Sam Barlow (Immortality) On Games As Imperfect Immortality Machines

Episode Description

Sam Barlow is the writer and director of Immortality, Telling Lies, and Her Story and the founder of the Half Mermaid production company.

His most recent games are interactive fiction experiences that allow players to search through archives of footage such as police interrogations and video calls. Sam’s latest game, Immortality, asks players to comb through footage from three unreleased movies to uncover what happened to actress named Marissa Marcel.

We spoke with Sam about the untapped possibilities in video games and how his stories work to expand what games can do. Plus: what's the point of making art, anyway?

Hosted by Phillip Russell and Ben Thorp

Episode Notes

You can follow Sam Barlow here.

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Cover art and website design by Melody Hirsch

Origin Story original score by Ryan Hopper

• Episode Transcript

  Phil 0:18
  
  What's good everybody? Welcome to origin story, the podcast that interviews creators about where they came from, to understand how they got here. My name is Philip Russell and I am with my co host, Ben Thor. And Ben. This week, we have Sam Barlow, who is the writer and director of the new game immortality, as well as telling lies and her story. And he is the founder of half mermaid productions. And his latest game immortality, he asks players to comb through footage from three unreleased movies to uncover what happened to an actress named Marissa Marcel. Damn, this was a really cool conversation, because Sam has been making these kind of like FMV, or full motion video, kind of like movie games for the last, you know, decade or like half decade. And they've kind of always been on my radar, but I've never really played any of them. So immortality was a great kind of introduction. And to this, I'd say almost this new or new remixed genre that he's working in, and it was really interesting, talking to him about like, what even is a video game? You know?
  
  
  
  Ben 1:29
  
  Yeah. Oh, 100%. And I think like, we're both gently I wouldn't say hardcore, but like, gently movie people too. And so I think in a lot of ways, this is like, right at the, the the corner of both of our interests here in understanding like, alright, well, you can watch a movie, but what mean, what does it mean that you can now interact with that movie. And this is also an archive that you're playing with, which is a pretty classic thing that Barlow does. I went back and played her story, which also has kind of a video archive that you're kind of playing with to find different clips buried inside of it. And yeah, it's so it's interesting to think about, like, well, what is the what is a game? And like, what is it movie? And what does it mean that this is kind of taking place, somewhere in between the two of these things. And when we kind of talked to Sam about this, he kind of talked about the idea that you know, what's most essential in games is, you know, that you've got narrative, but you also have some kind of interactivity in choice player choice to engage with narrative in some way. Which Phil, I think is interesting for us, because we've talked to some of the other creators, games creators, who have taken completely different positions on like, what like, what is a game?
  
  
  
  Phil 2:45
  
  Yeah, I mean, I think the first one that comes to mind is Greg cassava, and the creative director of Hades, as well as like, braid. And you know, a couple of other titles like transistor and things like that. And, you know, if you all haven't listened to that episode, check it out. One of the kind of key ideas that Greg talked about, that was, I think, really surprising for both of us, given that Hades was such a narrative driven game was that to him, essentially, narrative and story is just another tool, and the game developers toolkit in order to make these awesome experiences. And I think that, in some ways, it's, you know, almost an antithesis to how Sam Barlow, at least in his most recent solo projects, has been approaching game design, and it kind of feels like none of these, you know, her story telling lies, or immortality could exist in that with that same ethos, you know. So in a lot of ways, I feel like this conversation is really interesting in relation to that Greg cassava and conversation and that was one that think expanded, maybe how I view what a game actually is, or what a game can be.
  
  
  
  Ben 3:59
  
  Right? I think we both like kind of danced around this question with him about like, well, you know, if this counts is a game, like what else counts as a game? And like, what are other things that you would think of? As like as games? And you know, another thing that kind of kicked that off is he's someone who is I think, constantly saying, Where's where's more innovation in this space? We can't keep kind of replicating these old mechanics, while you know, how can we push things forward? And if I'm recalling correctly, he also said something to the effect of like, you know, like how clothes something like scrolling through different kinds of Wikipedia entries and kind of the Wikipedia Doom scrolling that I do and I know a lot of people do as like a kind of game in some ways. Which is interesting, again, because I think immortality in some ways plays with that, that you're, you're clicking on different pictures within kind of a movie clip. And those pictures will take you to other instances of a similar object. or a similar actor or a similar emotion on that actor's face in a way that does in a lot of ways kind of reflect kind of clicking through Wikipedia hyperlinks, right?
  
  
  
  Phil 5:11
  
  Yeah, I think that that's like a perfect summation of the experience that you have. And you're playing immortality. And then like with the different flavors, how you play her story and telling lies. And, you know, in this conversation, we get into, you know, how Sam kind of came up with this concept, why he's kind of lured to like these FMV style games. And, you know, yeah, we really, we really dig into kind of like, his whole idea around narrative and how it's an essential component to the types of experience he's making that are kind of expanding the genre or the medium in some ways. So how about we just jump right into the conversation and we will talk more about everything that occurred in the outro.
  
  
  
  Sam Barlow is the writer and director of immortality telling lies and her story, and the founder of the half mermaid production company. His most recent games are interactive fiction experiences that allow players to search through archives of footage, such as a police interrogation, or video calls. And Sam's most recent game immortality asks players to comb through footage from three unreleased movies to uncover what happened to the actress named Marisa Marcel. Sam, thanks so much for coming on the
  
  
  
  Sam Barlow 6:54
  
  show. Excited to be here?
  
  
  
  Phil 6:57
  
  Yeah, so I think we just wanted to start off with kind of getting how you're feeling, you know, now that immortality is out, you know, from my understanding, you know, the, the reception has been, like, really, really positive. I got like a 10 out of 10, from Edge magazine, which is pretty rare for them. And then we even recently saw that, Roger ebert.com, which, as far as we know, hasn't covered or reviewed video games before, you know, kind of had a really glowing review of the project. So you know, like, how are you feeling now that this thing is out there?
  
  
  
  Sam Barlow 7:31
  
  Yeah. And the reception has been fantastic. Because I mean, especially with this one within usually, I've always kind of pushing myself to make something that is usually quite specific, right? Like, when I went independent and made her story, part of the kind of idea there was, well, I'm just gonna go make something that is no one else would, you know, let me make. And so I'll just follow my guts. And if I end up liking it, then maybe there'll be some people out there that like it. And so there's always an understanding of like, this is not for everybody. Right? This is not a big crowd pleasing, mainstream thing. But yeah, the reception. So you know, within mortality, I thought we'd go even further this time. And it would be, you know, incredibly divisive, but critically, yeah, it was getting incredible reception. And yeah, the Roger Ebert one was the was the cherry on the cake. Because this there's obviously a storied history of Roger Ebert versus video games. And, and all those fun questions that maybe we've moved on from now, in terms of, you know, our video games. So to have that, you know, that you know, the Roger Ebert name stamped on it and have them kind of judge doesn't acknowledge that we were worthy was, it was a cool moment.
  
  
  
  Ben 8:54
  
  I want to expand on that a little bit more, you know, less from the the angle of our video games art, but, but I think more specifically, like, what is this Do category categorizations matter here to you this is, you know, immortality, especially I think feels like it fits into this world where it's video game, it's movie. It's somewhere, you know, at the meeting place of these two things. And even when I look at your website, I see this mission to create authored player centric stories across a spectrum of narrative narrative genres, that feels like it's not necessarily saying, Hey, I'm in the business of making video game video games. And so how do you think about like, what it is that you're doing?
  
