We Are OFK
PC
Time to break kayfabe: during our interview with Teddy Dief in E355, we played along with their notion that OFK is a real band, and talked about the story of Itsumi, Luca, Jey and Carter in-fiction with them. The point was to illustrate something that gets to the heart of We Are OFK: a crucial part of its development has been that narrative investment in the reality of the band, and the extensive lore that has been constructed around the members. It’s almost eerie how easily Dief rattles off their backstories, but this is precisely what we meant when we referred to the fusion of art and performance. It’s clear the idea has been in their head for a while, and over time it’s been fleshed out into an entire world. And that world has bled into our own: the band members even have their own individual social media accounts.
Transmedia storytelling is nothing new, of course, but a five-episode interactive animated series is quite the departure from Hyper Light Drifter, which Dief co-designed with creator Alx Preston. “The parts of Hyper Light that I loved the most had to do with our narrative and how we sprinkled that into that world,” they tell us. “Although my work looked very different on Hyper Light than it does on this, I really wanted to embrace an opportunity to produce something that was still visually beautiful, and that people could connect to on that level, but eschewed violence for something more human-sized.”
It’s evidently a more down-to-earth story, and one that’s close to Dief’s heart – and their creative base in LA. “From there I started working with our producer, Mikayla Foote, who comes from the music industry – we both had a vested interest in the creative process of music. And seeing as I was looking for a story that was about making something, it felt like a really nice fit to tell the story of some people who were trying to make music in Los Angeles. That’s sort of how the pieces came together.”
Are there many similarities between making music and games? “The more time I’ve spent with people in other creative fields, the more I see that, these days, we all spend a lot of time on computers fiddling with knobs, so to speak,” they smile. “Obviously, we have things like programming that don’t as often play into the creative process of music, but I do think the life experience seems similar – as do the emotional journeys of trying to put a project together, to figure out what you want to say, and how you’re going to find an audience for it.”
They couldn’t have found a much bigger occasion to reveal OFK to the world, with The Game Awards debuting the animated video for the band’s first single, Follow/Unfollow. There is a desire here to reach a very different audience to that of Hyper Light Drifter: the game’s interactivity has been designed to be “meaningful yet approachable,” with the player making choices in dialogue, and through text messages to contribute to the story. “It was really important to both get the audience involved in person-to-person conversations, and in conversations over text, because that’s part of modern communication and how we all experience each other.”
Indeed, the game’s stories will be drawn from the lived experiences of many of the staff at the studio that worked on it, although Dief is quick to clarify that no specific person’s story will be recreated here. “The characters are amalgamations of experiences that myself and my co-writer Claire [Jia] and members of our team have shared and talked about together,” they say. “I think it’s important that it not be simple autobiography, but also that we can see ourselves in these characters and experiences.” Music to our ears.
There is a desire here to reach a very different audience to that of Hyper Light Drifter