KEY
Bold:	Interviewer
Regular:	Respondent
[ ]:	Uncertain word(s)

Okay, so that's recording now.  Could you say your name and spell it for the recording, please?
My full name with surname?
Yes, please.  Yeah.
Okay.  [anon]
Z-I, isn't it?
I'm not sure what you call it (laughs).
[anon].
Yeah, […]
[anon]
Yeah (laughs).  So could you confirm your nationality, please?
I'm Dutch.
Where the pronunciation of all the letters in the alphabet is different (laughs).
Yeah, it's kind of confusing, but (laughs)—
You're not the first to have struggled with that.  Can you also confirm for me, please, that you have signed the consent form?
I've signed the consent form.
Cool, thank you.  Okay, so you're both a games developer and—  Do you play games as well?
When I have free time, I try to, but I don't have a lot of free time.
Okay.  So, mostly a developer.
Yeah.
I have questions here for developers and a few questions for players.  We'll mix between them as we go along.
All right.
What is your area of professional practice?  What do you do as a games developer?
I'm a visual artist and I specifically specialise in character art.  Although, since I'm working on a NDA project, which I'm not going to say the name of, I'm also working on environment art and possibly I will be working on lighting and a few effects.  So you could say I'm a generalist indie developer.
Okay.  And at the moment you are working in your spare time on a project and seeking work at a studio?
Yes, and I'm working part-time at a whole food company, a few days in the week just to get by.
So do you think that's a common position for a lot of indie developers?
You mean that they don't have enough money so they have to work a part-time job?
Hm-hm.
I think it's not uncommon.  I mean, I have read that some developers start out like this, especially in the United States, in order to get by and, in their free time, they work on projects, and sometimes that is an indie game.
Yeah, okay.  If you think of all the games developers that you know and the people that you follow online or whatever, what sorts of things do you think characterise them?  Who are they as people?
Ooh, that's a question (laughs).  I think, from what I see, most of these developers are really passionate about—  They're not necessarily focused on making a lot of money.  They really are passionate about the craft of making a game.  Sometimes I see that indie developers are more pure in what they make, compared to really big developers.  They tend to look at unconventional ways of creating a game, and I think that's where bigger game developers stagnate, they don't really try to experiment any more.
So when you say more pure—?
Yeah, I think that has to do with they're not afraid of stepping out to look outside of the box.  Obviously they are not influenced by investors a lot.  Maybe they have investors, but that won't steer their vision too much.  
I've read some articles that beer companies are often influenced by investors, what they want to see, and they're often influenced in order to make money.  That's what—  Yeah, how do I say it?  I think that's where art isn't art any more, when money takes over, when money steers the entire creative process.
Sometimes you can also see that in comments on YouTube, that people have a certain expectation of a game and, when it's released, they're really dissatisfied by the result.  They say, "You told us this would be in the game.  You told us that it would like this.  And you told us that there would be these options."  Often developers can't make promises, but yeah, I think that's where a lot of stagnation comes into play.
So this is creative stagnation, you mean?
Hm-hm, I think so, yeah.
Yeah.  So the smaller companies are more often following a kind of personal direction?
Often they are.  Also, it's based on—  Yeah, I think it's mostly personal.  If I look at the types of games they release, it's mostly based on games they have played in their childhood.  You see a lot of platformers or [side scrolling 0:05:38] games, but also games with a lot of narrative.  That is not so conventional for the bigger franchises in the AAA industry.
How would you characterise a typical AAA industry narrative?
It follows the standard hero's journey.  It's basically always the same, maybe some twists and turns here and there, but I don't see a lot of deviation from that.
Is it more in line with Hollywood-style things?
It definitely leans towards that formula, unfortunately (laughs).
Yeah, okay (laughs).  Why do you think that's unfortunate?
Well, it's basically a retelling of the same story and, if you know the formula, it's not interesting any more.  It doesn't allow for surprise elements.  It doesn't allow for realistic storytelling for characters or environments.  It's set within a pre-existing definition of sci-fi or of a certain setting.
