Sam Killermann – Gamers Against Bigotry

Sam Killermann is a name I didn’t know a week ago. My introduction to him came totally at random, when I saw a re-tweet from a friend which linked to a website called “Gamers Against Bigotry”. The tweet was about how the site had been defaced by hackers—and not knowing the site nor the story, I was curious.

The Gamers Against Bigotry website contains this pledge:

As a gamer, I realize I contribute to an incredibly diverse social network of gamers around the world, and that my actions have the ability to impact others. In effort to make a positive impact, and to create a community that is welcoming to all, I pledge to not use bigoted language while gaming, online and otherwise.

Bigoted language includes, but is not limited to, slurs based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and disability.

A seemingly innocent little website that encourages people to be nice to each other—and a site that was made by just some guy that could easily have come and gone in the history of the internet. Unfortunately, numerous recent examples have shown that a small minority of people in the gaming community don’t even want these topics being brought up—and are willing to prove that. So, I contacted Killermann, and had a lengthy discussion with him about what Gamers Against Bigotry was, how it had come to exist, and why it had been attacked.

Mollie: So, before we really get into things, I’ll start with a tough question: Who is Sam Killermann?

Sam Sam: Ha—something I’m still trying to figure out. I’ve recently taken to calling myself a social justice comedian, for lack of a better descriptor.

Mollie: So are you an active comedian?

Sam: Yep, it’s my main job.  I perform at college campuses during the school year.

Mollie: Are you one of those “nerd comic” types, is video games just a hobby for you, or did you somehow stumble into our strange subculture in some other fashion?

Sam: Three questions in one—I’m impressed. I am one of those “nerd person” types, absolutely.  My comedy style could be best described as “let me tell you real things that I’ve done slash have happened to me, and allow you to laugh at me for an hour.” Video games have always been a hobby for me. Growing up, they were about the only thing my brother and I could agree on—brother fight, if you haven’t heard—and we played gratuitously. Now I stick mostly to RPGs and go on the occasional binge session taking down monsters like Skyrim in an extended weekend.

Mollie: So—in what we’ll be getting into in a moment—you aren’t coming at it as an outsider; you’re coming at conversations about the gaming community as somebody who has been a part of it for a long time.

Sam: Yeah, it’s in my blood.  In college and grad school I had to scale it back a bit—you know, to, uh, graduate—but I don’t think I’ll ever stop playing games.  It’s one of the best releases around.

Mollie: As somebody who has grown up with gaming, I’ve watch it go from almost this obscure hobby that kids would have, to an industry that is huge and out there and talked about and constantly forced into the public eye. I think, in a way, that shift has been what’s brought up the various controversies that the community has. Gaming is growing, and evolving, and bringing in people who were never here before, and because of that, we’re being forced to—if you will—clean out our closets and deal with what we’ve been stuffing into them to keep out of sight and out of mind.

Sam: That’s a great point. Beyond that, I think things really starting shifting when multiplayer went online to begin with. Before that, you only understood “gaming” as it existed within your little social circle. When we all merged our circles, things got interesting.

Mollie: Online multiplayer was like going around the country, picking up gamers at random, forcing them all into the same room, and saying, “Alright, now get along”—without really preparing them for that new challenge.

Sam: Absolutely. And it was awesome! But it was also a time where we had to create/define a culture. Who are we, what do we stand for, what type of people are we going to be, and how are we going to treat one another. All those questions were answered without people even knowing they were being asked. They just… happened.

Mollie: Whose failing was that? Was it the companies suddenly giving us access to other players without telling us how to handle that new freedom, or was it our fault for not giving more thought to what those new options really meant in terms of how we communicate with one another?

Sam: I think that’s an unfair question, because is it really fair to say someone “failed” at something they didn’t even know they were doing? It was all a huge experiment, right? Don’t get me wrong: We (gamers) could have done a better job, pioneering game developers/community managers could have done a better job, for sure, but it’s tough to say how.

Mollie: Well, I think that really hits home at one of the core arguments when we’re talking about the acceptance of diversity: How much should we be expected to understand coming in, and how much of it is a learning process. And, actually, I agree with you—online gaming has absolutely been a learning process. It can be rough, but it’s something we have to go through because otherwise we won’t always know what’s right and what’s wrong.

Sam: Yeah, I don’t blame developers early on for not curbing the things that are so prevalent now, because you have to give it time to see what it will become before you start shaping it. And I think the acceptance of diversity should be on-par with the way society-at-large is growing. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the case.  What’s widely accepted as unfathomable IRL, barely makes the average gamer blush in game chat. I’m not talking about swearing, here, either.  I’m talking about the casual use of words like “n*gger.”

Mollie: It’s a topic that’s been brought up many times—that when we aren’t face to face, and when we have no threat of repercussion, that filter that keeps us from being jerks to one another seems to go away. Some have proposed solutions, such as people on the internet using their real names—but, if Facebook is any indication, real names don’t suddenly make people not be rude to one another.

Sam: Hahaha—very true. And I don’t like the real name option much, either. I love that gaming can be an escape, a place where you can take on a new identity. Also, it’s not really my goal or the mission of Gamers Against Bigotry to make people stop being rude to one another. As someone said, “you want everything to be roses and flowers? Real life isn’t roses and flowers.” That’s not the idea, and not just because roses AND flowers is redundant.

Mollie: Is part of the importance of this whole argument that escape? When you think about it, things like online gaming should—in theory—allow anybody anywhere to have an equal place among their peers, even if in real life they wouldn’t. So, when that potential for equality breaks down, it could almost be even more devastating than when it happens in real life.

Sam: Absolutely. That’s a fantastic point. I’m going to be copy/pasting that in the future, I’m sure of it. I think we owe it to one another to create a space that is, at the very least, equally rude to everyone, regardless of their specific identities.  It really bothers me how many people have said, “You don’t like it? Don’t play.”

Mollie: In chatting with you a bit about all of this, I know trying to fight against that kind of stuff is something we’re both interested in. But when you get to the point of starting your site—Gamers Against Bigotry—I have to imagine that there was something—some catalyst—that set plans in motion to launch the site. What was the beginning of the site coming into existence?

Sam: Hm… this is a question I’ve had to answer a lot, but it’s still a tough one. For as long as I’ve played online multiplayer, I’ve been bothered by the bigotry.  In the past year or so, I’ve seen a lot of articles in popular media (outside of just gaming media) about the misogyny and bigotry of gamers. Then this spring/summer there were a few huge blowouts. All of those things, I think, created a mentality in me that wanted change.

Unrelated, last month I made this comic about an article I was writing called “How to respond to bigoted language.” Someone commented and said something like “Great, but how do you have any advice for how I can deal with bigoted language in-game?” I said something like, “Unfortunately, that’s a lost cause. Someone would have to create something that existed outside of the game that united people against that type of behavior, because any resistance in-game only makes it worse.” Then I thought, “Hey! That’s pretty lazy. Maybe I should try to be that someone.”

Mollie: It’s been an interesting topic over the course of the year, because we were having these conversations about homosexuality in gaming (in part thanks to Mass Effect 3), and then all of a sudden, it was almost this string of events that caused the conversation to change to women in the community. So, when that spark to do something did get lit, was it fueled by any specific segment of the the issue, or was it a case of you wanted to do something in regards to the cause overall?

Sam: No segment in particular.  I consider myself a social justice advocate because I want to see everyone get the same opportunities, regardless of their identities, but I certainly have a closer connection to some sub-communities than others.

Mollie: So, you’re there, and you decide to do something—but did you know right away what that something would be? How did you end up at the GAB site?

Sam: After making that decision, I spent roughly the next 30 straight hours working on what became the foundation of GAB.  I had a lot of ideas, but the idea of a pledge resonated the strongest as an effective starting point.

Mollie: And why was that?

Sam: Because we don’t really know where the community stands on this stuff.  We’ve gotten to hear the opinions of a few journalists, and a few thousand angry commenters in response to those journalists, but that’s about it. I wanted to see how many people already had the same belief and stance that I did: That gaming would be a better place if it were welcoming to everyone. Once we have an idea where we are, I thought, it’d be easier to know where we need to go.

Mollie: Giving people a way to stand up for the idea for equality in the gaming community, without telling them that they have to go find their own solution and outlet for making that statement.

Sam: Absolutely. A unified front, if you will.

Mollie: What was your expectation for the kind of exposure the GAB site would get when you launched it?

Sam: I was expecting that it would be exponential. A few people would find us, sign up, tell their friends, some of whom would sign the pledge, who would tell their friends, and so on. Slow at first, but increasing momentum with time.

Mollie: And before certain events happened, the site got to around 1500 or so pledges, correct?

Sam: That is correct.

Mollie: At that point, how were you feeling about GAB?

Sam: Great, honestly. I had received dozens of messages from people who were excited to see a movement like this happening, the Mary Sue [a website dedicated to “girl geek culture”] published a great story about GAB, a couple of people had volunteered to help, and we were starting to get a sense of the organization taking shape. There were annoying hacks/exploits/spam all along, but it was more encouraging than it was detracting—sure, it was annoying having to go into the database each night to clean that stuff out, but it was also a great reminder of why we’re doing what we’re doing.

Mollie: So then, what happened with the site?

Sam: DOOMSDAY!

Kidding, sorry, it’s not that bad, but if you google “Gamers Against Bigotry” some of the headlines make it appear that way. I decided that I wanted to put an end to the little hacks/exploits that were happening, because as we increased in numbers so did they (and that was not an exponential growth I was excited for). I spent Sunday learning how to write a patch that would prevent the exploits that were allowing all the little hacks, and within the hour the database of all the signatures was gone.

Mollie: Not from your patch, but due to an outside source, right?

Sam: Not related to the code I wrote, no, but I think taking away the exploit made them step up their attack to something more permanent.

Mollie: So when you say “them”—at this point, do you have any idea who was directing these attacks at the site?

Sam: Nope. Believe it or not (you’ll believe it) none of the people who are so angry about GAB happening have actually said anything about it directly to me.

Mollie: For you personally, would it change anything if you knew who was responsible for the attacks?

Sam: I would love to hear why they did it, and have a little chat about it.  I’m all ears to ways to improve GAB.  Why, you know ’em?

Mollie: No, no, but it’s an interesting question for me. Knowing or not knowing doesn’t change what happened. On one side, I can see why you would want to know, but on the other, maybe not knowing makes it easier to deal with, because you don’t have that direct feeling of “this is the person or persons who did it, and now I want to go and try to make them tell me why”.

Sam: Haha, yeah, I was kidding, I didn’t think you knew who it was.  You don’t, right? Kidding.  Just kidding.  But if you know, tell me.

I see where you’re coming from, but to be honest, I haven’t had much time to give it any further thought than “I wish they would have just sent me an email instead.”

Mollie: The deletion of the database wasn’t all that happened, though. What occurred next?

Sam: I tried to restore things and get the pledge back online, but everything I tried to do was met with further attacks. We’ve lost tons of new signatures due to repeated deletion—which is why I was asking folks to hold off on signing for now, even though it pumps me up that people are like, “Screw that, I’ll sign it again if it gets deleted.” And then Monday, as the press coverage started to blow the lid off of things, all of my other websites (other projects, portfolio, etc.) got taken down.

Mollie: And at some point, people were even inserting text or graphics into their pledges to deface the GAB site, right?

Sam: Ah, yes. That’s one of the things that’s been widely reported out of chronological order.  That actually preceded the database deletion. Things like that were happening all along, but just started getting worse last week.

Mollie: As we’re having this conversation, I was just looking over the list of pledges, and I see one that looks like somebody trying to get the database to empty. So, obviously, the attacks are still going on.

Sam: Hahaha—yep. Hadn’t even seen that. Must’ve happened earlier this morning. Those slashes were added in by my patch that I released Sunday, preventing any of the code from clearing. The same thing would happen if someone tried to insert an image or the like—it’d just present dummy code that I can go in and delete.

Mollie: So—and obviously, this is a question better answered by the people doing all of this—why? Why the attacks on your site?

Sam: It’s like watching an episode of Lost—there are so many crazy theories being thrown around. I’m not really sure, obviously, but my guess is (a) for fun, advanced/illegal trolling; (b) someone wanted to obstruct our progress; or (c) some men just want to watch the world burn. C is the Joker, who is one of my top suspects so far.

Mollie: When I first learned about all of this, my mind instantly went to Anita Sarkeesian and what she’s gone through because of her Tropes vs. Women project. Here she is, wanting to look at the stereotyping video games often do for female characters, and she’s been called every name in the book, publicly trashed, and I believe she’s even received a death threat or two. It seems like such an extreme reaction to someone wanting to bring up the discussion of misogyny in gaming.

Sam: Yeah, that was a harrowing and troubling story for me to follow. And a lot of people have made the connection between that and what’s happening to GAB, but I sincerely hope it doesn’t get that bad. However, it certainly provides an example of the type and scale of action people will take to prevent a conversation from taking place.

Mollie: I can’t say that I’ve been in the place of either of you, but in the conversations I’ve had, it can be amazing just how much some people not only don’t get the fight for diversity in the gaming community, but who are then so adamant against that conversation even happening. If it doesn’t directly affect them, then they see it as being pointless to talk about.

Sam: You know, it’s not that much different from any instance of an equality movement.  The arguments are all the same.  There was one forum thread I was reading, and, for fun, I went through all the arguments and replaced “use bigoted language in games” with “own slaves”. It played out remarkably, and shockingly well.

“If they stop letting me own slaves, what will they take away next?”

“If you think owning slaves is wrong, don’t own them.”

“I’ve always owned slaves — if you take them away everything else will crumble.”

“Owning slaves is a product of racism.  Making it illegal to own slaves won’t end racism.”

Whoops, that last one is actually true. Obviously, that’s an extreme example, but it was entertaining to point out nonetheless, because it really shifted the nature of the conversation.

Mollie: Has what has happened been disheartening for you at all? Do you regret starting up GAB, or do these events just serve as proof to you that we need to be having this discussion more, not less?

Sam: I had hopes, we could call them pipe dreams, that there wasn’t going to be any terrible backlash. But I was prepared and expecting them. So while it’s slightly disheartening that I was proved right, it’s been even more heartening to see the positive reactions. I just wish GAB’s introduction to the world didn’t have to come with such a negative undertone.

Mollie: I think, with anything, that the positive aspects do need to be remembered more than the negative. It’s ridiculous what’s gone on with the site, but at the same time, it’s helped to underscore that this is an important topic that we have to keep pushing, as obviously there’s still some segments of the community that will give the rest of us a bad name if left to their own devices.

Sam: My thoughts exactly.

Mollie: One other things I wanted to ask you about: The “Support Gamers Against Bigotry” page that’s up on indiegogo. Can you clarify what that is for?

Sam: Absolutely. We launched that when the GAB site went public. The original goals of the $700 were to incorporate GAB as a 501(c)3 non-profit ($300-$500) and get the word out with ads.  Our stretch goals were all ways we could really enhance the org and the movement. On Sunday, it shifted gears a bit.  Now our number one goal is rebuilding the site to be more secure (and working with a team of security specialists to do so), and moving it to fancier, stronger servers. That’ll take a few thousand dollars to keep us running for a year, and we’ll also still need to pay for and file the legal stuff for the non-profit.

Mollie: So, in terms of trying to set up the non-profit, what would love to see Gamers Against Bigotry become?

Sam: I want to unite the voice of gamers who are done putting up with this stuff and want it to stop, and take that voice to game developers so we can work together on concrete ways to make it happen. I also think we can do a lot to educate our community on why this “diversity” stuff is so important, as well as letting society-at-large know that most gamers are awesome people—we’re not cretins hiding in shadows wondering what little person we can victimize next. And in the meantime, we want to provide as many opportunities as we can for gamers who want to play in a bigotry-free environment to do so, by creating GAB-centric communities (e.g., steam groups) and giving GAB pledgees the ability to play with one another, because gaming is awesome, and bigotry-free gaming is awesomer.

