"Obviously the in-game music was entirely electronic, with the exception of choral voices," blogs Wintory, "but I had an idea floating around my brain (somewhat resembling the jelly fish, careening out of control after spinning too quickly) for how to handle an adaptation."

Enjoy the end result as performed by the Golden State Pops Orchestra.

flOw Like You've Never Heard It Before [PlayStation.Blog]

The two games do look mighty similar and have pretty much the same player objective. When people pointed that out in comments for a YouTube trailer of Aquatica, Ketera Software responded by saying the source code was "100% written from scratch."

This was two hours after Chen himself had seen the game and made the following Twitter post:

"I released flOw source for people to learn. I didn't expect to see it on iphone without quoting the creator http://www.ketara.ca/aqua.html."

Luckily, this scandal seems to have a happy ending. 1up.com contacted both parties for comment and received a conciliatory statement from Ketera — and now Aquatica's website reads: "Please note: Aquatica is an iPhone from-the-ground-up re-make (FAN VERSION) of the famous flOw game created by Jenova Chen of the ThatGameCompany fame. We deeply apologize for not properly crediting him earlier. Our mistakes were caused by naivety, not malice."

I'm pleased the situation was worked out so quickly — the longer a scandal festers, the harder it is for a game to get clear of it and be awesome on its own. And it is awesome to have flOw on the iPhone, even if it has a different name and isn't affiliated with Sony.

Hm. I wonder what Sony has to say about Aquatica?

Aquatica iPhone Devs Respond to flOw Creator Accusations [1up]

The first few World War II shooters Chen played floored him. We were all floored until the last Great War became such a vanilla setting for shooters. Old hat, and don't we want something new?

With games like Flower and flOW, that's exactly what Chen tries to give players: Something new. And he's giving them that via a new method for console gamers, digital distribution. Each year, video game after video game hits retailers. Few of them we remember; few of them stick with us. The rest sit on our shelves with nothing more lasting than the plastic boxes they came in.

ThatGameCompany doesn't do sex or violence. "I've played a lot of first person shooters as a child," says Chen. "I don't see the need to improve my headshot." More importantly, he doesn't see the need to make games to have other players improve their headshots — not because he's some prude, but because it's been done. A gajillion times.

"I joke that we probably have the highest per-day rate of conversations about ethics and morality when it comes to making video games," says ThatGameCompany president Kellee Santiago. "We take artistic responsibility very seriously, as we believe we owe it to players to always provide them a meaningful experience in exchange for their time and money." Something more meaningful than exploding barrels or ridiculous cleavage. Something neither black nor white, but gray.

For Chen, his earliest emotional connections to entertainment were via gaming. "My parents restricted what I watched on TV and the books I read," he recalls of his childhood in Shanghai, China. "I guess they were worried about content." Instead, his computer engineer dad got him a computer (a PC-286), figuring that it would inspire young Jenova to follow in his old man's footsteps. It instead inspired him to spend an inordinate amount of time gaming. "They thought I was studying," says Chen. "They didn't even know I was playing computer games."

Chen did follow in his father's footsteps — to a point. He got a Bachelor in Computer Science and Engineering at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 2003. But he wanted to somehow combine his computer science background with his love of art and enrolled at the University of Southern California. "When I came to America, I couldn't believe how green everything was," Chen recalls. "It was such a shock — like the first time I cried." An ocean away from dense, urban Shanghai.

"I met Jenova in 2004, when he took my seminar in critical game studies," recalls associate professor Tracy Fullerton at USC's Interactive Media Division. This was the first time USC offered the grad school study of games at academic level. The students debated and discussed game theory, and, when they were finished with that, they debated it some more.



Students were asked to keep a "design journal." "The idea was to get students to really think about the games they were playing, to analyze them in terms of their mechanics and the types of play they promoted," says Fullerton. All the students did the assignment, but Chen did more of it, turning in a hundred or so pages of analysis of the games he was playing. "It was incredible," says Fullerton, "here was this guy who was pretty quiet in class but it was clear that there was a lot going on in his head."

