Speaker 1: It could happen here, Mike is possibly anyway, I'm Robert Evans. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know who I am, because you're listening to this
Speaker 1: show unless you stumbled upon this having never heard of
Speaker 1: the Internet before, in which case this is a show
Speaker 1: about how things are kind of falling apart, and we
Speaker 1: also try to talk every now and then about how
Speaker 1: to maybe put them back together a little bit. My
Speaker 1: co host is Garrison Davis. Garrison, say hello to the people. Hello, people.
Speaker 1: I'd also like you to say hello to Sean. Hi. Sean. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a Sean somewhere out there. Listen. Probably a few sans. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was at least one or two. Garrison, what do we?
Speaker 1: What do we? What do we? What? What? What are we? Well,
Speaker 1: we're finally doing something I've been wanting to do for
Speaker 1: a while. Is branching off into kind of covering different
Speaker 1: parts of like media and culture UM that kind of
Speaker 1: relate to all of these topics UM. I know both
Speaker 1: the with me, but both me a little bit and
Speaker 1: and Robert more so have worked for or have have
Speaker 1: written for UM like an online investigative journalism website called
Speaker 1: Belling Cat that deals in open source UM like research
Speaker 1: and One of the things that we're big fans of,
Speaker 1: that belling Cat I've talked with a few of the
Speaker 1: other people is a game called Her Story, which is
Speaker 1: a video game that has maybe one of the better
Speaker 1: better depictions of kind of open source um investigations. Uh
Speaker 1: it's it's a it's a very it's a very good game.
Speaker 1: I highly recommended. I played it a few years ago.
Speaker 1: It was lovely and I recently uh well, Originally, when
Speaker 1: I bought Her Story, I bought both that game and
Speaker 1: like a spiritual sequel called Telling Lies, which I did
Speaker 1: did not play for a while because I was too
Speaker 1: busy um. And then I went to the Earth First
Speaker 1: Gathering this summer and I and I came back and
Speaker 1: I had some free time, so I played Telling Lies,
Speaker 1: And because of the content of that game, I found
Speaker 1: it really interesting. Because I'm not gonna spoil tons of it,
Speaker 1: I think you should play it for yourself, and part
Speaker 1: of it is solving the mystery on your own. But
Speaker 1: but part of it does take place to like green
Speaker 1: environmentalism activism setting, and it has one of the more
Speaker 1: honest depictions of environments like that. So I have we
Speaker 1: are we are graced with bringing on the creator of
Speaker 1: both Her Story and telling lies. Uh. Sam Barlow, Hello, Hey,
Speaker 1: exciting to be Lovely Interest. Yeah I am. I am.
Speaker 1: I'm very excited to talk with you. These games are
Speaker 1: some of my favorite things. Um. First off, I guess
Speaker 1: I would just like to kind of talk about your
Speaker 1: inspiration for this type of detective game, because it is
Speaker 1: it is unique to every other kind of investigative game
Speaker 1: out there. UM. And it's you know, very much grounded
Speaker 1: in open source research. Um. And like you think computers
Speaker 1: that in the real world. What what kind of got
Speaker 1: you onto that kind of storytelling concept? I mean, I
Speaker 1: think there was a whole bunch of things that all
Speaker 1: kind of sparked off at once. Like when I made
Speaker 1: Her Story, this was my first independent video game. So
Speaker 1: I've been making video games for ten plus years, um,
Speaker 1: working on other people's franchises, more traditional things kind of
Speaker 1: when I started out working on like Nicolas Cage movie,
Speaker 1: Tiants and extreme sports games and all these kind of things. Um.
Speaker 1: But at some point I got to work on the
Speaker 1: Silent Health franchise, which is this very cool psychological horror franchise,
Speaker 1: and it's one of the certainly at that point in time,
Speaker 1: it was one of the few kind of established gaming
Speaker 1: franchises that had a story that was interesting and took
Speaker 1: place in the real world and had characters and things,
Speaker 1: So kind of from that point, I was really digging
Speaker 1: into kind of a lifelong interest in storytelling as actually
Speaker 1: what we can do with it interactively and continue to
Speaker 1: be frustrated somewhat by working for these bigger publishers. And
Speaker 1: at one point I worked for three years I was
Speaker 1: directing and writing this this big budget video game that
Speaker 1: got canceled, and that kind of gave me a moment
Speaker 1: to kind of sit and think, like, what what do
Speaker 1: I want to do? Do I want to get on
Speaker 1: board another of these big video games. I was very
Speaker 1: frustrated at the kind of incremental change that you see
Speaker 1: in the kind of bigger budget video game space. It
Speaker 1: feels like things happened very slowly, which can be frustrating.
Speaker 1: So I was kind of looking around. This was when
Speaker 1: like iPhones, people gaming on their iPhones and stuff was
Speaker 1: kind of starting to blow up. The fact that you
Speaker 1: could now distribute a game individually digitally and reach an
Speaker 1: audience was sort of changing the landscape. So I kind
Speaker 1: of felt like I should get into that and so
Speaker 1: at its conception, her story was was me sing, what
Speaker 1: are all the things I've wanted to do that that
Speaker 1: I wasn't able to do when I was working with
Speaker 1: these bigger budgets, with these more established kind of gaming templates.
Speaker 1: So from the get go it was I wanted to
Speaker 1: deal with characters that essentially lived in the real world,
Speaker 1: which is a hard pitch. You know, if you're asking
Speaker 1: for big bucks, every video game has to essentially be
Speaker 1: about superhero It needs to be some kind of wish
Speaker 1: fulfillment for a teenage boy is generally what people are
Speaker 1: asking for. And the big thing with her story was
Speaker 1: subtext as someone's interesting storytelling. Us always trying to push
Speaker 1: how important subtext is and the idea that there is.
Speaker 1: You know, there are layers to a narrative that you're
Speaker 1: not spelling out for the audience that they're going to
Speaker 1: extract through performance or through whatever U and that was
Speaker 1: always a hard sell when you were kind of dealing
Speaker 1: with these kind of bigger companies that had a very
Speaker 1: simple idea of what their audience was. So I wanted
Speaker 1: to prove that the audience was actually smarter than we
Speaker 1: were giving them credit for, and that if you gave
Speaker 1: more control to them, if you gave more of the
Speaker 1: kind of work of piecing these stories together, that that
Speaker 1: would be not not just something they could do, but
Speaker 1: which would actually be more interesting and more personal and um,
Speaker 1: you know, and with her story, I had a kind
Speaker 1: of lifelong love of like crime fiction and slightly more
Speaker 1: kind of Gothic leaning crime fiction, and so I was like, right,
Speaker 1: I'm going to create a video game which is in
Speaker 1: that world and which kind of breaks a lot of
Speaker 1: the established rules of how you might tell a story. Um,
Speaker 1: and you know, a lot of that I was pulling from, Yeah,
Speaker 1: my love of some of the more kind of avant
Speaker 1: garde literary stuff, interesting pieces of kind of movies and things.
Speaker 1: But it was, it was, it was pulling from a
Speaker 1: lot of different kind of storytelling traditions and ending up
Speaker 1: in this this interesting place where, like you say, it's
Speaker 1: kind of a game experience where you're essentially researching the
Speaker 1: story yourself and kind of putting the pieces together. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: For for people who don't know, it's like you're basically
Speaker 1: on a virtual desktop, um, and you're sorting through like
Speaker 1: a hard drive full of footage and the versatility of
Speaker 1: the game, and you know, people learning how to use
Speaker 1: like search terms, right, just like people try to use
Speaker 1: like um in open source it's called like using like
Speaker 1: um Google operators. It's the same kind of the same thing, UM.
Speaker 1: But also there's like the other side of things. I
Speaker 1: think a belling Cat wrote an article about your game
Speaker 1: where they like made like a Python script to scan
Speaker 1: all of the videos for specific keywords and put them
Speaker 1: into like different folders and files. So it's like you
Speaker 1: can do the thing where you just like search it,
Speaker 1: but you could like take this to a ridiculous level
Speaker 1: or you're like breaking the game open and doing it
Speaker 1: like you're actually like investigating this and you need to
Speaker 1: be very quick. Um. So I think her story is
Speaker 1: is a lovely intro to this type of game concept.
