News: Political interviews: Smith, Ferriera, Seropian

October 08, 2007, 06:58 AM

by brandon, via various -
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At E3 I did some interviews with creators of games that had political themes (all of which are up on Gamasutra now), which was a pretty interesting experience for me - not a lot of games have done it to this extent, at least not since the adventure game days, and even then it was often tongue-in-cheek ribbing. That's the route taken by Alex Seropian of Wideload, with his game 'Hail to the Chimp'. The interview with him is here. Nothing is overt, it's all just comical innuendo - makes sense for a party game. If you want to skip to the politics bit, it begins here - article start is here.

Next I did an interview with Harvey Smith, who did a lot of work on Deus Ex, as you may recall. He's in charge (creatively) of BlackSite: Area 51, which I wasn't particularly interested in until this conversation. He's really working the angles to get a message across in a very subversive way, which I think is really interesting. Politics weave throughout the interview, so I can't really point you to a specific spot...but I do highly recommend it. It's one of my favorites in a while, and Smith is clearly thinking about how to advance games as an art, actively thinking about how to make an immersive and valuable experience. If you read it, you'll see what I mean, but here's an excerpt: "It's so hard to convince your team about those things. I was recently adding a buzzard to BlackSite, and I wanted buzzards that wheel in the distance in the desert, and when you're driving along, I wanted, 20 yards down the road, buzzards around roadkill. As you get closer, they turn and flap and ascend into the air, and as you get closer, you realize it's a wrecked Humvee, and the roadkill is an American troop. That worked for me on many different levels. Some producer will look at that and be like, "Ambient Animal: Priority Four." And I'm just like, "You don't understand. This is really fucking important. I can't explain to you why." And he's like, "Well, is it more important than fixing this bug in our animation system?" Technically, no! It's a nightmare."

Next there was Chris Ferriera, who's designing Army of Two. This is another game I wasn't interested in until I heard about the content. Our interview is here. Army of Two takes on private military contractors (PMCs) and they actually have some of those fellows advising on the game. It generally shows the evil of that particular system, which has a bunch of hopped up military elites that are not actually funded by the government, but rather private companies with private interests. A lot of our current war is being fought that way. Anyway, worth a look as well. I'll be giving an update later, as we have a couple more articles like this in the hopper.

For me, it all began with my Eugene Jarvis interview, which I mentioned back here, where I asked him if Target: Terror was a socio-political statement. Good (if ultimately depressing) times, all round! Theoretically reporters are supposed to not have a political bent, but the fact is I do, and have constantly railed against the false pretense of objectivity since I started this here website, so there you go. A note about the image to the left that's a bunch of folks lying down on the grass spelling 'impeach 4 peace' - my mom is in the M.