ELEGY FOR A DEAD WORLD: INTERVIEW WITH ZIBA SCOTT

On Wednesday December 10 2014 indie game developers Popcannibal and Dejobaan Games, released Elegy  for a Dead World on Steam.

Since its release the game has been positively received among the gaming community.

Synopsis courtesy of Ziba Scott:

Elegy for a Dead World is a colourful side-scroller adventure game about writing, and three portals have opened to long dead worlds. The player is the only survivor of an expedition to explore them. It is the player’s responsibility to write the only account of these civilizations the earth will ever know. The player has two choices: To walk through each landscape and write what they perceive or imagine was their origin, history, triumphs, and downfall. Or write limerick. [A form of poetry]

Ziba Scott is the owner of Popcannibal and one of the developers of Elegy for a Dead World.

Scott is the son of an English professor and comic collector. Scott said given that context it would be surprising if he didn’t make cerebral games. He grew up in Lansing, Michigan which he described to be a diverse well rounded area. In his spare time Scott plays a little harmonica, takes care of his turtle and travel.

He happily exclaimed that he got to see both Alaska and New Zealand this year, and said that those were the most beautiful places he has ever been to.

Before creating Elegy for a Dead World Scott shared the various games, that his company Popcannibal worked on.

“My company, Popcannibal, worked with Luigi Guatieri, the artist on Elegy, to make Girls Like Robots.  The 13th best reviewed iOS game of 2012. It’s a puzzle game about seating arrangements. The playing pieces are faces, the rules are their emotions. Arrange for happiness,” he said.

“Much earlier, but more directly related to Elegy my masters’ thesis in Serious Games was: Moon Taxi. I gathered a collection of short, narrated stories told from the perspective of a passenger riding in a taxi to the moon. Players listened to these stories as they piloted the taxi, dodging asteroids and collecting key words from the stories as they appeared before them.  The idea was better than my execution of it, but I was just getting started.”

 

Scott discussed how he came up with the idea for Elegy for a Dead World and what served as an inspiration to him.

“Ichiro [owner of Dejobaan Games] invited me to do a five day jam with him. He had an idea about a simple experiment where you walk through a dead place and read about it. I had poetry on the mind and brought that theme to the table.  Once we had a quick and dirty draft of our “walking through poetry” game, it became clear that what people read was way less interesting that what they could imagine. So we stripped out all of our words to make room for the players.”

 

Scott said that working on Elegy for a Dead World took approximately over a year, though not full time. He also added in that because they are a small indie games developer, they need irons in the fire. [Backup ideas, in case one doesn’t work out]

Scott said that the biggest challenge he has faced while creating Elegy of a Dead World, was living up to the concept.

“An early draft that we shared with people didn’t have any writing prompts. Players always got a blank slate to write on. For many players, that was too much. They would become paralyzed with indecision and then feel bad about their own creative abilities. By talking to other developers, we realized that nobody is afraid of “Mad Libs”.  So we worked hard to create writing prompts to give players a framework to hang their creativity on, and it has been a great success.”

Scott believes in big concepts and originality, and that has a huge influence on his personality and style as a game developer. He also said that he spends a lot of time, thinking about the feelings that he wants his players to experience.

Scott shared that while he loves all the visual spaces in the game, he has more of an emotional connection to the poem: When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Beby John Keats. Scott explained that the poem is such a moving, and universal expression of a creator’s fear and mortality.

When I have fears that I may cease to be

 Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,

Before high-pilèd books, in charactery,

 

Hold like rich garners the full ripened grain;

When I behold, upon the night’s starred face,

 Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,

 

And think that I may never live to trace

Their shadows with the magic hand of chance;

 

And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,

That I shall never look upon thee more,

 

Never have relish in the faery power

 Of un reflecting love—then on the shore

Of the wide world I stand alone, and think

Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

 

“It [the poem] reminds me that I’ll never make every game I want to, so I need to focus and work hard on what I do have time to accomplish,” said Scott.

Scott said that the most rewarding part of going forward with this gaming project, was seeing people getting excited about writing.

“It’s like we’re giving them permission to do something they love but haven’t been allowed to do,” he said.

Scott shares what he hopes that the gaming audience will experience as they play this game.

“My number one design goal has been to give people of all levels of ability a positive writing experience.  You sat down for 10 to 30 minutes, wrote something and feel good about what you did.  That’s what I want.”

Special thanks to Ziba Scott and Will Brierly for making this interview possible!