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…trying to get a developer’s perspective on these topics, because the European Union is very interested in serious games but they don’t really think about entertainment games for research.  You are very welcome.  Just very interesting to get your perspective on this from that side of it.
Sounds like a fairly broad topic.
It is a fairly broad topic.  Just answer honestly and if the answer is no, we don’t do that, or yes, we do that, anything’s fine, it’s just about finding out what you think and what you guys do.  For the sake of the video could you please say your name and summarise in a sentence or two what you do in the games industry?
Do you want me to do it to you?
Yeah, just talk to me.
My name’s [anon], I’m the Head of Creative for [anon].  That’s what I do in the games industry.  I also am a co-founder of a small indie games company called [anon], we’ve released two games so far and are working on others but that’s strictly in our free time and the work tends to slow down when we are under a lot of pressure at work at [anon], because that is our number one priority.
If you were working completely without market restraints, so if you weren’t thinking about sales and just making things however you wanted to, taking as long as you wanted to, how do you think your games might differ from what you’ve been making so far?
That would depend on whether I was fully in creative control or not.  I mean, are you talking about in terms of my role at [anon] where ultimately [anon], the Creative Director of the company, what he wants to do essentially goes.  Obviously he is mindful of what we all want to do as well, but he would naturally make choices that would differ from my own if I was running my own company, in terms of exactly what things would be done.  I couldn’t tell you exactly what those differences would be.  But yeah, I guess I’m asking you to narrow down your questions in terms of like am I talking fully hypothetical, just like this is Tim’s approach to the world, or is this Tim in his role at [anon]?
Tim in his role at [anon], if [anon] in your opinion were not thinking about targeting sales but making something that [anon] just wanted to make because they make a game they believe in, do you think your projects would be different?
Honestly, not very much I don’t think.  I mean, [anon] is fiercely independent and has always gone its own way and it’s in a position now where pretty much everything is under [anon]’s control, not like working for external publishers anymore, we’re working with our own IP and doing what was want for our own IP.  And publishing it ourselves and funding it ourselves, so basically the buck stops with us.  That’s not to say we aren’t mindful of considerations in the outside world so to speak.  
An obvious example of a situation where we have made a change based on outside forces would be our recent Zombie Army Trilogy which has been a phenomenal runaway success.  It originally started as a small experiment we did just on Steam, on PC, and it was originally entitled Nazi Zombie Army, which very much does what it says on the tin kind of title and works really well because of that.  It kind of sells itself, even if you’re going, that’s a pretty kind of out there title, you know what you’re getting.
And it has a certain edge to it as well.  But when it came to – you know, we moved on to the sequel, Nazi Zombie Army 2 because there was such a demand for it and then ultimately we did a further chapter to wrap it all into one, a Zombie Army Trilogy, bring it to consoles, do the whole thing.  Publish it fully, box and everything.  When it came to that point we had to be mindful of the considerations of supermarkets for instance.  Certain franchises which were not comfortable putting things on the shelves that had Nazi in the title.
Now I believe there are different rules for different products, like if you’re a book with Nazi in the title that’s not a problem.  But if you’re a game with Nazi in the title that is a problem.  And there are all sorts of complicated cultural reasons for that and ultimately it’s not something we can control.  We could decide to try and fight it but you pick your battles.  As it stands, Zombie Army Trilogy also does what it says on the tin.  It has a clear picture of a Nazi zombie on the cover so there’s no real room for confusion there.  It caused a little bit of a challenge for us in terms of messaging and making it clear what it was and how it compared to the previous title.  But ultimately it didn’t prove to a huge deal and as it stands proved to be a good decision.  
Retailers absolutely love the game because it seems to fly off the shelves, wherever you are in the world, often to an audience that isn't necessarily hugely educated in games but they see it, they understand it, they pick it up and they buy it and they come back and they want more.  So that’s a great position for us to be in.  But yeah, we wouldn’t have given it that exact title had it not been for that external influence.