  
  
  Sam Barlow 9:40
  
  I mean, I think at this point, the word game I'm kind of just used to write it. My definition of game is so broad, right? If you're being entertained, and it's on a, some kind of computing device, and if, if you don't do anything, nothing happens and it's probably a game right so that you I remember was the black mirror guy Charlie Brooker did a top 100 video games of all time? Show a few years back. And he kind of annoyed some people by pronouncing the number one video game of all time was Twitter. Right? So I think there's, you know, there's a very fluid understanding now of like, Oh, crap, actually, so much of what we do is interactive, on either a surface level or on a deeper level. And, you know, I get very excited when I see there'll being some kind of cultural equivalencies. So, you know, it's very early days, but like, when you see Netflix games, and when they kind of presented that to us. And the pitch was, well, you'll have your TV and your movies, and your games all on the same page. Like it's not, it's not, you're not going to a separate tab, you're not having to, you know, go to a different device, or whatever. It's like, it's all that it's all like, these are ways in which you can experience stories. And, you know, technically, we're calling this one a game, and we're calling this one, a TV show, right? I mean, that's becoming even more fluid. Now. It's like, is it a movie? Is a TV show? If it's an hour and a half long? Is it a movie? If it's, you know, 90 minutes, that three hours, whatever, it's getting very fluid, but you know, I think, definitely, you know, and I'm someone that has a huge love of movies, and books, and all sorts of different mediums. And I'm definitely coming from a place here of like, we're tackling this problem from the game side of things, which I think is partly, a lot of it's like business case and tech, right? It's like, if I want to make something like immortality, I probably need a game engine. I probably need a device and an audience that's familiar with the device so that you can interact with it in some way. And then when I need to actually make my money back at the end of the day, like how am I doing that? Right? Like, so? Yeah, when you call it the game, people understand, well, I had to pick up a controller, or I have to sit at my computer, they understand? Well, I'm used to paying like, $20 for something like this on Steam. So you kind of have a business case. So I think it's but it but it is strange, right? Like to put something like immortality out there and look at the top 10 that it's in. And you're like, Oh, we're going toe to toe with, you know, this, this pixelart row like and there's this RTS thing, and there's, you know, whatever, the valorant or something, right, whatever the big shooter is, it's very strange, that it's still like the games ecosystem, it's still kind of a big muddle. Right? Like, when I grew up playing games, I pretty much when I had like my, my eight bit home computer, I would play every game that came out whether I had to, like borrow it off a friend or whatever. But, you know, I didn't really care about the genre, because I was really into video games. So I was just playing all the video games. Obviously, there are now so many video games, you can't do that. And as well, like, as the medium has kind of become more interesting and complex and rich, you can now define yourself in the same way that you know, someone said you want to come watch a movie, I'd be like, Well, what type of movie like, Let's go watch any movie right? Sides, you know, it's, it's, it's still weird sometimes that you know, the way games are packaged and branded, can kind of veer to the kind of capital G gamer kind of aesthetic. But it's
  
  
  
  I imagine I mean, people keep expecting that at some point, there's going to be a kind of tipping point where TV and games and whatever is happening on our television will become beautifully and meshed. With you know, and it's kind of happened as as consoles have moved into the living room and and then when we started watching Netflix on our consoles, obviously you're starting to kind of merge the worlds but you know, into to the Charlie Brooker joke I find myself if I'm watching Netflix and your if my rest of my family are out of town, and it's like oh, I get a whole evening to myself. Sit down what I'm going to watch I'm going to watch something I couldn't normally watch and I'll beat up Netflix and then before I know it, I've wasted 45 minutes just going through Netflix right looking at stuff because it's kind of slightly sticky, fun experience to browse their catalogue and have it be personalized and suggest stuff and throw your the thumbnails and everything. So, you know, I think we're just we're so used to that level of kind of interactivity now, everywhere that I think at some point, you know when we're going to have this this full on meeting between all the different mediums and we'll stop having to worry too much about Whether a thing is a game or not. But as it is right now, there is still questions of discoverability, and hardware and all these kinds of things.
  
  
  
  Ben 15:09
  
  Yeah, I, I'm really in love with, you know, the kind of archive or database nature of your games. I think I'm someone kind of growing up as a kid, I remember going to the public library, and you could search through old reels of newspapers. And that kind of interaction, I think, has always felt weirdly intimate. And I think like, allows for this feeling, even when it's something that is in the public record that feels, you know, as though it's very personal. And as though the information is only there for you and you alone. But I'm wondering if you can talk about, like, what attracts you to the idea of an archive or a database, as a, as a site for so many of the games that you've made?
  
  
  
  Sam Barlow 15:57
  
  I mean, I think it came from. So suddenly, when I was younger, the stuff I was really deeply into was, was a lot of the kind of more avant garde writing, and surrealism and kind of modern art. And a lot of those people were looking at traditional forms of painting or storytelling, and we're starting to break them down and deconstruct them. And we're saying, Well, you know, in the 20th century, you know, everything is so much more fractured, and the way we consume and kind of absorb information is now so disparate and hyperlinks that we're going to create art forms that reflect that. So I was definitely, like, that was the thing. Growing up, you know, I remember being really into Bowie, and then Bobby, getting me into William Burroughs and cut up technique. And there's a bunch of kind of early stuff that JG Ballard wrote, including his book, The atrocity exhibition, which is, it's a book so it isn't technically linear. But in the foreword, he encourages you to read it by just kind of flicking through the pages and dropping in and seeing like a word or phrase looks interesting to you. Just drop in, read that paragraph pull out and kind of just you know, so it's very, very early, primitive, hyperlinking, almost, but so, you know, that was always something I had tasted like the texture of it. And then, when I did her story, I'd been working on more traditional games, until a couple of Silent Hill games, where we were kind of doing interesting things with the storytelling. And I think I got, I got to the point where I was painfully aware that a lot of the assumptions we make with a traditional video game, a lot of the things that we kind of take for granted, I started to worry that they were kind of props that we were leaning on. So kind of before I, like professionally join games, I was really, really into like the immersive Sims, kind of thief, System Shock JSX, like, those are my games back in the day. And then after that, like I got really into Nintendo. And so particularly stuff like Zelda, some of the Metroid games like just that level of immersion, and exploration, that sense of like physical presence in a game world. These are things that I was like, really, really into. And when we made Silent Hill Shattered Memories, that was kind of my love letter to that idea. So we tried to make this game that was extremely immersive. And then we kind of removed a lot of the things that might get in the way of that tried to create a game world that you could just kind of move through kind of seamlessly. But after that I, I kind of really started to think about it and question that you get so much for free just by dropping someone in a 3d environment. Right? It's just naturally enjoyable as a human to explore. And to kind of walk around places. And, you know, a lot of the games that at that time were held up for storytelling, I would kind of look at them. And I'd be like, well, you get a lot of like atmosphere from the 3d exploration. Everyone was very hot on environmental storytelling. And, but but still, to actually tell a story, these games would have to drop in like tape recorders, or diary pages, right? To actually tell the story. And they will always really struggling with characters because the characters are really hard to do. And so even if you have infinite money, right, the BioShock games, most of the characters are dead or behind screens or inaccessible. So you know, to tell those character based stories, you're having to listen to voice recordings, or kind of pre canned cutscenes. And then when you get to kind of indie games like Gone Home, where you literally can't afford had to have 3d characters walking around in the scene, they were still having to put in some voice acting, right, they were having to pull in voice acting to communicate a level of emotion. So I was at that point kind of really starting to think like, you know, the, you know, the most extreme and maybe slightly reductive. point would be that if I looked at what moved me when I played gone home, it was listening to the voice, the voiceovers that would play when you found diary pages. And, you know, I was like, well, if they if someone edited that into a radio play,
  
  
  
  it would probably still have a fairly similar narrative experience, despite the fact that all of the game stuff is extremely compelling and fun. So with her story, a I kind of pushed myself to wrote this very pretentious manifesto was like, I gotta make a game with no 3d exploration. And moreover, one of the big things for me was no meaningful state changes. So, you know, a lot of when you talk about video games, and for me when I was really into those immersive Sims, and you talked about what's special about video games, I find you talk a lot about simulation, right? Like that all the stuff that is the most video gaming stuff comes down to simulation, right? Shoot as a straightforward because it's very easy for us to simulate bullets and guns and physics and explosions. You know, driving games, is very easy for us to simulate cars and motion. So these are things that feel intrinsically very video gaming. And so I was like, Well, what, what doesn't? What does it mean to tell an interactive story and to create something that's deeply immersive and intimate? Without these things, right? So I'm not moving through 3d space. There's no simulation. Partly, I'm going on a lot for this question. But partly, I remember there was a moment where it was when Half Life two came out, maybe it was not immediately after it came out, because whenever I was playing it, and I just had a son. And I remember playing half life, too. And everybody was raving about like the physics system in that game. And oh, there's these great puzzles where you have to do stuff with physics. And I was like, slightly cynical. Because as a hardcore Zelda fan, I was like, these are kind of the same puzzles of Zelda, just, it's just, they're using physics rather than, like, specific scripting. But I remember doing this one puzzle involved stacking some things and knocking them over or something. And I looked over, and my son was playing with his blocks, right? And I was like, Oh, my God, we're both doing the same thing.
  
