Joshua Pulsifer: Encountering Life, Death, and Art Through Video Games

In this episode, we are joined by Joshua Pulsifer - narrative designer and co-director at Zipit! Games, an indie studio in New York. Joshua and his partner Ben are building The Wide Open Sky is Running Out of Catfish, a story-driven photography game set on the back of a giant flying catfish. Beneath its playful exterior lies a meditation on memory, friendship, and the impermanence of life. 

We dive into a super fun journey exploring: whether video games are a good storytelling medium, what creates powerful emotional arcs, and why we need to take video games seriously as art. Along the way, we also confront death - both as a universal fear and as a source of connection and meaning. 

It’s an episode about creativity, mortality, and the stories we play that shape who we are.

Socials: @zipit_games

Transcript

episode 13-Joshua Pulsifer

[00:00:00]

Rui: Welcome to Floating Questions, the podcast where curiosity leads, we follow and stories unfold. My name's Rui, simply asking questions, shall we begin?

Rui: Hi Joshua. How are you doing today?

Joshua: I'm doing very well. Thank you so much for having me. 

Rui: maybe let's just talk a little bit about how we met. I was, uh, having dinner with my friends in New York, and then you were the server, uh, for the table. Somehow I just got a sense that you are some sort of writer on the side, and my friends are like, what? How did you tell that? I'm like, I don't know. I just feel, I just know it. And then I tried to slow down hmm, how did I really pick up that signals? I remember, maybe it's because You're pretty particular about your word choice. And then you confirmed [00:01:00] that you are writing something actually on the side and you are a video game, uh, narrative writer.

And I was like, wow, this is so exciting.

Joshua: I'm gonna have to send that clip to my boss and have him give me a raise. articulating the dishes so well, man, I really, you gotta gimme another dollar an hour or something.

Rui: if your boss will be listening to this episode, I'll be really happy. Um, maybe give the audience a Self-introduction 

Joshua: Definitely. I'm Joshua Pulsifer. I am the, narrative designer and, co-director, at Zipit Games. we're a small two person indie dev team in New York. I, I run it with my partner, Ben. and currently we are working on our debut project. The Wide Open Sky is running out of Catfish.

It is a, uh, story driven photography game, while on the back of a giant flying catfish.

Rui: That sounds super imaginative before we get into the specific project that you were working on, I have to confess that I [00:02:00] don't play video games. I play one video game when I was a kid, 

Joshua: That's okay. That's okay. 

Rui: I obsessed with that game for one semester and then I was just like, I'm so bored. 

 this is a long way of saying I have zero clue about video game.

 so maybe it's helpful to set a little bit context first. 

Um, so based on a quick research, I understand there are three major players in the industry studios, which is the one that you started, and publishers and platforms. So then publishers are the ones that sort of. Investing different studios games, uh, making sure there is marketing team behind the studio to help arrange a lot of production, logistics and then platforms or where you publish that game and then sell the game.

Joshua: Yeah, that's an interesting way of, of looking at it. the most. Maybe relevant [00:03:00] dichotomy would be, it's based off of the types of games that are published. So what you have are, like, AAA games are what you would probably call like a platform or like a platform game.

You know, they're the games that are published like by Nintendo, by Microsoft, the massive multimillion dollar games. Um, then you have like double A games, which are also really, really big, but can sometimes be, focused on by smaller, kind of mid, mid-size studios. and then you have like single A games or just indie games that are, you know, honestly make up probably the majority of games that are published like on Steam for example, which is kind of where most people buy and, um, interact with video games these days.

And that would be like the category that we fall under these. And indie games, of course, can get publishers and they can become really, really, really big. Um, but for the most part, most games that are put out into the world are, you know, everything is done by the one creator or the kind of handful of creators that work on a specific project.

Um, and they're very lucky if they get [00:04:00] published because publishing is quite hard to do these days. 

Rui: I see. the next context I want to understand a little bit more is that, um, for the writing part of the game, at least the for, the big games, uh, in general there are different, writers. There, there is a narrative designers, so they would. At least my understanding is that they would design a story structure, play your choices, and then the writers would, uh, focus on developing characters dialogue and scene writing. And then there is also world builders who basically specify the timeline, the culture, the politics, the role. Is that how you would also think about the writing for those like big games and how that differ between the indie game versus like the big game that you would publish on the platform?

