Interview with Braid's David Hellman [Part 2 of 3]
Posted by Gary Hodges at 3:39 PM Sep 11, 2008
As promised: part two of the three-part, in-depth interview with Braid's David Hellman (if you missed it, here's part one, and part three is now up).
Naturally, a huge portion of our conversation dealt with Braid, and that's what you'll find here today. Click through for talk of working with Jonathan Blow, building worlds, thoughts on Braid's protagonist and even me spinning fanciful interpretations of Braid's ending that don't hold up to scrutiny.
(Which reminds me: parts of this conversation include what could be considered SPOILERS.)
You’ve had quite a publicity tour since braid hit, what’s that been like?
There was a certain satisfaction when my role in the project was done and I knew it was finished, that Jon had sent it to Microsoft. There was a certain relief there, and then I moved on. I had kind of forgotten about the release date for some reason, I think because I was in Baltimore. And then when I came back, that week Braid was released and there was this flood of reviews and people trying it, it was really exciting, it felt really good. I expected some people to like it a lot, and a lot of people to not really get it. But it seems like a large number of people really loved it. It’s really special to be involved in a project like that, I don’t think it’s something one can ever really expect.
All told, how long were you working on Braid?
Pretty close to two years.
Did the work keep you busy enough? Could you work on other things in the meantime, or was that pretty much your life for those two years?
It was pretty much the only thing I was working on. I had some side projects but nothing serious. It was not full time the full two years but it was pretty close to that, it was what I poured myself into for those two years.
How comfortable are you with the idea that you’re one of a very few game artists people actually know by name?
(long pause) I think that’s great! (laughs) I feel like more artists would want to be in that position. It’s certainly a different kind of thing when you’ve got a very small project and just a few people, you’re able to really infuse it with your sensibility and just care for it bit by bit. It’s a way of working that I really like. I hope there are more opportunities like that, but I’m not sure what to expect in that regard.
How did you and Jonathan meet?
Actually, a friend of mine through an Internet forum, Eric-Jon Rössel Waugh, had covered Braid at GDC one year, and some time later heard Jon was looking for an artist, so he just got us in touch through email. Jon had been looking for an artist for a while and was having people do little illustrations – basically draw over his programmer art which was very minimal – so he was screening people. And we got started. Initially, I thought it was going to take four months to do the whole thing. It ended up taking a lot longer.
Wasn’t there some other artist involved in between?
Yeah. A significant portion of the game was illustrated by another artist whose name I don’t know, I think he was working for some art house. My understanding is that he was told to work on something else by his boss, so they couldn’t finish. But I don’t know the details.
So everything that we’re seeing in the final version is from you?
That’s correct. There are some old screenshots still floating around the Web. In some there’s a cannon that looks sort of round, bulbous, and has this flaring… the mouth of the cannon flares outward, it’s metallic and has a highlight on it. If you see that, that’s old artwork.
(Addendum! - David writes:
"About the previous artist who worked on the game, I must have had a brain hiccup or been dodging traffic, because I forgot to mention Edmund McMillen, the excellent artist who did the original character animation for Braid. His versions of Tim and the monster are in that screenshot you posted with the bulbous canon. Edmund was hired to do the character art around the same time I was hired to do the world art, or maybe a little before. Eventually, the world art I was doing came to define the overall aesthetic, and the characters just looked out of place. So towards the end of the project, Jon gave me the go-ahead to replace the existing characters. In the interest of time, I pretty much traced over all the characters, frame by frame, preserving Edmund's basic movements. Edmund's stamp is still strongly present in the final game. He is listed in the credits for Animation Prototyping.
Edmund is a game designer in his own right; his works can be found here, and include IGF winner, Gish.")
So was all the work you did for Braid done in the computer? None of it was done traditionally?
Right, all in Photoshop.
 The issue in question, cover art by David |
I read the essay you wrote for The Gamer’s Quarter in 2006…
Oh!
…”Input as Metaphor”?
Okay.
There was a line that really struck me, it reads: “The story of a game is its emotion, and this emotion resides in its tactile structures and reactive systems, not its cutscenes.” Reading it and looking at the timeline for Braid’s development, it sounded like you might’ve been writing it with Braid in mind. Were you?
That was before I knew about Braid. But actually, that quote… I’m pretty sure that’s a line from near the end of the article?
Yes, right near the closing.
Actually that was changed by the editors.
Oh really?
Yeah, and I couldn’t tell you what the original was, but the word "emotion", when I hear that I know I did not write that.