Everyone has ideas. Everyone has things going on in their heads. It's a matter of getting them out of your head and onto paper — or in this case, into an actual game. 2004 — one year after Jenova had come to America — was a watershed. At that year's GDC, he checked out the indie-slash-student games. "Honestly, I wasn't that impressed."

Chen put his money where his mouth was, and pitched what would become Cloud — what Chen calls "a game that's not a game" — to Game Innovation Lab at USC, which Fullerton directs. It wasn't Chen's first game, as he'd worked on a couple PC titles while an undergrad in Shanghai. This was, however, his biggest. "We would give the team $20,000, a place in the lab and faculty advisement and see if we could make something truly innovative," says Fullerton. "So we chose the idea for Cloud out a bunch of ideas – of all of them, it seemed the most intriguing and definitely risky."

Three months later, the end result was risky. Risky, elegant, beautiful and deceptively simple, where simple is not a euphemism for simplistic. The dreamlike Cloud let players fly through the sky, leaving a fluffy vapor trail behind. While Chen ended up taking an industry job under Will Wright at EA, he and his USC classmate Kellee Santiago were able to parlay Cloud into a three game deal with Sony. To date, ThatGameCompany has turned out two of those titles: fl0w and Flower.

In an industry where first-person-shooters continue to dominate, these titles stick out. They're gentle games about gentle things and are almost poetic in their lack of specific meaning. According to Chen, "The fact that we have funding from Sony to make these crazy games says something." Perhaps it says how far the industry has come — that there is a place for a unique developer like ThatGameCompany.

Sony seems to think so — well, at least at Sony. "New concepts like Flower which really go outside traditional design can sometimes be hard to communicate to consumers and even internally," says Sony Santa Monica's external product development direct Tina Kowalewski, "but at Sony we would like to think we have the foresight to take well-calculated risks which provide us content players cannot find anywhere else and production schedules which make such risks viable."

"Games need different hues of color," says Chen."Novels and films has many different genres. Games are mostly action. Most focus on primal feelings. And the industry is constantly produc[ing] Hollywood summer blockbusters." They are summer blockbusters not only in the non-stop action, but in their bloated budgets and endless sequels.

While titles like Flower clock in at a couple of hours, that does not mean they are casual. "Casual games," says Chen, "are too shallow." What they are is easy to get into. ThatGameCompany wanted to make a new, yet totally accessible experience. In Flower, for example, Chen's small team removed everything that made test-players utter the word "fuck" in frustration.

"Having a player play a sequel or grinding through to boost game play time is a crime," says the iconoclastic Chen. "And if we did a sequel, it would have to be something new. That's why it's easier just to do a totally new game." Chen and ThatGameCompany are moving on to their next challenge: a new project that they've just began. "This new game is slightly larger and more of a challenge," says Chen. "The game concept is big. It's risky." Riskier than games about clouds and flowers? "Yes."

Photos

Handy, even if one of those is a very odd mix of genres, but we thought we'd be seeing less UMDs, not more. No pricing yet, so try not to get too excited about the big big savings.

PSP PSN downloadable games get UMD collections [Siliconera]

Into the Pixel is a juried art exhibition that selects sixteen works of video game art to be displayed both digitally and in actual exhibits, like the one currently at E3. The exhibit is an opportunity for video and computer game artists to showcase their work and receive critical feedback from both digital and fine art experts; it also showcases the actual visual art of games in creative and unique ways. The pieces range from playful to serious, and utilize a variety of visual styles to convey their subjects. Now in its fifth year, the selected entries are usually quite impressive, and this year was no exception.

The exhibition hall was quiet compared to the chaos both above and below it — a few people wandered through, but it was otherwise silent. The exhibition included some of the winners from the 2007 competition (including my personal favorite, "Defeated Dragon" by Daniel Dociu (Guild Wars)), and it was nice to see the art in large format. Four of the sixteen entries were takes on Guild Wars (I was particularly fond of the one entitled "Four Knights" by Richard Anderson); also covered were games like flOw, Fallout 3, and Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, and untitled DS game (seen at the top; "Puzzle World Twilight" by Jay Epperson).

