What's in a Name: Chair Entertainment
Donald Mustard is the creative director and co-founder of Chair Entertainment, the Salt Lake City-based team responsible for 2009's Xbox Live Arcade hit Shadow Complex and last year's iOS hit Infinity Blade. He discussed the origin of his studio's during a panel at GDC:
"The idea of 'Chair' comes from Plato's theory of forms. You guys all remember your Philosophy 101 class from university? Plato theorizes that everything exists in a perfect state, in some metaphysical state, and everything else is just an emulation of that metaphysical perfection. And he uses the example of a chair.
"All of you are now sitting on a chair but if you look around through GDC, you'll see lots of different chairs that look different but all follow the same function. [Plato] postulates that all those chairs are all trying to become the perfect chair that is kind of out there, somewhere.
"And we thought that was actually an applicable concept to game design. Because when we sit around and talk about games, or think about them in our head first, we think, 'Oh man it would be so awesome if this game was like this, or like this, or like that.' And then in our head, it's this perfect thing. And then we have to go through the process of actually making that game and it's never -- at least in my experience -- it's never as perfect as what we first envisioned in our heads.
"So 'Chair' to us means the pursuit of perfection. It's trying to actually get to that ideal image that was first in our head when we thought about it."
Infinity Blade is available -- and still being updated -- on the iTunes App Store as a universal app, compatible with both iPhone and iPad, for $5.99.
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