Interview: Dan Pinchbeck on Dear Esther

Posted June 2, 2011 by Lewis Denby.

Dear Esther was a success story no one could quite have anticipated. An experimental mod for Half-Life 2 built by the University of Portsmouth, it did away with traditional game mechanics, instead presenting an Hebridean island to explore and a story that you had to piece together yourself, filling in the gaps as you went. But despite its unusual nature and an artistic bent, it became one of the most successful mods of all time, downloaded almost 70,000 times, and picking up an award along the way.

When designer Dan Pinchbeck, his team ‘thechineseroom’ and new developer Robert Briscoe announced that they were releasing a remake commercially, the reaction was mixed. Why would people want to pay for what was a free mod? Was the original version just a glorified advert, then? Or would the remake be a considerably different game, a professional-level product which learnt from the mistakes made by the first effort? The screenshots certainly looked extraordinary, but how would the game play? Would it all be worth it?

Now, as thechineseroom splits off from the University of Portsmouth and becomes a fully independent development studio, I’ve been chatting to Pinchbeck about Dear Esther, why we should be excited about it, and why games have always been his number one passion.

BeefJack: What’s been happening in Camp Esther since you announced you were going indie?

Dan Pinchbeck: Well, the big change is with thechineseroom: we’re no longer part of the University of Portsmouth. As of May, the studio became a fully independent business, so we’re now running completely under our own steam.

The short story is that there are some contractual liability issues which are inherent to online distribution of PC games – platforms covering themselves against viruses and trojans etc. These just don’t square with the legal obligations an institution like a university has – they just can’t sign those kind of contracts. So this is already a really important process for us, as we’re working out how you can commercialise research games within a university context, and no-one has ever done this before. So while it’s been tough, we’re working out the ground rules for this type of work in future. Sometimes it’s really hard to be the first. While we’re working out solutions for Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture [thechineseroom's next game, currently in pre-production], it was really too late to get those in place for Esther, so in the end, we decided on the independence route. So we’re massively grateful to the University for basically incubating the studio, but now it’s no longer associated with Esther – which means it’s not liable but we’ve got complete freedom to take the project to market.

That’s meant a lot of complicated work behind the scenes. Alongside having to learn, in a very short space of time, all the stuff you need to run a business – and I’m an academic, designer, project manager, but never before a managing director, and there’s all this stuff we have to sign-off in terms of UK/US tax treaties and all sorts for the Source license – we suddenly had a big hole in Dear Esther’s finances that the University couldn’t fill any more.

But we’re really lucky – it’s one of those cases where a better scenario ends up in place. We got in touch with Indie Fund, who are a consortium of really successful indie developers who have got together to help new studios off the ground and support really great projects. I already knew they had a brilliant existing portfolio and I’d talked to them briefly about potentially helping out with Rapture when it was a bit further developed, so I thought they may be interested in Esther, which fortunately they were. It’s terrific for us, as it’s not just about the cash – we get access to the expertise of some really amazing developers and it’s a scheme which is extraordinarily developer-friendly. So that’s a huge change.

BeefJack: Tell us a bit more about the Indie Fund.

Dan Pinchbeck: They’re just really cool, brilliant people. So it’s a consortium made up of Jon Blow (Braid), Ron Carmel and Kyle Gabler (World of Goo), Aaron Isaksen (Cadena de Presos), Kellee Santiago (flOw, flOwer), Nathan Vella (Might and Magic) and Matthew Wegner (Off-Road Raptor Safari and IGF co-chair).

They have a remit to help new studios gain financial independence and do it from this incredibly developer-friendly perspective. So it’s all about flexible terms – so you don’t end up paying back so much you never make it to a stable position – and responding to the reality of indie development, so you’re not locked into spending a ton of time making milestone commitments that end up eating into actual development time. They don’t exert control over the product, or claim IP ownership, and they just really, really understand indie development. And they are fantastic for being able to drop an email to and ask, “Hey, do you think this’ll work?” They’ve been there, and they’ve been in the situation like most of us indie developers where you really rely on being plugged into this community of small-scale studios and individuals who are as diverse as you can get, but united by a common love of games. The titles they are involved with speak volumes about them as a group of investors.

