Hi, I'm Divya. Hi, I'm Kahran. And this is... Thinking. I'm thinking.
Hello everyone. Welcome to this episode of Thinking on Thinking. Today, I have a very, very special episode. I'm talking to Remy Siew, who is the creative director of this really incredible game
that is definitely one of my top 10 games of all time, called 1000 Times Resist. And we're just going to have a conversation with them about how do you make a game which is so successful and make something just so artistically creative and incredible.
I hope you enjoy. So maybe we can start with like a little bit of an intro of you and if you can describe 1000 Times Resist, because I struggle describing it every time to people. Oh, you're going to make me describe the game.
Yes. It's so hard. Yeah, my name is Remy Siew. I'm the creative director at Sensei Visitor Studios and I was the creative director on 1000 Times Resist
as well as a writer and I guess like a unity generalist. Our team's very small, so we all kind of wear multiple hats. And describing 1000 Times Resist, I mean, there's so many different angles now.
Like I think some of the things that I've been reading from fans are better pitched than my original pitch, which is just that, you know, what if a kind of immigrant teenage girl became the most important person on earth
and spawned a whole society in the future based around her and her personality and her baggage, I guess. And so like what would go down and how would that play out over like a really long time?
Yeah, but from a purely game perspective, I guess it's like a narrative adventure game where you do a lot of, I guess, walking and talking and also exploring spaces both, you know, based in reality and then also doing very kind of like light narrative puzzles.
So yeah, that's my best attempt. That's a nice description. I'm also going to steal that one. Yeah. Well, I saw that on Tumblr. Somebody posted it on Tumblr and I was like, oh, that's a good one. That's better, you know, like...
Yeah. Because there's like, it's funny because like, you know, I know that this podcast is a little bit, you know, leaning towards like developer side, right? So it's funny what you have to say sometimes on your Steam page
and then it's also funny about how you actually sometimes try to get other people that you know to play the game. So and maybe they may be different or maybe they should be more the same. That's an open question, I guess.
Yeah. No, I also feel like what players might expect on our Steam page is very different from what players might expect from their friend. Yeah, yeah, for sure. So you mentioned that you are the creative director for this game,
but I think you have like a different background beyond this. Like I just came across in some of my mild research. You guys don't have a lot of interviews, but I came across a little bit that you have a theater background and a music background.
Yes. And it's an interesting kind of theater. So maybe you could talk a little bit about what is device theater. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, my background is that I guess I studied western music composition
at school, but like I also went to a school that really prioritized kind of interdisciplinary collaboration. And so all the dancers and visual artists and filmmakers and composers and actors, I guess, and directors, they all kind of were in the same space together.
And so we got to be exposed to a lot of work in these various disciplines. And then often we would collaborate. And so that kind of got me over into experimental theater, device theater. And the way that I would interface with device theater at that time is that I would try to do music for it because that was like my way in.
But device theater. So this device theater. Yeah. So yeah, yeah. So device theater is like, I'm going to like really butcher and reduce this,
but like it's like a form of theater where often you gather performers and sometimes non performers. Essentially you gather a group of people in a room and you undergo this kind of device process where often there is no script per se. Right.
Like it's not like traditional theater where often it stems from like a script made by a playwright. And so it's a relatively non traditional process. And so you have this people in the room. It could be, you know, composer or musicians or dancers or sometimes it could be jugglers
or it could be like, you know, whatever. There's a great piece of device theater where it's with performers and their dads. Wow. Yeah. So it's really great.
It's by a group called Shishi Pop, I believe out of Germany. And yeah. So that's an example of the range of types of people you may have in the room. It doesn't have to just be actors. And they undergo and everybody does it slightly differently,
but generally the idea is that you make a work this way trying to, you probably bring in with a couple of themes, a couple of things that you're interested in exploring. You like, you know, in the case of the dads, I'm sure it's like, okay, we're going to try and make a relationship.
We're going to make a show about our relationships with our parents and specifically, I guess, with our dads. And so here they are. They're in the room with us and everybody has different types of strategies and how to employ. It's quite a pluralistic type of practice, you know, from a very broad level.
It's about creation in the room with those people. And often the director is not trying, is not like interpreting a script in that case. They're more kind of the author of the room, so to speak. And, you know, the people inside the room, they would be given, you know, some types of exercises or tasks or undertake certain strategies in which to generate material, I suppose.
And that material is kind of often rehearsed inside the room. And then the director may try to mold that material towards a certain direction. The material, yeah, is often presented inside the room to one another and to the director. And then there's like offers made, people talk about it. And then it's just kind of molded and sculpted over time into something that is performed on stage or performed site-specific.
I think one of the values also of device theater is a desire to have everything in the room that you'll be working with from the beginning. And that includes like formal properties as well. So I guess, you know, in the software side, we would say it really prioritizes what you see is what you get environment. So like you want to be able to be working with the lights, you want to be working with the sound setup, you know, like a sound surround setup for the final show. You want to be setting that up kind of day one, right?
You want to be very close with the material, which I think is another value of device theater. It's like you want to be very, like you kind of get this in games sometimes. Yeah. It's almost like how improv is without script. But this is not that.
This is more like you are coming up with the script in a collaborative process. Yeah. Yeah. So then like, you know, often you may have somebody like a drama turge or like somebody who's also, I shouldn't, if I say I'm going to define the drama turge's role here. There's going to be a lot of argument about it.
But let's just say like there is somebody's defined role in the room sometimes to try and, you know, keep track of what's being shown. And then also help bring to the fore some of the things that are coming out of that room. So, but yes, as you say, it's like it's not one person sitting down and writing a script and then kind of defining the whole output. It's really having everything present in the room from the beginning and trying to craft it with what is in there as opposed to like the other way around. It kind of makes sense now if I like, you know, look at that definition and think back about the game.
I've been doing a second playthrough of the game now. Oh, nice. Actually, like just today I went back to my last chapter playthrough and I played through a bunch of different endings just to know, okay, what happens because like I got one ending in the beginning. I got the blue ending surprisingly, which I didn't know that though I got the best ending. Best is subjective.