  
  
  And I was like, you know, clearly, as a human being, it is extremely enjoyable. There's endorphins and everything, to play with this simulation, right? To test the rules of things, to experiment and to be playful. And, you know, but then I was like, but as someone that really cares about story and character, how much of that is plugging directly into the storytelling. So that was, you know, with her story was this idea of, okay, I'm going to try and make a game that still feels intimate, still feels expressive, still feels like challenging, but doesn't have any meaningful state change. You know, so you think of like narrative as well. The thing people always go to is like, branching narrative. Today, adventure. Oh, I didn't say Bob. So in chapter three, Bob's wife is gonna hate me, right? Like, that is so intrinsic to people's, when you try and justify why is an interactive story interesting. So often comes back to that idea of the big son explicit consequence. So with you know, with that, I kind of sent myself those rules. And I knew kind of, I wanted to do something in the police procedural mystery space. Because that that had been something I'd pitch to publishers a lot. And they would always say, Yeah, we get we get it, Sam, these things are huge, and every other medium, but they don't work in games, right? Like games have to be about action, and you have to be a powerful, empowering individual. Like, you know, these are not the kind of stories that were conveyed. So I was like, Well, I'm going to show you and, and one of the big exciting things with her story was I gave myself and I didn't have a huge amount of time or money. I gave myself at least half of the development time upfront, to just research and explore and think about stuff. Before I was going to even touch a computer and do any of the work, which is a luxury I had never really gotten in making the bigger kind of more traditional video games. So part of that was was going okay, I want to tell this story, something in this space. You know, how does this genre work? What what is interesting and exciting about this genre, how do these stories normally work? I did a ton of research into like, well, how does a homicide detective go about interrogating a suspect? All these kinds of questions, and I think early on, I decided the interview room was going to be the focus for the game, which was partly because that was like, my favorite show growing up was Homicide Life on the Street, best bits of that show when their interrogation room, just like a lot of my favorite kind of mysteries and police things would always kind of peek in that kind of, you know, showdown between the detective and the suspect. So I was thinking, well, that that's a really interesting thing. It's going to be very convenient for me as an indie developer, because I don't need to do the car chases, and the cities and all this stuff out in the wild, right, I'm just going to focus on this. And by focusing on something that is the most kind of human part of it, I do have like the indie advantage, because, you know, that kind of human interactions conversations is still a thing that no one has sold. And that, you know, people
  
  
  
  have not been able to crack. So if I can come at it from a different angle, then that'll be interesting. So I was kind of exploring all this. And part of that exploration was discovering. At that point, it was like just before the true crime explosion, and really, like video was just becoming kind of ubiquitous, like our phones, were getting good enough, our internet connections, were getting good enough that everyone was now watching lots of YouTube, right? Uploading vines, and video just suddenly started to be everywhere and feel different. And I was discovering all of these real life interrogation clips that were uploaded in the public interest. So I was watching a lot of those, reading all of the transcripts as part of my research. And so really, kind of all those disparate things, right, like this love of avant garde storytelling, these desires to move away from kind of traditional game mechanics, watching all of this footage reading about the processes around police interrogations, how the recordings are used, etc. It all kind of you know, welled up, and then I remedy I woke up one day, and it's like, Huh, what if, what if the game was at police database, and you have all these clips, and you could search. And you know, it's like I had, I'd been kind of active in the kind of text adventure interactive fiction space for a very, at the end of the 90s was, was really into that genre. And you know, that's a genre where the promises that you can type anything, write the game, we'll just have a prompt, and you can type something, and then the story will follow your lead. But if you play those games, you know, that actually, like the posture is not that sophisticated. There's, there's only so many things you can type. So there's, there's always this clash between the magic of the blank prompt, and the reality of it. And so you know, as even as this idea occurred to me, I was like, Well, this is kind of cool. It like has some of that magic of the text adventure, where, you know, and the people that were still making text adventures, would justify it by pointing to probably five or six examples in games where you would get halfway through a game. And you would suddenly think, oh, shit, what if I try this? What if I type this and it would work, and you'd have this magical moment. But the, you know, the detractors would say, Well, yeah, that's that's happened five times, in the rest of playing these games is go east, go west. And I can't do that. I don't understand this word. So when this idea occurred to me, I was like, Oh, well, I get some of that magic, right? Like people can play her story. And think of an idea that's not been presented to them by the text be like, Oh, is this what happened, have an idea and come up with a word to type and then discover something magical. But because you get that this is a crappy, old piece of technology, this police database, you don't have the expectation that every single thing you type should magically work. So you know, a lot of this stuff all kind of came together. And you know, that, you know, that became her story. And kind of a lot of, a lot of there wasn't much. I don't think there was a current remember, but there wasn't as much kind of conscious, like, this is what I'm doing. At every step of it, it was it was always like, this sounds like an exciting idea. This feels like a cool thing to do. I'll just kind of follow this. And then, kind of after her story, looking back at it, then I was kind of more consciously thinking about, well, what have I just done? And that's when I started to really dig this idea that what I done was to take a lot of my favorite verbs from those traditional games, you know, exploring, building a meant will map have a level or a planet, accessing new areas through gaining keys or kind of knowledge or abilities, and realizing that I've taken all that good stuff, but applied it directly to the story, or the video content, right? So you're discovering new clips in the way that you might discover new rooms and Metroid. And as you discover more and more clips, you're kind of building this map of the whole story. And by revisiting certain clips, with new information, you're unlocking layers of those clips, you know, so I was like, Oh, this is kind of interesting that it's very much in the tradition of these games I loved.
  
  
  
  But you know, coming at it from a very different way, I think that was, I mean, again, it was a conscious choice, I was there saying, this will not be systemic, there'll be no 3d exploration. And then somehow, you know, you end up replicating what's good about those systemic 3d exploration games, but in a way that's really addressing the story. So I think that was the time quite a novel approach. Because like I say, so, you know, the expectation with narrative games really was either you'd have a narrative game with very little gameplay, that would be very linear, right? But you'd still experience a story, or it would be kind of very systemic, right, choice based. And so this was like an interesting, sort of Third Way.
  
  
  
  Ben 31:23
  
  Her story is a narrative Metroidvania.
  
  
  
  Sam Barlow 31:28
  
  Yes, yeah, I've, I've used that line.
  
