Sa The Witch Interview Transcript

Introductions! Who you are and where we met.

Sa: My name is Sacha, I am a game artist, currently freelancing living in Berlin, trying to do the game art gig in Berlin. I finished my studies in September of last year. I kind of hit a rough patch in the gaming industry right now, there’s sorta been a lot of restructuring happening recently and we’ve heard a lot about massive layoffs and stuff like that. I think one of the best ways to combat that, or to react to that is to create a more cohesive and united community of developers. So I became involved, not as much as others but a little bit involved, with the gameworkers collective here in Berlin which focuses a lot on Cooperatives and Cooperative Initiatives which I would say is perfectly suited for game studies. It’s a collaborative work of creatives and you should theoretically own all of it together. It’s games, the effort of one person very rarely amounts to the entire product. We met there, having a discussion, I believe one of the first discussions that the initiative put together. It gives you a feeling of being in a nice community of like minded people trying to work together towards a better industry.

Me: Would you like to go more into what a Collaborative is?

Sa: I might not be as suited for that but I’ll try my best. Usually studios have a very top down organization because of the economic structures we live in, and the organizational structures needed to run a studio, we have kind of a difference in levels. We have the people who own the products being worked on, and the people who make them. Your stake in the company is not the same as your boss, who owns the product. In Cooperatives, you restructure that so everyones around the same level. Everyone owns more equity in the company and that product that’s gonna come out and make profit, so that profit is gonna come back to you as a worker instead of as a product owner and manager of people. That’s exactly why I think it’s so well suited for this. You’re making a product that necessitates the work of several people together at all times. Like artists can't just make art without thinking of the design. Designers can’t just design without thinking about the program. Programmers can’t just begin programming without plans and visualization and all these things. It’s obviously a matter of opinion and discussion, but I think it’s a more fair way of working in this industry. I try to be a responsible heh propagandist, and this kind of more equitable work. Just banging the drum of workplace democracy and that sort of thing.

Me: Just to get a sense of you, what are some things you enjoy doing outside of game art and development, hobbies, passions, all that. 

Sa: Ha well I'm kind of a jack of all trades in my friend groups. I’m kind of a massive nerd, game artist ya know, tracks right. One of my huge passions of mine, martial arts. I do mixed martial arts, jiu jitsu, boxing, muay thai, all of that. Huge fan of board games as well. I think one of my main inspirations even for trying game design and game art and coming into this area of work. And yea, just a big ole nerd running around Berlin doing things.

Me: Ha alright, remind me not to upset you in board games. I actually used to study kickboxing and briefly Brazilian jiu jitsu. I think it’s really important to keep a good balance of physicality in your life along with all the nerd stuff we enjoy. 

[brief mention of fixing audio and my travels]

Me: You briefly mentioned it already with the board games, but what inspired you, board, video, card games inspired you to get into game development?

Sa: I have a background in design, I took a while to figure out what I wanted to do professionally in my career. I was trained as an architect for two years, important terminology there, I didn't study architecture, and I just fell in love with design. Like finding the mix between art and utility. I’ve always been extremely passionate about video games, they always felt like a very effective way to learn about things. I always talk about how my door into Greek mythology was God of War, and I think a lot of people can say the same, especially nowadays since the series is getting this renewal. And it was just a very interesting intersection of all these things and I was like, “okay let's take the leap, lets actually try to do this and hopefully excel at this type of design.” So yea my focus is environment art, which you know, architecture nerd, environment art and video games you know. On that note I think I have to mention dishonored as a huge inspiration, because the way dishonored does architecture is different I think than any other game. The way that Dishonored and Dishonored 2 as well, they have a perspective on how levels are made and how architecture is a part of that, that I think is kind of overlooked in how important that is. If you play those games, it feels different to traverse those levels and in my opinion it feels different because of that knowledge and understanding of architecture. If you go to Arcane, you know the company that made Dishonored. The positions that they list are things like Level Designer, Level architect, and so on and so forth. They have a vision that most other companies don’t. And I think it’s a different way of how to make games and how to make 3D space feel a certain way. And it’s super cool, it's just, I’m ranting here because I’m such a nerd about this. A lot of little things clicked in my head, I was like this is something I want to do right. It has none of the cons and all of the pros, like maybe I should do that.

