Grad-School Thesis Becomes PS3 Game

Carl Bialik from WSJ writes, "USC student Jenova Chen's Flash game, 'flOw,' attracted interest from Sony, which commissioned an enhanced version that will be sold through its PlayStation Network, WSJ.com reports. From the article: 'Gameplay is incredibly smooth, particularly for a Flash game. But it's the design touches that set flOw apart. Players will notice faint outlines of the creatures lurking at lower depths, a foreboding sign that vicious manta- and squid-like enemies await. The water darkens as the creature advances to deeper levels. The game's ambient sound is somewhat hypnotic. The intuitive controls and design simplicity are among Mr. Chen's mandate: build immersive games for people who don't consider themselves gamers. 'My parents and grandparents don't play games. My girlfriend, she doesn't play either,' he says. 'I want to make games that those people can appreciate.'"

"My girlfriend, she doesn't play either."

No wonder he has the time to create games. Poor bastard.

Re:"My girlfriend, she doesn't play either."

I bet she does ! Nudge, nudge, Know what I mean?

Re:"My girlfriend, she doesn't play either."

Unfortunately no. *sighs*

Dupe-a-riffic

DUPE [slashdot.org]

Good

It's about time someone decides to make a game that doesn't depend on the bleeding edge graphics, but focuses more on gameplay and fun factor. I hope Sony doesn't rape this student's idea.

Sigh, I miss the lucas arts adventure games days. Crap graphics, damn good fun.

Re:Good

"It's about time someone decides to make a game that doesn't depend on the bleeding edge graphics, but focuses more on gameplay and fun factor." umm... Nintendo have been doing this for years... and has made this the major focus of the Wii... I'm surprised that Nintendo didn't go grab this guy before sony...

Re:Good

Crap graphics!? An insult! Are you really saying that Monkey Island 2 or The Dig weren't a couple of the prettiest examples of pixelart ever to grace a gamer's screen? You sure as hell better not be including the wonderful world of Grim Fandango in your reference. Gah!

Oh and look up Nintendo -> Wii. Sheesh. Everyone always drags out this tired argument of "Games today don't care about anything but graphics" and ignore all the hojillion great games we have available that aren't all about the shiny graphics. We have more choice in gameplay NOW than ever!

Re:Good

Yes, LucasArts adventure games are gorgeous!

Are the graphics-obsessed gamers of today simply victims of advertising? Programmed to forget what impressed them yesterday and to discard everything that isn't NEW NEW NEW?

What was gorgeous on the PS2 (ICO, for instance) is now in the category of HORRIBLE HORRIBLE HORRIBLE? Games from Xbox 1 that made me drop my jaw once (DOA3) are now crude, primitive reminders of a forgotten time? Or how about that "terrible" GameCube with that "awful-looking" and "low-res" Resident Evil 4 game that came out not that freakin' long ago?

It's getting so boring! In my world, you have to go back 20+ years to start talking about most things looking ugly. And what about games like Metroid on the NES? Aren't those great graphics? Didn't that old Mac game Dark Castle have incredible graphics? What about the first Prince of Persia?

No, no, no. Not to today's zombie consumer gamers or zombie whore game reviewers... If it came out more than a year ago or if it's on the Wii, it's got crappy graphics.

The first Half-Life, every Zelda game, POP: Sands of Time, Morrowind, Halo, you name it... Fun to play? Sure. But I guess the graphics are now crap, crap, crap, crap, crap...

You must have missed it.

Katamari Damacy [wikipedia.org]

Re:You must have missed it.

Believe it or not, but Katamari Damacy was a challenging game to make work from a graphics standpoint. There was a good article about it in Game Developer magazine a while back. The katamari ball builds up a huge number of objects, thus necessitating the use of low-poly models, even after fancy depth-based culling was implemented for the ball. What's funny is that they turned that "limitation" into a feature by going for a retro look, and nailed it. Along with the simple controls, an excellent soundtrack, and a very different concept of success/failure, it was an instant classic. It does push a playstation to its limits on a triangle-rate basis though.

Re:Good

I'm sorry, but I think all the hype about this game is ridiculous. Everyone I know who's actually played the game did so for maximum half an hour never to play it again after. Mod me down if you want, but I think this is bullshit. I'm not saying the game itself isn't well made, because it certainly is, but it does NOT appeal to many people and it doesn't even follow the pretentious thesis that it's supposedly designed after.

Re:Good

I'm sorry, but I think all the hype about this game is ridiculous. Everyone I know who's actually played the game did so for maximum half an hour never to play it again after.

