Chapter 468 - 300: Anti-War Arts Festival (Part 2)
"Huh?"
’Who knew?’ Zog thought. ’Uffie, a girl who looks so quiet and gentle, is actually a promising candidate for our "evil" faction.’
"What do you mean, my most common method is using the media to stir up trouble?"
The moment he said it, everyone in the office stared at him expectantly, their expressions all seeming to ask, ’Well, isn’t it?’
"I built my business on the strength of my products, thank you very much!" Zog had to set the record straight. He was, after all, considered a good businessman of a Dragon by his peers.
"The two aren’t mutually exclusive," the group replied in unison.
If this were a comic, Zog’s face would definitely be covered in little curved tick marks showing how ticked off he was.
’I really want to dock their pay right now.’
But he resisted the urge.
These people in the game department were valuable assets to the company. It was better to humor them when he could.
Besides, all the Gold Coins they earned would end up in his swimming pool anyway.
"Alright, you win. Now, let’s get down to business. Isn’t this art festival a charity event?"
"Yes, it is," Uffie replied.
"Then if they want to do charity, let them. Why would we go and drag their name through the mud?"
"No, no," Uffie said, waving her hands frantically. "We don’t want to actually ruin the art festival. We were thinking we could just put a little pressure on them so they’ll accept games."
"Ohhh—"
It clicked for Zog. "I get it. The art festival doesn’t want to let games in on the fun."
The team immediately nodded.
"So you want me to find a way to make them include you."
They all nodded vigorously.
’Why do I feel like a parent whose kids got bullied at school and ran home asking me to fight their battles for them?’
"Why bother?" Zog scratched his head. "They’ve already given you the cold shoulder. Why are you so desperate to tag along?"
"Because I believe games can be a form of art, and they shouldn’t be looked down on," Uffie answered with great earnestness.
Seeing how serious she was, Zog began to take the matter more seriously as well.
In his experience, he’d grown accustomed to the gaming industry being looked down upon.
You can look down on it all you want; I’ll just keep making my money. It didn’t bother me one bit.
Eventually, the very same people who looked down on gaming would see how profitable it was and come shamelessly crawling back.
It felt just like a child who was abandoned at a young age, managed to become successful all on their own, and then had their parents show up talking about the gift of raising them and offering their "support."
That was why Zog had long since learned not to care what other people thought.
But Uffie and her team hadn’t had those experiences, so naturally, they didn’t share his mindset.
And really, why should games have to put up with being disdained?
Sure, the quality of games was a mixed bag, full of both gems and junk, but that was true for every art form. What mattered was the creator’s ability, not the medium itself.
"So, what reason did the art festival give for rejecting games?" Zog asked.
"They said that as a medium, games are too new. They said they haven’t formed a proper system, lack uniqueness, and haven’t demonstrated the depth and intellectual substance required of an excellent medium."
’They almost sound like they have a point.’
And to be fair, Zog’s company hadn’t really released any games with great depth or intellectual substance so far. The primary focus was always on fun.
After all, the goal was to make money.
And fun was definitely more profitable than depth.
’Who wants to be lectured when they’re trying to relax and have fun, anyway?’
"Wait a minute. What about the Shadow of Evil, Magic Shadow Dramas, and animation? Aren’t those three also relatively new mediums?"
Zog realized that reasoning could be applied to the Shadow of Evil as well.
The one advantage the Shadow of Evil had over games was that they had already produced a few truly impressive films.
"Because the Shadow of Evil has the support of the Drama Guild, and drama is an accepted art form. So they claim the Shadow of Evil is a derivative of the performing arts."
’That’s a narrow view,’ Zog thought. ’A Shadow of Evil is more than just performance art. You can’t make one with just a director and actors.’
The medium was a composite art form that required the involvement of many traditional arts.
And games were even more complex than films.
"As for animation, more than half of the members of the artists’ guild are from our animation studio."
So, in the end, it was all because games had no one in their corner.
"I see what you’re getting at."
"Really? Does that mean we’ll be able to join the art festival right away?" Uffie asked excitedly.