Me: Understandable. I definitely see what you mean, I really enjoyed the Dishonored games as well. It was so interesting seeing how the environment shaped your gameplay with the different paths you could take. The design around making it accessible if you went stealth or loud, murderous or not. Alas can’t say I’ve played the most recent Kill The Outsider DLC.

Sa: It’s worth it, I had my doubts, but I played it and it’s really good.

Me: I also really liked one thing you said in the middle of that. Something along the lines of art intersecting with functionality or design. Do you think you could express more on that idea?

Sa: Sure! The beauty of design, the thing that interests me the most, is that intersection where you go, this thing has a purpose, it was made for a purpose. But there is something outside that purpose, something beyond it. We can’t describe what it is maybe. You can just call it beauty, you can call it communication, or to use the terms economists use, the “emotional value” of the purchase or something like that. It’s something beyond that. I say that because if you look back at things that were highly utilitarian, they still have that something. If you look at graphic design for the design of subways or documentation, you get these little funny intersections where communication, very direct objectively measurable things, put together become kind of this beautiful document or beautiful piece of art. I think that’s a good example or microcosm of what design is. Building things with purpose and then adding or finding ways of elevating those things with art. A teacher of mine used to say, anyone can build a house that doesn’t fall apart, it takes a genius to build a house that almost falls apart but doesn’t. I think that’s a beautiful way of explaining it. You go the extra mile to do something that's almost less utilitarian, but somehow it's more valuable, we understand it as more valuable.

Me: I think that also raises a fun idea of like art as instability, but that’s a side note. Moving on from all that, in my prepared questions I phrased it as an elevator pitch for your game, but if you take ten minutes on a rant I don’t mind either.

Sa: Ha that’s very dangerous if you offer me the ability to rant I will rant. I’m currently working on two small projects with friends of mine. Friends who studied game design and game programming, but as well as friends who were just interested in helping and writing. The first project we just finished pre production I’d say. We have an idea of what the game is and we are currently working or preparing to work on making it. Still unnamed. But the elevator pitch is, Paper’s Please during the housing crisis. You play the role of a guy just trying to make do, make his money, by helping people move out of their apartments that have been bought by big companies and have been rebuilt. So housing projects are coming in but they’re displacing a large amount of the population. The way that the game goes is you get to know these people, get involved in their narratives, and if we do the job right, you’ll fall in love with them and want to do your best to help them out as much as you can. Basically gameplay is driving around town and going from point A to B. Trying to find enough hours in the day to help out these people, make your own money, and get to the next day. Much like Paper’s Please where you have the expense screen at the end, we have systems similar to that where you have a certain amount of jobs, they are scattered throughout the city. Try to find a route that works, that gets you enough time to do all those jobs, make your own money, and help the people in the most need. 

Me: Mmm okay so like a ferrying system where you get involved with their lives. Interesting. I’m curious, what timeframe is this set in. Like a fictional world, modern day real world? 

Sa: We wanted to set this, I like the terminology to explain this. There are some types of media that have like “it’s 1970s in California in a fake city”. That’s kind of what we’re going for. Definitely 70s ish. Especially with the stylization and art direction we’re taking a lot of inspiration from that. But with no specific place. That’s kind of the point, it's happening everywhere. 

Me: Hmm okay. So the idea as you said was to gradually fall in love with them, so do you mean that literally as in like a dating sim aspect?

Sa: Ha maybe, maybe that’s a nice to have feature that we put in like dating sim aspect. No, the idea is really hitting the player where it counts, making the player care for these characters. Like hey if you don’t do three jobs a day that's fine you can make it to the next level. But Mrs. McCarty doesn’t get to find her new apartment. Or she misses the chance to move into that apartment she got. You find out all this information by going to Mrs. McCarty’s apartment, talking to her, and being like, okay when do I need to be here, how much money can you give me for this, and so on so forth. We want to push the player to make tough decisions and try to play optimally because they care. Kind of giving away the message here but yea

Me: Interesting, yea I can definitely see a lot of opportunity for heartbreaking moments. Like say Mrs. McCarty sleeps on the street for a night and you can’t find her again. 

Sa: Exactly exactly.

Me: You said you were also working on a second project, if it’s too early to say that’s okay.

