Thomas Waterzooi creates games that reinterpret famous paintings into interactive experiences while describing himself as an average art viewer rather than a connoisseur. He experienced gallery visits in childhood and found highly contextual contemporary art challenging. Early industry work included Larian Studios and IO Interactive, and a layoff prompted a turn to solo development after reading Will Gompertz's What Are You Looking At?. Modern art inspired him by demonstrating artists embedding personal visions into society, a concept he applied to his own creative identity. His debut, Please, Touch The Artwork, converts De Stijl abstractions into puzzles, and he starts from aesthetics before designing mechanics. The series later shifts tone and mechanics in Please, Watch The Artwork to emphasize observing rather than touching artworks.
Despite having made a series of games based on famous paintings, Thomas Waterzooi wouldn't call himself a connoisseur of art. "I know art like the average person," he admits. "I had a mother who was really into art and took me to art galleries when I was younger, but it wasn't my passion either. Especially contemporary art I always struggled a little bit more with when it became too contextual."
Early in his career he had worked at Larian Studios, also based in his hometown of Ghent in Belgium, followed by a stint at IO Interactive during the reboot of Hitman in 2016, until he was laid off. It was after reading Will Gompertz's book What Are You Looking At?, a sort of modern art for dummies guide, that ignited the spark for going into solo game development.
This led to his debut release, Please, Touch The Artwork, a playful narrative-based puzzler set within the paintings of Dutch art movement De Stijl, whose abstract works mostly consisting of lines and rectangles in primary colours turn into puzzles. For Thomas, it's a way of making art for accessible to audiences, although he still starts from the art's aesthetics before considering what game mechanics can be applied.
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