Sebastien Hamon
Sebastien Hamon is with Xilam, developers of Stupid Invaders,
an upcoming adventure game to be published by Ubi Soft for Mac, PC, and
Dreamcast.
I have seen in various places around the Internet, maybe even your
own web site (the details escape me for the moment), that Stupid Invaders
is based on a TV show, Space Goofs. Is that true? Hardly anyone
has ever heard of Space Goofs, and I have received several emails
telling me what show Stupid Invaders was really based on. Damned
if I can think of any right now, but they weren’t Space Goofs.
Well. Stupid Invaders is really based on Space Goofs
(Home to Rent in the UK). The show used to be on air a couple
of years ago in the states. Maybe it disappeared too quickly. Maybe the
game is going to make it popular again, that would be great, it is a good
show … Which is the reason why we decided to push it into the videogames
world.
You are a sick puppy. Did your mother drop you on your head when you
were a baby? She might not have told you about it–do you have any odd
scars or mysterious lumps on your head? Maybe she left you out in the
sun too long one day. Care to speculate?
Oh no. Nothing quite like it. My mother is an angel, I’ve been
incredibly well educated as a kid, as my brothers and sisters were. I
mean, educated the French way of course, to help us develop our intellectual
and physical possibilities; to preserve us the best future possible. Ooooh
of course, French education may seem a little bit hard sometimes, I mean
to American standards, but nothing special here. We get trained to live
with as little as possible, who knows what could happen. As a kid my mother
was feeding me with a bowl of little rocks in the morning and a glass
of sand before going to bed, typical French recipes you know. We were
getting up quite early, my brothers and sisters and I, right from the
age of 4, at 5 o’clock in the morning just in time to get the handcart
and go to work to the next town two hours from our small village. Then
I used to work in the coal mine for 15 hours straight, with a small break
of 15 minutes where our boss–a very old and strong guy–used to kick
us in the stomach while declaiming Baudelaire poetry for our own sake.
No handcart to come back home after work, so we had to walk back without
any shoes as our boss was keeping them to sell them and make money (he
promised to give us the money back. Never did. Probably forgot, never
mind). We were late, usually, so our mother was kicking us in the stomach
to teach us good manners, which is great. I mean, quite great. And then
she was kicking us in the stomach again when discovering we didn’t any
more shoes. At night, while we tried to sleep in the same bed all 10 brothers
and sisters (it was very hard to get some sleep as we didn’t have any
roof and the rain didn’t stop from 1972 to 1985), our father was coming
to kiss us goodnight when coming back from pubs where he had to work for
long hours (our father was a professional drinker, as most French people
are). Well, not really kissing us goodnight, but at least punching us
goodnight in the face. I had a great childhood.
Do you play adventure games? What are your favorites? Have you ever
played Down in the Dumps or U.F.O.s? Both of them have similarities
to Stupid Invaders.
I didn’t play adventure games for a long time now. My favourites
are most certainly Sam and Max and Day of the Tentacle, both
great and funny. I used to love Sherlock Holmes too, on the ZX
Spectrum and Masquerade on the Apple II. Do you remember those
games ? Hardly any graphics at all, just text. English text, which means
I didn’t understand a single word of what was going on. I should play
them again with emulators, maybe they suck … Anyway. Down in the
Dumps? Oh, yeah, I know this one. But if Stupid Invaders has
similarities, it’s just plain random: the guys who designed Space Goofs,
the series which the game is based on, never heard of this game (I
think they never heard of any game at all by the way), and Thomas Szabo
and Nicolas Gallet, who wrote the first draft of the Stupid Invaders
story, never played it either. More odd things, it happened that two
of our animators who jumped in the development of the game used to work
as animators for Down in the Dumps (which was another French title
by the way). It’s a very small world out there … I don’t know U.F.O.s,
I mean the UFO game I know is no adventure game, it’s a strategy one.
If you could marry any celebrity, would it be Pamela Lee Anderson?
Why or why not?
Nope. Definitely not. Too thin, too blonde, too full of weird
chemicals in the chest.
Stupid Invaders’s release date is looming large. Any future
plans? Are you going to start work on another game?
Yes, we do have plans. Very serious ones. In fact, we are starting
the predevelopment of Stupid Invaders 2 in December, to evacuate
the frustration we had on the first game and try to create an even more
stupid game. Which is very important, I mean stupidity … We are also
planning on working on a stupid platform game, which is another story.
Bolok
seems awfully familiar. Did you base him on any person from real life?
He’s kind of cute, in an ugly sort of way.
He is cute, yes. And yes, he is based on someone familiar. The
design of this character is based on Jack Palance, the famous actor.
Who’s your favorite alien? I’m partial to the red one. The purple
one is stuck up.
My personal favourite is Candy, the green messed up one, the
one with sexual identities problems (I don’t have any problem of this
sort, do I?). The team members have different favourite ones. Frederic
the lead programmer loves Bud big time, the orange one. Thomas hates Stereo,
the red one; he tried to kill right at the beginning of the story, arguing
the fact his two heads were useless. We had to fight to keep him alive.
Have you ever been treated for mental illness? Inpatient or outpatient?
I am treated right now, as I speak. My personal psychiatrist
is sitting next to me, pumping weird chemicals in my arm every 10 minutes
to help me concentrate.
How long did it take to develop Stupid Invaders?
It’s been a little bit more than two years in the making. Very
tiring and stressful. We learned the hard way, as Stupid Invaders is
our first game. What kept us from stopping the development to go back
fishing is definitely the fact we have so much fun every day.
Have you ever been arrested?
Just once. But I am innocent. That’s not me! Leave me alone!
It’s an old story!
What’s your favorite kind of beer? If you don’t drink beer, what’s
your favorite kind of soda?
I like Bass. I like Guinness too. I like dark beers, usually.
British dark beers. I hate Budweiser, tastes like water. Water is the
worst enemy of a French man.
Why did you decide to release a Dreamcast version of Stupid Invaders?
Do you perceive consoles as the future of adventure gaming?
There was absolutely no marketing reason behind this decision.
When we started the game, the Dreamcast was the next gaming platform,
everybody predicted its fast disappearance, but we tried to believe in
the console anyway. We wanted to experience the console development process;
producing a videogame is incredibly expensive nowadays. If you want to
create a real good game, you’ve got to find as much possibilities to get
you money back (to be able to create another better one after). Multiple
platform is a way to be more lucky. Stupid Invaders is going to
be available on the Macintosh too, right now it is nearly finished, our
programmer is working on the installer. I honestly don’t know if this
kind of classical adventure game is going to be welcomed on console or
not. Time will tell.
Is there anything in particular you would like to tell our readers
to entice them to buy Stupid Invaders?
Does “the most stupid game ever” make any sense to
you?
Are you married? You’re cute.
I am. I mean, married. Not sure I’m really cute, you may have
seen me from very far.
You’re French. Do French people really drink Perrier?
Yes we do. But we have to, there are laws regarding the drinking
of Perrier. People from the government do control our Perrier drinking.
They can test your stomach whenever they want to check if you drank your
daily litre of Perrier. Did I mention they’ve got the right to kick you
in the stomach if you didn’t?
Thank you for taking the time to answer my silly questions. As for
me, Stupid Invaders is my most-anticipated game of the year, and
I appreciate all of your great work on it.
What could I say? This is just great … Hope you will still
love it after playing it.