  
  
  Phil 31:31
  
  Well, you know, I think that's interesting. So recently, we talked to Graham Parkes, who was the writer, and creative director of this indie game called before your eyes. And, you know, in that game, the narrative allows the player to move through scenes time and space through the blinking of their eyes, which is tracked through the webcam. And, you know, something that we found pretty intriguing, that we talked to Graham about was, you know, when you have that kind of mechanic, baked into how you're presenting your narrative, it kind of incorporates this interesting friction, in terms of storytelling, where like, you have the story you're trying to tell, and then you have this player agency that kind of has at least some say, in terms of what is going to be seen, and each individual scene and how they're going to experience the narrative, in any given scene, because of, you know, the eye blinking, and I think, you know, your, your most of your, your most recent games, they use FMV, it kind of feels like it takes that concept to the extreme right, where I feel like I look at when I played immortality, I was just constantly thinking. I mean, it seems as if everybody would have a completely different experience in terms of how they come to the conclusions that they do, because of the different clips that they see and how they get to those, those different clips. So, you know, I think Ben and I are both really curious with all three of these games, just like how the hell do you even approach, you know, constructing these narratives, because there's some so much agency in terms of, you know, how the player is going to, you know, see x tech scene? And yeah, I guess like, how are you approaching that? And maybe immortality since that's the newest one, that class, maybe let's talk about that.
  
  
  
  Sam Barlow 33:24
  
  Yeah, I mean, I think it's, I think there's a choice you like, there are a lot of video games that talk about freedom. But I think there are two ways of doing it. One is the let's pick on half life again. Like it's the half life way where you're, you go anywhere you want, do anything you want. But we're going to place lights and steer the walls of this level, so that you will, subconsciously had for this doorway, oh, we're going to have a monster run out of this doorway. So you'll run to the left, right. There's so much work that goes into kind of stage managing, so that you feel like you're in charge, you feel like you have agency, but you don't because they want to present a very specific set of beats. And then there is the genuine freedom, which I think like I bought people by going on about Zelda Breath of the Wild. Like I think it's so funny that there are countless, countless open world games, right? And there are whole companies like Ubisoft that put out almost nothing but these open world games. But really, it was only when I played Zelda Breath of the Wild where it's like, oh, this is actually an open world game. Like this is a game where they genuinely want me to do what I like go anywhere. And they mean it. Right? It's not just a way of spreading mission markers around an island or something. I think what makes Zelda work for me as well as that. There's an inherent joy in walking through the grass, climbing up a mountain because you saw a little tree over here right that itself is inherently joyful, they care about the walking through the world part of the open world games. And so I think, you know, with these games, there is an inherent, like, you've got to find the game feel. And the content itself is not filler, right? Like that is. That's like the craziest production headache with something like immortality. Because, you know, there's a generosity to the game, which I think is also absolutely essential. I think Zelda has this, right? If you're gonna say to a player, who might be confused, and like, have like, choice anxiety, because it's like, I could do it, or I could do anything. Well, what am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to play this game? Right? Like, that's, you're, you're, you're asking a lot the player when you do that. So I think what you have to do, and I think Nintendo does this, and all that games is, is give something back. And what you get back is saying, Well, we're going to be generous, we're going to this abundance of fun, cool shit in this game, right? It's going to be a joyful, fun thing. So with immortality, you know, there's, there's no like, you know, there's no cut and paste content, like you would find in a bad open world game, right? It's, there's just tons of stuff for you to discover. And that in itself should inherently be joyful, right? So we put so much effort into the aesthetics of things of like each individual scene, having something to write being in itself. Interesting. So the worst version of immortality, if nothing worked, would just be someone throwing a bunch of random interesting things at you, and you'd be like, Oh, shiny. But then I think what really isn't, and this is kind of the stuff that I've built up over the course of the three games is, is is this idea that the audience is really smart, which in itself is a controversial position to take in video games, the audience's response, the audience has, has seen and experienced more stories in their lifetime than, you know, if you went back 200 300 years,
  
  
  
  you people just wouldn't write even even an aristocrat sat in his house with his grand library is not as exposed to as many stories as somebody who's logging into Twitter every day, hearing the news, reading graphic novels, playing video games, streaming, the latest Netflix show, like so everyone's, like, really smart. And everybody gets the tropes. And you know, it's, I think part of the reason we have all these kind of movie sins, is people are just so used to this stuff now that it's easier for them to pick holes. And to kind of scale, I've seen this before, oh, there's a plot. So you have an audience that's like, super smart. And so that's kind of almost the rationale of something like history was going well, if you tell a traditional linear story to an audience that knows every story, it's really hot, because you're trying to outsmart them constantly. So the idea here was, well, let's, let's let them be smart. So by giving them you know, pieces of the story, you're almost inviting them closer to kind of experience of being the creator of being involved in putting this thing together. And the kind of the trick is that each individual piece has multiple layers. So all these stories that I'm telling, you know, they could theoretically be told as linear stories, with a main character and some suicide characters, various things happening. But I get excited by stories that Sproule a bit more, right become slightly more novelistic. And so what we're doing here is we're telling these stories that have a bunch of different things going on several layers. So in the case of immortality, there are this silly amount of landscape, there's this, we have three actual movies with actual stories. And so you know, someone might want to put the pieces together to figure out the stories of the movies, then we have the fact that we're also showing you how these movies were made. So now you have kind of the behind the scenes, stuff that is going on, which you know, is a more sophisticated, ask the audience because you're having to pick up on the subtext and you're having to put two pieces together by saying, Well, this happened. Why was this person upset here? What happened in the previous thing they filmed? And because you shoot movies, not in linear order, you know, both these stories that overlaid are not running in parallel, they're kind of coming at it from different angles. And then there's like the bigger picture story of like, Well, what happened to Marissa Moussa, what's the deal with this character, Marissa, so and then the maybe some other layers as well. without spoiling anything, so the really exciting thing is, like when you're writing these things, there's like a, it's not simple. But there's kind of a simple checklist where you go, Well, this individual piece here, does it. And then what, in a very mechanical way I'll often do is I'll know what the themes are of the stories. I'll know what each individual character's story is, you know, what are the big questions? What are their big conflicts or desires or whatever. And each scene should address every single one of those things in some meaningful way. And in the case of immortality, there's extra things right of like, well, each scene should have one piece of movie craft, right? Each scene should have one little thing that's like, gives you an insight into how movies are made, how things play out differently. And so what happens then is a completely different player, one player might come in and be like, Well, I'm really digging this character. I want to know what happened to the actor Carl Greenwood. So I'm kind of following this thread, someone else might be like, Well, I just want to know what happens in the fictional movie Minsky, someone else might be like, really trying to figure out what's the deal with the director, John Derrick, and someone else might be just enjoying absorbing, like, Well, how did they make movies in 1970? And how was that different to when they made movies in the studio system, right. And you could put different pieces together. And if you're putting pieces together, that have coal in them, you're now making something that looks like a story, right? And by tracking call. And so you know, you're kind of letting people
  
  
  
  and you know, this is what humans do, like humans love to see patterns. People love to organize things, right, like, so this is kind of narrative Tetris, you're letting people put these things together. And I think, really, when people get when people freak out, and like, how does this even work? Like? How could you tell a story like this? I think they're usually thinking about plot, right? Because that's what we normally think of as how a story is told, Well, you have to have A and then B, and then C. If you don't, then how's the plot work? And really, to me, like the plot is the least interesting thing. And really plot is just how do you organize the information. And, you know, we all know that actually, there are many ways of doing that, right? You could go watch Pulp Fiction, in which Tarantino puts things out of order. So that it's sad, right, because you see this guy die. And then now you see it before he was dead. And it's like, sad, and you have that extra layer of dramatic irony. But you can equally tell that story. You know, in complete chronological order, it would be about the same character, it might make you feel slightly differently, and maybe have a slightly different message. But there are so many different ways you can organize these pieces. And so actually, plot is the most arbitrary thing, right? And so giving over the ability to organize and kind of create the plot, to some extent to the audience feels like a reasonable thing. And it's quite interesting to watch people play as well, because there's, there's kind of an element of self pacing as well, where I mean, it's, it's slightly less, you can't be quite as explicit in staring things in immortality, although there are kind of ways but you know, if somebody is, you know, has had lots of very exciting fun things that they've discovered, and they put things together and light bulbs have gone off there, maybe they're in a position to just noodle around, or maybe they're in the mood to just noodle around over the side character or pick up on some atmospheric details. But if they get to the point where they want to move on now, right, they're ready to move on, then they can go back to that clip where they're really excited thing happened, or they're like, Oh, I'm gonna go click on this character again, because I know that character is at the heart of things, right? So there's an element where there is this ability for players to kind of steer things themselves. So, you know, for me, it's, you know, there aren't that many downsides, because it's really about having a different kind of conception of this of like, well, I want to share the stories and themes and ideas with the audience. And I'm giving that to them in the way that a sculptor might, or, or even like a painting, right, if you go and see a painting and an art gallery, you sit down and you absorb it, and no one's telling you where to put your eye. It's a slightly loose example. But you know, so it's that kind of presentation of giving you something that is more exploratory, and then like the huge bonuses for the person playing it, you then have this much closer, more intimate relationship to the story. And so much of it is happening in your brain, which to me is like a real fundamental have, if if it's an interactive experience if it's a game. So if the point is, this thing is cool, because I'm participating in it, you want as much happening in someone's brain as possible, right like that. That's where the collusion is happening. And there is this kind of common understanding that, you know, if you're trying to tell a story in in Halo,
  
