Nouvelle Vague
Tale of Tales Profile and Interview
This article was originally posted at Coregamers on March 17th, 2009
Part I
Design ethics
Secluded from the intellectual battles waged between the different factions of game studies theory, a domain in which narratology and ludology remain irreconcilable, Auriea Harvey and Michaël Samyn have settled on a middle term, a compromise that regards a new and highly pragmatic vision. Their Realtime Art Manifesto, written in 2006, presents a serious challenge to years of presumptions concerning game design, as well as the very definition of the term videogame.
Rather than actively seeking their share of protagonism within the medium’s industrial hierarchy, Tale of Tales’ pursuit of complete autonomy from market pressures is the sine qua non condition for the creation of their art-games - a term they provokingly place in opposition to game-art. Relying on digital distribution rather than conventional retail, the Belgian-based ensemble deliberately channels their work for a bespoke audience, evading the commonplace vagaries of global video game market conquest. Where other independent studios might lament their limited means and reach, Tale of Tales embraces them as the necessary conditions with which to preserve any modicum of artistic integrity.
More than mere wordplay meant to upset the traditionalist, Tale of Tales has been at pains to apply this philosophy to their every creation since the time of the studio's inception in 2002. Without exception, each one of their interactive experiences is driven by the ambition to innovate and disrupt the most deeply seated orthodoxies, laying bare a conservatism and sense of entitlement that is characteristic of game playing audiences. Their first complete project, THE ENDLESS FOREST, is an online experience enabling players to conjointly explore a mystical forest of unrivaled beauty. With stags for avatars, all communication is performed through symbolic acts; forsaking text or voice input in favor of its own language, one enabling new and unique exchanges between participants.
THE GRAVEYARD, released in 2008, became an iconic representation of their design ethics in view of its deceptive simplicity and openness to interpretation; infuriating the more unadventurous due to its utter disregard for longevity or replayability. The short tale places the player in control of an old woman crossing a straight and narrow path across a gloomy graveyard, in an act of abounding symbolism. A contemplation of old age and of life itself, its profound message was construed by some as a display of pretense. Nevertheless, THE GRAVEYARD equally demonstrated the existence of an audience striving for more mature and intellectually stimulating interactions, so sporadically found in mainstream games.
The studio’s latest endeavor, THE PATH, is described as a short-horror game that once again captures the forest theme as a background for a contemporaneous reenactment of the traditional tale Little Red Riding Hood. The game presents itself with two distinct layers: one decorated in vibrant and gracious tones that summon the idyllic imagery of the traditional fairy tale; and another stratum comprised of darker, coarser visual elements exposing the frailty and vulnerability of its all-female cast of juvenile characters, wandering innocently into the perilous woodland.
Its higher production values, in tandem with the allure of its characters and visual splendor, have so far been able to captivate the attention of a larger, more diverse audience; once again proving the medium’s potential and the player’s voracity for originality and evasion from habitual interactive models. It would seem as if the future of Tale of Tales as a studio, and the viability of their daring conceptualization of interactive games as vehicle for artistic expression, depends on how the merits of their creations may persuade non-players to indulge in the act of playing. While such a conversion may be unattainable at the last, Harvey and Samyn have already laid the all-important first stone. From here on out, interactive games will never be the same again.
Part II
Interview
COREGAMERS : Most of what is so fascinating about the studio Tale of Tales seems to originate from the nature of your relationship. In what circumstances did you two meet and when did the idea of creating a studio together started to germinate?
AURIEA & MICHAËL : We met online on 1999, as was the style of the time. We were both very active as web designers and internet artists, Auriea in New York City as Entropy8 and Michael in Belgium as Zuper! We were members of an internet artists collective called Hell.com and we talked to each other for the first time during a research meeting with the collective. It was love at first type.
We started working together the next day and never stopped. First we continued to make websites but in 2003 we switched tools and started exploring the potential of games technology. The actual start of a studio for this was required by the fact that for the first time, we needed funding to do our work. Before, the art we made online was much less work-intensive and could be combined with and funded by design jobs. But working with games technology takes a lot more time. So we started a company as a structure to deal with that business side of things.
CG : Tale Of Tales is a studio founded in a country that has minimal relevance to the videogame industry: while it must feel very rewarding to be among the first, the lack of a videogame design tradition isolates the studio in a distant point of the map. To what extent has this fact affected the growth of your studio?
