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Bold:		Interviewer
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For the sake of the camera, could you tell us your name and what you do in the games industry please?
I am [anon]and I’m an independent developer and I also run a game jam called Train Jam.
What do you think your games would be like if you had no market constraints or market considerations when you’re making them?
Does that include not having to make money?
Yes.
Oh.  I think that my games would be more small vignettes of what I’m feeling and wanting to explain to people how I’m feeling about something and using that as a means of communication.
So how different is that from what you make at the moment?
Currently I mostly focus on contract work, so I’ve been making other peoples’ games for the last year and a half, just because money.  And aside from that it has been tiny little vignette games but none of them have really made any money because that’s not really what the market is.  So that is what my games are right now, other peoples’ games. 
Do you think players have their social views or behaviour changed by playing games in general or by playing your games in particular?
I think that people can have their social views changed by playing games, especially games that are used to show and share personal experiences.  One of the nice things about games is because they’re interactive and you have the agency of the characters you can very easily put yourself in the player’s, the character’s shoes.  So it’s a much more impactful medium to share different experiences that you might not be able to experience in real life, whether it’s going through a certain event or being a different type of person or facing a fear or experiencing a location that you’d never be able to experience before.  I think games, because of the interactive medium part of them, are really good at being able to change and shape social views and just give insights into different experiences.
Do you think the changes that games can trigger in people, do you think they’re typically recognised for any educational or pro-social, or do you think they’re artistic or cultural experiences?  And is that normal for games to be positive or do you think there’s a lifestyle to that?
I think whether it’s educational or positive or negative changes depends on the person and the game.  Some people are more susceptible to having their viewpoints changed, some people are less susceptible to it.  Then of course the varying levels of different types of games can either perpetuate something educational or something new or something bad.  Like a lot of the historic, the last few years or the beginning of games until now, historically have not been kind to women and this, that and the other thing, and that can reinforce that stereotype that it’s okay to treat women like rewards or objects.  Or if I press these right buttons and do the right inputs then I get naked lady.  
But then there’s also games that can perpetuate a lot more educational in treating people with various different levels of humanity and opening eyes to different experiences of – so what it’s like being a person in a war torn country, I never knew this was an experience that somebody had and then I got to play this game where I played a character that was that person.  So it depends on the game and the person I think whether it be positive or educational.
Most games use very fantastical or extreme social settings such as war for example.  In your professional practice have you or your friends created games or mechanics or scenes or whole things that are looking outside of those non-violent themes or non-fantastical themes?
Yeah, I think because especially being in the indie scene and being part of that, there’s a lot more games that are less fantastical, less flashy, less need to be like, oh we’ve gotta have bang, bang, bang, dragons.  So there are a lot more smaller personal games that are just walking through life and experiencing a lifetime of growing up, meeting a partner, growing old, having children, starting a family and dying, and going through that sort of process.  Or something like Papers Please is very much non-fantastical, non-war, but sort of a sad situation of putting yourself into the shoes of somebody who has to balance being corrupt or being kind or following the rules with taking care of their family in this situation.  I kind of lost the pilot of what the question was?
Have you or your friends created mechanic scenes or whole games that explore different themes or non-violent interactions?
Ah yes, yeah.  I know a lot of people who’ve made non-violent interaction games.  I also know a lot of people who’ve made lots of violent interaction games.  But I think especially in the indie scene there’s a good mix of the two.
What do you think inspires the choice, when someone’s starting to make it?  What makes them choose to do a typical violent stereotype of a game or to make something more real world or more personal?
I think it’s a combination of a lot of things for that.  It’s either some people just really like violent things.  I actually really enjoy hyper violent games and movies and stuff like that, I just find the over the topness of hyper violent things to be just sort of fascinating in a way.  So I really enjoy those.  And some people really hate hyper violence and they want to make something where they’re sharing a personal experience and that doesn’t include a war or a dragon or a fight or guns or anything.  Then some stories that people want to tell lend themselves more towards the violence or the fantastical stuff and some of them lend more towards non-violent interactions.  I think it’s a mix of what is the creative thing you want to be making, what is the story you want to be telling, what is the thing that you’re interested in showing to other people and what is the best conduit for all of that together?
