Daniel Muriel: Could
you tell me a little bit about your background and how did you end working at
the video game industry?
Mark Foster: Well, since I was a kid, I always wanted
to make video games. I remember playing Sonic
on the Mega Drive Genesis, when I was about 5, or something, and seeing the
kind of worlds that someone created in a computer game, I really liked that, I
wanted to do that for myself. A few years later, when I was maybe about 12 or
something, I found like a program on a shelf in Game, Public Spaceship. And it
said, you know, make your games and stuff, and it had like… it was a picture of
a platform game, where someone is firing a ship out of a cannon on the background, and I thought “oh, that’s cool,
let’s give it a go”, and I bought it and get home. It was all like Blizt and C
type hybrid code, and I didn’t have a clue at any of them. I tried it a bit,
and mess around with some of the examples there, and couldn’t get anything
worthy, so I just put it away. For a few years later, I picked up a program called
Click and Play, which is a similar kind of thing, so there is no code, it’s
like you just drag and drop stuff around, and it makes it much, much simpler.
And that’s when I started getting into it because I could actually make
something. So I made a few games in the Click and Play games factory, and
that’s where I started to learn how to logic programming. I was making again Sonic
type games because I really like that when I was
a kid. And then eventually, I found that CD again in a drawer, and I got it out
and started looking at it. Because I had all that knowledge built up from
playing with the other programs, so I thought about it more logically and then
got more into it, that was my first actual programming, yeah. And then, from
there I just kind of carrying on, making small games in my spare time. Then I
went to uni, in Manchester, and did Games Technology there. To be honest, I
didn’t really learn that much in the course. Some of it was programming
modules, some of it was design, and the design was more about stories and
stuff, rather than actual game design. But doing things at my own time I
learned a lot about game design, and then I moved onto… I got a job as a
software engineer for a company which is a software warehouse, a warehouse
management software company, which is really boring [Laughter].That was coding
with C, that’s where I learned the most about programming, because you actually
have to do stuff with it. You sort of have to adapt to it, and I learned a lot
there. Basically, as soon as I went into that job, I was kind of planning on
doing the indie game thing. I knew I always wanted to make games, but I didn’t
know where to get into the Triple A games company, because I wanted to do the
design stuff, but my experience is with programming, so I probably ended up
doing the programming role, and not really have that much design control. So I
always wanted to like… just go off and do my own thing. While I was there, I
worked on… I got my first Mac and I was learning objective C, so I produced
iOS games. I actually launched a small iOS game, and that gave me some bit of
money. I think it was like 2 dollars, something like that. Still like,
occasionally, I get like 20 pounds from Apple into my account, “oh, that’s
cool. It’s alright”, that was like two years ago, when I launched that. So I
was working there, and I saved up money in my spare time and then eventually I
just quit the job and went indie full time. I was working on a video game at
the time called Chroma, which is a 2D platformer. So yeah, I quit my job, worked
on that for like a year, and then we did the Titan Souls jam, and then Devolver picked that up, and put us
making that game…
DM: Why
did you decide to do a game like Titan
Souls? What did you seek doing this game?
M: When we first made it, it was for this jam,
so we made it in three days. You know the story about that, right?
DM:
Yes, I know the story.
M: So the only thing we were trying to achieve
was completing a game in three days, really. Because of the themes, we
discovered Titan Souls. The idea of
having a one hit boss mechanic game, so that was “oh, this is quite cool”. And
then, when we got to expand it with Devolver, we just kind of wanted to see
what else we could do with that kind of thing. The moment of the kill is like
the sweet moment of the game, so we kind of build the entire thing around that
one moment, we tried to push that as far as possible. And things like, when you
die, you have to run back for the fight, so it’s like more… maybe more
frustrating, but also more… like death has more meaning, and when you actually pull
off the kill, that frustration that has built up is released and it’s even
better. We tried to make those feel as good as possible. That’s kind of, the
core of the game.
DM:
When you were working on the game, did you explicitly think about the people
that were going to play it? You said on Gamasutra said that you always knew
that Titan Souls was going to be a
niche game.
M: It was the kind of game that we wanted to
play. I’m not sure… I definitely think that it’s not everyone’s kind of game,
because it’s very difficult, to a certain point. But some players will be
really good at it, and they’ll find it may be easier than a lot of people, and
it’s maybe those are the kind of people we’re trying to appeal to. I rather
make a game that a few people really love than everyone kind of felt was
alright, you know. Making someone think “that is really, really good”, that’s a
cool thing. Even if others on the other spectrum, people go “I hate it, it’s
terrible”.
DM:
In general, what impact do you think Titan
Souls had on the people who played it, or well, the people who are playing
it now, what kind of impact it’s having on them?