A & M : We are only part of the videogame industry in as far as is convenient. We never set out to become game developers. We're just artists making things with games technology and we try to use the channels created by the games industry to distribute our work. And it wasn't until we started making games that we became aware of our location. And only because arts funding tends to be localized. Before that, and still to a large extent, our homeland is the internet. Or the world. We don't believe in borders. We're not very interested in the video game design tradition and we also have no interest in seeing our studio grow, at least not economically.
We have experienced, however, certain problems with being from where we are. People sometimes forget about us because we're not in the US or the Netherlands, for instance. But we're not sure if this is because of differences in location or differences in culture and attitude. We don't really belong anywhere. We're not sure if being in another country would change that.
And indeed, it is amusing to be able to call ourselves one of the most important game studios in our country, especially since we're so small.
CG : Do you agree that there was once a great school of European game design? I’ve often discussed this among fellow videogame players and researchers in the field and I’ve come to believe that countries such as France and England played a vital role in the evolution of the media. Where do you stand in this position?
A & M : We're citizens of the world. We've seen interesting games coming from the Americas, from Europe, from Asia. But we're really not an authority on game design history. It only concerns us marginally because we don't see contemporary videogames as only the result of a history of videogames. They're part of a much larger evolution that overlaps with many other areas. All we can see is an embryonic medium that has a hard time growing up. As far as we can tell, any "great school of game design" still needs to happen.
CG : I understand that, apart from designers, you also seem to be avid game players. Certainly you’ve realized how dull most game productions have become lately, in spite of few but powerful exceptions: even the games that seem to be most promising end up revealing structural weaknesses. Sales seem to triumph over artistic vision and innovation most of the times. Do you think that it is possible to create a perfect balance between both?
A & M : We really want to be avid game players. But we sadly are not. There's not a lot of games that we find interesting. This seems to have been to be a little bit better a few years back. But now, as you say, it's mostly quite dull. Unlike in any other creative industry, there is no place for artistic vision in the games industry. As long as artistic vision is not considered the central aspect of game creation and the entire industry is not structured to accommodate for that, balance will be difficult to achieve. It's not even a matter of sales. We all know that original games can sell a lot better than copy-cat games. There's not just a lack of artistic vision. There's also a lack of economic vision.
For all its advances in technology and all its influence on society, the games industry is in fact very conservative and acts like a bunch of small grocery store owners. So in such a climate, the only thing you can do as a forward-looking creative person is to take risks and put commercial interests below artistic ambition. The funny thing is that the majority of games actually fail commercially. So in a sense, making a highly artistic game is not a big risk since the worst that can happen is what happens to most games anyway.
CG : Your studio seems to orbit very far away from financial obligations. How does Tale of Tales manage to stay alive in spite of lacking profitable products?
A & M : First of all, we minimize our costs by remaining small and sustainable rather than requiring constant growth. And second, we make art. When you make art, you can get arts funding. At least in civilized countries. Not a lot of funding, but enough to do your work if you're careful. Some people find art important, even if it's not popular or commercial successful. Those people are smart.
CG : With THE ENDLESS FOREST you have conceived an experience unlike any other in an online videogame, where communication is conditioned to different forms of expression. Were you somehow motivated to complete this project as a result of the very basic level of communications performed in most online games?
A & M : We have always had a problem with language. Because it puts the speaker in a certain location and a certain culture. And that's not always what we want. Furthermore, the choice of language always puts the non-native speakers at a disadvantage. On top of that, of course, when conceiving a multiplayer game, we had great concern about social behavior.
So we removed every possible way in which people could hurt each other. Language being one of them. With THE ENDLESS FOREST, we wanted to create the illusion of a perfectly harmonious society, because everything any player does in the game, could always be interpreted as nice and friendly and fun by another. Even if if wasn't intended as such.
CG : It must have been quite an encouragement, seeing an unpretentious game such as The Graveyard being nominated for the prestigious IGF awards. I recall Michael’s answer the first time I asked you about this award - he seemed pessimistic. Do you think that players are prepared to play a game such as THE GRAVEYARD? Do you ever fear that most people who played it might just not be able to read the entire message you conveyed for them?
A & M : Many people would disagree with you and call THE GRAVEYARD extremely pretentious.
We don't mind either way. If we sound pessimistic, it's mostly because we feel a bit lonely. It would be nice if more independent developers were working in the same field as we are. Especially considering how important we consider this work to be, and how much still remains to be done. There's us, and there's thatgamecompany, and there's Icepick Lodge. That's about it. An international movement, for sure. But a very thin one.
