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Episode 43: Pip Warr (A Monster's Expedition, Spooky Express, Little Kitty Big City)
257 Plays22 days ago
In this episode, hosts Alan and Syrenne are joined by Pip, the writer and narrative director of A Monster's Expedition and Spooky Express. Topics include the development of A Monster's Expedition, worldbuilding in non-linear games, and writing localization notes about comedy.
Pip lost her train of thought at a crucial point and forgot to mention a really important part of the writing process on A Monster’s Expedition: involving sensitivity consultant Helen Gould! Helen’s feedback was invaluable in helping us make the exhibits fun for as many people as possible, while working with the museum framing.
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Background
00:00:22
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to the Dracneck and Friends official podcast, we peel back the curtain on puzzle games and the people who make them. I'm Seren, back after two episodes of being on vacation and then being sick, and I'm joined as always by Alan Hazelden, the head Dracneck at Dracneck and Friends.
00:00:39
Speaker
Hey there. Thank you again for stepping in to host in my absence. Vivi. And today we're joined by Pip War, who you may know from her work as narrative director on A Monster's Expedition, work on games like Flock and Little Kitty Big City. How are you doing today?
00:00:58
Speaker
I'm good, thank you. It's nice to be here. ah Yeah, this is a long time coming. ah We love chatting with you. And so this is going to be a lot of fun. ah So can you start by maybe giving yourself a little bit more of an introduction than what I just gave you for people who do not know you? Yeah. Yeah. I am a narrative director, designer, writer, pro word doer ah is probably the main thing ah because everything I do ultimately will come back to the
00:01:39
Speaker
i the the building of a narrative space in a game or the world shape in that play space, essentially.
Pip War's Career Transition
00:01:49
Speaker
So yeah, ah before that I was a journalist and ah before that I was sort of ah in the art history slash museum space for a little bit. So yeah, ah a bit of a bit of a circuitous route, I think. So what got you into working on games?
00:02:09
Speaker
um Well, so I had been working on a PC Gamer most recently and as the deputy editor on their magazine. And then i was, I could feel burnout just recently. stretching its icy little fingers out towards me and I decided to reassess some things um and take a bit of a break. I had the ah fortune of being able to do that at that particular point in time. It wasn't easy but yeah, like at least I could take a ah little step back. And during that period of me no longer being a ah games journalist, Alan reached out and would had ah an intriguing little proposal of would I like to audition for working on Monsters Expedition?
Pip's Past Projects and Narrative Challenges
00:03:06
Speaker
See, I'd kind of forgotten that you hadn't done a lot of games writing before that. Is that, like, had you really not done anything that I would have been thinking of at the time? I forget the order of things. I think I may have done the editing pass on Terry Kavanagh's Dicey Dungeons. That makes sense because I think it may have been Holly who first mentioned your name to me and said, oh, yeah, Pip might be great for this.
00:03:35
Speaker
o But yeah, and I think I'd done i'd done ah a couple of little twine things of my own, ah just about going for little walks. And mostly it was an excuse to write a passive aggressive exchange between the narrator and the person who maybe would keep just picking the option of going on a bad walk that was not going to be fun for them.
00:03:59
Speaker
So there was a little bit of that and also ah the acclaimed video game, um Avocado Pusher, using your... ah ah What's it called? I'm so sorry. My brain is not doing with the memory ah today. but the ah tool set that you came up with for moving things around and making Sokoban-esque games. Puzzle Scripts.
00:04:28
Speaker
Yes. So I essentially made a game which had exactly one level and you used a finger to push an avocado into, i think, possibly a swimming pool. But, you know, that was enough to get a little quote from ah Tom Francis. So I made a little poster ah to sort of be like, you know, acclaimed video game maker. Tom Francis says, you know.
00:04:53
Speaker
ah whatever he'd said. ah i may have really selectively edited the quote as well. But um yeah, so ah who knows which one of those it could possibly have been.
00:05:08
Speaker
No, mean, it was probably talking to Terry and Holly about ah the the narrative of the game. And were in a place where we'd gone through like a couple of years of having some forms of narrative on Monster Expedition and they'd all not quite they'd either increase the complexity of the game or increase the scope of things or like it was intercon interconnected in such a way that the narrative was putting too many constraints on the on the rest of the game um and so yeah we were trying to like reboot the project find a new narrative direction and yeah it would have been chatting to people and yeah your your name came up we we chatted to you we already had some like
00:05:49
Speaker
museum adjacent ideas in the mix but we hadn't settled on any of them and i mean your your playfulness and uh your your sense of humor came across very very quickly i think yeah yeah Also, i think maybe just my experience of very much poking around in museum archives and things as well ah as part of the volunteer work I used to do. So i i think that there's a certain absurdity.
00:06:23
Speaker
that I could bring to the the project once that idea really came into focus for us. ah i think, you know, at particular times there were elements of the game, which ultimately we didn't choose to include, but um that helped flesh out that idea that were a little bit from personal experience, like the sanctity of tea time, you know? Yeah, no, I mean...
00:06:51
Speaker
Very, very deeply British game, but also very, very funny. Alan, do you remember anything else about like what the state of the game was when you were looking for narrative design work?