And so you're saying that smaller companies are more likely to step outside of that?
Yeah, I think so, or they dare to do that just to kind of rebel against the AAA industry.  I mean, you see a lot of developers getting out of a AAA company so they can make what they want, for instance.  
Yeah, I'm not sure if this a good comparison, but if you look at Ori, from what I saw of the game, the first chapter has a really engaging prologue that immediately captures the feel, and that kind of vibe I have been missing from games a lot, that it really touches someone emotionally.  From what I read about the developers, they stepped out of… some were from Blizzard and I think some were from Bungie and they really wanted to make something that they felt they would want to play, and not something that was made for the masses.
Yeah.  So there's almost a maturity in some of that [0:08:25].
Yeah.
I mean, Ori, O-R-I, is a game that still has a fantastical setting, fantasy elements in there, but it does feel a lot more emotionally engaged that perhaps we would expect from a AAA big budget game, and it's more of a personal expression from the creators.
Yeah.
Do you think that that is something we're going to see more of in the future?
Hmm, that's not something I (laughs) can say right now.  I mean, the indie game developer wave, if you'd call it that, there's not really a direction it is going in right now.  It's going all over the place.  So I think that depends on the company that's working on a game.  
I mean, if you look at Pine, it's totally different and it has a totally different focus.  They want to make game play more interesting by putting in – what was it?  They want to put in procedural elements into the game play so it has more variation – that's from what I understood – whereas Ori has focused on the narrative.  So it totally depends on what the focus is of the indie game developer.
Yeah.  So in the last ten years, video games have become increasingly popular.  How do you think that's affected how people use their leisure time?
I think because video games have been increasingly more realistic – like Unchartered and [0:10:24] – people have viewed it as more of an interactive movie instead of just a game that's played by nerds (laughs).  I think people are changing their perspectives on the whole game industry now, that they see we can actually make things that are similar or even better than movies at times.  But at the same time, if you look at Unchartered or [0:10:58], they're basically the same hero's journey story again.
Hm-hm, they have a gruff, white man as the lead character doing gruff, white man things in a very 1980s Indiana Jones kind of mode.
Yeah (laughs).
Yeah (laughs).  Although, the typical hero story structure also fits Bridget Jones' Diary, for example, and Indiana Jones and Bridget Jones' Diary have a very different feel about them or a different emotional impact.  So it's not just the structure; it's also about the content.
Let me see.  What sorts of impacts do you think games have on people, have on their players?
Could you be more specific?  It's a pretty broad question (laughs).
There are some very broad questions in here.  It's semi-deliberate to leave it up to you to interpret, but positive or negative things that people get from playing games.
I think these days it's seen as stress relief, I guess, and escapism.  It always has been about escapism and challenging yourself without actually knowing you're challenging yourself.  Yeah, I really don't know (laughs) the answer to this question.  It's pretty broad.  If I had to answer this question for myself, however, I would say it's to get inspiration or, I think, also escapism.
Inspiration in what?
Art, but also ideas for game design because I sometimes share my ideas and visions with my colleague.  Yeah, it's good to have multiple perspectives if we want to proceed with our company after our current project.
Hm-hm, okay.  You're familiar with the term applied games and serious games?
Yes, I am.
Yeah.  What do you think of their quality in general, or what do you think of their effectiveness?  What are your opinions of these games?
I haven't seen too many of them, but I did an internship last year and, from what I saw, yeah, it's a totally different standard of game.  The games that are made for, for instance, healthcare instances are not to be compared with any game in the entertainment industry.  They're not focused on visuals at all.  They're not focused on something you would expect from a game.  They're solely focused on helping the person escape – again, escapism (laughs) – escape from their pain or help them into regaining a certain ability with their body or with their minds.
What I did see is that some developers try to combine the visuals of an entertainment game with the practical and functionality of an applied game, and that's where I think fun and an applied game comes together.  
