Game Design: Finding the essence of what we do

BigDave

A small article that came through me today. Any thoughts?

Game Design: Finding the essence of what we do http://wp.me/p46gGM-tj

The_Gamesalad_Guru

This goes to the ultimate question, "what is art"? Then this leads to the second question "what defines an artist"?

SlickZero

Perfect example of "Does life imitate art, or does art imitate life?"

Personally, I think art imitates life. Because, if your life is imitating art, then you are a follower, and a psycho that needs help getting a grip with reality. But that's just me.

Lovejoy

@SlickZero said:
Perfect example of "Does life imitate art, or does art imitate life?"

Personally, I think art imitates life. Because, if your life is imitating art, then you are a follower, and a psycho that needs help getting a grip with reality. But that's just me.

Must learn to follow before you can lead.

SlickZero

Right, but living your life and making decisions based on what you see in art is irresponsible, was my point.

Lovejoy

@SlickZero said:
Right, but living your life and making decisions based on what you see in art is irresponsible, was my point.

Yeah, i was just messing around with you.

SlickZero

Dangit! And here I thought I was un-trollable! :P

The_Gamesalad_Guru

I think creativity is the key. Is ones creation a self expression in some way. In other words, how much of you is in the creation. The less percentage of the concepts that comes from ones imagining determines it's art level.

Franto

@SlickZero said:
Perfect example of "Does life imitate art, or does art imitate life?"

Personally, I think art imitates life. Because, if your life is imitating art, then you are a follower, and a psycho that needs help getting a grip with reality. But that's just me.

I think its a cycle. Life was always imitating something before art came around, if it wasn't imitating other people, we were imitating the enviroment around us, the animals{which is why primitive human societies from long ago where wearing animal costumes and mimicking their ways with dances or making likenesses of them}. It's a universally human thing. We may have inclinations towards certain things. People mimicking the bad things already had an inclination towards such a route. Humans pick what they want to mimic, and what they don't want to mimic.

Human brains mimic, learn, and absorb the environment they are in to adapt and evolve. Art as it is now is a more advanced, sophisticated tool to guide evolution of more advanced organisms in the long term. Art is also a form of communication, which allows us to share ideas, a way of life, stories, and so on.

Art was born. Art imitated life, and then life imitated art, and the cycle began. The regions where art developed saw rapid advancement of culture and technology, such as Europe and China. Other places, which lack art in their culture, remain barbaric, impoverished, and with the people being simple, with some being violent, even to the modern age.

So aren't the personalities we have, a build up of stuff we have been mimicking and learning of since we were born?

Although, if your talking about the short term, then I agree, people who have no personalities of their own and just mimic whats popular or the first thing they see, are truly empty. Especially those who can't think for themselves or can't create on their own. But I wouldn't call that art. The term Art must not be lowered to such a level.

BigDave

@The_Gamesalad_Guru‌

reminded me to your questioning.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Pl0A7Jl6_GU

The_Gamesalad_Guru

My partner @RP‌ and I follow the philosophy of game making as a creative expression. Since we both come from other mediums, me screenwriting, him artist, both of us film guys. We couldn't imagine approaching it any other way. We don't monitor or track what the top games are. We rely on creative inspiration to drive our game concepts. We approach all our games with a specific creative angle. We try to bring a cohesiveness to all our game assets from art style to sculpting the perfect music and FX. In our new game Atom Smash we went with a particular art style to bring a voice to the game. We are using the 1950s atomic art style. This we believe adds a flavor to what is a simple game mechanic. The game is completely accelerometer based. We spend lots of time sifting through ideas and art concepts and music. We just don't throw our games together. Every scrap is drawn out our inspiration and intuition. For us game making is just another extension of the other creative disiplines we work in.