Given the hundred thousand or so downloads of the trial version, we think there's quite a bit of willingness to play The Graveyard. This willingness does not automatically lead to appreciation. This tends to be highly personal. We like it that way. We want to make games that end up being about you, the player, and not about any message we might be trying to convey. For some people The Graveyard is meaningless. That's perfectly possible if the themes that are addressed in it have no place in your life. And that's OK. We don't need to force things down people's throats.
CG : THE PATH, however, seems to be headed in a different direction: you’ve put a lot of work into each character, making them stylish and appealing; the game space seems less linear; the gloomy visual themes are still en vogue at present. Judging from the reactions, there seems to be a greater number of players interested in this project, possibly more than any of your previous endeavors. Was this a conscious decision, to make the game slightly more appealing to a greater public?
A & M : Funny how you are the first person to make a remark about this. Everybody continues to insist how weird and artistic THE PATH is, while we're sitting there thinking "But this is supposed to be our commercial project!" Not that we have any illusions of mass market success. THE PATH is only attempting to appeal to a certain niche market, a group of people we feel some affinity with and that we think are underserved by the games industry. As long as we have been working together, we have never separated business from pleasure or art from entertainment. It all goes together for us.
THE PATH is probably the first project of which we consciously tried to maximize the appeal. Within certain given parameters of course. We were not prepared to sacrifice the integrity of the narrative for the sake of mass appeal. But we did carefully try to add elements to the game that would appeal to people in the periphery of our core audience without hurting the overall experience. Of course we can't make a game for everyone. So we don't even try. But with THE PATH we have tried to be as inclusive as possible, to allow as many people as possible to enjoy the game.
CG : One of the things I find most remarkable about Tale of Tales is its aspiration to look more than just a studio where games are programmed, more like a studio where games are crafted like a fine art. You also seem to employ several influences from folklore – from the top of my head, the clear references to the Little Red Ridinghood story in some of THE PATH’s characters. Where does this interest derive from? Is Belgium culture rich in bedtime stories and fables?
A & M : We're a company with mixed nationalities, not strictly Belgian. In fact this is probably why we're so interested in these old stories. Because they connect people across -or underneath- their cultures and locations. Versions of Little Red Ridinghood can be found in many locations and cultures, in many periods of history. These stories are things that people on this planet share in some way, it's something that unites them. And in these times of continuous antagonism, war, inequality and racism, we find it important to talk about the things that we have in common with other people, instead of what separates us from each other.
CG : From the moment I read it, I felt highly challenged by your Real-time Art Manifesto: the fact that such an elaborate document concerns the industry of videogames is a statement that you, as artists and designers, realize the importance of uniting videogames with a higher purpose. What is the root of this seemingly anti-ludic current?
A & M : The Realtime Art Manifesto is not anti-ludic. It's "different-ludic"! We want playfulness to become a part of games again. Videogames today are too much like work. And the rules and goals of the ludologists are to much like constitutions and laws. Games demand that you behave in a certain way and if you don't, they punish you. Games are no fun at all if you don't enjoy military discipline.
Anyway, we consider interactive technology as a major invention that offers a solution for many problems that artists have been having throughout the ages. And furthermore, it offers us a tool to think about contemporary life in an appropriate way. The old media are simply too rigid, too linear, too top-down, to be able to capture contemporary sentiments and ideas about life.
With the Realtime Art Manifesto, we want to encourage artists to design games and game designers to make art.
CG : Surely you’ve read many books on game design and about the medium of videogames: they either instruct or enlighten the reader to a philosophy of game design that is consonant to the widely accepted methods of today. In light of the old question “are videogames an art”, how hard is it for you to envision a way to create art with ludus as the raw material? (Rephrasing: is it possible to create artistic expression by means of a game system and its game rules?)
A & M : We're quite sure that it's possible. But it's very difficult. And we wonder why we should limit ourselves to that? We have this incredibly rich medium of the networked computer and yet we would choose to limit our creativity by working only with rulesets and goals? Seems completely absurd to us.
I understand that some people believe games to be what computers are all about. That they are the core of the medium and therefore should be focused on. But we simply don't agree with that. The core of the medium is something vaguely related to interactivity and emergence. Nothing as concrete as game rules. Certainly game rules can help create something that makes use of interactivity and emergence. But surely there are many other ways to use these qualities in a creative way!