I'm not sure if—  No, it wasn't really NDA because there was also press.  There was a game that showcased you walking your dog in a park and it was a linear road and you had to steer your dog in the right direction.  The player was walking on a treadmill, a special kind of treadmill for rehabilitation purposes.  Depending on where the dog was walking, the treadmill would shift to the side or tilt a bit and you could see that the player had fun while also having difficulty with staying in balance on the treadmill.  That's where I thought, yeah, this is where applied games could be fun and still maybe be released as an entertainment game aside from that.
So yeah, I think it could be going in the right direction, but we're a still a long way from having really interesting applied games.
So at the moment, you'd say that their effectiveness is limited?  Is that what you're saying?
I think the functionality is there, but they're still in a research phase.  They're not as mature as the entertainment game industry, and I'm not sure whether that is impacting the effectiveness, but I think—  Yeah, well, now that I look at it (laughs), it does affect the effectiveness.
So you mentioned a research phase there, and obviously you were saying that they'd be more impactful if the entertainment industry was… well, they met some of the standards from the entertainment industry.  Is that correct?
Yeah, I think so.
Have you seen much research, academic research or anything like that, or studies from the entertainment industry which could be applied to serious games?  Or have you seen much research in the entertainment industry?
No, not at all, actually.  Maybe I haven't looked in the right places, but when my colleague and I were doing research on whether to become an applied game company or not, we couldn't really find research from the game industry into applied gaming.  I think it was mostly research from actual healthcare instances and business companies.  It wasn't really specific.  It was always a general representation of an applied game.
Hm-hm, okay.  Obviously serious and applied games, you've talked about some of their capacity to help with, for example, rehabilitation, and you've expressed that it could be better, perhaps, with more fun, but they are effective to a degree at the moment.  Do you think that entertainment and arts games also have positive or negative effects on players?
Well, that's a really broad topic as well (laughs).  There has been a lot of research on that topic.  I mean, if you look at GTA and what effect it has on children – and seemingly it doesn't have that much effect as what parents would think – I think it is up to each individual what kind of impact it has and I would say—
Sorry, what was the question again (laughs)?
Oh, it was just like do—  I've got a statement here.  Let's go for this statement, which is: Games are powerful tools to change behaviours and attitudes for the better.  Do you agree with this statement?
That's not an easy question.  Well, I could say that a lot of games have this representation of good and evil in there, and that's kind of showcasing the morality of, I guess, Abrahamic (laughs) laws in some sort of way without actually knowing it.  But, yeah.
The other phrase for it is Manichean Dualism.  There you go (laughs).
Yeah (laughs).
Very clear boundaries between good and evil.
I think what is missing and what could make characters more interesting and also make characters more realistic for the players is venturing into the grey area, like characters aren't bad or good.  And I think that good and evil thing is maybe interesting for kids, but when you grow up, you tend to get bored of that.  I feel if kids want to see a realistic representation of the world, they need to see how people actually behave, how people actually are in real life.  If that can be conveyed in games, then I think it could have—  Yeah, I think that could be better for games and for players in general.
At the moment, I'm not too sure if games are good or bad for players.  Yeah, I've not done any research into that.
So games could be powerful tools (laughs)?
Games are powerful tools, but if they are powerful tools for good or evil, that isn't clear to me.  I think that's totally up to the individual playing a game.
Sure.  We've already covered quite a few of the topics in that section there, so we won't bother with that one.  From your view of the games development industry, what do you think are the pressures on your field and your job in particular?  So what makes your life difficult as a visual artist in the games industry?
Well, that I'm not able to work full-time at the moment (laughs).  Yeah, I mean, as an indie game developer without funding, that's probably the hardest thing at the moment, not to be able to work on your project full-time.  It's kind of like you aren't able to work full-time on something you have a lot of passion for and it's kind of frustrating, in a way.  But in another way, it's also good to zoom out from what you're working on.  It gives space to think about what you're doing.  
