Scope, testing, and Finishing Games | Nina Freeman: Cibele, Lost Records: Bloom & Rage

SPEAKER_00 0:00

As an early game developer, understanding the scope of a project is a learned skill. And many, many mistakes go into learning what an appropriate scope for a game is based on the amount of time you have to make it. Like mistakes aren't always a bad thing. Like a mistake of an idea might lead you to something awesome. And maybe you think something's gonna be a mistake, but you commit to it anyway because you're brave or stupid. And it turns out great.

SPEAKER_04 0:32

Hi there, my name is Stephen Lake, and welcome to the Examined Games. Today we're talking with Nina Freeman, a video game designer, narrative designer, writer. She's made some brilliant games. Sybil is one probably the first game of hers that I came across. She worked on uh Tacoma, more recently, Don't Nod's Lost Records, Bloom and Rage. I love talking with writers, uh narrative designers. They always have so much to say about their inspiration, their influence. Nina's brilliant. My question to her was how do you learn from your mistakes? And also, like, how does one learn to learn from their mistakes? Because those are two quite different things. And you know, what I loved about talking with her, she basically always finishes a project. That's why she's got a good amount of games under her belt. Brilliant games, uh, no matter how long they take. And it was really just nice to hear about, you know, her process, how she sort of weaved in kind of autobiographical elements to her work, and then other ways that she helps sort of flesh out and develop the characters that I certainly, for one, fall in love with. It's a great conversation. Please stick around. This is the examined game and subscribe. Thank you very much. Okay, Nina, thank you so much for joining me uh today. I mean, so obviously, as I sort of prephrased you, my interest was about, you know, learning from one's mistakes and learning to learn from one's mistakes. But I just thought perhaps there's a bit of scene setting. Um, I often like to ask people if they could just kind of paint me a picture of their sort of younger self, kind of the first proper, like gamey gaming moment that kind of not the first ever one, but a good young gaming moment that kind of comes to mind that sort of paints a bit of a picture of the type of person slash gamer uh you are slash were.

SPEAKER_00 2:12

Totally. I it's hard to pick from early games memories, to be honest, because of course I'm sure every game developer will tell you that they like have been playing games since they were a kid, etc. Um Although I actually didn't have my first computer in the home until I was 10. So it's funny, my actual earliest memories with games are from before that, playing games at the library, like at the public library, um, and at the mall, because there was a scholastic store that had computers set up with edutainment games. So it was pretty much edutainment games at the library or the scholastic store when I was really little kid. And like at the mall, I remember my mom would go shopping, and I was old enough for her to just leave me in the scholastic store playing games, and I would do that for as long as humanly possible while she was shopping because I really loved them. Um so yeah, I I was always wanting to play games, seeking them out wherever I could, even in public space spaces. Um yeah, that was the glory days of edutainment games. So I'd say those were the earliest ones.

SPEAKER_04 3:23

That's like what comes to mind for you when you think about that. Yeah. Just and it is interesting, I think, how we're just kind of like because I don't know that we know as kids, it's like, oh, I think I'm really into gaming. It's just like there are different things, and we're like, some people are intrinsically drawn to just like drawing constantly, or I mean many things, but for me it was the exact same, just like gravitated towards that ginormous grey Amstrad that sat next to my parents' bed.

SPEAKER_00 3:50

Uh awesome.

SPEAKER_04 3:51

Dragging the um the dining room table up to it, uh dining room chair up to it, you know.

SPEAKER_00 3:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 3:58

Um and then so in terms of like proper like sit-down, either PC gaming or console gaming, what was some of your sort of favorite early, you know, where you sort of like, and I'm I I mean maybe it was something like Mario, but you know, in my experience it was kind of like those old those early games, something like Sonic, but then I was like, oh, I discovered a game like Monkey Island, I was like, and then something like Final Fantasy VII. It's like, oh wow, I had no idea that they could go this deep. So I'm just interested in in the sort of what's the next step up from you from the kind of mole um arcade game.

SPEAKER_00 4:30

Mm-hmm. Um so yeah, when I was super little, I was playing a lot of edutainment games, kid picks, the classics of the 90s. Um and I didn't have exposure to story games, which I now make, uh, until I think I played Mist. That was probably the first story-driven game that I played. I was super little. I don't think I understood what was going on, but I do have very vivid memories of being really engaged with the world in Mist, because at the time the art in that game was pretty mind-blowing, especially to a little kid. So I remember exploring and feeling like, wow, this place is so mysterious, it's so magical, like what could be around the corner? Um and yeah, so even though I didn't really follow the narrative in a normal way, I was captured by the world and the fact that I was like this character in it that could discover and solve mysteries. Uh, and I I just loved that. And I played the beginning of that game over and over and over on the first family computer we had. So that was probably my earliest game that sort of relates to what I do now.

SPEAKER_04 5:48

My memory of MIST is that it's not there's not too um you can do quite a lot of exploring of different areas early on, because that was, I mean, my it was my neighbor Kevin Webley that had missed, and I had no idea how to play it, but I could at least sort of navigate around. I sort of recall like the woods, I think there's a puzzle in there. Um I did get riven as a present. Um and I still think even at for the age I was then, I don't remember I don't remember completing it, let alone even approaching the back of it.

unknown 6:17

You know.

SPEAKER_00 6:19

Same. I also got riven later, and I had the book where you could write the notes in it and stuff. I loved it.

SPEAKER_04 6:24

But it's so funny because I think about there's certain games that I mean I, you know, God knows how far I actually got and missed, but it's like such a visceral memory for me.

SPEAKER_00 6:32

Mm-hmm. Yeah, me too.

SPEAKER_04 6:34

Um, that it's like relative to the amount of times that I, you know, those games I poured like hundreds of hours into that I still like missed as is equally as vivid, um even if I didn't get past the first handful of puzzles, you know.

SPEAKER_01 6:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 6:50

Um and so I guess uh you know, go g leaning a little bit into what I was sort of interested in talking about, you know, well firstly, at some point in terms of your conversion over to actually starting to make games, where was the sort of the drive for that? Was it that you had an idea in your head that you wanted to see just exist, not on paper, like on on screen, and that you just like found a way to like make that come come to?

SPEAKER_00 7:24

My journey into making games was actually much more social than it was like having a specific idea of something I wanted to make. Um that came slightly later, I mean like months later, but originally uh I was living in New York City. I was out of undergrad, and I had become friends with a bunch of people I met through the chiptune scene at the time, which is like video game-inspired music. And uh I was dating this guy, Emmett, who I ended up making many games with. Um, but him and his friend Diego Garcia were making a game together called Heads of Hot Dogs. It was a mobile game. And I would hang out with them while they were working on it, and I was like, this is so cool. You're making a game. What? Uh and I had considered making games before because I had some friends who had gone to school for it, but I never like went for it. Um, I knew how to code and stuff for making websites as a kid, but I just never really made that jump. I always just like to play games. So then when I saw them making games, I thought, I should try this too. It's super up my alley. I could hang out with my friends while I'm doing it. We could make games together. Um, my partner at the time is friend. So I started going to game jams with them and tried to teach myself some action script three to help them make flash games at these game jams in New York. So that's kind of how I got started. And shortly thereafter, I think I started pitching some ideas inspired by poems I was working on, because poetry was really my thing at the time. So some games like Ladylike and How Do You Do It were inspired by poems that I had written. I I would bring them to the jams and be like, I have an idea, I think it fits the theme, and I have this writing that I've done about it that I think we could use to sort of design a game around. So that was the it was sort of a year where that was going on where I went from teaching myself to pitching ideas and my friends and I would make them together.