We’ve got a few topics we’re going to go through, talking about society and games and about some of the ethical considerations or not taken into account, and a little bit about academia and research, that’s the kind of rough groupings we’re going to go through.  Do you think players have social views or behaviour changed by playing games?
I think it is possible in that – I mean, I’m sure you and I have had our own views challenged at some point in our lives by something or other.  That may have been an influential figure in our life, it may have been a chance encounter with a stranger, it may have been a book we read or a movie we watched or a game we played.  I don’t see how you can kind of differentiate between those things as influences on how we think.  
More broadly speaking, I guess well if it’s true for me, or if I believe it’s true for me, then yes it is true for other people.  We are all one species, I like to think, much as political forces seem to be wishing to divide us these days.  But the extent to which you can try to change peoples’ ideals with gaming, ultimately that’s down to the individual creator to decide.  And generally I think it’s fair to say that people tend to reject having messages thrust down their throat unless they’re specifically looking for one.  
At the same time, I think people also value an experience that is being delivered with enough conviction that there is a message behind it.  Even if they don’t agree with that message, and want to reject it or argue about it on forums or on the internet or whatever, I think if something has got nothing to say then in many respects it’s – well, it’s got nothing to say (laughs), it’s less interesting.  But that’s not to say that not trying to say something is also problematic, that’s totally valid.  I don’t know what Bejewelled is trying to say, I don’t think it’s trying to say anything, but that doesn’t make me love it any less and millions of players out there.  
It’s kind of difficult to generalise because games are such a broad church of so many kinds of experiences, the idea of having some message is, well, of differing levels of relevance depending on what you’re talking about.
Do you think that in comparison to other media that because those games are interactive they have the potential to be more powerful than other media?  Or do you think it’s just another form?
I think that’s probably true.  I think the more engaged someone is then the more effecting the experience.  However, if you take for example let’s say a traditional cinematic story driven action game where the player is engaged interactively with the action itself, I think for some players that might help them be more engaged with the cinematic interludes, where they’re showing what their characters are thinking, feeling, doing, and how the journey that they’re having alongside them is affecting them.  
But there are a big swathe of players – I don’t have statistics to tell you which goes which ways – but there’s a bunch of players that will be completely disinterested in those kind of scenes and will skip past them or roll their eyes and go, come on, let’s get on with it.  If you’re trying to convey a message through those cinemantics there then there’s going to be at least a chunk of your audience that won't get it and won't care.  But if you’re trying to convey your message through the systems mechanics of the game, I don't know, let’s say every time you shoot someone they break down crying, that you can't avoid, then you’re more likely to have an impact on your players, good or bad.  Or at least on all of your players.  
And I suspect that that will be – give someone more to chew on than being shown a piece of footage of someone breaking down and crying versus them doing it themselves and then going, okay, right, that’s that.  I’ll do the same thing to the next person.  Oh, they also cried.  You’ll start feeling the impact of your actions.  So I think that can be a very powerful thing.  I’ve forgotten what you asked originally now.
That’s fine, it was just whether games are equally impactful, or have potentially more impact because of interaction.  I think you’ve kind of answered it really.
Yeah, potentially they can, I believe they can.  But you could argue the case that someone may feel uncomfortable – like if you put a game controller in my mum’s hand she’d be struggling with the two sticks and stuff and so that immediately puts a barrier between her and what’s going on on the screen.  Whereas if she’s watching Inspector Morse where there is no barrier between her and what’s going on on the screen and she’s engaged in the subject matter, then she’ll likely be more affected by that.  So it depends on the person.  These days more and more people are – well, they don’t think of themselves as gamers, they play games, and even if it’s just on a touchscreen on their phone or whatever, there is the chance to really kind of make a difference to those people.
I like the comparison, that’s cool.  A lot of games use very fantastical settings and very extreme social settings such as war for example, or fantasy and war, Nazi zombies.  Have you in your professional practice created games which are using non-violent themes?