I sat down and played the game. It was fun, and had an extremely simple and intuitive interface. For a flash game it had quite a high degree of polish. I'm not sure of its replay value as it stands however. As you suggest, I played for about half an hour but don't find myself feeling any particular desire to continue or go back to it. The weakness, ultimately, is the relative sameness of the gameplay as you advance - there simply isn't anything particularly new or different; nothing to aspire to achieve. Of course in a full blown version there will likely be rather more effort put into developing and extending the levels so that new material can be introduced as you proceed - perhaps the "evolution" steps could introduce significant new skills so as to overcome new challenges etc.

So I guess I both agree and disagree with you. Yes the game, as it stands, is intriguing but lacks replay value. On the other hand the base is reasonably strong, and if someone creative can expand upon that to creater a longer fuller game experience... so much the better.

Re:Good

I'm sorry, but I think all the hype about this game is ridiculous. Everyone I know who's actually played the game did so for maximum half an hour never to play it again after.

I'd have to agree with you, and I will admit that I did enjoy it for that half-hour.

As the biggest problem I see with turning it into a "real" game, it lacked any conceptual hooks whereby you could flesh it out into something that would take significantly longer than that half hour to finish.

I suppose they could add bigger, meaner enemies (though by the lowest depths, the enemies had already gotten absurdly complex - More than once, I found myself chasing a fast enemy in tight circles, slowly wearing it down by eating 10 of its energy pellets for every 9 it nabbed from me). They could stick in artificial "quests" such as the old standby of find-the-keys and save-the-princess-slash-hostage. They could break it into more expansive worlds for each depth (though then how do you prevent the player from killing 27,416,318 bunnies at the first level by locking the controller in a tight turn for a week, then breezing through the rest?), but just about anything you tack onto it would detract from the original intuitive UI design.


Oh well, good luck to Sony with that. Perhaps they will make something good out of it - I suppose, with a lot of artificiality tacked on, they could manage something as playable as E.V.O. for the SNES. And in five years, when the PS3 goes for $50 and its games for $10 on the used market, I might even pick it up and give it a try.

Re:Good

I've played Flow all the way to the bottom and onto the next level and I sort of agree with what you are.

Part of the problem with the game is there are no obvious instructions as what you're meant to do. It turns out you eat everything in site (except the blues & reds that move you up and down). You even eat the humongous creatures by going for the spots in their body. Once you get all the spots the creature (without it eating you in turn), it will dissolve into bits that you eat.

But it is a trippy experience and I can see that the game could be fleshed out in interesting ways, or even make a cool screensaver. BTW, Want to know what happens when you get to the bottom? You start again in an orange ocean as a different creature.

Next level you become circle monster

You start out on a yellow screen as a circle monster, after finishing off the centipede looking creature on the bottom of the first set of blue levels. The centipede drops a yellow dot, you eat it and evolve into a circle monster creature. I keep eating stuff and made my way to the bottom using the red "go deeper" dots and eventually fought a long snake creature, like I was on the first level. After deafeating him, I worked my way UP to the top and was able to kill off the large orange paramecium type creatures, that before I had to run away from. After I got back to the top - no more levels to do.

Re:Good

And it can be used to press wild flowers
And you can build houses out of it (if you buy enough units)
And "PS3" upside down looks like "ESd"
*And* it fits in your pocket ! (if you have very large pockets)

What a deal !

Re:Good

It plays Blu-ray ... movies

While I agree it does do a lot, most of those things aren't why it costs $600

That $600 price tag is due mostly in part to that one little bullet item right there, the price could almost be halved if they removed that "feature". In my personal opinion it's that one price raising feature that changes this console from a "sure buy" into a "I'll wait a few years for a price drop"

Not only has that feature raised the price of the console itself, but it's also mostly responsible for the nearly year long delays we've experienced and the laughably small number of consoles available. It also raises the price of disc manufacturing, has slower disc read speeds (which directly hinders gameplay), and throws gamers directly in the middle of a format war whether they like it or not.

You're not paying $600 for a feature filled PS3, you pay about $300-$400 for the PS3 and another $200-$300 for Blu-Ray. Personally, I think consumers and the Playstation brand alike would have been better off without it.

Re:Good

I work at Sony Computer Entertainment America in their FPQA division (I'm a game tester)

While I really cannot legally spill any details about any of the current projects that are in this department, I will say if you enjoyed the original flash game, the enhanced version will be a treat.

Rest assured, the idea was not raped.

You want your grandparents to game?

For the grandparents, try suggesting "The Depression: Revisited" It will be an MMORPG based on the hardships of 30's living. You will get to experience the thrills, and the excitement of living in this time. You can choose to live in a Hooverville, even better, work someones field for them at a nickle an hour, and maybe you will be able to buy a few pieces of bread to keep your character alive. Feel the excitement of jumping onto a train! If you miss, well your fault. Blood and gore of bodies cut in half by the trains. Go to work in a factory! You can start producing weapons to bring back those good time memories of the beginning of World War II.