Mollie: This may initially sound like a strange question, but it’s come up a few times in discussions I’ve had with others, and I think it’s an interesting one. Would we—as a community—be better if we all saw each other as “gamers”, and that was that, or is in important to bring our different aspects of diversity to the community, and acknowledge those differences while also trying to come together?

Sam: I think we should see each other, the people playing the games, as people. And in game chat, or lobbies, treat each other the same way we would treat each other in any other similar situation. If you were in an intense sport game (I play soccer), you get heated, you get passionate, and often times people get personal, but nobody ever takes it half as far as people take it in a regular basis in games. And when they try, they get head-butted by Zinidine Zidane.

Mollie: On the subject of interesting names, I come to my last question: You know you have the perfect action game hero name, right? Sam Killermann—just reading your name, I can already picture the character there on the cover art.

Sam: Hahahaha—well thanks.  I can say that GAB is the first thing I’ve done where my name has been a good thing. I used to work in college orientation, and I’m not sure parents were excited to see an email from [email protected] as they were handing their child off for the first time.

Mollie: I could never have done that job, because I wouldn’t have been able to stop myself from having fun with that very situation.

Sam: I think the best game was just not even mentioning it.  “Oh, yes, we’re just dying to meet your daughter next week.  She’s going to have the time of her life.”

Theatrhythm: Final Fantasy Review

I would love to believe that the opening 30 to 45 minutes of gameplay in Theatrhythm: Final Fantasy was a carefully orchestrated plot, one conceived in some smoky Japanese bar one night when staff from both Square Enix and indieszero went out drinking together. The goal would be a scathing commentary on Japan’s RPG industry, and how—inexplicably—so many of its offering force players to sit through 5 to 10 hours of boredom in order to get to the “good stuff.”

“If this is truly to be an homage to Final Fantasy,” one of the game-development salarymen would say between taking drags from a soon-to-be-expended cigarette, “then it has to be a true homage to the concepts of Final Fantasy. Even the bad parts.”

I would love to believe that—but I’m not sure I can. Instead, I find it more realistic to believe that Theatrhythm: Final Fantasy’s early moments were simply an attempt at making first impressions that somewhere went horribly wrong.

I can understand the difficulty in trying to figure out how to ease players into a game like this, because for many, Theatrhythm will be something of a bizarre concept for the franchise. In an era when Final Fantasy has come to be represented by epic drama, finely rendered CG, sprawling cities filled with technology, and—how could I forget?—guns, the graphics and characters here scream Final Fantasy Babies. Aww, look at the adorable little faces on Terra, Cloud, and Lightning, with their bright eyes and rosy cheeks! They’re just so darned precious!

And then there’s Theatrhythm’s gameplay. Forget the arguments over real-time combat versus turn-based battle systems—here, victories are won with soul, not swords. The core mechanic is pretty standard rhythm-game fare: Note icons show up on key beats to the music, and you—as the player—must do something to clear that note with the proper timing.

For anybody well versed in rhythm games, Theatrhythm’s mechanics will probably take you all of about 15 seconds to grasp. Tap notes, tap and hold on notes, swipe on other notes—basic concepts we’ve learned plenty of times before. For those not so familiar with the genre, I might say that it’s something like Guitar Hero, but I’d hate saying that, because the genre existed long before Guitar Hero, and I’d only be using it as a reference point due to the fact that it’s the genre example you’re most likely to be familiar with.

More important than a detailed explanation of how to play Theatrhythm is what the game does with those concepts. Playstyle is broken up into one of three types: Battle, Field, and Event. In Battle, four familiar Final Fantasy faces (of your choosing) team up to fight a series of monsters, where properly timed actions on your part cause damage to foes—while missed notes result in your team instead being on the receiving end of attacks. For Field tracks, your team leader takes to the overworlds of the Final Fantasy games, where playing better means more ground covered, and more ground covered means collecting more loot.

Finally, we have Events, which are the cinema scenes of Theatrhythm. Here, the game’s distinct art and visual style is pushed aside for gameplay laid over the top of full- motion video clips taken directly from each of the 12 major Final Fantasy chapters. (Thankfully, Event tracks don’t make up the majority of what you’ll be playing through—they come off a little gaudy and feel out of place when compared to the atmosphere of the rest of the game.)

Now, I know what you’re thinking—I totally forgot that part where I was going to tell you about how Theatrhythm’s early going is terrible. Ah, but I didn’t!

Just as I’ve introduced you to the basic concepts behind this project, so, too, does the game. This is accomplished via the Series mode, where we’re taken through every mainline Final Fantasy release by way of an Opening, Battle, Field, Event, and Ending theme for each. In theory, it’s a nostalgic trip back through the franchise that should serve as the perfect introduction to the game.

Except, it doesn’t. The Series option feels just like the beginning hours of the RPGs it honors: It’s slow to get through, it offers far too little challenge, and you can’t stop wishing that the game would hurry up and become fun already. I also found the initial song selection in this mode rather peculiar. Some tunes make perfect sense for inclusion in a game such as Theatrhythm—but many others simply feel like they’re more along for the ride due to fan service and less because they’d actually work well in a rhythm game.

So low was my level of enjoyment with Theatrhythm’s opening that, at times, I had to force myself to keep playing it. And then, I finished the last song in Series mode—and suddenly, I felt like I was at that moment in RPGs when you take your first steps out of the game’s initial town and out into freedom.

The difference between Theatrhythm’s beginning portion and the major chunk of the game you’ll find after it is so drastically different that it’s somewhat shocking. Freed from the confines of title-specific courses, Challenge mode lets you go straight to whichever particular tracks you’d like—and now that you can crank up the difficulty, getting through each successfully is not only more daunting, but also much more enjoyable.

The true star of Theatrhythm, however, is the Chaos Shrine. Coming off as something of a strange bonus mode at first, the Chaos Shrine could best be described as the random dungeon for Theatrhythm’s RPG elements. Here you’re presented with Dark Notes: uniquely generated courses that consist of one Field track and one Battle track paired together in random combinations and difficulty levels. Each Dark Note has three assigned bosses—reached by satisfying different conditions when playing the course—and each can drop one of three items. Every piece of the equation is a secret the first time you play a Dark Note, and after your first trip through, you’ll still only know whatever details you revealed during that first journey.

The Chaos Shrine is a rather simple concept, but one that becomes terribly addictive. This is, in part, due to those RPG elements that I mentioned above, elements that don’t really become relevant until you get to Theatrhythm’s more challenging levels. Each of the Final Fantasy protagonists you can choose from have their own strengths and weaknesses, and as you play through songs, you’ll earn XP in order to beef up your squad. As the Onion Knight’s strength rises, he can do more damage with each hit on Battle tracks; as Shantotto levels her agility, she can travel farther in Field tracks. Becoming stronger and faster, unlocking more powerful spells, equipping support items—all of these things are so foreign to the concept of rhythm games, but they’re part of what makes Theatrhythm the utterly-peculiar-yet-completely-compelling experience that it is.

They’re also tied to the one real disappointment that I walked away with—the wish that Square Enix and indieszero had been even more daring with Theatrhythm. What if it were some crazy RPG, where the various Final Fantasy heroes and heroines were brought together to journey through each game, defeating a wide roster of foes that had suddenly come together to threaten the fate of the franchise? Here, traveling, fighting, conversing, and everything else would be done via these music scenes—think of all of the possibilities the development team could come up with!

The real question, however, is what Theatrhythm: Final Fantasy is—not what it could be. That answer is clear: a game that initially may seem like little more than a heavy dose of nostalgia, but one that then grows into a project full of creativity, charm, and cleverness. With over 70 tracks to unlock and play through, extra characters to discover, the added element of the game’s RPG aspects, and an endless supply of Chaos Shrine challenges (which can be played either in single-player or local multiplayer), Theatrhythm contains a whole lot to love in a little 3DS cartridge–provided you can survive the terrifying Boredom spell its beginning loves to cast on inexperienced adventurers, and that you have some affinity for the Final Fantasy series in the first place.

Lollipop Chainsaw Review

In the interest of full disclosure: I went into Lollipop Chainsaw wanting to love it. I’m sure the proper rule for reviewing games is to go into each one as a blank slate, but I just couldn’t help it. If there are two things I love, they’re cuteness and gore—so having a Japanese developer promising to mix both together was a project with my name on it right from the start.

And, from a stylistic perspective, Lollipop Chainsaw delivers in spades. Lead heroine Juliet Starling is a total darling—don’t worry, I’ll feel ashamed of using that line later—who has no problem carrying most of the game on her shoulders. She’s attractive, she’s spunky, and you can’t help but fall in love with her as she gleefully saws through zombie hordes while trading back-and-forth quips with her decapitated-head-for-a-boyfriend, Nick. These conversations, in fact, are far and away the best part of Lollipop Chainsaw—thanks to the work put in by filmmaker/writer James Gunn. For most of the game, his dialogue—for both heroes and villains—is sharp, witty, and appropriately campy.

I say “most,” because Lollipop Chainsaw sometimes slips into somewhat uncomfortable territory. Sure, this is a game specifically crafted to honor B-movie horror schlock—but as hard as Juliet works to be more than just male-gamer spank material, random comments scattered throughout the game go too far in belittling her. For those who were worried that Lollipop Chainsaw would be nothing but sexist garbage, I’m happy to say that it’s instead very charming and exceedingly smart—and then moments like those crop up and threaten to undermine that statement of support.

What undermines Lollipop Chainsaw as a whole aren’t the random comments of NPCs, however—it’s the “game” portion of this videogame. As a package, there’s just so much to like: those strong characters, Gunn’s writing, the engaging storyline and settings, and a soundtrack—a product of the combination of Silent Hill veteran Akira Yamaoka, Mindless Self Indulgence frontman Little Jimmy Urine, and perfectly selected American retro-pop—that’s the aural icing on the cake.

With all those stars on the squad, Lollipop Chainsaw’s gameplay feels like the homely, awkward girl who ended up being a cheerleader because the team had an extra slot to fill. While Juliet shows off an abundance of agility during cutscenes, chaining between her three main basic attacks lacks the grace and fluidity of more polished action titles like Bayonetta. You’ll find a roster of maneuvers to unlock, but these only really provide additional dial-a-combos instead of smoother combat. Juliet’s main defense from becoming zombie food is her jump—which acts as a dodge of sorts—but it’s often ineffectual, especially given that many enemies have no intention of obeying proper hit-stun etiquette.

All of these things leave Lollipop Chainsaw feeling more like a clunky ’80s arcade brawler than a modern action title; in fact, clunky is how I’d describe numerous aspects of the game—the camera that enjoys fighting with you as you try to move it, the overreliance on quicktime-event button presses when such things are more bothersome than bettering, and the constant cutscenes that break the gameplay flow (especially annoying in a game that encourages multiple playthroughs of stages).

As a game, Lollipop Chainsaw is never terrible—but it’s also never terrific. When every other aspect of what Grasshopper Manufacture put together here is so unashamedly fun, knowing what Juliet’s zombie-hunting adventures could have been with better polish is utterly disheartening. The collection of complaints and concerns I have about the gameplay doesn’t stop Lollipop Chainsaw from being something I’m glad to have experienced—but it does really hit home that I’m getting tired of defending developers for gameplay decisions that should no longer be happening in 2012.

Gravity Rush Review

Ever since I was a child, I’ve had one particular dream that’s played out over and over again: my ability to fly. Each time, the pieces are different—different settings, different people, different sources of motivation—but the core component’s always the same: I know I have the ability to fly, I’ve just forgotten how to. At some point, that memory comes back to me, and moments later, I’m jetting myself through the sky to some new destination. At times, these dreams can be so utterly overwhelming and powerful that it’s hard for my subconscious self not to swear that I’ve always been meant to have that power of flight. For a brief sliver of time, my body’s as light as air—my battle over the forces of gravity won.

When first starting up Gravity Rush, we know that spunky, blonde protagonist Kat has the ability to fly—she’s just forgotten how as well. Her crash course in controlling such talents comes suddenly, when she’s faced with either awakening to her powers or watching helplessly as a child’s carried off by a fierce gravity storm. The game teaches us how to control Kat’s powers one step at a time, but even these introductory lessons can be intimidating. Videogames typically have rules—rules that comfort us. Up is up, and down is down; we jump to get higher, and we fall to go lower. Gravity Rush breaks those rules, in a way that I’ve never seen (or felt) before in a videogame.

In thinking about what makes us enjoy games, it all comes down to connections. The game has to connect with us on some sort of level: physically, emotionally, mentally, or spiritually. For Gravity Rush, that connection’s crafted through Kat’s ability to control gravity—and, through that, her ability to fly. For me, it instantly speaks to those powerful feelings I’ve felt from my dreams; for others, it’ll be the natural curiosity of having such a skill, or maybe that desire to feel like a superhero.

No matter the source of such connections being made, Gravity Rush accomplishes this by having the single most impressive flight mechanic I’ve ever seen in a game. I honestly cannot remember another project in any generation where I’ve felt such power and emotional from watching (and controlling) a character as they flew through the air—nor am I sure I can explain in written word the full extent of the awe and emotion I experience when actually playing the game.

Kat will be standing there in the middle of a sun-lit plaza somewhere in Hekseville—Gravity Rush’s floating-town setting—as children run around playing and adults go about their daily lives. You tilt the camera so that she’s looking up, and you press the right shoulder button. Suddenly, Kat’s body is literally flung in the air. The camera shakes, the wind howls around you, and you watch as buildings give way to wide open skies as she rockets higher and higher into the clouds. And then, her power over gravity gives way as the meter expressing the limit of those powers drains to zero. Kat falls—faster and faster, her body twisting and turning, the city she was just floating above now shrinking above her as she plummets to the unknown abyss below. The fear we all hold inside of ourselves kicks in; you know it’s just a game, but as you’re watching Kat helplessly plunge to certain doom, you can’t help but feel a genuine sense of nervousness and unease.

Then, the sound of her gravity meter refilling to full dings in your ear—and, just as quickly as she was descending, she’s ascending once again. You come to realize something you didn’t expect: Flying isn’t where we feel the most powerful—it’s when we’re falling. In most games, that would be the fall we’d witness before being presented with a “game over” screen. Here, we know we’ll be OK—because we understand that power we wield in this world. Gravity Rush is just that: empowering. Amidst so many games that make us feel like a pawn forced to raise arms against gods, here we are the god

That’s not to say that you’ll be playing Gravity Rush without any sense of danger or challenge—there’s plenty of that. It’s just that, even as the game continues on and you help Kat unlock new attacks or power up the ones she already knows, there’s just such a satisfaction to how the game plays and what options Kat’s mystical abilities afford her. As technically, stylistically, and emotionally impressive as Gravity Rush’s flying elements are, none of that would matter if the game didn’t offer control to back it up. Thankfully, that, too, is in place. At first, controlling Kat can be a little tricky—but, then again, so is any game where one minute you could be standing on the ground, and the next you’re running upside-down along the bottom of a bridge. Soon, the controls become second nature, and it won’t be any struggle to send Kat whipping through obstacles or dogfighting with winged Nevi (the game’s trademark monsters) in intense mid-air battles. Again, it goes back to that word—empowering.

I’m not sure if director Keiichiro Toyama’s goal was to create a game that allowed players to feel so powerful and so free, or if he just wanted to make a game that was cool because you could fly. If his goal was the former, he’s certainly succeeded.