"Nope."
"Huh?"
"I have a better idea. Since they refuse to accept you, why go groveling for their approval? We can just host our own charity event."
Zog proposed, "We’ll just go head-to-head with their anti-war art festival. We’ll hold an anti-war game festival. We’ll follow their schedule, do everything they do, and even make a donation at the end. We’ll see who draws a bigger crowd."
Games are going to donate that money with their heads held high!
Once games demonstrate their power, the other traditional arts will come knocking on our door themselves.
Who’s going to say no to money?
You don’t beg for recognition. You make your opponents realize the error of their ways on their own.
"But I won’t help you cheat by faking donations or anything like that. Whether you can outperform the traditional arts is up to you. If you lose, don’t come crying to me."
"Deal!" Uffie answered.
She seemed confident, but the others who had come with her weren’t in such high spirits. They looked completely dejected.
"Don’t tell me you guys don’t have any confidence in yourselves."
Hearing Zog say that, Uffie was the first to get agitated. She immediately turned to her colleagues. "How can you not have any confidence?"
"I... I don’t think what we’ve made will be that popular," one of them said meekly.
"Oh? You’ve already made something?" Zog asked, his interest piqued.
"Yes. To prepare for the art festival, we made a few playable demos ahead of time. The development cycle for a game is much longer than, say, painting a picture or writing a song."
"Can I try them out?"
"Of course."
It had been a while since Zog had played a demo for one of his studio’s original games.
Soon, he was testing the demos one by one.
The demos were mostly short, and many of the art assets were just placeholders. You’d have to be a real die-hard gamer to play through this cobbled-together collection.
This was why so many games got caught up in the graphics race.
Art makes the first impression, and it’s something you can improve just by throwing money at it.
As for gameplay, however, money wasn’t always the solution.
Generally speaking, as long as the graphics were good enough, a huge number of players would play a game even if the gameplay was completely cookie-cutter. They might not love it, but they’d accept it and buy it.
But for a game that built its reputation on graphics to try and pass off crap gameplay with its gorgeous art... well, that just meant the developers didn’t understand their audience.
And many of Zog’s employees had chosen to focus their efforts on the art.
With the limited time they had, they’d done their best to make the art assets they created both exquisite and stylized.
’It seems game developers are destined to grind themselves to death.’
It was hard to imagine when they found the time to grind all this out on top of their regular work.
The problem with this approach was also obvious: the games were all boring. Once the initial impact of the art wore off, the experience felt underwhelming.
Besides the art-focused ones, there were others that put all their effort into the text, as if they were desperate to prove their "depth."
The only one that was even remotely interesting was Uffie’s demo.
She had made a first-person shooter, only instead of bullets, you shot Magic.
She had also cleverly created a sense of subversion. The character you controlled wasn’t the sole protagonist; when you died, you would switch to another character, unlike most games where you play as one hero from start to finish.
This created the sense of soldiers falling one after another in a war, effectively conveying its brutality.
The problem was, in her eagerness to show the cruelty of war, she had made the difficulty unbelievably high.
The demo was only one level, but Zog died so many times that his head was spinning.
And while he might not be a pro gamer, he was definitely an above-average player.
After trying all the demos, Zog shared his thoughts.
"You’re all too desperate for the approval of traditional art. If you’re just going to focus on art or text, why not create pure art or write a novel instead of making a game?"
His words silenced the employees.
"Do you remember what I said in my lecture about what makes games special, what sets them apart from other mediums?"
"Interactivity. It’s interactivity," Uffie answered.
She was also the only one whose demo had even remotely interesting interactivity.
"Exactly. Interactivity. So if you have something you want to express, you shouldn’t just shove it in the player’s face with dry text or static images. You should integrate it into the gameplay, letting players understand your message through their own actions. Right now, your demos feel too much like lectures, and nobody likes a preachy game."
Zog thought for a moment, then added, "As it happens, I’m not too busy myself lately. So how about this: since we’ve decided to hold this anti-war game festival, I’ll make a short demo myself. You can use it as a reference."