Also for PS3's "older crowd"...

I think my folks are holding out for the action-packed title "When I Was Your Age: Walking Home From School In the Snow, Uphill, Both Ways".

It's a sort of FPS/RTS hybrid game. The atmospherics alone are going to blow your mind.

Squid???

Yea.. when I want my father or my girlfriend to play a game, I just tell them "Keep playing.. THERE'S SQUID!"

I don't mean this to be a troll.. I'm just saying things like Nintendogs are a little more compelling than "Find the darker water with the giant squid. Then kill it, and you'll find even MORE, DARKER squids!"

For non-gamers, Cute puppies > Ugly squid, that's all I'm saying.. and that's not even bringing Sims 2 into it.. my girlfriend couldn't understand why I liked building houses and stuff until she actually got the hang of it. Now it's one of her primary relaxation games, and frankly, her being entertained is worth a hell of a lot more than what I spent on it (especially since it frees the TV up for me to play Saint's Row hehehe)

Not a fanboy of any system, just my own experience and opinion :)

/.ed already?

Sounds interesting and would like to check it out... :(

Call me crazy,

but wasn't "flow" that minigame which was inspired by the first level of Spore? So wouldn't the "production version" of that game, be, umm, Spore? Or are we not making Spore now?

Re:Call me crazy,

Well, I'm pretty sure flOw came first, actually.
But if you RTFA it turns out the creator of flOw is now actually on the Spore team. I'm shocked.

I just wonder if he was hired before or after they had already created the underwater stage of Spore. I would guess after, but it's still amusing.

I'm still trying to decode the secret website

Iloveflowbees.com

Get it here

The link to the website only seems /.'ed
The direct links are still alive
Try the Coralized links first

Offline Version
ftp://intihuatani.usc.edu.nyud.net:8090/Cloud/flow _04142006.zip [nyud.net]
http://intihuatani.usc.edu.nyud.net:8090/Cloud/flo wing/flow_04142006.zip [nyud.net]
The SWF
http://intihuatani.usc.edu.nyud.net:8090/cloud/flo wing/core.swf [nyud.net]

-ftp://intihuatani.usc.edu/Cloud/flow_04142006.zip
-http://intihuatani.usc.edu/Cloud/flowing/flow_041 42006.zip
-http://intihuatani.usc.edu/cloud/flowing/core.swf

Spore

Wow, the first level of spore has been upgraded to ps3 level gameplay, I have to say I'm impressed.

Now if sony could actually finish any of their games.

Ironically, the captcha is looser!!

Six minutes later....

I'd be unhappy if I'd paid money for this. I'll admit that it stopped me from falling asleep for six minutes, but that's as far as I'll go.

...and yet his game ends up on PS3

immersive games for people who don't consider themselves gamers

That mandate looks as if it were ripped straight from a Wii marketing promo. Hopefully the fact that fl0w is on PS3 won't preclude this dude from trying his hand at a Wii game; they could be a perfect match.

We'd also have a stream of "wii fl0w" jokes to keep us occupied.
-f

No wonder...

...the launch titles are so crappy.

Online services great for this

I really like the online services that all the three next generation consoles offer - I am really looking forward to simpler, yet still fun, games being able to be developed and bought for far less than the tradtional blockbuste games cost.

Somehow in the middle of playing the game "who copied who" people seem to have forgotten that the point of all this is to give us gamers more options.

Now the race is on to see who takes this segment of the market seriously and really gets behind a lot of smaller but innovative games for the online market.

Great Game

The game is great itself. Though the entertainment value isn't as good as the typical games that you would pay for today, the concept itself is good. The construction of the game is also very smooth. Though the goal of being a relaxing game is sometimes not achieved, considering that competitive gamers could get frustrated with not being able to "grow larger".

Definitely something everyone should try out. Keep in mind though that the Flash game itself is incomplete, but you can post on the forums to give suggestions and discuss the concept with the creator.

fl0w is Beauty

If you haven't played fl0w before, go check it out http://intihuatani.usc.edu/cloud/flowing/ [usc.edu]. I used to work for the dorms at my school, sitting at the front desk for hours at a time. I spent many hours sitting, watching this game because it is truly beautiful. After about 3 times through it's kinda old, but still, those first couple times were pretty amazing...

Go Trojans

Fight on.

Not much depth

For a game thats touted as being so excellent, its pretty boring and shallow.

I played fl0w for about 30 minutes.. you just grow this creature in a pretty limited fashion by eating things on different z-depth levels.