The exhibition will be headed to E for All in October, but you can all see the winning entries over at the Into the Pixel website, which also includes archives of art and commentary from previous years. A few selections from the silent gallery hall are below.

I think it's just too easy for us. And, also, if I just want to make violent games or fun games... It's not to say that fun games are bad, but I could just go to work for Blizzard, or go to work for Maxis. And they make fun games, they make creative games. I could get a lot higher pay, and a much more stable job. Why not?

Why would I start a company just to make the same kind of game which I can get a much better life in another company? You know, the reason we started this company is because nobody is making this kind of game, and to expand that emotional spectrum of video games — having more people be able to enjoy video games. The only way to do it is to just do it yourself.

The interview touches on a lot of issues — from Sony to Passage to Spore — and worth a read through.

Finding A New Way: Jenova Chen And Thatgamecompany [Gamasutra]

Kellee Santiago (fl0w), Jon Mak (Everyday Shooter) and Pekko Koskinen (LudoCraft) told us of their obsessions during our first session of GDC's Independent Games Summit. And these simple ideas that make their minds spin forced us rethink games a bit as well.

Kellee Santiago
Her obsessions: Intrinsic Rewards and Linear Gameplay

Kellee Santiago has been scratching her head over this idea of intrinsic rewards in games—rewards born from the game's construct itself. She illustrates the idea through Steven Spieldberg's "Director's Chair," a game in which players learn how to make a movie, make it and are "rewarded" with a movie. This game, from 1996 I believe, has been rocking her world a bit.

She then questioned the intersection between these intrinsic rewards and linear gameplay: are longer games better? Santiago points out that our current review system values length, not necessarily quality—which is ironically flawed since none of us have all that much time to begin with. She concludes, how many awards it has and how long it takes are not indicative of a game's quality.

Jon Mak
His obsession: Input/Output Theory

Mak explains that video games are a balance between inputs (users hitting buttons) and outputs (pretty graphics and sound). But he argues that the output—the superficial—may actually be the more important part of gaming.

He loads a small tech demo he designed of a red ball that can jump up and down. It's pretty boring, he explains. But when doing nothing to the controls and merely adding more eye-catching animations (the ball squeezes and squishes like a cartoon as it hops), he thinks that the "game" gets far more interesting. And the thing is, he's freaking right. In shameful predictability, I want to play Red Ball Jumps Up And Down: The Game. Where do I enter my credit card info?

He wonders if the next logical step is designing a game in which the player pushes the same button over and over, making new, interesting things happen on the screen. Then he wonders jokingly if this game has been made already: Guitar Hero.

Pekko Koskinen
Obsession: How can games play in any medium, and what does this mean?

Koskinen took a turn for the theoretical, immediately boiling down "video games" to the idea of just "games." He argues that games transcend their medium (you can play chess on a computer screen, with physical pieces or in your head) while other forms are "rooted in their media" (a painting is no longer a painting without paint).

Ed note: I think that, maybe, Koskinen is comparing unlike categories. For instance, if we say a movie is not a movie without film, it's a bit unfair to compare that to a game. "Games" makes a huge category probably better compared to something broad like "story," in which case we see this same media transcendence.

Koskinen continues that games boil down to a series of fictional player behaviors, ultimately meaning that the game exists in the player. Koskinen is fascinated with developers not necessary designing games, but designing "lenses" for these player/games to view the world. "Game design" then becomes something broader, like personality design or even life design. The game can then just be a lens on top of ""how we walk to the bus stop," for instance.

Mak responds that maybe this is where his own arguments on input/output theory fall short because, as he so simply puts it, "The game is playing you."

And if you got this far, I hope you feel compelled to discuss some of these ideas on the comments. Our brains are too tired.

Yes, flOw's coming to the PSP. No, it's not coming in January. In case you hadn't put that one together yourself. Instead, Sony have announced today that the game's due on March 6, and will be available for download through the PC/PSP PlayStation Store. Developers SuperVillian say they've been able to "reconstruct and faithfully preserve the unique experience of flOw on Sony's premier handheld device", but whether that means this is a direct port of the PS3 version or something new, I don't know, since they both look the same to me.

