WEBVTT - Interview with Game Maker Sam Barlow (Her Story) 0:00:03.920 --> 0:00:11.239 It could happen here, Mike is possibly anyway, I'm Robert Evans. Uh, 0:00:11.280 --> 0:00:13.240 you know who I am, because you're listening to this 0:00:13.280 --> 0:00:15.800 show unless you stumbled upon this having never heard of 0:00:15.800 --> 0:00:18.720 the Internet before, in which case this is a show 0:00:18.760 --> 0:00:21.000 about how things are kind of falling apart, and we 0:00:21.280 --> 0:00:23.360 also try to talk every now and then about how 0:00:23.360 --> 0:00:26.720 to maybe put them back together a little bit. My 0:00:26.920 --> 0:00:32.080 co host is Garrison Davis. Garrison, say hello to the people. Hello, people. 0:00:32.600 --> 0:00:36.600 I'd also like you to say hello to Sean. Hi. Sean. Yeah, 0:00:36.600 --> 0:00:40.200 there's a Sean somewhere out there. Listen. Probably a few sans. Yeah, 0:00:40.120 --> 0:00:43.159 it was at least one or two. Garrison, what do we? 0:00:43.200 --> 0:00:46.400 What do we? What do we? What? What? What are we? Well, 0:00:46.520 --> 0:00:49.159 we're finally doing something I've been wanting to do for 0:00:49.200 --> 0:00:52.080 a while. Is branching off into kind of covering different 0:00:52.360 --> 0:00:55.279 parts of like media and culture UM that kind of 0:00:55.280 --> 0:00:59.080 relate to all of these topics UM. I know both 0:00:59.800 --> 0:01:02.320 the with me, but both me a little bit and 0:01:02.320 --> 0:01:05.440 and Robert more so have worked for or have have 0:01:05.680 --> 0:01:10.440 written for UM like an online investigative journalism website called 0:01:10.440 --> 0:01:13.880 Belling Cat that deals in open source UM like research 0:01:14.640 --> 0:01:17.600 and One of the things that we're big fans of, 0:01:17.680 --> 0:01:19.679 that belling Cat I've talked with a few of the 0:01:19.680 --> 0:01:23.200 other people is a game called Her Story, which is 0:01:23.360 --> 0:01:26.959 a video game that has maybe one of the better 0:01:27.120 --> 0:01:32.000 better depictions of kind of open source um investigations. Uh 0:01:32.000 --> 0:01:33.920 it's it's a it's a very it's a very good game. 0:01:33.959 --> 0:01:36.319 I highly recommended. I played it a few years ago. 0:01:37.319 --> 0:01:42.320 It was lovely and I recently uh well, Originally, when 0:01:42.360 --> 0:01:44.759 I bought Her Story, I bought both that game and 0:01:44.840 --> 0:01:48.200 like a spiritual sequel called Telling Lies, which I did 0:01:48.320 --> 0:01:50.360 did not play for a while because I was too 0:01:50.400 --> 0:01:55.360 busy um. And then I went to the Earth First 0:01:55.520 --> 0:01:57.640 Gathering this summer and I and I came back and 0:01:57.680 --> 0:01:59.920 I had some free time, so I played Telling Lies, 0:02:00.240 --> 0:02:02.440 And because of the content of that game, I found 0:02:02.440 --> 0:02:05.880 it really interesting. Because I'm not gonna spoil tons of it, 0:02:06.080 --> 0:02:07.760 I think you should play it for yourself, and part 0:02:07.760 --> 0:02:10.480 of it is solving the mystery on your own. But 0:02:10.480 --> 0:02:13.639 but part of it does take place to like green 0:02:13.760 --> 0:02:18.360 environmentalism activism setting, and it has one of the more 0:02:19.520 --> 0:02:26.320 honest depictions of environments like that. So I have we 0:02:26.400 --> 0:02:28.840 are we are graced with bringing on the creator of 0:02:28.840 --> 0:02:34.480 both Her Story and telling lies. Uh. Sam Barlow, Hello, Hey, 0:02:34.560 --> 0:02:38.680 exciting to be Lovely Interest. Yeah I am. I am. 0:02:38.840 --> 0:02:41.680 I'm very excited to talk with you. These games are 0:02:42.000 --> 0:02:44.040 some of my favorite things. Um. First off, I guess 0:02:44.040 --> 0:02:46.560 I would just like to kind of talk about your 0:02:46.600 --> 0:02:50.080 inspiration for this type of detective game, because it is 0:02:50.160 --> 0:02:54.960 it is unique to every other kind of investigative game 0:02:55.000 --> 0:02:58.120 out there. UM. And it's you know, very much grounded 0:02:58.280 --> 0:03:02.480 in open source research. Um. And like you think computers 0:03:02.520 --> 0:03:05.280 that in the real world. What what kind of got 0:03:05.320 --> 0:03:09.040 you onto that kind of storytelling concept? I mean, I 0:03:09.080 --> 0:03:11.480 think there was a whole bunch of things that all 0:03:11.840 --> 0:03:15.040 kind of sparked off at once. Like when I made 0:03:15.040 --> 0:03:17.840 Her Story, this was my first independent video game. So 0:03:17.880 --> 0:03:22.239 I've been making video games for ten plus years, um, 0:03:22.280 --> 0:03:25.680 working on other people's franchises, more traditional things kind of 0:03:25.720 --> 0:03:28.760 when I started out working on like Nicolas Cage movie, 0:03:28.760 --> 0:03:32.600 Tiants and extreme sports games and all these kind of things. Um. 0:03:32.680 --> 0:03:35.480 But at some point I got to work on the 0:03:35.480 --> 0:03:40.480 Silent Health franchise, which is this very cool psychological horror franchise, 0:03:40.520 --> 0:03:43.440 and it's one of the certainly at that point in time, 0:03:43.800 --> 0:03:46.160 it was one of the few kind of established gaming 0:03:46.160 --> 0:03:50.400 franchises that had a story that was interesting and took 0:03:50.400 --> 0:03:53.440 place in the real world and had characters and things, 0:03:53.440 --> 0:03:56.200 So kind of from that point, I was really digging 0:03:56.200 --> 0:04:00.400 into kind of a lifelong interest in storytelling as actually 0:04:00.400 --> 0:04:04.680 what we can do with it interactively and continue to 0:04:04.760 --> 0:04:09.120 be frustrated somewhat by working for these bigger publishers. And 0:04:09.280 --> 0:04:11.720 at one point I worked for three years I was 0:04:11.760 --> 0:04:15.280 directing and writing this this big budget video game that 0:04:15.360 --> 0:04:19.080 got canceled, and that kind of gave me a moment 0:04:19.120 --> 0:04:21.880 to kind of sit and think, like, what what do 0:04:21.960 --> 0:04:23.039 I want to do? Do I want to get on 0:04:23.040 --> 0:04:26.159 board another of these big video games. I was very 0:04:26.200 --> 0:04:31.719 frustrated at the kind of incremental change that you see 0:04:31.760 --> 0:04:33.680 in the kind of bigger budget video game space. It 0:04:33.720 --> 0:04:36.600 feels like things happened very slowly, which can be frustrating. 0:04:37.040 --> 0:04:39.520 So I was kind of looking around. This was when 0:04:40.040 --> 0:04:42.920 like iPhones, people gaming on their iPhones and stuff was 0:04:43.000 --> 0:04:45.680 kind of starting to blow up. The fact that you 0:04:45.720 --> 0:04:50.919 could now distribute a game individually digitally and reach an 0:04:50.960 --> 0:04:53.960 audience was sort of changing the landscape. So I kind 0:04:53.960 --> 0:04:56.960 of felt like I should get into that and so 0:04:57.839 --> 0:05:00.960 at its conception, her story was was me sing, what 0:05:01.040 --> 0:05:04.080 are all the things I've wanted to do that that 0:05:04.160 --> 0:05:05.960 I wasn't able to do when I was working with 0:05:06.000 --> 0:05:09.480 these bigger budgets, with these more established kind of gaming templates. 0:05:09.560 --> 0:05:13.680 So from the get go it was I wanted to 0:05:14.360 --> 0:05:17.400 deal with characters that essentially lived in the real world, 0:05:17.920 --> 0:05:20.919 which is a hard pitch. You know, if you're asking 0:05:20.920 --> 0:05:23.200 for big bucks, every video game has to essentially be 0:05:23.200 --> 0:05:25.479 about superhero It needs to be some kind of wish 0:05:25.480 --> 0:05:29.080 fulfillment for a teenage boy is generally what people are 0:05:29.080 --> 0:05:32.760 asking for. And the big thing with her story was 0:05:33.120 --> 0:05:38.279 subtext as someone's interesting storytelling. Us always trying to push 0:05:38.680 --> 0:05:41.400 how important subtext is and the idea that there is. 0:05:41.720 --> 0:05:43.680 You know, there are layers to a narrative that you're 0:05:43.720 --> 0:05:45.520 not spelling out for the audience that they're going to 0:05:45.560 --> 0:05:49.039 extract through performance or through whatever U and that was 0:05:49.040 --> 0:05:51.839 always a hard sell when you were kind of dealing 0:05:52.000 --> 0:05:56.320 with these kind of bigger companies that had a very 0:05:56.360 --> 0:05:58.120 simple idea of what their audience was. So I wanted 0:05:58.160 --> 0:06:01.120 to prove that the audience was actually smarter than we 0:06:01.120 --> 0:06:04.279 were giving them credit for, and that if you gave 0:06:04.400 --> 0:06:06.920 more control to them, if you gave more of the 0:06:07.400 --> 0:06:10.680 kind of work of piecing these stories together, that that 0:06:10.720 --> 0:06:12.919 would be not not just something they could do, but 0:06:13.000 --> 0:06:16.760 which would actually be more interesting and more personal and um, 0:06:16.800 --> 0:06:19.760 you know, and with her story, I had a kind 0:06:19.760 --> 0:06:23.760 of lifelong love of like crime fiction and slightly more 0:06:23.800 --> 0:06:27.040 kind of Gothic leaning crime fiction, and so I was like, right, 0:06:27.080 --> 0:06:30.680 I'm going to create a video game which is in 0:06:30.720 --> 0:06:33.719 that world and which kind of breaks a lot of 0:06:33.720 --> 0:06:37.560 the established rules of how you might tell a story. Um, 0:06:37.600 --> 0:06:41.920 and you know, a lot of that I was pulling from, Yeah, 0:06:42.160 --> 0:06:45.239 my love of some of the more kind of avant 0:06:45.279 --> 0:06:49.880 garde literary stuff, interesting pieces of kind of movies and things. 0:06:49.920 --> 0:06:51.280 But it was, it was, it was pulling from a 0:06:51.360 --> 0:06:54.600 lot of different kind of storytelling traditions and ending up 0:06:54.640 --> 0:06:57.240 in this this interesting place where, like you say, it's 0:06:57.320 --> 0:07:01.440 kind of a game experience where you're essentially researching the 0:07:01.440 --> 0:07:04.800 story yourself and kind of putting the pieces together. Yeah. Yeah. 0:07:04.880 --> 0:07:07.160 For for people who don't know, it's like you're basically 0:07:07.520 --> 0:07:10.760 on a virtual desktop, um, and you're sorting through like 0:07:10.800 --> 0:07:15.040 a hard drive full of footage and the versatility of 0:07:15.080 --> 0:07:17.320 the game, and you know, people learning how to use 0:07:17.360 --> 0:07:19.920 like search terms, right, just like people try to use 0:07:19.960 --> 0:07:22.680 like um in open source it's called like using like 0:07:22.760 --> 0:07:27.480 um Google operators. It's the same kind of the same thing, UM. 0:07:27.520 --> 0:07:28.920 But also there's like the other side of things. I 0:07:28.920 --> 0:07:31.040 think a belling Cat wrote an article about your game 0:07:31.200 --> 0:07:34.080 where they like made like a Python script to scan 0:07:34.240 --> 0:07:36.560 all of the videos for specific keywords and put them 0:07:36.560 --> 0:07:38.920 into like different folders and files. So it's like you 0:07:38.960 --> 0:07:40.720 can do the thing where you just like search it, 0:07:40.800 --> 0:07:43.000 but you could like take this to a ridiculous level 0:07:43.280 --> 0:07:45.400 or you're like breaking the game open and doing it 0:07:45.440 --> 0:07:47.520 like you're actually like investigating this and you need to 0:07:47.560 --> 0:07:50.640 be very quick. Um. So I think her story is 0:07:50.760 --> 0:07:53.560 is a lovely intro to this type of game concept. 