Since its birth, electronic games have been closely related to the development process of real society. In the beginning, when electronic games just emerged in the world, designers who were limited by technology could hardly truly control them, and all they could do were interactive games that stayed on the surface. With the changes of the times, electronic games have become more and more mature, and the richness of the graphics they can present and the advanced design concepts of game interaction have been greatly improved. At this time, some high-quality works are not so much "electronic games". ”, it is better to call it “artwork”.
Regarding the word "art", the height it represents is beyond the reach of ordinary works. Art requires more advanced creativity and aesthetic expression beyond the times. Nowadays, the field of electronic games has grown into a towering tree. As the saying goes, "the forest is big and there are all kinds of birds." There are too many shoddy game works among the good and the good. The design that is full of copper odor has nothing to do with art. However, there is also a type of manufacturer in the game industry who is committed to making games exude an artistic atmosphere from the inside out. Even in today's "profit first" game industry, they still maintain their credo of emerging from the mire and remaining untainted. Today in "Electronic Games, a closer look from the beginning" we will talk about the leader of this type of manufacturers, "the elegant implementer of the Ninth Art" Vanilla Club.
In which direction a game manufacturer will develop, the focus lies on the top-level decision. When it comes to where the artistic atmosphere of Vanillaware comes from, you must not avoid its president and founder "Kamiya Moriharu". If we were to rank the presidents with artistic temperament among all Japanese game manufacturers, Kamiya Seiji would definitely stand out. Kamiya, who has long flowing hair, would definitely compare him to an artist if he hadn't known that he was the president of the Vanilla Club. The time goes back to 1997. At that time, Sega game consoles still had a place in the gaming industry. In order to compete with the "Legends" series that dominated the Japanese ARPG genre at that time, Altus (the manufacturer of "Persona") established the "Princess Crown" project and dispatched Kamiya Seiji established a team called Puraguru to develop this game.
"Princess Crown" has the potential to become a hit both in terms of graphics and gameplay, especially in terms of vertical graphics, which already have a vague feeling of Vanilla Club. However, it lost at the "untimely time". At that time, the Sega game console was already at the end of its power. All games released on the Sega SS (Saturn game console) had poor sales due to insufficient installed capacity. This naturally included "Princess Crown". 》. Before the game became as popular as expected, Puraguru had to move to the Altus Kansai branch due to financial problems. The good times did not last long, Kamiya and his team did not work in the Kansai branch for long, and the Kansai branch also closed down.
After going back and forth until 2002, Kamiya finally left Altus with his team and turned to SE, which was famous at the time. However, SE had Kamiya’s trump card but would not use it. Kamiya The team was assigned to develop the "Fantasy Continent" online game. In order to maintain the survival of the team, Kamiya did this for two years. People are like this. When they don't like it or it goes against their ideals, they may tolerate it for a while, but they will never tolerate it for the rest of their lives. In the end, Kamiya Seiji left SE with five team members and established the "Vanillaware" vanilla club in Osaka that was incompatible with all manufacturers in the game industry.
Although Vanilla Club cannot be called a first-tier manufacturer, it is one of the few unique manufacturers in the industry. Different from the game works developed by other manufacturers, players can distinguish the works of Vanilla Club at a glance without thinking carefully, because the games of Vanilla Club are so "beautiful". It’s so beautiful that it’s not so much a game for players’ entertainment as it is a “work of art in the garb of a game.”
Unlike AAA games that use 3D and a series of top-level special effects to create beautiful worlds, Vanilla Club's work is the most top-notch existence in 2D games. It does not have fictional or real grand landscapes, but only uses silhouettes, Dreamy pictures created by artistic expression techniques such as oil painting. Of course, this is inseparable from the personal artistic attainments of President Kamiya Moriharu.
After establishing itself, Vanilla Club has the spiritual support of Kamiya Seiji, and continues to inject "unique beauty" into games. Hence the classic "Grimm's Grimm" and "Odin's Realm". These two games are not only the pioneering works of Vanilla Club, but also mark the unique artistic style of Vanilla Club in the future. In "Grimm Grimm", Vanilla Club redesigned the RTS (real-time strategy) game type with its own understanding. Conventional RTS games are either directly 3D games, or they also use a 2D top-down perspective to construct the screen. This is of course for Ensure "cleanliness" on the screen. However, Vanilla Club went in the opposite direction and used a multi-layered battle mode to solve the pain points of RTS. Although it is a 2D game, it is visually more like a three-dimensional space.
Not to mention "Odin's Realm", most players started to become addicted to Vanilla Club from this game. As the spiritual sequel to Kamiya Seiji's earliest work "Princess Crown", it has reached the peak level of Vanilla Club in terms of painting style, artistic quality and diverse combat interactions. Kamiya Seiji used "Odin Realm" to prove that the shackles between art and games can be completely broken. Without any surprise, “Odin’s Domain” has become Vanilla Club’s signature IP.
After Vanilla Club achieved unprecedented success in "Odin's Realm", it did not directly promote it to a continuity IP like other manufacturers. It is well known that if a game is well-liked by players, its sequel will be a hit even if it is not as good. However, Vanilla Club gave up on the road of making money, and Kamiya Moriharu even proposed a rule that completely went against the mainstream of the game industry-never develop a sequel (artists really have different ideas from normal people). So maybe we can see a reset version of "Odin's Realm" on other platforms, but we won't be able to feel the charm of the sequel.
For Kamiya Sheiji, the charm of money is far less than his pursuit of art games. The reason for not developing a sequel is very simple for him. It’s just because Kamiya Seiji feels that Vanilla Club should be full of enthusiasm and creativity when developing each work. Only in this way can he have no regrets. Just like an artist's inexplicable obsession with his own work, this kind of responsible and almost paranoid attitude towards the game is exactly what every player expects.
It is true that Kamiya Seiji limited Vanilla Club to a niche and segmented game field, which cannot be said to be complacent, but the result was that it was expected to be unable to make ends meet. Classic works such as "Obi Muramasa" and "The Story of the Great Knight" are both well-received and poorly received. The company is always hovering on the edge of bankruptcy, and will fall into the gaming industry if it is not careful. When Vanilla Club was in crisis, Kamiya Moriharu even personally borrowed 20 million yen to maintain the normal operation of the company. Regardless of whether they are poor or wealthy, Vanilla Society will only suffer material hardships, but its spiritual will will not be wiped out.
For Vanilla, their unique 2D art style and application of LIVE2D technology are their most critical trump cards. This special and endearing style of painting is almost unavailable in any Japanese factory except Vanilla. Able to control, not to mention European and American games that are known for their roughness. However, this unique artistic expression has also become the biggest self-imprisonment of Vanilla Club.
Because the painting style of the game is too distinctive, it directly limits Vanilla Club’s game market positioning and game mechanism design. If Vanilla Club does not consider transformation, it will always be in the position of "a small studio targeting niche markets".
It is true that if the criteria for first-class game manufacturers are scale and revenue generation, then Vanilla Club is naturally not among them, but their artistic charm that is different from the game industry and their attitude of implementing the ninth art to the end are not the most dazzling stars in the game industry. Pearl.