Then there’s always the market pressure of when people think of video games it’s a shooty bang thing.  So if you’re trying to make a game that’s going to make a lot of money then some people feel pressured to go that direction versus something that’s more experimental and not as proven in the market financial side of it.  It’s a whole conglomerate I think of different reasons I think coming down on whether or not you would make a violent game or not.
While working on games, do you recall intentionally addressing issues such as gender, minority representation, political, culture, religion or any of these other serious or maybe even you could term it educational topics?
There was a game I made a little while ago when I first entered into the independent games sphere and quite my job of making other peoples’ games and everything, where I was going through a really rough time, I had a personal relationship fall apart, I was moving, everything was bad and I felt bad all the time.  I was in this constant state of trying to get through every day with the amount of energy that I had, which was very, very, very little.  There was one day where I just made a game about that, and it’s just a game where you have to keep pressing the same button over and over and over again in order to make it through a day.  If you ever stop pressing that button it’s over, you’re not okay anymore, and that’s just the end of it.  It was a really simple game but it felt really nice to be able to capture that feeling and put it out there.
I know some people who played it who were just like, ah, I get this feeling, I understand it or I understand what you were feeling now.  That was really neat.  That’s probably one of the most serious topic games I ever made, where it was just me dealing with basically going through depression and not really knowing how to like show that to people.  I think that would be my most person non-violent thing that I made.
Have you ever deliberately been what you might call antisocial in your games themes?  So extreme violence for example, have you ever done that in the games you’ve made?
Making like super violent games?
Super violent or something that might be – you mentioned representation of women as being quite objectifying, have there been things where you’ve contributed towards that side of it?
That’s a good question.  I’m trying to think of all the games I’ve worked on.  I don’t think I ever contributed to the misrepresentation of women or anything, but I’ve made sort of violent games.  Nothing like super, like hyper violent, mostly just like oh these two people are fighting or shooting each other or you’re shooting spiders or anything.  I have made some of that, but nothing super hyper-hyper-violent.  Which some day I want to just make like kill, kill, kill, but we also have enough killing games, I also feel sort of like, ah, you don’t have to add to that.  I’ll just consume that media.
Do you think when discussions are happening around ideas about ethnicity, age or class or sexuality with games, do you think it’s happening within particular groups, for example the designers, or the artists or the producers or programmers?   Do you think it’s driven by diversity within the team or whether it’s very much an individual thing?  What makes people in a studio get involved with this and what drives them?  How does it reflect in their workforce I suppose?
I think from what I’ve seen of how studios operate and stuff, from my experiences, the more diverse the people in your studio the more you’re going to talk about those things. If you have a studio full of a bunch of the same type of person there’s going to be so many blind spots of what is an issue or what isn't an issue or what should be represented or what’s not being represented.  If you’re all the same type of person you’re going to make a game mostly likely nine times out of ten that is also reflective of that same person.  If it’s a bunch of twenty-five year old white guys from America you’re going to make a game about a twenty-five year old white guy from America.  Maybe you won't, maybe you will and maybe you’ll be making a game about a fifty year old woman in South Africa or something but you may not get that correct because you don’t have the experience or anything.  
So the more diverse the workplace the more you have those conversations, the more you have somebody who goes, “Oh, you’re doing that wrong, that’s not how it works in real life, this is how it works in real life.”  Because when you don’t have that diverse thing you don’t know what you don’t know.  So I think the more diverse the workplace the more you have those conversations.  Or the more you have people in your workplace who experience more diverse things outside of their work as well, you can still have a studio of twenty-five year old white guys from America but maybe some of them are really active in feminism or in racism – not active in racism, active in fighting racism and everything.  And they will be able to bring that knowledge back into their studio.  
I think it’s just a matter of having people who are open to other peoples’ experiences, to listen to them, to hear what they’re saying and everything, whether that’s in the studio culture, inherently by having a diverse workforce or in the studio culture by having people who are open to diverse workforces.  I think yeah, it’s just mostly about having people there to share their experiences and show what’s going on.
So it’s really about the developers personal background rather than other forces pushing in going, “Look, you must do this”?