Joshua: Yeah, yeah, definitely. I think that for larger games, like the writing teams can really, really swell, depending, I, I think like, uh, Elden Ring might be a good [00:05:00] example of this, where, it's such a lower rich game as well. on top of just having so much dialogue and, and even certain things that, you know, like item descriptions, for example, with a game with hundreds of item descriptions, you might have a single person just devoting, hours of their time, making sure that, the way that things are described, fits with, what the item is and make sure, that those are all set in my own process though, I am every single one of those roles right on, on top of doing game design, which is, with a story driven game, 

When the story is a mechanic to kind of push the player forward to progress through the world, these things have to work in tandem with each other. Sometimes narrative designers don't need to worry too much about gameplay, if their game is more, game focused, you know, jumping around platform or whatever.

 but, in my case, wearing all of those roles means looking at all those things and how they interact in a, in a really intimate way. the larger the project may be, the more space you have to explore each one of those individual components, more in depth. but for me, they are all the same thing [00:06:00] in a way.

Rui: I see, Since you mentioned story driven game and there are different types of storytelling and in games, uh, my understanding is that there could be a linear plot line, there could be branching, and depending on the player's choices, that that storylines would be a little bit different.

And then there could also be emergent storytelling, which is a lot more organic. I guess what kind of writing that you in generally would do, What specific type of storytelling that you are particularly aiming 

Joshua: Oh, man, it's a loaded question because especially, for listeners who. Are not so familiar with games. So I went to school as an English major. I've always been a huge reader. my background is in fiction, right?

So when I first started making games, I was really kind of confused by this aspect that, you know, games are not these linear things. it's not like reading a book. You can't write something in a game and just expect your player to kind of process it, read it the way they engage with literature or other [00:07:00] types of fiction.

And, essentially what you're doing is you're kind of crafting, in the words of a scholar, I think his name is Henry Jenkins, a narrative architecture, right? So what I'm creating when I create a story in a game is a place for narrative opportunities. oftentimes that is emergent.

Narrative design, emergent gameplay, creating kind of spaces for narrative opportunity within the game itself. So for example, we have a journal in the game that the player kind of stumbles upon and finds and interprets, uh, for themself, what is the content of this material, and how does it interact with the gameplay that I'm doing, with the action itself.

Um, there is also the question of something that is more direct, like dialogue. You know, when it comes to like a branching narrative, for example, although they are extremely difficult. it's so hard because you expect as a storyteller to, making one story.

Cohesive and, make sense is hard enough, to make two or three that [00:08:00] are all equally, good first of all. But then just, cogents is, ah, it's a nightmare. it's so hard. It is so impressive that people have done it so well. Um, but I guess maybe just go back to your question.

 the thing that I'm most interested in is the opportunity space, for, uh, players to experience a story for themselves rather than me telling that story to them. that is the, uh, fundamentally, different part of writing a video game versus writing anything else.

Is the fact that the player always has autonomy and therefore I must be creating the illusion or, or creating the actual lived experience of them, manifesting the story. Um, that makes any sense.

Rui: So what you were saying for the last bit is that, uh, the freedom, choice is the illusion that you were given

Joshua: In, in, in a way, in a way, I am steering the player, right? and they of course are in control of how fast they [00:09:00] go. But ultimately, my job is to create, uh, barriers. Boundaries and kind of strict avenues and intersections of turning right? but to do so in a way that feels natural and feels integrated with the other kind of autonomous decisions they're making.

Like how fast they're going through the gameplay, what they decide they want to do in that moment, um, making sure that, you know, it's well paced, the beats are hitting and so on. Yeah.

Rui: Interesting. since you also read a lot of fictions, um, and I also presume that you'll have a lot of movie recommendations just based on your artistic choice, um, do you feel like video game is actually a good form for storytelling?

Joshua: Oh, wow. That's a good question. That's a good question. Uh, it is a difficult place to be if you want to story tell. Um, there's a couple reasons for that. First of all, I am not so convinced that people [00:10:00] really understand the genre. even designers themselves really understand what they're doing when they make video games.