Speaker 1: And then for telling lies, you kind of changed you
Speaker 1: change things with it. Um you made like I guess,
Speaker 1: I guess like an expansion would be the way I
Speaker 1: would describe it for how it like takes the same
Speaker 1: concept and pushes it further. And I think watching these
Speaker 1: things now, it's very different after being like two years
Speaker 1: on Zoom right, I'm I'm sure I'm sure you've heard
Speaker 1: this from other people as well as like you know,
Speaker 1: because because because of how Telling Lies operates, it's like
Speaker 1: a lot of it is well you open the game,
Speaker 1: because you're basically cracking open and then I say hard drive.
Speaker 1: So all of it is video from like webcams and stuff. Um,
Speaker 1: so you know, watching people talking to their computer camera
Speaker 1: like this after spending years on Zoom definitely uh hits harder.
Speaker 1: I guess it was one of those things. So when
Speaker 1: we would first working on this and conceiving of it,
Speaker 1: which was I don't know, maybe and something like that, Um,
Speaker 1: there was a leap, right and as a storyteller, you
Speaker 1: allow yourself sometimes to take that one leap that the
Speaker 1: orders to take with you. And the leap was like
Speaker 1: these people are using video chat a lot. But I
Speaker 1: mean and as I was starting to put it together,
Speaker 1: I would start noticing people around that time doing video
Speaker 1: chat in the street on their phones, which was something
Speaker 1: I was not used to sing and I was like, oh, ship,
Speaker 1: maybe this is not too big of a leap. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I think it was The Virgin or somebody
Speaker 1: ran an article that like Telling Lies is still a
Speaker 1: great game mid pandemic, it's just real hard to play
Speaker 1: now that like this zoom thing is our lives. I
Speaker 1: mean that was like, that was that was a big
Speaker 1: thing I was interested in at the time, was like,
Speaker 1: what what is this doing to us? What is communicating
Speaker 1: over the internet, How does that change how conversations and
Speaker 1: things happened? And was kind of looking into some of
Speaker 1: the research there. So that, Yeah, that was wild. Was
Speaker 1: was was kind of living in that world for several
Speaker 1: years putting the game out and then spending two years
Speaker 1: on zoom calls. Yeah. I mean in a few ways,
Speaker 1: think the game has aged very well because of that,
Speaker 1: and because the way people. People are more used to
Speaker 1: interacting with the computer in that format now, so when
Speaker 1: they're you know, trying to search for these like hundreds
Speaker 1: of video files, I think they can understand it better.
Speaker 1: Um So, in some ways, I think it's not it's
Speaker 1: not necessarily a bad thing. Um But yeah, let's see.
Speaker 1: So I think, well, I want to talk a bit
Speaker 1: about kind of the influences for kind of the surveillance aspect,
Speaker 1: because like her story is filmed in like a police
Speaker 1: um interrogation room for based basically basically the whole thing,
Speaker 1: whereas this pulls video footage of people like in private moments. Essentially,
Speaker 1: of course, this was like after like the Snowden stuff
Speaker 1: and after all of the other kind of after the
Speaker 1: you know, surveillance became a bigger talking point. Um, But
Speaker 1: what what got you to decide you wanted to kind
Speaker 1: of revolve the game around this concept of internet surveillance
Speaker 1: and then you know, different three letter agencies kind of
Speaker 1: fighting each other a little bit. So I think it
Speaker 1: was two things. One was in making her story and
Speaker 1: making lots of decisions somewhat intuitively kind of when it
Speaker 1: was finished and it was a big success, and I
Speaker 1: looked back on it, and then kind of when a
Speaker 1: little bit of time and passed, I then had this
Speaker 1: very different relationship where I had forgotten that I was
Speaker 1: the person that had made it and so could have
Speaker 1: opinions about it. And I was really interested in how
Speaker 1: that that game established a level of intimacy with the
Speaker 1: main character that Viva plays, that you're seeing being interrogated,
Speaker 1: despite the fact that it's happening through a computer desktop,
Speaker 1: despite the fact that there's none of what traditionally you
Speaker 1: know that the agency you were traditionally having a video game,
Speaker 1: which you know, conventional logic would be that's how you
Speaker 1: would establish the idea that this person is alive and
Speaker 1: that you're in contact with them. But the act of
Speaker 1: like digging into all this video footage of Viva and
Speaker 1: seeing her on screen talking essentially at you created this
Speaker 1: this interesting amount of intimacy that a lot of people
Speaker 1: responded to. So I was like, well, that's one of
Speaker 1: the things that is interesting to me to take further,
Speaker 1: because it's it's very rare that a video game creates
Speaker 1: this sensation of kind of intimacy or of getting close
Speaker 1: to or understanding people. And then it was Snowden UM.
Speaker 1: I think it was one of the the early reports
Speaker 1: UM from from all the various things that came out
Speaker 1: via Snowden. There was a particular UM operation in the UK,
Speaker 1: which I think was called Optic Nerve or something, and
Speaker 1: the idea there was that they were spying on everyone's
Speaker 1: Internet traffic and I think it's a little bit easier
Speaker 1: to do that in the UK than it is elsewhere.
Speaker 1: And this one particular operation, I remember there was a
Speaker 1: PowerPoint slide that was leaked that was like their internal
Speaker 1: presentation which proved that, like in any leaked government PowerPoint
Speaker 1: will be the worst power point you've ever seen, like
Speaker 1: the clip part and this terrible nous, right, um. But
Speaker 1: in this scheme what they did and this blew my
Speaker 1: mind was for a period if I think it was
Speaker 1: two years, every single video chat that went through Yahoo
Speaker 1: in the UK was captured and recorded, and they had
Speaker 1: this issue, which I think is if you want to
Speaker 1: go about surveillance kind of post eleven, the big problem
Speaker 1: with surveillance and the extent to which is now used,
Speaker 1: is like what you do with all this data, Like
Speaker 1: it's it's it's just too much. So they they were
Speaker 1: capturing all this Yahoo video chat and attempting to add
Speaker 1: the metadata and sort it, which is kind of interesting
Speaker 1: because that's kind of to some extent kind of how
Speaker 1: something like her story worked. Yeah, yeah, totally. And the
Speaker 1: biggest issue they had, and they put up this power
Speaker 1: point and it blew my mind, was thirty of all
Speaker 1: the video chat through Yahoo at this point was sexual
Speaker 1: in nature, and they were concerned about the feelings of
Speaker 1: their operatives who were doing the tagging of all this data.
Speaker 1: So they'd put their best computer minds on it and
Speaker 1: they'd come up with an algorithm which would detect an
Speaker 1: excessive amount of skin tone and would then kind of
Speaker 1: flag and silo those clips, and I just remember reading
Speaker 1: this and being like, what about the feelings of the
Speaker 1: people whose skin tone you're capturing? Right? Like you weren't
Speaker 1: you weren't stopping to think like why are we doing this?
Speaker 1: Shouldn't we be doing this? You're you're you're solving for
Speaker 1: the problem of like how do we stop our agents
Speaker 1: seeing all this unity? And I think there was there
Speaker 1: was a bunch of other anecdotes right in the snowed
Speaker 1: and stuff of people alongside him, like you know, looking
Speaker 1: through people's webcoum data and stuff and in a in
Speaker 1: a voyeuristic way, and just this constant invasion of people's rights.
Speaker 1: So I think that it was one of those things
Speaker 1: where I was like, oh, this is this is like new,
Speaker 1: Like you know, we now have you know you you
Speaker 1: you worry about certain levels of like your privacy being invaded,
Speaker 1: and you would certainly worry if someone was letting themselves
Speaker 1: into your house at night. But we suddenly found ourselves
Speaker 1: in this position where we have these phones that we
Speaker 1: put by our bedside at night, that have cameras and
Speaker 1: microphones that are pretty much just running right and capturing
Speaker 1: and just the extent to which now technology has transformed
Speaker 1: surveillance and that that was really interesting to me because
Speaker 1: I um and a big thing I wanted to do.