Game Development Insights
00:07:05
Speaker
I mean, we would have had a lot of it. Like there would have been hundreds, thousands of islands. um There would have been a playable, like ah a version of it, which was like where those islands were linked together in some kind of start to finish way. Probably a lot of the pieces were like ordered very differently, introducing some of the twists in a very different order.
00:07:28
Speaker
So I think you could have gotten in a good sense of the game and what we were going for in terms of the puzzle. don't remember if we would have had a build that had some narrative elements that we would later pull out or whether we'd already pulled out all of that stuff, knowing we wanted kind of a clean slate.
00:07:47
Speaker
If memory serves, you actually sent me a ah build of the game that I could noodle around in um when I was coming up with some ideas. um And have it was it didn't have any narrative attached to it as yet. it was we'd We'd talked about ah your ideas or you know the the direction that you felt that it was headed. But when I actually got my got my fingers into the into the game at that point, it was very much a kind of, oh okay, I see this, I see the art style, I see you know the
00:08:25
Speaker
the space that the idea needs to match up with or mesh with in some way. But beyond that, I think i it was a bit later that you told me about some of the ideas that had come before. um And that was an interesting thing just to hear about.
00:08:44
Speaker
Yeah, because I think we didn't want to come in it saying like, okay, here's here's all the ideas we've got. You've got to make them work. We definitely wanted somebody who could like find a ah new spin on on things.
00:08:57
Speaker
What was your very first impressions of the game? I definitely just found it very charming um and very well presented in terms of it's very simple to get the hang of. And then it was about the moments of of of small accomplishment or little delight that I had as I was like just playing with those ideas and figuring out how to solve the things that had come out of of your brain and ah collaborator brains and everything so yeah but it was it was very much there was a a simplicity to it that i loved and wanted to try and augment or you know not interfere with do you remember if it had the title card moment when we first showed it to you
00:09:53
Speaker
I think it did, or at least that was where the build cut off, maybe.
00:10:03
Speaker
I can't remember. i feel like we had so many conversations and and there was, you know, like different... points in time where the game existed and had slightly different ways of being in terms of you know where things were. So I might be just rewriting history on that one because it feels like it would have been a neat thing and and you would have known very early on when that moment needed to come. so Yeah, I don't think, I certainly don't remember any conversations about where it should be. Or i think there may have been at one point a, should we move this? That was almost immediately answered with a no. so Okay, that that probably answers my question because there was definitely periods of development where um I thought that moment should go really late um because i like it's it's a like mechanical surprise. that Oh, you could have been doing this the whole time. um and like yeah once we moved it early, it was very obvious that like oh no the surprise of this moment and the joy of this moment is like really strong. um
00:11:14
Speaker
That ah even if it's a mechanical thing that you could save for later, it shouldn't be. o Yeah, it's kind of, ah yeah it's not the same feeling, but it reminded me when you were just saying of of that idea that you should always end a chapter on a cliffhanger. Yeah.
00:11:34
Speaker
Because it it immediately gives you a thing where you're like, well, I can't go to bed now. I have to use this new thing that I've been given and and explore the world in in this way now and figure out what that opens up, you know?
Narrative Design and Player Experience
00:11:51
Speaker
Yeah. And like, not quite the same thing, but I think sometimes we were trying to do a similar thing with the exhibits of like placing something that looked weird and like knowing that like seeing something weird on the next island over was going to be a an enticement to get there.
00:12:08
Speaker
m Yeah, there was definitely um a whole bunch of that in the conversations that we had about placement and where things might lead people or what might be enticing or weird enough to galvanize a ah kind of, oh, I'd like to go to there.
00:12:32
Speaker
kind of response from people um and also i think that once they hopefully quickly understood that the monsters even though these objects are broadly hopefully understandable or they are understandable you know it's like oh i recognize that from day-to-day life nowadays But the reveal of what the monsters thought that this stuff would have been was still going to have to wait until the object was encountered up close because you have to read the short text on the on the plinth for that to happen.
00:13:14
Speaker
Yeah. And do you do you remember how you got to the monster's perspective? Like, did did we come to that really quickly? Did that take a while? Um, I think that it didn't take too long to get the the broad tone of it um right. I don't think that I'd need to go back through the ah the email that I sent you, but I feel like That actually has stayed pretty consistent from beginning to end. It was more about finesse or what the shape of the world behind this law
00:14:00
Speaker
was because there are some crucial differences from our universe. For example, there is leech-based technology, ah which I guess scientists just couldn't be bothered to make work in our universe. um Whereas in in this, there were some odd tech things in that vein, which...
00:14:27
Speaker
became a bit more of a thing that I could riff with or reference in in other ah exhibits and have a bit of a sense of, oh, okay, this is the flavor of human that has existed in this space or um these are the types of conflict that they would have or or you know those kinds of things um were, I guess, bigger or...
00:14:54
Speaker
that was more the evolution on that front. But I do remember that there was a point where... So I can't remember how far in we were, but I remember there being a point where you asked me if I could have a think about a more narrative, as in traditional narrative, story beginning, middle, end, or at least apply something a bit more start, middle, and then concluding act to the game. And we did experiment with some things together.
00:15:36
Speaker
there but ultimately it just didn't really suit the the the shape of the puzzles and how they connected together this kind of exploration that is kind of guided because obviously you have set the puzzles up and in some of the scenarios you know you'd need to follow a particular chain and and you do a really good job of leading people around those or without it feeling like you're being funneled.