Limiting your medium to what can be expressed through game rules also limits the content you are capable of addressing, in our opinion. Not everything reduces well to the rigid demands of purist game design. And if you try to force a complex and subtle theme into a simplified rules-based system, you risk losing a lot of what makes the theme interesting and human.
CG : Every now and then I feel pessimistic about videogames as a medium, particularly when I strive for substance in a game experience. As players, some of us have grown outside the limits of thought that would enable us to play moronic first person shooters on a daily basis; because we contacted with art forms our senses beg for a little more than high resolution graphics.
Being cinema one of videogame’s next of kin, do you envision a future where the industrial side of this medium can coexist with the sort of deep, artistic vision we’ve witnessed in the so called “seventh art”?
A & M : We still haven't given up on the industrial side of the games industry. They're getting better at a lot of things. And in our opinion, they're doing a lot of things right already. But there's one ingredient missing: artists. There's no artists in the games industry as they exist even in Hollywood. Or better: there's no artists in positions that matter. And there is no place in the current production workflow to allow for a vision holder to control the entire game. If they can solve that problem, the games industry may not need the awkward division that happens in cinema.
In the mean time, of course, let's hope that the artistic side of the independent games scene grows. There's in fact a lot of reasons to be optimistic here. The tools are becoming more accessible, more and more artistic people find their way to the medium, the journalists are opening up to new ideas (perhaps we'll even have actual critics soon), the distribution channels for smaller projects are multiplying. Good things could happen. There's still not a lot of serious artistic interest. But it's growing.
CG : Your website already provides some clues as to a possible answer to this question; however, I feel impelled to ask each of you, individually, which were the most important videogames you’ve played in your lives and for what reason?
A & M : CEREMONY OF INNOCENCE because it shows that interactive work can be romantic, even when it's very simple.
SILENT HILL 2 because it shows that narrative can be a collaborative activity between game and player.
BLACK & WHITE because it shows that artificial creatures can be worthy of your love and attention.
ICO because it shows that attention to details that are irrelevant to gameplay, can make all the difference.
TEKKEN 4 for teaching us that making up stories about what happens on screen is a lot of fun.
The first TOMB RAIDER for being this amazing immersive experience that felt so much like a real adventure.
CG : Saving final thoughts for last, I would like to ask what you think the future holds in store for you, both at Tale-of-Tales and for this brave new medium you chose as “the path” of your artistic and intellectual expression. Is there some personal aspiration that you would like to achieve, that would make all the work (and sacrifices, I’m sure) worthwhile?
A & M : We do have a vague and very general artistic goal, far away on the horizon. It's very hard to describe. It's more of an emotion than a concept. But it does serve as a guiding star.
More concretely, a lot will depend on how THE PATH is received. It's a big experiment for us to try and make our art and sell it too, in the hopes of being able to fund our own production. We know that there is an audience for our work out there. But we don't know if it is large enough to support our creations. If it turns out to be too small, we will probably concentrate on smaller, more artistic projects in the future, and probably care less about being in the public eye or even being involved with the games industry at all. If, on the other hand, THE PATH turns out to become sufficiently successful, then many new routes open up. Not just for us but hopefully for other creators as well. If this new digital economy would make it possible for an artist to form a sustainable unit with their audience, then the possibilities are endless.
But whatever happens, we will continue to use this medium for our art. There's so much work that remains to be done. So many projects we still want to do. And life only lasts a limited amount of time, they say.
Overview of works
8 (unreleased)
An ambitious project that has not yet seen the light of day, 8 tells the story of a deaf-mute girl trapped inside a palace. Unlike most adventure games, the player does not have full control of the autonomous character that reacts, instead, to the player's choices and the environment.
The Endless Forest (2005)
In The Endless Forest, the beauty of the visual environment is only comparable to the impressive game system allowing multiple players to roam freely in a virtual forest where words become meaningless. In order to relate with others, the player must become acquainted with an original and peculiar language composed of signs and behaviors.
The Graveyard (2008)
Much has been said about The Graveyard, a clear display of the unusual creative force that supports the Tale of Tales studio. Consenting a great amount of subjective interpretation, this uncanny experience deals with the theme of old age and death in a manner quite different from that of conventional games.
The Path (2009)
Scheduled for release on March 18th, The Path is so far the studio's greatest production as can be seen in the actual level of production. Highly atmospheric, this short horror tale portrays six different female characters, of young age, each one of them with a different style and personality. Abandoning old videogame design dogmas, The Path appears to rely heavily on free exploration and introversion instead of mission objectives or competitive score keeping.