Interview with Game Maker Sam Barlow (Her Story)

We chat with the creator of the investigative video games Her Story and Telling Lies about online surveillance, how Police are viewed in gaming, and FBI infiltration into green activism. Nerd time baby!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
It could happen here, Mike is possibly anyway, I'm Robert Evans. Uh,
you know who I am, because you're listening to this
show unless you stumbled upon this having never heard of
the Internet before, in which case this is a show
about how things are kind of falling apart, and we
also try to talk every now and then about how
to maybe put them back together a little bit. My

(00:26):
co host is Garrison Davis. Garrison, say hello to the people. Hello, people.
I'd also like you to say hello to Sean. Hi. Sean. Yeah,
there's a Sean somewhere out there. Listen. Probably a few sans. Yeah,
it was at least one or two. Garrison, what do we?
What do we? What do we? What? What? What are we? Well,
we're finally doing something I've been wanting to do for

(00:49):
a while. Is branching off into kind of covering different
parts of like media and culture UM that kind of
relate to all of these topics UM. I know both
the with me, but both me a little bit and
and Robert more so have worked for or have have
written for UM like an online investigative journalism website called

(01:10):
Belling Cat that deals in open source UM like research
and One of the things that we're big fans of,
that belling Cat I've talked with a few of the
other people is a game called Her Story, which is
a video game that has maybe one of the better
better depictions of kind of open source um investigations. Uh

(01:32):
it's it's a it's a very it's a very good game.
I highly recommended. I played it a few years ago.
It was lovely and I recently uh well, Originally, when
I bought Her Story, I bought both that game and
like a spiritual sequel called Telling Lies, which I did
did not play for a while because I was too
busy um. And then I went to the Earth First

(01:55):
Gathering this summer and I and I came back and
I had some free time, so I played Telling Lies,
And because of the content of that game, I found
it really interesting. Because I'm not gonna spoil tons of it,
I think you should play it for yourself, and part
of it is solving the mystery on your own. But
but part of it does take place to like green
environmentalism activism setting, and it has one of the more

(02:19):
honest depictions of environments like that. So I have we
are we are graced with bringing on the creator of
both Her Story and telling lies. Uh. Sam Barlow, Hello, Hey,
exciting to be Lovely Interest. Yeah I am. I am.
I'm very excited to talk with you. These games are

(02:42):
some of my favorite things. Um. First off, I guess
I would just like to kind of talk about your
inspiration for this type of detective game, because it is
it is unique to every other kind of investigative game
out there. UM. And it's you know, very much grounded
in open source research. Um. And like you think computers

(03:02):
that in the real world. What what kind of got
you onto that kind of storytelling concept? I mean, I
think there was a whole bunch of things that all
kind of sparked off at once. Like when I made
Her Story, this was my first independent video game. So
I've been making video games for ten plus years, um,
working on other people's franchises, more traditional things kind of

(03:25):
when I started out working on like Nicolas Cage movie,
Tiants and extreme sports games and all these kind of things. Um.
But at some point I got to work on the
Silent Health franchise, which is this very cool psychological horror franchise,
and it's one of the certainly at that point in time,
it was one of the few kind of established gaming

(03:46):
franchises that had a story that was interesting and took
place in the real world and had characters and things,
So kind of from that point, I was really digging
into kind of a lifelong interest in storytelling as actually
what we can do with it interactively and continue to
be frustrated somewhat by working for these bigger publishers. And

(04:09):
at one point I worked for three years I was
directing and writing this this big budget video game that
got canceled, and that kind of gave me a moment
to kind of sit and think, like, what what do
I want to do? Do I want to get on
board another of these big video games. I was very
frustrated at the kind of incremental change that you see

(04:31):
in the kind of bigger budget video game space. It
feels like things happened very slowly, which can be frustrating.
So I was kind of looking around. This was when
like iPhones, people gaming on their iPhones and stuff was
kind of starting to blow up. The fact that you
could now distribute a game individually digitally and reach an
audience was sort of changing the landscape. So I kind

(04:53):
of felt like I should get into that and so
at its conception, her story was was me sing, what
are all the things I've wanted to do that that
I wasn't able to do when I was working with
these bigger budgets, with these more established kind of gaming templates.
So from the get go it was I wanted to

(05:14):
deal with characters that essentially lived in the real world,
which is a hard pitch. You know, if you're asking
for big bucks, every video game has to essentially be
about superhero It needs to be some kind of wish
fulfillment for a teenage boy is generally what people are
asking for. And the big thing with her story was
subtext as someone's interesting storytelling. Us always trying to push

(05:38):
how important subtext is and the idea that there is.
You know, there are layers to a narrative that you're
not spelling out for the audience that they're going to
extract through performance or through whatever U and that was
always a hard sell when you were kind of dealing
with these kind of bigger companies that had a very
simple idea of what their audience was. So I wanted
to prove that the audience was actually smarter than we

(06:01):
were giving them credit for, and that if you gave
more control to them, if you gave more of the
kind of work of piecing these stories together, that that
would be not not just something they could do, but
which would actually be more interesting and more personal and um,
you know, and with her story, I had a kind
of lifelong love of like crime fiction and slightly more

(06:23):
kind of Gothic leaning crime fiction, and so I was like, right,
I'm going to create a video game which is in
that world and which kind of breaks a lot of
the established rules of how you might tell a story. Um,
and you know, a lot of that I was pulling from, Yeah,
my love of some of the more kind of avant

(06:45):
garde literary stuff, interesting pieces of kind of movies and things.
But it was, it was, it was pulling from a
lot of different kind of storytelling traditions and ending up
in this this interesting place where, like you say, it's
kind of a game experience where you're essentially researching the
story yourself and kind of putting the pieces together. Yeah. Yeah.
For for people who don't know, it's like you're basically

(07:07):
on a virtual desktop, um, and you're sorting through like
a hard drive full of footage and the versatility of
the game, and you know, people learning how to use
like search terms, right, just like people try to use
like um in open source it's called like using like
um Google operators. It's the same kind of the same thing, UM.
But also there's like the other side of things. I

