#Game Developer Interviews

[adelar-storytime]

OC questions

60 questions that can be made into an OC ask game, or you can just fill everything out yourself to get to know your character a little better :)

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[1] What first impression do they typically make? Are they likeable from the get go, or take time to grow on people?

[2] How does their social personality differ from how they act when they’re alone?

[3] What emotion is the hardest for them to deal with?

[4] How physically and emotionally affectionate they are?

[5] Are they good at keeping secrets?

[6] How direct are they in conversations, do they speak in hints and riddles or bluntly say what they think?

[7] Are they a good liar, and what would they probably lie about?

[8] How open they are about their true feelings, both positive and negative?

[9] What is their love language?

[10] How quickly do they fall for someone?

[11] What are small things that make them happy?

[12] How high is their self-esteem?

[13] What kind of sense of humor do they have, if any?

[14] What does it take to make them laugh, and what does their laugh sound like?

[15] How do they act around people they don't like?

[16] Do they easily rely on others to help them out, or prefer doing everything themselves?

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[17] What is their biggest struggle that no one around them is able to understand or believe?

[18] Do they ever have to hide their identity and for what reason?

[19] If they could change one thing about their past, what would they change?

[20] When they’re sad or upset, do they need company or some time alone?

[21] When they’re sick, would they want others to visit and take care of them, or they would rather prefer not to be seen at not their best?

[22] Do they have nightmares, and if yes, when did they start and what are they usually about?

[23] What was the worst, the darkest period of their life that they have been through?

[24] How hard it is for them to not allow their emotions to cloud their judgement?

[25] Do they have fears and phobias, and if they do, do they usually keep it to themselves or talk about it openly?

[26] Do they have any physical or mental ilness, how do they handle it and how open they are about it?

[27] Do they have any scars, how did they get them and how do they feel about them?

[28] What is something that they will never be able to forgive?

[29] How do they deal with loss, stress and anger?

[30] What are their most healthy and most unhealthy coping mechanisms?

[31] How hard it is for them to own up to their mistakes and wrongdoings?

[32] Is there something they've done in the past that they deeply regret till this day?

[33] What are one of their fondest and most treasured memories?

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[34] Do they have vices they don't want others to know about?

[35] Do they like their own appearance, and what do they do, if anything, to alter it in any way?

[36] Do they own items that have sentimental value?

[37] How would they spend a lazy day when they have nothing specific to do?

[38] What do they usually do or where do they go when they need to feel comfortable and safe?

[39] What is their sleeping habits and favorite sleeping position, either alone and with someone?

[40] How picky they are with food, do they have specific dietary requirements based on their health or culture?

[41] What’s their usual morning routine?

[42] What is their idea of a perfect friendly hangout and/or romantic date?

[43] Do they enjoy flirting or being flirted with?

[44] On a party, where would you find them?

[45] For an event, would they dress like they typically do, or go all out?

[46] Would they rather dress to look attractive or to feel comfortable, and what would they never wear?

[47] Do they drink alcohol, and if they do, how much and how often?

[48] Are they, or were they at some point in their life, a part of any subculture?

___

[49] Do they possess any unexpected skill or knowledge that surprises others, and otherwise, what is something anyone would assume they know or can do, but in fact they don’t?

[50] What are they really good and really bad at?

[51] How good are they with money?

[52] Do they speak any other languages aside from their own?

[53] Do they like to sing and how confident they are with their singing?

[54] Do they like giving gifts, and how good are they at picking good gifts?

[55] How long does it take for them to make a new place feel like home, and what do they need for it?

[56] How would they react to hearing a dirty joke?

[57] What was the most stupid or dangerous thing they have ever done?

[58] In the situation where they had to choose, would they rather stay loyal to their morals or to people they love?

[59] What would they want to be remembered for?

[60] If they were to commit a crime, what kind of crime would it most likely be?

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some of these question were written myself, some are the courtesy of my friend, and some were brought from my questionnaires in my old fandom. if you use them, please reblog or link back to this post

[interact-if]

Our second edition of the Black History Month Author Spotlight series features beloved author, C.C. Hill (@when-life-gives-you-lemons-if)!

