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Chatting with Richard Cobbett
129 Plays1 month ago
We spoke with game journalist turned game designer Richard Cobbett about his PC Gamer column Crapshoot, designing a game, Discworld and much more!
You can wishlist Richard's upcoming game Nighthawks on Steam here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1221950/Nighthawks/
Quest Quest podcast is Ben Vigeant and Jess Morrissette.
Editing by Ben Vigeant
Show art by Kevin "WilcoWeb" Wallace
Watch us on Twitch!
Ben: https://www.twitch.tv/ps_garak
Jess: https://www.twitch.tv/decafjedi
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Transcript
Morning Coffee Hype
00:00:23
Speaker
Hello, everybody. And welcome to Quest Quest. I am feeling so strange right now. This is a morning record. A morning record. We've both got that morning energy. We've had nine cups of coffee each. I'm literally drinking my my mug morning mug of like whole jug of coffee. Just a mug of dirt. So in the old Joe Java.
Introducing Richard Cobbett
00:00:51
Speaker
i'm ah I'm Ben. I'm here with Jess. That's me. here i I wasn't ready. Usually there's like a big buildup. I don't know. Yeah. Hey, it's me Jess. And that's Ben over there. And Ben, I have a special surprise for you today. yeah you Well, yeah. I mean, I'm awake at this hour. What's up? Well, I've brought along a special guest to our podcast clubhouse.
00:01:17
Speaker
that's right here here at the studios where we record in beautiful downtown Burbank. I've brought along a legend in the adventure gaming scene. I've brought along the one and only Richard Cobbett. Hi. Hello there. Now, I have to say, Jess, I prepared for your surprise by writing a short bio to bring them in. Wow, that's how in sync we are. I mean, that that's how you know we've been podcasting for like 11 episodes now.
00:01:48
Speaker
um Richard Cobbett is... a game developer who's worked on Sunless Sea and Skies, Not Tonight, Beyond a Steel Sky, The Long Journey Home, and more. Before that, he was a journalist at Rock Paper Shotgun, Eurogamer, PC Gamer, and more. Currently, his project is the game Night Hawks, a vampire RPG being published by Wajit Eye Games. There it is. Now it's all formal. Richard, how are you? Welcome to the podcast. I'm doing great. Thanks for having me.
00:02:20
Speaker
Oh, we're excited to talk to you today.
Current Games Discussion
00:02:23
Speaker
So what we wanted to chat about today, as is often our tendency to do is adventure games. But as you know, we are strictly forbidden from diving into adventure game discussion before we've asked one another, what are you playing? So maybe Ben, I'll pass the mic to you. Ben, what are you playing?
00:02:41
Speaker
Uh, so I'm going to, I'm going to do something we've never done before. I'm going to break the rules. I'm going to break the rules here. I'm going to say, uh, but you know what? This is very human. Everyone's going to relate to me intensely when I say this, which is to say I'm playing a game. I've already said I've been playing because I'm still playing it.
00:03:00
Speaker
ah That's, that's easy content. I mean, come on. Every, every week we come in and I've said a different game. and this talk about u fifty a I'm leaving for 10 minutes. So this is going to be more UFO 50 talk. I'm out of here. ah Number one. ah Listen, all the, all those times for, for weeks, Richard, did you play UFO 50? Not yet. No, it's so good. It's on my list. Uh, but, uh,
00:03:26
Speaker
I'm still playing Dragon dragon Quest III, Hidden Dragons edition, ah because ah it's a JRPG, which means that it is long. ah So like I don't know what to tell you. like I'm up to the final boss, and all my guys aren't strong enough. So I just got to walk them around in a circle until they get strong enough. And then they're going to walk up to the boss and kill him. And i'm not and this is what I'll add ah to preview.
00:03:55
Speaker
i I don't do post-game content. Those credits roll, I'm done. I'm out of here. I'm out the door. I'm actually out of there before the credits roll because I don't care who made the game. I just care that I enjoyed it. And also, that's the same with movies. I have no idea what's going on in Marvel films. I don't know who's going to show up next. I'm out the door. I'm out the door. The credits start. I'm out. I don't care who worked on this. yeah not Richard, do you work in game development?
00:04:25
Speaker
don Well, Ben, I'm glad to hear what you've been playing. Richard, why don't you jump in? Let's, so let's hear what you've been playing lately. I hope it is that the same thing's been, if it's been playing because this is going to get really repetitive. I don't think so. Not, not precisely. No, I mean, um, trying and failing to play the new Dragon Age, which just doesn't like my PC. And so instead I've been finishing up, uh, Oh, I kind of get the name wrong. I know this, um, uh, metaphor refantasia.
00:04:51
Speaker
I think that's correct. so The persona guys, I'm a huge fan of the persona series. so And it's been quite nice to have like it's something a bit different to s sink into. Yeah, so okay, how how far because this is also a particularly lengthy jrpg. Oh, how like how far would you say you've gone into to ah metaphor? Oh, I finished it. Oh, you finished? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I'm currently ah waiting until basically the Christmas break because we're recording this, you know, the week, week or so before Christmas. That's basically when I'm planning to catch up on my adventure games. Because I don't know about you guys, but I sort of need to be in a very good state of mind to be playing adventures. And at the moment, it's supposed to be more like i I need to hit things, you know.
00:05:37
Speaker
in in well and Enjoy having the the simulated ability to have friends and you know, all of that kind of stuff, which you kind of get more from, uh, from RPGs. Um, but, uh, like the crisp side is good. It's very like crimson diamond UFO, uh, tons, tons of stuff in my backlog, which I want to kind of get a good chunk out of. Yeah. Cool. Uh, Jess, where are you playing?
00:06:01
Speaker
What have I been playing? This is a great question. I just wrapped up streaming and that's our cheating too, like talking about the game I've been streaming. Everyone who watches my Twitch channel already knows I just finished up playing Space Quest 6 for the first time in a really long time. I'm pretty sure that I had not played Space Quest VI start to finish since I played it for the first time in 1995. I think I played it in 1995, hastily wrote a walkthrough down, uploaded it to my Space Quest fan site, and then never returned to Space Quest VI again. but i mean The good thing about Space Quest VI, if you play through it once, you've actually done probably more than either of the writers.
00:06:48
Speaker
That's exactly right. i mean and yeah Here's the thing. baseball with six was loved I love jo but Josh Mandel. I mean that with with love. He's amazing.
00:07:00
Speaker
No, I mean, everything I've ever written, and especially all the things I've overwritten in my lifetime, I've been inspired by Josh Mandel. I love his work on these games. And, you know, Space Quest VI is fine. It's not my favorite of the series. But there's good stuff in there. I mean, Gary Owens is fantastic. He is much better in Space Quest VI than he was in Space Quest IV. I kind of like the cartoonish aesthetic.
00:07:25
Speaker
ah Space Quest VI is fine. um It's not my favorite. It maybe isn't in my top five or six. but Watching you play it, it was i it made me think just kind of how...
00:07:37
Speaker
Like there there is there's parts in it where like I saw you playing and going like, wow, like this part really, really works. This is really funny and it really works. And then like, it just goes into a very lengthy and dull segment for like another two or three hours. It's sort of the problem when one of your designers does lots and lots of research on the workings of the human body, then your second designer doesn't include any of it. So you're kind of, you're sort of sort a bit lost in the biology stuff of it.
00:08:07
Speaker
i And again, there's something about about ah Scott. I love the Space Quest series as a whole. it Just with that specific game, you can sort of tell screen by screen whose baby it was. so and so And for me, it's like, if every pixel has a joke, then you know that it's Josh Mandel. And I really like those set those screens. And when you kind of get towards the end, where you have this real sense of, please be over, please be over, please be over, kind of emanating from the game itself, then you know I'm a bit less into it.
00:08:37
Speaker
There was definitely when I was watching you finish it, Jess, I think we all felt that please be over. The game radiated it and then it was being reflected back. It was actually quite perfect. It it made a ah perfect, brilliant band of light between the two, just reflecting the same exact thing back and forth. I could tell it was happening. It was great.
00:09:02
Speaker
I can see in chat, everybody's like, is this almost over? Jess is was yeah how you know that, you know, you've really, you've really hit your mark as a, as a streamer. So yeah, like space quest six, maybe I will play it again in the nine years.
00:09:17
Speaker
so and I'll see you again in 29 years. it's year war your Year that will be like, is that like, that's in the far flung future. That's yeah. I don't plan to be around for the next time my scheduled space quest six playthroughs is up for ah for grabs, but yeah, ah there you have it. That's what I've been playing now.
00:09:40
Speaker
Let's go on to the important stuff. Richard, again, welcome to the podcast. We are very excited to talk at venture games with you and maybe start out with a question that I'm curious about.
Richard's Gaming Journey
00:09:52
Speaker
Ben and I have talked a lot about our earliest adventure game experiences. How did you end up ah end up sort of getting introduced to this genre? What were some of the first games you played, the ones that really made an impression?