M: Not sure. Interesting question. I’m not sure
what kind of lasting impact would be. I think the achievement of getting these
kills off… it depends on the person. Maybe another game designer, maybe they
couldn’t take some things away from it, because it is a… when we were making
it, we kind of describe it as an arrogant game, because its design is really,
really strict back in this. It’s quite a small number of mechanics and it’s
just built around this one thing. We were always reluctant to expand that in
any way, we wouldn’t add things like in a RPG, like stats or anything like
that. So maybe if a game designer was going to play it, they would maybe learn
a bit about it. Because I certainly learned while making it. If I made a more
traditional game in the future, the knowledge of what we’ve done now I would
just carry over. To other people, I’m not sure what kind of impact do it have.
DM:
What kind of impact would you like to have on them?
M: The only impact I would like to have is that
they enjoy the experience. Make people have something to have fun with. The
main thing is giving people something to … basically giving them an obstacle to
overcome, then overcoming it themselves, actually gives them the enjoyment.
This is maybe not specifically aimed, the sense of accomplishment they get for
beating something. We just set the challenge for people and if they wanted,
they could try and beat it.
Enjoy your frustration
DM:
In one interview at E3 you said something like, what I told you, a lot people
hated it, it was because of the difficulty of the game. Is it something that
you actually like about your game, a game that can make people hate you in a
way?
M: I’m not sure I like being hated, but I know
what you mean. I’m okay with it. I think a lot of people who say that, at the
moment of thinking “I hate who ever made this”, it’s not they really hate it.
They’re angry, and they just take out some frustration. But when they kill
something, they’ll think “oh, I love them”. [laughter] It’s the way you think.
I think I’m fine with it. It wasn’t like a goal to make people hate you, but
it’s a side effect to make something that frustrates people.
DM:
In another interview, at PAX East, you mentioned that this guy who was playing on
a Vita while he was on a plane and he wanted to scream so badly…
M: Yeah, that was Angie from Devolver Digital.
I don’t think anyone from Devolver finished the game. [laughter] They just give
money and stuff and published it, and the never played through the entire
thing. Yeah, Angie was on a plane, he might be flying to PAX. Because it was a
Vita, he had the urge to kind of smash the thing, but it would have been a very
expensive moment of rage. I actually had that as well, because we left it for a
while, and I was on a plane going somewhere, and I was playing the hard mode
version of the game, and I wanted to smash the computer! [laughter]. Yeah, it
was a weird moment of “Man, I hate whoever made this game. Oh, wait, it’s me!”
I think that’s kind of funny that people do that.
DM:
Would you say this is a game that makes people want to scream at the screen?
Did you decide that… did you have that on mind? It’s interesting this kind
of reaction …
M: Yeah, I think it’s the kind of thing. It was
never specifically in my mind, but it was kind inevitable that feeling comes
across. Any game that frustrates people is obviously going to make them get mad
and that is necessary to make the enjoyment. You have like the negatives and
the positives to it, to make it …
DM:
That’s part of the approach. In order to make people enjoy the game, you frustrate them
first.
M: That certainly doesn’t apply to all games,
that’s just to these kinds of… these niche games, because some people don’t
want to feel frustrated in the game. There are people that play something more
relaxed, where you still get the sense of achievement for doing so, but it’s
not someone punching you in the face before that. [laughter]
DM:
When you designed this, did you specifically think that “there’s going to be a
lot of repetition, a lot of frustration”, did you want the player to suffer?
M: A little bit. The game is designed around
not having any repetition in the actual gameplay. But there’s repetition in
like, you have to run back to the fight. So, it is a bit of suffering. There is
like a theme … actual design reasons why we put that run back in. Death has
meaning, because you have to run back, so you actually lose something in real
life, like seconds of time or something before you actually get back into it.
And that builds up in your mind and makes it… it is like suffering, you get more
frustrated with the game. When you actually achieve the kill, and you
succeeded, you don’t have to do that anymore, it’s kind of like “I’ve beaten
this, screw you, game”. Of course there is a few other reasons to it as well
like… we wanted to have this really quiet peaceful over world, and then when
you are going to fight, it’s like a manic, like really intense. It’s quite a
different juxtaposition of these two. You got moments of silence between the
noise, to make the noise as loud as possible.
DM:
It’s interesting that you are building up the tension there.
M: And that’s kind of the reward as well. You
have a very intense battle, you get a moment of like [sigh] “ahh”, and you are
just walking around and in like this environment, thinking “I don’t want to go
into another room, because I can get my ass kicked again”.
DM: In
Giantbomb you said that at some point, when you were watching people playing
the game at some of these conventions, you said it was great to see people hit
that frustration zone. What is great about seeing someone frustrated?