  
  
  if someone is running through a battlefield, on multiple height levels, deciding which gun to use, managing their ammo count, prioritizing who to shoot first, which piece of cover to use, like there's very little of their brain left, to start emotionally responding to things to be thinking about, and anticipating elements of the plot and story. And so kind of the trick with my games has been to, to reduce as much as possible, that kind of, you know, that mechanical use of your brain to do the kind of the gaming stuff, but to still massively use your brain, right? It's just now it's all questions and mechanics, which have fixated on the story itself. So it becomes like, you know, it's really what I'm trying to do is encourage people to be as obsessive about things as I am, right. I'm like, I'm like to be any immortality, it really literally is saying, This is what it's like to be obsessive about movies, you go watch a movie, and you watch it 10 times, and you pause it and you freeze frame it, and you note the movies on scene, and then go read that Autobiography of the director, then you go read the second, the biography written by someone else about actually how the director was lying about everything, right. And you, you know, that's exciting, to have that level of kind of scrutiny. And to then, you know, be in the edit room with the editor and just be scrutinizing the footage and appreciating, you know, the kind of frame by frame expressions on people's faces. Really, immortality is like, well, let's take all that stuff. And that's the game.
  
  
  
  Ben 46:57
  
  I totally hear you on that on the level of as a player, it's really engaging, to be able to start to draw the little lines together and start to build the map in your head. But I was also thinking about, like, how, you know, how on earth did you engage with this as a director working with actors? And how linear were things on set? And how did you move people through scenes? I mean, you know, when you were filming the three movies, were those done in a linear fashion? Or were you doing, you know, in the same way that we have these match cuts to completely random scenes? How did you engage with that? And you know, did you mirror you know, the work on sets of this kind of jumping from scene to scene to scene? Or were things done in a kind of more complete, linear way?
  
  
  
  Sam Barlow 47:45
  
  Yeah, when we shoot these things I always try, then it's just about the actors, right? It's about helping them. Because if you're saying, like, the fun of this is to scrutinize someone's face, and through the subtext, right, get something out of it, then you need to give the actors as much freedom and support as possible. So it's, you know, it's never possible to shoot everything in chronological order, because of practicalities. But it's always was trying to get as close as possible. So in the case of immortality, you know, the three movies were entirely separate shoots, we try and shoot everything through. So there is a linear progression through the story. So that, you know, you know, the thing that is deeply is the most deeply buried is, you know, this, so and so's relationship with so and so? Or is this the things going to happen? On set that thing going to color other things, then, you know, because the actors have so much going on. So many lines, remember, so many different contexts that that, you know, at least having the, you know, give them that through line? You know, is pretty, pretty useful.
  
  
  
  Phil 48:54
  
  Yeah, I'm thinking like, just about your games in general. And, you know, you're recently you had a tweet that kind of influenced, maybe this question you were talking about? What was read it? You said, there are so many possibilities for what games could be that when I see a company throw money at what apparently is a pretty specific clone of another game that feels like a bum? No, maybe in olden times, it's okay to be like, this is the genre now, but I feel like we can do better. And, you know, something I was thinking about with the Euro games is that I think it's pretty fair to say that you're interested in expanding the medium of what a game is. And to me, I think I'm a writer, and I think we usually what I think of that, I feel like form is where a lot of that expansion takes place, and whatever kind of art form and I think we're in this really strange time this specifically in the games industry, where it kind of feels like everything slowly kind of in imploding, enter, as as budgets kind of continue to skyrocket to make these things? And I'm curious, like, I don't know, just like, how are you feeling about the state of the industry in relation to? Yeah, like kind of broadening the scope of what games could be because I feel like, you know, this listening to us talk and this conversation so far, it's, it's firing off so many receptors into my, into my brain of like, what is a game and like, maybe my some even, I think I have a fairly broad understanding of what games can be. But even now, I'm like, oh, maybe I'm still even being a bit closeted in terms of what I think a game is. So that's kind of a wishy washy question, but maybe just to reiterate it like yeah, how are you feeling about the state of things? And do you feel like there's more opportunities for things like immortality to be made? Or does it feel kind of like, damn, each time you make one of these, it feels like a miracle.
  
  
  
  Sam Barlow 50:57
  
  It's probably somewhere, it's probably jumping between the extremes, depending on what is happening on that day. You know, I think sometimes you sit through like the big game showcases, and you're like, Oh, my God, it's the SEC does this 20 of the same game. And I like the as a storyteller, the thing that always gets to me is like, the repetition of characters rights. There's such a limited set of characters and situations that you can explore in a game so often, because we're so tied to these very rigid genres. But I think, you know, there's just so much more being made now. The, you know, the ease to get to market is so much greater that. And, you know, there's no one in charge of the industry, right. So it's not like, A, it's not like I can usefully disagree with, like, the direction of the entire industry. And, you know, there are definitely things that are a sad, right, where you look at what's happened to phone gaming. And it kind of pretty much feels like the last two years, they've killed phone gaming. Right, I think like the arrival of Apple arcade, there was a number of changes to the store. And then Apple arcade coming along, and essentially fencing off premium games, within a kind of PG banner, pretty much destroyed the idea of making premium games for mobile as as a as a meaningful thing. And that's really sad, because mobile gaming was so exciting, because everyone had phones. And you know, the types of control systems we had on phones were suddenly fresh and new. And there was touchscreen, gaming and using cameras, and the fact that this very intimate personal device was like, super exciting. But it's, you know, business decisions and capitalism have kind of killed that. So, you know, there's things like that, where you're just like, Ah, it's like, we're in the sucky reality, right? This, there's an alternate universe where phone gaming continued to go and interesting places. But you know, I think it unless there is a big apocalypse, like, inevitably, the future of entertainment, and storytelling is digital, right? It is going to be on devices. Exactly what that looks like, no one knows. And so yeah, I've been coming at this from the game side, you know, maybe at some point, it stops being as explicitly, you know, linked to the game side. So, you know, I think we'll continue to see cool things. I mean, the fact that, you know, it's easy to forget, but if I think back to when I made Silent Hill Shattered Memories, like the arguments I had to make to justify the fact that that game didn't have a combat system, the fact that we want to tell a story that was about complicated grief. You know, there were so many decisions we made that, you know, we've had to fight for every inch to justify that this medium should be allowed to do these things. And now, I can just decide to make immortality and it is scary, it is risky. And, you know, maybe I'll make a bet and lose all my money one day. But, you know, I think that in itself is quite exciting. And, you know, it's part of a larger societal people, you know, becoming accustomed to video games, and digital things. So, you know, who knows, I remember someone telling me when the pandemic was early days of the pandemic, and they said, it was exciting. They were coming from a very high level business perspective, they were saying, it's very exciting, because you're gonna have a generation of kids that spent two years, two years just sat on computers. And so the innovations that would have taken 510 years to happen are going to happen a lot sooner, because these kids have just become so much more immersed and entrenched in gaming, and an accelerated so this younger generation that is going to, you know, invent new things and change things will be kind of much, much more difficult. So who knows?
  
