Jade Raymond on games as art: it’s getting there

EuroGamer had a brief sit down with Ubisoft Montreal’s Jade Raymond to talk about the subtle clues hidden in the recently released Assassin’s Creed (for the PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360) trailer, only to find out that Ubisoft is still staying as secretive as ever. Even though they have claimed to be dropping pretty “obvious clues” to the mysterious plot of the game, only a devout few have pieced enough information to point out a “conspiracy” that actually runs in real life today.

But before we get carried away, the producer was also set against a few questions not related to the mysteries revolving Altair and his missions in the Third Crusade era. Raymond had given her own views of games as an artform – a direction the gaming industry has always targeted for. She may not think that the industry is at the point of equating games as art – yet.

She said, “Well I do actually think of games as an artform and an entertainment form.” But in her views (and as far as our interpretative skills go), she believes that interactivity is not all about the latest, flashiest or coolest aspects by measure but about the unique things that “you can do with the interactivity” that would set games as a “legitimate artform.” She’s grabbed a Wii lately, perhaps?

Click on Full Article to read more on Jade Raymond’s opinions regarding game development and Splinter Cell: Conviction.

EuroGamer had a brief sit down with Ubisoft Montreal’s Jade Raymond to talk about the subtle clues hidden in the recently released Assassin’s Creed (for the PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360) trailer, only to find out that Ubisoft is still staying as secretive as ever. Even though they have claimed to be dropping pretty “obvious clues” to the mysterious plot of the game, only a devout few have pieced enough information to point out a “conspiracy” that actually runs in real life today.

But before we get carried away, the producer was also set against a few questions not related to the mysteries revolving Altair and his missions in the Third Crusade era. Raymond had given her own views of games as an artform – a direction the gaming industry has always targeted for. She may not think that the industry is at the point of equating games as art – yet.

She said, “Well I do actually think of games as an artform and an entertainment form.” But in her views (and as far as our interpretative skills go), she believes that interactivity is not all about the latest, flashiest or coolest aspects by measure but about the unique things that “you can do with the interactivity” that would set games as a “legitimate artform.” She’s grabbed a Wii lately, perhaps?

And yet interestingly, she does feel that there should be compromise of granting the best for gamers in games, even if it means having to go from aspect to aspect and see how much resources they can use to increase the overall game qualities. She said:

But probably more often it makes sense to redistribute the budget in some way that increases the gameplay quality or the general sound quality or just get more talented voice actors instead of just this one expensive voice actor. There definitely is some trying-too-hard in there, but, it’s cute, no?

Speaking of “trying too hard,” she did have some comments on Ubisoft’s Splinter Cell: Conviction and how it’s trying to include crowd gameplay – a feature that primarily forced the team behind Assassin’s Creed to do some serious engine re-writing. Is Conviction being developed with Assassin’s Creed technology? Raymond answered:

One would think, but actually we created a brand new engine from scratch, which is going to be used by some other projects at Ubisoft, but Splinter Cell is based on the Splinter Cell engine so it’s not at all the same technology. … Surprisingly, we came up with some of the same ideas in terms of what crowd gameplay is, but in terms of the experience and the scope and being an assassin in the Third Crusade, and having loads people on screen is very different to what you’re going to experience being a fugitive in the small areas that’s really based on physics and interaction and those kinds of things [that Assassin’s Creed offers].

So who’ll get the formula right? We’ll find out when Assassin’s Creed makes it way to our favorite platforms this November, hopefully.