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Okay, so once you get some of that stuff up, what is the first thing you start trying?

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Because now you're like, okay, like I could start in theory investigating some thing about

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this arrow of time concept.

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What do you actually first try to investigate?

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Hello and welcome to episode two of the Braid Anniversary Edition podcast.

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Our interviewer is once again Casey Muratori and we're going to start by talking about

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programming.

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But if you're not a programmer, don't worry too much, because before too long we start

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adding design into the discussion mix and then eventually we start talking about this

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special kind of project management that you have to do when you're doing a weird project

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that has no pre-existing roadmap and the team is just yourself.

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You know, usually people think of project management as managing a team of multiple

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people, but if it's just you, you still have to make smart decisions that will get the

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game from its starting point, which is basically nothing, to someplace where there's actually

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a game and it's playable and it's good and it fulfills your hopes that you had in the

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beginning of the project.

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Toward the end we talk about art games and maybe surprisingly, maybe not, we talk about

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art games in the context of an old text adventure game from home computer days.

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I'm recording this intro while we're still working on finishing up the game and just yesterday

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we delivered our first release candidate of the game to Netflix who's releasing it on

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iOS and Android.

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A release candidate is a version of a game that you hope is done, but it's going into

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the testing process and you may still find problems, you may need to revise some things,

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but that's where we're at now, it's pretty exciting.

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And this just reminds me to tell people that hey, if you're a Netflix subscriber, you're

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going to be able to play the game on your phone when it comes out.

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May 14, 2024 at no additional cost is just part of your subscription and I want to encourage

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people to try it because you know, I want Netflix to be happy that they signed our game

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and gave us some money to do these ports.

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So yeah, even if you prefer to play the game on PC or console, just go ahead and try it

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on your phone too.

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We did some fun stuff with the controls and you might be surprised how smoothly the game

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runs.

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Anyway, that's enough of an intro.

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Let's get to the main event.

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Where we left off was you are ready to like actually try this thing.

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You've been thinking about it, but you haven't actually typed anything in.

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You've got the stripped down version of your code base so that you know, it opens a window

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and can do stuff.

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But you go on vacation not knowing if you're actually going to touch that, I guess.

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So what happens?

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How does this vacation go?

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You get on a plane for Thailand, I guess.

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Well, I was meeting my friend from college who had also traveled to Africa with and whatever

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and we were hanging out in Thailand and we were there for probably two, three weeks,

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something like that.

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There was a part where, so the first week or so we were all hanging out.

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He then went off to Cambodia, I think, because he wanted to go see Angkor Wat.

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And for some reason I was just like, I just want to chill in Thailand or something.

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So there was a time when I was just hanging out by myself and that became a natural time

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to work on this game.

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And then after he got back, I still worked on it.

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Yeah.

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What did that, like for people who aren't familiar with your work process, I mean, what

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does that actually look like?

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You've got a laptop in a backpack, I guess.

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You're in Thailand and you just...

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I'm just going to Thailand coffee shops and restaurants and working on the game with whatever

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laptop I had at the time.

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So you're literally walking into like, you know, the Thai equivalent of a Starbucks or

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something and you open up the laptop, you see that directory, what's the first thing

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you do?

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Well, like I said, I believe I had prepped by at least making a game template, right?

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Like I had code that would open a window and do nothing.

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And so then it's like, well, I want to make a platformer.

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I would probably was still thinking about that at the beginning of the vacation.

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Like what's the genre of the game or something?

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And then I probably concluded platform.

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I mean, I'm sure that idea was already swirling around, but it was like, Oh, what about this?

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What about that?

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So then how do you make a platformer?

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Well, you can get bogged down in all kinds of things like making the character look good

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or doing the animation system or doing the collision system.

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And I was like, Nope, I'm not going to do any of that.

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It's going to be very simple to start with because I want to get to the point where I'm

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trying out the actual idea, which is the rewind thing.

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And again, I wasn't sure that rewind was going to be the only thing.

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I was just like, well, I have a very concrete thing to aim for.

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And I was thinking probably one of the things that helped push me over the edge to doing

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it was, you know, I was thinking about these things, what genre is the game?

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What does that look like?

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If it's a Mario game, what is that?

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What is the minimum set of stuff?

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If I'm going to do rewind, how would I do it?

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Right?

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Obviously before you sit down and type code, you probably should know at the very least

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how you're going to do it.

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And the thing is I had already by this time had a lot of experience with games that had

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entities in them.

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Right?

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Even going back to the Wolfram stuff.

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I mean, even going back to the MUDs almost, right?

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Probably the MUDs.

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I don't remember those that well.

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But the Wolfram stuff, for example, you have entities in a 3D world and over the network,

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you want to talk about subsets of the data per entity.

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Because if you even send all the data for the tank every time the tank updates, then

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that's a lot of bandwidth for a modem.

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Right?

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So what I've already was a thing like I've maybe got some bit field of what the members

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are and the first thing I send you is either, you could make an implementation decision

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already.

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Like, do I think there's generally few enough members that I just send you a bit field of

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one means that member is set in the following data and zero means it isn't.

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Right?

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Or is it like I tell you how many things are about to be set and then the indices of them,

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which is a little bit more of a portable thing or whatever.

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Right?

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I don't remember which one the Wolfram code was.

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But the thing is, when that's your first game, right?

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That game didn't really have to ever save game state.

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Right?

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It's multiplayer.

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It just would start up the server.

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Right?

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So if you ever killed the server, it's like the game's over and we would start it over.

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However, by the time you've got that level of networking, saving is kind of easy.

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Right?

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So if you wanted to send it over a network, you can send it to the disk.

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Right.

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That's actually an easier problem.

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So when it came to like golf staff or something, which had a world with objects in it, I already

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had a way of like saving entities.

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And that was just in this code base that I had copied over.

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And it's like, well, if you already have a way of saving entities and you already have

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a way of like diffing them over the network, if I wanted to do rewind, what do I do?

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Well, it's just like sending network updates of this thing changed, except you put that

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in a buffer.

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Right.

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Right.

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There's a little bit extra because you need to be able to maybe go scrub back and forth.

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But even in the initial proof of concept, you probably don't ever have to go forward

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in time.

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You just have to go backward.

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Right.

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Which what that could look like is just for every member, like you know the old state

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somehow, like that saved somewhere.

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Right?

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Every frame, super dumb, look at every entity, look at the old state, diff it to find the

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new state, where diffing it can again be written very slowly, go from zero to max item number,

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look at the byte offset and the size and mem comp it.

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Right.

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Or maybe you have, you know, maybe you have a per type function.

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There's only a limited number of data types that you're going to have.

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Right.

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And so it was very clear to me how I would implement that is basically what I'm saying.

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And then there are questions like, well, how much rewind data can you fit and is it enough

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and all that.

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But there are obvious answers to a lot of it too, like, okay, but a lot of the level

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is going to be static level objects, most things about which don't change.

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And so factoring those apart so that you don't even diff them ever because you know they're

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constant lets you be dumber about the ones you do diff because you're not spending that

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much CPU and it means you won't be saving data somehow or whatever.

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Right.

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And so if you have enough game making experience, which I did at that point, it's very clear

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that like, if there's any kind of problem with this idea, it'll happen way down the

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road.

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Right.

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Once we have like a pretty specific system put together, but no real problem needs to

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be solved to make a proof of concept.

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It's just like the road is clear.

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I could make a game obviously with dudes that rewind and I can do it.

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You know, you mentioned that the Prince of Persia rewind was like not a very high fidelity

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rewind.

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It was like barely there.

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Yeah.

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Doing it this way obviously gives you perfect rewind.

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Right.

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And so why wouldn't I do it that way?

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Like that's cool.

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It's a cool technical thing to have a high quality bar for the rewind that nobody had

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done before.

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Right.

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And then there was the question, you know, what about sound?

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Well, I already do the sound mixing.

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I mean, I'm sure I can just do it backwards.

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Right.

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Like that's not that big of a deal if you wrote the mixer forward.

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On the other hand, if you didn't write the sound mixer and you're using someone else's

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engine, it probably isn't going to go backwards very well.

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And then you have to start doing other weird things like I have a data file for every single

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sound effect that's like backwards.

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Yeah, right.

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You know, the flipped version.

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And that's going to be nasty.

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So there was a benefit to having historically written all my own code.

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Right.

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And that was all great.

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And when things come together like that as a programmer and you just see, oh, there's

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something cool to do here.

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There's hardly any friction.

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It's just easy to be hyped about it and to make progress.

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And that was the scenario there.

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So it was, let me get the minimum amount of stuff that I need to do rewind, which was

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probably I could go search.

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I don't even know if I used source control in the middle of the vacation.

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So I don't know if I have a record of what was first, but it was probably just the player

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character, right?

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Because you can move around and then hit rewind and then go backwards.

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And either that works or that doesn't work.

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There's nothing to do yet.

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But you know.

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But you must have had to have, I mean, you need a level as well.

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So like, are you, do you have some kind of a thing you make for placing platforms or

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what's like, how does that?

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Well, I had a whole editor from Happy Cake.

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Okay.

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Right.

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Which was really a little bit like the editor we're still using to this day.

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Like there's a very clear straight through line of it where it had this little immediate

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mode rendered buttons and stuff and really quite poor UI experience of laying things

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out.

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But if you're willing to do it, like it's fine.

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And so here's what's interesting is I must have decided it was 2D before Thailand because

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that would have been one of the things I prepped was just like, okay, let me get the editor

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running in 2D.

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You know, okay, because it was 3D only.

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I mean, maybe I did that on vacation, but I kind of feel like I didn't.

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So you maybe before leaving for Thailand did something where instead of like picking points

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in 3D with like a manipulator or whatever was the thing you had, you would just do like,

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okay, it's just the 2D plane now and cut out the part where it's like moving things.

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Yeah.

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Well, I mean the whole-

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Flying around in 3D or whatever.

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The whole engine had to be 2D, but not just the editor, right?

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But that's mostly just deleting stuff.

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It's not that hard.

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So, you know, the way the game was structured back then, I still for some reason thought

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it was important to try to like compartmentalize pieces that were the engine to use.

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So there was like the game folder, but in there, there was like the game lib core and

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the game lib render folders, which had sort of the things you could imagine in them in

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retrospect waste of time caused a lot of annoying problems with like Visual Studio and whatever,

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right?

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As you would imagine.

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And so like a lot of the 3D code was even still in there, right?

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Like quaternion stuff was still in there, like covariance matrix stuff that was using

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game developer or whatever was still in there, right?

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So when you get something where you're like, okay, I can place some platforms down because

239
00:13:56,800 --> 00:14:03,660
I have like the 2D version of the editor and I can move a little like character around.

240
00:14:03,660 --> 00:14:08,920
And I think if I remember correctly from early builds I played, you would kind of open up

241
00:14:08,920 --> 00:14:13,920
like Photoshop or something and draw like a little crappy guy or something, right?

242
00:14:13,920 --> 00:14:16,680
Usually like what was that process like, I guess just so I'm sure.

243
00:14:16,680 --> 00:14:19,080
It was very, very programmer art.

244
00:14:19,080 --> 00:14:24,560
It was so aggressively programmer art that like my goal was I literally don't care at

245
00:14:24,560 --> 00:14:25,560
all.

246
00:14:25,560 --> 00:14:31,960
I want this to be recognizable as what it is, but it's going to be ugly and I'm not

247
00:14:31,960 --> 00:14:36,120
going to spend any time at all making it not ugly because if I'm on vacation for a week

248
00:14:36,120 --> 00:14:40,680
and I want to make progress into this question of is this an interesting game?

249
00:14:40,680 --> 00:14:42,600
How does it work?

250
00:14:42,600 --> 00:14:46,560
You know, spending time making the character look better in Photoshop does not answer that

251
00:14:46,560 --> 00:14:48,000
question at all.

252
00:14:48,000 --> 00:14:51,760
It may lead to a better play experience for somebody, but like we know how to do that.

253
00:14:51,760 --> 00:14:54,080
We can do that later, right?

254
00:14:54,080 --> 00:15:00,560
So I very explicitly remember one time I was hanging out with Eric after he got back from

255
00:15:00,560 --> 00:15:03,880
Cambodia like at a bar and I was drawing.

256
00:15:03,880 --> 00:15:08,280
So there already was the concept that there's a castle at the end of each level and the

257
00:15:08,280 --> 00:15:10,640
dinosaur comes out and stuff.

258
00:15:10,640 --> 00:15:15,400
I remember drawing like a little, there was a gate that was like a golden arch, not quite

259
00:15:15,400 --> 00:15:19,220
a McDonald's art, but it had a little like star on it or something.

260
00:15:19,220 --> 00:15:22,040
And you walked through that gate and that was the object that ended the level.

261
00:15:22,040 --> 00:15:27,100
And it was just literally like, okay, pick kind of a yellow color from the default Photoshop

262
00:15:27,100 --> 00:15:30,320
little rectangle gradient photo picker.

263
00:15:30,320 --> 00:15:31,320
Pick a brush size.

264
00:15:31,320 --> 00:15:34,180
I think I knew already that brackets go brush size down and up.

265
00:15:34,180 --> 00:15:37,480
So get approximately the right one and like, whoop, draw the arch.

266
00:15:37,480 --> 00:15:40,120
Oh, it's got, it's kind of ugly and it has a wrinkle in it.

267
00:15:40,120 --> 00:15:41,120
It's fine.

268
00:15:41,120 --> 00:15:42,120
Save.

269
00:15:42,120 --> 00:15:47,160
Sort of make the brush three caps smaller, draw a little star on top of it by hand.

270
00:15:47,160 --> 00:15:48,860
Save, right?

271
00:15:48,860 --> 00:15:52,520
And like, I think all the bitmaps had to be power of two at that time and stuff.

272
00:15:52,520 --> 00:15:56,120
So like all of that was in play, right?

273
00:15:56,120 --> 00:16:03,320
Also there was a texture pack that somebody had given out for free.

274
00:16:03,320 --> 00:16:05,960
And like, you know, as a programmer, I was like, Hey, awesome.

275
00:16:05,960 --> 00:16:09,520
I just had previously downloaded it and maybe used it in stuff.

276
00:16:09,520 --> 00:16:13,560
And I believe I might have the game wrong, but I believe it was from this game, Severance

277
00:16:13,560 --> 00:16:17,720
Blade of Darkness, which was like an indie game.

278
00:16:17,720 --> 00:16:22,600
Not quite attacking the darkness, but it was an indie game that was like before the doom

279
00:16:22,600 --> 00:16:30,200
three shadows stuff, but it did some kind of like, we're doing planar shadows onto the

280
00:16:30,200 --> 00:16:31,200
ground.

281
00:16:31,200 --> 00:16:34,520
It wasn't like full environment shadows, I don't think, but it was like your characters

282
00:16:34,520 --> 00:16:35,520
doing shadow.

283
00:16:35,520 --> 00:16:36,520
All right.

284
00:16:36,520 --> 00:16:37,520
Maybe it was full environment shadows.

285
00:16:37,520 --> 00:16:38,520
I don't know.

286
00:16:38,520 --> 00:16:39,880
You could look that one up, but.

287
00:16:39,880 --> 00:16:42,640
So they released some kind of a textures set from the game.

288
00:16:42,640 --> 00:16:47,040
Yeah, they were like, they were like, here's all the tiling environment textures that we

289
00:16:47,040 --> 00:16:51,440
used and like tiling textures, dude, that's like some high effort stuff.

290
00:16:51,440 --> 00:16:52,440
Right?

291
00:16:52,440 --> 00:16:58,520
So I use those for the, just the walls and stuff.

292
00:16:58,520 --> 00:17:01,840
And a lot of them were like really low contrast.

293
00:17:01,840 --> 00:17:06,480
Like I remember I used this tile texture and every time I whip out this old version of

294
00:17:06,480 --> 00:17:12,360
the game to show it, like the tile is just, it's hard to see on like a projector or something,

295
00:17:12,360 --> 00:17:15,520
but that tile texture, by the way, stayed in the game.

296
00:17:15,520 --> 00:17:19,040
It just never was visible to people, but like in the editor, when you may.

297
00:17:19,040 --> 00:17:24,080
So in the final game, of course, there's lots of geometry that isn't a rectangle, right?

298
00:17:24,080 --> 00:17:26,840
It's like we're making nice grass or whatever, right?

299
00:17:26,840 --> 00:17:29,680
But often there'll be like a rectangular slab under that.

300
00:17:29,680 --> 00:17:32,080
That's what you're actually standing on.

301
00:17:32,080 --> 00:17:38,960
And that texture in the editor was still this severance blade of darkness, like tile texture

302
00:17:38,960 --> 00:17:40,540
from the first days.

303
00:17:40,540 --> 00:17:46,280
But so it's like, let's get some walls with textures on them.

304
00:17:46,280 --> 00:17:48,880
Let's have a character that can move and jump.

305
00:17:48,880 --> 00:17:55,280
And then after that, like a little monster that you could jump over and you die if you

306
00:17:55,280 --> 00:17:56,280
hit it.

307
00:17:56,280 --> 00:17:57,880
Like that's all very easy, right?

308
00:17:57,880 --> 00:17:58,880
Right.

309
00:17:58,880 --> 00:17:59,880
Yeah.

310
00:17:59,880 --> 00:18:05,800
So you, I guess during that initial phase are just like implementing some code like,

311
00:18:05,800 --> 00:18:11,440
okay, I need to detect whether the guy is standing on one of these slabs.

312
00:18:11,440 --> 00:18:15,320
I need to be able to detect like whether the guy hits the enemies.

313
00:18:15,320 --> 00:18:16,320
Yeah.

314
00:18:16,320 --> 00:18:17,920
Get that basic stuff going.

315
00:18:17,920 --> 00:18:19,760
And all the collision detection at that time.

316
00:18:19,760 --> 00:18:25,240
So you came along a little later and said, like, I was asking you, how should I do higher

317
00:18:25,240 --> 00:18:26,680
quality collision detection?

318
00:18:26,680 --> 00:18:31,000
And you were like, Hey, there's this rounded rectangle thing that I did end up using.

319
00:18:31,000 --> 00:18:36,520
Although it does cause artifacts in a couple of places still to this day, but they're not,

320
00:18:36,520 --> 00:18:41,640
they're artifacts that would have been there even with non rounded rectangles in some way.

