There are countless reasons as to why we play video games. For some of us, video games are a means to connect with others–a way through which we can participate in a community, or carve out time specifically reserved for nurturing our friendships. Some use games as means of escaping reality, while others appreciate the hobby’s competitive, skill-based nature. However, far too few of us are using games for one of their most compelling purposes: to experience suffering.
Much like Black Tabby Games co-founder Tony Arias-Howard, whom I interviewed about this very topic, “I’m only half-kidding” when I say this. I recognize that, for many of us, times are hard and the very notion of playing something to suffer sounds unappealing, to say the least. And yet, as I recollect on all my favorite games and stories, it’s the ones that challenged me emotionally–that led me through hell and towards catharsis–that occupy the largest recesses of my mind.
Through games, film, and various other forms of art, we are offered a relatively risk-free space to suffer–to delve deep in our feelings and reflect on loss, trauma, and perhaps even the parts of ourselves we’d rather turn away from. So why do we–and game developers, for that matter–all too often shy away from suffering despite knowing what rewards it reaps?
The obvious answer is to avoid discomfort, of course, but fortunately for us, Black Tabby Games (Slay the Princess, Scarlet Hollow) and Sunset Visitor (1000xResist, Prove You’re Human) are two studios that have opted to actively chase discomfort rather than turn away from it. So far, the results of this are three critically acclaimed works of psychological horror that have achieved success far beyond the studios’ expectations. Following this success, Black Tabby has elected to enter the world of publishing in an effort to make it easier for narrative-focused studios like their first collaborator, Sunset Visitor, to publish their titles with as little bureaucracy and interference as possible.
Right now, Black Tabby and Sunset Visitor are hard at work on the latter’s sophomore title, Prove You’re Human–a psychological science-fiction game that asks players to examine their own beliefs on what makes us human. Leading up to its release, I decided to speak with Black Tabby co-founders Abby Howard and Tony Howard-Arias, and Sunset Visitor developers Remy Siu and Natalie Checo, about their partnership, the art of making narrative-rich video games, and how we could all use just a bit more friction in our lives.
GameSpot: So, how did this partnership between Sunset Visitor and Black Tabby come about? In my head, it makes perfect sense, but I would love to hear the story of how this all played out.
Howard-Arias: The indie side of game development is a very small world–especially when you’re looking at studios that have shipped games at all and are still together, let alone shipped successful games. So just a lot of us know each other. And in general, we’ve gotten along very well with Remy. We talk about art and the craft of game making and storytelling, and we also talk about the business side.
Howard: When he had this pitch that he was shopping around, we wanted to hear it anyway. But then after we did hear it, it kind of just coincided with plans that we had very far out to start a publisher. Slay the Princess crossed a threshold for us where now we can fund our internal projects. So it was basically a question of, “How do we make sure other people can do this too? How do we do what we can to try to kickstart somebody else being able to be self-sufficient?” We thought that was going to happen after our internal projects were all done, and then Remy talked to us about this pitch.
Howard-Arias: We’ve always been people who take opportunities when they arise. I think it’s very easy to go through life with blinders on and ignore cool things that cross your path. And starting a publisher with this title essentially allows us to put the more bold thoughts we have about game publishing and how it can work to the test. I think it’s very frustrating when a studio like Sunset Visitor has to go through the motions of pitching. It’s a many-months-long process where you still have to pay people while you’re doing it. It leaves a lot of things up in the air. If you’re developing a pitch, you’re not just making an artistic piece for its own sake and exploring what interests you as a creative–you’re tailoring something to be sold to a single entity who has the funds for it. Something is lost in translation when you’re doing that.
[Black Tabby Publishing] is pitch-dependent, it’s scope-dependent, but ultimately I feel like Sunset Visitor has already earned a huge amount of trust from their work on 1000xResist across every avenue. So why not make it more straightforward?
Additionally, being able to come in so early on a project means that we’re able to have collaborative conversations about things like marketing and messaging. If art is communication between the artist and an audience, getting the audience to listen is part of that communication process. And then, because this is a narrative-first game and we are a narrative-first game studio, we’re in a unique position to serve as editors you would see in a traditional book publishing house. We’re not making the game, but we’re intimately aware of its development process. We’re able to check in when the writer’s room gets stuck on something and we can weigh in with a fresh perspective–maybe give a little nudge or ask some questions.
Siu: Going to talk to Tony and Abby about [writing dilemmas] and them bringing their perspective without being bogged down by the six or seven hours that we’ve knocked it around the writer’s room, that’s been really helpful.
[Working with Black Tabby] means we can think about positioning and marketing a lot earlier than we usually do, too. It’s often kind of a misunderstood thing, where you want the narrative to be unaffected by [marketing]. But I think if you can fold it in artfully, that’s usually the best outcome.