(laughs)
That was one thing The Gamer’s Quarter changed, I don’t know what’s supposed to be there.
Fascinating. Well, okay… um…
You read my whole essay and the one line you pull out--
...the one you didn’t write.
Great job!
Yes, well that really was the line that made it all work, you know? I’m kidding. Seriously, the whole thing was fascinating, but I thought, well I hoped that-- aw nevermind.
I have another thing here I pulled from the closing paragraph, let’s see if you can claim authorship of this one.
Okay.
The closing paragraph states that how a character moves in a game “distinguishes personalities and elaborates motivations.” It says, “It’s a mistake to consider style and utility as separate. As in all media, every creative decision that impacts the player is not only technical, but also evocative.” This will be a two-part question. Part one: did you write that?
Yes!
Ah, okay! So then: what do Tim’s abilities say about his personality and motivations?
Oh, um… (long pause)
I think clearly the rewind is the most meaningful, important action that he can perform. And, I think basically what it suggests is that he wants to-- I mean, this is all me pontificating, this isn’t-- I don’t know why I cut myself off just now. I think it’s because I know Jon is very reluctant to explain anything in the game. And so, this is probably completely unnecessary but obviously I’m speaking for myself, I don’t know what he would say. But, to me, Tim is a guy who wants to control his world, and so being able to rewind time, it gives him this incredible liberty. And it’s the first inching movement towards manipulating his world at all times in other ways. So I think the rewind is a kind of wish fulfillment, and as the player experiences it it’s very empowering. “I’m not bound by my actions, I can take back anything.” So I think it has something to do with that: a wish to have another chance.
Sort of the gaming expression of “If I could do it all over…”
Right. But it’s also a defiance of the normal rules of the world, you know. And it puts him at odds ultimately, with normal human existence.
I don’t know if this is a stupid question or not, but maybe after two years you were sick of it: did you actually play through the final version of Braid?
Yeah.
Okay, so without getting into whatever Jonathan intended and not wanting to explain it, what was your reaction to the experience of the game, and especially the end?
That’s a rough question. (long pause) Well, when I first played the ending – which was a much earlier version of the game, of course, without the art that’s in there now, but it was pretty much the same – I thought: this game is really doing something interesting with embodying its themes through the gameplay. I mean, all games embody their themes through the gameplay on some level, but this was purposefully. It wasn’t starting from something we’re used to experiencing in a game or expressing through game mechanics like “exhilaration” or “conflict”. It was something about reversal and about relating to people. And just by putting in these figures, using characters – the princess, Tim – just that little bit of window dressing is enough to set your mind on interpreting these mechanics as expressive. If you replaced Tim and the princess with blocks or something, I think a large part of the game’s meaning would still be intact, but people probably wouldn’t be inclined to look for that meaning because they’d just see it as a game mechanic.
That’s the kind of thing I was trying to get at in the Gamer’s Quarter article, which I haven’t read in a long time. But the point you read sounded okay, maybe I’ll reread it. I think I was afraid to revisit it, because usually anything I look at after a couple years is going to be embarrassing to look at.
It’s very good, actually.
Okay, good. So I thought: This is doing something sophisticated and interesting, and kinda unique with the way this game works. And I think that’s what makes it profound if you play it, what makes it better than a cutscene in a game or something like that. You feel change happen, and you feel it because you’re completely invested on all these levels, it’s not just emotional and aesthetic, you’re thinking through and actively doing something and trying to make something happen. I think it works quite well. I was struck by the sophistication of the design, and ambition in what it was trying to express.
Jonathan has noted some analysis of Braid has been “wrong”, most recently in an interview with Chris Dahlen, and in response a reader made an interesting observation: that while puzzles have a single solution, art – regardless of authorial intent – can be interpreted many different ways, and people have subjective reactions to it. So when Jonathan talks about someone’s interpretation of Braid being wrong, is he thinking too much like a designer, and not enough like an artist?
I don’t know, I don’t know what he actually said to be honest. When I’ve talked to him and been present in conversations he’s had – for example, in the 1UP FM podcast we did – my impression is that he appreciates that his part of the conversation is the game, and that people will go and have whatever different thoughts they’re gonna have. Nevertheless, if you’re making something with an intent you hope that people will find that, so I think that’s what he’s expressing. I’m not sure that he’s any more dogmatic than that.
I was surprised to see how much of Braid is built out of simple tiles – unlike some games, you can’t easily see where the seams are, almost everything looks like a single piece of art and very organic. Was that difficult to achieve?
