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Bold:	Interviewer
Regular:	Respondent
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Okay, so the recorder is working.  Cool.
Cool.
So, could you please say your name and spell it for the recording, please?
My name is [anon]
Cool, thank you.  And just to confirm for the recording, you have signed the consent form, haven’t you?
Yes, I have.
Cool, awesome.  So, can you tell me a little bit about what you do within games development?
I am a beginning game designer.  I mainly focus on narrative design.
Okay, and you’re also a player of games?
I also play games,  yes.
Okay, so how long have you been making games?
I’ve been making games for roughly five years now.
And you’ve been playing them for—?
All my life (laughs).
Which is?
By now 23 years, let’s make it a little less, it’s about 20 years that I’ve been playing games.
Okay, so from a very, very young age, yes.
Yes, I grew up with games.
Okay.  What’s your background before you came to start making games?
Initially my background, I was mainly focused into interior art structure…
Okay.
…doing something along those lines, or maybe doing creative writing and exploring those options, I decided that I liked both, but there was something missing.  And a friend of mine guided me towards game development and I found that being a game designer was exactly what I wanted, so…
Cool, so how would you describe what a game designer does?
A game designer is basically the one person that creates the concept of the game and also the narrative within the game.  I would say a game designer is there to make sure that the project goes from a technical demo or an art demo towards an actual game play experience.  A designer is very important in order to get, how do I say this?  To get all the game play within these concepts working, not on a technical side or on an art side, but more on a, you know, just making sure it’s there.  It’s a bit of an editing job in my experience.
So, you sort of say there are different tasks for the different – the – the different kind of developers.  So roughly—
Yeah.
Sort of roughly what sort of people have you got involved making games then?
I would say there’s a technical department, which is more focused on getting the software to actually function, doing the technical aspects of this, making sure it all works on a software level or a technical level.  I would say it was also a – yeah, I guess an art department, which is more focused on getting the look of the game in there, which is more focused on actually creating models which function in a 3D space or a 2D space.  And among art I would also see in the more technical sides of art, which is animation, more focus on, you know, conveying things through visual inputs and I would say there’s the design department, which is more focused on the initial idea, working out how it all is going to work and making sure there’s communication between departments.  And eventually also just put everything that was made on both sides together into one product that is satisfactory.
Do you – do you think the same kind of personality types are attracted to each of these fields?
Possibly yes.
Yeah?  How would you describe the character of a games designer or a games developer, should I say?
I think there’s a lot of different types of game developers.  I think towards the technical side, types of personality that I would usually see are more reserved people who are very dedicated to the work and can work for hours.  Towards the more – the art department, I always find more creative individuals who are less focused on strict formulas and stuff, but more like just actual creative people, who also tend to be more extroverted, in my experience.  And amongst designers I feel like it’s the most – generally the most extroverted group who is more social and tends to talk to people a lot more, but on the other hand I also see a lot of differentiation between designers because there’s also a lot of, yeah, silent designers that I’ve seen that just do their job and are satisfied with that.
Do you – do you have enough experience between sort of having talked to, for example, triple-AAA developers, so the capital AAA developers and indie developers to sort of see if there’s a – a difference in the way they approach their work or who they are as people?
I haven’t really had a lot of opportunity to talk to different types of professionals, but from the experience that I have and also with things – reactions I’ve seen in interviews, I feel like there is definitely a difference between triple-A developers and indie developers.  I feel like triple-A developers generally are more within these boundaries I just explained, like within these personality types, whereas indie developer is generally diverged more from this norm and can be very different personality.  And usually these people are, in my experience, yeah, more dedicated, it feels like, towards a product, whereas triple-A developers feel more like they’re very happy with the status of the project.
So it’s a bit of – almost like a – it’s a professional versus personal interest.
Yes, yes.
So the triple-A is more professional-focused and…
Yes.
…product-oriented and stuff.
Yeah, I would say that.  Yes.
Cool.  Among the player base, who – who plays video games?
Well, I feel like in this day and age pretty much everyone plays video games in whatever different form there is of video games.  I know my parents and a lot of parents of others play video games regularly on their mobile devices.  I’ve also – know in my personal experience that my grandparents also play on their mobile devices.  I’ve noticed that mainly the women in my family play video games and of my own generation, younger generation, I see that literally everyone plays video games.  Everyone has touched a game in their life before.