Much of what makes Gravity Rush so brilliant lies in those elements, but such ideas would be nothing if the rest of the game weren’t of equal quality. Thankfully, this isn’t a great gimmick wrapped up in a mediocre game. From start to finish, Gravity Rush exudes class and charm in everything it does. Kat will grow on you before the game’s barely kicked off, and the world she inhabits is filled with people, places, and personalities that are all equally appealing. Exploring every nook and cranny of Hekseville and its adjoining areas doesn’t come because you’re always forced to—it’ll come because you want to see every back alley or every shadowy underside of a city section that the creators have conjured up.

And, my goodness, will the world look stunningly beautiful as you do! Gravity Rush was originally conceived as a PlayStation 3 game, until Sony decided to move it to the Vita to give their new handheld another purchasing option to catch customers’ eyes. Without question, the game’s no worse off visually from this move—every place you visit and every new area you see will be stylish, creative, and downright amazing to behold. Even something as simple as looking off in the distance will provide examples of the graphical touches that went into the game. Buildings don’t just fade out or blend into the background when farther away—they become solid colors, strong lines, almost as if sketches used for the backgrounds of comic-book panels. In fact, Toyama referenced French comic artist Mœbius (Arzach) as one of his inspirations for the look of Gravity Rush, and that shows via the in-game graphics and the comic-style storyline breaks. Mention must also go out to the soundtrack that accompanies Kat’s adventures—it’s beautifully produced, fits the fantastical setting, and serves as yet another strong pillar in the foundations upon which Gravity Rush is built.

Gravity Rush has a few nagging issues, and if a hypothetical sequel changed very little about the experience, I would probably be disappointed that the concept wasn’t successfully refined. For example, Hekseville is big, beautiful, and full of life, but it can, at times, feel emptier than expected. It actually reminds me of Toyama’s first project—the original Silent Hill—and its own world. The town of Silent Hill was detailed and decorated, with plenty of places to go exploring, but your reward was often little more than the experience of seeing something new. I hate to say that I want more “fetch quests” in Gravity Rush—because, lord almighty, that’s not what I want!—but the game could’ve found more to do with its expansive locations. There’s also a huge amount of potential in the entire gravity aspect, especially given just how polished it feels from a gameplay standpoint.

Yet while I can think of segments I’d love to have seen or expanded upon, I can’t find myself able to look negatively on Gravity Rush due to those feelings. For the small amount of points I could make that could’ve been better, I can provide 10 times as many elements that were better than I expected. Plus, this game isn’t about a simple checklist of points—it’s not a rundown of “good”s or “bad”s with an average tallied at the end. This is one of those games like Journey or Shadow of the Colossus, where what strict pieces of gameplay we could criticize or claim are missing give way to something bigger, something more important. Gravity Rush is a game, yes, but it’s also an experience—and one that boldly stands out from anything I’ve played before it. It’s fresh, it’s novel, it’s exciting, and it’ll grab hold of you and refuse to let go until you’ve seen and done everything it has to offer you.

I have a rule: A gaming system must have three titles you absolutely want to play and own—and they have to be out on store shelves—before you should consider buying it. If I were to allow myself to break that rule, it would be for something like Gravity Rush. This is a game that’ll sell you on needing to own a PlayStation Vita, and it’s the killer app that those who already own one have been waiting for.

Atelier Meruru: The Apprentice of Arland Review

Even if I’ve not played every one of its chapters, I have a long history with Gust’s Atelier series. I still remember seeing the reveal of the original Atelier Marie: The Alchemist of Salburg in Japanese gaming mags, as do I remember my shock—and delight—when the series saw its first chapter to be released in North America in 2005 with Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana.

The reason the franchise caught my eye was because it offered up something that, at the time, felt very different: gameplay based around item creation. Sure, the concept of crafting food, armor, or even people still seems a little weird even to this day—but it was a concept that made creating things cool, when so many RPGs were focused solely on how much you could destroy.

Fifteen years after Atelier Marie released in Japan, the series’ latest chapter—Atelier Meruru—doesn’t exactly shake up the basic premise. We’re once again introduced to our requisite young heroine, this time played by Merurulince Rede Arls—aka Meruru, princess of the Kingdom of Arls. Meruru idolizes the alchemist Totori (protagonist of the previous Atelier release), and as we catch up to her at the start of the game, she decides that she’ll better herself and her kingdom by learning the ways of alchemy—much to the chagrin of her father, the King.

Atelier Meruru is still a traditional RPG at its core, so you’ll find plenty of monsters, townspeople, and quests. Those quests in part lead us to the main component of the game—the creation or modification of items via alchemy. Meruru’s presented a wide variety of ingredients from the various areas of Arls; much of these materials will come from harvesting, collecting, and mining, but you’ll also be able to procure needed ingredients from shops or completing tasks. Alchemy is, at first, quite daunting. Meruru’s in-game tutorials kinda-sorta explain how to get started, and then thrust you into a workshop where you’ll definitely feel like an apprentice alchemist just learning the ropes. You’ll know that you want to make something, but not only may the exact combination of what to use to create that something be a little unclear, but what that something even is in the first place might also be a mystery to you. Soon, however, you’ll be brave enough for some good old-fashioned trial-and-error, and you’ll feel like a pro at creating a small selection of starter items. If I add this, this and this, I get that! Oh, if I use this item with this higher bar, it’ll produced this better thing!

Meruru’s alchemy system—like those in previous chapters—can feel overwhelming and more than a little obtuse at first, but it also provides a gameplay aspect with a lot of depth, an equal amount of enjoyment, and a great feeling of satisfaction. What starts as the required method for making the items needed to satisfy quests from townspeople turns into Meruru’s biggest point of interest and something you’ll find yourself sinking time into because you want to, not just because you have to for storyline progression.

Another of the things I really enjoyed about Meruru is its focus on world building. Instead of having that selfish “I want to be a better alchemist” type of motivation, Meruru has that desire to work toward the betterment of her kingdom. As you advance, you can construct or improve on certain types of new construction projects, such as a magical academy or defensive stronghold. It’s rewarding to watch as the game’s world map comes to life thanks to your hard work, and not only do these new additions to your kingdom offer up the chance to advance your abilities, but they also grow the kingdom’s population. A similar world-building element was part of Atelier Annie on the DS; while Meruru goes farther (in some respects) in these ideas, the concept is still woefully underutilized.

What about Meruru’s more traditional RPG aspects, you ask? They’re—well, they’re good, and they’re not so good. Though the cast teeters dangerously close to becoming blatant anime stereotypes at times, Meruru has an infectious appeal to her, and given time, the rest of the characters you’ll be interacting with will also grow on you. Plus, you’ve got to love the character designs going on in this game, all of which are brought to life stunningly by some of the best cell-shaded visuals you’ll see in gaming today. Every time I see a new Atelier heroine, I think she’s far more striking fashion-wise than her predecessor, only to feel the same thing again come the next round of characters. Meruru is easily my favorite lead character from the PS3 era of Atelier. That dress! That rainbow-colored cape! That slightly askew miniature crown!

Where my feelings on Meruru start to get dicey is when we get to the conversation of combat. Over the previous Atelier games, Gust has brought a few new additions—the biggest of which is the ability for teammates to either defend Meruru from attack or assist her via follow-up combos. The problem is that combat here never elevates to anything more than serviceable-but-not-stellar—and it also starts to feel terribly out of place after a while.

And that, in fact, is the biggest disappointment I have in not only Atelier Meruru, but the entire Atelier series as a whole. There’s so much potential in what exists here, and as it stands, Meruru offers up a lot of wonderful moments. And yet, Gust continues to feel like it must infuse these more stereotypical JRPG trappings into the games—trappings that actually take away more than they add.

Indeed, if Gust were willing to yank out some of these elements, the Atelier franchise could become something utterly great. Look at games like SimCity, or the somewhat similar smash indie hit Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale—ideas like world building or item crafting/selling can be the entire focus of a game, and not just one of its elements. Atelier Meruru doesn’t need random battles; its near lack of combat is why—to this day—Atelier Annie stands as my favorite Atelier chapter.

Atelier Meruru has such great concepts, characters, and charm! The fear for Gust, no doubt, would be upsetting the hardcore fans the Atelier series currently caters to. With a bit of daring and some extra creativity, games like Atelier Merurur could be less for niche otaku audiences, and something with far more universal appeal. Games like Animal Crossing have proven that such concept can and do work—and if a switch like that were to happen, maybe the Atelier series could finally stop pandering to the love-pillow-snuggling otaku crowd as it tends to do every now and then. (While I won’t spoil anything, there’s a certain situation with a certain returning character in Meruru that’s just far more creepy than cute.)

Whatever I may want the Atelier series to be at this point, what matters most is what Atelier Meruru is—and that’s an endearing tale of a young girl of nobility and her quest to perfect the ways of alchemy. Like its protagonist, Meruru can be clumsy, awkward, and unsure of itself at times—but it’s also just so damned adorable, charming, and worth getting to know.

Akai Katana Review

If you look at the Wikipedia article talking about the shoot ‘em up genre, you’ll find this entry for a specific sub-genre known as “bullet hell”:

“Bullet hell” (danmaku, literally “barrage” or “bullet curtain”) is a shoot ’em up in which the entire screen is often almost completely filled with enemy bullets. This type is also known as “curtain fire”, “manic shooters” or “maniac shooters”. This style of game originated in the mid-1990s, and is an offshoot of scrolling shooters.

What I find funny about that entry is just how casually it talks about the bullet hell genre. Oh yeah, it’s that style of shoot ‘em up where the developer throws so many bullets on screen at once that your brain locks up from overload. No big deal, really.

If you’re already completely lost, then this is going to be one heck of a ride.

When I was young, games like Akai Katana were simply called shooters. Space Invaders, Galaga, Asteroids, things like that were shooters—antagonists of some sort were on screen, and you pressed a button over and over to shoot them until they were dead. Simple.

At some point, a new breed of games came along that greedily stole the “shooter” title, and what once used to go by that name became known as the “shoot ‘em up”. Something else happened along the way, however: The games evolved into a totally different beast. They went from the for-everyone fair of the arcade titles I listed above, to a bit more serious—yet still accessible—games like R-Type, Gradius, or Sky Kid, to games like what we have today—hardcore, maniac, tough-as-nails battles for survival.

Except, even the hardcore just weren’t finding them hardcore enough. So, now we have the bullet hell shooter—where your screen can literally become a maze of enemy bullets, and survival is sometimes less about killing everything and more about keeping yourself alive.

In the interest of full disclose, I’m not one of those hardcore experts at bullet hell shoot ‘em ups. Heck, I didn’t even get seriously into them until last year, when I finally jumped in with an imported copy of Do Don Pachi Resurrection. That isn’t to say that I hadn’t previously played either your typical shoot ‘em up nor those of the bullet hell variety: From Deathsmiles also on the Xbox 360, to more competitive-type stuff like Star Solider R on WiiWare, to classic games like Gaiares on the Genesis, to modern stylish takes on the genre like Space Invaders Infinity Gene, I’ve played plenty of genre offerings. However, it was Do Don Pachi where I decided I really wanted to see if I could get good at a shoot ‘em up, bullet hell or otherwise—versus simply playing it.

There’s a huge difference between those two—playing and mastering—and that’s one of the first things you’re reminded when venturing into Akai Katana. If you go into it simply with the mindset of beating it, you’ll find yourself easily doing so with a bit of persistence (and a lot of mashing the continue button). That isn’t the aim of every new release from bullet hell masters Cave, and that’s not why a game like Akai Katana exists.

Mastery means getting into Akai Katana’s core gameplay elements—and like any good Cave shoot ‘em up, they’re interesting, deep, and seemingly impossible to understand by a mortal human being at first. I think this is one of the biggest elements that keeps a lot of players away from the bullet hell genre: That initial steep learning curve, and the fear that there’s just far too much to comprehend and remember. As somebody who’s been there before, let me tell you this: Don’t let that stop you from giving the genre a go. When I sat down with Do Don Pachi, and forced myself to really learn its ins and outs, it ended up reminding me quite a bit of Street Fighter IV. Yes, that initial intimidation level is indeed there—but you start to learn the game, piece by piece, and step by step Soon, you’ll find that those things which at first seemed impossible to master are now almost second nature.

Akai Katana’s trademark gameplay elements center around two ideas: Item collection, and proper use of your Phantom mode.

Let’s start simple. Each of the three plane choices you have have two basic modes: Defense and Attack. Defense comes from either not touching the shot button, or by only firing off shots via quick taps of the button. Attack mode, meanwhile, produces a bigger and more powerful barrage of firepower by holding the shot button down.

Energy items can be obtained in one of two ways: By either killing an enemy up close via Defense mode, or by killing an enemy via the shots coming from your partner Option. If you’re in Defense mode, energy will automatically be collected by your plane; if you’re in Attack mode, your Option can collect that energy, but it won’t be absorbed. While your Option still has that collected energy, if enemy bullets travel through those energy items, they’ll get bigger. The bigger the energy item, the more energy you’ll get from them when finally absorbed.

So far, so good?

That collected energy is used to lengthen the time you can exist in Phantom mode. When Phantom mode is engaged, your plane and your Option merge together, summoning a powerful floating warrior. When the Phantom is in Defense mode, they’re invincible—enemy bullets will bounce right off of them. When in Attack mode, their laser blasts are extremely powerful—but one hit from enemy fire, and you’ll instantly be kicked out of Phantom mode.

Phantom mode is where things get especially interesting, as those bounced bullets don’t always go away; some  fly off in an arc, soon returning in your direction. Should you bounce the bullets yet again back near an enemy, and then kill that enemy with those bullets in close proximity, the bullets turn into score-boosting gold.

This is just a simple—yes, I’m being serious when I say “simple” there—rundown of the basics of Akai Katana’s original arcade mode. The game becomes not only a test of your reactionary skills, but also your quick wit, as you have to balance when to use which mode either for survival or for taking a chance at getting a higher score. It’s a series of concepts that I understand, yet haven’t come close to fully mastering. Those concepts also make Akai Katana feel both like a tried-and-true Cave shoot ‘em up, and unlike the rest of the Cave games you may already have in your library (or, at least, may have tried before).

Then, of course, all of this gets complicated even more by the fact that this Xbox 360 release of Akai Katana comes packed with two other flavors of the game—Slash Mode and Climax Mode—each of which mixes up the rules while also adding in some new elements. None of these three mode options are so totally different as to break the feel of the game, but each does stand out on its own enough to really provide a great sense of variety and content in regards to the overall package.

All of this is just scratching the surface of what Akai Katana is. Simple in theory, complicated in practice, and visually intimidating—it is a perfect representation of the genre it calls home. When taking a look at both Cave’s roster of games, and the bullet hell family as a whole, Akai Katana is a great new chapter that will provide shoot ‘em up fans with a fresh set of challenges to conquer.

Yet what about those who aren’t bullet hell experts, but want to give the games a go? Personally, I’m more a fan of vertical-scrolling shoot ’em ups; still,  horizontal-scrolling offerings like Akai Katana may feel a bit more familiar to those more used to many of the simpler shooters from gaming’s past. As well, I think the theme here is a bit more Western-friendly than other offerings from Cave—instead of strange fantasy situations or flying robot girls, most of the game is based around a so-ridiculous-it’s-cool world of more traditional weapons of world war.

So, Akai Katana is a great choice for both longtime pros and those just getting their feet wet. Just don’t let its daunting persona keep you away—while Akai Katana is certainly another case of sink-or-swim, it’s quite a lot of fun once you’re no longer thrashing about wildly from fear of drowning.

Hidetaka Miyazaki – Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition

If you want proof of the power Japanese game developers can still wield, look no further than From Software’s Hidetaka Miyazaki. Miyazaki is the director of both Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls—two games that found audiences where some thought there’d be no audiences, and which conquered the West when some thought the games would die in those territories. Instead, it was players who died, over and over and over again as they braved the dangers of the games and enjoyed every minute of doing so.

