“Play Beyond the Game – the First Grand Exhibition of Art and Serious Games” is opened at the CAFA Art Museum on September 8, 2018. It is hosted by the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) and China Cultural & Entertainment Industry Association (CCEA) and organized by the School of City Design in CAFA, CAFA Art Museum and Game Branch of CCEA. It showcases a large number of serious games that combined with various elements including culture, art, science and technology, and holds a series of discussion and exchange activities, in the aim of excavating the artistic and functional value as well as the cultural connotation of games. Through exploring profound communications between the game and art, education, medical treatment and other social disciplines, the exhibition hopes to convey the positive values of serious games and encourage and support talents of game developing to create serious, cultural and artistic games, so as to push forward the development of digital entertainment education in China.
The exhibition presents a variety of nearly 100 pieces of games from around the world, including “Minecraft”, “Monument Valley”, “Kingdom Come: Deliverance”, “Sky”, “Gorogoa”, “Cuphead”, “Ylands”, “Folding Fan”, “Mortise and Tenon”, “DragonBox Big Numbers”, “Human Resource Machine”, and so on. Based on the interactive experience of games, the exhibition focuses on introducing the development process of each game and uncovering the creation process of game designers, including showing their original manuscripts and exclusive interview videos, directly conveying the charm of the “ninth art”, cultural value and practical application to the audience.
Fan Di’an, President of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, is addressing the opening ceremony
Fan Di’an, president of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, expressed at the opening ceremony that, “Play Beyond the Game – the First Grand Exhibition of Art and Serious Games” not only displays a large number of new works of game design and innovation at home and abroad, and more importantly it reveals a new cultural pursuit in the international game industry under a global information era, that is, to concern about social culture on the aspect of game creation and production. Game is an ancient and ever-changing field, and also a cultural lifestyle which is closely associated with human intelligence, imagination, sense of competition and adventurous spirit that are required in people’s life. With the rapid development of the game industry and its increasing market demand, there are at least two issues exist in the process. One is the language style of games; the other is the social and cultural responsibility that games should bear. People may worry about that the teenage generation loses themselves in cultural recognition and interests because of those games with strong cultural characteristics in the content, form, discourse and style. Therefore, it particularly needs to consider some crucial questions that what the game care about and whether it has contributed to social development through showing humanistic and cultural concern. The theme of the exhibition “Play Beyond the Game” reflects a cultural review of games from the perspectives of design concepts.
Fan Di’an further commented that “many displayed game works explores the integration of digital technology and artistic innovation, including drawing inspiration from traditional art and making a modern transformation, which increased the degree of artistic involvement in the exhibition to some extent”. He hopes that “Play Beyond the Game” will open a new window for the world of games and game works from different countries could resonate with people’s spirit world, thus to make indeed the exhibition an academic milestone in the worldwide game industry.
Wang Zhong, Director of the School of City Design in CAFA
Wang Zhong, Director of the School of City Design in CAFA, mentioned that it is the first exhibition featuring serious games in China. Themed on “Play Beyond the Game”, the exhibition explores the communications between the game and education, culture, medical treatment as well as other social disciplines, and pays attention to the virtual world and imagination of serious games that may transcend an age. Thus, this exhibition not only concerns the expansion of the functions of games but also shows an attitude to explore the future, trying to establish an intensive platform for gathering cutting-edge technology, academy and capital.
Zhang Zikang, Director of the CAFA Art Museum
Zhang Zikang, Director of the CAFA Art Museum, said that , “CAFA Art Museum hopes that through sorting out and presenting the cultural issues concerning game art in the exhibition, it can lead this emerging art form to draw more attention and discussion in the academic system of fine arts, and explore the deep influence brought by games nowadays on visual arts as well as other fields. At the same time, it expected that people who come to visit and experience the show could pay more attention to serious games that involved in domains such as education, medical treatment, social practice and future imagination. It also anticipated that the humanistic care and social philosophies reflected in the exhibition would evoke new thinkings and possibilities for the future of the game and human beings.”