Sa: It is pretty early but it’s uh, what can I say about this project. I’ll say both of these projects showcase genres or areas I love in games. Which is this kind of narrative based, very emotional, very critical, very intense and honestly hard to play kind of game. This other project, it’s a school group of our’s getting together to make a fighting game of some sort. It comes back to that passion for mixed martial arts, and shooters, and big in your face action-action-action games. [Technical difficulties] - yea like the direction that we’re currently going in is like a in your face action fast paced game in the vein of friends vs friends and that sort of thing. We’re kind of workshopping ideas if it’s really gonna be a 1v1 fighting game or more like arena thing, we don’t know yet, but yea exploring that type of game design. Exploring that type of game design, fun and easy and exciting.

Me: Yea definitely two very different fields of game design, the first one feels very story driven and this other one seems a lot more mechanics and pure gameplay almost. Do you feel like you have a preference out of the two?

Sa: I think that’s one of the great parts of working in game design, game art, is that you can do both. I find it difficult to say if I like one more than the other because they have their own challenges. Especially for an artist. Getting the art direction right on a sad moment, is much harder than getting on a big explosion, or this split second moment where you counter a strike or dodge a shot. So although I love narrative games, you wake up every moment, you go to work, and you go, okay how do I solve this, how do I make this work. Meanwhile when you’re working on more action games you go, “okay what's the weirdest thing that can happen. What’s the most in your face, over the top”. This friend of mine who I’m working with, a sound technician, he very often shows me animation clips that he’s done the audio for, and he goes “oh this is too over the top”. I go, “no it's perfect, the animation is over the top just lean into it” and if you do that with dramatic narrative moments you can very easily miss the mark and then it doesn’t read, it doesn’t pack the punch. You go, “this is too much, this is cliche, tacky”. 

Me: Crossover from genuine to comic-y and satire almost.

Sa: Exactly yea

Me: Do you think there’s ever, at least out of the stuff you’ve done, has there ever been a time where it’s felt necessary to go over the top for something that might’ve been more emotional at first?

Sa: I’ve not had the luck to do a lot of narrative games, moreso worked on strategy games and platformers and stuff like that. I’ve worked with, again, friends from school, on a horror game. That was one, we had one encounter where we said okay we need to go over the top here, it needs to really hit the player. We had a really cool atmosphere and really a nice almost silent hill with a constant monotone atmosphere of like, you are oppressed and there's no exiting this. Eventually that could get boring right, the player isn’t being stimulated at all. So we designed this big over the top gorey and it kinda worked. Wasn’t our most successful student project but it kinda worked.

Me: Interesting. I feel like for the silent hill games that was probably why there was the inclusion of the pyramid head and all that to add that sudden massive spike of fear and tension into all of it.

Sa: For sure for sure, at least the way I look at it.

Me: You sorta mentioned these already, for the first game Paper’s Please and the second one Friends vs. Friends. What are a couple games that in general in your life have inspired you? You already mentioned dishonored, but what would you say inspired your art direction for these projects?

Sa: I’ll get to the specifics for these projects, but generally speaking, Disco Elysium. I mean it’s so cliche to say that now because every pretentious game designer like me goes, “Oh Disco Elysium you have to play it” but yea that game, it was like a breath of fresh. You can do abstract narrative abstract games about communism like what? I get how the game isn’t for everyone, it’s a lot of reading, it's a lot of like classic roleplaying of like clicking through options and getting information. But I played that and I went, “Oh , this is why we make games. This is it. This is great”. And yea it changed the way I think about art direction for sure.

Me: That’s really nice. I also am a big fan of Disco Elysium, I haven’t finished the game but I have played through a fair bit of it. The art in it has always been inspiring, especially the character portraits I loved in particular. Just seeing how it reflects for each individual character how they styled it. Especially for Harry’s archetypes as well.

Sa: Yea, so good, and you get it in a second, like okay I see what you did here.

Me: You said you wanted to go more into the specifics as well(in terms of art direction)?

Sa: Yea let me take a look at what we have here, mood boards mood boards mood boards huh yea.