Um, it's not a medium that people have ever taken seriously. and they're kind of only just now beginning to reckon with, in that way it's a bit of a challenge to even set the. You kinda have to lay groundwork to even be taken seriously before then you can kind of explore the rich opportunities for narrative design and the opportunities, that make making a video game so, enjoyable and so rewarding.

Rui: What is the groundwork that needs to be laid in order for that narrative to be rich?

Joshua: uh, I think that I, what I mean by that, I suppose, is like getting people to care about video games in general, to kind of see them as a legitimate form of art. I think that people assume that video games are these, trivial, shooters or, just kind of this thing that can be done past something that we should feel guilty for doing.

Also, like there's all this guilt that's wrapped up in, in playing video [00:11:00] games, Before I even talk about the artistry, and before I even talk about, like why they're important, I have to kind of engage that people still struggle to actually meaningfully, endeavor them.

 that's one difficult part of storytelling through a video game is just, feeling like you're creating legitimate form of art, realizing that's what you're doing, and then getting other people to realize that as well. but I do, I think it's, I think it's immensely important that people engage with video games.

That's like my whole shtick. that's like all I try to do all the time is try to get people to realize that this is, I mean, I, like video games have made me just sob in ways that I have never, ever cried before. it's a really powerful kind of thing because, 

You know, the level of identification that, that you feel with an arc that again, you feel like you are making autonomous actions in, one of the really trippy things about playing a video game, especially like a first person video game, or one with a really strong emotional kind of arc, is this kind of like weird subconscious, uh, thing that happens when you and the [00:12:00] character kind of merge and that can't really happen in the same way with any other medium, right?

Like that, that sense of real embodiment. I'm not saying that, there's not identification in, in literature or movies, but it's, but when you're, when you are making the actions, this is the really exciting, weird psychoanalytic part of video games that really is like, oh my gosh, there's so much there to chew on.

Um. I think that you can tell a story that really resonates with a person in a really different way. 

Rui: What was one of the sobbing moments for you while playing video games?

Joshua: I have to shout out the Game Mori. it's like A-J-R-P-G with just the mo, one of the most haunting, beautiful redemptive story arcs that I have ever seen in any medium. 

Rui: Can you describe the story arc a little bit.

Joshua: yeah, um, I guess not to give too many spoilers, essentially you, you play as [00:13:00] this, he's like a kid, I guess he's probably like 12 or 13, and you kind of start off in this fantasy.

Land where things are cute and nice and you're hanging out with your friends, then things go really, really dark and people are dying and you're dealing with all these monsters, and then you're transported into the real world and you're like, wait a minute. Like, what, where is reality?

What is the situation? You're uncovering who this character is. By the way, this character does not speak, which I think is a really interesting part, a really strong, um, choice. A strong narrative choice is, making, the player you play as not have a dialogue option. and yeah, you're uncovering this mystery about who this main character is that doesn't have any words to share, 

How does the lack of dialogue for the main character really helped with the storytelling? This specific case?

Ooh. Um, well, it's something that [00:14:00] I, I, I think maybe I'm more attuned to as somebody who is writing a protagonist with dialogue options, right? Because, um, you kinda have two routes you can go down with dialogue options for the player. So you can either create a character that is, uh, kinda the way you do in like a, in like a book, right?

You know, has a very strong sense of character, personality, direction, motives, whatever. The other thing you could do with a main character in a video game is, is try to really oscillate the kind of character that the protagonist is, right? So like, I can give options like a, a, a nice response, a kind of mean response, a neutral response, and it really changes the tone of who you're playing as.

Um, and you, you kind of get a mixture of both of these things in different video games. But ultimately it means that you are either have a character that's been crafted for you, that you're playing, or you're playing the character as your own kind of desired self in a way, by having no dialogue options at all, but still creating, this main character [00:15:00] Mori who ends up having an extremely strong personality that you only find out through the emergent gameplay, through understanding their backstory, through their other friends, through their actions, through, flashbacks and how they respond in different realities.

 you get this really strong sense of character without having to say anything, which is brilliant and in a way the goal of storytelling in a video game, you know, the best story driven games in the world are the story driven games with the least amount of writing in a way, I really think that because, 

 it's a medium that requires you, the player to put an effort to understand what's going on, as opposed to it being told to you. 