0:07:54.160 --> 0:07:59.560 And then for telling lies, you kind of changed you 0:07:59.640 --> 0:08:02.120 change things with it. Um you made like I guess, 0:08:02.160 --> 0:08:04.080 I guess like an expansion would be the way I 0:08:04.080 --> 0:08:06.880 would describe it for how it like takes the same 0:08:06.920 --> 0:08:09.640 concept and pushes it further. And I think watching these 0:08:09.680 --> 0:08:13.560 things now, it's very different after being like two years 0:08:13.560 --> 0:08:17.360 on Zoom right, I'm I'm sure I'm sure you've heard 0:08:17.400 --> 0:08:18.960 this from other people as well as like you know, 0:08:19.160 --> 0:08:21.800 because because because of how Telling Lies operates, it's like 0:08:22.440 --> 0:08:25.400 a lot of it is well you open the game, 0:08:25.400 --> 0:08:27.840 because you're basically cracking open and then I say hard drive. 0:08:28.000 --> 0:08:32.400 So all of it is video from like webcams and stuff. Um, 0:08:32.440 --> 0:08:35.240 so you know, watching people talking to their computer camera 0:08:35.320 --> 0:08:40.079 like this after spending years on Zoom definitely uh hits harder. 0:08:40.120 --> 0:08:43.000 I guess it was one of those things. So when 0:08:43.000 --> 0:08:46.400 we would first working on this and conceiving of it, 0:08:47.880 --> 0:08:53.439 which was I don't know, maybe and something like that, Um, 0:08:53.559 --> 0:08:55.640 there was a leap, right and as a storyteller, you 0:08:55.720 --> 0:08:57.960 allow yourself sometimes to take that one leap that the 0:08:58.040 --> 0:09:00.600 orders to take with you. And the leap was like 0:09:00.880 --> 0:09:05.320 these people are using video chat a lot. But I 0:09:05.320 --> 0:09:07.720 mean and as I was starting to put it together, 0:09:07.760 --> 0:09:11.320 I would start noticing people around that time doing video 0:09:11.400 --> 0:09:13.720 chat in the street on their phones, which was something 0:09:13.760 --> 0:09:15.320 I was not used to sing and I was like, oh, ship, 0:09:15.400 --> 0:09:18.520 maybe this is not too big of a leap. But yeah, 0:09:18.720 --> 0:09:20.840 I think I think it was The Virgin or somebody 0:09:20.920 --> 0:09:24.520 ran an article that like Telling Lies is still a 0:09:24.559 --> 0:09:28.240 great game mid pandemic, it's just real hard to play 0:09:28.280 --> 0:09:32.520 now that like this zoom thing is our lives. I 0:09:32.520 --> 0:09:35.400 mean that was like, that was that was a big 0:09:35.559 --> 0:09:37.160 thing I was interested in at the time, was like, 0:09:37.240 --> 0:09:41.920 what what is this doing to us? What is communicating 0:09:41.960 --> 0:09:44.920 over the internet, How does that change how conversations and 0:09:45.400 --> 0:09:47.000 things happened? And was kind of looking into some of 0:09:47.000 --> 0:09:51.760 the research there. So that, Yeah, that was wild. Was 0:09:51.760 --> 0:09:53.600 was was kind of living in that world for several 0:09:53.679 --> 0:09:56.720 years putting the game out and then spending two years 0:09:57.200 --> 0:10:00.000 on zoom calls. Yeah. I mean in a few ways, 0:10:00.080 --> 0:10:02.720 think the game has aged very well because of that, 0:10:03.240 --> 0:10:06.480 and because the way people. People are more used to 0:10:06.520 --> 0:10:10.240 interacting with the computer in that format now, so when 0:10:10.240 --> 0:10:12.760 they're you know, trying to search for these like hundreds 0:10:12.760 --> 0:10:15.200 of video files, I think they can understand it better. 0:10:15.960 --> 0:10:17.800 Um So, in some ways, I think it's not it's 0:10:17.800 --> 0:10:21.600 not necessarily a bad thing. Um But yeah, let's see. 0:10:21.640 --> 0:10:23.880 So I think, well, I want to talk a bit 0:10:23.880 --> 0:10:29.360 about kind of the influences for kind of the surveillance aspect, 0:10:29.400 --> 0:10:32.439 because like her story is filmed in like a police 0:10:32.960 --> 0:10:35.839 um interrogation room for based basically basically the whole thing, 0:10:36.240 --> 0:10:41.040 whereas this pulls video footage of people like in private moments. Essentially, 0:10:41.440 --> 0:10:43.640 of course, this was like after like the Snowden stuff 0:10:43.679 --> 0:10:46.319 and after all of the other kind of after the 0:10:46.360 --> 0:10:50.040 you know, surveillance became a bigger talking point. Um, But 0:10:50.200 --> 0:10:52.199 what what got you to decide you wanted to kind 0:10:52.200 --> 0:10:57.360 of revolve the game around this concept of internet surveillance 0:10:57.440 --> 0:11:00.320 and then you know, different three letter agencies kind of 0:11:00.320 --> 0:11:02.880 fighting each other a little bit. So I think it 0:11:03.000 --> 0:11:07.600 was two things. One was in making her story and 0:11:07.679 --> 0:11:10.720 making lots of decisions somewhat intuitively kind of when it 0:11:10.800 --> 0:11:12.960 was finished and it was a big success, and I 0:11:13.000 --> 0:11:15.720 looked back on it, and then kind of when a 0:11:15.720 --> 0:11:17.480 little bit of time and passed, I then had this 0:11:17.559 --> 0:11:20.199 very different relationship where I had forgotten that I was 0:11:20.240 --> 0:11:21.640 the person that had made it and so could have 0:11:21.679 --> 0:11:25.080 opinions about it. And I was really interested in how 0:11:25.760 --> 0:11:29.120 that that game established a level of intimacy with the 0:11:29.160 --> 0:11:31.960 main character that Viva plays, that you're seeing being interrogated, 0:11:32.559 --> 0:11:35.240 despite the fact that it's happening through a computer desktop, 0:11:35.320 --> 0:11:38.640 despite the fact that there's none of what traditionally you 0:11:38.679 --> 0:11:41.080 know that the agency you were traditionally having a video game, 0:11:41.200 --> 0:11:43.679 which you know, conventional logic would be that's how you 0:11:43.720 --> 0:11:46.480 would establish the idea that this person is alive and 0:11:46.520 --> 0:11:49.439 that you're in contact with them. But the act of 0:11:49.480 --> 0:11:53.080 like digging into all this video footage of Viva and 0:11:53.120 --> 0:11:57.240 seeing her on screen talking essentially at you created this 0:11:57.240 --> 0:11:59.040 this interesting amount of intimacy that a lot of people 0:11:59.080 --> 0:12:01.080 responded to. So I was like, well, that's one of 0:12:01.080 --> 0:12:03.800 the things that is interesting to me to take further, 0:12:04.120 --> 0:12:08.000 because it's it's very rare that a video game creates 0:12:08.040 --> 0:12:11.439 this sensation of kind of intimacy or of getting close 0:12:11.480 --> 0:12:16.520 to or understanding people. And then it was Snowden UM. 0:12:16.559 --> 0:12:19.880 I think it was one of the the early reports 0:12:21.000 --> 0:12:24.319 UM from from all the various things that came out 0:12:24.480 --> 0:12:30.520 via Snowden. There was a particular UM operation in the UK, 0:12:30.679 --> 0:12:33.000 which I think was called Optic Nerve or something, and 0:12:33.320 --> 0:12:36.600 the idea there was that they were spying on everyone's 0:12:36.600 --> 0:12:38.400 Internet traffic and I think it's a little bit easier 0:12:38.440 --> 0:12:41.959 to do that in the UK than it is elsewhere. 0:12:42.080 --> 0:12:45.040 And this one particular operation, I remember there was a 0:12:45.080 --> 0:12:48.040 PowerPoint slide that was leaked that was like their internal 0:12:48.280 --> 0:12:53.600 presentation which proved that, like in any leaked government PowerPoint 0:12:53.679 --> 0:12:55.959 will be the worst power point you've ever seen, like 0:12:56.040 --> 0:13:00.120 the clip part and this terrible nous, right, um. But 0:13:00.200 --> 0:13:02.320 in this scheme what they did and this blew my 0:13:02.360 --> 0:13:04.880 mind was for a period if I think it was 0:13:04.880 --> 0:13:09.199 two years, every single video chat that went through Yahoo 0:13:09.240 --> 0:13:14.040 in the UK was captured and recorded, and they had 0:13:14.080 --> 0:13:16.120 this issue, which I think is if you want to 0:13:16.120 --> 0:13:22.560 go about surveillance kind of post eleven, the big problem 0:13:22.600 --> 0:13:25.280 with surveillance and the extent to which is now used, 0:13:25.360 --> 0:13:27.200 is like what you do with all this data, Like 0:13:27.720 --> 0:13:32.880 it's it's it's just too much. So they they were 0:13:32.920 --> 0:13:38.240 capturing all this Yahoo video chat and attempting to add 0:13:38.280 --> 0:13:40.760 the metadata and sort it, which is kind of interesting 0:13:40.800 --> 0:13:42.880 because that's kind of to some extent kind of how 0:13:42.920 --> 0:13:46.040 something like her story worked. Yeah, yeah, totally. And the 0:13:46.080 --> 0:13:48.440 biggest issue they had, and they put up this power 0:13:48.520 --> 0:13:53.440 point and it blew my mind, was thirty of all 0:13:53.559 --> 0:13:56.600 the video chat through Yahoo at this point was sexual 0:13:56.679 --> 0:14:01.040 in nature, and they were concerned about the feelings of 0:14:01.080 --> 0:14:04.000 their operatives who were doing the tagging of all this data. 0:14:04.480 --> 0:14:06.719 So they'd put their best computer minds on it and 0:14:06.760 --> 0:14:09.000 they'd come up with an algorithm which would detect an 0:14:09.000 --> 0:14:12.040 excessive amount of skin tone and would then kind of 0:14:12.040 --> 0:14:14.880 flag and silo those clips, and I just remember reading 0:14:14.880 --> 0:14:17.320 this and being like, what about the feelings of the 0:14:17.360 --> 0:14:21.360 people whose skin tone you're capturing? Right? Like you weren't 0:14:21.600 --> 0:14:23.600 you weren't stopping to think like why are we doing this? 0:14:23.600 --> 0:14:26.080 Shouldn't we be doing this? You're you're you're solving for 0:14:26.120 --> 0:14:28.000 the problem of like how do we stop our agents 0:14:28.080 --> 0:14:30.400 seeing all this unity? And I think there was there 0:14:30.440 --> 0:14:32.080 was a bunch of other anecdotes right in the snowed 0:14:32.120 --> 0:14:37.440 and stuff of people alongside him, like you know, looking 0:14:37.480 --> 0:14:39.680 through people's webcoum data and stuff and in a in 0:14:39.720 --> 0:14:45.080 a voyeuristic way, and just this constant invasion of people's rights. 