So I've been playing games for maybe the last 30 years. It's like my primary mode of I would say consumption, not just like games like Dota or Minecraft, which are like long term games, but like I love playing a lot of indie games and I would say like last 10 to 12 years have an amazing in terms of indie games like it's just been just brilliant games one after the other. It was just interesting because I could feel that this game is coming from a place that is fundamentally different from everything I've played before. I couldn't even think of like any close corollaries and it just made me think I don't think it's about the thematics because like some people might say, oh, it has the vibe similarity to near automata. You know, there is that sort of sci-fi world and there are these like, you know, intersection of robotics are these humans are these not what does identity mean those kind of things.
But I was like, no, but it isn't that like it feels different. And now as I hear you talk about it, at least I can get a better sense of it. But like still how did you guys do it, especially because like these themes are very serious. Like for our listeners benefit, the game touches upon many themes like resistance, identity, coronavirus in some ways. The game was created around the time of coronavirus pandemic, right?
And like so many different themes, intergenerational trauma, everything which is like so serious, right? Like how do you, you know, in a room of people, how do you keep that? Let's just do another thing while what we are discussing is so heavy. Oh, okay. I think, you know, this is I mean, like the writers who worked on the game and myself, we've been working together for quite a long time at this point.
I think, you know, at least 10 years when we went to school together. And I would say we we know each other's interests pretty well. And we've done this kind of work before in theater. So it's kind of like even though we are touching on some of these themes, they're quite serious, right? They're quite serious.
We do make a lot of jokes. Yeah, yeah. Like, I mean, in the writers room itself, I think, you know, funny, by the way. Oh, thank you. I'm glad that people find it funny because like for us, we're just like, you know, that I think this is also something that we prioritize is that we do want to bring humor into these things because that's also how we get into it.
Because that's also how we get into them. Or there's just something about how like, you know, if if a game does not have humor alongside tragedy to a certain extent, and not to say you always have to have this, but I'm just saying that like that kind of, I think, tampers the spectrum of a feeling inside that thing, right? I'm not being able to kind of have those next to each other. And often, you know, if you think about life, you know, humor and tragedy are right next to each other, you know, like just touching each other. All the time.
And so it's, it's something glad to have one said. Yeah. Comedy equals tragedy plus time. Yes, exactly. Yeah.
And so it's true. And it's it really is like one of those things too. And this is something that like, you know, I'm not an expert in in clown, but, you know, having sat in on on sessions where people were learning to do a specific type of clown. You know, it's often about, you know, you try to say something funny, it bombs and then you do it again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again. And then eventually it gets funny because it's just desperate.
And then it and then you're just like, oh my God, I can't like it's cringe. It's desperate. And then it like does this wave of things where it gets, you know, funny and then it stops being funny and then it gets funnier and then it gets, you know, like humor. It's much like grief as well that way. Like, you know, the wave of humor in that regard can be like grief.
So like, yeah, I don't know. I'm just, I can't remember my point as much as that. I think for us, the seriousness and the humor and all of that stuff is very tied together for us. I think that makes sense. Yeah.
And many of these things come as as jokes first. Quite morbid jokes, I guess, to one another. That also kind of makes sense why her dad is the way he is. Like the world is falling apart, but he's like continuously making jokes about things which in some ways reminded me of my dad. I was like, yeah.
So like your background is for the lack of a better term, very unconventional compared to like where most game makers come from. Right. Like most game makers come from more techie backgrounds. Right. And you guys are bringing like clearly such a different and innovative approach to it.
But like what got you guys into making games because it's not a very easy, like I've done a broad set of like multi dimensional sort of like creative endeavors. And I still think making games is the most annoying and difficult one. It's definitely the most annoying. Yeah. It's definitely the most annoying.
I kind of think of things that are more annoying, like maybe filmmaking is more annoying, but filmmaking is maybe more annoying because you have to wait more. Yeah. You have to wait a lot. I've worked in movies and media as well. I think game making is more annoying.
Oh, you do. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's really annoying.
How did you guys even decide to get into it? It's also very like, I would say it feels very inapproachable for most people. Right. I think, well, there's a couple of things. I think, at least for myself, I really grew up on games and it was playing these types of games when I was younger and to date myself, I guess, like yeah, in the 90s, like playing something like Final Fantasy 7, Chrono Trigger,
Chrono Cross, these kinds of JRPGs that really opened my mind about, you know, what type of fictional worlds you could achieve in games when I was younger. I think that that was like the impetus of me kind of getting interested in art. And I didn't really know how to get at it though, because like in the 90s, you can't just like these, these days kids can just like, I don't know, go make a game if they wanted to go make a game. And they do. And like, that's why Roblox is a thing.
God, so dark. But like, you know, like that is not something that is immediately available to somebody who was growing up in the 90s. And so I guess I decided to go try other things because, you know, there was no way to make a game. I tried writing fiction and making music and then doing some film when I was younger, but then like eventually, yeah, decided to go study music for some reason as well. But I think, you know, kind of getting into why it was more approachable for me at least was that in the kind of devised experimental theater part of my practice.
And I guess music part of my practice, like, you know, in music, we learned something called Max MSP, which is a kind of visual programming environment for sound and real time synthesis, digital synthesis. Kind of like processing. Oh, it's kind of like pure data. I don't know if people know pure data. At least I don't.
But I'm sure some people do. Yeah, so it's like a node based. It's like a node based visual programming environment. And so pure data and Max MSP are like these two, two of the ones that are quite popular amongst, you know, people who make that kind of stuff. So that was just like the first step into, okay, well, there's, there's some kind of thinking about programming as a part of making art.
And then early on, yes, we also did learn processing and processing and then creative applications and then all of this stuff. I think the thing that really got me into it was the program called Isadora, which is named after the dancer Isadora Duncan. But that's a visual programming network. That's a super high level one that is meant to be used actually in device theater processes and in dance processes. The idea being that you can like quickly code in the studio while the dancers are rehearsing what you want to do and see it and like, yeah, keep up with the pace of creation in the room.
