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Jamin Warren founded Killscreen as well as Gameplayarts, an organization dedicated to the education and practice of game-based arts and culture. He has produced events such as the Versions conference for VR arts and creativity, in partnership with NEW INC. Warren also programmed the first Tribeca Games Festival, the groundbreaking Arcade at the Museum of Modern Art, and the Kill Screen Festival, which Mashable called "the TED of videogames." Additionally, he has served as an advisor for the Museum of Modern Art's design department, acted as cluster chair for the Gaming category for the Webbys, and hosted Game/Show for PBS Digital Studios.
Jamin Warren: 00:00
All right, cool. Thanks for joining me, I appreciate it. How are you doing today?
Toby: 00:05
Good. Yeah, a day away from release so, you know, um, some... some adrenaline spikes here and there, but for the most part pretty good.
Jamin Warren: 00:15
Oh, okay. Okay. Okay, great. Yeah, I didn’t realize that you were so... so close to... so close to launch.
Toby: 00:22
Yeah. Yeah, less than 24 hours.
Jamin Warren: 00:24
Okay. All right, cool, cool, cool. Yeah, well, I mean it’s like a very exciting and nerve-wracking... nerve-wracking approach. Um, well, I first found out about your work from Jenna Caravello. Um, she recommended that, you know, that we... we get connected. Mostly to talk about animation. I think that was the thing that I reached out to her was, uh, you know, was interested in, you know, what was happening with, you know, uh, with animators here in Los Angeles just, you know, given their relationship to games. Uh, you know, Jenna’s work ties really closely... really pulls in like her experimental animation practice like into a game-based... game-based, uh, game-based context. Um, how did you make your way into... into game making?
Toby: 01:03
Yeah, so, um... almost as long as I can remember it’s been something I’ve wanted to do. It was around high school when I played Cave Story for the first time and became aware that making a game was something one person could do.
Jamin Warren: 01:22
Right. Yeah.
Toby: 01:23
And I think as soon as that was on my radar, I immediately like began taking stabs at doing stuff, whether that was like making mods for Cave Story or, you know, trying to make Flash games. And I started a lot of projects and didn’t finish any until like a little out of college, I think. But the desire to make games was there from a pretty young age, as soon as I figured out it... it was even feasible for me to do that.
Jamin Warren: 01:55
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then Cave Story, I guess for folks who... who haven’t played it, uh, like how do you describe that as... you know, if that’s your, uh, that’s your the inciting incident for your games practice, you know, what about... what about that game in particular? You feel like jump—aside from I guess the solo dev side of it. But yeah, just tell me a little bit about your relationship to that game, um, or, you know, just for folks who haven’t played it.
Toby: 02:14
Yeah, Cave... so for people who aren’t familiar with it, Cave Story was kind of like one of these, um, major touchstones of the first wave of indie games. Um, it was made by a single creator over the course of like five or six years. It’s a really ambitious, polished, um, like Metroidvania type of game with really like the really amazing art, really amazing music, just like a very well thought out world and story. And, you know, especially at the time I think something that was that ambitious and successful, uh, and also free was a real novelty. Like at the time that was a huge part of like the early indie games scene, I think, was just the fact that like a game was free and you could download and play it was a huge novelty. And which is funny because now that’s sort of like the default model for a... a big segment of like Triple-A gaming is the free-to-play model, but that wasn’t the case at the time.
Jamin Warren: 03:19
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Toby: 03:21
So that... that’s sort of the backstory on that game and I think I’m not... I’m not alone in it being pretty influential like among indie developers of a certain era.
Jamin Warren: 03:34
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It is interesting games do go in and out of, uh, go in and out of that cycle, you know, on the subject of caves, you know, you have like Colossal Cave Adventure, you know, one of the... one of the original... original freeware successes developed by, you know, one guy and his obsession with, you know, caves in—I believe it was in North Carolina, the colossal cave. Um, and yeah, games interesting, they go through these waves where it’s like things are free and then they become like, you know, heavily commoditized and then you have Doom in the 90s and then that’s like free and all the shareware stuff that’s happening in the PC games era, and then it goes back to being commoditized and now we’re like... yeah, you’re right, we’re back in an era where like the model is definitely free so I’m sure it will come back around, uh, back around.
Toby: 04:14
Yeah. I mean, to be fair it’s like free with an asterisk. It’s like free but we hope you’ll get addicted to gambling.