00:10:05
Speaker
ah this is where it gets slightly awkward because ah my first seven adventure games were all pirated and they came with ah the first PC that we owned which was a 8086 which ran at about 4-6 megahertz um and it came basically with a big box of floppy disks with handwritten labels And one of the first- They were all authorized backups. They were all authorized backups. Absolutely. And one of the first games I played when I was far too young to be playing it was Legacy of Suit Larry 1, which was one of the floppies that came basically with my PC. And I was far too young to have any idea what was going on in it. I just knew that it was a cool walking around a city and doing things. And you have this real sense of being in a world.
00:10:52
Speaker
And that's kind of what I really kind of came to love about adventure games. And I played a lot of text events at the same time, again, usually not the commercial ones. um You know, I had some from like level nine and magnetic scrolls and kind of the other and infocom, of course, but they weren't particularly big on the PC.
00:11:09
Speaker
At least not in the UK, they they kind of tended to be more on like other computers. So I would sort of come to one of those later on, or be playing the free ones, um two which come to mind immediately, or actually cover this games, Jackaranda Jim and Humbug, ah which are two games I've never heard of. Well, they were just messing with us, are you? No, no, not at all. They were both written by a guy called Graham Clouley, who later became a very well-known figure in the antivirus world.
00:11:37
Speaker
But he wrote he basically wrote, I don't know if he wrote Jack Around the Gym specifically for the magazine, ah but he did write Humbug because it was ah like a special send off and received this along with some other games um kind of deal. And they were like some of the first adventure games that really spoke to what I wanted in games.
00:11:55
Speaker
I mean, I kind of enjoyed the arcade stuff as well, but it was that always that sense to be able to step into a world, to interact with people, you know, to have this sort of sense of actually escaping into this new place. And I know that with legislative Larry, in particular, it was kind of funny because my dad actually uses work as ah a way of getting people comfortable with how to use computers, obviously not the sexy time stuff, but the go into the bar, order a drink from the bar, the sort of stuff which you kind of she kind of got. And it probably says something about me that the the other people who played it, ah yeah these these grownups who so who should have been playing it, ah never worked out you could leave the bar. you know They never figured out you could call a taxi. And there was actually a whole game outside of lefties.
00:12:42
Speaker
And until I played this game, like quite often, it would be a case of you know if I went into a new room, it would be like, kind of yeah, I'm going to just take a look at that before I let you play this. um But then very quickly realized that if I wanted to play something on the computer, I was going to play that thing on the computer. um When I was about 10 or so, my parents ah told me that they considered getting some ah parental control software, but then realized I would have to install it for them. And so it was a bit pointless.
00:13:11
Speaker
now Now was Jack around this is the i I Unfortunately, I can't let this go ah was Jack around the the gym like also like within the the tone of leisure suit Larry because that's all like It's more like small space quest st it's Jack around the gym not Jack around the gym but it's a space ah It's a space adventure about, ah I don't actually remember what he is, but he he's it's him and his ah friend Alan the Gribble, or Alan the Gribbler, or something on those sort lines, so um having a very zork-style adventure on a, I think they crash land on a planet, ah which is sort of full of things like thieves who are always trying to steal your things. Again, very zork.
00:13:54
Speaker
And so I basically kind of grew up playing, you know, mostly the Sierra and Lucas arts and revolution and basically anything I could get my hands on. And like things like Infocomma had sort of had to sort of pick up bit by bit, you know, as they sort of came out. So I had hitchhikers going to the galaxy, which is not.
00:14:12
Speaker
good game. I really wish people would, would would ah you know, go back and play it. It's not a good game. I'm sorry. it Play a mind full of voyaging. A mind full of voyaging is brilliant. That is the game which everyone should be praising. um hit hitchhike Hitchhiker's Guide, I can best sum up by the fact that nobody ever talks fondly about bureaucracy.
00:14:33
Speaker
um happen you know, great, great license, great books, and they carry and they carry the game like a team of Sherpas. And like it so I said, I played at a friend's houses that you had, you know, other computers, I would play other, mostly on their machine to be text adventures, then kind of on mine, it would be PC and kind of going from CJ up to BGA and basically getting my hands as much stuff as possible. And then ah later on, when the internet came out, ah uh making preemptive backups of a few games now uh well what i will say you know uh about bureaucracy i'll say a couple things about bureaucracy one is is that bureaucracy had an incredible like the felis for it the infelcom felis uh modern paranoia magazine is really funny
00:15:25
Speaker
no But there's modern paranoia or something like that magazine, which is very funny. And it has a great cover. ah they and having ah ah The location called the like the paranoia complex is a brilliant joke. Yeah. Yeah. There's.
00:15:41
Speaker
I mean, also, I don't think he really worked on it. I didn't, he like kind of outsourced it to a friend of his. Much like, maybes much like, much like Hitchhiker's. I don't remember who wrote bureaucracy, but I think Hitchhiker's was mostly a Steve Moresky gig. Yeah, it was Moresky, I believe.
00:15:59
Speaker
um Yeah, you know, ah I, I've never gotten very far. Jess, you beat a hitchhikers, but you were using a walkthrough. Oh yeah. I beat hitchhikers, which is to say I entered a series of commands. I read verbatim online and pushed your turn after each one. ah But yeah, I mean,
00:16:20
Speaker
I don't know. Hitchhiker's man. It's, you know, I love the source material. Uh, I feel like if you were both intimately familiar with the source material and a close personal friend of Steve Meretsky, possibly you could finish that game with those sort of help, you know, or if you have some sort of like being John Malkovich portal into the mind of Steve Meretsky, maybe that would also work. you would You would get a headache, which no buffered analgesic would be able to solve.
00:16:51
Speaker
absolutely no yeah it was it was an experience yeah yeah there were bits that were fun but no it's not not for me I do you play more info comm though I have a limited data set to compare to I am curious here then like so you played all how we talked about this on our the first one we recorded. How do you play an adventure game? Do you take notes? Do you draw a map? Do you like how do you solve like an adventure game when you're playing it?
00:17:22
Speaker
mostly without notes. It sort of depends if I was reviewing one, then I would take notes because I'd sort of need to look back and just you know remind myself. um If I'm playing them normally, then generally I will brute force maze mazes um using the old Batman just turn left all the time trick. And otherwise, I tend to kind of like play them in like a know, maybe one to three, like mega mega sittings, you know, rather like survey over a long period of time. So otherwise, I forget all the details. um And so I don't really need notes for the most most part. yeah um of Obviously, there's something you like a dedicated puzzle game, like say a Mist or a Traitor's Gate or something like that, then yeah, yeah then then I'll take notes. But if it's just like a regular, you know, Sierra, Luke Sarts, you know, game along those sorts of lines, which isn't like specifically a detective game, obviously, something like Laura Bow is different. But
00:18:16
Speaker
It was like so like a space quest or some of them. No, I just keep it in my head. And how do you feel about like really puzzley puzzles, if if you understand what I mean by that? When you get like a screen, like so you'll be playing a game, then you get a screen and you see like 13 buttons and some red of eight blocks and there's a flashing light. There's a giant chess piece. man like i would I would say that that I'm not a big fan of what I was thinking of as interface puzzles. oh actually would Like the the big the big kind of sort of screens. And it depends on the game. And for me, it it really depends on like, are you wasting my time? You know, in in that if it's like a dedicated puzzle game, like say Zort Grand Inquisitor, which is fantastic. ah Cool. One of my favorite puzzles. I am totally drink to like,
00:19:05
Speaker
ah Mine too, actually several of my favorite puzzles. I think that's a brilliantly designed game. But it's something like that, you kind of, you buy into that as like how the world works. If I'm playing something like say, I don't know, an Indiana Jones game, and then suddenly it's like, and now we're going to slow down so you can do this very obviously bullshit adventure game puzzle. I don't particularly like that. And if it's one of what I call what I refer to as the elder puzzles, I get angry.
00:19:30
Speaker
which is like towers of fanoi. Towers of fanoi, sliding block puzzles, anything which basically you would find in 101 puzzles for slightly smart kids, you know, sort of type things like, like basically if I'm playing through it like a game and the action is stopped so that I can put like queens on a chessboard so they don't kind of cross, you have really got to earn that.
00:20:01
Speaker
And the only way in which i'll I'll generally accept it is, I think the early Tex Murphy games actually did, or not the early, but the other mid- The pre-FMV ones? No, the FMV ones. I think they did ja generally did a pretty good job of wrapping it in enough fiction that I could get behind it. you know like but They'd have one which was basically crossing the river, you know the whole thing where you've you've got like multiple animals or whatever. why ah like a wolf, a lamb and a bale. That's the one. And in in like Pandora directive, I think I think it's Pandora directive. They've got no, but but things in Pandora directive, they've got that which is sort of like with a bomb and it's like moving neutrons kind of across I may be like forgetting about the detail. It's something like that. And it's like that that even though like objectively, yes, that's
00:20:50
Speaker
like one of those puzzles, I can accept the, okay, it's just a cool way of diffusing a bomb in a more interesting way than finding a thing. But then you get something like Tesla effect, and it's just straight up, we're going to put these puzzles onto a big screen in front of you. And you are going to solve them. So you can move to the next room. Well, there's another one that gets me cross. great least because you both Both because it's, it's an unoriginal puzzle. And it's,
00:21:16
Speaker
again, not test, effectivelyly but like when when I still see those kind of puzzles, it feels lazy because it's just like we've just dumped a puzzle in front of you. And it's like, you know, either come up with with something original and interesting, or just let me walk past and, you know, get on with the story.
