full interview_ben esposito_6.mp4
Ben Esposito [00:00:00] I'm Ben Esposito and I'm an independent game designer.
Speaker 2 [00:00:04] What does a game designer do?
Ben Esposito [00:00:07] Game designer designs the experience of playing a video game. So they... They come up with the challenges that you need to overcome and the esthetic experience that you're supposed to have when you play a computer game or a video game. So a game designer really has to think about the kind of both the really, really high level and the very low level details of like, what is it that you really doing from moment to moment? So those are like verbs for like, you know, you jump or you know they're things that are much bigger than that. Like. Is frustration an important part of the experience. That's what they have to manage as well. So the scale kind of varies dramatically depending on what aspect of the project you're working on.
Speaker 2 [00:00:57] That's fantastic. That's a good length. Are we good? Yeah. You ticked off some things the other day when we were on Zoom about what you have to know about in order to be a game designer. I think you said, I have to about fonts. So just give us an idea of the kinds of things, especially independent of what kind of things you have be on top.
Ben Esposito [00:01:19] As an independent game designer, you have to have an awareness of every field involved. So for example, yeah, I have to learn about fonts because the types of characters that get included in my games, we have 12 languages that we ship these games with. So I need to know about, you know, in German we have this special set of characters. Out but beyond that like having an awareness of almost every medium can really help with making games. Like there's times when I have to direct the music. There's times where I have to come up with an establishing shot. And there's also film language when we're trying to tell a story, writing. There's everything you can imagine. And I think you can kind of tell the character and the interests of the creative director of a video game. By what they choose to really focus on. So you can tell if an artist is leading the project because that's the value that comes out. They really are a visual artist. But you can also tell a designer because they might not care so much about how it looks and the grit and intensity of the experience or the level of complexity might be a lot more important to them. So you really have to pick what parts of the game that you really want to invest your time and energy in. I love music. I love graphic design and I think that stuff just kind of comes out naturally in the game. You can see it in my work.
Speaker 2 [00:02:54] So when we look at your games, there's music, there is graphics, there are game mechanics, there is play. So do you have to think about that all at once? Is it linear?
Ben Esposito [00:03:04] The process of making the game is anything but linear, because the level of complexity is so high that game designers famously can't predict how long it's gonna take to make a game, because the problems you have to solve are problems you couldn't have conceived of at the very beginning. And so I know how long a game might take because I'm just guessing, right? Most of the time, in my head, I can only imagine the little bits that are important to me now. But the problems that I end up having to solve just cascade and cascade. So can you give me the question again?
Speaker 2 [00:03:41] Yeah, well, you also mentioned you quoted somebody else about, like, confetti. Oh, yeah. Okay, so it's just, do you think about it all at once, does it come out of your head at once or is it something other than that?
Ben Esposito [00:03:56] Yeah, the process is not linear. So to, let's see, hold on. I should, I should quote that again.
Speaker 2 [00:04:03] It was great. Do you remember? Yeah. I forget who he is. I mean, it was Tim. Yeah, Tim Schafer. Okay. Is he a game designer? Yeah, he's a game design. Is he legendary? He is legendary. Okay, so you can say the legendary game designer. You can do that. Yeah. Yeah.
Ben Esposito [00:04:21] So yeah, the process is not linear for me.
Speaker 2 [00:04:23] The process of game design, putting in game design.
Ben Esposito [00:04:30] The process of putting together a video game is not linear at all. So there's a quote from Tim Schafer, who's a famous game designer who inspired me a lot. And his, I'm paraphrasing, but his quote is essentially that when you make a game, you throw all sorts of ingredients up in the air, kind of like confetti. And as they fall down, you're choosing which piece to move here and which piece move there. And as it gets closer and closer to the ground, it starts to form a picture until boom, it's done and you can't touch it again. And that's kind of a good way to describe the chaos and complexity of a game, because if you throw everything into the air and you can't guarantee you're gonna know what's gonna happen.
Speaker 2 [00:05:10] So are games, video games, are they an art form?
Ben Esposito [00:05:15] Are games an art form? Well, let me start over. I don't see how games aren't an art form, but I do often ask people who question if games are an artform. I ask them, why would you want games to be art? Because I don't know if people appreciate art. People appreciate things that are fun and entertaining. And so I don't look at my work, you know, in terms of like, is it like high art or low art? I kind of just look at it as like, well, how could it not be art. I'm putting You know, this is like a super set of all sorts of artistic forms put together. So yeah, I can't it's, it's gotta be art, right?
Speaker 2 [00:06:00] Yeah, well, we think so, but it's just, you know, if you think about the continuity of art, like over the last 200 years, you know, and think about cinema, so I came up, you know, movies, and there was a whole question about our movies aren't, you know, right, okay, and this seems to be like a 21st century analog to that, that these games are in many ways the next, the next version to be fought over. Right
Ben Esposito [00:06:28] Yeah, I know.
