Is there a particular intention behind making many of your games accessible via these simulated computers and surfaces? Do you feel it can help draw the player into the game’s world, or are there other reasons behind this choice? How do you feel about the traditional interfaces of visuals novels, and for that matter, the old text adventures (text only and graphic adventures alike)?
The slightly-bullshit answer here is that it makes for a more immersive experience; it's very easy for a player to empathize with someone sitting at a computer, after all, since that's exactly what they're doing. The less layers of abstraction in the way, the easier it is to feel like you yourself are part of the story, which is definitely a goal when you're making games where the player themself is the main character.Digital and Analogue aren't games where the protagonist is a particular person, they're games where you exist in the role of the person trying to explore the mystery. And I think it makes you get more involved in the mystery, as a result.
So I think there's a lot of benefits… but honestly, the reason why it's informed so much of what I do? Before I went into games full time, I paid my bills through doing a lot of web design work. So it just so happens that graphic design is pretty much my only useful artistic skill; hence a lot of games that look like computers, 'cause that's all I knew how to do.
Stepping away from games a bit, how do you feel computer UIs and systems affect the way we experience using computers in real life? Is there a certain appeal to you behind these modes of interacting with computers that compels you to recreate them in game?
I don't know if computers necessarily appeal to me so much as they just happen to completely dominate our lives. They're inescapable. Basically, my entire adult social life has either been mediated directly through social networks, or at least organized through them. So really, my interest here is in social interactions, in how people work; there's just no way of honestly approaching these subjects without an understanding of how big a role technology plays in that. To an extent, I focus a lot on the technological sides of these because it happens to fall into my skillset, but I'm sorta trying to branch out from that, now. So I mean, computers may be a huge part of our lives, but I think when you focus on that aspect too much, you get a sort of skewed perspective. Analogue and Digital are games that feel very lonely a lot of the time; with Ladykiller in a Bind, we're going to try to focus on in-person interactions, so we can get a fuller perspective.
I was genuinely surprised, as I’m sure were many, when you came out with Interstellar Selfie Station. You clearly have more technical dev skills than many of us were aware of or suspected. Do you mind sharing with us what training you have had, and if you have used it in other projects before, or plan to do so in the future?
So the Interstellar Selfie Station… I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm an experienced programmer, I do sorta know what I'm doing. But it's not as impressive as it seems. The really hard parts of it, the graphic processing stuff, it's just an algorithm that I stole the code for and slowly refined. It's a lot of math that really baffles me, and, it took me like, ten times longer than it should've to write the shader that does the heavy lifting.
But my games have always been kinda technically heavy. I've worked with the visual novel engine Ren'Py in the past, but there's a lot of my own code in there to make the more complicated interactions work.
Mostly, I just always had access to computers as a kid, and took a couple of programming classes when I was in elementary school that really inspired me; after that, it was all entirely self-taught. (Which is why I'm pretty bad at it.) I've always found programming to be really fun, so I stuck with it, and I ended up getting experience doing back-end stuff when I was doing web design professionally. That sort of thing doesn't really translate to game development skills, though, unfortunately; but I think when it comes to programming, learning how to teach yourself things just gets a lot easier the more experience you have.
