192: Remy Siu Goes Guesto Mode

[00:00:00] Hello everybody, welcome to Anime Sickos. It's the podcast for geniuses and the only podcast. We on Anime Sickos, we like to take a look at the four pillars of modern misery, those being anime, gaming, posting and jobs. I am Tom in Anime Sicko. I'm Joe in Anime

[00:00:43] Sicko. We got to guess but first we got to thank someone who gave us money because we're going to give the guest money. That's a horrible burden on us. This is the economy. We're doing economy. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So there's a graph. Is it what Marsha represents?

[00:01:00] Yeah, he was always like, those guys are doing the economy. Yeah, I read the manifesto. It was mostly about that. So we got to thank our new patron, Alison McDonald. Thank you, Alison. Thank you, Alison. Not only did Alison give us money, but she commented

[00:01:18] on episode three of Sicko Shock 2, the Stack Overflow episode, that it was the one that took Anime Sickos from a podcast where you listen if the other podcasts don't have anything interesting today to definitely one of the main podcasts. So

[00:01:31] that's like better than money. That's the big league when you get moved up in the rotation in the car. Yeah, that's so good. That's a big deal. Also, before we introduce our guest. So our guest, I'm gonna go nuts. This is what folks, this is, we've had like

[00:01:45] big names, big-ish names on before. This is the first time I'm like, like a Twitter about it. I'm like, oh, our guest, in preparation, I listened to an episode he was on on a podcast called Gaming in the Wild that was very sort of artistically

[00:01:59] minded and serious with like, yeah, Tom was intimidated because they're smart. Yeah. So I want to tell a great joke that I thought up recently to sort of set the tone. Here it goes. A man and his son were driving in the car when

[00:02:11] their car stalls on the train tracks. Just at that moment, a train starts bearing down on them and they struggle to get out of the car in time. The train collides with the car, killing the father instantly and

[00:02:22] leaving the son in critical condition. He is rushed to the hospital and to save his life, he needs emergency surgery right now. As the surgeon turns to the operating table, they gasp and say, I can't operate on this boy. He's my son.

[00:02:38] How is this possible? I have three punchlines. One, the doctor was wrong. It's just, it's just wrong. Sometimes doctors can be wrong. They're wrong a lot. They have to pay insurance in anticipation of them being very wrong.

[00:02:59] It's punchline number two. How is this possible? Son's got two gay dads. What are you talking about? It's 2024. What are you? Governor of Texas Greg Abbott, you bigot. Get with it. Mm hmm. And three, the doctor is very drunk and is looking for an

[00:03:16] excuse not to do it. Now you might be thinking, this is a pretty easily disprovable lie. That's not going to work. Well, he's been drinking quite a lot. This is the best he can come up with. Also, he's not trying to get

[00:03:28] sober. He's trying to get sober enough. He just needs to buy time. That's true. Anyway, that's my great joke. I thought that up when I was walking the park and I had to send it to Joe in a voice memo because I

[00:03:40] was going to lose it forever and I couldn't bear that. That being said, tone set. Let's introduce our guest, Remy Sue. Remy, thanks for joining us today. Oh, thanks for having me on. Did you like my terrible joke?

[00:03:55] I did. I did like it. I was trying not to laugh during the joke because I did not want to reveal my presence until now. I was trying not to laugh during your joke is a thing all comedic people love to hear. This is the best possible outcome.

[00:04:10] I was trying my best. Can you do our podcast? Can you also just not talk for the first 10 minutes while I do a very long winded joke? Thank you. For those of you who don't know, Remy is the creative

[00:04:21] director on a recently released computer video game by the name of 1000 Times Resist that I just got to say, buy that fucking game. Everyone do it. Here's how good it is. I finished the game. I saw the credits roll and the first name on it was Remy Sue.

[00:04:44] And I'm like, I got to ask that guy go on podcast. And then he said yes. And I'm like, wow. This was my first visual novel. That's how good this is. Unless you count me figuring out what happened in all the Fates Day nights by reading the wiki.

[00:04:58] But this was like my first legit VN. A kick ass opener, in my opinion. Yeah, Joe being a new father was not able to complete the game. Unlike me, a motherfucker with nothing but time. Yes, congratulations, by the way, I heard about you being a new father.

[00:05:21] Thank you. Thank you. He was slapping at my steam deck when I was getting traumatic backstory. Yes, yes. So I'm not going to make you say that unless you want to say the pitch, although I bet you said it many, many times.

[00:05:35] A Thousand Times Resist is a game where you walk around and read a story that kicks at, I should say read, but it has voice acting that's actually like really, really good. It sounds like actual real people speaking. It is not musical theater voice. It's real people talking.

[00:05:51] Yeah, that we really tried to make sure that that was the case. Thank you very much for doing that because like especially because we've done some voice over directing like in a hobbyist sort of way for our funny

[00:06:06] little audio dramas and like the voice actors out there are like insanely good. But like the it's I think it's like one of those things like the evils of capitalism drips down to all of us.

[00:06:19] Like the thing to do if you want to make money is talk like this. You really got to put a lot into it. And it's like, please don't do that. That sounds wrong. Absolutely. Absolutely.

[00:06:30] And I think one of the things that I mean, a lot of the voice actors who would they're recording in the booth that I'm recording in now. This is the same set up that we recorded in.

[00:06:40] And you know, when they come in, they're from theater and they just kind of push their voice, they're used to pushing their voice to the back of the stage. And the very first thing we're just like, OK, well, you know,

[00:06:54] you don't have to like this is a situation where we can literally hear like, like I can talk like this and you can hear me. But literally, I don't know, in real life, nobody could hear what I was saying in that regard.

[00:07:05] But like, so that was something that we tried to orient everybody around really quickly when they came in, because I agree. I mean, it's tough. Like, I wonder, you know, I'm not a professional voice actor, but I know that

[00:07:18] it's so funny that it's kind of been that way. Like, as you say, you know, it's like drips down to all of us. Like, I wonder why that that has become Vogue or like that has become kind of the way to do it.

[00:07:31] I mean, I'm interested and it sort of makes sense that actual theater people would have the theater voice because in that it they're correct to do that. In the theater, you must have that voice. But like the professional voice actors who have like that stagey voice,

[00:07:48] it is just because that's what they're asked to do. And like they can. And you can see it when when they're asked to do something else. They can do a natural performance and it sounds amazing. But it's so good.

[00:08:01] I think it's because the big thing that makes money is anime and video games, which generally are yelling shonen protagonists. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. It's kind of really interesting because, OK, well, I mean, this is an anime ish podcast, right?

[00:08:16] So like, you know, we can delve into this a little bit. You know, you have I don't I don't really watch a lot of anime with English dub. Like I know some people like watch with Japanese dub and then they go watch

[00:08:28] the English dub and I'm like, whatever. It's a lot of time. It's a lot of time. And but like if you go listen to how Japanese actors are being cast or some of the Japanese deliveries are are being delivered, some of it is so interesting.

[00:08:42] Some of it is so strange. And then but then when you go to the English dub, it's like that. That is really not the case. They're not doing the same thing. And yeah, I mean, that's always I don't know, maybe the curse from the very

[00:08:55] early, early days when they were just like not even doing dubbing. They were just like, you know, making up the script. You're just talking over what they think Piccolo was saying. Yeah, yeah. I mean, like if you go back and listen to the Yu Yu Hakusho English dub,

[00:09:09] like try like, can you imagine getting away with the lead Shonen protagonist vocal performance like Yusuke has? He sounds so real. He sounds like like a guy from life. Like that can't happen today. And again, it's not because like today's actors are terrible.

[00:09:28] It's like it's because it sells. You know, they know, like we've looked at the charts. And if you talk like this, it gets more popular because it's familiar. I am immediately thinking of like one of the common scenes in the game is the apartment.

[00:09:43] And it's just like none of the dialogue works there. If anyone had anything resembling a stagey voice, it's very quiet, very intimate. There's a lot of hush stuff through the wall as well. It is kind of funny to imagine just like the most like, oh, no,

[00:10:01] like just Mickey Mouse ask reading of everything. But like, no, this works because you have people actually speaking kind of in a way that is normal. Yes. Yeah. I mean, even if you think I think a lot about I mean, this is a good example of it.

[00:10:16] You know, the wind rises and Anno getting cast as the main character. And then you hear Anno's delivery and it's just like, oh, this is this is strange. This feels real in a way that, you know, it was kind of really impossible

[00:10:33] otherwise, because I don't really think Anno could have done the stage voice that we're all talking about. He's just kind of like, I don't know, mumbling into the microphone. There's a lot to be said for real for realistic mumbling.

[00:10:46] We got I was supposed to be describing what the game 1000 times resist was in the future. Everyone lives in a big bunker underground, question mark. We don't know. And it's good. There are no problems. There's no problems.

[00:11:02] Everyone is a clone of the All Mother, just like it should be. There are six main sisters. One is Principal, who's red. And then we have Watcher, Knower, Fixer, Healer and Bang Bang Fire. Sick name. They all have special roles that they're named after and they wear

[00:11:20] different colors and then there are sort of not quite their sister clones called shells that sort of help them out. And everyone's doing great and it's fine. And in the first scene of the game, your character Watcher kills the All Mother because she hates her very much.

[00:11:40] And so that's not a spoiler because it's again, the first thing that's like 30 seconds. Yeah. My sort of like big thing, obviously I love this game. We call it a visual novel. It's not quite because you do move around in space and like with a,

[00:11:58] you know, third person character, which is a very good decision. But it's a visual. I call it a visual novel to prime people for like don't expect like to be fighting or doing like Mario levels like this is for you playing this for

[00:12:13] the story and the story so like again, I said it before, but by this game, like you must do it. It's so goddamn good. And the thing that hit me about like this is why it's so goddamn good. And like this is why this is special.

[00:12:27] I have to talk to the people who made it is the first game I've played since Xenogears that gave me the vibes of like this is like Xenogears, except like I when I was done with Xenogears, I'm like this.

[00:12:41] There's never going to be a game that gives me Xenogears vibes. And the fact that this did is like chilling in a great it was like, oh, yes, oh, yes. Remi, are you familiar with Xenogears? You know what I talk about when I say this? I Xenogears.

[00:12:57] What is this? I do know Xenogears. And OK, I mean, I can go back like. I mean, I played Xenogears when I was very young, so it's a huge kind of fever dream blur to me, you know, and like if you ask me to recall

[00:13:14] like I have to play it again because I have some time more time now, but I do want to like play it again, I guess as an adult and see what's going on. But I have to say the thing that left

[00:13:29] the biggest imprint on me, probably because I played it at just the right age, also was Xeno Saga on PS2. I remember I rented that game from Blockbuster. Classic. And for the funny rental, like I can knock this out in five days.