Jamin Warren: 04:22
Yeah. I suppose before it was like, it was fine if it was free, but you would like the hope was like, you play for free and hopefully you will purchase the full version, which is, you know, time-limited, not develop a... Not not like develop a light... like a light addiction to, uh, gambling mechanics, I suppose. Uh, that’s a good... that’s a... that’s a good point. Um, um, did you... were you working on like another creative practice at the time in terms of like animation or like other, uh, yeah, tell me like—I’m interested if there are other elements of kind of like who you are as a creator that... that came out like through gaming or you kind of started with gaming and then worked your way into other... other... other fields.
Toby: 04:59
I would say, uh, I’ve made music for a long time and music developed more or less parallel to game making.
Jamin Warren: 05:08
Mmhmm.
Toby: 05:09
Um, with a similar sort of trajectory where like I had a lot of false starts with it and then it wasn’t until around college that I actually started to like figure out a workflow that worked for me and put out material. Um, a little after that I also started DJing, which I’ve, um, you know, done since then for like almost a decade. And those three kind of form the brunt of like my artistic output is DJing, making music, making games. And...
Jamin Warren: 05:43
Right. Right.
Toby: 05:44
I do feel like they are, um... I mean music... music and games I think are very complementary. Like obviously because, uh, games contain music. And also I think there’s, you know, with games... that... it’s almost like the act of playing... playing a game there’s almost like a parallel with playing an instrument where, you know, it does produce sound that fills a room. And I think a lot about the experience of like, okay, what would one of my games be like to be in the room with if you weren’t the one playing it and you didn’t see what was happening, you just heard it? You know, would it be abrasive? Would it be like unpleasant? Or would it, you know, be more soothing background kind of ambient noise? Which is what I usually try to lean towards.
Jamin Warren: 06:37
Yeah. Yeah, that’s a good point. And I guess it’s always an interesting challenge also with games like, uh, having music be the centerpiece. Like you want it to be a meaningful piece of the interaction, but if it’s not a music... a game that’s explicitly designed to get you to interact like with the music, it shouldn’t be so, um... yeah, it shouldn’t be so distracting that, uh, it pulls you like out of the... out of the experience. I’m sure that’s like a... that is like an in-between. What... what type of music were you DJing? Or had you come to like... were like electronic and ambient music like as a... as a DJ? Were there particular artists that kind of pulled you into like music like early in your, you know, sort of your professional... or, you know, professional career as a music maker?
Toby: 07:16
Um, yeah, I mean I would say a lot of the stuff I was really inspired by early on was, um, sample-based music. Like stuff like DJ Shadow or Burial or, um, I was also really into IDM, so Aphex Twin and Kettel and Proem. Those were two pretty big foundations. A lot of like rap production, like 36 Chambers. Um... Those would be the big ones. And I think it... sample-based stuff especially had a big influence on how I made music because it really fit the way I thought about music and sounds was, you know, through the process of experimenting and sampling and re-sampling. Um, and... and also ambient music. I listened to a lot of... I’ve always listened to a lot of ambient music and that’s, um, a big part of what I... I DJ now is stuff that leans more in the sort of like ambient, dub, ambient techno, down-tempo realm.
Jamin Warren: 08:31
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I... I mean that was like pretty apparent I think also in playing your game—like just as someone who loves that kind of music. I mean, you know, I think of, you know, DJ Shadow or Oval or like there’s... there are these artists that, um, I think create a... a very—I mean not all electronic music like does that, but, um, they are sort of in this in-between of like lean-in and lean-out, you know. It’s like they are... is... is ambient enough in the sense that like there’s a... there’s a... there’s a mood to it, but there’s not so much of like a backbone or a backbeat that’s like, you know, inviting you necessarily like to dance. And so—and also just like creating a like a scenography with sound. I feel I think I, you know, think of them as being like very, um, like with Burial or with—you can sort of you have a... a like a synesthetic kind of like reaction to I feel like that... that type of music in a way that I don’t necessarily get from like other types of like electronic music. But, uh, that was immediately apparent to me, I think, in sitting down with your game that like, um... I mean, one, you know, obviously the—I’m uh... I’m not like a huge fan of like chiptune music. That’s the thing that’s like bothered me I think sometimes about like using, um, like lo-fi aesthetics that the... the... that the... that the... the connection immediately becomes, oh we need to create like a... like an old school like retro video game like sound. And I really did appreciate that about the... about the music backbone for the... for the game as well. That like it... it creates a... creates a sense and a mood in a contemporary way that matches the... the look and feel. I don't know, I guess I find chiptune stuff a little bit jarring from... from time to time. Depends on who it is, but like definitely your break from that was like I thought... I thought was like pretty... pretty refreshing. Um.