(07:28):
think a belling Cat wrote an article about your game
where they like made like a Python script to scan
all of the videos for specific keywords and put them
into like different folders and files. So it's like you
can do the thing where you just like search it,
but you could like take this to a ridiculous level
or you're like breaking the game open and doing it
like you're actually like investigating this and you need to
be very quick. Um. So I think her story is

(07:50):
is a lovely intro to this type of game concept.
And then for telling lies, you kind of changed you
change things with it. Um you made like I guess,
I guess like an expansion would be the way I
would describe it for how it like takes the same
concept and pushes it further. And I think watching these
things now, it's very different after being like two years

(08:13):
on Zoom right, I'm I'm sure I'm sure you've heard
this from other people as well as like you know,
because because because of how Telling Lies operates, it's like
a lot of it is well you open the game,
because you're basically cracking open and then I say hard drive.
So all of it is video from like webcams and stuff. Um,
so you know, watching people talking to their computer camera

(08:35):
like this after spending years on Zoom definitely uh hits harder.
I guess it was one of those things. So when
we would first working on this and conceiving of it,
which was I don't know, maybe and something like that, Um,
there was a leap, right and as a storyteller, you

(08:55):
allow yourself sometimes to take that one leap that the
orders to take with you. And the leap was like
these people are using video chat a lot. But I
mean and as I was starting to put it together,
I would start noticing people around that time doing video
chat in the street on their phones, which was something
I was not used to sing and I was like, oh, ship,
maybe this is not too big of a leap. But yeah,

(09:18):
I think I think it was The Virgin or somebody
ran an article that like Telling Lies is still a
great game mid pandemic, it's just real hard to play
now that like this zoom thing is our lives. I
mean that was like, that was that was a big
thing I was interested in at the time, was like,
what what is this doing to us? What is communicating

(09:41):
over the internet, How does that change how conversations and
things happened? And was kind of looking into some of
the research there. So that, Yeah, that was wild. Was
was was kind of living in that world for several
years putting the game out and then spending two years
on zoom calls. Yeah. I mean in a few ways,
think the game has aged very well because of that,

(10:03):
and because the way people. People are more used to
interacting with the computer in that format now, so when
they're you know, trying to search for these like hundreds
of video files, I think they can understand it better.
Um So, in some ways, I think it's not it's
not necessarily a bad thing. Um But yeah, let's see.
So I think, well, I want to talk a bit

(10:23):
about kind of the influences for kind of the surveillance aspect,
because like her story is filmed in like a police
um interrogation room for based basically basically the whole thing,
whereas this pulls video footage of people like in private moments. Essentially,
of course, this was like after like the Snowden stuff
and after all of the other kind of after the

(10:46):
you know, surveillance became a bigger talking point. Um, But
what what got you to decide you wanted to kind
of revolve the game around this concept of internet surveillance
and then you know, different three letter agencies kind of
fighting each other a little bit. So I think it
was two things. One was in making her story and

(11:07):
making lots of decisions somewhat intuitively kind of when it
was finished and it was a big success, and I
looked back on it, and then kind of when a
little bit of time and passed, I then had this
very different relationship where I had forgotten that I was
the person that had made it and so could have
opinions about it. And I was really interested in how
that that game established a level of intimacy with the

(11:29):
main character that Viva plays, that you're seeing being interrogated,
despite the fact that it's happening through a computer desktop,
despite the fact that there's none of what traditionally you
know that the agency you were traditionally having a video game,
which you know, conventional logic would be that's how you
would establish the idea that this person is alive and
that you're in contact with them. But the act of

(11:49):
like digging into all this video footage of Viva and
seeing her on screen talking essentially at you created this
this interesting amount of intimacy that a lot of people
responded to. So I was like, well, that's one of
the things that is interesting to me to take further,
because it's it's very rare that a video game creates
this sensation of kind of intimacy or of getting close

(12:11):
to or understanding people. And then it was Snowden UM.
I think it was one of the the early reports
UM from from all the various things that came out
via Snowden. There was a particular UM operation in the UK,
which I think was called Optic Nerve or something, and

(12:33):
the idea there was that they were spying on everyone's
Internet traffic and I think it's a little bit easier
to do that in the UK than it is elsewhere.
And this one particular operation, I remember there was a
PowerPoint slide that was leaked that was like their internal
presentation which proved that, like in any leaked government PowerPoint

(12:53):
will be the worst power point you've ever seen, like
the clip part and this terrible nous, right, um. But
in this scheme what they did and this blew my
mind was for a period if I think it was
two years, every single video chat that went through Yahoo
in the UK was captured and recorded, and they had

(13:14):
this issue, which I think is if you want to
go about surveillance kind of post eleven, the big problem
with surveillance and the extent to which is now used,
is like what you do with all this data, Like
it's it's it's just too much. So they they were
capturing all this Yahoo video chat and attempting to add

(13:38):
the metadata and sort it, which is kind of interesting
because that's kind of to some extent kind of how
something like her story worked. Yeah, yeah, totally. And the
biggest issue they had, and they put up this power
point and it blew my mind, was thirty of all
the video chat through Yahoo at this point was sexual
in nature, and they were concerned about the feelings of

(14:01):
their operatives who were doing the tagging of all this data.
So they'd put their best computer minds on it and
they'd come up with an algorithm which would detect an
excessive amount of skin tone and would then kind of
flag and silo those clips, and I just remember reading
this and being like, what about the feelings of the
people whose skin tone you're capturing? Right? Like you weren't

(14:21):
you weren't stopping to think like why are we doing this?
Shouldn't we be doing this? You're you're you're solving for
the problem of like how do we stop our agents
seeing all this unity? And I think there was there
was a bunch of other anecdotes right in the snowed
and stuff of people alongside him, like you know, looking
through people's webcoum data and stuff and in a in
a voyeuristic way, and just this constant invasion of people's rights.

(14:45):
So I think that it was one of those things
where I was like, oh, this is this is like new,
Like you know, we now have you know you you
you worry about certain levels of like your privacy being invaded,
and you would certainly worry if someone was letting themselves
into your house at night. But we suddenly found ourselves

(15:06):
in this position where we have these phones that we
put by our bedside at night, that have cameras and
microphones that are pretty much just running right and capturing
and just the extent to which now technology has transformed
surveillance and that that was really interesting to me because
I um and a big thing I wanted to do.