Creative Experiments and Challenges
00:16:10
Speaker
But there is still enough noodling that the player can do or choice about what to focus on if they see a distracting little island somewhere over there and want to see if they can reach it this way then i it just made everything a lot harder if we wanted to have a bit more of ah a story thing because it would have then involved okay well how do we make sure that the player has the right information by this point in time how are we going to organize things does it then make the game a bit more linear does it you know ah where can we then put the ending is it you know like How do you keep enticing the person through? like what are we
00:17:02
Speaker
All of that kind of stuff then would have had to become a bit more of ah a question mark. Plus, you wanted to be able to sprinkle whatever we were using for storytelling across these islands. But it wasn't set in stone as to which would go where and you wanted the flexibility to be able to um move things around even even late in the day. And so pegging that to narrative as well would have just, I think that would have just caused you to have ah a big cry, i think. and And not just you. i would have had a big cry also.
00:17:45
Speaker
okay everyone Everyone would have been sad. Yeah, no, and structure of sort of open world games and narrative is obviously...
00:18:02
Speaker
obviously one struggle another is trying to come up with like the internal logic and rules of this world which i i remember that as late as i came onto the project some things were still in flux what are your strongest memories of that process
00:18:26
Speaker
im I think, ooh, yeah, I'd be interested to hear yours actually as well. um But I definitely, so the thing that I remember the most, i are you comfy, Alan, with me talking about like one of the other ideas that that we kicked around for but the thing?
00:18:49
Speaker
So one of the things that was a bit more, of a, I guess, a traditional narrative than than sort of a selection box, a chocolate selection box of of treats, was the idea that you were working your way towards, essentially towards Medusa at the end of the game. You would have some sort of an encounter with her. And and so we would would still have had statues and things, but it would be her chain of islands where she had been existing for
00:19:27
Speaker
Hundreds of years, thousands of years. And so all of the what what now are exhibits could have been just statues or, you know, stone renderings of various objects.
00:19:43
Speaker
bits and pieces that had essentially got too close or tried to impinge on her space. And then, you know, the the further you got in, the more stuff you would find that was a bit more, um you know, people on a hero quest or the debris of ah the thwarted ah heroes and other challenges to whatever, you know, she was going to be doing in this world, whether she was,
00:20:13
Speaker
faithfully adapted from mythology or whether it had gone in a bit of a different direction um and was more just okay well the idea of a gorgon um in terms of mechanically just turning people to stone um so that was a an interesting thing to to noodle with but ultimately there were enough I guess, points where I would have wanted to, or it would have felt like it was necessary to have slightly harder edges, I guess, on the narrative than it was comfy
00:21:03
Speaker
to have in that space. It was ultimately a bit of a, a I mean, I hate the terminology because it feels like it doesn't quite ever match up to the thing, but um cozy or wholesome games, it is very much in that bracket. And so I think i am always keeping an eye on just how acerbic I'm allowed to be but or I allow myself to be because it can be very easy to turn a space that needs to be safe in order to...
00:21:41
Speaker
fulfill those criteria or at least to to sort of be a wholesome thing without the need for any clarifications or sort of upfront. And the the moment you've got a ah ah Gordon turning people into stone, that's there's a tension there.
00:22:02
Speaker
It was more that I think I was interested in in in hewing a bit more closely to the the mythology. And that immediately goes into some territory because essentially Medusa is being punished by the gods for being assaulted. And it is like, okay, wait a minute.
00:22:28
Speaker
That automatically introduces some problems. Yeah, that's that whole mythology, unfortunately. I mean, it's, yeah, anytime there is any mythology anywhere, it it sort of, you start a little countdown. How is it the woman's fault?
00:22:44
Speaker
yeah exactly The whole story of Zeus is how is it the woman's fault? I know. Or just, yeah, I was just minding my own business, pretending to be a cloud and doing some terrible things. yeah And all of a sudden, you're like, oh. Anyway. um Yeah. So I don't know if that really answered your question because it's it it's more about what it wasn't, I suppose, than what it has ended up as.
00:23:16
Speaker
No, I mean, that's still very, very interesting. i'm I'm thinking more like by the time that I came in there was still a debate about zoo-like exhibits.
Ethical Considerations in Game Design
00:23:30
Speaker
Yeah. I think the closest we ever got to that is the reverse mermaid, right? Yeah. We were very, very careful to make sure that like, well, they they want to be on that rock. They're not like in a cage. Yeah.
00:23:42
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, you could absolutely envision the the trip that the monster takes and there's actually a sign saying, you know, be right back out to lunch or something. Like this is not an unhappy situation. This is just, that's the rock where the reverse mermaid enjoys dancing. So you know um but yeah so there were things like that um we also at various points tried to tackle some of the slightly more complicated or not tackle exactly but you know museums are often at heart problematic in a whole bunch of ways but you know appropriation you know cultural theft
00:24:37
Speaker
Yes. it's going to, and it's deeply rooted in ah colonial history. And so, again, it's this sort of very odd tension that you deal with, at least on the back end, if you're if you're responsible of like, how you know, not not ignoring that question, but at least...
00:25:01
Speaker
Perhaps making that the first exhibit of let's let's get this out of the way. ah I wanted to definitely be able to have an answer for if that came up, you know, I wanted to be able to say like.
