Kanye West (now generally known as Ye) is a kind of celebrities that has a penchant for controversy and unpredictability. He crashed Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech for her Best Female Video award on the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, pivoted to gospel music, tried to run for president with Elon Musk as his political advisor, harassed Pete Davidson on social media for courting ex-wife Kim Kardashian after their divorce, and surprisingly sufficient, developed a online game. His style firm Yeezy Gap and Balenciaga launched a brand new cell sport to advertise his new style line, to the shock of followers.
In this untitled sport, you set the pores and skin tone and gender of your avatar, choose any outfit from the Yeezy Gap Balenciaga clothes line starting from a jumpsuit to a Gap hoodie with boots, and soar above the sky, swaying your cellphone left and proper to gather as many doves as you possibly can to remain afloat with out falling again right down to the post-apocalyptic panorama. It’s fairly simple, however notably bizarre. Not solely does this sport lack a title, however the mechanics construct upon the premise of Only One, an unreleased iOS sport based mostly on his music of the identical identify with Paul McCartney by which Kanye’s late mom, Donda West, ascends to Heaven.
Tying this straightforward, post-apocalyptic cell sport into the newest style line could seem to be a superb advertising and marketing technique within the eyes of stakeholders, however in apply, it’s an underwhelming fruits of Kanye’s lengthy and peculiar saga by means of the video games business.
First gaming ventures and Only One
Kanye initially wished to develop video video games as an alternative of manufacturing music ultimately, form, or type. According to GameRant, he tried to create a Mario-style sport on the age of 12. The contents of the sport have been sexual in nature, which might absolutely have drawn the ire of many dad and mom in 1989. The sport didn’t see the sunshine of day, but it surely succeeded in main Kanye to find his musical abilities whereas composing the soundtrack for it.
Flash ahead deep into his profitable music profession. During an interview on 105.1 FM’s The Breakfast Club in February 2015, Kanye introduced that he was creating the Only One online game. Like the music it took its identify from, the sport was created to honor the reminiscence of his mom, who died in 2007 of coronary artery illness and issues ensuing from beauty surgical procedure. Kanye defined that Only One can be a linear sport about guiding his mom to the gates of Heaven. The premise mirrors that of Journey, in that solely the participant roams by means of the clouds.
Encyclopedia Pictura
At E3 2015, Kanye approached Nintendo director Shigeru Miyamoto and then-Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aimé on the present and offered a prototype for Only One, which was set to a soundtrack he carried out himself. Former IGN reporter Zachary Ryan confirmed the story on a Twitter thread, saying that Miyamoto described the sport as very fascinating and shifting. Kanye requested to talk with Fils-Aimé about pitching the sport, and shortly sufficient, they met at Kanye’s style firm workplace. As Fils-Aimé defined within the podcast Talking Games With Reggie and Harold, he informed Kanye that Nintendo is a really strict online game firm, and it had so many sport tasks lined up on the time {that a} collaboration between Kanye and Nintendo was not possible. Two weeks later, Kanye introduced Only One at a Yeezy style present in New York.
The subsequent 12 months, Kanye confirmed off the trailer for Only One on the Yeezy Season 3 style occasion, The Life of Pablo album listening occasion, and at E3 2016. The trailer showcased his mom flying by means of the sky on a white horse earlier than incomes her angel wings to enter Heaven.

Production for Only One was being dealt with by Encyclopedia Pictura, a movie and animation studio based mostly in Los Angeles. The studio comprised 14 employees members who labored on the sport from late 2014 to the summer time of 2016. The sport by no means noticed the sunshine of day.
According to Business Insider (by way of TheGamer), sources accustomed to the Only One mission mentioned in 2019 that the sport hadn’t been in manufacturing since that summer time as a result of funding for it fell by means of. Encyclopedia Pictura denied this declare with an announcement saying partly, “We’ve continually worked on the project, through various stages of development, production, prototyping, re-development, more prototyping, then more production, before and after E3 2016.” When TheGamer reached out to the studio for an replace a short while later, it claimed that it was now not engaged on the sport and mentioned nothing additional.
The trailer gave followers the impression that the manufacturing of Only One was accomplished, or on the very least a hair strand near accomplished. However, Encyclopedia Pictura defined on the sport’s design web page that it left the mission even after finishing the preliminary model and creating a prototype resulting from Kanye getting hospitalized for exhaustion, inflicting him to cancel the rest of his Saint Pablo tour.
“We completed a version that was never released, as Kanye wanted to expand the scope,” the studio mentioned. “We built a prototype of this bigger game, but following the events of November 2016, we parted from the project.”
Yeezy Gap resurrects Only One (kind of)

The cell sport launched by Yeezy Gap and Balenciaga is form of a resurrection of Only One, full with components like movement controls, digital camera orientation for the avatar, and the gathering of doves for flight upkeep. Its ideas are proper on the cash, and the rotation of the avatar with the swaying movement of the cellphone in a superhero pose is paying homage to a scene in his Runaway music video the place the phoenix lady flies again as much as the heavens whence she got here. The solely factor that’s lacking is the angel wings which might be obligatory to remain in flight.
It’s a clumsy app that straddles the road between sport and elaborate commercial, but it surely caught followers abruptly contemplating that the celeb appeared to have given up on creating video games in his spare time following the failure of Only One. However, this sport is a product of his persistence to get his online game concepts out into the world at any value, regardless of the video games business being seemingly impervious to celeb affect. Despite being one of many greatest celebrities on the earth, he wasn’t sufficiently big to muscle Nintendo executives into releasing his sport. Instead, he needed to skirt across the business solely to make it occur.
It’s laborious to inform if Only One plummeted to Earth in order that this sport may soar. Perhaps it’s meant to be a teaser for the sport, testing the waters and gauging participant curiosity in additional Ye video games. Either method, it’s good to see the artist’s ardour mission realized in some type, as underwhelming as it might be.

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