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

Hello, [anonymised].
Hello.
Can you hear me?  Can you hear me?
Oh, I can.  It's not a great signal.  Can you hear me?
Yes, loud and clear actually.  I'm disabling the video, so maybe it will get a little better, but I will have to share my screen with you.  So can you see the screen I'm sharing?
Yes, I can.
Okay, great.  So, thank you a lot for agreeing to be interviewed.
That's okay.
I will explain to you how this interview works.  As I said in my initial email, we are interested in your experience with games and what you think about games in general.  We will start from your experiences and then cover a variety of topics, and these slides I'm sharing have some keywords which you can use to guide your thoughts.  You're not required to use them and touch upon all these topics.  You can just use them to help you.  Okay?
Okay.
Okay, great.  Do you have any questions about the interview?
No.  It sounds good.
Okay, great.  I think I'm hearing you with a little bit of delay, so don't worry if I'm (laughs) a little slow in answering you.  Okay?
Okay.  Is that going to be all right with the delay?
Yeah, yeah.  So we can begin the interview by talking about your experience with games.  So, which games do you play, how long do you usually play, etcetera?
Okay.  Are you interested in hearing about how games came into my life other than playing them, because I'm a developer as well?
Yes, I am interested in that.
Or is more about playing?
We will focus on your experience as a player, but yes, I am also interested in how you interact with games in general.
Okay.
So how did you come in contact with games?
Okay.  So when I was younger, I used to play games with my dad, and we only had a Mac when I was a kid, so we didn't have any handheld consoles or home console systems or anything.  So my first experience with games was games like Mist (laughs), which is quite unusual, I think, for a first game.  
So when I was first introduced to them – and my parents were quite interested in games as an artistic medium as well –I was introduced to them as, basically, other worlds that you could experience.  So I was always interested in games that were very sort of story-based or ones where you could just go to this complete other world that somebody has created.
For me, for a long time it was kind of a thing I did alone.  So I didn't have many other friends growing up who played games or were interested in playing games, and definitely my sister was not, so it was quite a solitary thing.  After I got past the age of about ten, I stopped playing games with my dad and just played them on my own.
So I got more interested in games like Black and White, the Lionhead game.
Yeah, I know about it.
Yeah?  So that was one of the ones where that was a real turning point for me.  I used to play that game all the time (laughs).  So it would be like the whole weekend, if I was able to.  It would be most of the time and I think I played it for several years as well.  So that was one where… that's kind of like a God game, so it's very much about kind of experimenting and like a sort of Sandbox most of the time.  So that really hooked me and I do like the kind of creational aspect of those kinds of world-building games.  I still do.  I still look for games like that really.
The games I kind of play now are like Animal Crossing or some—  I've got access to other consoles now (laughs) so I have expanded in that department.  I have a 3DS and I have a Switch and I have access to a PC.  So, a few other games which I would've loved when I was younger, like Rollercoaster Tycoon or Civilisation and stuff, which I didn't have access to, have become more the games I would play now, now that I have access to more consoles as an adult with disposable income (laughs).
Do you play on a mobile too, a smartphone?
I used to.  So, for a while I worked in an Apple store and I was there for the birth of the iPad.  So for a while I was very much aware of what was on the App Store, and I made a few apps, actually.  And then over the past year or so, I've moved away from mobile games and I don't play them so much.  I now prefer to play PC games and bigger games than mobile games.  
So, if I was to play a game on a mobile, it would probably be one that is also available on PC.  So, slightly bigger games, like Kingdom is a good example of a mobile game which wasn't originally on mobile but has been put onto mobile, and that's one of my favourite games.
Yeah, I don't know it.
Oh, it's an independent game.  It's like a sort of Pixelar game where you—  It's kind of a cross between roguelike and a tower defence and you're sort of building a little town, and then every night it gets attacked and you have to defend it.  It's very, very intuitive with very simple mechanics… well, simple controls.  So it was a really good mobile version.
Okay.  Do you still play mostly or exclusively alone?