Me: Ha Pintrest after Pintrest post

[brief personal discussion]

Sa: Yea! So a few inspirations for our, let’s say fighting game yet to be decided. Friends Vs Friends for sure. I think Power Chord is a game that, extremely underrated, it's an indie game like card battler. Like battle of the bands vs demons and it’s wonderful. The art direction is really really wonderful. Lethal League, specifically Lethal League Blaze. Talk about getting that like late 90s 2000s aesthetic on point, we really love that. To a broader extent, things like guilty gear and persona, those toon shaders. I don’t know if I should use this term but like graphic design first art direction is so so good.

Me: I’m curious, what do you mean by that graphic design first?

Sa: There are some games that when I look at them I think there’s this focus on legibility and communication and just immediate readability that’s very similar to stuff like graphic design. You want to get a message, maybe in some more subtle ways, mix or layer your meanings, but it’s just very graphical, readable, in your face. I always say in your face, I know that’s not a very helpful way of describing this. Games that just jump out at you. 

Me: Do you mean games where the art style is less about legibility but more about having their own identity?

Sa: Yea, communicating that identity more so. I’ll give an example. The Last Of Us. It’s a game that has a very distinctive identity, even though it's realistic, post apocalyptic, these are well trodden cliches so to speak. But if you see a screenshot from the last of us, you get it right. The overgrown vegetation, the camera perspective, the beautiful detail on the characters and animations. But that’s not immediately visible. You might look at The Last of Us 1, 2, 3.

Me: Well if there's ever a 3.

Sa: Exactly, and then you look at persona, and you’re like oh that’s persona 3. I recognize that menu or that character because of the shape or the pose or the colors. God I wish I had more examples in mind now. I think Akira is also a great example. You look at Akira’s stuff and you’re like yea that’s Akira, that’s it. It’s not ghost in the shell, it’s not other cyberpunk stuff, it’s Akira.

Me: Yea I do think they had such unique different styles, like Ghost in The Shell and Akira, during that time period of the early 2000s and 90s and all that of the animation. Ugh such beautiful content with such unique identities. And for the art direction of the more Paper’s Please style, what’s been the inspirations in that regard.

Sa: I’ll take a look, this might not be super helpful for most people, but Berlin has been an enormous inspiration, the city itself, the way that not just the architecture in it but the way that Berlin feels is something that we’ll try to display, even though the game is probably going to be set in the United States. That feeling, that griminess of the city, we want to get that in there somewhere. I mean I’m talking to a New Yorker so maybe you know a thing or two about big grimy cities ha

Me: Ha just a little bit.

Sa: Yea just a little bit, a lot of 70s design, that classic 70s graphic design if you look at like movie posters from the 70s are some of the best ever made. So putting that into the UI or graphic identity is a big thing, you probably might’ve noticed how I always talk about graphic identity and like communicating identity a lot. I think that’s something that is super important in the indie scene. Independent of the game you’re making, if it’s super unique or if it’s in these well trodden genres, to like show what you’ve got, to show this individual very personal identity. Artistically, in the way that you write, in the way that you make visual art and stuff like that. And that’s always been super important to us and the people that I’ve had the pleasure to work with is displaying those things really well.

Me: That was really well put. I think I sort of, towards the Berlin thing, going back to that, also as a New Yorker I do feel a lot of the same sorta grimy inner city sort of grind and struggle but also beauty found in that in a city. But what would you say is the sort of main emotion you want to bring across from the architecture of the game you’re making and taking from Berlin and all that?

Sa: We want, so to go back to that idea of identity, we want to create levels, and the only level we’re really going to have is the city, create something that is filled with… how can I put this, with characters, with places, that kind of have an aura that showcase that identity. We want the deli on the corner, the old school, the tenement neighborhood that has tiny streets you have to cross all the time and you’re unsure where you are. We want to kind of showcase, the word that comes to me is character, showcase character. I think that those big cities offer that. We always talk about how big cities are very anonymous, like you can just go under the radar and no one cares about you, but at the same time, when you have that moment of identifying with something and remembering it and caring about it. It becomes this kind of lighthouse point. That’s one feeling that we really want to get, as they’re playing for a few hours or a few levels, whatever it may be, going oh I know where I am because I know that so and so’s deli is there and the office of so and so is there. Kind of mapping the city for yourself.

Me: Learning the landmarks, and being like oh I've been here before, I used to get a bite to eat over there type of thing.

Sa: Exactly, exactly.