0:14:45.120 --> 0:14:47.320 So I think that it was one of those things 0:14:47.360 --> 0:14:51.720 where I was like, oh, this is this is like new, 0:14:52.000 --> 0:14:56.040 Like you know, we now have you know you you 0:14:56.040 --> 0:15:00.720 you worry about certain levels of like your privacy being invaded, 0:15:00.760 --> 0:15:03.240 and you would certainly worry if someone was letting themselves 0:15:03.280 --> 0:15:06.360 into your house at night. But we suddenly found ourselves 0:15:06.360 --> 0:15:08.760 in this position where we have these phones that we 0:15:08.840 --> 0:15:11.240 put by our bedside at night, that have cameras and 0:15:11.320 --> 0:15:16.320 microphones that are pretty much just running right and capturing 0:15:16.360 --> 0:15:21.120 and just the extent to which now technology has transformed 0:15:21.160 --> 0:15:24.960 surveillance and that that was really interesting to me because 0:15:25.080 --> 0:15:28.840 I um and a big thing I wanted to do. 0:15:29.720 --> 0:15:32.840 You know, I've made her story. And like, growing up, 0:15:32.880 --> 0:15:37.440 I loved cop shows, and I particularly loved the good ones, 0:15:37.520 --> 0:15:40.320 like like Homicide, Life on the Street in the US. 0:15:40.360 --> 0:15:43.000 There was a show in the UK called Cracker Um 0:15:43.040 --> 0:15:45.360 and these were like, you know, somewhat nuanced in how 0:15:45.400 --> 0:15:50.240 they with policing, but you know, you're you're still you know, 0:15:50.240 --> 0:15:52.520 we're in this position now where we're starting to ask 0:15:52.840 --> 0:15:57.720 deeper questions about whether we should watch this many cops shows. Yeah, 0:15:57.760 --> 0:16:00.160 when they're like the main thing on a'll tell itsh 0:16:00.200 --> 0:16:03.840 and all the time. Yeah, exactly, And that would be 0:16:03.920 --> 0:16:07.560 like when I made her story. Partly I pitched the 0:16:07.560 --> 0:16:10.440 bigger publishers like we should do the equivalent of a 0:16:10.480 --> 0:16:12.760 cop show like that, we should do crime fictional cop show, 0:16:13.240 --> 0:16:16.000 video game, and they would always be like nah, and 0:16:16.040 --> 0:16:18.120 I would say, well, look, this is like the evergreen. 0:16:18.480 --> 0:16:19.880 You know, if you're a book publisher, you have a 0:16:19.880 --> 0:16:21.440 crime show, you have a crime book. You know, if 0:16:21.480 --> 0:16:25.200 you doing movies, you're going to have some movies with 0:16:25.280 --> 0:16:29.160 this genres. It works, and they would always kind of 0:16:29.160 --> 0:16:31.920 push against that. So when I made her story, that was, 0:16:32.000 --> 0:16:34.680 in fact, like the arc of of playing her story 0:16:35.440 --> 0:16:38.200 to some extent, mirrors my ark in that. Like at 0:16:38.200 --> 0:16:39.760 the top of it, I was like, I want to 0:16:39.760 --> 0:16:44.120 make an interesting detective game, and I want to deconstruct 0:16:44.160 --> 0:16:48.120 how detective stories work. And I then started to do 0:16:48.160 --> 0:16:52.480 a bunch of research whereas digging into, well, how do 0:16:52.560 --> 0:16:56.000 actual criminal investigations work, how does one interrogate the suspect 0:16:56.600 --> 0:16:58.680 doing all that stuff? And then I started to pull 0:16:58.800 --> 0:17:01.560 up what at the time like there was a bit 0:17:01.800 --> 0:17:04.600 it was slightly ahead of like the true crime explosion, 0:17:04.680 --> 0:17:07.240 but there was starting to be stuff on YouTube and 0:17:07.240 --> 0:17:11.080 in various places where footage from real investigations was online, 0:17:11.400 --> 0:17:14.639 and it was starting to get a bit weird and interesting, 0:17:14.680 --> 0:17:18.000 and that people were kind of vicariously watching these things. 0:17:18.040 --> 0:17:21.199 And yeah, that raised also questions they were trying to 0:17:21.480 --> 0:17:24.080 piece Thegether their own kind of conclusions based on these 0:17:24.600 --> 0:17:28.680 leaked or sometimes officially released interview segments. Yeah, and and 0:17:29.080 --> 0:17:32.399 there was one in particularly got really into the Jodi 0:17:32.480 --> 0:17:35.760 Arias case. It's just like a and and the way 0:17:35.760 --> 0:17:40.240 the media spun that story and just really dug into, Oh, 0:17:40.359 --> 0:17:42.960 there's like sex and murder and Mormons, and there's this 0:17:43.000 --> 0:17:45.760 beautiful blond woman who now when she goes to court 0:17:46.119 --> 0:17:50.879 has gone brunette, and they were endlessly talking about on 0:17:50.920 --> 0:17:53.920 cable news like her parents and setting her up as 0:17:53.960 --> 0:17:59.800 this kind of them fatile kind of ice maiden. Um. 0:18:00.000 --> 0:18:01.800 On the slip side of this, I think there's like 0:18:02.160 --> 0:18:05.160 the thing with them the Making the Murderer documentary, which 0:18:05.200 --> 0:18:07.280 I think I have some issues with how they handle 0:18:07.359 --> 0:18:11.480 the main guy, but particularly how they showed the totally 0:18:11.480 --> 0:18:16.200 immoral interrogation tactics used on used on Brandon the kid um, 0:18:16.280 --> 0:18:19.320 and that really cracked that whole thing open, being like, yeah, 0:18:19.400 --> 0:18:23.000 the way the police are interrogating miners without it was 0:18:23.119 --> 0:18:26.080 the lawyers is shocking. And that was that was that 0:18:26.200 --> 0:18:28.560 was part of this transition for me. Was was was 0:18:28.840 --> 0:18:30.760 going into her story with like, the hero of this 0:18:30.840 --> 0:18:33.080 is the detective. It's Andre Brower and homicide of life 0:18:33.119 --> 0:18:34.920 in the Street, it's the genius detective that's going to 0:18:35.000 --> 0:18:38.240 come in there and crack this case. And the more 0:18:38.280 --> 0:18:42.680 I dug into in cases like Jody's where um the 0:18:42.800 --> 0:18:49.480 word various um aspects to that case, she definitely did 0:18:49.600 --> 0:18:52.840 murder her lover, but there are lots of questions around 0:18:53.040 --> 0:18:56.760 whether the relationship itself was particularly healthy. Um And by 0:18:56.760 --> 0:18:58.879 the end of it, like all of my sympathy was 0:18:58.920 --> 0:19:03.080 with Jody, not the interrogator who You watch it and 0:19:03.760 --> 0:19:06.399 you realize that, like, the reason this person is in 0:19:06.400 --> 0:19:10.920 this situation is because their life has gone very badly, 0:19:11.520 --> 0:19:13.800 and the reason for that is everything that's happened in 0:19:13.800 --> 0:19:16.240 their life prior to this, and they've never spoken to 0:19:16.280 --> 0:19:19.080 anyone about any of this stuff. And suddenly they're in 0:19:19.080 --> 0:19:21.760 this room with the homicide detective who's like, hey, you 0:19:21.800 --> 0:19:23.879 can talk to me. I'm the first person that's going 0:19:23.920 --> 0:19:26.359 to sit and listen to you, and all these tricks 0:19:26.359 --> 0:19:29.040 that they use to just get people talking, and it 0:19:29.119 --> 0:19:31.679 becomes very intimate and becomes kind of like therapy session. 0:19:32.680 --> 0:19:35.520 But by the end of it, so for me, like 0:19:35.560 --> 0:19:37.639 the hook of her story is, oh, you get to 0:19:37.680 --> 0:19:39.920 solve a murder, but really, by the end of it, 0:19:39.920 --> 0:19:45.080 it's like a character Portney should entirely be with her 0:19:45.520 --> 0:19:50.760 and is less about seeing justice done right. So even 0:19:50.880 --> 0:19:53.600 but even coming away from that, I was like, I 0:19:53.600 --> 0:19:56.760 still feel slightly uncomfortable with with kind of having made 0:19:56.800 --> 0:20:00.080 this thing that is reveling in how much fun it 0:20:00.200 --> 0:20:02.879 is to be involved in the police work or whatever. 0:20:04.080 --> 0:20:07.200 And so I was definitely thinking about the snows and 0:20:07.280 --> 0:20:10.960 stuff thinking about that aspect and the extent to which 0:20:11.080 --> 0:20:18.600 technology has just so empowered policing in general to the 0:20:18.640 --> 0:20:22.320 point where it's there's this great um. Like one of 0:20:22.359 --> 0:20:24.240 the core themes that I wanted to dig into and 0:20:24.240 --> 0:20:26.800 telling lies was that when you see people try and 0:20:26.840 --> 0:20:30.440 defend this stuff and defend policing in generally, is they 0:20:30.480 --> 0:20:33.760 try and set it up so that you basically have 0:20:34.000 --> 0:20:38.200 They talk in terms of families and very close relationships, 0:20:38.240 --> 0:20:40.760 so they're kind of like, well, the government is your parent, 0:20:41.480 --> 0:20:43.960 and they're trying to look after you, and you understand 0:20:43.960 --> 0:20:48.640 as a parent, you're going to sometimes invade the privacy 0:20:48.680 --> 0:20:50.760 of your children or sometimes you're going to inhibit their 0:20:50.800 --> 0:20:54.040 freedoms because you're trying to protect them. And we all 0:20:54.119 --> 0:20:56.480 understand that and that's part of being human, and that's 0:20:56.520 --> 0:20:58.520 all that's happening here with government, right We're trying to 0:20:58.560 --> 0:21:00.920 protect you from the big bad add the evil. I 0:21:01.000 --> 0:21:04.520 sort of like there's some tweet from the NYPD the 0:21:04.560 --> 0:21:07.560 other day that was like, you'll become you'll come running 0:21:07.560 --> 0:21:10.600 when evil is on your doorstep. Someone was saying something 0:21:10.680 --> 0:21:15.920 bacrops and and and for me, once you you take 0:21:15.960 --> 0:21:19.199 that understanding of how people relate directly to each they 0:21:19.200 --> 0:21:23.040 have families, work. The second you scale it so the 0:21:23.080 --> 0:21:26.240 size of government, it breaks like that you cannot extend 0:21:26.280 --> 0:21:30.040 that metaphor. And then when you add in tech, Um, 0:21:30.080 --> 0:21:34.320 you know, the extent to which uh, you know, privacy 0:21:34.359 --> 0:21:37.159 has been degraded, our freedoms. Um, you know when you 0:21:37.200 --> 0:21:42.720 start just blanket looking for crime, right, you start creating 0:21:42.760 --> 0:21:47.960 all the systemic issues that we have just suddenly become amplified. Um. 0:21:48.040 --> 0:21:53.040 So that that to me was kind of interesting. Um, well, 0:21:53.200 --> 0:21:57.080 you know, here is like a means to explore that. 0:21:57.200 --> 0:22:00.480 And I like one of the things that was interesting 0:22:00.480 --> 0:22:04.560 to me about her story that in retrospect was the 0:22:04.560 --> 0:22:07.200 extent to which it was about watching video, which seems 0:22:07.240 --> 0:22:09.280 like a dumb thing to say, but like the choice 0:22:09.320 --> 0:22:13.199 to use real video kind of inspired by watching all 0:22:13.200 --> 0:22:16.840 this interrogation piece of footage from Jodi and people. Um, 0:22:17.440 --> 0:22:19.680 you know, it was was kind of made Oh yeah, 0:22:19.720 --> 0:22:21.080 that makes sense, and I just kind of got on 0:22:21.119 --> 0:22:22.920 with it. But then looking back, I was like, oh, well, 0:22:22.920 --> 0:22:26.119 it's interesting because people talk about this game as being 0:22:26.119 --> 0:22:28.840 an interactive movie, but it's nothing like a movie. No, 0:22:28.880 --> 0:22:31.080 not at all, And it's not how movies work. It 0:22:31.160 --> 0:22:35.240 just happens that it uses a video camera. Only similarity 0:22:35.280 --> 0:22:38.479 is that it has live action footage. That so I 0:22:38.560 --> 0:22:40.920 was like, I really want to go even further into 0:22:40.960 --> 0:22:43.040 that texture. And so I was just thinking about and 0:22:43.240 --> 0:22:45.320 when I was starting to do my research, like the 0:22:45.359 --> 0:22:50.240 idea of surveillance and and the commonalities between like classic 0:22:50.280 --> 0:22:53.439 old school surveillance, I you know, someone sat in a 0:22:53.560 --> 0:22:58.920 car some binoculars watching someone and and modern surveillance, the 0:22:59.160 --> 0:23:02.880 commonalities of it's quite