ToT UPDATES

Tale of Tales in 2011

- January 18 -

2011 Was probably the strangest year in the history of Tale of Tales so far. We did not publish a single new game because we devoted all our attention to prototyping two new ideas. And yet both our personal life and our artistic process went through a turbulent stream which may have changed us forever.

Prototyping

We finalized the Cncntrc prototype in March, renaming it The Cosmos and The Cave, not entirely satisfied with the outcome. We felt that we had not succeeded in expressing all of the content that we had been investigating. Yet, after some distance in time and having other people play the prototype, we came to understand the merits of the work we had delivered and the reasons for our dissatisfaction. We are still uncertain as how to proceed to full production of the game, but we are fairly certain that we want to, one day, somehow.

Our experience with Cncntrc stimulated us to re-evaluate what we were doing with the other prototype, The Book of 8. In April, we came to the conclusion that we might be making some of the same errors and decided to drop everything we had done and start over, with a new idea, more in line with our former work. The work on the new 8 prototype continued for the remainder of the year until November when we decided to stop prototyping and switch to full production. Rather than looking for ways to fund this project, we decided to focus on asset production first, without a schedule. We had been able to advance the money for the production of the prototype without a loan (the EU Media grant was only paid out after finalizing the project), so we feel confident that we can support this on our own strength.

We have created a short documentary about these projects.

Venice Biennial

In the mean time, other things were happening as well. We had been invited to show our work at the Venice Biennial, the major event for contemporary fine art. The actual exhibition, entitled “Neoludica, Art is a Game”, was a bit of a disappointment to us but it did offer us the opportunity to travel to Venice twice and meet some very lovely people in the process.

Moving house/studio

Back home, we had decided to move from the small city of Gent to the capital of Brussels. So we went apartment hunting. After seeing the prices of the sort of place we would need with two children, we got the idea of moving only our business to Brussels and finding a nice house in the countryside for the weekends and holidays. We actually almost succeeded in doing this when we realized that we chose a really bad time. The production of The Book of 8 prototype had put us in a risky financial situation, and we also needed the time to actually work on the game. So we canceled/postponed the plan of moving house, rediscovered the beauty of our own place in Gent and moved our office to the attic instead. Now we have a much bigger studio to work in, and a much cosier living room.

GDC Europe & Notgames Fest

In August we were invited by the European Game Developers Conference to moderate a panel and by the Cologne Game Lab to co-curate an exhibition. Both centered around the idea of notgames, an initiative we started the year before to explore the potential of the medium of videogames beyond the limits of competitive, goal-oriented play. The Cologne Game Lab put together a wonderfully immersive exhibition that featured work of some of the most prominent members of the notgames community and some new discoveries. We also had a “secret meeting” with the developers where we talked about our new projects. I think we all realized that we were part of a kind of movement, supporting each other’s efforts on this ambitious path of exploring a new medium.

Richard

We only attended the IndieCade festival via Skype, so we heard second hand that Naughty Dog’s lead designer Richard Lemarchand had mentioned our short game The Graveyard as an influence on Uncharted 2 during his IndieCade keynote presentation. Intrigued by this unexpected avant-garde effect of our work, we got in touch and had a public conversation with Mr Lemarchand during the Game City festival in Nottingham.

Collaboration

In November, after a struggle that had been mounting for years already, we decided to try collaborating in a different way. We had always worked together in a more or less organic fashion where we would each complement for the other in a truly collaborative process. But over the years, this model had started to erode. Artistic arguments had become more frequent and we became less and less certain of our individual place in the production process. After several experiments and months of thinking, we decided to start working next to each other, each on a specific project, with the possibility of switching at some point.

Releases and other work

Even though we did not release a new game in 2011, we did publish Fatale on the then new Mac AppStore in January and ported The Graveyard to Android and Vanitas to Android and iPad in November. The iPad release included a new feature.

We have also been trying, off and on, to collaborate with Alex Mayhew. This process will continue. Hopefully something will come of it this year.

In November, we got funding from the Flanders Audiovisual Fund for an entirely new project, entitled Bientôt l’été. Production work has started already and release is scheduled for autumn.

Much to our surprise, at the end of the year, we ran out of second generation unique deer names in The Endless Forest. This means that some 50,000 new accounts were made in the last two years! The Endless Forest may not get a lot of publicity, but it may very well be our most successful project.

Exhibitions and Presentations

As usual, we got distracted by invitations to speak at multiple exotic locations. This year we jet-setted to Lille, Cologne, Istanbul, Montréal, Nottingham, Genk, Gent and Culver City (though the latter only via Skype).

Our work, too, traveled around and was exhibited in many places throughout the world: Rotterdam, Berlin, Santa Fe, Venice, Cologne, ‘s Hertogenbosch, Istanbul, Amsterdam, and even in our home city of Gent (which happens very rarely!).