  
  
  Ben 54:51
  
  I wanted to kind of your games to me, I think really care very deeply about making the player like me Meta awareness of the game that they are playing a game, you know, I'm thinking about, you know, immortality does it but you know, also something like her story when you have the flickering screen and you see your silhouette. Why is that important? Why is that an important element of the stories that you're telling to make players feel like they are part of and in some ways complicit in the stories that you're you're kind of unspooling
  
  
  
  Sam Barlow 55:29
  
  I think it's, it's inherent, I think it can be really useful to establish some kind of frame anyway. So you kind of, you're kind of limiting the possibilities, especially if someone's interacting, you're kind of almost kind of helping them understand the kind of constraints is part of it, I think there is a really useful storytelling thing. And this is something that I kind of learned from Hitchcock was, and again, sort of mirrors this, this disillusionment with the ultimate immersion of these kind of immersive VR type games was, if you look at what someone like Hitchcock does, it's all about creating this extreme immersion. And, you know, when people watch a movie, and a terrified, or, you know, the suspense is kicking in, and they're genuinely anxious about what's happening on screen, like, you're clearly having them plug into the story, and believing in the fakeness, you know, don't be on the fakeness, to the point where they can perspire or be terrified, right? But what you see when you look at Hitchcock is he will always punctuate these things he wouldn't, he might throw in some some humor, or particularly like a particular piece of camera work or something which almost calls attention to itself. And rather than diminished the immersion, like, I think this when you're immersed in something, and you're kind of committing to it, having it pushed back a bit, can oftentimes be quite useful. Because I think having that push back, it almost makes you push back twice as hard. Whereas I think if you're getting rid of all of that, then you're leaving it up to the player to poke holes in it, right. So there's an element of sort of attention of manipulating people's attention. And then I think as well, like the fundamental aspect of art is, is the conflict between the detachment and the kind of emotional involvement right, so what makes going to see a movie different from real life is come up with someone someone uses this example is one of the storytelling guru people was like, if you walk down the street, and you see someone dropped down dead in front of you, like you have the emotional reaction to that in the moment, and it's all emotion, and it's all intense. And then a week later, you might think back on it, and start thinking about your own mortality. And thinking on a very intellectual level about it. But these two things are separate. But if you're gonna see a movie, about death, you're able to because you have the distance, you're able to simultaneously be thinking about the idea whilst also experiencing the emotions. And it's this beautiful kind of synthesis, that I think maybe this person got very pretentious and said that that's what we used to call a religious experience that we don't have those anymore. So this is but you know, is that I think there is I am definitely like for me always conscious of bouncing, like a level of pushback or detachment, with then giving people an ability to, to kind of lean in which Yeah, I mean, in case of immortality, you go in here are these all these different levels of fake stories, and you want to be excited and interested in moved by them on all these different levels, but we're reminding you at every step of the way, this is not real, right? This is not real. And and these are not people living inside your TV screen, the little dots of color that, you know, when you pull back and look at them look like real people. So I think there's definitely for me that that is definitely my texture is kind of balancing those things to kind of give you this interesting relationship.
  
  
  
  Phil 59:27
  
  Yeah, I mean, with mortality, it's specifically I kind of felt a lot of I mean, as you've talked about, it's very densely packed. So if anything, one thing I was thinking as I was playing is like, Man in the game asks a lot of the player in terms of like, remembering, you know, there's like, like you said, there's the level of the film. There's the behind the scenes, there's kind of another element that I won't get to be too explicit about. And so there's a lot of things are kind of tracking in addition to like objects on screen. Richard's using to match cuts. And, you know, I kind of found that it reminded me a lot of like David Lynch's work broadly, where there's kind of so much density packed into the narrative. And then there's like a McCobb, kind of mixed with a mundane element to it. That basically, when you finish the experience, I found that like, the first thing is immediately going to like YouTube videos and like, forum posts, and it almost feels like that game, maybe even more so than some of the something like her story is like you kind of are forced to go and like, talk to other people, and engage with other people, in order to make sense of the experience you just had. And I'm wondering if maybe that is a bit of your ethos with that with that project, or with these kind of this, this trilogy of projects in general, where compared to a lot of I'd say, like more traditional games that give you the typical kind of payoff, or the narrative you've experienced by the end, it kind of feels like with this game, which maybe is just a sign of like, good art, it kind of forces you to then have to think after the fact of like, what is this experience I just had, I'm like, I want to talk to other people about this experience that I just had.
  
  
  
  Sam Barlow 1:01:18
  
  Yeah, I mean, that's so important to me, in all the stuff that I love. Gabe leaves you with something, right? Like, I think if something is neatly, if everything's resolved, and explained, then you can kind of wrap a bow around it, put it on the shelf, and move on. And then like six months time, two years time, it's gone. And you enjoyed it at the time, right? It was a roller coaster, and it was exciting. But you know, the stuff I love is the stuff where you get to the end, maybe there is some catharsis, there is some kind of resolution. But you're then left thinking like, Well, what happens next? Or oh, but why did they do that thing, right? Or did you just have something that keeps it alive in your head? And, you know, those are the stories I love. I remember talking to as a showrunner, they almost made a TV series of her story. And the showrunner they brought on. And he was saying to me, like, I'm so jealous of you, because he was a Hollywood screenwriter, done some very pretty big movies. And he was like, as a storyteller, I know that ambiguity and leaving things unresolved is like the magic. Like, that's the stuff, that's the best taste. But I have to I have to always resolve things, because I can't upset the audience. And I have to make everyone feel like they got it and resolve things before they step outside the movie theater. And then when he played her story, he was like, you kind of get to have your cake and eat it here. Because you can deal with levels of ambiguity and questions, because the audience knows that maybe they can keep digging, right? Like it's not, it's not finished like that, if they want to answer something, maybe they can just keep digging in, they'll find an answer. So there's this sense that they have some play in that so that they feel slightly more comfortable. In that interactive space with those kinds of interesting ambiguities that you don't maybe, you know, when part of their mortality is people looking back at 70s or 70s movies with like this high point, and you watch 70s movies, and so many of them just finish, right? They get to a certain point, they just finish and they'll they'll finish on some ambiguous scenario, right? Or you can movie like cruising, you just left on like Alcatraz phase, and you're like, what is happening with Swissy? The killer? Is he happy? Has he found is he acknowledged part of what is going on with this guy, right? All these questions. So you can't call them neatly put that away. So that yeah, that to me is, is like really, really key is, you know, the games the like, I love like we talked about metric games, right? There's like a two fold thing with the metric game where a metric game doesn't really start until you finish it. Right? You'll finish a Metroid game and they'll say 30% completion. And then you have to kind of dig deeper and actually discover this. And suddenly you like, I just discovered this whole entire hidden part of this planet that didn't even know existed, right? And there's, it's a deeper appreciation of the mechanics to access that stuff. But I will, you know, I love the idea that people will play one of my games get to the point where they feel satisfied, and they're done. But they'll know that I had the sense that like, if there's a rainy day, I can boot this thing back up again and people around or like you say go talk to someone about it. And, you know, and enjoy discussing and getting other people's perspectives on it kind of enjoy the fact that there are these kind of interesting questions that I have kind of, you know, some investments.
  
