Robin Hunicke and Kellee Santiago went to Germany to speak at GDC Europe and Gamescom and to present Journey to the European press and fans.  At Gamescom, Kellee spoke about the next ten years of gaming on a panel with Sony executives and other famous developers and Robin spoke about the history of Journey.

One of the highlights of the trip was the TGC Community Meetup held during Gamescom.  With just a few days’ notice of the event, about a dozen people came to the event.  You can see most of the attendees in the picture above.

Click the “More” button to check out some links from the week:

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Bryan Singh:  I’m a technical game designer here at thatgamecompany and what that means is I do a lot of mechanics design and implementation, level design and implementation, and programming and engineering. I’m part of that bridge between the engineering and design disciplines.

Bryan: I’ve worked here for almost two years now. I started here June of 2009, at the beginning of Journey.

Bryan:  I’ve actually asked myself this a lot of times. I like doing a lot of stuff and I don’t know if I do consider myself restricted to games. Growing up, games have always been around and they’ve had an impact on me, so that’s what I’ve grabbed onto.

I think thatgamecompany chose games because we’re one of the first generations to have grown up with digital games and we are seeing how much they can affect people. We want to help make games that affect people in the right way.

Bryan:  Everyone has the same hours.  Our core hours are about 10:30-7. We start a little bit late – that’s kind of the norm for the games industry.   As far as pushing nonstop until it’s done, we try very consciously not to do that. We really strongly believe that if something’s not done on time, killing yourself to try to get it done just won’t produce quality work.

Michael Samyn of Tale of Tales (The Path, The Graveyard, The Endless Forest) wrote an article last month for Escapist Magazine about video games as art.  He presents his view on why video game developers have strayed away from advancing video games as an art form.  In essence, everyone is looking at how to create video games the wrong way.  When most game ideas are created, the developers look for ways to use the technology in new ways or to make something that is fun.  Art, Michael says, is derived from wanting to explore a certain theme or convey a message that cannot be said in any other way.

“We’re not looking for a spot in the museum; we’re looking for a place in the heart of the public at large. And for that we will need to work as artists.”

At thatgamecompany, ideas for video games essentially come from a want to convey an emotion or message, which is probably why we, as well as Tale of Tales, are so understood and misunderstood at the same time.

All other entertainment industries give overwhelming artistic control over their projects to a couple people, though the people giving the money still have a large amount of say for what the final product ends up being.  Michael finishes the article by stating how the search for efficiency has, in effect, destroyed the chances for the industry to, en masse, move towards creating art.  That is, unless they give full creative control to the creator of the idea.

“Almost Art by Michael Samyn at The Escapist”

From fellow TEDFellow Angelo Vermeulen. Check out his presentation on his project, Biomodd – a computer that coexists with a living ecosystem.

While we might not actually be showing Journey at this year’s Comic Con, Sony Santa Monica Designer Nathan Gary managed to get us a little representation.

But there’s a little backstory – around the offices at TGC we have been loving this new web comic, Axe Cop. Written by 5-year-old Malachai Nicolle and illustrated by his brother (and Eisner award nominee) 29-year-old Ethan Nicolle, Axe Cop is just the most awesomest awesome that ever awesomed.

Knowing that we felt this way, Nathan tracked down the Nicolles in San Diego, and got Ethan to draw our Journey character pairing up with Axe Cop to explore new worlds and fight crime:

Thanks to the Nicolles, for this really special shout-out!