Make love, notgames.

Notgames is an initiative that we started in the wake of my New Years Resolutions. It has been growing behind the scenes and is already a nice place where developers can meet and share experiences. The purpose of the Notgames initiative is to encourage and support the development of digital entertainment and art that is not games. You can read more about our intentions here.

The most active area of the initiative is the web forum where we discuss development and theory, each other’s work and that of others. There’s also a Tumblr feed which acts as a kind of collective stream of consciousness in images and words. And we recently started a blog and a Facebook page.

The initiative is open to anyone with an interest in the creation of leisure software outside of the confines of games. It’s a supportive environment for the exploration of this vast new terrain. Register for the forum if you would like to participate in the discussions, the Tumblr feed or the blog. Or simply become a fan on Facebook to stay in the loop.

Interview with Fuco Ueda

Fuco UedaIn April 2009, we had the honor of interviewing Japanese artist Fuco Ueda, thanks to Miss Ellie Nagata’s kind offer to translate. Miss Ueda’s work has been a great source of inspiration and strength when we were creating The Path, as her work also seems to deal with the pleasure and pain of being a girl. In a way, the Red Girls are some kind of estranged cousins of the skinny contemporary nymphs in the pictures by Fuco Ueda. So it’s only appropriate that it’s our girls who do the questioning in the interview.

Enjoy the short but sweet interview (English and Japanese)!

The Path Anniversary: last days of sale

The Path is 1

Our celebration of the one year anniversary of The Path ends tomorrow. Until then, you can still buy all of our titles at half the price.

The limited Anniversary Edition USB drive will remain available after the sale. Until they’re sold out.

Interview with Ray Caesar

Ray Caesar: Blessed

When creating the art style for The Path, we were influenced by several wonderful artists. We are trying to interview them all. Our interview with Lisa Falzon was published a while ago. And the interview with Ray Caesar was done in that same period. But we never got around to publishing it. What better moment than the first anniversary of The Path to share this very insightful and inspiring interview with one of the world’s most imaginative contemporary artists!

People think I paint pictures of children… I don’t! I paint pictures of the human soul… that alluring image of the hidden part of ourselves… some call them ghosts or spirits but I see them as the image of who we truly are, made manifest with all the objects and bruises that filled the story of each life.

I look at the game industry today and see only one game… it starts the same and ends the same and it’s sold in a variety of names and packages and has no mystery because it is not utilizing creativity as well as it could…

Enjoy the interview!

The Path Anniversary: postmortem 5: conclusion

The final chapter of our postmortem of The Path evaluates the very personal creative process and makes notes about lessons learned. It’s been quite the emotional roller-coaster for us to go over this immense production again. And there’s so many things that we haven’t even touched upon. But the text is long enough as it is. :) We feel older and wiser now. And stronger with experience. The Path is our most successful project to date. But that success came at a price. Six innocent girls found their end in the process -it was unavoidable. And grandmother is always sick.

Read the conclusion here.

The Path Anniversary: postmortem 3

The third chapter of our postmortem of The Path is about what we think went right and what we think went wrong during and after the production. Several items on the list are not so black or white, as they have positive and negative sides. Overall, releasing a game like The Path probably has a similar effect on its creators as giving birth on a mother: the baby is such a glorious thing that you forget -or trivialize- all the hardship and pain that preceded its existence. Still, it’s good to stop for a moment and evaluate the entire project, in the hope of avoiding mistakes in the future, and repeating successes.

Please read on.

The Path Anniversary: postmortem 2

Red Girls models for The Path

The second part of our postmortem of The Path is written mostly by Auriea and explains the design process that went into the game. From the uncertainty at the start of the project, over mixed experiences with collaborators, the inspiration of glitches and the importance of prototyping, to our ideas about 3D aesthetics and dealing with personal emotions in videogames. Illustrated with work-in-progress sketches and screenshots.

Enjoy!

The Path Anniversaire, Jubiläum, Aniversario, etc: translations!

Thanks to the hard work of many volunteers, The Path has been translated in several languages. The following translations are available free of charge as a patch for the Windows version or automatically on Steam when you change your interface settings.

  • Danish translation by Tobias Kosmos and Nicklas Beck Jørgensen
  • Dutch translation by Michaël Samyn
  • French translation by Yann Cossiaux
  • German translation by Susanne Laws
  • Hungarian translation by Kiss Helga, Dékány Csilla and Ország Tibor
  • Italian translation by Matteo Sarnari
  • Portuguese translation by Bruno de Figueiredo
  • Romanian translation by Andra Andrei
  • Spanish translation by Ricardo Oyon

Once again, thanks to all the translators for putting so much effort into making The Path more accessible.

The language patch for The Path is a continuous project. We are working on more translations and will release them in an updated version of the patch as they get finished.