We did this neat interview with WIRED a while back, but they only had the editorial space to publish a fraction of it. So we thought it might be a good idea to use this space to publish it in its entirety. Because it's a pretty good interview, all things considered. It would be a shame to waste all these delicious answers.
We hope you like it and we hope you have a great weekend! On that order.
Cheers,
- a
What is the most difficult thing about the "hand-made" process you chose for The Dream Machine? And why is it still worth it?
Anders: I haven’t actually built anything in the game, so my perspective is probably different from Erik’s. For me, the hardest part is the amount of planning that goes into making these chapters. Building things by hand is obviously a very linear medium. You have to plan things out ahead. If you change your mind halfway through, you can’t just revert to an older copy of the file. Major changes often means starting over from scratch. So you have to break down the individual scenes and have clear ideas at the start of the process. What type of environments do we need? What moods should they evoke? What are the puzzles? What part of the story will be told? Why items should populate them?
Erik: The handmade process in itself is not the biggest hurdle. Working for many years, keeping focus and energy up is more of an issue. Motivation. Creating something as big and crazy as The Dream Machine has really been worth it, for me at least. It’s the first time I have pushed my limits, really exploring to see what’s on the other side. You’ll never learn anything good if you don't take any risks.
Anders: I second that. It has been totally worth it. It’s been the most difficult thing I’ve ever attempted so far. But also the most rewarding. We’ve poured so much time and effort and love into this thing – it truly is an insane effort. I’m confident that will shine through to the player in the end.
Can you describe what happens when the very tactile materials – clay and cardboard – hit the digital realm? In other words: How do these two worlds enhance each other?
Erik: Good question.
Anders: A digital pipeline lets you lock down your assets later on. It’s easier to backtrack and make adjustments late in the process. If you do everything by hand, and then discover you’ve made a mistake, you might be forced to start over entirely. Or at least make creative use of what you’ve got. Surprisingly enough, we found it was often better to change the design to fit the build, rather than rebuilding to fit the design. It was a way for us to allow some whimsy into the design process. If you pre-plan everything down to the finest details, it will eventually feel like you’re just mindlessly executing on someone else's ideas. So we tried to stay open to accidental design opportunities whenever we could.
Quite often Erik would build things that looked far more interesting than my crude sketches called for. And as a player, if something looks interesting, I get disappointed if it doesn’t have some significance attached to it. So I found myself going back, tweaking some objects interactions as I went along. Sometimes just a little. Sometimes a lot. I have to say, some of these objects really took on a life of their own and started demanding all kinds of added importance. For example, the teddy bear late in Chapter 4. He was originally just supposed to sit in the background, as a forlorn toy. Nothing else. But once I saw Erik’s build, I wanted to see him up close, I wanted to see him blink, I started getting ideas for what he might say, what he might sound like. And before I knew it, he had his own little scene in the game. If Erik had built something less interesting looking, that scene probably wouldn’t be in the game at all. And now it’s my favourite thing in Chapter 4. I love being able to let the game itself dictate what it wants to be in this way.
Erik: You know, all that matters is matter. Our physical bodies are made up of stardust. To build stuff by hand, putting it out there for another person to experience, that’s almost a religious experience for me. It’s a way of handling the great questions about the meaning of life and death and how everything is connected. When I dig my hands into dirt and clay, creating the worlds in The Dream Machine, I think of it as my way of creating a ghost in the machine, so to speak. Taking something from the idea world into the real one. It’s some kind of animism in this digital age.