{"id":267,"date":"2013-11-10T08:14:00","date_gmt":"2013-11-10T08:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chrigiz.wixsite.com\/gotohaneda\/post\/2016\/10\/04\/i-am-telling-the-stories-of-the-people-who-have-inspired-my-life-s-story"},"modified":"2026-09-04T11:25:34","modified_gmt":"2026-09-04T11:25:34","slug":"i-am-telling-the-stories-of-the-people-who-have-inspired-my-life-s-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gotohaneda.com\/?p=267","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Beeswing&#8221;: I am telling the stories of the people who have inspired my life\u2019s story."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.wixstatic.com\/media\/dd22cb_80533cf3561a4212bebb98be3d22f757~mv2.jpg\" alt=\"\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"> <strong>INTERVIEW with Jack King-Spooner on rural life, poetry, games, knights and sub-marines<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Jack King-Spooner is one of the more interesting indie developers out there: His games, while made with simple tools like Adventure Games Studio, are a fascinating pastiche of different techniques, tackling topics that are rarely addressed in games. I talked to him during the Kickstarter campaign for Beeswing, a game that focusses on the small Scottish village King-Spooner grew up in, the people living in it, and their stories. It resonated strongly with me, village-born myself, and often surprised about the fact that games hardly ever choose such places as their setting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>So, where are you talking from? Do you actually live in Beeswing?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;m afraid, I do not. I am going to be there by the week-end, though. I live in Edinburgh at the moment. But I visit Beeswing a lot, I still got family in the area. So it\u2019s not entirely wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>But you spent all your childhood in Beeswing?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">All my childhood, yeah. My dad moved away before my memory started, so I would visit him wherever he was. But that was only intermittently. So I spent all my childhood in Beeswing, with my mum. And, you know, it was great. Tree houses, trying to stop streams with mud, things like that. I consider myself really lucky. I can\u2019t imagine many children nowadays will have such a childhood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>This is a much debated topic right now\u2026 what the American writer Michael Chabon called the \u201cWilderness of Childhood\u201d, that important freedom to explore. It\u2019s hard for children to be adventurous when their parents are always on their back, fearing that their offspring is in constant danger.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Well, I\u2019m sure my mum thought I was in constant danger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Was she right, though?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yeah, probably\u2026 because I usually climbed up pine trees\u2026 well, all the kids did it. It was like: \u201eI bet you cannot climb so far up the tree that it bends over and you can jump onto the other tree.\u201d That\u2019s stupidly dangerous. [laughs]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.wixstatic.com\/media\/dd22cb_858375880e5c42bb89cceedd378d6d56~mv2.png\" alt=\"\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"> <strong>It does sound like it, yeah\u2026 Which makes me wonder: most of the games you did so far were, in a way, somewhat linear. Will you change that for Beeswing? Will you try to evoke that pleasure of exploring, that adventurous side?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Well\u2026 the stories in the game only have one way of being told, there is no multiple outcomes or anything like that, there can&#8217;t be. You see, I think people have fooled themselves into thinking that if they have multiple endings or multiple ways of discovering the same story in a game, then it is a better story. I don&#8217;t agree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That said, the stories can be discovered non-sequentially depending on who you want to or don&#8217;t want to chat with or what objects you interact with. This way of fracturing a narrative is more interesting for me. I feel it is the difference between a make-your-own-adventure book and a Burroughs-esque cut up technique. David Foster Wallace used footnotes to do something similar with narrative (not that I&#8217;m anything on Wallace). I&#8217;m not sure if this answers the question, but you could say that structurally, it&#8217;s a collection of linearities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>It will do! Anyway, Beeswing seems to be rather wonderful place. Its Wikipedia page is a thing of beauty! It\u2019s like the ramblings of a lovely, drunken guy. Like, you will not find the information you expect on a page on a place like this. Instead, they talk about a famous football player, as a total non-sequitur. It does not say who the footballer was.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[looks up the page on his computer] It really doesn\u2019t!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>So who was he?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I have no clue. I never heard about that. But that is a really strange sentence: \u201cThe village once had a world-class footballer as a resident, and is involved in Arthurian legacy.