The Endless Forest was first developed by Auriea Harvey and Michael Samyn in ______.

The Endless Forest has been developed by game company Tale of Tales, founded by former Internet artists Auriea Harvey and Michael Samyn. I first read about the game last year, and found Auriea Harvey and Michael Samyn were an enigma to me so I thought I should interview them.
Host: Many people have worked on the Endless Forest. How long did it take to develop the game?
Guest: The first prototype of the game was made in June 2004 with just us two, but we started remaking the thing with a team in May 2005. The first public release happened in September 2005. Then we continued working on it until April 2006 when we released Phase Two. So it took about a year in total, so far.
Host: What was the motivation of the Endless Forest? Did you feel there was a need for alternative computer games?
Guest: Our motivation to make computer games the way that we do, stems from the fact that we enjoy certain aspects of commercial computer games a lot, but dislike others with a passion. So we try to make computer games without all the things that we don’t like (competition, meaningless violence, strict roles, predefined goals, canned stories). We also try to add a certain level of authorship that we feel is lacking in commercial games. They often feel too much like products that fell off an assembly line in some toy factory than deep-felt expressions of creative people. The Endless Forest in particular was motivated by a desire to create a peaceful social environment. Online games very often seem like dressed up single player games. We try to design interactions that invite playing with each other. We also consciously removed all ways in which players could hurt or annoy each other. That’s why there is no chat in the game, for instance.
Host: Are you working on other projects?
Guest: Yes. Next to smaller additions to The Endless Forest, we’re working on three other projects. Two of them are related to each other. One is a research project called Drama Princess, the other a game called 244 Drama Princess is an attempt to build a software system that should help us populate our games with autonomous characters. 144 is a short horror game based on older versions of the folk tale of Little Red Riding Hood. 144 is a "spiritual sequel" to 8, our first game design, which was based on Sleeping Beauty.
Host: How was your work received by the various communities? Does file traditional video game scene welcome it with as much enthusiasm as the art scene?
Guest: We were actually surprised by the amount of positive feedback we have received from computer game players. While, as expected, there is definitely a large amount of hardcore garners who don’t get The Endless Forest at all and who seem to feel strangely threatened by it. We have received a lot of positive comments from both games press and players. I would even say that the games people who find out about the game often express more enthusiasm than the art lovers. It seems like, for many people, The Endless Forest is something they’ve been waiting for. On the art scene, our work is at least as odd as on the game scene. But there also, many people welcome the warm simplicity and pleasant "humanness" of the game with open arms in an environment that is usually full of ironic, ff not cynical, "clever" and cold conceptual pieces.
Host: Do you feel that your work belong to fine art or to digital art? But should we make a distinction between fine art and computer-based art forms, like many do?
Guest: I’m actually not sure what you mean by "digital art". There is a growing amount of computer-based art that is included in contemporary fine ’arts. But most of it is as stale and snobbish as its analog brothers and sisters. In the mid-nineties we fled the world of galleries and museums as well as the world of pop culture, to find a beautiful place on the Internet where creative people could share their work with the audience directly and without mediation. We still work in this mindset. We prefer to offer our work straight to the spectators, without any kind of framework. I think we do think of our work mostly as games and not so much as art, but in the sense that art film makers consider their work to he cinema first and foremost. We have a similar attitude: we make games, yes, but they are artistically more interesting than most commercial games. This doesn’t stop us from participating in art events though.
Host: Thanks Michael & Auriea!