(15:29):
You know, I've made her story. And like, growing up,
I loved cop shows, and I particularly loved the good ones,
like like Homicide, Life on the Street in the US.
There was a show in the UK called Cracker Um
and these were like, you know, somewhat nuanced in how
they with policing, but you know, you're you're still you know,

(15:50):
we're in this position now where we're starting to ask
deeper questions about whether we should watch this many cops shows. Yeah,
when they're like the main thing on a'll tell itsh
and all the time. Yeah, exactly, And that would be
like when I made her story. Partly I pitched the
bigger publishers like we should do the equivalent of a

(16:10):
cop show like that, we should do crime fictional cop show,
video game, and they would always be like nah, and
I would say, well, look, this is like the evergreen.
You know, if you're a book publisher, you have a
crime show, you have a crime book. You know, if
you doing movies, you're going to have some movies with
this genres. It works, and they would always kind of
push against that. So when I made her story, that was,

(16:32):
in fact, like the arc of of playing her story
to some extent, mirrors my ark in that. Like at
the top of it, I was like, I want to
make an interesting detective game, and I want to deconstruct
how detective stories work. And I then started to do
a bunch of research whereas digging into, well, how do

(16:52):
actual criminal investigations work, how does one interrogate the suspect
doing all that stuff? And then I started to pull
up what at the time like there was a bit
it was slightly ahead of like the true crime explosion,
but there was starting to be stuff on YouTube and
in various places where footage from real investigations was online,
and it was starting to get a bit weird and interesting,

(17:14):
and that people were kind of vicariously watching these things.
And yeah, that raised also questions they were trying to
piece Thegether their own kind of conclusions based on these
leaked or sometimes officially released interview segments. Yeah, and and
there was one in particularly got really into the Jodi
Arias case. It's just like a and and the way

(17:35):
the media spun that story and just really dug into, Oh,
there's like sex and murder and Mormons, and there's this
beautiful blond woman who now when she goes to court
has gone brunette, and they were endlessly talking about on
cable news like her parents and setting her up as
this kind of them fatile kind of ice maiden. Um.

(18:00):
On the slip side of this, I think there's like
the thing with them the Making the Murderer documentary, which
I think I have some issues with how they handle
the main guy, but particularly how they showed the totally
immoral interrogation tactics used on used on Brandon the kid um,
and that really cracked that whole thing open, being like, yeah,
the way the police are interrogating miners without it was

(18:23):
the lawyers is shocking. And that was that was that
was part of this transition for me. Was was was
going into her story with like, the hero of this
is the detective. It's Andre Brower and homicide of life
in the Street, it's the genius detective that's going to
come in there and crack this case. And the more
I dug into in cases like Jody's where um the
word various um aspects to that case, she definitely did

(18:49):
murder her lover, but there are lots of questions around
whether the relationship itself was particularly healthy. Um And by
the end of it, like all of my sympathy was
with Jody, not the interrogator who You watch it and
you realize that, like, the reason this person is in
this situation is because their life has gone very badly,

(19:11):
and the reason for that is everything that's happened in
their life prior to this, and they've never spoken to
anyone about any of this stuff. And suddenly they're in
this room with the homicide detective who's like, hey, you
can talk to me. I'm the first person that's going
to sit and listen to you, and all these tricks
that they use to just get people talking, and it
becomes very intimate and becomes kind of like therapy session.

(19:32):
But by the end of it, so for me, like
the hook of her story is, oh, you get to
solve a murder, but really, by the end of it,
it's like a character Portney should entirely be with her
and is less about seeing justice done right. So even
but even coming away from that, I was like, I

(19:53):
still feel slightly uncomfortable with with kind of having made
this thing that is reveling in how much fun it
is to be involved in the police work or whatever.
And so I was definitely thinking about the snows and
stuff thinking about that aspect and the extent to which
technology has just so empowered policing in general to the

(20:18):
point where it's there's this great um. Like one of
the core themes that I wanted to dig into and
telling lies was that when you see people try and
defend this stuff and defend policing in generally, is they
try and set it up so that you basically have
They talk in terms of families and very close relationships,
so they're kind of like, well, the government is your parent,

(20:41):
and they're trying to look after you, and you understand
as a parent, you're going to sometimes invade the privacy
of your children or sometimes you're going to inhibit their
freedoms because you're trying to protect them. And we all
understand that and that's part of being human, and that's
all that's happening here with government, right We're trying to
protect you from the big bad add the evil. I
sort of like there's some tweet from the NYPD the

(21:04):
other day that was like, you'll become you'll come running
when evil is on your doorstep. Someone was saying something
bacrops and and and for me, once you you take
that understanding of how people relate directly to each they
have families, work. The second you scale it so the
size of government, it breaks like that you cannot extend

(21:26):
that metaphor. And then when you add in tech, Um,
you know, the extent to which uh, you know, privacy
has been degraded, our freedoms. Um, you know when you
start just blanket looking for crime, right, you start creating
all the systemic issues that we have just suddenly become amplified. Um.

(21:48):
So that that to me was kind of interesting. Um, well,
you know, here is like a means to explore that.
And I like one of the things that was interesting
to me about her story that in retrospect was the
extent to which it was about watching video, which seems
like a dumb thing to say, but like the choice

(22:09):
to use real video kind of inspired by watching all
this interrogation piece of footage from Jodi and people. Um,
you know, it was was kind of made Oh yeah,
that makes sense, and I just kind of got on
with it. But then looking back, I was like, oh, well,
it's interesting because people talk about this game as being
an interactive movie, but it's nothing like a movie. No,
not at all, And it's not how movies work. It

(22:31):
just happens that it uses a video camera. Only similarity
is that it has live action footage. That so I
was like, I really want to go even further into
that texture. And so I was just thinking about and
when I was starting to do my research, like the
idea of surveillance and and the commonalities between like classic
old school surveillance, I you know, someone sat in a