Checo: I think of something like Cult of the Lamb, in which the concept was created not separate from marketing but in tandem with it. It wasn’t driven by a cynical sense of marketing, but by taking into account, “Okay, what resonates with our common audiences? What are people talking about right now? What are people anxious about right now?”
Part of us writing this game is exploring our own anxieties about AI, about work, about gender, about so many different things. And so being able to bring marketing into the conversations from the beginning helps us also feel more confident as storytellers, I think. It’s a very holistic approach.
Slay the Princess and 1000xResist both made such big waves critically. What has the aftermath of all of that success been like for all of you? Is it a bit intimidating going forward with this next project?
Siu: It’s been great. I mean, we get to make all kinds of 1000xResist merch. We get to engage in this new secret project that we’ll talk about later this year.
It’s given us the capacity to be able to continue to support the game, and that’s an aspect of running a game studio that perhaps I did not anticipate, not in a bad way. We’ve been trying to support and keep the community active and engaged. That’s very fun because in the performing-arts world, that doesn’t really exist.
I would also say that it gives us a little bit more confidence that some of the things that we’re interested in are things that maybe other people are interested in as well. There is pressure, of course. But when there is pressure, I think we just go back to artist mode and think, “Okay, practice-wise, why are we making this game and what kind of things do we want to do?”
A beginner’s mindset is something that I always want to make sure that we have or find ways to have. In many cases, there’s still a beginner’s aspect to this game because we’re doing a bunch of things we haven’t done before. It has to be a learning process, otherwise it’ll feel kind of static.
Howard-Arias: For us, I don’t think we’ve had a moment to process the changes until maybe the past month or so. Until Slay the Princess came out, it was a never-ending grind to hit the next release, which would be a bump in sales, which would pay our bills until we could grind to the next release. Once Slay The Princess came out, we felt like we needed to capitalize on just the momentum of that and did the Pristine Cut. Then after that, [we realized] it’s been however long since the previous episode of Scarlet Hollow and those fans have been left in the lurch.
Howard: Even now, we still have too many obligations to really understand, I suppose, how we feel. We still have to finish Scarlet Hollow. After that is done, we already have our next projects lined up.
I was a cartoonist before getting into games and it was the same way–just kind of this constant, “I have to make sure the next project is lined up, I have to make sure that I am working because otherwise my bills will not get paid.” That’s different now. Now the work is not just, “I need to get my bills paid,” the work is, “I need to finish the work.” And that is a good change. I am comfortable in the fact that I can focus on the work now and make sure that I am making something I’m proud of.
Howard-Arias: There’s another aspect of this that’s complicated to grapple with as a creator, which is there is a popularity threshold where your work no longer belongs to you.
I think that art itself is more about the process and journey behind the creation of something, and the fact that a game comes out at the end of it is almost the byproduct, even if it’s the reason we’re doing it.
But it is strange to think about this thing that’s like a snapshot of who we were at a certain time that remains just out in the world, almost like sealed in amber. But then there are people who are still engaging with that past version of ourselves. It’s a weird feeling.
When I think of 1000xResist and now Prove You’re Human, I think that they are so reflective of the political climate and the conversations that are happening right now. Do you think about 10 years from now, 15 years from now, how these will be viewed separate from that context?
Siu: There is always a danger, so to say, that if you are engaging with something in a specific way, in a specific time, that 10 to 15 years down the line, it’ll feel very out of place. But I think one of the things that we really try to focus on is: What is this effectual thing that continues to haunt us about these things that we’re engaging with? How can we lean into those, and how can that manifest in so many different ways and permeate the form of the thing as opposed to the literal details of something inside of the work?
My hope is that we are always making games that get to sit beside you as you also get older or as you change, so that when you come back to it, you may be a different person and you may find something else from it. Or maybe, 10 years from now, you’ll think, “Oh, that truly was a time and space 10 years ago.” And playing or engaging with it again is a way to access that.
The other thing I think is, a lot of these things happen in cycles. I don’t want to be around for another pandemic, knock on wood, but I think when these things reoccur–and they’ll continue to reoccur in different forms or fashion–the game continues to exist next to you and evolves with you. It may categorically be static, but perhaps the way in which you read it and the way in which it interacts with the world continues to change, if we did a good job.
Howard-Arias: There’s a universality to a lot of human experience. People still read ancient Greek myths. We still read The Odyssey and The Iliad and find things to relate in them. If you’re presenting something that, at its core, is deeply human, I think that adds a transcendent element to a piece and lets it survive 10 years into the future, 20 years into the future, 30 years into the future.
Howard: We really believe in building something that explores concepts and shows facets so that you can examine it yourself and take away from it what you kind of will take away from it as opposed to trying to turn to somebody and tell them how to think, which is always going to be met with friction.