Yes.  We have – I mean, it’s fair to say most of [anon]’s output that we’re known for has been in the action genres, which most of the time, not all the time, involves shooting weapons and guns and stuff.  That’s what we’re good and we embrace that and audiences go for that, as you’re well aware, whether that’s in movies, TV, whatever, there is nothing more dramatic than like life and death situations and the threat of life and death.  You put a gun in a situation and suddenly the stakes are raised and we can't resist it as audiences, it’s primal and meaningful to us and the natural escalation of that is war and that’s a fun and I would argue cathartic thing to explore in entertainment.  I would very much prefer it not to happen in real life, but unfortunately – I live a fairly charmed life by most peoples’ standards and I’m not confronted with it except through the news.  
But yes, we have done non-violent games at [anon].  We’ve done – particularly when we were working on mobile for a while we did a game called Harmony Isle which was one of those world building style games.   We were one of the first to do it fully in 3D rather than 2D, and it was just a nice diverting game in which you could build your idyllic town and uncover some of the secrets and mysteries that went on there as you went through the process of basically collecting resources and building your roads and your buildings and things.  And that was non-violent.  
We’ve also done work on building the educational works Biff, Chip and Kipper to mobile, those are also decidedly non-violent.  And arguably not as much traditionally gamer, however they have little mini games in them, just the fact that you can interact with the pages and tap on things and make sounds and stuff, it’s play.  But yeah, there are no guns in that I can think of, although there were a lot of cyclists so they might have been violent, but I don’t think so (laughs).
What inspired you to make those ones?  As you say [anon] is primarily known for its action titles.  What made you choose to make the non-violent exploration or world building things?
In the case of the mobile thing it was really exploring the possibilities of the space and it made sense at the time to try one of these world building games that were proving to be popular in the mobile space.  Yeah, it was a fun learning experience for us and it did well but it wasn’t the next Farmville or something, else we would have probably stopped making other games, (laughs) I don't know.  It was an experiment really, because [anon]’s always been keen to try different avenues and do different things, while not forgetting what it’s good at and where it comes from.  So yeah, you know, it might happen again in the future.
While working on games do you recall intentionally addressing such as gender, minority representation or political, culture?
Yeah, I think probably one of the first times we overtly approached it was in Alien vs Predator.  Where originally we wanted the human protagonist of the game to be female because that was consistent with the movies, but our publisher at the time, we shifted publishers over the course of the project, because Vivendi Universal were taken over and the project moved on to Sega.  But at the time originally we got word from on high that players didn’t want female protagonists, they didn’t want to play as women.  Which was obviously nonsense, it was someone’s opinion somewhere who was on a higher pay grade than all of us.  Yeah, it seemed to neglect some of the characters like Lara Croft and things.  
We kind of went, well, if we’re not going to have a female protagonist then let’s make him black.  It was a small act of I guess [anon] on our part.  But we were keen to take not the obvious choice of going gruff, white male, which happens a lot.  Sniper Elite is guilty of having a gruff, white male protagonist, but in AVP we chose a black character.  And it’s not even apparent that he’s black until quite a long way into the campaign where they actually see him for the first time.  So it’s not something we tackled in the narrative or dealt with any themes of race of anything like that.  The only meaning behind it as far as the game was concerned is just the fact that he’s there and it’s up to the player and their own cultural considerations what that means to them, if anything.  But if felt meaningful to us to make the choice.
Otherwise, I mentioned Sniper Elite, Sniper Elite doesn’t have a lot of female characters in it.  That was largely driven by second world war and the wartime situation which we were in, which was mostly men fighting in the trenches, pretty much exclusively.  However, in certainly Russia made strong use of female snipers, like they were when they fight in the military particularly in certain regions.  But in Zombie Army Trilogy, in fact we very deliberately introduced female player characters into that as a mod to that.  Because we really wanted to.  And it was really great when we had our launch event, a bunch of people came to that, a seminar in London and I had friends there and things.  There was a lesbian couple who came up and they were so pleased and so thrilled that we had female playable characters in it.  