(22:53):
car some binoculars watching someone and and modern surveillance, the
commonalities of it's quite boring, right, there's just a lot
of sitting and watching doing nothing. Yeah, right. And but
out of that and when you kind of read the
first hand accounts of the people doing the surveillance or
some of the depictions of this media, like there's a

(23:16):
level of intimacy that you get with the person you're
surveilling right where you know, if you're just sat watching
the menucha, if someone's life, if you're listening to a
bug in someone's kitchen and just hearing all the just
everyday ship in their lives or if you are, you know,
watching them through some kind of technology. Um, you're just
spending all this time with them, and that's like a

(23:38):
that's like a very non cinematic thing. It's it's like
this that manutia and the time stretching out of just
being present with somebody. And that was kind of interesting
to me of just kind of putting you in that
headspace and kind of thinking about what that means. I
think that totally gets through because of the way you

(24:00):
break up the conversations and telling lies. You have to
sit and watch these characters as they're just doing nothing
for sometimes like like over five minutes. They're just like
sitting there, um, and you do get like very intimate
with these characters, but it almost like in a very
like creepy way where you like you feel like I
shouldn't be here, which is kind of the general feeling

(24:22):
of telling It's really interesting because I like some people
would have a very and and this was you know,
completely again like trying to process how I felt watching
the like the videos of all the various police interrogations
and stuff. Was like, this is fascinating because the human
beings were fascinated by the human beings and here is
this extremely interesting, dramatic stuff where people are just really

(24:45):
spilling their lives out. That's why true crime blew up, right,
But then you have all these moral questions around it.
And obviously with telling lies, it's inspired by lots of
real things, but it's fake and you're watching actors act
this stuff. But still some people would have this real
visceral reaction of like I shouldn't be watching some of
this stuff, and I'd be like, I mean, you can.

(25:07):
It's like that was that was where it became really
not cinematic to me, was like, you know, if you're
watching a you know, a noir film or you know,
a thriller and you have you know, or even like
the The thing for the domestic stuff for me was,
you know, you could watch a sitcom, watching any a
normal sitcom, and the husband and wife are sat in

(25:29):
bed chatting. At no point do you feel like I
shouldn't be here because you're in the kind of classic
Hollywood invisible camera set up. You're this you know, you
had permission to be there as the invisible camera spectator,
and it doesn't feel as weird as it would if
you're hiding in the closet of this couple's bedroom. Um,
So with the setup I'm Telling Lies, you immediately feel like, oh,

(25:52):
like this, I am in this position that I shouldn't be.
So suddenly all those more domestic moments a very different vibe. Yeah,
because you're watching them and you're you're not invited, Like right,
you're you know, you're sitting looking at this ns A
hard drive and you're like, yeah, I'm not supposed to
be watching this like this, this, this isn't They never
invited me into this conversation. Telling Lies very much feels

(26:26):
like a much more mature game than her story. Not
in terms of like has like more mature content, but
like in terms of like this concept growing up and
like evolving and and gaining more depth. Um, particularly because
you know, not only just because it has way more characters,
but because you know, you get to know all of
your kind of games deal with some degree of like
characters lying to you and like just doing like straight

(26:47):
lines to your face. That's kind of a that's my
read on a lot of a lot of your games. Um,
I mean, you're the game is called Telling Lies, so
so you definitely see like elements of of you know,
all of these trying to figure out what is true
and it is not. I think it is interesting looking
at like how easier it is to lie via these
technological platforms. Um, I don't have to, just like you

(27:10):
feel like telling the truth is just so much more
work and you may as well just get through this
conversation by doing a few white lives, which is that
inspiral out of control. Um. When you combine this with
you know, law enforcement, infiltration and all this kind of stuff,
he gets it gets very complicated, very quickly. Um. One
thing that I think you guys handled very well in
telling lies was kind of the activism side of things.

(27:30):
So like when when I play this game, like almost
immediately after coming back from the stop lining three protests, um,
and like and and like an Earth First gathering, you
know everyone there is always very people try to be
aware of surveillance to be like, okay, you know, you
don't talk about certain things if there's phones nearby and stuff.
So so that whole side of things was very interesting

(27:51):
to like play this game right afterwards because you get
to see like the other side of things, being like, okay,
if the the FBI is infiltrating this group, here's you know,
one of the ways that they do it, and like
that from my perspective being you know, in activism spaces
for a while, not just like environmental ones, but you
know other ones like here in Portland. Um, you had
you handled this topic very accurately. Um, what what kind

(28:16):
of stuff did you pull from to kind of create
these like these you know environments and interactions between people.
Because I'm not sure if you have any experience yourself
and stuff like this, or if you've got people onto
like you talk to people who are more experienced activists.
What was kind of your inspiration for like, you know,
the opposite side of things, not on the law enforcement.
So that was that was like one of the big

(28:38):
initial jumping off points. So uh like in terms of
the kind of real life inspirations, Like the seed of
this whole thing was Remember when this was it was
I'm gonna say two ten could be completely wrong here,
but it was The Guardian in the UK I think

(28:58):
broke the story, but it was and we've recently had
some good progress in this this area, but broke the
story of this UK spy Cops operation, which was a
specific unit within the London Police whose job was to
infiltrate groups, to surveil them from the inside, and um,

(29:23):
it was horrific and they were like a couple of
things about it that were horrific. One of them was
that like, essentially their modus operandi was to find vulnerable
young women on the periphery of groups, target them romantically,
and then they would be the collateral to get you know,
to have people then more solidly enter into these groups.