M: I’m guessing is that, when you see someone
like that, they’re clearly invested in the game. It has roped them in, and if
they’re getting frustrated, because they want to win, so seeing people like that,
just means they actually … maybe they’re not enjoying it as in like, they’re
having a really great time, but they’re enjoying it in a way that they are
engaged with it, I guess. The best bit is when they actually pull up the kill.
You’re watching someone really frustrated and then brought the kill. I’ve seen
people getting really excited. One of my favourite memories of showing the game
was… when we were at E3. We had a double booking at the press appointments. So
there’s one guy in there, and a bunch of people outside, and they were all
watching him play, and we were thinking “Oh, no, he’s having a bad time”,
because these spectators are booing and cheering whenever he’s doing anything.
And he killed this one titan, and he’s got up and start dancing. And he started
doing an improvised rap over the music, and it was the funniest, weirdest thing
I’ve ever seen, because we thought he was having a horrible time, but he was
really enjoying it. So that was fun. It is always cool to watch players’
reactions in person. Especially if they do get really into it.
DM: Have
you witnessed someone that, for instance, started to play, and after a few
tries… “this is not for me”?
M: It didn’t actually happen. Maybe a few. It
didn’t really happen as much as we would have thought. Maybe that happened more
for people playing it at home, than at an expo. I think it kind of … it’s a
good game to show at expo, because people then just jumps in, and they can try
out a bit. Because everything is really fast paced, they can have just like ten minutes, maybe kill a boss, and then
after that “ah it’s sweet, I really like it, it’s really good”. But then at
home, maybe they’d get more frustrated. If you got a crowd of people watching
you and cheering you on, maybe that is more incentive to beat it, even more
pressure added, which makes the kill even better.
DM:
Do you think that a game like this still can be considered as something fun?
This equation between frustration and enjoyment…
M: I hope it’s fun, because else why are people
want to continue to play it? I mean, I’ve said a lot of its weight around the
game it’s about being an achievement, but I think the actual process for
achieving is still fun as well. There’s many moments like that in a fight, like
you pull up a perfect dodge, or something like that, and you feel really good
about it, and the adrenaline is going. And I think that whole process is fun,
in general. The achievement is an extra like a sweet thing on top of it.
DM:
Why do we like to play video games even if they frustrate us? Why is that
something that appeals to us?
M: With that kind of game, I don’t know… it’s…
it’s something to overcome, like having a challenge like that, I think is
pretty due to that kind of game. There’s loads of different games, a lot of
them don’t do that. A lot of old games, like Zelda on the NES, in the eighties, that was very hard, very
frustrating and that was just the kind of game at the time. Megaman as well, most kind of games.
Nowadays, it kind of went to a lull that, a lot of AAA companies will want you
to see all the content they made. They’ve put in millions of dollars, and made
all that stuff and they want you to see it all. They want you to get your
money’s worth. When things like Demon
Souls or Dark Souls came out,
they kind of turned it all upside down, went back to kinds of roots of like
“this is going to be hard, you’re going to have to pay in sweat and tears to
actually get to this point”. It is hard, and it’s also that you can compare
yourself against other people, like how other people do against this game. You
can think “oh, I’ve beat it. These people couldn’t beat it”, you feel
motivated. You can test yourself to see … if people identify as being good in
games, and then they can beat these games to prove their worth, or something. I
think that’s a lot of it, but also those kinds of games I just find really fun
anyway, especially like Dark Souls,
the way the game feels to play, and kind of the exploration. There’s actual
combat mechanics in it, but there’s also a lot of other things around the game
which could be very interesting for the story and things like that. You kind of
have a sense of discovery when you find things in these games.
Punish and Discipline
DM:
Speaking of Dark Souls, you mentioned
that one of your favourite situations in a game like Dark Souls is like when you’re fighting a boss, your health bar is almost
gone and you don’t have any item to recover your health, an estus flask, and the boss is also on the
verge of dying, and then your heart is beating fast… is that the reason you
wanted to translate that experience to your game? Making an entire game about
that moment.
M: Yeah, that moment in games is really like,
that’s when the adrenaline is going and you’re really tense, you want to take
the last swing and kill it, but you’re so worried that you’re going to die, you
maybe play more cautiously or maybe you play too aggressively and you die, and
it’s all really frustrating. We took that idea with Titan Souls and basically just scratched that time of moment out
for the entire fight, and I think that was one of the considerations we had
when we first made the jam game. “If we did it like this, it would feel like
that all time, right?”. And, it kind of did, and we just really liked it.
DM:
Do you think the fact that you can almost immediately come back to fight the
boss again might be diminishing that feeling? I know that you said that there
is some sort of punishment as you have to walk again, even if it’s just for a
few seconds. But don’t you think that this is something different from Dark Souls?