Not exclusively.  Since I have owned a few other consoles and I've got a lot more friends who play games, I've experienced a few multiplayer games, mostly local multiplayer.  Some of the best experiences I've had have been ones I just did not expect I would enjoy and then I've ended up really enjoying them (laughs).  Like I really enjoyed playing through Borderlands as a local co-op game, and that was a very, very unique experience for me.  I had never played an FPS or anything (laughs) like it.
Okay.  How much time do you play now, usually?
Probably about four or five hours a week, and I'll just kind of do an hour in an evening or a few hours at the weekend.
Okay.  And if I may ask – you may choose not to answer (laughs) – how much do you spend on games?
That has varied throughout my lifetime (laughs).  So, nowadays I think it's probably about… I buy probably one game every couple of months and it's probably in the region of £20 to £40.  It'll just depend on what the game is.  Some games I'm willing to spend up to £60 on, but that will probably be once a year.
Hm-hm, okay.  So moving on to the second section of this interview, I would like to ask you how do you feel games influence you.  I mean, you play games for a lot of time, do you feel they have any influence on you, and which kind of influence?
Yeah, definitely.  I think it's always been something for me where it's an opportunity to get some alone time, so I used to seek it out as that kind of activity.  So I think when everything else is so kind of out of control (laughs), especially when you're a kid and you're at school, I think that was always the control aspect, something that was really appealing.  So, playing games was like a wi—  I used to also play a lot of The Sims, which you just have complete control over everything that's happening.  So that was kind of something I really liked about the games that I used to play, and I still do play games like that (laughs).
So yeah, with games like Harvest Moon or Animal Crossing, it's kind of just having a little space that's yours, and it's very nurturing and it's a space for me where I can go and do that.
Hm-hm.  So like a relaxing pastime?
Yeah.
Okay.  Any other kind of influence?  I'm showing you the keywords if you want to pick some of them.
Collaboration is one that I have experienced a lot more recently.  So, playing a few local co-op games, but also things like Sandbox games with other people.  I'd never really done that before, and then one of the games that I ended up working on in the last couple of years is a sort of modding Sandbox game.  So that's been a really interesting experience and I've really enjoyed that.
Hmm.  One thing that is not amongst the keywords but you talked about is creativity.  You said you like this kind of element in games.  Do you think that games help you become more creative, even outside of the gaming space?
Yeah, I think so.  I think that they're kind of a place where you can safely experiment with ideas you might have.  So it may not directly translate into your real life (laughs) but it's definitely somewhere you can kind of build those connections and experiment with things.  That could be in a social way because often the games I play have other characters that you speak to or that you need to become friends with and build relationships with, and I think that's an area where you can be quite experimental and it can really kind of help people to maybe expand that creativity.
Okay.  Do you think that games can be addictive?
I've definitely experienced that to some degree myself.  So I think that some games definitely are and it's often when they've got a very tight loop of rewarding you for doing something specific and then you can kind of just keep doing it as much as you like and it's just continuously rewarding.  So I think they can be very addictive.
I've definitely had times where I've just played the same game for an entire day, from waking up to going to bed, but I haven't done it so much since I've been working in a job, and I kind of don't let myself do that.  I would also not want to anymore.
Okay.  The last topic I would like to touch on in this area is about immersion, because I get the impression that it is quite important to you when you choose games because you said you like to enter other worlds and – I don't know – immerse yourself (laughs) in something that is different from your real life.  Right?
Yeah.
What are the elements of games, drawing also from your experience as a developer as well as a player, what are the elements in games that you think help you immerse and have this feeling of entering another world?
Hmm, so there's a few elements in games that I think create the immersion that I like.  So it's usually when the atmosphere of the game is pleasant.  So I think, personally, I go for things that are more… like the more time you put into it, the more of a pleasant place you will be in.  So it's kind of like you're inhabiting this world when you're playing the game.  So the more you put into it, the more beautiful it looks and the more kind of happy things are.  
I think that's kind of mirrored in some of the games that we create as well.  So, definitely in some games, like world-building games or games where you're kind of renovating somewhere or helping a community that is fictional, I think there's a lot in those aspects which appeal to me personally.