Now, Miyazaki and his team are preparing Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition—a new version of Dark Souls crafted for Namco Bandai to satiate the legion of PC gamers who want their turn to play (and die). After a Q&A session with Miyazaki, I got the chance to sit down with the From Software director and dig a little deeper into the PC version of Dark Soul, the questions fans have, and what to call a spider’s sister.

Mollie: Shuhei Yoshida said it was a mistake to not publish Demon’s Souls in North America. Not many people originally thought such a game would be popular with players in the West, but both that and Dark Souls have found a huge following here. Have you been surprised by the reaction those games received here in this country, and were you also surprised by how many people wanted a PC version of Dark Souls to happen?

Hidetaka Miyazaki: Obviously, yes. We were surprised, and I’ve been very excited seeing the support the games have gotten—especially the petition. We had no plans at all to create a PC version, so the petition surprised us, and I’m glad that we now have this chance to give Dark Souls to those players.

Mollie: So, originally, did you think that a game like Dark Souls wouldn’t be fitting for the PC market, or was it simply something you just never considered?

Miyazaki: I had no experience making PC games, so it was simply a case of never even thinking about it.

Mollie: One of the big components of Dark Souls is its player-vs.-player elements. On the console versions, there were a few patches that came out to help prevent players cheating, or to fix bugs which caused balancing issues. When bringing the game to the PC, however, you’ve suddenly got a platform where modifying games or applying trainers or bots is far, far easier and prevalent. How do you deal with those concerns for the PC version?

Miyazaki: If I said those concerns didn’t exist, of course it’d be a lie. However, we didn’t want those concerns to stop us from bringing Dark Soul to the PC. So, for now, I guess what I can say is that I feel some anxiety over the issue. [laughs]

Mollie: One of the other questions that’s come up among PC gamers is Dark Souls being a Games For Windows Live title, as there’s quite a divide in the PC market between GFWL and those that are built on Steamworks. Did you at From Software make the decision as to what platform the PC version would be using, or was that a decision made by Namco Bandai?

Miyazaki: That was completely the decision of Namco Bandai. However, while for now we’ve only announced support for Games For Windows Live, that’s still to be determined—we might work with Steam as well. We don’t know yet.

Mollie: As much as people loved Dark Souls, a few fans did take some issue with the late-game areas—particularly locations like Lost Izalith. Was there any consideration for making actual changes to what had been created now that you were making the PC version, or did you decide that you wanted to stay true—as much as possible—to what had been created for the console versions other than the new content?

Miyazaki: The plan was for this to be a complete port from the consumer version, so I never thought about making major edits such as that.

Mollie: Then I also have to ask, if you’re saying this is a complete port—I don’t know if I’d call it a “feature”, or simply a part of the game, but in Blighttown the framerate can get a little rough at times. Can you say anything on a technical level on how the PC version of Dark Souls will run framerate-wise in sections like that?

Miyazaki: Unfortunately, at this moment, I don’t know the answer to that. [laughs]

Mollie: But, of course, you know that that’s something players are eager to know about, and potentially see from a PC version.

Miyazaki: I’m fully aware that players want such a fix not only from the PC version, but also the console versions. [laughs] I’m very sorry about that.

Mollie: In this being a new venture for you in terms of bringing the game to the PC market, was the whole idea of porting Dark Souls to the PC frightening? Was it overwhelming? Was it exciting? What feelings did you feel in now realizing that you had to make a PC version of the game?

Miyazaki: I was excited, but as I don’t have that experience in making PC games, I was also a bit afraid. I had concerns about making the PC version in terms of things like technical issues, but it was thrilling to get that chance. Having that chance to work on a platform that’s new to you is fun; it’s a challenge.

Mollie: If you think that challenge is fun, then you should also challenge yourself more by bringing Dark Souls to the Vita.

Miyazaki: That’s not my decision I’m afraid! [laughs] Personally, though, I like the Vita.

Mollie: At this point, you’ve said that you can’t give us any big details regarding the new bosses that are in the game, but can you speak at all to the inspirations your team had that brought us the new enemies we’ll be facing?

Miyazaki: I might not be directly answering your question, but we visualized the character of Artorias from the text and NPC conversations that were a part of Dark Souls. So, that visualization of who he was was part of the inspiration for making the new bosses or NPCs that will be in the PC version. For us, that was a fun and exciting part of putting together this project.

Mollie: Then, to finish up, I have two more light-hearted questions about Dark Souls. First, what was your favorite part of the game? It can be a character, a weapon, a location, anything.

Miyazaki: That’s very difficult! [laughs] As I am the director of Dark Souls, I like most of the various pieces of the game. But if I have to pick one specific thing, though, I’d probably pick the covenant system. I thought—and still think—there is real potential in that system, but even with what we did in Dark Souls, we weren’t able to reach a point with the covenants where I’m fully satisfied. Still, that was my favorite part—especially the Covenant of Solaire.

Mollie: That’s a great set up for my final question, then, as it also connects with the covenants, and one of my personal favorite parts of Dark Souls. And you might not know this, but I have to ask since I have the chance. One of the covenants deals with the daughters of chaos, and is centered around the sister of Quelaag. But—there’s a lot of discussion about what Quelaag’s sister’s name is, and nobody seems to know for certain. Can you, here today, give me a definitive answer?

Miyazaki: I can’t! [laughs] I’m sorry!

Mollie: But that was the most important question that I wanted to ask you! [laughs]

Miyazaki: I’ve actually been asked that before, but I’ve never been able to help anybody out with an answer. I apologize for that!

Dean Dodrill – Dust: An Elysian Tail

At PAX East 2012, I had the chance to get some hands-on time with Dust: An Elysian Tail—an amazing 2D side-scrolling adventure platformer coming to the Xbox Live Arcade. I also had a chance to talk to the game’s one-man development studio: Humble Hearts, aka Dean Dodrill.

Mollie: So, you had to have made some pact with the devil in order to be able to make a game like this on your own.

Dean Dodrill: [laughs]

Mollie: What did you have to give up in order to get that talent?

Dean: Well, I’ve basically given up the last three years of my life—and they’ll never come back! But, showing Dust here at PAX East—and seeing so many people being so receptive to it—has made it all worth it.

Mollie: So, that question is obviously me being a bit silly, but Dust: An Elysian Tail honestly does look extremely impressive. And I don’t want this to come out the wrong way, but—playing the game reminds me of Vanillaware and their titles, in the sense that you can tell the love and care they put into the visuals of their games. For them, it’s like, “2D is not dead, 2D is still awesome, and we’re going to show you how awesome it is.” That’s kind of the same feeling that I get from Dust.

Dean: I definitely take that as a compliment. I’m a huge fan of Vanillaware, and obviously there are some people trying to keep 2D alive. And you’re right—sometimes you just see a certain amount of love in a game, and I’m glad you see that coming through, because I’m putting my blood into Dust.

Mollie: Dust started in 2009, right?

Dean: Yup, I started it in 2009. At the time, I was an independent animator, so I was coming at the project as an artist—but I wanted to learn how to program. I picked up XNA, and thought I was going to make some small little game. The project exploded, I submitted it to Dream Build Play, and Microsoft showed interest—so Dust got picked up for the Xbox Live Arcade. Now I’m here, starting the fourth year of development.

Mollie: Before talking to you, I was playing another indie game here at the show—They Bleed Pixels—and that was also a game that started off as an Xbox Indies project, but which now also has a publishing deal of some sort. How do you feel about the trend of indie games getting picked up, and how did you feel when you first found out that Microsoft was interested in Dust?

Dean: It was mind-blowing; it was a dream come true. It’s like a validation of what you want to do. I just wanted to make a game for myself—I wanted to learn how to do it, and wanted to do something fun. The fact that Microsoft then came along and said that my project was worth something—it was incredible. And I think it’s great that publishers are picking these kinds of games up, because they’re seeing that there’s a want and a desire for these smaller games. Obviously there’s these huge games that everybody likes, but a lot of us also like older-style games. So, it’s great that the larger publishers want to show some of that stuff off.

Mollie: It’s funny that you said what you just said, because I was talking to the They Bleed Pixels guys about how it’s interested to see the platformer genre making a comeback of sorts. For a while, those types of games were almost gone, and companies didn’t seem to care about them any longer. Is it a case of having people who grew up with the NES and 16-bit consoles now making games, so they want to go back to the genres that they love? Or is it more of just a cyclical thing? Why are we seeing this resurrection of the old-school platformer?

Dean: You know, I think it’s both. Obviously a lot of us grew up with that stuff, and we love that style of game. But I think it’s also kind of fresh for certain people. Since practically every game now is three-dimensional, you see a game that’s hand painted—you look at something like Bastion with its backgrounds—and it stands out. It pops, and I think some people are picking up on that. It’s like when somebody comes along and makes a black & white film—half the people think it’s great and it’s a callback, while the other half see it as an interesting stylistic choice. So really, in the end, it’s that stylistic choice. With the combat and the gameplay, sure, you could find that in some kind of big-budget 3D game, but why not have it in a side-scroller?

Mollie: It is funny, because I remember back on the Genesis when Sega did Virtua Racing, and they had a chip in the cartridge to do rudimentary 3D visuals. Back in that era, seeing those 3D graphics was so exciting, because they were so different than the 2D graphics we were used to. But now, it’s reversed—and now what’s different and exciting are games with 2D visuals. What’s also funny is when I play Dust, it makes me think back to the days of game consoles before 3D graphics, and what we thought the future would be like for gaming. We had this belief that 2D was just going to keep going and going, and get more details and more visually complex. Games like Dust, or what Vanillaware does, those were what we thought the future of gaming was going to be.

Dean: Totally. I think for a lot of us, we all love 3D games, but we didn’t know that 2D games were going to die. We thought with the technological advances, 2D games were going to look better and better. But they just kind of stopped, and it was a real shame. Now, though, the technology is really great, and with a game like Dust I can hand paint the visuals, and fully animate it—the tech is there to show that stuff off. It’s a shame, though, that not many other people are doing games like that. So, when you see something from Vanillaware, or when you see Dust, it’s refreshing.

Mollie: Another thing I found interesting about Dust is that you’ve put some real depth into it. From the item selection, to weapon upgrades, and also in the moves set—how do you balance between a game that has enough depth that it stays interesting over the course of the entire game, and avoiding giving too much to players for this style of game?

Dean: It’s definitely an interesting mix. Being in an open-world game like a Castlevania, it’ll have towns and NPCs and side quests and such, but then having this crazy combat—I think it’s like if you give the player a bunch of different things, if you give them this big, huge toy to play with, maybe for a while they’ll want to start going crazy and all Ninja Gaiden on stuff. But then maybe they want to take it easy for a little while and just want to do some side quests and talk to people. I’m a big fan of that style of game—giving players a lot of variety.

Mollie: Other than the music and sound effects—who is doing the audio again, by the way?

Dean: I have a very awesome group of guys named HyperDuck SoundWorks who are out in Ireland, and they’ve done some amazing stuff. And then I’ve got some additional music done by an old friend, Alex Brandon—he did the original Dues Ex and the original Unreals, so he’s got some background in gaming. These guys are just friends of mine who have been doing some fantastic work.

Mollie: So other than that, you’re doing the entire game yourself?

Dean: That is correct.

Mollie: I mean, did you consider that before starting a project like Dust? I don’t know how the game originally started in terms of scale and scope, but from the time I spent playing it, I cannot imagine thinking that I’m going to make a game like that all on my own. What got you to do this in the first place?

Dean: I would say a kind of stupidity. [laughs] Originally it was supposed to be small. When I first started to program, I thought, “You know, I’m going to make a game like an NES-style Castlevania with pixel art, and it’s going to be simple.” I had these really basic ideas, but it just kept getting bigger and bigger. I thought, “Well, the Xbox 360 is powerful, I could put in actual painted backgrounds, and I have all of this memory I could play with.” I’m not really great at budgeting time—before I was always announcing new release dates, so that’s kind of why I went dark—but now that I’m in the final year of development, it’s exciting to see that people are so receptive.

Mollie: So, you know, on the topic of Dust‘s art style, there’s a topic that I want to bring up that’s mentioned all of the time whenever the game is talked about—the topic of Dust‘s “furry” style. There’s this whole complex argument about human characters vs. non-human characters, what is and isn’t furry, are Disney movies furry, and it all gets very crazy sometimes. From your perspective, what were you wanting to do with Dust in terms of art and character styles?

Dean: Yeah, that was definitely a big issue when I first announced the game. I like the anthropomorphic art style—you grow up with that stuff in cartoons , and it’s nice to have a little variety when you have humans in almost every other game. When I was learning animation, obviously you learn to animate humans, and that’s fun—but it’s very technical, and I’d almost rather be animating silverware or animals or something. When I started working on Dust, I thought that animals would let me do certain expression and certain motions that would look really great, and which might look funny if they were instead given to a human. With an animal character, I can push things a little further. And also, there was that thought of it being nice to have something different than most of the other stuff out there. I know some people hate it—and there’s definitely a stigma attached to animal characters which has kind of grown out from the internet—but really, it seems like it’s calming down. As people play the game, I think they realize that it’s not pandering to any one person. It’s just a game that looks cool, and if you hate the art style, then I can’t do anything for you. I don’t let it bother me too much, though it did bother me a bit when I started.

Mollie: What do you think the divide is between the people who are dead-set on not playing Dust because of that style, and those who are now more interesting in playing due to a style that makes it stand out from other games?

Dean: What’s interesting is, you’re kind of seeing that now with anime-style characters. There’s some people who say, “I just won’t play that, because that character looks like an anime.” That seems crazy to me, because I love all art styles. If I’m playing Mass Effect or if I’m playing some JRPG, I don’t care what the characters look like, and I’m kind of appalled that it bothers some people that much.

Mollie: It reminds me of the games Tale Concerto on the PS1, and now Solatorobo on the DS. They’re really deep, emotionally expressive games, yet there are people who are like, “I won’t play this because I have to play as a dog.” But, it’s not about being a dog—that was just the stylistic choice. It was done for a reason, but it wasn’t some “furry agenda” or something.

Dean: Definitely. It’s definitely nothing like that. Some people just want to look like themselves in a game, and I can understand that. Me? I don’t want to look like myself in a game. I’m playing a game to escape, and if my character is some 14-year-old girl doing this crazy stuff, that’s something different. Well, hold on—now people are going to start saying things about me for that comment. That was probably a bad example! [laughs]

Mollie: No, no, I know what you’re saying! [laughs] It’s a chance to play as characters that give you a different perspective on storylines and worlds and things like that.

Dean: Yeah. You want to experience someone’s story. If you’re playing, say, Elder Scrolls, you’re experiencing your story. But then sometimes you want to play somebody else’s story. You want a crafted experience, and a world like that gives you a unique opportunity.

Mollie: Can you talk at all about how big of a game Dust is going to be? I don’t know if there’s what you would call “stages” or whatever, but how big of an experience will the game be?

Dean: It’s going to be a pretty big open world. There’s a world map—and you’ll have different regions that you can go to. Being a love letter to old games, you can kind of guess what the themes of those regions are going to be; what I’m showing here at PAX East is the cemetery-style area. I haven’t really timed Dust in terms of playtime—because when I play it myself I’m sort of speed running it—but I think we’re looking at a 6~8 hour game. Maybe longer. I thought this demo was going to play for five minutes, and people have been playing for 15~20 minutes—so I guess I’m not good at judging that. But it is going to be a big RPG. There’s a main quest, there’s going to be a ton of sidequests which you don’t have to do, if people want to dig there’s going to be a lot of secrets—it’s going to be a pretty full-blown game. There’s tons of dialog, tons of characters that speak, all voiced over—it’s going to be big.

