Okay, so we've profiled our character art team and our music team... what's left? The writer? Hooboy. This is gonna be awkward, since (to step outside of the Corporate Royal We for a moment) I'm basically interviewing myself. But I am trying to be better at taking pride in my own work after years and years of worry at looking self-centered. Soooo... why not?
Tell me a bit about yourself -- your background, how you got where you are now.
My name is Stefan Gagne. I'm asexual and physically disabled and live in a generic middle class suburban hell. You might also know me as Twoflower; I started using the moniker back in my teenage years to mask the fact that I was piggybacking off my sister's university Internet account. (This is back in the days of dial-up modems, before commercial ISPs. Yes, I am that old. I am so old.)
I've been writing stories since I was a little kid, going through an obligatory run with anime fanfic in the 90s (mostly Ranma and Slayers), then moving on self-published YA novels (Sailor Nothing, Unreal Estate, City of Angles, Anachronauts, Floating Point). I also had a stint as an author for Neverwinter Nights modules (Penultima, elegia eternum, HeX coda). I've been pretty much perpetually writing one thing or another for damn near 30 years. Did I mention I am old? God, I am staggeringly old.
Currently I'm the lead developer for tiny indies under the label of Fiction Factory Games, notably Arcade Spirits, Arcade Spirits: The New Challengers, and now Penny Larceny. Same idea -- write stories. Just a different medium.
How would you describe your writing style? What do you enjoy most about it?
I wear my influences on my sleeve -- there's Terry Pratchett, who I got the Twoflower nickname from. Douglas Adams, Robert Asprin, Gordon Korman, Bruce Sterling, William Gibson. I gravitate towards comedy but usually thoughtful comedy, which can step back and examine the situation they're in during the quiet moments.
I'm in danger of essentially becoming ChatGPT with my influences as my learning model but I try to fuse it all into my own approach, focused on character-based storytelling and satire to dig into very human situations. I'm happiest when I'm really sinking my teeth into character motivations and trying to understand them with both empathy and criticism.
You're writing the story for Penny Larceny! What was your approach to that?
Back when I wrote Arcade Spirits, I thought: Stefan, you just wrote a soul-crushing trilogy of sci-fi novels that were a parable for G*merG*te. Your brain is now fried tofu and you hate the world. Please for the love of God make your next project something simple and fluffy and pleasant and fun. ...and so, Arcade Spirits was born, a slice-of-life rom-com.
But even trying to deliver something really safe and straightforward, I had some people hounding me over its "leftist propaganda" for daring to suggest that maybe capitalism causes problems actually? and whining about pronouns and diversity so on. So I thought: Screw it, if I'm gonna get haters anyway, I'm back on my satire kick again. A lot of that worked its way into New Challengers but it's really coming to the forefront with Penny Larceny.
What drives me is a desire to examine our world; where it's been, what's happening, where it's going. How unchecked ambition got us into the messes we're in, and how we can get out. Through this distorted comic book gigaverse I want to both and explain and mock the perpetual dumpster fire we've made of our own world. It's hard to say I "enjoy" that as I would very much like my friends and family to not be under constant attack by opportunistic politicians using us as a punching bag, but hey.
What are some of your favorite games which have writing you particularly love?
Too damn many to list so I'll throw a spotlight on two of them. So first of all: Batman: The Telltale Series. Specifically the second season with the Joker, for doing something I had never seen before in a Batman story: it flipped the Harley/Joker dynamic. Now Joker was the sympathetic sycophant making puppy-dog eyes at Harley -- and amazingly enough also telling a surprisingly empathetic story of how Bruce Wayne forms (or doesn't form) an emotional connection to Joker and can change his life path through sympathy and understanding. Blew my freaking mind that they were willing to go there instead of leaning on Crazy Murder Clown What Gets Punched A Lot.
Second, I want to highlight Psychonauts 2. If you're looking for empathetic storytelling this one really, really sings. Nobody is pure evil in this game; everyone can be reached if you're willing to help them sort through their emotional issues, and it does a great job depicting the struggles we all face with kindness and understanding. As much as I tire of the "kindly meta" in games where the safest response is always the best response, Psy2 crafts the entire narrative around it in a way that works.
Where can folks find you online if they want to enjoy more of your creative work?
You can wishlist Penny Larceny! Right here. Right now. Go ahead and do it. It seriously, seriously helps us like you wouldn't believe. Ask your friends to do the same. We are self-published this time around and that means a much smaller megaphone.
More info on all our games -- including links to our Twitter, Discord, Mastodon, and Tumblr so you can follow us anywhere you wanna follow us -- can be found at FictionFactoryGames.com. And if you want to read my self-published YA novels (and my embarrassing old anime fanfic) it's all at StefanGagne.com.