{"id":101,"date":"2012-01-30T21:03:12","date_gmt":"2012-01-30T21:03:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.radicaldog.com\/blog\/?p=101"},"modified":"2018-05-26T14:03:17","modified_gmt":"2018-05-26T14:03:17","slug":"behind-the-moon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.radicaldog.com\/blog\/behind-the-moon\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview: To The Moon"},"content":{"rendered":"

After my post on storytelling<\/a>, I got a recommendation to try out “To The Moon”<\/b> from Freebird Games<\/a>. It truly is a special experience, and I wholeheartedly extend the recommendation to anyone interested in exploring the potential of storytelling in games.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/center>Kan Gao is the team director, and was kind enough to offer a few words to share.<\/p>\n

Can you give a quick intro to who you are and why you make games?<\/b><\/p>\n

Kan:<\/b> I’m just some guy from Canada who struggles to hold his chopsticks. I make games mainly to tell stories.<\/p>\n

What other games inspire you and your projects?<\/b><\/p>\n

K:<\/b> The old school RPGs in general, I suppose. I’ve always enjoyed the storytelling in them, even if contrived at times; it made you feel involved.<\/p>\n

What era of games did you grow up in?<\/b><\/p>\n

K:<\/b> Late 80s and early 90s.<\/p>\n

It appears that you use death as a running theme, what draws you to that?<\/b><\/p>\n

K:<\/b> It’s only a running theme in To the Moon, I think. At the time I started the project, my grandfather was ill, so it was one of the things that got me thinking, and eventually became the base of the story.<\/p>\n

Are you proud of your results?<\/b><\/p>\n

K:<\/b> Well, things could’ve always been made better, but aye, I’m more than happy with how things turned out.<\/p>\n

That’s good. What is your development process? How long does it take you to produce a game?<\/b><\/p>\n

K:<\/b> Not that I recommend it, but it’s pretty loose and non-strict. It’s pretty much just me working away at it, doing one thing today and another tomorrow as fit. Then I’d run into things that I can’t do, and knock on talent peoples’ doors with a jar of cookie while begging for help. To the Moon took about 1.5 year to make, though it wasn’t full time.<\/p>\n

Would you ever work for a studio that didn’t give you creative control?<\/b><\/p>\n

K:<\/b> Not entirely unlikely; there’s a lot to learn from experiences like that too, such as work ethics. Though for now, I’d be a lot happier to be able to finish To the Moon’s series as I see fit.<\/p>\n

Do you have a plan for the future?<\/b><\/p>\n

K:<\/b> Late lunch.<\/p>\n

Hah. On a more business-oriented note, have sales met expectations? Do you care about finance at all?<\/b><\/p>\n

K:<\/b> Aye, it’s my first commercial project and I’m hoping to be able to devote my time to this for a living, so I’m really glad that the sales are gaining enough support to make it viable for now.<\/p>\n

Superb, I’m glad to hear it. Finally, do you have any advice for other developers looking to write more compelling stories?<\/b><\/p>\n

K:<\/b> Writing stories is a pretty personal thing, so I can’t exactly dictate the exact directions. . . but if there’s a choice, I think it’s better to write smaller-scaled and delicate stories than epic ones. There are plenty of the latter around nowadays, but we could use more of the other.<\/p>\n

Thanks for your time, Kan.<\/b><\/p>\n

K:<\/b> No problem, thanks for the opportunity!<\/p>\n

So there you have it, some thoughts on development and storytelling from the developer behind Gamespot’s Best Story of 2011<\/a>. If you didn’t notice at the beginning of the article, I seriously enjoyed this game and I demand you download the demo now<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What do you think?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After my post on storytelling, I got a recommendation to try out “To The Moon” from Freebird Games. It truly is a special experience, and I wholeheartedly extend the recommendation to anyone interested in exploring the potential of storytelling in … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":-1,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radicaldog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radicaldog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radicaldog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radicaldog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radicaldog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.radicaldog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":355,"href":"https:\/\/www.radicaldog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101\/revisions\/355"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radicaldog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radicaldog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radicaldog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radicaldog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}