SPEAKER_04 9:29

You don't happen to have any memories of some of your earliest sort of uh mistakes or missteps in terms of uh sort of learning as you go.

SPEAKER_00 9:39

Um let's see. Mistakes I remember. I think I do recall uh Emmett Diego and I were working on a game. I think there might have even been a couple other people. This is very fuzzy, but we were working on a game jam game that was something related to gardening. And we wanted to let you make sort of a ridiculous number of plants in your garden that could be combined. Almost like you know, in Animal Crossing, you can put two plants near each other and they'll create a new color, that that kind of design. Um and we wanted to do something like that, but that was not it, it didn't happen. It was a mistake of an idea because we only had like a week or so to make the game, and there was just no way Diego, who was doing the art at the time, could create that many assets to support our idea. So I think, yeah, one of my early mistakes was underestimating the amount of time that goes into asset creation for an art heavy game. Um and just like as an early game developer, understanding the scope of a project is a learned skill. And many, many mistakes go into learning what an appropriate scope for a game is based on the amount of time you have to make it. Um so yeah, we we did not get all the flowers that we wanted in the game, but that was okay.

SPEAKER_04 11:00

I I like that phrase, a mistake of an idea. I don't know why. There's just something because I guess and it you know, it's something I was talking to Richard Le Monschand, Lemonchand, you know, did the Uncharted series and now teaches, and basically I was just asking him like what is the one thing that students like do the most that they they shouldn't be doing at all? And what's the what's the one thing they do the least that they should be doing much more of? And it basically just came down to scope.

unknown 11:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 11:27

Not even scope creep, actually. Um just like on on paper, just having way too many ideas to try and um is that something that and again come into the idea of like learning from mistakes, is that something that you kind of you only have to make that mistake once and then you're okay, I got it now? Or is that like a a a constant thing within your career where it's like, oh, I've done it again, I've tried to bring in too many elements to this, I've done it again, I've done it again, I've done it again.

SPEAKER_00 11:52

Yeah. I think scope creep is an eternal challenge for every game developer. I don't think you ever can totally get it out of your system. Especially, I mean, we're creatives, right? So you get these ideas in your head and you're like, oh, that would be so cool. But uh I don't think anyone has the mental capacity to like do all the math right when they have the idea of how hard it's going to be to execute. So I think anyone with that creative impulse is going to come up with mistakes of ideas. I mean, some of them can be kernels that do turn into something doable, but I think there are many times where you have a really good idea that you need to whittle down. And that is just like I think that's just part of creativity in general, no matter the medium, in my opinion. It's just especially noticeable in games because they take so long to make, depending on you know what you're making. So yeah, I think it's something we're all constantly learning to do, um, especially with new technology being used all the time. Like you have to learn so much new stuff to make games all the time, which makes understanding the scope be a moving target in and of itself, just based on the technology too. So yeah, an eternal struggle.

SPEAKER_04 13:06

Do you think I mean I guess I sort of, you know, because it's the exact same thing with filmmaking, you know, where and and I just wonder like it's actually something that perhaps if you totally eradicated that optimistic, somewhat misguided desire to do all this, um, you might lose the sort of the creative spark that actually makes making something great possible. So it may just be a necessary, not evil, but um hurdle that we kind of have to go with go through every time, right?

SPEAKER_00 13:35

Right. And I think that's a good example of why like mistakes aren't always a bad thing. Like a mistake of an idea might lead you to something awesome. And maybe you think something's gonna be a mistake, but you commit to it anyway because you're brave or stupid, and it turns out great. Like there's I'm sure plenty of stories like that in in games and in other art forms. So yeah, I think it's such a gray area. Like, what what is a mistake? It's something you can all honestly almost only define in retrospect. So as a creative, you just kind of have to follow your heart. Like sometimes I've worked on things where I'm like, this is maybe a bad idea, but like we're gonna go for it anyways, and it can turn out great. So you never know.

SPEAKER_04 14:17

I think that point about being able to look at something retrospectively is sort of really I mean, and that kind of comes out of thing that's like we can't, unless we can sort of look back objectively enough and look at ourselves retrospectively, we can't really sort of move forward or grow or evolve right, or else we're literally doomed to just doing the same making the same mistake over and over again.

SPEAKER_00 14:38

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think reflection is a really important part of the process. Although it's funny because I ne I basically never play games that I've shipped after I finish them. Because it's sort of anxiety-inducing or it feels weird. Like maybe years later I'll play, but usually I need a lot of distance. So I think the learning comes from reflecting on the experience of making it for me at least, rather than looking at the thing itself. I probably should look at the thing itself more, but it's stressful.

SPEAKER_04 15:10

I don't it it is hard. I mean, I get the saying, you know, with with films, you sort of, you know, you spend you you make it and then you'll you'll spend a lot of time with the film on its initial distribution because you're watching it with audiences if I mean I love to do that, you know. And then and then you sort of suddenly reach a point where you're like, okay, to to yeah, I know it's it's an anxiety-producing um I don't know why, because it's not like I like I love my work, I'm very proud of what I've done. So it's not some kind of like weird, oh I hate it thing. It's just um I don't know. Maybe it's just that we sort of move on.

SPEAKER_00 15:44

Yeah, no, I totally agree. It's a hard feeling to pinpoint because I also am I mean I'm proud of everything I've made. I don't really look back on anything with shame outright. Like I certainly see mistakes in things that I've made, even if I haven't replayed them. I know I often know what the mistakes are even before we release. It's just I usually don't have time to fix them. Um so I'm all about acceptance. Uh I'm more about releasing than releasing a game rather than making a perfect game. Uh my goal is always to just finish something rather than make something perfect. That's just that's a me thing. Um so I think maybe part of the anxiety for me comes from knowing that I'm I would play it and see all the problems with it, even though I'm proud of it. Like I can still see there are things I wish I could have done better. Um like with Sybil, for example, we in the game you have sort of a fake desktop computer that you're playing on. And in that computer, you can't like click on a window and move it. Like if you open a picture, you can't move it across the desktop, it's just static, which was just something we did not have time to implement because it's a lot more complicated than it seems to build. So in the interest of time, we just didn't do it. But now looking back really bothers me that you can't do that. So like I think the knowing that I'll have feelings like that when I replay things I've worked on is maybe where some of that anxiety comes from. Um so yeah.

SPEAKER_04 17:13

I do think that the willingness to I mean, abandon is a strong word, but you know, as in abandoned but but put out into the world, it's probably a core tenant of actually being able to be successful in any res in any regard. Because I think um if you can't do that, I mean some of the the most talented people I know but who who can't finish something, you know, they don't necessarily get to sort of move move on or into other things because of that sort of um perfectionism. I think um Right. You know, it's it's I was gonna say perfectionism is a double-edged sword, but actually I think it's just a one-sided sword. Like I'm not sure it's it's it's not good in in in sort of any respect if you're actually trying to get work out there for people to engage with and enjoy, right?