It was kinda tricky, but a lot of fun and worked better than expected from the beginning, especially in the really organic worlds like World 2 with all the rocks and grass. It’s a bit harder when you’ve got manmade objects like in the later worlds – the more irregularity the better, it allows you to get away with more. They’re not tiles, actually, they’re irregular shapes of any size with a kind of transparent edge.
Is that the trick, that the transparency kind of muddles where the edges are?
Yes. So you put down a bit of rock or something, which is a rock pattern or texture with a fuzzy edge, and then you take another one much like it and overlap the edges.
It’s surprising how well that can work with a certain art style, a certain level of detail. Your eye forgives the… (siren or alarm in background)
Is the place burning down?
Yeah, gotta get out...
...So basically there’s enough noise there that your eye doesn’t pick up on what we’re doing, so that’s great if it looks like there’s no repetition. Part of the challenge in laying out those levels was hiding the repetition, because there weren’t that many rock pieces really, we had maybe a half dozen of a particular kind, or less. So it was always a challenge. If the same piece had to show up on the same screen or the same half of the screen it had to be rotated or flipped horizontally or colored or something like that. If you look closely you’ll see repetition but hopefully not too much.
You were tasked with coming up with a visual effect that tells the player: time is going backwards. First, for people reading this who haven’t played the game, can you describe what happens to the screen when time is being rewound?
Yeah, there are a few things. When I joined the project all it did was sort of tint the screen pink or magenta. I suggested we try what’s often called the Vertigo effect when you dolly in towards something while widening the lens angle so you see this compression of the space behind the focal point… I hope I described that correctly. Basically the background scales back and things that are further back scale back more and it was a way to contribute to the feeling of things shifting, things being sucked away, changing. Actually the other stuff that’s going on I can’t really take credit for. Sean Barrett, who worked on the game for a couple of weeks towards the end of the project, added some visual effects including the kind of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey thing the screen does when you’re rewinding. And I think it was either his idea or Jon’s to make the screen go grayscale instead of magenta, which works pretty well because the objects that are rewind-exempt with the green sparkle around them retain their color and stand out more when the rest of the screen goes gray.
Were there discarded ideas about what would happen visually?
Kind of. We didn’t spend a huge amount of time on it relative to some of the other things, where there were just loads of discarded concepts. I remember we had briefly talked about things having different trails behind them when they were moving but it just seemed like more visual distraction and I don’t believe we talked about it for more than a minute. So yeah, you’d think that would be a great, very rich and deep topic but I don’t know that we really spent that much time on making it look the way it does, at least I didn’t.
In your Art of Braid series, you talk about how some visual embellishments you made would get cut in the spirit of “Does it have a gameplay purpose?” – that is, they might be visually distracting. I’d think that added an extra level of difficulty to your job – how tricky was it to rein yourself in on the side of functionality?
It’s difficult just in the way design is difficult, because you have competing impulses to emphasize different things and one ends up stepping on the toes of the other. But it is also helpful in a way that constraints are helpful in design, in that they focus you. One example was the two-position switch that moves platforms or walls. Something we wanted to emphasize very clearly was that there were two positions. Earlier designs looked less like a switch, it had these protruding ears or something like that, different things that seemed to compete with the visibility of the handle which was really important in making it recognizable as a switch. So the “switch-ness” was competing with the “two-ness” and it’s all just stuff you bounce. I welcome that, I find that user interface stuff is interesting.
Early on there were times Jon reined me in more when I wanted to do something that was purely trying to make the space look more interesting in some illustrative way. I think there’s an example in the Art of Braid article I wrote where I made something in the background so it looked like the landmass in the foreground was kind of receding and there was something else happening back there, like you were running across the front of this land that was receding. It was this whole 3D thing, and it contradicted what you were actually playing. If you’re running along dips and rises you want to see that dip just as well as you feel it in a game like this. And I’d sort of made it look like the hill was rising behind you or something that just contradicted that basic perception of the shape of that slope. After a few months or so, it was something I didn’t struggle with too much.
One thing that did annoy me a little, the cannons that shoot fireballs used to be a steely gray and looked really nice, and towards the end of the game to help them stand out more during rewind when the screen was desaturated we made them kind of brownish.
They look almost like ceramic cannons or something…
Yeah. I kept throwing comments to Jon saying maybe we should make them like this, maybe we should make them like that, and he was like, “they’re fine”. We had enough to do. Even at the end we were still tweaking animation and stuff so I just shrugged that one off. For the most part I found that interesting.
It almost becomes, I don’t know, like a graphic design problem. How to convey information in a minimalist way.