00:25:17
Speaker
I know that this is really complicated and we've been able to do this or we haven't been able to do that. But we, you know, I i wanted to be able to say we've thought about it and we tried a few things and, you know. So, yeah, that is, i feel like I've completely lost the question again. I need to write things down.
00:25:44
Speaker
More writing. You're fine.
00:25:47
Speaker
Do you have any exhibits off the top of your head that you're sad couldn't be worked into the final game, either because of scope or art limits or just like it was too complicated with the rest of the story that was being told or I think there was something that we couldn't make work because of something to do with the way that shaders worked in the game. Because I really wanted to have a, essentially, I think a giant cup of tea where you would just be able to dangle your feet in or, you know, and it it would have... you know, ah a giant tea bag floating in the in the water maybe or so something like that. But it it just wasn't possible for some reason. And i i can't remember the ins and outs. It's one of those things where we would need to to prod Adam and Adam de Grandis and just sort of say, do you remember?
00:26:54
Speaker
don't that didn't work. But yeah, I really wanted to be able to do a little bit more with the with the idea of water in the game and we couldn't quite make that work. um and There was also something where we were talking about, so in relation to the thing I mentioned earlier, which is the sanctity of of tea time or coffee breaks and biscuits and things.
00:27:21
Speaker
um ah At one point we were talking about potentially having a ah door that was staff only and having some sort of...
00:27:32
Speaker
actually potentially a scene ah ah staff um rather than the monster being the character that you see and no one else. And so that was something that I would have been interested in trying to figure out, but it just didn't make, it wouldn't have made any visual sense. You know, it was, a think,
00:28:01
Speaker
Do you remember, Alan, it was something where maybe even it was going to be part of the save system that you would essentially just sit down for a cup of tea and that would be the save, maybe almost like a bonfire in Dark Souls, but I might be completely... mean, we definitely had, for a while, we were thinking we would have literal bonfires as like ah checkpoints.
00:28:23
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, I only vaguely remember this like a tea break room idea, but like like now you're talking about I can definitely picture the idea of like a TARDIS like door into ah this like side world that's like, oh, yeah, the tea break room is connected to all of the universe. I'm sorry to do this to you, but the two of you are British and are going to need to explain what a TARDIS is for the for our non-Tumblr, non-British audience. Everyone, taught doctor who Doctor Who is the global now. Everyone knows the TARDIS. It's bigger on the inside than the outside. Yeah, so global that Disney Plus returned the IP.
00:29:04
Speaker
well What does Disney Plus know? I mean, exactly. um I'm sorry, Siren, are you saying that only things that Disney acknowledges are allowed to exist? No, i' what I'm saying... You only recognize Disney IPs. No, what I'm saying is that Disney tried to put tens of millions of dollars into episodes and no one new cared about it. So ah a TARDIS is a nerd thing that's bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.
00:29:40
Speaker
I'm pretending that I'm not a nerd and can't tell you what the acronym is for. I see. How am I doing? Am I passing for a normal? I just want to, just you know, know that there are going to be some people who are not sci-fi television nerds and not in the great British Empire. yeah listening their license fee i don't think though I mean, specifically talking about Monsters Expedition as well. That game is, ah I think if you if you don't really know British culture, you may struggle.
00:30:19
Speaker
ah I mean, i think I think there's like a charmingness to it. I think you'd be pleasantly surprised. There's probably like, I think there's only like 10 or so that are not also um like distinctly American experiences. I'm i'm sure that some people learnt about cream tea from this game. That's one of the ones that is very, very British.
00:30:45
Speaker
I think... um The intention was to to build it so that it made sense for anybody with an understanding of Britain that was mostly just built off Netflix having um the Great British Baking Show, as it is called overseas, ah on their books. What do you call it there?
00:31:09
Speaker
Bake Off. Okay. Great British Bake Off. Um... So yeah, and and sort of, or maybe their understanding would come from Agatha Christie books, or, you know, the very sort Oh, maybe not Agatha Christie.
00:31:26
Speaker
No? unless unless Unless we want to get really racist. Ah, yeah. Well, it's very much, essentially, i was thinking of the conversations I have with ah cab drivers if I'm overseas or um with the barista ah who is dealing with my coffee order. And I'm sitting there saying, can I have an iced coffee without all the sugar? And they're kind of like, wait, what?
00:31:54
Speaker
Also, is your accent South African? And I'm like, aha, no. Oh, my gosh. um Anyways, what a what a weird tangent we just went on, as as happens when it's the three of us chatting. um Can I quickly ask, actually, ah what are the... like do Do you know off the top of your head any of the other exhibits that were just sort of like maybe just in that same realm of hyper-British? Oh, the Tea Wartime.
00:32:29
Speaker
ah yeah. Yeah. AKA a one of the only two that mattered for age ratings. ah Because so it's, it's been enough years. I'm I'll tell this podcast, this podcast has had explicit episodes. So one of the ah exhibits when I came in that I demanded was changed that you were actually sad about. don't know if you remember this is the um there's a box of,
00:32:57
Speaker
Oh, she is it the cereal? Sugar cereal. Yes! And it's – the joke is all all the crap that they put in kids' cereal, all the chemicals, all the food coloring and dye and everything, and it went – and it just kept going on and on and on. And it was like a – it was a run-on joke of every second thing, we're just going to keep plussing it up until the punch the final punchline is we added LSD. Hmm.