Speaker 2 [00:06:29] Do you think people have trouble thinking of it as an art form because it's so, it tends to be commercial?
Ben Esposito [00:06:36] I think people have trouble seeing games as an art form because they achieved such a great amount of commercial success being a children's toy. And I think that kind of made it more challenging to rethink and reimagine what they could really do. So I feel like comics maybe had the same problem where they were really like, they were meant to be funny, they were for kids. And so you think of comics now and. That's only just starting to change with superheroes becoming mainstream cinema figures. So yeah, I think we got in trouble because we made too much money being a kid's toy, and now we're trying to show that we can do a lot more than that.
Speaker 2 [00:07:19] But when you look at your work, I mean, like an artist, I assume you're being super creative and whatever you produce, you're expecting it to have some kind of value beyond somebody just playing it. I'm asking it, maybe, maybe not.
Ben Esposito [00:07:36] Um, yeah, I don't really see my work as like, oh, it's just an opiate, you know, you're just gonna feel good when you play it. Although I do generally want you to feel really good when you're playing it. You know, when I think about what I'm making and you know when I about my game as a piece of art, you know I'm thinking about including a lot of different levels that you can appreciate it on with the understanding that like, yeah, it is a video game so you know maybe it looks like it's for kids. But if you were to revisit it maybe when you were older, you know, you can see that there was a lot more, you know depth to the, you know a lot of more dimensions to the experience. And so like that's why I will always figure out why I'm doing this. I'll always figure what is this about, but I might not tell you necessarily because as long as I know that there is a meaning in this to me, like you'll be able to pull it out, but I don't go around telling people what it is.
Speaker 2 [00:08:34] Other art, you know, we sort of understand the artist's relationship to the viewer or the person who's experiencing it, you're a painter, you paint a canvas, it's going to go on a wall, this house or museum, right, and people are going to come look at it. Movies, you now, the filmmaker used to be, I'm going to be showing him, there's going to 500,000 people watching my movie, and I'm working for that. That's my art. Game design is a little bit different in terms of relationship to the, I don't want to say the consumer, but the person who experiences it, who's playing it.
Ben Esposito [00:09:10] Mm-hmm. Yeah, games are, games feel a little bit different than other forms of art because we're rigorously testing them with players. And so, you know, it feels a little bit like we're engineering when, or we're doing architecture when we're designing these things because I'm really concerned about having this kind of like high-minded concept come through, but I'm also concerned about like, are you getting lost when you walk into this room? And so the level of functionality that we need to achieve makes it so that we're really, really aware of what people are reacting to on a moment-to-moment basis. So I care a lot about the shape of every room because I know that if you just put a sign that says bathroom this way, it doesn't mean people are gonna read it.
Speaker 3 [00:10:03] Just need to see if I can knock this mic down just a little bit over here.
Ben Esposito [00:10:09] Yeah, feel free to pull the shade.
Speaker 3 [00:10:11] Yeah, I just want to get a little bit off of this. Yeah, that's what I need. Just a little.
Speaker 2 [00:10:19] This is great. This is fantastic. And you just said something that I never thought about, which I would like to ask you again. Sure. Well, you said it's a little bit like being an architect. I never though about it in that way, about there is this functionality. It isn't just about like, oh, I like the blue. So just when Andy's ready, I want to have you tell us about that again. We're still rolling. Do you need a question, do you need to prompt? Yeah, just give me it again. OK, so I want you to say to me that it's a little bit like Beacon Architects.
Ben Esposito [00:11:00] I'll catch you up.
Speaker 2 [00:11:01] Yeah, video games are not like every other art where there's kind of a passive viewer looking at it, okay? There's some participatory thing which puts burdens on you as a creator.
Ben Esposito [00:11:14] Games are different because they have to be functional. And so, yeah, when I'm designing a game, I feel like, yes, on one hand, I am an artist. On the other hand, I am a engineer or an architect. So like, when you build a space in 3D, then the space needs to be functioning. And so something that you learn making 3D games in first person where you can control the camera is that people don't look up. And so, despite your best efforts, if you put a really cool set piece up in the sky, no one's ever gonna look at it. So yeah, you have to really understand the way people's gaze travels across the screen and their effective area of vision. And also just understand the fundamentals of architecture because the way light travels through space, that can dictate, do people want to go to the left or the right, et cetera, et cetera. And so. When I'm designing games, I'm always thinking about how to subtly nudge players in the right direction so that they feel like they kind of chose the right direction on their own. People don't usually choose the right direction unless you rigorously design the space such that it's very unlikely for them not to do that. So there's a lot of video games, like, you know, famously the Uncharted series, they super rigorously play test all of their levels. So they have like data and heat maps of like anytime someone made an unsuccessful jump. They like have a data point and they say, okay, we'll turn the light down over there We don't want people going over there or like reduce the level of detail over here So it does get really really fine-grained because yeah Like anytime someone attempts something that you know, they were never going to be successful at I'm trying to minimize that Because I'm kind of trying to send them down that like, you know perfect path But still make it feel like they had the freedom to do whatever they wanted to do
Speaker 2 [00:13:10] Are your players collaborating with you, or is that not really, is that sort of a, because I know there's a lot of discussion about what makes games a different kind of art. Oh well, you have to collaborate with the player, the player is taking a role in it, but I'm not sure that's the answer. I'm sure you have some thoughts about that.