321
00:18:41,640 --> 00:18:44,760
And so maybe for the anniversary edition, I'll go frick and fix it.

322
00:18:44,760 --> 00:18:48,960
So this is like something that you need something better than rounded rectangles to solve kind

323
00:18:48,960 --> 00:18:50,720
of a thing.

324
00:18:50,720 --> 00:18:52,520
What it is, is the following.

325
00:18:52,520 --> 00:18:53,520
All right.

326
00:18:53,520 --> 00:18:55,080
We've definitely, I have an important question I want to ask.

327
00:18:55,080 --> 00:18:56,080
So I'm going to remember that.

328
00:18:56,080 --> 00:18:57,080
But yes.

329
00:18:57,080 --> 00:19:01,120
So what, well, so before I say what the problem is with the rounded rectangles, the initial

330
00:19:01,120 --> 00:19:08,160
version that you guys played was probably just using point queries like, am I able to

331
00:19:08,160 --> 00:19:09,760
walk to the right?

332
00:19:09,760 --> 00:19:15,720
Well, take the center of the character and offset by some distance, is that in a wall?

333
00:19:15,720 --> 00:19:16,720
Right.

334
00:19:16,720 --> 00:19:17,720
Yes or no.

335
00:19:17,720 --> 00:19:18,720
Right.

336
00:19:18,720 --> 00:19:21,240
And so that has this common kind of video game problem where if there's a very thin

337
00:19:21,240 --> 00:19:26,360
wall, you could like tunnel through it and stuff, but you can solve that for a low to

338
00:19:26,360 --> 00:19:30,000
medium quality level experience by limiting the frame rate and whatever.

339
00:19:30,000 --> 00:19:33,520
And so again, proof of concept, none of that stuff matters.

340
00:19:33,520 --> 00:19:41,680
And so to prove your concept actually, it helps just to constantly vigilantly have a

341
00:19:41,680 --> 00:19:48,240
very, very clear idea of what you need to do now and what you could do later.

342
00:19:48,240 --> 00:19:53,720
Because anytime in a game, as soon as you start typing anything, there's just a lot

343
00:19:53,720 --> 00:19:55,840
you can do to make it better.

344
00:19:55,840 --> 00:19:59,400
All these making the character look better would have made it look better.

345
00:19:59,400 --> 00:20:03,160
Adding animations like the character, I didn't quite explicitly say this, but the character

346
00:20:03,160 --> 00:20:05,720
was just a static bitmap that I flipped.

347
00:20:05,720 --> 00:20:08,920
I flipped the U coordinate of the UVs when you go left.

348
00:20:08,920 --> 00:20:09,920
Awesome.

349
00:20:09,920 --> 00:20:10,920
Right.

350
00:20:10,920 --> 00:20:13,920
And in fact, that flag stayed, I think it's still in the game.

351
00:20:13,920 --> 00:20:16,560
There's like the H flip flag on things.

352
00:20:16,560 --> 00:20:17,560
Yeah.

353
00:20:17,560 --> 00:20:19,960
But that's enough to like play something, right?

354
00:20:19,960 --> 00:20:21,720
It'll feel better if you make him walk.

355
00:20:21,720 --> 00:20:28,560
In fact, the, I remember when I first put in animations, it felt a lot better, but

356
00:20:28,560 --> 00:20:33,520
like I already knew it was a good game before I made it better.

357
00:20:33,520 --> 00:20:34,840
And that's very important.

358
00:20:34,840 --> 00:20:39,880
And I, I do think at least in those days, a lot of people were lacking that kind of

359
00:20:39,880 --> 00:20:45,480
a self disciplined self direction.

360
00:20:45,480 --> 00:20:49,000
Like these days on bigger projects, you have to like bigger projects have a different version

361
00:20:49,000 --> 00:20:53,760
of it, which is like, of course there's no way to make the actual game we wanted to make.

362
00:20:53,760 --> 00:20:59,040
And so we have to judiciously cut to get like the thing that we will actually be able to

363
00:20:59,040 --> 00:21:00,040
ship, right?

364
00:21:00,040 --> 00:21:04,880
Which is a more, you know, that's more of an emergency ward version of the same thing.

365
00:21:04,880 --> 00:21:05,880
Right.

366
00:21:05,880 --> 00:21:07,320
But you should have some version of that.

367
00:21:07,320 --> 00:21:11,680
Otherwise you're just kind of winging it constantly forever.

368
00:21:11,680 --> 00:21:12,680
Right.

369
00:21:12,680 --> 00:21:13,680
Right.

370
00:21:13,680 --> 00:21:14,680
Yeah.

371
00:21:14,680 --> 00:21:18,200
So the thing that I was interested in is, okay, so once you get some of that stuff up,

372
00:21:18,200 --> 00:21:23,200
so you've got like just the bare minimum passable version of like, I can walk left to right.

373
00:21:23,200 --> 00:21:25,720
I know I didn't walk into a wall.

374
00:21:25,720 --> 00:21:30,560
Obviously I can jump and come back into contact with the surface and that sort of works or

375
00:21:30,560 --> 00:21:32,160
whatever.

376
00:21:32,160 --> 00:21:34,300
And there's a little guy.

377
00:21:34,300 --> 00:21:36,800
What is the first thing you start trying?

378
00:21:36,800 --> 00:21:42,800
Because now you're like, okay, like I could start in theory, investigating some thing

379
00:21:42,800 --> 00:21:45,580
about this era of time concept.

380
00:21:45,580 --> 00:21:49,280
What do you actually first try to investigate?

381
00:21:49,280 --> 00:21:57,360
Well, like I said, their rewind was the way that I mapped bi-directional arrow of time

382
00:21:57,360 --> 00:22:00,400
into a concrete feature that I could type.

383
00:22:00,400 --> 00:22:01,400
Right.

384
00:22:01,400 --> 00:22:04,200
So let's type the feature in, let's make it work.

385
00:22:04,200 --> 00:22:07,440
And it wasn't that hard, you know, given what I had, right?

386
00:22:07,440 --> 00:22:11,400
I don't remember exactly how long it took, but way less than the week.

387
00:22:11,400 --> 00:22:12,400
Right.

388
00:22:12,400 --> 00:22:13,400
Right.

389
00:22:13,400 --> 00:22:15,600
So then I had that and I was playing around with it.

390
00:22:15,600 --> 00:22:23,400
And you know, they're like, isn't that much you can do with that aside from, isn't it

391
00:22:23,400 --> 00:22:24,400
cool?

392
00:22:24,400 --> 00:22:27,240
That's why I was interested in how do you get over this initial hump, right?

393
00:22:27,240 --> 00:22:29,160
Like, well, there's a simple answer to that.

394
00:22:29,160 --> 00:22:33,640
But before that, I'll say I was, you know, right away I was thinking about this problem

395
00:22:33,640 --> 00:22:38,320
of like, okay, it's interesting in the way that had been discussed on the mailing list,

396
00:22:38,320 --> 00:22:42,960
but you could, you know, the initial implementation of just rewind, like you can imagine what

397
00:22:42,960 --> 00:22:43,960
that would be.

398
00:22:43,960 --> 00:22:47,760
You know, you said Mario with rewind, it's like, all right, cool.

399
00:22:47,760 --> 00:22:53,920
Now there's a fundamental shift though, that already was in place before I even decided

400
00:22:53,920 --> 00:23:00,520
the rewind, which is that it's not that it's a game with technical features.

401
00:23:00,520 --> 00:23:05,160
It's that it's a game about how those features change the gameplay.

402
00:23:05,160 --> 00:23:10,560
Like that was part of the Calvino lightman ethic that I had going in.

403
00:23:10,560 --> 00:23:14,160
And so the initial problem is like, okay, I have this technical feature.

404
00:23:14,160 --> 00:23:15,360
I have implemented it.

405
00:23:15,360 --> 00:23:17,880
It is rewind.

406
00:23:17,880 --> 00:23:20,280
How can the game be about rewind?

407
00:23:20,280 --> 00:23:21,280
Right.

408
00:23:21,280 --> 00:23:25,280
And right away I started asking questions and you can come up with some stuff like,

409
00:23:25,280 --> 00:23:30,240
well, it could be a lot harder than it could be without rewind and right.

410
00:23:30,240 --> 00:23:34,040
You know, could just make it so that you're basically doing a tool assisted speed run

411
00:23:34,040 --> 00:23:35,040
as we would call it.

412
00:23:35,040 --> 00:23:36,040
Yes.

413
00:23:36,040 --> 00:23:41,280
It might not be very fun, but it is evident that things that are unfair without rewind

414
00:23:41,280 --> 00:23:43,960
become more fair with rewind, right?

415
00:23:43,960 --> 00:23:45,300
What else can you do?

416
00:23:45,300 --> 00:23:50,120
You could go forward into somewhere very dangerous that you would could regret going and get

417
00:23:50,120 --> 00:23:53,680
information that you wouldn't have earlier in the game.

418
00:23:53,680 --> 00:23:54,680
Right.

419
00:23:54,680 --> 00:23:55,680
Right.

420
00:23:55,680 --> 00:24:00,080
And then I was like, oh yeah, well, there is this game design wisdom that people have

421
00:24:00,080 --> 00:24:03,440
about how to design games, especially around platformers.

422
00:24:03,440 --> 00:24:07,800
And there's this term called leap of faith, which is taught to game designers, at least

423
00:24:07,800 --> 00:24:08,800
around the GDC.

424
00:24:08,800 --> 00:24:12,280
When I was hanging out, I don't know what kids learn in school these days, but like

425
00:24:12,280 --> 00:24:13,280
it was a note.

426
00:24:13,280 --> 00:24:18,580
I didn't even ever make a platformer, but I knew leap of faith is bad because you're

427
00:24:18,580 --> 00:24:22,840
expecting the character to jump into somewhere that they don't know.

428
00:24:22,840 --> 00:24:27,120
And if they die, if there's somewhere that they die down there and somewhere that they

429
00:24:27,120 --> 00:24:29,760
don't, you can't expect them to know in advance.

430
00:24:29,760 --> 00:24:31,360
It's completely unfair.

431
00:24:31,360 --> 00:24:33,520
So don't make your level that way.

432
00:24:33,520 --> 00:24:35,480
And, well, there are extremes of that.

433
00:24:35,480 --> 00:24:38,440
It's like, maybe you die at a hundred percent of the places and it's like, well, how would

434
00:24:38,440 --> 00:24:40,040
they know that either?

435
00:24:40,040 --> 00:24:41,920
Maybe it's safe at a hundred percent of the places.

436
00:24:41,920 --> 00:24:46,640
It's like, well, that's probably better, but like, it's still not good because you're forcing

437
00:24:46,640 --> 00:24:50,340
them to do something that they don't know is a good move.

438
00:24:50,340 --> 00:24:55,160
And if there's any other pits that go off screen anywhere else in the game, you're now

439
00:24:55,160 --> 00:24:58,600
still creating an unfair and uncertain situation.

440
00:24:58,600 --> 00:25:03,880
And so, well, that's not true if you have rewind, like free rewind.

441
00:25:03,880 --> 00:25:08,600
And that was one of the theses in the beginning, like I said, in the Moriarty talk or about

442
00:25:08,600 --> 00:25:11,920
the Moriarty talk, he was like, it should be totally free.

443
00:25:11,920 --> 00:25:14,440
And you were like, it should just be a feature of the system.

444
00:25:14,440 --> 00:25:19,560
And it's like, okay, so I'm not, I had the high level mission statement.

445
00:25:19,560 --> 00:25:24,080
I am not going to cop out by making sand a resource or whatever.

446
00:25:24,080 --> 00:25:25,080
Right?

447
00:25:25,080 --> 00:25:26,460
I absolutely will not do that.

448
00:25:26,460 --> 00:25:32,760
What I am rather instead going to do is implement the thing and then change the game.

449
00:25:32,760 --> 00:25:34,200
However is necessary.

450
00:25:34,200 --> 00:25:35,200
Okay.

451
00:25:35,200 --> 00:25:41,080
So a Mario game by itself is proven to be, it can be a good fun game if you do the right

452
00:25:41,080 --> 00:25:42,080
things.

453
00:25:42,080 --> 00:25:43,680
Okay.

454
00:25:43,680 --> 00:25:49,000
So you can picture it as I start with a good fun game that's just got lives and whatever.

455
00:25:49,000 --> 00:25:50,000
Okay.

456
00:25:50,000 --> 00:25:51,080
We know what that is.

457
00:25:51,080 --> 00:25:53,320
Now I mess it up by putting rewind in.

458
00:25:53,320 --> 00:25:54,720
It's maybe not fun.

459
00:25:54,720 --> 00:25:55,720
It's maybe tedious.

460
00:25:55,720 --> 00:25:57,240
It's maybe too easy.

461
00:25:57,240 --> 00:25:58,280
Right.

462
00:25:58,280 --> 00:26:02,480
The knee jerk reaction that a designer would have is like, okay, limit rewind, or you only

463
00:26:02,480 --> 00:26:05,160
get it during special times.

464
00:26:05,160 --> 00:26:06,160
I'm not going to do that.

465
00:26:06,160 --> 00:26:08,680
I'm instead the only way out is through.

466
00:26:08,680 --> 00:26:11,160
I'm going to see rewind stays constant.

467
00:26:11,160 --> 00:26:16,480
And then what else about the game needs to change to make it something different.

468
00:26:16,480 --> 00:26:19,200
And I had to just have the faith that I would be able to find that.

469
00:26:19,200 --> 00:26:20,200
Right.

470
00:26:20,200 --> 00:26:23,000
And that was again, a very experimental game play mindset.

471
00:26:23,000 --> 00:26:28,880
So it's sort of like flipping, it's just flipping the like arrow of action.

472
00:26:28,880 --> 00:26:34,080
It's like saying, look, normally what you would do in game design is you would say,

473
00:26:34,080 --> 00:26:39,280
we have to modify the feature to fit the existing game design.

474
00:26:39,280 --> 00:26:40,280
And you're doing the opposite.

475
00:26:40,280 --> 00:26:43,880
You're saying let's modify the existing game design to fit the feature.

476
00:26:43,880 --> 00:26:44,880
Yes.

477
00:26:44,880 --> 00:26:45,880
And off you go.

478
00:26:45,880 --> 00:26:46,880
Yes.

479
00:26:46,880 --> 00:26:51,080
And if you think about this in terms of exploring the space of game design, then obviously you

480
00:26:51,080 --> 00:26:56,120
don't want to retreat back into what is known, but that's almost what everybody does all

481
00:26:56,120 --> 00:26:57,120
the time.

482
00:26:57,120 --> 00:27:00,040
And if you're modifying the feature, you're sort of by definition saying that's what you're

483
00:27:00,040 --> 00:27:04,600
going to do because you're keeping the other side, which is the game play constant.

484
00:27:04,600 --> 00:27:08,200
And I believe, I don't remember a lot of what that conversation on the mailing list was,

485
00:27:08,200 --> 00:27:10,040
but I bet some of it was like that.

486
00:27:10,040 --> 00:27:15,320
Like, well, you ruin consequence and you make the game too easy and all that stuff.

487
00:27:15,320 --> 00:27:18,840
But you could mitigate that in the following ways.

488
00:27:18,840 --> 00:27:22,760
I mean, absolutely nobody said design a whole new game around rewind.

489
00:27:22,760 --> 00:27:23,760
Right.

490
00:27:23,760 --> 00:27:26,240
Just like make consequence not the important part or whatever.

491
00:27:26,240 --> 00:27:27,240
Yeah.

492
00:27:27,240 --> 00:27:28,240
Yeah.

493
00:27:28,240 --> 00:27:29,240
Yeah.

494
00:27:29,240 --> 00:27:30,240
Okay.

495
00:27:30,240 --> 00:27:31,240
So.

496
00:27:31,240 --> 00:27:32,240
So yeah.

497
00:27:32,240 --> 00:27:36,840
So what do you start to try then to figure out how to make this game be interesting with

498
00:27:36,840 --> 00:27:37,840
the rewrite?

499
00:27:37,840 --> 00:27:43,280
Well, you know, the leap of faith thing immediately, once I thought that idea that immediately

500
00:27:43,280 --> 00:27:48,160
translated into a level in the game where there's like a big pit, it's on world two

501
00:27:48,160 --> 00:27:53,000
and there's a big pit and you actually have to like dodge some spikes and then land down

502
00:27:53,000 --> 00:27:54,000
on the bottom.

503
00:27:54,000 --> 00:27:56,800
And it was even more unfair originally.

504
00:27:56,800 --> 00:28:00,360
And it's sort of tuned to be about as unfair as it is now.

505
00:28:00,360 --> 00:28:05,840
And that was just like very few people kind of get what that is, I'm sure.

506
00:28:05,840 --> 00:28:07,640
But you know, it's fine.

507
00:28:07,640 --> 00:28:09,360
And then the inverse.

508
00:28:09,360 --> 00:28:16,240
So I believe what's it what's like the Yoshi is the dinosaur in the Mario games, right?

509
00:28:16,240 --> 00:28:19,320
I just remember some Yoshi's Island kind of level.

510
00:28:19,320 --> 00:28:20,680
Yeah, there is a Yoshi.

511
00:28:20,680 --> 00:28:23,640
Yoshi is a dinosaur, but I don't think it was the dinosaur that comes out at the end

512
00:28:23,640 --> 00:28:24,640
of the castle.

513
00:28:24,640 --> 00:28:25,640
I don't know.

514
00:28:25,640 --> 00:28:26,640
I don't mean that.

515
00:28:26,640 --> 00:28:28,640
I mean, there's some other games Yoshi in that genre.

516
00:28:28,640 --> 00:28:29,640
Yes.

517
00:28:29,640 --> 00:28:33,200
Where so on two, three, after you go down the pit, you go straight back up the other

518
00:28:33,200 --> 00:28:37,880
side and there's like guys falling down and there's compartments on the side.

519
00:28:37,880 --> 00:28:42,000
And I remember there being a level in like Yoshi's Island or something like that.

520
00:28:42,000 --> 00:28:43,720
That was exactly that.

521
00:28:43,720 --> 00:28:45,440
And this one's more unfair.

522
00:28:45,440 --> 00:28:49,600
It's like the guy comes down way faster and you don't get as good of an audio cue and

523
00:28:49,600 --> 00:28:50,600
stuff.