Speaker 1: You know, I've made her story. And like, growing up,
Speaker 1: I loved cop shows, and I particularly loved the good ones,
Speaker 1: like like Homicide, Life on the Street in the US.
Speaker 1: There was a show in the UK called Cracker Um
Speaker 1: and these were like, you know, somewhat nuanced in how
Speaker 1: they with policing, but you know, you're you're still you know,
Speaker 1: we're in this position now where we're starting to ask
Speaker 1: deeper questions about whether we should watch this many cops shows. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when they're like the main thing on a'll tell itsh
Speaker 1: and all the time. Yeah, exactly, And that would be
Speaker 1: like when I made her story. Partly I pitched the
Speaker 1: bigger publishers like we should do the equivalent of a
Speaker 1: cop show like that, we should do crime fictional cop show,
Speaker 1: video game, and they would always be like nah, and
Speaker 1: I would say, well, look, this is like the evergreen.
Speaker 1: You know, if you're a book publisher, you have a
Speaker 1: crime show, you have a crime book. You know, if
Speaker 1: you doing movies, you're going to have some movies with
Speaker 1: this genres. It works, and they would always kind of
Speaker 1: push against that. So when I made her story, that was,
Speaker 1: in fact, like the arc of of playing her story
Speaker 1: to some extent, mirrors my ark in that. Like at
Speaker 1: the top of it, I was like, I want to
Speaker 1: make an interesting detective game, and I want to deconstruct
Speaker 1: how detective stories work. And I then started to do
Speaker 1: a bunch of research whereas digging into, well, how do
Speaker 1: actual criminal investigations work, how does one interrogate the suspect
Speaker 1: doing all that stuff? And then I started to pull
Speaker 1: up what at the time like there was a bit
Speaker 1: it was slightly ahead of like the true crime explosion,
Speaker 1: but there was starting to be stuff on YouTube and
Speaker 1: in various places where footage from real investigations was online,
Speaker 1: and it was starting to get a bit weird and interesting,
Speaker 1: and that people were kind of vicariously watching these things.
Speaker 1: And yeah, that raised also questions they were trying to
Speaker 1: piece Thegether their own kind of conclusions based on these
Speaker 1: leaked or sometimes officially released interview segments. Yeah, and and
Speaker 1: there was one in particularly got really into the Jodi
Speaker 1: Arias case. It's just like a and and the way
Speaker 1: the media spun that story and just really dug into, Oh,
Speaker 1: there's like sex and murder and Mormons, and there's this
Speaker 1: beautiful blond woman who now when she goes to court
Speaker 1: has gone brunette, and they were endlessly talking about on
Speaker 1: cable news like her parents and setting her up as
Speaker 1: this kind of them fatile kind of ice maiden. Um.
Speaker 1: On the slip side of this, I think there's like
Speaker 1: the thing with them the Making the Murderer documentary, which
Speaker 1: I think I have some issues with how they handle
Speaker 1: the main guy, but particularly how they showed the totally
Speaker 1: immoral interrogation tactics used on used on Brandon the kid um,
Speaker 1: and that really cracked that whole thing open, being like, yeah,
Speaker 1: the way the police are interrogating miners without it was
Speaker 1: the lawyers is shocking. And that was that was that
Speaker 1: was part of this transition for me. Was was was
Speaker 1: going into her story with like, the hero of this
Speaker 1: is the detective. It's Andre Brower and homicide of life
Speaker 1: in the Street, it's the genius detective that's going to
Speaker 1: come in there and crack this case. And the more
Speaker 1: I dug into in cases like Jody's where um the
Speaker 1: word various um aspects to that case, she definitely did
Speaker 1: murder her lover, but there are lots of questions around
Speaker 1: whether the relationship itself was particularly healthy. Um And by
Speaker 1: the end of it, like all of my sympathy was
Speaker 1: with Jody, not the interrogator who You watch it and
Speaker 1: you realize that, like, the reason this person is in
Speaker 1: this situation is because their life has gone very badly,
Speaker 1: and the reason for that is everything that's happened in
Speaker 1: their life prior to this, and they've never spoken to
Speaker 1: anyone about any of this stuff. And suddenly they're in
Speaker 1: this room with the homicide detective who's like, hey, you
Speaker 1: can talk to me. I'm the first person that's going
Speaker 1: to sit and listen to you, and all these tricks
Speaker 1: that they use to just get people talking, and it
Speaker 1: becomes very intimate and becomes kind of like therapy session.
Speaker 1: But by the end of it, so for me, like
Speaker 1: the hook of her story is, oh, you get to
Speaker 1: solve a murder, but really, by the end of it,
Speaker 1: it's like a character Portney should entirely be with her
Speaker 1: and is less about seeing justice done right. So even
Speaker 1: but even coming away from that, I was like, I
Speaker 1: still feel slightly uncomfortable with with kind of having made
Speaker 1: this thing that is reveling in how much fun it
Speaker 1: is to be involved in the police work or whatever.
Speaker 1: And so I was definitely thinking about the snows and
Speaker 1: stuff thinking about that aspect and the extent to which
Speaker 1: technology has just so empowered policing in general to the
Speaker 1: point where it's there's this great um. Like one of
Speaker 1: the core themes that I wanted to dig into and
Speaker 1: telling lies was that when you see people try and
Speaker 1: defend this stuff and defend policing in generally, is they
Speaker 1: try and set it up so that you basically have
Speaker 1: They talk in terms of families and very close relationships,
Speaker 1: so they're kind of like, well, the government is your parent,
Speaker 1: and they're trying to look after you, and you understand
Speaker 1: as a parent, you're going to sometimes invade the privacy
Speaker 1: of your children or sometimes you're going to inhibit their
Speaker 1: freedoms because you're trying to protect them. And we all
Speaker 1: understand that and that's part of being human, and that's
Speaker 1: all that's happening here with government, right We're trying to
Speaker 1: protect you from the big bad add the evil. I
Speaker 1: sort of like there's some tweet from the NYPD the
Speaker 1: other day that was like, you'll become you'll come running
Speaker 1: when evil is on your doorstep. Someone was saying something
Speaker 1: bacrops and and and for me, once you you take
Speaker 1: that understanding of how people relate directly to each they
Speaker 1: have families, work. The second you scale it so the
Speaker 1: size of government, it breaks like that you cannot extend
Speaker 1: that metaphor. And then when you add in tech, Um,
Speaker 1: you know, the extent to which uh, you know, privacy
Speaker 1: has been degraded, our freedoms. Um, you know when you
Speaker 1: start just blanket looking for crime, right, you start creating
Speaker 1: all the systemic issues that we have just suddenly become amplified. Um.
Speaker 1: So that that to me was kind of interesting. Um, well,
Speaker 1: you know, here is like a means to explore that.