Mollie: So, recently, there’s been a lot of games with “dust” in their titles. Have you ever thought that your name might not have ended up being the best choice? [laughs] Or did you decided that that’s the name, that’s that, and you’re going to stand firm?

Dean: I kind of had to, yeah! I had to put my foot down, because when I started Dust four years ago, I named it—because there’s a story related to it, and the character’s name is Dust—and I thought okay, this is cool, this is kind of a unique name. And then, all of a sudden, all of these other games came out. Every time someone would announce another game, there’d be this mass confusion, and I’d just have to go dark again. It seems like now it’s kind of settled down though—the dust has settled, if you will—and I can finally start talking about the game. And thankfully, I think it’s standing out enough that people aren’t too worried about the name

Mollie: So do you have a solid date for the Dust‘s release at this point?

Dean: I do not. The game is going to be finished this year, but what that means as far as release is up to Microsoft. It’s up in the air.

Mollie: Well then, finally, what one thing would you like people to most know about Dust as far as what they’ll experience when they finally play the game, or what you’re hoping they’ll experience?

Dean: I made a game that I wanted to play. I made a game that I’m not seeing other people make, and I’m combining a bunch of genres that I love—and the fact that people are receiving it is exciting to me, because I want other players to play Dust and say, “You know, I love these genres of games, so it’s cool to see them put together into this thing.”

Silent Hill Downpour Review

It’s games like Silent Hill Downpour that make people like me hate attaching scores to reviews.

Back many years ago, I reviewed another survivor horror adventure: A PlayStation 2 release called Rule of Rose. So many of the game’s core concepts were utterly terrible—and yet, its story, its characters, its scenarios, its atmosphere, and its music were all amazing in their owns special ways. (In fact, I had the chance to speak to the man responsible for most of those very elements—Yoshiro Kimura—at GDC, and he didn’t hesitate to agree with the game’s failings.) When it came time to review Rule of Rose and give it a final score, I was utterly torn. My head told me that I couldn’t give it any sort of decent grade, because it wasn’t a great game; at the same time, my heart begged me to do the right thing and give it a higher score, because it was a fantastic experience.

Silent Hill Downpour isn’t quite the mess that Rule of Rose was—and yet, because of it, I find myself in a very similar predicament.

The first official launch of the Silent Hill franchise for HD consoles was 2008’s Silent Hill Homecoming. Unfortunately, for all of the pent-up demand that existed for a new chapter of the series to be released for current-gen consoles, Homecoming was seen as a huge disappointment by fans and critics alike. After a few play-throughs, the game did end up somewhat growing on me—but it was still painfully obvious that everything about it felt like an uninspired and by-the-books attempt at making a major new Silent Hill chapter via a Western developer.

A year later, we got Silent Hill: Shattered Memories—a game which would become hugely divisive among the community. Shattered Memories took gigantic risks, eschewing game-spanning combat for segments where protagonist Harry Mason had no option but to run from his foes—and then focusing the rest of its efforts around exploration, story revelation, and character drama. The ideas presented in Shattered Memories were daring and dramatic, but the end result was a project which—for me—utterly failed to present or understand most of the things I as a fan was wanting from the game (and the series as a whole).

It’s important to remember those two games, because they set up the world that Downpour found itself in: That of being seen almost a restart for developing a high-definition Silent Hill, and a return to the more traditional ideas of the franchise after the previous game’s radical shift.

Silent Hill Downpour has problems—the most glaring of which is nearly everything centered around its combat offerings. Shattered Memories tried to answer complaints of Homecoming’s combat-heavy gameplay by getting rid of it entirely, but that idea never panned out as it should have. Did that experiment at least lead to better combat concepts here in Downpour? Sadly, no—though the game does throw far fewer encounters at us than I was first expecting. Unfortunately, when lead protagonist Murphy Pendleton picks up a melee weapon and chases after the closest hell spawn, attacking feel awkward and just never quite right, and you’ll find yourself wishing for options like better lock-on and the ability to side step.

Really, though—combat has always been mediocre at best in the Silent Hill series. Here, it would be excusable if at least what you were fighting was fun. Downpour suffers from a horrible lack of enemy offerings; outside of a couple of bosses, you’ll only ever encounter five different kinds of standard monsters in your travels through Silent Hill. Making this worse is that with one notable exception—the very cleverly designed Dolls—they’re all not only boring in concept, but too individually styled to be reused as often as they are. Previous chapters of the series knew to have monsters that looked more generic, so that seeing them over and over wouldn’t feel like you were running into the exact same individual enemy. In Downpour, it only takes until the second time you see the game’s very first demon to be bored of her.

And then there’s the breakable weapons. Oh, breakable weapons—how I hate you. There are few and very select times when this concept works in gaming, and Silent Hill is not one of those times. Ever since its beginnings, the series has been about a character being in a terrible situation with little hope and few things to rely on. One of those things that players could rely on, however, has been weapons. From the fire ax in the original Silent Hill, to Heather’s slightly-out-of-place-yet-still-awesome beam sword in Silent Hill 3, those weapons you found during your travels became like friends you could count on when no human was around to provide you that comfort.

I understand the concept behind breakable weapons: Never knowing when a weapon will suddenly become useless is supposed to help raise that feeling of helplessness inside of us. Except, it doesn’t—it only makes the fires of frustration burn stronger and hotter. To be fair to Downpour, a wide selection of weapons are almost always provided—with the way they’re offered to the player usually being very ingenious and fitting to the current surroundings—and the actual variety in what you can pick up and use is wonderfully diverse. Still, the idea doesn’t work. When a piece of wood breaks after continually using it to smash horrific monstrosities over the head, that I can accept; when the same situation causes a fire axe to snap in two, the ridiculousness of the situation becomes apparent. I hated the concept in Silent Hill 4, I hated it in Silent Hill Origins, and I still hate it here.

Another of Downpour’s biggest annoyances comes once again from misguided attempts at “creating fear”, and is itself a carry-over from Shattered Memories. As mentioned earlier in this review, in that game players had no choice but to make a desperate sprint for freedom once the town froze over and transformed into its nightmare self. Due to having no recourse for dealing with enemies—combined with their relentless pursuit of Harry—players would often find themselves with little to no time to actually enjoy exploring that icy world. In Downpour, that concept of forcing the player to run from imminent danger returns, but this time it’s only a portion of the game’s nightmare segments. That reduced important on the “flee or die” idea makes these sections more tolerable, but they still feel completely unnecessary and—again—far more frustrating than fear-inducing.

The rest of your encounters with nightmare Silent Hill are shockingly short in comparison to the overall time you’ll be spending with the game. What once used to be almost half of the complete Silent Hill experience now feels like almost an afterthought, and what you will encounter can feel a little over-designed and just too—well, Western. That may seem like an unfair complaint to lodge give that Downpour indeed is Western-developed, but one of Silent Hill‘s major points of attraction so long ago was that its horror was more Japanese; more psychological, more finely crafted, more thoughtful in design and execution. Downpour is less The Ring and more The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, with certain elements or sections coming off as heavy-handed or cheesy given what this series was once doing.

That lack of finesse isn’t uncommon in Downpour. When switching to a ranged weapon, Murphy (very annoyingly) drops his current melee weapon to the ground. The game is based around auto-saves, but actual full saves are only recorded after key events or location changes—and with players never really being sure which kind of save has happened after “Saving…” popped up on screen, you can easily find yourself quitting the game, only to come back later and be missing progress you thought had been recorded. Bringing up your collection of maps will be something you’ll need to do constantly, yet actually getting to them takes far too many steps. There’s also a strange unbalance between what is—and isn’t—marked on your map, which is especially annoying after Shattered Memories allowed players to make personalized notes themselves. A variety of characters are introduced—and then some of them just seem to completely disappear without any real resolution. Really, I could go on.

And then there’s the game’s engine. Silent Hill Downpour was built using Unreal Engine, a piece of middleware whose performance always seems to heavily rely on the hands it currently finds itself in. Previous to Downpour, developer Vatra had only made one other game (2011’s Rush’n Attack: Ex-patriot)—and that fact shows. One moment, everything will be running along fine, and then the next, screen tearing and framerate issues will become such a factor that it’s shocking. It doesn’t even seem to always be a case of too many things going on; I had countless times where all that was on screen was Murphy and the empty streets of Silent Hill, and the simple act of turning the camera to look another way caused the framerate to momentarily dip into what I’d swear was single digits.

So—I’ve just spent a decent chunk of this review saying how Downpour’s combat sucks, its monsters are boring, its weapon system is terrible, its nightmare sections are lackluster, and the very engine the game is built upon is at times a complete mess. And now, in a very M. Night Shyamalan-esque twist, I’m going to tell you how none of that stops Downpour from being one of the most exciting things to happen to the Silent Hill series since Silent Hill 2.

For a personal podcast I do every week, last year my co-host and I put together lists for our 50 favorite video games of all time. At the very top of that list sat the original Silent Hill—a spot it had always held for me since its release 12 years earlier. As of now, it still sits in that #1 spot, and each passing year convinces me just a little bit more that it will never be bumped from that position. To say that Silent Hill means a lot to me is an absolute understatement, and my passion for the series is only matched by my at times ridiculous expectations for any new chapter added to it. Where as most fans of the franchise consider Silent Hill 3 to be a beloved release, I could provide a long list of complaints I have with it; thought I now consider it to be a timeless classic, I was even disappointed with Silent Hill 2 after my first play-through.

After time spend with Silent Hill Downpour at last year’s E3, I was sure that I knew what to expect from the final product: Another misguided attempt by the West to continue on a series that might really be better off being put out to pasture. And yet, despite all of its faults and failings, this game has completely won my heart.

Silent Hill has always been a series about exploration. Not just in a general “figure out where to go next” sense, but also in the exploration of ideas, emotions, fear, and humanity. However, that first part—actual, old-school exploration—has seemed to become less of a priority as the series has gone on. I’ve hated the change, because one of my biggest pleasures in the original Silent Hill came from wandering the streets of the town. Checking down alleyways, reading store names, venturing into residential areas or commerce parks, it was elements like those that made me feel as if I was in actual small-town USA, versus just a studio back lot set up for the purposes of staging a video game.

While Downpour may not be a fully open-world experience, the Silent Hill we’re let loose in here feels like a return to a hometown I’ve not been able to visit for many years. The streets of this piece of Silent Hill set on the southeastern shores of Toluca Lake may be eerily desolate and decaying, yet they’re teeming with life when it comes to personality and architecture and places for the player to poke around in. Simply traveling them is an exceptionally enjoyable experience, but the true power of the world that’s been created here begins to be revealed once you journey off of the path that takes you to the next major step for storyline advancement. Exploration here isn’t just encouraged, it’s rewarded—in the form of side-quests that not only aren’t required for beating the game, but which also will never be revealed to you unless you’re keeping your eyes open for them.

Side quests run hot or cold in gaming. When used as a crutch to prop up an under-developed game, they can infuriate us. Here, they are ways for us to interact with and learn more about Silent Hill than the base storyline has the ability to show us. For that, they’re fascinating. In fact, it is these side quests when Downpour is at its most enthralling. I think it’s that freedom of being away from feeling the requirements of offering the “basics” of the game; here, Murphy’s personal growth isn’t at stake, players don’t need to be satiated with X amount of encounters or interaction, and one-shot concepts or rules can be allowed to surface.

It’s hard for me to tell you what makes these optional pieces of Downpour so fascinating without getting into spoiler territory, but I found myself wishing that the uniqueness present in them had also been expressed in the main portion of the game. There’s one particular quest that I’ll simply reference as “turn back time”, and the foe you are faced with here—a one-shot encounter that never happens again—displays more creativity than Downpour’s entire roster of monsters combined. Experiences like this are what Silent Hill needs to be more of, not meaningless encounters that lose their impact due to over-exposure. Games like Shadow of the Colossus show us just how emotional and enthralling video games can be when every encounter, every battle, every kill have real weight to them. Imagine a Silent Hill where you run into threats far less often, but when you do, you simply have no idea what you’ll be facing—or the danger they’ll pose.

Hope for the franchise also shows through in other ways. Yes, at times Downpour indeed does feel like B-movie slasher shlock—and then it’ll do something completely brilliant that’ll leave you in awe. It could be something small, like the little touches in a room’s design, or a particular comment one of the city’s residents makes. Other times, it’ll be something of far bigger value—a specific storyline twist, a previously-teased connection finally being made, or the solution to the puzzle that you just solved.

If exploration is one of the three core tenants of the Silent Hill series, another is puzzles—and here, Downpour also excels. This trademark of the survival horror genre has had its ups and downs across the various chapters of the franchise, but in Downpour, not only are they plentiful, but they’re also satisfying. You’ll find no silly Resident Evil-style unlocking of doors with chess pieces—puzzles are natural parts of their environments, built using real-world concepts and materials, and solutions are completely logical yet often very creative. Not only may Downpour be the most fun I’ve had puzzle-solving up to this point via a Silent Hill game, but its puzzles may also be the most consistently crafted selection the genre has ever seen.

That’s a bold statement to make—but it’s also one I’ve come to feel comfortable with making. I said earlier that this was the first time since Silent Hill 2 that I’ve truly been excited for the Silent Hill franchise, and that’s the absolute truth. Yes, Silent Hill Downpour is ridiculously terrible in some ways, and utterly mediocre in others. And yet, at the same time, it’s beautiful, it’s meaningful, it’s emotional, it’s inspired, and most of all, it’s enjoyable. The game’s failings tried as hard as they could to stop me from enjoying Downpour, but they were never once successful. No matter how bad combat may have been, or how much the game’s engine stuttered and struggled, or how much stupid design choices made me want to strangle somebody, I never once stopped wanting to play.

Sure, part of that was because I was seeing a game that made me giddy with hope about how amazing a follow-up to Downpour could be—but more than wishing for what might come, I was enjoying what I had been given. I keep going back an forth on how much of the game would need to be yanked out or drastically changed in order to make Downpour what it should have been. 25%? 30%? 35%? More?

Whatever the answer, what I do know is this: Silent Hill Downpour—for all of the reasons I could give you to not play it—is a game that you absolutely should play. Other people may tell you it’s horribly flawed or frustrating, and they’re right. However, when you come to the acceptance that we may never have a Japanese-developed Silent Hill title ever again, and once you’ve faced Downpour’s gameplay demons and decided that you’re not going to let them win, you’ll find a journey that is unquestionably worth going on. Just like Rule of Rose so many years ago, I can’t bring myself to give this game the score my heart would like to give it; I also cannot ignore everything it does do right, giving it a score that refuses to embrace its positives while still admitting its negatives.

For the first time in a long time, my heart truly believes that there’s still hope for Silent Hill. Given the fact that, at this point, I look like an abused wife after all this series has put me through, I keep telling myself not to get my hopes up—and yet, after playing Downpour, I just can’t help it.

I just hope that the powers that be—and you know who you are—are willing to listen. If they are, then this series could have a real future again.

Yoshinori Ono – Street Fighter X Tekken

The launch of Street Fighter X Tekken is now upon us, and if there’s one name that fans—and critics—think of when they think of the game, that name is Yoshinori Ono. The always lively and outspoken Capcom producer has become the face—as well as the father—of the revival of fighting games as his parent company, having helmed both Street Fighter X Tekken and Street Fighter IV.

In the past six months, I’ve found myself sitting down to chat with Ono-san not once, but three times. The first time was back at Tokyo Game Show 2011, when I dedicated our 25 minutes of interview time talking about the topic of one of Capcom’s most controversial and discussed characters, Poison. Then, in these final days leading up to Street Fighter X Tekken being completed, I had the opportunity to speak to him on two different occasions—the most recent of which was at last week’s launch party for the game.

So, without further ado, here are my two conversation with Yoshinori Ono.