Toby: 10:04
Yeah, I can sympathize with that. I think a lot of times it’s sort of just an unconsidered default for like a certain segment of games and, um, sometimes it can work really well and sometimes it can just kind of feel like, um... it’s just sort of playing loudly over the top of everything else. Um...
Jamin Warren: 10:24
Yeah. Yeah.
Toby: 10:24
I also should highlight that, um, just in case anyone doesn’t know that I didn’t do the music for Love Eternal. Um, it was my friend Emily Glass who did a much better job than I could have.
Jamin Warren: 10:37
No, I... I mean I think that speaks to like... I think one of the, uh, one of the things about the like the solo creator... like one of the things about the solo creator... like approach I think sometimes is the sense that like the... that the creator of the game needs to be... like there’s certain ways—and I guess we can talk about this—but like there’s certain ways where being doing things yourself requires you to be like have an active role like say like quote-unquote "behind the camera." And then in some instances it requires you to be the creative director that’s pulling together things that like fit a particular vision. And so even if you’re not the person like making chiptune music specifically, the decision to like contract somebody who fits that look and sound... like you’re making that active decision. So I think it speaks well to... It speaks well to taste. So even know—knowing knowing enough to know you’re like, "I’m not... I'm... I shouldn’t be the person." How did you... how did you connect with Emily? I guess how did you... had you started with a score in mind? Or like a look—just having a music background, did you start with a score in mind or... um?
Toby: 11:34
I just knew... I mean I knew early on when I was thinking about approaching the project I—she was kind of my first choice just because I knew, you know, it was like in thinking about everyone I knew who made music she was the most talented and she also had the emotional depth to it and sort of the like... the richness of her sound I thought would be fit really well. Um... And yeah, it’s interesting it’s like being in the position of kind of like, um, directing a project or like managing it, it does... something I think about sometimes is it kind of requires this like balance of egotism and humility where it’s like you want to be—the things you... you know you can do well you want to be confident in your execution of them, but then you really need to know what you’re not good at and then really trust the people you, um, you assign those roles to or entrust that work to. Because, you know, if you know you’re not as good at it, you shouldn’t micromanage them. So—and I was also really blessed to like work with collaborators where I felt like I could really trust them. Like I, you know, there wasn’t a lot of back and forth, um, between me and most of the artists we contracted out for work. It would be like small adjustments here and there just to fit technical specifications but for the most part you... I could really let them just do what I knew they were good at doing.
Jamin Warren: 13:12
Yeah, no of course. Um, was there a moment for you like live music-wise that felt like a... I don’t know like a... like emotionally like a mood that you wanted to capture? I find often like concerts are a great way for you to experi—like you’re saying having sound that fills a space and no better space than when it is live. I don’t know, did you have like a... when you were in the process of making this game, was there like a... an emotional resonance with a performance that maybe you thought of while you were working on Love Eternal? It's a very specific question, I know.
Toby: 13:40
Yeah, I mean I... it’s, you know, part of the problem is like these were decisions I made like seven, eight years ago.
Jamin Warren: 13:45
Right, okay.
Toby: 13:46
So it’s... it’s a little hard to have that recall. Um, honestly I feel like if I can remember how the... the correspondence worked, I think I just had this idea. I was like I want it to be, you know, ambient. I don’t want it... I want it to be ambient sort of in the classical like Brian Eno sense where if you pay attention to it, a lot of nuance will come out and you’ll get something out of it, but if you don’t, it recedes into the background and can go unnoticed. And I think I said something along those lines in my like original pitch to Emily and then, you know, the first thing I got back I was like, "Yep. That’s... that’s exactly it." I think probably I shared some art too, you know. Um, but yeah.
Jamin Warren: 14:33
Cool. Um, the process for making the game. Um, tell me a bit about like the... like the sketching... like sketching out like what you wanted to do in terms of, uh, like both look and feel and then also like mechanically like what you wanted players to be like doing as they’re moving through this, you know, this family story.
Toby: 14:53
Yeah, so some important context here is that Love Eternal is an extension of an earlier game I made called Love, which was a freeware mascot platformer with identical mechanics, a lot of similar levels—um, many of the levels in Love Eternal are modified versions of the ones in the original game—but there was no story. It was kind of a pure mechanical experience and it was also really difficult. Like to this day I think maybe 10 or 11 people have beaten it. Seven years for anyone to beat it in the first place.