boring, right, there's just a lot 0:23:03.000 --> 0:23:07.720 of sitting and watching doing nothing. Yeah, right. And but 0:23:08.160 --> 0:23:10.560 out of that and when you kind of read the 0:23:10.560 --> 0:23:13.199 first hand accounts of the people doing the surveillance or 0:23:13.440 --> 0:23:16.520 some of the depictions of this media, like there's a 0:23:16.600 --> 0:23:19.840 level of intimacy that you get with the person you're 0:23:19.880 --> 0:23:24.000 surveilling right where you know, if you're just sat watching 0:23:24.040 --> 0:23:26.000 the menucha, if someone's life, if you're listening to a 0:23:26.040 --> 0:23:28.520 bug in someone's kitchen and just hearing all the just 0:23:28.640 --> 0:23:32.239 everyday ship in their lives or if you are, you know, 0:23:32.400 --> 0:23:36.000 watching them through some kind of technology. Um, you're just 0:23:36.000 --> 0:23:38.600 spending all this time with them, and that's like a 0:23:38.680 --> 0:23:41.800 that's like a very non cinematic thing. It's it's like 0:23:41.840 --> 0:23:44.680 this that manutia and the time stretching out of just 0:23:45.000 --> 0:23:48.920 being present with somebody. And that was kind of interesting 0:23:48.960 --> 0:23:52.680 to me of just kind of putting you in that 0:23:52.720 --> 0:23:57.359 headspace and kind of thinking about what that means. I 0:23:57.400 --> 0:24:00.400 think that totally gets through because of the way you 0:24:00.480 --> 0:24:02.919 break up the conversations and telling lies. You have to 0:24:02.960 --> 0:24:06.280 sit and watch these characters as they're just doing nothing 0:24:06.400 --> 0:24:09.719 for sometimes like like over five minutes. They're just like 0:24:09.760 --> 0:24:13.280 sitting there, um, and you do get like very intimate 0:24:13.320 --> 0:24:15.480 with these characters, but it almost like in a very 0:24:15.480 --> 0:24:19.439 like creepy way where you like you feel like I 0:24:19.480 --> 0:24:22.639 shouldn't be here, which is kind of the general feeling 0:24:22.640 --> 0:24:25.399 of telling It's really interesting because I like some people 0:24:25.440 --> 0:24:27.399 would have a very and and this was you know, 0:24:27.480 --> 0:24:32.120 completely again like trying to process how I felt watching 0:24:33.160 --> 0:24:36.080 the like the videos of all the various police interrogations 0:24:36.080 --> 0:24:39.119 and stuff. Was like, this is fascinating because the human 0:24:39.119 --> 0:24:41.840 beings were fascinated by the human beings and here is 0:24:41.880 --> 0:24:45.159 this extremely interesting, dramatic stuff where people are just really 0:24:45.200 --> 0:24:48.520 spilling their lives out. That's why true crime blew up, right, 0:24:48.560 --> 0:24:50.600 But then you have all these moral questions around it. 0:24:51.040 --> 0:24:54.760 And obviously with telling lies, it's inspired by lots of 0:24:54.760 --> 0:24:58.359 real things, but it's fake and you're watching actors act 0:24:58.400 --> 0:25:00.480 this stuff. But still some people would have this real 0:25:00.600 --> 0:25:03.080 visceral reaction of like I shouldn't be watching some of 0:25:03.080 --> 0:25:07.120 this stuff, and I'd be like, I mean, you can. 0:25:07.320 --> 0:25:10.240 It's like that was that was where it became really 0:25:10.280 --> 0:25:12.680 not cinematic to me, was like, you know, if you're 0:25:12.720 --> 0:25:17.199 watching a you know, a noir film or you know, 0:25:17.280 --> 0:25:21.320 a thriller and you have you know, or even like 0:25:21.560 --> 0:25:23.879 the The thing for the domestic stuff for me was, 0:25:23.960 --> 0:25:26.280 you know, you could watch a sitcom, watching any a 0:25:26.359 --> 0:25:29.720 normal sitcom, and the husband and wife are sat in 0:25:29.800 --> 0:25:32.679 bed chatting. At no point do you feel like I 0:25:32.680 --> 0:25:35.240 shouldn't be here because you're in the kind of classic 0:25:35.280 --> 0:25:38.840 Hollywood invisible camera set up. You're this you know, you 0:25:38.920 --> 0:25:41.960 had permission to be there as the invisible camera spectator, 0:25:42.000 --> 0:25:44.239 and it doesn't feel as weird as it would if 0:25:44.240 --> 0:25:47.600 you're hiding in the closet of this couple's bedroom. Um, 0:25:47.640 --> 0:25:52.440 So with the setup I'm Telling Lies, you immediately feel like, oh, 0:25:52.600 --> 0:25:55.960 like this, I am in this position that I shouldn't be. 0:25:56.080 --> 0:26:02.240 So suddenly all those more domestic moments a very different vibe. Yeah, 0:26:02.240 --> 0:26:05.400 because you're watching them and you're you're not invited, Like right, 0:26:05.440 --> 0:26:07.840 you're you know, you're sitting looking at this ns A 0:26:07.840 --> 0:26:09.320 hard drive and you're like, yeah, I'm not supposed to 0:26:09.320 --> 0:26:11.760 be watching this like this, this, this isn't They never 0:26:11.840 --> 0:26:26.000 invited me into this conversation. Telling Lies very much feels 0:26:26.040 --> 0:26:29.159 like a much more mature game than her story. Not 0:26:29.200 --> 0:26:31.320 in terms of like has like more mature content, but 0:26:31.400 --> 0:26:34.080 like in terms of like this concept growing up and 0:26:34.119 --> 0:26:37.800 like evolving and and gaining more depth. Um, particularly because 0:26:37.800 --> 0:26:40.000 you know, not only just because it has way more characters, 0:26:40.280 --> 0:26:42.560 but because you know, you get to know all of 0:26:42.560 --> 0:26:44.639 your kind of games deal with some degree of like 0:26:45.280 --> 0:26:47.320 characters lying to you and like just doing like straight 0:26:47.359 --> 0:26:49.480 lines to your face. That's kind of a that's my 0:26:49.560 --> 0:26:52.040 read on a lot of a lot of your games. Um, 0:26:52.080 --> 0:26:55.560 I mean, you're the game is called Telling Lies, so 0:26:55.560 --> 0:26:57.760 so you definitely see like elements of of you know, 0:26:57.800 --> 0:26:59.760 all of these trying to figure out what is true 0:26:59.800 --> 0:27:02.040 and it is not. I think it is interesting looking 0:27:02.080 --> 0:27:06.440 at like how easier it is to lie via these 0:27:06.480 --> 0:27:10.159 technological platforms. Um, I don't have to, just like you 0:27:10.240 --> 0:27:13.000 feel like telling the truth is just so much more 0:27:13.040 --> 0:27:15.159 work and you may as well just get through this 0:27:15.200 --> 0:27:17.240 conversation by doing a few white lives, which is that 0:27:17.280 --> 0:27:20.280 inspiral out of control. Um. When you combine this with 0:27:20.320 --> 0:27:22.600 you know, law enforcement, infiltration and all this kind of stuff, 0:27:22.600 --> 0:27:25.720 he gets it gets very complicated, very quickly. Um. One 0:27:25.760 --> 0:27:27.480 thing that I think you guys handled very well in 0:27:27.520 --> 0:27:30.359 telling lies was kind of the activism side of things. 0:27:30.520 --> 0:27:32.840 So like when when I play this game, like almost 0:27:32.840 --> 0:27:36.680 immediately after coming back from the stop lining three protests, um, 0:27:36.840 --> 0:27:39.320 and like and and like an Earth First gathering, you 0:27:39.320 --> 0:27:42.840 know everyone there is always very people try to be 0:27:42.880 --> 0:27:44.680 aware of surveillance to be like, okay, you know, you 0:27:44.720 --> 0:27:47.159 don't talk about certain things if there's phones nearby and stuff. 0:27:47.640 --> 0:27:51.680 So so that whole side of things was very interesting 0:27:51.720 --> 0:27:54.200 to like play this game right afterwards because you get 0:27:54.200 --> 0:27:56.320 to see like the other side of things, being like, okay, 0:27:56.320 --> 0:27:59.320 if the the FBI is infiltrating this group, here's you know, 0:27:59.680 --> 0:28:01.040 one of the ways that they do it, and like 0:28:01.200 --> 0:28:05.240 that from my perspective being you know, in activism spaces 0:28:05.240 --> 0:28:07.439 for a while, not just like environmental ones, but you 0:28:07.480 --> 0:28:11.119 know other ones like here in Portland. Um, you had 0:28:11.440 --> 0:28:16.360 you handled this topic very accurately. Um, what what kind 0:28:16.400 --> 0:28:18.639 of stuff did you pull from to kind of create 0:28:18.720 --> 0:28:23.280 these like these you know environments and interactions between people. 0:28:23.320 --> 0:28:25.080 Because I'm not sure if you have any experience yourself 0:28:25.119 --> 0:28:27.240 and stuff like this, or if you've got people onto 0:28:27.520 --> 0:28:30.320 like you talk to people who are more experienced activists. 0:28:30.640 --> 0:28:32.760 What was kind of your inspiration for like, you know, 0:28:32.840 --> 0:28:35.480 the opposite side of things, not on the law enforcement. 0:28:35.800 --> 0:28:37.600 So that was that was like one of the big 0:28:38.000 --> 0:28:43.160 initial jumping off points. So uh like in terms of 0:28:43.200 --> 0:28:46.960 the kind of real life inspirations, Like the seed of 0:28:46.960 --> 0:28:51.040 this whole thing was Remember when this was it was 0:28:51.520 --> 0:28:54.640 I'm gonna say two ten could be completely wrong here, 0:28:55.000 --> 0:28:58.000 but it was The Guardian in the UK I think 0:28:58.120 --> 0:29:01.200 broke the story, but it was and we've recently had 0:29:01.240 --> 0:29:05.960 some good progress in this this area, but broke the 0:29:06.000 --> 0:29:11.680 story of this UK spy Cops operation, which was a 0:29:11.800 --> 0:29:16.480 specific unit within the London Police whose job was to 0:29:16.840 --> 0:29:23.120 infiltrate groups, to surveil them from the inside, and um, 0:29:23.160 --> 0:29:26.520 it was horrific and they were like a couple of 0:29:26.560 --> 0:29:29.520 things about it that were horrific. One of them was 0:29:29.600 --> 0:29:34.000 that like, essentially their modus operandi was to find vulnerable 0:29:34.040 --> 0:29:38.520 young women on the periphery of groups, target them romantically, 0:29:38.880 --> 0:29:41.959 and then they would be the collateral to get you know, 0:29:42.000 --> 0:29:46.040 to have people then more solidly enter into these groups. 0:29:46.080 --> 0:29:49.720 And then they had like a whole you know, stepped 0:29:49.800 --> 0:29:52.040 plan of like once you're in, how you kind of 0:29:52.240 --> 0:29:57.400 would would destabilize steer these groups from within U And 0:29:58.400 --> 0:30:04.280 the that thing that really made this even worse, um 0:30:04.600 --> 0:30:07.960 was the fact that most of the groups, I think 0:30:07.960 --> 0:30:11.040 maybe all of the groups targeted with this particular unit 0:30:11.240 --> 0:30:19.080 were green activists. There's this incredible, incredible, like you couldn't 0:30:19.080 --> 0:30:23.320 make this stuff up. But there's a famous libel case 0:30:23.600 --> 0:30:26.480 where McDonald's was suing these these two activists in the 0:30:26.560 --> 0:30:31.840 UK right because they were putting up flyers exposing some 0:30:31.920 --> 0:30:36.440 of the practices of McDonald's and the group that they 0:30:36.480 --> 0:30:38.880 were members of, which I think at this point was 0:30:38.880 --> 0:30:41.440 called Green Piece, but it was different to the kind 0:30:41.440 --> 0:30:46.000 of more famous Green Piece in London. Prior to them 0:30:46.040 --> 0:30:50.640 doing this big kind of McDonald's thing, um was losing 0:30:50.680 --> 0:30:53.239 members and it got to a point where there were 0:30:53.280 --> 0:30:56.280 so few people in this group that it would have 0:30:56.360 --> 0:30:59.560 shut down had it not been for the fact that 0:31:00.560 --> 0:31:05.720 there were a large number of undercover cops in this group. 