(CC is an absolute institution. What better way to celebrate Valentine’s than by doing a feature of the slice-of-life romance queen herself? CC is one the most inspiring, supportive IF writers out there, and it was a great honor to pick her brain! Read on for pandemic-setting feel good stories and Creole-based spells!)

Author: C.C. Hill

I'm from Haiti, born and raised. I love red wine, ice cream, and I'm obsessed with true crime podcasts.

Games: When Life Gives You Lemons (Slice-of-Life)

Synopsis: You play as an MC starting a new life in a small town called Lemon. It’s a story about self-discovery, love, and parenthood—a comfort story where the love interests want to sweep you off your feet.

Games: The Midnight Saga (Horror)

Synopsis: After finding yourself trapped in another dimension, you and your friends must fight for survival and defeat the monsters that lurk in the shadows. Make sure to grab a weapon as your quiet Halloween night turns into an out-of-this-world adventure!

Quote from the interview:

What mostly inspired Lemon in particular was the need for a feel-good story—a story where the character just needs a break. No magic, no monsters, just going through life and having the romance options fall in love with them no matter what. It was just the need for comfort, for feel-good moments, for romance, and a little bit of drama.

Read on for the full interview!

Tell me more about yourself! What are some things new readers or long-time readers might not know about you?

I'm from Haiti, born and raised. I love red wine, ice cream, and I'm obsessed with true crime podcasts.

Can you tell me a bit about what you’re working on right now and your journey into interactive fiction? What inspired the game/story you’re currently writing?

I'm working on so many things it should be illegal for my brain to operate this way. But mainly, When Life Gives You Lemons. My plan is to focus on the final part in March, do some beta testing, and submit it to Hosted Games in April for my birthday month.

I'm also under contract with Heart’s Choice, writing Spices of the Heart, with hopes of completing it this year. On top of that, I’m working on publishing my first visual novel, The Wedding. It’s close to completion, and I have the third quarter of 2025 planned for publication.

I only started writing interactive fiction in 2020. When the pandemic hit, I needed something to keep my brain occupied, and five years later, I’ve published three games and still have a ton of projects in progress.What mostly inspired Lemon in particular was the need for a feel-good story—a story where the character just needs a break. No magic, no monsters, just going through life and having the romance options fall in love with them no matter what. It was just the need for comfort, for feel-good moments, for romance, and a little bit of drama.

How has your identity, heritage/background, upbringing, or personal experiences influenced your storytelling or writing process? OR How does your work feature aspects of your identity / experience?

My first game, The Midnight Saga, was heavily inspired by my background and where I'm from. The story itself is based on an old Haitian folklore about not staying outside after midnight—if you do, the Keeper of Midnight will eat you. I took that idea and built the characters around it.

I even managed to include some spells written in Haitian Creole. It was a lot of fun to write, and even though Book 2 is currently on hiatus, this story has a special place in my heart because it was my first game. The characters are a representation of my people and the struggles they’ve gone through. I’m really happy that it was my debut story.

What are some of the most rewarding or challenging aspects of writing Interactive Fiction for you?

For me, it’s branching and being able to write an MC and other characters in a way that readers can truly connect with. Lately, I’ve been writing a lot of feel-good romance and slice-of-life stories, and I’m starting to feel like this is my comfort zone—and I want to stay here forever.

I never want to create a romance option that is inherently bad or purposely deceitful. My biggest challenge is writing characters who are flawed and complex—where readers can love them or hate them—but making sure they aren’t just villains for the sake of it. They’re simply existing in the world they were created in.

What does your writing process look like? Any rituals or habits? Any tips, tricks, philosophies or approaches that have worked very well for you?

My writing process is a mess. My brain gets pulled in so many directions. When I get an idea, I have to code it, shape it, and give it life—otherwise, it’s going to bug me forever. That’s why I end up with so many WIPs. I need to see them through, at least to a short demo, to see if they make sense.

My desk is also full of notes, and I basically write on anything—pieces of napkins, tissue boxes, whatever is nearby. One weird habit I have is that some of the best changes I’ve made to my games, those "spark" moments, happen when I’m in the shower. It’s weird and strange, but it works.

What’re you excited to tackle/implement/work on next? Or anything you’re looking forward to in the year ahead?

