Een lege Wereld

Development Log, Een lege Wereld

Een lege Wereld is the Dutch translation of and a project derived from a game concept called An empty World but evolved towards a post-game incarnation. We call it a film.

An empty World

An empty World was an idea for a game in which you play an ugly duckling who follows a river upstream and finds he became a swan when arrived at the source. The landscape below is filled with buildings and other human-made constructions that are decayed and overgrown with plants. But there are no people. The game does not explain why.

An empty World was designed for an easily accessible, uplifting game experience centered around seeing impressive vistas. After prototyping with a few volunteers, I submitted a grant proposal to a local government fund. When the proposal was rejected, I organized a pre-production period on our own expense. In this period I collaborated with Jessica Curry for the music, Marie Lazar as modeller, Laura Raines Smith for animations and above all Vicki Wong of Meomi, who concepted the visuals.

In my enthusiasm about the results of this phase, we published a teaser video.

In the mean time, government subsidies for games in Belgium had been moved from film to its own dedicated fund that subsequently rejected a request for funding the further development of such a non-conventional title. We had some conversations with Indie Fund but then put the project on hold because we had other productions to attend to.

Een lege Wereld

When I was liberated from the game industry, a new version of this idea came to me. Een lege Wereld would be an animation film that consists of one long camera travel over a landscape. Instead of a swan avatar, one would simply hear a voice-over narrating the story of how humanity solved all of its problems and created a perfect world of peace and harmony with nature. When the story gets to the part of how humanity ultimately disappeared, we have arrived at the source of the river and [SPOILER ALERT!] the voice breaks up and stops.

It is for the writing of this text that I have submitted another, modest, grant request. I should hear whether we will receive the grant early next month. I’ll keep you posted.

I see Een lege Wereld primarily as a film (Koyaanisqatsi is a huge inspiration) because of the ease of distribution of digital video and the potential of finding new audiences (I’d love to show it at film festivals!). But I also have a few ideas for very light interactivity. Nothing gamelike. More like playing with the dynamics of film (the player might control the progression of the film by swiping or scrolling for instance). I think this would make a perfect tablet app.

I’m also considering to create the whole thing in 2D, so we can use Meomi’s drawings directly instead of translating their style to 3D.

Beauty

This project, as is often the case here, is based on earlier ideas. I’ve long wanted to create something around common concepts of absolute beauty. Not the deep, contemplative beauty that I usually deal with (and that we hope to address in the Kijkdoos project) but the every-day “easy” beauty of epic vista’s, impressive clouds, sunsets, waterfalls, rainbows, dolphins, unicorns, and so on. Things that are often rejected by intellectuals as cheesy or kitschy but that nevertheless make our hearts flutter whenever we encounter them.

There’s many examples in the reference collection for this project: anemptyworld.tumblr.com

I want to explore this tendency in humans to be enthralled by the grandiose beauty of nature. Precisely because it can work as an antidote against the bitterness and cynicism that governs our societies today. Personally I get my kicks from Bach, Bernini and Botticelli. Many people don’t or can’t for whatever reason. But nobody is immune to the sight of glittering sparkles on the surface of a lake, rays of sun shining through the clouds, butterflies fluttering over a field of flowers, and so on. I suspect it may be more important that we experienced the joy of beauty than what exactly triggers that experience. And by “more important” I do mean politically, socially, ethically, and so on.

And for myself, next to excitement about inventing a Utopian planet, I just want to indulge in these easy pleasures for a while. Not that I expect that the triggers for these pleasures are simple to create. But there’s a lot of reference material out there! Humans love beauty.

—Michaël.

Cathedral-in-the-Clouds

Development Log, Kijkdoos

Cathedral-in-the-Clouds

Thanks for your feedback on last week’s introduction of our new project codenamed Kijkdoos! We’ve developed the concept quite a bit, in part as a result of trying to figure out how to present this project on Kickstarter (more about that in a future post).

We had already been thinking of physical presentations of one or more Kijkdoos pieces in a room. And we had been fantasizing about a Virtual Reality simulation of such an exhibition, possibly with additional “magic” (i.e. things that wouldn’t be possible, or very difficult, in the real world). This idea has now morphed into a general umbrella that covers the entire concept. We’ve named this project Cathedral in the Clouds.

cathedral_logo_sketches

Not only have we sang the praises Saint Bavo cathedral in our home town of Ghent as a source of inspiration so many times that at one point it was mentioned on our Wikipedia page, we have also, alongside our desire to work with Christian iconography mentioned before, had several ideas for videogames that take place in simulated churches. So the puzzle pieces are coming together. It’s very exciting!

cathedral_sketches

Our cathedral will only exist “in the clouds” that is to say in Virtual Reality. It’s an almost imaginary place that we intend to expand as new Kijkdoos pieces are being created. For every Kijkdoos piece we will add a chapel or niche to the cathedral building where the art can be experienced, much as is the case in actual cathedrals –except that in cyberspace there’s no physical constraints to expansion.

