating and outlandish experience which is extremely difficult to interpret - mainly to a westerner. Osamu Sato, the author, is quite an authority on Japanese abstract art and has several publications on the topic of Eastern Religion - see his other work entitled Eastern Mind and its sequel Chuuten.

Doesn't mean we have to like it: just as long as we respect it as a pioneering experience coming from a visionary who shared many of the concerns expressed in this forum as early as fifteen years ago.

Where is the Shakespeare of cinema you mean?

Or the Homer of script writing. Or the Bernini of film editing. There are none. And it is even questionable whether "Citizen Kane" is the "Citizen Kane of Cinema". These parallels, as amusing as they may be to some, simply do not exist in a degree of accuracy that makes them worthy of being pursued. Each author's contribution is unique and derives from very specific circumstances which can never be repeated.

In addition, Cinema accomplished more as an artistic medium in the first few years of its history than games have in four decades as an entertainment business. As we know, "Citizen Kane" represented a sizable advancement in film, in story-telling, photography, and so many other aspects of art and human creation in a far broader sense. No single video game has ever - or, the way I see it, could ever - have a comparable cultural impact.

I wonder if in the late 1930's, the likes of Welles, Mankiewicz and friends spent their spare time asking one another which was the "Beethoven's 9th" of cinema, or who was the Rubens of film directing.