BeefJack: For those familiar with the original mod: what’s different about this new version? Why will people want to pay for Dear Esther when they already have free access to the original?

Dan Pinchbeck: This isn’t just a reskin. The environments have changed quite a bit – there are new areas to explore and proper rewards for doing so. The caves sequence is almost unrecognisable and the final level is nearly twice the size of the original. There’s new script going in, partially to respond to the increase in scale, partially to pick up some places where I felt it wasn’t really performing as well as it could, and partially to respond to this new world Rob has spun – that last one is particularly cool for me as a writer. What’s brilliant is that Rob has taken my original designs and not just enhanced them, but responded to them to create a new island in effect. There are things I didn’t think of, but fit the world so naturally that I can’t believe I never thought of them, and other things which are just completely new and amazing. And the quality of the art is just outstanding, it’s one of the best environments ever realised in Source. And there’s a lot more environmental details, little things which really add a new layer of depth and complexity to the story and make it really worth exploring in more detail – I don’t want to give too much away about that.

Then we have the audio. Jessica Curry is completely re-orchestrating the soundtrack, so bringing in live musicians to fuse alongside the digital soundscapes, which is really, really exciting. It gives us a chance to distribute the music properly and evenly through the levels – little things like splitting them into sections to respond more fully to the player’s activities so we don’t get any more double-fires or music and voice competing for attention. It’s that level of professionalism which we’re really getting, and the difference to the soundtrack by having things like a piano sample replaced by a real concert pianist playing a Steinway – it’s hard to describe in words the impact that has. The original Dear Esther mod had a soundtrack better than most AAA games, and the new version will have one of the best soundtracks ever implemented in any game, ever. That’s really exciting.

Obviously you get more Nigel Carrington voice-over, and he is utterly brilliant, and I genuinely hope that after Esther he’s going to rapidly become a very important game voice-over artist as I think his work is again up there with the best AAA titles. And obviously, from my perspective, there’s a new script and that seemed to resonate with people the first time around, so the opportunity as a writer to revisit this world and tighten parts of it up… that’s great too, and I’ve got a couple of years experience as a writer/designer behind me now, so I hope that shows.

BeefJack: How are you expecting people to react to something as unusual as Esther? The gaming community? The press?

Dan Pinchbeck: Really well. The mod won over the mod community, who are hardcore FPS players, and so we know this is a game which is accessible to that audience. That’s a big plus for me. The thing about Esther is it’s massively accessible. It’s so simple to engage with that it’s super casual friendly, people who don’t play games can operate it, get into it and don’t even have to think they are playing a game but can get a huge amount out of it. But at the same time, this is a game for gamers – it’s about taking an existing genre and doing something really new and different with it. Dear Esther is still, nearly three years after the mod, a totally unique experience, and gamers are always hungry for that, so I think we’ll do well.

Esther has always been a critical hit – it’s a real gamer’s game, a critics’ game, and a developers’ game. That’s one thing that’s been brilliant for me: through Esther I’ve met some real heroes, some of the best developers on the planet and having them say they love the game… I can’t tell you how amazing that is. When we got the Source license, it was very, very cool for obvious reasons, but I was like a little kid when our contact at Valve said, “Oh yeah, we know about Esther. Our design team have played it and they think it’s great,” and I was bouncing up and down in my seat, glad this was on Skype and they couldn’t see I was having a fanboy-fit, thinking “Jesus! Valve have played my game! And they think it’s good!” – as a gamer, or a modder, or even a developer, it doesn’t get much better than that. So I’m excited to see how people react to the new version. I still feel like I’ve lucked out: I’ve got a team made up of the one of the best game artists I’ve ever seen, one of the best game composers I’ve ever heard, one of the best voice-over artists anyone has ever heard. So I guess my writing has to be okay too, to have attracted all of them in.