Keep writing romance and feel-good slice-of-life stories. Get When Life Gives You Lemons published this year. Focus on doing this full-time. Publish my visual novel.

Overall, just stay busy and be productive.

If you were to say one thing to your readers, other authors, and/or the interactive fiction community: what would it be?

To the readers—us authors don’t have all the answers. Sometimes, we start writing a story and end up forgetting certain plots or characters, which is easy to do when writing interactive fiction. So yes, we often write ourselves into a corner and just put a period there so the story can progress.

To the authors—write stories you love, something you would want to read. It makes it easier to keep going because if it’s a story you love, you’ll want to see how it ends, and that will push you to persevere.

This-or-that segment: (red = CC's pick)

Coffee or tea?

Early mornings or late nights?

Angsty or Cozy romances?  

Steady progress or frenzied binge-writing followed by periods of calm?

Introvert or extrovert?

Plotter or pantser?

[just-ornstein]

[JK]  My first job was as an Assistant Producer for a video game company called Interplay in Irvine, CA. I had recently graduated from Boston University's School of Fine Arts with an MFA in Directing (I started out as a theatre nerd), but also had some limited coding experience and a passion for computers. It didn't look like I'd be able to make a living directing plays, so I decided to combine entertainment and technology (before it was cool!) and pitched myself to Brian Fargo, Interplay's CEO. He gave me my first break. I packed up and moved out west, and I've been producing games ever since.

[JK] I loved my time at EA. I was there for almost a full decade, and learned a tremendous amount about game-making, and met the most talented and driven people, who I remain in touch with today. EA gave me many opportunities, and never stopped betting on me. I worked on The Sims for nearly 5 years, and then afterwards, I worked on console action games as part of the Visceral studio. I was the Creative Director for the 2007 game "The Simpsons", and was the Executive Producer and Creative Director for the 2009 game "Dante's Inferno".

[JK] I haven't played in a long while, but I do recall that after the game shipped, my wife and I played the retail version for some time -- we created ourselves, and experimented with having a baby ahead of the actual birth of our son (in 2007). Even though I'd been part of the development team, and understood deeply how the simulation worked, I was still continually surprised at how "real" our Sims felt, and how accurate their responses were to having a baby in the house. It really felt like "us"!

Now for some of the development and lore related questions:

[JK] So I ended up in the incredibly fortunate position of creating the shipping neighborhoods for The Sims 2, and recruiting a few teammates to help me as we went along. 

Around the same time, we started using the Buy/Build tools to make houses we could save, and also bring them into each new build of the game (correcting for any bugs and incompatibilities). With the import tool, we could load Sims into these houses. In time, this "vanguard QA" process turned into a creative endeavor to define the "saved state" of the neighborhoods we would actually end up shipping with the game.

On playtesting & the leftover sims data on various lots:

Basically, we were in the late stages of development, and the Save Game functionality wasn't quite working. In order to test the game properly, you really needed to have a lot of assets, and a lot of Sims with histories (as if you'd been playing them for weeks) to test out everything the game had to offer. So I started defining a set of characters in a spreadsheet, with all their tuning variables, and worked with engineering to create an importer, so that with each new build, I could essentially "load" a kind of massive saved game, and quickly start playing and testing. 

It was fairly organic, and as the game's functionality improved, so did our starter houses and families. 

The thought process behind the creation of the iconic three neighborhoods:

I would not say it was particularly planned out ahead of time. We knew we needed a few saved houses to ship with the game; Sims 1, after all, had the Goth house, and Bob Newbie's house. But there wasn't necessarily a clear direction for what the neighborhood would be for Sims 2. We needed the game to be far enough along, so that the neighborhood could be a proper showcase for all the features in the game. With each new feature that turned alpha, I had a new tool in my toolbox, and I could expand the houses and families I was working on. Once we had the multi-neighborhood functionality, I decided we would not just have 1 starter neighborhood, but 3. With the Aging feature, Memories, a few wacky objects, plus a huge catalog of architectural and decorative content, I felt we had enough material for 3 truly distinct neighborhoods. And we added a couple of people to what became the "Neighborhood Team" around that time.

Later, when we created Strangetown, and eventually Veronaville, I believe we went back and changed Pleasantville to Pleasantview... because I liked the alliteration of "Verona-Ville", and there was no sense in having two "villes". (To this day, by the way, I still don't know whether to capitalize the "V" -- this was hotly debated at the time!)