Ben Esposito [00:13:33] Yeah, I feel like I'm not so much collaborating with the player. So I don't think I'm collaborating with the players so much as acting as their parent. So I see the players as like my children. I'm sitting there designing this experience for them, trying to put up the bumpers so that they don't have a bad time. And within that kind of limited area of freedom, they can learn and grow and they can have an enjoyable experience without me literally kind of like... Putting my hand on their shoulders. So yeah, I don't think, I mean, certain types of games are really collaborative and they're really open-ended and they are called sandbox games because you put them in the sandbox and see what they do. But I think there are different levels to collaboration when it comes to how much players really bend and break the rules in games. So like when I design a game, I'm designing it mostly for people to experience in a very simple, somewhat superficial way where they're going down the path that was intended for them. But, you know, my last game, Neon White, was designed for facilitating the experience of going down a critical path, but then for other people to break the game in ways that I never intended. So, you now, we designed Neon white specifically to tell you, we want you to go fast, and when you do that, people find ways of going fast that you never imagined. And so yeah, I feel like the level of freedom players have kind of comes from them being more experienced and being more willing to kind of like, not consider the facade of what the game says it's doing, but instead look at what the games is actually doing. So they're looking at the code, they're trying to figure out like, okay, you know, is an enemy really an enemy in this game? Or is an enemies a resource for me to exploit to go faster? So like, once you start thinking about games differently, you'll notice that, you know, when you walk into a level, you actually don't need to kill all the enemies in a video game. In fact, you can kind of walk past them. And, you might find like a time limit actually isn't really much of a time of it. It's just meant to kind of like get you to move along. So there's players who are more engaged in, you know activities that we call them speed runners who experience games on a totally different level. And, I tried to make a game to cater to them. And they went way beyond my expectations. So, I think there's no real control you have over the way people truly interact with the game.
Speaker 2 [00:16:10] So how do you feel about, you know, I always think about, we don't go to a museum and take a pot of paint and paint up a copy. But that's the opposite in gaming games. People absolutely try to break it, right?
Ben Esposito [00:16:23] Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 2 [00:16:24] And is that Is that part of is that you take pleasure in that is that like all the bastards? I wish they wouldn't do that Do you know what what's the you know? What what you're feeling as an as a creator as a designer, you know, there's there's just like in film there's control freak directors Lucy-goosey you're talking about the speedrunners and they say no they went way beyond what I thought right is that like good yes that's what you wanted that or it's like those fuckers I have to do better next time you know
Ben Esposito [00:16:58] Um, yeah, I feel like I feel like when people know your game so intimately that they start to break it, especially people who are trying to play it faster and faster. I feel a level of like understanding, you know, because they're able to see the game for what it really is. They see the set of rules that I created, not just the fictional conceit of the game. And so in a way, I love when people try to break it because they see what I did. They saw the choices that I made. And so I really do feel seen in those circumstances. And that makes me really happy. But generally speaking, I'm kind of a control freak when it comes to the player's experience. So I like when people bend and break things. But I know a lot of people aren't really that willing to experiment. So a lot my games contain moments. Make you feel like you're breaking the boundaries when really you're kind of like just on the right track. So, you know, it's all about creating that feeling of like, am I really transgressing the boundaries of this game or am I supposed to do that? I'm not sure. So I really like exploring that area.
Speaker 2 [00:18:08] It's like being a novelist, you have to understand the psychology, along with all the technical stuff, right?
Ben Esposito [00:18:14] Yeah, it is, designing a game is all about psychology and we are often not that scientific about it because we can see people interact with the game. And if you do that enough, you start to get a mental model of how people approach different situations. And a lot of times when you have a design problem, the solution can be really unintuitive. Like a lot of times what you need to do is really identify what's actually wrong instead of where the friction was. So you know, I have to sometimes make a decision to like, you know fix an incentive on this side of the game. I have make you want to do this more and all of a sudden you know people stop doing a behavior I don't want on the other side.