So it was a really great tool to kind of like cut my teeth on, I guess, and then eventually I went on to use Touch Designer. It's like a, yeah, Houdini branch, right? So funny enough, Touch Designer was made in Canada. Like it's made in Toronto and I've come to know that the team over the years, but like, no, they're really great. And they're so, they're really passionate about Touch Designer.
And so like kind of after Touch Designer and then getting into more doing like shader work inside of Touch Designer, it was like a five, seven year approach towards something like Unity. That being said, like Unity is the most annoying of them. Like I still prefer Touch Designer. You know, if I could make games in Touch Designer, I would and I have, but like it's just kind of, you know, after a while, the scale of it. But the thing is, next time if you use Unreal Engine, you'll be like, no, no, Unity is a lot better.
So, okay, this is, this is of course the, you know, the eternal conflict of like what, you know, of course I've gotten used to Unity now, like, but there's just ways of thinking in Touch Designer that I wish I could, you know, use again. But are you a Touch Designer user? No, I have friends though who use it. And my brother is a Houdini user.
So I am okay. Okay. Yeah. So like he's a, he's ultra into node based stuff. He's a 3D artist, but like he's a node based stuff.
So yeah, that's how I'm aware of it. Yeah. Yeah. So that was just a long-winded answer towards like that's how it became approachable. I think like I always find it quite interesting how people become very multidisciplinary.
Like I'm very fortunate that like my family is very multidisciplinary, but generally, especially in India, that's not particularly common. That like, you know, people will take up different disciplines and sort of like try to mel together. And especially I created intersections, but I find that like most interesting stuff gets made at intersections of different domains. Oh, absolutely. I 100%.
You know, I always think like anytime you like cross disciplines or like you take one thought from one discipline and move it to another, it like gains some sort of weird inherent energy as if it's like breaking off from one kind of, you know, orbit to another. And in transit, it like picks up speed. Yeah. And I think, you know, the other thing that I'm really into is that I truly believe that, you know, process people on the other end can feel process, you know, like I love to talk about process, but not everybody like sometimes people they're like eyes glaze over when I start to talk about process. But I think like the energy that is inherent inside of a process makes it to the end, the audience, right.
And often audiences don't want to know how things are made. And that's fine. But if they do ask, it's like, you know, it really is, you have to kind of get into the process of it. And, and, and it's like a weird thing to quantify or it's like hard to grasp, right. Yeah.
But I think people feel it. Yeah, I think like it is very like visible with your game as well. Or rather, like there is this experiential component. Like in the second chapter, there is that scene with rain. And that was the first moment where I started crying while playing the game.
And I have no idea. I mean, don't say, oh, no, you guys made this game. You know that's like people would cry playing this game multiple times. But like, I didn't even know what was happening. I was just like, I'm getting flooded with these feelings and like, you know, I'm just crying.
I don't know why it's just rain. But like it made me think of climate change and it made me think of loneliness and it made me think of like the fact that this room is so crammed and there would be humans who might never see rain and God knows what all. But like, it was very interesting because if one just thinks about it, it's just a rain scene, right. Like it's a simulated rain. It's not even like, you know, oh, we have simulated each particle and beautifully or whatever.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not ray tracing is off. Yeah. But like it's very, very palpable. The thought that has gone into coming to this moment.
And so like you are emotionally in the right space to feel the impact of the scene. So yeah, I 100% like I felt it while playing the game. Nice. Nice. Earlier talking about themes and like, you know, how many different things the game touches upon.
Did you guys have like, and you said that the game was like, you know, you made the game during the initial phases of coronavirus. Were there themes that you knew you wanted to put in and others were devised or did everything come through that process of like you guys sort of coming together. We did have some themes we wanted to touch on when we started. And, and I think even going back into the prototype and like, I mean, one of them was just like, yes, for sure we wanted to play with cycles and long periods of time duration. And then I think we did want to of course talk about generational trauma in that context.
And then also a degree of desire to like myth make for diaspora experiences or specifically our diasporic experience because we just, you know, at least I didn't feel particularly attached to it. I didn't feel particularly attached to any myths that were assigned like as an immigrant and as the diasporic first gen or second gen depending on how you see it on in Canada. There's no myth that I really feel very close to, you know, like there's nothing that and I feel very like, you know, of course the past is not the place for that for me. And I guess, you know, I subconsciously felt this as a young, younger person, I guess, because, you know, really for me it was like, oh, the future is where these these things are for because they don't exist now obviously. If I look in the past, that's there's a real disconnection there when you are maybe a first or second gen immigrant.
So like those were some of the things, you know, we were thinking about earlier on but then as we went forward, I think certain things became emergent and we would try to catch them and follow them along the way because, you know, any any theme thematic material that you try to approach starts to and you really kind of invest in over time and dig out like, of course, there's much there's a huge amount of time. There's a huge plurality of things involved in any that. Yeah, you just kind of gets discovered and did you guys go back multiple times to chapter one and edit it again and again. Because of references. So actually, okay, interestingly, the answer is yes and no, the way that chapter one, like the game opens and the way that it plays out wasn't always the same. Okay.
Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, like, so like I think we didn't always begin with the Alma the murder we didn't always have the, I will say that like the nice part was that we did go back and this is maybe spoilers but okay there's like a there's like a location early on in the game that you see that reappears later, right. Yeah. So like that was for example, we had to make that first we were like working on the end of the game, and then we brought it forward. So there is always a little bit of like folding this way, you know, always when doing this kind of thing but we did make the game one chapter at a time largely and in chapter one, because we did the demo in like January 2023 or something. I think chapter one at least the school sections of it largely did not change.