[00:13:46] Yeah, yeah. Well, it was a two day rental. Oh, man. I was like, OK, well, I mean, that's how it goes. Right. Like, you know, you would get all these because I was super into JRPGs. And then you would get all of these.

[00:13:57] You would go to the Rogers video here in Canada and then also Blockbuster. And you would have your like, yeah, your 48 day rentals and 72 hour rentals and your like, you know, whole week, seven day rentals or whatever. And yeah, Xeno Saga is new.

[00:14:11] So it was like 48 hours and I played 48 hours of it. And it blew my mind. And then, of course, I I extended the rental, which was costly. And then eventually, I guess I I bought it or something.

[00:14:30] I can't remember what happened, but I just remember Xeno Saga just being like aesthetically also very, I don't know, imprinted on me in a way that that was more so than even Xeno Gears.

[00:14:45] And I think part of it was just that, you know, Xeno Gears was a PS1 game and when I PS1 was my first console at the time, I was just like, I want to play these three games and Final Fantasy seven had already.

[00:14:58] I'd already played through Final Fantasy seven before playing Xeno Gears. So it was weird to me like I had not played Final Fantasy six at the time, I was like super basic. So I was just like needed my JRPGs to be 3D. Yeah, that's the time period.

[00:15:14] I have to say I haven't played any of the Xenoblade games, which is I haven't. The only Xeno game I played is Gears. I will tell you why I specifically I got Xeno Gears vibes from a thousand times resist because there's not a lot of like explicit connections.

[00:15:34] The connection I got was the thing that blew my mind about Xeno Gears, because as a video game, it kind of like totally sucks ass because the combat system is not very good and you also don't get to do it very

[00:15:45] much because they didn't make most of it. The thing that blew my mind is the way that the story is told. It's constantly in this weird place where the game is not being honest with you. That's the wrong word, but I'm going to go with it.

[00:16:01] It's not being honest with you with what the story is about. It presents you this story and it starts the wheel spinning. And then when you hit a significant point, it zooms out and you realize actually the story has been about all this shit also.

[00:16:18] And what you've been seeing is just like a drop in the bucket. And when I say it's not being honest with you, that's not the right word because everything that happened was legit and all of the larger context

[00:16:31] you didn't know about retrospectively. Oh, that was all that was there. I just didn't have the tools to know that. And the thing that made Xeno Gears so good is that that shit happened so many times. And when similar events occurred in Thousand Times Resist,

[00:16:47] I was hooting and simply going nutty. Nice. So you mentioned in the other podcast that this game was written and produced one chapter at a time in the sense that chapter one was like done or at least close to that, I assume before chapter two began.

[00:17:06] How the fuck? It's so funny because it was like, oh, you know, I guess that's it. You know, we were new to game development and it's also just like, oh, I guess that's not a normal thing to do.

[00:17:23] When to us, it made a lot of sense because we were trying to, at least as the writers, we were trying to think of this as kind of a TV show or for ourselves, at least, even though everybody would play it all at once.

[00:17:36] And or maybe more of like the episodic games that kind of fizzled out in the 2010s, you know, like the telltales. Yeah, yeah. Or that method of delivery. I remember being very excited by that method of delivery. But then, you know, apparently it's not a good idea. Yeah.

[00:17:56] So yeah, I mean, we made it. We made it chapter by chapter. And I think one of the things that, you know, process wise, we were always trying to push with each chapter was that, OK, let's put ourselves in a

[00:18:12] in a place that makes us kind of scared about what to do next as writers. You know, if we're not scared and if we already know what's going to happen, we find that at least for ourselves as writers, we just can't work. Yeah.

[00:18:28] Like we find that the work that we make when we when we do know already and we're just like kind of moving to a point is not exciting for us. And then, you know, vice, you know, it would not maybe be exciting for the audience.

[00:18:41] And so like that, that was kind of the maybe one of the big process differences making this game is that we were just always trying to put ourselves in a scenario story wise where we were afraid of what would come next

[00:18:56] or like, did we just run out of stuff to do? And I think, you know, one of the common examples that I bring up is, is that, you know, at the end of chapter one, we had no idea that Watcher was going to turn in Fixer.

[00:19:10] And and it was one of those I guess this is like a huge spoiler podcast. So talk about everything. And so that was one of those things where when we got there, we were like, you know, the more traditional thing to do, it's like,

[00:19:23] OK, well, this whole game now will be about her trying to not turn her in or whatever. You know what I mean? But then to have her immediately kind of turn it in, it was like, yeah, actually, it was a very easy decision. Yeah, yeah.

[00:19:38] And like it told us a lot about her in a way that we didn't know, but it kind of made sense for her. And then also it put us in a place where we're like, oh, shit, what now? We do. That's so good. And that happened repeatedly.

[00:19:50] The thing about the chapter by chapter development and writing process that really hit me is that if you play this game, you will note very quickly that it is told in a very fractured and non sequential fashion. We are zipping and zopping through the timeline and through different

[00:20:10] points of view very frequently. As a result, information is doled out to you in a drip. You start out and you got questions. What's the deal? How come things is like this? Talking about this all mother shit. How come dislike this?

[00:20:27] And you are always being like the game is not cruel. It is always giving you information, but it is giving it to you obliquely and it is not giving you the answer that you want. It's giving you like deep shades and details on the side.

[00:20:41] And for me, it was like I could not get over how engaging this discovery process was, it brings to mind this is great quote by Benny Safdie about the curse, which is like the meaning of the curse is there.

[00:20:54] But we wanted to make it so that you have to get it. It's like a drawer with no handle. It's easy to open, but you have to figure out how to open it. And everyone's going to figure out a different way.

[00:21:04] The gameplay is is using your brain with these with the fucking words, folks. It's so goddamn good. Where was I going with this? Oh, yeah. How did you like know when to like now we're going to go where I'm now

[00:21:17] we're going to cut back to Hong Kong or like now we're going to go and see from the point of view of I don't want to spoil too much, but there was a there was a certain faction of people, people quotes,

[00:21:29] entities that I did not think we were going to get a point of view chapter about and then we did and I was like, oh, my. That was a Xenogears moment for me.

[00:21:36] It's like, are you you really telling me we get to see from the point of view of redacted? Right. So like for me, I guess like I can understand the process of like writing chapter by chapter. Yeah, if it is like just a straight ahead narrative.

[00:21:51] But to do that and also sort of like break it into shards and make a mosaic. How was that like? Can I ask a follow up? A sort of contributing thing here is when you're doing this chapter by

[00:22:04] chapter thing, the thing I kept as Thomas speaking about this, it's like, do you save stuff or is like the goal to leave every good idea on the table or not on the table, but like to put everything into that chapter

[00:22:17] and everything goes into now and there's not so much like future mindset planning. Like how do we just make this chapter good? Yeah, so it's a little bit of both. So like I would say that, you know, sometimes we would like we knew.

[00:22:33] I mean, like even going in, we did have like a macro understanding, like literally three points of like, OK, well, this is maybe got to happen. This is maybe got to happen. And then this is maybe going to happen. Like we knew that the murder had to happen.

[00:22:46] That was like maybe like the one the all mother murder was like the one thing. And even that one say originally, actually, we did not start the game with that. That was one instance where we did like kind of do chapters one to five.

[00:23:01] And then we're like, OK, you know what? Fuck it. Let's let's move chapter five that scene into chapter one. Right. Right. Right decision. Right decision. Yeah. And then and we all well, we thought about it a lot, actually. There was a lot of there was well, you know,

[00:23:17] you know, like debate about, you know, was it a good idea? In the end, I think it was a good idea. It was an attention. It was an absolute attention grabber because I was I was tired. I was booting it up. I just put my son to bed.

[00:23:27] I was like, all right, we're going to do a game. This reading base. Yeah, that's fine. And then when the stabbing happened, it was like, OK, I sat up a little. I was like, OK, OK, I'm in. I'm all in.

[00:23:38] And another thing, another instance of of Zeno Gearsian like curtain reveal, like you thought this is what you thought this all was. But it's not. I'm not going to get too into the spoilers because as much as we say

[00:23:50] spoilers are fake, like this game is so good and has revealed so fucking impactful, I'm not going to say everything. But you think because of that, you know, the first scene is watch your kill in the all mother.

[00:24:01] You think like this is a game about how we got there. And then you play the game and the game shows how you got there. And then it keeps going and you realize, oh, this is not a game about how we got

[00:24:11] there like and that all so good. I can't. So all I would just say right decision. Oh, thank you. Thank you. I think it's interesting because like, you know, we only felt confident to put

[00:24:26] the all mother murder at the beginning when we were already kind of a little bit into what happens afterwards. And at that point, we were like a little bit more confident going like, oh, you know, like as you know, as we were discovering along with,

[00:24:41] you know, the players as they journeyed through the game, we're like, oh, maybe this is truly this is not what it was all about. And like that was something where that's where, you know, as you were saying, do we throw everything on the table?

[00:24:54] And there are a couple of chapters where we throw everything on the table. And, you know, this is again spoilers. So like, I guess if you want to skip this part of the podcast, but chapter four is one one where we're just like, OK,

[00:25:06] let's throw everything on the table. Chapter five, of course, is also and then chapter actually everything after chapter five. It was like always let's throw everything on the table because, like, you know, to a certain extent there was a and this is kind

[00:25:21] of the thing where, you know, from chapters one to five, there were things that we had to hold back as much as we were trying to push and throw everything on the table. But then after we were, you know, free

[00:25:33] from chapter five and kind of reaching that point of inevitability, because you do set that up is going to happen. We were freed and then we were throwing everything on the table. We were truly throwing everything on the table in a way that was exciting to us.

[00:25:49] And so I feel like I forgot the first question. It was added on the first question was to the point of like, I can understand how a chapter by chapter writing process. It's easy for me to wrap my head around if we were using if we were telling

[00:26:07] the story in a straightforward way, but to also have non it also have it be heavily non chronological. That's just to me that seems so hard. And to do that without like an outline and like, well, here like I can get

[00:26:23] nutty with the structure, but I know that these are the, you know, bullets I got to hit that give me like something to reach for in the chaos. To do it, just be like, let's just go nuts. Let's see. Let's see what we can come up with.

[00:26:35] That's so it's so cool. It really works, folks. It's like really kind of fun because, you know, I think some of the writers are really fan minded in a way that, you know, we have our own chronologies that we obsess about. You can, you know,

[00:26:53] you know what I'm talking about. Right. So then, you know, one, for example, for me, like I'm relatively versed in it's Star Trek chronology. Oh, hell yes. Star dates. Yes. And so so like being like having that kind of brain or like growing up

[00:27:09] to have that kind of brain, it's kind of fun for us to be like we don't really 100 percent have this whole chronology before it's it's made. But we understand there are points on it and where there's empty space to jump in and put something interesting there

[00:27:27] because in largely, you know, even when you go back and think about especially something like Star Trek, like they're not 100 percent. They don't like map of the chronology first. They're just filling in, you know, what what may have happened and stuff passes into lore almost accidentally. Right.

