“The universe wants you to get your shit together!”
Ghello, Solarbots’ new Creative Director, explains how to design rewarding gameplay by managing stakes and shares his wisdom about in-game and out-game universes in our newest team interview.
Solarbots is growing and developing! Ghello aka Adam from – to quote him directly – “flyover nowhere USA” was just promoted to Creative Director at Solarbots. Today, we talk about writing for games, pretentiousness – and Zen Buddhism.
So right away, I sense some discomfort from your side when labeled as a capital C Creative, or when I said out loud the words „Creative Director“.
It’s such a title huh? (laughs) and I don’t want to sound pretentious. I’m just an avid gamer and dummy from America after all. (laughs) In all seriousness, at Solarbots, we needed a position to help make workflow better. And it became clear after I was producing work that I wasn't instructed to do, like coordinating with everyone, filling in gaps as needed, writing outlines for far out future content … that it made sense to make it more official I guess!
Help us understand this position and the responsibilities better. What are you working on at the moment?
I can’t share specifics on what I’m working on, because a lot has to do with the story, and I don’t want to spoil anything. But I’ll put it this way: Solarbots – we have this heady, thick game story. It’s not your basic setup, of good vs. evil, water vs. fire or such. We’ve taken a lot of time to make this game have a very dense, symbolistic world, which sometimes isn’t easy to understand just by looking at it. What I have started to do now, is I have been taking all of this, everything that has been mapped out and sketched and written about Solarbots, and re-working and shaping it so that everyone can read and understand it. The intention is to better capture the scale and vibe of the game and make it understood for everyone on the team and future hirees.
It makes sense that it would take time to – so to speak – smooth out existing lore. Solarbots was always a project that grew and developed as it went, so I can imagine there are some loose ends.
This is one of the differences between the way Solarbots happened, and the way traditional games happen. With many games, traditionally, there is a lot of pre-selling and pre-developing work from established studios. Before even anything is developed, there will already be like, in some cases like the legendary Planescape Torment, a 200 000 word script, that is thick and intelligently written, by industry veterans ready to rip. Then that would be sheared down and made edible to pitch to publishers, who would then condense their beautiful work down to “This game has hot chicks in hell, buckos!” to get the green-light.
For Solarbots, it was completely different. We started working on every aspect, on every front right away after the white paper launch: story, gameplay, characters, music … and we kept on developing as we went. This was the beauty of the idea, of the initial spark. When you have the spark, you want to start working on everything, in every direction it will take you in order to maximize, stay motivated and of course, not lose the magic of the spark. And to me, it’s absolutely a good thing that we rode this spark out like we did. But now, we are fleshing everything out, making storylines cohesive, and putting them into a single place that everyone can see. And with that, we can really start building our world confidently. Make it more into a glowing path rather than an overwhelming blaze.
A board view of some of Solarbots’ characters, locations, and storylines and how they are connected – one of Ghello’s tools that helps keep an overview.
And how was your path towards Solarbots?
I spent a lot of my 20s doing nothin’! I came to a place in my life in my mid-20s where I knew that I had to get my shit together, now. I needed to self-sustain, I needed to get a grip, and be okay with my station in life. That translated into taking mundane jobs, like working at a grocery store, and telling myself: It’s okay if I do this forever. I don’t have to begrudge myself. I don’t have to do anything, so to say, “special”, if I wished to live life fully, even if I had little. At that time, I was very influenced by Buddhism as you can tell (laugh). While I worked, I would essentially write stories for D&D characters, or lyrics or poems. I don’t have a library, or a lot of prior works. As I said, I’m just Nobody USA – I spent my time becoming okay with this setup. I got there and I was happy. And even though it was a labor-intensive, blue collar, standard 8h a day job – I was good. After essentially accepting this as my future – just a month later I got this job at Solarbots! And it has flipped everything on its head! Suddenly, I’m managing teams, I’m communicating, and I’m writing professionally! Writing is no longer just my emotional tool to navigate life and its emotions. It’s quite a change, to be honest. But a good one. Very different, challenging, but I like it.
This mindset really resonates with me, I have been reading a lot about Zen Buddhism myself recently, Alan Watts and the likes. It’s amazing how sometimes, when you let something go – for example the idea or desire to be or do something special – that in that exact moment, the opportunity opens itself up to you.
The lengths the universe will go to stay within that logic are insane! The universe really wants us to get our shit together! (laughs) This opportunity came at a time when life knew I was ready for more responsibility.
So you were not the type who always knew they wanted to be a writer?
No, but I’ve always had a knack for writing. I turned and turn to writing still when I felt and feel down and have since my youth. It’s very natural for me to get into a place where I can write and edit and re-edit my own stuff, and I’ve always been pretty obsessive at trying to make my voice realized through words. A lot of writers and people in general have great ideas but don’t know how to edit themselves down, which is the trick to most creative work I think. They sometimes don’t have the capability of making their voice distinct. I’m always conscious of that, and I think it’s helped me write my characters in many distinct voices. Truly the hardest part is, you will always doubt yourself as a creative person. Solarbots has been my biggest challenge yet, and I’ve still been doubting and rising up, pushing myself, not only as a writer but also as a person who leads people. The opportunity that Miso and Solarbots has given me with this job didn’t just mean a career, it's helped my private life immensely as well, as I’ve started a family since I’ve begun work on the game. So I’m immensely grateful. This is exactly what crypto should be for! For people who would otherwise have to go through debilitating selection processes, expensive and sometimes useless degrees, or work arrangements that don’t align with their personal needs. Crypto has revealed itself as many things, but one is a blessed shortcut to help fulfil people’s lives and give them opportunities once denied. If anything, that's what crypto is to me.
Let’s stay with this topic for a second – are you a crypto guy? Do you own NFTs?