We don’t expect VR — which should enter the market in the fall or early next year, I believe — to become accessible to a wide audience very rapidly. As such, a certain pilgrimage will be appropriately required: to VR goggles connected to a computer that can run the simulation.

The individual pieces — what this project is all about — will still be shared as separate apps, downloads, web sites or videos, whichever medium seems to fit. In a way the Cathedral is mostly a name to bundle the entire project.

Although we are very excited about building a virtual house of cyberworship! Especially since we’re embracing the idea that it takes years, decades to build a cathedral. I imagine it will start as a rather sparse place and become increasingly ornate as the project grows. I hope that we can use the opportunity for patronage in much the same way as traditional churches: people fund certain parts of the church or pay for the creation of a particular altar piece, sculpture or painting. There’s wonderful opportunities here for Kickstarter rewards. But I hope this sort of patronage can continue beyond that. We’re building a temple for our cyber-community!


It was in the Gothic Revival Notre-Dame Basilica in Montréal where, in 2011, the desire to create art with Christian iconography really set its fangs in us never to let go.

As you might have gathered from the logo design (which is by no means final: this is not commercial, we don’t need brand consistency), we’ve been inspired by Neo-Gothic (or Gothic Revival) style lately. It’s a style of architecture and decoration that peaked in the 19th century. Neo-Gothic artists rejected the rationalism that came out of the renaissance in favor of reviving the style of medieval cathedrals. A typically romantic movement that often produces very ornate spectacles (if somewhat less devout than the original).

Once again, we’ve started a Tumblr log where we collect reference materials for the project. Have a look: http://kijkdoos.tumblr.com.

There’s no way you could be as excited about this project as we are. But I hope you like where we’re going!

–Michaël.

PS: Feel free to ask questions in the comments. We have no secrets for our patrons.

Kijkdoos

Development Log, Kijkdoos

Obsession

Auriea and I have had a desire to create pieces depicting typical Christian themes for a long time. Probably because we often visit museums and have had very deep aesthetic experiences with especially late Gothic, renaissance and baroque art. We are not Christians ourselves but some depictions of the Madonna and Child, the Pietà, the Crucifixion, the Visitation, the Annunciation, the Last Judgment and so on, have deeply moved us. In part through the power of beauty to connect with the cosmos but also because of the emotions they inspire: love, empathy, patience, kindness, and so on. These images touched us so much that we have long wanted to use them in some way in our own medium.

Over the years we’ve returned to this desire again and again, but it wasn’t until very recently that finally an idea came to us that we really felt could work. Taking some distance from games probably enabled this. Because the idea is very simple. Not a game at all.

Description

kijkdoos-sketch

I want to create living virtual sculptures. Mostly depictions of a single human body, posed to fit in a rectangular box: so either standing up or lying down. The idea is to present this body more or less in life size. So your screen would act as a sort of window through which you would always only see part of the body and need to slide horizontally or vertically to see the rest. Eve with a serpent, the body of Christ, Judas hanging, Maria Magdalene covered with hair, a nursing Madonna, etc. Subtle changes in the box demonstrate that this is a real time scene, not a still image. The body, if alive, is breathing, maybe even looking at you, blood is flowing, insects, dust, light. We expect this to be a very intimate experience. In many cases a change will happen over time, sometimes dramatic (a box filling up with the blood of the Lamb) but most often very slowly. In such cases, the experience would have a beginning and an end.

There’s no other interaction than sliding. But we are playing with the idea of using the image from the monitor’s camera (if one is present) to influence light effects in the virtual scene.

The experience would be one of contemplation, of course. And as such the spectator would be required  to spend some time with the piece. During this time they can figure out what the image can mean for them. (We recently discovered that there’s a name for these sorts of images: Andachtsbilder.)

We’re considering different media for production and distribution. Definitely downloadable software running in realtime on your own devices. But also the web, video, physical installations and Virtual Reality.

In a way this is a combination of two previous games: the box from Vanitas filled with the still body of Salome from Fatale. These happen to be our least popular games. But maybe two negatives make a positive. Not that that matters. We're going for intensity of experience here, not mass entertainment.
In a way this is a combination of two previous games: the wooden box from Vanitas filled with the still body of Salome from Fatale. These happen to be our least popular games. But maybe two negatives make a positive. Not that it matters. We’re aiming for intensity of experience here, not mass entertainment.