Pleasantview:

Anyway, to answer your question, we of course started with Pleasantview. As I recall, we were not quite committed to multiple neighborhoods at first, and I think it was called Pleasantville initially, which was kind of a nod to Simsville... but without calling it Simsville, which was a little too on the nose. (There had also been an ill-fated game in development at Maxis at the time, called SimsVille, which was cancelled.) It's been suggested that Pleasantville referred to the movie, but I don't think I ever saw that movie, and we just felt that Pleasantville kind of captured the feeling of the game, and the relaxing, simple, idyllic world of the Sims.

Pleasantview started as a place to capture the aging feature, which was all new to The Sims 2. We knew we had toddlers, teens, and elders to play with, so we started making families that reflected the various stages of family life: the single mom with 3 young kids, the parents with two teens, the old rich guy with two young gold-diggers, etc. We also had a much greater variety of ethnicity to play with than Sims 1, and we had all new variables like sexual orientation and memories. All these things made for rich fodder for a great diversity of families. Then, once we had family trees, and tombstones that carried the actual data for the dead Sims, the doors really blew open. We started asking ourselves, "What if Bella and Mortimer Goth could be characters in Sims 2, but aged 25 years? And what if Cassandra is grown up? And what if Bella is actually missing, and that could be a fun mystery hanging over the whole game?" And then finally the "Big Life Moments" went into the game -- like weddings and birthdays -- and we could sort of tee these up in the Save Game, so that they would happen within the first few minutes of playing the families. This served both as a tutorial for the features, but also a great story-telling device.

Anyway, it all just flowed from there, as we started creating connections between families, relationships, histories, family trees, and stories that we could weave into the game, using only the simulation features that were available to us. It was a really fun and creative time, and we wrote all of the lore of Sims 2 within a couple of months, and then just brought it to life in the game.

Strangetown:

Strangetown was kind of a no-brainer. We needed an alternate neighborhood for all the paranormal stuff the Sims was known for: alien abduction, male pregnancy, science experiments, ghosts, etc. We had the desert terrain, which created a nice contrast to the lush Pleasantville, and gave it an obvious Area 51 vibe.

The fact that Veronaville is the oldest file probably reflects the fact that it was finished first, not that it was started first. That's my guess anyway. It was the simplest neighborhood, in many ways, and didn't have as much complexity in terms of features like staged big life moments, getting the abduction timing right, the alien DNA thing (which I think was somewhat buggy up until the end), etc.  So it's possible that we simply had Veronaville "in the can", while we put the last polish on Pleasantville (which was the first and most important neighborhood, in terms of making a good impression) and Strangeville (which was tricky technically).

Veronaville:

But my personal favorite was Veronaville. We had this cool Tudor style collection in the Build mode catalog, and I wanted to ship some houses that showed off those assets. We also had the teen thing going on in the aging game, plus a lot of romance features, as well as enemies. I have always been a Shakespeare buff since graduate school, so putting all that together, I got the idea that our third neighborhood should be a modern-day telling of the Romeo and Juliet story. It was Montys and Capps (instead of Montagues and Capulets), and it just kind of wrote itself. We had fun creating the past family trees, where everyone had died young because they kept killing each other off in the ongoing vendetta.

[JK] You know, I have never seen The Lone Gunmen, and I don't remember making any kind of direct references with the Strangetown Sims, other than the general Area 51 theme, as you point out. Charles London helped out a lot with naming Sims, and I'm pretty sure we owe "Vidcund" and "Lazlo" to him ... though many team members pitched in creatively. He may have had something in mind, but for me, I largely went off of very generic and stereotypical ideas when crafting these neighborhoods. I kind of wanted them to be almost "groaners" ... they were meant to be tropes in every sense of the word. And then we snuck in some easter eggs. But largely, we were trying to create a completely original lore.

[JK] Well, I think we kind of pushed it with The Sims 2, to be honest, and I remember getting a little blow-back about Bunny Broke, for example. Bunny Broke was the original name for Brandi Broke. Not everyone found that funny, as I recall, and I can understand that. It must have been changed before we shipped.