Solarbots of course! I bought those. I like the idea of owning digital property, but not because of the monetary value and supposed returns on it. I like the idea of giving something real-world monetary value that perhaps doesn’t translate back – but it has a value to you. For example, and I know this is a funny one but bare with me, but Second Life! Or other games and environments like these games: The people who take part in these worlds spend thousands a month to own property there. Obviously, to them it has so much value. I like the idea of putting money down for something that is important for you, even if it’s “not real”. The value and what that person derives from it is obviously real to them.
What makes storytelling and writing in games good, as opposed to other media? Or do the same rules and guidelines apply?
There are specific things that have to be kept in mind. For example, length, rhythm and pacing are extremely important. You need to establish what kind of game your game will be, and then plan your plot accordingly. If it’s more action-packed, you might not need too many intricate lore details, or at least expository dialogue. But if you want to immerse your players as much as possible, you have to for example set up things in the beginning that extend into the entire length of the game, big and little story-bits that keep on giving. That makes players emotionally connect to the game, it makes their experience thoughtful and feel complete. It’s also important that emotions are validated, for example when a character dies, or you pass some emotionally moving area in the game – the visuals and the music have to acknowledge that, for example, the song that plays should carry the weight of the scene. If people take the time to do it well games can be the most controlled, artistic way of delivering a really impactful story. It can make you feel like you’re really inside something.
Something I have been wondering about recently are stakes in storytelling. It seems to me that today, every other story, every other movie, has at least the world at stake, if not the multi-verse or the stability of spacetime itself. I think we do get a little desensitized to it though. How does one create a game, a world, where big things are at stake, but it doesn’t feel run-of-the-mill at the same time?
It’s a problem with game writing in general: Many people think more is more, but less is more in most any story that involves dramatic elements. If you write a story to be big, you most likely leave gaps in the world leading up to its climax. Write your world small and keep writing, in the end you’ll have an intricate world with no road without meaning. I want to spotlight locations, people, and their things and how they manage to live in a world that is so hard. How they fight back and make a claim in it. These small but bright sparks of story potential can cultivate a world worth caring about – and the world does need to be cared about when it’s facing its end.
I guess with Solarbots one trick to avoid the banal was to situate the story after the world has already gone through chaos, there has already been some sort of catastrophe.
The player enters in a time where things have grown eerily calm after years of war against the Abyss. It's time to rediscover the world, 30 years after this war to stave off total apocalypse. The question is not just of how we prevent the apocalypse, because it has already happened. It’s “how do we make sure it doesn’t happen again” or if it can’t be stopped, what can we do while we’re still here. Of course, there has to be a danger, in order to motivate us to fight. But we discover it slowly, by exploring – we want the motivations for doing quests to be diverse and surprising as well: Go, explore, find, search, fight, but we strive to keep it exciting and surprising, absurd and human. We want to capture human moments in this game – humor, absurdity, tragedy, useless fighting, demystifying the things we hold high… These things can be well written, but it needs to be given dignity. If we do these things well and with respect, then we will achieve a perfect mix of magical and real that will keep this world remarkable.
What is your favorite faction? Has being in control of a lot of the storyline changed your initial perspective here?
I recognize that Illskagaad is probably the coolest faction. They build things that they think are cool, but with a high degree of pride and worship. Building, the act of working – essentially making pointless skyscrapers – that's how they pray, that’s the face of their faith and how they stake their claim in this crazy world they're in, I love it. But I lean towards the Lacrean Empire. Not because I love weird blood magic or religious zealotry, but because religion and how people practice their spirituality is interesting to me. Also the Christian and Catholic faith has created some of the hands-down most powerful imagery in our world. Being able to play with this imagery is so much fun. The Lacrean Empire is basically: What if the Catholic Church could actually control magic through blood and the moon? I can play with their dogma and extremism but in even more absurd or interesting ways than they can (laugh). It’s a concept rife with so many great visuals and good stories – so as a writer, I lean towards them.
Ah! Spoken like a true creative, haha! I think if I had to make a rough characterization from the team interviews I’ve done so far, then I would maybe say that creatives like Lacrea and developers and mathematically-minded people liked Illskagaard more.
And Arboria? The joke with Arboria among the team is: “Arboria is… well they’re Arboria”, they are hard to understand on paper. I think on the surface level, one might think they are the nature people, the happy tree people. But I would say they are anti or “nega-”nature, to the point of thinking they are doing it better than the trees do by challenging it and re-inventing it all the time – the Elder Tree is not a real tree. Arboria is making fun of nature.
They’re satirizing it. Maybe there’s some sort of camp aesthetic there.
Maybe they’re nature-anarchists? It’s hard to explain. They’re very individualistic, it’s the weirdest story of the three other societies. They’re such extreme individualists, and harbor such a deep love for disenfranchising the natural world, that it's a miracle they exist as a powerful society still – but, that society is being run by one of the most powerful people on Eld after all! And I think she probably likes having a bunch of people around that low-key worship her.
What are you most looking forward to in terms of Solarbots developments in 2023?
For all the many tools and means to tell the game’s story to fall into place! Solarbots is an ambitious project that is trying to capture the magic of JRPGs and MMOs into a single bottle built within the metaverse. We want to make the soul of Solarbots unique but grounded at the same time. That’s what will make it special. It’s a world that went from renaissance to industrial-future, from war to war, to peace to apocalypse in a single millennium – and everyone still left, from peasant to king, is trying to make it to the next day – but not just by the skin of their teeth, but with a jaw full of grit and something to say about it! It’s not aiming to be just “look at this weird world and its crazy lore” and off ya go, we want to tell many human tales, and reflect on reality, our reality and our lives through this world that we’re making.