(29:46):
And then they had like a whole you know, stepped
plan of like once you're in, how you kind of
would would destabilize steer these groups from within U And
the that thing that really made this even worse, um
was the fact that most of the groups, I think

(30:07):
maybe all of the groups targeted with this particular unit
were green activists. There's this incredible, incredible, like you couldn't
make this stuff up. But there's a famous libel case
where McDonald's was suing these these two activists in the
UK right because they were putting up flyers exposing some

(30:31):
of the practices of McDonald's and the group that they
were members of, which I think at this point was
called Green Piece, but it was different to the kind
of more famous Green Piece in London. Prior to them
doing this big kind of McDonald's thing, um was losing
members and it got to a point where there were

(30:53):
so few people in this group that it would have
shut down had it not been for the fact that
there were a large number of undercover cops in this group.
So you know, if you imagine at some point they
were actually more undercover cops and private security people undercover
in this group that actual activists, which has enabled the

(31:15):
group to continue. And in fact, the original flyer that
they put out was written I forget the guy's name
now by one of these undercover cops. He wrote the
copy for this flyer that went out and then was
you know, saw this these people dragged up in court
and was this huge you know, McDonald's won the case,

(31:36):
but in terms of pr it was hugely damaging to them.
But yeah, that that for me was the thing that
seemed even more point because because here you had this
story of the state sanctioning the you know, one of
the most terrible abuses, Like essentially, you know, what was
happening was pretty easy to to kind of call it rape, right.

(32:00):
There was women in sexual relationships with people and thinking
it was consensual, but not realizing that they this was
you know, what they were getting into was not what
they thought it was. And so this was just so
appalling and like from a just to kind of base
emotional level, just it was so hard for me to

(32:26):
imagine the pain of um and these women win relationships
with these undercover officers for years. Yeah, and then and
and and part of the modus operanda was when you
were done, you had to exit and disappear. And they
had this whole plan where the cops would claim that
they were being followed and that they were worried, and
then they would disappear, and then they would call from

(32:48):
some European country and say that they had kind of
fled the country because they were worried that the cops
were onto them, and then they would slowly kind of
disappear and this you know, some of these were kind
of pre modern internet, so it was easier for I
want to kind of disappear. But this stuff totally happened
in the Green Scare in the States, in you know,
around this was around this was My big question was

(33:10):
was this you know, some of these cases were kind
of the original inspiration. And when I started thinking about
trying to tell a story inspired by this. Originally it
starts off and and and it's still in based in
the UK, and based on these things. And there was
a particular, ah, a particular flavor to it where the

(33:30):
cops doing this work it was part of the matt Police,
who were you know, that's the more kind of gang story.
Like there's there's a real reputation that the Met police have,
So these cops that were chosen for this work were
the ones that were a bit more kind of marcho
and edgy. And there we was there was I mean,
there was so much stuff to it that that was horrific,

(33:50):
Like they would only pick cops that were married, um,
because they felt that that gave them some level of
ability to be sleeping with these activists and not lose
themselves in it. Um. But obviously the wives didn't know
what was ending um And and there's just there's so

(34:12):
many layers of this that I just thought was it
was awful, And coming off the first story, I was like, well,
I would love to tell an undercover cops story in
which we acknowledge that the undercover cop is bad. They
aren't like, you know, because because it's such a classic
trope is the undercover cops story because you get to

(34:34):
have your cake and eat it. You get to see
someone on both sides the law. You get you get
all the tension and thrills of it. But usually, you know, whatever,
even if the if the movie or the story or
whatever has a bittersweet ending, the protagonists always the undercover cop.
And ultimately, because they're the protagonist, they're the one that
your heart goes to, right. And the secondary characters, whether

(34:56):
that's like the wife and Donnie Brasco or good Fellows
or something, you know, they basically serve as a foil
to the main character. So I was like, well, can
we tell a story where, um, we we treat the
wife and the activist who's being targeted and the other
people on the periphery of this guy think more about
their perspective on this world, and let's acknowledge from our

(35:20):
perspective that this is wrong. Everything that's happening is wrong
and it's not justified. And then let's just see what
the impact is on people. Um. So, once we started
developing it, and when I was speaking to Anna partner
about doing it, um, I felt like, oh, we should
move this to the States, um to make it feel

(35:43):
certainly as well, because the larger audiences American to to
kind of reiterate and make it feel kind of more
identifiable and have it be less quaint and British. Um.
So my number one question from day one was like, well,
does this ship happen in the States and as much
does it happen in the same way. And so we
on a researcher who then started pulling stuff up and

(36:03):
and the big thing for me was replacing the undercover
group the met with the FBI. And and then I
that became fascinating to me because then I started digging
into the FBI and understanding their history and everything that's
wrong there. But yeah, immediately I start seeing all these

(36:25):
great examples of yeah, this explicit infiltration of green groups UM,
some pretty horrific cases of entrapment um, where you know,
people infiltrate these groups and then encourage them to do
more extreme and violent things on the record. It's the
point where you're listening to like recorded FBI stuff and

(36:49):
and you can hear the group being like I'm not
sure about that, Like that doesn't sound like a great idea, dude,
And the the FBI person is They're going like, Wow,
I don't know, I I really do think we should
blow this bridge up, guys. And it's so obvious, like
when you listen to which is why a lot of
these cases have ultimately been thrown out. But yeah, it

(37:10):
was it was. It was I guess for the project,
reassuring to see that all this stuff was happening over here. Yeah.
I mean, and the FBI, like the specific FBI agent
that we kind of follow definitely feels very American and
feels very real. Um. I really like the actor that
you got to play him. Um, he definitely feels like

(37:33):
a lot of kind of the law enforcement dudes who
kind of handle this side of things. Um. That was
that was That was definitely that was like an FBI.
He became like the fbiis of it became very important
to it. And it was interesting the way that the
FBI they had this brand, which is partly reinforced by

(37:53):
the media, Like they had the great idea back in
like forties or fifties to themselves fund and support cop shows.
So this whole idea we have through the X Files,
through pretty much every serial killer media whatever. The idea
of the FBI is being like the smartest and the best,
like that's put out by them, but it's really interesting

(38:13):
to see they believe that, like they are beyond approach
and like they have higher standards for like, you know,
if you want to join the FBI, there is in
theory this kind of moral moral check that you have
to pass. But into ABI age and flipping backwards and
shooting somebody when his gun falls out of his pants

(38:34):
at a clock, Well, then you read about it and
you're like, actually the experience, the lived experience, and we
were it was it was so bizarre because I was like,
I really want to understand what it's like to be
an FBI wife, and um, let's find let's reach out
the research I've done. Some of the stuff we pulled up.
I was like, oh, it, it does sound pretty bad.