Speaker 1: And I like one of the things that was interesting
Speaker 1: to me about her story that in retrospect was the
Speaker 1: extent to which it was about watching video, which seems
Speaker 1: like a dumb thing to say, but like the choice
Speaker 1: to use real video kind of inspired by watching all
Speaker 1: this interrogation piece of footage from Jodi and people. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, it was was kind of made Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that makes sense, and I just kind of got on
Speaker 1: with it. But then looking back, I was like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: it's interesting because people talk about this game as being
Speaker 1: an interactive movie, but it's nothing like a movie. No,
Speaker 1: not at all, And it's not how movies work. It
Speaker 1: just happens that it uses a video camera. Only similarity
Speaker 1: is that it has live action footage. That so I
Speaker 1: was like, I really want to go even further into
Speaker 1: that texture. And so I was just thinking about and
Speaker 1: when I was starting to do my research, like the
Speaker 1: idea of surveillance and and the commonalities between like classic
Speaker 1: old school surveillance, I you know, someone sat in a
Speaker 1: car some binoculars watching someone and and modern surveillance, the
Speaker 1: commonalities of it's quite boring, right, there's just a lot
Speaker 1: of sitting and watching doing nothing. Yeah, right. And but
Speaker 1: out of that and when you kind of read the
Speaker 1: first hand accounts of the people doing the surveillance or
Speaker 1: some of the depictions of this media, like there's a
Speaker 1: level of intimacy that you get with the person you're
Speaker 1: surveilling right where you know, if you're just sat watching
Speaker 1: the menucha, if someone's life, if you're listening to a
Speaker 1: bug in someone's kitchen and just hearing all the just
Speaker 1: everyday ship in their lives or if you are, you know,
Speaker 1: watching them through some kind of technology. Um, you're just
Speaker 1: spending all this time with them, and that's like a
Speaker 1: that's like a very non cinematic thing. It's it's like
Speaker 1: this that manutia and the time stretching out of just
Speaker 1: being present with somebody. And that was kind of interesting
Speaker 1: to me of just kind of putting you in that
Speaker 1: headspace and kind of thinking about what that means. I
Speaker 1: think that totally gets through because of the way you
Speaker 1: break up the conversations and telling lies. You have to
Speaker 1: sit and watch these characters as they're just doing nothing
Speaker 1: for sometimes like like over five minutes. They're just like
Speaker 1: sitting there, um, and you do get like very intimate
Speaker 1: with these characters, but it almost like in a very
Speaker 1: like creepy way where you like you feel like I
Speaker 1: shouldn't be here, which is kind of the general feeling
Speaker 1: of telling It's really interesting because I like some people
Speaker 1: would have a very and and this was you know,
Speaker 1: completely again like trying to process how I felt watching
Speaker 1: the like the videos of all the various police interrogations
Speaker 1: and stuff. Was like, this is fascinating because the human
Speaker 1: beings were fascinated by the human beings and here is
Speaker 1: this extremely interesting, dramatic stuff where people are just really
Speaker 1: spilling their lives out. That's why true crime blew up, right,
Speaker 1: But then you have all these moral questions around it.
Speaker 1: And obviously with telling lies, it's inspired by lots of
Speaker 1: real things, but it's fake and you're watching actors act
Speaker 1: this stuff. But still some people would have this real
Speaker 1: visceral reaction of like I shouldn't be watching some of
Speaker 1: this stuff, and I'd be like, I mean, you can.
Speaker 1: It's like that was that was where it became really
Speaker 1: not cinematic to me, was like, you know, if you're
Speaker 1: watching a you know, a noir film or you know,
Speaker 1: a thriller and you have you know, or even like
Speaker 1: the The thing for the domestic stuff for me was,
Speaker 1: you know, you could watch a sitcom, watching any a
Speaker 1: normal sitcom, and the husband and wife are sat in
Speaker 1: bed chatting. At no point do you feel like I
Speaker 1: shouldn't be here because you're in the kind of classic
Speaker 1: Hollywood invisible camera set up. You're this you know, you
Speaker 1: had permission to be there as the invisible camera spectator,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't feel as weird as it would if
Speaker 1: you're hiding in the closet of this couple's bedroom. Um,
Speaker 1: So with the setup I'm Telling Lies, you immediately feel like, oh,
Speaker 1: like this, I am in this position that I shouldn't be.
Speaker 1: So suddenly all those more domestic moments a very different vibe. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because you're watching them and you're you're not invited, Like right,
Speaker 1: you're you know, you're sitting looking at this ns A
Speaker 1: hard drive and you're like, yeah, I'm not supposed to
Speaker 1: be watching this like this, this, this isn't They never
Speaker 1: invited me into this conversation. Telling Lies very much feels
Speaker 1: like a much more mature game than her story. Not
Speaker 1: in terms of like has like more mature content, but
Speaker 1: like in terms of like this concept growing up and
Speaker 1: like evolving and and gaining more depth. Um, particularly because
Speaker 1: you know, not only just because it has way more characters,
Speaker 1: but because you know, you get to know all of
Speaker 1: your kind of games deal with some degree of like
Speaker 1: characters lying to you and like just doing like straight
Speaker 1: lines to your face. That's kind of a that's my
Speaker 1: read on a lot of a lot of your games. Um,
Speaker 1: I mean, you're the game is called Telling Lies, so
Speaker 1: so you definitely see like elements of of you know,
Speaker 1: all of these trying to figure out what is true
Speaker 1: and it is not. I think it is interesting looking
Speaker 1: at like how easier it is to lie via these
Speaker 1: technological platforms. Um, I don't have to, just like you
Speaker 1: feel like telling the truth is just so much more
Speaker 1: work and you may as well just get through this
Speaker 1: conversation by doing a few white lives, which is that
Speaker 1: inspiral out of control. Um. When you combine this with
Speaker 1: you know, law enforcement, infiltration and all this kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: he gets it gets very complicated, very quickly. Um. One
Speaker 1: thing that I think you guys handled very well in
Speaker 1: telling lies was kind of the activism side of things.
Speaker 1: So like when when I play this game, like almost
Speaker 1: immediately after coming back from the stop lining three protests, um,
Speaker 1: and like and and like an Earth First gathering, you
Speaker 1: know everyone there is always very people try to be
Speaker 1: aware of surveillance to be like, okay, you know, you
Speaker 1: don't talk about certain things if there's phones nearby and stuff.
Speaker 1: So so that whole side of things was very interesting
Speaker 1: to like play this game right afterwards because you get
Speaker 1: to see like the other side of things, being like, okay,
Speaker 1: if the the FBI is infiltrating this group, here's you know,
Speaker 1: one of the ways that they do it, and like
Speaker 1: that from my perspective being you know, in activism spaces
Speaker 1: for a while, not just like environmental ones, but you
Speaker 1: know other ones like here in Portland. Um, you had
Speaker 1: you handled this topic very accurately. Um, what what kind
Speaker 1: of stuff did you pull from to kind of create
Speaker 1: these like these you know environments and interactions between people.
Speaker 1: Because I'm not sure if you have any experience yourself
Speaker 1: and stuff like this, or if you've got people onto
Speaker 1: like you talk to people who are more experienced activists.
Speaker 1: What was kind of your inspiration for like, you know,
Speaker 1: the opposite side of things, not on the law enforcement.
Speaker 1: So that was that was like one of the big
Speaker 1: initial jumping off points. So uh like in terms of
Speaker 1: the kind of real life inspirations, Like the seed of
Speaker 1: this whole thing was Remember when this was it was
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say two ten could be completely wrong here,
Speaker 1: but it was The Guardian in the UK I think
Speaker 1: broke the story, but it was and we've recently had
Speaker 1: some good progress in this this area, but broke the
Speaker 1: story of this UK spy Cops operation, which was a
Speaker 1: specific unit within the London Police whose job was to
Speaker 1: infiltrate groups, to surveil them from the inside, and um,
Speaker 1: it was horrific and they were like a couple of
Speaker 1: things about it that were horrific. One of them was
Speaker 1: that like, essentially their modus operandi was to find vulnerable
Speaker 1: young women on the periphery of groups, target them romantically,
Speaker 1: and then they would be the collateral to get you know,
Speaker 1: to have people then more solidly enter into these groups.
Speaker 1: And then they had like a whole you know, stepped
Speaker 1: plan of like once you're in, how you kind of
Speaker 1: would would destabilize steer these groups from within U And
Speaker 1: the that thing that really made this even worse, um
Speaker 1: was the fact that most of the groups, I think
Speaker 1: maybe all of the groups targeted with this particular unit
Speaker 1: were green activists. There's this incredible, incredible, like you couldn't
Speaker 1: make this stuff up. But there's a famous libel case
Speaker 1: where McDonald's was suing these these two activists in the
Speaker 1: UK right because they were putting up flyers exposing some
Speaker 1: of the practices of McDonald's and the group that they
Speaker 1: were members of, which I think at this point was
Speaker 1: called Green Piece, but it was different to the kind
Speaker 1: of more famous Green Piece in London. Prior to them
Speaker 1: doing this big kind of McDonald's thing, um was losing
Speaker 1: members and it got to a point where there were
Speaker 1: so few people in this group that it would have
Speaker 1: shut down had it not been for the fact that
Speaker 1: there were a large number of undercover cops in this group.
