DISPATCHES PERSPECTIVE
Unreliable Narrator
Exploring stories in games and the art of telling tales
SAM BARLOW
Making games takes a long time. When Immortality is done, it will have been three years of continuous effort. I have notes about it going back ten years, and its true genesis occurred last century. Only a fool would consider how long a game takes to fund, develop and release and do the mental arithmetic to ask how many games one can realistically make in an averagely productive lifespan. People (exclusively the nonchildbearing ones) sometimes compare the making of a game to the effort, cost and pain of childbirth, but you only have to glance at the ‘project babies’ sections of videogame credits to see how much easier it is to make a baby than a videogame. Shipping a videogame is like having a baby – but backwards. First you raise it (the sleepless nights of infancy, awkward teenage phase and expensive college years), and only at the very end comes the painful and primal childbirth of game release. After all those years of effort, when you hit that final stage you are screaming for medication and just want the thing out.