WHAT ATTRACTED YOU TO GUNZILLA GAMES AND TO THIS PROJECT IN PARTICULAR? Neill Blomkamp: I always found working on games very attractive. When I started out in film I was in VFX and animation, and many of those same tools are used in games. The way I was using VFX was acting as a one man crew; build the set, build the characters, light it, animate it, be the cameraman. So I was basically directing. I was using VFX to serve what I wanted to do in directing. And as I moved into real directing with real sets and actors, I always missed this feeling of creating a whole 3D world. Games offer this in spades. So for years I have wanted to find a way to work in games. One day, Richard Morgan emailed me and explained the project. Then I got to know Gunzilla and it felt like a perfect fit.
Richard Morgan: Primarily, the open nature of the brief, I think. What Vlad Korolev (co-founder, CEO) offered me was the chance to build an entire IP from the ground up. There were one or two key premises for the game, but aside from that everything was up for grabs! And it’s not often you get handed a blank sheet of paper like that.
Olivier Henriot: I always wanted to be part of the adventure of building up a studio from the ground up and also try new things from a narrative point of view, test ideas I had in mind for a long time but couldn’t implement in my previous job. So when Vlad (Korolev) contacted me to pitch me his project, it was both love at first sight on a personal level – we spoke about the games we were playing for 20 minutes before we even got to business – and a proposition I couldn’t resist.
WHAT IS YOUR PRECISE ROLE AND WHAT DOES IT INVOLVE ON A DAILY, WEEKLY OR MONTHLY BASIS? Neill Blomkamp: My role is basically to help steer the project creatively, and add to and flesh out the massive world and IP we are creating. Many of the same world building and tonal tools that I use in film carry over into this project. I don’t have direct experience building games, but many of the people I work with at Gunzilla are very experienced and either help me understand, or take what I am doing and know how to integrate it.
Richard Morgan: I guess my particular brief is IP development and oversight (though my company profile job description says simply ‘Making Shit Up’). What this means in practice is that I spend my time dreaming the game world into existence. Sweet gig, like I said. Initially, that involved sitting down with Olivier and hammering out the basic assumptions of the universe,
creating people and places, and backstory for it all. These days that’s mostly squared away though, this being game development, it’s always subject to revision! – and so the day to day is more tied up with developing storylines and narrative development for the player. So we have a Writers’ Room three to four mornings a week where we kick around the ideas and hammer them out. Then we’re in meetings with design and art on at least a weekly basis to coordinate the realisation of the world we’ve created and to ensure that the narrative dovetails smoothly with the game mechanics. And every so often there’ll be a more formal presentation or pitch session to the company at large. So, you know – keeping busy!
Olivier Henriot: My role is to coordinate the narrative team’s activity and help shape up the player’s experience, and more specifically the meaning of it. Just like Richard described, we’re having daily meetings in the writers’ room to discuss the various issues tied to anything related to the meaning of the player’s experience. I also help coordinate the cooperation with other departments, give feedback to the writers and work on the narrative design strategy of the game.
WHAT ELEMENTS OF YOUR PREVIOUS WORK - STYLISTICALLY - CAN PEOPLE EXPECT TO DISCOVER WHEN THEY EVENTUALLY COME TO PLAY THE GAME? Neill Blomkamp: I would say for me that people who know my previous work will absolutely see a lot of me and the things I am interested in within this game. It’s very up my alley. And now that I am helping guide it, I am guiding it even more in that direction. Let’s say, near future, fucking rad.
Richard Morgan: Well, I’m still not really allowed to divulge too much here (well, I could, but then I’d have to kill you). But I think, as I said in a previous interview, it’s pretty clear I’m not being hired for my historical romance fiction chops. So yeah, it’s the future and, concurrent with my own novels, a future in which you really need to carry some heavy ordnance. There’s no actual content from my own IPs, of course, but I think fans of my work will recognise a similar texture, let’s say.
March 2022 MCV/DEVELOP | 21
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