[00:27:45] And so having that kind of growing up with this kind of like millennial lore obsessed brain was helpful for for us when we were writing to like, OK, yeah, we can kind of freely float the chronology and and just throw darts at it.

[00:28:04] Yeah. And and I think one thing that we kind of tried to always do is play out the most interesting scene that we can at any given point in time as opposed to and, you know, one of the reasons why we even have the time

[00:28:21] jump mechanic in the game is that it does allow us to diegetically actually move directly from one interesting thing to another interesting thing without having to be like, OK, well, you know, there's this buildup into this. Right. And it has its own kind of buildup

[00:28:36] that you can create by jumping around these points. Yeah, it's yeah. Yeah, just cut out why waste time on the connective tissue between the the juicy bits when we could just have oops, all bits like you just have

[00:28:52] it be perfect, not perfect, but just like hit, hit, hit, hit. I mean, this is something that Adventure Time, I think, taught me. And it's kind of like, you know, Adventure Time is like 12 minutes long or whatever, 10 minutes long per episode. At least they used to be.

[00:29:09] And, you know, it was a real revelation to like in that show, maybe because it was animated driven, maybe because it was boarded as opposed to scripted, that they would be like, we need to go here. And then Jake would like, let's go now.

[00:29:21] And then he's like, we're here, you know, like in a more traditional way, it would be like, well, why did he want to go there or like, you know, like what's the what's this whole kind of logic and reasoning through the characters to get there when, you know,

[00:29:36] that show was just like, hey, you know, we're going to go here now. Yeah. And of course, we're not in the same kind of world as Adventure Time. Like we don't have the same affordances narratively.

[00:29:46] So so doing the time jumping mechanic was really much this was just like, OK, let's let's find a diegetic reason that we can do this. Yeah, that's bad. I also now that you've been talking through this, especially knowing that post Chapter five,

[00:30:00] you were sort of leaving it all on the table. Like, let's do all of our good ideas, no more holding back. I can I sort of am like going back and like, OK, I see now how that translates,

[00:30:13] because as I said, I'm not going to get into the specifics, but there are chapters from point of view factions that I'm just like, I thought that we were never going to get a lot of lore about them. I thought, look, that is a background detail

[00:30:29] that is always going to be a little mysterious. Cool. Like I have enough to know, like the gist of them, but I'll never know it all. And that's to me just fine. And then we get like the chapter with I'll say it because you won't know what

[00:30:44] I mean, with the 50 and like there's no way we're going to get a chapter about the 50 and like, oh, fuck. OK. And they're leaving it off like so beautiful. This is you see, we talk shit about lore a lot and correctly.

[00:30:56] But this is this is when lore is useful. This is how like Mad Max Fury Road is all action. But it also has like, you know, Bibles full of lore because like just having it there is like you have so much

[00:31:11] ammunition to do insane shit with because everything you do is just like, you can just tell there is so much meaning draped in this, even if they don't tell me what it is. I'm going nuts. OK, I need to say this.

[00:31:25] This is I'm going to try not to keep gushing too much. This by this fucking game by 1000 times. I resist folks. I after I wrote and produced our audio drama series, Psycho Shock 2, I said that I'm going to start saying

[00:31:39] I'm one of the best comedy writers in the country, you know, sort of positive thinking thing, because I think I did a really fucking good job on that shit. And the first time since the release of Psycho Shock 2 that made me think like maybe though it's not enough,

[00:31:50] like actually it wasn't good enough. It's not bad. It's just like, like I can't be happy with this was playing a thousand times resist because like the process that you're describing and the product that you made, it's just like how did how did fucking people do

[00:32:05] that? And it's just I'm so I'm inspired. I love it. If you folks listening out there, if you almost episode 200, you obviously like me and get my thing. You understand what it means when I say that you must buy this game. Go buy this game.

[00:32:24] Sorry, I just had to say. Thank you. Thanks. I mean, it means a lot to us that it inspires these things in other artists because like, you know, that's how we all continue to make art is that we kind of need, you know, and like I can't remember.

[00:32:42] Like I think I had this feeling when I think I was watching Sonny Boy. And that's something we could talk about later, too. But like I watched Sonny Boy and I was like, oh, man, this was this was really good. I got to think about my life.

[00:32:55] I saw you were in the dock and I had not heard that and looked it up and was like, oh shit, this does seem good. Yeah. And other things where it's just like, you know,

[00:33:04] even theater shows that I would see where I was just be like, oh my God, like I do have to think about or like, I don't know, just something that makes you want to make things right.

[00:33:13] Like that's why that's like we always kind of want at least as artists, you know, why do we continue to see things, watch things, listen to things, whatever. It's like we just want to find this thing that we

[00:33:23] that makes us want to make things and that we like or gives us whatever this affect or energy is. Right. So, Remy, I got to ask you, we've been we've been having a great conversation so far. It's been lovely. I feel like we sense of genius words.

[00:33:39] That goes without saying that we all are geniuses here. But one thing that we haven't discussed that we really need to delve into the room. Are you an anime seko? Yes, I think it's pretty obvious. I'm a sunny boy. You were saying all the Zeno games. It's over.

[00:33:59] Yeah, I mean, I did a game with Saga in the title. Yes, I did in two days. Yes, yes, yes. I don't know. I'm always on this. You know, chasing the dragon for this couple of every couple of anime seasons, there's like a show that really

[00:34:17] usually it's like a limited run original kind of anime, whatever one season, 12 episodes that blow that just like, you know, make me rethink life a little bit. I mean, Sonny Boy was one of them. You know, I just recently quote unquote recently watched the Pluto anime.

[00:34:33] The so that's a little and it's so good. And, you know, before that, I think I was just I can't remember which season it was, maybe it was like maybe a couple of half a year ago, another year. Time is strange to me now. But Vinland Saga,

[00:34:54] season two of Vinland Saga and everybody's like and I love the discourse about a fan discourse about this farm arc. People just can't get into the farm art, but like because it's not the murder one because it's not the murder one.

[00:35:08] Like Vinland Saga, the farm arc is like when they because I didn't read the manga right because yeah, I've somehow restrained myself from reading the manga. And when they started the farm arc after season one, I was like, oh my God, this is like actually the real show.

[00:35:26] Yes. Yes. Yes. This is what it's all about. People who don't like the farm arc are basically the translation. It doesn't matter what words they're saying. The translation is the translation is I have a low quality brain.

[00:35:39] I am not I'm not as advanced a person as you, the farm arc enjoyer. I mean, because I haven't cartoonish because it's just like, you know, this killing kid we've been along with for how many hours. He's different now. Isn't that something?

[00:35:57] It seems it seems like a really interesting thing. You know, I don't I didn't read that much into Vinland Saga or like read much about like the production of it as a manga or whatever or the mangaka and like

[00:36:10] it does, you know, at least from artist to artist, like kind of like recognizing season two, like farm arc feels like where he wanted to begin the story and what he wanted to actually be doing. But of course, you know, you're you're you're a mangaka who has to

[00:36:24] you got to sell this weekly manga. You got to draw some fights. And so I think that first season really felt like I mean, much like, you know, first season of Attack on Titan and the first couple of,

[00:36:35] you know, volumes of Attack on Titan are much like this too. You know, it's it's still it's like very much an action adventure. But then like Attack on Titan spoilers, right? Like people also complained about the the Marley arc when it was happening.

[00:36:49] But that was also like, oh, this is this is what they've been trying to do. Yes. Well, you can't just do that out of the gate. You got to build up some juice. Yeah. You have to go on the journey.

[00:36:59] See, I have only read the Vinland Saga manga and especially with the manga. I don't know if it's like this in the anime, but in the manga, they do one of my favorite tropes, which is a character turning directly to the camera and saying the main theme

[00:37:13] of the show out loud, they do it because I it sounds when I say it like that. Like it's dumb. But like when that happens, I go like, yes, yes. The main theme. It's when in the very beginning our little kid protagonist is like,

[00:37:30] Daddy, I want to kill with my sword. And he's like, why? Who are you going to kill with that sword? And it's like my enemies. And again, the dad looks directly at the camera and says, this is what every chapter is going to be about, folks.

[00:37:41] Yeah. You have no enemies. There is no one on this world you should hurt. So I lost my shit when that happened. I mean, this is going to be Vinland. This is like just going to be spoilers all over the place. Do it, do it, do it.

[00:37:54] So if you like haven't watched Vinland Saga, I mean, when he repeats it in the end of the farm art, you know, after finally truly understanding it, it's so good. It makes me getting the shit kicked out of him. Vinland Saga.

[00:38:11] I was like trying to grab my friends. I was trying to grab the writers like you have to. You have to watch Vinland Saga. And they're like, well, how many seasons is it? It's like, oh, but yeah, you have to watch the first season of it.

[00:38:21] But you have to get to the farm art. You know, you have to get to the farm so we can talk about Vinland Saga. They didn't. But it's OK. I guess it's just it's, you know. Oh, fuck. Yo, I just had a brain blast.

[00:38:34] Vinland Saga, a thousand times, just connection. One thing that's so interesting about Vinland Saga is that we know that our hero Thorfinn does not succeed. Spoilers. His goal is I want to go to Vinland and start a new country in a new land with no more violence

[00:38:54] and hate because violence and hate, which he experienced in Spades in season one, left him a very, very damaged person. The only way he sort of becomes himself is to leave that behind. And well, I live in Vinland and there's lots of bullshit. It didn't work. Thorfinn failed.

[00:39:15] But like despite that, his and I think people tell him like Thorfinn, you're going to fail. And I think he kind of knows that too. But he has to try as much as he can. Switch record scratch one thousand times. Resist. That's that too.

[00:39:32] People are resisting in that game one thousand times and it never gets good. And there is a part where Iris's father turns directly to the camera and says the theme of the game, which is it doesn't matter that our resistance

[00:39:44] didn't work, what matters is that people know that this wasn't natural. They know it was done to us and we resisted. And like just I want this is like one of my favorite themes in media,

[00:39:58] which is like we're going to be doing this forever and it'll never end. But you have but it's so important that you do it anyway, because this is what being alive is all about. I love this shit. Yes, I was going to say exactly the same thing.

[00:40:14] It's what it's about being alive is what it's about. And that is so clear in the end of that farm arc where it's just like because he doesn't really succeed. Like a bunch of people get got on the farm. Yeah, before this even kind of happens. Yeah, yeah.

[00:40:35] His his intervention is not well timed. Yeah, yes, yes. You know what Tom said earlier and also just how you were reiterating that the farm market is like the good part. I reminded and it's not quite the same because it's not such a discrete

[00:40:52] of a thing, but whenever I read about people talking about Berserk, there's always an idiot opinion, which is like Berserk starts. And he's like, Mr. Grimdark, I was birthed out of a corpse that's hung from a tree. And then as it goes on, it's like,

[00:41:08] I have a little friend now who's annoying. And it's like and they like they say that like, where's the cool stuff? Why is he it's like, no, him having an annoying child around him is like the part that matters. Yeah.