Eventually, I presume the project we're working on with have money, or will have some impact on the industry in one way or another, even if it's small (laughs).  But yeah, at the moment, that is the most frustrating thing.
Hmm.  Would you characterise your project as being of interest to—?  Well, which sector would you describe it most closely in, as serious, applied, entertainment, or arts?
Ooh, I think from what we are trying to do for the player, it's not necessarily entertainment, I guess.  I mean, it has a lot of [0:23:07] so it could be interesting for hardcore gamers, but that's not the main purpose.  Its main purpose is that players will make a choice in the end.  There's a choice to be made in the game and they have to look into certain aspects of the narrative in order to make that choice.
It's really hard to not say anything (laughs) about the game without breaking my NDA.
It's fine.
So yeah, I think in that sense it could be seen as a psychology thing; so that would be applied or serious.  I'm not sure.  It's a really thin line between—
So it's a narrative experience?
It's a narrative experience and it's supposed to gauge (pronounced as gouge)—  Yeah, well, I'm not sure.  You write it like this.
Gauge.  Gauge.
Yeah?
G-A-U-G-E.  Yeah, gauge.
Gauge, okay.  I thought it was 'gouge' (laughs).  So yeah, it's supposed to gauge the emotional tie of the player to a certain character and why that player has that tie to a specific or multiple characters.
So you've got kind of an artistic experience but it could be read as an applied game, it could be read as a research into games, it could be read as a research for characters?
I think so, yeah.
Okay, cool.  So how easy do you think it would be to find an academic collaboration for that at the moment?
You mean as an explanation of what we're trying to do?
Yeah, or kind of funding for analysis of what you're doing, or something like that.
I don't think there is.  Well, there are games that are trying to get to the point.  I mean, if you look at Gone Home, it's the starting point of what we are trying to do, and you have Tacoma, which will released in a month from now.  But I think our game is going a step further than that.
But actual academic research?  I'm not too sure.  I haven't looked into that.  I would love to read it though (laughs).
(Laughs) Cool.  We've got a couple of things to do and we're running a little bit long here, so let's go through these fairly quickly.  While working on games, do you recall intentionally addressing issues such as gender, minority representation, political culture, or other serious or socially educational topics?
I feel like there's been a lot of misrepresentation in a lot of the games these days, and especially AAA games are focused on the white, straight male, eighteen years old at least to thirty-five, I guess, and there's very little representation of, for instance, the Asian community.  You never see an Asian protagonist or you never see an LGBT protagonist.  Maybe in life it's strange, but that's kind of debatable.  It's a thin line there as well.
And that's also from the indie side rather than AAA.
Yeah.  Well, it's getting bigger.
Well, it's getting bigger.  Yeah, yeah.
I would say that's an A game.  It's not indie any more.  It's not yet AAA.
It got massive funding from a big publisher, but it was an indie game to start off with, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.  So I think, in a way, we're heading in the right direction, but I feel there's a really big misrepresentation of how people look in games.  They're all too perfect and there's always this notion that protagonists and antagonists have to look bad or really good, and I think there should be more neutrality in everything.  There should be, oh, you're at that side of the spectrum and you're at that side of the spectrum, not assume you're this or you're this.  It should be less binary.
Have you deliberately addressed this in your own work?
Well, in our project, let's say we have non-straight people.  We have LGBT people in there and we haven't a real focus on one of these characters to be the main character.  So there isn't really a specific highlight on, I guess (laughs), the genericness of the game industry.  And also, since our protagonist isn't a human, we can't really identify with this kind of (laughs) issue.
(Laughs) Fair enough.  What would you say, just in a few sentences really, what you think, for you, are the biggest changes in games in the last ten years?
Hmm, in what sense?  Visually?  Game play-wise?
Oh, visually, trends, game play, marketing, monetisation, applied things.  Whatever you want.  For you, what jumps out?  If you think of the last ten years of games, where we are now, where we were ten years ago, what would you say the big differences are?