Rui: fascinating. It's almost like observing someone in your life and if you just mute them completely, can you still figure out who they are just by their interactions with this world, which is fascinating. Right. And I think it might be kind of funny if you write a [00:16:00] dialogue for the character in a way that's opposite of their true personality character, and the players would have to figure out, wait a minute, the dialogue that I'm having doesn't really match with the actions that I can actually take.

Joshua: Your narrative, a narrative designer. you gotta, you gotta make the game.

Rui: I can't, but I can imagine that you can do that in a way, kind of funny, but also kind of creepy, kind of sarcastic. 

Joshua: Yeah. Yeah. a rich narrative opportunity there. Again, very difficult to do that in a different medium. there's a specific kind of, mechanisms within game design that allow you to explore different parts of storytelling Yeah, it's great.

Rui: I want to actually understand a little bit about, um, the toolbox that you have in general, how to think about like, how do I design this character? How do I design the narrative? Are there like some Tools that you would go and grab and then help you launch that framework and launch that world view that [00:17:00] you were trying to write out, or this is a lot more spontaneous.

 you would just go for inspiration. Like how do you really start that ideation phase and start developing into a full fledged, narrative and then do the design?

Joshua: Well, as a writer, I love spontaneity and that's generally how I used to write. what's really difficult about doing that with game design is that I have this other person that I'm working with that requires, this kind of anticipation of what's gonna happen so he can then begin designing and developing the backend of what's gonna go on within a certain period in the game.

 we struggled for a while because for me a story is something that kind of, comes out and builds and grows kind of naturally, but. In order to prepare for the gameplay moments and to account for kind of that, we've had to create a map, a narrative map, that is aligned, with different, uh, checkpoints, I suppose you'd call 'em, even though we don't have like proper checkpoints in our game.

 different markers of [00:18:00] identification of where the player is at within the game that then allocate for the next kind of narrative beat. we use Miro, shout out Miro with their free trial. We were able to create this visual map that kind of points with arrows, all the different directions that the game goes.

There's some branching narrative aspects for our game too that, we're able to visually see. Um, and then for writing the game itself, a really important thing for me, I guess my mental toolbox is being accounted for is like really diving into, game studies and, and different texts that have really allowed me to understand the medium in a, I guess you'd call 'em like an intellectual way, but I guess just more in a meta way.

 because I'm more attuned to understanding, the strengths of the medium as well as their weaknesses. 

Rui: maybe take a step back on that checkpoint part, a lot of the checkpoint is about, for example, asking the character to take pictures of the fly fish and then to help them experience certain. Emotion is your checkpoint emotion [00:19:00] based, for example, at this point, I'm inspiring this player to feel a certain way, or you are basically saying that, you know what, I actually have no idea how the player will really react. I can only try to influence, I don't really know how they react, so I'm gonna choose the checkpoint in a different way.

Joshua: I think that's a good question. So I am looking at what the player is doing. for example, the game's aesthetic is, is really, you know, sweet and nice.

 and I use the sweet, nice, cute gameplay in order to completely subvert it with the narrative that is actually kind of. Not dark, but very serious, very grave. the game's narrative is about how we come to handle death, how we come to accept death and 

 for example, for anyone who's gonna play the demo, there's a little bit spoilers here, so you can skip past if, if you want. after the player's done kind of after they've taken pictures of six different fish, it's at this point that we then drop the bomb on the player that the catfish that you've been hanging out in the back of it, you've been talking to, he reveals to you that he's going to die.

He's gonna die soon in the somber [00:20:00] music plays and whatnot. And we know that is the moment that we need to put that dialogue storyline there. Because the player has gone through the process of, now believing that the game is a certain kind of thing. It's this cute relaxing, be on the back of giant Catfish buyout.

And we, we reveal to them it is not that at all. You are now going to be on this adventure, and this emotional rollercoaster. we're gonna continually subvert what you think is gonna happen. so yeah, we are looking at the kind of the things that the player does then, uh, drop in narrative beats.

 first of all, I love the philosophy that you are trying to instill into the game. And I could totally see, for someone who maybe experienced any form of loss in playing this game, would help them. I, I don't want to say cope, I don't think there's a coping mechanism. I think it's more about like processing how you feel. About the world and reality a little bit better. Yeah. Yeah, definitely.