Hm-hm, yeah.  So you used the word 'nurturing' before, so that's the kinds of things that draw you in, right?
Yeah, definitely.
Okay.  Moving on to the third topic we'd like to explore, do you see a practical application of video games?  And by 'practical', I mean using games not just for entertainment but for other purposes.
Yeah, I have thought about this quite a lot (laughs).  One of the things that has been really interesting in some of the games I've worked on very recently is that they had a focus on being able to mod the game.  So that was something where I had never really done any programming at all and some of the requirements of my job, because I'm more art-based or sort of in the creative area of the game development, we also are encouraged to input or implement our own facets and the things we create.  
So, because of this focus on modding, it was kind of like an introduction to how you can actually change parts of the games and you don't have to be a programmer and you don't have to—  It's kind of like an entry level to that, so it was something where I could see that being very educational.  So it's something where we would really want people to experiment with modding and it's an easy way to try it for the first time.
So I think that games definitely have the capacity to teach sort of a lot of the different disciplines of how games are made, but also lots of things outside of that.  I think they're very useful educational tools because of the way that they're so immersive and they guide you quite easily or you can test yourself using a game.  So I think that there have been a few mobile games which have been very good for learning specific things, like I used to use Duolingo quite a lot, which is the language learning app.
Okay.  I don't know about it, but okay (laughs).
Oh, it's very clever because it's got a lot of gamification to it.  So it has things like you get scores on the small, little tasks that it asks you to do and it breaks it down really, really well and it focuses a lot on the repetition of doing things again and again to get a better score.  But that's also how you memorise the language, so I think that was a really good application of it.
Hm-hm.  Do you think these kinds of games and applications could be used in schools too?
Yes, definitely.  That's kind of what I was touching on with the example I gave of the games that we make, is that I have been into schools with them and shown children of most ages actually, kind of quite young to also university students, that even if they don't have any programming experience or, really, any game development experience at all, that they're able to change something about the game then and there and see that their change has an outcome.  Then they can start to understand how the game works and how the development works.
Hm-hm.  I find it interesting that—
I also think that—  Sorry.
Yeah, go on.  Go on (laughs).
I was going to say that, on the other aspect of it – because that's just about teaching game making, basically – but I think that there is definitely a place for them for teaching the subjects that you would want to be teaching in a school.  So it's definitely something that could improve language lessons and science lessons.  You could make a game about any subject at all, so I think there is definitely room for that.
Hm-hm, okay.  I was saying before that it's interesting that the application you have for games has quite a lot to do with creativity again.  So, creating mods.  Yeah, it's a very creative moment, I guess (laughs).
Yeah, I think that's just been my experience of it really.  I know that other people have learnt other subjects through games and I know that there are definitely some brilliant independent games that kind of tell you an untold story about a time in history.  Those are really, really brilliant because I think, otherwise, some of those stories just get lost.
Okay.  So, moving on, the next thing I would like to ask you is about ethical issues.  So do you see any kind of ethical issues in the use of games or in the messages they convey?
Yeah, I think it's easy for me to focus on the kinds of games that I like (laughs) and ignore some of the others that come out, which I think do get picked up in the press about issues like this.  
So I think there is definitely a focus a lot of the time on similar characters and not very much representation in, mostly, larger triple-A games.  But not always (laughs).  I think some studios are doing really great things with that, but yeah, I think representation is definitely one that, for many years, was just not very thought about.  And for me, it never really put me off the games when I was growing up, that there wasn't much diversity in the stories that were told or in the characters you could play as.  I was drawn to the game for other reasons.  So it was never kind of something that put me off, but I can see why it…
Yeah.  So it was not a…
(Overlapping speech 0:25:02)
…for you.
…target market.
Hm-hm.  Can you name me some examples of games that are better than the average game in representation, because you said there are some independent studios that are—?
Yeah, I think that Overwatch is a really good example.  That has a really diverse cast of characters.  It's also something that we try to do with our games that we make, definitely, but I think it comes quite in line with the people who are here making the games.  We have a very diverse team, so a lot of people just… it just comes naturally to the people who are making the games.