Coming to PSP: Go with the flOw [PlayStation Blog]

flOw for PSP already has ratings of E from the ESRB and 3+ from PEGI, but the title hasn't been officially announced yet. We've contacted SCEA for more information and will update when we have more.

flOw [PlayStation.com via thatgamecompany forums and NeoGAF]

While some of the inclusions will be contested—Warhawk gets props for dumping single player?—and some are certainly recycled—Ultima Online "innovated" with its graphical overhaul years ago—the argument could be made that at least these efforts were successful. Others, like Portal just being Portal, will probably find few detractors.

They might not have been my choices, but I suppose I'll have to back that up with my own list.

TOP 10 GAME DESIGN INNOVATIONS 2007 [Next-Gen.biz]

The whole thing promises to grounded in emotion, giving players "possible interactions for playing as the wind." Don't worry, I'm sure she'll be talking about the game's weapon set at a future date and how online deathmatch works not long after that.

MIGS: First Details On flOwer [Gamasutra]

1. Sit your ass on the couch.
2. Load up your PS3.
3. Download Calling All Cars or Everyday Shooter for just $5, or 50% off
4. Download flOw or PixelJunk Racers for just $5, or 30% off
5. Play games, laugh at freezing masses, scratch testicles at will—should you have them. The deal is going on now through Nov 29th.

PlayStation Store Update [via vh1]

Rock Band's first batch of promised downloadable content has been added, bringing music from Metallica, Queens of the Stone Age, The Police, T. Rex, The Runaways, Foreigner, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Wolfmother and The Knack. Single songs are $1.99, with three song packs priced at $5.49.

An expansion pack for flOw adds a new campaign, new creature, a screen capturing feature and support for the DualShock 3 controller for $2.99. Need For Speed ProStreet also gets the expansion treatment, adding five exclusive cars and four career race days, if you subtract $9.99 from your bank account.

Downloadable games Everyday Shooter, PixelJunk Racers, Calling All Cars and flOw get a temporary price cut, each now available for $4.99 until 11/29.

Videos for Ratchet & Clank Future, Battlefield: Bad Company, Snakeball and the Blu-ray release of Superbad make for unplayable fare, with new Devil May Cry 4 wallpapers rounding it all out.

Normally an $8 buy-in, the ThatGameCompany aquatic adventure can be yours for a mere $5 until May 23rd. You could do worse things with a fiver, but this SIXAXIS-controlled former Flash game has been called a "glorified screensaver" by jaded types, so it's not for everyone.

Thanks for the pointer, Tim. Michael McWhertor

While profits have been on the decline for the games division since 2003, with a heavy loss suffered due to the PLAYSTATION 3 launch, Sony denies the cuts are directly connected. They point to "general changes in the games industry, such as the move to online distribution."

See, you try to do some good by downloading flOw and people lose their jobs. You can't win! Michael McWhertor

Sony Games Unit Weighs Job Cuts In Global Revamp [Wall Street Journal]

The following Friday (March 30) will see Super Rub-A-Dub hit for an unspecified price with flOw hitting one week later (April 6). No price has been set for flOw either. Go! Sudoku (April 13) and Go! Puzzle (April 20) hit the following two Fridays.

See, that wasn't so tough! Grab a lollipop on the way out. Michael McWhertor

In it, Santiago talks about the group's other PLAYSTATION 3 plans, multiplayer potential for flOw, why they missed previous release dates, and, most importantly, why there's that big "O" in the middle of the word. A good read for those of us looking for something to do between PS3 releases. Back to twiddling my thumbs! Michael McWhertor

TEHSCLUSIVE: An Interview with Kellee Santiago on flOw (PS3)! [IGN]

Good news, to be sure, but it comes just a day after potential hits Virtua Fighter 5 for the PS3, Crackdown for the Xbox 360 and Sonic and the Secret Rings for the Wii. That's an expensive week for multiplatform gamers.

More detail is available at the official flOw site. Michael McWhertor

Feel the flOw [Gaming-Age]