14th
Less is more - The Digital Renaissance by Phil Fish
Few months ago, April 8th 2008 actually, I had the chance to go a conference on Gaming gave by Interfaces Montreal. All the majors like EA and Ubisoft where there, but there was also one guy alone, doing his own indie game called Fez. His name is Phil Fish and he did quite an impression on the crowd.
Here’s the video of Phil Fish on indie gaming that he presented that evening (because of the player auto-play, I didn’t embed the video).
Phil Fish represents the game creator’s perspective. In the gaming industry money is the problem. Creating a game is expensive … gaming companies want to recoup investments and make money, so they don’t take risks. But why are games so expensive ? Because of the art ! Ever since the beginning of the game industry, games have not evolved much … but today they are much more visually attractive and that’s what costs so much. However, independent game designers have found success by making games interesting in another way. Phil explains the concept of “Digital Renaissance”; stop representing things as they are, instead represent them as what we “see”. This esthetic can’t be ignored and can be realized with less budget and less resources, resulting in games that are less expensive but just as distracting.
To know more about Phil Fish, you can visit the Independent Gaming Source where they have interview, game demo, news, etc.