The stuff I've read on flow is all about freedom of choice, and playing how you want, and being simple to pickup, and the sense of satisfaction - After 30 mins, it becomes extremely boring, there is no sense of satisfaction, and it gets surprisingly hard (well i guess its hard.. these other huge "creatures" try to eat some bulby bits off you.

Perhaps there is some amazing part of fl0w that I've missed - other worlds, a "level up" feature, some ability other than swimming to the mouse cursor

This game is not fantastic, however, the ideas behind its design are great

How's this for intuitive...

...how about a game I can control not with hands but brain waves? Or with speech but in a truly, truly seamless unambiguous manner? Something like VR but which actually exists outside of a dedicated muli-million dollar facility? Maybe it's asking too much, but still, anything that I need to play using the keyboard and/or mouse has limits to how much it can 'flow', at least for myself.

Then again, good game design is always a huge thing. Brings to mind the snake game in Nokia cellphones...almost perfect flow, with nothing to learn.

But the whole point

was that it was a nice little inuitive game. This crys out to played on the DS or the Wii (more likely the DS).

analog stick mouse touch pad

I think the wrong super power bought this game - in the same way as trying to squeeze GTA onto a DS would be stupid.

snake?

reminds me of Nokias Snake or Intellivisions Snafu so what is the deal?

Another great casual game that I'd recommend :

Every Extend

Try it - it is also enjoyable and innovative, has nice graphics and sound... no squids though. There was a PSP version called Every Extend Extra, but it was not as good.

You can download it from here :
http://nagoya.cool.ne.jp/o_mega/product/e2.html [cool.ne.jp]

If you want to read a little more about it before and see screenshots, my mini-review is available here :
http://bartsnews.blogspot.com/2006/11/every-extend -is-blast.html [blogspot.com]

/usr/games/snake anyone?

Move around, eat something, grow larger? Kind of based on the classic BSD (I think) and other early computer game, "Snake." (But with fancy graphics, smooth navigation, and Z levels.) Cool, yes. Revolutionary? Ummmm...

Check out the game...

If you have not played it yet, do so. It is interestingly addictive. My girlfriend watched me play it for a long time, what seemed like an hour but could have been much shorter or longer. In the end I got frustrated because we could not figure out how to get me to evolve into what I would consider the third level of the game -- I had already eaten everything there was to eat. Maybe it was just a bug in the version I downloaded.

I don't know which is more infuriating.

The fact that a graduate student made a game similar to early levels of Spore.

The fact a graduate student thinks a casual gamer is going to buy a 600 dollar console.

Or the fact that the graduate student thinks a console is better for a casual gamer than a flash?

web site: slOw

somebody had to do it

Copy Cart

They are so copying Nintendo. Come on people. Nintendo is focusing on Gameplay rather then flashy graphics. Damn you, sony. Be original for once.

fl0w is in the same boat as Gnome or KDE games -- all there have cheap graphics.

here's the mirror

http://www.mirrordot.com/stories/c50bd8a291fca13bf 800b6e9d05087a4/index.html [mirrordot.com]

Immersive gaming (glub glub)

Players will notice faint outlines of the creatures lurking at lower depths, a foreboding sign that vicious manta- and squid-like enemies await. The water darkens as the creature advances to deeper levels.... Mr. Chen's mandate: build immersive games

Funny, but when he said, "build immersive games," I didn't think he meant it literally.

Grad-school thesis simulation

So, this is a RPG where you are a grad student trying to finish their thesis? Cool! It's all about flow!

I went to the website but there was just this floaty thing moving around some dots. Maybe I downloaded the wrong game.

This is supposed to be innovative?

Uhhh, it looks to me like this game is just Snakes [wikipedia.org] w/ a mouse. And without having to worry about running into yourself.

This is supposed to be new?

For Anyone who enjoyed Fl0w..

I mean enjoyed it for whatever time he/she played it, try the Cloud Game. [usc.edu] Its also made with the same relaxing theme in mind. Don't worry if you have trouble with the control part in the beginning, you will figure out the "how-to" part after a min or so.

Kinda like Shark! Shark!

Which is a good thing.

Where's my avatar?

Was I the only one who couldn't figure out how to start eating things?

Re:I've Always Wanted to Say This...

How ironic... post screaming DUPE gets modded redundant.

Re:PS3 Game?

"immersive games for people who don't consider themselves gamers" doesn't describe PS3 games.

Apparently it does now.

Re:Jenova?

God, I hope he doesn't name his son Sephiroth.

Re:Jenova?

No, his (real) name is not Jenova. It's Xinghan Chen.

Possibly he didn't realise "Jenova" was girl's name when he picked it as his tag. Or possibly he did and he's trying to tell us something...