Game Puzzles Critique
00:21:32
Speaker
um And that's kind of how I i roll with puzzles, which is probably why in like about three games as I've written, I've written in a parody of one of those puzzles.
00:21:41
Speaker
So Sunless Sea, for instance, this section, on one of the islands I wrote for that game, are the ah Isle of Hands, which is sort of like a monkey controlled island. minute And there's there's one where basically you go into a temple which has been built to be an ancient temple. i ah yeah as it is' It's only like a couple of years old, but they built it to look ancient. And so all of the uh the rooms that it's like a parody so like there's the snake pit but they haven't bothered feeding the snakes so they're all dead so you just climb out um and then the the final room um is a towers of hanoi puzzle which has something like 10 uh rods so it would take like many many thousands of moves in order to finish it or you could do the correct solution which is you go and buy some dynamite and you blow up the wall
00:22:28
Speaker
I think I know what, uh, one of your favorite puzzles and sort of grand inquisitor also is, uh, because it's fine. That would be the the one where you have the seventh guest style chess board in front of you. Rock like rock. Yeah. And you smash it.
00:22:44
Speaker
That's one of my favorite. I hope always love that puzzle. I love that. puzzle Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think about that all the time. And I have rewinding a little bit. You said like you in an Indiana Jones game, like you don't like you'll have the momentum and then you stop. So what you're saying is that you don't particularly enjoy ah doing surveying work ah in front of ah like fumes.
00:23:07
Speaker
on the island of Crete because actually I thought that was the most interesting part of the game just kind of walking around with it. think Faith of Atlantis actually does it pretty well because again they they kind of lean into indie as an archaeologist yeah know throughout the whole game which is fine and and I think it works within that context. I think that if it was a more like action-packed game and then suddenly it slowed down so you could put the other lights all around Crete, is that what it is? um Then I would be less into it. But it it has things that that version of India, I think how it does enough work to make like the moonstone puzzles and like the zeotolite puzzles like kind of charging up, you know, engines or whatever, feel appropriate to the setting. ah where Whereas like I said, if if it was like all Nazi punching, and then suddenly that it sort of stopped all this momentum for a puzzle,
00:23:59
Speaker
Yeah, not not so much. Well, let me ask then while we're talking puzzles and ones that I felt like just completely halted the momentum of the game. But I think I'm in the minority here. How do you feel about Le Serpent Rouge? from on not three This one is famous. People love it. They say it's one of the best puzzles of all time. It was not for me.
00:24:18
Speaker
I like the idea more than I like the execution. Okay. Yeah. And I don't want to be too, like, be something sort of too, like, I think it's a really clever puzzle. I really love how she works in the idea, like, sort of the sacred geometry and like that. Honestly, a lot of the stuff which is wrapped around it, you know, like when Grace has to sort of stop, take a break for a while, then some sort of stuff happens. My main problem is it doesn't really It's not really challenging in that you put the things in the only place that lets you put the things and then kind of, kind of it I would, I would have really liked it if like more of the game was about like sort of slowly piecing together that.
00:25:00
Speaker
like the map which you end up with from exploring the territory rather than like having like Grace just sort of sitting down for a long afternoon of like just playing on her computer. um but But I think the concept is brilliant. And and i I think yeah, stretch it out across the entire game and kind of make it more that that Grace has to go out and like investigate her while she's doing the puzzle. And I think it'll be perfect. ah It's just it's all in one big chunk And so you kind of know half the stuff which you're drawing because there isn't anywhere else to let you do it. So that's kind of interesting. That makes me think of like with with huge kind of grand puzzles like it is like we were just talking about like the moonstones and that's kind of like an ongoing like piece by piece by piece puzzle that runs the almost the entire length essentially the entire length of ah fate of Atlantis. And so it's like
00:25:57
Speaker
you know, this, this has just got me thinking and I don't have a like of like kind of paste out puzzles, like, like, ah ah you know, ah versus like having, as you said, like grace sitting at her computer for a long time and just, you know, there's the chapter where I use my laptop.
00:26:16
Speaker
Here's the chapter where I wander around a library in a real life. Where's that museum? Museum, I believe. Yeah. It's it's both. It's both. two two two museum ah It's one museum, the Castle of Neuschwanstein, which I've been to and is much bigger than in the game. And also the Schattenjรคger Library, which she spends ages ah looking up werewolves. What kind of company, Grace?
00:26:42
Speaker
What I wanted about that is that it kind of it's like yes that is what someone would do but is that interesting? for Is that a game? Gabriel likes you again it's a pacing thing where I love the concept I think that the bits where you have to go and investigate things are a bit too focused on you looking at literally everything, as in they will lock you in place until you have clicked on every damn pixel in those museums. And so while I think it works really well for Grace, I wouldn't mind it being a little bit
00:27:16
Speaker
gentler as a, like, when when you found the thing, the story can progress. We don't necessarily have to look at every single thing to kind of get the gist of it. Or alternatively, we could have like later on, if something comes up you haven't found, you'd be like, Oh, I wonder if they didn't think about that at the museum, and then she could kind of go back and look at it. um But I know that every time I've played the piece within, I've gotten the clues, because I know what I'm looking for. And that that long time, it's like, what do I have to click so that you will accept that I'm ready to go to the next bit? And again, I am not being down. I think the beastliness is an amazing. It's one of my favorite FMV games. ah But again, those sections are a little bit poorly paced. Well, that makes me think about and I don't know if I like I severely doubt that you have to ever ah that you have to deal with these right now, ah Richard. ah And I don't know if you have to Jess, but it like I have to every year, ah ah like for work have to take
00:28:11
Speaker
ah uh like video trainings on like uh like you know don't you know harass people at a workplace don't you know like don't do this don't do this this is what you do when there's a fire i mean i i mean i'm i'm self-employed and i work from home so ah honestly um harassing yourself is supposedly one of the benefits ah ah but But what's great about ah the those those tests that we have about those tests we have to do,
00:28:47
Speaker
that's that's why I thought Jack around the gym was about. um now i i is that butpa can i Can I just say that you'll probably please yeah be alone in the dark spin off Jack in the dark.
00:29:01
Speaker
oh no
00:29:06
Speaker
Anyway, so it's like you watch these terribly acted videos, ah which I think that would be an acting role I would love to do. I would love to be an actor that solely gets to act in like, you know, don't harass people in the workplace videos. But anyway, um then you have to answer quiz questions. And then ah once you've completed those quiz questions, ah it might say to you, you need to be on the screen longer.
00:29:33
Speaker
because they figured out that people just hit next, next, next, next. And then say, it's like, are you ah like, we if you were in this scenario, what would you say? And then it was like five offensive options. And then one, how are you doing today? And and then you click that it says, wait did you watch the whole video? And that's so kind of feeling about this, this grace thing, which is, it's just like, no, it doesn't matter that you know exactly where to click.
00:30:03
Speaker
You have to go through all of it. How dare you? We wrote everything in this library, and you're going to enjoy it. We had to fill little inserts of grace, like bending over to look thoughtfully at a book. It's like, you're going to watch that video. We spent a lot of money on this game. Listen. I've just decided that hell consists of Josh Mandel writing a game like that.
00:30:29
Speaker
You know, not not only will you watch it, you will laugh at every single poem. so
00:30:38
Speaker
and this is This is a guy when when he wrote Callahan's cross sign saloon. There's scenes like there's ah there's a scene in a coffee shop where there's about 10 different drawers of coffee and every single one of them has a multi-line pun attached to it.
00:30:52
Speaker
yeah you know If he turned if he turned his his talents to evil, then people would be begging Satan to get back to the pitchforks.
00:31:02
Speaker
Why hasn't Sam Barlow made a game based on those workplace instructional videos? like That feels like the next immortality. you know like You click on something in the sexual harassment video that takes you to new video content and immortality too and it's the same fucked up story about this bizarre actress that's lived for 50 years or whatever except that she's only been in anti-harassment videos it's like anything it's strange but she's acting I was thinking yeah from the maker of telling lies taking liberties oh well but her lawsuit
00:31:48
Speaker
Damn, we know you're you're a listener. So, ah you know, you this ah this idea is all yours. we We relinquish all claims. And Ben would like to star. Oh, yeah. And I would like to star. I would like the i want to be the creep of these videos.
00:32:04
Speaker
flip Creep one on your movie games page. to me I only have one act in credit. my Otherwise my movie games page is all a special thanks for kickstarters. That's true. That's true. You can look me up. It's like, wow, it's Ben's a credit history. It's like, Oh, they ah v log all the kickstarters special. Thanks.
