Erica, Jack, and others
Flavourworks’ co-founder talks PS5, new games, and live action
Having recently secured funding from an investor, and with a follow-up to Erica under way, the mood is good at Flavourworks. Jack Attridge, co-founder and creative director, shows us around the company’s cosy studio in the heart of London, strewn with props from Erica (one of the perks of making a live-action game), and discusses how they’re thinking about a bigger space to grow.
Although the PS4-exclusive thriller hasn’t been out long, the team is already preparing to strike while the iron is hot. “With the next game, not only do we want to push it more into feeling like a game you can marinate in, but also build on completely new mechanics and support a very different genre from Erica. Erica was a dark thriller, and I’m saying to myself, what’s the holiday version of that?” Attridge tells us. We ask if it’s a rom-com and he tells us it isn’t. “But the thing is that was actually one of the goals of the technology, right?” says Attridge. “We should be able to do a rom-com.”
At Flavourworks the focus is on exploring how branching decisions can affect the way you experience a plot, and allow you to explore your own feelings about characters much more closely. “The thing that’s really expensive in games is trying to render something
WE COULD DO THINGS THAT TRIPLE-A GAMES COULDN’T DO EFFECTIVELY.
close to a human face and an emotion. That’s the thing that’s affordable in film,” explains Attridge. “So the beautiful opportunity of us doing video was that as a very small team, which literally started with just me and Pavle [Mihajlovic; co-founder and technical director], we could do things that Triple-A games couldn’t do that effectively.”
VIDEO GAGA
While the team wanted to use live action to its fullest when making Erica, they don’t like to think of it being a genre unto itself. “I think that’s one of the weird things about FMV is that it’s a genre defined by its aesthetic. It’s literally the genre just says ‘it uses video’. That’s what FMV is, right?” says Attridge. “We just think of ourselves as a narrative game in the same vein as Quantic Dream, Supermassive,
and Dontnod. We just focus on the more nuanced direct human connection via live action rather than exploring a 3D space.
“FMV fundamentally does not work, film and games being clumped together do not work. For us, the only way to make that work was to introduce the mechanics we did with Erica,” says Attridge. “Everything we’re designing is hidden and it’s just there to help connect you a bit more. […] We’ve got so many more things we want to do to push that as well. The important thing for us is always it should not be an interactive film. It should be a film game.”
NEXT GENERATION
What else can he tell us about the next game? “I imagine the next one will be on PlayStation 5,” he says. “I think the SSD will be great for everybody. Because it just means you can load stuff quicker. People will feel that in terms of the speed of things […] For live action that gives us the opportunity of just being able to do things in 4K, for instance.”
But power isn’t the only thing that matters. “The best-looking games in the world right now are on a PlayStation 4,” says Attridge. “That’s down to art direction, not power, you know, art directors and technical geniuses being able to squeeze more out of less.”
FLAVOUR TEST
“From a financing perspective, actually, this is one of the best times in the history of games for risky innovative projects. […] And I think the great thing that’s made PlayStation very different,” says Attridge. “Sony has invested in showcase pieces, like ‘We are going to lead the way on why you should buy a PlayStation.’ And I felt like that’s been true ever since the PS3 days with LittleBigPlanet. No one else would have funded something like LittleBigPlanet.” With Erica, Flavourworks took risks, but they paid off. The future for live action seems to be bright.
What genre do you want Flavourworks to tackle? Let us know opm@futurenet.com