Rui: I guess this is a good segue [00:21:00] into specific the project that you're working on and on your website you describe, um, you started this zip it games with your partner, Ben, right after years of playing games together, which is really cute. and then you decide to actually create them. so it's a super intentional, and this is the. Quote from your website, Our goal is to craft work that elucidates and broadens the medium of play and the sort of stories that can be relayed through it Simultaneously, we aim to provide rich emotional landscapes that prompt players to engage with their sense of wonder and introspection.

 is that the type of game that you really want to create ultimately, like a series of game where that's just mostly anchor on the first project.

Joshua: what we find to be really important about video games, forward, which is again, this like sense that it's a artistic medium, it's one to be kind of reckoned with 

Rui: I guess, [00:22:00] what makes an video game to you? Artistic versus non-artistic. Like, I know that line is so ambiguous and hard to describe,

but is there a way for you to point to all the video games that you played in the past and just say oh, this one is very artistic versus that one is just, you know, have fun but not really a piece of art.

Joshua: I think that all video games are art now. Even the most, like ridiculous, like Fortnite is its own art in a way. Is it good art? that's definitely up for debate, but it is art. 

 and in like all artistic mediums, there's, different levels of that, ultimately my definition of art is just very broad and loose. again, the frustrating aspect of that is getting other people, including developers, people who literally make the art themselves, I don't think are necessarily considering what they make in that light.

 that's a huge problem. That's a massive, massive problem to the, longevity and the health of the medium. 

Rui: Why would that be a problem?[00:23:00]

Joshua: Okay. Right now, the video game industry, Makes, its, its, its revenue is larger than the global revenue of the film industry and the music industry combined. And it has been for, since like the turn of the decade. it is the most important, arguably, definitely the most relevant artistic medium of the 21st century.

It is eclipsing the, the cultural significance and importance of most other mainstream forms of media. That said, if our culture is, you know, being so deeply influenced by this medium that doesn't have the same kind of artistic, creative, spiritual connotations that we associate with classic traditional media, like then we're building a culture that doesn't know how to engage properly with the art that is being put in front of them.

 that's a big red flag. 

Because video games are so very fresh and very new, and we're still trying to [00:24:00] understand them. Um, but in order to really kind of reckon with the potential that they have to, massively change the way that we engage with everything else in our lives, we have to start taking them seriously as art, right?

 we have to start recognizing kind of the value that they have, because they're already having a lot of, influence over a lot of people. Um, we have to make sure that we're, steering it, steering video games in their, at what will be their history and kind of the right direction, I think.

Rui: especially, with the AR and VR development. Um, that will. I think take the game to a different level now. especially with kids, right? what kind of message and world that you are building into the game to help them make sense of the world outside of the game is gonna be critical.

Joshua: Oh, yeah. I was the kid that was constantly playing video games and, my own life has been kind of directed, uh, and dictated by kind of the [00:25:00] medium, and how I've engaged with it 

 if you're a skeptic of video games I promise you, they're only gonna be become more important and more in front of you and in your face. So you should really try to start to understand them and maybe engage with them.

Rui: let me ask one question that's piggyback on obviously very hot topic ai, G-P-T-L-L-M. how are you leveraging those new technologies for the narrative development? 

Joshua: we don't use ai. that is A bit of a, a political reasons, there's lots of issues surrounding AI and especially with what they're doing to indie developers or just people within games industry.

Like a lot of people's jobs are kind of being taken because of AI and how that AI be, uh, you know, became so advanced, is kind of because of the work that a lot of people have created and made and maybe are now not being compensated for, there's lots of ethical concerns.

 this is not to say I'm like an AI naysayer, I definitely understand the utility of AI and if video games are gonna get in my face, AI is [00:26:00] definitely gonna get in our faces. So we should learn how to embrace it and come to, really understand it.

 For us, making such a small project and making something that can be done exclusively like by us. And, because we take the artistic craft of it, so, it's so important. we don't utilize any AI in the project.

Rui: I see. what would be a fair model for you to interact with such new technology? What would be the criteria so that you'll be like, yeah, this is a good tool for me to use.

Joshua: Yeah, definitely. I think that any AI that is trained in studio, like a plus, without a doubt, there's a game that's coming out soon. I cannot remember the name of it. I'm pretty sure that it is a Korean studio. They created a sims like game, um, you know, where essentially you're like living in a world and, you create your own person.