Jamin Warren: 15:30
Yeah.
Toby: 15:31
Um, my... my friend Sylvie was the one who beat it, another very talented game developer. Um, so mechanically that was the scaffolding I knew I wanted to build this larger commercial work off of because I had a lot of faith that it was like a... a good strong foundation just from watching people play it. I also had a lot of distance from it so I knew what I did and didn’t need to change about it. Um, like how... what parts of levels were just kind of pure pain points I could do without and which parts were more, you know, interesting ideas that were central to a... a given level or screen. So that... that’s I would say was the mechanical side of it. For the story part it was much more developed as we went along. Like at no point did we map out the entire arc of the game. We were sort of just made it up as we went along, which I don’t know if it would work for everyone. I really enjoyed working that way because I think it meant the game always had the capacity to surprise me and it never felt like I just had a to-do list of work that, you know, I was banging out. I was continuing to make creative choices basically all the way up until the end of development.
Jamin Warren: 16:54
Mmhmm. Mmhmm. Um, yeah. No, that’s, uh... yeah it’s interesting. I mean artists do this often with like studies, you know, like you'll do a study but that’s often with the intent. So before you, you know, before you like work on a sculpture you might do like a study or a sketch and then that becomes something—but there is usually a deliberate process like I want to get... I get... some of it’s to, you know, maintain... you know, you’ll do like a... a smaller... so for sculpture, you know, you’ll do like a smaller... a smaller model before like actually casting something in bronze. You know, and I... you know, the intent is always for the final work to be a particular way and the studies are a way to get you there. Did you have that sense with Love that like you were maybe bound by your abilities or time or experience or... um, and that you the intention was always to end up in this particular place? Or was it more, you know, more serendipitous?
Toby: 17:42
I th—when I was making the original Love, you know, I wasn’t thinking about it as a prototype for a larger game or I didn’t have any thoughts about remaking it in the future. It was... um, I... I did consider it a complete game and, you know, I’m... I’m really... even though I did the thing everyone says you’re not supposed to do which is make your first game like a massive ambitious project...
Jamin Warren: 18:08
Right.
Toby: 18:09
Because the original Love is like... it’s... it’s a long game. There’s like over 100 levels or something. But I’m really actually grateful that I... I made it that way and I think it was really cathartic and useful for my own trajectory as a designer to have my first work be completely uncompromising.
Jamin Warren: 18:37
Mmhmm.
Toby: 18:37
Like I don’t... did not try to make any sort of accommodation to the player in terms of difficulty. Like it’s ridiculously difficult. It’s totally indulgent in its level design, you know. I was basically just making it for my own enjoyment. And I think being able to have made and finished a... like pretty ambitious game of that scope with that kind of, you know, self-indulgent freak energy, I think was... I... I’m very grateful, um, that got to sort of form the bedrock of my experience as an artist.
Jamin Warren: 19:19
Yeah. Yeah, that’s such a great point. I mean sometimes it’s like it’s easier to do those types of things without the expectation that they will, you know, without the expectation that... that pe—yeah, being able to do things your way I think, uh, goes a really long way. And certainly gives you like a lot of raw material to work with that you can kind of work backwards and say, "Well, what were the things that worked about this experience? And where are some things that I would... that I would... that I would certainly... that I would certainly change?" Um, the—you know, one of things that jumped out at me, I guess there... I mean there were a couple from like the... the play itself. I mean one is the... the, uh, the... the level design and the kind of this like foreground/background approach to sort of having, um, you know, the game feels very much like a game that was made in California in... in some ways just be—I’m thinking, you know, identifiable scenography like, uh, you know, palm trees and, um, like also I don’t know just like a look and feel that feels like, uh, familiar to me. Um, obviously the, um, like the dingbat... the those dingbat... I believe there’s like a dingbat, um, apartment building that makes a... those... do do you know what I mean? The those apartment buildings that are... they're they're unique to Califor—they're unique to LA. You have these like, uh... um, you park the car like underneath... underneath them with those skinny little poles and everything. Um. Uh, tell me about the development of that process in terms of like sketching those backgrounds and the, you know, the foreground level designs. Were you working with a... a bigger template of, uh, like backgrounds and matching them to particular levels or were you doing them at the same time? Just curious about those two approaches. Again, that thoughtfulness about like what is behind the scene I think al—also does feel like a break from other games that I see of this type. That there’s something that is, um, like thoughtful and intentioned and well-designed behind, uh, like what’s happening, you know, in your immediate... immediate, uh, immediate attention.
