Archive of our old blog (2005-2010)
The Zillion Monkeys have translated their interview with us to Japanese. This is probably the first ever interview with us in Japanese. Congratulations, Laszlo! 
Also, we have just signed a contract with Zoo Corporation to translate The Path to Japanese and distribute it through their digital network.
Unfortunately, I’ve found in my videogame experience that the big companies are just as conservative as the [Hollywood] studios. I was disappointed with the first Hellboy game. I’m very impressed with the sandbox of Grand Theft Auto. You can get lost in that world. But we’re using it just to shoot people and run over old ladies. We could be doing so much more.
Guillermo del Toro in an interview with Wired
The rest of the article refers to games in the typical broad strokes of an executive -as opposed to somebody who has actually created software- but I was happy to read that some film directors share the dream of the potential of this medium (and don’t fall into the trap that Spielberg and Cameron are falling into: embracing videogames as if the current fare is all there is to them).
We all know what del Toro is talking about. I’ll be interested to see if somebody with such economic (and cultural) power will be able to pull it off. It’s doubtful, since he seems to be thinking BIG, but at least he is trying. Which is more than can be said about most people within the games industry.
And I wish more film directors would stand up and speak out against the game adaptations of their work. So many great opportunities have been lost in the process of making cheap commercial games out of movies. It really shows the embarrassing contrast between an industry manufacturing product and a creative industry which at least pretends to respect creative vision and artistic expression. We shouldn’t let Hollywood out-art us!
Thank you, Alice, for pointing this out. Though I wouldn’t have called del Toro “extremely arty”…
Christian Schiffer expresses his hopes for the future of videogames in German mainstream newspaper Die Welt, focussing on yours truly and ignoring that we may not be all that representative of the indie scene. His optimism sure is contagious and confirms my belief that Europe is currently the best place in the world for innovation and exploration of the medium (partially because we’re running behind in market terms).
The article is also available online (in German, of course).
Playing The Path is a very moving and enjoyable experience to many. But others just get bored and cannot detect any point or find any joy in it. We tend to dismiss this issue by accepting that The Path is not for everyone. But maybe that’s too simple.
Enjoying The Path is not difficult. You don’t need to have special skills for it, or have read any heavy literature or seen any particular artworks. From observing play behaviour and listening to reports of experiences, we have learned that the difference between enjoying The Path and not is often simply a difference in attitude.
For some people this attitude comes naturally. But others may need to do an extra effort, or perhaps simply learn about it. It is for them that I’m writing this post. Because I have a feeling that many might be looking for an answer in the distance while it’s actually right in front of them.
“Once I figured out that the demo is solely attempting to establish an atmosphere, I enjoyed it quite a bit.”
– from a comment referring to “The Path – Prologue” from WK on TigSource
Tip #1: It’s about the girls
We realize that in many videogames, your avatar is mostly a vehicle that allows you to navigate through a virtual world. In The Path, however, the behaviour and personality of the girls is crucial. If you witness them carefully and try to imagine what they are thinking -and perhaps respond to that by caring for them- the game will become a lot more meaningful.
“Each girl’s journey through the forest is not so much a series of plot points but a non-sequential, undirected character study of the girl herself, leading up to a confrontation between that psyche and the adult world.”
– from a review by Rebecca Wigandt on Gamer’s Intuition
Tip #2: It’s about playing together
The avatars in The Path have a certain degree of autonomy. And sometimes they do things that you did not expect or do not want. This is on purpose. The idea is that you try to develop a relationship with the avatar and play the game together. You do your part, she does hers.
“Do not even try to fight against the pace, just surrender.”
– from a blog post by Tetelo on Femina Ludens
Tip #3: Everything is meaningful
While some things might appear absurd or the result of bad design at first sight, in most cases they are the fruit of careful consideration. The Path becomes much more enjoyable if you take everything that you see seriously and interpret it as part of the story. This is a very playful activity (feel free to even include technical errors in this “game”: it’s fun!).
“The effort put into The Path is equal to the enjoyment received. Look at the game like a difficult piece of literature that needs to be sampled over and over again.”
– from a review by Aaron Thayer on The Silicon Sasquatch
Tip #4: Play pretend
The Path is a fiction. It is not real. The girls are composed of polygons and pixels and algorithms, the leaves of the trees are abstract ornaments, day turns into night depending on place, etc. But you need to forget about all that and pretend that everything is real. The Path asks you to suspend your disbelief but it doesn’t force you to. If you can willingly do this, you will enjoy the game much more.
“The joy of it comes not from the way in which the journey ends but rather in the full immersion that one experiences on the way.”
– from a blog post by Joshua on Mouseandcat
Tip #5: Play, don’t game
Elements in The Path that appear to be traditional (rules, goals, collecting, grading, inventory, etc) form part of the narrative that we invite you to ponder. They are not the point of the game. Traditional gaming behaviour (like trying to completely explore the forest or collect all the flowers or beat the game in a minimum amount of time) is not rewarded. For joy, ignore those urges and approach things with wonder instead. Delight in what you receive and don’t go “hunting”.