We also almost shipped the first outwardly gay Sims in those neighborhoods, which was bold for EA back in 2004. My recollection was that we had set up the Dreamers to be gay (Dirk and Darren), but I'm looking back now and see that's not the case. So I'm either remembering incorrectly (probably) or something changed during development.

In general we just did things that we found funny and clever, and we just pulled from all the tropes of American life.

[JK] The alien abduction started in Sims 1, with a telescope object that was introduced in the "Livin' Large" expansion pack. That's when some of the wackier ideas got introduced into the Sims lore. That pack shipped just before I joined Maxis in 2001; when I got there, the team had shipped "House Party" and was underway on "Hot Date". So I couldn't tell you how the original idea came about, but The Sims had this 50's Americana vibe from the beginning, and UFOs kind of played right into that. So the alien abduction telescope was a no-brainer to bring back in Sims 2. The male pregnancy was a new twist on the Sims 1 telescope thing. It must have been that the new version (Sims 2) gave us the tech and flexibility to have male Sims become pregnant, so while this was turned "off" for the core game, we decided to take advantage of this and make a storyline out of it. I think this really grew out of the fact that we had aliens, and alien DNA, and so it was not complicated to pre-bake a baby that would come out as an alien when born. The idea of a bunch of guys living together, and then one gets abducted, impregnated, and then gives birth to an alien baby ... I mean, I think we just all thought that was hilarious, in a sit-com kind of way. Not sure there was much more to it than that. Everything usually came from the designers discovering ways to tweak and play with the tech, to get to funny outcomes.

[JK] Possibly we were just testing the functionality of the Wants/Fears and Memories systems throughout development, and some stuff got left over.

[JK] I can't remember, but that sounds like something we would have done! I'm pretty sure we laid the groundwork for more stories that we ended up delivering :) But The Sims 2 was a great foundation for a lot of continued lore that followed.

--

I once again want to thank Jonathan Knight for granting me this opportunity and taking the time from his busy schedule to answer my questions.

[flowersforthemachines]

Watching Darrah's video on the making of DAI reminded me that the devs fight battles we can't even imagine

[mysticdragon3md3]

"When we set out to make a new Ghost game, we wanted to maintain the core pillars established in Ghost of Tsushima: playing a wandering warrior in Feudal Japan, offering freedom to explore at your own pace, and highlighting the beauty of the world.

We also wanted to continue to innovate. To create something fresh but familiar, we looked beyond Jin Sakai's story and the island of Tsushima, and shifted our focus to the idea of the Ghost instead. At Sucker Punch we love origin stories, and we wanted to explore what it could mean to have a new hero wearing a Ghost mask, and uncovering a new legend. This lead us to Ghost of Yotei: a new protagonist a new story to unfold, and a new region of Japan to explore.

While we aren't diving into story specifics yet today, we can reveal that Atsu's journey takes place in 1603, more than 300 years after the events of Ghost of Tsushima. Our story is set in the lands surrounding Mount Yotei, a towering peak in the heart of Ezo, an area of Japan known as Hokkaido in present day. In 1603, this area was outside the rule of Japan, and filled with sprawling grasslands, snowy tundras, and unexpected dangers. It's a far cry from the organized samurai clans who lived in Tsushima, and it's the setting for an original story we can't wait to tell."

[pianokantzart]

Me thinking about what a Luigi’s Mansion 4 game might look like given the Switch 2’s capabilities

[velvetjune]

remedy games are very good and people should play them

[kirbyddd]

probably my favorite esoteric piece of Thief media is this "Interview with Garrett" some game magazine did (with garrett's responses actually written by the game's writer), and the interviewer asks why garrett's shoes make so much noise cloppin around when he's trying to be stealthy and garrett's like "these fine leather boots are the most exquisite ive ever seen.... i stole them from a noble and couldn't let them go...... i never take them off....."

the idea of garrett, who despises anything ostentatious and wears clothes so filthy his smell gives him away before his sound does, stealing a pair of shoes so beautiful he refuses to wear anything else ever again, even though they're tapdancing shoes and he sneaks around for a living, still slays me

[bestlaidplansproductions]

We thank the amazing journalists at Otome.com for conducting this amazing interview with us on our upcoming villainess-themed romantic dark comedy murder-mystery game, Save the Villainess!