(38:56):
Like there's a requirement if you're an FBI age and
you have to move every three years or something. So
if you're the wife to an FBI agent, you essentially
move every three years, and so you never get a
chance to build your own career or to make roots,
and so you're generally and the wage is not great,
which is why they're very vulnerable to corruption. Really Um,

(39:19):
so you're generally living there's usually kind of areas where
all the FBI families live, so it's this very insular
world and you you start to see where some of
these wives have come out and spoken about it. They're like,
it's really shitty because our husbands, who believe themselves to

(39:40):
be like you know, March of superheroes, get to disappear
for three days at a time and we can never
ask where they are or what they're doing. And there's
this kind of internal code which you see in a
lot of law enforcement right where they will cover for
each other and protect each other. Um. And you suddenly
start see that like, ah, you know the this is

(40:01):
not like And in fact, I remember reading sort of
the guy who inspired like Silenced the Lambs. The TV
show mind Hunter was based on him in his book. Um,
this guy who was one of the early kind of
serial killer profiling people within the FBI. You read his book,
It's a terrible book. When I heard that Fincher was adapting,

(40:24):
I was like, wow, good luck. Um, but it's incredible
the lack of self awareness he has. Um, this guy
is so sexist and so bad. Every time he introduces
a woman, it starts by from the legs up like
he's describing it and um. At the very end of
the book, he reveals that his wife leaves him, and
he kind of writes as if this is a huge surprise,

(40:45):
and yeah, he's calling us from chapter one and he
has the best buddy. So like the guy who's who's
the kind of number two in mind Hunter on TV,
there's like a real life version of him. And halfway
through the book, his wife high is an assassin to
kind of hitman to come in and kill him, and
the guy just narrowly avoids it. And the guy writing

(41:07):
the book is like, what an evil woman, like my
poor friend, and you're like, well, hang on a minute,
what did your what was your friend like? Yeah, what
was what was going on? Yeah, there's there's there's probably
something going on there. So yeah it was Yeah, that
that sense that which I think for me, expanded beautifully

(41:27):
to the bigger picture of like that character kind of
believing that he's the good guy absolutely, you know, he's
the sheriff in the Western. He's coming in and he's
fixing problems and he's saving the world. M but and
then hes apart and and and his inability like it's
such a brittle world view that. Yeah, he is he
is very once yeah, once he's exposed to thinking that

(41:51):
the world is maybe different, it just totally breaks them. Yeah.
His specific arc I think is extremely interesting. Um, but
I don't want to spoil it because I think it's
it's it's too it's too shocking. Once you get to
the final piece of his story, you're like, oh wow, um,
I think that was laid out in a really beautiful way.
But it's it's it's not like shocking away, like oh

(42:13):
this this like doesn't make sense. It's like, oh no, yeah,
I can see that, I can see why he's doing this,
but it's still it's like you kind of slowly watched
this guy get broken down piece by piece. Um, you know,
because he starts he's very much like the superhero FBI agent.
He's like, yeah, ha ha, I'm gonna I'm gonna stop
these terrorists or whatever, and then he just like yeah,
watching him progress throughout the story and you can see

(42:34):
like how pathetic he is. Sometimes there's a there's a
great uh one of the UK spy cops, Um, I
forget his name. If we're doing this three years ago
and I've had all these names in my head. But
he UM. Uh. So he was assigned and he was
infiltrated this screen group somewhere in the UK for a
couple of years, had this relationship with this girl. UM

(42:56):
was participating and facilitating. UM. The the one detail that
I loved and tried to make sure he's accurate was
all these cops would have a van or they would
have like a big truck in the UK because they
realized that, like in these smaller groups, like being the
transportation was like your superpower. So like if you are
someone was like, oh, I'll drive everyone to the thing.

(43:18):
I'll get us all there because I have this big van. UM.
That was the easiest way to just kind of make
yourself useful. UM. But this guy is doing all that.
At some point, UM, they decided to pull him and
they pull him out. He returns to his wife and
his normal life back in London. UM. But he can't

(43:39):
go back to his normal life, and so he starts
and he's done all the stuff of disappearing, but he
just starts getting up and driving and maybe he's in
the north of England somewhere, just just shows back up
and he's like oh, I'm back, guys, And they're like, oh, Ship,
what happened? I thought you had to like disappear because
people are after you. And he's like, no, it's all right,
ah and just goes back to live as an activist. UM.

(44:02):
And at some point one of his superiors notices that
the mileage on his police paid vehicle is huge, and
they're like, why is this guy doing so much my
legions because he's driving all the way back uh and
and continuing to live this life and inhabit this character
that he's set up. Um. And at some point I

(44:24):
think he gets found out and it all goes horribly
wrong because he no longer has like the fake idea
and stuff that they gave him. But yeah, I mean that,
and it's like that stuff is interesting. But then you
it was always important to never be overly sympathetic when
you see them struggling. There is an of life. There

(44:46):
is certain points where you see the FBI agents struggling
because of how like smug he is. You're like, yes,
he's struggling, and you like get excited when he gets
like when he gets like reprimanded or he you know,
people are like mad at him for various reasons. It
very interesting how you like how sympathies get pulled in
certain directions, because like, by the end of the game,
you definitely have a much fuller perspective on who this

(45:07):
guy is and how his kind of psyche works, because
he is really in a lot of ways like kind
of pathetic as like a person um and he like
needs to like hype himself up for himself to like
make himself feel like he's special. Then when that gets
broken down, he just completely collapses. M I guess one

(45:35):
of the last things I want to talk about is
like throughout all of your games you have kind of
a through line of like fairy tales. You kind of
you bring in fairy tale concepts into all of these games.
Um And. I like how a lot of your games
are very open ended in some ways. I think that
her story being much more open ended than than telling
lies in some ways. Um And, I really like that

(45:57):
you kind of you can't like look up, like what
is the ending of this game. It's like no, like
you have to piece it together in your own brain
like that, and whatever you think the story is, that's
where it is for you. There's no like definitive ending,
especially like especially for her story, um and how this
combines with fairy tales. I think it's it's really interesting
way to like include like mythology into these more modern stories.

