“In an industry always clamouring for artistic legitimacy, here is a creator happy to say: those worlds you love? I imagined them all.” (Stuart, 2016)
Throughout his career as a game designer, Fumito Ueda has produced interactive experiences that are distinguished by their simplistic plot and storytelling techniques, desaturated and overexposed art style, and themes of camaraderie. His works have achieved cult status and as such Ueda has been garlanded a video game auteur by critics and reviewers. This essay will investigate three different works of Fumito Ueda: Ico (2001), Shadow of the Colossus (2005), and The Last Guardian (2016); to articulate the way his discrete use of story, art, and relationship development create his authorial signature. The obvious parallels through both formal and stylistic qualities in these games, in addition to their esteem, was reason for their inclusion in this investigation. This paper explores how these aspects of Ueda’s games build a focus on the autonomy of the player, and as such have developed his recognisable and distinct aesthetic identity as a game designer who manipulates the emotional involvement of those who play his games.
S T O R Y
More and more prominent in modern games is the narrative experience – with a fictional world comes context, whether it is implicit or explicit. Ueda’s games undoubtedly aim to create a narrative experience, but in a much more subtle fashion than most.
There are two levels of story within a game: the story of the game world, which comprises the narrative up until the moment the player enters the world; and the embedded story, which are the events that need to be played out by the player in order to advance (LeBlanc, 2018). In most of his games, Ueda uses only the story of the game world. Leaving the context mainly up to the player to infer allows the story to be a very personal experience – without an explicit game world story, the story of the player comprises the events that happen as they play.
“[C]onstruct[ing] story time as synchronous with narrative time and reading/viewing time: the story time is now. Now, not just in the sense that the viewer witnesses events now, but in the sense that events are happening now, and that what comes next is not determined.” (Juul, 2001)
Juul describes this process of meaning interpretation as due to a discrepancy between the time of the story and the real time that the player engages with the game; creating a space of interrogation and reflection with what you participate in on screen.
“’If I throw a ball at you I don’t expect you to drop it and wait until it starts telling stories’ – the act of throwing the ball is initiating a game and the appropriate and obvious response from you is to play with the ball; to play the game. [… These experiences are] interpretative or imaginative and their core turns on meanings we extract from them.” (Markku Eskelinen, 2004)
Ueda’s games have progressively dabbled more in context over the years but he still maintains a level of ambiguity essential to his works.
In Ico, a boy of the same name must escape the castle with a girl who he protects from shadow creatures. The pair do not speak the same language, and there are no points, nor anything to collect. Shadow of the Colossus has more of a backstory but it is still up to interpretation – in an almost open-world, the player-character is set on a quest to kill sixteen creatures known as colossi in order to bring a woman he cares for back to life. Ueda’s most recent game is his most on-the-nose, with animated cut-scenes to communicate where The Last Guardian’s player-character came from as you try to find a way out of staggering ruins with the help of a creature you must learn more about with each environment. In this scenario, while the story of the game world is given more emphasis than previously, it is still only a summary of events that occurred just before the events of the game to help you understand why the creature you travel with behaves the way it does, and does not interfere with the player’s story on the screen; rather, manages to compliment it.
These three games exemplars of how narrative can be portrayed in a subtle fashion. Although many games that lack explicit narrative are at risk of feeling empty, Ueda’s games use this to allow the player’s story to intertwine with his own. Not only does the vague narrative directly and immediately implicate the player in Ueda’s games, it leaves room for the player to interpret their own experience with the game and this interpretation is an intimate act.
A R T S T Y L E
This intimacy would be difficult to achieve without Ueda’s signature art style; washed-out yet blindingly lit ruins are environments that achieve a harmony between a foreign land that presents as a near blank canvas for the player-story, and a land that is loved for its whimsy.
Ueda creates short films to pitch new ideas to his team – the intention of these films is to demonstrate how he wants the player to feel.
