The Spiritual And Sensual Meet In Tale Of Tales' New Video Game

Tale of Tales, the Belgian game studio that's known for throwing gaming conventions out the window, has created a video game based around the idea of pleasure—and flowers. The ever-creative designers approach videogames with an auteur's sensibility. To Michaël Samyn and Auriea Harvey, who spearhead the outfit, the concept of a game is as amorphous as the personalities of the players. So, a game crafted by Tale of Tales isn’t about clear endings or high scores, it’s about the journey a user pursues.

Their latest creation, Luxuria Superbia, is a game designed for tablets, and that’s where the conventions end. Divided into 12 levels that are actually interactive flowers in the shape of wormholes, Luxuria Superbia is an experience that redefines the definition of user interface as players must explore mutually-beneficial sensual relationships with their environments in order to “complete” it. There are no playable characters, no central story―just you and an autonomous flower system that knows what it likes.

Luxuria Superbia is as much a product of Samyn and Harvey’s artistic philosophies as it is the result of a secret research project they run exploring the union of sensual pleasure and spiritual evolution. Codenamed Cncntrc, that research has found a new home as a Tumblr page, replete with visuals. Taking that into consideration, we tried our hand at a new kind of interview: one that like Luxuria Superbia is about stimuli, in this case, visual.

Using images taken from Cncntrc, we let the below visual stimuli dictate the course of our questions.

The Creators Project: Needless to say, the flower makes quite an appearance in Luxuria Superbia. How did flora become such a central element in the game? Was it strictly a design choice?
Tale of Tales: One of the initial visions for the game was to travel through a tunnel shaped like a flower. We imagined falling into a lily, but continuously, as if the flower never ended.

This was actually triggered by a round table discussion at the Game Developers Conference years ago, led by Brenda Brathwaite. It was a discussion about sex in games. Given the nature of the medium, and the concern with maturity, we imagined that it would be interesting to try and capture in interactive form the sexual activity itself, rather than simply depicting it.

Flowers already encapsulate a form of abstraction of sexuality in their biological function, but more importantly, in the emotional effect their shapes, colors, and odors have on humans. In many human cultures, flowers are considered sensual and related to love.

Did the seamless union of the organic and the artificial in the game pose any unique challenges?
For the longest time with this project we didn't know how far from realistic imagery to stray. There was our usual desire to not "compete" with games that try to have photorealistic graphics as we know our own limits in that regard. But there was also our inclination to create representational art.

The game had a lengthy prototyping phase for this reason. We tried many, many, different iterations. Everything from environments that felt like dripping caves more than flowers, to more explicit skin imagery to see what look carried not only the meaning of the design but created the right atmosphere. Everything that went toward the photoreal seemed far too heavy for our vision and the sensation we were trying to create. It was a hard choice but once we started thinking more about color and lightheartedness in combination with the gestural controls of the touchscreen, it began to have a better expression of sexuality for us.

The world beyond games is experiencing a similar renaissance of the organic becoming artificial and vice versa. Did this play into the themes of the game at all?
No, it didn't. We don't see much of a distinction since everything artificial is still [part of] human creation—some of it is nice, some not so. It's always a choice. We refuse to see technology as something outside of humanity, something alien. On the contrary, we want to embrace our devices and even, in some cases, accept and emancipate them as fellow life forms. All of our games are like our children to us.

Luxuria Superbia is far more abstract than other titles in the Tales of Tales catalog as there are no characters or clear story. As designers, how do stay within the parameters of a world that seemingly doesn't have any?
Actually, we never explore complete abstraction, while this project may seem to be leaning in that direction, especially as compared to our other video games, in this case we simply present the character in a very different way.

In Luxuria Superbia we want to give the player a way to relate with their mobile device in a way more like the lover it sometimes seems to be. People constantly walk along streets, eyes fixed upon the glowing screen. They stroke it at the dinner table with friends. We feel [that] through Luxuria Superbia, your device becomes personified. You have a beautiful relationship. It responds to your touch shooting colors and music through your fingers. It's joy, it's beautiful. Hopefully the game leaves both player and device feeling satisfied. Less taken for granted. Needed, with a new level of appreciation for one another.