Do you think there’s been much work that, if you look at kind of the mass media or even academic work, do – do you think there’s been much reflection of that broad player base?
Not really.  I don’t see it reflected completely.  I – generally in mass media when the topic comes to gaming and gamers, they tend to pick out very specific types of gamers, with a very specific interest in specific games that are generally triple-A games.  But my experience of gamers is a lot broader than that.  I mean casual games are massive and I feel like so many people play games and they should be represented in some way.
Yeah, okay, so there’s more – more could be done to raise the profile there.
Yes.
So, you’ve kind of mentioned that – that games are played by a lot of people now.  Do you think this has – this has changed much in the last 10 or 20 years?
I think probably yes.  I can’t say for sure because I was growing up within this time, but I feel like, from what I’ve heard of other people of different generations is that people have definitely started to play digital games a lot more than what it used to be.  There used to be more controversy about this new technology, and by now, due to a lot of people growing up with this technology, it’s much more embraced.
Yeah.  The – do you think it’s in – in competition with – with the internet and with books and films and things like that?
Mmm.
Do you think it’s taking time away from those or—?
I think, yes, I think it definitely is competition, especially on an entertainment level.  I really do believe that video games are on the same level as movies and books are.
Okay.  You’re familiar with the term serious games and applied games.
Yes.
Can you give me your general opinion of – of their status?
I think serious and applied games are – are really awesome.  I think it’s really good that games are used not just for entertainment, but also in order to help with healing processes, for example, or to help people study.  I think it’s something that could be more expanded upon.  I think right now applied games within healthcare are actually really good, especially in the Netherlands, so in my environment.  But I feel like educational games, which are also among the serious games, actually still have a lot of work there to be done.
Where do you think they are weakest?  Is there anything that jumps out at you?
I see a problem that I also found a lot in just education – education itself, and it’s focused very much on a very specific type of learning, of remembrance and rep – repetition of specific elements, whereas learning actually is broader than that.  People learn more if they can actually apply the things that they’ve learnt and use them in more unique ways, and right now I actually feel like that educational games just stop at just making people repeat things and they don’t really do anything with it and it’s very boring actually because it’s only a fancy cover over something they do at school anyway.  And I’ve found that in video games, there’s a lot of games that have taught people very valuable skills, and those games were not focused on education but inadvertently actually did do exactly the same thing that should be important for educational games.
Yeah, so – so kind of unintentional learning can also come from the entertainment side?
Yes, definitely.
Are there any games that you can think of where you’ve learnt things from or—?
I feel like in the game EVE Online is one of the best examples of this.  I’ve not personally played this game, but I have friends who play it very regularly and what I’ve noticed is that from playing this game they just start to understand how economical systems work a lot better than from what we’ve had in school.  And because of this games is a very vast universe, it helps – because it’s basically also for economics, it’s something they would research, because it’s an entire economical system within, you know, another space, within a digital space.  
Yeah.
And, yeah, it’s – it’s not just a – a focus on the economical side of it either.  I feel like just in general also in massive multiplayer online games, there’s a lot of focus on learning social skills, on how to communicate with people, what is acceptable, what is not, because these games usually feature guilds, which are groups of people working together for the same goal, and I really feel like there’s a lot you can learn there.
And then I have another example, which is Ages of Empires, which is a game that featured realistic history within the game, and although it was not the focus at all of the game play, a lot of people actually learnt a lot about history from this game because it was there and because they were playing and doing something interesting, the information stuck to them and they can now still remember things happening in history due to this game.
Yeah.  Have you any experience of the Assassins Creed games?
Not yet, unfortunately.  
Yeah, right.
I feel like there’s also potential there, that there’s a lot of history elements that are very interesting.
Yeah.
I’m looking forward to play.
Yeah, certainly, yeah, I – I learnt a lot from those.  Do you feel that there has been – that’s – that’s kind of reflected in the priorities of – of – of research that this learning, for example, about economics or history, do you think that’s been studied particularly well at this point?
Not necessarily.  I haven’t really found a lot of documentation on it.  I researched it a bit myself for my education because I actually did find it a very interesting topic and I didn’t really find a lot of information about it, as I mentioned a little bit.  Even my husband studied a lot research about the economical system and how it works, but further than that I have seen here and there people explaining an interest in studying more, but I haven’t really found a lot of research documents on these topics.
Okay, so people are – there are people interested, but…
Yeah.