[00:41:24] Yeah, like Guts cutting the head off a huge guy is like. I think this is this is this is the how you translate these low quality brain people's thoughts is they want to see the character do the thing they do. So like what does Guts do?

[00:41:39] He cuts the head off a big guy. Also uses his Mega Man arm at close range. They do that like five times at the start and it's good every time. They want to just see the character do the thing they did.

[00:41:51] They want to see Thorfinn uses two little daggers and cut a guy's head off. They want to see the character do the thing they do. Whereas a true genius like us wants to see the character do something they don't do.

[00:42:03] I want to see Goku do a driver's test. I want to see Pickle. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, that's yeah. I don't want to jump around too much, but isn't this like literally why every Yakuza game is so fucking funny?

[00:42:17] Because it's just like, OK, now Kiryu is going to do this. And it's funny because he's just stoic honor guy and he's approaching it with 100 percent intent and sincerity. And it's slot car racing.

[00:42:30] As we're saying, like you just kind of what you do want to go see people do new things like why are you watching? I don't know what this is like the remnant of this kind of sense of perpetual unchanging.

[00:42:45] Maybe it was like in the 90s, you know, we had, you know, television shows that were largely pressing the reset button all the time. Yeah, I mean, that's like I think of 90s like superhero stuff like that. Sort of that loop like they have to be

[00:43:00] broadcasted and there can be no context before because it has to fit in any time slot and as a result, well, I assumed that like not everyone's saw that is like correct and good. But like maybe that's what people want.

[00:43:17] People want a context list thing all the time, which means I mean, stuff can't change. Counterpoint. We're all huge fans of The Simpsons. What is The Simpsons? But characters do the same thing every time. Yeah. And I love that shit. Oh, yeah. I mean,

[00:43:34] like that's like the kind of point of the show, at least in its more cynical seasons, I'm going to get I'm going to get full Simpsons here now. Like, yes, he's five and six, like the David Merkin era. Like that was his is can I ask a question?

[00:43:51] Is this the controversy over the principal episode? Did that happen then? No, that happened in season nine. It was like one of these leftovers from from the Bill O'Keefe era. Here we go. And and but season six and season five, I think, you know,

[00:44:08] David Merkin had come in as a new showrunner and they had a whole staff turnover, I think like one of the only people that like stayed was Conan O'Brien at the time. And and he had come in with this kind of take where it's like, yeah,

[00:44:21] people don't learn, people don't learn. And if you watch season five, season six, they truly don't learn. Right. And then part of it is like a little bit of a jab of the form in the context

[00:44:34] of The Simpsons is that, yeah, of course, you it's not a serialized show and it's constantly, you know, it is resetting. But much of that was about how humans truly just can't seem to learn. And I find that hilarious. It's so funny.

[00:44:54] I mean, obviously super tragic, but like extremely funny that people don't learn. Yeah, I think a singular scene that never ends. Like, I mean, it's really a well with unlimited depth. Well, I'm having a brain blast once again. Isn't that what I was just talking about with Thimlensig?

[00:45:12] Ten thousand times resist the cycles that never end. We never learn, but we have to try anyway. Yes, we have to carry that weight, folks. God, what a good game. So here's something that I have to say. This is not exactly as I've been super praiseworthy.

[00:45:28] You know, I love this game. So take it and keep that in mind when I say this shit. It's been like an incredible burden on me to say the name of the game correctly. We say it wrong all the time. We say one thousand one X Dalmatians.

[00:45:40] We say one thousand X Hunter. I say one thousand times Gex. I say three thousand times Bape. But it's like it's it. I saw the game come up in my steam queue before time even told me about it. And I said there, I was like, that's a name.

[00:45:59] That's a name. It's the first on the steam list. The first game in my library. Yeah, that one was by accident. But we benefit from from the happy accident. Sorry, we interrupted you. You were talking about your publisher, which is the second.

[00:46:13] They internally they internally call it a one K XR because they, you know, of course, it's like, you know, this this this title of this title is really not meant to be said a lot. And it's one of those funny things that like

[00:46:28] I was talking to a friend about this yesterday and it was like the title came. I don't know. I was just like walking around and like going to my car in the parking lot. And then like this was many years before I even

[00:46:41] considered making a game and like popped into my head. And I kind of wrote it down in my notes. And I do keep a collection of just titles because I impossibly cannot name something after I started.

[00:46:54] And then and usually the title is like the first seed of like, OK, well, maybe this tells me something about what this thing is. And it kind of grows out from there. But then not having a title and then

[00:47:08] having a then having to tell afterwards it never works for me. And then also usually the the project kind of implodes a little bit. And yeah, so, you know, it's funny because it's a title that I think is

[00:47:22] memorable in the fact if you look at it or read it, you just the shape of it, you may remember or you may remember the not knowing how to say it. And but yeah, that's one of those things.

[00:47:34] I for some reason, I never thought about the utility of people having to say it. I don't know why. I mean, I know why, because you're in the weeds, man. You're you're you can't think that's that's a publisher's decision speaking.

[00:47:47] I want to talk about this because this is interesting to me. So you if I'm gleaning correctly from the information that's out there, you are not like a video game guy in terms of your career at large. You do a lot. You do theater. I'm understanding this correctly.

[00:48:03] I assume the rest of your team at Sunset Visitor is of a similar background. Yeah, so it's like half and half. There's there's a half of us from the performing arts, more specifically, kind of like experimental theater and like kind of wild random stuff.

[00:48:18] Not random, but like wild things. And then the art director Kodai is he has a kind of illustration 3D background, and he was primarily working in VFX before this. And the programmer Colin, he's the one that has the most game experience.

[00:48:41] He's been he has like a 12 year long career of programming in more kind of triple A context. Oh, wow. So but the writers and myself, we are we are coming from like we've we've worked together for, you know, almost 15 years now in different capacities.

[00:49:02] And so we come from experimental to theory. Like I personally studied music in in school. And so like I was working in kind of music ish kind of areas as well. But but yeah, so we're not. Yes. Yeah, sorry. Half and a half.

[00:49:21] But the half where we're not from games, we all kind of largely grew up playing games, but but we somehow ended up doing experimental. Yeah. So OK, so this is interesting for two reasons. One is at this point like a fun fact that like everyone knows.

[00:49:38] Like did you know Nintendo goes out of their way to hire people not from the games industry? I mean, this shit is why because you are you are coming to to a very worn, not worn, but like a medium with a lot of tropes.

[00:49:50] People expect like if it's a game, I'm using gun box. I'm pushing blocks to get to get it in the little place where the block goes down a little bit and then I get an orb. And when you come from outside of that and you're not like you,

[00:50:04] you don't have, you know, 10 years of like I got to make gun. You are more likely to make something refreshing and original as a thousand times resist is. But on the other hand, how the fuck like the marketing of this game and like the money, like the money.

[00:50:23] How do you get a money man on on the on the scene for this? Because you need a money man. You need logistics guys to like do the do the heavy lifting of like getting the game out there, getting it on the storefronts and like

[00:50:38] what was that like? Because like this is a tough game to describe because you don't want to spoil the story because that's like the main part. Well, you know, we we had pitched to a couple of publishers and I think fellow traveler was

[00:50:55] the one that was interested in a way that they were interested that we were not. They were already open that we were not coming from video games. It rules. It's just like you're not you don't. Yeah, I love it because I hate these things.

[00:51:14] I mean, the thing about, you know, certain publishers is that they're gamers too, right? They're looking for they're chasing the dragon too. So we got super lucky, like, you know, it was like right timing as well.

[00:51:25] There was a very specific time in 2020 when you're just you could like I guess you could still do this. I'm not caught up yet on on what the new protocols are, but you could just like cold email and pitch a publisher and they would

[00:51:37] play the demo and respond to you, like even if they rejected you. Right. What's like getting a rejection in the first place is a revelation because in music and in literary, literary, you know, kind of industries, you send a letter or whatever,

[00:51:49] even to a literary agent or whatever. You're going to end up in a slush pile. But in games, they play through the slush piles, which is wild to me. Right. It reminds me of like 1950s literary industry or like music from the early 2000s where you could send

[00:52:08] a short story to an editor and get discovered as a writer. Yeah, you get in Harper's and paid five thousand dollars. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It just seems deranged. You could send a stranger your like 300 page manuscript and they're like, oh, I'll sit down and knock on hell yeah.

[00:52:23] Yeah, I'll take a look at it. I'll take a look at it. And you send them like one of your one of three copies that you made and I don't know how the world worked back then. I don't know how anybody did anything.

[00:52:37] But that was one of the nice things about like, yeah, there was infrastructure for this. And at least so far still, we have infrastructure. It seems to me that we have some infrastructure for this in indie games. It's all very precarious. So it's always just like, you know,

[00:52:53] for players and for people who like indie games just to to buy them because, you know, we don't want it to turn into or at least I don't want this to turn into what happened to music where

[00:53:06] it's just like you truly it's just impossible to make any money making music anymore. And, you know, it's sad because at the same time you can you have all the tools, you have more tools available to you than ever before.

[00:53:21] But they all go into a box no one can see. Yeah. And it's so yeah, I didn't I was worried that indie games would turn into that eventually or games would turn into that. But thankfully, so far, it's still nice that people,

[00:53:40] gamers still want to buy games like they'll pay 20 bucks to buy a game. And and that agreement needs to hold. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, because like as an outsider who does not work in the game industry,

[00:53:53] the games industry looks like a big like hell factory that makes you die. At least AAA games are like like fucked folks. They're not good to work at, but then like actively non viable. Yeah. Right.

[00:54:10] Do you think that will like be a boon in any way to like giving more space to indie stuff or these things are so huge? I mean, that's one of the interesting things about what happened.

[00:54:23] And recently when I mean, we released at a very intense time as well. Like it wasn't planned that we would be releasing with literally like six other very hyped up indie games. Yes, that was a great day. Crunchy, great, great master little cat game. What is it called?

[00:54:41] Little Cat, Little Cat, Big City, Little Kitty, Big City. All of these really hyped up indie games kind of released on the same day and I guess it was turned in like there was enough momentum like it turned into this like strange cultural

[00:54:57] moment of like, oh, you know, indie games could maybe take the place of of AAA games. I mean, that's already happened to me for many years. Like I don't really play AAA games. I like largely play. Well, that's not true.

[00:55:14] I play like largely just like from software games and then the Final Fantasy 7 remakes from the software is in its own league. Yes. Not like a Ubisoft. We're not talking about. Yeah, yeah. We're not talking about. Yeah, it's true.