Because the school section has so many references. I was just like, wow this dial is a reference and this also happens and that also happens. So I mean this is this is one of those things where it's like you know people are like, oh, did we plan that I'm like, it's more. I think outcome of working this way where you kind of react to your own work and that you kind of accrue these things as you go. Because like I don't know like I don't think I feel smart enough to have been able to plan specific lines of dialogue right for example that we would go reference later. Like I'm not playing 40 chest that way. So I'm playing I'm playing a more kind of like, you know, mushy kind of feely, you know chess, then, then, then like a hardcore like analytical chess right like so like I think as those things accrue like I think the writers and myself we start to pick those things up. And part of things that would come back. Maybe writers would bring some things back, we would latch on to them and see how they would, they would go. Of course that being said we already had some like the chapter one high school thing is really interesting as you say because like
we had so many of the many of the things that we were interested in going into the game like chapter one was the first thing we made. You can kind of tell what was present at the beginning of the development of the game based on chapter one right I guess. And so in the high school, there's like, there's already that student council who's like, you know, arguing or debating about whether they should finish this statue and whether it matters and and whether they have the budget for it and and like definitely that kind of thing was already something we were thinking about. And then of course you see it in the future and it's like nobody cares or like you know they maybe should have finished it because like but to what avail like would have made a difference. No, but it like it would have at least maybe in the future someone would have recognized what it was. Honestly, that scene also made me think about like how when in the moment we are so wrapped up into something we tend to think that all of these things matter so much like preserving it precisely and like that's what the whole game also becomes about. Yes, these people are so well bent on preserving the world as it is.
Yeah, no absolutely. And I think this is you know like so much of this is also from like being in the arts for like 10 years but then also being in the arts in a way where it's like yeah I'm I'm sitting on boards of nonprofits or like I'm like we're doing there's arts organizations then and and you know people and organizations get caught up on all sorts of things like this all the time. And then to what avail, you know like, I'm not just I'm not trying to, you know, razz them or anything I'm just saying that this is like an interesting mundane kind of decision making bureaucratic processes like this, a little bit of an obsession of mine of like, like how can they exist. And often when I'm like, how do people have the energy in their life to think about this. I don't know like maybe my brain is not tuned this way. And like, I don't know if this is like in like in North America, at least or in Vancouver at least and I don't know if this is the same case for everywhere else. Every private like apartment building or like a multi unit building has a strata. Right. And that strata is like, like somewhat of a kind of nonprofit or, you know, organization some sort of organization, a strata organization that has been built. It has meetings and has minutes and has like, you know, people meet and they like have to spend money or like decide what to do with budget.
And they have to figure out where to plant the flowers. Who can walk the job at what time. And I'm just like, who has the time and energy and like the mind space like my brain doesn't. Why do you care? Yeah, like my brain doesn't have and that's to say the strat is not important because like, you know, obviously if there's a like a plumbing leak or whatever, like I'm sure it's a good idea to get that fixed. But like, you know, we're in such a scenario where like the worlds that we live in, I just don't know. I just don't understand.
And then maybe part of it is like, I've been so laser focused most of my life to try and make art in some form or fashion that like that has maybe become more of an like that's an obsession of mine. And of course, and it's hard for me to do other things, but to think of like, yeah, just the degrees of this is something also I saw an arts organization. I just stopped. I pulled myself away from those eventually where I was just like, okay, that just basically the speed of decision making processes was something that I quickly tried to to feel. And then I was like, okay, if it's not fast enough, I probably can probably just gonna leave now because it's a bit hard for me. It also becomes almost like you start getting stuck in that rut and then you don't make stuff. And if somebody who's interested in creating, I don't know if you feel this, but like I always feel like I have limited time.
I want to make infinite things. Someday I'm gonna die. I must keep making. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, no, absolutely. Because like, I think, I think I lost a good chunk of, you know, like maybe 10. So say like, you know, before I started the game, I, you know, I spent most of the 2010s as an as an artist, right? Like as a performing artist and as an arts administrator as well. But like 50, 60% of that time, or if not more, was probably spent in administrative capacities in some form or fashion. And so like, I think about that a lot. I'm like, oh man, I spent like at least that's like five years worth, you know, like of the 10 years.
And I'm not to say that that's not important. Like those were things we had to do to survive. But at the same time, the efficiencies of that, I'm not convinced of. Right. So in retrospect, but of course you got to do what you got to do. So like that's, it's not a passing judge. It's just more me reflecting on how like there's a very highly likely chance that in of the 10 years that I spent in the arts, like at least five of them was doing some degree of administration. I would, I would comfortably say at least 60, 70% actually. So it's, it's, it's rough, right? And then, and that's why, you know, in the arts people burnout, like you have to work like 12, 15 hour days and not because you have to have to, but like, you know, if you want to make work, you have to like do the administrative work to make the work. And then, then you have to make the work afterwards. And so. So, well, this is not about the game, but because you said this, what does working as a performing artist looks like?
Okay, yeah, that's, that's a great question. Okay, so, okay, I'm going to answer very specifically in Canada. Okay. And very specifically in Vancouver, because it's different throughout the country. I would say Vancouver in Toronto is a little bit more similar because people in Montreal have a really good, they're going to hate me for saying that. All my Montreal friends. But I'm going to repeat and say that Montreal artists have a really much easier time because the cost of living there is much lower than the rest of the country. And also, I think they have more infrastructure for presentation and things like this. So it's like all around better. It's like, it's the Quebec quality. They deserve their cultural life that they've made for themselves because they made it for themselves, right? They value it.
But of course, in the Anglo world, that is not 100% the case. So, and specifically in Vancouver, often with performing arts, you really have to like, you're just going around justifying your own existence all the time to people because they made, they largely do not interact with performing arts as much in Vancouver. But like day to day, I guess, you know, it's like a day in the life of a performing artist in Vancouver, like you kind of wake up, you do your emails. There'll be lots of emails. There'll be lots of emails. Say like you have, you're trying to plan a show. And so like you're scared, you're trying to schedule seven, eight freelancers to be in the same place for more than a week. And of those seven and eight people, three of them use Google Calendar. Two of them don't use digital calendars. And another three of them use some outdated calendar from, yeah, it's just not interfaceable, right?