524
00:28:50,600 --> 00:28:54,520
And so it's actually it's a little bit like frustrating, right?

525
00:28:54,520 --> 00:28:59,200
But it's designed to illustrate this idea.

526
00:28:59,200 --> 00:29:04,720
The illustration may be very subtle and not gotten by a lot of people who don't think

527
00:29:04,720 --> 00:29:07,160
about game design.

528
00:29:07,160 --> 00:29:08,660
Right.

529
00:29:08,660 --> 00:29:12,400
So that was one way in which this manifested itself.

530
00:29:12,400 --> 00:29:19,000
Another way that got detuned later was, you know, much harder difficulty.

531
00:29:19,000 --> 00:29:25,080
So at the very first level of World 2, there's a few tutorialish things that are just like,

532
00:29:25,080 --> 00:29:29,320
here's some puzzle pieces that are kind of easy that you do various things to get just

533
00:29:29,320 --> 00:29:32,040
to show you the kind of things you do in this game.

534
00:29:32,040 --> 00:29:33,040
Right.

535
00:29:33,040 --> 00:29:38,960
One of the very first ones was there's one of these platforms that goes, I don't know

536
00:29:38,960 --> 00:29:40,960
if this was in the version that you guys play.

537
00:29:40,960 --> 00:29:41,960
It might have been.

538
00:29:41,960 --> 00:29:44,280
You mean the first like alpha build?

539
00:29:44,280 --> 00:29:45,280
Yeah.

540
00:29:45,280 --> 00:29:46,280
Okay.

541
00:29:46,280 --> 00:29:49,480
There was like a platform, you know, at the very end of what I'm about to say, there's

542
00:29:49,480 --> 00:29:52,200
a puzzle piece that you can see and you're like, I need to get that.

543
00:29:52,200 --> 00:29:53,200
Okay.

544
00:29:53,200 --> 00:29:54,720
So there's a platform with a gap.

545
00:29:54,720 --> 00:30:00,880
You have to jump across to a narrower platform with another gap to a narrower platform with

546
00:30:00,880 --> 00:30:03,160
another gap to a narrower platform with another gap.

547
00:30:03,160 --> 00:30:06,520
And there's like nine platforms increasingly narrow.

548
00:30:06,520 --> 00:30:12,880
And like the last ones are absurdly thin compared to your character, which is kind of bad because

549
00:30:12,880 --> 00:30:18,840
like even at that point, it's like you would stand on a platform or not based on whether

550
00:30:18,840 --> 00:30:23,680
the center point of your character was located on the span of the platform.

551
00:30:23,680 --> 00:30:24,680
Right?

552
00:30:24,680 --> 00:30:27,800
So it's like, are you supposed to read the game's mind there?

553
00:30:27,800 --> 00:30:34,160
But that was like funny because there's no way you would do that in a, in another game.

554
00:30:34,160 --> 00:30:35,160
Right.

555
00:30:35,160 --> 00:30:36,160
Right.

556
00:30:36,160 --> 00:30:40,000
And I ended up getting taken out in part, like Microsoft complained about it, but I

557
00:30:40,000 --> 00:30:43,920
was also like, yeah, that's been in the game since really early on.

558
00:30:43,920 --> 00:30:47,440
And it's no longer quite the quality of experience that I want to have.

559
00:30:47,440 --> 00:30:49,080
Microsoft complained about it.

560
00:30:49,080 --> 00:30:50,080
They did a thing.

561
00:30:50,080 --> 00:30:55,040
So in early 2008, when the game was getting close to kind of being done, they did a whole

562
00:30:55,040 --> 00:30:57,480
fricking playtest lab thing about it.

563
00:30:57,480 --> 00:30:58,480
Right.

564
00:30:58,480 --> 00:30:59,480
Oh, okay.

565
00:30:59,480 --> 00:31:05,040
And they decided to tell me here is how you should change your game based on the results

566
00:31:05,040 --> 00:31:06,280
of the playtest lab.

567
00:31:06,280 --> 00:31:12,880
And I said, well, this would make more sense if I could see the raw data.

568
00:31:12,880 --> 00:31:15,080
And they were like, no, we're not going to send you any data.

569
00:31:15,080 --> 00:31:19,120
I, I, as the producer, I'm just going to give you my opinion about what you should do.

570
00:31:19,120 --> 00:31:24,640
And I was like, no, but I did change that one thing because it was like, you know, sometimes

571
00:31:24,640 --> 00:31:28,960
you already kind of know something's not that good and it's like, all right.

572
00:31:28,960 --> 00:31:29,960
Yeah.

573
00:31:29,960 --> 00:31:30,960
Was that the only thing you changed?

574
00:31:30,960 --> 00:31:34,640
I mean, I changed a bunch of stuff over the course of the game, but that's the only thing

575
00:31:34,640 --> 00:31:35,640
I changed.

576
00:31:35,640 --> 00:31:36,640
I meant because of the playtest.

577
00:31:36,640 --> 00:31:37,960
Well, because of that playtest.

578
00:31:37,960 --> 00:31:39,800
That, oh, sorry, Microsoft lab.

579
00:31:39,800 --> 00:31:44,200
One other thing, which I often think of as my worst mistake in the game, that was the

580
00:31:44,200 --> 00:31:49,320
result of playtesting, but it was a result of my own playtesting and not Microsoft.

581
00:31:49,320 --> 00:31:50,320
Okay.

582
00:31:50,320 --> 00:31:51,320
Yeah.

583
00:31:51,320 --> 00:31:52,320
I guess we should talk about that.

584
00:31:52,320 --> 00:31:55,360
We should talk about that, but that comes later, like, cause I think we're still talking

585
00:31:55,360 --> 00:31:56,960
about the original prototype.

586
00:31:56,960 --> 00:31:57,960
Okay.

587
00:31:57,960 --> 00:31:59,500
So, all right.

588
00:31:59,500 --> 00:32:05,340
So what do you get, you get the early on as you're just playing with this, starting to

589
00:32:05,340 --> 00:32:12,540
play with the rewind that's working, you do a pit like a, I jump into a pit to find out

590
00:32:12,540 --> 00:32:14,880
what's there and then can rewind back.

591
00:32:14,880 --> 00:32:15,880
Well, not yet.

592
00:32:15,880 --> 00:32:16,880
Oh, not yet.

593
00:32:16,880 --> 00:32:20,800
Because what we've described so far is just rewind, right?

594
00:32:20,800 --> 00:32:24,280
So, oh, do you mean, you mean a different pit?

595
00:32:24,280 --> 00:32:27,240
Well, it sounded like you said the leap of faith was one of the first things you did.

596
00:32:27,240 --> 00:32:28,240
Right.

597
00:32:28,240 --> 00:32:29,240
The leap of faith is faith.

598
00:32:29,240 --> 00:32:31,960
I thought it was confused and I thought you were talking about something else.

599
00:32:31,960 --> 00:32:32,960
Yeah.

600
00:32:32,960 --> 00:32:36,640
So the leap of faith was like, there's a pit that several screens high and you need to

601
00:32:36,640 --> 00:32:38,680
go down it to proceed in the level.

602
00:32:38,680 --> 00:32:39,680
Yeah.

603
00:32:39,680 --> 00:32:44,840
There's some spikes and stuff in various places and you kind of need to know approximately

604
00:32:44,840 --> 00:32:47,680
where to aim for and how to dodge them and stuff.

605
00:32:47,680 --> 00:32:51,240
The first time you dive into it, you have no information and you probably die.

606
00:32:51,240 --> 00:32:52,240
Right.

607
00:32:52,240 --> 00:32:55,640
And then you're like, Oh, I, but I see where the things are that'll kill me.

608
00:32:55,640 --> 00:32:59,440
And so you can attempt it again and attempt it again, which you would do in a normal video

609
00:32:59,440 --> 00:33:06,000
game, but with a much longer sort of, uh, experiment loop.

610
00:33:06,000 --> 00:33:10,040
Cause you probably respond somewhere earlier in the level and at cost to you, which is

611
00:33:10,040 --> 00:33:11,720
why it's unfair, right?

612
00:33:11,720 --> 00:33:13,280
Cause you lose lives or whatever.

613
00:33:13,280 --> 00:33:14,960
And here it's like, that doesn't happen.

614
00:33:14,960 --> 00:33:15,960
Right.

615
00:33:15,960 --> 00:33:22,080
Um, and then the rest of it, I don't think I had the idea of there being a fixed number

616
00:33:22,080 --> 00:33:23,600
of puzzles per level yet.

617
00:33:23,600 --> 00:33:30,040
So I was just kind of doing whatever makes sense and we'll see how much that is.

618
00:33:30,040 --> 00:33:36,040
And in fact, so at this time in the version I sent to you guys, the idea was that the

619
00:33:36,040 --> 00:33:39,320
rewind was a surprise, right?

620
00:33:39,320 --> 00:33:41,840
And so before world two, there was actually world one.

621
00:33:41,840 --> 00:33:43,160
Yes, there was.

622
00:33:43,160 --> 00:33:47,760
And world one was you play this platformer and it's got the monsters and stuff on it

623
00:33:47,760 --> 00:33:49,080
and there's no rewind.

624
00:33:49,080 --> 00:33:50,080
Right.

625
00:33:50,080 --> 00:33:52,040
And so that you can do even less with that.

626
00:33:52,040 --> 00:33:53,040
Right.

627
00:33:53,040 --> 00:33:56,480
And it's a little bit like, well, jump on the guy's heads and practice jumping over

628
00:33:56,480 --> 00:33:58,480
pits and stuff.

629
00:33:58,480 --> 00:34:03,040
And the thing is there, because in the rules of the world, there are death conditions.

630
00:34:03,040 --> 00:34:04,480
They're just were.

631
00:34:04,480 --> 00:34:07,240
And in that one you would respond at the beginning.

632
00:34:07,240 --> 00:34:12,360
And then later in world two, you would get the ability to rewind.

633
00:34:12,360 --> 00:34:13,360
Right.

634
00:34:13,360 --> 00:34:20,280
And that seemed good to me, except I already kind of knew, you know, like when a movie

635
00:34:20,280 --> 00:34:27,080
comes out where like the reason you're supposed to watch it is because like, I don't know,

636
00:34:27,080 --> 00:34:29,240
2012 or some ridiculous movie like that.

637
00:34:29,240 --> 00:34:33,080
We're like, oh, it's because the world's getting destroyed in this movie.

638
00:34:33,080 --> 00:34:34,080
Right.

639
00:34:34,080 --> 00:34:39,640
You can't have that be like a surprise that you devote sufficient dramatic time to in

640
00:34:39,640 --> 00:34:42,040
the movie because everybody knows this thing.

641
00:34:42,040 --> 00:34:43,040
OK.

642
00:34:43,040 --> 00:34:48,920
And like, so you figured when this game came out, people would talk about it or see trailers

643
00:34:48,920 --> 00:34:51,640
and it's like they would already know that there's rewind.

644
00:34:51,640 --> 00:34:55,100
So it's just kind of it seemed like a danger thing.

645
00:34:55,100 --> 00:34:57,000
That was one of the elements I was thinking about.

646
00:34:57,000 --> 00:35:02,600
But there were some other ones like, well, respawning with infinite lives is almost a

647
00:35:02,600 --> 00:35:04,880
superpower of its own.

648
00:35:04,880 --> 00:35:06,040
That's not as good as rewind.

649
00:35:06,040 --> 00:35:11,000
But like, it's diminishing rewind to have like, oh, you just respond at the start of

650
00:35:11,000 --> 00:35:12,280
the level or whatever.

651
00:35:12,280 --> 00:35:13,280
OK.

652
00:35:13,280 --> 00:35:18,400
And I could put lives in and whatever and then have it be, hey, isn't it cool that the

653
00:35:18,400 --> 00:35:19,680
lives don't matter anymore?

654
00:35:19,680 --> 00:35:21,360
But that seemed like a big conceit.

655
00:35:21,360 --> 00:35:22,360
Yeah.

656
00:35:22,360 --> 00:35:26,880
And also it just seemed like the gameplay before rewind just wasn't going to be that

657
00:35:26,880 --> 00:35:27,880
good.

658
00:35:27,880 --> 00:35:28,880
And so I had this worry.

659
00:35:28,880 --> 00:35:31,640
So again, I have no reason to believe anyone's going to play this game.

660
00:35:31,640 --> 00:35:32,640
Right.

661
00:35:32,640 --> 00:35:33,640
Right.

662
00:35:33,640 --> 00:35:37,040
Like Sean had released chromatron and like a hundred people played it or something.

663
00:35:37,040 --> 00:35:38,040
Right.

664
00:35:38,040 --> 00:35:39,040
Right.

665
00:35:39,040 --> 00:35:43,880
So I was like, it's bad to have people play through a whole world.

666
00:35:43,880 --> 00:35:47,760
That's maybe even a little bit hard or something.

667
00:35:47,760 --> 00:35:48,760
Right.

668
00:35:48,760 --> 00:35:51,000
And not even know why the game's supposed to be good.

669
00:35:51,000 --> 00:35:52,000
Right.

670
00:35:52,000 --> 00:35:53,000
Right.

671
00:35:53,000 --> 00:35:54,640
So like, why not let them know right away?

672
00:35:54,640 --> 00:35:59,480
And again, I mean, this goes to the Psalm 46 speech again, like let them know right

673
00:35:59,480 --> 00:36:00,480
away why the game's good.

674
00:36:00,480 --> 00:36:01,480
Yeah.

675
00:36:01,480 --> 00:36:02,600
You know, why, why do this thing?

676
00:36:02,600 --> 00:36:07,320
And so the idea of rewind being a surprise was a little bit fun, but I was like, in reality,

677
00:36:07,320 --> 00:36:08,680
it's probably not going to work.

678
00:36:08,680 --> 00:36:10,160
And so I'm not going to worry about it.

679
00:36:10,160 --> 00:36:18,600
But for quite a while, the game had a world one where you just don't die and you've just

680
00:36:18,600 --> 00:36:20,320
got to get to the end of it.

681
00:36:20,320 --> 00:36:21,320
Yeah.

682
00:36:21,320 --> 00:36:22,320
Yeah.

683
00:36:22,320 --> 00:36:23,320
Well, and that's the other thing.

684
00:36:23,320 --> 00:36:29,400
Like it was in sort of inherently hard because there's nothing else.

685
00:36:29,400 --> 00:36:30,680
There's no other challenge.

686
00:36:30,680 --> 00:36:32,560
Maybe apart from getting to the end of the world.

687
00:36:32,560 --> 00:36:36,800
I mean, maybe you could have had the puzzle pieces all off to the side.

688
00:36:36,800 --> 00:36:37,800
I don't know.

689
00:36:37,800 --> 00:36:38,800
It just seems like a nothing burger, right?

690
00:36:38,800 --> 00:36:41,520
To be able to walk through that world and like, there's nothing going on.

691
00:36:41,520 --> 00:36:47,280
So I actually, I don't think I had the idea that early on that the main line through the

692
00:36:47,280 --> 00:36:49,000
game would be easy to walk through.

693
00:36:49,000 --> 00:36:55,320
I think it was still like, I do remember there was a quite wide pit that, you know, you kind

694
00:36:55,320 --> 00:36:59,520
of had to jump over on that level and there was like a secret door in the side of the

695
00:36:59,520 --> 00:37:02,640
pit that if you were falling down at, you could like get out.

696
00:37:02,640 --> 00:37:03,640
Yeah.

697
00:37:03,640 --> 00:37:05,640
There was weird stuff like that.

698
00:37:05,640 --> 00:37:11,520
However, on this same initial one week thing, I'm just, I have plenty of free head space

699
00:37:11,520 --> 00:37:12,520
cause I'm chilling.

700
00:37:12,520 --> 00:37:13,520
I'm on vacation.

701
00:37:13,520 --> 00:37:15,800
Everything's good.

702
00:37:15,800 --> 00:37:18,200
And I'm excited about this idea.

703
00:37:18,200 --> 00:37:29,680
And I've typed in the rewind code and it works by telling you what fields of entities have

704
00:37:29,680 --> 00:37:30,680
changed.

705
00:37:30,680 --> 00:37:31,680
Right.

706
00:37:31,680 --> 00:37:35,040
And so there's an outer loop that's for all entities in the world.

707
00:37:35,040 --> 00:37:36,040
Right.

708
00:37:36,040 --> 00:37:40,760
And there's an inner loop that's for all fields in this entity and transmit that information

709
00:37:40,760 --> 00:37:44,040
to the rewind buffer or whatever.

710
00:37:44,040 --> 00:37:48,080
You don't exactly know where this idea comes from, but it's a very simple idea that I just

711
00:37:48,080 --> 00:37:49,080
have.

712
00:37:49,080 --> 00:37:55,200
Maybe I woke up with it or maybe I was just chilling, but I was like, you know, like if

713
00:37:55,200 --> 00:37:59,840
there was a bug or something, or maybe I could just do it intentionally.

714
00:37:59,840 --> 00:38:03,640
Just some of those objects are not visited by that loop.

715
00:38:03,640 --> 00:38:04,640
Right.

716
00:38:04,640 --> 00:38:08,400
And then that gives me two classes of things.

717
00:38:08,400 --> 00:38:12,880
It gives me things that always go forward in time and things that rewind in time.

718
00:38:12,880 --> 00:38:17,680
And right away, like even as soon as I have that idea, like I don't know what to do with

719
00:38:17,680 --> 00:38:22,880
it yet, but it's like, Oh, that is the kind of cool and weird and expanding the rewind

720
00:38:22,880 --> 00:38:25,080
idea that I'm looking for.

721
00:38:25,080 --> 00:38:31,160
It feels just as you say it to be very in line with like the Calvino invisible cities

722
00:38:31,160 --> 00:38:36,600
kind of thing where it's like, Oh, there's these kind of like different permutations

723
00:38:36,600 --> 00:38:39,240
of things happening as I go through.

724
00:38:39,240 --> 00:38:40,240
Yes.

725
00:38:40,240 --> 00:38:43,240
And I don't know the Einstein and dream one, but I assume that was kind of similar.

726
00:38:43,240 --> 00:38:48,560
Like there would be, it's the kind of thing you would see in that kind of work, I guess.

727
00:38:48,560 --> 00:38:49,560
Yeah.

