That same year, Jo-Mei Games received enough funding to wrap up their free-to-play efforts and create something independent.
#E3 sea of solitude professional#
With microtransactions you need to build everything around the core mechanic.”īy 2014, struggling with these personal and professional crises, Geppert was ready for a change. “We had a publisher and the contract forever so we could make nothing and still get money. Business was good, but there wasn’t much creative freedom. When Geppert founded Jo-Mei Games with co-CEO Boris Munser in 2009, the studio did a lot of contract work, creating game concepts for publishers. “I've always wanted to make art games, story-heavy games, but you cannot really do that with free-to-play games,” she said. But there’s another source of inspiration as well: Geppert’s desire to break out of the “golden cage” of making free-to-play games in order to design something completely different. The symbolism is heavy you don’t need to know Geppert’s background to understand that it’s about a woman wrestling with some very dark feelings of despair and hopelessness. The sea is a gorgeous green, the sky is clear blue, and the water level drops to reveal more of the surrounding architecture. Soon the sun comes out again, and the world isn’t so dark. It’s a scary, empty world, and clearly dangerous not the sort of place one would want to traverse alone.Īs Kay laments her situation, another girl appears, one whose emanating brightness is in stark contrast to Kay’s ghastly form. Looking like a creature of the dark herself, she’s found herself lost in a submerged town loosely based on Geppert’s home city of Berlin. We don’t know much about Kay, but her intense loneliness is palpable in the demo. Sea of Solitude’s stunning art design uses the juxtaposition of bright colors and near-total darkness to tell the story of a young woman named Kay, also voiced by Jud. She took us through one of the first live demos of Sea of Solitude, talking about its “most personal story” as lead animator Miriam Jud played the game. “I'm always like an open book,” Geppert told GameDaily earlier this month at the EA Play event in downtown Los Angeles. Set to launch this summer under the EA Originals banner, Sea of Solitude uses the exploration of a sunken city to tell a story loosely based on Geppert’s personal experiences with a bad breakup, mental illness, and professional frustration. The CEO of German studio Jo-Mei Games has always been open about sources of inspiration for Sea of Solitude, the studio’s first title.
Cornelia Geppert isn’t the type of game designer to shy away from tough conversations.
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