00:33:21
Speaker
And I'm like, you are mentioning LSD here is going to shoot our age rating to the roof. It is going to become a 17 plus game immediately. We've got to remove the LSD joke. I was so annoyed because I'm like, look, I have been to the world of Coca-Cola museum, whatever it is in Atlanta. And I am not the person who was putting like cocaine in things for children. so No, no. and then And then Pepsi and Pepsine. Yes. Yeah, yeah, no. All of this stuff is just hard drugs in treats. And understand. Like, how dare you try and limit my artistic i voice? Look, part of my job is to be the unfortunate bearer of bad news about age ratings. Do you know what? I have carried that forward, with though, because it's something that I... had obviously not had much experience of at that point or at least you know it was something that you know I would write the thing and then we would you know discuss tone it down how that had gone exactly um but it's actually been really useful to be able to see a few things coming in other games that I've worked on I can't
00:34:44
Speaker
specifically remember the scenarios or maybe they would be probably a bit under idea uh but you know that there were definite moments where i was like sorette would be so proud of me right now i'm glad i'm what my my influence extends to games i do not work on um it's like i think you'll find we might get bumped up an age rating with that Yes. No, our two age rating ah exhibits for people who are curious, there is the oh the the one about...
00:35:21
Speaker
two different groups of, uh, two different people of two different preferences of how to enjoy. is it like crumpets or something with other cream ah cream tea? So whether you put Sam on first or cream. Yes. And then, ah they, they say that they, they had a brief war about it and then had a picnic. And,
00:35:43
Speaker
ah That mention of the brief war is is not enough to bump the age rating, but it is enough to get the phrase violent references on our age rating as a descriptor, which is something I had never heard of before.
00:35:57
Speaker
Wow. Because usually you get like cartoon violence or something because like when it comes to a a category, like for example, violence as a category, they're not going list the most, like if it's like strong violence, they're not also going to list cartoon violence. And I've had never seen a game that only had violent references before.
00:36:21
Speaker
So ah that that was us. And then ah the other one, was one of the exhibits about what a leech likes to eat.
00:36:32
Speaker
And it's like, a leech likes ink, but then um has like strong opinions about red wine. And so we also have alcohol reference. Yeah.
00:36:43
Speaker
Again, neither of these got us above an E. Like, we didn't get to E10, this was just like E for everyone, but parents should know that we've mentioned alcohol once and we've mentioned violence once.
Age Rating and Localization Challenges
00:36:54
Speaker
The existence of these things. If you don't want your kid knowing about the concept of war, the concept of alcohol, this game is not for you. um Which is very funny. And then, like, six months later, we got a 16 plus age rating on Bonfire Peaks.
00:37:16
Speaker
So, you know, age ratings and all. ah Eventually, we couldn't appeal that until the game released and then a human took one look at that game and said, why did the automated system spit out a 16 plus for this? Yeah. To be clear, um when it came to America, our age rating was pretty was consistent the whole time. It was specifically ah Europe and Peggy that went from 16 plus all the way down to seven plus when a human saw it.
00:37:48
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, wow. Thinking about the LSD again, I feel like if we really wanted to get it into the game, what we could have done we could have come up with an alternate history LSD-like substance. Yeah. Which is not a real drug, but just has some side effects that might correlate with drug side effects. No, what you could have done is made an acronym for something that had L, S, and D as the first letters.
00:38:19
Speaker
Yeah. Like, we could have said LSD and then put an asterisk and then a bit further down the description just, you know, have ah a kicker that is the explanation of the acronym that that takes it neatly away from being a drug reference. There are ways to mitigate the concern. I will say, um Apple was involved in this one, so we had to play it especially safe.
00:38:45
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. i just i remember the outrage at this point. like Now that you've brought it up, I'm like, yeah, actually, i was prepared to die on that hill for some reason. Yeah, for some reason you were. I remember that was like, that that was you and I's biggest debate.
00:39:02
Speaker
And I just had to keep pointing back to, I'm sorry, Apple's not going to let this stay in the game. Yeah, you were like, I don't, I personally am fine with this. Yes, this is not We need to talk about the liberties that are being taken. We had probably already at this point committed to Apple. This is the rating this game is going to have. Yes, we did.
00:39:27
Speaker
Well, the thing is, I'd probably already submitted an alternate thing. I was probably just banging on about this thing that I clearly felt struggling. Yes, you I think you did, but you you were like, but Seren, it makes the joke so much better. And I believe I just simply said, it does, period. We need to change it, period.
00:39:48
Speaker
Yeah, I think I just, at that point, i'm always just like, look, I will just blow off my steam in a Google comment. So, you know. Yeah, you, like, you, my my Slack DMs are a safe space for you to complain about the real world and the age ratings, as long as the final shipping game doesn't talk about LSD. Yeah.
00:40:11
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. but And also, um this was the first Dreknet game to get localized, speaking of Apple and the writing. and Oh gosh, I remember this. Yes, so there was not just a US English localization that we had to do for hilarious reasons, by which literally just involved going in and replacing the spelling of like every other word the some of these games. Yeah. How many zeds would you like to put in? Zs, sorry. Yes, z. Yeah.