0:31:05.960 --> 0:31:08.360 So you know, if you imagine at some point they 0:31:08.360 --> 0:31:11.840 were actually more undercover cops and private security people undercover 0:31:11.920 --> 0:31:15.480 in this group that actual activists, which has enabled the 0:31:15.480 --> 0:31:19.600 group to continue. And in fact, the original flyer that 0:31:19.640 --> 0:31:23.280 they put out was written I forget the guy's name 0:31:23.320 --> 0:31:27.120 now by one of these undercover cops. He wrote the 0:31:27.280 --> 0:31:31.440 copy for this flyer that went out and then was 0:31:31.560 --> 0:31:33.680 you know, saw this these people dragged up in court 0:31:33.720 --> 0:31:36.280 and was this huge you know, McDonald's won the case, 0:31:36.320 --> 0:31:39.000 but in terms of pr it was hugely damaging to them. 0:31:39.080 --> 0:31:42.560 But yeah, that that for me was the thing that 0:31:42.600 --> 0:31:44.760 seemed even more point because because here you had this 0:31:44.840 --> 0:31:50.720 story of the state sanctioning the you know, one of 0:31:50.760 --> 0:31:54.000 the most terrible abuses, Like essentially, you know, what was 0:31:54.040 --> 0:31:59.840 happening was pretty easy to to kind of call it rape, right. 0:32:00.000 --> 0:32:04.760 There was women in sexual relationships with people and thinking 0:32:04.800 --> 0:32:07.800 it was consensual, but not realizing that they this was 0:32:07.880 --> 0:32:09.800 you know, what they were getting into was not what 0:32:09.840 --> 0:32:14.120 they thought it was. And so this was just so 0:32:14.200 --> 0:32:18.880 appalling and like from a just to kind of base 0:32:18.920 --> 0:32:26.800 emotional level, just it was so hard for me to 0:32:26.840 --> 0:32:30.960 imagine the pain of um and these women win relationships 0:32:31.000 --> 0:32:34.840 with these undercover officers for years. Yeah, and then and 0:32:34.840 --> 0:32:36.800 and and part of the modus operanda was when you 0:32:36.800 --> 0:32:39.320 were done, you had to exit and disappear. And they 0:32:39.320 --> 0:32:43.120 had this whole plan where the cops would claim that 0:32:43.120 --> 0:32:45.120 they were being followed and that they were worried, and 0:32:45.160 --> 0:32:48.240 then they would disappear, and then they would call from 0:32:48.320 --> 0:32:50.200 some European country and say that they had kind of 0:32:50.200 --> 0:32:53.080 fled the country because they were worried that the cops 0:32:53.080 --> 0:32:55.200 were onto them, and then they would slowly kind of 0:32:55.240 --> 0:32:57.480 disappear and this you know, some of these were kind 0:32:57.480 --> 0:33:00.040 of pre modern internet, so it was easier for I 0:33:00.120 --> 0:33:03.719 want to kind of disappear. But this stuff totally happened 0:33:03.720 --> 0:33:05.959 in the Green Scare in the States, in you know, 0:33:06.120 --> 0:33:10.000 around this was around this was My big question was 0:33:10.000 --> 0:33:13.240 was this you know, some of these cases were kind 0:33:13.240 --> 0:33:15.520 of the original inspiration. And when I started thinking about 0:33:16.480 --> 0:33:19.480 trying to tell a story inspired by this. Originally it 0:33:19.560 --> 0:33:22.920 starts off and and and it's still in based in 0:33:22.960 --> 0:33:25.040 the UK, and based on these things. And there was 0:33:25.040 --> 0:33:30.400 a particular, ah, a particular flavor to it where the 0:33:30.440 --> 0:33:33.200 cops doing this work it was part of the matt Police, 0:33:33.240 --> 0:33:37.640 who were you know, that's the more kind of gang story. 0:33:38.160 --> 0:33:41.400 Like there's there's a real reputation that the Met police have, 0:33:41.640 --> 0:33:45.160 So these cops that were chosen for this work were 0:33:45.160 --> 0:33:46.959 the ones that were a bit more kind of marcho 0:33:47.080 --> 0:33:49.360 and edgy. And there we was there was I mean, 0:33:49.360 --> 0:33:50.800 there was so much stuff to it that that was horrific, 0:33:50.880 --> 0:33:56.320 Like they would only pick cops that were married, um, 0:33:56.360 --> 0:34:02.920 because they felt that that gave them some level of 0:34:02.920 --> 0:34:06.880 ability to be sleeping with these activists and not lose 0:34:07.160 --> 0:34:09.920 themselves in it. Um. But obviously the wives didn't know 0:34:09.960 --> 0:34:12.840 what was ending um And and there's just there's so 0:34:12.880 --> 0:34:15.880 many layers of this that I just thought was it 0:34:16.000 --> 0:34:19.080 was awful, And coming off the first story, I was like, well, 0:34:19.719 --> 0:34:23.319 I would love to tell an undercover cops story in 0:34:23.360 --> 0:34:28.640 which we acknowledge that the undercover cop is bad. They 0:34:28.680 --> 0:34:31.560 aren't like, you know, because because it's such a classic 0:34:31.600 --> 0:34:34.680 trope is the undercover cops story because you get to 0:34:34.680 --> 0:34:36.080 have your cake and eat it. You get to see 0:34:36.120 --> 0:34:38.439 someone on both sides the law. You get you get 0:34:38.440 --> 0:34:43.040 all the tension and thrills of it. But usually, you know, whatever, 0:34:43.200 --> 0:34:45.400 even if the if the movie or the story or 0:34:45.400 --> 0:34:49.799 whatever has a bittersweet ending, the protagonists always the undercover cop. 0:34:49.960 --> 0:34:53.160 And ultimately, because they're the protagonist, they're the one that 0:34:53.280 --> 0:34:56.880 your heart goes to, right. And the secondary characters, whether 0:34:56.920 --> 0:34:59.320 that's like the wife and Donnie Brasco or good Fellows 0:34:59.360 --> 0:35:01.800 or something, you know, they basically serve as a foil 0:35:01.960 --> 0:35:04.680 to the main character. So I was like, well, can 0:35:05.000 --> 0:35:09.520 we tell a story where, um, we we treat the 0:35:09.560 --> 0:35:12.040 wife and the activist who's being targeted and the other 0:35:12.040 --> 0:35:16.680 people on the periphery of this guy think more about 0:35:16.760 --> 0:35:20.279 their perspective on this world, and let's acknowledge from our 0:35:20.360 --> 0:35:24.480 perspective that this is wrong. Everything that's happening is wrong 0:35:24.520 --> 0:35:26.719 and it's not justified. And then let's just see what 0:35:26.840 --> 0:35:29.920 the impact is on people. Um. So, once we started 0:35:29.920 --> 0:35:33.720 developing it, and when I was speaking to Anna partner 0:35:33.760 --> 0:35:36.800 about doing it, um, I felt like, oh, we should 0:35:36.960 --> 0:35:42.360 move this to the States, um to make it feel 0:35:43.080 --> 0:35:46.320 certainly as well, because the larger audiences American to to 0:35:46.400 --> 0:35:49.520 kind of reiterate and make it feel kind of more 0:35:49.560 --> 0:35:53.040 identifiable and have it be less quaint and British. Um. 0:35:53.040 --> 0:35:55.279 So my number one question from day one was like, well, 0:35:55.280 --> 0:35:58.160 does this ship happen in the States and as much 0:35:58.200 --> 0:35:59.759 does it happen in the same way. And so we 0:36:00.120 --> 0:36:03.480 on a researcher who then started pulling stuff up and 0:36:03.480 --> 0:36:08.000 and the big thing for me was replacing the undercover 0:36:08.080 --> 0:36:13.440 group the met with the FBI. And and then I 0:36:13.680 --> 0:36:16.399 that became fascinating to me because then I started digging 0:36:16.400 --> 0:36:20.200 into the FBI and understanding their history and everything that's 0:36:20.200 --> 0:36:25.040 wrong there. But yeah, immediately I start seeing all these 0:36:25.120 --> 0:36:30.800 great examples of yeah, this explicit infiltration of green groups UM, 0:36:30.960 --> 0:36:35.759 some pretty horrific cases of entrapment um, where you know, 0:36:35.840 --> 0:36:40.160 people infiltrate these groups and then encourage them to do 0:36:40.520 --> 0:36:43.640 more extreme and violent things on the record. It's the 0:36:43.640 --> 0:36:49.360 point where you're listening to like recorded FBI stuff and 0:36:49.360 --> 0:36:50.960 and you can hear the group being like I'm not 0:36:51.000 --> 0:36:53.960 sure about that, Like that doesn't sound like a great idea, dude, 0:36:54.320 --> 0:36:58.040 And the the FBI person is They're going like, Wow, 0:36:58.080 --> 0:37:00.919 I don't know, I I really do think we should 0:37:00.920 --> 0:37:05.200 blow this bridge up, guys. And it's so obvious, like 0:37:05.320 --> 0:37:07.319 when you listen to which is why a lot of 0:37:07.360 --> 0:37:10.880 these cases have ultimately been thrown out. But yeah, it 0:37:10.920 --> 0:37:14.560 was it was. It was I guess for the project, 0:37:14.600 --> 0:37:18.279 reassuring to see that all this stuff was happening over here. Yeah. 0:37:18.600 --> 0:37:23.000 I mean, and the FBI, like the specific FBI agent 0:37:23.040 --> 0:37:26.000 that we kind of follow definitely feels very American and 0:37:26.040 --> 0:37:30.319 feels very real. Um. I really like the actor that 0:37:30.360 --> 0:37:32.960 you got to play him. Um, he definitely feels like 0:37:33.000 --> 0:37:36.160 a lot of kind of the law enforcement dudes who 0:37:36.239 --> 0:37:40.520 kind of handle this side of things. Um. That was 0:37:40.640 --> 0:37:43.080 that was That was definitely that was like an FBI. 0:37:43.920 --> 0:37:46.520 He became like the fbiis of it became very important 0:37:46.520 --> 0:37:49.120 to it. And it was interesting the way that the 0:37:49.200 --> 0:37:53.359 FBI they had this brand, which is partly reinforced by 0:37:53.360 --> 0:37:55.200 the media, Like they had the great idea back in 0:37:55.280 --> 0:38:00.360 like forties or fifties to themselves fund and support cop shows. 