Speaker 2 [00:18:59] When you come up with a new game, when you're thinking about a new game, what's the creator's spark for you? Is it, is it, I want this to be really interesting. Gameplay, oh, I have a great idea for a story. I like the look of it. What, what does it change? It may not be the same thing every time.
Ben Esposito [00:19:20] This is a good question.
Speaker 2 [00:19:29] That's why you're here.
Ben Esposito [00:19:35] When I'm thinking about making a new game, I'm usually inspired by some kind of odd exception that I saw in a different game. So I really like playing lower budget and outsider games because people's assumptions about how a game is supposed to work might be different in those circumstances. So when I'm inspired, it's usually the way someone broke. A video game or like a rule that someone implemented in a weird way. That's what's interesting to me because when I think about picking up a new game, I want a game that feels fresh and that asks me to think about something in a way I hadn't thought about before. So you know, in Neon White, my last game, that game was all about asking you to go faster. And so I put all these resources on the map. And I said, you could do whatever you want, but you have to like hit these three points and then go to the end. And so, yeah, like facilitating people breaking the game was a huge part of the experience. And, you know, I was inspired a lot by watching speed runners play video games. You know, the way they interact with them is, it doesn't feel human because they can see, they can kind of see through the experience in the code. Let me see if there's another angle on it.
Speaker 2 [00:21:03] I think you talked about how one of the things you said was that you don't, I think I'm putting words in your mouth here, but you don't t want to repeat yourself.
Ben Esposito [00:21:10] That's very true, yeah. I definitely said that. Yeah, I definitely said that.
Speaker 2 [00:21:13] Yeah, so talk about that. That's a huge creative, I mean, we feel that way. We feel that weird all the time. Yeah. I already did that. People say, oh, you should do that. We did a show about mothers, and they say, well, you do about fathers. It's like, eh! Wow, I can.
Ben Esposito [00:21:27] Wow, I can really relate to that. Holy crap.
Speaker 2 [00:21:31] So, yeah, so the idea, and then we have colleagues who like to do the same thing and they make history over and over again, which is cool. And it's like the hedgehog and the fox, you know about that, or whatever it is? It's a parable, the hedgehawk knows about one thing. Oh, right, right. The fox knows about that. So, but as you said, what you said early on, which I love, you said you have no idea how long it's going to take to actually finish a game once you start. So you really have to assume you'd be in love with your idea, you know. That's true. The idea that you wanted to do different, that you don't want to repeat yourself and. Yeah. Yeah, and. Like I'm not going to say like speed runners, that's like somebody saying, oh, I'm writing this piece of music so people can play it like it's kind of speed, right? It kind of seems like, why would you want to do that? But on the other hand, that is a way of playing games. It's very much a part of the art. Yeah, it's a way enjoying them. So it's kinda like, OK, I want to show you, you know, how to do that, but maybe you didn't do that with previous games, so maybe you're definitely more...
Ben Esposito [00:22:33] And I absolutely didn't do that. Making games takes such a long time that I tend to be a different person by the time I've finished one. And so I tend not make anything like the last game I made. I don't really do sequels. And that's because my interests usually change pretty radically. So my first game took me six years to make. And so, you know, my second game was a response to everything that I, you, all my values that I held, now I'm gonna do the opposite. And you know I think it could be more lucrative to like stay in one lane, but I find like, you know, I have to pick a project that's gonna keep me interested for so long that, you know it's more important for me to be really passionate about the subject than it is for me to like. You know, deliver on people's expectations about, oh, there should be a sequel to Donut County or whatever.
Speaker 2 [00:23:31] Do you remember the first game that made you feel, not that it was just fun, but that you really felt like this is an art?
Ben Esposito [00:23:42] I'm probably gonna say a similar game to a lot of people, but when I played Shadow of the Colossus, I felt like this was bigger than anything I've played before. This feels, this has given me a feeling like art. I wouldn't say I was like, oh, this is art all of a sudden. But it was a game, Shadow of Colossos was a game that. Gave me an experience of awe. And like I'm talking like traditional awe, like being overwhelmed and scared at the scale and the scope of nature and your size compared to nature. And that is something that I had only ever felt when I looked at like a room scale painting before. And so yeah, that was my first experience with thinking about it like an art form. And then we really like tried to explore that with a lot of. With a lot of our games, so I was part of a game, I was a game designer on the game What Remains of Edith Finch, and that had, you know, aspirations that were kind of greater than just being an entertaining video game. So we didn't walk around saying, oh this is capital A art, but we were really trying to, you know, we were aspiring to produce feelings kind of like that feeling of awe that you got in Shadow of the Colossus and similar.
Speaker 2 [00:25:06] I talked about this on the Zoom, as a film student, when sound came in, all of a sudden every director was trying to outdo each other, innovating the use of sound, okay, and I was kind of like, whoa, never did that before, never done that before. You know, camera movements, that sort of thing. How much, because games are such a technical, there's so much technical, you know, Stuff under the hood. As a designer, how much are you driven by innovating every angle of your game? So people go, it does this, it doesn't that, it's never been seen before. How much of that is an important driving factor in a creative way?