00:32:34
Speaker
Well, Richard, we were talking before the stream, Ben, and i yeah I think I was probably first exposed to your work in your in your crapshoot ah column, where you tackled some of the bright spots and arguably dimmer spots of gaming
Exploring Richard's Crapshoot Column
00:32:54
Speaker
history. And Ben and I were both talking about how much we just love these old calls. We've both gone back and read a few here and there.
00:33:01
Speaker
ah I was curious, you know, if you could tell us a little bit about Crap Shoot, games that really stand out for you that you wrote about their ones that you found just like particularly perplexing or soul crushing or however you want to approach that.
00:33:17
Speaker
What I mean, Crouchy was kind of interesting. It was a column I wrote for PC Gamer for many years. ah The original idea when they kind of came to me and said, you'd like to write a column for us was, ah we'd like you to do a funny column about the worst games ever made. And I was like, I don't really want to do that. um You know, because the thing the thing is, it might seem strange that you know, a British games journalist wouldn't like writing negative reviews. But honestly, most of us don't, yeah you know, in in that you're kind of you're writing for an audience. And so you're kind of you're paid to be, you know, sarcastic and funny and acerbic, or whatever. But generally, we like good games, you know, we want to support good games. And the idea of like, specifically picking on something kind of each week, just didn't feel right. So what what I said, was how about we
00:34:08
Speaker
meddle with that kind of a bit and make it weird and wonderful and interesting games, some of which are going to be bad. like Quite a lot of them are objectively bad. But it's not really about them being bad games. It's about them being interestingly bad, or interestingly good, or just really obscure. Like sometimes it can be as simple as the fact that there is a shooter game called Bert Higgins, The Man from Hell.
00:34:32
Speaker
uh which is a bit like a robo cop style thing um in which i think you players like this uh futuristic warrior who just happens to be called burt higgins um you know but but then youd' you'd also get other stuff like say uh conquest of the longbow which at the time was pretty obscure uh where there is so much cool stuff that nobody ever brought up because he was like one of the lesser known sierra games and I think about that one that you wrote about conquest because that's one of my absolute favorite Syria games. congress though And, and I think about like, I remember reading that piece and, and, and being like, yeah, man, he's right.
00:35:11
Speaker
He's right. up with your fist toward yeah yeah but actually the the the idea The idea each time wasn't specifically to tear into something or if it was, it was something which really deserved it. Usually there is one I can think of, which I feel really bad about because I don't know what the hell was going on that day. Um, but it's a game which I don't actually dislike, but when I can look at, look back through the archives, like Jesus Christ.
00:35:37
Speaker
you know, just a ripping this thing a new one. It's like I must have been in the worst of moods that day. um But like, most sex, what? Well, no, I don't even know how that was covered. No, I think it was a key with his kingdom of magic, which is just like, oh, you know, it's not a great game. But it's like, I've actually got quite a soft spot for it. And so like reading back, it was like, who wrote this? and Oh, my God, it was me.
00:36:03
Speaker
um but a lot But a lot of the time it was it was it was very much about finding like weird and wonderful. So I mean like for example Bureau 13, which is um on the surface, it's a sort of X-Files style ah thing where you you play a sort of a secretive organization that goes into a ah small town to investigate ah weird X-Files type stuff. Except for some reason one of the characters is in her underwear and riding a giant mech suit.
00:36:30
Speaker
And it is the the least subtle thing you could possibly imagine. Or conspiracies, which is like a Tex Murphy wannabe game, where the main character's voiceover is one of my favorite things ever. I highly recommend checking out video of it.
00:36:48
Speaker
um and and so and And again, sometimes it was just like stuff which people just didn't know existed. One of the earliest ones I started off by talking about how Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis was pretty rubbish so that nobody would possibly like it. And then after the jump, it was like, I am, of course, referring to the arcade game.
00:37:05
Speaker
which of course people haven't seen. So I think it's so difficult to like my favorite, my personal favorites were usually either games that I liked and were was able to kind of give a better view to or something which I was able to do something fun with.
00:37:21
Speaker
like one which kind of springs to mind is there's a game called the Unicorn Killer which is like a hidden object game which is based on an actual serial killer which has struck me as being the most poor taste concept and so I wrote the entire thing basically as like a detective story except all diegetic so you know that they're literally solving the case by finding like the 10 windmills kind of positioned around the screen or ah You know, like, look, I found a loaf of bread, this will lead us to him. Or there's like a Les Misรฉrables bismuth from Japan called Arm Joe. And so I wrote the entire thing as a parody of the Les Misรฉrables musical, like multiple songs, you know, to the, you know, the actual thing.
00:38:05
Speaker
um But yeah, it was a weird to say it's right because there was no real planning. I would basically sit down on Friday evening, I would decide what to cover, I would start writing and it would go live at 8am the next morning. And so I was usually playing through it at like 3, 4am and just basically just basically like stream of consciousness.
00:38:29
Speaker
So, you know, a lot of the time, they they're not very well edited. So what's the way to say I was just just wrapping my keyboard, right? You used to finish about like 10 minutes before I had to post it. And then it was like, I hope you'll find this funny. but You know, it's it's it's funny what you said about like, interesting, like because I, I with a ah group of my friends and including my buddy Grayson, who did a kidney mice boy, ah great game.
00:38:58
Speaker
Uh, uh, we watch, uh, bad movies and we've been watching bad movies, uh, like together as a group of friends for the last four years. And a thing that I like having watched a lot of them.
00:39:12
Speaker
Uh, is that the ones that are always really interesting to me are the ones that like betrays something about like the point of view of the people that made it or like there's something like, because it, anything, anything could be bad, but to be interestingly bad, it has to have certain qualities. And, uh, so like, you know, what you were saying about, uh, the crap shoot games that made me think of.
00:39:40
Speaker
I mean, I think for me a lot a lot of the time it's even a bad game can have something really interesting about it. And often they have really good ideas and they're not ideas you see again, because nobody played it. And so, you know, yeah people will steal from like ah Sierra and LucasArts and Revolution kind of all of the the big names, but then you'll you'll just find something, I'm trying to think of it, of ah of a good example of the top of my head but something like say the original cryo june game and how it like merged like strategy and um uh you know the adventure things to do something you know kind of like do you
00:40:21
Speaker
uh the the first the french dune that's the one yeah um the french dune la dune or yeah oh yeah you'd have something like you know the the muppets inside which was sort of a genuinely kind of funny game or um uh malputi island which sort of used this sort of really weird like text to speech system or uh the disc world mud which is just so big, it will blow your mind. Just look at this. If you look at a single map from the Discworld mud, and then that is like a millionth of the size of the game. um It generally has like an active population of like 2030 at the last time I looked. um It's just, it's just so weird.
00:41:06
Speaker
And Richard, I'm so glad you brought up Discworld. Thank you. Because I actually have a time-sensitive question for you. I am considering, I haven't decided what I'm going to stream on my Twitch channel tonight, and I'm considering Discworld 2. Should I stream Discworld 2? Let me tell you my experience with Discworld 1. It was fine, but a little exhausting. Should I stream Discworld 2? I would say it's more than a little exhausting.
00:41:37
Speaker
my My favorite thing about Discworld 1, just to very quickly mention, if you look at the speedruns, they actually involve time travel. You know, in that there's a glitch, which basically, you know, just sort of involves skipping around time to kind of like get items, you know, something, I forget the exact details. I i remember that being really fun. Discworld 2 is much less strenuous than Discworld 1. It's a much, much easier game. It's also much, much less pratche desk.
00:42:06
Speaker
ah they've really they really kind of lean way more into Python. um And the the thing the thing with discord two is, I enjoyed it. But it's very funny as a game. And ah i said like, you know, it's you'll walk into like a random building. And it's like, Oh, look, it's granny weather wax. And, you know, you walk into the next room, like, Oh, now you're in destiny small.
00:42:29
Speaker
it' it in ways It's more that it'll try to pull in and a lot of stuff, but it's a bit like the theme park Discworld to me. What I think Discworld noir is, if you can get it running, which is not ah an easy feat, it feels much more like a Discworld game to me, where Discworld 2 sort of feels more like a Discworld experience. it's like the let it's the It's a theme park ride. You will see your favorite characters, you will see remixes of some of your favorite stories,
00:42:57
Speaker
But you can also kind of let's be like, well, that's from that, that's from that, that's from that. um And a lot of the I mean, there's a bit in it where you literally walk into the stoning sequence from life of Brian, and it flashes up at the bottom of the screen, like gratuitous Python scene. And like, for for me, that's like, i I want to play a Pratchett game. I don't know. I love it. Discworld is my favorite series, basically of all time. It's it's the most important books to me. And so like disk will score to it doesnt It's not like I'm offended by it. It's a perfectly good game. And as licensed games go, it's actually really, really good.