0:38:00.960 --> 0:38:03.400 So this whole idea we have through the X Files, 0:38:03.400 --> 0:38:07.440 through pretty much every serial killer media whatever. The idea 0:38:07.480 --> 0:38:09.960 of the FBI is being like the smartest and the best, 0:38:10.960 --> 0:38:13.800 like that's put out by them, but it's really interesting 0:38:13.840 --> 0:38:18.840 to see they believe that, like they are beyond approach 0:38:18.960 --> 0:38:22.279 and like they have higher standards for like, you know, 0:38:22.280 --> 0:38:24.000 if you want to join the FBI, there is in 0:38:24.080 --> 0:38:27.279 theory this kind of moral moral check that you have 0:38:27.360 --> 0:38:32.359 to pass. But into ABI age and flipping backwards and 0:38:32.400 --> 0:38:34.800 shooting somebody when his gun falls out of his pants 0:38:34.800 --> 0:38:38.040 at a clock, Well, then you read about it and 0:38:38.080 --> 0:38:41.160 you're like, actually the experience, the lived experience, and we 0:38:41.239 --> 0:38:43.960 were it was it was so bizarre because I was like, 0:38:44.000 --> 0:38:46.120 I really want to understand what it's like to be 0:38:46.160 --> 0:38:50.279 an FBI wife, and um, let's find let's reach out 0:38:50.920 --> 0:38:52.960 the research I've done. Some of the stuff we pulled up. 0:38:53.000 --> 0:38:56.240 I was like, oh, it, it does sound pretty bad. 0:38:56.600 --> 0:38:59.400 Like there's a requirement if you're an FBI age and 0:38:59.560 --> 0:39:02.640 you have to move every three years or something. So 0:39:03.160 --> 0:39:05.120 if you're the wife to an FBI agent, you essentially 0:39:05.200 --> 0:39:07.160 move every three years, and so you never get a 0:39:07.239 --> 0:39:10.320 chance to build your own career or to make roots, 0:39:10.560 --> 0:39:13.080 and so you're generally and the wage is not great, 0:39:13.320 --> 0:39:19.080 which is why they're very vulnerable to corruption. Really Um, 0:39:19.640 --> 0:39:23.359 so you're generally living there's usually kind of areas where 0:39:23.360 --> 0:39:26.640 all the FBI families live, so it's this very insular 0:39:26.719 --> 0:39:32.520 world and you you start to see where some of 0:39:32.560 --> 0:39:35.920 these wives have come out and spoken about it. They're like, 0:39:36.120 --> 0:39:40.319 it's really shitty because our husbands, who believe themselves to 0:39:40.360 --> 0:39:43.680 be like you know, March of superheroes, get to disappear 0:39:43.719 --> 0:39:45.279 for three days at a time and we can never 0:39:45.320 --> 0:39:47.239 ask where they are or what they're doing. And there's 0:39:47.280 --> 0:39:48.960 this kind of internal code which you see in a 0:39:48.960 --> 0:39:50.920 lot of law enforcement right where they will cover for 0:39:51.000 --> 0:39:55.920 each other and protect each other. Um. And you suddenly 0:39:55.960 --> 0:40:01.080 start see that like, ah, you know the this is 0:40:01.200 --> 0:40:05.920 not like And in fact, I remember reading sort of 0:40:06.440 --> 0:40:09.080 the guy who inspired like Silenced the Lambs. The TV 0:40:09.120 --> 0:40:11.920 show mind Hunter was based on him in his book. Um, 0:40:12.200 --> 0:40:14.399 this guy who was one of the early kind of 0:40:15.880 --> 0:40:19.840 serial killer profiling people within the FBI. You read his book, 0:40:20.800 --> 0:40:24.080 It's a terrible book. When I heard that Fincher was adapting, 0:40:24.120 --> 0:40:27.480 I was like, wow, good luck. Um, but it's incredible 0:40:27.600 --> 0:40:30.879 the lack of self awareness he has. Um, this guy 0:40:31.000 --> 0:40:34.880 is so sexist and so bad. Every time he introduces 0:40:34.960 --> 0:40:37.560 a woman, it starts by from the legs up like 0:40:37.600 --> 0:40:41.360 he's describing it and um. At the very end of 0:40:41.400 --> 0:40:43.759 the book, he reveals that his wife leaves him, and 0:40:43.800 --> 0:40:45.880 he kind of writes as if this is a huge surprise, 0:40:45.920 --> 0:40:49.080 and yeah, he's calling us from chapter one and he 0:40:49.120 --> 0:40:51.640 has the best buddy. So like the guy who's who's 0:40:51.960 --> 0:40:54.319 the kind of number two in mind Hunter on TV, 0:40:55.280 --> 0:40:57.800 there's like a real life version of him. And halfway 0:40:57.800 --> 0:41:01.719 through the book, his wife high is an assassin to 0:41:01.960 --> 0:41:04.480 kind of hitman to come in and kill him, and 0:41:04.520 --> 0:41:07.200 the guy just narrowly avoids it. And the guy writing 0:41:07.200 --> 0:41:10.360 the book is like, what an evil woman, like my 0:41:10.440 --> 0:41:12.360 poor friend, and you're like, well, hang on a minute, 0:41:12.360 --> 0:41:14.320 what did your what was your friend like? Yeah, what 0:41:14.440 --> 0:41:17.560 was what was going on? Yeah, there's there's there's probably 0:41:17.560 --> 0:41:22.200 something going on there. So yeah it was Yeah, that 0:41:22.200 --> 0:41:27.680 that sense that which I think for me, expanded beautifully 0:41:27.960 --> 0:41:30.400 to the bigger picture of like that character kind of 0:41:30.480 --> 0:41:33.919 believing that he's the good guy absolutely, you know, he's 0:41:33.920 --> 0:41:36.040 the sheriff in the Western. He's coming in and he's 0:41:36.080 --> 0:41:39.840 fixing problems and he's saving the world. M but and 0:41:39.840 --> 0:41:43.640 then hes apart and and and his inability like it's 0:41:43.680 --> 0:41:47.759 such a brittle world view that. Yeah, he is he 0:41:47.920 --> 0:41:51.719 is very once yeah, once he's exposed to thinking that 0:41:51.760 --> 0:41:55.839 the world is maybe different, it just totally breaks them. Yeah. 0:41:56.680 --> 0:42:00.719 His specific arc I think is extremely interesting. Um, but 0:42:00.760 --> 0:42:02.480 I don't want to spoil it because I think it's 0:42:02.480 --> 0:42:05.319 it's it's too it's too shocking. Once you get to 0:42:05.360 --> 0:42:09.080 the final piece of his story, you're like, oh wow, um, 0:42:09.120 --> 0:42:11.080 I think that was laid out in a really beautiful way. 0:42:11.080 --> 0:42:13.160 But it's it's it's not like shocking away, like oh 0:42:13.200 --> 0:42:15.319 this this like doesn't make sense. It's like, oh no, yeah, 0:42:15.360 --> 0:42:17.239 I can see that, I can see why he's doing this, 0:42:17.800 --> 0:42:20.200 but it's still it's like you kind of slowly watched 0:42:20.200 --> 0:42:24.000 this guy get broken down piece by piece. Um, you know, 0:42:24.040 --> 0:42:26.759 because he starts he's very much like the superhero FBI agent. 0:42:26.800 --> 0:42:28.920 He's like, yeah, ha ha, I'm gonna I'm gonna stop 0:42:28.960 --> 0:42:31.520 these terrorists or whatever, and then he just like yeah, 0:42:31.680 --> 0:42:34.080 watching him progress throughout the story and you can see 0:42:34.080 --> 0:42:36.319 like how pathetic he is. Sometimes there's a there's a 0:42:36.400 --> 0:42:40.719 great uh one of the UK spy cops, Um, I 0:42:40.760 --> 0:42:43.239 forget his name. If we're doing this three years ago 0:42:43.280 --> 0:42:44.880 and I've had all these names in my head. But 0:42:45.040 --> 0:42:49.080 he UM. Uh. So he was assigned and he was 0:42:49.360 --> 0:42:52.440 infiltrated this screen group somewhere in the UK for a 0:42:52.440 --> 0:42:56.240 couple of years, had this relationship with this girl. UM 0:42:56.520 --> 0:43:00.960 was participating and facilitating. UM. The the one detail that 0:43:01.040 --> 0:43:02.839 I loved and tried to make sure he's accurate was 0:43:03.360 --> 0:43:06.799 all these cops would have a van or they would 0:43:06.800 --> 0:43:10.040 have like a big truck in the UK because they 0:43:10.160 --> 0:43:12.759 realized that, like in these smaller groups, like being the 0:43:12.800 --> 0:43:15.840 transportation was like your superpower. So like if you are 0:43:15.880 --> 0:43:18.200 someone was like, oh, I'll drive everyone to the thing. 0:43:18.320 --> 0:43:21.520 I'll get us all there because I have this big van. UM. 0:43:21.560 --> 0:43:23.640 That was the easiest way to just kind of make 0:43:23.680 --> 0:43:26.200 yourself useful. UM. But this guy is doing all that. 0:43:26.360 --> 0:43:30.920 At some point, UM, they decided to pull him and 0:43:32.000 --> 0:43:34.440 they pull him out. He returns to his wife and 0:43:34.480 --> 0:43:39.000 his normal life back in London. UM. But he can't 0:43:39.040 --> 0:43:41.440 go back to his normal life, and so he starts 0:43:41.800 --> 0:43:44.960 and he's done all the stuff of disappearing, but he 0:43:45.080 --> 0:43:48.040 just starts getting up and driving and maybe he's in 0:43:48.080 --> 0:43:50.400 the north of England somewhere, just just shows back up 0:43:50.440 --> 0:43:52.399 and he's like oh, I'm back, guys, And they're like, oh, Ship, 0:43:52.440 --> 0:43:54.400 what happened? I thought you had to like disappear because 0:43:54.520 --> 0:43:56.120 people are after you. And he's like, no, it's all right, 0:43:56.760 --> 0:44:01.960 ah and just goes back to live as an activist. UM. 0:44:02.000 --> 0:44:05.920 And at some point one of his superiors notices that 0:44:06.040 --> 0:44:12.040 the mileage on his police paid vehicle is huge, and 0:44:12.040 --> 0:44:14.360 they're like, why is this guy doing so much my 0:44:14.440 --> 0:44:17.160 legions because he's driving all the way back uh and 0:44:17.360 --> 0:44:20.600 and continuing to live this life and inhabit this character 0:44:20.640 --> 0:44:24.799 that he's set up. Um. And at some point I 0:44:24.840 --> 0:44:28.080 think he gets found out and it all goes horribly 0:44:28.080 --> 0:44:30.840 wrong because he no longer has like the fake idea 0:44:30.880 --> 0:44:33.799 and stuff that they gave him. But yeah, I mean that, 0:44:35.200 --> 0:44:37.279 and it's like that stuff is interesting. But then you 0:44:37.520 --> 0:44:41.759 it was always important to never be overly sympathetic when 0:44:41.760 --> 0:44:46.719 you see them struggling. There is an of life. There 0:44:46.800 --> 0:44:49.400 is certain points where you see the FBI agents struggling 0:44:49.520 --> 0:44:52.000 because of how like smug he is. You're like, yes, 0:44:52.080 --> 0:44:54.719 he's struggling, and you like get excited when he gets 0:44:54.760 --> 0:44:57.400 like when he gets like reprimanded or he you know, 0:44:57.520 --> 0:45:00.040 people are like mad at him for various reasons. It 0:45:00.160 --> 0:45:02.440 very interesting how you like how sympathies get pulled in 0:45:02.480 --> 0:45:04.160 certain directions, because like, by the end of the game, 0:45:04.200 --> 0:45:07.520 you definitely have a much fuller perspective on who this 0:45:07.520 --> 0:45:10.960 guy is and how his kind of psyche works, because 0:45:11.000 --> 0:45:13.480 he is really in a lot of ways like kind 0:45:13.520 --> 0:45:16.160 of pathetic as like a person um and he like 0:45:16.320 --> 0:45:19.400 needs to like hype himself up for himself to like 0:45:19.440 --> 0:45:22.120 make himself feel like he's special. Then when that gets 0:45:22.120 --> 0:45:35.160 broken down, he just completely collapses. M I guess one 0:45:35.160 --> 0:45:37.279 of the last things I want to talk about is 0:45:37.320 --> 0:45:40.239 like throughout all of your games you have kind of 0:45:40.280 --> 0:45:42.640 a through line of like fairy tales. You kind of 0:45:42.680 --> 0:45:46.320 you bring in fairy tale concepts into all of these games. 0:45:46.920 --> 0:45:49.000 Um And. I like how a lot of your games 0:45:49.040 --> 0:45:50.640 are very open ended in some ways. I think that 0:45:50.760 --> 0:45:53.680 her story being much more open ended than than telling 0:45:53.719 --> 0:45:56.680 lies in some ways. Um And, I really like that 0:45:57.040 --> 0:45:59.759 you kind of you can't like look up, like what 0:46:00.080 --> 0:46:01.600 is the ending of this game. It's like no, like 0:46:01.640 --> 0:46:03.520 you have to piece it together in your own brain 0:46:03.560 --> 0:46:06.200 like that, and whatever you think the story is, that's 0:46:06.200 --> 0:46:08.719 where it is for you. There's no like definitive ending, 0:46:08.840 --> 0:46:12.319 especially like especially for her story, um and how this 0:46:12.400 --> 0:46:14.840 combines with fairy tales. I think it's it's really interesting 0:46:14.920 --> 0:46:18.240 way to like include like mythology into these more modern stories. 