- “Hold My Hand: Impact of Intimate Controllers on Player Experience” (2020)
An article on my game Mutualism written and presented by Alessandro Canossa for our submission to the IEEE Conference on Games 2020.
Available at: https://ieee-cog.org/2020/papers/paper_88.pdf - “Cuphead: When Games Become Art” (2018)
An article on Cuphead published by Inside Scandinavian Business.* - “Next Level Storytelling” (2018)
An article on INSIDE published by Inside Scandinavian Business.*
*= Inside Scandinavian Business has shut down. As such I am sharing the text from my articles below.
Next Level Storytelling
By Erik Andersen, Feb 26, 2018. Originally published at: https://www.insidescandinavianbusiness.com/article.php?id=60
INSIDE is a mysterious and compelling video game. Despite the absence of dialogue or text, it tells a short story rich in content. With an open ending, you are left to interpret the events yourself, and come up with your own explanation of what has happened.
Spoilers ahead!
From the moment you start to play INSIDE, you will continue to ask yourself “What is going on here?”. Everything is vague and shrouded in mystery, so it may take several play-throughs to get any sort of answer to that question. Even then, it’s not guaranteed that things will become clearer.
The main character is a small boy, whose red t-shirt stands out in a world of black and grey. We follow him as he runs through a dark, lifeless forest, evading capture by mysterious men who, for an unknown reason, are hunting him. The boy eventually finds shelter in an abandoned building, but it becomes apparent that he is not alone. The building is revealed to have been a facility for conducting bizarre experiments with live subjects. There is no clear explanation as to what is going on, just small hints and insinuations from the in-game environment. You are aware that the boy is in danger. Exactly what the danger is remains for the most part unknown, which contributes to the overall tension and paranoia felt by the player.
Created by Playdead
INSIDE was released in 2016 and is the second game from Danish game developer Playdead, who garnered attention with the release of their debut game “LIMBO”. LIMBO bears many similarities to INSIDE; the game world is dark, an environment depicted in shades of black and grey. LIMBO also has an eerie undertone, set in a sun-less purgatory. As well as having a similar artistic style, LIMBO and INSIDE are also of the same genres, namely “puzzle”, “platformer” and “adventure”.
It is safe to say that Playdead have mastered their approach to game design, as INSIDE is not only being praised for its unusual storytelling but also for its playability and distinctive visuals. It has received numerous nominations and won several awards including “Best independent game” and “Best looking game” along with receiving top score reviews.
INSIDE is easy to play thanks to its simple controls, and can therefore be played by almost anyone who has the nerves. It took six years to make, with the last two being spent on polishing and fine-tuning the gameplay and graphics. Director Arnt Jensen has said that the smallest details are just as important as the big ones, and this becomes very apparent when moving through the scenes in the game. Sometimes the answer to a puzzle lies in the tiniest element, and this attention to even the smallest components contributes to artistic scenes that are rich in detail and emotion.
The beauty of the art
Being completely free from dialogue or text means that there is never a clear explanation offered from within the game as to what has happened prior to the game’s beginning. You do not know who the boy is running from, or indeed what dystopian world you are playing in. You must set your brain to work, and fill in the gaps yourself. Theories and explanations are shared and popularised on the internet, as people try to throw light on the game’s ending and work out what it means. This extends from regular players to YouTubers, and even some gaming magazines have weighed in and tried their best to make sense of the wordless game. As long as Playdead keep us in the dark by not releasing an official commentary, the mysterious story will remain open to interpretation.
This is the beauty of INSIDE’s dark style. It lets you decide what has happened in this world and forces you to become imaginative, even after you have completed the game. It makes you become a co-writer of the story, and your own version is just as good as anyone else’s, regardless of if you are the editor of a gaming magazine or just played your first video game. You may still want an official answer, but you will (probably) never get one.
INSIDE is the mystery you want to solve. It keeps the player in a state of constant intrigue, challenges the imagination and forces you to think long after you stopped playing. INSIDE may haunt you, but that might just make you love it.
Cuphead: When Games Become Art
By Erik Andersen, Feb. 13, 2018. Originally published at: https://www.insidescandinavianbusiness.com/article.php?id=56
Cuphead is a game that has received much interest and attention in the gaming and game design community worldwide, even since before its release in September 2017. This is mainly because of its unique art style, which is identical to the 1930’s “Rubber Hose” style, seen in the old animated shows such “Silly Symphony” and “Betty Boop”. The Canadian based developer, Studio MDHR, produced a style very different from what is seen in the modern game aesthetics and ended up being praised for their take on retro game design.
About visual art in games
Cuphead helped take a big step towards games being recognized as an art form, instead of just a form of entertainment. With today’s technology, any form of visual art can be implemented into a digital game, and so that art becomes part of an interactive experience, made up of visual art, animation, sounds, music and storytelling. There are no longer any boundaries to game designers’ creativity and they can experiment with any form of art. So, is this is a new era for digital games?
Art has been in games almost since the beginning, ever since the digital interactions moved from light bulbs to the small computer screens and pixels became a word. The designers had very limited options for their game’s visuals, and the placement of one-coloured dots on a tiny screen, was all they could work with to visualise a world for the players. Still, they used what they had, and today, PAC-MAN, a flat yellow blob made up of 16×16 pixels, is still one of the most well-known video game characters. They managed to put soul and charm into something that simple. The creativity, of course followed technology, and today it is a quite different story on the 4K wide screens. With new and advanced tools, artists are working harder than ever before to make their ideas come to life, and the things that are being created can no longer be labelled simply as game graphics.
Cuphead is not a modern high-resolution 3D game, but that is actually one of the reasons it stands out as art, much more than many new games. Studio MDHR did not do the modern high-resolution graphics, they tried something different, and they got creative. They dug up an old style and gave new life to it. A style from long before digital games even existed.
Typical retro games today are games that imitate the old arcade classics, using the pixel art, beep sounds and gameplay they are known for. Cuphead does this as well, as seen in the gameplay, the genre and in the high level of difficulty (today’s games are usually more casual and forgiving than the old ones). Additionally, Cuphead has also lent retro from a completely different media: Animated shows. The sounds, the music and of course the art and animation, are all imitations of the 1930’s Rubber Hose cartoons. Even the production of the game was imitated to match the look perfectly: Everything is hand drawn on paper, the backgrounds are painted separately with watercolours and the music is recorded with a live jazz band. Studio MDHR has made an admirable tribute and has stayed completely faithful to the style.
Other games?
Cuphead indeed stands out with its unique art style, but Studio MDHR is not the only developer that lays focus on visual art. Games like “Journey” (2012) and “Limbo” (2010) have also gained much attention and praise for their visuals. These games show how simple graphics, combined with the right lighting, music and narrative, can create very emotional experiences. Cuphead is an action game, but with the rise of newer game genres such as “visual novels” and “atmospheric”, it’s obvious that many developers want to make games with focus on the visuals and the narrative. A great example of this is the self-biographic game “That Dragon, Cancer” (2016), which tells the story of two parents who lose their son to cancer. The game takes the player on an emotional rollercoaster with an interesting art style, a different gameplay and of course, a touching story.
Through the history of digital games, art in some form can be seen in most of them. It is actually hard to find the ones that are made purely for entertainment, without any thought to the visual, narrative or musical art. Today, art in games shows itself clearer than ever before, as artistic games keep showing up, in many remarkable, unique and new ways.