And then you, then you try to go book space for that thing. And you realize that everything is booked up or it's too expensive. And then there's that email chain. And then then you have to keep apprised of the granting cycles, both from a municipal, provincial and federal level. Like I will say in Canada, we are quite privileged to have that degree of arts funding, because I know that's not the same everywhere else, but it's pretty highly competitive. So you're essentially always writing some form of grant. And so you probably are working on your grant somehow. In the case for me, I was freelancing. So like, I guess then you would maybe go to a theater production meeting that are like two, three hours long where it's like everybody is there. And then you just sit there and I mean, those, those meetings are good. I'm not saying that. But like that's like, and then you try to do more emails during that meeting, right? Because like, you know, then this is like before like digital meetings became more standard, like you might have to have a meeting with a presenter or somebody who is asking you, you try to support the community in some way.
Maybe there's somebody who wants to have a coffee with you. So you go physically go there to have a coffee. So when do you, when do you do the art? The day is over. The day is over. Then you're like, oh, oh shit. Like, yeah, I know. I know. And then you're like, oh my God, today is over. What do I do? And then you, then you start to stress out, then you get a little bit existential crisis. And then you're like, what, what the hell? Like, what am I, and then you start to think like, why is it taking so long for these presenters to confirm the show? And like, there's a lot of juggling things where if you get presented by a performing arts organization, especially in Canada, there's an expectation that Canada Council will pay for it.
Right. And so, but then you have to go submit the grant. And so you have to, you have to get the budget of which, like say, maybe they'll pay you a fee. They often pay you a fee. They may offer accommodations and or they make offer X amount of money. Right. And then you have to go match it with a grant of some kind. And you then you have to get that information, you know, a letter of support, and then you go to write your grant and then you, you make sure everything's in place. And then then you submit that all at once. And then hopefully you submitted it at the right timing because then it takes like four or five months to find out whether you get the grant or not. And then in between that time, you have to decide whether, you know, like if you didn't make the timing perfectly and align it perfectly, you might have to decide whether you're going to go do it regardless of the grant.
That sounds rough. Does it? Forget about what I said about making games. Well, what's what's what's even more infuriating is especially for Pinky and I Pinky and I have been working together for a really long time and and we ran a nonprofit arts organization and we like every piece, every new piece that we would try to make, you know, we were lucky. I want to say that we were lucky and we're very grateful for the success we had in the performing arts. We would go do touring and and be presented, you know, abroad and we would spend a lot of our time touring out of Vancouver.
But when we wanted to go make a new piece, kind of rent a space to do that or get support, say like space given for free, where we wanted to be able to use all the lights and all these things that gathered that we wanted to do to devise. We would just struggle every time, no matter what, like in 10 years into it, we were still struggling to book space. And then at that point, like even before the pandemic, I was like, I was getting tired of it. I was like, I mean, like I don't I want, you know, I do generally want a sense of honestly, like to a certain extent, part of starting the company is like, oh yeah, we're all going to use Google Calendar. I mean, like, you know, regardless of how annoying unity is, it's always going to be there. Like you can just open a new project and you can like work in it.
Yes, yes. And so like there's this kind of like, you know, trying to sync around similar tools so that we reduce friction and trying to yeah, all of these things that I had experienced in the performing arts, like I was just trying to smooth out. Did you? Sorry. This is like a very weird question. So like when you guys are devising, would you play different characters? Like because you are different writers on the team. So like is one person noir and one person blue and like one person like just. Well, I mean, like it's weird because like, you know, I can't exactly remember how because you just do it and you forget about it. Right. And like, usually it's just one person, you know, one person doing all the voices.
Like, or quote unquote, all the voices. They're just like pitching a scene. You know, it's much like, you know, you're trying to like have a funny sketch and you're just kind of riffing off each other. But like often a lot of the dialogue was written in, we were like, you know, we would go away and we would go and write it and then come back and show each other and then edit it with each other. You know, it's funny because people think we're like maybe theater kids and we are kind of can be rambunctious for sure. There's no doubt about that. But like when we do do the writing for the game, actually a lot of it was still very much like we have to go hold ourselves up somewhere and then write it and then show it to each other. And then and then we would start to to riff on what we've generated.
It's almost like a mix of, oh, I brought this from my writing session and we devised together on it. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. How interesting. Your process is so fascinating to me. Well, it's weird because it's mostly just the only way, not the only way we know how to work, but like kind of the way that we're just comfortable working after so long. Only I've discovered, you know, in the past four years and the process of doing the game that like, oh yeah, this is really not the way it's done.
And then also I think, you know, generally for whatever reason, one of my lots in life is that like thinking, yeah, oh yeah, this is just kind of the comfortable way to do it makes sense to me. But then the way that it makes sense to me to do things really puts me in a lot of positions where either people don't understand that or like, or, or it like flies in the face of a bunch of infrastructure. Like for, you know, in performing arts, the classic thing here is that like I was using Touch Designer and Isadora to do lighting from my laptop for the stage, right? So I would hang projectors and do lighting for the stage. And so, and also music because I was doing, I was a composer and I was improvising music and also setting up music.
And so I was running the entire show from my laptop. How many hands did you have? Well, I mean, this is why I had to learn to program because I ran out of hands. So I was like, oh, okay, shit, I have to learn to script or program or something because then I need. Yeah. Yeah. And in that case, you know, like running the entire show from a single laptop, it meant it bypassed an entire infrastructure in theater and it did kind of piss some people off, right?
Because there was no need for a stage manager. There was no need for a lighting designer, no need for a sound designer, no need for like, we would like to hang our own projectors. So often, you know, and we wanted to satisfy the union requirements. And so we would often just hire one person from the union and we would ask them to do nothing, just like go for lunch or whatever. Right. Like, but they got really upset about that.
I was like, no, this is this is literally maybe a free lunch. Like, why not? And so that actually got worse and worse over time. No, it kind of makes sense. So I mentioned that I work in media as well.