00:40:44
Speaker
Yes. Take out the British U in every word except for glamour, because for some reason we keep it in glamour, but only glamour. Um... Just and incredible, arbitrary everything about the US English.
00:41:00
Speaker
um But my favorite is that when the so the game gets localized, it gets localized it into 13 languages, I believe.
00:41:11
Speaker
Yeah, something like that. And it's an enormous script. Like... There's so much writing and it's all comedy writing, which means Pip, you and i if you probably blocked this out because you did not enjoy this process at all.
00:41:28
Speaker
Oh, I am having so many flashbacks right now. You and I spent week where we just pieced out from the rest of the dev team and wrote comedy explanations for every single joke in the game to make sure that the translators, for whom English is probably not their first language, understood the joke and what they were and were not allowed to take creative liberties on.
00:41:56
Speaker
Yeah, it was ah it was so, it was actually a really interesting process. So I didn't mind doing it It was, I think it was more just that, like, I knew that it was, I think we were under a bit of time pressure at the time. Oh, yeah, no, when I say we took a week, I mean, we had one week. Yeah, exactly. It was not able to go to the eighth day. Yeah, I'm so tempted to look it out. Would that be okay? Shall I see whether I can find Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, um it's it was it was a lot of just like sitting down and unpacking the humor, but it was also like a justify your writing kind of exercise in a weird way. Yeah, it was very much a kind of...
00:42:42
Speaker
By the end of it, I was like, is any of this funny? Yes, the answer was yes. What have I done? um so yeah But and I will say, oh watching like Twitch streamers, like there were there were a bunch of Brazilian Portuguese Twitch streamers when the game came out that played the game, and they all laughed at all the right moments, like consistently, every single time. And I was like, this is incredible. Alan has found the document.
00:43:09
Speaker
Yeah! I've just clicked on it. There it is. just I'm going to pick a random example. Okay. ah Bottled water. Oh, no. now That one didn't get into the game.
00:43:22
Speaker
If it's in yellow, it didn't get into the game. Yeah. Okay. Emergency cheese sandwich. Inscription reads, in case of emergency, please break glass to release cheese sandwich. Breaking glass will activate sandwich alarm. Penalty for misuse of emergency cheese sandwich, three pound fifty.
00:43:39
Speaker
So that is that that is the just like the actual text in the game. Yeah. Localization notes references emergency tools like hammers or fire extinguishers. The joke is that the emergency in question is feeling a little bit hungry. The penalty fee is also very low.
00:43:58
Speaker
Yeah, it was like yeah it was it was making sure that in an event where there wasn't a direct translation or where the direct translation would just sort of render the whole thing weird because yeah this particular thing is so...
00:44:17
Speaker
idiomatic or so here's here's a really big one sort of ah bees knee pads scale model here you see one full set of protective padding designed to fit the legs of an adult honeybee humans created these support garments to help protect the bees knees a valuable commodity in Englandland And then localization notes, it's the bee's knees is a common phrase in England. It means that a thing is excellent. This exhibit shows protective equipment for the knees of an actual bee, suggesting that humans started to take the phrase literally and wanted to safeguard a valuable commodity.
00:44:50
Speaker
God, yeah, it was. This and this document is hundreds of lines. It's huge, isn't it? I just like... so The ones in yellow did make it into the game. It's the one that red at the bottom that didn't, but I'm... Oh, yes, yes. I don't remember what the yellow ones are then. The yellow was probably that I'd had a ah pass over it like at the 11th hour and needed attract your attention. Um...
00:45:20
Speaker
Yes, ah for for people who are, because we're already talking about the dark and all all history of this game. For people curious, the six ones in red at the bottom of the document are a dinosaur ghost, origami crane, deprecated, ah pet tree, deprecated, skimming stone, deprecated.
00:45:40
Speaker
I wonder why Skimming Stone was... Oh, that was probably just attack limitation. that' for one i mean I think Skimming Stone probably didn't look visually interesting. Child's hat and frog prison outfit. I wonder why frog prison outfit was different.
00:45:55
Speaker
Well, actually, that was um that was another one where I was a bit like, oh, I'm sad about that. Like, I didn't, you know, object. The joke on Frog's prison outfit is, after each being issued with shoes and a backpack, open parentheses, the result of a local election gone awry, close parentheses, Frog's began to experiment with object acquisition. The owner of this outfit was caught acquiring a watch, three diamond rings, and a whistle.
00:46:22
Speaker
Yeah, this is the thing because it was um the concluding part of a joke that one of the other items set up, I think. like so there was a frog. Yeah, so if you go to line 52, it's a frog work outfit.
00:46:38
Speaker
um which is during one local election in England land, a human candidate pledged to make frogs useful. After the curious electorate voted for this scheme, every frog in the district was fitted with shoes and a backpack and told yeah to get on with it.
00:46:53
Speaker
But the idea, like, that I guess, the well, the punchline for that was that ah the frog in question turned out to have taken that as permission to just nick things or you know it's the frog had had acquired a work ethic but hadn't been like told where on a human morality scale that needed to exist yes this this this whole document is such a blast from the past because it is like in a good way because it really is just like a
00:47:27
Speaker
None of- Respectfully, most of these do not play if you don't have visuals. Oh god, no. And so, and so, like, paragraphs of text explaining that, scream if you want to go faster, keep your arms and legs inside the ride at all times, and you must be this tall to ride the coaster. Like, what context those three exhibits, like, take on? I just want to read one that I haven't read in a long time. Yeah.