Yeah, because there’s only so much – you can tell somebody until you’re blue in the face about a thing, but until that person experiences that thing or does that thing nine times out of ten they’re not going to really understand it.  It’s the same in everybody, with a game jam you have x amount of time to make a game.  You can tell people, oh, your idea is too big, you have to cut it down, you can tell them that over and over again, and they’re still going to have too big of an idea and they’re still going to do it.  But then when they do it and they realise, oh I had too big of an idea, they learn that lesson.  It’s just a matter of having an experience to open your eyes to a lesson as opposed to somebody just coming in and being like, “Hey, this is how it is.”  
Some people are susceptible to that, but I would say the majority of people that I run into are much more, like they either have to see it or experience it or trust the person who is telling them, not just some higher up coming in and being like, “We need to have more women in our games.”  So it’s sort of an individual thing being susceptible to having that education put on them but also just the human nature of having to actually experience or see something before you can really accurately understand it.
Moving slightly on to academic stuff, research about games.  Are you aware of any research, academic or otherwise, on video games specifically that has influenced your games development?
I’m sure there was but I can't think of any (laughs).  I’m sure there is some sort of academic thing that I’ve internalised but I can't think of any off the top of my head.
Why do you think that is? 
I think probably because academic games is fairly new, at least from what I have experienced.  I went to school for engineering, and we didn’t have a games programme at all at my university and I didn’t really even know I wanted to be in games then so I went for engineering.  I think because I did all of my schooling before any universities I knew have really had games education or academic games research I sort of have always – not that I don’t know games research exists but it’s always been over here and I’ve been over here.  I know a lot of games academic folks who teach at universities and are super smart and when I talk to them about games it’s amazing because they have all this knowledge and all this really analytical viewpoints of everything.  But I don't know, I’ve never gotten into the academic side of games.
So it’s fair to say that you’ve probably not published anything for academic journals?
Yeah, I think that’d be fair to say (laughs).  Unless I’ve really just done something without knowing it, you never know.
Why do you think knowledge sharing in that way hasn’t been part of your work?
I think again it’s just because it’s outside of my realm of how I got into the games industry or how I was educated, so both of those.  I have this bubble of how I got into the games industry and how I taught myself about making games.  And then over here is academic games research.  I’ve read a few books here and there from smart games academic folks, but it’s always just been on this periphery.  I don't know, I really don’t, yeah.
Do you often attend conferences?
I attend a lot of conferences.  I’ve been trying to go to more smaller conferences which I haven't been super good on yet, but that’s always been one of my goals is to – because there’s like GDC and then there’s PAX, which is not really a conference, it’s an expo or whatever.  But I’ve been wanting to go to more conferences, because we have so many now.  There’s conferences on games in terms of sexuality and gender and people of colour and everything nowadays and I want to go to them because I do want to open up more of where my blind spots are of what I don’t know about things and I think going to conferences of games for people who are not me would be really educational for that.  I go to a lot of conferences but they’re a lot more like GDC and the general conferences. 
From what you just said there it sounds like building your knowledge and being exposed to different stuff is why you go, networking, knowledge development, those are the reasons you attend conferences?
Yeah, I would say conferences are fifty percent networking, fifty percent learning new things.  Maybe sixty percent networking, forty percent learning new things, I’m going to be totally honest.  I want it to be more fifty/fifty but it always ends up being a little more sixty/forty.  But I try to go to talks and I try to meet new people.  Networking and expanding your knowledge can go hand in hand a lot of times because if you’re networking in the right groups then you meet new people from new places, learn new things.  I’m all about the meeting new people to get the new perspectives. 
So finally, last question.
Already?  See I’m getting you back on track here.
It’s all good, we’re hitting our times to be honest.  It’s actually returning to that first question of thinking about these ideas about society and research stuff and all the other things that we could think about here.  If you were making something without those market constraints would it still be those vignettes or is there something else you’d like to do more?  Or is that your goal?  If money was no question.
Gosh, if money was no question!  I think if money was no question I would get nothing done.  Like to be quite honest, if you completely remove the constraint of having to make any money I think I’m self motivated enough to work on some stuff but not whatever the thing is that I want to super do – super do!  Whatever.  I think if there was absolutely no market constraints I would probably still stick to little vignette games, but if there was a tiny market constraint I have a few prototypes I would like to do of just an adventure game to sort of like – again, also work in personal experiences with a bunch of things.  I’d want to share personal experiences of like things I feel or how I grew up or whatever.  Either to do it through a small vignette or some sort of whacky adventure game.
Thank you so much, it’s been a pleasure.