Me: I think that’s one of the best parts of exploring a new city honestly. Just finding those new comfort spots, whether they’re big massive landmarks or a small ma and pa coffee shop. As a side question, have you always lived in Berlin or is this a new place for you?

Sa: No, I was born in Brazil. I moved here when I was 16, we lived in Munich for 3 months I think. Then we moved to Berlin, me and my parents. Now I live in Berlin alone because my parents moved to another city in Germany. I feel like Berlin adopted me and I adopted Berlin, like it’s my city.

Me: To sort of continue off that, what sort of identity do you think Berlin has that might have contributed to you even?

Sa: Wow that’s a really interesting question. There’s I think.. [short water break while he thinks]

I think that Berlin is a young city. Which makes no sense. If you look at cities in Brazil, they’re colonial cities. Well not anymore, but these are cities that were founded and built and the foundations of those cities are colonial cities because that’s our history. In Europe, that history is completely different. You have parts of Berlin that go back to the middle ages. Like parts of the city that you can go to right now and look at stones that have been there for who knows how long. Right, like you have historians who go through tours and tell you like why this part of the city is completely different to that. And somehow Berlin feels young. And that has to do with the history of Germany and the massive regime changes that have occurred over hundreds of periods of history. Obviously World War 2 we can always remember that, but like the Berlin wall. The effect of the Berlin Wall on statistical data about Berlin is incredible. You can look at statistical maps and it looks like the wall is still there. [Wow] Yea, I don’t want to misquote anything, but there’s been a lot of statistical data that showcases differences between west Berlin and east Berlin that still exist. I think because of those massive, I was going to say revolutions as in revolving cycles, but again revolution would be a perfectly usable word for these several events. Berlin keeps itself young, it keeps itself this shifting identity. I think it’s a city where you can come in and not lose parts of yourself that you took from home. I never felt more Brazilian than in Berlin. Because of contrast, because you realize, Oh right we’re coming from different places and instead of having these massive crashes, those things are celebrated. Not to say Germany or Berlin doesn’t have a racism problem, but there's a culture of celebrating these differences. I was talking to a friend of mine recently and he said something that I found extremely funny, is that, “the most german thing you can be is Turkish” and yea you have generations and generations of migration, and that identity is distinctly German, it's also distinctly Turkish, but it’s a new thing. It’s together. One day hopefully this country and maybe sooner than that this city is going to embrace that identity a bit more and have less of these racist distinctions or xenophobic distinctions. Again sorry, I ranted for 10 minutes and don’t even know if I made sense.

Me: Ha don’t worry very enjoyable all the same, and I really fucking love that quote from your friend. On a more technical question, how do you go about organizing and planning your game’s often times? I know you have those mood boards and all that, but perhaps beyond that even.

Sa: One of the very important parts of our courses in the school that I went to is the AGILE method. Huge topic, you can read about it on the internet, it’s useful sometimes. It’s a difficulty trying to maintain that cycle going, the agile cycle, scrum cycle, sprint cycles. You usually need a person to be responsible for that. Which we luckily have. We assigned people in our groups as the manager or producer of the game. We communicate so that someone has a more general approach to organization. I’m personally a super visual person so my thing’s a mood board, its maintaining a jira board is the other one. [Yea I’ve used that one before] And maintaining that one alive, right because someone has to, and if you don’t you’ll struggle with what you’re doing.

Me: (struggles to phrase my question for a second) - What would you say are some of the weaknesses of you and your team at the moment? What do you think needs to be filled or that you really have been lacking in?

Sa: I think if you ask most indie developers the thing that they need is a dedicated producer. There is an unbelievable amount of bureaucracy that, if you want to do anything in life, bureaucracy is gonna be a part of it. Having someone who is dedicated to doing that and solving those problems is super important. What’s the term I’m looking for, funding for example. Acquiring funding could be the difference between a project not getting off the ground or becoming like a commercial success. We’ve heard stories about that all the time. But how do you do that? Who’s the person who’s going to take on the overhead of making that communication, preparing the documentation, and doing all of these things. Often like in conversations like we had at the cooperative initiative, people who are knowledgeable can do that much much faster than people who aren’t. Like if I wanted to do that right now I would have to research it for a long time then start the process. Meanwhile there are people who are like, okay everyone I need these documents given to me at the end of the day, next week we could start the process of applying for funding. And then more time and more time and more time and more documents, and maybe we get funding. So yea, other than that, I don’t know maybe Universal basic Income.