 

Aesthetic style

Another long time obsession that I want to address in this project is our desire for an aesthetic style of figuration that exploits the strengths of realtime 3D (while rejecting its weaknesses). This means embracing the synthetic nature of 3D modeling and rejecting photographic realism (and other forms of imitation). In art history we’re especially inspired by the Flemish primitives and Northern Renaissance. So on the edge between symbolic and naturalistic. But polygons and pixels are not paint and panel. We want to find a digital equivalent for the techniques of Van Eyck, van der Weyden, Christus, et al, not imitate the end result.

We have tried to do this in every figurative game we’ve made so far but there’s always been a million other things to do and we were never quite able to nail it, to our great frustration. Since in this project, the depiction of the body is the entire point, we can devote all of our attention to figuring out a form of representation that is true to the medium, and to our contemporary era.

The Salome character in our game Fatale (on the left) is probably the most beautiful character in all of our work. It was designed, modeled and textured by Takayoshi Sato, one of the best game artists around, famous for his work on the early Silent Hill games. The Madonna on the right was painted on a piece of wood by Jean Fouquet in the 15th century. One could argue that Sato’s Salome looks more realistic. But for our current project, Fouquet’s Madonna feels more suitable. Not that we want to imitate paint on panel but the stylization and exaggeration of the form and the appropriateness of the execution to its medium are what we want to find an equivalent for in realtime 3D. Because we believe that this will help contemplation. We wouldn’t dream of ever hoping to reach this goal. But it’s something to aim for. And the contrast is sufficiently severe to serve as a useful reference.

 

Funding

This is quite an elaborate project. Especially since we want each piece to be utterly lavish. There’s no cutting corners here. Every piece needs to be excessive, have an almost decadent feel to it: a very deliberate and detailed presentation that doesn’t do much, that just sits there, waiting for your contemplation. Much like the old altar pieces that often took years to make.

So how do we fund the production of such an ambitious and somewhat crazy project?

I want to try a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter. Not because it seems like an especially suitable environment to fund digital art (since this is obviously not a game). But because this is the project we are most passionate about and I believe many Kickstarter backers (myself definitely included) support the passion of creators more than they want to possess the objects being created.

But it’s a difficult project to present. A description of it may sound rather dull. And I don’t want to present a rough mock-up or prototype for fear that people might draw the wrong conclusions about the potential of the end result. Kickstarter is about fantasies anyway. It’s about supporting dreams, not buying products. That’s how I see it, a least.

An additional problem that worries me is the subject matter. Christianity is not very popular in our circles. Some atheists can respond extremely aggressively against mentions of religion, especially Christianity. I will try to circumvent this by stressing that I am doing this project being an atheist myself focusing on the humanist aspects of the messages in these scenes, and the social benefits of contemplation and meditation. And I hope that my desire to embrace my own cultural roots, as a Flemish atheist brought up in Catholic schools, can justify my use of these themes (in contrast to, for instance, the Western appropriation of Eastern religions for the purpose of meditation).

Feedback

I’d love to hear how you feel about this idea!
Do you find it interesting?
Do you think it can work?
Can we get it funded?
Do any questions come up?

The plan

Development Log

We have decided not to rely on commerce anymore for funding our production. Not so much because we dislike commerce but simply because we’re not very good at it and we feel we should devote more of our time to creation and less to trying to sell the products we create. The huge benefit of this approach is that it liberates us from all sorts of concerns that may have been compromising our work for years. I believe this will lead to a significant improvement in the quality of our work.

So instead of borrowing money in the hopes we can pay it back from revenue gathered through sales, we will now collect the money required for production (most of which simply goes to food and rent) before, or while, we are creating. Part of this may be covered by art grants and subsidies. But we still believe in what we called a “punk economy” in our Realtime Art Manifesto.

We like the idea of forming a sort of symbiotic relationship with our audience. If enough of you can contribute a small amount of money every month, then we can produce all the art that we hope brings you (and others) much joy. That you do this while we are creating, and not after the fact, means that our work can be much more pure and sincere. This is very different from making a product that one needs to sell when it’s done, which always influences the decisions made during creation, often in a bad way.

This may seem overly idealistic, but if I look back on our 12 years of game development, I have to admit that sales only supported us in part. In a way it’s more realistic for us to not count on sales at all. We can still sell the products of our work. But we shouldn’t need to for survival. We’ve always found it a bit absurd to sell software since it’s so easy and cheap to just copy it. It feels more honest and fair that people who enjoy our work simply pay for its creation, rather than buying a product (that could just as well be copied for free).

