Journey Creator Jenova Chen Aims To Win Wider Cultural Respect For Games With Next Project

thegamer.com:

The designer behind Flower and Journey, Jenova Chen, wants to win wider cultural respect for games with his next project. While they’ve long since been accepted as art, games are still seen by many as being a lower form of expression. Chen aims to change this.

"You go to a party and someone says 'what do you do?' If you say 'I write scripts for movies,’ they treat you as if you are an author of a book or a poet,” Chen told IGN during an interview. “But if I tell them ‘I work in games,’ in 2005, they said 'you know the Columbine shooting? The congressman said you guys are making kids violent.' And in 2014 to today, people are like 'I heard you guys make a lot of money, right?' That's basically what people ask.”

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Chen said that he struggled for years to get games accepted by the public as a form of art. "I got these games like Flower and Journey in the Museum of Modern Art and the Smithsonian and in all these contemporary galleries. I thought this is going to elevate the public's respect for games because how is it possible that games are a lesser artform than any others?” He noted that many still consider games to be an inferior form of artistic expression, asking “if proving games can be art can't elevate the respect or how the public views games, what else can I do to change that?"

The designer blames predatory practices of monetization for the bad wrap that games have been given over the years. "We have ten times the players now, but at the same time, where is the money flowing to? Where does the talent go? What are we focusing on? I was really happy in 2012 when I saw more and more AAA games starting to become artistic and have emotional power, but suddenly