Right. Like the last year and a half, a little over that. I've been working with this team. It's a VFX team based out of Mumbai and Bangalore and multiple places. We say this, but the team size is like five people. And working like I started working on a feature film.
Like that's how I got on board. But we've worked on ad films and like interactive projects, whatnot, right? But any conventional producer or anybody we talk to, they are like, how do you mean that like you are this many people and you're doing VFX for an entire film? It's a feature film handling all of that. Like it's the same feeling.
And like, you know, when you're just saying it pisses off people because it like just flies in the face of existing infrastructure. It's the same thing because you do do too many things. I can't believe that this is doable. Yeah. No. And I think that when you get to that place where you're like flying against, you have tension with the existing infrastructure. It's kind of the place where I personally like to be.
And it's also where the energy is. And then also where, for example, maybe you're making something kind of interesting. Of course, there's a dark side to this, right? Like Uber is the dark side to this, right? Like when Uber came on the scene, but like, you know, from when specifically talking about art and our processes, you know,
we have an understanding that like, especially in the contemporary performing arts and experimental performing arts that like we value new things. We value new types of creation and new types of expression and diversity of form and performers and everything. Then thinking that everything should fit inside like a pre-production, production, post-production type of theater model. Those are in conflict with one another, right? But often you would get pushback on that even though the value is that, oh, we should make new,
new work. But then really what you mean, what they mean to say is like, please make something quantifiably new inside of the structure that exists. I think it's also, I want a new output, but can I not change the input? Yeah, no, exactly. No, this is 100% the case where it's just like, well, and my argument this whole time has been like, and where I've been saying like processes so important to me and people feel the energy of process is that if you follow those existing processes, yeah, you are going, you're splitting hairs amongst a kind of more narrow band of, as you say, how can you expect a different output if you don't change the thing itself?
Like it's great. Yeah, anyways, you've really woken up a frustration of like my, sorry, I keep it dirty. No worries. So like this is the side of like performing arts, but like, of course, game making also has systems, right? And like that is what at least I picked up that like, you know, in my years of playing games, making games, I could tell that like this is not, this cannot be made in the way that standard games are made. Like I'm right now working on two different narrative games, one with my sister, which is going to be a murder mystery game. We've been trying to work on it for far too long and both of us are tired, but at the same time, okay, we can make it happen.
And like another one is just like sort of sci-fi visual novel kind of a thing with my co-host of the podcast. And like I could tell like, it's writing is so hard. It's very hard. It's so insanely hard. And I was like, and this writing, whatever I'm playing in this game does not look like what normal writing would look like even like that is also hard. I don't even know how these guys did it. But like, how has the reception been within the gaming community, like game making community? If you talk to other developers, what is like, you know, their view on your process and like how you guys have made 1000 times resist 1000 times 1000 times.
I'm actually very nonchalant about how people say that I will always say this is how I say it. I guess like what I've been saying is like 1000 times resist. I think it's quite early for us to know that I think that from what I can tell the development community feels that the game is different in that way. It was made in a different way. And I think they've been very like the reception has been very good from the development community in that regard where they're like, oh yeah, they can tell, you know, like much of what you've seen, they can feel that difference. And so we're really grateful for that. Like we've been really because like I didn't know I had no thought about how it would be received. I just wanted people to like it, I guess in a very general sense. And this is weird, like, you know, in the development of the game, you know, like you think about the audience, right?
You think about the audience, but at the same time, the reason why a work is made, at least from my perspective or at least in my experience making it is that you want to try and achieve something. Whether it's a formal thing, whether it's with the material that you're engaging with inside of the thing that you're making, like you want to enter into a creation making process with that in mind and let that value kind of drive it through to the end. While trying to think about the audience still, right? But that's not always the priority, right? And so that is just to say that I wasn't thinking about. I just had a general sense. I hope people liked it. Right. And of course we were thinking about like, will people understand? Like we did lots of play tests with people where it's like, you know, we asked very, we did like, I felt bad, but like, like essentially a comprehension test at the end of every play test where it's like we asked. Yeah, that was another question I had. How did you even play test this game?
So like one of the things is like, you know, each chapter had a form, like we have like a lot. Okay, so we followed a very specific type of feedback. I can't remember exact name of it. There is an aim for it. We would ask the player at the end of every chapter in a form, can you just give us a one word affect or feeling from that chapter? What would you pick? What were these one words? And then can you describe very briefly from without judgment with just like from a very surface objective level? Like what happened? Like, and then afterwards we would ask more specific questions of like, you know, what do you feel like this chapter was about or what struck you or what are moments that stood out to you? And, you know, basically kind of going through that scenario, but I think that the more, you know, when you ask for feedback, you know, I think people often ask for feedback like, well, did you like it? But it's more just, I think information of like, well, what did you experience? Can you describe your experience to me from a level that's separate from judgment, right? Like, and in that description, like maybe don't use judgment qualifiers or whatever, just tell us what you think it is. And then, because that may be useful data, because when they describe to you what may have occurred in that chapter, and it's all wrong, you're like, oh, you know, like I, and then, and then of course we would ask even more specific, hopefully it wasn't, it's not trying to be offensive or anything. It's just like, here's some reading comprehension, like essentially kind of reading comprehension type questions, where it's like, can you tell me what happened here? Like, can you tell me what happened here? Like usually around tension points where we suspected that there would be some possibility for confusion.
And so just to draw out, making sure that from a moment to moment level from a storytelling place, like, okay, they did understand what happened this chapter, right? Like, for example, in chapter one, let's just say this is maybe not a spoiler. If you say it took place, if people reported back of it took place in an art gallery and not like a high school, then that doesn't mean we'll be like, oh, well, I don't know. That's bad. That's interesting. So that's also because you brought up high school art gallery. The spatial design of the game is very interesting. Like, there is generally, there is a certain gaminess to how levels are made in most games. Yes, right. And that's not what this game does. There is no gaminess. It was the same kind of confusion that a real life place would be where, where was I supposed to go left or right?