Instead of classic video game levels, Luxuria Superbia is broken up into "flowers," which users must navigate through in mesmerizing journeys of music, sensuality, and color. What drove the decision to break up the game play in this manner?
It's intended to be very much like the levels in conventional games. The purpose is to make the playing easier by guiding the player through the experience. Just like in other games.

This does not come natural to us. When we imagine our games, we tend to think of them as situations, as moments. Endless moments where time does not exist. And our ideal player is one who structures this experience through their own imagination. Such a player is a joy to work for as an artist because they do half the work. Sadly such people are rare. And others deserve beautiful experiences as well. So we try to help them.

The structure does make sense in terms of the content of Luxuria Superbia. We see it as a journey from the intimate to the universal, from the sensual to the spiritual. But without separating those poles. When you end, you can start again.

Luxuria Superbiawas designed as a tablet game, and you've mentioned, that ideally it would be played on a circular monitor. What would be the reason for this? And why haven't device engineers strayed away from the traditional square or rectangular interface?
We want to know why they haven't as well! Is it purely convention and the limits of mass production? Is it the same phenomena which leaves digital photography pathetically chained to traditional photography? Habit? If there can be not only new interfaces but also a rethinking of, an evolution of the screen, Tale of Tales would be very happy.

Cncntrc, the Tumblr research stream from where these images were taken, is composed mostly of non-game visuals. Did any video games or "notgames" in the style of past Tale of Tales titles influence Luxuria Superbia?
We have a very diverse set of interests and those interests are reflected in all our game designs. If a game designer only stays within the limits of what other video games can inspire we feel it is to the detriment of the medium. So we tend to design while thinking about things we haven't seen and experiences we haven't had in other video games.

That being said, Luxuria Superbia does refer quite clearly to the game genre of the tunnel shooter of which Rez stands out as [a] major achievement. When we looked at these games, it struck us that they often focused on destruction. But they don't need to. They tend to be rather abstract. So, instead of destroying enemies, one could pretend to be creating explosions. In early prototypes we implemented things like planting seeds and growing trees. And there is still an element of this digital gardening present in Luxuria Superbia.

Despite having no characters there's a high level of interaction within Luxuria Superbia. A user must pleasure the environment so that it can provide a pleasurable experience in return. How does this differ from other versions of AI in traditional video games?
We have actually done a big research project into autonomous characters a while ago, called Drama Princess. We ended up with a system that relied as much on the player's desire to make sense of what they see as on logical structures in the programming. Our goal was not to imitate life but to give the impression of life and trigger the emotions of interaction with a life form.

The AI, if you can call it that, in Luxuria Superbia is very simple. In fact, it is more similar to autonomous systems in other games than in The Path, for instance. In The Path, the characters have true autonomy. They can be unpredictable. But Luxuria Superbia is easy: there's a certain way to interact with it and its reactions are predictable. What's interesting about it is that the way that the program responds to the players is very similar to how humans respond to certain stimuli. So the software feels very familiar very quickly, and hopefully something that players can form a sort of bond with.

One of the qualms critics have of describing games as art is that they don't possess an individual essence—something along the lines of spirituality. Yet, Luxuria Superbia is a great deal about the spiritual world and seems to possess that very thing. Was this its ultimate goal?
Yes. In fact, with Luxuria Superbia, we try to make this sort of spiritual essence more accessible. In a way, our previous work was more conventional. In the sense that it was more similar to other contemporary art. It was very sincere, did not make many compromises and made big demands on the player. But videogames are a playful medium. We believe that this medium can allow us to provide aesthetic experiences in a much simpler way than other media can. Because we can program the software to play along, to respond to the spectator, to have a sort of conversation. Luxuria Superbia is a first step for us in this new domain.

The spiritual is of great concern to us. But not in opposition to the sensual. In many religions you can see this transition from the sensual to the spiritual. This is often interpreted as a journey from low to high. And at the end, you abandon the sensual in favor of the spiritual. With Luxuria Superbia, we try to suggest another way: a spirituality through the sensual that does not require us to leave our bodies. On the contrary: it is through the experiences of our senses, especially the experience of joy, that we reach the divine.

@blacktiles