SPEAKER_00 17:56

Yeah, in that context I agree. Although I guess if you're making art for yourself, just for yourself, and not in the interest of like making more or releasing it for money or just for sharing. Like if it's really just for you, then I think it's probably okay to work on something indefinitely. But for most of us, that's probably not the case. You know, like especially as game designers, I think a lot of game design is time spent thinking about how people will engage with your work. Like it's a very outward-looking medium. Um so I think that yeah, people who are working for like purely self-driven reasons that just want to make it for themselves are probably few and far between.

SPEAKER_04 18:41

And I guess if it scratches their that itch, then it's like, well, then it doesn't it doesn't need to go and exist anywhere else anyway. Because I've got such a strong desire to sort of like connect with uh um you know, I mean it goes way back to just making silly little stop-motion animations with my camcorder and uh wanting to show my parents as soon as possible. Sometimes before I'd even done enough for it to even count as a rough thing, you know.

SPEAKER_00 19:06

Totally, yeah. And the same. I've always like enjoyed putting my work out there and like when I was in college, I loved taking workshops for poetry and like being able to go to a classroom to share what I'm working on, even if it's unfinished, just to see how people would react. Um but I do know there are some people who are just very like like closed off with their work, and I just I find that fascinating. It's so different from me, but I know it's a thing. And I think it's valid too.

SPEAKER_04 19:33

Are you good at showing people your work? Are you good at sort of sitting there and kind of like watching them, you know, engage with it and then bump up against it and then have questions or giving feedback and taking critique?

SPEAKER_00 19:44

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think or I don't think I know that playtesting is a really valuable and essential part of game design. Um so I have worked really hard on getting rid of any ego or pride to an extent when I'm watching someone play a game, especially one that's in development, so that I can learn from other people playing the game I'm working on, what could be improved, what is not landing, what is confusing, etc. Um So yeah, that's been a big focus for me over the years is always improving my ability to watch people play and learn f learning from how they play, how they react, what they say about the game while they're playing. Like there's so many things you can learn from playtesting. And it has become easier over time. Like in when I first started making games, it was, I think, more stressful because I I just took things more personally when people like criticized or talked about things I worked on. But I quickly learned that I shouldn't take it personally because there's so much to learn there that can improve the design. Um and I think it's always a balance of like taking people's feedback and but having like enough of an ego to like keep in things you feel strongly enough that maybe cause some friction with some people, but are like doing something new and that's what's causing the friction. So it's it's always a balance of like, yeah, trying to be good at learning from people, but knowing like when to also reject some feedback. Um I think that's uh that's been an important part of my game design practice.

SPEAKER_04 21:26

That's such a it can be such a difficult balance that or maybe it's it's just it it's actually not it's it it's difficult in the moment because it's sort of trying to work out, yeah, exactly like how how much do I need to sort of like take on board here about potentially corrupting something that I sort of you know say feel is a a proper sort of north star of the project, although it usually kind of comes out in the wash, has been my experience. Um Do you sort of still have I mean I'm I was gonna ask a really broad question like do you still have insecurities? I'm guessing perhaps so if you're a human being of a heart. But um, you know, I'm just wondering. If there's sort of areas that are still, you know, if if something's gonna sort of like maybe not gut punch is too strong a word, but the things that kind of get to you, those still exist.

SPEAKER_00 22:10

Mm-hmm. Yeah, definitely. I am sure any game developer of any tenure is going to have issues of some sort. Um I think for me, I have a lot of trouble reading reviews of things that I've worked on. It's very stressful. So I usually, when I, you know, I'm part of a game that's being released or I release a game, I will avoid the internet for a little while at least. Like I won't, I won't, you know, read all the reviews right away or watch all the videos. I try to release it and take my time to sort of recover from the stress of that process. Um because I think there's this feeling of knowing that your work is being judged. And I don't think you can ever fully get rid of that feeling of taking it a little personally. I think I am super aware of it, but I still get that feeling a little bit. So if there's like a really negative review, it will it will hurt my feelings. But I think with that distance from, you know, when the game comes out to when I I look at this stuff, I can sort of emotionally bear that more easily because I'm I'm just giving myself distance. So I have ways of dealing with it, but you know, sometimes words can be cutting, whether it's like you know, professional review or yeah, yeah, exactly. Or someone like you respect or whatever, or even if it's just someone on social media, like I don't know. Like there have been times where you know developers I respect have said something critical about something I've worked on or didn't like something about it. And I have to live with that. But it's it's hard because I'm like, oh, I respect this person, but like, uh, that that hurts. But it's okay because ultimately it's all about healthy dialogue of you know, being able to criticize people's work and learning from it. It's similar to playtesting, right? It's just that after you're done working on the game and you can't really like I'm not someone who goes and updates games typically, so I just have to live with it instead of going and fixing something. So I think that's maybe why it hurts, because I can't go back and like do something about it. Uh, because I just have given myself that constraint arbitrarily, I guess. Um that's probably something I struggle with. It's not like an intense struggle, but it's definitely something I think about.

SPEAKER_04 24:36

And certainly not an uncommon one either, right?

SPEAKER_00 24:39

Yeah.

unknown 24:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 24:40

Is there um in terms of that post-release and sort of getting the feedback and is there a certain sort of um type of engagement that you find most rewarding, like in terms of getting to talk with players in person about it or seeing industry people's responses or people on Reddit getting deep into theory on characters?

SPEAKER_00 25:04

I think the most rewarding thing for me, I mean there's a bunch of things, honestly. One of the major things though is uh the feeling that a team gets when a game comes out. There's sort of a the release relief and this like this group happiness that occurs that I think you only get when you release a game, when you release something together that you've worked on so hard for so long. That ephemeral feeling like the day of release where you're all just celebrating together is I think one of the best parts of making games. Um so I'd say first there's that, and then definitely whenever I've heard from individual players who, you know, send me an email. For example, with Sybil, I received many personal messages from people who had similar online relationships in their youth. And, you know, some were really happy stories, some were really sad stories. And I think all of them felt like they had some catharsis in playing the game to an extent that they wanted to message me personally about it. Um so that kind of personal feedback, when I know that it like something I worked on connected with someone on that level, that is really rewarding. Um, and I know same goes for my friends who worked on Sybil. Like all of us have heard from these people, whether in person or through email. Um, it's not like a ton of people or anything, but even just a few, it's very moving to receive those messages. So yeah, that's great too.

SPEAKER_04 26:45

Is there because again, your work is often very personal, or you're creating characters that that and I think you've spoken about moving away from doing quite so personal like work quite as that's so personal to you. Um, you're creating characters that are extremely sort of um relatable. Um what do you think is the sort of satisfaction the or the the the You know, it's the reason I love talking about video games and making content around them? My sort of desire is to be better understood or have my stepkids be better understood, you know, and and expose them to like, hey, the world of gaming is kind of awesome, and everyone should at least understand it a little bit. Um I guess what I'm asking is is is there a kind of an innate desire to sort of like have people perhaps feel a little if someone can play one of your games and feel a little bit more connected or feel a little bit better understood, um, is that is that a sort of a a driving factor for you?