An issue that is widely debated upon is the presence of violence in video games.  All the games you cited to me as games you are playing, I would say are unusually non-violent (laughs).
(Laughs) Yeah, that's true.
When I think about games, the stereotype in war games, either strategy games or FPS, but you play completely different kinds of games and I'm interested in your point of view on violence in video games.
Okay.  I guess to me, when I watch people play games like that, or I play them myself, I just don't see much satisfaction in it.  So it's not that I find it really off-putting, it's mostly that just I don't enjoy it (laughs).  I don't get much out of it at all and I don't feel that it encourages you or desensitises you.  I haven't experienced that myself.  I think if I was—  I'm trying to think because (laughs) there's definitely been a couple of games I've played where I've tried to play some horror games and things like that that aren't really quite up there on the violence scale (laughs) and, yeah, I don't feel like I get much out of it.  But it doesn't make me feel desensitised.  I still find it scary.
I don't know whether there's much correlation there between encouraging that behaviour maybe outside of the game, because that's often talked about, but I think there's definitely a distinction for any player between what's happening in a game and what's happening outside of a game.  I've never felt like the two are confused (laughs), or could be.  It's just not something that I think could happen.
Okay.  And for you personally, violence, I mean, I get the impression it's more indifferent to you.  
Yeah.
You don't care about it one way or the other, so it's just—  Yeah.
It has stopped me playing a couple of games before because – I think an example of that was in BioShock, and BioShock Infinite specifically – because I tried to play that game when it came out and I just wanted to progress the story because the story was very compelling, the environments were lovely.  I wanted to know what was going to happen after I started the game, and then very quickly you're given—  Basically, the entire game play is to just commit these acts of violence, and I just didn't want to.  So it put me off that game a lot, which I felt was such a shame because I heard other people say the same, that it was something they would've loved to play but, when it came to actually playing and the input that you have as a player and the actions you have to take, that it just wasn't what they wanted to do in that situation.  
It was commented at the time that that was quite a lazy design choice because violent games are such a standard that it's what people expect as game play.  But it is quite lazy because there are a whole wealth of other things you can do in a game that is not just shooting a gun or going round assassinating people, or whatever it is that you do.  So it is lazy to me because there's other ways to interact with people (laughs).
Yeah, actually, there are quite really successful games with no violent content.
Hmm, and I just feel sometimes it doesn't need to be there and it definitely doesn't make sense, and it ruins it for me at that point.
Hm-hm.  Another thing I would like to talk about is monetisation because the standard way of selling games is you pay upfront the cost of the game and then you have the game for ever, and more recently there has been an increasing number of games using a subscription model or free-to-play games in which you have micro-transactions inside the game.  What do you think about those?  Have you ever played these kinds of games?
I have.  I was definitely still playing mobile games when that kind of thing became very popular, and I'm not a fan of that, personally.  I think I'm quite happy to pay upfront the full price of what the developers think the game should cost.  And sometimes that's more than I think it should cost, but it depends on the amount of content and how much time I'll be playing it because sometimes I buy a game that costs £25 and I play it for years.
So I think it's a lot fairer to just pay a premium price for a game because then it doesn't get in the way of your experience as well.  I find that they can be very in your face with monetisation and it's just not something that I want to think about whilst I'm playing it.  I want to be immersed.  I don't want to have to think about real world things like money.
Hm-hm.  Oh, so that's interesting.  You think it's something that breaks immersion.  Okay, that's—
Yeah, it does for me.  And I think I've played a couple of games where I've actually wanted to buy more content, but that's probably in games like The Sims.  So, in the third one and the second one, I think, you could buy additional items, additional stuff, basically (laughs).  It was kind of more like DLC at that point because it was something you did outside of playing the game.  You kind of just went to the storeroom and got more content.
So I prefer DLC.  I'm not opposed to that at all.  I think DLC is great because, actually, if I'm enjoying a game, I'm happy to pay more to have more of it.
Yeah, I find it interesting what you said about immersion.  I personally remember some experiences with this kind of immersion breaking.  I remember DLCs in Dragon Age.  I don't know if you know that game.