It's very, it's a life simulator and there's a lot of AI elements, but they were all done within the studio itself, and they're not grabbing from other work, and they're not training their AI in ways that I find precarious and maybe unfair. that is a [00:27:00] beautiful use of ai.

 you're definitely not the first person to ask me this question. what I would compare my position on AI to is like, I don't think we're at a point where we're asking novelists like, how would you use AI in your next book?

Right? Because that feels not as, you know, disrespectful to the novelist it's not what, it's not why we write novels, right? I'm making a game because I'm trying to imbue myself and my own moral positions in, my own creativity into it.

 but that is not to say, of course, utility in, and ethical ways to engage with, um, all different kinds of, uh, new technologies. I am 100% open to it.

Rui: Interesting. Okay. let's talk about, the project that you were working on, again, this is from your website. the name of the game is The Wide Open Sky is running out of Catfish.

Uh, again, it's super playful and super imaginative. I can imagine like a kid, it's almost like the Ghibli studio style of movie. this type of [00:28:00] title even invokes that image in me. 

Joshua: I'm glad you see that. Yeah, we're huge, huge fans,

Rui: And then the description says your mom has been gone for a while and the environment has grown quiet without her.

So that's a sense of loss. Um, and then the next one is equipped with a magic fluid and your computer friends. It's up to you to bring abundance back to an empty sky all on the back of a giant flying catfish. There is a sense of choice and creation here. And then next part, which is how will you balance supporting life above, while life below goes on without you? A story driven photo, uh, photography game, exploring friendship, memory, and the impermanence of time and place. Um, this is a beautiful. Small description. And let me start with the [00:29:00] question of what is pho photography game? Why did you choose that format?

Joshua: for us, the photography is like a point in click, you know, point in snap camera or whatever. It's almost reminiscent of like Pokemon Snap, which is a kind of a huge cultural touchstone for a lot of people.

So we encourage the player to, uh, go take pictures of these fish. But all these fish also have really unique personalities and behaviors, and they'll respond to the photos that you take. Uh, furthermore, all dialogue opportunities that you have with NPCs done below.

They're gonna comment on the photos that you take and kind of the way that you're engaging with this in-game medium. So. Yeah, photography is a, not only is just really fun, it ends up playing, I think a really important role in how we think about, memory and sense impermanence again.

 there's always really great parallels between like, photography, death. Why we take photos is so we can, be and remembering the things that are no longer, it's this kind of like, capturing of something that is no longer there. it's all, balancing this kind of fun thing with this like, oh wait, this is kinda like[00:30:00]

Rui: A little bit heavy. Yeah.

Joshua: Yeah, yeah.

Rui: I see. and obviously the theme suggests a loss, grief, and impermanence. is the story inspired by personal experiences or is it more of a universal meditation?

Joshua: Yeah. I think that death for Benjamin and I is, um, a really heavy. Source of, gosh. I shouldn't just say for us, I mean, it's death. Like we're constantly avoiding the topic, and constantly, convincing ourselves it's not happening and so on and so forth.

And I think a lot of people really struggle with that. and I had my own reckoning with death over the last couple of years. Um, but it's also something that I think that I, I recognize within me. I don't fear death anymore, right? and it's kind of one of the reasons I wanted to make the game.

It's a letter to people, and to myself, I guess my former self who really struggled with [00:31:00] that, that notion, you know, things don't last forever. And, I hold myself accountable as an artist. Like, I only wanna make art when I feel like I actually have something to say, and when I actually feel like I can, legitimately and truthfully kind of put something out into the world.

And I really do believe that death is this process and this kind of, uh, force, that we can really embrace and learn to not only accept, but to really welcome into our lives. and that's the kind of message I guess, that we're trying to share through the story.

Hmm. 

Rui: Can I just say that I really, really appreciate that you just tackled this subject right on. I have this really good friend. She is, I have no idea how old she is. She's probably like 80 plus years old and we've known each other for eight years.

And when I call her every other day or every two days, occasionally, we would just talk about what happens when she [00:32:00] passes away? How am I going to cope with it? And then in the back of my head, I also would think about, you know, my parents, my grandparents, and they're very blessed with, good health.