\u201d It kind of makes it sound like the footballer was part of the King Arthur-legacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>It\u2019s perfect, in a way. I can imagine knights walking around in full plate armour, trying to kick that little ball without falling backwards over. And the village was named after a race horse, right?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That\u2019s true. The house across from me is a really big manor house, where wealthy land owners used to live. Their butler placed a bet on a horse called \u201cBeeswing\u201d. It won the race, and he never had to be a butler anymore. That left a big impression. You see, the village was actually a mining village. And, although the butler obviously wasn\u2019t a miner himself, because of his fate, of getting so fabulously rich off of this horse, the gossip around the place must have slowly changed the name. It used to be called \u201cLochend\u201d, because it\u2019s situated at the end of a \u201cloch\u201d, a lake. I imagine that the people in the village must have forgotten that and started calling it \u201cBeeswing\u201d. That\u2019s just how language works, really. But I think it\u2019s quite nice that it is called after a bet on a race horse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>And before that, the name referred to Arthurian legend, right?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Of course, there is also the Arthur-thing. I mean, there are lakes and lochs all up and down Britain, which people link to King Arthur. But about ten years ago\u2026 or maybe longer, they actually found a U-boat in the loch near Beeswing\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>A German submarine?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">No, I do not mean that at all. Why did I say that? It definitely was not an old submarine, sorry. [laughs]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>That would have been amazing, though.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Football-playing knights and submarines\u2026 what a place! But unfortunately, it was just a thousand year-old boat which was somehow preserved in the Loch. It is in the national museum of Scotland now. You see, not much happens in the village, but things like that are a talking point for years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.wixstatic.com\/media\/dd22cb_d16eaa6dc084495fb16d3e04c453218b~mv2.jpg\" alt=\"\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"> <strong>I can imagine that. You say that not a lot is happening there, but I have to admit that from afar, Beeswing really looks like a special place.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It actually is quite special. Well, a lot of places around here are, because they are not really being touched by tourism. No one really goes down to the southwest of Scotland. They either go north, were the highlands are, or to the Glasgow and Edinburgh area. But there are things about it that are really special. There is a community which cares for disabled people. I think it\u2019s really sweet. They also make amazing food there. And also you\u2019ve got forests, you\u2019ve got hills, and you\u2019ve got water, the Loch. And the sea is really nearby as well. It\u2019s really nice, a kind of magical location, I think. But of course, I grew up there, so I\u2019m probably biased.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>So how did you get from climbing trees in a place like this to study arts? The usual clich\u00e9 is that for people in villages, arts are not very high up on the list of priorities.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I don\u2019t know, actually. My best friend from the village is a carpenter, and another one is a brewer, he makes beer. Actually, there is something artistic about them, if you look at it from a funny angle. But I don&#8217;t know\u2026 maybe there were some weird movies on TV? I remember that there was a Jodorowsky film on TV, and that kind of changed my way of thinking about things. That things just can be really weird. There used to be some really late-night, kind of druggy TV-shows which I used to like as well. For example, when I was a kid, about six years old, Twin Peaks was on TV. I used to watch that with my mum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">On top of that, it might sound a bit clich\u00e9, but I have always been creative, making things. I showed a talent for it in high-school, and I passed everything pretty easily, without studying, at least in terms of art. After high-school, I first went off to study English literature. But then I realized that I was not going to get a job studying this\u2026 so I might as well study something that I enjoy. And not get a job. [laughs] So I swapped courses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Ultimately, I completely gave up on my initial studies, took a timeout to earn some money, and started studying art. I was sure that I would never get a job studying that\u2026 But honestly, I really don\u2019t call myself an artist by any means. I am just making things, really. Things which I have not seen before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>At Indiestatik, Chris Priestman called what you do \u201cbricolage\u201d. I think that\u2019s a good word.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yes, I like the word, too. They are quite insightful on Indiestatik.