{"id":149,"date":"2008-12-12T10:08:41","date_gmt":"2008-12-12T15:08:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hemispheregames.com\/?p=149"},"modified":"2015-01-19T23:31:54","modified_gmt":"2015-01-19T23:31:54","slug":"zen-gaming-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hemispheregames.com\/new_blog\/2008\/12\/12\/zen-gaming-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Zen Gaming, part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Friend and Hemisphere collaborator <a href=\"http:\/\/nealen.net\/\">Andy<\/a> pointed me to a post today entitled <a href=\"http:\/\/multiplayerblog.mtv.com\/2008\/12\/10\/sony-introduces-new-genre-to-video-games\/\">&#8220;Sony Introduces New Genre To Video Games\u2026&#8221;<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The game is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thatgamecompany.com\/flower.html\">Flower<\/a>, and the genre, &#8220;Zen Gaming&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>First of all, let me say that Flower looks gorgeous: somewhat like a next-gen Wind Waker without friend Link. Thematically, it sits in good company with the likes of Okami, in that the player&#8217;s apparent &#8220;purpose&#8221; is to bring life back to the land. The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/feature\/2322\/game_feel_the_secret_ingredient.php\">game feel<\/a> remains to be seen, but, like flOw, one can be sure that players will have strong control over the game&#8217;s pacing and difficulty progression.<\/p>\n<div class=\"videoContainer\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/nJam5Auwj1E\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>So why am I posting about this here?<\/p>\n<p>To answer that question, I need to give a little personal dev-history. I started working on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hemispheregames.com\/osmos\">Osmos<\/a> about one and a half years ago. When Andy tried the first prototype, he pointed me to the <a href=\"http:\/\/intihuatani.usc.edu\/cloud\/flowing\/\">Flash version of flOw<\/a> (which has since come out on PSN), as well as <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Rez\">Rez<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Every_Extend_Extra\">Every Extend Extra<\/a> (which have since come out on XBLA). While the aesthetic of flOw was more on the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/New_Age_music\">New Age<\/a> side, and <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Tetsuya_Mizuguchi\">Tetsuya Mizuguchi<\/a>&#8216;s designs felt more <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Trance_music\">Trance<\/a> influenced, they seemed to share something in common. Was it genre? If so, it was a sparsely populated one &#8211; but one that Osmos seemed to belong to. As you can imagine, my interest was piqued. Since then, I&#8217;ve payed close attention to the area and given it a fair bit of thought.<\/p>\n<p>But more on those musings later. In the meantime, the interesting news is Sony&#8217;s announcement. In one fell-marketing-swoop, they&#8217;ve labeled &#8220;a new genre&#8221;. It remains to be seen what games they group under it, but for now I&#8217;ll start with the minimal assumption that, besides Flower, flOw will also qualify.<\/p>\n<p>One interesting point here is that game genres, unlike music or film, are typically based around their gameplay: FPS, Platformer, Shmup, and so on. But in a Zen game, what principal activity does a player engage in? The label doesn&#8217;t tell you. Instead, it&#8217;s about the aesthetic, the relaxed pacing, the ambience. The closest example I can think of in gaming vocabulary is <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Twitch_game\">twitch<\/a>, in that it describes an effect on the player&#8217;s mental state, rather than a mechanic. Perhaps zen is the anti-twitch. But I believe there&#8217;s more to it than that&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>What makes a game zen? What does the space look like, and what other games fit into it? Is &#8220;Zen&#8221; even the right word to describe these games?<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll stop here, and call this &#8220;part 1&#8221; of the post. More soon&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Friend and Hemisphere collaborator Andy pointed me to a post today entitled &#8220;Sony Introduces New Genre To Video Games\u2026&#8221;. The game is Flower, and the genre, &#8220;Zen Gaming&#8221;. First of all, let me say that Flower looks gorgeous: somewhat like a next-gen Wind Waker without friend Link. Thematically, it sits in good company with the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-zen-ambient-gaming"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5C9wi-2p","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hemispheregames.com\/new_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hemispheregames.com\/new_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hemispheregames.com\/new_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hemispheregames.com\/new_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hemispheregames.com\/new_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.hemispheregames.com\/new_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4391,"href":"https:\/\/www.hemispheregames.com\/new_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149\/revisions\/4391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hemispheregames.com\/new_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hemispheregames.com\/new_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hemispheregames.com\/new_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}