Me: Ha yea if only. So, you said you felt that’s for most teams, a producer the overhead for all that. But you also just mentioned you do assign a producer to your teams and projects, so do you feel that’s still a weakness for you?

Sa: Yea for sure, because if you assign someone with that position, even if they’re very good at it, that’s still hours of their day that need to be doing that. You’re always gonna have someone who is a designer and a producer or artist and a producer or programmer and a producer. The workloads become kind of scary when you join them up like that. And it’s kind of a funny thing, but if you’re a person who’s a little bit more vocal in a group, a little bit more decisive, you’re probably gonna take that production role in the group. And it’s good that the most vocal, more decisive person takes that role, but it becomes more difficult for them.

Me: Yea the division of tasks and all that gets a lot tougher for them. Okay. So I think we’re slowly running out of time a little bit. But I do have one or two more questions that I feel are very important to ask. The first one is something that’s been touched on to some degree throughout the conversation, but do you think you have a core philosophy for why you make games? Obviously everyone’s trying to survive and make money and live and all that. Is there some meaning or ideal, or just passion for a particular type of thing that you want to bring across in whatever projects you make.

Sa: I hope you do more of these interviews or podcasts or conversations or whatever you want to call them, because they’re great, I think it would be very fun to listen to one of these and get different perspectives, and I’m going to highlight that I am the bad person to ask this question to, because I’m very detached from games. I think it’s a medium, and I think it’s a very interesting medium. It’s a medium that I like working in. I wouldn’t say, I don’t know how to explain this but, it’s inherently different than making movies or making art, like visual art. It’s special in that way. It allows you specific abilities that other mediums don’t. The mechanisms through which people interact with your art are different, and that opens so many possibilities for different types of experience. Reading a horror book, watching a horror movie, and playing a horror game are completely different experiences right. And like I’m a horror fan, I would love to write a horror book, but I specifically enjoy working in this medium, and trying to figure out ways of achieving those emotions or communicating something I find important through the medium of game. It’s a very young media. Maybe in decades, we’ll be able to compare these three mediums head to head - ( technical issues ) - I think it’s a very interesting medium, I hope to see it evolve. It’s a young medium and I want to be part of it. I think if you’re a filmmaker you're not interacting with a medium as young and as pliable, as volatile is I think even a better word, as games. I meant that quote is probably gonna start a lot of discourse and I might not be completely right, but I do think it’s an interesting medium. 

Me: I do think games as a medium, is sort of like a building on the shoulders of giants situation. It does still oftentimes takes from the camera work and direction of film and the music of this and so on and so forth, and it’s really interesting to see how they combine to make their own new things nowadays with such an interactive form. [For sure for sure] Alright and now just one last sort of fun question. If you had infinite funds, as much time as you wanted, a team of however many skilled people as you felt you needed, what is a game you’d love to make?

Sa: A game I would love to make with unlimited resources. I think to kind of like go full circle. I would make a game adaptation of Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino. It’s a book about cities, ya know going back full circle, we’ve talked about cities a lot this conversation. The book itself is extremely hard to explain, its a book of poetry, but the main idea is Marco Polo is describing cities to Kublai Khan, the emperor of Mongolia, and the way that he does is like these extremely trippy descriptions of completely abstract cities, and I think if you had enough resources and enough time, you could make a game adaptation of that, like inhabiting those abstract spaces, and it would be I think the experience that I would want to play. Play this 5 hour game that’s just about getting the vibe right, and like going through this world of poetry and 3D space and trying to extract meaning from that.

Me: That sounds really beautiful, firstly I very much need to look for the book, and it sort of reminds me of the beginner’s guide with more of like navigating through these spaces and [Yea! Yea] well I hope you get the chance to make that one day. 

Sa: Thank you thank you! Finger’s crossed.

Me: Before we finish up and everything, would you like to give any plugs or social media or whatever for you and your teams?

Sa: If this goes up anywhere you can find me @SaTheWitch all together, basically anywhere instagram, twitter, whatever. We very sadly don’t have social media platforms for those two projects that I’ve been talking to you about, but if you find me there will definitely be a link somewhere and posts about them so I’ll be sure to link them to the projects sites.