(46:18):
What's kind of your pot process behind you know, kind
of kind of including mythology and fairy tales into these
more like modern stories of like you know, people interacting
with like government, law enforcement, and then just you know,
breaking down their own psyches under these heightensed situations. Yeah,
I mean I think it. I think it came initially
with her story of yeah, thinking about the kind of

(46:41):
meta storytelling nous of these things, right of the expense
which their experiments and like how we tell stories, um
and but a lot of times, like the myths and
the the kind of classic stories that people go to
those right to try and understand the bigger questions or
certainly like um, I guess partly came out of the

(47:07):
start of first story. I had like two youngest kids,
and you're so you're reading them all the classic stories
and you realize the extent to which these are just
encoding our society's values. Right. But I had this incredible
book that was my parents got for me, and I
tracked down and made sure we still had when I
had my kids. That was called it was like folk

(47:28):
tales of the people's of the Soviet Republic from like
the early eighties, and it was collected like a lot
of it was. It was Ukrainian folk tales, and they
were amazing because they were so dark. Like the message
of each of these stories was trust nobody. The rich
will always win, you will end up dead and unhappy, right,

(47:49):
And each story would start with the poor peasant his
brother gets rich, he asks for help. The brother like
is horrible. Like there's one story where there's this brother
who's like, oh, if you want some grain because you're starving,
and then gouge out your own eye and I'll give
you some grain. And then it comes back from more
grain later and he's like, gauge out your other eye. Now,

(48:10):
chop off your hand. And it's like they're so dark,
and I'm like, but this is reflecting what it was
like to live in that world and grew up and
you're preparing people for the realities. So um, you know,
I think that to me was really interesting in and
her story tells this story that kind of to some extent,

(48:31):
grows out of this childhood and then we're tell him lies. Definitely,
it was part of this idea of of, yeah, how
Logan's character David sees the world and relates to his
part in it and like his utter inability to realize
that he's the bad guy in the story, right, and yeah,
he's the good guy. Um. And and that was like

(48:54):
that was partly the key to breaking his character. And
it was his daughter. So he has this character who's
this six seven year old daughter and that's like, you know,
he lets down and does horrible things to a whole
bunch of people. Um, but the thing he's not going
to be able to get over is knowing that he's
laid his daughter down, right, knowing that at some point

(49:14):
she will grow up and be an adult woman who
if she learns about what her father has done, we'll
we'll think less of him and you know, we'll realize
that he's the bad guy in the fairy tale whatever.
So um, that was like just interesting to me to
set him in that moment and have him reading those
stories and see see his relationship with his daughter. Um

(49:38):
and yeah, I think that that ye just relating those
things back to what are these these kind of base values,
and so much of those foe tales is preparing you
for the fact that people are going to lie to
you and trick you and you know all those kind
of aspects. Yeah. Well a lot of them do deal with, like,
you know, failures of trusting people and you know, getting

(50:02):
getting let down and being misled. A lot a lot
of those do kind of follow on these same same
kind of rough templates. UM, let's see, is there anything
you're working on now that you wanna that you wanna
plug um, And of course you know people should pick
up Telling Lies her story. UM. I have them on Steam.
I think they are best suited to be playing on PC,
but you can get them on console. We can get

(50:23):
them on iOS. But in any anything anything upcoming. Yeah,
we're working on currently this project called Immortality UM which
is very ambitious. Uh. It will be out next year.
It deals with the story of an actress who only
ever made three movies the latter half the twentieth century UM,

(50:47):
and then disappeared. And we have recovered footage from these
three movies. UM. It. It's been interesting because with Telling Lies, like,
I've always been someone that m when I think about
the kinds of stories I want to tell I've always
thought that I'm not a capital P politics person, right,
I tend to be interested in how people relate to

(51:08):
each other and some of the kind of smaller politics.
Um And once I got to telling lies, it was like, oh, actually,
like there is some capital P politics tied to all this,
and so dug into that was like, well, so I
want to do right by this, right, So we did
involve speaking to lots of people, didn't involve bringing in
all the research and everything. Um So, coming away from

(51:30):
telling lies, and as I mean, it was making the
game was insane because it was during Trump Trump happens,
and I remember going into it thing like we're making
this story about the FBI being bad. That's a pretty
reasonable endpoint. And then once we hit Trump, you had

(51:50):
all that stuff of like the good FBI agents and
theory or the FBI might be the people that bring
Trump down and suddenly they it was leaning into the
myth of the FBI and I'll stick down it and
just everything getting worse, and it was like, oh, this
is like so intense to be making something and speaking
to some of these issues whilst this is all happening.

(52:12):
Um So, finishing that I was like, well, Okay, for
the next project, we are definitely going away from talking
about real life issues and capital p politics, and then
just accidentally it's become because we're talking about an actress
in the twentieth century and what it means to make movies,

(52:32):
and ah, digging into that suddenly becomes about a whole
other bunch of systemic issues. So yeah, not not managed
to avoid the politics again, but it's it's been a
really really interesting project. I think. I think once you
crack that egg open of realizing that politics are kind
of intrinsic to every story we tell, it's hard to hand.

(52:54):
It's hard to kind of put that back in the box.
Because once you realize you can use politics and a
very interesting and calm storytelling way that still doesn't relily
need a lot of audiences, it's like, oh, yeah, this
is just using another way to interact with the world.
I think that was that was one of the things
that were slightly disappointing. I guess We're telling lies was
like we were working on it, I'm like, well, to

(53:15):
make sure we get these things right, because like, these
are very important issues and there are some nuances, and
so we you know, we don't want to accidentally say
something that is incorrect, or we don't want to give
people the impression that we're you know, yeah yeah, yeah wrong.
So I was expecting some level of scrutiny in terms
of discussing the games themes and everything, um, and I

(53:37):
guess like the video games world is still not quite
ready for that. Like they're quite happy to talk about
the game mechanics and how this thing will work since
a big picture emotional responses, but no one's willing to
kind of dig deeper. And we had like as the
game was coming out and continues to be, you have
the bigger name developers being like there's no politics and

(53:58):
our video games as they're like invading make a game
about you know, being a black Ops unit taking down
communist countries. We're not gonna abou politics. We're gonna yeah
that constantly a constantly just saying it's it's possible, and
they'll always say we we both sides it right, Well,
we'll tell both sides and let people make the decision.