SPEAKER_00 27:53

Yeah, I think initially it wasn't only because I came from this background of writing personal poetry where I was really you know, I was in college, I was writing for myself and for my classes, enjoying sharing my work with my friends, etc. And I wasn't thinking too much about who about like these people out there receiving my work that I don't even know who are connecting with it personally. Like really my roots are in these sort of smaller settings, right? Where it's very intimate, like sharing these stories with my friends. But then of course, when I started making games that were reaching a broader audience, I was very quickly exposed to this idea of people I don't even know connecting with me on a personal level because I was making these games about real life scenarios I've been in that that they found relatable. So I think at that point when I when I learned that, especially through I think Sybil was really the big turning point for that, or although how do you do it also had somewhat of a similar response. Um, I realized, like, oh, telling these kinds of personal stories in poetry was sort of the norm. So I didn't even think too hard about it because that's just what we were all doing when I was more in that world. But in games, it really wasn't exactly the norm outside of some, you know, notable examples like dysphoria, which had a huge impact on me and my work. So I sort of thought, oh, okay, this is something somewhat new that I'm bringing to this game space. And that in and of itself was really exciting. And, you know, it did become a motivation for me beyond that, but not to the point where it was changing what I was making. I think I've always stayed really dedicated to this idea of telling my personal stories in a distilled manner to help players embody my lived experience. Not necessarily just so they can relate to me, but so that they can understand what my ex experience has been like, whether they relate to it or not. It's it's really this urge that I have to get people to almost perform as me as a character. Like the games I work on are a theatrical performance. I think theater has like a lot of parallels to the kinds of things that I work on. Um so yeah, I think that's an element. And as a side note, like I never work on these games alone. So it has always been on my mind, like, even how do my collaborators feel about you know making a game that's driven by my own story. You know, these are things that that I have reflected on a lot. Um But my my main motivating factor is still this just excitement I have for treating games almost like theater and using myself as the the conduit for that.

SPEAKER_04 30:43

It was great going back to Sybil um after all these years. And I was sort of like, I still don't know that I've played anything quite like it. I think um narrative-wise, you know, it it makes me feel a very, very um specific way. And I'm actually, even though I'm playing as you, I'm I'm sort of by the nature of the story, I find myself in the the shoes of the um the guy. I forget his name, you know. Blake. Yeah. And it it sort of brings it's uh I mean this is just me sort of gushing about it, but a weird mix of slight anxiety, trepidation, and then joy and nostalgia, and sort of that slight lovesick feeling as well. Um and it's just nice when a game can sort of draw that out of you, you know.

SPEAKER_00 31:40

Mm-hmm. Totally. I like that feeling too. I mean, for me, like Emily is away, got that feeling for me, which kind of was a contemporary of Sybil that I still think about a lot, and like uh Digital Love Story by Christine Love. Like, I I do love playing those kinds of games myself as well. Um, so I think, you know, even though I come from a poetry background and I often cite that as the main influence, there were other games like this coming out at the time that were pushing me in that direction too. Because it's I often work on things that I would want to play myself. Like that, that will be a a goal partially. Um, so I felt, you know, I was sort of emulating that kind of work um in my own way and my with my collaborators as well.

SPEAKER_04 32:28

And then, you know, sort of more recently, like playing um, you know, like Lost Records, it sort of seemed kind of actually like, oh, it seems like a sort of no-brainer that you would end up working on a sort of don't nod game, right? Um I guess I'm just curious. I mean, what what where what was the sort of the core principle of the sort of role you were bringing to the table with that that particular game and those characters?

SPEAKER_00 32:56

So for Lost Records, I was the principal narrative designer, and I also did a lot of writing, uh dialogue writing on the game. Um so yeah, it was a role with many different aspects. So I I mean I did a lot of like character building. I always think of Kat. I feel like I worked on Kat so much and just thinking about like who is she as a person, what is her voice, you know, how how is she feeling in these moments and trying to evoke that in the dialogue alongside Desiree, um, who also wrote on the game for the dialogue side of things. So yeah, for me it was narrative design, so lit like literally building the interactive dialogues, all the branching, keeping track of, you know, what happens where and when, and also building the relationship system and designing that. So it was really like nuts and bolts designy and like technical implementation stuff, um, using tools that the programmers provided, and then also doing more dialogue writing, narrative, ideation, character building stuff. Um, so a a pretty big range of things on that project. It was really fun because I I have a lot of 90s nostalgia. I mean, I was very young. Desiree was more of a the teenager in the 90s representative. I was a kid, but I still have a lot of really intense memories of that time. So it was super fun to sort of dig into those memories. And that's something obviously I've done a lot in my own personal work, um, more with like the early 2000s for my teen years. But yeah, that's the kind of work that I like to do. I love nostalgic stuff. I know it's not for everyone, but like I love it.

SPEAKER_04 34:45

Well, you really steeped us in it. Is it when you said I think you said when we started talking about you know take taking your poetry and turning it into games, and I was thinking, oh, that sort of reminds me of Kat with the poetry to write a song. I was thinking, I don't want I didn't want to oversimplify, but I was like, oh, is is Nina Kat?

SPEAKER_00 35:01

Um No, I mean I came onto the project actually after the characters had already been developed and like the the plot, the main story had been developed. Um I came on after that. But I definitely, I mean, I think any writer or even like anyone working on a game is gonna say this. There's some part of oneself in the work somewhere. It's almost inevitable, especially I think with writing. Um so yeah, I definitely related to Kat a lot, and I loved this sort of literary aspect of her character. So all of her Emily Dickinson references that that was stuff that I I'm a huge Emily Dickinson fan. So obviously that ended up in the game. Um so yeah, there are little things like that that came from me or from Desiree or from Masha, who also was um leading narrative design before me. So I think there's little pieces of each of us in there, and Michelle as well. I mean, anyone. Like it's quite a large game, so there are a lot of sort of personal influences in it throughout.

SPEAKER_04 36:05

I absolutely love playing it, and I was sort of um I was just I just you know, again, not to sort of seem self-centered, but the the moment I spent just a few minutes with Swan, I was like, oh, it's it's it's me. It's like literally me, you know. I would have what year is it set?

SPEAKER_00 36:25

Uh 95.

SPEAKER_04 36:27

Yeah, so I would have been a little bit younger, just a titch, so I would have been like nine at that point, so it's not the exact era, but you know, the exact same camcorder, all of that stuff. And again, I'm sort of like was so and I loved that system of like basically kind of finding a bestie within the game, and it was like for me, it was like a no-brainer. Like I I I the way that I felt when I was around cat. Um and and um, you know, when when you're given these these opportunities to spend time, you know, and it's it was so sort of like similar to to real life, you know. It's like what if I've got the choice? Of course I'm gonna walk up the hill with cat, you know.

SPEAKER_01 37:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 37:09

Because it's just a little bit more time like hanging out with who is effectively like one of the coolest people I've ever met, you know.

SPEAKER_00 37:17

That's awesome. Yeah, we really were excited about exploring that dynamic of being in a friend group and sometimes being closer with like one person in the friend group. I think that's like a pretty typical dynamic amongst kids and teenagers. So yeah, we spent a lot of time thinking about that and how even when like I mean, the group is really has this amazing dynamic among all of them, but there's also this opportunity to gravitate towards someone. So we felt like that that's a really natural thing to do. Um and yeah, it was a big part of our thought process.