Ben Esposito [00:25:45] I would imagine that decades ago, I would be really interested in pushing the boundaries of technology because there was a lot of room to do that. And there was lot of to innovate on like, how many sprites can you get on the screen? You know, like how many levels can you include? But the constraints are so different nowadays that I don't feel like my work is really about pushing technological boundaries because I can't compete with, you know. $50 million poured into a PlayStation game. So instead, what I really think about when it comes to what's interesting to me about producing a game, it's about thinking about what I'm not going to do in my game, because they make a lot of games where they included everything in them now. So a lot my work is about saying, okay, well, what's not gonna be in this experience? So in Dona County, I decided I was gonna make puzzle game where you can't fail. And all of a sudden that created a whole bunch of questions where I had to answer like, okay, well, I have to rethink what it means to do a puzzle because you have to always be able to work yourself out of any situation that you get yourself in. And on top of that, it was all physics based. And so there was a level of control that I gave up there. And so that kind of problem was really interesting for me to solve. And neon white. Similarly, is kind of about bucking the trend of having really expansive or procedurally generated levels. I really wanted to focus on, you know, what if we made this all about the experience of you and the game designer are sitting down and you're kind of having a one-on-one discussion because you're feeling out all the edges of the level design and you are also thinking about, you know well I know the level designer would never do something like that. And so, you know, you'll be playing it and you'll get a real understanding of the voice. And so by like laser focusing on just a few things, I feel like I can still be innovative. But you know when it comes to technology, I'm not even trying.
Speaker 2 [00:27:54] But innovations will necessarily come across your screen at some point if somebody comes up with a new engine or something that just. Makes your job easier or more or more variable and what just one of the weird stories were the invention of oil paints and tubes Which only happened like in the middle of the 19th century that made impressions People could take pants outside and they wouldn't dry Right. Yeah, kind of like well and they weren't necessarily invented for painters They've been for something else and the painters went oh we can use this We can do that. I don't know if that's something that you think about, you know, the latest and the greatest and that you're kind of like, oh, you what, I can do this kind of mechanic. I know that it was done for some $50 million game, but I'm going to use it to do something different and weird. Yeah.
Ben Esposito [00:28:48] Yeah, I mean, a lot of, I do take a lot of inspiration from the weird side parts of larger games because a lot of games are so ambitious that they'll try to include a ton of different types of experiences. And often it's the kind of like more off beat ones, the less developed ones that feel like they have a lot of potential. So, you know, I find that I really, I'm keyed into kind of like all the different. What's the word? I'm really keyed into all the different types of kind of like off the beaten path experiences. So an open world game might have a fishing mechanic or something like that and you know the more rushed it is the more interesting it is to me because you know they probably had limited resources and so they had to figure out how do I make something engaging without you know a huge budget. And then all of a sudden, that's like something that I can use. I'm a little bottom feeder down here. Like I don't have much money either. Maybe they came up with something really interesting. And to your other point, I find that the tools that we have available to us do tend to shape the kinds of games that we make. So I'm working in an engine where making a lot of small levels is really viable. It's engineered for me to make small scenes and the level of complexity of working with other people all of a sudden is severely reduced. Now I can have a bunch of people making their own levels. Versus having a bunch of people try to merge their like huge open world together, and so yeah like those pathways created by the tools kind of like Do nudge people in directions, you know in particular directions that I don't think were intended necessarily So it's interesting to see games come out and be like oh, I know why you leveraged that like I know what tool you're using
Speaker 2 [00:30:44] I have one more question then we're going to let these guys chime in. What does it feel like when you're finished with the game?
Ben Esposito [00:30:51] Ooh. I am finished with games. When I'm done with a game, I'm gone with it and I try not to think about it again. But when I finish a game it's not that fun of an experience actually. I don't really like it. I like the beginning of the game. I like working on the middle of the the game, but when it comes out like, I feel like I know how people are going to enjoy it by the time I finished it. And so seeing a really large mass of people appreciate it, it's been years since I've done the first play test, right? So I've kind of seen the reactions that are gonna happen and by the time it comes out, I don't get a lot. I'm not doing this for my ego. Like, I really am not doing it for my Ego. I'd rather kind of disappear once my game comes out because if people enjoy it, that's great. If they tweet about it, that's fine. If they write me an email. And they have a personal story about it. You know, that's kind of the only thing that will like, you know, make my heart grow a little bit Grinch style. So yeah, I don't really like releasing them, especially because there's always a problem. No matter how much you test, you know someone whose computer is set to German will not be able to load the game because, you know you didn't like get the. The string culture is correct. And so like they're sending you an email and you're Google translating and you, it's a not a fun time.