…the work isn’t happening at the moment.  Okay.  So, we’ve got a statement here, but I think in some ways you’ve already said an opinion on it.  The – the statement is games are powerful tools to change behaviours and attitudes for the better, so games are powerful tools to change behaviours and attitudes for the better.  Do you agree with that statement?
Definitely, I very much agree with that statement.
Yeah.  So, in terms of kind of attitudes or behaviours, what – what sort of things do you think there, I mean you mentioned about learning is – is part of that?
Yeah, and also, as I also mentioned, yeah, social skills and behaviours towards other people can be nurtured through video games.  And, yeah, basically as I’ve noticed myself, I’ve really changed myself due to playing different video games.  For me personally specifically, narrative-heavy games have really altered my perspective on things.  They’ve really allowed me to, yeah, think in – from different perspectives and in – in different ways because they made a powerful impact on me.  I think that if video games, even without narrative, can portray an impactful realisation on – on someone, I think it definitely will change their behaviours and who they are as a person.  It will be an expansion on, yeah, growing as a person.
Have you – can you think of any examples that you’ve played or that exist?
For me personally, I started thinking in a very different way initially after playing Myst, which is a puzzle game, and it had a very nice atmosphere and it had a very interesting within it and I was very fascinated by it, and I noticed that I started – yeah, I changed my perspective on things because I – because of all the puzzles that were within the game, I started thinking more in a solving manner within real life as well and in a way I think that probably nurtured my interest in puzzles and just in general having active, yeah, brain games and stuff, that kind of thing.
I also noticed in the SIMs that that really helped me expand both on my interest in interior design, I realised that I had an interest in interior design, purely by playing this game.  And I also noticed that, because of my narrative interest, I always had an interest in creating stories.  I could really nurture that skill by playing this game as well.  I had all these characters that I controlled and I would read to myself what the story is between these characters and what will happen.  Even though that might not have been perfectly represented onscreen, I was still within that mind set.
Yeah, so that – that interest in interior design and storytelling, is that – is that reflected in your current work?
Definitely, as a narrative designer, definitely, yes.  And I do really feel like that my skills in – in both level design, environment storytelling and narrative design have definitely benefited from my previous experiences with both games and other things that I’ve done in my life.
Can you tell us a little bit more about what environmental storytelling is?
Environmental storytelling is pretty much as it says.  It’s portraying like telling a story through environment, basically through environments.  So, for example, one would have a room, an office space and instead of just having the office space just empty with just tables, you would put in small bits and pieces, for example, little papers, notes.  One would have specific items like, for example, water bottle in a very specific spot.  And thinking about these elements, about these show basically what a specific personality is like, what a specific person who would work on this room, you can get a lot of information from their character just by looking at how the room is structured.
Okay.  Cool.  So, what do you think are the main differences are between the entertainment games and serious applied games, obviously beyond their – their initial purpose?  One of them is more to entertain, the other is to educate.  Do you think there are kind of mechanical differences or difference in – in how they’re made at all?
I think right now in the industry there is definitely a difference.  I had the opportunity to work with healthcare games.  And I’ve noticed these are really technical-focused, very technical-focused.  Art is less important, but still a part of it that they’re interested in, but I’ve found that usually they don’t really care for design, which is very – yeah, it’s pretty baffling to me because I would say that designers are the most important in these types of games because, yeah, I feel like a designer, as part of their job, think about players and, well, basically users, consumers, about what they want and care about.  There’s a lot of psychology involved with game design.  And I feel like designers can really bring, yeah, these products to a next level, whereas I actually find that in entertainment games they have much more focus on that, which is a bit of a shame.
Yeah, so – so one of my questions here really is – is do you – do you think they rely on the same psychological mechanisms?  So, at the moment you’re kind of saying that the psychology in entertainment games is – is a primary component of how they develop it.
Yeah.
But in serious and applied games it’s something that – that would need more work.
Yeah, I do believe so from my own personal experience, of course.
Sure, of course.
Because I have found that sometimes there’s, you know, there’s professionals within this specific area that do give feedback on the development of these products, but I’ve found like it basically lacks the integration part of it because these professionals usually don’t understand exactly how games work, how this technical software thing works.  So I think there could definitely be more polish in order to, you know, bring it to the next level to actually make it work even better than it does now.
So, so rather than just looking at games as – as – as technical manifestations of skill…
Yeah.
