Flower Intentionally Made Less "Fun"

[FloodOne]

This is the distilled essence of why "art house" developers annoy me to such a grand degree. Intentional boredom wasn't interesting when Warhol and Beckett attempted it with theater and it's not interesting when people like Chen attempt it in gaming. I also disagree that The Path is anything other than a complete waste of time. I'd rather play Madden, and so would most people, which is why EA Sports is a money-printing machine while nobody outside the gaming enthusiast media gives a flying crap about Flower and The Path.

Sweet. Pretty closed minded individual.

Are successful artists the only ones who make good music? Top 40 Billboard debuts are much better than that indie band working the bar circuit.

I enjoy Madden too, but that doesn't mean I don't like new gaming experiences.

 

[the1ultimate]

Flower looks like an interesting game to me. I haven't played it since I don't have a PS3, but even I can see that spells, or things like that would conflict with the primary control scheme. I mean, if there were spells, you might expect there to be more to the game, but simply controlling the wind makes you realise that the game is supposed to be relaxing fun, like sliding down a waterslide.
It's fair enough that they've removed gameplay elements that stick out like a stick in the mud, because this allows better immersion in the mud... errr, game.

 

[Pigeon_Grenade]

haven't played this one to say much on it

 

[Zand88]

The thread title is way too provocative. It seems more like a distortion of the truth, just to go back on it.
Games don't always have to be completely "fun" to work. Horror games, for example, work because of their restrictions, which makes it more tense. If I could mow down a ton of creatures with out-of-place items, then it's not scary, and definitely not interesting. Full freedom usually isn't as good as it seems.
Like they say about art, sometimes restrictions make the outcome that much better.
If you want a game with all the content you can think of, then make your own.

 

[thatonekid393]

Personally, I thought Flower was a masterpiece. It is so elegant, peaceful, and overall such a simple game that it gives off nothing but good vibes. I wouldn't have it any other way.

 

[quack35]

I'm glad there's no nerdrage on this thread.

Good show, gentlemen.

 

[TsunamiWombat]

I've never heard of this game so...

That worked well!

 

[TheBadass]

I've never heard of this game so...

That worked well!

A lot of people here have. It was an indie game released on the PSN, and still managed to become many people's GOTY... including mine. It sold FAR better than the traditional "fun" games their company used to make, and is regarded as one of the most immersive, emotional and well designed games of last year.

So yeah, it did.

 

[Paladijn]

It raises an interesting question over whether games have to be 'fun' to be good. Indie titles like The Path aren't fun, not in the sense that Street Fighter IV is fun, but they can still be powerful experience.

Does anyone else feels it is starting to get to a point where it becomes really tiresome that the subject - of games needing to mature - there is always this obligate mentioning of: 'The Path'?

To me it only shows lack of interest or pure lack of creativity if this is still the only example we can come up with that shows games can elvolve beyond kids-toys.

Examples? Go look at Cactus' (Jonatan Soderstrom) Mondo [http://www.rhizome.org/editorial/2209] or games like: Burn the Rope [http://www.kongregate.com/games/Mazapan/you-have-to-burn-the-rope] and maybe even the - yet unfinished -:
Blueberry Garden.

I have nothing against 'The Path' but I do hate to see that so little other (mostly independent) game designers are working hard to mature this industry who get little or no credits in these sort of articles.

 

[Jumplion]

I've never heard of this game so...

That worked well!

To further help TheBadass with his point, it's still usually on the top 20 downloaded PSN games list.

 

[bushwhacker2k]

I don't really understand what this is trying to say, it's too damn vague.

All I see is "we are removing the fun because fun is immature", PLEASE correct me if I'm wrong, I just don't see what they're saying.

 

[Jumplion]

I don't really understand what this is trying to say, it's too damn vague.

All I see is "we are removing the fun because fun is immature", PLEASE correct me if I'm wrong, I just don't see what they're saying.

He's basically saying that he took out some original elements that used to be in the game, like spells and whatnot, because it took away its simplicity and conflicted with the message it was trying to show overall. Having spells and more content in it would undermine the whole point of the game and make it into another "Go here, shoot that, activate spell 5, watch the explosion!" kind of game. Think of it as a "less is more" kind of thing.

 

[More Fun To Compute]

I don't really understand what this is trying to say, it's too damn vague.

All I see is "we are removing the fun because fun is immature", PLEASE correct me if I'm wrong, I just don't see what they're saying.

Jenova Chen didn't want to add a shooting mechanic to his game flower because it has been explored in many other games and he wanted to create something different. The rest is mostly jibber jabbering by people who are easily set off on rants by the world fun.

 

[raankh]

This is a dumb argument. If a game is deep and sophisticated, it is fun. While games like Peggle are not deep or sophisticated, they are also fun.

If you're intentionally removing things that add to the fun of the game, in order to make it seem more "sophisticated" though, you're a pretentious prick.

/thread

I agree, incredibly dumb. It's like a marketing ploy based on the semantic riddle "I believe the evening star and the morning star are really the planet Venus."

Putting words in single-quotes won't help. It's still dumb.

 

[SirSchmoopy]

Wackjob.
Then again he's making a game about flowers so I guess thats the whole point. Calling flower a "game" is a bit insulting to the rest of the industry.

 

[MrSnugglesworth]

It'll never be as deep as The Dishwasher ead Samurai.


I'll miss you chef.

 

[Jumplion]

Wackjob.
Then again he's making a game about flowers so I guess thats the whole point. Calling flower a "game" is a bit insulting to the rest of the industry.

....insulting? Really? An insult to the industry? It's pretty clear that you've never played this game. Is that what people stooped down to? Calling a game "insulting" because it's not what you think a game should be?

I dunno about you, but I think an Indie game is still, you know, a game. I still have yet to see a single reason, let alone a valid one, to not call flOwer a game. Why can't this be a game? Because only one button is ever used (press any button, or use the analog sticks to speed up the wind)? Because you don't score "points"? Because it doesn't have any explosions? What exactly makes this game an "insult" to this industry?

I was under the impression that bad games were the insults, not games that do something different from the rest and succeed.

 

[ShadowKirby]

Wackjob.
Then again he's making a game about flowers so I guess thats the whole point. Calling flower a "game" is a bit insulting to the rest of the industry.

Yeah, how insulting. The video game industry should try to keep it's high standard of boobs, violence and guns...

 

[ElArabDeMagnifico]

This headline makes this story quite misleading.

 

[WhiteTigerShiro]

I just have to say that my hat is off to this man (not that I wear a hat) for using the phrase "Mature Game", and decrying works like Dead or Alive and Madworld in the same sentence. Just because a game is meant for mature audiences, doesn't mean it should automatically have blood and tits flying all over the place.