Speaker 2 [00:32:23] It's actually interesting because almost all the artists we met are getting really depressed. Yeah, it's horrible. So when we finished the film, when I went to my work, he said, I gotta go on vacation immediately. To disappear? Yeah, because the best was a guy who does these really beautiful, we call them 3D mirrors. You know, you stand in front of it and there's all these RGB little circles. And he says, I actually feel really depressed because the work no longer has potential. It's just
Ben Esposito [00:32:49] Oh
Speaker 2 [00:32:50] Yeah. So I think we're all talking about the same thing. It's people, oh, you must be so happy you're done. You've been working here for six years.
Ben Esposito [00:33:00] No, I'm never happy when it's done. Cause right, it's it's, it done instead. I can't change it. You know, it full of all the problems that I put into it. It's full of, it has a lot of missing potential that I never really got to achieve. So yeah, when people say, oh, you must be so happy. You finally shipped your game. And I'm like, oh you have no idea. I just want to go into a hole.
Speaker 2 [00:33:25] All right.
Speaker 3 [00:33:26] I have a couple of questions. Yeah, it's just a fairly basic question. There is a whole world of video games out there. There's games that you can play with 1,000 people. There's video game forums. There's all kinds of things. You can build your own games. What is it about the games that you decide what attracts you to a particular kind of game? What is that? Is it something in you that drives you to a particularly kind of a game? Just answer the question. OK.
Ben Esposito [00:33:56] I'm really drawn to solitary games. I used to play multiplayer games when I was a kid and I got a lot out of that, but now I really think about the way I play games and it is weird. It's slow, it's plodding. I'm very methodical when I play things and I want to look around. And so I find the games that I make tend to be kind of like full of details and they tend to not be multiplayer experiences, because when I've connected most to video games in my life, it's because I was in a solitary state and I was able to really breathe in that world. And so I'm always making games like that and. I also don't want to make multiplayer games because they're really hard to make.
Speaker 4 [00:34:53] Ah.
Speaker 5 [00:34:56] I have a couple of questions for you. So you talk about Shadow of the Classes, which resonates with me. And I was thinking about Roger Ebert, obviously, years ago, wrote an article talking about his thoughts on games as part and how people have sent him games for years, trying to convince him that they are. Shadow of The Classes was the game he sent. Everybody sent him the most.
Ben Esposito [00:35:16] Yeah.
Speaker 5 [00:35:17] Let's do that.
Ben Esposito [00:35:17] Pretty universal.
Speaker 5 [00:35:20] Yeah, no, it's it's you know that sense of awe you reference, you know, I'm wondering if qualitatively there's a difference You know, we've all seen movies like Independence Day or something, you big movies that have that same sense of scale Mmm, what's the difference if there is one for you? In terms of being a part of it or having it affect you on a deeper way that a game can do
Speaker 4 [00:35:44] than any other r-form scale.
Ben Esposito [00:35:53] Should I talk about Shadow of the Colossus again? You can.
Speaker 2 [00:35:57] I mean, you talked quite a bit, it was great, yeah, it's fine, just go for it.
Speaker 5 [00:36:01] I'm looking for a broader idea. Yeah.
Ben Esposito [00:36:02] Yeah, a broader idea. I think the kind of obvious thing about games is that when you're playing them, you are kind of complicit in the actions and the story. And so I think games can really affect you when they put you in a position where you become aware of what you're complicit. So in Shadow of the Colossus, it's kind of a tragedy because in order to achieve your goals, you have to kill something beautiful. Our game What Remains of Edith Finch, each story is, you know is going to end with the character's death. And so by poking and prodding at the systems, you know eventually this play is going to lead to the demise of someone. And so I think you're able to really feel something different when it comes to your video game versus say reading it in a book because you're the one who had to- take the step. It's a really simple difference and maybe you didn't even have a choice, but it really hits different when you're put in the position where you could have put the controller down.
Speaker 5 [00:37:22] That's really interesting and I just have one more question sort of you know on the topic of creativity Trying to get to the root of what that is Sometimes at the same time, sometimes one at a time, do you feel you're thinking in a different way when you kind of put on a different hat or does it kind of feel the same making an esthetic choice versus a map building choice?