…it would be useful for the whole games industry, entertainment, art, serious, applied, to get a better understanding of kind of the soft processes, the soft psychology, the – the nature of it?
Yes, definitely.
Yeah, okay.  Cool.  So obviously you’re – you’re a player alongside being a designer.  We’ve talked about that a little bit here.  Do you think that everybody who works in games plays a lot of games?
No, I don’t think so.
Okay.
I really don’t see that this is the case.  I – from personal experience again, I’ve seen that designers generally just do play games, a lot of games, which I find very understandable because they’re the ones usually more focused on the research and, you know, the psychology, as I mentioned before.  And playing games helps understand different types of product better and different ways of doing thing, which, in the end, you know, you – makes you grow as a person and as a designer that really helps because it’s exactly the things you’re interested in and you need to know.
And I found that programmers, in my personal friend groups, also play games generally, but on a very different way.  They more tended to become speed runners or hackers, like they try to get to the technical limits of the product.  They’re much more focused on those elements rather than the entire experience, which I find designers doing.  And artists, I see a very varying degree of interest in actually gaming.  There’s artists that I know that are very into gaming, but in general I’ve found that they’re more interested in, you know, the external layers of games, I mean besides obviously the art because that’s also interesting for their actual work, but I also see that they’re more interested in the narrative aspect of video games, of the more actual consumer perspective on things rather than a developer perspective.
Okay, so – so different people have – with – even within the sort of the sub-groupings of entertainment or whatever, we – we have different people within there working as well?
Yeah, definitely.
Okay.  So we’ve got – got a big topic here, which is while working on games, do you recall intentionally addressing issues such as gender, minority representation, political culture or other serious or socially educational topics?
Yes, definitely.
Can you give me examples where these have come up in your work?
I’m currently working on a pretty big project that actually covers specifically these topics.  So, in this work we’re focusing on characters, personalities of people, opposed to game player mechanics.  We’re focusing more on narrative.  So we have a real focus on personalities and on people and we want to try and portray the most realistic people as we can.  And we’ve definitely, because we’re creating these characters, we’re definitely considering all things, considering diversity.  We have a very – we have six characters within this product and they all come from a different area of earth.  There’s even one coming from Mars.  Interesting topic (laughs). 
And we also explore different sexualities, gender identities and these things.  They are definitely things that we have to pay in mind as well when working on this product because we want it to be realistic and relatable.  And we also – we are still not sure about whether or not to actually actively cover this, but we have explored political systems and religious system for this as well because we’re exploring something in the future, so we’re looking into how would these progress and how would people in the future, you know, develop or, well, yeah, I don’t know exactly what word I can use, basically go into like how do these topics change over time and how do people react with this in the future.
And this – this game is looking at these quite serious topics or using these…
Yeah.
…serious topics, but this is within the entertainment field?
Yes, this is an entertainment game.
Yeah, okay.  Have – you’ve had – have you had a few people play this already or earlier versions?
Yes, yes, we have ver – earlier versions that have been played by a group of people.
Yeah.  Did you notice any response from the players?
Not very significantly.  We generally had people enjoying the experience and generally being pretty positive and explaining how they related to characters and how they liked them, which was very interesting to us because there were no real specific things they were talking about, even though we’ve seen other similar products online, where people were actually very specifically talking about these topics.  And we – while we have these within our experience in our game, people didn’t specifically comment on them.  And we – yeah, we’re not sure exactly why this is, but we have a feeling like, okay, maybe we actually did something good and it’s actually just, you know, normal and represented in a good way that people just assume it’s part of it and, you know, understand it as being realistic.
Do you think that that – that acceptance that comes from a – a very integrated handling of these topics, do you think that is something we mentioned earlier about change – change of behaviours and attitudes for the better?  Do you think that’s – that could be part of that?
I think definitely, that could definitely be a part of it.  I mean with these heavy topics, if they are explained in a very subtle way, just, you know, as a part of an experience, a part of the larger scale of things, just like how they are in real life, I think it could definitely help people understand these topics as long as, you know, the topic is researched properly and the developers actually maturely deal with this topic and, you know, actually do their utmost best to represent it properly.
Do you think it’s commonly a problem that people don’t do their utmost best to represent these things?
I do feel like that is a problem, yes, in games (laughs).
Yeah.