Checo: I think part of why so many people connected to 1000xResist was because it was so uniquely itself in trying to tell a specific story–in creating a safe space to explore things like generational trauma, identity, sexuality, and the pandemic. I think a lot of art might strive to be timeless, but I think capturing a specific moment in history is just as worthy an endeavor.
I think of games like Venba, for example. It’s not my exact same culture, but that game made me cry so much because it’s so beautiful and specific about what it means to be the child of an immigrant. I’m so glad that we are seeing more of those stories in video games–that we are, as a medium, pushing for more of those stories to get the spotlight.
The human experience is so vast and impossible to encapsulate in a single work, but it feels like a good mission to look at the landscape of video game storytelling and figure out what we can add. What are things that haven’t been said before or explored before in this certain way? Part of why people connect to things like Slay the Princess, Scarlet Hollow, and 1000xResist is because the artists put a lot of themselves into them. I really believe in what they want to say and how they want to say it. That will always be something that people connect with.
Howard-Arias: I think what video games really need right now, from a narrative context, is more suffering. I say that in a joking tone, but this is something that I struggle with with a lot of games right now.
We are in this kind of push and pull between, “Are they products to be consumed or are they art? Are they toys where it’s about capturing a power fantasy or is this an immersive means of exploring the depths of human experience in all of its pain and joy and everything in between?”
I really appreciate you saying that. There is a push right now towards media that, I don’t want to say coddles because I feel like that’s too negative of connotation, but isn’t necessarily challenging. It’s comforting, which can be useful and good. But I also do think, as a society, we sometimes do need to engage with stuff that pushes back a little bit more or challenges us or asks us to look at ourselves.
Howard-Arias: We feel the same. I feel like one of the central hugs within the culture right now is we’re at the end of a two decade long trend towards removing friction from everything. I get really spooked by the fact that there are videos where a zookeeper will give a chimpanzee or a gorilla a smartphone with Instagram loaded on it and, intuitively, the gorilla is able to navigate the app, like things, and make something big or go away.
I feel like when I was growing up, I got so much out of how hard computers were to use. We often get asked questions like, “What tools do you use to keep your branching straight in your games?” And the answer is we don’t use tools. We map everything out within the engine using really, really meticulous nested file structures because that’s the logical way to map something like this out. But then I feel like that’s something that we can only do because we went through the friction of needing to know how nested folders worked growing up. We needed to know that if we needed to back up our save files for something, well, the game is installed in this folder, which is in this directory. I think that generative AI is another vector by which we are removing friction from things. And if you don’t have friction, you don’t learn, you just smoothly sail through life.
It reminds me even of what you said, Remy. That you don’t look at 1000xResist as having limitations because the constraints are part of the art–they help define and shape it.
Howard-Arias: The question you asked earlier about the impact of success? That’s the scariest part. We don’t have the same constraints placed on us that we did earlier. And those were constraints that we had to work within to make the art happen.
Howard: It’s possible that having fewer constraints then leads to just this explosion of possibilities that then it makes the next piece worse. It could make it so it never gets finished because there are so many possible ways it can be.
I understand why people seek out less friction. I mean, the world is very challenging all the time itself, so they seek out media not as a way to explore that or try to understand it in a safe environment. They don’t really see that as what’s going on, they just see it as more attacking. And I understand that, but I also don’t agree with it. I mean, this is why I’m a huge fan of horror, because horror’s entire deal is confronting you with something that is just off reality enough that it becomes a separate place for safe examination. But it is still an examination. I think that it is much more healthy.
Howard-Arias: I don’t think the answer is that all narrative-focused games moving forward should be extremely heavy on the friction, but that’s the area where we’re interested in an exploration.
We need it to exist though. I will always reach for catharsis before I reach for comfort. And I feel like that’s part of the reason why these games resonate so much with me–they’re very cathartic experiences.
Howard: And comfort is different for everyone, too. What I find comforting is going to be very different. I can’t stand, “Oh, we work in a coffee shop together and we’re slowly falling in love or something, but comfortably. And we always talk about our boundaries.” I’m like, “This sucks. I can’t connect with you. You guys aren’t people. This isn’t how people interact with each other.”
I think it also means that some people take for granted that they kind of are operating at that level all the time, like, “Oh, I’m totally doing everything ‘right.'” And then not understanding how they are running up against somebody else’s boundaries or how they are making life a little harder for somebody else by making it more comfortable for themselves.
Checo: The possibilities for art and for people are endless. The world is so difficult right now and maybe it’s always been this difficult, but because of social media, we now have such a clear window into just how awful things can be. I think there’s totally a space for cozy, wholesome experiences that comfort people. But like you said, I personally really seek catharsis. Those are the types of games that we want to make.
Something that has come up in interviews is the idea that [Black Tabby Publishing] can change the industry. I don’t think anyone really has the power to do that, but we do have the power to create small pockets of kindness and to enable teams like Sunset Visitor, and any others in the future, to create the stories that they want to create.