00:47:54
Speaker
The Sudoku cult of 2214. Poorly designed newspaper editor AIs occasionally cause sections of the paper to bleed into one another. One such incident inspired the founding of a cult whose prime text was an unsolvable Sudoku puzzle composed entirely from sports emoji. Pip, you wrote this before Gen. AI. Yeah. I predicted the future. Join my Sudoku cult. So the so the um the unread book Amnesty was and this is Did you get the two years up?
00:48:38
Speaker
Look. I'm just putting this out there. um the la the own the The one that stays the most in my head, Pim, is the nightmare that you unleashed on Mike Robinson and I with watermelon.
00:48:55
Speaker
And this the localization notes are so unassuming for how hellish this localization was. What was that one? You'll have to remind me. Previously thought to simple compound of the human words water and melon, we now understand the etymology of watermelon to be a corruption of the exclamation, exclamation, watermelon, which was often triggered by the size of the fruit.
00:49:18
Speaker
Right. Pip, all of this is about English phonetics. I know, and it's such a dad joke as well. It's a dad joke, but when I tell you, hip that it was already tough to support Arabic as a right-to-left language... And the aerobic localization decided, correctly, that water, melon, watermelon, and what-a-melon all needed to be in English, left to right, in the middle of right to left, and that this one string needed to be hard-coded and QA'd on every device and resolution.
00:49:56
Speaker
o That definitely doesn't sound like a me problem, so I don't know what you're worried about.
00:50:04
Speaker
I mean, we could have made a you problem by telling you, hey, Pip, you've got to write another joke here. But no, no. No, instead, mike Robinson and I went to hell. So that so that watermelon in Arabic looked right. And to this day, like when we released that game on PlayStation 4 and 5, which is like the most recent port, no, and Android, um which was the most recent, actual most recent port. Every single time like i make a beeline for the watermelon and check it in Arabic, that is my primary text.
00:50:36
Speaker
Because that game, that that that text is the most complicated line of text in the entire game by a lot. That's intense. I didn't realize. that's i i yeah you said you really i apologize. No, you're It's just like, most of these were edited after you knew that localization was going to happen.
00:51:02
Speaker
o However, I don't suspect that you edited this one after knowing that the localization was going to happen. Or if you did, it just didn't click for you. 100% the joke is English phonetics.
00:51:18
Speaker
I think I think that might have been something that I... was there are so many objects in the game that I think it was, I think a team effort at that point. I think it was yeah a case of if there is something that looks like it's going to really, really not translate, let me know. um Otherwise, i think what we were trying to do, which is what the document is about, is essentially just give enough context that,
00:51:56
Speaker
if this joke doesn't work, here's the spirit of it so that the translator, the specific person, yeah could then take it and do something that at least honored the um the vibe of the game. So I personally would have been totally fine if the um the Arabic translator had actually just sort of... Written a new joke.
00:52:24
Speaker
well i Or write a similar joke. Yeah, or done something with, you know, maybe I don't know Arabic at all. So it's very much like if if the word for watermelon in Arabic had a different sort of um for etymology that yeah or a different phonetic breakdown. that lent itself to another dad joke. That would have been fine. But no, for what it's worth, they they they kept they kept your jokes as close as possible.
00:52:56
Speaker
um I mean, to be fair to them, they are there to, you know, like I can imagine that it's like, I don't get paid enough to deal with this woman's nonsense. i I'm just checking. Yeah, like in French, it's ah definitely a different pun, depending on the different word. Different translators handled it differently because I very, very explicitly...
00:53:21
Speaker
um Pip, you weren't on this email. When I emailed the translators ah to like ask for a quote, the two things I said were, one, it's a lot of text and it's a rush job, and so I'm very sorry about that. And two, to hopefully make up for it, most of this is humor.
00:53:38
Speaker
It is more important that the spirit of the humor carries over than the direct text. So please let your translators have fun. yeah Yeah, that's such a good note because like I think that's the big thing that we needed to preserve. It needed to be funny more than they needed to be confused about. It's different pun in French Canadian. Yes, it is.
00:54:02
Speaker
Amazing. What are they, Alan? I've said this before, but to any listener who has not heard my spiel on this, if you can speak multiple languages, please replay A Monster's Expedition in the other language.
00:54:16
Speaker
Like, please do it. My understanding from everyone that I've ever talked to in multiple languages and me playing in the other languages that I know... The localizations in this game are freaking excellent and very funny. Like they did a phenomenal job. So the last one I want to specify is the unidentified flying object, which has a bunch of redacted text. And so the translators had to identify what text in the other languages needed to be redacted.
00:54:47
Speaker
Oh, God, yeah. Because I think we talked about that a little bit because obviously at that point we needed to make sure that the way that the text rendered also had a way to yes redact the amount of characters. Yeah, there's HTML tags around highlighting it in black.
00:55:08
Speaker
highlighting it in black Yeah. anyways do you have any As we wrap up a little late, ah do you have any questions for us before we let you go?