0:46:18.680 --> 0:46:20.839 What's kind of your pot process behind you know, kind 0:46:20.920 --> 0:46:24.480 of kind of including mythology and fairy tales into these 0:46:24.520 --> 0:46:27.480 more like modern stories of like you know, people interacting 0:46:27.480 --> 0:46:29.520 with like government, law enforcement, and then just you know, 0:46:29.560 --> 0:46:34.080 breaking down their own psyches under these heightensed situations. Yeah, 0:46:34.080 --> 0:46:37.080 I mean I think it. I think it came initially 0:46:37.120 --> 0:46:41.799 with her story of yeah, thinking about the kind of 0:46:41.920 --> 0:46:45.560 meta storytelling nous of these things, right of the expense 0:46:45.640 --> 0:46:48.720 which their experiments and like how we tell stories, um 0:46:48.800 --> 0:46:51.920 and but a lot of times, like the myths and 0:46:51.960 --> 0:46:55.319 the the kind of classic stories that people go to 0:46:55.480 --> 0:46:59.319 those right to try and understand the bigger questions or 0:47:00.280 --> 0:47:07.359 certainly like um, I guess partly came out of the 0:47:07.400 --> 0:47:09.840 start of first story. I had like two youngest kids, 0:47:09.920 --> 0:47:12.319 and you're so you're reading them all the classic stories 0:47:12.320 --> 0:47:14.080 and you realize the extent to which these are just 0:47:14.239 --> 0:47:18.200 encoding our society's values. Right. But I had this incredible 0:47:18.239 --> 0:47:23.200 book that was my parents got for me, and I 0:47:23.280 --> 0:47:25.200 tracked down and made sure we still had when I 0:47:25.239 --> 0:47:27.959 had my kids. That was called it was like folk 0:47:28.000 --> 0:47:31.160 tales of the people's of the Soviet Republic from like 0:47:31.920 --> 0:47:34.880 the early eighties, and it was collected like a lot 0:47:34.920 --> 0:47:38.319 of it was. It was Ukrainian folk tales, and they 0:47:38.320 --> 0:47:42.600 were amazing because they were so dark. Like the message 0:47:42.760 --> 0:47:46.000 of each of these stories was trust nobody. The rich 0:47:46.040 --> 0:47:49.640 will always win, you will end up dead and unhappy, right, 0:47:49.719 --> 0:47:53.440 And each story would start with the poor peasant his 0:47:53.560 --> 0:47:57.000 brother gets rich, he asks for help. The brother like 0:47:57.480 --> 0:48:01.080 is horrible. Like there's one story where there's this brother 0:48:01.080 --> 0:48:04.200 who's like, oh, if you want some grain because you're starving, 0:48:04.960 --> 0:48:06.879 and then gouge out your own eye and I'll give 0:48:06.880 --> 0:48:08.360 you some grain. And then it comes back from more 0:48:08.400 --> 0:48:10.640 grain later and he's like, gauge out your other eye. Now, 0:48:10.719 --> 0:48:13.080 chop off your hand. And it's like they're so dark, 0:48:13.600 --> 0:48:18.120 and I'm like, but this is reflecting what it was 0:48:18.239 --> 0:48:20.680 like to live in that world and grew up and 0:48:20.680 --> 0:48:25.680 you're preparing people for the realities. So um, you know, 0:48:25.680 --> 0:48:28.680 I think that to me was really interesting in and 0:48:28.760 --> 0:48:30.840 her story tells this story that kind of to some extent, 0:48:31.360 --> 0:48:34.680 grows out of this childhood and then we're tell him lies. Definitely, 0:48:34.680 --> 0:48:40.240 it was part of this idea of of, yeah, how 0:48:41.160 --> 0:48:45.640 Logan's character David sees the world and relates to his 0:48:45.760 --> 0:48:48.400 part in it and like his utter inability to realize 0:48:48.400 --> 0:48:50.640 that he's the bad guy in the story, right, and yeah, 0:48:51.040 --> 0:48:54.120 he's the good guy. Um. And and that was like 0:48:54.200 --> 0:48:57.600 that was partly the key to breaking his character. And 0:48:57.640 --> 0:48:59.680 it was his daughter. So he has this character who's 0:48:59.840 --> 0:49:03.520 this six seven year old daughter and that's like, you know, 0:49:03.600 --> 0:49:07.000 he lets down and does horrible things to a whole 0:49:07.040 --> 0:49:10.480 bunch of people. Um, but the thing he's not going 0:49:10.520 --> 0:49:12.560 to be able to get over is knowing that he's 0:49:12.600 --> 0:49:14.799 laid his daughter down, right, knowing that at some point 0:49:14.880 --> 0:49:18.600 she will grow up and be an adult woman who 0:49:18.680 --> 0:49:22.000 if she learns about what her father has done, we'll 0:49:22.239 --> 0:49:25.560 we'll think less of him and you know, we'll realize 0:49:25.560 --> 0:49:27.719 that he's the bad guy in the fairy tale whatever. 0:49:27.840 --> 0:49:31.719 So um, that was like just interesting to me to 0:49:31.920 --> 0:49:34.239 set him in that moment and have him reading those 0:49:34.280 --> 0:49:37.560 stories and see see his relationship with his daughter. Um 0:49:38.239 --> 0:49:43.759 and yeah, I think that that ye just relating those 0:49:43.800 --> 0:49:46.840 things back to what are these these kind of base values, 0:49:46.880 --> 0:49:49.600 and so much of those foe tales is preparing you 0:49:49.640 --> 0:49:51.160 for the fact that people are going to lie to 0:49:51.160 --> 0:49:53.520 you and trick you and you know all those kind 0:49:53.520 --> 0:49:57.359 of aspects. Yeah. Well a lot of them do deal with, like, 0:49:58.160 --> 0:50:02.160 you know, failures of trusting people and you know, getting 0:50:02.400 --> 0:50:04.160 getting let down and being misled. A lot a lot 0:50:04.200 --> 0:50:06.000 of those do kind of follow on these same same 0:50:06.080 --> 0:50:10.040 kind of rough templates. UM, let's see, is there anything 0:50:10.080 --> 0:50:12.640 you're working on now that you wanna that you wanna 0:50:12.920 --> 0:50:15.560 plug um, And of course you know people should pick 0:50:15.640 --> 0:50:18.600 up Telling Lies her story. UM. I have them on Steam. 0:50:18.600 --> 0:50:20.879 I think they are best suited to be playing on PC, 0:50:21.360 --> 0:50:23.160 but you can get them on console. We can get 0:50:23.160 --> 0:50:28.120 them on iOS. But in any anything anything upcoming. Yeah, 0:50:28.200 --> 0:50:34.320 we're working on currently this project called Immortality UM which 0:50:34.800 --> 0:50:39.040 is very ambitious. Uh. It will be out next year. 0:50:39.560 --> 0:50:42.759 It deals with the story of an actress who only 0:50:42.800 --> 0:50:47.080 ever made three movies the latter half the twentieth century UM, 0:50:47.120 --> 0:50:51.799 and then disappeared. And we have recovered footage from these 0:50:51.800 --> 0:50:58.080 three movies. UM. It. It's been interesting because with Telling Lies, like, 0:50:58.200 --> 0:51:01.600 I've always been someone that m when I think about 0:51:01.640 --> 0:51:03.400 the kinds of stories I want to tell I've always 0:51:03.440 --> 0:51:05.960 thought that I'm not a capital P politics person, right, 0:51:06.040 --> 0:51:08.640 I tend to be interested in how people relate to 0:51:08.680 --> 0:51:10.760 each other and some of the kind of smaller politics. 0:51:11.360 --> 0:51:15.560 Um And once I got to telling lies, it was like, oh, actually, 0:51:16.600 --> 0:51:20.480 like there is some capital P politics tied to all this, 0:51:21.200 --> 0:51:23.440 and so dug into that was like, well, so I 0:51:23.480 --> 0:51:25.560 want to do right by this, right, So we did 0:51:25.600 --> 0:51:27.520 involve speaking to lots of people, didn't involve bringing in 0:51:27.560 --> 0:51:30.000 all the research and everything. Um So, coming away from 0:51:30.000 --> 0:51:33.600 telling lies, and as I mean, it was making the 0:51:33.680 --> 0:51:39.640 game was insane because it was during Trump Trump happens, 0:51:40.320 --> 0:51:42.760 and I remember going into it thing like we're making 0:51:42.760 --> 0:51:46.920 this story about the FBI being bad. That's a pretty 0:51:46.960 --> 0:51:50.319 reasonable endpoint. And then once we hit Trump, you had 0:51:50.360 --> 0:51:52.440 all that stuff of like the good FBI agents and 0:51:52.520 --> 0:51:55.359 theory or the FBI might be the people that bring 0:51:55.400 --> 0:51:59.040 Trump down and suddenly they it was leaning into the 0:51:59.160 --> 0:52:01.759 myth of the FBI and I'll stick down it and 0:52:02.040 --> 0:52:05.719 just everything getting worse, and it was like, oh, this 0:52:05.840 --> 0:52:09.360 is like so intense to be making something and speaking 0:52:09.360 --> 0:52:11.920 to some of these issues whilst this is all happening. 0:52:12.320 --> 0:52:14.520 Um So, finishing that I was like, well, Okay, for 0:52:14.560 --> 0:52:19.760 the next project, we are definitely going away from talking 0:52:19.760 --> 0:52:23.440 about real life issues and capital p politics, and then 0:52:23.480 --> 0:52:27.600 just accidentally it's become because we're talking about an actress 0:52:27.600 --> 0:52:32.320 in the twentieth century and what it means to make movies, 0:52:32.360 --> 0:52:38.479 and ah, digging into that suddenly becomes about a whole 0:52:38.480 --> 0:52:43.120 other bunch of systemic issues. So yeah, not not managed 0:52:43.160 --> 0:52:45.799 to avoid the politics again, but it's it's been a 0:52:45.840 --> 0:52:48.360 really really interesting project. I think. I think once you 0:52:48.440 --> 0:52:51.200 crack that egg open of realizing that politics are kind 0:52:51.200 --> 0:52:54.640 of intrinsic to every story we tell, it's hard to hand. 0:52:54.640 --> 0:52:56.440 It's hard to kind of put that back in the box. 0:52:56.520 --> 0:52:58.759 Because once you realize you can use politics and a 0:52:58.960 --> 0:53:02.000 very interesting and calm storytelling way that still doesn't relily 0:53:02.080 --> 0:53:04.799 need a lot of audiences, it's like, oh, yeah, this 0:53:04.840 --> 0:53:07.600 is just using another way to interact with the world. 0:53:07.680 --> 0:53:10.239 I think that was that was one of the things 0:53:10.239 --> 0:53:13.560 that were slightly disappointing. I guess We're telling lies was 0:53:13.719 --> 0:53:15.279 like we were working on it, I'm like, well, to 0:53:15.280 --> 0:53:17.399 make sure we get these things right, because like, these 0:53:17.400 --> 0:53:20.400 are very important issues and there are some nuances, and 0:53:20.480 --> 0:53:23.640 so we you know, we don't want to accidentally say 0:53:23.719 --> 0:53:25.959 something that is incorrect, or we don't want to give 0:53:25.960 --> 0:53:29.359 people the impression that we're you know, yeah yeah, yeah wrong. 0:53:30.120 --> 0:53:33.799 So I was expecting some level of scrutiny in terms 0:53:33.800 --> 0:53:37.319 of discussing the games themes and everything, um, and I 0:53:37.360 --> 0:53:39.960 guess like the video games world is still not quite 0:53:41.320 --> 0:53:43.640 ready for that. Like they're quite happy to talk about 0:53:43.680 --> 0:53:45.600 the game mechanics and how this thing will work since 0:53:45.760 --> 0:53:49.560 a big picture emotional responses, but no one's willing to 0:53:49.640 --> 0:53:53.040 kind of dig deeper. And we had like as the 0:53:53.080 --> 0:53:55.160 game was coming out and continues to be, you have 0:53:55.960 --> 0:53:58.160 the bigger name developers being like there's no politics and 0:53:58.200 --> 0:54:02.720 our video games as they're like invading make a game 0:54:02.800 --> 0:54:07.319 about you know, being a black Ops unit taking down 0:54:07.360 --> 0:54:10.319 communist countries. We're not gonna abou politics. We're gonna yeah 0:54:10.360 --> 0:54:15.360 that constantly a constantly just saying it's it's possible, and 0:54:15.400 --> 0:54:17.440 they'll always say we we both sides it right, Well, 0:54:17.480 --> 0:54:19.640 we'll tell both sides and let people make the decision. 