  
  
  Phil 1:04:49
  
  That's really interesting. I mean, you just kind of answered what I was going to ask next is like a lot of your games kind of feels like they end but they're, you know, there's still more that you could say you have found yet and like, what was the reasoning behind that? But I think that like really,
  
  
  
  Sam Barlow 1:05:04
  
  it's a really hard thing to pull off again, like I look at Zelda games and some of the earlier Zelda games, I would struggle with this thing, right like you playing a Zelda game, you just want to explore and have fun. The game's telling. You gotta go kilgannon. Right, like you've got a five hours, kilgannon. There's lightning in the sky, but I'm like, now I've got like, some some questions, I gotta go get some stuff over here. And at some point, you're like, I should probably kilgannon. Now I'm gonna kill Ghana, and then you're like, I've got 12 more golden spiders to find. And often with those games, I would find that get the getting of the 12 Spiders, I would, I would be kind of, you know, the game would be getting thin, and I would be kind of lessening my enjoyment of the game. Well, I loved I don't think I'm able to do this quite. But with Breath of the Wild was, there was so much content that you knew you were never going to find it all. And the game was like, You never gonna find it all. So just relax, just just do the stuff that's interesting to you. To the point where the few people on the internet that did get every single thing discovered that their reward was like a golden piece of poop. Right? Was Was Nintendo going you're not supposed to do this, like, just chill. But yeah, that, you know that, to me, that kind of that, that idea that that thing is still alive and interesting to you. And with it being an interactive thing, you know, genuinely having a level of color lighting is definitely key to me.
  
  
  
  Ben 1:06:23
  
  I had the experience with her story where I was like, I've seen a good amount of this, and then I kind of pulled up you have the you can see what clips you've seen and then realized I had missed just massive chunks of chunks of the game, and that they were still kind of out there. One of the questions I wanted to ask you, because it feels like it's at the forefront of immortality, is this question about like, is the art like is it worth is the kind of the suffering that you go through, or in some cases, the exploitation that you go through to create a thing worth it? If it's immortalized in a piece of art? You know, in some ways, even if only one person the viewer ever really sees it. And that, that question, I think jumped out to me just because video games, I think as an industry, we're seeing like every other week, you know, these expos days about working conditions, and just how bad things have been behind the scenes for the creation of you know, X game. And you know, I'll read those, and then sometimes I'll go back, and I'll play Red Dead Redemption, too. And I'll be like, it's pretty fun, pretty good. And so I don't know, I wanted to in some ways, I suspect that immortality is maybe the answer to the question that I'm asking you. But like, what, what, where do you? Where are your feelings on? You know? What's worth it in art? And where to draw the some of those lines?
  
  
  
  Sam Barlow 1:07:52
  
  Yeah, I mean, it's, it's always, especially with immortality, there were questions here, as well as as a video game maker. You're creating the video games are very bad immortality machine, because you create these things that maybe in five years won't exist on the app store. Or even if they even if they do survive in 10 years, we'll have age so badly three, because of the technologies and things. So you know, I know, solid Hill Shattered Memories was one of the best things I've made. There are people that love that game. But it's very hard to play now. Like you'd have to physically track down the right hardware, there aren't that many copies in circulation, then even if you did that graphically, people's faces would liquid right? Because you like our people's faces just look better now. Like this is weird old school computer faces. So it's really weird to be in video games and, and to some extent feel like you're a companion to books and movies and things. But I feel like you're aware painfully that we're suddenly the lifecycle in video games where things aged out a lot quicker. So you're kind of thinking about those aspects. And again, in video games, you have to work very, very hard to make these things. And it's important to us, and I guess, and I think you'd affirm every time you highlight something extremely toxic or horrible about videogames. Usually, it applies to other industries, too, right? It's, it's more about capitalism and other power dynamics within our world than specifically video games. And you know, sometimes, because people are so invested in the art that you know, you can kind of exploit them more, but I guess I mean, definitely making immortality. It's not like I have an answer that is spelled out in immortality, like you say it's it's partly about asking the questions, and suddenly going through the making of it, and the difficulty of making it almost changed my mind and then as well seeing it transformed, you know, you're writing this story that is about an actress and what does it mean for the actress to be changed by the roles that She's playing, how much of themselves? Do they put into it? You know, all these questions, and we're putting real actresses through that. So it's very was very interesting to see the various actors to some extent changing the story in how they told it especially and kind of how they, you know, what was their emotional response to this so that, you know, the kind of the ultimate message of their mortality of like, you know, what is Marisa Marcel's take on this, I think very much feels like that was a joint effort. And, you know, came from some places that were very real. But I think ultimately, the thing that is exciting is connection, I think, like, a human connection. And, you know, it might be that you meet a person in real life, and they have a connection and share something of your life and absorb something of theirs. And ultimately, whether you're writing a book or making a movie, you're kind of trying to do the same thing. And we have this magical ability through technology to do it with lots of people at the same time. And, and what I love about video games is that some of that interaction is not necessarily it's not real interaction, but like, there is some of that dynamism is kind of retained in the work so that when people are playing immortality, and having an intimate reaction to it, and feeling like they've had a very personal experience, you know, that's different in the way that it would be with other pieces of art. So, you know, I think trying to find ways to create that. And that's really why I have found myself I think, in this FMV world is, like the stories I want to tell and the connections I want to create with players, so much of that is accessible through human faces and human performances. You know, it's I wouldn't even say it's a shortcut, I feel like it's, it's, it's just a powerful tool, to be able to kind of create those reactions and experiences for people.
  
  
  
  Ben 1:11:59
  
  We really appreciate you taking the time out of your day to talk to us.
  
  
  
  Sam Barlow 1:12:04
  
  I enjoyed it, thanks for taking the time to talk to me, after making sense for three years, and then it was exciting to get to talk to people about them. And, you know, not be secretive, or you know, and just know that it's out there, and people have interesting questions to ask
  
  
  
  Phil 1:12:19
  
  about it. Awesome. Well, thanks again, Sam, we really appreciate you for coming on.
  
  
  
  And that was our conversation with Sam Barlow about his new game immortality as well as just like, all these games he's been making with half mermaid productions that are focused around like these searching and scouring archives in order to, for the most part, like solve a mystery. Yeah, Ben, I felt like this was a I don't know, it was like a challenging conversation, I think, in some ways, because his games are so different from basically anything else we've played for the show. But I feel almost like my my whole idea of like, what a game could be really changed after after talking with them, and that was really cool.
  
  
  
  Ben 1:13:24
  
  Yeah, and I, you know, I think like, if you're someone who is, like, interested as in again, I think this is a very tired conversation in a lot of ways. But games as art, like, Sam Barlow is your fucking guy. You know, like, Sam Barlow is like, very interested in, like, what is art? And how do we make, you know, games be a way of engaging with, you know, narrative and story that is absolutely about like, how do we, you know, ask these bigger, deeper questions. And so I think it was like, definitely a conversation that was hard to get our arms around at times, because Sam is very smart. And also is like, interested in, you know, engaging with these things in a really complicated way, which is great and good, but also hard sometimes as an interviewer when you're just like, Well, wait a minute, like we are you saying that? That? Scrolling through Wikipedia is like a game like what's going on here? But it was great. Yeah. And
  
  
  
  Phil 1:14:23
  
  I felt like another thing. I don't know why this comes up, and so many of our episodes, and maybe it just revolves around like both of us being writers and kind of interested in narrative and interactive narrative. But I feel like no matter what any kind of narrative based game that we play and talk, talk about, the ultimate kind of question that comes up revolves around the visual novels and like, thinking about interactive fiction, and the sense of like, traditional game design. And yeah, there's like a moment in this conversation where we're talking All those things like, what a game means to say, like, how does he view immortality? You know, thinking about player agency, and it is really good. And I think he might have even said something about, like, choose your own adventure novels. And like, I don't know if there's like a moment when during that conversation and he was talking about like, choose your own adventure. And like, I think a start and to text based, like role playing games, when he first started out developing games, where I was, like, almost having an out of body experience is thinking about, like, choose your own adventure games and like creative nonfiction and like collage essays, and like how, in some ways, like that is kind of like a game. But the interactivity that you have when you're kind of putting the pieces together in this nonlinear narrative, how there is a lot of a game like qualities, and some ways he's playing with that from like, a visual standpoint.
  
