Original image with permission of Jenova Chen
Yesterday, I interviewed Jenova Chen. He’s a video game designer, about to release a much anticipated new game, Flower.
Jenova’s games aren’t any old adrenaline-pumping, first person shooters, though. He’s trying to create a sophisticated emotional journey. I love his earlier game, fl0w, and was eager to find out what he has come up with.
A shorter version of this interview will air on the Feb 4th and 7th episode of Spark, but you can hear the full, uncut interview below, or download the MP3.
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Jenova Chen appears enlightened beyond his years. An intelligent, contemplative interview!
Only had a chance to listen to this today. Wow. This suggests that while I never "got" video games in the past (not a first-person shooter type), that there may be a future when I'll be participating in more mature narratives. There are many types of books, movies and music I like — and it will be interesting to add video games to this.
Fascinating insights… the comparisons to mature entertainment mediums and the variety of emotions they provide was striking. Games on the Wii are already moving away from the traditional ideas of a video game, and with downloadable games doing well on the PS3 & 360, it seems like the future Jenova envisions is not only possible, but very probably. I wonder if we will look back years from now and look at Jenova as a pioneer. Flower could be our Pong or SpaceWar!.
Intriguing to speculate on where video games could go in the future….what kinds of emotional or philosophical journeys we could go on. I particularly liked the way he talked about how so many games take place in fantastic worlds with irrelevant rules. What could we learn, what problems could we solve, if they were modeled on the real world instead?
I don't so much think there is a problem with fantastic worlds (in contrast with realistic ones)… instead, I think the problem is that games in the past have always had a problem speaking to a full range of human emotions. I think that the way Jenova decided to take the focus away from "excitement" and "aggression" and decided instead to open up the range into something more mature and valued is a huge step for sure.
He is not the only one to do this, though. Try looking for the game "Passage" online, which uses very basic graphics, but tells an emotional story, decided by the player, but with an important message behind it.. one that takes a videogame to express…. to let you find the message for yourself. (and all in five minutes).
I do think the future for videogames is bright. Clearly the method of story-telling is changed, as it IS important for games to be interactive.. to focus on gameplay. To make the gameplay emotional is the direction that Passage, and Flow and Flower have gone – and I hope we see it more in the future.
THANK-YOU for the great interview.
I was very intrigued by the interview, thanks! Hope to see more of his work
He looks so young! But it's impressive that at that young he already became games developer. Very promising.