Bottom line is that everything about Dear Esther is AAA-quality. All that’s different is that this quality is wrapped around a highly experimental core, but one that is totally accessible and all about games. I hope that’s enough. I think it is.

BeefJack: How much is it going to cost? Go on, you can say…

Dan Pinchbeck: I can’t! As low as we can make it while hitting our targets. My rule of thumb is, “same as a pack of cigarettes, a cinema ticket, a round of drinks.” I hope we bring it in under $10, I think that’d be a fair price.

We’re thinking at the moment about a limited edition hard copy as well – with a gatefold sleeve, an exclusive version of the game with some unique additional script in it, an audio CD of the soundtrack at non-game compression, some Ben Andrews’ concept art – because he’s a star too – and a storyform version of the game as a kind of short novelette. Something for the hardcore fans, which would be more expensive, but have all this exclusive stuff on it. So we really want to hear what people think about that idea, whether it’s worth doing.

BeefJack: When’s it out? You can tell us that, at least, surely…

Dan Pinchbeck: Well, it’s all counting backwards – we need x time from getting the Portal 2 code implemented, so it’s hard to say. I think we’re on course for the end of the summer still, maybe slipping into Autumn. It needs to be out and done in time for making the IGF and BAFTA submissions.

But we’re not going to rush it. You don’t come this far and then screw it up by releasing early. That’s one great thing about being an indie – there’s no publisher breathing down your neck to hit a release target. Not that I’d ever object to that. If Sony or EA want to give us a million to make a game, they can breath down our necks all they like. But until then, it’ll be out when it’s done.

BeefJack: Games are your academic profession, but you always seem so enthusiastic about them, so excited about their possibilities. What has always drawn you to it as a medium? Why is gaming awesome?

Dan Pinchbeck: You know, I was supposed to be writing this chapter on games the other day and was just staring at the screen trying to put things into words, and ended up writing, “Games are just simply fucking brilliant,” and then couldn’t actually manage to say it better than that. I love games. I think they are just simply fucking brilliant.

I’m playing Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood at the moment, and I had a moment where I just had to sit back and come out of it and admire the gameplay design, because it’s just extraordinary. It’s the thing which is really hard to communicate to non-gamers, the skill and artistry which goes into even the simplest thing of balancing one integer off another, getting the feedback and resistance to player input right, increasing not just challenge but complexity without disrupting the intuitive play of an individual. Wow… and to have a job where I get to play games a lot, share that passion, see young developers come on, build new games – that’s basically the coolest job ever, and I’m a lucky, lucky man.

Gaming is awesome for me, because there are all these amazing worlds out there to be submerged into. Everytime I hear someone whinge and bitch about games being shallow or simplistic, I just think about that sensation of total freedom you get from parkouring across Rome’s rooftops; that rush of crawling terrified through [STALKER's] X18 labs; that sense of wide-open loneliness you get in Red Dead Redemption; that roar of triumph when you pull off a really mental combo in Prototype. It’s hard to explain to non-gamers – without playing, it’s hard to “get it”. But gamers do. It’s like a portal into another space, and that takes some investment, which is why I’m not a big fan of causal games. Sometimes, like with some music and film and novels, it takes some investment, but that really, really pays off.

I think we’re still in this weird space where people are still bleating on about gaming being in its infancy, and what the medium can one day be, and so on and so on, really apologetically, like gaming is this half-formed, embryonic thing that will one day stand proudly alongside film or other media. And increasingly, I just think that’s bollocks. Gaming is already here, it’s already arrived. It doesn’t have to compete with film, or only have a value in comparison to other things. Games are already brilliant.

Dear Esther will be released for PC later this year.