Mollie: So, of course, the most talked-about aspects of Street Fighter X Tekken in the community have been Pandora mode and the Gems system. I know, in talking with you, you’ve said that you’ve gotten a wide variety of responses on these ideas. Personally, I think fighting game fans can be—well, almost a bit delicate. They’re used to certain ways of doing things, certain ideas, and even small changes that shake that up can cause havoc. When you were putting together planning for the game based around ideas like these, did you know the reaction you’d get, or were you surprised?

Yoshinori Ono: When we put together the features in the game, we knew that there’d be some level of community feedback, and that there’d be some sort of negative reaction. But, we thought that when players got their hands on the game, a lot of those opinions would change. So we hope that from now on, players can play Street Fighter X Tekken more, and see the deep level of the system. I know with Pandora mode, a lot of people were saying it was really useless, or asking why we would ever put it in. But there’s some really amazing things you can do with Pandora mode, things which we think players will be able to find out more once they get the game.

I know when the game was first announced, Pandora mode looked like something you might just do at the end of a match as a last-ditch effort. You know, that kind of wondering of why you’d do it for seemingly no reason. But what we want to show players is how it’s useful as a strategy. Some players might be about to build strategies around the Pandora mode itself. Some of the Gems in the game activate only when you’re in Pandora mode, so if a player wants to try that kind of counter-attacking at the very last moment, and pull a 360 in the match, it’s possible if that’s how they want to play.

Mollie: I think one interesting element is that fighting games, for a long time, have kind of been the same thing. Same basic principle, character versus character, maybe pulling off a super move or special attack. New games come along, and they may have one major new feature, like Street Fighter III did with parries. I feel like there is this danger of fighting games not advancing or evolving, but then you have games like Street Fighter X Tekken that try to bring a lot of new ideas, and you see that pushback from fans. Is this what the fighting game genre needs—more ideas like this? Or are going with crazier ideas something only proper to try for side projects? Like, would you do this with Street Fighter V?

Ono: [laughs]

It’s like you said, it’s kind of a balancing act. What we want to do with the genre is expand it; we want to grow it. We could do the same thing over and over, and that’s fine, because fighting games have seemed to make a comeback in recent years. Us, as Capcom, we could just take a hands-off approach, but we do feel some responsibility as one of the leaders in the genre to kind of push it in a direction we feel would be beneficial. Not only to the community, but players as well. With previous games, it was kind of an offline world, where players wouldn’t get information as fast—and the way that people are connected nowadays is just so different.

So, when we announce a new feature, it’s almost instantly criticized in one way or another—but that’s just something that we have to deal with as times change. We do intent to keep supporting the community through funds or the equipment that they need, because we want to bring everything together as well as we can through new ideas. However, doing so while still catering to that hardcore demographic which you mentioned can be sort of sensitive toward certain issues.

Mollie: Do you think that the argument fans have had over Gems wouldn’t be as loud if you could play online without them? I know that you’re strongly behind the idea of them being a big part of the game, and that this is what Street Fighter X Tekken is and the Gems aren’t a side feature, but I think part of that hardcore community does want them to be an option. Do you think not giving them that option caused the community to be more vocal?

Ono: The way I see it, we want players to play the game, yet we had this certain vision in mind when we created the game. Gems were definitely a part of that, because we want to bring the genre into this new place where it hasn’t gone before. So, yeah, we could have made it an option to not use Gems online, but we don’t want players to approach it as, “Oh I don’t like them, so I’m not going to deal with them at all.”

Because, really, we did have a certain vision in mind when putting the game together. So we’re presenting our ideas, and would like players to give it a try. That’s all we’re asking. I think that once you get your hands on Street Fighter X Tekken, once you’ve put enough time into it to really understand what our vision was, you’ll see why we made the decisions we did.

Of course, with Street Fighter X Tekken, you only need to buy this one disc to enjoy the game for a long time. We’re not going to sell another disc version of the game, so if we do any kind of updates or patches, it’ll all be done properly through DLC. We don’t want users to be afraid to accept these kinds of new changes. We want them to be as open-minded as possible when it comes to new features like these.

We definitely pay attention to community concerns, so it’s not like we don’t hear what the reactions are. We do, and we know. But we’ve created this kind of rulebook for Street Fighter X Tekken, one which requires you to have these things. To use to a baseball analogy, you need to have a glove, shoes, bat, things like that. Sure, you don’t need to have those things—you can play the game without shoes, and you don’t need to have a glove to catch the ball. But we think that’s the best way to play the game, so that’s why we made the decision.

If players—after putting time into the game—eventually think it is better to play without the glove, and it’s better to run with no shoes, we’re going to be monitoring the community as it goes along. So don’t think that we’re releasing it and just leaving it to the lions. We’re going to be supporting Street Fighter X Tekken for as long as we can, and we want players to enjoy it. If there’s balance changes that need to be done, we’ll do that. We’re going to be constantly seeing how the community is reacting, and we’ll make changes that need to be made.

Mollie: Speaking of that community aspect and their sometimes harsh criticisms, I was talking a while back to some of the people working on Silent Hill. That’s another very outspoken community, and I asked them if they’d rather have those fans be very negative in their comments, or have them say nothing at all. Since you’re somebody who deals so closely with a similar type of fan, how would you answer that same question?

Ono: From my perspective, I definitely think it’s better to hear something, no matter if it’s players telling me that they’re happy, or they’re saying “f**k you” to me. [laughs] It means that we’re engaging the fans, and at least we have some kind of interaction going on. The worse thing that can happen is that there’s no noise at all.

Though I do think that, out of all of the game creators in the world, I receive the most “f**k you”s out of anybody. [laughs] Maybe I’m the most hated creator around the world—but I do get just as many good comments as I do bad ones.

I think part of this is because fighting games are really organic. At Capcom, we basically prepare the tools and the platform for players to express themselves through their gameplay, which is a different kind of game from a series like Silent Hill. For these kinds of games, it’s especially important to hear all of that feedback from the community, be it good or bad.

Mollie: Personally, in terms of roster choices, I wanted Poison—so it didn’t take long to make me happy! Sure, I really wanted her for Street Fighter IV, but at least I get her here. Beyond that, I was never a huge Street Fighter II fan—I was always much more into Street Fighter Alpha. So when, in the process of announcing the roster for this game, I hear characters like Balrog of Vega coming back, to me I think I’d rather have Karin or Birdie from Alpha, or even Alex from Street Fighter III.

Ono: How about Eagle? [laughs]

Mollie: [Uncertain look]

Ono: Noooo?! [laughs] But you said you were an Alpha fan!

Mollie: I’m sorry!

Ono: [laughs]

Mollie: How do you balance what fans want and what makes sense for the game in terms of making the choice of which characters to include?

Ono: It’s definitely tough as you know, and there’s a lot of people who have a lot of opinions. But for Street Fighter X Tekken in particular, we wanted to get as many people to play as possible, so we did listen to the fans a lot in terms of who would make the ultimate roster for an all-star fighting game. So, we came up with this roster of characters by going by the order of popularity that we think fans would want. Even so, some people might wonder where’s this character or that character. Although we did mention that there’s only going to be one disc, there’s obviously always possibilities in the future for other characters like that—though I’m not saying anything certain.

(Note: This part of the discussion came before the 12 characters were announced for the Vita version, and before it was understood that there were additional DLC characters included in the release of Street Fighter X Tekken.)

So, we did listen to the fans a lot when it came to characters. Well, except that I can say for certain that you won’t see Twelve. [laughs] I’ll say that straight out, so sorry Twelve fans. No Twelve supports came to his defense on Twitter, so I figured that he must not have any fans out there. [laughs] It’s kind of sad.

Mollie: I think, among people I know, the biggest requests I was hearing was Karin and Elena, because they’re two characters really deserving of another chance to shine.

Ono: We do know what people are saying, trust me. [laughs]

Mollie: Whose voices are louder—Capcom fans, or Tekken fans?

Ono: Capcom fans, definitely. They’re more aggressive, they say harsher things, they definitely let their opinions be heard—so I definitely know who they do or don’t want. For the Tekken community, it was almost the opposite: I had to actively go out and ask that community what their opinions were. It was really interesting to see the difference between the two communities, where the Capcom fans are so up-front and loud, while Tekken fans are more reserved.

At one point I went to Germany, and at an event we were handing out t-shirts to both groups of fans. The Tekken fans lined up nicely and were well mannered, while the Capcom fans were clawing over each other, saying things like, “No, that’s my t-shirt! My t-shirt!” [laughs]

So I thought to myself, “Wow, these communities are the same all over the world!”

Mollie: Since you work for Capcom, doesn’t that make you happy that your fans are that passionate?

Ono: Absolutely! I love those passionate fans. Rather than somebody who’s really well-mannered, I want to see a fan who loves the game so much that he hides his t-shirt and—in order to get another one—is like, “Oh I didn’t get a shirt!” That’s the kind of fans I like.

Mollie: It had to be sort of a daunting task trying to bring together the two very different worlds of Street Fighter and Tekken. I was a huge fan of Capcom vs. SNK when it hit back in the day, but those were two fighting systems that had a lot of inherent similarities. Here, the game styles had far, far fewer similar points. What was the biggest hurdle in figuring out how to make this idea work?

Ono: For Capcom vs. SNK, that was a game where they obviously were both 2D franchises, and we managed to mix them pretty well together. For Tekken and Street Fighter, they’re both fighting games in the broadest sense of the word. They’re very, very different.

So, we tried to take our knowledge of Street Fighter, and our extensive knowledge of fighting games from over the years, and we built basically the base. We then tried to take the Tekken characters from their world—while keeping that Tekken flavor and those distinct characteristics—and make them fit in the same field as these Street Fighter characters. Tekken fans who come and play the game will say, “Well, maybe this doesn’t really feel like Tekken.” But if you give them five, ten minutes with the characters, they’ll be able to get the sense that, wow, this is how Xiaoyu is in Tekken, or this is what Hwoarang is like in Tekken.

Will they completely say it’s a Tekken game? No, of course not, because it isn’t. But it’s not a Street Fighter game either. It’s really kind of a combination of the two to make something brand new—that’s how we look at it.

Mollie: So, in all of the work your team has put into Street Fighter X Tekken, and in thinking about the future of fighting games you might make from here, what’s the biggest thing you’ve learned during the game’s development?

Ono: I’ve learned a lot of things on this project. Like, when we talk about dealing with the community, we’ve tried our best to foster the community up until now—but we realize we’ve got a lot more work to do. As to what we can do, I can’t even imagine. I just want to concentrate on getting everything with this game done, getting the Vita version done, and I then really want to take a break! When it comes to next year’s E3, ask me again, and maybe I’ll have a better answer for you. [laughs]

It’s funny, because people are already asking me on Twitter and Facebook about Street Fighter V, and when it’s coming out. I can’t even think about such things yet! [laughs] I just want to get everything with this game squared away first.

Mollie: I’m not sure if you’re familiar with it, but there’s a fighting game called Skullgirls coming out, and it’s only going to be available as a digital download. What do you think about the idea of a fighting game going that route?

Ono: I’ve definitely heard about it. With regards to selling games purely as downloadable content, I think it’s a good business model for independent developers. It means that they have their head in the right place about it being online. If you sell something as a download, you’ve already kind of guaranteed that it’ll be playable online. In this day and age, with online games becoming so much more important, I think that’s a great thing.

As well, without having those physical discs, they needn’t worry about having inventory or shipping or things like that, so they’re able to reduce their overhead costs and focus on developing the actual game. By keeping those costs low, they’re able to try new things. Here at Capcom, we don’t really have that many of those cost issues to worry about, but it’s good for those independent developers to get their game out to a larger audience. All they need to worry about is the advertising, and then basically the sales of the game. When I talked to the Skullgirls guys themselves, I told them this—that it’s a really good model for them.

I do think there’s some negatives to being downloadable-only though. It’ll be harder to get a more casual audience to even know about your game if you don’t have it sitting there on the shelf of a store. So, they’re definitely limited in the kind of advertising you can do. You could have the greatest game in the world, but if nobody knows about it, they’re not going to be able to play it and enjoy it—which would be a shame.

For a case like Skullgirls, though, I think they made the right decision to go the download route.

Mollie: I think it’s a good idea for smaller projects, or games less about a sure-fire hit and more about doing something for the fans. So, you know, maybe you could do that for Darkstalkers.

Ono: Do you really think I could get away with making Darkstalkers a small download-only project? [laughs] The fans at Comic-Con would definitely be up in arms if that’s all I did! They wouldn’t let me go home if I said, “Hey, there’s a new Darkstalkers game, and it’s a small download-only game.”

Mollie: When I was talking to Seth Killian before, I told him that I thought the biggest factor in the revival of fighting games was online. I grew up as a hardcore SNK fan, and I owned a Neo Geo, but I usually had nobody to play against. So, I think online is the biggest advancement to come to fighting games, and in Street Fighter X Tekken, you’re really supporting that online component. What do you think online has brought to fighting games?

Ono: I think one of the key words for fighting games now is “social networks.” That, and maybe “social interactions.”

Fighting games are a genre that come from people interacting with each other. Players facing off one on one, I’m fighting with this guy, I do my move and see how he reacts, things like that. It’s kind of communication in that way. So online has been able to bring people together in a way that’s never been done before beyond in arcades. That’s where fighting games have their roots—people gathering around those arcade machines. If you think of an awesome combo, it’s great, because you can show other people what you’ve come up with.

So, being able to have the online capabilities to bring people together has been a huge boon for the fighting game community, and fighting games in general. We’ve done a lot of work for Street Fighter X Tekken, based on what we’ve learned with Street Fighter IV, and we’re going to improve the online experience as best we can with any future products that we do.

And anything Seth said in his response, I bet it came from me! [laughs]

Mollie: In the lead up to the release of Street Fighter X Tekken, there’s one thing that just stuck in my head that I found kind of funny. I saw the video with Juri fighting Xiaoyu, and in the video, Xiaoyu was speaking Japanese, and Juri was speaking English. But Juri is Korean, and Xiaoyu is Chinese. Do you ever think, in a Capcom fighting game, we can have characters speak their own languages?

Ono: For the promotional videos, we decided that Street Fighter characters would speak the language of the territory that that video was made for. So, for those in America, all of the fighters speak English. For the Tekken characters, however, we made them have whatever voice they had in the background of the Tekken series. If you play Tekken, you know Hwoarang speaks Korean, the Chinese characters speak Chinese, the English characters speak English. Tekken never had that concept of making an English voice for a character, or some other non-native voice.

For Xiaoyu, sure, she’s Chinese, but she’s actually a Japanese schoolgirl, which is why she speaks Japanese.

Mollie: But do you think, for a character like Juri, who is Korean, could she ever have a Korean voice in a Capcom title?

Ono: There’s definitely more development costs associated with doing those kinds of things for characters, and the money Capcom will give me for a project won’t quite cover it. [laughs]

Obviously, the two largest player communities are in the US and Japan, so that’s why we have both of those language options available. If, for example, the fighting game community in France ever builds up and those players become opinion leaders, maybe we can try to add French voice options.

Here at Capcom, we do realize the need to localize voices correctly as well in the future, so as time goes on, we might start looking at those options of localizing voices more and more. Maybe in Street Fighter V—whenever that comes out—we’ll have options like that.

If fans are willing to pay $5 more to get those other kinds of voices, and I get a lot of good reaction to the idea on Twitter, maybe we could do it! [laughs] But if fans don’t want to pay more, then I’ll have to go with only having two options for voices.

Mollie: I was going to say that—that as DLC, the idea could be very interesting. Like a “native language” voice pack, if you will.

Ono: We talked about doing some sort of DLC voice pack like that, but the fans want those kinds of thing for free. The problem is, there are download fees associated with any kind of DLC. In that type of case, we wouldn’t be giving out just one or two voices, we’d be giving out huge chunks to make it worth it. It would mean like a 1GB or 2GB download, which could be very hard for some people to download—so we’re also always limited by the technology and the rules of the system.