Yeah, I was very particular about that. And of course, you know, like if you read about the game, one of the most common things that is mentioned is that people get lost in the orchard, right? Yeah. But I think, you know, we were very, one of the goals of the environment design, at least with this game, was to try and make it feel not as gamey as possible. And we needed that to read in the sense that, you know, like Iris' childhood apartment, that needed to feel like the size of it. It feels like an apartment. Yeah, yeah. It feels like, I mean, cramped apartment made me think of Mumbai, but like it feels like an apartment.
Yeah, yeah. It needed to be, it couldn't be one of those situations like in the show Friends where you're like, how can these people with no jobs live here? And then also, it needed to be in a situation where it's like you're not playing it and you're like, wow, Iris' parents must be rich. You know, like, yeah. So, like it was one of those things where it's like, it's very possible. Like this is where we didn't grey box that scene or didn't grey box that environment. We went online and found an architectural visualization of an existing apartment. We essentially went like set, what's the word, like a location scouting. Yes, in the sense that we went to different, looked at different 3D models available of existing apartments and or concepts of apartments. We kind of brought it down to two different type of apartments. And we had the current one that was, that's in the game. And then another one that was actually bigger.
It was nicer and bigger. And I was like looking at it as a designer. I was like, wow, that bigger apartment would be so much better to design in. Right. Has more rooms. There's more like opportunity for traversal between one room to another. There's some corners in it. And you can see things more interestingly. Yeah, yeah. But I was like, that's not, it looks to, you know, like it's a three bedroom apartment and it's a spacious three bedroom apartment.
Right. And like that is not a reality. And I think people would not believe the apartment or we would have to like on the writing side be like, okay, well, I guess Iris parents, like either they took on a mortgage, they couldn't afford or they have a lot of money in that case. And so, so we decided to pick the smaller apartment and we, and we don't, and we designed inside of that as best we could. But that's, I guess, one example where I also feel like the real environments like places that exist in the real world versus environments which were more in the communion. By the way, I love the word communion, which you used instead of simulation. Right. Because like it was so immersive. Just like the world was so immersive. Yeah. Anyways, but like, I feel like everything inside a communion feels a lot more like, how should I say staged. I think like that scene with Noor in chapter four, that was where I was like, I have never seen anything like this done in a game where I could walk around and that was like
really very interesting because normally I guess like people I've seen who work in film or theater, they always find the part where like people can walk around in a game the most challenging. But like that scene was set up. I was just like, so how did you sort of think about these spaces and environments in contrast with these real spaces like Iris's parents apartment or the orchard. Yeah, I mean those ones like the cave is a funny one in the chapter four because we just treated it a lot like a black box, I guess, like the way that we would light it. Like in many ways the cave was like it was more work but it was easier for us to conceptualize in this way because it was largely like an empty space. And there was no defined function of that space prior to it, you know, like an apartment has it speaks to you about its functionality but like it was just like an empty cavern right and so, and that's very much the scenario which we would be like making work in the performing arts like we would just have an empty box, and then we would fill it with light and like darkness and or whatever right. And we didn't often have money to make sets, I know or did we want to travel with physical sets. So we would find other ways to carve out the space. But in the situation the cave it was a nice thing where I was like, okay, here's one thing that games can do is I can make these weird messed up sets and stage them in ways I could never do it in real life, because I would never be able to, you know, afford to do that or, or whatever.
And we would never travel with five different desk and cupboards and chairs. Yeah, travel, travel with all of this. Yeah, yeah, it's it's too much. And I like I was, yeah, I very much want to do avoid that kind of like logistical travel situation but in the game that was kind of like with the cave it's like okay I guess we can run wild with how we organize this space. So that was a nice thing where it's like we get to do something in a performing arts style that we never would be able to do in the performing arts. You know, we just never, you know, unless you like our, I don't even know like it's just not yeah. So that's an interesting kind of, you know, inverse thing where I think a lot of the talk amongst other developers sometimes maybe that like oh it's great that theater was brought into the game, but it also meant that it allowed us as people who were making performing arts to do things. That we never could have done before that. I mean, I would imagine even this huge a cast that would also not be possible in performing arts. No, no, absolutely not. Absolutely not.
No, okay, I mean, Pinky, you know, who's a choreographer did pitch a dance work that was like 50 people, right. And there are dance works that are 50 people. They only have in a Montreal. No, I mean, they actually that's not untrue. Like you don't have you really can go look at the size of a cast and performing arts place and see where it's friendly for the arts right so you can you can have large cast in maybe Montreal, Berlin, other places in Europe. New York. Maybe yeah maybe New York, maybe but like even it's it's very expensive right in New York right. So there's maybe other concerns there. Yes, as you say having a cast this big is really a privilege that is also for it to us from like working in games.
Apart from like you mentioned Final Fantasy Chrono Trigger, those sort of like childhood games but were there like other games that were like specifically inspiring stylistically to you guys in different components. Like I'm sure people have made comparisons but like when you were making did you think oh maybe need automata that seems like a good one. Well, I think I think the biggest it does go back to something like Kentucky Route Zero. Oh, I love that game. Yeah, that game is amazing. And it was what kind of convinced me because it came out like in 2013 or something right like the first at least the first time.
Yeah, the first chapter. And when I played it then, you know, I had kind of not thought about making games for a long time. But when I played Kentucky Route Zero was like the first time in like a long time where I was like, oh, maybe it's possible now. Maybe it's happening because like again coming from the 90s it's like I knew I couldn't make games. I did other things.
Yeah. But you know there was probably going to be a time when the tools and technology would get simpler or more accessible that you could do it. And I could see it happening. I was like, I remember using Unity beta or what I don't know whatever. So I could I was kind of tracking that actively happening.
Kentucky Route Zero was the first one going like, oh yeah, somebody did it. You know, so he used these tools and made some art with it and shipped it as a game. And so like that I think is a really important kind of reference thing. And it was also like it also had all these things that I also cared about where they were like, forget the puzzles, you know, forget the lose states, forget the, you know, like all this stuff.