SPEAKER_04 37:56

I mean, it's it's really nice, and I could I try not to get too like observant of like the fact that I'm playing a game at the time, but if I see that I'm experiencing what feels like a mechanic that I haven't enjoyed before, and it's like it's it's doing for me exactly what it seemed like the intention was. Um you know, like the I think and it it it's it's so funny because it always comes down to such simple things like that moment where you've got the three numbers and you've got the landline phone, yeah, and you just instinctively know like what you know, and I just felt like it's like, oh my gosh, I'm getting so much agency just from this one um little gameplay mechanic. Um which I you know I I've noticed in games, you know, like things like uh The Walking Dead, where there's usually opportunities, there's a the ensemble cast, and I'm seeing who I'm gonna gravitate towards, but it doesn't necessarily carry over into sort of um decision-making territory. So it was just um uh I don't know, it just it just doubled down on this sort of immersion factor for me. And my other thing that I I I loved about it is the idea of a game, an opening for a game that gamifies a telephone conversation with one's mother.

SPEAKER_00 39:09

Yeah. That was fun to work on. Uh I worked on that a lot with Michelle. And I feel like that's that is one of those moments, like we were talking about working on games with relatable moments. That that feels like a big one that probably everyone can relate to in some way. I think I mean not everyone. I mean, like not everyone has sort of that kind of like uh tense relationship with their mom, but I feel like most of us have had some experience with a parent or a loved one that is a little dicey.

SPEAKER_04 39:42

Aaron Ross Powell Especially when you've just arrived from a long journey, right? And you're kind of like you're at the tail end of this call. And I think what I loved about it was it was like, oh the the outcome for me was that I got guilted into saying, Yes, of course I'll I'll I'll be home for um Christmas or Thanksgiving. Yeah. And I was like, and I think I had to like confirm it twice. And I was like, oh, the good, you know, it's like that that was a really interesting experience. And you know, and again it's like you're sort of um you're because something like being on the phone, I mean, I love my mum, but sometimes being on the phone with your mum can be inherently either boring, you know. Yeah. Um and you're kind of ready to get off. So it's a bit of a brave move, right, to start a video game. Like kind of it's not a quick call. You're sort of you're you're you're you're in it. Um yeah, so I just love that mechanic.

SPEAKER_00 40:32

Thanks. Yeah, it was definitely fun to work on. And for me, it was a bit of a throwback because one of the early games that I worked on was called Ladylike, which I mentioned earlier was like at one of the earliest game jams I did with those friends. Um and that is a game that is almost entirely a conversation in the car with your mom, and then the game ends with you arriving at one of five random locations and you get like a little vignette there. So I feel like that's one of those things, one of those like story types that I've returned to a bunch of times. And actually, my husband and I have been working on like our own uh indie game outside of Don't Nod, um that also is about my relationship with my mom. So that's yeah, a recurring theme for me. And now I'm a mom. So who knows? There's so many layers. I know, right?

SPEAKER_04 41:29

Well, it's sort of like you're just uh no, I'm not you've become a mother to add fodder to your sort of uh viping capability, but I'm sure it's gonna sort of change the way the I know who knows what the mom games will be coming from in the future.

SPEAKER_00 41:41

I'm sure it's inevitable. Um but yeah, I mean I'm still into making those kinds of personal games, even though I was working with Don't Not and like even within the don't not stuff, I think that experience with writing about my own mom sort of helped inspire some stuff there. So yeah, it's been really nice to be able to work um on games that have that human-centric sort of storytelling. I enjoyed that. Although it would also be fun to work on like a fantasy thing or something sometime. I mean, I'm a huge Final Fantasy fan, so I'm open to whatever.

SPEAKER_04 42:18

Yeah, I was sort of wondering about I guess, but yeah, you've decided to kind of just like you yeah, you haven't sort of veered into that that genre at all as of yet.

SPEAKER_00 42:26

Well, I guess to with Tacoma, that was sci-fi. So but I was a level designer on that, so like not as involved in the character writing, um, but the environments and environmental storytelling for sure I was involved in game design stuff. So yeah, I think a big thing for me as a game designer is that I uh enjoy having a wide range of skills and types of things I've worked on. So I would never like close myself off to one thing, but I definitely like I mean the personal game stuff, I sort of I just love it so much that I keep doing it. But I certainly have explored other areas as well when I can.

SPEAKER_04 43:07

Do you um I guess I'm wondering about moments in your career to date where and I don't know again, like when you were working on Tacoma or Sybil or going on to work with Don't Nod, where you sort of felt like, oh my gosh, I'm sort of this is I don't know how I'm gonna do whatever it is that I'm potentially expected to do here. I mean, or maybe that's literally every day of your like your life, I'm not sure. But I guess it'd be interesting to hear about you reflect because I think it's really helpful as well for for people to hear um and understand that we kind of have to go into situations without almost any evidence or clarity that we're gonna actually pull the damn thing off. Um totally for some reason that's not enough of a reason for us not to put ourselves in that uncomfortable position anyway, right?

SPEAKER_00 43:56

Mm-hmm I definitely have I mean a bunch of examples of this. Um This example isn't for a game that's out yet. We're still working on it. Um, but I mentioned my husband and I are working on our own game. Uh it's like a horror game. The working title is size zero. It's about my relationship with my mom and body image and like being a teen during the early 2000s on a shopping trip at the mall and like trying on clothes and dealing with just the body image issues that thus ensue. Um and uh Jake and I I think definitely bit off more than we could chew at first. And this was actually really early during the COVID pandemic. And I think the everything in the world and just like it it really threw us for a loop, obviously, just with everything in the real world going on. And I think that the stress from that actually manifested in our game development process, and we were designing a game that was bigger than we could pull off, and we just weren't even realizing it because we were so distracted by COVID and everything else going on. And then once things like cleared up a little bit, and I think once we like got vaccinated and stuff and could like relax a little bit more, we realized like, oh, we are not making something achievable and we need to try again. So we actually started rebuilding it from scratch with like a smaller design. And for real, we have actually done that for this game. I think we're on like the third rebuild now. Um, and to be clear, we don't have funding for this game or anything. It's self-funded. So we are able to sort of do this as many times as we want. Um, but I typically don't work that way. Like usually I'll say, okay, we'll work on this for like a year or even less, and like whatever we have, we're just gonna ship it. But for this idea, it's really important to me to allow myself a little bit more of a perfectionist streak. Um so yeah, I would say I think my best example is that where I've like allowed us to rebuild this project from scratch multiple times just to get at this like nugget that I'm searching for in the design. Um and we haven't even found it yet. And it's been harder to work on with like having a baby now, and we were working on the don't nod game, which Jake also worked on Lost Records. Um so yeah, we're sort of like in that like super indie zero funding on the weekends development hell. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 46:40

Exactly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:43

I mean, I'm excited. We'll release the game eventually. I've never started something I didn't finish. It's just that it's gonna take a long time and it is what it is. That's okay.

SPEAKER_02 46:52

We actually shipped curious.

SPEAKER_00 46:53

We shipped, by the way, two other indie games while working on this: Nani's Legend and Last Call. So we're just weird. We've been working on too many games.

