A Bit Belated, Interview With Fricitional

It’s been a little while since my last update, but I have been writing a novel and various other things.  I’ve been rocking out in the literary way as well as playing around with Black Ops and the latest Goldeneye.  Expect a few more updates in the coming days. 

Frictional, developers of the ever amazing Amnesia and Penumbra, granted me the ability to conduct an interview.  The actual interview has been long waiting, but without further delays here we go.

1.       When coming up with the initial concept for Amnesia, what sort of inspiration did you draw from?

Amnesia was actually transformed over several years so the initial concept is quite unlike what the final game looks like. It actually started out as a bite-sized horror game, heavily inspired by Super Mario. This was then thinned out over the course of the project and very little of that first idea remains. Over the course of the project we have had tons of inspiration from various sources though and one major is the first 30 minutes of Bioshock. This is by far the best part of the game and showed us that you can make an engaging experience only based on exploration and interesting events.

2.       A lot of the design choices in Penumbra and Amnesia are rather inspired in light of your typical horror game.  Why did you decide to opt out on combat when it’s so prevalent in games these days?

Combat in horror games only result in the player feeling strong and safe as he kills monsters. We avoid combat as we think it increase the notion of danger and horror. We also remove it because normally combat is the main thing that you do in a game, so if you remove it you have no choice but to try and come up with other means of occupying the player.

3.       What’s next on the development cycle for you guys?  Are you planning an expansion to Amnesia or another game altogether?

It will be a new game altogether and it is quite certain that it will not be a pure horror game. It will still have horror elements, but it will not be the only thing it is about. With Amnesia we made the best effort we could to make a unique horror experience, so trying to reset the horror mode and get at it again does not feel that inspiring to us right now. We need to develop another type of game, even if similar, before we can make another true horror game.

4.       How many members do you assign per team?

We are six people in the company, 5 full-time and 1 part-time. We also work with contractors for things like concept art and music. We try to split the team at times, for example when we made Black Plague, some started to work on Requiem while others were still working on BP. Then we did the same with Requiem, as technology for Amnesia was developed during the same time. As we have had a harsh time finishing Amnesia, we did not have the luxury to do it like that this time around, so currently we are doing our best to keep both design, graphics and technology in development as much as possible without getting stuck due to one part not being developed enough.

5.       What are you striving to deliver with your games, what sort of experience and theme do you want to impart on those purchasing the title?

With Amnesia the main goal was to make an experience that did not feel like something you had to win to have done it right. It was more to create a world that would really draw the player in, tell an interesting story and allow for exploration of it. We also aim for evoking more varied emotions and to have deeper and more thoughtprovoking themes. In Amnesia we had the nature of evil as a core concept and Penumbra explored madness a bit, In the future we aim to take this kind of focus even further and to create games that are not just easy-going entertainment.

6.       How has piracy affected your sales?  Has the lack of DRM hampered your overall sales?

Not more than games in general are affected by piracy, sure different type of games might suffer at different levels. We have put a lot of effort into making it a single play-through experience, that you play it one time and the main idea is that the less you know before the better the experience will be. In this case it might be very harmful with piracy, if you pirate and play it one time then why would you later buy it? A sport, strategy or online driven game might have you hooked a long time and offer a replay value that eventually makes you purchase it. Not having this probably affects us a bit more.

We don't really think of piracy as something pure evil, nor do we see it as only beneficial as the pro-pirates so often want to shout. It's a problem that there is a lack of research on the topic, as it makes everyone make claims with little grounds.

If you play our game from beginning to end, or if you play a considerable part of it and have a good time, all we ask is that you purchase it when you can afford it. We often run sales, or stores that have our games have sales, so there are lots of opportunities to get it real cheap if 20 USD is too much. We have even participated in events such as the Humble Indie Bundle, which has given the opportunity to pay what you want.

7.       You guys deliver fairly atypical gaming experiences, what leads to some of the conceptual designs when you’re pitching an idea?

The main thing is probably that we do not start of with some core gameplay, but rather with a feeling and a theme. So instead of first iterating a low-level gameplay mechanic and then come up with a fitting story, we go for a more holistic approach where everything depends on one another. We have tried to start with gameplay first, and this is actually how Amnesia started out, but we felt that it so easily overshadowed the atmosphere and feel we wanted. Instead, we found that focusing on higher level concepts at first enables one to craft a quite different experience.

Thanks again for the interview guys.  To my readers, give me just a little time to gather up some ideas for posts.  Check this space, and thanks again for reading!