[00:55:26] So I do think that, you know, if I don't know what a normal average gamer, how they think about games, I know like I don't like I don't do a lot of like say market research that way of like how many games they buy.

[00:55:40] But I know that they like they largely don't buy that many games and they like like buy one game and they maybe play it for like 12 months or whatever. Yeah. Which is really opposite to my behavior, where it's like I'm buying

[00:55:51] small indie games all the time, but you can kind of see this like with books, right? Like people are people who read books. They're like going to the library, taking out books all the time, buying books. It's just a thing that they're, you know. Yeah.

[00:56:06] The part of the thrill of the art is the is the process of discovery. You're always on on the march forward. There is one thing about AAA I wanted to say that Tom and I talk about this kind of frequently.

[00:56:22] It came up again because your game does this very well. We were saying, oh, your your game has a wonderful sense of space, by which I mean like the environments feel like they are polished with intent and they just like. They're just good, right?

[00:56:39] Spend a lot of time in them. You get to really know them. Yes. The game that I thought would have had an amazing sense of space, which had nothing for me and was a dud is control. And Tom also kind of agrees on the basis that like,

[00:56:56] OK, the environment is like 60 CIA House of Leaves building that kicks. Oh, there's no computers and everything's tube operated. That should be awesome. But like the space felt so whatever it had this like that AAA. If I said AAA feel like it's polished,

[00:57:14] but who cares? You know what I mean? I absolutely know what you mean. Where, you know, and again, like I think this is this is just like, you know, my armchair kind of thinking out loud about this where, you know, sometimes

[00:57:30] and then we can get into this like, you know, people getting lost in the orchard thing as well because I got lost, I got lost, no, and people get lost. And that's kind of like it's interesting. A lot of these spaces there, you know,

[00:57:43] one could say that the spaces in control are like really well designed. Like, you know, they're designed around the encounters. They're designed so that you move through them very cleanly. They're designed with very clear vantage points of like where you should go

[00:57:58] and look and where it's like a theme park ride is the issue. Yeah. Yeah. So it's like a real theme park thing. And then it really I don't know, like the space kind of exists for you to move through it in a way that's

[00:58:11] like it doesn't it didn't like pre-exist before you before you being there and having its own kind of strange logic. And this is something that I feel really kind of like this is something to think about a lot where, you know, we talk about,

[00:58:28] you know, what are some of the we try to understand what are some of the unique aspects of the fact that we're making games with software and, you know, a lot of the things that people bring up in terms of like

[00:58:40] what makes it like what makes games unique are kind of not 100 percent. Like, I'm even thinking about like, you know, I love TTRPGs and I love, you know, playing TTRPG video games, but, you know, that those are things that can pre-exist outside of it.

[00:58:58] We're just doing it at like a speed. Of course, there's I'm being reductive here. I see what you're saying. You're saying this way to tell a story can only be done at this point in time. It's not like it is recapturing an analog thing. Is that correct?

[00:59:12] Yeah, or it's like I feel like there's something about video games that as a software medium or however they've turned out that the real kind of unique aspect of it is that you can experience a coherent space. I've said this before. I think I said something like, yeah,

[00:59:28] that you can like experience a coherent space for a long duration of time. Yes. And, you know, you go look at a TV show. It's like a set, right? They're designed so that if you the moment that you

[00:59:39] go through a door, like if you go through a door on Deep Space 9, like it'll just be like the Paramount lot. Right. Yeah. And but obviously here, you know, we have some version of this.

[00:59:49] Like if you look behind a certain wall in the orchard, it's just like a skybox, right? But like there is a general sense of coherency inside of that space that you have to live through and move through and you kind of imprint it.

[01:00:04] And you get the sense when you travel to a new place or if you go to a city, you don't immediately know it. But as you start to understand it and learn it, there's this thing that happens in your brain that you memorize that space.

[01:00:18] And I feel like this is something that I really enjoy. And maybe like I'm a little bit of an outlier in regards to like I have a really good sense of direction and can make these these mental like this

[01:00:32] is something I actually attributed to the fact that I played a lot of video games and specifically like 90s MMOs when I was younger, like I was playing EverQuest and I'm like, oh, I can still tell you what Freeport looks like, you know,

[01:00:48] or or Queenis or like, you know, like how do I get from Freeport over to take the boat over to the island and walk over the Dorf City, walk over to the Elfson City, whatever. I can't remember their names, but

[01:01:01] yeah, like that that kind of experience of virtual space is what I always kind of thought we as video, like maybe I'm kind of naive in the sense that I am a 90s kid who played MMOs when MMOs were aspirational.

[01:01:17] Yeah. As a as a thing that was happening, right? Like playing EverQuest and Star Wars Galaxies and and experiencing kind of a coherent, consistent space with multiple people was something that I really thought was like, oh, this is the future. Right. Like this is like this.

[01:01:38] But of course, MMOs became theme park as well. Right. Yeah. Everything is what? Dungeon runs with random people that get drafted at the start. And like from a look, I used to play MMOs like the thing in like Vanilla Wall where you're like, hey, we're four guys.

[01:01:54] We need a fucking healer. Yes. Please, if you are interested. Hello. Like to do that sucked. But also, like that was the best part. That was why I played these games. It was real. Yes, exactly. Like the logistics sucked.

[01:02:11] But I also like met people not like they have long friends as a result. But when you have to round people up, you talk to people. You would also get something weird where, like, you know, you have the party. I mean, much has been said about party finders.

[01:02:25] Like I didn't play well when to the point where there was party finders in that game, but I played Final Fantasy 14 and there's party finder in that. Right. And you just like kind of queue up and you like on a lounge around somewhere

[01:02:37] and you get thrown in with like a perfect party, like a perfect party. And I also played on a really advanced server. So like the tank was always just like perfect. Like just I was just going through the motions. Whereas like in in while I remember

[01:02:52] exactly what you're saying or EverQuest was exactly the same way. You're like chilling outside the dungeon and you're like, I want to do this dungeon, but we need this. We need a healer. We need whatever DPS maybe. But then you go into this dungeon

[01:03:06] and there's like three tanks and like an underleveled healer. Oh, that shit rules. And like one guy is like, I'm so high right now. Yeah. And you have an experience that you'll remember for the rest of your life. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:03:21] There was was Budi Bay, the no Budi Bay was a town in warcraft. There was the the pirate themed dungeon. I remember we got through that cheesing like a shaman isn't supposed to tank. But like we were like, no one's fucking coming, man. So get in there.

[01:03:36] So you're just going to you're going to try. You're going to try and make do, which is like something that I wish games still did more of like. And this is maybe like a very specific player. Like one of the writers is very opposite to me.

[01:03:50] Like they always want to min max everything to the Mac, like just like truly be in control of optimized where I'm just like, you know what? Let's just go in there and like fuck around and see what happens. And the two genders. Yeah.

[01:04:05] And so like this thing, one of my favorite gaming memories of all time is I was playing EverQuest and I was like 12 or whatever. I don't know. And I didn't know what I was doing because I was 12 and I was got caught out walking when the sun set.

[01:04:27] And because I was playing a human and I was like, didn't know what I was doing and I was like, you know, didn't know anything. A human cannot see in the dark in EverQuest. Yeah, that's the same as here. Yeah, yeah, that's the same as so.

[01:04:42] So you can't see in the dark. So it's literally pitch black. And and so you're like, oh, I'm going to get got in this forest because you're just posing in the woods. Yeah, yeah. And and then what but what happens is

[01:04:55] like a random, you know, another player like a dwarf shows up and they're like, oh, I got they clearly also got stuck out in this darkness and we both cannot see in the dark. Right. I think the only people could see

[01:05:10] in the dark was like a dark elf or like you had to have like a white which we both did not have because we're noobs. And so, you know, we decided to to party up and try to survive the night. But the thing that was really intense

[01:05:27] was that we could not understand each other because EverQuest did this thing back in the day where you, you know, if you would if you were human and you didn't speak Dwarvish and if you had a dwarf, you didn't speak like whatever they called human language,

[01:05:42] they would scramble your text. Oh, that's so good. And so while had this kind of but it was like for fun and not as restricted that so you describing this is making me realize what I miss most about it

[01:05:54] and most, which is when you go to a location and then you wordlessly work with another idiot. Yes. Yeah. And you try to make it happen and we somehow survive like we did it through emoticons or so like, like, you know, motions and stuff like this.

[01:06:12] But what was really magical was that over the period of time we were stuck out in the forest because you start to learn the language if you just are in proximity of somebody typing that like over that night I start to see more words come through.

[01:06:28] And I was like, Darmak and Jallad. It's all the shit that goes away when it's just Dungeons, Dungeons, Dungeons. And so like that's I don't know why I'm on. I guess the whole point is that about space and about like these inconveniences

[01:06:40] in gaming that make this experience like more lifelike or more these interactions, I don't know if players have patience for it these days, but I think my gut says no on the basis that like everyone has become accustomed to this type of party finder stuff, so right.

[01:07:00] Everyone has small brains as a result. And like if you try to be like, hey, this game's about waiting. I mean, OK, what about counterpoint from software? Elden Ring, huge hit, a very player hostile game that was just like, you got to fucking figure this shit out.

[01:07:20] You can go anywhere. From software is its own category. But I will say that I feel like Elden Ring is the most friendly of from software games. Yeah, and that was also the one that, yes, compared to most games.

[01:07:35] I do want to quickly go back to control because us not liking controllers are most cancelable opinion. And I know multiple listeners are like sharpening their fucking no, they're not sharpening anything. They're getting their chins of other devices ready. They're taping up the barrels.

[01:07:50] Let me just say, so the thing the thing that control does that could make it great to me. I know you think it's great, listener. The fact that I don't want to shoot a gun in control. Why don't want there to be gun?

[01:08:05] The reason when we're talking about like it feels like a theme park, it feels built for you and when it should be this weird, the space should be the main character of the game is because you have to have

[01:08:15] video game levels where you shoot enemy with bullet in the game. And I know that's probably they were required to do that in order to be able to publish a video game because

[01:08:25] they don't want a triple A game where you go around and talk and look at a space because people aren't don't like that, but like I think if control had the same sort of story and art direction,

[01:08:38] but the gameplay was like a thousand times resist where you just chill in a space and have plot happen and you don't have to shoot a gun like that to me would be a 10 and the thing is it has those bits a little bit because

[01:08:50] there are little outposts within the House of Leaves building where people are just hanging out because they're like, this sure is wacky here. And like you get a little bit of that and you got to shoot a gun in a level. Then you got to shoot a gun

[01:09:01] in a game where you can throw filing cabinets. I don't want a pistol. Yeah, people always say, like, Tom, you complain about the gun. Don't you know you can throw filing cabinets? I mean, that's just a differently shaped gun.