Yeah.
So how collaborative was your working relationship with Jonathan? On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being “he was the boss” and 10 being “we were partners”, where would your Braid relationship fall on the scale?
I don’t know, maybe… That’s kind of a funny scale. Maybe 5? But I’m not even sure what that means. Basically, it’s his game, he made all the final calls on things. Fortunately, as you hope in every project, I respected his judgment and what he was doing. On the other side he really welcomed me to bring my sensibility to bear on the project and have a lot of influence as far as style, for example the puzzle boards that you assemble in the game, he just said “draw some things”. He didn’t give me strict scenes that he wanted drawn, he didn’t describe every aspect of it, he just said “draw some stuff that fits”. There were a lot of things like that where he really gave me a lot of freedom and was just looking for someone to bring themselves to the project, not just carry out his preconceptions in a rote way, because I think he believed that would yield a much better result than if he were just dictating something to a scrub, even a very talented scrub, who would just sort of…
Just follow orders.
Yeah, yeah, right. Right.
No big discoveries would happen there.
Right.
Now correct me if I’m wrong, but you were the one to suggest changing the hub world from a museum setting to Tim’s home, is that right?
Yes.
I thought it was interesting that while most game journeys, if you want to get into Campbellian structure, take the person out, Braid’s Tim is going inward, going home at night and then even further inside into his own head where he’s having his adventure. What made Tim’s home seem like the right setting to you?
Well, you know venturing out is just a metaphor really. I mean, sometimes it’s literal, but the idea is leaving your normal place. Tim does leave his normal place, but you’re right, it’s an internal exploration. I think the home is appropriate because it seems like a place where he would be in his element and would be the most himself, the most apt to reflect. And because the themes of the game are introspective it seemed very appropriate to bring players into Tim’s spaces as much as possible, show him in his space, and then we could also elaborate a little bit on his personality through the design of that space.
In describing the stuff lying around Tim’s house, you say: “I wanted to show the unfinished nature of his ambitions, how some avenues have been abandoned, others are in progress and still others have yet to develop.” What’s the significance of Tim’s inability to see things through?
Well, I think he’s searching, so he doesn’t know exactly the means to his ends, and I think each world in the game is kind of a different attempt at something, whatever he’s trying to achieve or figure out. So I suppose it’s a parallel, showing evidence of his hobbies, though actually, I don’t know how much we did that in the final game, I think in the earlier drafts which are in that article, you see more: there’s an instrument, there’s an easel, there’s a hamster cage, things like that. But hopefully that idea still came through to some extent.
So what’s the story with the green books in the epilogue?
(pauses) Oh, the empty books?
Yes.
Um, well… there are a lot of things that don’t work as normal in that epilogue… wouldn’t you agree?
I would agree.
(laughs) That’s not really an answer, is it?
It’s a little slippery.
Um, I don’t have the story behind that. All I can do is speculate but I don’t know if that would be as valuable as other things I could say. I don’t know, what do you think? What do you think about the books?
Ah, see, this is the wonderful thing about me being the interviewer: I don’t have to answer these sorts of hard questions.
Well, if you want to keep me in the conversation you have to, you know, be responsive.
(laughs) Um, let’s see, the green books… Well see, I’m reluctant… this is scary, because I’m not involved in the project, so I’m going to be putting an answer out there and people are going to read it and say “Oh, Hodges is full of shit, he doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about.”
But David Hellman made you do it, though.
Okay, I’ll say it was extortion. He was not going to continue with the interview unless I answered.
Right.
Okay. I would actually… maybe this is simplistic, but I’m satisfied with a very superficial explanation. He gets to the end of the game, he gets to the end of his quest or journey or however you want the metaphor, and there are these books on altars you expect will explain everything that happened and give him the answers he’s looking for… but there’s nothing in them. There are no answers.
Right. Right.
I was satisfied enough with that, that sometimes there are no answers to find by looking back. But I know a lot of other people are very curious about them.
Are there other theories about the green books?
I’ve read so many. It seems like everyone has a theory, and I couldn’t even tell you what the predominant one is. And I’m sure you’ve heard the whole range of “it’s about an ex-girlfriend”, “it’s about his daughter”, “it’s about the atom bomb”. It’s about, it’s about, it’s about. There’s every possible theory out there. Which is interesting; it’s interesting that it’s apparently such a mirror that when people sit down they’re finding things in it that may or may not be justified by the game. (Like I just did in my explanation of the green books… - Ed.)
Right. That’s interesting.