M: It’s definitely different. There’s a lot of
differences between them, because of things like… the soul mechanic in Dark Souls, where you want to get back,
so you can recover your souls, and also when you’re going back, you have to fight
your way through a lot of enemies, or find a way to get past them quickly without
getting hurt or killed, and that is a different thing. It’s like that bonfire would
be maybe a minute or two as well, so much longer. In our game, it isn’t the
same thing. The bonfires play a really significant role in Dark Souls. When you gone through a long area, and you got no
health and you’re like “oh my god”, and you find a bonfire, that moment is like
“oh my god, what a relief”. You sit down, next to the bonfire, recover, it’s
really powerful. That isn’t something we have in Titan Souls, because of the way the game is structured. But I think
the run back to boss, it doesn’t have the same kind of heart to it, like the
bonfire in Dark Souls, but I think it
is mechanically really good for the game. If you didn’t have that in it, you
restart the boss straight away. There’d kind of be almost no point in dying,
because you got one health, and one boss is one health, so if you… say, in like
the Eye Cube fight or something like that, if you die, and then you respawn
immediately, it doesn’t make a difference, because it’s not like game has
helped that, because it doesn’t have any. It’s a weird thing.
DM:
Still, there were people complaining about that. Why cannot I respawn in the
same room?
M: Oh, yeah. That was the main thing I
expected, and a lot of people hated it, but they’re not supposed to like it,
really. Some people actually do, they say “oh yeah, I quite like having this
kind of moment of peace, where I go, OK, let me think how to do it”. I think,
the way that the mechanic works is, there’s loads of very, very intricate
design decisions, that you don’t see as a player. All you think of as a player
“why does it make me run back to the boss, why doesn’t it spawn me so that I
can fight it again”. But if you don’t think about that stuff, you just let that
kind of frustration build up. That is in particular made to make the kills feel
as good as possible.
DM:
You define these kinds of games as punishing games. Is that what Titan Souls is?
M: Yeah, Titan
Souls is definitely a punishing game. If you make a single mistake, you’ll
die, and you have to run back. That is very punishing. Things like the iron
mode, where you only have one life. That is punishment. We made the game for
those kinds of people, people who want to just really punish themselves.
DM:
Because you said that you have to die to learn. So it has to be painful process
to play Titan Souls.
M: You technically don’t have to die, if you
were incredibly good. But, I’ve never seen anyone play through a game without
dying yet. I’ve seen some people one shot Titans, like when they haven’t seen
them, but not the whole game, that would be something [laughter]. I don’t think
that I can do that now! I think whenever you die, you’ve learned something
about the way that it moves and things like that, and what you did wrong. And I
think, the core thing to it is that whenever you die, it’s your fault, it’s
never like the boss being random, there’s no random in the game. Often the Blob
boss moving in slightly random way. But most of the fights are kind of … it’s
kind of like you’re controlling the boss. Your position on the screen, your
action at the time, dictates what the boss is going to do. The boss will always
move in a very specific pattern that is based on that, like the Eye Cube always
moves around one tile at a time. It’s always following you, so there’s no
random thing to it. What you need to do in a fight is move around and learn how
to control the boss in certain ways. So the game is kind of about control,
really.
Player agency and (dis-)empowerment
DM:
Do you think that in a way you were trying to disempower the player and leaving
them at the mercy of the game? Because you are telling me now it is all about
controlling the situation. You’re leaving the player vulnerable, just one hit
kills you. But at the same time you’re saying this is about control.
M: They are very vulnerable, you know, one hit get
them killed. It is kind of like they have no real power, because they’re so
fragile, when you first look at it. When you as a player become more skilled in
it, you understand that you have all the power, because you control these
titans and you can kill them, where they can’t really kill you, you keep coming
back. In real life, you kind of get better in the game, and you get more
understanding and that lets you feel like you have more power in the game.
DM:
That’s interesting, because you say that you make people feel powerful once
they’re able to overcome the challenge.
M: Yeah, so it’s not like the player’s stats got
higher; it’s you in real life having become good at it. You actually gain some
skill.
DM:
It’s not your character the one that is leveling up.
M: Yeah, it’s you. Exactly. I think that’s one
of the key things to the game, to make people feel they’ve actually achieved
something.
DM:
In a way, this game is transforming the people who are playing it, because
actually it’s the player who has to become better by doing that.
M: That’s why we call it an arrogant game. That
kind of design is like “no, we don’t want you to level the character, we want
you to level up”. But at the same time, things like Dark Souls, I’ve played through Dark
Souls without leveling the character to see if that’s possible. There’s a
sub Reddit that it’s called… can’t remember, it’s like Soul Level 1, or 1bro,
or something like that. You play through the qhole game without leveling up. So
you got lower health, you can only have a certain amount of armor, you want to
be faster all the time. I think the best weapon at level 1 is a barbed club.