00:43:35
Speaker
But it doesn't have that feel of actually being in Discworld. It has the feeling of being in like this the a world intended to remind you of Discworld. Whatever you look at. Like Rinswind is Eric Idle. yeah know He's not Rinswind. At least to me. And I think that was also the case with Discworld 1 to some extent. With Discworld 2, they just really... you like We've got Eric Idle, of course we're gonna do it. And so like at one point one point I know they even plan to use Always Look on the Bright Side of Life as the game's theme song.
00:44:05
Speaker
and the story goes that basically they asked him if they could have permission and his response was like kind of oh no let's not do that let's let's make it just make something new up and um he wrote this source this new song called that's death uh which sort of plays at the start you know that's death say if no need to take a breath just lie around all day with not a single bill to pay hooray um and all of that kind of stuff and again it's cool but but it's it's erica idol it's it's not yeah I just want to also note, while you've been talking, I've been looking at maps of the Discworld mud and it is... that the The people who make the Discworld have my absolute respect. yeah That is an incredible piece of work. Jesus Christ. like and i'd like like to but but When it comes to Discworlds, I'm very picky because I have um i have played the Discworld games that nobody knows about.
00:44:57
Speaker
uh you know uh because there were um there were two of them released on 8-bit computers by the guy by the guy yeah someone by the guy by the guys who wrote the town with no name
00:45:10
Speaker
Well, how are those? ah they' They're pretty much like straight conversions of the story, as I remember. But like no, I think Discworld, if I could pick one license to have a crack at myself, it would be Discworld. I would love to do a Discworld game. Oh, that was on my list of questions. I'm glad you brought that up. Yeah, I was curious if there was any game you could get your hands on. so dis That is about the only license I can think of that I would share. The thing is I would never dream of writing of trying to write a Discworld book. I think that's Terry's thing. And ah you know I would never like dream of thinking I could do that. But I do think I could write a good game. I think I could like come up with something which was ah interesting.
00:45:53
Speaker
deep and something which I as a long-term fan would love to play ah because for me like a lot of it is I ah for me Discworld was a constant companion ah from the age of about 10 onwards until like basically the bitter the only one I haven't read um is Raising Steam and the reason I haven't read it I got it I got it on launch is because reading that one would mean that it's over the the only the only time I think I will read that book is if like the miracle million billion to one chance that you know Rihanna and co allow me to have a crack at it then I would read it otherwise I don't think I will ever read it because again that is the end. I have read The Shepherd's Crown because I thought that was an important one to to finish off Branny's story because the first one I read was equal rights so it felt like starting with equal rights and it was Shepherd's Crown
00:46:41
Speaker
That was a wrap up that I could do, but I like to kind of like have this idea that Discworld is still you know alive. There's still new stories being told there. And I would love basically to to write it to write a Discworld game specifically because I want to go back to that world.
00:46:58
Speaker
And I want to spend more time in that world. And i I wouldn't trust other, most other people to write it. And I'm not saying they should trust me. I'm just saying that I wouldn't trust them because it is precious to me. And so yeah, I at least know that if I were to do it, and even if I made an absolute mess of it, it would be a mess with the absolute best intentions of wanting to do right by the license.
00:47:22
Speaker
And I would love to do that. And there aren't any other licenses I can think of which I feel like that at work about. um i mean I mean, like, for example, even ones where theoretically would be cool, like the rapper of them is so problematic. Like, you know, I think it'd be really fun to make a Doctor Who game, but I think that the constraints that you would be on to would make it not fun in the slightest. I would quite like to make a supervillain game starring Kermit the Frog, but they would never let me do that.
00:47:51
Speaker
um and they shouldn't but it's an idea which I thought was funny a few years ago um but Discworld I actually have like a folder of like what I would do in the exact it's kind of what it's sort of like one of it's one sort of what one of my um it's not the only one but I've kind ofve kind of got loads of uh like sort of fantasy game designs that I kind of sort of keep around and a lot of the time it's like kind of nobody will ever let me make X but I it's in my head I kind of want to get out of my head and maybe I'll get some ideas from it like use it something else later on but Discworld yeah i I have a pitch I would like to make that pitch just to have done it but one but at like at least you know what get this game out of the way first and then maybe ah send send them something basically with with the email. I know you'll say no, but I had to do this to get it out of my head.
00:48:41
Speaker
If I could, I don't want you to reveal all of your secrets, but is there like the sub series of Discworld, you know, CityWatch, the witches, et cetera. Is your pitch in one of those sort of subsections in particular, or does it sort of span the Discworld canon? or like this world noir, which is a, you know, it yeah it's, ah it's, it's not really an original story. It's a platform on which stories can be told. i The best way to sort of solve it. So it that the way the way that I the way I see it, see it. and but Hell, let's go. Let's just go into this.
00:49:20
Speaker
brief I won't to talk much about the idea because, you know, the millions of people listening might steal it and I don't want to do that. But like to me, the way that you don't write a disc ball game is you have like sort of a brand new character who walks up to the city gates and you're met by Captain Vimes who is like kind of, oh, you're an interesting fellow. The patrician will want to go and see you. And you go and speak to the patrician and he says, you know, oh I'll be keeping an eye on you. But first, you know, here's a quest to go and kill three rats in the basement of the mended drum. And then you go and you find a room at Mrs. K and it's just like, no, that's not how you you have to, write you you have to treat it ah with a sense of
00:50:03
Speaker
i almost like Realism is quite like detachment is not quite the case either, but I think you have you i what what I would want to do and what my entire scheme is basically is to put the player into a real world, which is Discworld.
00:50:21
Speaker
and So rather than just like rehashing like ah the the books because we've all we've all read them. If you're playing a disco game, you've read you've read all of the books. It's like, what can you build on this with? you know where Where can we go that the books haven't covered?
00:50:35
Speaker
um and interesting and kind of cool ways and a lot of it's like sort of building on the structures which are in there ah so like you got like the the guilds you've got the newspapers you've got ah you know all of that like the characters you've got like all these sort cool locations which which are venues for building stories and my my personal belief is that um a good licensed game isn't just a copy of something that you've seen before you have that but equally it's not about tearing it down uh they did a tv series a few years ago called the watch i was going to yeah bring it up i i have angry angry thoughts about the watch because watching that game watching that movie that that series
00:51:21
Speaker
it had this feeling of absolute contempt for the books yeah just he was just it was just ripping everything down it's like no no we could do better we could do better we could do better you can't no you can't you you you can't and like doing it in that way to me is offensive and especially what they do with some of the specific characters and how i know that they've been um you know uh taken up by fans over the years is specifically offensive, especially with some of the stuff that they did with the dwarves. But equally, I don't think that you do a good licensed game by sticking straight to the source. I think it is it is important to build on it. you You have to change stuff. You have to kind of find your own stamp to put on it. You have to find your own direction to take it, which is why I think Discworld Noir works so well.
00:52:08
Speaker
Um, you know, and it does a lot of stuff, which within like the confines of a license is actually pretty unusual. Like, for example, um, the, some of the users, the city watch for instance, so the city watch is generally, I mean, there are exceptions, you know, like, um, Oh, uh, the truth and a couple of other ones where you sort of see the watch as a bit more like authoritarian and kind of not particularly nice, but.
00:52:32
Speaker
luton in discord noir has an actual antagonistic relationship with vibes and so you're sort of seeing him as a much nastier figure um then then you're kind of customarily used to sort of seeing him and you wouldn't really kind of sort of get that in say a star trek game if you want it to make you know Captain Kirk and Captain Kirk into a dick or something like that you know they're not going to let you do that um but it was perfectly suited for what Discworld noir was going for that that mood that sort of setting that kind of atmosphere that conveying doing a new thing from the books by doing what they did in a different way of taking a theme and then making it Discworld and I think that's the best way of going about it and my kind of like
00:53:18
Speaker
design is sort of in a sort of similar way but on like a much more fractal kind of level. Again like stories stories about stories and um you know and interesting things that you can do in that setting without just you know popping a wizard hat on your head and saying you know the world is doomed to go and save the world it's like it's not that.
00:53:38
Speaker
It's I think it's ah interesting and you you you said this in here is it's like when when somebody like licenses like a like a property or if they bring back you know like new Star Trek shows or whatever it it does feel like bad adaptations are always in two different directions.
00:53:58
Speaker
uh which is either what you just said where it's like the the slavish fan stuff which is like you know kind of demeaning to ah like to to a fan where it's like uh all right uh today you're going to babylon five and you're best friends with captain cheridan and you're going to uh hang out with the bonneva and even kiss byron a little bit and uh with a commemorative plate And, uh, but then also the other one, as you said, because I was thinking about this, as you were talking, I started thinking about that awful watch show, which is like, yeah, then it's, ah or it could be made by people with absolute contempt of, uh, of, of the, the property where who, who have no interest. And then, but then like, it it is, it's very hard. And like the, like I go back to Star Trek because it has contained every version of this.