Hm-hm, yeah.
Quite a bit in your face, you just had these side quests in the game and you accepted them and then you had to pay (laughs) or you couldn't go on.  Yeah, I can see why you say it's (laughs) immersion breaking.
Yeah, and it makes you feel like the game's not on your side.  It's very sort of money hungry to me.  But I've paid for the game, so (laughs) what do you want?
(Laughs) 
Yeah.  And then if it's kind of an update or something, or a DLC where it's advertised separately and I can search for it myself and find it, then that's okay because it's in my own time when I'm looking for that kind of thing.  But I think it's not very fair to bring it up in the game and say, "Would you like more of this?  Pay for it."  (Laughs) 
Okay.  Moving on towards the end of the interview, this is probably the most abstract and difficult question but (laughs) how do you see that games influence society in your experience, in your opinion?
Hmm.  (Pause)
If you think they do.
Yes, I think they do.  I feel like there's still a sort of division between people who play games regularly and it's a part of their life, and then people who just don't come into contact with games at all.  There's definitely a lot of people who I think would enjoy a lot of the games that are out that they just don't know exist.  That's always been of interest to me actually and has kind of been one of the things why I've wanted to make games as well, is because I think there's a lot more to games generally as a medium that could bring a lot to people and they just don't know that.
So I think they do affect society and it's sort of like the people who do play games are in on this kind of (laughs)… like this secret, in a way, because there's a lot of people I know who play.  Like we were just saying, the kinds of games that I play aren't really typical per se, but there's a lot of people who I know – and I have big sort of community around me of people who do play those kinds of games, who do enjoy them – and I can see that these people get a lot out of it.  So I don't quite know how it would affect them, but it's become something that is socially kind of… a big part of the social dynamic, I suppose.  I have groups of friends who will play games together, and that's how they communicate, that's how they socialise with each other.  
So I think it has affected people in that.  I mean, for a lot of people who aren't near their friends, it is how they socialise with them and it's how they keep in touch with people.  It could be that you are only playing this certain game with this particular friend and they don't live in your city any more and you barely talk to them in any other way.  It's mostly just that you play that game together and that's how you keep in touch.
So I think it's just another avenue for communicating with people that didn't used to exist, and for making friends as well.  I know a lot of people who have made friends who they've met online first in a game, and then later they've been friends in real life and some of them have even got married.
(Laughs)  Okay.  Before, you said that you see people who get a lot from games, or you kind of mentioned some people who will get a lot of games they are not playing.  Right?
Hm-hm.
And thinking about what you mean from 'getting a lot' because I get the impression you're not talking just about the entertainment value of video games.
Yeah, I think so.  So kind of what I meant by that is what I get out of it is this kind of feeling of alone time, like I said really early on.  So yeah, that is kind of how I feel about it when I go to sit and play a game.  I'll pick something that is quite solitary and that's my sort of personal little space that I can nurture in that kind of game.  
So I think, for me, that's how I get that feeling in my life and I think that's something other people wouldn't expect to get from a game, and so wouldn't look for it there.  But it can be very sort of calming and relaxing, and that's beneficial.
I see.  And also at the beginning of the interview you were talking about games as an artistic medium.
Yeah.
Well, what do you mean by it?  Do you think games can be art?  Yeah (laughs).
(Laughs)  Yeah, it's a difficult sort of line that gets crossed between whether something is just a piece of art or whether it is a game because there are a lot of things which are sort of lovely interactive experiences that are very hard to define what kind of game they are, other than just kind of people have started calling, like, a walking simulator (laughs) and things where you just experience something that someone's put together.  And I think those are very much like pieces of art that you could put in a gallery, I guess, that someone could go and experience and it lasts an hour or two, which is akin to kind of similar experiences in other mediums.
So I think, in that way they're becoming more like watching a film or visiting an exhibition.  But I do think as well that, just inherently, the way that it combines a digital medium and sound and lots of creative input, especially with the story as well, that it is kind of a development in art, just the fact that it's these things combined in a new way.  So it's kind of like a new artistic medium that has yet to be fully experimented and people are just trying things all the time.