Die ochtend, in bed

Development Log, Die ochtend, in bed

Die ochtend, in bed (“That morning, in bed”) is the only game we’re currently working on officially (in the sense that there’s a budget for producing a prototype for it). It’s a small smartphone game that we are making in collaboration with Flemish author Gaea Schoeters, based on her novel De kunst van het vallen (“The art of falling”).

The novel is about the unnamed “I” getting over a previous relationship that was broken off as soon as it stopped being illicit. A love affair is compared with a dictatorship and the end of the affair with the fall of communism. The falling, then, is associated with the diving of one of the main characters, a young man named Alex whom “I” falls in love with. At least in the first part of the novel. The second part tells the same story again, but with a slight difference. As a novel in which images are freely associated and where truth is always uncertain, it is remarkably suitable for a game.

In the game that we are making in collaboration with the writer you play the role of “I” and the computer plays the role of Alex, the lover. After a night of love making, Alex roams around the room and asks you about objects that he sees. Many of these objects remind of the previous relationship. You can choose to have “I” say the truth about them, lie, evade or ignore. Step by step you learn more about what happened, or about what “I” imagined or wished for or thought about.

The objects will probably be presented fairly abstractly. The game will simply be a succession of images that you click on. Since this sounded like the old HyperCard program (that Myst was originally made in) and I have a desire to experiment with other authoring tools than Unity, I started looking around for a new application to build this game in.

I’ve found two that I like. Both are explicitly inspired by HyperCard.

PencilCase is a very cute application where you drag and drop different media (including 3D objects) onto “cards” that you can then program interaction with through a puzzle-like interface. The application compiles exclusively for iOS which is an advantage on the one hand because it probably works very well on the iPhone (our target platform for this game) but also a disadvantage because I dislike learning how to use an application that is locked into one particular platform, especially one owned by a large corporation. PencilCase also has a license that you pay for per month and I worry about access to my source code later.

So I’m currently prototyping in Tumult Hype instead. I am interested in the web again because nobody cares about it anymore as a platform for art. So it’s a good place to hide from the game industry. Plus the web is super-accessible. Everyone has a browser and internet access these days. Some people don’t even know anymore what “download” means, let alone “install”. Hype’s interface is similar to PencilCase’s but even more Flash-like, as it’s entirely focused around a timeline. It feels very solid to work with. But its dedication to the web that attracted me also limits it to the piecemeal way in which HTML 5 is implemented across browsers and platforms. I’m happy to learn how to use the application but maybe I’ll only use it for prototyping this project and make the final version in something else (PencilCase, or maybe even Unity). We’ll see.

We’re in the very early stages of the prototype and since the game is so text-driven, a lot of the work is currently being done by the writer. I find the prospect of building a game around a structure proposed by a writer very exciting. Although we will undoubtedly add some programmed logic as well, to give the characters more personality, by making things less predictable, and changing the structure based on simulated emotions.

One hugely exciting thing for me is that this game will be in Dutch. I’ve never made a game in my own language before. The novel is written in Flemish and the funding comes from the Netherlands. Enough reasons to make a game in my mother tongue!
(another way to liberate myself from the Anglo-Saxon dominated game industry)

Welcome to my new development log!

Development Log

I want to share the things that I’m working on with you, so you can see where we are and where we’re heading and when you can expect new releases. This first post is a little introduction to what’s going on at the moment. In future posts I will elaborate on single projects in more details.

My time is divided among a number of projects at the moments. I’m continuing support of Sunset by fixing bugs and adding translations (French is almost done!). I’m prototyping two new projects. A lightly interactive animation film based on a game idea we had called An empty World (teaser video here), now codenamed in Dutch Een lege Wereld. And a collaboration with Flemish novelist Gaea Schoeters, named Die ochtend, in bed (Dutch for “That morning, in bed”), for which we were given a small grant, . There’s also several older ideas that offer new potential now that I’m now looking at them with non-game eyes. We have two collections of images on Tumblr that I want to use as starting points for new projects: Cinderoohla and The Neighbours. More about those later. And the day before yesterday, while visiting the Wallraf-Richartz museum in Cologne, an idea finally came to me on how to make the piece about religious imagery that’s haunted us for years.

For one of these projects (or maybe yet another one) we will run a Kickstarter campaign in October. Not sure which one yet. I originally wanted to run a Kickstarter for a graphic novel about the wolves in our 2009 game The Path. I’ve written the scenario for it but we’ve decided against dealing with such extremely violent subject matter at the moment.

Looking forward to sharing more.

And thanks again for your support! You are the cornerstone for this new mode of creation that we’re embarking on.