SPEAKER_04 47:06

Isn't the similar- I think the similar thing happened with Tacoma, right? Like I think you were just like kind of banging- not banging out games, but I think a lot of stuff was was was sort of um shipping at the same time, right, for you. Yeah. I guess I'm curious with this curious for this game, and I'm maybe there's not not too much you can say about it at this point, but you know that that so you're saying about there's a sort of a a desire, there's something, a nugget you're trying to get to that you want to make sure that you're gonna pull off. Is that is that coming from a place of because you know there's something really specific that you're wanting to sort of like convey with this game, like around the themes you talk about body image and stuff like that. But you are you sort of is it that if you don't sort of absolutely nail that, then there's the risk that it's gonna if it misses the mark just a bit, then people aren't gonna get necessarily the specifically what it is that you want them to get and understand from from the game, right?

SPEAKER_00 48:00

Definitely. It's uh about body image, but also it's uh the first time that we've worked on a horror game. I'm like a huge horror game fan, and I've always wanted to experiment in the genre. Um we're actually really inspired by devotion from Red Candle games, and that sort of spurred us to start working on this project because we were like, oh my god, we want to make something like this. It's not really like it, but just something that's uh in the horror genre, but uh that is telling a very human story. We wanted to do something like that. Um so anyway, I think because it's the first time I've worked in this genre and body image is such an important topic to me, and there's this sort of nuance where it explores my relationship with my mom. Um it would be a game where it would be really easy to make my mom be a villain because she was really hard on me with in terms of body image stuff. But actually, I want in the game to show that her and I both had our own issues, and also while weaving in the sort of horror stuff where you're lost in the small and you're like being attacked by these mannequins. I won't give too much away, but it's pretty fantastical in a sense, while also exploring these very human um topics. So I'm trying to figure out how to explore that stuff with the nuance that it requires. And we're still getting there. But we will get there.

SPEAKER_04 49:28

I'm very excited about that. I mean, even just the premise out of the gate, and again, it's it's one of those because there's there's not a lot of games out there that are tackling that and finding a way to sort of pull it off right. And um, you know, it's one of those things that just crosses all genders, socioeconomic backgrounds, all ages.

SPEAKER_00 49:50

Yeah, for sure. And actually, Consume Me came out, and that is a game that also explores this topic, so it was cool to see that, and now I can have that as a reference. I actually know Jenny from when I lived in New York and remember her working on that game. So I knew about it for a while. Um, and it's funny, hers is very, it's super clever and much more lighthearted than the kind of thing that that Jake and I are going for. So it's gonna be really neat to actually be making a game that joins this like dialogue of games about body image, um, of which Consume Me is now like quite a visible part, it's a very visible game in in that category. So yeah, I'm like it made me more excited to finish it to be like, oh, here's this like new angle. So yeah, which also is, and I want to emphasize like it is sort of drawing on body image, but I think ultimately the game will be like really about me and my mom, um, with that as sort of a backdrop. So yeah, excited for that eventually to be done.

SPEAKER_04 50:49

Eventually, me too. I guess it brings up I don't even know the question, it's like like historically, you know, I think about something like Lost Records or Sybil or games like you know, I was big into like point and click games, thinking like Siberia or The Longest Journey, where there was never any trouble as like a sort of uh young man or a boy putting myself in the hands of a say female character, right? And I don't I don't want to sort of have an a like irrationally optimistic view on this sort of thing, but it it feels as if video games can do a really good job of putting you in the hands of a character who, you know, say physiologically, is that correct? You know, or like is is potentially the complete opposite of you, you know, in terms of build or gender or age, and that that is not a barrier to entry to connecting with them on that sort of visceral level, like someone like say Swan. We're pretty far apart in terms of me as a sort of 39-year-old uh man and playing as this sort of teenage, even though I basically post her as a teenager. But um again, as you might tell, I don't exactly know what the question is that I'm asking. I just I guess I'm interested in to me that's a as it's a pretty beautiful thing about that video games can do. And I don't know if it's something that people have to work, you know, such as yourselves as devs have to work very hard on to be able to pull off, or if there's just something about the interactive uh element of gaming that just makes people sort of drawn to being willing to put themselves in the hands of characters that are nothing like them.

SPEAKER_00 52:37

Right. So this actually goes back a little bit to something I mentioned earlier, which is I personally am really excited about the potential for games to allow players to embody characters with very different lived experiences, which is essentially what you were just describing. And for me, there's these parallels to theater that I was referencing where the stuff I've worked on is very much there are games that are like stages where you are given essentially the script to play these characters that that you know the game is about. You're embodying me and Sybil, for example. And when we were working on the game as an example of where this kind of player-character embodiment design thinking happens, I wanted the game to start with that FMV, that video sequence of me, and then it cuts to looking at the desktop computer straight on, and that's when you first get to control the game. You know, you can start to click around the desktop, open the files, etc. So that design was meant to say, look, here is this character, here's this girl sitting at her computer, you see who she is. Now here is her computer, here you are in her exact point of view at her computer, essentially sitting in her chair, being put into her shoes. So, yeah, that that sort of video to gameplay transition was really meant to emphasize that moment of telling the player they are now embodying her. Um so I'm always trying to think of little moments like that in terms of game design where I can remind players that they are sitting in the shoes of a character. You know, it's it's pretty hard to pull off and doesn't always work. Obviously, you might relate to another character more and then you feel more connected to that character. But I still think there's a lot of ways mechanically, and I think games are uniquely good at this, at giving you the tools in terms of the game mechanics to make you perform as that character, to help you understand them better. Like in Sybil, it's using her computer, going through her files, playing the game as her, hearing her uh like lover's voice in the headphones as if you are in Ventrilo as her, right? So yeah, I think I took it very literally in Sybil, but you know, I think there are a lot of directions you can go in in terms of making the game be almost like a theatrical experience where you are the actor. Um and games unique way of inter Games unique trait is that it is an interactive medium. And I think that that interactivity is what makes that so exciting as a designer to explore this like performative aspect of what interactivity can be in that way.

SPEAKER_04 55:36

Do you think that that that interactive element is what makes it possible? And it it's it's not like that that there isn't always more work to be done in terms of um representation um of different people on screen in a game, but that it it makes it easier for people to sort of, you know, because I I feel like and I, you know, perhaps you've got a different opinion on this, but if I look at the sort of the top-selling sort of movies versus the top-selling video games, there's a lot more so like female characters that we're sort of getting to play as. And is it because there's there's less of a barrier to entry to sort of like want to spend time with these people because we're we're we're the ones embodying them versus just passively watching them on a screen?

SPEAKER_00 56:15

Yeah, I think the two things have some crossover. Like for me, I'm just a I'm a nerd for this player character embodiment design philosophy. But you're right, there's also this idea of, you know, can I only feel like I'm embodying a character if the character looks like me? And I think, you know, because games have this ability to make you feel like an actor, that that lets you embody so many different roles, so many different lived experiences. Because if the mechanic is, in my opinion, doing its job, it can sort of help you have this suspension of disbelief in a sense of like even who you are. You can kind of like sit there and and get so into the game that you feel like, oh, I am this person, even though they're not like me at all. So I don't know if I can say like exactly how that works, but I think there is this like mental jump that people can make, and games are good at helping people do that, at helping people relate to other lived experiences on such a deep level because the interactivity uh triggers this sort of suspension of disbelief type feeling. So I think that that the fact that games are good at that makes it so exciting when games do represent uh lived experiences that are not often portrayed in media. So, like obviously Swan being a heavier set girl is an example. Um, any character of like a minority group, I mean, there's not nearly enough playable black characters in games, for example. So, like, yeah, I mean, one hopes that game developers are excited about harnessing this ability for games to help players embody other lived experiences by representing a very diverse range of lived experiences. Um I'm I'm a huge advocate for that, um, for sure.