Speaker 1: So you know, if you imagine at some point they
Speaker 1: were actually more undercover cops and private security people undercover
Speaker 1: in this group that actual activists, which has enabled the
Speaker 1: group to continue. And in fact, the original flyer that
Speaker 1: they put out was written I forget the guy's name
Speaker 1: now by one of these undercover cops. He wrote the
Speaker 1: copy for this flyer that went out and then was
Speaker 1: you know, saw this these people dragged up in court
Speaker 1: and was this huge you know, McDonald's won the case,
Speaker 1: but in terms of pr it was hugely damaging to them.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that that for me was the thing that
Speaker 1: seemed even more point because because here you had this
Speaker 1: story of the state sanctioning the you know, one of
Speaker 1: the most terrible abuses, Like essentially, you know, what was
Speaker 1: happening was pretty easy to to kind of call it rape, right.
Speaker 1: There was women in sexual relationships with people and thinking
Speaker 1: it was consensual, but not realizing that they this was
Speaker 1: you know, what they were getting into was not what
Speaker 1: they thought it was. And so this was just so
Speaker 1: appalling and like from a just to kind of base
Speaker 1: emotional level, just it was so hard for me to
Speaker 1: imagine the pain of um and these women win relationships
Speaker 1: with these undercover officers for years. Yeah, and then and
Speaker 1: and and part of the modus operanda was when you
Speaker 1: were done, you had to exit and disappear. And they
Speaker 1: had this whole plan where the cops would claim that
Speaker 1: they were being followed and that they were worried, and
Speaker 1: then they would disappear, and then they would call from
Speaker 1: some European country and say that they had kind of
Speaker 1: fled the country because they were worried that the cops
Speaker 1: were onto them, and then they would slowly kind of
Speaker 1: disappear and this you know, some of these were kind
Speaker 1: of pre modern internet, so it was easier for I
Speaker 1: want to kind of disappear. But this stuff totally happened
Speaker 1: in the Green Scare in the States, in you know,
Speaker 1: around this was around this was My big question was
Speaker 1: was this you know, some of these cases were kind
Speaker 1: of the original inspiration. And when I started thinking about
Speaker 1: trying to tell a story inspired by this. Originally it
Speaker 1: starts off and and and it's still in based in
Speaker 1: the UK, and based on these things. And there was
Speaker 1: a particular, ah, a particular flavor to it where the
Speaker 1: cops doing this work it was part of the matt Police,
Speaker 1: who were you know, that's the more kind of gang story.
Speaker 1: Like there's there's a real reputation that the Met police have,
Speaker 1: So these cops that were chosen for this work were
Speaker 1: the ones that were a bit more kind of marcho
Speaker 1: and edgy. And there we was there was I mean,
Speaker 1: there was so much stuff to it that that was horrific,
Speaker 1: Like they would only pick cops that were married, um,
Speaker 1: because they felt that that gave them some level of
Speaker 1: ability to be sleeping with these activists and not lose
Speaker 1: themselves in it. Um. But obviously the wives didn't know
Speaker 1: what was ending um And and there's just there's so
Speaker 1: many layers of this that I just thought was it
Speaker 1: was awful, And coming off the first story, I was like, well,
Speaker 1: I would love to tell an undercover cops story in
Speaker 1: which we acknowledge that the undercover cop is bad. They
Speaker 1: aren't like, you know, because because it's such a classic
Speaker 1: trope is the undercover cops story because you get to
Speaker 1: have your cake and eat it. You get to see
Speaker 1: someone on both sides the law. You get you get
Speaker 1: all the tension and thrills of it. But usually, you know, whatever,
Speaker 1: even if the if the movie or the story or
Speaker 1: whatever has a bittersweet ending, the protagonists always the undercover cop.
Speaker 1: And ultimately, because they're the protagonist, they're the one that
Speaker 1: your heart goes to, right. And the secondary characters, whether
Speaker 1: that's like the wife and Donnie Brasco or good Fellows
Speaker 1: or something, you know, they basically serve as a foil
Speaker 1: to the main character. So I was like, well, can
Speaker 1: we tell a story where, um, we we treat the
Speaker 1: wife and the activist who's being targeted and the other
Speaker 1: people on the periphery of this guy think more about
Speaker 1: their perspective on this world, and let's acknowledge from our
Speaker 1: perspective that this is wrong. Everything that's happening is wrong
Speaker 1: and it's not justified. And then let's just see what
Speaker 1: the impact is on people. Um. So, once we started
Speaker 1: developing it, and when I was speaking to Anna partner
Speaker 1: about doing it, um, I felt like, oh, we should
Speaker 1: move this to the States, um to make it feel
Speaker 1: certainly as well, because the larger audiences American to to
Speaker 1: kind of reiterate and make it feel kind of more
Speaker 1: identifiable and have it be less quaint and British. Um.
Speaker 1: So my number one question from day one was like, well,
Speaker 1: does this ship happen in the States and as much
Speaker 1: does it happen in the same way. And so we
Speaker 1: on a researcher who then started pulling stuff up and
Speaker 1: and the big thing for me was replacing the undercover
Speaker 1: group the met with the FBI. And and then I
Speaker 1: that became fascinating to me because then I started digging
Speaker 1: into the FBI and understanding their history and everything that's
Speaker 1: wrong there. But yeah, immediately I start seeing all these
Speaker 1: great examples of yeah, this explicit infiltration of green groups UM,
Speaker 1: some pretty horrific cases of entrapment um, where you know,
Speaker 1: people infiltrate these groups and then encourage them to do
Speaker 1: more extreme and violent things on the record. It's the
Speaker 1: point where you're listening to like recorded FBI stuff and
Speaker 1: and you can hear the group being like I'm not
Speaker 1: sure about that, Like that doesn't sound like a great idea, dude,
Speaker 1: And the the FBI person is They're going like, Wow,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I I really do think we should
Speaker 1: blow this bridge up, guys. And it's so obvious, like
Speaker 1: when you listen to which is why a lot of
Speaker 1: these cases have ultimately been thrown out. But yeah, it
Speaker 1: was it was. It was I guess for the project,
Speaker 1: reassuring to see that all this stuff was happening over here. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, and the FBI, like the specific FBI agent
Speaker 1: that we kind of follow definitely feels very American and
Speaker 1: feels very real. Um. I really like the actor that
Speaker 1: you got to play him. Um, he definitely feels like
Speaker 1: a lot of kind of the law enforcement dudes who
Speaker 1: kind of handle this side of things. Um. That was
Speaker 1: that was That was definitely that was like an FBI.
Speaker 1: He became like the fbiis of it became very important
Speaker 1: to it. And it was interesting the way that the
Speaker 1: FBI they had this brand, which is partly reinforced by
Speaker 1: the media, Like they had the great idea back in
Speaker 1: like forties or fifties to themselves fund and support cop shows.
Speaker 1: So this whole idea we have through the X Files,
Speaker 1: through pretty much every serial killer media whatever. The idea
Speaker 1: of the FBI is being like the smartest and the best,
Speaker 1: like that's put out by them, but it's really interesting
Speaker 1: to see they believe that, like they are beyond approach
Speaker 1: and like they have higher standards for like, you know,
Speaker 1: if you want to join the FBI, there is in
Speaker 1: theory this kind of moral moral check that you have
Speaker 1: to pass. But into ABI age and flipping backwards and
Speaker 1: shooting somebody when his gun falls out of his pants
Speaker 1: at a clock, Well, then you read about it and
Speaker 1: you're like, actually the experience, the lived experience, and we
Speaker 1: were it was it was so bizarre because I was like,
Speaker 1: I really want to understand what it's like to be
Speaker 1: an FBI wife, and um, let's find let's reach out
Speaker 1: the research I've done. Some of the stuff we pulled up.
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, it, it does sound pretty bad.