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>I actually discovered you on the site. In a feature called \u201cWho is the next Cactus?\u201d.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">    That one was just a bit silly. I don\u2019t think that I am doing the same thing as the other people in that article. I mean, I don\u2019t mean to be pejorative or negative towards what they are doing. I think that it\u2019s really fun and expressive. That said\u2026 they have got a kind of boyishness to their work, and that\u2019s actually a side I sometimes worry about. That anti-intellectual attitude. I can\u2019t be bothered with that, really.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>There is also that label out there, \u201cWeird Games\u201d, that is applied to all of you. I think I first came across the word describing games by theCatamites. But it\u2019s truly a somewhat strange idea to take the weirdness as the defining characteristic of a genre.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">    It\u2019s pathetic, really. As soon as you put labels on things, you start to negate them. You start to say: \u201cOh, I know what that is.\u201d But that does just not work at all. Even though I think that theCatamites is fantastic. I don\u2019t think that what he is doing is anti-intellectual at all. I\u2019m a big fan of his.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.wixstatic.com\/media\/dd22cb_282aafa8c88e47fe9070d4ba258cd902~mv2.png\" alt=\"\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"> <strong>At least superficially, there are clear parallels between what you are doing and what he is doing\u2026 like that aspect of \u201cbricolage\u201d, where both of you are working with your hands and materials &#8212; clay, cardboard, and so on &#8212; that show their materiality even in digital form.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That\u2019s true. He is an influence on a lot of young indie developers, like myself. He has actually written about my stuff in his A1reviews. He seems to be a fan, even though he says that he does not really play videogames. It\u2019s nice to think that he has tried my stuff, though.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>That\u2019s another thing you have in common, isn\u2019t it? You said that you are not playing a lot of commercial videogames either\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That\u2019s true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>So another label used for your work, that of \u201coutsider art\u201d might be more accurate, in a very literal sense of the word?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I don\u2019t think it\u2019s outsider art, something that I really, really, like. It&#8217;s not that at all. Well, I don\u2019t know. What is certainly true, though, is that a lot of freeware games are a lot more artistic than a lot of commercial, high budget games. The latter often do not have a lot of artistic merit, at all. I\u2019m sure that most people would disagree. But even if a game like that has an artistic merit, it does not really have an artistic function, in the way that good art often has a function\u2026 a social function, for example. It just panders to the masses, kisses arse left, right, and centre, doesn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For example the new BioShock [Infinite]. They asked twenty year-old boys what should be on the cover. And what did they and up with? A man with a gun. What else could it have been? If you are just going to do what the biggest demographic wants, then you have no social function, no matter if you are computer game, a film, or what have you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Beeswing obviously is very different. And in a way, it\u2019s a project I had been waiting for. I mean, in so many art forms, the village is such an important topic and setting for stories. So it\u2019s all the more surprising that it\u2019s really rare that a videogame chooses a village as its setting.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I never really thought about it, but that\u2019s a good point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Do you know why that is?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It\u2019s probably the same thing that we just talked about\u2026 that idea of trying to please everyone. There\u2019s that silly idea that people think they want BIG STORIES, they want \u201cepic\u201d. Somehow I think that everyone just fooled themselves into thinking that\u2026 But whatever way you put it, a village really can\u2019t be epic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But why do YOU think that villages are rarely depicted in games?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>I actually have several theories. What you are saying is surely one of them. Another one comes from something that Robert Sherman said. He argued that the \u201cHero\u2019s Journey\u201d is so important for videogames because it provides them with a clear structure. It\u2019s much more difficult to tell stories that are true to life, because reality is often messy, and it\u2019s more difficult to extract a straight narrative from that. The \u201cHero\u2019s Journey\u201d is, literally, straightforward: People moving through space, having life-changing experiences. It\u2019s something that videogames are good at, much better than the more introspective perspective that is at the heart of stories set in villages.