We just thought, oh yeah, it’s cool, we’ll do female characters, because it doesn’t get done enough but the game supported multiple player characters for you to choose from so it’s like, yeah, let’s do this.  To them it seemed like it meant the world that they could actually play as someone of their own gender.  And for there to be no nonsense about it as well, it was just, yeah, you can do this or that, and in that kind of game as well.  That was really gratifying to know how much even in the context of what is on the face of it a kind of ridiculous thing, like a fantasy horror game in which you’re shooting Nazi zombies, you’d think you could easily dismiss as trash.  Which it’s not because it’s probably the favourite thing I’ve ever worked on because I am a horror film freak and it came from the heart and hopefully that shows in the end product.  But yeah, it also seems that it does connect with – for all sorts of different reasons, something as simple as just allowing people to play as someone of their own gender or indeed race or ethnic group or whatever is a big deal for people.
That was one of my follow-ups, how has been the response for these themes from your players.
Yeah.  And indeed in Sniper Elite 4 we had a strong female court the main story of the game.  Sophia, the leader of the Italian resistance group that you’re working your way in with.  That’s been picked out by a couple of reviewers and things as really refreshing, you get a strong and important female character there that isn't driven by their sexuality or anything like that, it’s all about her actions and her position, what she’s doing.  And it’s like not really directly relevant to the story whether she’s a man or a woman.  It is in terms of what she represents and like how people react to her, and she gets referred to as a bit of an angel, beacon of hope, and you’d use different terms if she was a man and you can sense a certain – like there are some characters in the game similar to I guess a mother figure.  
And yeah, you could flip it and turn her into a man and it would be a less interesting dynamic.  And the story in many respects would work pretty much the same but it would feel different.  That was cool.  We’ve included playable female characters for the multi-player as well, not in the single player but maybe in the future.
On a personal note then what’s driven your – because you say the team wanted to do this kind of stuff, you’ve had some good feedback.  Is this something that’s fed into your thoughts about doing this in future games?  Where did the impulse to do the women characters or the African-American character come from?  Is it literally just we don’t think there’s been enough or—?
I wouldn’t want to over think it really.  You could ask the same of any decision that’s made on the game.  Whether it’s like the style of the uniforms or the feel of the weaponry, or which country you set it in.  There are complex and often hard to dig down into exactly where decisions came from because there were an awful lot of factors and voices along the way that led to that point.  I guess ultimately it comes down to the fact that we’re a studio with men and women in it and people of all sorts of different nationalities and ethnicities and all of us live in a world in which there are men and women and people of different nationalities and ethnicities.  So it’s natural to try and represent that or reflect that or give the ability for people that work on the game to connect with the game and the audiences as well.  
We don’t sit down in committees and go, how are we going to get diversity into our game?  It’s not that sort of place.  I think I wouldn’t want to suggest it’s a bad thing to do that.  I know some people do think that I guess positive discrimination is a bad thing, I don’t know whether it is or not, I’d say on balance I’m inclined to think it’s probably a necessary thing to redress what is an imbalance.  But yeah, we just try to do things in an instinctively honourable fashion I suppose.
That leads us to the final big topic which is things like research and how decisions are made and where ideas come from in some ways.  Are you aware of any academic research or other research on video games that has influenced how you develop your games?
I think probably the most direct influence comes from places like GDC when we’ve come here to soak up the knowledge of other developers and what they’ve been doing and their experiences and what they’ve tried that’s worked and what they’ve tried that hasn’t worked and that kind of stuff.  I guess sort of like learning from our peers is the most useful thing, in the same way we all learn from each other in the studio.  That’s what makes the biggest difference to us in terms of where influences come from, aside from the games we play and love and want to bring a piece of that or this to the concept that we’re doing because it feels like the right thing to do.
As for academia in general, I don’t – unless it’s articles that come up on places like Gamasutra where I do read keenly I must admit I don’t read academic papers on games.  To be honest, I’m not sure where I’d go to find them if I did.  I’m more driven to focus on people that have been making the games and their insights into that process.  