Toby: 21:05
Yeah, it’s... so... so as far as like the, um, the aesthetics of the individual levels. Uh, it’s funny, it’s... my... so my brother drew these... the way it worked is I had the level geometry, you know, which was just sort of the placement of the blocks and the spikes. And then my brother would make these large background paintings that were maybe the size of like four or five screens wide and tall.
Jamin Warren: 21:32
Okay.
Toby: 21:33
And then we actually did not do much... we... we sort of just slapped them on top of one another.
Jamin Warren: 21:40
Right, okay.
Toby: 21:41
And most of the time it turned out fine. And then occasionally we would like go through and patch little bits to be like, "Oh, we should have like a more central visual element here." So I had... I built this system in the level editor where you could basically be running the game and load in a PNG and then stamp it anywhere in the game at like any depth level, be it like foreground or background.
Jamin Warren: 22:07
Okay. Okay.
Toby: 22:09
Um, so it was very like... it... it was it... iterative but the... the initial construction of it was pretty slapdash for better or for worse. But it... it seems, you know, I’m not sure it’s apparent from... it... they seem pla—placed much more deliberately I think than they actually were. Which uh...
Jamin Warren: 22:31
Okay, fair enough, fair enough. Um, was it difficult working with your brother? I... I... I mean I’m not asking in a pointed way, but you know working with family on creative projects is... is always like a... is always... always a risk, you know. I think the like the Coen brothers like aren’t talking to each other right now for example. You know, like there’s, you know, there's you have on one end there's like the, you know, the Maysles brothers like, you know, historically work together for... for many, many years. Um, I was just curious like working with family does always seem like a... a... can be like a treacherous... a treacherous affair.
Toby: 23:02
Yeah, I mean I’ve definitely heard that from other people. Uh, I think me and my brother have like an exceptionally close relationship. Like we’ve always gotten along. Um, you know, I consider him my best friend. And we’ve... don’t really clash creatively either. I think we’re like pretty aligned on our tastes and what we like. Um, so it’s... it’s been a total joy to me, you know. I think it’s one of the things I’m most grateful for about being able to make this game was being able to make it with him. Um, that’s definitely not the norm, I think, for most creative sibling relationships, you know. I... I think, um, I... I’m not sure how... how many people would, you know, be able to do like an eight year long creative project with their sibling without like having a screaming match at some point. But...
Jamin Warren: 23:55
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Toby: 23:56
Wasn’t the case for us luckily.
Jamin Warren: 23:58
Ye—yeah, that’s great to hear. What was the division of labor like between the... the two of you? Like how did you decide what... what roles to, you know, what to assign to one another?
Toby: 24:06
Yeah, it was... it was pretty natural. I mean I did the design and the code and the sound effects, and he did the art. And then we collaborated on the story. Um, we both wrote portions of the dialogue and, you know, would sort of throw out... toss ideas back and forth about how something would proceed or how a scene would play out. And it was very, um, improvisational. Like we were sort of just making each scene as it happened, you know. He would... um, we would block it out verbally and then I would program it with placeholder assets and then he would give me the assets and we would put them together and make sure it looked okay. And you know most of the time we were... a lot or at least a lot of the time we were in the same room so it was just kind of like, "Hey, come over and look at this." So it was very collaborative and pretty organic too, I would say.
Jamin Warren: 25:03
Mmhmm. Mmhmm. Mmhmm. Um, the... the weighting of the... like the weighting of the character... like jumping is a... obviously a key feature of the game. Um, you know jumping is a... is a love language I think for... for games or something. I think there's a new—I need to check this book out. There's a new book from MIT Press called Bounce. I think it looks at the... the... it's the history of the... the bouncing ball and looks at, uh... but you know bouncing characters, jumping objects just seem to be like a... a... a love language for games but also is something that is, uh, like very common for... for animators as, you know, animators as well. It's like first... one of the early things that you do. Um, how did you... how did that process of figuring out what the right like weighting and then ideally like the acceleration of the character? Because so much of it happens in this kind of like liminal... this liminal space. You know, it’s not like a platformer in the sense that you’re trying to get from one platform to another, you’re just sort of sometimes existing very precar—very precariously as you’re kind of like moving back and forth between these two poles.