728
00:38:49,560 --> 00:38:55,960
I mean, it's, it's weird reality basically, but it still has all the character or all

729
00:38:55,960 --> 00:38:59,640
the, like, it's still a system with well-defined rules in fact.

730
00:38:59,640 --> 00:39:00,640
Right.

731
00:39:00,640 --> 00:39:05,520
So as soon as I had that idea, that was pretty easy to put in.

732
00:39:05,520 --> 00:39:13,560
And then as soon as I had that idea, I was like, what else can I do with the rewind?

733
00:39:13,560 --> 00:39:19,080
And I believe, I know that I did three worlds in that initial beta.

734
00:39:19,080 --> 00:39:22,280
And I think it was literally what's now world two, three, four, right?

735
00:39:22,280 --> 00:39:24,760
So world two is rewind.

736
00:39:24,760 --> 00:39:28,840
World three is rewind with objects that are exempt to rewind.

737
00:39:28,840 --> 00:39:32,720
And world four is time is tied to space.

738
00:39:32,720 --> 00:39:35,720
And I think there was just like one level of that or two at the end.

739
00:39:35,720 --> 00:39:36,720
Right.

740
00:39:36,720 --> 00:39:42,560
In fact, I think it was T equals X and then T equals Y, which there's no T equals Y in

741
00:39:42,560 --> 00:39:43,560
the final game.

742
00:39:43,560 --> 00:39:44,560
Right.

743
00:39:44,560 --> 00:39:45,560
Yes.

744
00:39:45,560 --> 00:39:46,560
Yeah.

745
00:39:46,560 --> 00:39:53,840
But how did you have that idea or it was, you know, again, it was this physics initial

746
00:39:53,840 --> 00:39:55,760
idea.

747
00:39:55,760 --> 00:40:02,560
And so once I realized, okay, there's rewind in this game, it's working well.

748
00:40:02,560 --> 00:40:05,560
How do I tie in the other physics ideas?

749
00:40:05,560 --> 00:40:08,920
Because there's maybe supposed to be quantum mechanics and relativity and whatever.

750
00:40:08,920 --> 00:40:11,360
And well, what is there about relativity?

751
00:40:11,360 --> 00:40:14,160
Like there's four dimensions, right?

752
00:40:14,160 --> 00:40:16,080
And like time is a dimension.

753
00:40:16,080 --> 00:40:17,760
Can I put that in this game somehow?

754
00:40:17,760 --> 00:40:20,040
And does that involve rewind in some way?

755
00:40:20,040 --> 00:40:21,040
I see.

756
00:40:21,040 --> 00:40:25,400
And you know, regular space time for us is like three plus one before you start talking

757
00:40:25,400 --> 00:40:26,960
about string theory or whatever.

758
00:40:26,960 --> 00:40:27,960
Right.

759
00:40:27,960 --> 00:40:29,760
This game is two dimensions.

760
00:40:29,760 --> 00:40:33,200
So like, how do I, is it two plus one?

761
00:40:33,200 --> 00:40:40,600
And just somehow it just maps onto the idea of like, what if I just control time by your

762
00:40:40,600 --> 00:40:41,600
position?

763
00:40:41,600 --> 00:40:42,600
Right.

764
00:40:42,600 --> 00:40:43,600
Right.

765
00:40:43,600 --> 00:40:50,960
Also, you know, in, in relativity, for example, you know, like if you're a photon and you're

766
00:40:50,960 --> 00:40:53,480
always traveling at the speed of light, right?

767
00:40:53,480 --> 00:41:04,520
Like time does not pass for you in your, in your frame, but it does pass like maybe orthogonally.

768
00:41:04,520 --> 00:41:05,520
And I don't know.

769
00:41:05,520 --> 00:41:09,920
It's been a long time since I thought about these things, but it's just the idea popped

770
00:41:09,920 --> 00:41:10,920
up.

771
00:41:10,920 --> 00:41:11,920
You know, what can I say?

772
00:41:11,920 --> 00:41:13,080
Like, like those were the inputs.

773
00:41:13,080 --> 00:41:18,680
And in this concrete case, it was not very hard to have the idea.

774
00:41:18,680 --> 00:41:20,840
Let's just map it to space because that'll be cool.

775
00:41:20,840 --> 00:41:23,520
Because again, I start thinking about what that is before I implement it.

776
00:41:23,520 --> 00:41:31,600
And it's like, Oh, it'll be kind of neat that things you're kind of in control of the motion

777
00:41:31,600 --> 00:41:32,600
of the world.

778
00:41:32,600 --> 00:41:33,960
And if you stop, everything stops.

779
00:41:33,960 --> 00:41:38,620
Like before I try to make puzzles with that, it's got an interesting feel and an interesting

780
00:41:38,620 --> 00:41:39,620
kind of interactivity.

781
00:41:39,620 --> 00:41:40,620
Right.

782
00:41:40,620 --> 00:41:42,320
And then I think how would I implement it?

783
00:41:42,320 --> 00:41:49,560
And it's like, well, it's pretty easy to look at like, where is, where is the player spawn

784
00:41:49,560 --> 00:41:54,760
in the, in the very initial implementation, maybe even in the final thing, your spawn

785
00:41:54,760 --> 00:41:58,960
point is just like the leftmost part of the level.

786
00:41:58,960 --> 00:42:04,360
So there's no question about, could I go earlier in time than when I spawned in?

787
00:42:04,360 --> 00:42:09,520
So you just literally load the level and then you simulate it forward.

788
00:42:09,520 --> 00:42:12,800
And then instead of just the rewind key, you have an alternate input.

789
00:42:12,800 --> 00:42:18,200
That's if you walk left, rewind the rewind buffer by that amount.

790
00:42:18,200 --> 00:42:19,200
Right.

791
00:42:19,200 --> 00:42:23,400
So it's very easy to think of implementation wise and you could kind of hack it in and

792
00:42:23,400 --> 00:42:27,680
like, well, if there's some robustness issues with this or whatever, we'll think about it

793
00:42:27,680 --> 00:42:28,680
later.

794
00:42:28,680 --> 00:42:29,680
Right.

795
00:42:29,680 --> 00:42:31,480
It can't quite rewind the rewind buffer.

796
00:42:31,480 --> 00:42:32,480
Can it?

797
00:42:32,480 --> 00:42:36,520
Because isn't the way that that works in braid that you can also rewind?

798
00:42:36,520 --> 00:42:37,560
Yes.

799
00:42:37,560 --> 00:42:41,240
So it can't quite rewind the rewind buffer in the way that the rewind buffer normally

800
00:42:41,240 --> 00:42:47,080
gets rewound because it needs to be putting that action also onto the rewind.

801
00:42:47,080 --> 00:42:48,080
Yes.

802
00:42:48,080 --> 00:42:49,320
So it's a little bit different.

803
00:42:49,320 --> 00:42:52,400
It's like, look at the rewind buffer and apply it or something.

804
00:42:52,400 --> 00:42:53,400
Yes.

805
00:42:53,400 --> 00:43:02,320
It's seek to the time indicated by the leftward travel, round to the nearest frame, right?

806
00:43:02,320 --> 00:43:06,120
Take that state and then forward diff the current state to that.

807
00:43:06,120 --> 00:43:07,120
Right.

808
00:43:07,120 --> 00:43:08,120
Right.

809
00:43:08,120 --> 00:43:09,120
And, and that's the new rewind frame.

810
00:43:09,120 --> 00:43:13,040
So it's, it is not trivial, but if your code is not a flaming nightmare, it doesn't take

811
00:43:13,040 --> 00:43:14,040
that long.

812
00:43:14,040 --> 00:43:15,040
Yeah.

813
00:43:15,040 --> 00:43:16,040
Yeah.

814
00:43:16,040 --> 00:43:17,040
Yeah.

815
00:43:17,040 --> 00:43:21,440
So it's not where I'm sure the rewind buffer was just a flat array at that time or whatever

816
00:43:21,440 --> 00:43:23,320
of each frame is a thing.

817
00:43:23,320 --> 00:43:25,480
And then there's probably a data structure for each frame.

818
00:43:25,480 --> 00:43:28,920
Like it wasn't that sophisticated, but I don't care.

819
00:43:28,920 --> 00:43:29,920
Right.

820
00:43:29,920 --> 00:43:30,920
There's not that many objects in this game.

821
00:43:30,920 --> 00:43:31,920
It's a proof of concept.

822
00:43:31,920 --> 00:43:32,920
It's all good.

823
00:43:32,920 --> 00:43:33,920
Right.

824
00:43:33,920 --> 00:43:34,920
Yeah.

825
00:43:34,920 --> 00:43:35,920
Okay.

826
00:43:35,920 --> 00:43:43,680
So in a sense, like, I guess there isn't, it sounds like there isn't a lot of like,

827
00:43:43,680 --> 00:43:45,880
you know, banging your head against anything during this time.

828
00:43:45,880 --> 00:43:48,120
It's really just kind of fluid.

829
00:43:48,120 --> 00:43:50,960
Like it's like, I had this idea that I had this idea.

830
00:43:50,960 --> 00:43:56,280
And like, it almost sounds like by the time you finished typing in the previous idea,

831
00:43:56,280 --> 00:43:58,120
you've got another idea kind of a thing.

832
00:43:58,120 --> 00:43:59,120
Yes.

833
00:43:59,120 --> 00:44:03,440
It was very rapid progress and really no real blockers.

834
00:44:03,440 --> 00:44:04,920
Like there's always little bugs.

835
00:44:04,920 --> 00:44:12,620
Like I did this and it didn't work, but there was never any like, Oh, I'm underpowered systemically

836
00:44:12,620 --> 00:44:17,840
in a way that I can't achieve the thing that I want, which does happen often in games development.

837
00:44:17,840 --> 00:44:18,840
Yeah, certainly.

838
00:44:18,840 --> 00:44:19,840
Yeah.

839
00:44:19,840 --> 00:44:21,560
But I had the instinct going in that that wouldn't happen here.

840
00:44:21,560 --> 00:44:23,280
And indeed it did not.

841
00:44:23,280 --> 00:44:30,520
And so by the end of this week, I had implemented these three different mechanics of time plus

842
00:44:30,520 --> 00:44:32,040
the null one, right?

843
00:44:32,040 --> 00:44:37,000
The right, the world one, the myth, the now non-existent world.

844
00:44:37,000 --> 00:44:38,000
Yeah.

845
00:44:38,000 --> 00:44:40,240
And I had little maps with little puzzles for all of them.

846
00:44:40,240 --> 00:44:43,200
Like I had at least a couple of puzzles for each one.

847
00:44:43,200 --> 00:44:51,480
I had the one, you know, walk linearly in the world monster where you stomp on his head.

848
00:44:51,480 --> 00:44:54,960
I had a key and a gate because you know, and that's very simple.

849
00:44:54,960 --> 00:44:59,320
It's like the gate acts as an obstacle until the key touches it.

850
00:44:59,320 --> 00:45:03,020
Then the Boolean that says open and we swap out the bitmap.

851
00:45:03,020 --> 00:45:05,400
We don't worry about animations or anything.

852
00:45:05,400 --> 00:45:08,020
And then you can walk through it very easy, right?

853
00:45:08,020 --> 00:45:13,360
Like less than an hour should be 10 minutes or less if like everything is good.

854
00:45:13,360 --> 00:45:17,200
I mean, you have to make the entity type and instantiate it in the editor and say what

855
00:45:17,200 --> 00:45:18,320
the default bitmap is.

856
00:45:18,320 --> 00:45:20,840
And that stuff adds up, but it's like not hard at all.

857
00:45:20,840 --> 00:45:21,840
Right.

858
00:45:21,840 --> 00:45:22,840
And that was the plan.

859
00:45:22,840 --> 00:45:24,040
Like, look, it's 2D with sprites.

860
00:45:24,040 --> 00:45:25,160
Like how hard could it be?

861
00:45:25,160 --> 00:45:26,160
Right.

862
00:45:26,160 --> 00:45:27,160
So I had that.

863
00:45:27,160 --> 00:45:29,280
I had the little dinosaur coming out when you're at the end of the level.

864
00:45:29,280 --> 00:45:33,820
I had the story screens with text that I wrote, although it was different.

865
00:45:33,820 --> 00:45:37,280
So let's talk about that for a second, because I guess you haven't mentioned that this entire

866
00:45:37,280 --> 00:45:39,240
time.

867
00:45:39,240 --> 00:45:42,680
When did you even know that that was going to be in there?

868
00:45:42,680 --> 00:45:43,680
Because although you...

869
00:45:43,680 --> 00:45:46,100
Before I programmed anything, I knew it was going to be in there.

870
00:45:46,100 --> 00:45:47,160
So how did that happen?

871
00:45:47,160 --> 00:45:52,640
Because the central idea sort of like that it's going to be like something like Einstein's

872
00:45:52,640 --> 00:45:53,640
dream.

873
00:45:53,640 --> 00:45:54,640
Yeah.

874
00:45:54,640 --> 00:45:59,960
It could be like that in the sense that it's this collection of worlds with different mechanics.

875
00:45:59,960 --> 00:46:05,080
It doesn't imply that there's necessarily like a story with it or anything like that.

876
00:46:05,080 --> 00:46:06,120
Yeah, no, totally.

877
00:46:06,120 --> 00:46:11,720
So when did you sort of, or how did that idea develop that there was going to be sort of

878
00:46:11,720 --> 00:46:16,280
a like distinct two things, text and the game?

879
00:46:16,280 --> 00:46:20,360
It was baked into the idea at the start for reasons, right?

880
00:46:20,360 --> 00:46:23,320
I mean, obviously there's a lot of choice about what you make.

881
00:46:23,320 --> 00:46:24,320
Yes, yes.

882
00:46:24,320 --> 00:46:26,680
One, I kind of wanted to write something again.

883
00:46:26,680 --> 00:46:31,640
I had written things way in the past and I was like, I could do something here.

884
00:46:31,640 --> 00:46:35,800
It was going to be much more of a constrained writing exercise.

885
00:46:35,800 --> 00:46:44,040
So part of all of this stuff, so the O'Lippo, which we mentioned, is all about constrained

886
00:46:44,040 --> 00:46:48,560
writing according to rules or heuristics or algorithms, right?

887
00:46:48,560 --> 00:46:55,300
And then like these specific books that I was taking inspiration from were like that.

888
00:46:55,300 --> 00:47:01,880
And so I kind of liked the idea of there's gameplay in the different worlds and that

889
00:47:01,880 --> 00:47:09,880
puts constraints on what the writing is, but then also there's constraints like that's

890
00:47:09,880 --> 00:47:11,960
one direction of constraints.

891
00:47:11,960 --> 00:47:15,040
And then there's an orthogonal direction that's just from writing to writing.

892
00:47:15,040 --> 00:47:20,800
Like the intros to these different worlds can have structural parallelism in some way.

893
00:47:20,800 --> 00:47:25,440
In the end, there was probably at least one too many constraints on it.

894
00:47:25,440 --> 00:47:31,440
And it like the writing quality suffered from it probably, but you know, it's fine.

895
00:47:31,440 --> 00:47:37,520
Also for me trying too hard, I think.

896
00:47:37,520 --> 00:47:40,520
But like I was just interested in that idea.

897
00:47:40,520 --> 00:47:46,880
And then also, even before I know it's rewind, there's like, there's this idea that doing

898
00:47:46,880 --> 00:47:52,400
something in gameplay is more difficult than in fiction, because in fiction you can just

899
00:47:52,400 --> 00:47:56,080
fiction just depends on how good you are at rhetoric in some sense.

900
00:47:56,080 --> 00:48:02,160
Like once there was a world where everybody walked around on their hands and that's just

901
00:48:02,160 --> 00:48:03,160
how it is.

902
00:48:03,160 --> 00:48:07,800
And in games, you have to deal with what that means.

903
00:48:07,800 --> 00:48:10,940
Walking on their hands is not that good of an idea, but like you open a door and it goes

904
00:48:10,940 --> 00:48:12,560
to another universe or whatever.

905
00:48:12,560 --> 00:48:17,720
Like that's, that's an idea where in fiction you can say whatever, but you're describing

906
00:48:17,720 --> 00:48:20,160
some rules all of a sudden.

907
00:48:20,160 --> 00:48:23,840
And in games, you have to make those work consistently for it to be a certain class

908
00:48:23,840 --> 00:48:27,160
of game, a system oriented game.

909
00:48:27,160 --> 00:48:31,040
Now of course, whenever I say this, there's always like, well, it could be like the old

910
00:48:31,040 --> 00:48:33,360
adventure games where there's just if statements, right?

911
00:48:33,360 --> 00:48:34,360
Right.

912
00:48:34,360 --> 00:48:35,440
So you don't really implement the system.

913
00:48:35,440 --> 00:48:40,000
You just implement the like particular beats you cared about and everything else is just

914
00:48:40,000 --> 00:48:41,000
not there.

915
00:48:41,000 --> 00:48:45,400
But even those are better when they feel systemy and the way that people figure out.

916
00:48:45,400 --> 00:48:52,680
So like planet fall, for example, or a star cross actually is even more star cross has

917
00:48:52,680 --> 00:48:55,560
some objects that are pretty systemy.

918
00:48:55,560 --> 00:49:00,760
And the way that you solve the puzzles is you know how they behave and you use that

919
00:49:00,760 --> 00:49:03,200
to engineer the solution.

920
00:49:03,200 --> 00:49:07,960
And then the if statements happen to correctly implement the behavior that you want it.

921
00:49:07,960 --> 00:49:08,960
Right.

922
00:49:08,960 --> 00:49:09,960
Right.

923
00:49:09,960 --> 00:49:13,760
Um, and so it's like, you're pretending the system is there both as the player and the

924
00:49:13,760 --> 00:49:15,520
author, right?

925
00:49:15,520 --> 00:49:19,000
But as you go more forward in time and games are more capable, it's like, Hey, there's

926
00:49:19,000 --> 00:49:23,040
more of an actual system and the system is more complex and nuanced.

927
00:49:23,040 --> 00:49:24,620
And I was very interested in that.

928
00:49:24,620 --> 00:49:31,120
So I didn't want it to be like a story based game in the way lots of games are where it's

929
00:49:31,120 --> 00:49:32,880
about the narrative or something.

930
00:49:32,880 --> 00:49:34,200
Those people drove me nuts.