Speaker 1: Like there's a requirement if you're an FBI age and
Speaker 1: you have to move every three years or something. So
Speaker 1: if you're the wife to an FBI agent, you essentially
Speaker 1: move every three years, and so you never get a
Speaker 1: chance to build your own career or to make roots,
Speaker 1: and so you're generally and the wage is not great,
Speaker 1: which is why they're very vulnerable to corruption. Really Um,
Speaker 1: so you're generally living there's usually kind of areas where
Speaker 1: all the FBI families live, so it's this very insular
Speaker 1: world and you you start to see where some of
Speaker 1: these wives have come out and spoken about it. They're like,
Speaker 1: it's really shitty because our husbands, who believe themselves to
Speaker 1: be like you know, March of superheroes, get to disappear
Speaker 1: for three days at a time and we can never
Speaker 1: ask where they are or what they're doing. And there's
Speaker 1: this kind of internal code which you see in a
Speaker 1: lot of law enforcement right where they will cover for
Speaker 1: each other and protect each other. Um. And you suddenly
Speaker 1: start see that like, ah, you know the this is
Speaker 1: not like And in fact, I remember reading sort of
Speaker 1: the guy who inspired like Silenced the Lambs. The TV
Speaker 1: show mind Hunter was based on him in his book. Um,
Speaker 1: this guy who was one of the early kind of
Speaker 1: serial killer profiling people within the FBI. You read his book,
Speaker 1: It's a terrible book. When I heard that Fincher was adapting,
Speaker 1: I was like, wow, good luck. Um, but it's incredible
Speaker 1: the lack of self awareness he has. Um, this guy
Speaker 1: is so sexist and so bad. Every time he introduces
Speaker 1: a woman, it starts by from the legs up like
Speaker 1: he's describing it and um. At the very end of
Speaker 1: the book, he reveals that his wife leaves him, and
Speaker 1: he kind of writes as if this is a huge surprise,
Speaker 1: and yeah, he's calling us from chapter one and he
Speaker 1: has the best buddy. So like the guy who's who's
Speaker 1: the kind of number two in mind Hunter on TV,
Speaker 1: there's like a real life version of him. And halfway
Speaker 1: through the book, his wife high is an assassin to
Speaker 1: kind of hitman to come in and kill him, and
Speaker 1: the guy just narrowly avoids it. And the guy writing
Speaker 1: the book is like, what an evil woman, like my
Speaker 1: poor friend, and you're like, well, hang on a minute,
Speaker 1: what did your what was your friend like? Yeah, what
Speaker 1: was what was going on? Yeah, there's there's there's probably
Speaker 1: something going on there. So yeah it was Yeah, that
Speaker 1: that sense that which I think for me, expanded beautifully
Speaker 1: to the bigger picture of like that character kind of
Speaker 1: believing that he's the good guy absolutely, you know, he's
Speaker 1: the sheriff in the Western. He's coming in and he's
Speaker 1: fixing problems and he's saving the world. M but and
Speaker 1: then hes apart and and and his inability like it's
Speaker 1: such a brittle world view that. Yeah, he is he
Speaker 1: is very once yeah, once he's exposed to thinking that
Speaker 1: the world is maybe different, it just totally breaks them. Yeah.
Speaker 1: His specific arc I think is extremely interesting. Um, but
Speaker 1: I don't want to spoil it because I think it's
Speaker 1: it's it's too it's too shocking. Once you get to
Speaker 1: the final piece of his story, you're like, oh wow, um,
Speaker 1: I think that was laid out in a really beautiful way.
Speaker 1: But it's it's it's not like shocking away, like oh
Speaker 1: this this like doesn't make sense. It's like, oh no, yeah,
Speaker 1: I can see that, I can see why he's doing this,
Speaker 1: but it's still it's like you kind of slowly watched
Speaker 1: this guy get broken down piece by piece. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: because he starts he's very much like the superhero FBI agent.
Speaker 1: He's like, yeah, ha ha, I'm gonna I'm gonna stop
Speaker 1: these terrorists or whatever, and then he just like yeah,
Speaker 1: watching him progress throughout the story and you can see
Speaker 1: like how pathetic he is. Sometimes there's a there's a
Speaker 1: great uh one of the UK spy cops, Um, I
Speaker 1: forget his name. If we're doing this three years ago
Speaker 1: and I've had all these names in my head. But
Speaker 1: he UM. Uh. So he was assigned and he was
Speaker 1: infiltrated this screen group somewhere in the UK for a
Speaker 1: couple of years, had this relationship with this girl. UM
Speaker 1: was participating and facilitating. UM. The the one detail that
Speaker 1: I loved and tried to make sure he's accurate was
Speaker 1: all these cops would have a van or they would
Speaker 1: have like a big truck in the UK because they
Speaker 1: realized that, like in these smaller groups, like being the
Speaker 1: transportation was like your superpower. So like if you are
Speaker 1: someone was like, oh, I'll drive everyone to the thing.
Speaker 1: I'll get us all there because I have this big van. UM.
Speaker 1: That was the easiest way to just kind of make
Speaker 1: yourself useful. UM. But this guy is doing all that.
Speaker 1: At some point, UM, they decided to pull him and
Speaker 1: they pull him out. He returns to his wife and
Speaker 1: his normal life back in London. UM. But he can't
Speaker 1: go back to his normal life, and so he starts
Speaker 1: and he's done all the stuff of disappearing, but he
Speaker 1: just starts getting up and driving and maybe he's in
Speaker 1: the north of England somewhere, just just shows back up
Speaker 1: and he's like oh, I'm back, guys, And they're like, oh, Ship,
Speaker 1: what happened? I thought you had to like disappear because
Speaker 1: people are after you. And he's like, no, it's all right,
Speaker 1: ah and just goes back to live as an activist. UM.
Speaker 1: And at some point one of his superiors notices that
Speaker 1: the mileage on his police paid vehicle is huge, and
Speaker 1: they're like, why is this guy doing so much my
Speaker 1: legions because he's driving all the way back uh and
Speaker 1: and continuing to live this life and inhabit this character
Speaker 1: that he's set up. Um. And at some point I
Speaker 1: think he gets found out and it all goes horribly
Speaker 1: wrong because he no longer has like the fake idea
Speaker 1: and stuff that they gave him. But yeah, I mean that,
Speaker 1: and it's like that stuff is interesting. But then you
Speaker 1: it was always important to never be overly sympathetic when
Speaker 1: you see them struggling. There is an of life. There
Speaker 1: is certain points where you see the FBI agents struggling
Speaker 1: because of how like smug he is. You're like, yes,
Speaker 1: he's struggling, and you like get excited when he gets
Speaker 1: like when he gets like reprimanded or he you know,
Speaker 1: people are like mad at him for various reasons. It
Speaker 1: very interesting how you like how sympathies get pulled in
Speaker 1: certain directions, because like, by the end of the game,
Speaker 1: you definitely have a much fuller perspective on who this
Speaker 1: guy is and how his kind of psyche works, because
Speaker 1: he is really in a lot of ways like kind
Speaker 1: of pathetic as like a person um and he like
Speaker 1: needs to like hype himself up for himself to like
Speaker 1: make himself feel like he's special. Then when that gets
Speaker 1: broken down, he just completely collapses. M I guess one
Speaker 1: of the last things I want to talk about is
Speaker 1: like throughout all of your games you have kind of
Speaker 1: a through line of like fairy tales. You kind of
Speaker 1: you bring in fairy tale concepts into all of these games.
Speaker 1: Um And. I like how a lot of your games
Speaker 1: are very open ended in some ways. I think that
Speaker 1: her story being much more open ended than than telling
Speaker 1: lies in some ways. Um And, I really like that
Speaker 1: you kind of you can't like look up, like what
Speaker 1: is the ending of this game. It's like no, like
Speaker 1: you have to piece it together in your own brain
Speaker 1: like that, and whatever you think the story is, that's
Speaker 1: where it is for you. There's no like definitive ending,
Speaker 1: especially like especially for her story, um and how this
Speaker 1: combines with fairy tales. I think it's it's really interesting
Speaker 1: way to like include like mythology into these more modern stories.
