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| Tale of Tales Awarded for Innovation During a glitzy ceremony at the Congress Center in Frankfurt, Belgian independent games developer Tale of Tales were awarded the Advancement Prize for Innovative Game Design by the European Innovative Games Award 2010 for their moody and mysterious Red Ridinghood-inspired exploration game "The Path". Other winners were "Limbo" (Game Design), "Kinect", "CryEngine 3" and "Cloddy" (Technology), "Houthoff Buruma - The Game" and "Gabarello" (Application Methods). This is the second time in a period of one month that Tale of Tales receive an award -in September, "The Path" was awarded for Best Sound and Best Design at the hóPLAY festival in Bilbao. The game was first released in March last year. Tale of Tales' controversial title "The Graveyard" had been a nominated for the European Innovative Games Award of 2008, but did not manage to win. "The Path" was more successful. Tale of Tales take home 10,000 Euro with the award. Money that will be invested entirely in the production of "The Path"'s spiritual sister game, code-named "The Book of 8", currently in prototyping phase. "The Path" turns game design conventions upside down. There is a single rule in the game, but it needs to be broken. There is a goal in the game, but when you reach it you die. There are many objects to be found in the large open environment of the game, but you need to let go of the avatar to interact. There's 144 flowers that can be collected but no reward for doing so. And in the last part of the game, you can only move forward or stop. There are no options, no "meaningful choices". Tale of Tales consider these subversions necessary to express the essence of the fairy tale. Little Red Ridinghood is a story about the pain that accompanies growth, about the lack of control that humans sometimes have over their lives and about how destruction is sometimes the only way forward. Awarding a design born out of its content, rather than out of the "fun factor" of its mechanics, may turn out to be an important step forward in the evolution of video games as an expressive medium. It certainly encourages Tale of Tales to continue their research of the artistic potential offered by interactive technologies. write your comments about the article :: © 2010 Game News :: home page |