Maybe we could make it so that you could record your own voices sometime in the future. [laughs] I could record myself saying “hadoken” or something like that.

Later, at the Street Fighter X Tekken launch event

Mollie: Last we spoke, you were still very busy putting the final touches on Street Fighter X Tekken. Have things calmed down a bit for you?

Ono: Actually, I’ll probably be busy until the end of this month! [laughs]

Mollie: So, at that point, will you finally get the chance to take some sort of break?

Ono: Sadly, the true ending of Street Fighter X Tekken is still kind of far off. The console version is pretty much done at this point, but we’ve still got the Vita version, and we’ve also got the PC version. I can breath a small sign of relief right now, but work on the game won’t be over for a while.

Mollie: At that point of our last conversation, fans still hadn’t played the game very much, and still didn’t really know how all of its pieces felt. Now they’ve had more experience, the game has been shown off much more, and those opinions have started to change. How do you feel about the fan opinion now versus where it was before?

Ono: As you say, things have gotten a lot better now that more people have had the chance to play the game. They can understand it better, and see what it’s all about in a very quantifiable sense. We’ve seen the pre-orders go way up out the blue—a lot of that has to do with people getting the chance to play it, and evangelize it to others. Our Street Fighter X Tekken-themed reality show Cross Assault had hundreds of thousands of viewers, and that helped as well. People are starting to understand that it’s not just a cross-over title, but that we’re trying to innovate and trying to do some new things. When fighting game fans see that, it resonates with them I think, and they appreciated the game more. They’ve made that known, I think, with the increase in pre-orders.

Mollie: So of course, the biggest controversy was the Gems system. Have you fans reacting to the idea change now that they’ve played the game? Before, trying to figure out how Gems would affect the game was all in their heads, but now some of those people have had the change to see them in action for themselves. How have those previous opinions changed?

Ono: I think we’ve seen a change from people being outright disinterested in them, and saying that they didn’t want to even try the Gems system, to saying, “Well, maybe I could give that a shot. I have three slots, so I could try customizing my character. It might be interesting to figure out ways to do that.”

We’re finally seeing people interested in doing that, and I think getting people to want to try it at all was the biggest hurdle. Now that we have people wanting to give it a shot, the hard part is over. Once they try out the Gems system, and really get into using it, I think they’ll really dig the whole idea. So, we’ve finally gone from a resistance to it to more of an openness to it, and that’s the important part.

Mollie: The one real concern I have about the Gems system is, if Capcom releases more Gems as DLC, and I can pay money for more powerful Gems, I’m worried that could create a disadvantage for some players. Are you worried at all about that aspect of the system?

Ono: I’ll tell you—you’re going to see Gem DLC, and you’ll see other kinds of DLC as well. Some will be free, some will be paid. But at the end of the day, no matter if it’s free or paid, and no matter whether you download it or you don’t, the balance overall is not going to be broken.

To use an analogy, I like to look at it as kind of like F1 racing. You can customize your car, you can use different parts for your car, you can buy different parts for your car, but you still have regulations that you’re working within. So you’ll see different people take different strategic approaches to the characters, but you’re not going to see them altering the game to such a degree that it breaks the balance. We’re being very, very careful about that.

The beautiful of this system—and the advantage that we have that F1 racers don’t have—is that we can continue watching this, and seeing if the balance is getting out of whack. If so, we can correct for that in patches. So, we always have full control over it, to make sure we have a level playing field. With some interesting hills and valleys, sure, but no bonafide unbalance so to speak.

Mollie: We talked before about the online component of the game, and now that I’ve had a chance to get some good hands-on time with Street Fighter X Tekken, the level of options for online over what was present in Street Fighter IV really is noticeable. Do you worry about giving players too much in regards to options like that, and having to figure out how to do even more in the next release?

Ono: I think there’s always going to be further to go, so I’m not worried about it. I’m not going to rest until we get to a point where we can perfectly replicate the EVO experience in an online environment, so that you can get 100,000 people in front of their consoles watching a tournament unfold and participating in that tournament. We haven’t done that yet, and technology hasn’t allowed us to do that yet—but when we get to that point, I’ll feel like we’ve done our job. Until that time, I’m not going to rest. I’m going to keep going.

Mollie: You know, I told you that Elena should be in the game, and now she was part of the announcement for the Vita version of Street Fighter X Tekken. So, her showing up is obviously thanks to me.

Ono: Of course it isn’t! [laughs]

Mollie: In regards to that announcement, though, the reveal of those twelve characters happened before the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions are even out. Do you think that announcement came a bit too soon?

Ono: It is indeed a rather unorthodox way of announcing things, but it was very deliberate on our part. It was a message to people that we’re going to keep supporting this title going forward, and that when you see additions to the Vita version, you’ll see additions like this in the future on the console versions as well. You’ll see continuous support like we did with Super Street Fighter IV, and then Arcade Edition, and then the Arcade Edition 2012 patch.

We’ll keep expanding on what we’ve put together in Street Fighter X Tekken, so hang on to your disc. So, to me, that was a way to communicate that message that we’re not finished with the game—we’re just getting started. And won’t be like Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3. [laughs] Of course, [Tekken producer Katsuhiro] Harada-san and his notorious team of slowpokes won’t have their version of the game out until like 2018 or so, so we’ll have plenty of time to support ours in the meantime. [laughs]

Every time I talk to you, I ask you a strange question as a last question. So, this time, I’d like to ask this: If Capcom was making a fighting game based around Japanese pop singers, who would be the end boss?

Ono: Kitajima Saburo. You probably don’t know him.

Mollie: I do!

Ono: Well then, Kitajima Saburo. That’s a very meaningful statement for a lot of reasons. [laughs]

Devin Shatsky – Silent Hill Downpour

Given that the original Silent Hill and its sequel, Silent Hill 2, stand as two of my all-time favorite games, it’s hard for me not to be emotionally invested every time a new game is annouanced for the series. Will it be good? Will it disappoint? In what ways will it push the series forward, or will it instead do things to diminish progress made in previous chapters?

In sitting down with Silent Hill: Downpour producer Devin Shatsky, I not only wanted to know about the game, but also the man himself. How did he feel stepping into a series with such a rabid fan base, and could he understand why those fans are so passionate about the franchise? And, of course, there was a biggest question looming—even if he understands those fans, does he truly understand what should go into the game that he’s making for them?

Mollie: So what is your history with the Silent Hill series?

Devin Shatsky: I came on at the tail end of Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, so I worked on finalizing that. Then, I’ve worked on Silent Hill: Downpour from pre-production onward.

Mollie: What about your personal history with the series? I mean, in terms of outside of working on it in some fashion?

Devin: I was a fan of the games, though I wouldn’t say a super-fan. I played Silent Hill through Silent Hill 3 from beginning to end, and Silent Hill: Homecoming as well. Then, obviously, Shattered Memories and Downpour. I’ve been a survival horror fan from the early 90’s, and when Silent Hill came out, I was immediately enthusiastic about it—I thought it brought a whole new element to the idea of psychological horror that no other games at the time had done. I thought that was something that set the game apart from the rest, and I found it to be very intriguing.

Mollie: Silent Hill is, of course, a series which has some infamously hardcore fans—of which I am one. If those fans ask who you are and why you’re qualified to work on the series and Downpour itself, and they ask you what the key to Silent Hill is, how would you answer them?

Devin: For the first part of your question, one of the reasons that they brought me on was that with Silent Hill—after Homecoming—Konami was really trying to bring it back to… I don’t want to say a more mainstream feel, but find the recipe of what was successful in the earlier installments, and why those were so appealing to fans. Find what happened over the years to cause that sort of, you know, slow degradation I guess you could say in its appeal to the audience. So, what could we do to bring it back to its roots and its glory?

Part of that was my job. Not being too attached to the original Silent Hill games—and not feeling like Downpour had to follow this recipe of whatever Homecoming did or whatever Silent Hill: Origins did, or feeling that it has to follow along those same lines with the canon. So, part of it was evaluating these earlier games, and trying to find what elements were in those and bringing those out in Downpour as well.

Being a fan of Silent Hill 2, I kind of clung to the notion that being its own stand-alone narrative was something that was really unique about the game. It didn’t tie into the past storyline of the original Silent Hill, and didn’t have to be a sequel to that as Silent Hill 3 did. So, bringing Downpour back to that sort of origination was one of my goals.

That was part of the reason that Konami brought me on. I had worked in the past on The Suffering for Midway, and Area 51 as well, so I had some experience in other horror-genre games, and what we could do to find the mainstream appeal but still make sure we were staying true to the Silent Hill fans as well.

Mollie: I still remember the situation surrounding the release of Silent Hill: Homecoming. It was to be the first “next gen” Silent Hill release, the first HD release for the series, and also was positioned as taking the series in a direction it hadn’t been going in. Silent Hill 4 had been released to mixed reactions, so Homecoming was positioned as getting “back on track”. But then, it too received a mixed reaction. In a way, Downpour feels like another attempt at that idea—not in doing what Homecoming did, but in say to a degree, “this is the real launch of Silent Hill on HD consoles.”

Devin: Right. I think one of the reasons why Homecoming received mixed reactions was that the team really attempted to tie the storyline back to the original roots, so they were trying to answer questions. Not only that, but also trying to hamstring elements of the movie back into the game, and I think the producer of that game had this grand visions of like, “I’m going to explain everything and tie in all of the movie lore and the previous games into one and explain it all.”

It was almost an impossible undertaking to do that. It seems as if the movie almost violated certain areas of canon, and any of the core fans know that. I think trying to explain it all in a game was sort of a mistake, and for me that was one of the things that I wanted to get away from. Let’s not try to explain everything and make one big happy story out of it all. The original motivation behind Silent Hill—from everything that I’ve read, in terms of the past developers—for the Japanese Team Silent group was the focus was on the town. The town is the main character, and that idea kind of got lost over the years. That was the big focus that we wanted to do with Downpour—bringing that concept back. It’s not all about the main protagonist, and it’s not all about the Order, it’s about the town and how it brings out the darkness in whoever is there, and sort of forces them to face their own inner demons. It could be a completely different story depending on who is there and what has troubled them in the past.

Mollie: One of the things I’ve always said in this discussion is that Silent Hill sort of reminds me of Lost; the island was a character, not just an island or a location, and it was the main catalyst for what happened to the characters.

Devin: Yeah, exactly.

Mollie: Also, in terms of that whole idea, it’s hard not to feel like the series has been stuck in a rut for a while now. You had the original game, and then Silent Hill 2, which understood that it could exist as its own story. But then Silent Hill 3 tied back to the original, Homecoming felt like it had to explain more about the history of the town, Origins layered even more back story upon all of that, and even Shattered Memories—in its own way—was about going back to the beginnings of the series. For so long now, it’s felt like there has been this obsession with over-explaining how the town became what it is, and I think that’s one of the reasons why it feels like the franchise has lost its way.

Devin: It’s felt like the series sort of placed more importance on the Order and the cult following more than the actual town itself. In playing Silent Hill 1, I was kind of under that impressions—that everything revolves around the Order, and that’s the reason why all of these crazy things are happening in the town. But then in Silent Hill 2, you kind of realize that that’s not what’s going on, it’s the town itself bringing out these things.

Mollie: Yeah, that’s kind of the point. I know what I need to know, and that’s it. You didn’t need to know more about why Silent Hill was screwed.

Shatsky: Right—it just is. So trying to explain all of that, and providing answers for all of that, to me, felt like that was a bad direction to go in. With Downpour, we wanted to step back from all of that again, and let the town be the town and whatever it does to Murphy and Anne Marie throughout their experience there is going to be cool and interesting, but we’re not going to try to explain the inception of why it’s there. Granted, that could be a really cool premise for a game—and who knows, at some point maybe that’ll be done—but for Downpour we weren’t trying to answer all of these deep-rooted questions.

Mollie: Also on the topic of getting stuck, there’s things like Pyramid Head. His original design was one that specifically related to James, but then fans liked him, and suddenly we saw him returning outside of his original intended uses. In other ways, too, there’s always been this urge to go back and re-use elements that worked in previous chapters of the series, even if they didn’t fully make sense at that point.

I didn’t play Homecoming until a decent while after it’s release, in part due to all of the negative reaction I had seen others having to it. When I did, I actually enjoyed the game, but at the same time it really felt like a Silent Hill game that had been crafted by-the-book—like somebody had a “This is Silent Hill” guide, and they’d followed it to the letter. When you came into all of this, with the familiar-but-not-fanatical connection that you have to the series, how do you decide which points to connect back to from previous Silent Hill chapters, versus what to avoid doing just for nostalgia’s sake?

Devin: For the most part, I had the mentality of the former that you just mentioned—let’s not do anything just for nostalgia’s sake. If we could find a way to pay homage to those games in subtle ways, then I’m all for that—but trying to force characters in from the previous installments just to pay fan service would be a huge mistake. The primary focus for me was to not do that.

With the help of Tomm [Hulett]—he’s our resident Silent Hill expert—I would always kind of refer to him in any areas that I was unsure of. However, more or less, the thought was to completely step away from what we knew of Silent Hill, and keep some of the core fundamentals—like the town itself is the beacon for all of this madness—but other than that avoid implementing things like Pyramid Head, or bubblehead nurses, or any of the former characters. Granted, we did realize that when we went with ideas like side quests and having the town be more open-ended, we had a lot of room to play with. We felt like there was elements of the previous games that we could still mention or pay homage to in the town itself, without going overboard with it. For the savvy player that does a lot of exploration, you’re going to see nods back to every single game, whether it’s just a mention of a name or something else—I don’t want to give away too much. There’s lots of little lore elements that tie into previous games that you’ll find when exploring.

Mollie: For the games you mentioned that you’ve worked on previously, those were new titles with no real fan base to worry about. Here, you’re stepping into this minefield. I mean, for Konami, I’d say Silent Hill is only second to the Metal Gear series in terms of the craziness of fans and how hardcore they are about canon. Did that freak you out at all?

Devin: Oh yeah, absolutely. Not as much freak me out as it did frustrate me. It wasn’t until I had stepped back and eliminated any sort of feelings of it being personal attacks or whatnot, and realized that the fans just genuinely care about the franchise. They love it. I think a lot of them feel this sense of ownership over it, right? It’s like, I grew up playing these games, I’ve played seven or eight Silent Hills since 1999 and onward, I’ve invested a lot of my own time and money into these games—and I feel like Konami is screwing me to a certain extent. They’re going in a direction I wouldn’t have gone with the games.

The more I sort of put myself in their shoes and see where they’re coming from, the more I understood that it’s something that they grew up on and feel this nostalgia to. They care about the franchise, and I think that’s really cool. Granted, there’s a lot of very vocal fans too that I think are doing an injustice to the franchise as well by constantly berating whatever story they didn’t agree with—like with Homecoming or whatnot, and the certain elements that they didn’t like. It’s like, they get so vocal in bashing a particular game that it’s detrimental to the future of the franchise.

The internet is a very scary place, and it can start swaying other people’s opinions—like you even mentioned, before you played Homecoming you had this bad view of what it was and you didn’t even really want to give it a chance at first because you had read so many negative opinions of it. Whether or not that actually swayed your view of it once you played it, I don’t know, but it’s very likely that a lot of people pick up and play Homecoming after reading negative reviews of it and just have this mindset that they’re not going to like it no matter what. You can’t change that after a certain point. So, it’d be nice if people could just play the games without reading what other people think of them, and just judge for themselves a lot of the time, but I think that people get so caught up in the negativity. It’s fun to bash things; it’s fun to be a hater sometimes and go on forums and badmouth the people that are creating the games and whatnot. I think it’s sort of doing an injustice to the franchise over time.