You level the club, and you’re still pretty powerful, really. The main thing
is, because your health and vitality and endurance is lower, you can’t get hit,
ever. It’s basically like Titan Souls,
where you get hit, you die. I quite liked playing like that.
DM: At
Gamasutra you said that the gameplay becomes about control and the game’s about
understanding and manipulating the enemy. Could you tell me more about this
idea of taking control of the situation? Because the game disempowers you in a
way, but actually you are telling me that you have to take control of it.
M: The power that you have is that these bosses
will move in a predictable way relative to you. That is the part you have
control over the fight, if you as a person know how to control it. Like the
Guardian with its two fists, like that moves in that way, the fist will try to
get you with a certain range and rotation. If you move over to the other side,
where the other fist is closer, it’ll switch hands, so if you make it move
around and chase you in a certain way so you could make it switch hands when
you want it to, and then you have your oppotunity to kill it. You’re
controlling what it’s doing, so you can manipulate it into a position where you
can kill it. The same with the Brain fight, it’s not moving randomly, it’s
going at you, so you can imagine “ok, it’s going to come at me here, it would
bounce of this wall in this trajectory and it would end up on a switch”. So you
do that, you move out of the way, and it keeps moving and it ends up on the
switch, and while it’s doing that, you’re running in front of the fire, so you can
align yourself in the way you know it’s going to end up, and you shoot it
through that, and then you run away from the Brain as it’s coming down at you,
and you know you need to put this much distance between, because he’s always
going to chase you, and then you can wind your arrow, when you know it’s going
to land not on you, then you kill it. It’s just about understanding how the
fight is going to work, and manipulating the boss to move in that way.
DM:
So you put a lot of thinking on the design of every titan, because they’re very
different.
M: Yeah, that was the hard part of making the
game, because everything is so… and the way you… maybe in a more traditional
kind of boss fight that you slashing and… it can be more lenient, because you
have like opportunities to do damage to it, rather than opportunities to
outright kill it. So that had to be really finely tuned to get that kind of
thing right, and having the weak spot exposed. It should be kind of exposed all
the time, but actually getting to it is really difficult. So, designing around
those kind of limitations is really, really difficult to do and interesting as
well.
DM: At
Kill Screen, the author of the review said that Titan Souls gives you the
opportunity to feel the success of the impossible shot, the hail Mary, the
curved bullet, to experience it first hand, is this another reason why are so
appealing for some people to play games like this?
M: Again, I think it’s achievement, like people
feeling really good about actually doing something like that. Those kinds of
windows are … if you actually think about the amount of time you can do it,
they seem impossible. I know the numbers behind them, like, I can tell you… have
you played the Yeti?
M: Yes? When it lands, it rolls and lands,
rolls and lands, rolls and lands. And on the first and second landing, the
window to hit it, is ten frames, which is one sixth of a second. On the third
landing it has forty frames, four sixths of a second, so it’s like the longer
you go on, there are certain options which are slightly more lenient than the
rest. But people get them on those tiny moments, they feel really good, because
they’ve done something that is really kind of ridiculous, because they
understood how to do it.
DM:
Did you measure these things, I mean, you know the window you have to defeat
this boss?
M: I just have the numbers that controls, so
the way I made the game, it’s a sixty frames per second game, as a base, so the
actual logic is around that fact. I’d say like, when it lands, the time accounts
this single frame, so when it’s done, it doesn’t count. I have absolute control
over the number of frames they’re doing it for, so that’s why I know all of
those numbers. But when we’re making it more difficult, we just kind of tweak
them. It was at a point of like “hmmm, ten frames is a bit too long, let’s move
it down to six”, tweaking it by four is really nothing. Making that kind of
really, really small change, but towards it, it was like… made a big
difference.
DM: In
the hard mode everything is faster…
M: There’s a few differences, where the hard
mode is generally moving faster. It’s harder to actually stay alive. Those
windows I was just talking about, those change, a lot of those are smaller
windows to actually get the kills. Some of them actually change completely.
Some of them have different things, like the plant fight gets extra tentacles
and stuff like that. The Yeti fight in hard made, when I said it lands on ten
frames, in hard made, when it lands, it doesn’t stop, it just keeps rolling
until the fourth one, where it lands with that ten frame window. So we actually
then force you to do the ten frame window kill. Hard mode is faster, at the
kills, and some of the moves get changed a little bit.
Criticism
DM:
There were people doing some criticism about Titan Souls, for instance, this is from Polygon, this person didn’t
find the game challenging because not only did he usually know where the weak
point was from the beginning, he also was able to easily recognise the patterns
of the Titans. For this person, it wasn’t challenging because of that, because
he could recognise the patterns very easily. Even if he lacked the ability to
execute them, but once he recognised that, well, there is no mistery. What do
you think about this kind of…?