Ben Esposito [00:37:52] Oh, that's, this is juicy, I like that. I feel like I'm always changing what hat I'm wearing, and usually my style of decision making and creative decision making changes along with, you know, the particular medium that I have to work in. And you know part of that is just I have some mental pathways that I formed. Maybe you know I started making music when I was like 13 years old. And so you know what worked for me then is kind of like what works for me now still. So, you know, when I developed, you video. My chops in all these different areas. That was kind of like, you know, foundational to how I was going to think about type setting or, you know, even program architecture or something like that. So it really, it really does depend on, you know, what I'm doing at any given moment. It doesn't really feel the same to me. I'm generally trying to remain pretty transparent and, you know, let new ideas and things flow through me. So I find I'm most. Inspired by mis-hearing conversations that are just happening on the street. Like someone says a weird word that I didn't know and all of a sudden I'm like, okay, my brain's coming up with what that means and you know, that's my new idea. And you know I'll tell my wife and she'll be like, what are you talking about? She'll be, like, I heard that conversation and it was not like that.
Speaker 5 [00:39:24] And that's where games come from. And that how you
Ben Esposito [00:39:25] And that's how you make a video game.
Speaker 2 [00:39:29] I have a couple more. This is getting specific now. Imagine that, can you, assuming we can get the clips, can you tell us about a challenge, a design challenge, a creative challenge that you faced, either in Ian White or maybe in Edith Finch, that you're proud of solving, that we would be able to kind of see, Illustrated.
Speaker 4 [00:39:56] Illustrated pretty easily.
Speaker 2 [00:39:59] And not like, oh, I couldn't get the characters to walk. It's not about physics, but just where it's kind of like an elegant solution or something where I can, you know, teach your arm hurt as much as you want. But you know it's just kind of, like, it's like, this is how, we have this good idea. And we'll say that about it. You know, we had a clever idea to do this, you now.
Ben Esposito [00:40:19] Right
Speaker 2 [00:40:21] Part of it is about having the audience understand, we're not going to see people making games, we don't have that kind of time, but the kind of work that goes into it.
Ben Esposito [00:40:35] I'm trying to think of a good example of that.
Speaker 2 [00:40:37] It's like, you know how they have these things like anatomy of a scene and they bring a director to come in and talk about it, so they can work on it forever, and you know, oh, that's how they do it, aren't they? So, it's a little bit like that.
Ben Esposito [00:40:49] Yeah I can talk about that. Something we experienced when making Neon White was you know it's a game about getting a really high score or going really fast and so we found that it was actually kind of hard to motivate players to pursue that perfection when they would see the leaderboards kind of like a high score table and they would actually get really demotivated. And so, we tried it a million different ways and then it turned out the real solution to keeping players motivated was to provide only the information they could use to get a little bit better next time. And then once they achieved the next level of ability, we showed them the next the level that they needed to get to. So, what ended up happening in Neon White is when you finish a level, it just tells you, why don't you go a little bit faster this time? And so when you do that, you get another prompt that says, why didn't you a little faster? And then all of a sudden you get a leaderboard in front of you that says here's how your friends did. And then you're like, okay, I wanna beat them. And then finally, once you've gotten really fast, it says, okay here's everyone who's played this game did. And now instead of being demotivated by seeing someone whose time was like 10% of yours, you feel really empowered and ready to, you know. Tackle that, or you say, I'm gonna move on, it's fine.
Speaker 2 [00:42:16] So you worked on that, and you worked out Edith Finch. Edith Fitch seems to involve a lot of psychological, emotional intelligence. Neon white, not so much, I'm guessing.
Ben Esposito [00:42:29] No, not as much. Okay.
Speaker 2 [00:42:30] Okay, so so it's so it kind of like those are two very different. They're both games, right? They're, both games you were involved in the creation. I mean obviously, yeah like more Is that is that a testament to the variety of games is it is it do you have to you basically Put on a different habit and it's a little bit back to like how you don't repeat yourself. Mm-hmm but the challenge of This is a we used to be famous for being the only documentaries on public TV. We would laugh Really funny. That's how we made our name, you know, because most of it was like Eat your peas somebody said it was eat your peas television And and they would give us money because we were funny That's it's much harder to make people laugh at the crop. I can make I can I can paint a picture like a dog with a tail stuck in a door and it whimpering, people go, oh, but I can't make people laugh unless I really work it. Humor is hard. Humor. Humor is definitely hard. But I'm just wondering about like the emotional piece of like Edith Fitch, which is obviously one of the things that's famous for is that. Require a different part of you, a different part of your creative work, you know, to kind of make that work. Because there the goal was not to get people to go faster, the goal is to presumably make people crawl. Yeah, make people feel something. Yeah.