“It’s really about trying to find the most effective way to visually express what I would like to do: the outcome is what you see. [… Y]ou have to find the right balance, of clearly showing the player how to navigate, but also being able to express what we want to. We sometimes resort to the hazy visuals because we can’t illustrate beyond a certain point.” (Ueda, 2016)
An aesthetic experience is defined by how it feels to play a game. This feeling is influenced by the dynamics of the game – the texture and rhythm that is produced through audio, visual and kinetic properties (Egenfeldt-Nielsen et. al., 2008). These ‘hazy visuals’ have a dreamlike, quaint and fanciful quality to them, and while their unrealistic nature makes it easier for the player to associate themselves with the world without any preconceived notions about it, it is also highly ornamental and pleasing to the eye, which evokes a certain admiration.
“I also liked that, behind those abstract images, there was always an idea […] that set me thinking about art in terms of ideas, rather than depictions. What could I make that had a clear idea behind it, looked unique, and yet wasn’t alienating?” (Ueda, 2016)
Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, and The Last Guardian are all vast, lonely and overgrown worlds modelled in an overexposed, desaturated and painterly style (refer Appendix 1, 2 & 3). This design, often coupled with a lack of music, leaves the player alone with their thoughts and the sound of the environment around them. This adds to the reflective quality of the way the narrative is structured, as aforementioned, and can be a very emotional experience; particularly in Shadow of the Colossus, where your reflections can cause interesting revelations about your role within the world.
“No enemies jump out to attack, it occurred to me on one of these rides, because I am the one on the hunt […] there are no enemies because I am the enemy. [… T]he creature’s eyes dimmed, the music turned mournful, and it seemed pretty clear that a wrong had been done. This dissonance—kill, regret, and then kill some more [… accompanied] by [a] complicit feeling […] is what, I presume, Ueda had in mind…” (Suellentrop, 2011)
Giving autonomy and consideration to the player not only through the structure of the narrative but also through the encompassing art design makes the experience of playing one of emotional connect, and this style is exhibited in all three of Ueda’s most prominent works.
C A M E R A D E R I E
The way the game looks and feels can be analysed through art style, however, the running theme of camaraderie is integral to the player experience exhibited in Ueda’s games is best unveiled through the rules and core mechanics.
“The content of the images is far less important than the inexhaustible routine of moving […] and producing the same effect, repeatedly, mechanically. And each time [it is] transubstantiated into a compulsory and seductive vision of the ‘real’.” (Crary, 1992)
Games naturally move in accordance with our intentions. Changes of pressure and tension that occur in the palm when using a controller, followed by resultant action on screen, create a locus in the hand that gives a player the feeling that they initiate the events (Kirkpatrick, 2011). Ueda’s core mechanics are centred on an action between the player character and a supporting character – when the player feels that they are the one making the action, it optimises the potential the relationship has to develop.
According to Ueda, Ico’s core mechanic is to reach out and hold a girl’s hand evolved from the aim to create a game where the characters interacted with touch rather than violence (Nutt, 2013). The player must take the girl with them to proceed – to do so, they depress a button and the boy extends his hand. The boy’s and therefore your motivation is to prevent the girl from being capture by the shadow monsters. If the girl is captured, it “evokes feelings of guilt and sadness in the player, rather than panic and self-preservation” (Suellentrop, 2011). The completion time of the game is between five and six hours, and for each hour the player reaches out to the hand of the girl to pull her along on the adventure; it is a very intimate act for a video game.
The core mechanic for Shadow of the Colossus and The Last Guardian lead from that idea of contact with other character; the ability for the player to cling to the fur of larger creatures. In the former, the mechanic is used to kill colossi. As aforementioned, this process can be very emotional for the player, and this is in part due to the intimacy of actually initiating and fulfilling the assassination. The fluctuation between frustration and anger during a particularly difficult battle to triumph and finally to regret is linked intrinsically to the execution of an action from the control. In this case, the theme of camaraderie is portrayed through the voyage to each new colossus, on the back of a horse. It is the horse that keeps the player company when reflecting on their actions, and the horse that remains loyal to them even when they question their quest.