931
00:49:34,200 --> 00:49:35,200
Right.

932
00:49:35,200 --> 00:49:36,200
Even back then.

933
00:49:36,200 --> 00:49:37,200
Right.

934
00:49:37,200 --> 00:49:38,200
But I like the idea.

935
00:49:38,200 --> 00:49:39,200
Okay.

936
00:49:39,200 --> 00:49:40,200
So it's some kind of hybrid.

937
00:49:40,200 --> 00:49:41,560
I want to have some writing and I want to have some gameplay.

938
00:49:41,560 --> 00:49:43,040
What does that look like?

939
00:49:43,040 --> 00:49:46,720
Well, you know, there are illustrated storybooks, right?

940
00:49:46,720 --> 00:49:50,520
Some of which are for kids, but even for like young adults and adults, the further back

941
00:49:50,520 --> 00:49:54,400
in time you go, the more you see like things that are illustrated.

942
00:49:54,400 --> 00:49:55,400
Right.

943
00:49:55,400 --> 00:49:59,840
And then even old religious texts were often just like illustrated, right?

944
00:49:59,840 --> 00:50:03,280
Here's, here's Jesus dragging the cross or whatever.

945
00:50:03,280 --> 00:50:04,760
That's a thing.

946
00:50:04,760 --> 00:50:10,600
And so I was like, okay, what if, what if it's like that and illustrated storybook,

947
00:50:10,600 --> 00:50:16,040
but it's kind of flipped around where the text takes the place of the illustration in

948
00:50:16,040 --> 00:50:21,140
that there's like less of it and it's there more for color and flavor.

949
00:50:21,140 --> 00:50:26,720
And then the gameplay is like the text in the storybook is the main part, right?

950
00:50:26,720 --> 00:50:31,200
Is most of what you're experiencing and playing most of the time.

951
00:50:31,200 --> 00:50:32,200
Right.

952
00:50:32,200 --> 00:50:33,200
And I liked that.

953
00:50:33,200 --> 00:50:39,000
And that, that also, it just led to this format where I don't know also ergonomically though,

954
00:50:39,000 --> 00:50:42,620
if there's going to be text as an introduction, like I liked it better as an introduction

955
00:50:42,620 --> 00:50:47,840
in the beginning of each world to help set it up, then like coming in the middle or whatever.

956
00:50:47,840 --> 00:50:52,520
Now if I were text phobic, some like sometimes people do things that are inherently contradictory,

957
00:50:52,520 --> 00:50:53,520
right?

958
00:50:53,520 --> 00:50:54,520
They do that all the time.

959
00:50:54,520 --> 00:50:58,640
If I wanted text in the game, but was scared of text in the game, I would put it as little

960
00:50:58,640 --> 00:51:00,480
blurbs in the middle, right?

961
00:51:00,480 --> 00:51:03,880
Or have little characters who would tell you backstory.

962
00:51:03,880 --> 00:51:11,000
Like before I even started braid, I think a very popular indie game was like cave story,

963
00:51:11,000 --> 00:51:12,000
right?

964
00:51:12,000 --> 00:51:16,760
So that was one of these like linear story-based adventures where you meet characters and they

965
00:51:16,760 --> 00:51:19,560
have dialogue that gives you information about the world.

966
00:51:19,560 --> 00:51:26,440
So that was very clearly a model that I could have done, but I liked, so I wanted this to

967
00:51:26,440 --> 00:51:28,120
be an art game, right?

968
00:51:28,120 --> 00:51:31,840
That was another one of the high, there were a lot of high level parameters of what I was

969
00:51:31,840 --> 00:51:33,200
trying to do, right?

970
00:51:33,200 --> 00:51:37,360
I wanted it to be an art game, but unapologetically an art game, right?

971
00:51:37,360 --> 00:51:40,560
Cause I'd been thinking about art games and experimental games and all this stuff.

972
00:51:40,560 --> 00:51:45,840
And I was seeing that certain classes of things were not being made, right?

973
00:51:45,840 --> 00:51:46,840
Like,

974
00:51:46,840 --> 00:51:48,120
But what does that mean?

975
00:51:48,120 --> 00:51:50,980
What does art game mean?

976
00:51:50,980 --> 00:51:58,400
What made you think that that was a thing that there was like, because it's one thing,

977
00:51:58,400 --> 00:52:05,320
you know, kind of if I could bring it back to the game rants mailing list, where the

978
00:52:05,320 --> 00:52:12,440
aforementioned rewind mail came from, another post that I made on that mailing list, I remember

979
00:52:12,440 --> 00:52:20,000
very clearly was somehow in some discussion or something, someone may have used the word

980
00:52:20,000 --> 00:52:23,500
pretentious to describe something.

981
00:52:23,500 --> 00:52:29,300
And I literally wrote an email saying, I would love it if we were already at the point where

982
00:52:29,300 --> 00:52:34,320
I ever played anything that I would describe as pretentious, because at that time there

983
00:52:34,320 --> 00:52:39,280
was nothing that was trying, that was even trying and failing to be an art game, let

984
00:52:39,280 --> 00:52:41,520
alone being an art game.

985
00:52:41,520 --> 00:52:48,400
And so I feel like that you using that terminology is a little confusing for me knowing what

986
00:52:48,400 --> 00:52:52,160
it was like at that time, because how are you, what was, what did that even mean?

987
00:52:52,160 --> 00:52:55,280
Yes, I can definitely get more specific about it.

988
00:52:55,280 --> 00:52:56,280
Yeah.

989
00:52:56,280 --> 00:53:02,280
So I felt like if you look at another genre, like film or novels or whatever, the best

990
00:53:02,280 --> 00:53:08,720
art had a few, obviously everything varies by genre, right?

991
00:53:08,720 --> 00:53:09,920
Every genre is a different thing.

992
00:53:09,920 --> 00:53:12,400
But there's some commonalities that I could observe.

993
00:53:12,400 --> 00:53:19,040
Like the best art was not designed by committee primarily for making money, which is what

994
00:53:19,040 --> 00:53:22,720
the majority of the games industry was even at that time and what it was clearly heading

995
00:53:22,720 --> 00:53:23,720
toward.

996
00:53:23,720 --> 00:53:24,720
Right?

997
00:53:24,720 --> 00:53:26,880
It had some stamp of the individual on it.

998
00:53:26,880 --> 00:53:35,000
Here is something that somebody cares about and maybe wishes to communicate or express.

999
00:53:35,000 --> 00:53:40,360
And even the word communicate is like kind of a red flag because it's very easy for people

1000
00:53:40,360 --> 00:53:42,320
to misinterpret that.

1001
00:53:42,320 --> 00:53:43,320
Right?

1002
00:53:43,320 --> 00:53:45,840
I don't remember, we've done enough hours of recording now that I don't remember if

1003
00:53:45,840 --> 00:53:46,840
I said this here.

1004
00:53:46,840 --> 00:53:54,160
I think I did in the very beginning, but like back in grade school, in English class, you

1005
00:53:54,160 --> 00:53:59,680
get taught or we got taught in California and maybe it's true across the US, this very

1006
00:53:59,680 --> 00:54:03,280
formulaic thing about how stories are, right?

1007
00:54:03,280 --> 00:54:07,280
You read the story and there's basically a secret message in the story that it's your

1008
00:54:07,280 --> 00:54:12,680
job to understand and then write the five paragraph essay about like what that is.

1009
00:54:12,680 --> 00:54:13,680
Right.

1010
00:54:13,680 --> 00:54:14,680
Yes.

1011
00:54:14,680 --> 00:54:16,440
That always felt too trivial to me.

1012
00:54:16,440 --> 00:54:23,280
And as I had graduated to like college and beyond and found what do I really enjoy reading,

1013
00:54:23,280 --> 00:54:24,280
right?

1014
00:54:24,280 --> 00:54:26,000
It's just never that simple.

1015
00:54:26,000 --> 00:54:31,800
Like there's stuff that people care about, but it's bigger than like hiding the marble

1016
00:54:31,800 --> 00:54:32,800
in the oatmeal, right?

1017
00:54:32,800 --> 00:54:33,800
Right, right.

1018
00:54:33,800 --> 00:54:38,280
It's like, what is the green light at the end of the dock is not the whole point of

1019
00:54:38,280 --> 00:54:39,280
the thing.

1020
00:54:39,280 --> 00:54:40,720
No, no.

1021
00:54:40,720 --> 00:54:47,400
And then in fact, all these things are complex and multi-dimensional.

1022
00:54:47,400 --> 00:54:51,040
And I also saw that people were not really trying to even do that in games.

1023
00:54:51,040 --> 00:54:54,960
Like where is the complex multi-dimensional meaning in games?

1024
00:54:54,960 --> 00:55:00,600
And even for people who were making independent games, there was a struggle to be polished,

1025
00:55:00,600 --> 00:55:01,600
right?

1026
00:55:01,600 --> 00:55:03,960
Like you're, you're in India, you're doing some stuff.

1027
00:55:03,960 --> 00:55:05,700
It looks crappy.

1028
00:55:05,700 --> 00:55:09,560
You want people to play it and not think it sucks.

1029
00:55:09,560 --> 00:55:12,960
So you're spending all this time trying to make the bit maps look nice.

1030
00:55:12,960 --> 00:55:15,200
Like Nintendo makes them or whatever.

1031
00:55:15,200 --> 00:55:20,800
And that's a certain honing.

1032
00:55:20,800 --> 00:55:27,200
If you were that, imagine you're that as a person and you go to like dinner parties

1033
00:55:27,200 --> 00:55:34,220
or something and you're always like, I am exerting effort in everything I say and every

1034
00:55:34,220 --> 00:55:41,360
move I make at this dinner party to present the most refined picture of myself so that

1035
00:55:41,360 --> 00:55:45,440
I look as good as possible and so that everybody likes me as much as possible.

1036
00:55:45,440 --> 00:55:49,540
I mean, on the one hand, everybody does a little of that, but on the other hand, that's

1037
00:55:49,540 --> 00:55:54,280
kind of a psychopath or somebody who's never, that person is never going to become really

1038
00:55:54,280 --> 00:55:58,640
good friends with anyone at the dinner party and like establish valuable relationships

1039
00:55:58,640 --> 00:56:01,200
because they're not letting you see them.

1040
00:56:01,200 --> 00:56:02,200
Right?

1041
00:56:02,200 --> 00:56:05,520
And so there was some idea that all of this polish.

1042
00:56:05,520 --> 00:56:08,440
So first of all, you're never going to compete with the triple a budgets.

1043
00:56:08,440 --> 00:56:14,480
Even back then, the budgets were merely 20 or $30 million or whatever.

1044
00:56:14,480 --> 00:56:17,640
So you're not going to compete with that on polish.

1045
00:56:17,640 --> 00:56:19,360
So what are you doing?

1046
00:56:19,360 --> 00:56:24,680
And why, as an indie, you should be trying to, a realize what you can't really do.

1047
00:56:24,680 --> 00:56:26,240
So don't try and do that.

1048
00:56:26,240 --> 00:56:34,800
But B again, like with the EGW manifesto, realize what you are in a tactical position

1049
00:56:34,800 --> 00:56:39,520
to do that the greater amount of money prevents those players from doing.

1050
00:56:39,520 --> 00:56:40,520
Right?

1051
00:56:40,520 --> 00:56:41,520
I see.

1052
00:56:41,520 --> 00:56:43,040
And that involves having a personal viewpoint.

1053
00:56:43,040 --> 00:56:44,040
I see.

1054
00:56:44,040 --> 00:56:45,540
It involves having things be imperfect.

1055
00:56:45,540 --> 00:56:51,800
It involves like, okay, this looks a little sloppy, but it's expressive in a way that

1056
00:56:51,800 --> 00:56:56,440
you won't see out of things that are polished all the heck.

1057
00:56:56,440 --> 00:56:57,440
Right?

1058
00:56:57,440 --> 00:56:58,440
That's very interesting.

1059
00:56:58,440 --> 00:57:06,840
So in some sense, you are saying two things that are, that are almost, it's the same.

1060
00:57:06,840 --> 00:57:11,000
It's the same conclusion, but from two totally different perspectives.

1061
00:57:11,000 --> 00:57:15,720
One is that you would like there to be this kind of game because there is this kind of

1062
00:57:15,720 --> 00:57:18,880
thing in other medium and there should be in this one.

1063
00:57:18,880 --> 00:57:19,880
Yes.

1064
00:57:19,880 --> 00:57:24,400
And the other is that actually this makes business sense.

1065
00:57:24,400 --> 00:57:29,240
Like if you think of yourself as who's, you're going to survive as an indie and make a bunch

1066
00:57:29,240 --> 00:57:30,520
of games.

1067
00:57:30,520 --> 00:57:34,840
If your whole thing is just like, try to be as close to AAA as possible, you're kind of

1068
00:57:34,840 --> 00:57:38,300
always probably going to fail to a certain extent because it's just going to keep getting

1069
00:57:38,300 --> 00:57:39,300
worse for you.

1070
00:57:39,300 --> 00:57:42,360
Why not stake out a place they can't go?

1071
00:57:42,360 --> 00:57:44,520
Well, it definitely makes business sense.

1072
00:57:44,520 --> 00:57:47,720
And I would tell that to people all the time, but it also just makes creative sense.

1073
00:57:47,720 --> 00:57:54,080
Like if, if you want to contribute to the form, you can't do it by competing with AAA.

1074
00:57:54,080 --> 00:57:55,960
Like that doesn't make sense, right?

1075
00:57:55,960 --> 00:58:00,880
But you can do it by going in a different direction that, that you are set up to succeed

1076
00:58:00,880 --> 00:58:01,880
in.

1077
00:58:01,880 --> 00:58:06,760
And so that's a case where creative incentives and financial incentives overlap, which is

1078
00:58:06,760 --> 00:58:11,400
actually a very valuable territory because that's the space in which artists can survive

1079
00:58:11,400 --> 00:58:16,800
while having integrity, which is something that our culture doesn't understand to this

1080
00:58:16,800 --> 00:58:17,800
day.

1081
00:58:17,800 --> 00:58:22,000
Like you'll see all these people who say they're artists, but then they, they compromise what

1082
00:58:22,000 --> 00:58:26,080
they're doing to make money like constantly.

1083
00:58:26,080 --> 00:58:31,900
And the idea here was like, I see, I think I see a space where I can do something that

1084
00:58:31,900 --> 00:58:34,360
some people will want to buy and play.

1085
00:58:34,360 --> 00:58:37,880
If they don't great, I still made something cool.

1086
00:58:37,880 --> 00:58:42,960
But that I don't have to be compromising to try and do that.

1087
00:58:42,960 --> 00:58:46,120
I can, it's complicated, you know?

1088
00:58:46,120 --> 00:58:53,120
And also, as you know, the whole time since I got into the game industry, there was this

1089
00:58:53,120 --> 00:58:58,800
ongoing discussion in the background, like our games in art form.

1090
00:58:58,800 --> 00:59:02,280
And there are lots of people who would say, oh, they, yeah, they totally are because X,

1091
00:59:02,280 --> 00:59:07,120
Y, and Z, but I would look at it and be like, you're telling me because of story or whatever,

1092
00:59:07,120 --> 00:59:09,160
but the stories suck compared to movies and books.

1093
00:59:09,160 --> 00:59:11,120
At least the ones that I know.

1094
00:59:11,120 --> 00:59:13,880
So like, really?

1095
00:59:13,880 --> 00:59:19,620
And so there's this question for me is like, what, how are games a good art form?

1096
00:59:19,620 --> 00:59:23,080
What can you do in them that is special to games?

1097
00:59:23,080 --> 00:59:24,080
Right?

1098
00:59:24,080 --> 00:59:27,300
You look at film, films have cinematography.

1099
00:59:27,300 --> 00:59:29,840
You don't have that in a stage play, right?

1100
00:59:29,840 --> 00:59:33,840
Which is how film started is just setting up a camera and filming a stage play, right?

1101
00:59:33,840 --> 00:59:37,140
You don't really have cinematography in a book, although you, you maybe have something

1102
00:59:37,140 --> 00:59:41,200
a little bit analogous to it, but it, it works and feels very differently.

1103
00:59:41,200 --> 00:59:42,200
Right?

1104
00:59:42,200 --> 00:59:45,040
And so, well, what about games?

1105
00:59:45,040 --> 00:59:47,060
And people had their pat answer even back then.

1106
00:59:47,060 --> 00:59:48,520
It's like, oh, it's the interactivity.

1107
00:59:48,520 --> 00:59:49,520
Okay.

1108
00:59:49,520 --> 00:59:50,520
But what about it?

1109
00:59:50,520 --> 00:59:51,520
Right?

1110
00:59:51,520 --> 00:59:56,520
Like if you start talking about cinematography, you can break that down into a ton of different

1111
00:59:56,520 --> 00:59:57,520
techniques.

1112
00:59:57,520 --> 00:59:58,520
Right?

1113
00:59:58,520 --> 01:00:01,200
Like, you know, when you're talking about film basic, they go in the script, right?

1114
01:00:01,200 --> 01:00:03,200
Establishing shot is in the script.

1115
01:00:03,200 --> 01:00:04,200
Yes.

1116
01:00:04,200 --> 01:00:06,560
What's the establishing shot of interactivity, right?

1117
01:00:06,560 --> 01:00:12,140
What's the, you know, list out the 37 different things and tell me what they are.

1118
01:00:12,140 --> 01:00:13,600
Nobody really had an answer for that.

1119
01:00:13,600 --> 01:00:17,640
And so I was interested like what, okay, what is that?

1120
01:00:17,640 --> 01:00:19,940
Can I make a contribution to that?

1121
01:00:19,940 --> 01:00:23,240
Can I figure out what some of these things are?

1122
01:00:23,240 --> 01:00:27,640
And I'm not sure to what degree braid specifically did that.

1123
01:00:27,640 --> 01:00:32,300
It probably did a little bit, but it's also like, that's the territory I was trying to

1124
01:00:32,300 --> 01:00:35,760
mine for EGW and all this stuff.

1125
01:00:35,760 --> 01:00:40,880
And so I was, I was very deliberate though about this is an art game.

1126
01:00:40,880 --> 01:00:42,920
That means it's expressive.

1127
01:00:42,920 --> 01:00:49,840
That means the art style, whatever it is in the end is not going to be very cookie cutter.