What’s your view on academia’s place in the system?  I mean, because I’ve been thinking about this and I don’t know exactly, I believe it should be there, like in a civilised society it’s kind of important that people study stuff just for the sake of studying things.  And looking for a kind of analogy, say, you know, people go to film school to get into cinema because there’s so many complexities about how it all works and cameras and lighting and staging and everything associated with that.  But then you have people that like study film, like might write PhD papers on the symbolism in Kubrick movies.  What value does that have?  I don't know.  
I’m glad that it exists and I’m glad that we have a society in which people can pursue that goal with no specific kind of commercial value if you like.  Because you never know what might come of it and you can't draw a line between that kind of action or study on things you think might be useful and things that are probably not going to be that useful to the world.  Like whether it’s a philosophy or ancient languages or the composition of rocks on the moon or whatever it is.  One of them might spark a revolution in something, but it might not, or it might help a bit or it might influence someone into doing something good somewhere.  
So yeah, I don’t know where it fits in to be honest, and I don’t know how I’d go about designing a games course and what I’d be trying to teach in it other than getting people to make games, which is the best possible way.  But if people are just studying games and reflecting on them I think it’s good that people do that.  But in the same way that a film maker would be unlikely to study peoples’ PhDs on what they thought he was saying in his movies, I’m not driven to read the more esoteric side of things.  Yeah, I don't know where I’m going with that, but I don’t – it’s – yeah, it’s a tricky one.
If somebody wrote a PhD about the Zombie Army Trilogy?
Oh, I’d be thrilled.
Would you be reading it?
Yeah, I probably would actually.
There you go (laughs).
But again, I’d be like was that a good use of their time if someone’s funding?  I don't know.  But yeah, what do you think?
I’ll answer that after the interview so I don’t bias any of your answers (laughs).  Is it fair to say then that you’ve not published in academic journals?
I haven't, no.
Fair enough.  Would you be interested in publishing in academic journals?
Potentially, yeah.  It’s not something I’ve thought about doing but yeah.
Last couple of questions then, why do you come to GDC?  You kind of touched on a little bit earlier, but what’s your reason for being here for example this year?
I come to learn, I come to find out what other people are doing.  I come for inspiration, I come to just soak it all up and get a sense of that connection to everybody here making games and it’s just – I don't know, it’s an inspiring place and it’s an invaluable resource and I feel very privileged that I’m able to come.  Last year I was unable to go to any talks because I was busy demoing and promoting our own stuff, which was – that was a very different reason for coming here.  It’s great this year that actually I’m able to focus my time on going to talks and learn stuff.
Do you ever give talks yourself?
I haven't done at GDC.  I’ve done at couple on VR stuff on Battlezone in a couple of places in the UK but I’ve never done a GDC talk, maybe one day.
So finally, in light of this conversation if there is academia to be done out there, research to be done out there and there’s general awareness and racial awareness and all these other things and you’ve got a team of diverse people around you, you can make anything in the world, what would you make?
What would I make?  Well, that answer would vary day to day depending on the people I was working with.  I mean, at the moment I’m working on some interesting stuff that I can't talk about at [anon] yet, but I’m also working on a reboot, a redux version of our Rogue Trooper game from ten years ago which we just announced this week, which is a real thrill.  In my own time with some friends we’re working on some other little projects which is just a simple puzzle game, one which I don’t believe has a message behind it either but is hopefully a satisfying little fun thing to play.  There’s always a million ideas floating around but you know what they say about ideas and arseholes, everyone’s got one.  It’s all in the execution and actually doing it and what you discover along the way.  You might start in one place and end up in an entirely different one, but that’s part of the joy of it.  And the journey you take along the way very much depends on the people you’re working with and what you all discover together.  So yeah, in short, sorry, don’t know (laughs).
That’s a lovely place to end it.  Tim, thank you so much for talking to us.