Ben Esposito [00:43:54] I don't really see my work, even though it's diverse, I don't really see it very differently when it comes to different projects. So when I think about making a game about going really fast, I already have my goal in mind, right? Which is I want to make you feel like it was your idea to go faster. And when it come to making a games like Edith Finch, when I was helping design that game, we had a completely different goal. The tools are the same at the end of the day. So, you know, I wanted you to feel like, you know you were participating in this story where you see, you how someone's kind of flight of fancy led to their demise. And so, you the tricks aren't that different I found, you know. At the end the day I'm still, you creating mechanics for you to explore and I'm managing your attention. So, in a game like Edith Finch, that was a really interesting challenge because I had to make something that was fun, but also kind of ended in a really obviously tragic way. And so because you kind of knew that you were gonna die at the end, I was able to create mechanics that made you get lost in infinite growth. And so there's a story where you're flying a kite and there's tornado happening and there is objects floating in the air and you can kind of keep bundling them together and it gets bigger and bigger. And so, you know. The techniques for that were just how do I keep you engaged and not totally focused on the tragedy that's about to happen? And I don't see it as that different. I think what you choose to do as your experience goal is gonna define the experience and the tools are kind of, they've been designed already.
Speaker 2 [00:45:47] One of the things, and this is my last question, the... Our series is about how art and science are often separated, like when you're learning, when you were a kid. When you're in kindergarten it's like, let's paint and let's build planets and all that and then it becomes specialized by the time you're middle school, it's the two sides of each step and they're going to be the band kids. What about your experience, because it seems like you've got a little bit of everything.
Ben Esposito [00:46:17] Yeah. I got, in terms of education, I got to touch everything and that was one of my main goals was I wanted to, you know, go to college so that I could do communications and programming and art and I could learn all the programs that I wanted learn because I was really motivated by wanting to create things and because I wanted create things, my goals were fairly obvious, right? I needed to know how to make an image on the screen, I needed know how program something. And so, you know, I don't see the disciplines as really being as distinct as they are made to seem, because, you now, if you have a clear goal in mind, then you just have to pick up the tools that you need to accomplish that goal. So I like doing everything, and I don't I think it's kind of an arbitrary distinction because, music and programming are not that different. They're about structure, right? And they're about thinking in a certain way. So I really, yeah, I don't see them as being that different.
Speaker 5 [00:47:27] I have one more quick thing, just as a point of order, if this is possible to do, for the layman out there watching, doesn't know how a video game works, can you just give us like a 30,000 foot view of how a videogame is put together, you start with a script, then you do mechanics. Like a process for it? Just like real high level how do you make a game is that if that's too
Ben Esposito [00:47:50] Yeah, no, I could do something with that. So a really high level of how you make a video game is it starts generally with an idea for an experience. You say, I want the player to feel this. And then you kind of build it up like a layer cake. So you're building a foundation where you say, okay, I'm gonna make a prototype. I'm going to program like my character can move around. And then I'm to give him some goals and some constraints. And then, you make prototype and you hand it to someone and you say is this fun? And if they say, yes. Then you move on and you say, okay, that's our blueprint. We're going to now make a wider context for him. So we're going make levels, we're gonna make a world. We're gonna decide why is this character doing this? And that's kind of like the next step. And then it's producing a lot, a lot of content. So you're designing worlds, you're coming up with the art, you're come up with a pipeline to create new art assets. And then, you know, you're... This might not make any sense for you. And then you start putting the finish on it and really play testing it with people to say like, is this really achieving our goals? Are there problems? There are bugs that we need to fix. And then, you say, okay, I can't work on this anymore. I feel like that wasn't a good explanation.
Speaker 5 [00:49:24] Explanations, how is it?
Ben Esposito [00:49:27] If that works, it works.
Speaker 2 [00:49:30] It's so easy. Talkin' like a true artist. I don't know, what? There's a guy we interviewed who's a very big deal acoustics guy. He designed Jimi Hendrix's studio. First studio. He was 21. 20 studio. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No way. So he goes out and he measures stuff and he's talking about retchins and all these kind of measuring stuff. Then he says, at the end of the day, I don't know why it works. I just cry when I hear verity. I don't know, which is an honest answer, it seems, because at a certain point somebody said it's indistinguishable from magic.
Ben Esposito [00:50:06] Right, sufficiently complex.
Speaker 2 [00:50:08] So there's one thing I want to, I don't normally do this, but you said it really well, but I just want to get it again to be sure. Well, you said being a game designer is a little bit like being in the arcade.
Speaker 4 [00:50:18] Mm. OK.
Speaker 2 [00:50:18] Okay, and just like try to strip that down to the fundamental statement, like big games are going to be architect has to build a room that doesn't fall down, a game designer has to go to a room where people know how to get around, you know what I'm saying, just a really kind of a basic, because it's, I got to tell you, definitely connected with me, and I think it'll be helpful for a show.
Ben Esposito [00:50:40] Being a game designer is a lot like being an architect. Like you are an artist, but you're also producing something that's functional. So, you know, an architect needs to make sure a building can stand on its own and meet the needs of the people who walk into it. But you know a game design is kind of tasked with the same thing. I need to make that you know how to navigate. I need make sure you know the rules of the game and how to even engage with it, how to press forward on the control stick. I can't assume that's gonna be true. So really like we're making functional software that happens to also be art.