1128
01:00:49,840 --> 01:00:52,640
It's not going to be a bunch of tiles that look the same.

1129
01:00:52,640 --> 01:00:54,740
It's going to be like analog.

1130
01:00:54,740 --> 01:00:59,720
It's going to be brush strokes from a paint brush or something because that in the medium

1131
01:00:59,720 --> 01:01:05,640
of painting, what makes a painting a painting, it's not just that like paint came out of

1132
01:01:05,640 --> 01:01:07,200
a brush, right?

1133
01:01:07,200 --> 01:01:17,120
It's that was used in ways that took a good deal of skill and refinement to figure out

1134
01:01:17,120 --> 01:01:20,300
here are the things we can do with a paint coming out of a brush.

1135
01:01:20,300 --> 01:01:25,560
And you can look at that example created by painters and see what they did.

1136
01:01:25,560 --> 01:01:27,840
And there's a challenge again in games.

1137
01:01:27,840 --> 01:01:30,320
Maybe we want to start using that.

1138
01:01:30,320 --> 01:01:32,060
We're at a time when graphics are better.

1139
01:01:32,060 --> 01:01:33,160
We can afford to do this.

1140
01:01:33,160 --> 01:01:35,540
It doesn't have to be a bunch of little tiles yet.

1141
01:01:35,540 --> 01:01:37,720
You see people may be still doing a bunch of tiles.

1142
01:01:37,720 --> 01:01:40,240
Okay, let's get some more expressivity in there.

1143
01:01:40,240 --> 01:01:46,720
I don't want to copy painting, but I want to try and use that channel better, right?

1144
01:01:46,720 --> 01:01:53,160
With audio, platformers typically had one minute, two minute long little repeating themes

1145
01:01:53,160 --> 01:01:56,400
because that's what would fit in memory on a Nintendo.

1146
01:01:56,400 --> 01:01:58,080
And then people just copied that.

1147
01:01:58,080 --> 01:02:01,280
And like, why don't I have a song that's more analog?

1148
01:02:01,280 --> 01:02:02,480
It's just like it's sampled.

1149
01:02:02,480 --> 01:02:03,480
I like cellos.

1150
01:02:03,480 --> 01:02:06,460
Let's put some cellos in this game, right?

1151
01:02:06,460 --> 01:02:14,160
Let's have them be longer and more complex because we can and because that's helps me

1152
01:02:14,160 --> 01:02:20,280
build a feeling that is not the generic mascot platformer feeling, right?

1153
01:02:20,280 --> 01:02:23,220
That's a thing that everybody was familiar with at the time, right?

1154
01:02:23,220 --> 01:02:27,200
It's like, oh, this is ratchet over here.

1155
01:02:27,200 --> 01:02:33,400
And then this game, what's the insomniac or that is Crash Bandicoot, Crash Bandicoot,

1156
01:02:33,400 --> 01:02:34,720
whatever.

1157
01:02:34,720 --> 01:02:39,720
Blinks the time sweeper is a mascot platformer with rewind that I think came out after I

1158
01:02:39,720 --> 01:02:41,640
had started braid or maybe slightly before.

1159
01:02:41,640 --> 01:02:45,200
I think it may have came out during, during braid production.

1160
01:02:45,200 --> 01:02:47,600
Certainly well before braid was done.

1161
01:02:47,600 --> 01:02:50,600
And all of these games are kind of trying to do the same thing.

1162
01:02:50,600 --> 01:02:51,760
They're polished.

1163
01:02:51,760 --> 01:02:58,480
They're designed by committee to make money by living in this aesthetic zone of the mascot

1164
01:02:58,480 --> 01:03:02,840
platformer that is well understood appeals to kids.

1165
01:03:02,840 --> 01:03:03,840
Adults can still play it.

1166
01:03:03,840 --> 01:03:10,680
You can sell toys based on the mascot and you can make a franchise out of it.

1167
01:03:10,680 --> 01:03:14,480
You walk away from all of those bullet points and where do you end up?

1168
01:03:14,480 --> 01:03:19,880
You can actually use those as points in space and instead of an attractor field, put a repeller

1169
01:03:19,880 --> 01:03:20,880
field on it, right?

1170
01:03:20,880 --> 01:03:21,880
Right.

1171
01:03:21,880 --> 01:03:24,280
Just don't go anywhere near where that would be.

1172
01:03:24,280 --> 01:03:30,180
Now the problem is without an attractor point somewhere, what that ends up being is repelling

1173
01:03:30,180 --> 01:03:33,620
you arbitrarily out into space in all directions.

1174
01:03:33,620 --> 01:03:35,320
So you have to have attractor points.

1175
01:03:35,320 --> 01:03:43,320
Because if those are my repeller points and I have other attractor points, personal uses

1176
01:03:43,320 --> 01:03:53,080
this idea of weird physics as an analog to human scale paradoxes of existence based around

1177
01:03:53,080 --> 01:03:57,000
the mechanic has this inverse illustrated storybook.

1178
01:03:57,000 --> 01:03:59,560
Like all these ideas were things that I wanted to do.

1179
01:03:59,560 --> 01:04:03,660
And so I had the things I wanted to do and the things I didn't want to do.

1180
01:04:03,660 --> 01:04:06,260
And that together was enough.

1181
01:04:06,260 --> 01:04:10,320
That still isn't a concrete game idea, but it was enough to create some field that I

1182
01:04:10,320 --> 01:04:13,160
could navigate very easily.

1183
01:04:13,160 --> 01:04:19,560
So I think I want to take a quick detour then from talking about things chronologically

1184
01:04:19,560 --> 01:04:21,460
because you brought up a lot of things there.

1185
01:04:21,460 --> 01:04:27,040
And while we're on that subject, they kind of bring up some things I wanted to ask you.

1186
01:04:27,040 --> 01:04:28,040
Okay.

1187
01:04:28,040 --> 01:04:32,560
So since we talked about art game and that aspect, I'll just ask the quick question.

1188
01:04:32,560 --> 01:04:36,160
Is Trinity at all a touch point here?

1189
01:04:36,160 --> 01:04:41,280
Because when I said I wouldn't even know what art game was, and I said I wrote that game

1190
01:04:41,280 --> 01:04:45,120
rants thing, that's I had never played Trinity.

1191
01:04:45,120 --> 01:04:50,160
And I'm pretty sure that if I thought pretty hard about it, I really wouldn't find anything

1192
01:04:50,160 --> 01:04:53,600
else but that game does kind of stand out.

1193
01:04:53,600 --> 01:04:54,600
And you have referenced it.

1194
01:04:54,600 --> 01:04:59,760
So I'll quickly ask, is that at all in your mind on this one?

1195
01:04:59,760 --> 01:05:02,800
Or is that more a witness thing later on?

1196
01:05:02,800 --> 01:05:07,640
Are you thinking of like, oh wait, no, I do know there was an art game once a long, long

1197
01:05:07,640 --> 01:05:09,280
time ago or something.

1198
01:05:09,280 --> 01:05:12,600
Or did you kind of have forgotten about it at this point and it comes back up later?

1199
01:05:12,600 --> 01:05:17,480
Well, no, I feel like there were several art games in the 80s.

1200
01:05:17,480 --> 01:05:19,760
Well Trinity was the one that meant the most to me.

1201
01:05:19,760 --> 01:05:23,700
It was my exemplar of an art game.

1202
01:05:23,700 --> 01:05:26,160
This is something like what I would like to do.

1203
01:05:26,160 --> 01:05:27,160
Yes.

1204
01:05:27,160 --> 01:05:29,600
There was other, there were just really weird games.

1205
01:05:29,600 --> 01:05:36,760
Like the, the Frankie goes to Hollywood game is this weird ass game.

1206
01:05:36,760 --> 01:05:39,720
We can watch it after the session is to be entertained.

1207
01:05:39,720 --> 01:05:45,000
It's you know, by modern standards, it's not that good of a game, you know.

1208
01:05:45,000 --> 01:05:46,800
But there was other stuff too.

1209
01:05:46,800 --> 01:05:48,600
And there were games that were funny.

1210
01:05:48,600 --> 01:05:49,600
Okay.

1211
01:05:49,600 --> 01:05:56,960
I don't know if we're going to like, keep this on the record, but like in BBS land on

1212
01:05:56,960 --> 01:05:59,560
the Commodore 64, you would like down, Oh, what is this?

1213
01:05:59,560 --> 01:06:00,560
What is that?

1214
01:06:00,560 --> 01:06:03,200
And there were some games that are kind of notorious and you're like, let me check this

1215
01:06:03,200 --> 01:06:04,200
out.

1216
01:06:04,200 --> 01:06:05,200
And okay.

1217
01:06:05,200 --> 01:06:10,800
So you remember electronic arts is summer games franchise, right?

1218
01:06:10,800 --> 01:06:14,960
The Olympic sport things where you like wiggle the joystick at the right time.

1219
01:06:14,960 --> 01:06:16,840
And they had winter games and all of this.

1220
01:06:16,840 --> 01:06:17,840
Yeah.

1221
01:06:17,840 --> 01:06:18,840
There's a whole series.

1222
01:06:18,840 --> 01:06:19,840
Yeah.

1223
01:06:19,840 --> 01:06:21,000
There's a whole series and those were kind of fun to play.

1224
01:06:21,000 --> 01:06:24,160
Those really were some of the best games of the time, even though they were kind of simple

1225
01:06:24,160 --> 01:06:26,960
for commerce 64, you could do a lot worse than any of those.

1226
01:06:26,960 --> 01:06:28,160
They were, they were a good idea.

1227
01:06:28,160 --> 01:06:29,160
Yeah.

1228
01:06:29,160 --> 01:06:36,480
So on BBS is of the time, uh, somebody had made a parody of those called sex games.

1229
01:06:36,480 --> 01:06:38,040
And it was from some dude in Finland.

1230
01:06:38,040 --> 01:06:39,040
Okay.

1231
01:06:39,040 --> 01:06:40,040
That's all I remember.

1232
01:06:40,040 --> 01:06:44,320
And you would start out, you're like a dude with a girl or whatever.

1233
01:06:44,320 --> 01:06:48,880
And then it's, it's all on one screen, but it's like games in that day were kind of simple.

1234
01:06:48,880 --> 01:06:52,200
So you almost could have sold this if it wasn't like a joke game.

1235
01:06:52,200 --> 01:06:57,080
And the series would progress and progress until there's like a seven person scene at

1236
01:06:57,080 --> 01:06:59,360
the end that you're like controlling.

1237
01:06:59,360 --> 01:07:00,360
Right.

1238
01:07:00,360 --> 01:07:01,360
Okay.

1239
01:07:01,360 --> 01:07:04,640
And it's like this summer games timing kind of a thing.

1240
01:07:04,640 --> 01:07:05,640
Right.

1241
01:07:05,640 --> 01:07:08,040
And, uh, like that's an art game in a certain way.

1242
01:07:08,040 --> 01:07:11,200
It's like, I'm making this game for the joy of it and it's funny.

1243
01:07:11,200 --> 01:07:17,600
And I have a, like a, a certain funny personal picture of what I'm trying to do.

1244
01:07:17,600 --> 01:07:22,920
Now it's not an art game in certain other dimensions.

1245
01:07:22,920 --> 01:07:30,160
Like is this trying to be deeply meaningful to give you an answer to your plight that

1246
01:07:30,160 --> 01:07:32,360
you're experiencing right now as a human being?

1247
01:07:32,360 --> 01:07:37,160
Not necessarily, but I mean, comedy is, is an art, right?

1248
01:07:37,160 --> 01:07:38,160
Is it not?

1249
01:07:38,160 --> 01:07:39,160
And certainly.

1250
01:07:39,160 --> 01:07:40,160
Yeah.

1251
01:07:40,160 --> 01:07:44,520
And so this was comedy in the form of a game.

1252
01:07:44,520 --> 01:07:47,360
And um, yeah.

1253
01:07:47,360 --> 01:07:49,080
So okay.

1254
01:07:49,080 --> 01:07:56,280
But, but relevant to what you're specifically asking, which is did Trinity inform braid?

1255
01:07:56,280 --> 01:08:01,240
And the answer is yes at the beginning broadly.

1256
01:08:01,240 --> 01:08:05,400
And then toward the middle of end of end, end of development more specifically, because

1257
01:08:05,400 --> 01:08:14,240
I did decide to end up going in this, uh, you know, nuclear test kind of direction that

1258
01:08:14,240 --> 01:08:16,160
was on my list of things to ask about.

1259
01:08:16,160 --> 01:08:18,920
And when I did that, I was very aware of the Trinity stuff.

1260
01:08:18,920 --> 01:08:25,860
In fact, the, one of the quotes, um, that's in the game is like on the box of Trinity

1261
01:08:25,860 --> 01:08:27,040
or in the manual.

1262
01:08:27,040 --> 01:08:28,200
And that's how I knew the quote.

1263
01:08:28,200 --> 01:08:29,200
Right.

1264
01:08:29,200 --> 01:08:33,760
And I even put Brian Moriarty in the credits of braid for being an inspiration on this.

1265
01:08:33,760 --> 01:08:34,760
Right.

1266
01:08:34,760 --> 01:08:40,320
So, um, what I told him later was that Trinity taught me what an art game was.

1267
01:08:40,320 --> 01:08:41,320
Right.

1268
01:08:41,320 --> 01:08:47,240
And then I, you know, percolated on that understanding for like 20 years or whatever.

1269
01:08:47,240 --> 01:08:48,240
Right.

1270
01:08:48,240 --> 01:08:49,240
Yeah.

1271
01:08:49,240 --> 01:08:56,320
And started doing my own version of it, you know, um, which probably would have happened

1272
01:08:56,320 --> 01:09:02,040
a lot sooner, but like I said, I went kind of sluggishly through personal computer stuff.

1273
01:09:02,040 --> 01:09:07,360
And then it's like the inflation of the universe is going faster than you can thrust.

1274
01:09:07,360 --> 01:09:11,040
Like I'm learning how to do games, but games are getting bigger and more complicated.

1275
01:09:11,040 --> 01:09:12,040
Right.

1276
01:09:12,040 --> 01:09:17,800
If I had gone through high school, like four years earlier, I probably would have been

1277
01:09:17,800 --> 01:09:22,080
able to do like Richard Garriott style RPGs at the time that he was doing that.

1278
01:09:22,080 --> 01:09:23,080
Right.

1279
01:09:23,080 --> 01:09:29,440
But it was just, or if I had somehow been much more fervent, quicker learner who, who

1280
01:09:29,440 --> 01:09:35,400
was more proactive in terms of figuring out how to find external material, like for all

1281
01:09:35,400 --> 01:09:39,800
I know at the UCSD library, they had books about how to program the Commodore 64.

1282
01:09:39,800 --> 01:09:40,800
I don't know.

1283
01:09:40,800 --> 01:09:41,800
I don't remember ever looking.

1284
01:09:41,800 --> 01:09:42,800
Maybe I did actually.

1285
01:09:42,800 --> 01:09:43,800
I don't know.

1286
01:09:43,800 --> 01:09:48,280
But like it's fine, but you know what I'm talking about, right?

1287
01:09:48,280 --> 01:09:51,040
Like games got nuts and they're still getting more nuts.

1288
01:09:51,040 --> 01:09:52,040
Absolutely.

1289
01:09:52,040 --> 01:09:55,200
I mean, I know exactly what you mean because I feel the exact same way.

1290
01:09:55,200 --> 01:10:00,880
It's like, I always was a little bit behind where I would have liked to have been like

1291
01:10:00,880 --> 01:10:08,600
the era of the one or two person game development studio was always a few years before I was

1292
01:10:08,600 --> 01:10:10,280
good enough to ever do it.

1293
01:10:10,280 --> 01:10:12,200
And it just kept sliding upwards.

1294
01:10:12,200 --> 01:10:16,520
And it's like, you know, maybe you can be really amazing and you're just that good that

1295
01:10:16,520 --> 01:10:17,520
you can do it.

1296
01:10:17,520 --> 01:10:20,720
But it's like, I mean, it just gets harder and harder.

1297
01:10:20,720 --> 01:10:21,720
Yeah.

1298
01:10:21,720 --> 01:10:24,640
id software was like eight to 14 people when they were making doom.

1299
01:10:24,640 --> 01:10:25,640
Yeah.

1300
01:10:25,640 --> 01:10:26,640
Right.

1301
01:10:26,640 --> 01:10:27,640
Like, and they were the best.

1302
01:10:27,640 --> 01:10:30,120
So what are you going to do?

1303
01:10:30,120 --> 01:10:34,900
So well, well, there's one more thing about that, which is there is an element of personal

1304
01:10:34,900 --> 01:10:37,000
choice in what we just said as well.

1305
01:10:37,000 --> 01:10:38,000
Yes.

1306
01:10:38,000 --> 01:10:42,960
I'm allowed to say, dude, if all I had to do was make a Trinity like thing to make an

1307
01:10:42,960 --> 01:10:45,040
art game, it'd be a lot easier.

1308
01:10:45,040 --> 01:10:47,720
And I could have done a bunch of them.

1309
01:10:47,720 --> 01:10:51,880
But as we've discussed off the record, like, yeah, I could, I could have done that.

1310
01:10:51,880 --> 01:10:53,200
And I could still do that.

1311
01:10:53,200 --> 01:10:57,440
And there is some part of me that wants to do the more ambitious thing that takes a lot

1312
01:10:57,440 --> 01:10:58,440
longer.

1313
01:10:58,440 --> 01:10:59,440
Yeah.

1314
01:10:59,440 --> 01:11:02,000
Maybe to my detriment at this point.

1315
01:11:02,000 --> 01:11:04,880
And maybe we're going to have to reassess after this.

1316
01:11:04,880 --> 01:11:09,560
But yeah, in those days, like making a game a year was a really long time to spend on

1317
01:11:09,560 --> 01:11:10,840
a game in those days.

1318
01:11:10,840 --> 01:11:11,840
Oh, yeah.

1319
01:11:11,840 --> 01:11:18,520
I mean, and and I think Trinity was considered very long development in that time in that

1320
01:11:18,520 --> 01:11:20,240
it took about a year to make.

1321
01:11:20,240 --> 01:11:21,240
Yeah.

1322
01:11:21,240 --> 01:11:23,280
And that was very long.

