Ben-DutkaWell, it's a noble dream, anyway.
Thatgamecompany boss Jenova Chen is saddened that people tend to grow up and leave video games behind. He'd rather the industry was a "respected" entertainment medium like film or music, and then maybe people would remain interested for the majority of their lives.
During a recent Mashabale interview , Chen said that while games have always been a part of his life, a lot of his friends have stopped playing.
"People still read novels, watched movies, listened to music. The fact most of my friends are abandoning games makes me feel sad. How can I help video games not just be for kids, and respected from people of all ages and genders? My dream is to make everyone love video games."
Chen continued by saying that most games still cater to a young male audience and if gaming is to progress, it has to become "healthy." It's up to developers to produce such productions:
"Look at the genres women like: a romantic comedy game doesn't exist. Few examples of a documentary game exist," Chen said. "What is the equivalent of a real drama game? They don't exist. Emotion with that complexity for a more mature, older audience are necessary to make medium like video games healthy, so it can be highly respected like the film industry."
Given games like Flower and Journey , we'd say Chen knows what he's talking about. He's obviously someone who wants to see video games offer more in the way of diverse entertainment and we're all for that. We need more people like this in the industry, that's for sure.
He seems a little behind the times.
How come the "times" always means it's ok to turn into a effeminate wussy. It's not! We need more bash your brains, blow stuff up games and an 80's attitude where you just get your ass kicked for being a wussy or pot smoking hippy. HIPPY!!!!
Now if you will excuse me, I am in the process of turning Buttkiss and Worldmonkey into real men by making them play Street Fighter instead of FF 10 part 3: Dresses for you and me. Weeee. ( really.)
The crack head calling out the marijuana smoking hippy is a bit of a pot calling the cooker black scenario, isn't it? (See what I did there?)
Man ethird, that's gotta be one heluva drug you're on.
Last edited by Underdog15 on 4/17/2014 5:07:41 PM
Effeminate wussies? Pfft. I believe that we're called "sensitive, new-age guys". We're just looking for a bit of emotion, a bit of intelligence. That's not too much to ask.
I'm just surprised he goes through the trouble of making additional accounts to give himself upvotes.
It's already happening more and more, but it remains mostly in the indie realm, where Chen is involved. Heavy Rain, to a lesser extent Beyond, TLoU (sorta), Gone Home, Brothers, Catherine. I think we definitely need more games like these that sideline the violence in favour of deep thought, but Chen just sounds a bit self-gratifying in these quotes; as though he thinks that he's the only one doing something different.
That being said, I agree that it needs to happen more in the AAA sector.
Not sure if they were indie or not(got them digitally)but I'd have to add that Rain & Puppeteer were unique, and very, very, good games too.
Strictly speaking, neither was indie, but Puppeteer was pretty brilliant, though I felt that it didn't follow through well enough on the idea of having so many different heads.