Mollie: I’ll ask you the same question I asked Tomm: would you rather people—in relation to the game you’ve made or your personal decisions on a particular title—be saying bad things on the internet, or would you rather them be saying nothing at all?

Devin: I’d rather they were saying nothing at all.

Mollie: Oh really? Tomm was the opposite.

Devin: Yeah, and there’s different schools of thought on it. For me, like I said, I would rather people go into the game with a completely clear slate, and just judge it on their own merits without reading somebody else’s opinions beforehand. It’s easy to get caught up in that negativity, and be like, “Ah man, this game’s going to suck” before even playing it. If you go into it with that impression, it’s obviously going to sway your opinion.

Mollie: When the original Silent Hill was released, at the time I was a big fan of the Resident Evil series. When I saw what Konami was doing with this new game called “Silent Hill”, I just expected it to be a total knock-off of what Capcom was doing. But then it came out, it was something completely different, and I fell in love with it.

In Resident Evil, progression was very linear—yet in Silent Hill, I felt like I was in an actual town. In a way, at times it almost felt like an early Grand Theft Auto or other sandbox game to me. There were streets, and shops, and all of these places that I didn’t need to go to complete the game, but exploring those locations helped to create the atmosphere of being in the town. And yet, that feeling kind of got lost as the series progressed, even to a point as early as Silent Hill 2. One thing I’m excited by seeing in Downpour—in what’s been shown so far—is that it seems like you’re getting back to that idea. That creation of a city that infuses exploration, and which makes you want to know more about what’s around you. That desire to know things like, what’s that store called? Or what is that poster in the window of this building? Or what’s down this totally random side street? Am I correct in feeling like this is something you’re going after?

Devin: Yes, absolutely. For me, I felt the same thing with Silent Hill 1—having this town I could walk around, and being able to wander down an alley wondering what I’d find and whatnot. I felt like it was a great idea that they didn’t really maximize. But, you know, it was on the original PlayStation, and there was a lot less capability at that time in terms of the amount of design they could have done. I felt like that was just scratching the surface of what we could do. For Downpour, that was one of the things that we focused on: Let’s encourage the player to look around and explore things instead of just coming to that alley and thinking, “Oh, that’s a cool texture and it looks really atmospheric and everything is really neat, but there’s nothing to do at the end of the alley.” With Downpour, we wanted to add rooms that players could explore, or trigger a sidequest here and there when exploring the town to encourage that more and more, instead of how eventually you’re just going to give up when you face a locked door each time you head down an alley. So that was definitely a big motivation for us—making the town explorable.

Mollie: This may  sound silly, but going back to that question of understanding the fan base, and how the series has grown and progressed—originally Silent Hill was this small resort town, then Silent Hill 2 brings in this whole new area south of Toluca Lake, and now Downpour is announced and all of a sudden we hear that Silent Hill has subways. How in the world does this sleepy little town of Silent Hill have subways? [laughs]

Devin: Right? [laughs]

Mollie: Is there a point where you just say, this is what we have to do?

Devin: Sort of. We definitely—when we proposed the idea—we knew that some fans were just going to be like, “What the hell are you doing? This is outrageous.” But ultimately, it was a mechanism for us to allow the player to teleport to different areas of the town without forcing them to walk miles and miles to get to these various sections. Because, really, it’s a very big town in Downpour. The section is large. So, how you justify that is up to you really. People have their own schools of thought really as to what Silent Hill is. Was it a tiny little resort town, or was it growing over time, right? Some people think it’s a town that’s been quarantined, and nobody lives there. But the way we perceive it is that it’s a living, breathing town, and what Murphy sees, or what James sees isn’t what everybody else is seeing. It’s sort of the parallel reality thing, right? There could be a normal living town of Silent Hill going on right now, and the fact that Murphy is wandering through it and not seeing anybody is because that’s what Murphy is experiencing; that’s what the town is bringing out of him. So having a subway there, and having these mechanisms for transportation seems perfectly normal if it’s a town that’s still growing over time.

Mollie: It’s really interesting to hear you mention that, because—and I don’t know if anybody else picked up on this—but one of the things that stuck with me from the segments of the game that you showed us was Murphy’s conversation with Howard, the mailman. And Howard—very casually—is just like, “Oh, I’m here doing my job.”

Devin: Yeah, Murphy’s like, “What are you doing?” And he’s like, “Delivering the mail. What’s it look like?”

Mollie: Right. So among the Silent Hill community, there’s this long-running discussion and list of theories on what the town really is. There’s the idea that maybe it’s a series of layers, where the “normal” town does still exist as a living, breathing town, but then maybe it’s also a quarantined town, but then maybe it’s also all of these other things. You had Silent Hill 2, where Angela sees the town as this place that’s on fire, for example. Obviously you won’t spoil anything here, but in whatever way you can tell me, do you get into any of those ideas in Downpour?

Devin: Absolutely. We want to leave it up to player’s own interpretations to a certain extent, but from everything we’ve read, and from the development team that still exists in Japan that we’ve talked to, the original intent for Silent Hill was that it’s a living, breathing, normal town. What James is experiencing in the time he’s there, for example, is just within his own mind, and his own inner demons coming out. It’s the whole parallel reality scenario, where there could be people going back and forth and walking down the street while he’s there and he’s not noticing them or seeing them because he’s in his own personal Silent Hill.

Mollie: One of the freakiest parts for me of the Silent Hill series was in Silent Hill 3, when Heather is talking to Vincent about the monsters she’s been fighting, and he’s like, “They look like monsters to you?”

Devin: Right? See?

Mollie: That part just kind of sends a chill down your spine, so I liked seeing something similar in that clip of Downpour. It kind of brought that feeling back.

Devin: Yeah. That question of, “Wait, what’s really going on?” Howard’s not seeing it—or maybe he is. So it’s really unique to Murphy’s own story, or whoever’s story it is.

Capybara Games – Super Time Force

Among the games on display at PAX East 2012 was Super Time Force—a crazy, challenging, all-out side-scrolling action shooter from indie developer Capybara Games. After getting my hands on the game, I had a chance to speak with two of the men helping to bring the game to life: Lead programmer Ken Yeung, and Co-founder & audio director Sean Lohrisch.

Mollie: So, I remember when Super Time Force was first revealed, and it was this big tease at first—almost like, “what the heck is this game?” What you showed at first seemed like this insane, chaotic game. What was it that you were wanting to express to fans during that first reveal?

Ken Yeung: I guess the most important thing was that we wanted to show that the game is old-school, and that it’s crazy. Those were the two key things, and I think that it came out really well in that trailer. There’s details about what’s really going on that weren’t revealed, but I think those sorts of questions get people curious, and gets them wondering what Super Time Force is about. That was the goal of our teaser—not to give everything away at once, but to let people come, sit down, play it, and then see their reaction.

Mollie: When I myself was playing the game a bit ago, one of the comments you made was, “Okay, this game’s hard, so don’t feel bad if you die.” That’s an interesting conversation to me, because games used to be hard, and you never had to explain that concept.

Ken: Yeah, exactly.

Mollie: Not that I want to say that Super Time Force is emulating that era—maybe more honoring it in a way—but I think the question is if it’s actually hard, or if its difficulties is normal compared to how games used to be. Have we gotten a bit soft as gamers?

Ken: I think so, sure. Back then, for example, you didn’t even have a tutorial. Anything you did, you had to learn it on your own, or you had to hear it from word of mouth. And for the longest time, there weren’t even save games. If you died, that was it, and you started all of the way back at the beginning. To me, I like that—but that may not be for everybody. For those people who do enjoy that though—and games that are like that with that sort of difficulty—they’ll really appreciate what we’re doing here.

Mollie: When everybody at Capybara was considering what would inspire what you’d be doing in Super Time Force, did you ever go back and play games from the 8- and 16-bit eras?

Ken: Yeah, sure. A lot of the design choices we do, and a lot of the concepts that we wanted to bring to this project, they’re straight out of other games. We’d look at something like Contra, find things that we love about it, and figure out how to bring those elements out. Play Gunstar Heroes, Ninja Gaiden, Bionic Commando—they’re all classics that people know and love, and they had this certain something about them. We wanted to capture that same sort of thing, and bring it back.

Mollie: So when you did that, were there any games that you replayed, and were like, “How in the hell did I ever get through this game as a kid? I can’t even beat the first stage now!”

Ken: Pretty much every game! I watch YouTube videos, and wonder, how in the world did I play this? How did I play Contra: Hard Corps, or Gunstar Heroes, you know? You watch, and it’s ridiculous. But back then, we didn’t know anything else, right? That was all we knew. Games were hard. You had to earn it to win it, and I think that’s what we want to bring to the table.

Sean Lohrisch: Or at least the happy medium, somewhere in between. Maybe as an industry we’ve over-shot in trying to eliminate frustration, so maybe that’s what a game like Dark Souls brought back a bit. Put some rules in place that make you actually feel threatened. I guess when you feel that you know you can just go back 30 seconds ago and not have any risk, it kills any sort of tension you might want to create. It makes games less engaging. So, maybe find somewhere in between. It doesn’t have to be that make-you-want-to-break-your-controller-in-half kind of frustration, but maybe we’ve also made things too casual friendly as an industry. But to be fair, it’s also been beneficial in getting more people into games I think.

Mollie: It’s interesting that you say that, because I almost feel like that desire for hard games never went away, even as a lot of the more mainstream games got easier. What a game like Dark Souls proved is that—

Ken: That there’s still a market for those types of games.

Mollie: Right. When its not cheap difficulty—but actual, real difficulty—fans love that, and love that sense of accomplishing something in the game.

Ken: Exactly. You’re not dying because of some cheap element or something that you didn’t know, but because you lack the skills, or you need to solve this problem. Those are the things that really get the gamers going, I think.

Sean: Nick Suttner—I think he used to be with EGM and 1up, and is now at Sony—he pointed out to me that when you’re going through Dark Souls, you’re failing, but you’re also gaining information. I hadn’t thought about that, but I guess it was implicit that okay, I tried this guy, and I’m not powerful enough, or I need a different weapon, or something’s got to change. Around our office, the game really created a lot of discussion. I think it creates community as well. It’s engaging to try to figure out what you’re supposed to do, and draws you in a bit more.

Mollie: In my time playing Super Time Force, I felt some of that—that sense where every death was a learning experience, versus just a random event happening. All of that is of course tied to the respawn system that’s in the game, as it almost gave me encouragement to play the game, learn what I may have done wrong, and then give it another try.

Ken: Yeah, so, when you die, the game sort of rewinds itself, and you play again alongside your previous play through. You die once, and now there’s two of you running around shooting things. So not only do you know about what killed you to avoid it next time, but you can actively try to prevent it. There’s this extra layer on top, where I know this guy’s gonna shoot here and kill me, so I’m going to go and kill that guy first. By doing that, you change the future. Not only does killing that guy help you progress through the level, but now you can recover that life that you lost. So, it’s sort of a two-fold thing going on—something that I don’t think I’ve seen going on in a game before. Sure, you get information to progress, but you also get the opportunity to recover a life back.

Sean: And theoretically, yeah, it acts as a bit of a self-created checkpoint. You could potentially leapfrog your current character with a previous character back and forth—you save a previous guy, then you make a little further progress, you get killed, and the guy you previously saved comes in and saves your life. We’ve yet to see a long run of that, but it could happen; we’re going to try to explore that a bit more. Overall, though, all of this gives a lot more importance to the saving in the game. I’m sure, after a while, if you’ve had to run through the level too many times, it’ll be welcome that you don’t always have to go return to the beginning.

Mollie: You’ve got three characters playable here—I’m not sure if that’s the full amount the game will feature or not.

Ken: Actually, in the demo, you can unlock a fourth secret character. You have to save him. You’ll see him, and he’ll be stuck in a  situation where he dies—but now that you know that, you can go there and try to save him by killing a robot that’s about to shoot him. So, we have that fourth character who plays different than all of the other characters, but the plan is definitely for us to have lots and lots of other unlockable characters, and each of them would offer their own strategy or take on dealing with situations.

Mollie: That’s the thing I noticed. Often you’ll have, say, the big strong guy who’s more powerful, and then you’ll have the smaller faster female character, and then the third random stereotypical character. Playing all three of the currently unlocked characters here, though, there’s such a different mentality in how you progress through the level with each. That’s one of the things I find really interesting about Super Time Force, because it’s not an arbitrary choice—it’s a legitimate choice of play style.

Ken: Exactly. For example, in some games, you’ll be able to carry ten weapons, and each weapon does all of these different things. For us, each character does one thing and one thing really well. So, you’ve got to utilize their strengths, and work together to get all of those strengths in concert—that’s sort of how we encourage teamwork. Instead of one character who can do everything, we have a bunch of characters who are good at their own thing, and by working together you can get through almost any situation.

Sean: In the original teaser, there was actually two characters who aren’t currently in the game. There was an engineer, and the other, I guess we call him the ninja. The ninja would deflect bullets with his melee attack, and I think he could kill guys when he dashed through them. Then we had the engineer, who could build turrets. I guess we still haven’t finalized those guys—the dev team decided it was best to take them out for now, and we’ll keep working on them.

Mollie: To switch to the question of aesthetics, there’s been a lot of games recently that have had this sort of retro style to them, and I’ve wondered—and worried—if we’re getting to a point where that whole style is being overdone. How do you make a game of this type of style without it coming off as just another retro throwback, or whatever else some might assume when seeing it?

Ken: I don’t know. I guess, for us, we’re not trying to be retro for the sake of being retro. The game started out as a Game Jam game, and in order to have a quick turn-around time—which you need for Game Jam entries—everything has to be really streamlined. So, one of the decisions we made was to go with pixel art, for the benefit of our artist being able to pump out assets really quickly. That was the starting point. But I think, as a company, we believe that pixel art is not just nostalgic—it’s an actual, valid, artistic style and aesthetic that’s unique. That’s still valid—even today among, you know, the crazy, high-end, 3D graphics. So, for this game, we were trying to show that. It’s retro, but it’s not retro for the sake of being retro. We can do things that you couldn’t do before in pixel art—and make it look awesome and modern. That’s my take on it.

Sean: Also, our plans are to include some modern features, like particle effects. The game looks like an old-school platforming shooter, like a Contra, but with the modern twist of rewinding time. I think the artists—generally always late in a project—start adding effects and give the project this kind of eye candy, making it look distinct. But I can understand that some may say, “Oh, another pixel art game. What’s so special about this one?” Or they’ll just discount it, because they’ve seen ten pixel art games today.

Mollie: So, final question, and this is the hardest of them all: A lot of gamers out there love you guys. Why do those people love Capybara so much?

Ken: I don’t know. [laughs]

Sean: Oh man. I attribute a lot of it to our artists. I think they seem to come up with something unique—and to be clear, I’m not an artist, so I’m not praising myself. I also think our designers have been able to come up with some neat twists. We’re not inventing new genres or anything, but I think we’ve come up with some subtle twists that make our games feel fresh. I’d then attribute some of it to our key guys that go out to all of the trade shows, like Nathan [Vella] and Kris [Piotrowski].

Ken: Yeah, I think that’s a big part of it.

Sean: They seem to make a lot of friends with a lot of people, and I guess if people like them, then it’s hard to hate them, right?

Ken: I think the indie scene itself is a very small—but loud—community. The thing about indie development is there’s always a face behind the game, which is not always something you see in the triple-A side of game development. So that, in concert with the fact that the guys make so many friends; they all hang out together, they all have beers, it sort of creates this positive community that then also spills out to the fans as well. It comes back, and feeds back to us, and that’s why it’s a really positive environment. I think that’s the thing that makes the indie scene a lot different from the bigger game development scene.