1323
01:11:23,280 --> 01:11:26,920
Most of those were six month games, those Infocom games, six to nine.

1324
01:11:26,920 --> 01:11:27,920
Right.

1325
01:11:27,920 --> 01:11:28,920
So yeah.

1326
01:11:28,920 --> 01:11:29,920
Okay.

1327
01:11:29,920 --> 01:11:32,640
So I have another kind of question on something that came up there.

1328
01:11:32,640 --> 01:11:36,200
I just want to ask the Trinity question, because we should maybe get that in there now.

1329
01:11:36,200 --> 01:11:40,160
I did want to ask about the atomic bomb part as well, because I know most people kind of

1330
01:11:40,160 --> 01:11:41,400
fix it on that for some reason.

1331
01:11:41,400 --> 01:11:44,760
But of course, because I was interested in Trinity, I was sort of looking at it from

1332
01:11:44,760 --> 01:11:45,760
the other angle.

1333
01:11:45,760 --> 01:11:50,040
I was like, was this intended to be something that was related to Trinity at all or not

1334
01:11:50,040 --> 01:11:51,040
really?

1335
01:11:51,040 --> 01:11:52,040
Not from the beginning.

1336
01:11:52,040 --> 01:11:56,860
And then later on, later on, it was like a little bit of an homage to Trinity.

1337
01:11:56,860 --> 01:12:03,400
But also, it kind of makes sense with the with the whole time exploration.

1338
01:12:03,400 --> 01:12:05,360
So I couldn't tell where it was coming from.

1339
01:12:05,360 --> 01:12:08,240
I was being really careful in a certain way.

1340
01:12:08,240 --> 01:12:09,420
And what this was.

1341
01:12:09,420 --> 01:12:12,060
So back when I was writing stories, right?

1342
01:12:12,060 --> 01:12:15,800
Like I said, I got two published and one accepted to be published.

1343
01:12:15,800 --> 01:12:17,400
But I wrote a bunch of them, right?

1344
01:12:17,400 --> 01:12:18,400
Right.

1345
01:12:18,400 --> 01:12:19,400
I didn't submit all of them.

1346
01:12:19,400 --> 01:12:20,960
I knew some were better than others.

1347
01:12:20,960 --> 01:12:21,960
Right.

1348
01:12:21,960 --> 01:12:26,520
But when you start creating, maybe it's a relatively universal thing.

1349
01:12:26,520 --> 01:12:29,040
People who make indie games do this as well.

1350
01:12:29,040 --> 01:12:33,720
Or I'll say what it is and then we'll transpose it to games.

1351
01:12:33,720 --> 01:12:39,320
It's just like you have something that you already like or think is funny or whatever.

1352
01:12:39,320 --> 01:12:40,320
Right.

1353
01:12:40,320 --> 01:12:47,400
Like one of the stories that I wrote that actually got published started as a riff on

1354
01:12:47,400 --> 01:12:51,040
a song that I liked by a band called Negative Land.

1355
01:12:51,040 --> 01:12:52,040
OK.

1356
01:12:52,040 --> 01:12:59,720
It's a ridiculous song about a guy wanted to drink his Nesbit's lime soda and then a

1357
01:12:59,720 --> 01:13:05,320
bee flew into it and it just ruined the soda, even though he shooed the bee away.

1358
01:13:05,320 --> 01:13:06,320
OK.

1359
01:13:06,320 --> 01:13:07,320
All right.

1360
01:13:07,320 --> 01:13:09,360
That's literally about all there is to the song, by the way.

1361
01:13:09,360 --> 01:13:10,640
That sounds like a great song.

1362
01:13:10,640 --> 01:13:11,640
Yeah.

1363
01:13:11,640 --> 01:13:13,640
And I just like, yeah, that's funny.

1364
01:13:13,640 --> 01:13:16,360
I'm going to write a story about that or whatever.

1365
01:13:16,360 --> 01:13:18,120
And then there ended up being more to the story.

1366
01:13:18,120 --> 01:13:21,560
But like this was kind of the principal element of the story.

1367
01:13:21,560 --> 01:13:24,200
And like, that's fine.

1368
01:13:24,200 --> 01:13:26,160
You got to start somewhere.

1369
01:13:26,160 --> 01:13:37,980
But at some point, if if the primary value being offered by the thing that you are creating

1370
01:13:37,980 --> 01:13:43,920
is something that was made by somebody else, then you're making secondary things that are

1371
01:13:43,920 --> 01:13:44,920
not that good.

1372
01:13:44,920 --> 01:13:48,940
And so you hope that at some point you transit beyond that.

1373
01:13:48,940 --> 01:13:55,600
And so relatively quickly, as I was writing stories, you sort of exhaust the short list

1374
01:13:55,600 --> 01:13:58,520
of like things that other people did that you're really excited about.

1375
01:13:58,520 --> 01:13:59,520
Right.

1376
01:13:59,520 --> 01:14:04,160
Where this happens in games is like you get fan mail from someone and they're like, I

1377
01:14:04,160 --> 01:14:06,840
want to make a Zelda game with Link running around.

1378
01:14:06,840 --> 01:14:08,440
And how do I do that or whatever?

1379
01:14:08,440 --> 01:14:11,160
And it's like, OK, you could do that.

1380
01:14:11,160 --> 01:14:12,640
Yes.

1381
01:14:12,640 --> 01:14:16,920
Or even, you know, in terms of game mechanics, like I want to make my game.

1382
01:14:16,920 --> 01:14:24,600
It's just like twisted metal, but it's got a character who's like a mime instead of a

1383
01:14:24,600 --> 01:14:25,600
clown.

1384
01:14:25,600 --> 01:14:26,600
Right.

1385
01:14:26,600 --> 01:14:27,600
Right.

1386
01:14:27,600 --> 01:14:31,600
In some sense, we don't really use this term, but fan fiction is kind of something you would

1387
01:14:31,600 --> 01:14:36,080
call it if you were doing that to too great of a degree in literature.

1388
01:14:36,080 --> 01:14:37,080
Yeah.

1389
01:14:37,080 --> 01:14:39,560
And I suppose there's no real reason we couldn't say that in games.

1390
01:14:39,560 --> 01:14:43,620
Like this game is kind of fan fiction of this other thing because it doesn't really do enough

1391
01:14:43,620 --> 01:14:46,520
else to actually stand on its own or something.

1392
01:14:46,520 --> 01:14:48,600
Unfortunately, most games now are fan fiction.

1393
01:14:48,600 --> 01:14:49,760
That's a good point.

1394
01:14:49,760 --> 01:14:50,760
But yeah.

1395
01:14:50,760 --> 01:14:55,160
So by the, you know, early on, I was like, this is its own thing.

1396
01:14:55,160 --> 01:14:58,240
It's inspired like in spirit by games like Trinity.

1397
01:14:58,240 --> 01:14:59,240
Right.

1398
01:14:59,240 --> 01:15:07,120
And then later, as I develop the themes around science and decided I like, it turned out

1399
01:15:07,120 --> 01:15:11,560
that where I ended up thematically, and I'm going to be vague about this because what

1400
01:15:11,560 --> 01:15:16,920
I don't like being on the record on is like, this should be your interpretation of the

1401
01:15:16,920 --> 01:15:18,960
game or how you should calibrate to it.

1402
01:15:18,960 --> 01:15:22,880
Yeah, I would like to say when it comes to this stuff, I'm not going to be too specific,

1403
01:15:22,880 --> 01:15:26,400
but there's very clearly there's a theme of science in the game.

1404
01:15:26,400 --> 01:15:27,400
Yes.

1405
01:15:27,400 --> 01:15:30,400
And there's a theme of science being a serious matter.

1406
01:15:30,400 --> 01:15:31,400
Yes.

1407
01:15:31,400 --> 01:15:34,680
And what is an example of science being a serious matter?

1408
01:15:34,680 --> 01:15:37,400
Like the atomic bomb kind of is one of the biggies.

1409
01:15:37,400 --> 01:15:43,200
It's sort of the quintessential example of modern how modern science affects things.

1410
01:15:43,200 --> 01:15:44,200
Right.

1411
01:15:44,200 --> 01:15:45,200
Yes.

1412
01:15:45,200 --> 01:15:48,520
And so it was natural for me to end up there given that these were the themes of the game.

1413
01:15:48,520 --> 01:15:49,520
Yes.

1414
01:15:49,520 --> 01:15:52,040
And so I was able to bring this Trinity influence in.

1415
01:15:52,040 --> 01:15:55,040
But at that point, the game was already its own game.

1416
01:15:55,040 --> 01:15:56,040
Right.

1417
01:15:56,040 --> 01:15:58,040
You could take that part out and it's still braid.

1418
01:15:58,040 --> 01:15:59,040
Exactly.

1419
01:15:59,040 --> 01:16:01,200
And so at that point, it's not fan fiction.

1420
01:16:01,200 --> 01:16:04,440
It's like, okay, we're going to work in a connection here to this other thing that I

1421
01:16:04,440 --> 01:16:05,440
really admire.

1422
01:16:05,440 --> 01:16:06,560
Yes.

1423
01:16:06,560 --> 01:16:08,400
But we're not lesser for it now.

1424
01:16:08,400 --> 01:16:09,400
Right.

1425
01:16:09,400 --> 01:16:10,400
I get it.

1426
01:16:10,400 --> 01:16:13,040
And that's very different from, I'm going to make a game.

1427
01:16:13,040 --> 01:16:19,720
Like I'm going to make a graphical point and click adventure in a land that is a mushroom

1428
01:16:19,720 --> 01:16:22,880
land inspired by Trinity.

1429
01:16:22,880 --> 01:16:26,560
But like it starts to make less sense because it's not about atomic bombs.

1430
01:16:26,560 --> 01:16:28,680
So they're just mushrooms now or whatever.

1431
01:16:28,680 --> 01:16:29,680
Right.

1432
01:16:29,680 --> 01:16:30,680
Right.

1433
01:16:30,680 --> 01:16:31,680
Right.

1434
01:16:31,680 --> 01:16:32,680
Spoilers.

1435
01:16:32,680 --> 01:16:35,640
By the way, yes, for anybody listening to this, I have no idea how many people are going

1436
01:16:35,640 --> 01:16:39,720
to listen to this, but Trinity is a really good game.

1437
01:16:39,720 --> 01:16:40,720
It's of its time.

1438
01:16:40,720 --> 01:16:41,720
Right.

1439
01:16:41,720 --> 01:16:47,000
And so we mean Trinity, the info com game by Brian Moriarty, not any other game called

1440
01:16:47,000 --> 01:16:51,240
Trinity that currently exists or may exist in the future, which unfortunately does.

1441
01:16:51,240 --> 01:16:52,240
So it may be confusing.

1442
01:16:52,240 --> 01:16:53,240
Yes.

1443
01:16:53,240 --> 01:16:54,240
It may be confusing.

1444
01:16:54,240 --> 01:16:55,240
This is a text adventure.

1445
01:16:55,240 --> 01:16:56,240
It does not have graphics.

1446
01:16:56,240 --> 01:16:57,400
That's an easy way to tell.

1447
01:16:57,400 --> 01:16:58,400
Yes.

1448
01:16:58,400 --> 01:17:04,040
And being a text adventure from the eighties, it is somewhat limited, limited interactively.

1449
01:17:04,040 --> 01:17:06,120
Like you have to work with it.

1450
01:17:06,120 --> 01:17:10,440
You have to sort of know how those games go and how to type commands into them.

1451
01:17:10,440 --> 01:17:16,400
But if you are willing to do that, it is still to this day, probably the best such game that

1452
01:17:16,400 --> 01:17:18,080
I can think of.

1453
01:17:18,080 --> 01:17:19,080
Yes.

1454
01:17:19,080 --> 01:17:20,320
Definitely.

1455
01:17:20,320 --> 01:17:25,320
You know, some of the puzzles I think are a little bit, you know, they're a little bit

1456
01:17:25,320 --> 01:17:27,040
eighties and all that.

1457
01:17:27,040 --> 01:17:31,040
But you know, if you want to play the best text adventure and if you want to play one

1458
01:17:31,040 --> 01:17:34,960
of the earliest, best, in my opinion, art games.

1459
01:17:34,960 --> 01:17:35,960
Yeah.

1460
01:17:35,960 --> 01:17:36,960
I recommend playing it.

1461
01:17:36,960 --> 01:17:38,880
It is worth your time.

1462
01:17:38,880 --> 01:17:39,880
It is.

1463
01:17:39,880 --> 01:17:40,880
It is pretty cool.

1464
01:17:40,880 --> 01:17:41,880
I do too.

1465
01:17:41,880 --> 01:17:45,720
I played it for the first time this year.

1466
01:17:45,720 --> 01:17:46,720
So now what?

1467
01:17:46,720 --> 01:17:52,520
So you played that because you knew you played that before you wanted to interview Moriarty.

1468
01:17:52,520 --> 01:17:55,320
You decided to interview him because you had played that.

1469
01:17:55,320 --> 01:17:56,320
Yeah.

1470
01:17:56,320 --> 01:18:00,520
I mean, so what brought that off your list into like current relevance?

1471
01:18:00,520 --> 01:18:02,440
Because I know you've been interested in story stuff.

1472
01:18:02,440 --> 01:18:04,800
Hey, I'm asking the question here, buddy.

1473
01:18:04,800 --> 01:18:07,280
All right.

1474
01:18:07,280 --> 01:18:08,280
You had recommended it.

1475
01:18:08,280 --> 01:18:09,280
A long time ago, though.

1476
01:18:09,280 --> 01:18:14,280
I don't know that you recommended it, quote unquote, but you've often spoke of it as an

1477
01:18:14,280 --> 01:18:15,800
important game, right?

1478
01:18:15,800 --> 01:18:21,560
Like you were like, hey, this is one that I think was relevant from this time period.

1479
01:18:21,560 --> 01:18:25,280
And you don't tend to mention many other games from that time period.

1480
01:18:25,280 --> 01:18:29,120
You certainly, I've never heard you really mention even another text adventure where

1481
01:18:29,120 --> 01:18:32,480
you were like, hey, this is like a game that I think was really important.

1482
01:18:32,480 --> 01:18:36,960
And I've heard you in multiple lectures, you refer at one point in a lecture, you actually

1483
01:18:36,960 --> 01:18:43,040
read some of Brian Moriarty's lecture in one of your lectures, and you introduce it as

1484
01:18:43,040 --> 01:18:46,880
being by Brian Moriarty, a game designer who I greatly respect.

1485
01:18:46,880 --> 01:18:49,800
I've never heard you say it about any other game designer.

1486
01:18:49,800 --> 01:18:53,000
So it's like, so in my head, like I get it.

1487
01:18:53,000 --> 01:18:55,560
I'm like, I know this must be something.

1488
01:18:55,560 --> 01:18:57,160
There must be something here.

1489
01:18:57,160 --> 01:19:00,240
I don't know how much is there, but something that John remembers being important about

1490
01:19:00,240 --> 01:19:02,080
this time period.

1491
01:19:02,080 --> 01:19:13,680
And so what happened was I, for some reason, refinely remembered that Jeff Roberts, the

1492
01:19:13,680 --> 01:19:16,800
person who runs Rad Game Tools for anyone listening to this, who they got acquired by,

1493
01:19:16,800 --> 01:19:23,200
Epic is now a guy at Epic on Unreal and all that sort of stuff.

1494
01:19:23,200 --> 01:19:30,820
He had told me to watch this lecture that Brian Moriarty did recently called I Saw What

1495
01:19:30,820 --> 01:19:34,480
I Did There, which was actually about the witness.

1496
01:19:34,480 --> 01:19:36,320
It's about him playing the witness.

1497
01:19:36,320 --> 01:19:39,880
It's also about him playing, playing braid, but it's mostly about him, things about the

1498
01:19:39,880 --> 01:19:41,500
witness.

1499
01:19:41,500 --> 01:19:44,240
And I was like, oh, I should go listen to that.

1500
01:19:44,240 --> 01:19:47,720
I just kept forgetting to, and maybe the witness had come up for some reason.

1501
01:19:47,720 --> 01:19:50,680
And I was like, I should go do it.

1502
01:19:50,680 --> 01:19:59,760
And I went and I watched this lecture and I was kind of like, huh, all right, this is

1503
01:19:59,760 --> 01:20:01,680
a little weird.

1504
01:20:01,680 --> 01:20:04,600
And I wasn't quite sure how to take it.

1505
01:20:04,600 --> 01:20:10,200
And he referenced another lecture called Pile of Dirt with Trees.

1506
01:20:10,200 --> 01:20:14,920
And the way that he referenced that lecture was like very, and now that I've interviewed

1507
01:20:14,920 --> 01:20:18,720
him, I can actually probably use the correct term for how he was feeling because I know

1508
01:20:18,720 --> 01:20:21,720
more now, but I didn't know at the time.

1509
01:20:21,720 --> 01:20:23,120
Melancholic would be the way I would describe it.

1510
01:20:23,120 --> 01:20:24,480
He would probably use that same word.

1511
01:20:24,480 --> 01:20:25,600
He would probably use that term now.

1512
01:20:25,600 --> 01:20:28,440
I wouldn't have known he was from now, but now that I've interviewed him for 10 hours

1513
01:20:28,440 --> 01:20:30,880
or whatever, I now know how he'd probably think about it.

1514
01:20:30,880 --> 01:20:34,720
He says he is of Irish descent and they understand melancholy.

1515
01:20:34,720 --> 01:20:36,720
That's what he would say.

1516
01:20:36,720 --> 01:20:43,120
I went and watched that lecture and it just struck me as like an incredibly like emotional

1517
01:20:43,120 --> 01:20:45,120
lecture.

1518
01:20:45,120 --> 01:20:50,400
Like I read it and I was like really kind of moved by it in a way that I've always liked

1519
01:20:50,400 --> 01:20:51,400
Brian's lecture.

1520
01:20:51,400 --> 01:20:53,800
I saw them in person like you did at GDC sometimes.

1521
01:20:53,800 --> 01:21:01,440
So New Year's a great lecturer, but I never quite had that reaction to it as I did when

1522
01:21:01,440 --> 01:21:02,440
reading it.

1523
01:21:02,440 --> 01:21:04,960
And I was like, God, that's really weird.

1524
01:21:04,960 --> 01:21:07,600
And now I'm just like, I'm in this weird headspace.