But death is ultimate. You can't avoid that. And to some extent, I think the type of argument has been said so many times without death. What makes life even meaningful, right? I also think that death is what connects humanity, because you have to confront that at some point in your life, most likely one way or another.

Uh, obviously if you are the one. Who's gonna die first? Well, I guess you don't really have a chance to really confront it, but who knows? But at some point, if a close person in your life just passed away, you have to confront that. That's what makes that emotion and understanding across humanity, different race and whatever dimension that you slice, human beings would [00:33:00] be the same.

So I definitely can see the poetic and beauty, uh, in that, but it's still difficult for me emotionally to really just process it. Like intellectually I can talk about it, but emotionally it's really difficult for me to wrangle with it. And I feel like potentially your game is the one that helps you emotionally process it without that active narrative in the back of your head.

Joshua: Yeah, that's a great way of putting it because I, yeah, I totally agree that emotional kind of resonance, is really difficult to kind of get to and every person's gonna go through it in some way in their lives. I would actually encourage most people to get around to it sooner rather than later because, something terrible happens to a loved one or what have you.

I think having a positive relationship with death is, is one of the most important things you can do to set yourself up for psychological, health. because it is something we avoid in our society. we don't talk about death or when we do, it's only when we [00:34:00] need to.

 and I love what you said, that it's the thing that really connects to all people. you can take that as something that's really scary or you can really, really come to embody how incredible and amazing and powerful, recontextualizing, what death means 

Rui: what was the moment or a series of event that help you, overcome the fear of death of your own? Because I. Definitely have not reached that point. 

The only way that I can paper tape it is to say that, you know what, if I die, I don't know anything anyway, so forget about it. I, but that's different from like fundamentally accepting it.

Joshua: Yeah, for me it was thinking about how time operates and the length of time that exists in the universe and the notion that, I like actually have a possibility of Reemerging in some kind of strange way.

Like people always talk about, being put in the [00:35:00] ground and you're going to turn into soil and grass and so on and so forth. But not only that, but that grass and soil isn't also going to die. Then the whole universe is going to, you know, the earth is gonna explode and the sun's gonna explode, whatever.

 but like time goes on for ev like for forever, I mean, un until maybe the universe collapses and time collapses, what have you, but we don't even know if that is gonna happen or not. I don't know. I find a lot of comfort in understanding that like, life is something just like how death is shared by all things.

Life is shared by all things, my life is not really like my own life in it. what makes my life is not really mine. It's the universes. It's in, in a way. Like I have a spiritual element to this, of course. Like I do believe in God. So I think that like life as a force is something that is just not mine.

 I don't possess that or at least I don't possess it singularly. I share it with all things. and time, uh, will work through that life force and in cooperation with that life force to create new life and to continue the thing that I find so beautiful about being here to begin with, you know?

And I am just a part of that cycle. and I get to [00:36:00] experience it in a conscious way. And how incredible is that? there's a great sci-fi book called The Children of Time that I, I would recommend to a lot of people, maybe read the book even though it has nothing to do with death.

Rui: okay. Noted. Um, I think what's unique about what you're doing, where in general this genre of like emotional driven storytelling, uh, video game form is that it's so different from I think the majority of the video games, um, or games in general out there, which is a lot more strategy. It's about your intellectual power of designing, uh, strategies and then action, and then it's about competition.

It's more like logic and reasoning. So this type of emotional engagement is a lot more fluid, right? It's not like a chess board. You can, drop the lines and then put the pieces on top and then specify the rules, and then here you go. Like that emotional fluidity. It's so difficult to [00:37:00] nail because it's so fluid.

How do you really making sure that your players are actually getting and accommodating to that emotional point.

Joshua: going back to what I was saying a little bit earlier, I've tackled this through, subversion of expectations. what we try to do is really catch the player off guard, right?

 I've thought a lot about affect theory affect theory is, the feelings that one experiences in a way before emotion itself surfaces on a conscious level. So like the subconscious emotions in a way are like the effects.

 I've thought a lot about how we can dig into the subconscious of a player, make them really experience things before they know how to even articulate them. so that way when the emotion does rise to the surface, it's as potent as it can possibly be. 

 you know, this kind of retro safe game, environment, um, this kind of playful, activity, make them feel really secure, then we crush them,[00:38:00]

Rui: Uh, it's kind of sick that we're laughing right now about that.