00:54:53
Speaker
Yes. Like Star Trek being intense multitudes massive and Doctor Who as well, like, uh, uh, like has contained every version of it's like, it's been in hands, like there's, uh, the, the original and then, uh, then it goes away and then a generation later it's made by fans and fans of it, uh, who are either like, uh, who either don't get how to tell an interesting story with that or.
00:55:23
Speaker
Or they do and you can always tell like I'll now go to dr. Who because it's just like you could tell because then they'll either use it as a platform to resolve ah plot threads that bothered them when they were 12 or ah They'll make ah the the doctor remarkably super powerful and everybody loves the doctor because that's how they viewed them as like a six-year-old ah Well, I mean, he used to use Discord in particular, I think it's...
00:55:56
Speaker
It's the kind of, I think with all licenses, but again, this is for like discords, particularly, I think if you're going to do a license game, and I should point out that I'm not like unaware that like licensing stuff comes with a whole host of like issues. Um, you know, I'm not blaming any individual developer. Like if their games sort of didn't weren't able to do this, uh, I get it. I get it. I honestly do. I'm so talking purely in like fan terms, what I'm sort of talking about, like what I want from these sort of games. It's.
00:56:25
Speaker
Are you leaving the property better than you found it? And that doesn't mean rewriting. That just means like, like, have you kind of kind have you like made your mark on it in a positive way? Have you built on it? Have you given people and a good experience they they wouldn't otherwise have had? ah Have you basically lived up to the license, not by proving you can copy it, but proving that you can add to it and, you know,
00:56:54
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Well, now after hearing all of this, I'm just wadding up my pitch for a moist, fun, lip wig, uh, game where he, might go for where he launches the game studio. Uh, that was going to be my game. And now I feel like it just be, uh, now I'm not doing the right ad adaptation. yeah the numbers the night The nice thing about, you know, thinking about doing a discord game is that I know Rihanna and I also know that if I was to a bad game, she would physically murder me.
00:57:22
Speaker
which which is it's a good it's a good incentive to do good work. yeah but good Like I said, I don't for a second think they will like they will they will bite, but it's a thing which I want to pitch because otherwise I will know that I didn't pitch it. And if they do say yes for some reason, then awesome. I think that'll be really, really cool.
00:57:42
Speaker
that's why I'm glad you brought this up because you know one of the things that Ben and I both when we were talking about what we wanted to talk about with you today we're really curious about this transition going from someone who wrote about games for years to now a writer for games yourself a writer a writer and designer and I guess we're curious, joe what were the
From Game Critic to Developer
00:58:07
Speaker
challenges there? How did the how the process of writing about games inform your career as someone who's now writing actual games themselves?
00:58:17
Speaker
Well, I mean, I'd say that a big thing for me is that having played a lot of games, you get to know a lot of games, ah which ah doesn't mean that you're necessarily kind of good at making the sort of transition. But it doesn't mean you have a really good um like mental catalog of things to draw from, you know, individual things which you've you've seen, which maybe other people haven't. And ah for me, for me, like the transition was almost like accidental.
00:58:47
Speaker
ah You know, it's something I've always kind of wanted to do. I mean, um here here's a fun fact. I actually wrote one of the jokes in Legislative Library 7. Oh, yeah. um there There was a competition to submit jokes for the animatronic Bill Clinton. And ah the prize basically if you if you won the competition that you got a credit apparently, I didn't do that. But everyone else basically got a free copy of the game. And I wrote one of Bill Clinton's jokes in Larry seven. was the to note I honestly don't remember. ah i but It's always made it I
00:59:21
Speaker
I can't remember of how what it was. But I think it's what they're being a joke about with Bill Clinton. ah ah i I think it's actually one of the first things he sort of says what where it's it's actually awkward because I did the joke that like a few years later, I sort of heard almost the exact same gag in the critic. ah Now I remember the details. Yeah, it's basic's basically when it all starts up and his joke is just literally, I'm your president and everyone starts laughing.
00:59:50
Speaker
i but like give them like A few years later I was watching The the the Critic, which I think was about, to say I'm not saying they saw the gag, it's just like was obviously an an obvious gag, but they had to a similar thing, you know, where like, you know ah you know, I am your president, you know.
01:00:06
Speaker
the The Bill Clinton joke I think about from ah the critic is the one where they go to like the knockoff Disney Hall of Presidents and they just put in one of the hillbilly bears.
01:00:21
Speaker
And as you sing for Duke do down. That's right. Wow, deep critic dive here. That's totally unexpected. but I'm here for it. But no, I i mean, it's like to do the traditional, like, it was always something I kind of wanted to do. I'd actually, you know, written basically, the reason I got into like the game's writing side specifically, was that while I was just bored one day, I did a parody of the online game Fall in London, ah called Fall in Swindon.
01:00:51
Speaker
where the gag was basically that instead of ah there must The Masters of the Bazaar taking Victorian London, um you know, down into the depths of the earth and making into this sort of like wonderful sort of steampunk world, ah they took modern day Swindon. And so instead of like the Echo Bazaar, it's the Tesco Bazaar. And instead instead of like the, you know, the the romantic poet, it's things like the the loquacious chav and you like stuff like that. It's it's it's a very goofy parody.
01:01:19
Speaker
um But a few i it was like a few months later, and they were looking for ah writers to just join their actual team. And I basically put out a just sort of a retweet, so I said, this isn't something I can do. I haven't got like the you know the yeah ah credentials or whatever to apply, but you know they seem like cool people. I interviewed them a few times and whatever. um And I basically just got a DM and said,
01:01:44
Speaker
we know you don't actually have the like what we're asking for and the ah the thing, but if you wanted to apply, we would take your application. um ah you know because we've seen like yeah We saw that you basically recreated our system in Twine, you know so you you clearly like know something about how to do this. I basically said yeah you know really flattered thanks to the offer, but you know i can't really do that i would be moving to london and all that kind of sort stuff and that's it but then i survived cheeky but if you're ever looking for more guest writers for sun the sea you know i would love to do that and um that basically kicked it off because i did one island for sun the sea and then i they kept on calling me back to do more stuff for that and then for london and uh the skies. And they also very kindly passed my details over to some other people like the Daedalic West, I think they what it was, ah who made the Long Journey Home, which is like sort of space, sort of star control. It's like a like a star control type. Yeah.
01:02:42
Speaker
yeah and um And then there were there were a couple of other games that sort of wrote bits for at the time. And then sort of slowly, I just sort of transitioned to doing that instead of the journalism thing, because it was a lot more fun. It was a lot more, you know, sort fulfilling. And you didn't get shouted out by 100 people every time you said something even slightly mean about their favorite game.
01:03:01
Speaker
you you got now so like people that really loved like was manly like they were just always in your mentions right like all the was all the lessons yeah or the less you you wouldn't too much get him for less manly because nobody played that game but you but but but you would if you sort of said anything even something like slightly rude about Leisure Suit Larry or um I did a Crap Shoot once on Tender Loving Care and people sort of jumped up and said this is clearly an attempt to sabotage like the upcoming you know Kickstarter they were working on for something it's like no it wasn't it was just you know I yeah it was just meant to be a funny you know funny piece um and you know or you know I did a thing about the arcade game Hologram and then I got like it this guy like sort of going on for hours about how little I understood the arcade market it's like yeah okay
01:03:53
Speaker
but there was so There were some satisfying parts in that kind of crossover. I think my favourite was at one point, I said something, I said I didn't like the writing of a particular game, obviously I got the very sort of snooty, you know, well, let's see you do better. And I was like, oh, it's called Son C BH.
01:04:13
Speaker
ah so So currently you're working on a game I'm very excited about and full disclosure because we believe in journalism ethics around here. um I am a backer of of this game. am i yeah yes That's right. Another Moby Games credit for me. um Racking them up. yeah racking them up that Now I just want to kind of to to do a credit, which is really awful, you know, like, you know,
01:04:41
Speaker
King of shit, Ben. The worst part, I don't even, yeah, like, please, yeah. so Let's see, what? Now I gotta look. Let's see, Ben. Ben is founder of Codename Iceman. Who doesn't love Codename Iceman? But tell us all about that, Hux. surface space quest one. each day Night Hux. Right, Night Hux is basically a project which went completely out of control very, very quickly.
01:05:09
Speaker
um Essentially, it was a few years ago, I had just been to Adventure X, which was ah ah it's a big narrative ah convention in the UK, which I highly recommend people go to. Unfortunately, it was cancelled this this year because of some staffing things, but we're hoping it's back again next year.
01:05:25
Speaker
um And while there, I was sort of fiddling around, like, like I kind of want to make a game you know of some sort, like nothing too complicated, is like something simple. And so I kind of came up with this very easy thing which I could make in Unity, probably. you know if i kind of yeah kind of looked up yeah I didn't know how to do any of any of it. um I saw new basic programming, film some other stuff. But um I just wanted to like make something from scratch, because I'd been writing other people's games for a few years at this point.