I – I’ve seen a lot of video games attempting to include, for example, L – LGBT topics within their game, but usually it would feel very forced.  It would be the entire point of the game is exactly this topic, and I feel like that creates, yeah, negative responses to a lot of people because a lot of people would be against that or don’t understand it.  And they would be forced into this mind set, whereas with products that are more subtle that I’m just explaining something that is instead of focusing on this very specific topic that is controversial, I feel like, yeah, the last one, like just, you know, the software, gentle, natural way of – of explaining it would work a lot better and would allow people to take a step back and think about the product.
Yeah.  Do – do you think that’s perhaps a difference between a serious game and an entertainment game, that a serious game is – is focused on a particular topic, so perhaps a – a serious game about LGBTQ topics is likely to be more focused on those topics specifically rather than just including it as a part?
I do think so, yes.  And I – yeah, as I mentioned before, I think that might create more controversy than rather than acceptance and learning because it’s really right in your face and it just forces you to think about it, which might be a good thing in some cases, but it could also, you know, work in the opposite direction.
Yeah, okay.  Let’s move onto the last little bit there, which is, well, first, let’s look backwards.  In the last ten years what would you say are kind of the big changes that have happened in games?
Well, I’ve definitely noticed a – a large trend of focus on graphics, but—
Yeah, that’s something.
It’s – it’s – it’s definitely a thing I’ve noticed because of the hardware changing very rapidly.  I also noticed that while there’s always been experiences and games that cover, yeah, pretty mature topics, I do think that especially in the last five years even that a lot more developers are trying to convey these topics.  I also have seen that specifically in the triple-A game industry there’s more attempts to trying to get a good narrative out in the game instead of focusing solely on the game play, which was more the norm previously.  And I’ve seen this happen in varying degrees of success, but I think it’s – it’s a very interesting change.
Yeah.  If we were to be having this conversation in ten years’ time from now and we said, “What’s the big thing that happened in the last ten years?” what do you – what do you think we’d be talking about?  What’s coming up for us?
It’s a good question.  I think big things that are currently in the beginning stages are mainly VR and AR, which I think will definitely settle down in the coming ten years.  And I think AR is gonna have more future than VR.  I think VR is gonna be more towards the serious applied gaming side rather than the entertainment side due to the various problems with it, whereas AR gaming I really see becoming more prevalent in games altogether.
I – I also feel like with the way things have been going and the topics that have been addressed and just in general with the way the world is covering different topics right now, because there’s a lot of big things happening in the world in general, I feel like games will probably mature more than what they have before because this trend of being more narrative-focused, I think there’s going to be more integrated narrative, more diversity as well, I think.  It’s definitely coming for games in the future because newer generations have grown up with these topics and find them more natural to themselves, and these people are going to work in games as well.
Yeah.
So I feel like there probably will be more diverse games in the future on both entertainment and probably also in serious gaming and art and all the types.
Do you think that serious gaming and entertainment gaming are gonna be closer or can they ever be closer?
I – I think it’s – it’s definitely a topic I’ve very – personally very seriously explored and I think there’s definitely possibilities for them to get closer together.  I believe there’s ways of creating a game for a serious applicate – application, you know, applied to something very specific in either healthcare or education or anything and can still be an entertainment product of its own and can be released separately as an entertainment product.  I definitely believe that is possible.
Is there anything that you think would prevent these – these areas getting closer?
I think the mid set of people currently within specifically the – yeah, well, actually both worlds actually, both in entertainment games and in serious and applied games.  I think the mind set of those people is to segregate each other basically because the entertainment developers, from what I’ve heard, they’re so focused on just, you know, basically creating their own fantasies of what they want in a game and they don’t really stop to think about possibilities for broader application for their product.  I have definitely spoken to a lot of people who are interested in actually doing specifically this, but there’s not a lot of people.  And whereas I find – also find people in the more serious atmosphere that are really focused on, “No, this is purely, you know, academical and very research-focused and this is very specific,” and they would never even consider entertainment as being a part of this very interesting product, which I also think is a shame.  So I think this really – basically what it needs is that people start talking more to each other, I feel like. 
So you need more research people in entertainment and more entertainment people in research.
Yes, definitely.
Okay.
Merge those together because I think they can help each other create more interesting experiences on both sides.
Okay.  I think that’s probably a nice point to end on.
Okay.
Good.  Thank you very much for the interview.
Yeah, no problem.