Joshua: Nah, I'm stealing from some of the best out there, right? I know this works because it's happened to me more than a few times.

Rui: see. what were some reflective moments, uh, for you while creating this game?

Joshua: That I am so in love with my partner, um, is maybe the main takeaway from making this game with him. I mean, like, we live together. We are constantly talking about the game. And I don't recommend doing this for most people. I would not recommend for most people to make something as large and as difficult to do as making a video game with your loved one.

Um, but for us it's strengthened our relationship in ways that I'm sure I will be feeling the effects of for many, many years. I am so in awe of his creative power and what he's able to achieve. that has been my main takeaway from making [00:39:00] this game. 

That's awesome. Um. It's so sweet that I don't even know what else that I could say after that. So maybe let, let me switch the gear from a very emotional, uh, philosophical and life journey type of, uh, tone to a little bit more practical one. because at the end of the day, it's great, that you are helping people reflect on everything, but there is a cost of making this game too.

Rui: So is one of your goals to also make the game commercially successful? or is that how you define the success?

Joshua: Yeah, it's a fun question because we think about it all the time. so first of all, for context, the game very, very fortunately was accepted to the NYU Game Center incubator last year. Ben and I weren't affiliated with NYU in any way, but they, their game center, 

 allow small indie teams to, apply. And, we got in, we got funding, we got an executive producer, we got all this support for the game that just made it possible up to this point. [00:40:00] through that process, I think that what we learned too is we are interested in trying to make a commercially successful game.

 I don't think that there has to be, necessarily a conflict between making really great art and also wanting that art to be seen and engaged with by lots of different people. But it, it definitely, um, changes the way that we like approach making certain aspects of the game.

you know, we understand what the game is, we understand its vision, but like now it's like, yes, we are definitely talking to publishers.

 we've had lots of really great success over the last couple of weeks. We've been in all the big, game video game, publications like IGN and Game Informer, and we've had lots of really great press, uh, shout out six one Indie, which is a really fantastic, um, independent video game publication based outta New York, who's given us lots of love.

 we are definitely trying to sell this thing, but it's because we want people to play it, and we wanna continue making cool games,

Rui: Yeah. How do you choose a revenue model for such narrative driven game? my prelim rare understanding of like how game com video game company make money for a specific game. you have in-game purchase [00:41:00] micro transactions and then, or you can do subscription.

Uh, but there, there are variations for how users and players really pay for it. what is the model that you have in mind?

Joshua: Yeah. different games, um, can do different revenue streams, 

 for us, we are just making like a one-off game with no, like micro transactions or anything like this. for us it is just selling the project in its entirety as it is, 

Rui: That totally makes sense. 

Joshua: yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

Rui: Uh, given that this is a narrative driven artistic choice, uh, you kind of don't want random dialect popping up to say like, Hey, care to me, like $1 purchase for this picture that you just take.

Joshua: yeah, yeah. Definitely, we're tracking where other games are in our genre right now. What they're selling for, how, uh, the length of a game really depends on how expensive you can make it. 

We'll know in the next couple months exactly how much the game will cost. We have an idea right now.

Rui: I see. this is just a random thought popping up in my mind. Like, but [00:42:00] potentially you can still charge for micro transaction maybe at the end of the game after the whole emotional journey. And then you have a souvenir shop for all the photos that you take.

Joshua: Yeah, it's like when you go to the aquarium or the zero something and you get your photo taken with a monkey and you get it printed on a, on a mug or something.

Oh, that's funny. I don't know if we'll have the resources for that one, if anyone wants to put their pictures and took in the wide open sky on a mug, all the photos get saved to your hard drive. So please,

by 

Rui: No, not even a hard drive. You can have the option of like, we will actually literally ship you a mug with that picture on it. And I think if it's emotionally carving piece, people will do that. I will do 

Joshua: Uh, that's good. That's good. That's good.

 we'll bring it up to the big wig in the other room.

Rui: This could be the last episode of floating questions, or it may not be either way. I hope you [00:43:00] enjoyed flowing along with us today. If you liked our journey, please consider subscribing. Thank you for listening and made the questions always be with you.