  
  
  Ben 1:16:00
  
  Yeah, I think it like it gets to, you know, one of the things that I think Sam is interested in is like, if we can interact with a text, right, like, what does that mean? And what does that add that, you know, watching a movie or reading a book that are in some ways static, can't really engage with you as a person you're playing? Right? And so I think he's really interested in like, how does that how does it further what he's doing? How does it further a narrative? You know, how does that complicate a story if the text is in some ways, like changing to the person playing it, but also is like, in a creepy way, like, pretty explicitly as with immortality, aware of the player playing it?
  
  
  
  Phil 1:16:43
  
  Yeah, yeah. Well, 100% and I feel like, you know, you had played her story is played immortality. And, you know, it's, it's interesting, I think, I don't think we get too much into it. But you know, I kind of left it playing immortality feeling like like, I don't know, if it's related to genre for me and necessarily like, what he's doing. But I feel like there's, it's like, almost there. And I think the way that you described her story is almost being a sycamore, like you enter a word, a key word, and that brings up different clips, that seemed like something that was a bit more easy to parse than something like immortality, which in a lot of senses is really asking a lot of the player in terms of understanding, like, all these different narrative layers that are, you know, sandwiched on top of each other, on top of like, navigating a UI, that I in my opinion, isn't like super intuitive. That it's just interesting to kind of see, like, between these three games, how he's found new ways of, of iterating, and like, re mixing the gameplay, that I'm like, I'm still intrigued by it, but like, I don't know, at least like the way that the immortality was delivered. I'm like, damn, maybe I'm just like, stupid. I don't know. Like, it was like a really tough game to, to forest for me, you know?
  
  
  
  Ben 1:18:04
  
  Yeah, though, it definitely felt like and again, I definitely felt this while playing her story, too. I ended up like, halfway through, I was like, I need to take notes. Like, I need to write down what my thoughts are, in order to like, like, figure out what next to engage with and figure out like, what's a key word just so you don't forget it that someone says is in a scene that I want to follow to next? And so I think it definitely, you know, these are games that are not made for kind of passive engagement, like I think many games are, these are games that really are like, we want you to be thinking about like eight different layers in eight different levels all at the same time. Yeah, so I also was feeling Am I too dumb for this?
  
  
  
  Phil 1:18:47
  
  I mean, I probably put in like, let's say, four hours. And I was like, looking up on Reddit, like, literally, like how to play immortality, having already spent four hours with it. And I did that like multiple times. And you know, if anything, I mean, I think if I'm being like more objective about it, it really shows us kind of like the power of what Sam's doing in terms of like expanding with the medium can be where like, somebody like me has been playing games, all my life has to be like, oh, like, what actually am I doing? And like, it almost feels like you found this alien artifact, you know, you have to like, kind of retrain your brain to understand, you know, how to engage with the thing. So if anything, I think like, that's really cool and really, really valuable and something that the industry really needs, given the fact that so much of the industry now is like rehashing the same three ideas.
  
  
  
  Ben 1:19:43
  
  The three seem same games over and over and over. There's one more thing I'm gonna make his talk about, because it definitely stood out to me, which is the game itself is kind of asking this question about art and like, is it worth it to kind of suffer for free or art if if that art kind of preserves you and your works into immortality, right? Like in the same way that a movie might or, or a book might like, what does it mean? You know, is it worth it? If there's suffering and abuse that goes into the creation of the thing, if the thing at least allows you to kind of have touch on some kind of immortality, and when we kind of asked Sam about it, he said, This thing games are imperfect immortality machines, just kind of the idea that, you know, they're, they're degrading so quickly, just in terms of, you know, so many games get, they age out very quickly, people stopped playing them very quickly. You know, right now, I think we're in this moment where there's just so many that it's like, they get lost very quickly. And if there aren't physical versions, you they can like truly disappear, become unplayable on new machines. And so I don't know, I was just a thing that I was thinking about a lot after that interview is like, well, what is the what is the purpose and the value of all this work? That goes into something like immortality, because their mortality? I think, like, you play that game, and you're like, holy shit, someone put a lot of effort into this? And what is the value of it when it can disappear? Like, almost almost instantaneously in like, the grand scheme of things?
  
  
  
  Phil 1:21:18
  
  Yeah, I think that's actually a really like a really good point to end on. Because it's just like, yeah, the games as an art form, it's such an interesting, it's an interesting space, because like, like Sam is talking about. So many games that kind of get made, and maybe they're talked about for inhaled, and then they're kind of like, suddenly become so archaic, so quickly, that it almost becomes like, they're just forgotten, you know, like, these almost canonical works. Like, you know, like a novel which you can kind of, we figured out how to write novels, you know, in some ways, it's kind of like games are still in this space, where we're figuring out the language that that best exemplifies what the medium is. And because of that, like, there's all these, essentially these experiments, and, you know, the longer that they exist, the more it's kind like, Well, why do I want to go to this old experiment? You know, and I think, especially since it's a visual medium, it's that's always going to be the constant battle of like, Oh, this looks old, or like, this doesn't play like, with the new hotness plays, like and I think I think Sam is really interested in that, right. And then in some ways, the games he's making are kind of like, future future proofed. And in that regard, because they use real people and the, they're using like, these, these mechanisms that are easily easy to understand.
  
  
  
  Ben 1:22:39
  
  Yeah, and it's like, I do think it's like, it's a thing that is worth thinking about. Especially like, if we broaden the scope out when we talk about like art more generally, which is like, you know, what is it? What does it mean to create something? If it is impermanent? I don't know, I've been thinking about it a lot lately, Phil? Because did I tell you this? We watched the like Netflix documentary about infinite infinity the other day? No. And, like, the conclusion of that, in some ways, is like, everything is going to be ground to dust. Like nothing is permanent. And so like, what does it mean? That these the the efforts, you know, in the time in the in the place, and how much you're kind of putting into things? Is it worth it? If it's going to be, you know, disappeared? And I don't know, I just think it's an interesting thing to think about, but it does, like, in some ways, answer the question for me of like, well, well, how much? You know, like, how much abuse should you tolerate? Or like, how much pain should you tolerate in creating the thing where I'm like, like, makes me feel like not that much.
  
  
  
  Phil 1:23:46
  
  Now, I mean, I think that's, yeah, I mean, if listeners if you have any idea of how we should, how we should think about these issues around like, is it worth it? And then shit, like, let us know, we'd love to continue that conversation. I think that's kind of like almost the ethos of the whole show of like, what what is this? You know, is this process worth it? And like, how does it affect us when you make these these creative works? So, yeah,
  
  
  
  Ben 1:24:11
  
  I'm fully off the rails become a hedonist. Like that's the that's the conclusion of immortality. Thank you.
  
  
  
  Phil 1:24:17
  
  So you know, if you want to check out, immortality is available on Steam, it's on Game Pass Xbox Game Pass. I believe it's on PlayStation. And that's coming to Netflix on like their iOS rollout. So definitely check that out. And you know, Sam's other games have definitely been hailed for years now. So her story and telling lies are available on all platforms. You can find Sam at Mr. Sam Barlow on Twitter. And you can check out his production company half mermaid at half mermaid.co. Where can they find you about?
  
  
  
  Ben 1:24:58
  
  They can find me at Sad underscore radio underscore lab you can also shoot us an email did I? Did you say that the origin story pod@gmail.com Our website is origin story dot show and you can always tweet at us at origin story underscore. Thanks as always to melody Hirsch for all the design work for origin story and to Ryan Hopper for the intro and outro music which you are likely hearing right now. Leave a review on Apple podcasts and Spotify. I don't know so we don't disappear forever, never to be thought of heard of ever again.
  
  
  
  Phil 1:25:36
  
  So we're not ground into the dust through infinity. So with that we will see you all again here on the next episode of origin story. Peace.
  
  
  
  Ben 1:25:52
  
  What's the point?
  
  
  
  Unknown Speaker 1:25:53
  
  You