A Whole New World

OUTSIDE INFLUENCE
In many ways, The Void feels like the world that was so frequently struggling to burst out of Pathologic’s town. Despite being a very different game, there’s an obvious natural progression between the two releases. “Having finished work on Pathologic, we most of all feared that we would become prisoners of this game, this world, this genre,” says Dybowski. “We still weren’t confident enough about our power, our professionalism, and even our talent – almost all our team came into the game development industry ‘from the streets’, so to speak. We were able to finish our first project, but we still concede this may have been a coincidence.

“But the ideology of our studio assumes that we’re trying to develop, explore a special game language, turn the game into a new, modern, expressive form of art. Such a task required us to work in different genres – if you pledge, don’t hedge. In addition to that, we wanted to become more like the universal masters on the scale of Pushkin, Stanley Kubrick or Peter Weir.” And both Pathologic and The Void were influenced primarily by music, Dybowski says.

“The world of Pathologic was wilfully realistic,” he continues. “Even the made-up elements were ‘earthly’, life-like. The world of The Void was supposed to become a grotesque dream, completely devoid of reality.” But even with the game’s astonishing creativity, Dybowskiy is somewhat disappointed by the result. “Unfortunately, we didn’t build up enough courage – and strength in our battles with the publisher – to make The Void the way it was planned. What we got in the end is a compromise, and this wasn’t good for the game at all. The initial idea, the way it pops up in your head, the way it first achieves its integrity, is always the best.”

ACE Team, like Ice-Pick Lodge, look to influences outside the games industry when designing their worlds. “We were very interested in the work of illustrator John Blanche,” says Andres Bordeu. “We got acquainted with his work through some adventure books that featured his illustrations – The Crown of the Kings adventure books from Steve Jackson. We also looked at traditional art as a source of inspiration. The paintings of 15th Century painter Hieronymus Bosch had fantastic creatures and designs that we could refer to. Another great source of inspiration was The Dark Crystal film from Jim Henson and Frank Oz. The world and the characters featured in that film are absolutely marvelous. Not even the rocks and the plants are real. They were designed to convey the idea that the characters were in a world nothing like our own. But that world also has mountains, woods, deserts and the animals that live there. We wanted to do the same; build a world where everything was immersed in a particular art style.”

BRAVE NEW WORLD
It’s clear that both Ice-Pick Lodge and ACE Team have a strong sense of artistic value within videogames. And while it might seem like they’re in the minority, and that only independent studios are making truly creative waves in today’s climate, Andres Bordeu thinks mainstream works have just as much potential in the future.

“I still think that, even though the industry has tended to focus on more ‘safe’ concepts, we won’t cease to see the birth of creative new worlds, and they won’t necessarily always come from the indie group. BioShock is a great example of a unconventionally themed game that was developed by a large studio that was willing to take a risk.”

As for Ice-Pick, Diybowski shares Bordeu’s optimism, but feels his own team still has a long way to go. “The stem idea, like the DNA code, binds the integrity of the entire concept – the gameplay, scenario, graphics and sound. On the other hand, we’re not doing our best on this job yet. It requires experience and proficiency. But if we for one moment understand that we’ve completely lost sight of this integrity and are unable to see it anymore, our work will lose meaning. Then we’ll pack our bags in our nomad tent and go touring around Europe as a small circus.” By Lewis Denby

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