Mari Kim is a woman who wears many hats. She is a digital fashion designer, a music video director, a CEO of Japanese immersive entertainment studio Cocone N.Y., and now, she’s also a lead developer of a game. Launching sometime in the beginning of 2024, Centennial is an interactive avatar lifestyle game that will transport players into a metaverse known as Centennial City. Ahead of the game launch, Asia Blooming spoke with Mari on the game’s concept, designs, inspirations, and more.
With so many roles and responsibilities, Kim’s mind moves quickly no matter what she’s doing. Even with the game, the process from idea to launch took less than one year. “This project actually started from the beginning of this year. I know it’s a really short period of time, but I always had this idea about being isolated in some place, and then having to make a living, kind of like a very typical story from Netflix. I never saw things like [what we have] in our game, so I wanted to make something like that. The name Centennial also actually came from my graphic novel I was writing. I always liked to create stories and drawings apart from making fine art.” In addition to offering unique gameplay abilities such as being able to produce original music and collect designer items, Kim believes Centennial stands out from other lifestyle games simply because they do not have Kim herself. “It came from my art. My art is not just a graphic like a design or illustration, it’s actually working as fine art. I think this is a very rare case where you have a character from fine art, and I think that is the most eye-catching part here as well.” Comparing it to a current game, Kim alludes to Niantic’s wildly popular Pokemon Go, but with a vintage approach.
When she begins to work on her pieces, she usually has an idea of what she’s planning on doing already, which helped speed up the process of creating the game. “I could always visualize what I am creating and what it will become. I never doubted my belief that I have a strong imagination, and I think if you’re doing something [like drawing] over and over for almost 20 years, you have to believe in you.” Although it’s clear she has strong confidence in her abilities, Kim acknowledges the initial challenges of coming up with different looks and characters while maintaining her signature artistic style, and humbly credits the rest of her team for their work to help create the game. Not only do the characters look like Kim’s art, but they’re also incredibly versatile and customizable, something that was important to Kim as well. “The head size can be adjusted, the body size can be adjusted. You can adjust to your body type, so we have some that are very skinny, and some are fuller, so there’s a variety that people can choose.”
Kim also hopes the game can help people connect with others around the world through various mediums of art. “The notion of being an artist has changed. A lot of people are familiar with having art and being around art, but I think the game is a good way to have something that you can play knowing that this is an art piece that you’re playing with. Usually if you have an avatar, you’re familiar with fashion, but then you might have never had a music piece. You know, K-pop is getting bigger too, so I thought that I wanted to make something that also included music. I never actually had an experience like this myself, so I want to give these users the opportunity to create this K-pop-like music themselves.”
Although Kim’s excitement over the upcoming game launch was palpable as the conversation continued, she was also equally as passionate speaking about her art and her journey, starting from how she became the artist everyone knows today. “I have not studied art at all, so I thought I didn’t know how to use tools like paints, and I had to kind of teach myself during the journey. My background is actually in interactive media and games, so I watched a lot of cartoons when I was young and read a lot of comics. I always liked to draw from the comics, and I made a lot of replica comics on my own. Then, when I was in Australia for a while, I didn’t really want to get a job [in my field], so after my graduation, I [started to] post my drawings onto a blog. That’s how I started drawing, and then somehow I was found by the curator from a gallery. Since then, I actually use digital tools to draw and create my pieces, and I’ve kind of evolved my art style. I self taught a lot of art techniques, so I wanted to prove that whoever didn’t study art can still create art with the exact same tools that artists use.” Learning on her own, Kim has honed her skills in various mediums of art, both modern and traditional. “In traditional Korean pieces, we use gold flakes, and that’s a very difficult technique. I actually learned that myself, and I place the gold leaf on my art as well.”
With a distinct style, Kim’s art inspires others around the world, just the way she was inspired by her interests before. “As I mentioned, I never actually learned how to create art pieces, how to draw, or anything like that. I think that was kind of my strength, because I never learned to create art, so I had this freedom to create whatever I would like to create. I was strongly influenced by all these styles from the cartoons and anime I saw from when I was younger, always with big eyes and big heads.” Having learned everything from scratch, Kim now prefers to draw digitally because of how diverse it can be. “If you create art in digital form, you don’t really have to take a photo again to present it on digital platforms. Nowadays, you don’t have to only share your work through a gallery. If you exhibit your work in a gallery, then only limited people can see this work. But, if you exhibit your work through online platforms, it can be on any social media and a lot of people could see it. You can wake up one day and you’ve become a star. I liked that idea, so that’s why I really like to keep my art digital.”
With Centennial launching sometime in early 2024, Mari Kim is already looking forward to what’s next, as she hopes to evolve the game into a social platform as big as Twitter. “It sounds very funny, but I want to be like Michelangelo in history. I have a long way to go, but I want to make history rather than just make a trend.”
