Interviews

AGON

Interview with Private Moon developer Pierrot

Conducted by Alexander Tait

Pierrot is the scriptwriter, game designer and sound designer at Private Moon, maker of the new online, serial adventure game, Agon. Cindy Kyser’s review of Agon can be read here.

JA - Pierrot, thank you for taking the time to answer my questions. Many people have seen screenshots and have read about Agon for some time on the Agon website and are keen to know more about the game, the company, and the team. Tell us a little about your company (when as it set up, how many staff etc.).

Private Moon sounds familiar to anyone in Hungary who likes pop music. It was founded exactly ten years ago as a productions company and now has several divisions. The most significant of these is Private Moon Records, which is the largest independent record publisher in Hungary. In Private Moon Studios, representatives from the various divisions (the studios) united to do something absolutely different to before. The small group that specialized in adventure games, more specifically in making Agon, was founded by members of the music division, the sounds department, the graphics and programming groups.

JA - Has Agon been your most popular production to date?

The name Private Moon has been connected with several dozens of successful and high quality productions in the past ten years, especially in the field of pop music in Hungary. It is worth mentioning the international success of the ethno-dance project, Toys of Ancient Gods, which was published in seven European countries, and the band, Remember, which has been a regular participant at European festivals. We, the members of the Private Moon Studios, while we were making smaller games for pop music records and other multimedia supplements, talked a lot about how we would love to make an individual game one day. Eventually, we did-seven of us gathered last year to realize our dreams, at our own expense!

JA - Can you tell us what Agon will be about?

Agon is a pure adventure game, and I’m not saying “traditional” because its parameters differ strongly from the usual “boxed” releases, primarily in the fact that it’s not one game. Given the playing time, it makes up about four games in its fourteen episodes. Another difference is in the way of distribution: it cannot be bought in commercial shops and episodes can only be downloaded from the official website of the game. Through doing this, we the developers can contact gamers directly, are able to bypass complicated procedures and useless (e.g. production) costs, and last but not least, we have the opportunity to start a production from Hungary that can easily reach everyone in the world who is interested.

JA - What will be different in future chapters?

The first chapter of Agon is really a kind introduction, which is absolutely necessary to start the story. But of course it contains entertaining adventure elements (actually a lot of them). The London episode is a preliminary to the other episodes, in which the protagonist, a professor of the British Museum, visits twelve exotic parts of the world and gets into deeper adventures in pursuit of the mysterious Agon and certain board games. The most important change in future episodes is that board games connected to local cultures will feature in the later episodes and gamers will also be able to play these online with others. We are promising varied scenes, varied puzzles and exciting situations.

JA - Why make adventure games? What inspires your company to make quality adventure games instead of trying to make the next Quake/Doom/Unreal?

We never thought of trying other genres. The primary reason for this is that we are all committed adventure game fans. I have been collecting them for ten years and have about 300 boxes on my shelves. We are creative, artistic people, who like to have intellectual stories that make us think even while we’re having fun. So, in games and in making the game, the cathartic experience is in creating a world that cannot be compared to anything. The turn of the century is my personal interest, and everyone agreed to it, since this historical period, the age of discoveries and technical inventions, is an exquisite location for adventure games.

JA - What do you say to those people who claim that adventure games are dead?

I think this may hold true for the mainstream of the game industry. This will never happen for adventure game fans. The fact that the industry has apparently turned its back on the once thriving genre was not all bad. For one thing, we have seen the emergence of clearer and clearer ideas. Amateur developers and developers who are away from the center of the industry (like us Eastern Europeans) can get into the sights of the scattered community of adventure gamers and can have our voices heard. As in film and music, technical developments provide renewed inspiration for game makers. Nowadays it is basically the increased speed that defines evolution in this area. It seems a natural process that developers can first incorporate and demonstrate these new achievements in action games that build on fast reactions.

JA - That’s a very philosophical view of the growth and development of action games. Do you think 3D is a direction that adventure games should take?

Not necessarily. According to their original unwritten rules, adventure games need no speed or action, however they need the experience of discovery, a strong story, and clever puzzles. In my opinion, pre-rendered graphics still lead against real-time 3D in beauty and life-like scenes. Even though the distance between the two is closing, I wonder if the latter will never come up to the level of the former, as the development of technology offers ways to use both methods simultaneously. In short, I could say, everyone can choose their engine, way of development for the type of game they have in mind; we voted for the traditional pre-rendered method, which is quite a challenge. Agon contains some 3D technology, but it continues in the tradition of Myst and the like. This is simply because it has been shown to work; 2D is sufficiently life-like and moldable. At the same time, it’s not the simplest to use. It’s easy to calculate the difference: while making the scene of one room takes the rendering of 40 pictures for us, in third person depiction, which is having a renaissance right now, this usually needs only a single picture in most cases. However, I believe that the experience of discovery is much stronger in the panoramic, you-are-in-the-scene method than with the protagonist-you-control-is-in-the-scene approach. What’s more, there’s less frustrating pixel hunting if you deal with the human distances and sizes you are accustomed to.

JA - Do you think adventure games need to change to survive and, if so, what changes are needed?

Adventure games need not so much change but committed fans, supporters of the genre. I believe that better game productions are more than simple entertainment, they almost reach the heights of art. The gaming industry has almost fully ignored the existence of the adventure genre so maybe it is more important to aim for new areas as new audiences should and can be found for such an intelligent way of entertainment.

JA - Do you have other titles planned for this year?

Oh, yes, at least one more Agon episode is coming up this year and six more next year. Although we have some rather specific, and some less formulated, ideas in mind concerning other projects and adventure games, we want to focus fully on Agon now. Our circumstances do not enable us right now to work on several productions at the same time.

JA - Do you ever get ideas from gamers that influence your games?

We are all gamers and all of our experiences influence the work under construction to a certain extent: people’s favorite books, films, and games. As we work out our ideas together all these influences come into play. However we will count on the ideas of “outsiders” in the future: after a few episodes we would like to make it possible for members of the Agon Club to be able to influence the story, the relationships and fate of the characters at certain points. This is an opportunity that exists solely because of the unusual method of distribution and the direct communication with gamers. For this reason, it is worth giving Agon a chance so that we adventurers can take these groundbreaking steps together.

Many thanks for your time, Pierrot. Agon looks and sounds interesting. We wish you the best and look forward to seeing more of Agon and other projects from Private Moon.