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.

Bryan:  We do use a few things to start ourselves off. We’re using PhyreEngine, which is a Sony provided framework for rendering. Journey, uses some back end systems that were developed on Flower just for maintaining our asset pipeline, which has been expanded on. But as far as the gameplay and the elements specific to journey – the game parts – that’s really from scratch.  We want to make the game that we’re trying to make, and we don’t want the limitations imposed by outside libraries.

Bryan: This question is making the assumption that we know exactly what we’re doing, or at least Jenova knows exactly what’s happening from the get-go. Our development process is actually very iterative and very experimental. We don’t have a complete picture of what the game’s going to be to begin with. Jenova will come up with what the objective is, what we’re trying to achieve from the game, what the emotional goals are, and generally what the experience is. All of us are constantly contributing to what we think will make the game better, what we think will more effectively get to our emotional goal.

Jenova is sort of like the curator. He has the last say, but usually the collaborative settlement is what we use.

You shouldn’t try to be like us… Well, To some extent maybe you should. One of the things that I admire from the founders of this team as well as the rest of my coworkers is they saw something that matters to them, and they worked on that. Aspiring game designers should really find what motivates them and what they’re genuinely interested about. Be true to yourself, and really just think about why you are creating things and who you are creating them for.

I play all sorts of games. I’m a gamer. Lately I’ve been playing some Kirby’s Epic Yarn; but I do a lot of stuff. I don’t just play games. Lately I’ve been making games a lot. I program, and draw. Playing games isn’t my primary passtime.

When I was eight years old, I was completely convinced that I was going to be a puppeteer. That ended up changing somehow into being a cartoonist, and I had even less of an idea of what that actually meant.  And then I think that changed into, “I want to be an animator.”  Around middle school or high school, that’s when I started programming and making games.

So, I think… uh… Fire truck. [Sound of a fire truck racing in the background.] The first thing I remember was probably Marble Madness or Super Mario Bros. on the NES.  I recall always having my brothers around playing games, and old NES games were the first ones, but the first one that was really impactful was Mario RPG on the Super Nintendo.

I had been making games since middle school, just for fun. In 2001 or 2002, I was really getting into the Newgrounds scene. I was really inspired by Tom Fulp and Dan Paladin, the guys who started The Behemoth and made Castle Crashers. Those guys have just been amazing inspirations for me. It seems like one of the things I really learned from them is to be yourself, just be awesome, and just do things you think are cool.
In high school I was making flash games on Newgrounds, and when I was graduating high school I ended up going to Digipen.
Coming out of school, I was just lucky enough to get a job at thatgamecompany. I just straight up sent in an application and wrote them an e-mail, really, and then did a couple of interviews and got a job here. So I didn’t really do anything spectacular; I just made games. If you wanna make games, just do it. There’s nothing stopping you.

I like cake, but I don’t like cake with a lot of frosting in it. I think frosting is the worst part of the cake. Well, that’s not true; it depends on who made the frosting. In general, cake that’s either not frosted or not too frosted.

That makes me really excited. To me that shows that we’re penetrating multiple markets or multiple fan bases. Not only are we appealing to casual gamers, but actual hardcore gamers. Traditional gamers are getting something from our games as well. In some way I see this as validation.
It’s fun that people can play our games and play-hearted way and joke around about them, and also appreciate them.

Stay tuned for more interviews of thatgamecompany members!
And if you have any more questions for us, just comment in this blog with your question (please leave a Twitter, Facebook, or website for us to link to) and if your question makes the cut, you’ll see it here soon!

“‘Just try to make everyone’s experience positive and creative and without friction,’ she suggests. ‘Obviously, one person can’t do that. A producer alone can’t make the working experience smooth and efficient and joyous, but one should try as best as they can. A lot of that is having conversations about areas where skills can be developed, how behaviors can be improved or just giving someone positive feedback about doing something really fantastic.’”

“‘What I strive to do every day, is to leave the office having made a measurable impact on everyone’s work experience. That could be anything from organizing a meeting about a feature I think needs help to ordering a whiteboard and helping someone hang it up so their ideas can be expressed more freely than being scrawled on little pieces of paper.’”

http://gamesauce.org/news/2010/09/07/robin-hunicke-on-working-with-feeling-how-to-be-a-great-producer/

“Feelings make the game, says thatgamecompany’s Jenova Chen. “If the feelings that you provide in your game are unique, then your game will be unique,” said the Flower developer’s creative director and co-founder at Develop in Brighton.”

Read the full article here.

Stuart Brown, a physician and director of the National Institute for Play, says that pleasurable, purposeless activity prevents violence and promotes trust, empathy, and adaptability to life’s complication.  Play games – they’re good for you!