0:54:20.000 --> 0:54:22.920 And something that I was very adamant was very imported 0:54:23.000 --> 0:54:26.680 to me on telling lies was like, if we're making 0:54:26.760 --> 0:54:31.240 this game, it is not the point of the game 0:54:31.320 --> 0:54:34.719 is not to give you a mush of information and 0:54:34.920 --> 0:54:40.279 have you decide the moral yeah, you know, good or bad? 0:54:40.520 --> 0:54:44.920 Something like. We are going into this with the assumption 0:54:44.960 --> 0:54:47.040 that we and the audience or most of the audience 0:54:47.120 --> 0:54:51.520 believe that people doing these things are wrong, and then 0:54:51.560 --> 0:54:53.759 we're just And then I'm interested in what does it 0:54:53.840 --> 0:54:56.000 due to the people, What what is it like to 0:54:56.080 --> 0:54:58.720 be in this world? What are the consequences of ramifications? 0:54:59.080 --> 0:55:01.200 How does one exist, ist and continue to live a 0:55:01.239 --> 0:55:04.520 life after having been involved in these things? So, for me, 0:55:04.560 --> 0:55:09.160 a political game is it can't be a political story 0:55:09.160 --> 0:55:12.439 in any media. It can't be going back to first 0:55:12.440 --> 0:55:14.759 principles pretending we're in debate club, because I just I 0:55:14.800 --> 0:55:17.839 think that's just that's absolutely lies the audience. I think 0:55:17.880 --> 0:55:22.160 you can say a political story is one which embraces 0:55:22.200 --> 0:55:26.239 and acknowledges the reality of the various power struggles and 0:55:26.400 --> 0:55:28.920 inequalities that we have and and then has something to 0:55:28.920 --> 0:55:32.239 say about or has a particular angle it wants to interrogate, 0:55:32.360 --> 0:55:34.759 or something it wants to shed light on. Um. But 0:55:34.800 --> 0:55:38.080 it's very childish and I think we're definitely struggling with 0:55:38.080 --> 0:55:41.000 this in video games. To be like, oh, if it's 0:55:41.040 --> 0:55:43.880 about politics, then it should be a big question and 0:55:43.920 --> 0:55:46.359 we should assume no answers, right, And it's like, yeah, 0:55:46.600 --> 0:55:49.399 this is a completely bullshit and and it kind of 0:55:49.560 --> 0:55:52.080 it can lead to some problematic ways, which is why 0:55:52.600 --> 0:55:54.880 you see a lot of you know, game footage in 0:55:55.680 --> 0:55:59.520 actual like terrorist propaganda, like with like like with like 0:55:59.600 --> 0:56:01.719 Nazi the white supremacist stuff, they use a lot of 0:56:01.760 --> 0:56:05.319 game footage in their propaganda videos when especially when it's 0:56:05.320 --> 0:56:08.440 like both sides of these issues. Yeah, it's a I 0:56:08.440 --> 0:56:11.680 have have a particular interest in the intersection between politics, extremism, 0:56:11.719 --> 0:56:14.520 and gaming because the gaming is very important to our 0:56:14.600 --> 0:56:19.040 modern kind of extremist ecosystem um, particularly around like four 0:56:19.120 --> 0:56:20.880 Chan and like you know, like mass shootings. All of 0:56:20.920 --> 0:56:23.480 these things play into game culture. Not not not saying games 0:56:23.560 --> 0:56:26.520 cause these events to happen, they don't, but like the 0:56:26.560 --> 0:56:29.960 way they interact with these people is actually interesting. You know. 0:56:30.000 --> 0:56:31.319 This is very different from like the way like this 0:56:31.360 --> 0:56:33.560 Senate is like, oh, games are causing mas shooting because 0:56:33.680 --> 0:56:35.200 they're not. Yeah, I think it's it's it's it's it's 0:56:35.200 --> 0:56:38.480 it's it's a completely separate thing. It's it's there is 0:56:38.600 --> 0:56:42.480 there is a Fox News kind of hysteria around gaming. 0:56:42.640 --> 0:56:45.880 But at the same time, like and and clearly, you know, 0:56:46.040 --> 0:56:48.280 one way I pitched her story when I was telling 0:56:48.280 --> 0:56:49.799 people why it was interesting, it's like, this is a 0:56:49.800 --> 0:56:54.319 game about listening. I was like, that's cool because, you know, 0:56:54.840 --> 0:56:57.160 whatever you think about the larger politics of it, or 0:56:57.760 --> 0:57:00.279 the question of whether video games themselves are inherently MPLO 0:57:00.320 --> 0:57:04.160 or anything, like, the fact that's still the stories we 0:57:04.200 --> 0:57:05.839 tell are about someone with a gun in their hand 0:57:05.920 --> 0:57:10.160 or assorting their hand, and the power dynamics and the story, 0:57:10.200 --> 0:57:13.600 the types of stories and the types of protagonists, Like, 0:57:13.680 --> 0:57:15.920 it's screwed up. And I think to the same extent 0:57:15.960 --> 0:57:20.000 that the fact that, like the Marvel Cinematic Universe is 0:57:20.040 --> 0:57:23.520 about a bunch of glorified cops going around saying the 0:57:23.520 --> 0:57:28.760 world like, you know, if you continue to reinforce these things, Yeah, 0:57:29.840 --> 0:57:31.840 all of the art we make are saying certain things 0:57:31.880 --> 0:57:34.600 about the world, and we're reinforcing a certain narrative over 0:57:34.640 --> 0:57:37.240 and over again and not really thinking critically about it. Yeah, 0:57:37.920 --> 0:57:41.240 that's the problem with making art. I mean, I'm not 0:57:41.280 --> 0:57:43.200 trying to conference being anti gamer. I would play a 0:57:43.240 --> 0:57:45.040 lot of games. I really like gaming. I just think 0:57:45.440 --> 0:57:49.880 some some companies need to figure out why why certain 0:57:49.960 --> 0:57:54.240 games are used in mass shooting manifestoes in certain games 0:57:54.240 --> 0:57:57.040 aren't um particularly around like politics like this is a 0:57:57.040 --> 0:58:00.320 particularly particularly talking about like white supremacy and how certain 0:58:00.320 --> 0:58:03.040 games kind of playing too certain things. Because even even 0:58:03.080 --> 0:58:04.680 a game like Wolf in Stein, which I think handles 0:58:04.680 --> 0:58:07.360 this topic very well, still will you know, get brought 0:58:07.440 --> 0:58:10.000 up in certain you know, propaganda videos because they do 0:58:10.040 --> 0:58:12.400 have cool shots and Nazis walking around, right, that's the 0:58:12.880 --> 0:58:15.640 kind of the problem with some of these things. Um 0:58:15.680 --> 0:58:17.520 And you know, if they weren't killing if Nazis weren't 0:58:17.560 --> 0:58:19.080 killing people as much as wouldn't be as much of 0:58:19.080 --> 0:58:21.600 a problem. But because that's still a thing, that's still 0:58:21.600 --> 0:58:24.520 a thing that needs to get talked about. Anyway, this 0:58:24.600 --> 0:58:27.400 this this took a very sad sad turned towards the 0:58:27.560 --> 0:58:31.000 end of anyway. Yeah, I but I will I will 0:58:31.120 --> 0:58:35.800 just strongly recommend playing her story, playing telling lies. I 0:58:35.840 --> 0:58:42.280 think these games, you know, interrogate our our predispositions about 0:58:42.320 --> 0:58:46.600 about kind of police detective work. Um and you just 0:58:46.640 --> 0:58:47.840 get to learn a lot. You get to learn a 0:58:47.880 --> 0:58:50.000 lot about like people on characters because like a lot 0:58:50.040 --> 0:58:51.520 of these games, you know, are the setup is like, oh, 0:58:51.560 --> 0:58:54.560 solve this crime or mystery, but then by the end 0:58:54.560 --> 0:58:56.640 you're solving a very different mystery and you're kind of 0:58:56.640 --> 0:58:58.920 solving what makes the person tick. And it's very You've 0:58:59.440 --> 0:59:01.240 I really like the ark that you have in your games. 0:59:01.520 --> 0:59:04.360 They've brought me a lot of happiness. So thank you. 0:59:04.400 --> 0:59:06.640 Thank you for that, and thank you for talking with 0:59:06.680 --> 0:59:11.680 all of us, um about your work, I mean doing it. 0:59:11.720 --> 0:59:14.040 Thank you, thank you for having me and uh yeah, 0:59:14.080 --> 0:59:16.160 like I say, I was, I was hoping to have 0:59:17.440 --> 0:59:21.200 hundreds more conversations about what Telling Lies was about and 0:59:21.480 --> 0:59:24.280 about these issues when it came out. But it's uh, 0:59:25.440 --> 0:59:29.240 you know that, it's I mean, it's hot just general 0:59:29.280 --> 0:59:31.400 media landscape now, like you put something out there and 0:59:31.440 --> 0:59:34.200 it comes out and people consume it, Yeah, move on, 0:59:34.320 --> 0:59:39.040 Like you don't have that. It's bad of like discussion 0:59:39.320 --> 0:59:41.760 that that. I don't know, it feels like it used 0:59:41.760 --> 0:59:43.520 to used to be a thing. Yeah, I think it 0:59:43.520 --> 0:59:45.680 definitely did. It used to be a thing. And definitely 0:59:45.720 --> 0:59:50.280 your games have had an influence on media in certain ways. 0:59:50.280 --> 0:59:52.080 And I know there's been like a few other like 0:59:52.120 --> 0:59:54.360 projects that like Netflix is doing that is kind of 0:59:54.360 --> 0:59:58.880 taking your concept but not really doing it correctly. Yeah, 0:59:58.920 --> 1:00:01.360 they're coming now. Yeah, there's definitely been a lot. Yeah. 1:00:01.360 --> 1:00:03.200 People always send me them. They're like, oh, this sounds 1:00:03.200 --> 1:00:05.960 a lot like a story, this thing, and it's like, oh, 1:00:06.000 --> 1:00:10.560 but it's it's built non linear. Yeah, exactly like you 1:00:11.240 --> 1:00:13.960 let people don't ye. Usually it's like watch there are 1:00:13.960 --> 1:00:16.000 eight episodes. You can watch them in any order, which 1:00:16.080 --> 1:00:18.800 isn't how her story works. No, Yeah, like, yeah, there's 1:00:18.840 --> 1:00:20.440 there's a Yeah, there's a whole different thing going on. 1:00:20.680 --> 1:00:24.320 But no, I mean it's it's interesting times for that 1:00:24.360 --> 1:00:28.760 sort of stuff. But anyway, play these games on Steam 1:00:28.840 --> 1:00:31.120 and that that doesn't for today. You can follow the 1:00:31.160 --> 1:00:34.000 show on Twitter and Instagram at Happening here, pod and 1:00:34.120 --> 1:00:36.440 cool Zone Media. Do you have Do you have a 1:00:36.480 --> 1:00:38.360 social media that you would like to plug or would 1:00:38.360 --> 1:00:43.280 your people if people are on Twitter, that's where I 1:00:43.320 --> 1:00:47.360 tend to be despite its Yeah, I know I am. 1:00:47.400 --> 1:00:51.600 I am Mr Sambalo on Twitter, Ma Sambal. I will 1:00:51.640 --> 1:00:54.240 say I I actually actually do like your Twitter account. 1:00:54.400 --> 1:00:56.720 You do? You do post some fun stuff every once 1:00:56.720 --> 1:01:01.320 in a while. That's that's kind of a weird contescen 1:01:01.320 --> 1:01:04.720 thing we think to say of anyway, Bye for Punny. 1:01:08.440 --> 1:01:10.800 It Could Happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media. 1:01:11.040 --> 1:01:13.720 For more podcasts from cool zone Media, visit our website 1:01:13.720 --> 1:01:15.880 cool zone media dot com, or check us out on 1:01:15.920 --> 1:01:18.440 the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you 1:01:18.480 --> 1:01:21.240 listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It could 1:01:21.280 --> 1:01:24.280 Happen Here, updated monthly at cool zone Media dot com 1:01:24.320 --> 1:01:26.240 slash sources. Thanks for listening.