Toby: 25:59
Yeah, it’s funny, you know the physics of Love Eternal are ported over directly from the original Love like to... down to the, you know... down to the decimal.
Jamin Warren: 26:10
Okay.
Toby: 26:11
Um, with the exception of like a few kind of modern conveniences I added like, um, coyote time, which is when if you run off a ledge you can... there’s a window of opportunity where you can still press jump even though your feet aren’t on solid ground and your character will jump. Or input buffering, like if you press jump right before you land the game remembers that you pressed jump and will jump immediately when you land. Small stuff like that. But for the most part it was imported directly. What’s interesting, I think to your point about animation, is people have said the physics feel much better. And I think it’s because the animation is much better. And I think a surprising amount of that like, um, you know, what people attribute to the physics feeling good is actually just how... you know, there there’s some visual trickery there where it’s just like, no, the character is just moving in a way that makes it feel like really smooth and fluid but it’s actually the same cube, you know, moving up and down.
Jamin Warren: 27:17
Unpack... unpack that for me. What’s like something like a... like a visual flourish like in the... in the character animation that you feel like, uh, you know disguises, uh, you know disguises something like technical? Um, that gets communicated to players like through animation.
Toby: 27:31
Um, probably the one... my favorite one is the... so the... there’s no acceleration or deceleration on the X-axis in the game. When you stop, you stop immediately.
Jamin Warren: 27:44
Oh, I see. Okay.
Toby: 27:45
But when you stop there is an animation of the character sort of jolting and righting themselves. And it’s very subtle, but I think it actually does a huge amount of work of basically selling that momentum even though the momentum doesn’t exist. Like, you know, the character just went from full speed to zero speed in one frame, but seeing them kind of write themselves contributes a lot to selling this pretty unnatural movement tick as naturalistic.
Jamin Warren: 28:16
I see. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean that's a good... yeah, that's a good point. That would be like jarring for a character to come to a complete stop. So even if they're like the full... that even the actual... if the actual like character itself has stopped like you want to sell that motion to... you want to sell that motion. I... I get that sense, you know, I... Super Smash Brothers is a game I used to play a ton of and I felt like, you know, uh, not quite understanding like how hitboxes work. I feel like so much of my understanding of that game from N64 onward was like mostly through like animations because it wasn't... it sort of always sort of seemed imprecise in some ways. And obviously like high-level players really were able to figure out exactly how precise it could be. But yeah I did feel like animations for... for that game were always like, um, extremely, extremely good at disguising like what was actually happening in a way that was like verisimilitude. You know, it wasn’t quite... it wasn’t exac—everything wasn’t exactly right but always like felt right. It wasn’t realistic in the way that like, you know, in GTA or whatever the new ones you can like shoot a rocket launcher like through somebody’s... you know a rocket like through somebody’s legs and, you know, it... it's to the... basically to the pixel. So yeah. That... that... that makes a ton of sense to me. Um. For the, you know, for the story itself. Um, tell me a bit about the process. You said it was, uh, um, it was, um, it was, uh... was not planned in a particular way. But, you know, tell me a bit about the development of the story and the relationship between these like individual characters and setting that as a backdrop, um, for... for... for Love Eternal.
Toby: 29:36
Yeah. Um, so it was... it... as I mentioned it’s like yeah, we did kind of just come up with it as we went along. We had... we... we did map out some characters early on. I think I remember writing like a brief, you know, a one-page Google Doc or something that was just kind of like, "Here’s the characters, here’s their names, here’s a hint of what their personalities are like." The... a lot of it was kind of just especially past a certain point, you know, cause I... I think the beginning of the game I was like a little more focused on kind of basic... ba—basic both like game and storytelling precepts where I was like, okay, I want there to be an interesting... a like... an interesting narrative event that happens immediately and then you start playing. Like the first two minutes of the game should have something strange, something compelling, and then immediately let you start playing. Like that was something I knew I wanted to happen. And then the like first three or four story beats or whatever, they're... the focus was really like, okay, this is like exposition. Like there’s something, you know, I do want to communicate the general premise of the game. So that first third or whatever of the game I was following more kind of a traditional like, "Here’s how you tell a story, um, here's how you like communicate information to the player," kind of mindset. And then I think the back two-thirds increasingly became more of kind of me and my brother just like tossing ideas back and kind of egging each other on to pursue the ones that kind of seemed the most like outlandish or funny or out there. And that was also when I think the game became really fun to work on and started to really find its particular character. So it was... it... it was a combination of the two but I think towards the end especially it really became more about just kind of like, um... yeah, improvisation and play and just like trying to... trying to one-up each other.