Speaker 1: What's kind of your pot process behind you know, kind
Speaker 1: of kind of including mythology and fairy tales into these
Speaker 1: more like modern stories of like you know, people interacting
Speaker 1: with like government, law enforcement, and then just you know,
Speaker 1: breaking down their own psyches under these heightensed situations. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I think it. I think it came initially
Speaker 1: with her story of yeah, thinking about the kind of
Speaker 1: meta storytelling nous of these things, right of the expense
Speaker 1: which their experiments and like how we tell stories, um
Speaker 1: and but a lot of times, like the myths and
Speaker 1: the the kind of classic stories that people go to
Speaker 1: those right to try and understand the bigger questions or
Speaker 1: certainly like um, I guess partly came out of the
Speaker 1: start of first story. I had like two youngest kids,
Speaker 1: and you're so you're reading them all the classic stories
Speaker 1: and you realize the extent to which these are just
Speaker 1: encoding our society's values. Right. But I had this incredible
Speaker 1: book that was my parents got for me, and I
Speaker 1: tracked down and made sure we still had when I
Speaker 1: had my kids. That was called it was like folk
Speaker 1: tales of the people's of the Soviet Republic from like
Speaker 1: the early eighties, and it was collected like a lot
Speaker 1: of it was. It was Ukrainian folk tales, and they
Speaker 1: were amazing because they were so dark. Like the message
Speaker 1: of each of these stories was trust nobody. The rich
Speaker 1: will always win, you will end up dead and unhappy, right,
Speaker 1: And each story would start with the poor peasant his
Speaker 1: brother gets rich, he asks for help. The brother like
Speaker 1: is horrible. Like there's one story where there's this brother
Speaker 1: who's like, oh, if you want some grain because you're starving,
Speaker 1: and then gouge out your own eye and I'll give
Speaker 1: you some grain. And then it comes back from more
Speaker 1: grain later and he's like, gauge out your other eye. Now,
Speaker 1: chop off your hand. And it's like they're so dark,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, but this is reflecting what it was
Speaker 1: like to live in that world and grew up and
Speaker 1: you're preparing people for the realities. So um, you know,
Speaker 1: I think that to me was really interesting in and
Speaker 1: her story tells this story that kind of to some extent,
Speaker 1: grows out of this childhood and then we're tell him lies. Definitely,
Speaker 1: it was part of this idea of of, yeah, how
Speaker 1: Logan's character David sees the world and relates to his
Speaker 1: part in it and like his utter inability to realize
Speaker 1: that he's the bad guy in the story, right, and yeah,
Speaker 1: he's the good guy. Um. And and that was like
Speaker 1: that was partly the key to breaking his character. And
Speaker 1: it was his daughter. So he has this character who's
Speaker 1: this six seven year old daughter and that's like, you know,
Speaker 1: he lets down and does horrible things to a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of people. Um, but the thing he's not going
Speaker 1: to be able to get over is knowing that he's
Speaker 1: laid his daughter down, right, knowing that at some point
Speaker 1: she will grow up and be an adult woman who
Speaker 1: if she learns about what her father has done, we'll
Speaker 1: we'll think less of him and you know, we'll realize
Speaker 1: that he's the bad guy in the fairy tale whatever.
Speaker 1: So um, that was like just interesting to me to
Speaker 1: set him in that moment and have him reading those
Speaker 1: stories and see see his relationship with his daughter. Um
Speaker 1: and yeah, I think that that ye just relating those
Speaker 1: things back to what are these these kind of base values,
Speaker 1: and so much of those foe tales is preparing you
Speaker 1: for the fact that people are going to lie to
Speaker 1: you and trick you and you know all those kind
Speaker 1: of aspects. Yeah. Well a lot of them do deal with, like,
Speaker 1: you know, failures of trusting people and you know, getting
Speaker 1: getting let down and being misled. A lot a lot
Speaker 1: of those do kind of follow on these same same
Speaker 1: kind of rough templates. UM, let's see, is there anything
Speaker 1: you're working on now that you wanna that you wanna
Speaker 1: plug um, And of course you know people should pick
Speaker 1: up Telling Lies her story. UM. I have them on Steam.
Speaker 1: I think they are best suited to be playing on PC,
Speaker 1: but you can get them on console. We can get
Speaker 1: them on iOS. But in any anything anything upcoming. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're working on currently this project called Immortality UM which
Speaker 1: is very ambitious. Uh. It will be out next year.
Speaker 1: It deals with the story of an actress who only
Speaker 1: ever made three movies the latter half the twentieth century UM,
Speaker 1: and then disappeared. And we have recovered footage from these
Speaker 1: three movies. UM. It. It's been interesting because with Telling Lies, like,
Speaker 1: I've always been someone that m when I think about
Speaker 1: the kinds of stories I want to tell I've always
Speaker 1: thought that I'm not a capital P politics person, right,
Speaker 1: I tend to be interested in how people relate to
Speaker 1: each other and some of the kind of smaller politics.
Speaker 1: Um And once I got to telling lies, it was like, oh, actually,
Speaker 1: like there is some capital P politics tied to all this,
Speaker 1: and so dug into that was like, well, so I
Speaker 1: want to do right by this, right, So we did
Speaker 1: involve speaking to lots of people, didn't involve bringing in
Speaker 1: all the research and everything. Um So, coming away from
Speaker 1: telling lies, and as I mean, it was making the
Speaker 1: game was insane because it was during Trump Trump happens,
Speaker 1: and I remember going into it thing like we're making
Speaker 1: this story about the FBI being bad. That's a pretty
Speaker 1: reasonable endpoint. And then once we hit Trump, you had
Speaker 1: all that stuff of like the good FBI agents and
Speaker 1: theory or the FBI might be the people that bring
Speaker 1: Trump down and suddenly they it was leaning into the
Speaker 1: myth of the FBI and I'll stick down it and
Speaker 1: just everything getting worse, and it was like, oh, this
Speaker 1: is like so intense to be making something and speaking
Speaker 1: to some of these issues whilst this is all happening.
Speaker 1: Um So, finishing that I was like, well, Okay, for
Speaker 1: the next project, we are definitely going away from talking
Speaker 1: about real life issues and capital p politics, and then
Speaker 1: just accidentally it's become because we're talking about an actress
Speaker 1: in the twentieth century and what it means to make movies,
Speaker 1: and ah, digging into that suddenly becomes about a whole
Speaker 1: other bunch of systemic issues. So yeah, not not managed
Speaker 1: to avoid the politics again, but it's it's been a
Speaker 1: really really interesting project. I think. I think once you
Speaker 1: crack that egg open of realizing that politics are kind
Speaker 1: of intrinsic to every story we tell, it's hard to hand.
Speaker 1: It's hard to kind of put that back in the box.
Speaker 1: Because once you realize you can use politics and a
Speaker 1: very interesting and calm storytelling way that still doesn't relily
Speaker 1: need a lot of audiences, it's like, oh, yeah, this
Speaker 1: is just using another way to interact with the world.
Speaker 1: I think that was that was one of the things
Speaker 1: that were slightly disappointing. I guess We're telling lies was
Speaker 1: like we were working on it, I'm like, well, to
Speaker 1: make sure we get these things right, because like, these
Speaker 1: are very important issues and there are some nuances, and
Speaker 1: so we you know, we don't want to accidentally say
Speaker 1: something that is incorrect, or we don't want to give
Speaker 1: people the impression that we're you know, yeah yeah, yeah wrong.
Speaker 1: So I was expecting some level of scrutiny in terms
Speaker 1: of discussing the games themes and everything, um, and I
Speaker 1: guess like the video games world is still not quite
Speaker 1: ready for that. Like they're quite happy to talk about
Speaker 1: the game mechanics and how this thing will work since
Speaker 1: a big picture emotional responses, but no one's willing to
Speaker 1: kind of dig deeper. And we had like as the
Speaker 1: game was coming out and continues to be, you have
Speaker 1: the bigger name developers being like there's no politics and
Speaker 1: our video games as they're like invading make a game
Speaker 1: about you know, being a black Ops unit taking down
Speaker 1: communist countries. We're not gonna abou politics. We're gonna yeah
Speaker 1: that constantly a constantly just saying it's it's possible, and
Speaker 1: they'll always say we we both sides it right, Well,
Speaker 1: we'll tell both sides and let people make the decision.