“I found the game more enjoyable when approaching it more as an interactive narrative than a traditional “game”.”
– from a review by Dan Liebman on Game Zone
Tip #6: It’s pretty
If all else fails, just enjoy the sights and sounds that The Path brings. If music can be simply beautiful and a painting can be enjoyed purely for its aesthetics, why not a game? Just look, listen and enjoy. Don’t even try to find meaning. Indulge yourself. The gameplay will not get in your way in this game.
The whole environment is beautiful, and I love how the look and feel changes depending on whether you’re on the path, in the woods, or near a wolf. The game IS artwork.
– from a review by Allison Boyer on Binge Gamer
I may have missed some possible tips. Maybe I’ll create a second post like this in the future, with more tips. If you have enjoyed The Path, please comment about how you did it, what attitude you assumed versus the game, what expectations you brought, etc.
Awesome Ruby cosplay photo, sent to us by Per Janssen, as seen at an anime convention.
Just giving Blizzard some tips on how to create MMOs…
Opening tonight, The Endless Forest is a part of an exhibition at the Laguna Art Museum, in the Los Angeles area in California. The show is dedicated to World of Warcraft and sponsored by Blizzard. But curator Grace Kook-Anderson decided to contrast the Awesome Art of the dungeon masters with the far more modest creations of regular media artists such as Alexander Galloway, John Klima, Eddo Stern, yours truly and many others. Sounds like an epic battle!
We’ve been told that the Forest is looking wonderful in projection, it will be playable in the museum on two computers. If you can’t make it there then play online and see if you can find the two deer controlled by visitors in the museum.
They’ll probably be asleep. 😉 So cast some Forest Magic on them!
I think The Path is so freakin’ postmodern that its whole purpose is to challenge classification. And, therefore, whether or not it’s a game is irrelevant. Let me explain…
Not many critics have talked much about the actual design of The Path (apart from the relatively general mantra “as a game, it sucks”). Despite our sincerity as storytellers, we do find this “meta-layer” important -and amusing. Check out Touché Bitches for some interesting observations.
We’re not the world’s greatest authorities on deconstructivism and intertextuality but we have always considered the interactive medium to be the single artistic medium that is truly able to embrace the conclusions of postmodernism and allow us to use them to create better experiences for the viewer/reader/player -instead of falling into the trap of “cleverness”, irony, cynicism en relativism we’ve seen in a lot of fine art. The multiple layers of experience and the multitude of realities that can be created simultaneously in a virtual world offer opportunities for telling stories in ways that they have never been told before and, more importantly, about things that we were never able to talk about before.
I’m not claiming that The Path does all of that with equal success. But we do believe that this is one of the more interesting areas of the medium to explore.
Michel Musters interviewed us for Gamer.nl about The Path, its production process and the games industry in general. Good thing none of you can read Dutch. 😉
De retoriek is goed: iedereen zoekt naar manieren om games vernieuwend en toegankelijk voor een groot publiek te maken. Maar de realiteit is dat er weinig games gemaakt worden die buiten de nauwe genres vallen. We willen dat verschil tussen de retoriek en de realiteit verkleinen. En we willen ontwikkelaars aanmoedigen om onafhankelijk te werken en te denken, niet koste wat het kost deel uit te willen maken van deze industrie.
C.T. Hutt interviews us “on the social and artistic merits of video games.”
We had always assumed that the industry was perfectly content making hardcore games for hardcore gamers. But things may be changing. We used to be firmly on Chris Crawford’s side when he claimed that the future of the interactive medium lies outside of videogames. But we’re not so sure anymore. Maybe there is room for expansion. We’ll see.
After suffering a technical problem overnight leaving our servers down, We are back up! So The Endless Forest Community is back, Our store is back, The Path – Prologue is available again.
And speaking of the Prologue… There was an issue where it wouldn’t run on Mac OSX 10.5.6. The Path full game runs happily on that version. Transgaming (who handled the port of the game) had made the Prologue 10.5.7 only without telling us. We’ve had them roll this back. So now, if you’re on Mac you can run both the game and the demo on OSX 10.5.6 upwards. If it wasn’t working for you before we invite you to download the Prologue again.
But its probably a good idea to upgrade your OS anyway. Because Apple puts new graphics drivers in every system upgrade making all 3d games run better, smoother, faster on your computer.
Okay… end of announcement. Lets hope we never suffer downtime like that again.
Instead of extracting part of The Path and releasing it as a free trial, we made a brand new chapter, similar to parts of the game, but not the same. It should give you a free taste of the atmosphere of the game and be a good test for your computer’s ability to handle our technology.
In The Path – Prologue, you control the mysterious Girl in White. There’s a not a lot of gameplay in this demo. This should inform players looking for that sort of thing that The Path is perhaps not for them. It’s just about exploring the forest and pondering the sights.
Something strange seems to have happened. Did it really happen before the Red Girls visited the forest? How is that possible?
Download The Path – Prologue here!
Available for Mac and PC.