There's so much more to explore in games and in interactive media. And we're going to do that. And they did it in all their different ways. And as they did it, and even as it finished, you just realize, you know, there's so much left on the table still, like, and not to say that no one game can explore at all.
Right. So like, but they really exposed how much was left on the table. And the sad part is that, you know, it's like a slow, slow going in these types of games about how to like pick those pieces up and kind of keep going with them in their own trajectories. But that was definitely a huge reference and inspiration. It's a very amazing game.
I had one more question. I think when I played the game, I had this feeling that you have when you like, you know, watch something or read something that you know is meant to be like a cult classic. I mean, like maybe for you guys, it's like, oh, it's too soon. But like, it gave me that same sort of feeling that like, honestly, like it gave me the feeling that I got when I played journey and like journey almost sort of like, you know, I'm sure you know it, but like, you know, it gave birth to an entire genre of game. Which is like little girls in tiny, triangular clothes walking around in imaginative places.
That's a great description of the genre that I spawned. Yeah, because there's like, greed is a part of that genre, I guess. And Monument Valley. Monument Valley. Yeah. That's a good one.
That's a good one. That's a good descriptor. But like, you know, I think that like when I played journey for the first time and I didn't have a PlayStation, so I played it quite recently. Like I realized, oh, yeah, I can see why this game sort of like inspired. So like, I could feel it, but like when you guys are sort of like publishing the game or play testing the game, how are you feeling about how is this going to get picked up?
I'm sure there's some anxiety, but like, you know, how did you guys overall, I don't know, feel about it, see it. Oh, there was a huge amount of anxiety, especially on my part, because like, I think, you know, we were already struggling marketing the game. And well, outside of the program, or none of us had any kind of foothold or background or any relationships even in the game industry at large and in the indie game industry at large. And so we were really come, we were like, effectively coming out of left field to try and market a game that was very strange. And there was not a lot of traction during that time, right?
Like, and that was pretty anxious about that. But like, I was also at the same time we were, you know, like into the publishers credit into, we didn't want to stray too far into revealing everything the game was going to do. And at some point, I know, like, you know, we kind of ebbed and floated about how much we cared about social media at the time. But I think, you know, there was a thought that the larger team might make some social media content. But I think in the end, there was a decision where I was like, I think we just got to put it in the game.
Yeah, we got to put our efforts as hard into the game as we can, which was also, I wouldn't always recommend this for everybody because like, it's very important to market, try to find ways to get your game seen by others before it launches. But I think we were just, it's a case by case basis. And I think very specifically about our game, if our game was going to survive past launch, it would have to be around providing that surprise, like as best as we could. And providing a really good experience that people would really like, hopefully. And so they would tell other people about it. Like, you could say that about every single game.
But I think that was particularly just on the angle and trajectory of the marketing that we were doing and how it was working and what we were hiding and then also what we were making. It worked out for us in that way. Yeah, during the making of the game, there was really not. Again, it was just a general desire of like, I hope people like this. I hope, you know, I hope some people experience this.
How do you feel about the reception now? Now that it's been, I think, six months, seven months? I think it's about seven months, seven, I think, maybe approaching eight. I pretty blown away by it. I think Pinky and I are also, Pinky is also expressed.
And I say this every time I'm asked this question because like, in the performing arts, you do something and it's done forever. It's over. And, you know, like maybe somebody will come up to you after the show and be like, oh, hey, that was cool. But you're like, cool, cool, cool. And then, but here, people are, you know, engaging with it for a much longer period of time after it's been released and people talk about it.
And like, you know, we're very grateful for like the community that's kind of started to sprout around the game, especially in our fellow traveler discord. People on reset era who post about the game and, and other other places as well. And, and I think people who are make fan art, like we've never had fan art ever made for anything that we've ever made before. So like that, it's been very touching. That kind of thing is weird, not weird.
It's good weird, right? Like we just don't, you know, who's going to draw a fan art at the one performance they saw that one night at 8pm on like a Friday or whatever. I also think that like as artists, we want to inspire other artists, but it's very disarming when somebody gets inspired. Then you're like, wait, what am I supposed to do with this? I 100%.
Like, and I do think that value is like, you know, it's interesting because people often like, oh, you should make things for general audience. Like really, in my mind, a lot of the time, I'm like, I want to make things as an artist for my peer art, like friends, you know, so to speak, in the sense that I want to make it for them. But then also in a way where it's like, it's like an ongoing conversation, right? Of like, of that. But yes, I guess we're pretty taken aback and it's pretty surreal and shocking.
Because like it's weird to be like, oh yeah, like people are like, oh, you have to foster a community. And like early on, even before the game released, I was like, how, how, what? How do we do? What is that? What do you mean?
And all, but then starting to understand now that the game is out, like, oh, I see, you know, I, you know, it's, but in general, you know, it's definitely coming from people who are discovering the game and discovering each other and then talking to each other about it, which I'm, yeah, again, just really grateful for. So I think in general, yeah, both Pinky and I and everybody in the team were just like, well, yeah, because you just have your head down in making it. And, you know, artists have insecurities and definitely we all had our insecurities while we were making it. And so anybody who's working on something right now, it's like, it was not a situation where we were like, oh yeah, while making it, it's like, yes, this is good.
We know it. I'm not sure that ever happens. Yeah, it's going to work. It's not quite the opposite. And it's quite the opposite where it's like, well, we did thank you so much for me for this conversation.
Can you maybe like tell briefly where people can find you and where they can follow you guys? All of that good stuff, social media and. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yes, yes. You can follow us on Blue Sky and our handle there is at sunset visitor dot studio and sorry, I'm blank. So on Twitter, it's at 1000 times resist.
And you can you can also follow me personally on blue sky. My handle is at remycu.com. So, R-E-M-Y-S-I-U. Yeah. Thank you for thinking with us.
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