M: That’s kind of not the player that we were
aiming for. It’s like totally fine… is that from the Polygon article?
DM:
Yes, it was the Polygon article, Arthur Gies…
M: Yeah, he just didn’t really get the game, he
thought that a lot of it was down to just random chance, just taking pot shots
of the game. Which isn’t… you can’t really dictate how people play a game, it
isn’t how we intended it to play. That’s the reason why we kind of have the
running back to the fight stuff, so you’re more careful. You’re maybe focusing
at first on surviving before attacking them, whereas his tactic were kind of
just go in, just randomly throw arrows at it and try to kill it, maybe. But, if
people don’t enjoy that frustration, then it’s just not for them, which is
fine. I still think it’s that kind of game, you either love it or hate it.
DM:
There was a lot of… it was intended as some sort of demake of Shadow Colossus. But there are people
that think these references are misleading because, for instance, Shadow Colossus has more exploration,
there is no possibility to kill the colossus so quick, there are different
weapons… What would you say to these people?
M: So is that people who do think that is
misleading?
M: I agree with them. The thing is… there is
kind of a thing with games called games, medium and culture to… they would
describe a game based on other games. So Titan
Souls was “oh, it’s Shadow Colossus
meets…” – I just going to put an American accent there because everybody there
was “oh it’s kind of Shadow of the Colossus” [Laughter]. Every single person! They
always say Shadow of the Colossus, Dark
Souls and Legend of Zelda. And
you can understand why, and it does get people a fast kind of thing in their
head, like “oh yeah, ok, it is like this”, but it’s some other things to those
three games smashed together in a completely different way to Titan Souls, when they see Titan Souls, they think they’re
disappointed by it. It’s an interesting thing, but like all games nowadays will
be described that way. Because everything is kind of built off the shoulders of
its predecessors. Most games can be compared to other games. It’s rare to get a
game that’s really, really unique. The only thing that I can think of that’s
been recent that was completely… that couldn’t be really compared to anything
would be Papers, Please. That’s not
like any other game I’ve played, it’s such a weird, strange thing that is
really interesting.
DM: There’s
going to be games that are going to be compared to Papers, Please.
M: Yeah, because now it’s a reference point. So
I think that thing comparing to Shadows… when we originally made it, we said like “oh,
we did a demake of Shadow Colossus”, we weren’t thinking of that as a commodity or
anything like that. We were just thinking “this might be fun!” Making some of
those boss fights, the actual game it doesn’t play anything like Shadow Colossus, it’s just a part of the
vibe it accomplishes. It does a good job of giving you a slight idea of what it’s
like pretty quickly.
DM:
Because now video games have a history and sometimes is going to be inevitable that
people start comparing the newer games to previous games. I think that’s part
of the process. Now that video games is part of a more or less established
culture.
M: I think that kind of thing did us a favour,
really, in terms of game marketing towards how the game came up, because people
were pretty hyped about it. You hear those things, and people think “oh my god,
this game is going to be the best game ever”, they might… maybe isn’t what they
were expecting, but they might still enjoy the game. That comparison, I think,
drew people into the game as well, so it’s not all negative.
DM:
It’s been pointed out that the game lacks narrative. Was that intended? Or maybe
people just have not been able to find it.
M: That’s probably one of the weakest parts of
the game. There is a narrative playing through it, but it’s kind of in the
background, it’s really kind of hidden. You have to really think about what
you’re seeing and what is going on, to actually try and build the picture. We
kind of figured that some people would collaborate and… throw together ideas
and compare notes and stuff, “oh, maybe this is going on”. But that kind of
thing didn’t really happen. I don’t know if we maybe not got quite the exposure
that we need for that yet. I also think that maybe we could’ve introduced the
story more to people, in some way, because everything we did, was really,
really, obscure and hands off, whereas if we’d given people a kind of hook,
something to set them off, looking for the story rather than just assume people
would try and find it. There is definitely… I wrote like a few pages about the lore
about all the kind of history of the world in the game, and stuff, and that was
just my own acknowledgment, that we could fit everything together, but no one’s
seen that. To piece things together, for example, the boss names are all in
these language of hieroglyphics, but after you complete the full game and you
beat the true ending, you got to unlock all these names as well, so you can
read everything. But there’s examples of storytelling like the knight fight,
his name is in English straight away, because your character has prior
knowledge of it, which then makes you think “oh, maybe he was a human before
this”, so maybe humans brought titans here, and you can kind of scrap a story
from those things. There’s also a titan that just talks to you in the game, I
don’t know if you’ve seen that.