Speaker 1: And something that I was very adamant was very imported
Speaker 1: to me on telling lies was like, if we're making
Speaker 1: this game, it is not the point of the game
Speaker 1: is not to give you a mush of information and
Speaker 1: have you decide the moral yeah, you know, good or bad?
Speaker 1: Something like. We are going into this with the assumption
Speaker 1: that we and the audience or most of the audience
Speaker 1: believe that people doing these things are wrong, and then
Speaker 1: we're just And then I'm interested in what does it
Speaker 1: due to the people, What what is it like to
Speaker 1: be in this world? What are the consequences of ramifications?
Speaker 1: How does one exist, ist and continue to live a
Speaker 1: life after having been involved in these things? So, for me,
Speaker 1: a political game is it can't be a political story
Speaker 1: in any media. It can't be going back to first
Speaker 1: principles pretending we're in debate club, because I just I
Speaker 1: think that's just that's absolutely lies the audience. I think
Speaker 1: you can say a political story is one which embraces
Speaker 1: and acknowledges the reality of the various power struggles and
Speaker 1: inequalities that we have and and then has something to
Speaker 1: say about or has a particular angle it wants to interrogate,
Speaker 1: or something it wants to shed light on. Um. But
Speaker 1: it's very childish and I think we're definitely struggling with
Speaker 1: this in video games. To be like, oh, if it's
Speaker 1: about politics, then it should be a big question and
Speaker 1: we should assume no answers, right, And it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a completely bullshit and and it kind of
Speaker 1: it can lead to some problematic ways, which is why
Speaker 1: you see a lot of you know, game footage in
Speaker 1: actual like terrorist propaganda, like with like like with like
Speaker 1: Nazi the white supremacist stuff, they use a lot of
Speaker 1: game footage in their propaganda videos when especially when it's
Speaker 1: like both sides of these issues. Yeah, it's a I
Speaker 1: have have a particular interest in the intersection between politics, extremism,
Speaker 1: and gaming because the gaming is very important to our
Speaker 1: modern kind of extremist ecosystem um, particularly around like four
Speaker 1: Chan and like you know, like mass shootings. All of
Speaker 1: these things play into game culture. Not not not saying games
Speaker 1: cause these events to happen, they don't, but like the
Speaker 1: way they interact with these people is actually interesting. You know.
Speaker 1: This is very different from like the way like this
Speaker 1: Senate is like, oh, games are causing mas shooting because
Speaker 1: they're not. Yeah, I think it's it's it's it's it's
Speaker 1: it's it's a completely separate thing. It's it's there is
Speaker 1: there is a Fox News kind of hysteria around gaming.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, like and and clearly, you know,
Speaker 1: one way I pitched her story when I was telling
Speaker 1: people why it was interesting, it's like, this is a
Speaker 1: game about listening. I was like, that's cool because, you know,
Speaker 1: whatever you think about the larger politics of it, or
Speaker 1: the question of whether video games themselves are inherently MPLO
Speaker 1: or anything, like, the fact that's still the stories we
Speaker 1: tell are about someone with a gun in their hand
Speaker 1: or assorting their hand, and the power dynamics and the story,
Speaker 1: the types of stories and the types of protagonists, Like,
Speaker 1: it's screwed up. And I think to the same extent
Speaker 1: that the fact that, like the Marvel Cinematic Universe is
Speaker 1: about a bunch of glorified cops going around saying the
Speaker 1: world like, you know, if you continue to reinforce these things, Yeah,
Speaker 1: all of the art we make are saying certain things
Speaker 1: about the world, and we're reinforcing a certain narrative over
Speaker 1: and over again and not really thinking critically about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the problem with making art. I mean, I'm not
Speaker 1: trying to conference being anti gamer. I would play a
Speaker 1: lot of games. I really like gaming. I just think
Speaker 1: some some companies need to figure out why why certain
Speaker 1: games are used in mass shooting manifestoes in certain games
Speaker 1: aren't um particularly around like politics like this is a
Speaker 1: particularly particularly talking about like white supremacy and how certain
Speaker 1: games kind of playing too certain things. Because even even
Speaker 1: a game like Wolf in Stein, which I think handles
Speaker 1: this topic very well, still will you know, get brought
Speaker 1: up in certain you know, propaganda videos because they do
Speaker 1: have cool shots and Nazis walking around, right, that's the
Speaker 1: kind of the problem with some of these things. Um
Speaker 1: And you know, if they weren't killing if Nazis weren't
Speaker 1: killing people as much as wouldn't be as much of
Speaker 1: a problem. But because that's still a thing, that's still
Speaker 1: a thing that needs to get talked about. Anyway, this
Speaker 1: this this took a very sad sad turned towards the
Speaker 1: end of anyway. Yeah, I but I will I will
Speaker 1: just strongly recommend playing her story, playing telling lies. I
Speaker 1: think these games, you know, interrogate our our predispositions about
Speaker 1: about kind of police detective work. Um and you just
Speaker 1: get to learn a lot. You get to learn a
Speaker 1: lot about like people on characters because like a lot
Speaker 1: of these games, you know, are the setup is like, oh,
Speaker 1: solve this crime or mystery, but then by the end
Speaker 1: you're solving a very different mystery and you're kind of
Speaker 1: solving what makes the person tick. And it's very You've
Speaker 1: I really like the ark that you have in your games.
Speaker 1: They've brought me a lot of happiness. So thank you.
Speaker 1: Thank you for that, and thank you for talking with
Speaker 1: all of us, um about your work, I mean doing it.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you for having me and uh yeah,
Speaker 1: like I say, I was, I was hoping to have
Speaker 1: hundreds more conversations about what Telling Lies was about and
Speaker 1: about these issues when it came out. But it's uh,
Speaker 1: you know that, it's I mean, it's hot just general
Speaker 1: media landscape now, like you put something out there and
Speaker 1: it comes out and people consume it, Yeah, move on,
Speaker 1: Like you don't have that. It's bad of like discussion
Speaker 1: that that. I don't know, it feels like it used
Speaker 1: to used to be a thing. Yeah, I think it
Speaker 1: definitely did. It used to be a thing. And definitely
Speaker 1: your games have had an influence on media in certain ways.
Speaker 1: And I know there's been like a few other like
Speaker 1: projects that like Netflix is doing that is kind of
Speaker 1: taking your concept but not really doing it correctly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're coming now. Yeah, there's definitely been a lot. Yeah.
Speaker 1: People always send me them. They're like, oh, this sounds
Speaker 1: a lot like a story, this thing, and it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: but it's it's built non linear. Yeah, exactly like you
Speaker 1: let people don't ye. Usually it's like watch there are
Speaker 1: eight episodes. You can watch them in any order, which
Speaker 1: isn't how her story works. No, Yeah, like, yeah, there's
Speaker 1: there's a Yeah, there's a whole different thing going on.
Speaker 1: But no, I mean it's it's interesting times for that
Speaker 1: sort of stuff. But anyway, play these games on Steam
Speaker 1: and that that doesn't for today. You can follow the
Speaker 1: show on Twitter and Instagram at Happening here, pod and
Speaker 1: cool Zone Media. Do you have Do you have a
Speaker 1: social media that you would like to plug or would
Speaker 1: your people if people are on Twitter, that's where I
Speaker 1: tend to be despite its Yeah, I know I am.
Speaker 1: I am Mr Sambalo on Twitter, Ma Sambal. I will
Speaker 1: say I I actually actually do like your Twitter account.
Speaker 1: You do? You do post some fun stuff every once
Speaker 1: in a while. That's that's kind of a weird contescen
Speaker 1: thing we think to say of anyway, Bye for Punny.
Speaker 1: It Could Happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from cool zone Media, visit our website
Speaker 1: cool zone media dot com, or check us out on
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Speaker 1: listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It could
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Speaker 1: slash sources. Thanks for listening.