[01:09:11] That's just a gun where the bullets are looking different. It's the same. Am I shooting a projectile straight ahead of me? OK, that's boring. I don't care. I mean, that's I mean, one of the goals of 1000 times resist was just trying to

[01:09:26] lead with stories so much so that we were just warping literally every game thing to it as possible. So, you know, one of the challenges challenges was also trying to and this could make people roll their eyes, but like just trying to completely

[01:09:42] reduce the little narrative dissonance as much as like it's just like literally and so much so where it's like some chapters are truly, yeah, you're just walking around because like this is like what is happening right now

[01:09:55] and this is all you can do because you've not done anything else and just trying to close that gap as much as possible. And I think, you know, one of the other reasons why I can understand why maybe

[01:10:08] people don't do it beyond the fact that, you know, it can some some players may be like, well, there's no game here is that it's actually really hard. We learned that it was really hard because like, you know, even though you're

[01:10:23] just quote unquote, just, you know, you walk around. But like every encounter and every moment inside of that thing has to be somewhat thought about and made, you know, every conversation is unique. Every year you got to stage people in different places.

[01:10:36] You can't just like and the pacing of it has to be done that way. Like you're largely making pacing with unique bits as opposed to certain types of things that you could reuse. And yeah, so that's the other thing we wanted to do with with the game was

[01:10:55] that, you know, I mean, I played a lot of walking simulators in my day. And of course, they've fallen somewhat out of fashion since their heyday, like in 2010 or whatever, whenever Gone Home came out.

[01:11:09] And one of the things that was always the situation like that was an act of subtraction as well. And so I think I'm just getting to the point here is that like, you know, we're always about like, what can we throw in games

[01:11:20] as opposed to what can we subtract from our understanding of them? Because when we subtract something, we do have to put ourselves in a position of like, OK, well, what do we how do we make play without that thing that we thought everything was about?

[01:11:33] Exactly why I am always enamored by the idea of D makes because the idea is to remove enough as much as you can either graphically or gameplay wise, and it still is like, yes, standing up as a reference of the original. And you look at Gone Home and

[01:11:54] that was essentially Bioshock, but no gun, right? Like or System Shock with no gun. And it has that kind of genealogy, at least the people who worked on Gone Home used to work at Take Two or whatever, Take Two Maron or 2K Maron.

[01:12:09] Who knows? Not No, yeah, not Take Two, 2K Maron. And they just kind of wanted to take the kind of or at least it seemed to me from a player's perspective, they were taking like the kind of storytelling they were doing in Bioshock and Bioshock 2, I guess.

[01:12:25] And but yeah, saying no gun, right? And then and then we also had things like, you know, Dear Dear Esther. I always pronounce it wrong. And Firewatch and all that stuff happening at the same time. But outside of Firewatch, one of the things that I'd always noticed

[01:12:41] was that all of these games were kind of told, kind of told in a way that it wasn't happening immediately. Yeah, like you're reading journals of what occurred, which is a level removed. Yeah, yeah, like the the important event is not something that you're moving

[01:12:58] through immediately, which was something for us when we were doing 1000 times resist, it was like, OK, well, let's try to like, let's engage in the interests of the walking sim again because there was a real fall off of that kind of thing, not 100 percent,

[01:13:13] but not as it was. And but like, let's make sure that it's like whatever is happening is happening to the player right now, even though maybe it's happening in the past or whatever, but like you're experiencing it as it's happening.

[01:13:26] Yeah, it's like if you're especially in the early game of 1000 times resist, like Watchers job is to watch, is to go and look at flashbacks. So you might be like a classic like this is like Edith Finch.

[01:13:38] I find my brother's room and I flashback to how he was fucked up. But it is again, like I said, the story you presented with at the beginning is not what the story is. And it is very much like what's happening now.

[01:13:54] And that is again another way it plays with your expectations surprises you what a good game. I really like the framing early on of you doing this memory as like you are both the all mother and the watcher. So it's like people reacting to you.

[01:14:12] It's a nice way to again, it was kind of said, feed tasty bits of info that might otherwise be kind of hard to like line up sequentially. It's cool. It was well done. Thank you. Like that first chapter was really challenging that way.

[01:14:30] I do want to say before we move on, because we said it off, Mike, and I thought it was a genius thing that part of why I think AAA games are fucked, not only because of the logistics of the industry, how like, oh,

[01:14:42] it's impossible for these to turn a profit anymore because of how long they take and how much money they take. And also all the way we do. But like we were talking about like what's interesting, what's in what is interesting about these demakes, they're taking things away,

[01:14:55] they're introducing limitations, especially as if you are an artist, if you have made art and you put your entire effort into it, you understand that a limitation is an asset, not a hindrance. It's like a bunch of choices like settled for you. How wonderful.

[01:15:12] Yeah, I know. Right. You don't have to make those choices. I mean, and that might sound like, oh, it's taking, you know, cognitive load away from the artist. But I would argue no, that it forces you to make choices differently than you would have already.

[01:15:25] I mean, especially if you are if you know yourself is very difficult to not just make the choices you're comfortable with. And obviously, you would like to try to do it the other way. But eventually, it's sort of the

[01:15:38] momentum of your project brings you back to this familiar place. I feel like the chapter by chapter approach helps you mitigate that like momentum of going back to the comfortable. Do you agree with that?

[01:15:50] Yeah, I think I think it does because like, you know, we do get to be cyclical about it and, you know, we thought there would be ten chapters, but we didn't really 100 percent like there were for a time we were like, oh, like, OK, for example, without spoilers,

[01:16:06] like chapter seven really caught us off guard. Like we got to a place emotionally in chapter seven that we did not think we would get to so quickly. And we were like, oh, shit, like

[01:16:20] and and we were truly just like in a place where it's like now we live with the baggage that we created just immediately. And we have to kind of as a limitation or as a kind of constraint or a rule,

[01:16:33] we now have to work ourselves through a series of events. We have to imagine what immediately happens after this thing. Like we followed the logic of this thing. And now we're in this place where we feel like we're definitely way far off than we thought we would be.

[01:16:49] And so like now we had to make a big yeah, this sounds like a very much play where it lies approach. And yeah, yeah. Yeah. So I mean, constraints as you know, there's always the misconception that an artist is like, oh, I have this.

[01:17:04] I can close my eyes. I can envision everything and like it just like ends up on that, which which is completely false, right, like there's all artists that I know and all artists at every level that I know they're constantly working

[01:17:19] with constraints and 50 percent of the time most artists that I know are doing administrative work, right. So it's like, if not more, it's a kind of constraint. Right. Yeah. And they're having to deal with the constraints in a way that's extremely personal.

[01:17:34] And yeah, anyways, that's kind of what to me is why AAA gaming seems so unappealing. Like I would never want to play an Assassin's Creed or like the idea of doing it is ridiculous because I think

[01:17:49] we're at I mean, and obviously anyone who works on these games is going to think what I'm about to say is absolutely laughable, but it feels like to an outsider, at least to this outsider, that like they're at a technological level

[01:18:02] now where like if you throw enough blood and time at it, at like whatever you want to do, it can happen. You can make the horse react in real time to the weather that the horses if you if you just kill a couple of guys

[01:18:22] and like that's a sacrifice we're willing to make. And I'm just and again, it's just like the interesting thing is when we push against the boundaries is when we like stretch what's what is possible and like push against something.

[01:18:38] And I feel like that's where indie games really shine. And like I hope they I hope what we discussed earlier does continue that like this is a this is a space that's allowed to thrive because like shit,

[01:18:50] if I don't get to play another game like a thousand times, resist in my life will be so sad. There's also like no reason, but it's the case that like a game in with small scope has to be indie. I'm saying it's good that those games are made.

[01:19:05] But like there's nothing stopping like a big studio from crushing, but they won't because there's just not the right incentives there. It's just funny that like it's fallen to the knees to basically do it.

[01:19:20] There's a guy on Twitter, I think head falls off, who said a thing that when I saw it, I was like this is engraved in my heart, which is like there is no reason Square Enix couldn't make Final Fantasy 17 a pixel a pixel art RPG.

[01:19:35] Yeah, like we just do it. It'll take you it'll take eight months. And yeah, like yes, do just do it. Just do it. You can do a big fucking cinematic thing that loses all the money that you have saved up for 18. You know, OK, that's fine.

[01:19:51] But like 17, just like you have the staff still just like they should do the duty thing. It's like the main team makes the big one and then the black ops team, the B squad, the B squad can make the pixel one because it's fun. Whatever.

[01:20:04] They have Octopath Traveler that teams the team that makes Octopath Traveler. Maybe they should give Final Fantasy. They should just be Final Fantasy. Yes. That the problem with Octopath Traveler is that the writing is such an afterthought and it's like, like I love the combat system.

[01:20:20] I love the jobs. It's so crunchy. I love the art. My issue is that even though it's the central premise of the game, it literally feels like you're starting a game eight times. Right. I just can't. I just can't. That's the thing that absolutely blows my mind.

[01:20:35] Like you cannot possibly be telling me Square Enix. So this is the best you can do because I know that you can do a game, a pixel art RPG with a huge cast and it has and grows naturally. It's called fucking Final Fantasy six assholes.

[01:20:49] You did it 20, 25 years ago. More than that. Those guys are still around. Yeah. Geez. God damn. So one thing I bet you hear a lot and are very sick of hearing and you're going to hear again is that the hub

[01:21:12] world, the orchard, the bunker that all the sisters live in is very confusing. It's speak on that. Yeah. OK. I mean, we've already talked about this. I don't know about space and games and and like why we very intentionally did

[01:21:28] not include a map at the beginning because it was something where we wanted people to learn that space, internalize it a little bit. And then when that space changed, it would be meaningful. I didn't expect. I mean, we did have some play testers kind of raise that

[01:21:47] it was an issue. We tried to solve it with the waypoint thing. But then at some point we also kind of got to a place where we're like, oh yeah, this is like a this is actually

[01:21:55] a huge design challenge in that we made it a circle and then of course, in the middle, it's not there's like two areas that are not accessible to each other. Right. That that was like making me go nuts. And like, I see her there. Can I get there?

[01:22:13] And and I think when Koda and I were talking about it early, early on, it was really like, OK, well, let's let's try to make a space where it's like in certain places in Hong Kong and certain places in Japan, you can easily get lost.

[01:22:28] You just get lost and then you just don't know. You just kind of eventually wander around. Eventually, the more you exist in that space. The more you realize there you just maps out in your brain and then it's fine,

[01:22:46] which is kind of the experience we want people to be having. We totally understand that like it's not happening for everybody. So. We I did get turned around, but my perspective on it, which is why I didn't take any issue with it,

[01:23:03] is because the point is to interact with as many people as you can. Yeah, like, well, I'm going anyway. Like it's just like give me the dialogue, give me some context. So it didn't really matter where I was going so much as I was just going.