If you want to know more about our game, our team, and our creative process, check out the Youtube interview or the print interview - which contains exclusive behind-the-scenes production sketches.

It was amazing to talk to them about our process of creating the game, the mysteries surrounding our characters, the deeper themes behind our game, and how we give our players different tools to be detectives that solve the mystery of this strange world.

Thank you again to Otome.com for their support. Please check this amazing team out for many more fantastic game reviews and developer interviews!

[project-sekai-facts]

There are currently only 3 BGM tracks that feature vocals. Two of these tracks are unnamed and unreleased, but sung by main/major characters. Kohane sings a solo song in Kick it up a notch, and Taiga sings a solo song in Light Up the Fire.

One of these tracks is quite unusual. It was featured in the RE:START from Here! event and was released on the first OST under the title Nijiiro Garland (see video at the top of post). The singer is not a named character (it's sung by the idol that inspired Airi when she was a child), and the voice actor also goes uncredited. It's unknown why this is the only instance of an unnamed character singing a BGM track, let alone being the only instance of a vocal BGM track for over two years until the Kohane song was used.

[sparkspropaganda]

strangely the writers hate gale for completely different reasons but still don't make jokes about how we all want to fuck mystra. in EA if you made that kind of joke about cazador in front of astarion he threatens to kill you. as he SHOULD.

[interact-if]

Writing Spotlight: The Golden Rose

We interviewed @anathemafiction, author of the IF, The Golden Rose, Book 1. It’s a game that delivers everything it sets out to do, with its sweeping, ambitious scope and beautiful, intricate detail. It was an honor to pick her brain about bringing such a rich, complex, and truly immersive world (and its wonderful characters) to life.

In one of my favorite quotes in the interview, she writes:

[…] We Portuguese sometimes still call ourselves Lusitanos, and it always saddened me to some extent. That loss of history, of identity, is one of the major driving forces behind the Rose. What if there's a world where it's Rome that's forgotten? Where Latin is forbidden so that the languages born from it, the kingdoms, and the civilizations never came to be?

Without further ado, here’s the full interview!

What drew you to interactive fiction as a storytelling medium?

The very nature of it. I'm a big fan of RPGs, where you can shape your character and make key decisions in your adventure, and, of course, I'm also a big fan of books and literature in general. So, when I encountered my first IF game (Choice of Dragon), I was instantly hooked.

It's the perfect blend of two of my passions — storytelling and player agency. The fact that it's entirely text-based gives a kind of freedom and depth that's hard to match in other gaming media simply because the only budget it needs is the author's time and effort. It's quite literally, corny as it sounds, fuelled by your imagination.

2. Is there a part of your background—personal, cultural, professional—that finds its way into your work?

In a land that is today a region of Portugal, there used to be an agglomeration of tribes collectively known as Lusitanos. They were eventually conquered by the Roman Empire, but not before putting up such a fight that even Roman generals acknowledged their spirit. Their culture was largely eradicated, and the pieces that weren't were assimilated into the empire. We Portuguese sometimes still call ourselves Lusitanos, and it always saddened me to some extent.

That loss of history, of identity, is one of the major driving forces behind the Rose. What if there's a world where it's Rome that's forgotten? Where Latin is forbidden so that the languages born from it, the kingdoms, and the civilizations never came to be?

I'm also fascinated by the Catholic Church and its monopoly over some of the wealthiest, most powerful kingdoms of Europe. The Pope was the king of kings, so to speak, and all that power, that opulence, was born from something as simple and as human as faith.

That control, that God-like power, not only over the body but the very mind of its subjects, is another big part of the story I'm writing.

So, in summary, my cultural background was and is a major influence on this IF.

3. What does your writing process look like?

I'm what's generally called a pant-ser; I like going where inspiration takes me. Still, in a project as big as The Rose, I did write a general outline, and I have a very clear idea of where I want the plot to go and the major story beats that will get me there.

But the in-betweens are often left blank. I think, even if I tried to plan every single detail beforehand, I wouldn't be able to. Even the scenes and chapters that I have planned, I'm always open to changes or deviations from the outline. If a character, a situation, or, especially, the MC decides to surprise me, I kind of roll with it.