Jamin Warren: 32:04
Yeah. Yeah. No, that’s a... that’s a really interesting point. I mean it’s interesting the decision to like to, uh, to pursue story. I mean I typically, you know, typically do not think of, um, like these types of platforming games as having ones that where story is an important element. You know, or that like designers that make those types of games often don’t view story as being like a crucial piece. It’s much more "I’d rather... I’m going to spend time working on something." I don’t necessarily need to create like a emotional relationship between the characters and their particular environment aside from like the apparent like difficulty up front. And I feel like that’s been, you know, true from... um, it’s been true for many platformers starting with, you know, Super Mario Brothers. Has like a very extremely like the Mario series the plot is like pretty... pretty light all things consid—considered. Stakes are like pretty low. Um, there is something about platformers that seems to be kind of immune to like, uh, to storytelling in that... in that capacity. Were there any moments that you felt like, uh, like that what the game required mechanically like was with odd—what odds... was at odds with what you were looking to express like, uh, narratively?
Toby: 33:10
No, I would say there... there wasn’t. You know, I’m... it... it’s funny. There was... there was like a really big trend I think in the 2000s where it... it was very chic to have your story be expressed very explicitly through the mechanics. Or like have the mechanics kind of cleverly comment on your story, you know. Um, the joke I always make is like a platformer where it’s like "I’m grappling with the loss of my wife" or something.
Jamin Warren: 33:43
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Toby: 33:46
But... but I... I kind of think one of the strengths of video games is that people are willing to accept this level of abstraction. And they don’t actually find it jarring to do a bunch of arbitrary platforming and then have stor—like a story beat. Like...
Jamin Warren: 34:08
Right. Yeah.
Toby: 34:10
Um... And like the... the gravity thing. Um, where you can flip gravity. Spoiler alert. It’s never explained. Like there’s never any in-game reason for why you can do that. It’s just... but... but I’ve also never had anyone ask me why she can do that. You know, it’s like...
Jamin Warren: 34:28
Yeah, yeah.
Toby: 34:28
I think video games are allowed to operate with this sort of dream-like logic. And I... I think it’s... you know, you sort of give up some storytelling power if you ignore that. Um... You know, it’s... it’s was very freeing, I think, to allow ourselves to write the story in a way that was like a little more abstract and didn’t explain everything. You know, there’s no sort of moment in the game where Maya looks to the camera and is like, "What’s going on? Why am I in this castle?"
Jamin Warren: 35:00
Right. Right, right. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah. No I feel like the... yeah, the... the... the... like typically with games that have like some kind of like fantastical element, the character has to exhibit some kind of like amnesia or like sort of like be—bewilderment about their particular predicament as opposed to just like moving through the world. Which you know I... frankly it feels much more like other... other media. Like, you know, when I watch films, there’s no moment where they sort of explain what the medium of film is. I just ma—like make a judgment on whether or not I like it or not based on like its individual... its individual like merits. But no one sits you down is like, "This is what needs to happen in a film. It... you know, it’s going to work and it communicate certain things in a particular way." Um, I mean I do think there’s something about like for you like making deciding to center it around like, um... you know, uh... uh, like a... the opening beat of just like a family at a dinner table. Uh, centering it... just kind of like back and forth between like sort of this fantastical world and the real world I think does... people are are familiar with like family dramas like it does... I... I do think that that is like a... a decision to make that like a familiar piece does... I don't know... seem to... definitely resonated with me. It’s like definitely something that I think everyone can relate to. Like relationships with a sibling or, you know, fights with, you know, family members or like you don’t have to go too far to be like, "Oh yeah, the jumping..." Yeah, like you're saying. "The jumping... I'm... the jumping means this and the levels mean this and the objects mean this and the, you know, the red rubies that switch direction mean this." And like, you know, everything needs to have a particular meaning. I think it’s... it’s absolutely okay to let those things just kind of like exist or kind of like be. Um, yeah. Um, well I think the last thing I wanted to ask you about was, um, you know you mentioned like music making and wanting to have like sound fill the room and, um, you know as a... as a... as a player of the game, I mean there was moments where... was—what I find interesting is like there... the way the game functions is kind of at this like subconscious state of me kind of like working through individual levels. Like when I would think about things too much that made it difficult because I'm required to make a decision. And so I did feel like, uh, you know it was a bit... it was a bit more like playing I don’t know like a theremin I guess compared to, you know... th—oh, hold on one second.