SPEAKER_04 58:09

I mean, something that is brilliant is obviously when, you know, because there's so many adaptations now of video games into movies and TV shows, you know, if a video game creates a really interesting, compelling character, then you know, if the if the TV show or movie wants to make that adaptation, they're gonna have to bring that character along with them, right? And it it it means that we get to see, you know, I don't know, people like say Ellie from The Last of Us. You know, like that's that's that's an archetypal character that might otherwise not have gotten to spend time on, you know, in the homes of millions of people. But because it was made from through a video game, um, they sort of get that exposure of all of the sort of depth and contrast that that that comes of that particular character.

SPEAKER_00 58:52

And I think though, there is like there is a difference between like relating to a lived experience that's very different from your own in film versus games. I think in film, because it's a more passively consumed medium, you'll relate to specific elements of the story, you'll have a lot of feelings about the character's place in the story, et cetera. This is an oversimplification, but I'll get to my point. Uh whereas in games, I think because you're being asked to embody the character in a more active way, it gets you to think about characters in a way that a film might not. Like you're you're sort of actively trying to work through a character's decision-making, for example, in a choice-based narrative game like Lost Records. Like you're sitting there trying to think, like, should I make choice A, B, or C? What would what would Swan think about these choices? Like which one would she be gravitating towards and why? I don't think film necessarily pushes you to ask the same questions. Um, so I think that games are yeah, really good at getting you into a character's mindset because you're often, you know, put in these positions where you have to make decisions that are, you know, telling you a story about what is happening in this character's head that you have to build yourself, thereby helping you, encouraging you to try and understand that character's mindset actively.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:22

I love that sort of perspective on it. I mean, I think about, you know, with Swan, I never stopped myself from from I never stopped her from saying the weirdest, most awkward things, like about raccoons having like human hands and things like that. But the the but what I would do is any opportunity that I was given to sort of put myself down versus not, then I would always choose the the latter. And that was that was perhaps me slightly trying to correct my own child. Being like, no, don't don't like it doesn't make people feel you know, like they don't they don't need that from you. You can be okay, you know. Take the compliment, you know. Um so well, that's a whole other discussion about rewriting history through.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:06

Well, that's valid too. I mean, a big part of narrative design is, or at least in a game like Lost Records, obviously narrative design depends on the game. But in Lost Records, each time I was writing a choice, I would think, you know, what what are potential choices Swan could make here that will, you know, spur these kinds of thoughts in players, like get them to consider, you know, what would she think between these two? That's always a design consideration, but there is this other layer of like, how will these choices make the player feel? You know, like because there's never going to be perfect player character embodiment. There's always going to be a little bit of yourself in the play experience. But I think there's a really useful dialogue between how you see the choices through your own lived experience that is layered on top of you trying to understand how the character would perceive them. And what you just shared about how you were sort of using it to reflect back on yourself is totally something that we as narrative designers are thinking about. It's like the big challenge of narrative design is like, are you thinking just for the character or also for the player, or a mix of the two, and like how do those speak to each other and what's it going to evoke in the player's head? It's honestly like really complicated.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:23

I mean, and and that's when they get those magic moments when you're like you really hit a point of conflict when you're like, I don't know what, I actually don't know what to do here. And that thing was like, there's actually no right. I mean, it's a bit of a cruel thing to do, you know, not not literally, but we get so used to like, you know, with video, it's like it's it's it's like a you know, when it's a linear thing, it's like, yeah, we jump on the coopers and we get to the castle, we know what the right thing to do is. But with this, it's like, no, we're gonna remove that from you. You're kind of screwed evil way. What are you gonna do?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:52

Yeah. I mean, a lot of the most memorable, like sort of more I don't want to say moral decisions, but like some of the hardest like A versus B choices in narrative games are often those choices where you're torn between like, how does the character feel about this versus how do I feel about this? And maybe that causes you to want two different choices depending on which lens you're putting more value on. Um I want to say examples, but I don't want to spoil games for people. But I think if you think of especially some recent games with really major A versus B choices at the end, like consider how it is hard to make the decision because of that interplay of like your values versus the character's values. Aaron Ross Powell Without giving away actual literal spoilers, are there games that you have in mind when you're sort of um well uh an older example would be like Life is Strange. Yeah. But a more recent example would be the much discussed Claire Obscure Expedition 33. Um another game with a really incredible choice moment. Um I love thinking about why some choice moments like that are really memorable. Um it's like, you know, that's like the gold gold moment as a narrative designer is if you can make a choice that people feel that impacted by. Um so those those two games are good examples of that.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:18

I'm trying to think of moments, you know, of I mean, yeah, because again, don't want to give any spoilers, but there's obviously been times in video games where like it's been a dialogue choice and like the way that it's programmed, it has no um repercussions like whatsoever. You know, it's just literally like what you say and then the the response that you're getting back, but even in and of it itself that that can feel like an extremely heavy, you know, when when you're fully in invested as a uh character, that can feel like a heavy um decision, you know, even though there's there's there's no mechanic that's necessarily building on that. But that's the beauty of the imagination taking over, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:05:05

Yeah. I think imagination as like a key word is one that I haven't mentioned during this discussion, but like it is a huge part of all of this, is like how your imagination is filling in the blanks when you're playing these games. Like the ability for game mechanics to inspire the imagination is really powerful.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:25

I guess it's what it's all about. Because then you then the imagination is going on to um you know, fill in mechanics that you you just either can't make or don't have the time or capability to make, and it's like, oh, it's fine actually, it's all going on in the player's head. Anyway, you know, I think about like say with something companions in like Fallout, you know, when I want to go and do the thing with this faction, and I know that they're really not gonna like it, so I make the decision to like leave them at the base, and then I can go do this underhand thing. Like, there's no mechanic in play there other than the decision. That I'm making in my head, that I like, I really don't want them to see what I'm about to do here because it's like it's no good.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:07

Right. I think another really good example that actually is in both film and games is environmental storytelling. Like some of the most powerful storytelling is just in seeing the objects in a scene arranged in a certain way that helps you make a narrative connection that is unspoken. Like that's that's as a level designer, that's one of my favorite things is like how can I tell a story just through arranging things in a room? Um both film and games are really good at that. So that's yeah, that's one of my favorite storytelling tools for sure.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:40

And it's again extremely satisfying to experience as a player when it's done wrong. Um I just, you know, I guess just to, you know, I know we've only got a little bit of time left, but um I just wanted to ask a little bit about sort of certainty and whether, I mean, maybe it's not something that that um what am I asking? Have there have been times where you sort of you've you sort of felt certainty about okay, this is the way that things, you know, this is the way that I need to approach games, these are the kind of stories that I'm gonna be telling, this is how it's gonna be, but then like through the evolution, say of yourself, like growing up, maturing, changing, or the changing of the sort of teams that you're working with, or the types of games that you're playing that you've basically had to sort of ditch what felt like sort of like rock steady ideas and ideals, and then be willing to sort of like move on and grow and change into other um uh approaches and viewpoints and positions.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:42

