On February 15th, I went to the NYU Game Center Lecture with Youjin, and Justina (also we saw John there). The guest for this lecture was Jenova Chen. At the event, what stood out to me during the lecture wasn’t mainly the talk about his game concepts and his upcoming game, but rather the way in which he has set out guidelines for himself for the kind of games that he wants to create.
One of the things he said that stood out to me was his description of how one could incorporate emotions into the games. He mentioned along the line that, just like how cut scenes are in cinema to instill emotions into the audience, games and interaction can also embed emotions in a different way as well. Since games allow a person to do more than just watch, I think that it makes sense for the emotions to come from the immersive experience of playing the game. Still, I feel that even though this could be said simply as a concept, actually executing it on real life maybe a lot harder. Of course, there are many games that have allowed players to feel the emotions through the gameplay, but I realize that there are also many that relied mostly on the emotion within the written story and film-like cutscenes in the game instead of the gameplay themselves, leaving the game mechanic simple and without any major connection to the emotional aspect of the game. I feel that the game should allow players to play and experience the emotion themselves, rather than having the cut scenes and the game plays itself and explicitly shows the emotions to the players.
Another part that stood out to me was how he mentioned that he wants to create games for anyone and take away the stereotype of who is a ‘gamer’ and who isn’t. In addition, he showed a map of how many action games have been made (which he called the ‘red ocean’ area) while games that focused on topics like family relationship or love are barely touched on. He said that he wanted to explore those unexplored areas in games and also advised that future creators should do so as well to expand the diversity of games, as well as the fact that one would earn money easier than if one were to work in the already abundant and competitive red ocean. While I agree that making games for everyone and working to expand the smaller genre of games are something that definitely should happen, I think people should still work in creating games in the already popular genre and work just as hard. If the genre in the red ocean is something one is passionate about, then one should pursue ti achieve new heights for that genre. I think that, just like creating a game in a new, untouched genre, a new ‘best’ game could also be created in the already heavily explored genre as well; since nothing is going to be the ‘best’ forever, creators and designers should do their best to bring forth fresher, improved and better ideas in whatever genre they’re passionate in.