[01:23:17] Yeah. Yes. Yes. And the game does a great job of making those sort of like what you would think of as minor NPCs, like the characters, like obviously like Nowher and Healer, the characters with who are your sisters, but the color coded outfits, like they are significant characters.

[01:23:34] But then there's like nervous shell and like forgetful shell. Like these are like these are like silly shells. This isn't major characters, but then you realize that like, oh, I can talk to forgetful shell after every plot event and she always has something new to say.

[01:23:53] And some of these plot events are really having a major effect on forgetful shells life and like actually forgetful shell was a main character all along. Oh, my God. I'm so glad I talked to her all those times.

[01:24:05] Now, when like she now in the God is again, this is not that big of a spoiler. Now that some time has passed and she references things that happened then I'm like, my God, oh, to be so innocent. Oh, it's. I mean, so there's that.

[01:24:26] Yes, I think, you know, I will say that this is maybe like, I don't know when you're going to release this podcast. You you might get a scoop on this is that we will we'll be putting a map in a patch.

[01:24:41] OK, so so like I don't know when that patch is coming probably sometime next week. And the way that it works is that it will be a map that you can bring up, but you can't move while you're looking at it.

[01:24:57] But it does tell you where you are while while looking at it. So so the idea is, I guess, you know, we've kind of admitted to ourselves that like the actual layout, I will say even for me

[01:25:14] when I saw the map, I was like, oh, yeah, I guess this is how it is. I was like, this is OK, like because I in my brain, I mapped it this way. But, you know, if we on paper, it looks like this.

[01:25:28] OK, now, folks, hearing this, you really have no excuse. You got to buy this game. I will say that when the first tooltip for like press L button, I think it's a button and it'll bring up the waypoint finder.

[01:25:42] And I press L button and saw what it was. I said, oh, fuck this. Never use it. I'm just like, ah, the one thing I appreciated on there is that at least there was like here are the waypoints that are literally above you vertically speaking.

[01:25:56] Yes, here they are below. And I was like, that should be bog standard. Always. It is not like I mean the waypoint even like, you know, obviously the most egregious version of of the orchard is one without a way

[01:26:10] pointing without a map, which is what we had for a very long time. And then we started slowly getting people being like, oh, yeah, I get lost and OK. And as you say, like, you know,

[01:26:22] the waypoint is one of these weird things where it's like you put it on the screen, it's on screen, and then I've seen people just try to beeline straight to the dot. And I'm like, that's not that's not, you know, like if that's even in like

[01:26:34] real life, if you are on one side of the street and there's like a building in between where you got to go, it's like you cannot walk through that. And this is the other interesting part is like, you know,

[01:26:44] it's also that I've thought about this where it's like, you know, where do people live? What's their experience with their immediate environments? Like, do they live in a more kind of grid based city? Do they live in a place that does

[01:26:54] have winding roads that don't are not like immediately logical? Right. All of this experience with space kind of affects how they they interact with video game spaces as well. It's like stuff they bring in. But we definitely wanted to avoid a mini map, a real time mini map,

[01:27:11] because then you look at my experience of that has always been in any games where I it's like Google Maps. Like if you're always using Google Maps in a new city, you'll never learn the city and you'll never kind of build a mental map for yourself.

[01:27:25] And even in Final Fantasy seven rebirth, like in a tiny town. And I'm I'm just like relying on that mini map to get around. Yeah, we end up looking. Yeah, it's what you end up looking at. Yeah. Like any of the boy. Sorry, folks, the boys showing up.

[01:27:45] We got boy on camera. We got the eye when he hide the boy. He cute as hell. Like any sort of open world game, any Grand Theft Auto, any The Witcher, I'm looking at 100 percent of that mini map. I'm like the reason that the Zelda,

[01:28:02] the new Zelda hit so hard in addition to all the reasons are great. Yeah, it's because you can turn that shit off and it's like, oh, oh, oh, well, I'm in a world like I'm actually outside. Well, not yeah, you get me.

[01:28:14] Yeah, I mean, I'm someone else who plays like who played Breath of the Wild without the mini map. So, yeah, that's so good. I mean, I played with it and it obviously makes life easier.

[01:28:25] But I'd be lying if I wasn't saying there's parts where I was just like only looking at the mini map and effectively not playing the game, you know, not seeing this huge, gorgeous world. I don't care. I got to go towards the dot.

[01:28:38] So we will have a map, though, but not real time. That's I think a good compromise. Yeah, that doesn't totally cheapen the effect. I will say that the how do I put this in a way that's not a spoiler? When we find out what Old Town means,

[01:28:58] that was just like, oh, yes, like just put the themes in the game. Just say it. It's like I love it. It's like throughout you see these signs that are like this way to Old Town. I'm like, I wonder what Old Town is.

[01:29:14] And like in the beginning, you just can't get to it. And it's just like, I guess that's I don't know what that is. That's something maybe I'll learn about later. And then later you get you're in a new place and I'm like, how the fuck are we

[01:29:26] here? This doesn't make sense. And then it's like, then you leave and you go to, oh, that was Old Town. This is where the signs were pointing to all along. Oh, my God. That's like again, talking about talking about getting to know a space

[01:29:41] and then something being different. Yeah. I mean, that's something that I think like really you feel strongly in video games in a way that you can't feel in other mediums. That's good as hell. So one thing about this game that absolutely owns is a very rare beast

[01:30:06] and is that it is pandemic art. It's not about the pandemic, but it's not not about the pandemic that actually like is it the sort of lazy rule of thumb. It's like, oh, pandemic art is bad because it's dated because it's just going

[01:30:18] to be about like, do you remember when we wore masks? You remember that? Remember when you were in your apartment? Remember that? And everyone goes, yes, I was there. You don't need to tell me again, man.

[01:30:28] But this is pandemic art that like does not make you feel that way and instead makes you feel like you're watching something that kicks ass in a big way because we're focusing not specifically on, you know, like it's not like in

[01:30:42] Glass Onion where they're wearing masks and you're like that. That happened to me. It is obviously a sort of sci fi heightened version of there being a pandemic, but what we're focusing on is more of like those. Ineffable feelings that we all experienced rather than the specific signifiers.

[01:31:04] Home. Yes, with the mask. Yes, yes, yes. Like you spend a lot of time in Iris's tiny apartment, but it's not because they're quarantining, but the fact that you're spending a lot of time in the tiny apartment is giving you a feeling that is very, it really hits.

[01:31:22] Well, I mean, what's kind of interesting is that Chapter two, even though it's like not happened, like they're not in quarantine in Chapter two in Iris's home apartment. I feel like having lived through the pandemic where I was trapped in a very small apartment

[01:31:41] or quarantine in a really small apartment, like prepared me to do that level. Right. When because like this is another thing we did with Chapter two and apartment, which is like there are a couple of reasons why we did it that way.

[01:31:57] One was like, OK, in high school, there was a big space and then there was like two timelines. One of those a really small space and there was a bunch of timelines. And the other aspect of it was like, you know, we see a lot of

[01:32:10] homes depicted in media or whatever, and they're like nice homes, right? Like it's like the classic like it's a detached home. Yeah, it's like it's or even friends, right? Like on friends like their apartment that is like nice. Yeah.

[01:32:27] Whereas, you know, I was pretty intent on trying to to get like like the layout is based on like a real kind of like Vancouver ish kind of new ish apartment. It's like barely a two bedroom kind of place that they'll sell.

[01:32:42] They'll hike up the price because it's two bedrooms. Right. Yeah. But like square footage wise, it's like maybe around the same as one bedroom. I guess what I'm saying is that, yeah, like the way that the pandemic,

[01:32:56] you know, outside of the literal virus in the game, like it really was, as you say, about us trying to transmit the feelings or kind of even just explore and understand for ourselves, like what happened and what was happening

[01:33:10] and how has this changed our brain and how has this changed? And we still don't. We're still like unpacking that now. Yeah. You know, it's like four years and not even that much later, you know, like maybe two years before when

[01:33:22] we were still a little bit like really, you know, and for some people, it's still kind of still happening. Right. And so it was definitely a sense that like it was not how I thought a pandemic would play out, at least for we were very lucky or privileged,

[01:33:36] at least in the West and North America, like for some of us. Imagine if this happened before there was Internet, right? Or before there was, you know, before there was Animal Crossing, before there was, you know, all of this. They really timed that shit.

[01:33:51] Maybe they were in on it. But like, I can think of no, no company. Yeah. Had a better time to release for COVID other than Animal Crossing. It's just Nintendo. Yeah. But like there's this feeling in Thousand Times Resist that is like,

[01:34:07] like when you look at the society that is set up in the Orchard and in the start of the game, it's very static. You know, there's nothing is changing and nothing could change. And it feels like someone has pressed pause on the world.

[01:34:22] Yeah. And part of that is that you can't leave. And like the only thing that will ever happen is you have sisters who do the task and you're always going to be here. And like, yeah, it's just I love that it gets to a feeling

[01:34:37] that I don't think a lot of people want to talk about because it's bad. It's unpleasant, which is, I think, why people sort of like bristle against pandemic art that like shows someone in N95. And it's like, I know about that.

[01:34:51] Get that out of here because it's like it's traumatic. Sorry. But like getting to use sci-fi. I mean, isn't this what sci-fi is all about? We use these funny made up beep boop shit to like get at the core. And it's I love it.

[01:35:08] I think it's really good. You can get at the core by the first two quests in the log top notch because it's go to Jim, confront the entity. I like I've been muttering that to myself a lot. Jim, confront the entity.

[01:35:27] Something else I want to talk about is so we mentioned this briefly, but like I assume that a big vector of this game's success is that it seems you're caught on word of mouth wise.

[01:35:38] That's why I bought it because I saw someone post like, I think a thousand times resist is an absolute masterpiece of video game storytelling. Everyone should play. And I'm like, that sounds like I like that. And yes, I did.

[01:35:52] And now you listener are hearing about it now through the words that my mouth say. But like what was what was the marketing strategy before we knew that there was like some word of mouth that had traction?

[01:36:06] Because like I was I said this in the document, but I'm going to say it on Mike. I had a friend over and we got to play a house times resist is so good. He's like, what's it what's it like?

[01:36:14] I'm like, let me get a trailer up and I put a thousand times resist trailer. The first hit that came up was for some horror game fest. I don't know, fest. I don't know. It's not about horror games.

[01:36:23] And I'm like, a thousand times was just not a horror game. What the hell is this trailer? And I played it and it was like it's trying really hard. It's taking all the sort of horror ish lines out of context. And there's scary music behind them.

[01:36:37] And I'm just like, this is not what the game is. But then I'm like the trailer should have been. And then I realized I can't finish that sentence because I'm like, oh, I have fucking clue. Man. Yeah. OK, so I mean, 100 percent.

[01:36:56] I think I admit this, the publisher admits this. This is a very difficult video game to market like for many of the reasons that we've said, like one of them is that it's not in one particular genre. I mean, I guess you could call it a walking simulator.