Definitely. Um I think an example for me is Last Call, which is a game that I made with my husband Jake. Um it's a game about a past experience I had with domestic violence and like an abusive relationship. Um and in the game, you essentially play as someone exploring an apartment, my old apartment, that is full of unpacked boxes, and some of the boxes have um the stanzas of a poem in them. And when you find each stanza, you're essentially reading a poem about my experience uh as a survivor of domestic violence, about the specific experience that I lived. Um, and each time you find a stanza, you can read it, and then you're sort of in this screen where you can't move, you're just looking at the stanza of the poem. And in order to proceed, you have to speak a phrase of affirmation into your microphone. So, like you read the stanza and then you say, I believe you, or I hear you, or I understand. There are some prompts for things that that the game that you can say that will let you progress. Um so I'm using this as an example because actually in the game you're not playing as me. And you, and but it's still a personal game about my lived experience. So this was a time where I knew that I had to break away from this typical design um of having the player embody me because I would never want someone to have to embody my experience being abused. That's not like good, not appropriate. I don't want anyone to feel like they're living through that. Um so instead, you're playing as sort of this visitor, presumably like a friend of mine coming to help pack, um, and you're, you know, playing that role of hearing me out with my voice being just in the poem itself, and you're in the role of being the affirming voice, you know, telling me that they believe my story. Um so yeah, I think last call was one of the key moments where I realized not all personal stories are going to be best explored through player character embodiment. Um, because not everything should be embodied, especially like abuse.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:18

I guess that just makes me think about you know, and the the the the decision-making process, like if like and again, I guess it depends on what your motivation is, right, for each piece of work you do, but let's just say even if it's not the whole part of it, but part of it is about it's like, hey, someone may find themselves being able to put themselves into the shoes of either not in like in that case another person's actual experience, but time rummaging around someone else's experience, right? And like how you separate out the desire to pull that off um from what you need to be able to give the player to actually like pull it off. Does does that make sense? Um I guess it's literally what you were just saying about okay, well, that this is the this is something I want to touch on. I'm not I'm not going about it this way, so I'm gonna have to find a workaround that's gonna sort of help us sort of get you know achieve what I what I what I hope the player will you know perceive, and I'm assuming there'll be similar things with this new game coming out, but um I'm guessing there's a a sort of a creative process that you have to go through to kind of like take the intention and then find the route to that through the gameplay, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:11:34

Yeah. So for me, uh for example, with Last Call, I actually wrote the poem first just for myself as sort of cathartic way to get my thoughts on paper about what had happened to me. Um and then I thought, you know, the next thing I want to do is make a game because I'm often like doing this thing where I write something and then I have like a game idea about it. Um and in this case, I was like thinking, well, it would be weird. I personally wouldn't want to make a game that literally is illustrating what I wrote about in the poem. So I was like, so what is it about the story that is making me want to make a game about it? And then I realized that for me it was about the act of telling the story. That was what was feeling important to me because I was realizing that in telling the story, for example, I made some post about it on Twitter at some point to like share a little bit about what happened to me. And I had this experience where people were replying or like liking the tweet. And I was like, this feels so weird that people are like liking my tweet about my abuse. And I just felt strange and like strange about having posted about it. And I was like, why do I feel so weird about this? And then I realized like there was this experience of wanting validation that what had happened to me was understood, believed, that I was seen because it had been a very isolating experience and it wanted people to know how hard it was. So I realized in that, in this case, I was wanting to explore this like feeling I had about telling the story rather than about exploring the experience itself. So I think for each kind of story, it's gonna be different, if that makes sense. It does. Does that answer your question?

SPEAKER_04 1:13:33

It it does. Yeah. Yeah. No, and I yeah, no, I love I love it.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:36

It's like this realization when you want to tell a story, sometimes you don't at first understand why you want to tell the story. And sometimes digging into like the actual kernel of what is important in the story will reveal to you, you know, it wasn't about story A all along. It was about this like deeper layer in the story that I actually want to surface through game mechanics in like a subtler way. That's sort of what happened with Last Call. It was like, I had one story, but it was really about this other story that came out of it.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:06

I mean, it's very similar again with with filmmaking, specifically documentary. I think, you know, there's usually a kernel of truth that you want to like expose people to, and the most direct route to that isn't necessarily the one, especially if like I did a amazing film, I'm very proud of it, called Roared Roll with director Nancy Schwartzman, which is about this big sexual assault case that happened in 2012, and it was the first one where you had that real convergence of Twitter and like a crime, and it was all there. Um, and and the the the the whole intent with that film was like, well, what if we could make something on this topic that men and boys would watch, you know, and what's the positioning we need to do so that they're gonna click play on Netflix, and then nine minutes later they've inadvertently, you know, upskill you know, educated themselves on something that's like crucial. And so you you do you have to sort of divide out, you know, if in that instance, like I had to remove my own sort of like activism or you know, anger or all of this stuff to then like, yeah, but what's the what's the route that makes this sort of pill go down? Um this is me just really specific about documentary, or else one's at risk of just preaching to the the choir, you know. Um whereas um you know there's something really special about putting something in front of somebody that they might otherwise not access and then giving him the means to be able to digest it and come away better off for it.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:47

I totally know what you're saying. I think when I say my personal games are distillations of the real story, it's exactly for those reasons because I think uh when writing, you can easily put like too much information for the player, for the viewer, and overwhelm them to the point where they miss the point. Not that everything needs a point, but like if you have a point and you want to get it across, you want to make sure that you're like stripping away all the unnecessary distractions. So my writing process is often really focused on that. It's focused on maybe not telling the like exact story as I remember it, but using the key points from that to evoke a feeling or a point about it that I think is core to what I'm trying to say. So yeah, it's sort of there's sort of the difference between just like literally showing something as it was versus uh telling a story about it that evokes something specific.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:47

Which again, it's exactly the same with Doc. And the funny thing with documentary is like supposedly we I mean we are telling the truth, but it's like, well, actually, you sort of need to find a way to box in the truth with a bit of editing and a bit of music and these other things because or else it's it's it's it's sort of too raw to be able to even, you know. Yeah, and it's a reprint the original truth that happened as well. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:09

So um it's like truth but framed in a way that like clarifies it.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:15

Exactly. And that's something I try to talk with students about when I'm sort of um um you know, yeah, trying to teach teach this stuff, you know. Um well thank you. You know, this has been really enjoyed this conversation, you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:31

Yeah, thank you.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:32

Um likewise. I feel like you know, well, I'm I'm glad we got sidetracked actually, because it was so like there was so much to sort of to to to dive into as well. And um yeah, I was just really keen. You know, a lot of the time for me these conversations is like, look, there's a there's a niche that I want to scratch, and I'm sort of selfish and get the person in front of me. Yeah, no, that's the thing is gonna talk about it. So you know, I really enjoyed this conversation and just just looking forward to seeing what's what's sort of coming next with your uh your work, really. And it's it's reassuring, like you said, you know, you've you've you've you finish what you you start. It's just a case of uh when. So I look forward to it.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:06

Yeah, how, when it will happen. Yeah, making games is really hard, but I'm definitely one of those people that obsessively needs to finish things. So great.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:16

Well, that's reassuring then. Um brilliant. Well, you know, you can go give your dog uh a little treat now for being so Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:23

No, they were so good, they didn't bark again. I'm so glad.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:28

Um brilliant. Well, thanks for your time, Nina. Really appreciate it.