Can you name me some games that you believe are artistic, or have artistic value, I mean?
Yeah.  So there's quite a few recently, and thinking back to kind of a few years ago as well.  So, something like Journey or Flower, or something like Gone Home, or there's a newer game called What Remains of Edith Finch.
I don't know this one.
That one is a really good one to look at because it really builds on what kind of thing Gone Home did, but it's a little bit more interactive, it's a bit more puzzley.
Hm-hm, yeah, I—
So those are really nice.
Hm-hm, okay.  Another thing I will actually ask you, and it is related to this topic, given that you are also a developer, is how do you see the future of video games?  How do you see their evolution over time?
Hmm, it's difficult to say how it will go from here (laughs) because it's changed so much in the last few years with—  I think one of the biggest things was mobile games and the kind of birth of the App Store because it let people self-publish very easily again, like used to be the case but then wasn't for a long time because of big publishers.  So that really opened up the general public's eyes, I think, about who could make a game and the fact that you could make one with your home computer and that kind of thing.
So it's very apparent nowadays how it's kind of accessible, but it takes a lot of dedication, and obviously funding and things like that.  So it's definitely changed things in the last few years, that people just even know that that's a possibility.  And with technology catching up, it's just been an explosion of people making games on their own, independently.
I'm not sure how that will continue because I think there's an over-saturation of games generally in a lot of the marketplaces.  So one of the reasons why I stopped playing mobile games or really kind of keeping an eye on what was being released was just because there was just so much and there isn't really a way to—  I mean, some really great games just get completely ignored because… there's nothing wrong with them, but they just don't get seen.
So it's definitely not very sustainable (laughs) the way that there are so many games right now coming out all the time and I think the marketplaces generally find it very difficult to work out how to curate it or to advertise what there is and really kind of find some of the games that they want to put a spotlight on.  Also, I think for developers, everybody struggles with trying to get seen when you're just starting out.
Hmm.  So you think it's also an advertising problem?
Well, I think it's a visibility problem.  So it's kind of people who are developing games and putting them on stores, like the App Store, wouldn't know how to make their game more visible because you launch it and it's just in a store with a load of other games and it's not given any kind of priority.  It used to be that, unless Apple picks it, but it's a bit different to that now.  And I think the same with stores like Steam, they just get so many, so many games coming through.
Yeah (laughs).
So it's really difficult as a consumer at that point to be able to look through them effectively.
Another thing I would like to explore a little bit more is you said that the explosion of mobile games took the games to a wider audience.  Right?
Hm-hm, definitely.
But sometimes I get the feeling, also from other interviews I've conducted, that mobile games are seen as a little separate from other kinds of games.  For example, when I, at the beginning of the interview, ask always to people, "What platforms do you play on?", they don't ever answer 'mobile games' unless I specifically ask for it (laughs).
Yeah, that's interesting (laughs).
Yeah.  It's like they consider it, in a way, a different beast (laughs).
Yeah, I think it is like that because I think people use their mobiles in such a different way to you would use a PC or a console for playing games because it also serves these other functions and you just kind of have it on you.  It's only when you're stuck in a situation of not having anything else that you kind of game on it, in my experience, and I think a lot of people fall into that category.  
There are definitely people who don't and they'll play a game on their mobile by choice when they're at home, even, but once you're not on the bus any more (laughs), then you have so many other more sort of… well, I guess kind of immersive, but just you've got a bigger screen, you've got more power, you've just got other ways to play games that are more fitting to your environment.
So it's kind of just seen as something to do when you're stuck with nothing else.  But I think that is a shame because, I mean, handheld games consoles can deliver very good gaming experiences that can last hours and hours and you can sit playing a game on a small screen in a similar way to you would play a mobile game.  But there's something about how mobile games have kind of… well, I would say steered themselves into that kind of category because of just what's available on the store and them having lower and lower price points and things like not paying anything upfront but then paying later as monetisation.  That kind of thing, I think, cheapens the whole market and you can then not launch a game of substance for a premium price because the audience there just isn't interested.