00:55:22
Speaker
i think I'm curious to ask... possibly Alan more than you, surrender because of when you joined the project, but how it ended up, is that how you, how did that fit with where you had
Project Evolution and Reflection
00:55:40
Speaker
started? Is it that you didn't have a vision for, for what it would be in terms of the words that got applied to it or, or did you, and it went in a different direction or yeah, I'm interested in how it went from your side.
00:55:55
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it was a three and a half year project. um And I started not having any kind of ideas to having um not ideas, but ambition.
00:56:08
Speaker
um Like i I wanted it to be this like epic thing. um I thought, well, the the scope of the puzzle complexity and the the size of the world required to flesh that out means that the the narrative should be similarly um not large and bombastic, but like like impactful. like It should have i should have a story.
00:56:32
Speaker
um And ah that caused a lot of problems. um So like what we ended up with, there's no way I could have like pictured it when we were starting it. But I do think it's the absolute best thing we could have ended up with.
00:56:47
Speaker
It like it fits perfectly. the game so well, it it like works together. It feels so cohesive that um at the start of the project, I could never have pictured that because if i if I'd known upfront, oh yeah, this will work perfectly, we could so save ourselves so much hassle.
00:57:07
Speaker
Yeah, i ah I guess the other thing is that, ah is do you have a sense of which types of narrative or writing or story in whatever form you think of it work best in puzzle games? Yeah.
00:57:28
Speaker
i mean Personally, I'm a big fan of things that just get out of your way, ah which yeah I think the the the writing in this game does.
Narrative and Puzzle Integration
00:57:36
Speaker
um that's That's a different thing to like it working well. i i think Maybe like there's there's kind of a difference between like the what the end product looks like and the process to get to the end product.
00:57:53
Speaker
And I think that um ah puzzle games and explicit story, um if you can do it well, I'm sure it leads to good results. But I think it's a...
00:58:05
Speaker
a complicated combination to execute well without something going wrong and causing problems. Yeah, light touch feels...
00:58:19
Speaker
feels right a lot of the time unless it's, you know, obviously there are so many exceptions at this point. You know, I i guess I'm talking more about the types of games that you and I have have worked on together because obviously stuff like the root trees are dead. it's like, well, that's a that's a different beast, isn't it? I think that the...
00:58:42
Speaker
So just to give it a quick shout out, ah Spooky Express, like yeah when we when I did some consulting on on that and what might be possible in terms of giving it a thread in in that direction, it was nice that to to discuss it and settle on those ah comic panels in between the games and and have a kind of like, okay, well, here's a a gentle, very light touch flow. But I mean, I think also i am very much of the the school of thought where if somebody wants to read, they will have gone and got a book or they will have gravitated towards ah a different experience or or something that is explicitly, you know, interactive fiction or something. And I i think that a lot of...
00:59:37
Speaker
the stuff that I write, I i want to try not always, you know, sometimes you're not successful, but i i I want to try and keep it as short as possible just so that the person can get to the point, you know, and and not have to just think, oh, did I read all of those, you know, exhaustive sentences. I think it's very important for Monsters Expedition that each of the exhibits is like a very short amount of text.
01:00:06
Speaker
Mm-hmm. I still feel like there is, ah like, even just looking through that list, I'm like, I could have been more brutal with my editing. Yeah, well, that's also pip of five years later, because I'm sorry to say, this game is half a decade old.
01:00:21
Speaker
What? You have to say that, Seren? Yes, that game came out on September 10th, 2020. Oh. Yeah. wait this is why this This is why you've worked on three Draknet games.
01:00:35
Speaker
This, Spooky Express and Sokobond Express. Yeah. And all of them have involved finding different ways to tell a thing that doesn't necessarily have ah an order exactly. Yes. How do we how to communicate something really briefly? A really brief idea. That that is the tenet of a lot of Drac Nick narrative and writing. Yeah. I love the chocolate box aspect of it. you know Just dip your hand in and see what you get and have a nice time.
01:01:05
Speaker
yeah that all right Thank you so much for joining us. ah at This feels like an artificial cutoff, but unfortunately, like like I accidentally said at the top when we weren't recording, this is a conversation that could go for 45 hours. um before Before we wrap, i feel like I feel like some of our listeners would would love me to ask this question.
Personal Attachment to Game Humor
01:01:28
Speaker
um nep What is the deal with the leeches? I...
01:01:36
Speaker
I sometimes just get an idea in my head that I can't get back out and I just... It it really tickled me. So I think i I tried to write nearly all of the exhibits for other people's enjoyment and then I think the leeches were for me.
01:01:58
Speaker
I wouldn't have it any other way. It's better for it, honestly. That's why work well together. Thank you so much joining Thank you having me.
01:02:09
Speaker
Where can people find you online? um I am on Blue Sky and the Twitter, ah Instagram, all of those. that Wherever I am, it will be Philippa War. So P-H-I-L-I-P-P-A-W-A-R.
01:02:28
Speaker
Great. Thank you so much. Of course. thank you for listening to the Dracnic and Friends official podcast. Our music is by Priscilla Snow, who you can find at ghoulnoisemusic.com. Our podcast artwork is by Adam DeGrandis. Our podcast is edited by Melanie Zawadniak.
01:02:44
Speaker
Please rate and review us on your podcast service of choice, and be sure to tune in next episode for more interesting conversations.
01:02:57
Speaker
you