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Kenji Eno broke new ground for video games

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technology The 90s, including innovations in 3D graphics and affordable storage in CD-ROM mode, opened the doors to a new generation of innovative video games. One of them was Kenji Eno.

Eno’s games became known for their unique creativity, though they never achieved much commercial success. But all of this went on for Eno and inspired his passionate work ethic and indie-first mindset.

“Eno’s work serves as a lesson in overcoming difficulties,” says writer and video game historian John Andersen. “Everyone’s point of view was this: forget about the social norms that you think are blocking you. Take your creativity out of the shadows and into the world. ”

I’ve always found it fascinating to have someone “ahead of their time”. In the two decades he has been playing games, Eno has certainly proved that the bill fits. Nowadays, it is common to find pedestrian simulators Firewatch and What remains is Edith Finch those who place the narrative first: experiences focused on the cinematic experience that they place on curiosity, rather than the difficulties of curiosity. Eno was the first to explore this now accepted game design aesthetic. However, his most popular game, D, is hardly a footnote to the history of video games. Maybe if he had produced it D today, games and their work could have been even more widely accepted.

Humble Beginnings

On March 1, 1994, Eno founded Warp, a gaming studio that would go on to produce his most popular work. The studio was a launch, with limited staff and resources, which would have influenced the platform on which the studio focused its development. A few years before the original PlayStation was launched and quickly dominated the market, Tripp Hawkins, the founder of Electronic Arts, launched the 3DO Company. One of its greatest feats was the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer, using state-of-the-art 32-bit game console CD technology and polygonal 3D graphics. Eno was attracted by how affordable the development was for the console. Using the technical skills of 3DO, he aimed to develop an ambitious 1995 film game experience. D.

“Survival horror” was still months — or were at the time Resident EvilIn the case, a year later, Warp released the game. The story Laura Harris continues to investigate a hospital after her father has a psychotic break, resulting in a mass murder (with a controversial side of cannibalism).

The game plays like a bit Myst. Every move the player makes matches the dramatic cinematic sequences on the screen. Along with a very nasty and humorous soundtrack composed by Eno himself, D it was a commercial success at the time, selling one million copies in its native Japan and becoming a system vendor in 3DO. In the United States, it became a cult classic, putting Eno’s name in the stratosphere of the public game.

The developers of the games are rock stars

“What I respected most about him was that he wanted a better work environment for Japanese game developers,” Andersen says. “American game developers saw how they worked from the early 1990s to the mid-1990s; He wanted the same environment for Japanese game developers. ”

While American developers like John Romero and John Carmack of Id Software came into focus, speaking openly and with a definite charisma in favor of their games, Japanese gaming companies were highly structured and culturally uninterrupted with their audiences. Japanese developers rarely looked at it from their current projects and treated each game as a work in progress, without participating in title marketing or advertising. Eno wanted the Japanese developer to look like a rock star. “He was a very oral boy, and that’s why he chose to attack on his own.”

His next game, Enemy Zero, it took the player deep into space. Something is wrong with the AKI spacecraft, which was once the center of biological research. Similarly, Eno chose to use it DLaura is the protagonist, but instead of holding on to the narrative of the previous characters in the game, they used her as a kind of digital actress. That was something Eno did in games with many of his characters, perhaps because filmmakers often benefit from a repetitive cast in their films.

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