1525
01:21:07,600 --> 01:21:10,320
Like the whole affair has gotten me in a weird headspace.

1526
01:21:10,320 --> 01:21:12,080
I'm like, I'm going to go play this game.

1527
01:21:12,080 --> 01:21:14,360
I'm just going to see what the heck this is about.

1528
01:21:14,360 --> 01:21:18,120
I don't understand how Brian and John are linked.

1529
01:21:18,120 --> 01:21:20,440
I don't understand Brian's mental state.

1530
01:21:20,440 --> 01:21:26,320
I don't know this game that now because of Brian's lecture, I know the map is in the

1531
01:21:26,320 --> 01:21:33,080
map from Trinity that comes in the Trinity box is in the witness in a video.

1532
01:21:33,080 --> 01:21:36,840
And I didn't really even know that because I mean, I didn't know what Trinity, I'd never

1533
01:21:36,840 --> 01:21:37,840
played it.

1534
01:21:37,840 --> 01:21:40,320
I knew very well it was.

1535
01:21:40,320 --> 01:21:45,520
So I went to play it because of this weird, I was just in a weird mindset.

1536
01:21:45,520 --> 01:21:47,280
I don't understand what's going on.

1537
01:21:47,280 --> 01:21:49,440
John, you've been a friend of mine for a long time.

1538
01:21:49,440 --> 01:21:51,720
And I'm like, I want to understand what the hell is going on here.

1539
01:21:51,720 --> 01:21:58,800
So I played the game and it was like just totally blew me away to be completely honest.

1540
01:21:58,800 --> 01:22:01,680
Like I've played many text adventures.

1541
01:22:01,680 --> 01:22:05,960
I played most of the text adventures of that era at the time.

1542
01:22:05,960 --> 01:22:09,040
Like I played them as a little kid.

1543
01:22:09,040 --> 01:22:11,400
And I've played many since then.

1544
01:22:11,400 --> 01:22:18,040
And when I played it, I just realized that like, okay, actually, it was actually a very

1545
01:22:18,040 --> 01:22:23,760
nice experience for me in some way, even though it was kind of, I felt kind of depressed after

1546
01:22:23,760 --> 01:22:25,720
listening to some of that lecture stuff.

1547
01:22:25,720 --> 01:22:31,700
It was actually a very nice experience in a way because this is probably something that

1548
01:22:31,700 --> 01:22:33,600
sounds overly laudatory.

1549
01:22:33,600 --> 01:22:42,560
So I apologize, but I wasn't really sure that there were like, I wasn't sure what the probability

1550
01:22:42,560 --> 01:22:49,460
was of anybody really doing an art game for real and pulling it off.

1551
01:22:49,460 --> 01:22:55,240
My level is like probably higher than yours for being willing to call it something.

1552
01:22:55,240 --> 01:22:58,400
I'm guessing if I went and played Frank, he goes to Hollywood, I wouldn't call it an art

1553
01:22:58,400 --> 01:22:59,400
game, right?

1554
01:22:59,400 --> 01:23:03,680
So it was like a Shingi kind of art game.

1555
01:23:03,680 --> 01:23:04,680
Yeah.

1556
01:23:04,680 --> 01:23:09,040
So in my head, I'm not, and I'm not trying to apply a taxonomy to these either.

1557
01:23:09,040 --> 01:23:14,480
It's just in my head, I have this reaction that I have sometimes to games and it's like

1558
01:23:14,480 --> 01:23:20,640
braid to a certain extent, but the witness, like very much so one of the only games I

1559
01:23:20,640 --> 01:23:22,320
can point to, right?

1560
01:23:22,320 --> 01:23:30,680
Where I feel like it does a certain thing that I've previously described as the important

1561
01:23:30,680 --> 01:23:32,280
part of the game.

1562
01:23:32,280 --> 01:23:36,320
Before I'd even heard you say this, actually, I described it this way to show how much this,

1563
01:23:36,320 --> 01:23:39,040
I guess, is in line with your intention.

1564
01:23:39,040 --> 01:23:43,600
A game in which the important part of the game to me takes place in my head, not on

1565
01:23:43,600 --> 01:23:45,440
the screen.

1566
01:23:45,440 --> 01:23:48,500
Almost no games do this.

1567
01:23:48,500 --> 01:23:50,160
And I wasn't really sure.

1568
01:23:50,160 --> 01:23:54,680
I was like, so is John like the only person who can ever pull this off?

1569
01:23:54,680 --> 01:23:58,580
Because it's possible that that's just been the case so far.

1570
01:23:58,580 --> 01:24:02,480
Maybe there'll be other people later or whatever, but it's like, I can't really think of it.

1571
01:24:02,480 --> 01:24:05,640
And so playing Trinity was actually kind of nice because it was like, he actually pulled

1572
01:24:05,640 --> 01:24:06,640
it off.

1573
01:24:06,640 --> 01:24:10,840
Somebody somewhere else a long time ago pulled it off.

1574
01:24:10,840 --> 01:24:17,240
And to me, that was really cool because I was like, okay, it did kind of connect the

1575
01:24:17,240 --> 01:24:18,240
dots a little.

1576
01:24:18,240 --> 01:24:25,480
And I'm like, okay, so it's very rare, but it can happen more than once.

1577
01:24:25,480 --> 01:24:26,680
Totally.

1578
01:24:26,680 --> 01:24:31,460
And that's special if you're a player because you don't really know.

1579
01:24:31,460 --> 01:24:36,240
You don't know whether the thing you love that you've only played once is ever going

1580
01:24:36,240 --> 01:24:40,080
to happen again or ever happened before.

1581
01:24:40,080 --> 01:24:46,240
And maybe if you just like whatever and you don't really care that much about these specific

1582
01:24:46,240 --> 01:24:49,200
things, then it doesn't matter to you, you're just playing games, you're playing games,

1583
01:24:49,200 --> 01:24:50,200
it's whatever.

1584
01:24:50,200 --> 01:24:55,200
But if you're somebody who was like, oh, I really had this rare experience, like is

1585
01:24:55,200 --> 01:24:56,960
that ever going to happen again?

1586
01:24:56,960 --> 01:24:57,960
Right.

1587
01:24:57,960 --> 01:24:58,960
It was pretty good.

1588
01:24:58,960 --> 01:25:02,240
So I'm sorry to go off on that long tangent, but that's the actual complete answer to the

1589
01:25:02,240 --> 01:25:03,240
question.

1590
01:25:03,240 --> 01:25:04,240
Yeah.

1591
01:25:04,240 --> 01:25:09,840
And I do, I think there are several layers of things that connect his games to what I

1592
01:25:09,840 --> 01:25:10,840
do now.

1593
01:25:10,840 --> 01:25:11,840
Right.

1594
01:25:11,840 --> 01:25:18,440
And one of the most basic ones is just this idea that, well, this is not the idea that

1595
01:25:18,440 --> 01:25:19,720
the player sees, right?

1596
01:25:19,720 --> 01:25:27,560
But when making it that we have a strong aesthetic picture of what we were trying to make and

1597
01:25:27,560 --> 01:25:34,240
all the decisions around what is in the game aim at constructing that idea.

1598
01:25:34,240 --> 01:25:35,240
Right?

1599
01:25:35,240 --> 01:25:38,560
It's like maybe there's a tent and there's all these poles and we need poles in a certain

1600
01:25:38,560 --> 01:25:40,600
shape to make the tent.

1601
01:25:40,600 --> 01:25:41,600
Right?

1602
01:25:41,600 --> 01:25:45,080
And we just mentioned the mushrooms, right?

1603
01:25:45,080 --> 01:25:48,640
Like I'm in this land, right?

1604
01:25:48,640 --> 01:25:52,680
Even if I have the idea about there being doors in the land, which is not spoiler, right?

1605
01:25:52,680 --> 01:25:55,080
But there's some doors in places.

1606
01:25:55,080 --> 01:25:56,520
What else is in the land?

1607
01:25:56,520 --> 01:25:57,520
Right.

1608
01:25:57,520 --> 01:26:01,440
What there's natural things, I guess, like there might be forests or something.

1609
01:26:01,440 --> 01:26:05,480
What, what is it and what is it like and why and what?

1610
01:26:05,480 --> 01:26:09,320
Well, there are better answers to that and there are worse answers to that.

1611
01:26:09,320 --> 01:26:10,320
Right?

1612
01:26:10,320 --> 01:26:11,320
Yeah.

1613
01:26:11,320 --> 01:26:18,160
And the challenge as a creative person is to come up with the best answers to that and

1614
01:26:18,160 --> 01:26:22,960
not just in one direction, but in all directions at once, counterbalancing each other.

1615
01:26:22,960 --> 01:26:25,960
And that is what I felt playing Trinity.

1616
01:26:25,960 --> 01:26:26,960
Yes.

1617
01:26:26,960 --> 01:26:29,440
Firstly, as like a coherent whole.

1618
01:26:29,440 --> 01:26:30,440
Yeah.

1619
01:26:30,440 --> 01:26:31,440
Right.

1620
01:26:31,440 --> 01:26:38,320
And then secondly, I mean, there's a bunch of things I've said before about, you know,

1621
01:26:38,320 --> 01:26:43,480
like being about something that's important to you or important to the audience, really.

1622
01:26:43,480 --> 01:26:50,000
It can be important to you and you expect the audience to sort of share that in a way.

1623
01:26:50,000 --> 01:26:53,520
There is some subset of people out in the world who will be enough like me that it's

1624
01:26:53,520 --> 01:26:55,640
important to them, for example.

1625
01:26:55,640 --> 01:26:56,640
Right.

1626
01:26:56,640 --> 01:27:02,760
But yeah, Trinity was, oh, the other thing I can say about it is just not to take anything

1627
01:27:02,760 --> 01:27:03,760
away from Trinity.

1628
01:27:03,760 --> 01:27:04,760
Right.

1629
01:27:04,760 --> 01:27:06,120
It was 20 years before Braid.

1630
01:27:06,120 --> 01:27:07,200
Right.

1631
01:27:07,200 --> 01:27:10,240
Because the form of it is fictional.

1632
01:27:10,240 --> 01:27:18,680
It can use fiction as a model for how to do this thing that you're talking about of having

1633
01:27:18,680 --> 01:27:25,440
things, realizations take place in your mind and not on the screen.

1634
01:27:25,440 --> 01:27:26,440
Right.

1635
01:27:26,440 --> 01:27:29,880
So we've discussed off the record and I don't want to say any of them here because it'll

1636
01:27:29,880 --> 01:27:33,680
spoil the game for people or tell them an interpretation or something.

1637
01:27:33,680 --> 01:27:37,440
But there are very well chosen things in that game.

1638
01:27:37,440 --> 01:27:41,200
Just these elements around the game, like what's in the world and what do you deal with

1639
01:27:41,200 --> 01:27:43,200
and under what circumstances.

1640
01:27:43,200 --> 01:27:44,600
Right.

1641
01:27:44,600 --> 01:27:51,240
And that's along the lines, like some of the meaning that is evident there is along the

1642
01:27:51,240 --> 01:27:55,080
lines of the kind of thing that you would learn badly in English class or whatever.

1643
01:27:55,080 --> 01:27:57,840
But it's like the better version of it.

1644
01:27:57,840 --> 01:27:58,840
Right.

1645
01:27:58,840 --> 01:28:03,400
And the game never says, hey, did you get it?

1646
01:28:03,400 --> 01:28:04,400
Right.

1647
01:28:04,400 --> 01:28:07,840
By the way, this thing means that yes.

1648
01:28:07,840 --> 01:28:09,240
Firstly, yes.

1649
01:28:09,240 --> 01:28:12,920
I mean, I don't want to speak for him, but at least for two reasons.

1650
01:28:12,920 --> 01:28:13,920
Right.

1651
01:28:13,920 --> 01:28:19,000
One reason is because that removes agency from you and it removes, even if you don't

1652
01:28:19,000 --> 01:28:24,640
get it the first time, part of replayability is that you can go back to something and get

1653
01:28:24,640 --> 01:28:26,120
something new out of it.

1654
01:28:26,120 --> 01:28:31,040
And if I just like told you the thing, firstly, it prevents you from having that experience

1655
01:28:31,040 --> 01:28:35,800
of getting the new thing, but secondly, you get an inferior realization of it because

1656
01:28:35,800 --> 01:28:40,800
these things are complex and subtle and multi-dimensional.

1657
01:28:40,800 --> 01:28:47,700
And when I, when there are just elements and it's your job to build the connective tissue

1658
01:28:47,700 --> 01:28:53,440
between them in your mind, that connective tissue can be quite delicate and you may not

1659
01:28:53,440 --> 01:28:55,920
even know how to put it into words.

1660
01:28:55,920 --> 01:28:59,840
And in fact, the author may not know how to put it into words without messing it up or

1661
01:28:59,840 --> 01:29:02,120
making it more coarse or destroying it.

1662
01:29:02,120 --> 01:29:07,360
And that is really, there's this idea of fine art, right?

1663
01:29:07,360 --> 01:29:14,040
And I feel like that's part of fine art is it's not just skill, but there's something

1664
01:29:14,040 --> 01:29:19,040
there that you can say that it's not just that you're choosing to say it in this medium.

1665
01:29:19,040 --> 01:29:21,720
It's that you couldn't say it not in the medium.

1666
01:29:21,720 --> 01:29:22,720
Yes.

1667
01:29:22,720 --> 01:29:26,440
And Trinity has that and very few games have that.

1668
01:29:26,440 --> 01:29:27,440
Yes.

1669
01:29:27,440 --> 01:29:33,200
Yeah, and maybe all that's left to say about that is that I've had some picture the whole

1670
01:29:33,200 --> 01:29:36,480
time and I don't know if I realized this was directly from Trinity.

1671
01:29:36,480 --> 01:29:42,320
I think I just knew that Trinity was this really good art game that I enjoyed, but I've

1672
01:29:42,320 --> 01:29:48,000
for way longer than I've been in games, like back when I wrote fiction and stuff, I definitely

1673
01:29:48,000 --> 01:29:53,080
had this aesthetic of there are things I'm trying to get at.

1674
01:29:53,080 --> 01:29:54,880
They're hard to express.

1675
01:29:54,880 --> 01:30:01,880
And so you maybe express them by demarcating the space around them to sort of make the

1676
01:30:01,880 --> 01:30:04,720
negative space image or the silhouette of them or something.

1677
01:30:04,720 --> 01:30:09,720
And then people can pattern match on that and get something out of it that they wouldn't

1678
01:30:09,720 --> 01:30:13,000
be able to get if you just clumsily scribbled it in crayon.

1679
01:30:13,000 --> 01:30:16,160
Right, right, right.

1680
01:30:16,160 --> 01:30:23,000
I am not a practitioner of Zen, but there's a Zen parable about pointing at the moon.

1681
01:30:23,000 --> 01:30:25,480
And it's I don't remember the story.

1682
01:30:25,480 --> 01:30:26,720
It's one of these stories.

1683
01:30:26,720 --> 01:30:29,200
But the point is pretty short.

1684
01:30:29,200 --> 01:30:35,160
It's like someone's going to the master and asking for enlightenment and he keeps pointing

1685
01:30:35,160 --> 01:30:36,160
at the moon.

1686
01:30:36,160 --> 01:30:37,160
Okay.

1687
01:30:37,160 --> 01:30:38,160
Right.

1688
01:30:38,160 --> 01:30:39,560
And the guy's like, so what?

1689
01:30:39,560 --> 01:30:41,200
What's so special about your finger?

1690
01:30:41,200 --> 01:30:42,200
Right.

1691
01:30:42,200 --> 01:30:44,560
Because he keeps looking at the finger, right?

1692
01:30:44,560 --> 01:30:47,760
Where the job of the finger is to indicate something far away.

1693
01:30:47,760 --> 01:30:48,760
I see.

1694
01:30:48,760 --> 01:30:49,760
Right.

1695
01:30:49,760 --> 01:30:56,280
So the less of a finger you put, the less likely somebody is going to like fixate on

1696
01:30:56,280 --> 01:30:57,280
the finger.

1697
01:30:57,280 --> 01:31:03,800
Now that said, the atomic bomb stuff in braid is a very strong signal that many people fixate

1698
01:31:03,800 --> 01:31:04,800
on.

1699
01:31:04,800 --> 01:31:09,280
And had I realized how strong that fixation would be, I might've tuned it differently.

1700
01:31:09,280 --> 01:31:14,160
But nevertheless, for my first big like trying to be an art game, right?

1701
01:31:14,160 --> 01:31:18,840
All these previous projects we talked about were not trying to be this kind of art.

1702
01:31:18,840 --> 01:31:19,840
Right.

1703
01:31:19,840 --> 01:31:22,680
And it's interesting that it took me a while to get there.

1704
01:31:22,680 --> 01:31:25,360
But when I get there, I already knew what I was doing.

1705
01:31:25,360 --> 01:31:28,200
So obviously this had been percolating for a long time.

1706
01:31:28,200 --> 01:31:32,080
But like Wolfram was not an art game in this way.

1707
01:31:32,080 --> 01:31:37,320
It was just like, I'm going to try and have smart game design and do a challenging technical

1708
01:31:37,320 --> 01:31:38,320
thing.

1709
01:31:38,320 --> 01:31:44,040
But that example of Trinity rode with me the whole time and came out later, 20 years later

1710
01:31:44,040 --> 01:31:45,040
or whatever.

1711
01:31:45,040 --> 01:31:54,440
That's the end of this episode.

1712
01:31:54,440 --> 01:31:59,840
Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time when we change things up with a new interviewer.

1713
01:31:59,840 --> 01:32:04,240
If you like the kind of thing you're hearing here, Braid Anniversary Edition comes out

1714
01:32:04,240 --> 01:32:06,680
on the 14th of May, 2024.

1715
01:32:06,680 --> 01:32:09,640
You could pre-order right now on Steam and on consoles.

1716
01:32:09,640 --> 01:32:11,680
You'll be able to buy it pretty soon.

1717
01:32:11,680 --> 01:32:17,560
In this episode, Casey Miratori asked the questions, Jonathan Blow answered the questions,

1718
01:32:17,560 --> 01:32:21,360
Jason Brisson produced, and Will Torbett edited.

1719
01:32:21,360 --> 01:32:42,400
Thanks very much and we'll see you next time.