Here we are: the third and final installment of our interview with Braid's David Hellman. (If you missed the others, here's part one and part two.) Today we talk about his history with games, games that have struck him visually, and then the larger topic of art in gaming in general. Finally, we close with what's next for David - click on through!

It’s time for geek talk, let’s talk about your gaming resume.
Okay, well I started playing… there are two origin stories here, I have different memories. One is: I had a friend in camp and I remember talking with him on the bus and he told me he had this toy that was sort of hard to explain, so we went back to his house and we played Super Mario Bros. I remember sitting on the floor on the carpet, and I remember my mom coming to pick me up and his mom explaining that these were carpenters or something, and they were on a quest.

And then there’s another version where I had an uncle who used to be an electronics distributor for the Best Buys of the world, basically arranging deals with the people that put him out of business. They’d have trade shows where he would invite all the retailers in the area to see what he had to offer, and one of the companies he had was Sega. So they always had Sega at their house, they always had a lot of Sega games.

The old Master System?
Yeah, well, the Master System first. Actually they had an Atari 2600 before that… that must have been my first time playing, but it’s all kind of jumbled in my head.

Do you still play today?
Yeah, I just got an Xbox… now that there’s a killer app. Just kidding.

When it comes to art in games, can you name some games with a look you really appreciated?
There were a bunch of PlayStation 2 games. The funny thing about the last console generation was it kind of broke me of my Nintendo focus. I was always playing Nintento systems but with the GameCube I realized that all the interesting stuff was on PS2: Rez, Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, Katamari Damacy, Silent Hill 2. Those all had really great art direction and were all really different, I really enjoyed those visually.

You realize I’m going to parse that quote and turn you into a hero to Sony fanboys and a villain to Nintendo fanboys everywhere, like, overnight.
Okay!

To me – both as a gamer and someone who appreciates art – it’s disappointing that the graphical capabilities of consoles and PCs are greater than they’ve ever been, yet games seem to look more and more the same. These companies are having to hire more artists than ever, yet games rarely have even a glimmer of artistic spark or innovation. So the question as I’ve written it here is: What the fuck is happening?
Well, jeez… I mean, you’ve got Castle Crashers now. Dan Paladin did all the art for that, and it’s just brimming with life.

It has so much personality and wit visually. I would say the most interesting looking games this year so far are Braid and Castle Crashers. But other than that, it’s just a friggin’ desert of brown first-person shooters.
I think a lot of people feel that way, I think it’s true. It’s just getting so expensive, the march towards photorealism. It’s increasingly expensive and decreasingly interesting in most cases. There will always be people pushing in that direction – which is terrific, that’s fascinating, that’s great – but not everyone can do that, it’s just getting too expensive. So on one hand you’re completely right, there’re so many bland, brown-gray first-person shooters, but I think there’s a movement in the opposite direction as well. I mean, look at the new Prince of Persia… I wish I could think of some more.

There are a few, but I can’t decide if I’m being too optimistic in saying “Oh, maybe they’re starting to get a toehold, this is a sign of the times, there’s going to be a sea change.” I wonder if there’ve always been a few different looking games.
Well, isn’t there always a sea of stuff that’s poorly differentiated from the rest and that you wouldn’t bother with?

That’s true; it might be naïve for me to expect anything different. If you use movies as an example, there’s always going to be a mass consumption, everyday level of quality making up the majority of stuff, you can’t expect a standout, exciting, interesting level of quality most of the time.
I’m sure I agree with that.

Do you think it’s unfair to say a lot of these artists have more technical skill than artistic vim? Or do you think these companies are forcing talented individuals down the brown, dystopian sci-fi road because it’s commercially safe?
I have no idea what’s going on inside of companies. I think that it’s a mistake to point at the fat cats at the top and just assume that they’re crushing all the goodness out of things. I mean, people make things that are like what they like. You can tell a lot of people making videogames love the games they played a few years ago or they’re playing now, and they want to make something like that but just add their stamp to it. That’s fine, I just think maybe that’s some of the sameness.

Maybe there should be more people coming in from other backgrounds. I think there’s more of that with the indie scene, which really seems to be gaining traction with the console manufacturers, online distribution, these websites with flash games and stuff, though I don’t know what to expect from the industry on that front. I just see there are channels right now, and my impulse as an artist is to seek those out. I'm troubled as a consumer when I go to GameStop and there aren't a lot of games that look like things I’d enjoy on the wall, a predominance of men holding guns on brownish backdrops. But some of those are terrific games. I'm playing Gears of War now, and I think it’s fabulous, I think the art direction is actually great, I think it plays really well. I wouldn’t have thought I’d love it because of its football player-looking characters and the fact it was another very gray and brown post-apocalyptic shooter, but it’s a terrific game.

Regarding 2D versus 3D approaches to graphics, do you feel that one is by its very nature handicapped against the other in terms of what it can do visually, artistically?
No, not at all. I think it’s probably a little harder to have one artist do all the art for a 3D game; the more complex it is, the more it necessitates a team which makes it harder for a single artist to bring his personality out, so maybe there are more challenges there, but no I don’t have any prejudice towards 3D or 2D.

Do you think there’s anything in particular can be done with 2D that would change gamers’ minds about paying $60 for a 2D game?
Do you think people are reluctant to do that?

Yeah. Well, see it’s hard for me to answer that because personally I would be fine paying $60 for a 2D game. But I’m one of those messageboard-dwelling nerds that’s been wanting a full price, high-res Castlevania: Symphony of the Night sequel on a console for ten years. So I’m fine with 2D, I love 2D, I grew up on 2D. But I see the companies not making 2D games unless it’s for a handheld or a downloadable release. So even though 3D games are more expensive to build, you can tell just by the way they’re behaving there’s not a market for 2D, or at least they don’t believe it exists.
Yeah, that’s unfortunate. I’m not sure I have a well-formed opinion on that. Maybe part of the problem is that publishers are used to doing PR for a certain sort of game, maybe they just don’t know how to market something different.

I want you to know you’re on the last few questions here.
Okay.

You survived.
This is rugged terrain here, this third section.

Well, I wasn’t going to ask you Miss America questions. So tell me what’s next for you.
Well, I just came back from PAX and I had a lot of fun and got in touch with some people. Starting tomorrow, I’m helping Jon with a couple things to prepare the PC version of Braid; he wants it out this year before the holidays, so it probably should be out just a couple months from now.

So there’s new content?
Well, all we’re doing is replacing the Xbox-specific icons with keyboard icons. That’s all I know about. And I would imagine it’s going to be pretty straightforward. So other than that I have no idea what I’ll be spending time on but I’m hoping it will be really cool.

I heard Jonathan said Braid’s success will let him pursue his next game project. Would that include you?
I don’t know right now. I think he’s probably going to prototype on his own for a while and then depending on what kind of game it is and what the needs are, I think then he’ll go look for collaborators. I’m guessing he’s going to try to keep his team very small so I don’t know, I don’t know if it will be me or not.

Would you be interested in something like that?
Sure, I would definitely work with Jon again.

Are you interested in working on games again in general? Or was Braid something you wanted to try once, something you’d only do with Jon…?
I suppose other things will come up that would be just as interesting. I have to work on small projects because I like to have a lot of influence, and I would like to have a little more of a design role as well, but that could take a lot of forms.