Hello everyone,
Pladidus Santoso here — Writer and Co-Narrative Designer for 1998: The Toll Keeper Story.
This time, I’d like to talk about how GameChanger Studio adapted one of Indonesia’s darkest chapters in history and turned it into the foundation of a fictional story that still remains grounded in reality.
This situation is, of course, vastly different from the development of the previous three My Lovely series entries, all of which were rooted in fantasy. For fantasy stories like those, the narrative is entirely under the control of the creative writers, with little need for heavy consideration. They can channel their creative energy as intensely as possible to build a story they find compelling.
However, things are different with 1998: The Toll Keeper Story. While the story we built is still fictional, what happened in Janapa during that year was clearly inspired by our own understanding and experiences of what happened in our home country — Indonesia. Alongside the sociopolitical changes fought for by students at the time came tragic events involving serious issues such as sexual violence, ethnic-based violence, looting, and murder.
This vastly different context required GameChanger to think carefully and consider many things before crafting the story of Dewi, Heru, and Sinta — characters who live through this period of chaos.
Striving to Be Sensitive
From the beginning, both Riris (Game Director/Narrative Designer) and I shared one key principle: to approach this theme with deep sensitivity.
Sensitivity is built upon understanding — understanding that countless people were directly affected as victims of this tragedy, losing not only property and lives but also fragments of their humanity. Understanding that the pain, grief, and loss they endured until nowadays, cannot be trivialized or portrayed without deep consideration and empathy — especially in an interactive digital medium like a video game.
It became a unique challenge for GameChanger Studio to navigate this harsh reality as elegantly and carefully as possible. On one hand, this suffering needed to be depicted and told — as a dark part of history — as truthfully as we could manage, because it deserves to be acknowledged. On the other hand, it had to be executed gracefully to ensure it would not come across as being trivialized when presented in a game. What you’ll see in the final version of 1998: The Toll Keeper Story is the best possible interpretation we could deliver in adapting this tragedy.
Through the vast number of written and video materials we used as references — to inject a sense of historical accuracy about the moments leading up to the fall of the authoritarian regime — GameChanger also stood by another important understanding: we do not possess certain knowledge about what happened “behind the scenes” (means political negotiation) during the student movements and the shift of power. Therefore, it was rational for us to avoid “touching” areas we couldn’t verify. Otherwise, the story could easily slip into conspiracy territory — something that would be counterproductive to the narrative we wanted to tell. Thanks to this creative decision, most of what you see and read about Dewi’s story is rooted in what happened on the surface — in things we could confirm and understand.
Ultimately, we constantly reminded ourselves that 1998: The Toll Keeper Story is, at its core, a work of fiction — with Indonesia’s dark history serving merely as inspiration. There were multiple discussions about how accurately we wanted to represent historical events, but we ultimately chose the creative freedom to shape our own timeline and events — ones that would best serve Dewi’s story and the “world” behind it.
International Relevance
Indonesia may be the fourth most populous country in the world, but not everyone around the globe knows or understands what Indonesia is. It’s even undeniable that our top tourist destination — Bali — is more widely recognized than Indonesia itself.
Because of that, offering a story centered on the 1998 monetary crisis and the struggles of ordinary people might not immediately appeal to international gamers. The game could lose its emotional relevance for players outside Indonesia.
GameChanger was fully aware of this. Honestly, there wasn’t much we could do to completely address it, because our main priority was to tell the story of Dewi, Heru, and Sinta the way we wanted to. However, that doesn’t mean we didn’t make small efforts to help 1998: The Toll Keeper Story feel more “international.” One small adjustment we made? Instead of focusing on rice — the staple food of Indonesians — our discussions about rising food prices centered on eggs, a more universally relatable item.
We were also motivated by an undeniable fact that lies beyond our control: that in 2025, stories of young people fighting — even risking their lives — to build a cleaner, fairer government remain timeless. These stories keep resurfacing whenever dissatisfaction, corruption, madness for power, and loss of empathy emerge. In this sense, there could be no better timing for 1998: The Toll Keeper Story to tell the story it wants to tell.