A 19th century Catalan farmhouse is the setting for CLeM. “It was my grandparents' house and it has served as inspiration for us to create the environment in which the video game takes place,” explains Mariona Valls, the co-founder and art director of Mango Protocol. The new work of this small Barcelona studio proposes the user to immerse themselves in a dark and personal story that, unlike how it would be presented in the rest of the arts, in this case is played. As a strange rag doll, the player moves through the different rooms, carefully observing all the details and interacting with the objects that adorn each room. The objective? Discover what happened in that gloomy abandoned house.
Although different in its playable mechanics, CLeM is similar to Ugly, another recently released video game developed by the also small Catalan team Team Ugly. This time, the player controls a tormented nobleman who must confront the traumas of the past while traveling through a huge palace, jumping from one place to another and using a mirror that allows him to exchange himself for his shadow self.
Original, right? One of its creators, Gerard Singuerlin, reveals his influences, “the animated miniseries Beyond the Garden and the experimental music band Mr. Bungle.” Both CLeM and Ugly are two good examples of what is known as an indie game within the electronic entertainment industry. These are works developed by much smaller teams than those responsible for the large video game blockbusters and which, therefore, can allow themselves greater artistic and creative freedom.
Almost half of the video game development studios in Catalonia (46%) and in Spain (49%) have fewer than five workers. This is attested to by the respective editions of the White Paper on the video game industry prepared by the sector's employers with the support of the Department of Culture and the Ministry of Industry. For years, these small independent studios have been creating interactive works of great cultural and artistic value, but, in the vast majority of cases, they go unnoticed by the general public and off the radar of the general media. “This type of game has not yet reached the general public,” says the creative director of the Barcelona studio Nomada Studio, Conrad Roset. “Many more singers, film directors or politicians are interviewed in the media than video game creators,” says the head of the acclaimed Gris. In this evocative video game, the player guides the steps of a girl through a dream world that confronts her with a painful experience in her life.
Although independent, his is a much larger studio than those previously mentioned and his game, he acknowledges, has received great media attention, but this does not prevent this artist from perceiving that “there is an imbalance between the importance that the video game has at the level of industry and popularity and the coverage it receives from traditional media.” Roset, who is in full development of his studio's new project, Neva, cites the example of The Game Awards, an annual gala for the video game sector in which Gris was awarded and whose last edition tripled the global audience of the Oscars. –reached 118 million viewers compared to 35 million for the film gala. “Although progress has been made, there is still work to ensure that video games are valued in the same way that cinema, literature, music or art are valued, so that they have a more balanced recognition like that received by other cultural industries,” he maintains.
Another factor that can cause this lack of knowledge of indie games among the general public is the great diversity of genres that exists within this creative industry. This is what Carla Sevillano, a level designer at the Barcelona-based Piccolo Studio, points out—yes, the video game sector in Catalonia is mostly concentrated in Barcelona. “The games that tend to make the most noise are those that do not have as artistic a purpose as others that do focus and pivot their design on this element,” says she, the person responsible for shaping some of the scenarios in the After Us game. . In this emotional title the player controls Gaia, the spirit of life who must travel through an Earth that has been devastated by man. In fact, in the four games that have been mentioned so far, there are neither shooting guns, driving cars, nor shooting a ball. “The diversity of genres contributes to its richness and breadth, and it is important that gamers and the industry in general continue to explore and promote the variety of experiences that video games can offer,” says Sevillano. An idea that the designer and artist of Ugly takes a little further. “It is not that the artistic side of video games is unknown to the general public, but to the vast majority of players,” says Singuerlin. “I think it is very difficult to understand the expressive capacity of video games from the outside, but it is also difficult from the inside if the only experience is works that only serve entertainment,” she adds.
Conversing remotely with these four video game creators, either through voice notes or through messages on Discord, it is easy to notice the richness of their works in terms of their inspirations. Although they all admit to paying attention to what other artists in the interactive medium do, they are not limited to what this sector offers them. Painting, sculpture, video clips and animation are part of his references. “Anime and animation series from the nineties have marked the visual style of all our games, but our travels through Europe, Japan and South Korea have also outlined the landscapes of our universe,” explains Mariona Valls. “Cinema is also key,” says Conrad Roset, “films from the Japanese studio Ghibli, such as Princess Mononoke, or the French film The Red Turtle, have served as inspiration for us, in the same way as the work of contemporary artists, such as Screech.” Precisely, Carla Sevillano has a special predilection for sculpture and architecture when looking for ideas for the three-dimensional scenarios she designs: “I am passionate about abstract sculpture but also watching documentaries about the architecture of ancient civilizations to understand how they conceived and executed their constructions.”
For these video game creators, inspiration can come from many places, but can we talk about author games when they are works that in most cases are developed as a team? Although with different visions, everyone believes it. “As in other arts, such as cinema or theater, there are creative profiles that give intention and coherence to the work beyond the strictly technical and recreational part. But we must not forget that, as in the aforementioned cinema and theater, games are developed by usually large groups of people without whom their creation would not be possible," says Singuerlin. For his part, Roset highlights the importance of a figure on the team taking this type of initiative. “This is what is happening to us with Neva, I want to have control of the creative, narrative and artistic part, since that is what provides a unique vision.” For Carla Sevillano, author games are those that “compared to video games designed for the masses, allow you to experiment and explore various artistic and narrative forms.”