01:05:51
Speaker
And I wanted to do something which was just short and simple. And ah because i ah something I'd often thought about in the past was how cool it would be to have basically Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines meets Fallen London. And they'd released this this game called, um oh, is it Prelude or Prologue? I think it's Prelude, um which basically used like a mobile phone interface. So like very sort of simple menus and ah sort of not that much of the way of kind of graphics and sound.
01:06:17
Speaker
yeah kind That's kind of cool. So you know let's put those together. Let's all do it like a simple like detective-y type game. And so I started working on this just for fun. And ah when and after I kind of got a few rooms demo kind of sort of done, I basically sort of did a very jokey post on Twitter with like a screenshot and so saying you know something like, so paradox, you want to give me the license or anything?
The Making of 'Nighthawks'
01:06:47
Speaker
and obviously is a joke and then the then head of white wolf then replied saying yeah show us what you've got wow and i think the words at that point were oh shit ah because and and so what what but what i figured was um i again i knew that there wasn't any sort of chance they were going to accept like a pit i wouldn't have accept to the pitch but this is actually a good opportunity to practice pitch writing and so I put together basically a ah pitch for like a again kind of in the Nighthawk style which is like it's a sort of very sort of text driven um simple graphic sort of visual it's sort of visual novel in style but like in interactions it's a bit different but I put together this this sort of pitch called Nighthawks yeah Fadpa Mascare Nighthawks and um
01:07:31
Speaker
I you know worked out a story, I kind of worked out some basic characters, I sent it in, and I noticed what they said, no. And so, yeah, cool. i no No harm, no foul, I didn't expect them to say yes, it was purely a thought experiment.
01:07:42
Speaker
um And then I was just like, but I kind of like this idea. And so I just like, there's a gap in the market because Bloodlines was a long time ago and nothing you had been announced. And the sequel keeps going. exactly this By this point, the sequel hadn't been revealed in any form. yeah ah There were there were were kind of rumors they were working on, actually, if they were working on something, but I don't think um they'd outright said that they were yeah are doing Bloodlines too.
01:08:11
Speaker
um and so i basically like that's kind of what what the older the kit start was i sort of spoke today it was like can i got this but this idea we've been we've been talking about working together for you know like over 10 years at this point uh you know we became friends um you know when i was writing very nice things about his early games uh and so i put i put together a pitch basically for dave and so i said well this is probably a going to be a Kickstarter thing because, you know, we need, you know, funding, you know, for art and voices and all that kind of stuff. And essentially it kind of was like a runaway train from there to doing the Kickstarter. And then, you know, on to actually working on the game. And the game itself is it's a vampire ah visual novel star game, which is way longer than I think people are expecting it to be. It is is currently about 750,000 words.
01:09:01
Speaker
so um This is why it's taken a while. i mean so isn't he yeah Some of those words are repeated, right? those are sat okay They're not all unique words. and In fact, when you play the game, they're all in alphabetical order. Oh, good. It's a bit like Dark Souls. You kind of like, you piece together the narrative from the pieces. It's just, in this case, their individual consonants.
01:09:25
Speaker
i But nos it's basically it's a little fancy like vampire game, but it's sort of the antithesis of vampire the masquerade, ah mostly because there is absolutely no point trying to fight vampire masquerade. You know, they have vampire masquerade, they are going to do vampire the masquerade better than anybody coming along and trying to do vampire the masquerade. So a lot of my talks is like, let's flip it.
01:09:48
Speaker
And so it's set in a world where vampires basically eight years ago, the secret came out, and it came out by accident. And the story is basically about a world adjusting to this new normal. And it's like, where do we go from here? Like, because there's no putting this genie back into the bottle, and you know, vampires are here. And they're not all evil, you know, because again, I know a lot of people themselves, it's about like true blood, it's like,
01:10:14
Speaker
ah a bit in kind of concept, but with True Blood, the vampires are pretty much all evil. And that was something that was really bugged me about it, because it kind of destroyed a lot of like the the metaphor that they were going with. But basically, you know, there's like two not evil vampires in the entire series. And in my talks, they're not all evil, but a lot of them have had to do things they didn't want to in the name of survival.
01:10:39
Speaker
and most mostly is sort of focusing on how lonely that kind of existence is and so the main the main characters are essentially brought together um ah into the like the setting at night talk is a night is a seedy nightclub ah in the corner of this fictional town um which kind of becomes a place where everyone comes together and finds the family which they've never had in the past basically all of the all of the companion characters are kind of outcast they're lonely um but you know they they they're sort of starting to figure out who they are in the new world along with the world around them and so essentially the the game is sort of made up of
01:11:21
Speaker
stories, exploring in different aspects of human and vampire interaction. And a lot of it is the summit, which is like big and dramatic, but a lot of the stuff which I which I think is more fun is the smaller scale stuff. Like, for example, how how is it um psychologically, when you forget what you look like?
01:11:42
Speaker
yeah What is it like what what what is it like to to have your existence just be perpetual night? you know what what what i um And then there's some silly, some ah like and off-the-cuff sillier stuff as well. like There's a scene where one character comes in because they've just been ah hit by a car because the guy reversed and because she didn't appear in the mirror. Yeah, he hit me.
01:12:04
Speaker
ah or you know there's gags about like you know how do you put on makeup if you can't see yourself like what you're like one character was saying that basically they got so fed up of trying they just had it all tattooed onto them because it sort of saved it's sort of saved effort i'd say you got this sort of you got some interesting I think it's interesting sort of mix up where you have like monsters but you also have just regular people who happen to be in this really unusual situation and nobody really knows what the next step is ah you know because obviously you've got people trying to contain the situation you've got other people trying to sort of like push for like
01:12:43
Speaker
you know, freedom and, you know, sort of more expands. And then your character basically is by chance stuck in the middle and kind of ends up in a position where they get to kind of be the like the deciding factor in the the the next few years for the world. ah And so i I think it's an interesting concept. I think it's ah it's a take on vampires that I haven't seen before. I've seen bits of it in other things. Like I said, True Blood is the obvious um you know touchstone.
01:13:11
Speaker
um But it's it some of it's horrible, some of it's funny. ah Some of it, I think, is going to break people's hearts. And that's my that's my intention. um but And i it's been way longer than I ever expected it to, thanks to like COVID and some personal kind of things. So I'm really grateful to our Kickstarters for waiting this long and you know for being so patient. And being so nice about being patient, honestly. like I think in the entire course of the Kickstarter, we've had like five negative comments.
01:13:42
Speaker
Oh, wow. Or something like that. I apologize. I apologize. for is what That is why your credits is king of shit. I mean, I, I hold my grudges. gru A grudge is a poor thing to waste. um but but But it is, it is it's genuinely you know it being so nice to have people like responding to the kickstarter updates you know so positively you know when there have been delays we'll kind of go yeah we we understand just let let us know when it's done you know we'll we'll wait yeah we'll we'll kind of play it and um yeah and and the fact that we're now basically facing off against
01:14:16
Speaker
the biggest vampire licensing games with a budget of, let's just say, more than ours. um And, you know, an entire team working on this, as opposed to basically two of us. yeah It's, it's a bit intimidating. but we We're doing our best and we we we hope that we hope that people like it. We should sell at least five copies. We'll be six, but my parents told me that they would share one.
01:14:39
Speaker
author I can't wait. I mean, it looks fantastic. I mean, I like thinking too much about vampires. um I mean, I teach a whole college course that yeah delves into a bunch of vampire related stuff.
01:14:56
Speaker
And I like just sort of having to piece together what this existence would look like in the real world. Because I mean, again, yeah, True Blood's the obvious touchstone, but also True Blood got bored with exploring that like an episode and a half in and I was like, we're gonna have sexy vampire stories, because every vampire story turns into a sexy vampire story. And then it was like, it was all werewolves and shifters and fairies. And and one one of the things that I talked to is it's just vampires.
01:15:24
Speaker
And the the way the way that I, the way she'll say it is that I'm not saying that there aren't werewolves and like ghosts and all these other things out there, you know, as well, but that's not what the game is about. The game is specifically about vampire stuff so that we can drill down really deep um into, you know, what makes vampires. And one of the things which I love about vampires um in a gaming context is you have so many interesting rules.
01:15:50
Speaker
you know like the the but mean the sun thing the reflection thing in night talks actually take it a step further vampires don't uh record audio you don't see them on tape uh they don't leave fingerprints and so that's something which is like a it's a two-edged sword because on the one hand it makes them really hard to arrest because you have no evidence but equally it means people don't trust them because they're always kind of thinking well what are they getting up to um and a lot of the stories like like but basically every individual story is a theme, a theme on a theme. So it could be like, ah the, like the section this a bit early on from where you need to get into a house to interrogate somebody, but you can't get in because you have to be invited.
01:16:36
Speaker
and it's it's explicit like you can't hypnotise your way you have to be genuinely invited in and there's this so there's that one and later on there's another one where you're trying to get an invitation for another vampire who the person inside does not want to meet by tricking them into extending an invitation so they can kind of open the door and kind of be gotcha um and And again, like all sorts of things, something along those sorts of lines. you know ah you know the threshold The threshold rule is kind of a cool one. um Lots of like individual frustrations. Sometimes just you know the minor things are the most interesting. like If you get injured, ah then anesthetic doesn't work. And so you're basically looking at like having like your ribs cracked open yeah by a guy with a bone sore because that's all you can do.