Listen to the radio program here.

However, this is the first time I tried to add my narration to my slides. There were so many technical issues happened during the making of this video. So if you hear sound glitches (some are pretty long), please bear with me. In addition, this was suppose to be a 8 minutes talk. However, I spent 20 minutes trying to elaborate each slides to more details which made the talk too long to watch : {

The crew at Spark managed to edit our 30 minutes conversation into be a very condensed information feast. You probably won’t be able to tell that I had bad coughs that day. Applause for the effort went into the show!

In short, video game can be Art if you make it.

And here are my lazy IM notes…(JC = me)
(AK = Anna)
AK: How do you define a game?

JC: In the traditional sense, they are interactive contents considered mainly for entertainment and leisure purposes. However it is often considered the most commercially successful art form of interactive media. Whether game is going to become the new name for interactive media just like the “film” of motion pictures is still unknown.

AK: I’m wondering the difference or split (if any) between an art game and game

JC: Game is really just a medium, so anything in a medium can be art or not be art. Art is a communication between the creators and the audience, where non art can also be entertaining. However, there’s no intellectual message embedded. Someone said art is for changing the world while entertainment is for leisure.

AK: Hmm. Postmodern is not to change the world.

JC: Yeah that’s why I didn’t completely agree with him.

AK: what is the drive in your art making?

JC: To me art is sharing understanding of life with others. Whether it’s an opinion or an appreciation, artists express that message and feeling through their works.

AK: are you saying that an artist can create a game around his appreciation for the relationships formed between user and piece (game)?

JC: very likely. For example, in architecture, the artists design a building with consideration of how human interact with the building, the lighting, the shadow and so on. I’d consider that as an interactive art rather than a sculpture of concrete. In fact, if you look at a well made sports car, isn’t it an appreciation of the relationship and extension between the driver and the machine?

AK: indeed it is

JC: However, while most people make cars, they don’t necessarily put their messages in it. They are just making a car. They forget what they want to express through the metal. Therefore, the car is just a car, not an art.

AK: yes. That’s clear

JC: if I’m an industrial designer I might be able to design a car that expressing my feeling about peace, depression or anything. I think artists are people who have something to say and have the desire to share with others. And the medium they can use are unlimited.

AK: Do you see digital as a medium?

JC: digital is a tech term to describe that things are stored in numbers, usually 0/1. So I won’t call it a medium.

AK: Yeah. But I keep seeing “the digital medium”

JC: well that means “any medium that uses 0/1 to store” which can be painting, movie, music and game, anything as long as they are stored in some kind of data format.

AK: Do you feel that there are universal structures to the game (like having a goal and levels and so on)?

JC: there are conventions, but never rules. So goals and levels are not mandatory. But it would be easier for others to understand if a game has them.

AK: what’s the most abstract game you’ve seen?

JC: it’s hard to define abstract, maybe that means the opposite of realism

AK: umm, I mean farthest from the classic game while still falling under the term Game

JC: I can’t really choose the most abstract game of all time. There are too many art pieces that are considered non-game.

AK: I’m trying to get a grasp of the poles within the game medium. But I’m asking what you consider a game… I dun care about other people

JC: you can try out “passage” which is a game that I considered art. One of the most inspiring games I played in the past two years

They’ve been gathering quite an interesting interview series, the last of which, we are honored to say, is an interview with our Creative Director, Jenova Chen.
The same TGC concepts you are probably familiar with are explored, but Jenova goes into much more depth about his background and beginnings as a game developer, and I think the dialogue becomes more interesting in lieu of the nature of ToT’s games.

Click here for the interview.

It's a clip from a documentary titled “Chambre 666,” shot during the Cannes Film Festival of 1982. During the festival, director Wim Wenders set up a camera in this hotel room and invited various directors to come in and discuss their thoughts on the future of cinema. A 1982 Steven Spielberg(post-Raiders of the Lost Ark, pre-E.T.) shares his thoughts.

I get an eerie sensation watching this video. Possibly because the subject he addresses is so similar to the subject that game developers have been harping on for the last few years. And maybe this makes me feel like I'm seeing the future of video games in this weird way, by watching 1982 Spielberg discuss his frustration with the business of film making, but knowing that he would go on to create hit after hit after hit. Did he intentionally or accidentally contribute to the very problem over which he expresses concern? Does he wish he had made more personal films, or did his opinion on this subject change?

At any rate, whether you read into this clip as much as I do or not, I hope you enjoy this interview with someone from what's known as the first generation of directors who were able to study film in college, and went on to change the film industry as it was understood at the time.

Making the most of U. Time — Academic paths to working in games