M: At one point in the game, there’s a secret
kind of hidden titan that you find and it’s really passive, it doesn’t attack
you, you just kill it, but it talks to you. It’s a kind of weird interesting
break in the gameplay because you expect something, and it kind of subvert that
expectation, something starts talking to you, “what’s going on?” And that kind
of reveals a bit of story as well. What it tells you, it tells you some
information, but it’s still a bit like mysterious and enigmatic.
DM:
Also people said that the universe recreated is quite empty, desolated in a
way…Why did you decide to carry out this kind of design of emptiness?
M: I think, maybe the world is slightly bigger
than it needs to be, but it was built for these massive creatures, so it is
going to be a big world compared to the character, and maybe it didn’t have the
impact that we wanted to, but it was kind of like the scale of the world put
into the game.
Identity and community within video game culture
DM:
In a more general sense, how would you define video games? Could you give a
definition of video games?
M: It’s a difficult thing, because there’s so…
it’s weird that video games are like this one thing, but if you look at two
random video games, they are just nothing alike. Crash Bandicoot and Call of
Duty, they’re both video games, but one is about simulating killing people
in a warzone, the other one is that you’re a weird cartoon spinning around.
They’re completely different, but yet theyr’re the same thing because of the
depth of what video games are. I guess video game would just be something that
allows people to play in a virtual system. I guess that’s really, really, not
very specific in any way, but because it’s such a broad spectrum of things. The
video part is the digital and then the game part is pleasure/play. There is a
weird discussion that’s been going on with things like the game Proteus. One of the top Steam reviews
says “this is not a game” [laughter], but it
still lets you wander around, play, and you’re like “I like chase a frog and I
jump around”. You just kind of like mess around and have fun in it. But just
because it doesn’t have these set goals that you’d have in most games, does
that mean it isn’t a game? What is a game?
DM: That
was one of the things I wanted to ask you about. These kinds of games like Proteus and others, considered as walking simulators. There are a lot of
people that say “these are not games”. That’s why I ask these questions. What
makes a video game to be a video game? Where is the frontier… what is the level
of interactivity that you must have in a game to be considered a game?
M: I think the main thing is having some
interactivity is necessary. There was one thing that I saw, like a few months
ago. Basically, it was classified as a game by the author, but it was just basically
a screensaver. I think leaves would fall down, and you couldn’t do anything,
you couldn’t interact with it in any way. It is supposed to be a game because
then you could like maybe count the leaves? I don’t know! That was the most….
Like… I’ve seen anyone try to push the argument. But I think anything that lets
you play, I think that’s the key thing to it. Proteus lets you play around. It’s not got this set of goals and
stuff, but it does have that fun element to it. I think that is probably the
most important thing when you’re classifying games. I went to an event on
Friday, called Feral Vector. Have you
ever heard of that?
M: It’s like a small event for game designers
to go to. It’s a really, really kind of interesting thing, like games culture,
because it’s celebrating games as art and stuff as well, it’s like talking
about the art merits in games. It’s not really about the game mechanics. Dick
Hogg from… he made Hohokum, he did the visual art and everything. He did a
talk, that was called ‘The art guy”, because people would say like “oh, you’re
the art guy, because you do all the art?”, but then he was like “but, isn’t the
game art?” So that would mean the programmer is creating art as well, because
they’re making this world, so their development is there like an art guy. But
it’s this weird kind of thing where the visualised scene is the art, but like
the music isn’t seen as art, but is still art. It was an interesting eye-opening
kind of thing. That’s the kind of thinking I was talking about, games as art,
celebrating that.
DM:
Do you think there’s a video game culture in our contemporary society?
M: Yeah. Well, I think games are everywhere.
Everyone plays games. Even if it’s not video games, people when they were a kid
on a playground they would play some games or whatever. I think games are an
important part of everyday life. People who are walking down the street and
don’t step on a crack, that kind of thing, it’s like kind of a game. Games are
just everywhere. I think video game culture is a… what you said ‘video game
culture’, that makes me think more of people who are really into video games
who like… you know, they play Counter
Strike obsessively, or something like that. That kind of person online,
generally seen to be more aggressive. That’s the kind of image that gets
pictured in my mind, but at the same time, I think most people play video games
in some way. Nowadays, when you go on your phone, you play Candy Crush or whatever, Angry
Birds. Everyone has played a video game. So I think we do live in a culture
that has video games everywhere.
DM:
Video games are part of our culture right now. That idea that everybody can play
video games and actually everybody is playing video games or at least they
recognise the importance of video games in our culture.
M: I think the idea of the kind of a teenage
male basement, that all thing now is kind of disappearing. Everyone can play
games, anyone, and anyone does. The diversity in games like World of Warcraft, which are online,
those MMO’s, you can find anyone playing that. It’s cool that it’s just like
everyone plays video games now.
DM:
Do you define yourself as a gamer?