[Brief pause]
Jamin Warren: 37:23
Um, a bit more like playing a theremin versus, you know, say maybe like, uh, playing the piano. You know, like I feel like there was a bit more, you know, playing a fretless bass versus, you know, fretless bass or something compared to, you know, um, you know playing the harp or something along those lines. Right? Like where there's... I feel like I was sort of like operating in these individual spaces. Was that, um... yeah, I mean that question of like feel, like what feels right is like I think a complicated one. Can you tell me about your thinking on like what kind of like what the feel of the levels should be like and maybe how you adjusted some of your design to kind of get it to a place that was not... it was difficult but not so difficult that, you know, you couldn't complete it like with Love?
Toby: 38:00
Yeah. Yeah, it’s a tricky question because a lot of it comes down to, you know, intuition and personal preference and experimentation. Um, there’s a lot of just opening the level editor, smearing some like spikes and geometry around, hopping into the game, seeing what it feels like, you know, running and dodging around some stuff. And then maybe you have one particular moment where it’s like, "Oh, that was really satisfying."
Jamin Warren: 38:29
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Toby: 38:31
Um, you know, maybe I can do that a second time in a slightly different way or maybe I can sort of structure the whole level around this thing. Um, that happens more often than I sit down with an idea fully formed. Um, so I don’t know. Level... level design is tricky to talk about because I think, you know, I think despite what like, uh, YouTube essays would have you think, there aren’t really like... you know, I don’t sit down I’m like, "Here’s my... my ten rules I’ll follow to produce a brilliant... a brilliant level." Like it’s a lot more just like experimenting and playing and seeing what feels fun or interesting. Um, I will say it was like nice to be able to riff on these levels I’d made like five years ago because...
Jamin Warren: 39:23
Right. Yeah.
Toby: 39:24
You know, at that point I was so removed from them. It was like someone else had made them. And that’s something that’s true of editing anything, be it like levels or prose or music or whatever. It’s like when you come back to it, you know, when you finish it you’re like, "I think this is good maybe? But I’m not really sure how." And then like when you come back to it after a long period it’s like, "Okay, this part is good. This part is bad." It’s very obvious.
Jamin Warren: 39:51
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Um, oh just I... I was curious like where... where... where'd you all grow up? I was just curious like your... how did you... are you from Los Angeles or did you make your way from another part of the country?
Toby: 40:03
We grew up in Portland, Oregon.
Jamin Warren: 40:06
Okay.
Toby: 40:06
Um, which is why there’s... there’s some Pacific Northwest vibes in some of the areas and there’s also some Southern California vibes in other ones. The reason for that is, you know, um, during the course of development I moved from Portland to Los Angeles to join my brother who had been living here for a while.
Jamin Warren: 40:24
Okay. Got it, got it, got it. And, uh, were you like outdoorsy... outdoorsy kids like growing up? Did you spend time like outdoors or were you indoor kids or?
Toby: 40:32
I was pretty outdoorsy, um, and... and still am. I like... that’s probably what I’ll do right after this interview is go for a walk. Um, I’ve... yeah, I’ve always liked hiking, um, and being outside. A lot easier to do here since it’s not raining all the time. Um.
Jamin Warren: 40:51
Right. Right, right. Yeah. Yeah, that’s true. Yeah, 100%. Yeah, that was every time I go to Portland it’s like just being like... it's always raining... like semi-raining, about to rain. Yeah, I just definitely just sort of something you just kind of like live with as someone who lives in Portland or Seattle is, uh, just like constant moisture everywhere. Uh, get a good rain jacket. Just kind of no one brings umbrellas, right? It was just like, yeah why would I bring an umbrella? It’s like what... what's the... what's the... what's the point? Cool. All right, well Toby, thank you so much for making time to talk. Um, um, good luck with the launch and everything. And, uh, yeah, I hope you have a... a good walk... good walk after we... after we finish.
Toby: 41:29
Thank you. Yeah, thanks for taking the time. Um, really appreciate all the thoughtful questions and really great to... I love yapping about it so thanks for giving me the opportunity to.
Jamin Warren: 41:39
Yeah, of course. Cool. Let me hit stop here.