Yeah, that's interesting.  I do wonder if it's a matter of how these games are monetised and a matter of the type of games, or if it's a matter of the type of audience because maybe these are people who would not play – how can I say – big games anyway.  So I actually don't know (laughs) what generates this kind of dynamic.
Yeah, it's odd because it kind of all comes about together.  So it's sort of self-perpetuating, I think, that the more people want those short games that are cheap, the more people make them, and then that becomes what the market is.  So it's very difficult to change, I think, once it is set, and it feels very set right now.
So, moving to the last part of the interview, I would like to ask you whether you have any advice to give to different kinds of people who interact with games to make the situation better, or what opportunities do you see in games?
Yeah, okay.  So out of these suggestions, I think 'parents' is a really key one because there is a lot of stigma, obviously, around what games are, and I don't think that embraces what they can be and the kinds of things that people are apparently making that are educational experiences or really kind of… not so much they have to be educational, but enlightening experiences that are being developed and are available for you to play now and change your views, potentially, on something, or they could just show you someone else's perspective and how that is educational in itself.
So parents is an area where I think there is just a generational gap, possibly, with what people still think games are.  It could be embraced better as what they might be or they could be, especially in the future if people then show their children and they might go and make games that are more what games could be instead of what they are right now.
I'm a little interested because you said you started playing with your father.  Right?
Yeah.
Do you think that's unusual?
Do I think it's unusual?
Yeah.  I mean, I would think you didn't experience this kind of disconnect, generational disconnect.  Yeah?
Oh yes.  Yeah, not at all really.  I found that to be quite unusual actually.  I've heard a lot of people who work in games say that their parents don't even try to work out what they do for a job.
(Laughs) 
Or they didn't encourage them at all and that they just don't even talk to them about it (laughs).  I've even heard a lot of people say that their parents discouraged them because they thought that it would be a waste of time, or that it was silly.  So I was very lucky.  I count myself really lucky that my parents were very encouraging from a young age.  But that's because they saw it as this new artistic medium, honestly, so they were just very keen on what could be done with that.
I know from my dad's case in particular, he would've loved that kind of opportunity going into studying and choosing a career, to have had the technology that we have now and be able to do amazing things and create art, basically, with that kind of technology and those kinds of courses and things that are available now.
Okay.  Any advice you would give to other developers?
It's difficult because it's obviously a very risky—  It's a business, so it's very risky for developers to take chances on things like very innovative game playing, or I suppose as well, sometimes it's seen as a big risk to do kind of unusual stories or characters that you might not expect.  But I think there's definitely places where you can take risks that aren't very risky (laughs), if that makes sense.  So there's places where you can just think, okay, well does it have to be like that?  Could it be different?  And just make some changes to what you might automatically think of doing.  So, just question what you're doing, I suppose is the advice.
Yeah.  Are you thinking of your BioShock experience and how—?
Yeah.  Basically, yeah, because I know that there's a lot of pressure on big teams with really, really high budgets that they kind of play it safe with things like game play and the characters.  They're taking risks in some areas, which is how you come up with the [version of infinite thing 0:57:05] because it's very different in terms of story, but it's the same in terms of game play.  So it doesn't connect with those people who then [0:57:17] but it's very difficult to change that or to change a big company that's got a lot of stake in what they're putting out because they can't take a risk like that.  So it is something that independent developers are being a lot more experimental with.
Hm-hm, of course.
But I think those bigger companies could make some of those decisions without them being risky.
Hm-hm.  So is there any other kind of observation that came into your mind and you didn't know when to say it?
(Laughs)  I didn't know when to say?  Okay.  Hmm, can't think of anything that I thought of.
Okay.  So I guess this is the end of the interview then.
Okay (laughs).
Thank you a lot for your time.
Well, I hope it was useful.
Yes, I think it was.  If you're interested, I will send you the results of our analysis of the interviews, as soon as we have them.
Oh yeah, definitely.  That'd be great.
So I will keep your contact and I will send it to you.  Of course, if you have any other questions, just ask.
Okay.
Thank you a lot.
Oh, thank you.  Have a good day.
You too.  Goodbye.
Bye.