M: That is a good question because… I’d say
that everyone’s a gamer, in some way. Yeah, I don’t know, I guess, yeag. I play
games, therefore I’m a gamer.
DM:
Is it part of who you are, of your identity?
M: I’ve never really thought of it in that way,
because, again, I assume that most people do. Maybe most people don’t play video
games that much, but some people would… they maybe still would play games on
the phone or whatever. But I would sit and play games for a few hours on my
PlayStation or my computer or whatever. So, yes, I guess I would identify as a
gamer like in that kind of way of gamer.
DM: And
would you use that label, for instance, to be introduced as such, would you
feel comfortable with that? “Well, this is Mark, he’s a gamer…”
M: Well, because of the kind of world I live
in, everyone I know is a gamer, so it wouldn’t… that’s why I’ve never really
thought about it, it doesn’t make sense, because everyone I know plays video
games. I think I probably identify as myself, I would say I’m a game developer,
it’s like this states my identity. That’s how I identify as a game developer, that’s
my entire life is that. I think as a gamer… yeah I assume everyone as a gamer
[laughter].
DM: I
think you have open definition of video gamer because there are other people who
consider that just playing some games don’t make you a gamer. They think in
order to be a gamer you have to be very involved in the…
M: That has to be a specific kind of game… It’s
a weird thing, because like, really, why would we need that kind of a
definition? If most people do play some games, technically, that makes everyone
a gamer, because they’re playing games. But then, if people are then saying
“no, you need to play this kind of game”. It’s like “well, is that like a
sub-genre gamer?” Why do you need to define yourself by these kinds of
parameters? I don’t think it’s a healthy way of living, trying to put yourself
in these weird boxes. I don’t think it’s really needed.
DM:
There has been a lot of controversy about this thing called Gamergate, probably
part of it it’s people saying “no, no, we are the hardcore gamers…”
M: That’s an interesting thing, because with
the whole Gamergate thing, I think a lot of people who identify as gamers, specifically,
who do all that kind of believe and say “I am a gamer, because I play games,
maybe not everyone I know does that, I play Call
of Duty, Counter Strike, MMO’s,
whatever, I am a gamer”. That whole thing was like, people saying that isn’t
really a thing anymore. And they were kind of offended by that, because they
identify so heavily as a gamer, that was part of them, and they didn’t like the
idea that someone was trying to take that away from them maybe, which is
interesting. I think as time goes on, I think that would disappear a bit,
because games are so mainstream now, I think everyone is a gamer.
DM:
Usually identity is about… not only the things that you share with other people
but also what differentiates you from the other. But now everybody is…
M: Yeah, you maybe need something else to...
DM: Speaking
of which, do you think there is a community of gamers? Because if everyone can
be a gamer, there is no community of gamers anymore, or is there still a sense
of community of gamers?
M: Well, I don’t know there’s much of a
community of just general gamers. Because I think the communities that grow
around these games nowadays are more based around the actual game that they’re
playing. Like, people who have Counter
Strike clans, League of Legends, DotA, that kind of thing, where you’re
playing with friends online. Especially with MMO’s like World of Warcraft, where people are in a guild, and hang around,
doing raids and stuff, with twenty five doing a raid, and maybe with like
hundred people in the guild and they all get to know each other and become
friends and stuff. They identify themselves as like a raid or a PvP or whatever.
“I’m a WoW player”, and then “I’m a PvP’er”, there’s a subversion of that as
well. I think that’s what people would identify more with, rather than saying
like “yeah, I’m a gamer” because… I don’t know of any place where you go to
meet other gamers, I don’t know if that’s a thing. If there is, I would be
interested in checking that out. I don’t think there’s any, except maybe for
online, Reddit, or something like that, where you got like r/gaming. I don’t
really… but it’s seems is too many people there to actually form any kind of
community.
DM: It’s
difficult to say if there is a general community of gamers but, in a way, like imagined
communities, something like is there…
M: Yeah, and you feel you’re part of it…
DM: Yes,
or maybe it’s just on the Internet, there’s some sort of… maybe you can
interact with people with the same interests. But, yeah, it’s difficult to say
if there is a general community of gamers.
M: That said, whenever I’m at PAX, I really
like those events, because when I’m there, I do kind of feel like everyone else
there is in the same kind of… it feels comfortable, because you all have this
one major thing in common. You all like games so much that you’re at events
celebrating playing games, which is kind of different like just walking around
in Manchester, because maybe you look around, you don’t know that anyone else
have anything in common with you. But when you are at that kind of position,
you do know that. That is a cool thing to know that you have something in
common with those people, and maybe that’s what it means to those people to be
a gamer. Because they know if they met someone else and says “I’m a gamer”,
they immediately have this thing in common.
Other interviews:
Karla Zimonja on Gone Home (Fulbright, 2013)