(54:20):
And something that I was very adamant was very imported
to me on telling lies was like, if we're making
this game, it is not the point of the game
is not to give you a mush of information and
have you decide the moral yeah, you know, good or bad?

(54:40):
Something like. We are going into this with the assumption
that we and the audience or most of the audience
believe that people doing these things are wrong, and then
we're just And then I'm interested in what does it
due to the people, What what is it like to
be in this world? What are the consequences of ramifications?
How does one exist, ist and continue to live a

(55:01):
life after having been involved in these things? So, for me,
a political game is it can't be a political story
in any media. It can't be going back to first
principles pretending we're in debate club, because I just I
think that's just that's absolutely lies the audience. I think
you can say a political story is one which embraces

(55:22):
and acknowledges the reality of the various power struggles and
inequalities that we have and and then has something to
say about or has a particular angle it wants to interrogate,
or something it wants to shed light on. Um. But
it's very childish and I think we're definitely struggling with
this in video games. To be like, oh, if it's
about politics, then it should be a big question and

(55:43):
we should assume no answers, right, And it's like, yeah,
this is a completely bullshit and and it kind of
it can lead to some problematic ways, which is why
you see a lot of you know, game footage in
actual like terrorist propaganda, like with like like with like
Nazi the white supremacist stuff, they use a lot of
game footage in their propaganda videos when especially when it's

(56:05):
like both sides of these issues. Yeah, it's a I
have have a particular interest in the intersection between politics, extremism,
and gaming because the gaming is very important to our
modern kind of extremist ecosystem um, particularly around like four
Chan and like you know, like mass shootings. All of
these things play into game culture. Not not not saying games
cause these events to happen, they don't, but like the

(56:26):
way they interact with these people is actually interesting. You know.
This is very different from like the way like this
Senate is like, oh, games are causing mas shooting because
they're not. Yeah, I think it's it's it's it's it's
it's it's a completely separate thing. It's it's there is
there is a Fox News kind of hysteria around gaming.
But at the same time, like and and clearly, you know,
one way I pitched her story when I was telling

(56:48):
people why it was interesting, it's like, this is a
game about listening. I was like, that's cool because, you know,
whatever you think about the larger politics of it, or
the question of whether video games themselves are inherently MPLO
or anything, like, the fact that's still the stories we
tell are about someone with a gun in their hand
or assorting their hand, and the power dynamics and the story,

(57:10):
the types of stories and the types of protagonists, Like,
it's screwed up. And I think to the same extent
that the fact that, like the Marvel Cinematic Universe is
about a bunch of glorified cops going around saying the
world like, you know, if you continue to reinforce these things, Yeah,
all of the art we make are saying certain things

(57:31):
about the world, and we're reinforcing a certain narrative over
and over again and not really thinking critically about it. Yeah,
that's the problem with making art. I mean, I'm not
trying to conference being anti gamer. I would play a
lot of games. I really like gaming. I just think
some some companies need to figure out why why certain
games are used in mass shooting manifestoes in certain games

(57:54):
aren't um particularly around like politics like this is a
particularly particularly talking about like white supremacy and how certain
games kind of playing too certain things. Because even even
a game like Wolf in Stein, which I think handles
this topic very well, still will you know, get brought
up in certain you know, propaganda videos because they do
have cool shots and Nazis walking around, right, that's the
kind of the problem with some of these things. Um

(58:15):
And you know, if they weren't killing if Nazis weren't
killing people as much as wouldn't be as much of
a problem. But because that's still a thing, that's still
a thing that needs to get talked about. Anyway, this
this this took a very sad sad turned towards the
end of anyway. Yeah, I but I will I will
just strongly recommend playing her story, playing telling lies. I

(58:35):
think these games, you know, interrogate our our predispositions about
about kind of police detective work. Um and you just
get to learn a lot. You get to learn a
lot about like people on characters because like a lot
of these games, you know, are the setup is like, oh,
solve this crime or mystery, but then by the end
you're solving a very different mystery and you're kind of

(58:56):
solving what makes the person tick. And it's very You've
I really like the ark that you have in your games.
They've brought me a lot of happiness. So thank you.
Thank you for that, and thank you for talking with
all of us, um about your work, I mean doing it.
Thank you, thank you for having me and uh yeah,
like I say, I was, I was hoping to have

(59:17):
hundreds more conversations about what Telling Lies was about and
about these issues when it came out. But it's uh,
you know that, it's I mean, it's hot just general
media landscape now, like you put something out there and
it comes out and people consume it, Yeah, move on,
Like you don't have that. It's bad of like discussion

(59:39):
that that. I don't know, it feels like it used
to used to be a thing. Yeah, I think it
definitely did. It used to be a thing. And definitely
your games have had an influence on media in certain ways.
And I know there's been like a few other like
projects that like Netflix is doing that is kind of
taking your concept but not really doing it correctly. Yeah,
they're coming now. Yeah, there's definitely been a lot. Yeah.

(01:00:01):
People always send me them. They're like, oh, this sounds
a lot like a story, this thing, and it's like, oh,
but it's it's built non linear. Yeah, exactly like you
let people don't ye. Usually it's like watch there are
eight episodes. You can watch them in any order, which
isn't how her story works. No, Yeah, like, yeah, there's
there's a Yeah, there's a whole different thing going on.
But no, I mean it's it's interesting times for that

(01:00:24):
sort of stuff. But anyway, play these games on Steam
and that that doesn't for today. You can follow the
show on Twitter and Instagram at Happening here, pod and
cool Zone Media. Do you have Do you have a
social media that you would like to plug or would
your people if people are on Twitter, that's where I
tend to be despite its Yeah, I know I am.

(01:00:47):
I am Mr Sambalo on Twitter, Ma Sambal. I will
say I I actually actually do like your Twitter account.
You do? You do post some fun stuff every once
in a while. That's that's kind of a weird contescen
thing we think to say of anyway, Bye for Punny.

(01:01:08):
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