The Last Guardian uses the mechanic for a different purpose – this time, the companion is a towering composite animal, exhibiting features of a cat, bird and rat. The relationship with this creature is redemptive; trust and affection are built over the course of the game as the player crawls on its back to remove spears, accompanies it as it progresses to areas where the child alone cannot, and pats it lovingly when in close quarters.
“The main character is controlled by the player, so the main character is you, but because every single gamer is different, it’s very hard to give the player an exact definition of the protagonist: it’s up to you who the main character is going to be. As a developer, in order to form such a character you need assistance from that character’s surroundings – that’s where the role of the NPC, or opposite character in the case of our games, comes in. The secondary character helps shape the main character. That’s how we make our games.” (Stuart, 2016)
The core mechanics and the way that they emphasise the player’s relationship with the supporting characters are key to the emotional investment players develop with Ueda’s games.
Through a combination of formalistic manipulations, stylistic patterns, and thematic fascinations, Fumito Ueda creates games that give the player autonomy that fosters strong emotional involvement in the ideas and characters presented. Conceptually his approach is removed from the mainstream yet still provides resonant experiences for players nonetheless, evident in the cult status of his works. Every design decision that goes into making his games is deliberate to implicate the player in the world of the game. “I wanted to make something that would have more of a lasting impact than a painting […]. That would be memorable art, I thought” (Ueda, 2016).
^ Appendix 1-3, L-R ^
S O U R C E S R E F E R E N C E D
Björk, Staffan, and Jesper Juul. 2012. “Zero-Player Games, or What We Talk about When We Talk about Players.” In Proceedings of the Philosophy of Computer Games Conference.. http://www.jesperjuul.net/text/zeroplayergames/.
Caldwell, J. (2018). A retrospective of Autechre’s inhumanist aesthetics. Retrieved from https://orbistertiusnet.wordpress.com/2018/04/09/unknown1-a-retrospective-of-autechres-inhumanist-aesthetics/
Crary, J. (2012). Techniques of the observer. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Egenfeldt-Nielsen, S., Smith, J., & Tosca, S. (2007). Understanding video games: the essential introduction (3rd ed.). New York: Routledge.
Eskelinen, M. (2012). Cybertext poetics. New York. N.Y.: Continuum.
Fernández-Vara, C. (2014). Introduction to game analysis. New York: Routledge.
Hunicke, R., LeBlanc, M., & Zubek, R. (2018). A Formal Approach to Game Design and Game Research. MDA. Retrieved from http://www.cs.northwestern.edu/~hunicke/pubs/MDA.pdf
Kapp, K. (2018). Create Autonomy in Gamification and Other Learning Environments. Retrieved from http://karlkapp.com/create-autonomy-in-gamification-and-other-learning-environments/
Kirkpatrick, G. (2017). Aesthetic theory and the video game. Manchester: Manchester University Presss.
Parkin, S. (2018). Fumito Ueda’s Slow Route to Perfection. Retrieved from https://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/fumito-uedas-slow-route-to-perfection
Nitsche, M. (2009). Video game spaces. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT.
Nutt, C. (2018). Ico creator Ueda on his design ethos and development style. Retrieved from https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/207018/Ico_creator_Ueda_on_his_design_ethos_and_development_style.php
Salen, K., & Zimmerman, E. (2009). The game design reader. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Stuart, K. (2018). The Last Guardian creator: 'I can't face playing my own game'. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jun/28/the-last-guardian-fumito-ueda-interview
Suellentrop, C. (2018). The Video-Game Art of Fumito Ueda. Retrieved from https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-video-game-art-of-fumito-ueda
Swink, S. (2014). Game Feel. Hoboken: CRC Press.
コメント