Tale of Tales: 8

TALE OF TALES

game demo project

MOTIVATION

Thanks to interactive media, art can become a relevant factor in society.
Art has become a very marginal aspect of contemporary society. But, unlike cinema and television, interactive media are still very much in their formative stages. We believe that each and every artist currently involved with these new media can contribute to their development. This is an opportunity that we cannot pass by. Not if we want to avoid the kind of marginalization of art that we have seen in film and television. We believe that, thanks to new media, art can, once again, become a relevant factor in society.

Computer games are technically the most advanced interactive medium.
Developing a computer game requires a lot of time and know-how. Mainstream games are generally developed by teams of 10 or 20 (sometimes up to 50) people over a period of 2 to 3 years. Creating the various assets needed for these games, requires extremely high skills. As a result most games on the market are purely commercial products that are absolutely uninteresting from an artistic point of view. Yet computer games are by far the most developed interactive technology. But because of the reasons mentioned above, this technology is not easily accessible to people who would be able to use it in an artistically interesting way. We are new media artists. We know very well what we want to do with interactive media. We also know that the technology that we need for doing what we envision, does not exist yet. But the technology that comes closest at this point in time is computer games technology.

The game demo is the work of art.
"8" is an experimental computer game. The project involves two stages. The first stage is the development of a demo of the game. The second stage will be the production and distribution of the actual game. Stage 1, the demo, will be used to raise the necessary funding for stage 2, the game. "8" should become a mass product that is available in normal stores to normal people. Not an artistic curiosum that will only be sold in museum stores. It is for stage 1 that we are still seeking additional funding. The production of the demo will require about a year of research and development done by two people. The bulk of the budget will go to simply allowing us to spend the required time on the project without needing to engage in commercial activities. We plan to have the game demo available by May 2003, providing, obviously, that we get the necessary funding. This demo will be a fully playable version of part of the game, but most importantly, it will constitute the "research report" mentioned earlier, aka the "work of art". So, if the project fails, i.e. if we would not succeed in producing the actual game as a mass product, we would still have the demo which we could subsequently exhibit in all the art museums and galleries that may want to show it.*

To bring the art experience to the people
The goal of the game is the same as the goal of most of our other work: to submerge the user in a virtual environment in the hope of giving him or her a little comfort and a little strength which should help him or her to face every day reality a little better. This is very much a design brief and links the project very closely to entertainment. That is exactly the point of our work. We do not believe in making hermetic work with interactive media. One of the many borders that we think are irrelevant in interactive media, is the border between high art and low art. As a matter a fact, we regret the modern movement's policy of turning the appreciation of art into a very specialized domain, widening the gap between the art and the audience in the name of freedom of expression. What is expression, we are left to wonder, if no one is listening? We accuse the modern movement of having destroyed beauty and art in our every day lives. And we wish to start repairing the damages by bringing back the experience of art to the people. It is thus extremely important that "8" appears as a computer game at all times, since calling it a work of art would eliminate the target audience from ever accessing it.

New media technologies are desperately in need of artistic input
Interactive media technologies develop very rapidly. Software appears and disappears faster than anything we've seen before. Artists and designers are struggling to keep up. It is no wonder then that no one seems to be able to find the time to research the potential of the medium. Many artists seem to have given up and are hiding behind all sorts of socio-political justifications for their low-tech approach to the medium. Yet we think that it is of the utmost importance that artists be on the forefront of technological evolution if we don't want the pornographers and the multinational commercial news and entertainment complex to be the only ones who define the standards for creativity within these media. We have an opportunity to make a difference right here and now. That's where we like to situate our work in general and this project in particular. And even if we do not manage to broaden the conceptual approaches within interactive media as a whole, surely "8" will become a major contribution to the games development community, an area that is desperately in need of some non-violent originality.

*The main application that we are using for the development of this demo is software called Quest3D (http://www.quest3D.com). The Quest3D developers also offer a free browser plugin to internet users that allows them to see most of the interactive content made with Quest3D on the world wide web. As a result, we would be able to use the web as a distribution medium for the game and/or the game demo.