01:17:27
Speaker
um And you know or like the the annoyances of like drinking blood in this setting isn't that great. you know blood is It tastes like blood. yeah know you're thirsty You're thirsty for it, but it's not that interesting. So you've got these little throwaway lines like um ah your bartender at the nightclub, which comes to ah the end of act one. And yes, there are references to how cliched it is to have a vampire in a nightclub. I am not unaware of that.
01:17:53
Speaker
uh but it was a good like sort of central place but she's still saying things like you know most of their uh regulars um sprinkle cinnamon into the blood because it helps to sort of take away some of the iron aftertaste or you know when she's sort of talking to one of the other characters like madam luxe and you know she's referring basically some graffiti that she's seen outside the club you know kind of the get back to your coffin sort of type like andy vampire thing and she's still saying like you know i'm i'm sorry you know i you know i I'll clean this up as soon as possible. Oh, don't worry about it. you're you're You're really not offended. I couldn't stand people thinking I was a monster. And she says, darling, we are monsters. Some of us are just better at marketing.
01:18:36
Speaker
yeah And it's it's that kind of sort of setting like it's, I, but I think one one really important thing about it, which I think separates it from most vampire fiction, is it's intended to be warm. ah You have all kinds of options to do horrible, horrible things. But overall, those options are mostly there.
01:18:55
Speaker
so that you don't pick them. I mean, if you do, then that thing will happen. You know, if you say to kill somebody innocent, that person will die. But it's really more that that you need the the negative options kind to reinforce the, ah actually, you're probably going to and to much more enjoy Making friends and being like the friendly neighborhood vampire and kind of being that I am better than you think I am kind of vampire um And even that can like sort of take multiple forms because you can be that you can also have like wildly different versions of how The future should be but also I kind of want people to to reach the end and just feel good the that you know, I have I have made the night a little bit lighter and if that's all I could do that it was worth doing and
01:19:40
Speaker
Well, uh, uh, Jess, I think, uh, please buy my game. Yeah.
01:19:47
Speaker
Wishlist is the, the call to action on this usually, right? Like a steam wishlist. That's right. Uh, yeah. ah right Right now, right now the screens and the trailers are like very old. Um, they will be, they will be looking nice from the new the new year. I just haven't got around to updating them yet. Um, so it's actually looking quite a bit prettier and, uh, there will be a new trailer.
01:20:10
Speaker
and we have time to do it. Right now I'm racing to kind of get the beta out to the backers, which is gonna be this the start of the new year. And that's basically going to then ah run us to release as we like try and beat beat it into submission. The game's basically done. It's the bug fixing and then the marketing run, ah which we have to do before we can release it to the world and I can sleep.
01:20:39
Speaker
Uh, well, uh, uh, Jess, do we, do we have any, anything else that we wanted to hit? I think that covered most of the questions I had in my notes. Richard, is there anything else you'd like to communicate to the millions of millions of people listening to QuestQuest? I would just say that usually when I, I kind of, you know, look back on my own work, the words that come to mind are I'm sorry.
01:21:05
Speaker
it It seemed funny at the time, you know. That covers for a lot of sense. No, you're good there. but Thank you so much for being here. This was great.
01:21:19
Speaker
so Space Quest 2 is right. Okay, let's pause for a second. Okay. Everyone who is like, ah great to move on to your next podcast and your queue. Just wait just a second.
Revisiting Space Quest Series
01:21:33
Speaker
Now I know that you are a famed ah disparager of Space Quest 2. And, you know, there were times in my life, like, if you go back and read my old Space Quest website, I maybe even said some critical things about Space Quest 2.
01:21:49
Speaker
I have been born again in the light of Space Quest 2. I've become a've' been baptized the swamps of Lebion. um now Now I am an apologist for Space Quest 2. Richard, please tell me why I'm wrong before we wrap things up. Well, I'd say that there are two key things to keep in mind about Space Quest 2. The first is that for me, what it lacks is the ah like the space spanning kind of adventure that I really kind of like things like the sequence in Space Quest 3, where you're going to different planets. And i'm for for me, that's like a running thing. In 4, obviously, it's time zones as well. But usually, I think, you know, for me, Space Quest 2 is too small. It's sort of too
01:22:38
Speaker
um Star Trek insurrection kind of a story flow like I'm liking. I think that the overall story lets itself down by being goofy. um You know, the whole ah evil insurance salesman thing is but it doesn't do anything without that's why it's always Well, I say you don't it't it's not too early because apart from the VLs, doesn't he launch them at the end and you like anyway? Anyway, I think it has fantastic graphics. I think that the opening sections are really strong. And then after that, I completely fall asleep. So I don't much like it because it has that sort of sense of being far too small, too linear. It feels more like Future Wars than it does like a Space Quest game. But the second most important reason that I often disparage it is it really annoys the Space Quest historian. And that is funny to me.
01:23:25
Speaker
Yeah. You know, I completely understand that. That is a good enough reason alone. ah We love you, Charles.
01:23:37
Speaker
she's step You know, I mean, I like ah how do you feel that Space Quest five? it's the best. Yeah, it's the best fight in the series. What is what with if they got rid of a specific maze sequence, yeah which should be fired into space itself. but Space Quest five, I think is the most consistent than the least player a hostile and the best written. um I forget who actually wrote it off the top of my head. But but um It's certainly the best, the best risk of the series. Apologies to Josh, I love your writing and I love the bits which you wrote in Space Quest 6 and the demo of Space Quest 6 is what made me buy the game. um you're I love like, I love kind of sort of clicking around the individual bits, but like as the like the overall kind of game writing, I think Space Quest
01:24:25
Speaker
Four has the best gimmick, Space Quest V has the best writing, and Space Quest VI has the best, like, you know, pixel-bitching, you know, for jokes. And, ah yeah, it's it's easily the best it is apart from that maze. Yeah, that but maze is awful. I just wrapped that up on my stream last night. All right. Jess, is there anything else about ah Space Quest before we...
01:24:49
Speaker
Well, let's see. We haven't talked about... I think we've got it. I mean, I try not to talk about Space Quest too much because, you know, it... You're not the one out on the field. that's of that yeah Thank you so much. I should say for very quickly that so something which I thought many years ago, which I will never actually get around to doing, but I think was a fantastic idea and that somebody should do, is a game jam which mods Space Quest 3 to put more planets into it. Yeah.
01:25:17
Speaker
Oh and all like the the EGA sort of style and it's just like that scene where you go to the the map the sector map yeah where it and you only get like the three planets and and ah the monolith burger right I want to see that full of full of worlds right I want to I want to like have You know, play the game like every time you play it, like different worlds appear in that. So it's like it's like a rogue like kind of random selection of cool stuff. I, you know, I want not in the stuff from Galaxy of Fantabulous Wonderment, if you have to just just yes, you know, just fill it with with with cool places to visit. it
01:25:52
Speaker
Yeah, I feel the same way. And also, like, think of Galaxy of Entabulous Wonderment also um ah in this. is It's like, I would get, like, a disc add-on that just adds more planets for the Eureka to go to in Space Quest V. Because I just want to hang out. My my only issue my only but issue with that is that the VGA art is harder. ah Where I think Space Quest III has, like, the you'll be sort of super friendly for a game jam. You know? you face not Not saying that anybody can join EJ, that it's obviously drawing well is hard and I can't draw the crap, but I think it would be, it would allow more people to kind of create like the, because something I'm really tired of in and a lot of games is that the imagination and settings sort of tends to be fire world, ice world, demon world, but you know.
01:26:45
Speaker
You know, let's have the planet made a spaghetti, you know, let's have the one where all of the people are different parts of the light spectrum. I think it'd be really, really cool if like every time you load at space quest three, it was like, you you don't know what you're going to find. You know, it would be great. Space quest three and it said.
01:27:03
Speaker
e but
01:27:07
Speaker
ah Glass bottom boats.
01:27:12
Speaker
um Now you're talking to our language. of Of course, who better than Roger for a nice closet?
01:27:27
Speaker
yeah Now this pitch for ah for an infinite space quest three is going to be like all I think about. yeah so Someone less lazy than me please make that because I want to play it. Yes, we need to weaponize some people toward this end. Because now, yeah, and especially I think Spaghetti Planet, great place to start. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you. ah Once again, thank you, Richard, for joining us. This has been just an absolute blast.
Engagement and Farewell
01:27:57
Speaker
Be sure to wishlist Night Hawks. Yeah.
01:28:02
Speaker
yeah i like Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Buy buys book buys book buys book to the critic i great and review us. Send us an email quest quest podcast at gmail dot.com and ah join us.
01:28:18
Speaker
Oh brother, join us next week when we ah discuss why ah I still use an Adlib sound card for all games to this day in 2024. That's then.