The opening forum brought together worldwide famous game designers and experts of game education in colleges from around the world, including Tracy Flullerton, Dean of the Game Department in the University of Southern California; Pamela M. Kato, Former President of the Research Center of serious games European Union; Andre Thomas, Principal Lecturer of the National Art Education Association. Their discussion is around how the electronic game – as a well-received digital media of the future – could combine with different social fields and provide higher social values beyond entertainment with the development of technology.
Tracy Flullerton, Dean of the Game Department in the University of Southern California
Tracy pointed out that interactive experience is essential to the development of future game industry and the humanistic idea that the game wants to convey is the soul. To achieve this goal, it requires game developers, designers and people from the education department to have interdisciplinary cooperation in cultivating talents as the industry enabler for the next generation.
Pamela M. Kato, Former President of the Research Center of serious games in European Union
Pamela believes that there are challenge and opportunity for this industry as well. The challenge is that creating serious games itself involves several irrelevant disciplines and costs high during the initial stage of development. On the contrary, however, it will lower the cost for the related industries in the long run, such as medical treatment, psychology, medical skills and engineering. In this sense, the challenge can also be viewed as an opportunity.
Andre Thomas, Principal Lecturer of the National Art Education Association
Andre talked about every game should start from a learning course and these courses contain new knowledge for the students. His another point is to build an efficiently-collaborated team, in which the game scholars and course experts – such as the expert in mathematics or history – design the required examinable quantity and learning objectives for the students to achieve.
It is the first time in China for an exhibition of game art to enter into a major national art museum – CAFA Art Museum and provide a large-scale concentrated display of world-class game designers’ exclusive documents, sources of inspiration, creation manuscripts, videos as well as accomplishments of applications on serious games. “Play Beyond the Game” is a journey of adventure and exploration about games, using the means of the game to enable people to re-recognize and re-know serious games from the cooperation with various fields covering children’s medical treatment, teenage education, literature and fine arts.
On the opening ceremony, China Cultural & Entertainment Industry Association, leaders of the Central Academy of Fine Arts and world famous game education experts gave rewards for the “Enterprise Contribution Award of Serious Games”, “Pathfinder Award of Serious Games”, “Culture and Art Communication Award” and “Academy Award of Games”.
Enterprise Contribution Award of Serious Games
Tencent Serious Game, Tencent Next Idea Center, Perfect World, NetEase Games, TapTap Games, Bilibili, Unity, Sony China
Pathfinder Award of Serious Games
Shiyun, Nishan ShaMan, Unheard, Ylands, Minecraft, Aooman
Culture and Art Communication Award
Iris Fall, Candle Man, White Night, Sky, Seven Days of International Trade
Academy Award of Games
Arte-Mecenas, Gorogoa, Walden, Folding Fan
The audience is playing games during the exhibition
Part of the serious games presented in the exhibition include: “Variant: Limits” – bringing game into the teaching of college education, “R-mission” – helping children with cancer to fight against the disease by presenting the cancer treatment process, “Minecraft” – allowing players to learn history through famous historical scenes and Chinese classical architectures that restored in the game world, “DragonBox Numbers” – using the form of game to illustrate basic mathematics for learning, “Walden” – using the means of game to interpret the essence of the world literary classics, “Ylands” – inspiring students’ creativity and imagination through collaboration with the game design department of colleges and universities.
For artistic games, there are: “Lumino City” – using handmade models to create a game world with city buildings combing live shooting, “Sky” – a social game on mobile terminal developed by the famous “Zenist” designer Chen Xinghan, “Iris Fall” – presenting the optic artistry of black and white by the way of digital game, “Nishan Shaman” – promoting minority culture and paper-cut art through the means of electronic game, “Gorogoa” – a puzzle game completed independently by one person with the style of hand-drawing, possessing a high artistic quality and rich philosophical connotation.
The exhibition forum also invited Yoshitaka Amano, an illustrator and famous Japanese artist who is also known for his illustrations for “Final Fantasy”, and Yoji Shinkawa, an exclusive painter of the Kojima Production, and the illustrator of “Metal Gear” and “Death Stranding”, to come to the event and bring the audience a conversation after 20 years.
Interactions between game design masters: Yoshitaka Amano is talking with Yoji Shinkawa