[01:37:14] But then we can talk about how genres sometimes just break down and are not useful for us. And then the more we lean into them, the more we just like, yeah. And so the other aspect of is that much of it is spoilers, right?

[01:37:28] Like if we can't really say, you know, and thank God we have word of mouth in this way because it's finally kind of the that is a little bit given to the audience, which has been great because, like, you know,

[01:37:42] you had asked me to pitch this this morning or earlier in the interview. And I was like, I don't know. Like, I would rather hear other people pitch it to each other because, like, I think that's where, you know, we see this all the time

[01:37:58] when you try to tell people, tell your friends, like, I really like Vinland Saga because of the farm. Right. But let me explain. Let me explain about the farm. And yeah, so I guess, you know, one of the angles that seemed to have was stickier.

[01:38:16] Was that there was all of a sudden a bunch of these narratively driven indie games that were more in the kind of survival horror. And, you know, strangely enough, the one place where walking simulators are accepted and not derided is actually horror games. You go look at it.

[01:38:35] Just like nobody. Nobody's going to be like, you know, to like, I don't know, one of those liminal space games. He was like, oh, man, all you do is walk around. I mean, Resident Evil 1 is a walking simulator.

[01:38:45] The gun is like barely in there and using it is like this thing sucks shit. Yeah. Walk like a forklift. It sucks. And so like that's the interesting thing about, you know, these horror games that are quite popular on Steam is that, you know,

[01:38:59] and a lot of them are really very much just like walking simulators. It's not and it's not a coincidence that the people who made Dear Esther, they also went on to work on some amnesia games. Right. And so like it's yeah.

[01:39:14] Anyways, I guess that was kind of in a lot of people were like, oh, this game reminds me of Signales, which is also a kind of survival horror thing. And I would say it's reductive to call it that. But like,

[01:39:28] so that's why we were angling in on some of this, where like maybe some of the people who would kind of come to play it. But I think now like that it's out in the world. Like, I think I finally was just like with

[01:39:40] that last trailer that we released with the song. I think it was the first time where we were like, OK, this feels like somewhat true to the game. Right. And it doesn't feel like we are trying to make the game something,

[01:39:55] trying to push it towards something that it's not. But I'm very relieved that it's now kind of we can advertise or market the game by quoting what other people are saying about it. Yes, testimonials and shit. Because for me, here is literally what a successful marketing campaign

[01:40:15] that translated to a sale was for me. Again, I saw someone say this game's great. If you like video game storytelling, play it. I'm like, I do like that. I went on Steam.

[01:40:24] I saw the like the hero art with the X with what I thought was one face wearing four things, but what was it? You don't know. And then I saw the autoplaying trailer where the first thing that happened was

[01:40:41] Watcher stabs all mother in the back and die she die. And then I go, OK, this game this game owns. I'm getting it. Like this is it. And, yeah, I just have having quotes with like

[01:40:54] with like Laurel Reeves around them, that's going to that's going to do a lot. Yeah, that was a brazen thing for us to do because I think we had I was just working on that trailer when we had learned about those nominations.

[01:41:09] And so I kind of threw them in. I do you know, it's tough because like the game was not. And this is something, you know, I think indie game developers will tell you, like if the game is not if you can't have a hashtag wholesome,

[01:41:21] if they cannot have hashtag horror, you know, I have a hashtag city builder, you know, like that. Like you have these things that are quite developed, like wholesome games, for example, is like really well developed. And there's you really if you can fall into the wholesome category

[01:41:36] from a marketing perspective, it's really great because they have a whole infrastructure for this. But the closest thing that we could ever get to something like that was Little Narcon with fellow traveler where I was like, oh, yeah, here's a festival of games about narrative games.

[01:41:54] But most of the time, like Steam doesn't have like Steam has like a horror fest, visual novel fest, rogue like a rogue like fest, but they truly don't have like a story driven fest. And honestly, I don't know how many games would fit in there

[01:42:11] because you start to get a strange distinction between like, OK, VNs and other things like because I would consider something like Outer Wilds as story driven. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, my God. Outer Wilds is one of the best games all time.

[01:42:28] Do we love Outer Wilds in this house? I love Outer Wilds. It's so yeah, I could talk for days about it. And and and but like, would that be in that scenario? Right. Would that be in it?

[01:42:40] So it's really tricky because it's weird because, you know, you think about like when you first thought about the interactive medium, like when you back in the 90s or I don't know whatever. Like the the Vogue genre, at least from what I could tell at the time,

[01:42:55] was point and click adventures, right? Like everything was getting a point and click adventure, right? There was like Star Trek, 25th anniversary. There was like Indiana Jones. There was all those LucasArts games and then and and then it changed. So I think it was I don't know.

[01:43:10] I don't know what exactly someone someone who's charted this a little bit better than me can go into more details about like why it changed and like probably around the time when Doom and the demo disc for Doom started circulating.

[01:43:25] Yeah, I don't know what I'm going beyond saying that marketing this game was really difficult. I'm so relieved that I can now just leave it to the players to to do that in a way that and they've been

[01:43:38] doing such a great job. I really want to thank them here. I want to thank everybody who has asked somebody to play this game. Yeah, I'm going to keep doing it. Talk about we don't market this podcast because it kind of feels like.

[01:43:57] And maybe this is just the defeatism talking that I and I'm trying to justify it to myself why I don't do more, but it feels a lot like nothing really works other than someone saying, hey, my friend, you should look at this because it is of high quality.

[01:44:15] And then they say, OK, I will do that because I trust you. Yeah, like because, you know, I had older projects that I did, like podcast best practicing marketing for and all that did was waste my time and money did not do it did not do anything.

[01:44:31] And I don't know. I mean, like that it's sort of like it feels do me and do me might be the wrong word, but like there's sort of like a fatalism about it. It's just like I sure hope I get lucky and and like someone

[01:44:50] with some momentum hooks onto this and it drags it into the light. And I'm glad it happened for the thousand times. Resist because it it has the juice like folks. I cannot emphasize enough. This game kicks major ass. It is so good. You will love it.

[01:45:08] But I mean, I think that's why we actually we, you know, one of the very early on, even before I signed with fellow travelers, like I made a decision. It's like I kind of have to have a publisher because like the type of game

[01:45:19] this is going to be, it's going to be really difficult to to market. And like it's kind of like white labels exist in the first place. Sorry, like record labels. Right. Yes. Like here's I don't know an artist that you like,

[01:45:32] but here's a new artist that we signed that might be similar, like that you might like also. Right. So there's like a general function for indie labels in that way that I think is really important. You know, that being said, we did work really hard.

[01:45:44] We still had to like push the wish list, do all the indie dev stuff, you know, do festivals to kind of get, you know, like a body of wish lists to jump off from. Yeah, it was painful. All marketing is painful, I think.

[01:45:58] Yeah, I'm glad you did it. Here's a question. So maybe this is not something you know yet because you're sort of in the the deep exhale after having pulled off the thing. Can we expect more video games from you guys?

[01:46:12] You going back to you going back to your original mediums? You know, it's more theater. We're not going back. We're staying in video games and so or at least I'm not going back. And it's not because I don't like it. It's just because like, you know,

[01:46:30] one of the reasons why we wanted to switch video games is that we or at least I wanted to switch to video games was to engage with these things on a scope that's just not possible in theater.

[01:46:39] Right. Like, you know, indie games don't have a lot of money always to make these things, but whatever you imagine, the amount of money that it takes to make even something very small in video games, it's way less like we have way less of that in theater.

[01:46:57] We have like, you know, literal like a couple of boxes, right? Maybe if we're lucky and like some computers, I guess. Like so. Yeah. I mean, what I mean to say is that we I want to stick around and continue making video games. Just having an infrastructure.

[01:47:18] Like, I mean, it's wild that like we made something that people are buying or like have bought and can be bought, I should say, just can be bought because we're coming from a place where like that's not the case.

[01:47:27] So we're going to stick around and and make more video games. What immediately we're going to make next. I think we're just going to probably do a kind of like manga one shot style kind of thing, like a short film or short game,

[01:47:46] manga one shot much like because in between, you know, like I'm not trying to compare in this way, but this is a good model. Like in between the Magaka for Chainsaw Man, like he yes, yes. He did these two one shots or maybe just more.

[01:48:02] But I think it was too. Yeah. Look back and goodbye, Ari. Yeah. And between part one and part two, am I an anime sicko? I am, I guess. So those one shots where where you start to see some of those one shots bleed into Chainsaw Man part two.

[01:48:21] And this is why I like 100 percent believe Chainsaw Man part two is way better than Chainsaw Man part one. And and I don't know, there was just something that he learned there. So we kind of want to do these one shots similar and kind of learn a

[01:48:35] little bit, do a little bit smaller scope before kind of doing another big thing. So that's currently the plan, at least that kicks ass. I'm so pleased to hear this because, yeah, I am like locked in. I can't wait to see what's next.

[01:48:51] It's going to be good as hell, folks. And with that, I believe that's all time we got for anime sickos because we've been going for a while and I'm getting tired and hungry. Also, Joe's holding the little baby boy, Ivan. He's so well behaved. He's perfect.

[01:49:05] He's doing good. So Remy Sue, thank you again for joining us. It was, I'll say it, a slam dunk. One of the great episodes of anime sickos, in my opinion. Nice. Obviously, people can go by a thousand times, resist on steam. And is it anywhere else?

[01:49:30] Nintendo Switch and Gog and Epic. Hell, yeah. You should go do that because it rules in a big way. I have a friend of mine who literally he is in Vancouver and moved from Hong Kong as a child to Vancouver, and I'm just like grabbing him virtually

[01:49:51] by the shoulder and you got like literally if you don't play this game, I'll go insane and die. Where can people follow you and see more of your stuff if they want to do that, aside from just the game, of course?

[01:50:08] Oh, aside from just the game, I guess I have a website, remy Sue dot com. It's really an artist website. You can see some of the strange weird things I used to do. I'm also on Twitter at remy su r e m y s i u.

[01:50:23] So you can follow me. And of course, you can follow the game on Twitter also, which is 1000x resist. I'm spelling it out. Yeah, so hair to hair folks. It was great. Yes. Hell, yeah. All right.

[01:50:42] I'm not going to overthink it. This is the end of the show. Bye bye. I've been Tom and anime sicko. I've been Joe and anime sicko. I am Remy and anime sicko. We'll see you next time. Bye bye. Thank you. Thank you for listening to anime sickos.

[01:50:59] I've been Tom a sicko. You can follow me on Twitter at Tom Harrison 19. Joe was also a sicko. You can follow him on Twitter at Sharia Uncle. You can follow anime sickos on Twitter at anime sickos or email us at anime sickos at gmail dot com.

[01:51:14] Please leave us a review or something. I don't know. Tell a friend. Anyway, until next time, bye.