To be honest, most of my favorite scenes, dialogues, and even characters that I've written were born as a sudden inspiration and not from the pages of an outline.

But as for my actual writing process, it goes like this: I go chapter by chapter, and I always begin by handwriting the first draft. I don't know why, but handwriting, when it comes to just getting the ideas out of your head, with no finesse, no grammar checks, just the pure chaos of materializing your thoughts into tangible words, is the best medium for me.

After that, I write the second draft on the computer. There, I fill in all the choices and paths I didn't write in the first draft, and, of course, beautify the text, make the dialogue fit the characters, discard or expand on rudimentary ideas, etc. Basically, it's where I write the text that'll appear in the game.

This juxtaposition between the first draft and the second allows me to rethink story beats, adjust the progression of the characters' relationships, postpone scenes, etc. Basically, it allows me to think about where the chapter is going.

The third step is to put it all in code and make it playable. As I go through the Word document, I make minor edits here and there, but nothing major.

The actual editing is made later, in what I call a 'deep edit.' I usually do this when I finish writing the following chapter because looking at a text with fresh eyes allows you to spot mistakes much better than if you do it right away.

4. What’s one piece of advice you’d give to someone just starting out in interactive fiction?

To follow up on the last question, I will say that you need to know yourself. Just as I operate better without a clear, bullet-proof plan, other people thrive with a structured outline, a character glossary 20k words long, chapter charts, and multicolored graphics. My advice is that before you embark on such a complex and often big project as an IF game, you should know your own writing process, and the only way for you to know that is if you write.

I'd say start with short stories or small fables, but honestly, just write anything. Dive right in, and with time, you'll begin to know yourself as a writer.

When you know yourself and your own style, then begin the IF. You'll never be truly 100% prepared — we're always learning and adjusting. I'm not the same writer I was when I first started The Rose, and I won't be what I am now when I finish this second book. We're constantly evolving, so allow yourself space to fail and fall short of expectations. This is, after all, a marathon, not a sprint.

5. What’s a common mistake you see in interactive storytelling, and do you have any tips on how to avoid it?

Not so much a mistake but a misconception. I think people, especially those with little to no experience writing (or any creative hobby), believe that it's an inspiration-based activity. That you write whenever you feel like it.

This is completely wrong. If I only wrote whenever I felt inspired to, I wouldn't have made it past the third chapter of book one.

Some days — most days — you won't feel like writing. You sit at your desk, and you do it. You have to face it like a job, almost. You clock in, do your work, and leave. Does this mean I have no joy in writing? Of course not. I get really into it once I begin, but it's not every day that I wake up and want to leap for my pen.

Sometimes, I'd rather go out hiking with my dog, meet a friend for coffee, or watch another episode of whatever show I'm watching. But, when writing IF, you often will have to make these sacrifices, and, many times, you won't even be blessed with inspiration, so that sacrifice is made easier.

This is made even worse in IF. Due to the nature of the medium, you will get days where you're stuck writing repeating passages or paths you're not entirely interested in. You will want to pull the hair out of your head. You'll have to clench your teeth and do it — otherwise, you won't make it to the fun, rewarding bits where everything comes together.

It's not an exaggeration when people say, 'writing is hard.' Anyone can do it. Very few actually do. I think it's less about talent and more about commitment.

End of interview

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A big thanks once again to Anathema for her insightful answers, and @veswrites-if for taking the time to coordinate the interview. Hope that this was a fun and interesting read.

Stay tuned for more of these interviews, both for the Writing Spotlight AND for Pride Month!!

[love-at-first-bite-game]

things that inspire the game were making!!

[velvetjune]

one of the best parts in playing through remedy’s games is directly seeing how each game built upon concepts touched upon in prior ones. you can trace almost every experimental decision throughout its run of games that it makes for an interesting playthrough whether or not you enjoy playing the game

[mysticdragon3md3]

Metaphor: ReFantazio — Interview with Yoko Taro | Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC by Official ATLUS West

[spider-xan]

Thinking again about how I really liked the moments Harry and Curt had with each other in the game - their interactions in the EMF scene above, the mission to try and save him at the abandoned zoo, etc. - but that I also wish that relationship had gotten more development onscreen, especially before everything goes wrong with the symbiote.