Entrevista por email com os irmãos Robyn e Rand Miller da Cyan
Enviei estes emails para Robyn Miller e Rand Miller enquanto estava na faculdade, lá pelos idos de 2006, após aprender nas aulas de paisagismo sobre Gordon Cullen e Kevin Lynch. Amo a ambientação do jogo Riven, que jogo desde 1997 (mesmo sem entender muita coisa), que de alguma forma ficou gravada na minha cabeça.
Não tenho a data exata, pois perdi os emails originais, mas encontrei os textos em um antigo grupo de emails em que compartilhei esta entrevista. Lembro que tinha mais coisa, mas hoje estão perdidas na expansão estelar.
A resposta de Rand Miller é ótima, sinto que ele realmente gostou da pergunta. Legal notar que esta foi a primeira vez que conheci Christopher Alexander, uma grande influência na minha carreira.
Aqui está:
Email original #
De: Leandro
Para: Rand Miller, Robyn Miller
Assunto: -- perdido na transmissão --
Hello,
I’m a brazilian student of architecture and I’d like to know about the process of design of all this worlds, specially the world of Riven, in my opinion the most spetacular of all. I would like to know if there was any architects or landscape designers evolved in the process. I feel that the overall game style there is a big influence of Gordon Cullen and Kevin Lynch. The proper game structure based on image sequences seems based in the ideas of Cullen’s serial vision.
Respostas: #
De: Robyn Miller
Para: Leandro
Assunto: Re: -- assundo perdido --
Leandro,
Great question!…
This may seem low brow, but a lot of our inspiration for Riven came from Disneyland, a compact city-like environment that Walt designed to be as navigable as possible. Richard (the co-director of Riven) and I loved the park as kids and we spent loads of time studying it’s evolution and flow. The disneyland landscape had an interface that made it easy for guests to find their way from one area to another.
Also, we weren’t just designing a landscape, we were designing a vast set and a story. And so from film we took the idea of staging. We were free to go wild with staging. We use lighting, plant trees, or dramatically reshape the landscape. One of my favorite examples of is that of the player walking down some stairs to one of the creatures (that we called “sunners”) and, as he does, the cliff walls on either side, seeming to part like curtains. No player would notice this… but it does create a subtle tension. Or a cave, with light at the end of it… this does the same thing. Or a false end to the cave might break the tension for small moment. Or a sudden change in colors. And on and on…
We hit upon things intuitively. In a broad sense we knew what we were after and we could just tell when it wasn’t working. Truthfully that’s how we hit on many of our best ideas.
By the way, I didn’t read any of Christopher Alexander’s books until after Riven (and had already left the game industry). I devoured them. I’d been doing many of the things intuitively but much was new. I thought everyone in the game industry should be reading these books. I even began recommending them to a few friends (who were never brave enough to delve into them).
Thanks for your very intriguing questions! As you can tell, I enjoyed answering them.
Robyn
www.tinselman.com
By the way… I’m Robyn, one of the designers of Riven and the founder of Cyan. I left Cyan when Riven was completed and the company took a different design direction.
Já o Ryan não pareceu muito interessado nessa questão:
De: Ryan Miller
Para: Leandro
Assunto: Re: -- assundo perdido --
Hi Leandro,
Unfortunately, the primary designers are no longer with us and I don’t know who, in particular, influenced the designs. I did forward your note to one of them but I can’t guarantee they will answer it.
Sorry,
Ryan