There's a specific focus on open game worlds these days.  There's a lot of research into micro transactions in games.  Especially since I did my internship at a model game company, I see that a lot of mobile game developers struggle with finding the perfect monetisation system.  I guess for PC and console gaming they are trying to do something similar since their games are steering away from being just games to game surfaces, since they intend to release more downloadable content and intend to do so until the next instalment or a new IP is released.
What I also see compared to—  Well, if I had to compare it to 2007, visually, graphic fidelity has increased a lot.  It has improved a lot.  I'm not sure if that has improved the game play experience.  I mean, I feel like older games have more of a fun and escapism level to them.  
I mean, if I have to compare, for instance, The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess, it isn't realistic.  It has a really generic story (laughs), but it has an atmosphere that is not being conveyed into—  It's not conveyed by mainstream developers in their art style any more.  They all use this same kind of realistic approach to their games and you rarely see a cartoon-y or a really significantly different looking game out there by a big publisher.
Yeah.  So Nintendo did something a bit different with that.
Yeah, I guess so.
Yeah.  If I were to ask you the same question in ten years' time – so if I said, "Looking back at 2017, now we're in 2027…" – what do you think we'd be talking about?  What big changes do you think are coming up for us?
What will come or what do I hope will come?
Well, either.  Both.  What's going to come and what would you hope to see happen in the next ten years of games?
Well, I hope to see more games with less violence.  Not because I dislike violence in games, but because it's getting boring (laughs).  It's been overdone to death and I think narrative games and psychologically challenging games would be the next step for—
How do you mean psychologically challenging?
In a way, the game needs to make the player think a lot more than, for instance, just your average puzzle game, and I think that has to do with narrative or with maybe something mathematical.  I mean, if you have a game that's based on mathematics or if it's based on chemistry and you have to make the right combinations and build something on a molecular level—  Oh, that word!  Oh my god (laughs). 
Molecular, yes.
A molecular level, I think that would be interesting also for applied games because I think games will also be part of education.  Maybe not in ten years, but maybe it will.  
I'm not too sure, but what I did see during my last internship was that children are using apps and gamified platforms – they're not really games, but you could see elements of it – to do their homework, and that was already a really big step from when I was in middle school.  So yeah, I can see games dominating education.  
Maybe also company life, in general.  If you go and work at a bank, or if you go and work at a car dealing company, I think the way people are investing or looking into what they—  No, I'm not too sure how to phrase this.  If people want to get a loan or want to have a certain insurance or look into money issues, they don't do it with the sense that they want to do it.  They're often struggling and, oh, I have to do this, so I'll look it up, oh man!  (Laughs)  I think, in that sense there will be some gamified elements to make it more fun or automated in the future.
Yeah, so it's almost like taking the lessons of user interface from games and applying them in other places.
Yeah, I think that's where gamification will go and games will—  I'm not sure if VR will be big.  I think augmented reality will be the next big thing.  Maybe VR arcades will be a thing, but at home, I'm not too sure.
I have to say, I do agree.
(Laughs) 
So, gamification of life, in some ways, is one of the things.  Not so much VR, but more AR.
Yeah.
And entertainment games becoming framed as educational tools.
Yeah, and what I mentioned earlier, psychologically – how do you say? – not engaging but challenging.  Psychologically challenging games.
So by that, you mean kind of addressing moral and ethical ambiguity, rather than just puzzles?
Part of.  Part of.  I think characters in games could be more interesting if they had their own life, like in AI.  I'm not too sure whether we'll see an AI in ten years, but maybe we can see something that has a sort of life of its own in the game world and it's programmed in a really ingenuous way but kind of faking it, in a way.  
I think that would make the game world a lot more interesting.  I mean, then you don't have these linear (laughs) parts that games are in right now.  Then it will be truly – how do you say? – non-linear.  I think non-linear games will be big then.
Yeah, non-linear games.
Yeah.
Okay.  That seems like a good point to end up on.  Thank you very much.
Okay.