Flower

Click here for a link to a video about Flower narrated by the president and co-founder of ThatGameCompany Kellee Santiago. In the video Kelle says "We start our ideas with emotion, how we want the player to feel." is this not how an artist would approach a painting? Flower is like an interactive watercolor painting, that moves and changes as you paint the ground with color as you float across its landscapes. The game is freely available on the playstation Network which relates to what Chris Crawford said during his Dragon speech "Effectiveness over efficiency." Looking into the philosophical definitions of art, the game is mimetic, an observation of nature(traditional), the games aesthetics are clear (Functional), and it has been widely praised by critics(Institutional). I believe Flower is interactive art and a good sign that maybe Chris Crawford was wrong in the Creativity: the missing ingredient chapter on his book On Game Design. What Kelle says towards the end of the video backs this up "With downloadable games you can have smaller teams, smaller budgets, which means we can take more creative risks and now we are seeing all sorts of games that would not have been published with out the playstation network." This feels me with enthusiasm about the artistic direction the games industry can go. Sally backs this up further by saying "Were continuing to try and create games that express emotions and hopefully push the boundaries of what games can do." Is this not what artists do with a medium.