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Actually, what you say might be a problem for Beeswing. I mean, sure, it\u2019s a Zelda-like setting, but the stories in the game are real stories. For example, one of the neighbours suffers from a kind of social anxiety, which is a lot more common than almost anyone expects. One in ten women will have social anxiety-problems\u2026 that is an incredibly amount of people. But what is the answer to this? There is a clear problem there, but how do find a solution to that? Should you really make a game where you find a magic potion to solve social anxiety? A lot of people would like that, probably. But I\u2019m afraid; I\u2019m not going to do that. [laughs]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>I know that might sound bizarre in light of the unusual settings and characters you often depict in your work, but still: Would you call your games more \u201crealistic\u201d than what a lot of games are trying to achieve? Maybe you could even use the word \u201cMagical Realism\u201d? There&#8217;s another label for you!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Someone actually used the word \u201cMagical Realism\u201d to describe Beeswing, but it\u2019s not really fitting. Not that I am not interested in it.  Well, let\u2019s say that I just aim to represent things visually, aurally, and with narrative, and kind of illustrate the same thing through all my games. I just don\u2019t quite know what that thing is. That\u2019s up to the person interfacing with my work to say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That said, I think that there are a variety of themes in Beeswing, childhood as the most important one of them. I don\u2019t know, do you have Calvin &amp; Hobbes in German? Of course, that\u2019s far better than anything I will ever make, but I\u2019m definitely borrowing that kind of childishness, except with an informed viewpoint. Well, lots of people use it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>It&#8217;s at the heart of the Picaresque novel, for example.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yes, that kind of thing. But what\u2019s interesting is that it\u2019s not only an artistic thing. It\u2019s actually a perspective you sometimes adapt, depending on who you are talking too. Like, when you are talking to your mother, you automatically take on aspects of a child\u2026 probably more from the point of view of the mother than the child, because she is talking to \u201cher little baby\u201d. Whereas when you are talking to other people, you are forced to be an adult. I am not ignoring that. You are not constantly a child, or an adult in the game. It really depends on who you are talking to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>But the character will be a child, physically?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It is a child, but it\u2019s got a beard. [laughs]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>That absurdity there\u2026 it ties back to a thing you alluded to before when talking about Jodorowsky. A narrative making sense only on an emotional, or even a subconscious level. That\u2019s something a lot of people experience for the first time while encountering the work of David Lynch, I think. In a way, he was to me what Jodorowsky was to you: An eye-opener of sorts. You said before that you watched Twin Peaks as a child, and of course, this is also one of the most famous recent depictions of small town-life in popular culture. Is Beeswing maybe influenced by it, too? Do you let yourself inspire by the depiction of small town or village life in movies, or other art forms, at all?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Twin Peaks is not a direct inspiration, no. The other works which are inspiring it are Lewis Grassic Gibbons Sunset Song, a fantastic novel. It is about a young, intelligent girl growing up in a village, who has to decide if she wants to become an English teacher or if she is going to stay in the village as a farmer\u2019s wife. Another one is Laurie Lee\u2019s Cider With Rosie, which is a big influence to the game. And there are others\u2026 Ted Hughes, for example, and the Tolstoy-short story A Spark Neglected Burns the House. These kinds of stories, where the morality is hard, but not really clear, which is representative of real life. There is definitely a smell of morality all about the work of those writers, in a good way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>It\u2019s interesting, because these days, \u201cmorality\u201d has an almost pejorative connotation. Like morality automatically has to be something oppressive, something negative.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yes, it\u2019s that whole notion of \u201cDon\u2019t tell me what to think!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Which is kind of narrow-minded, really. I like good writers exactly because they can show me new ways of thinking. It\u2019s what good literature should do, in a way. Another writer for whom this is certainly true, and one you just mentioned, is the Scottish poet Ted Hughes. How does his influence on Beeswing shine through?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I was thinking about his poems which are representing rural things, simple things often. Like, there is one about a tractor in the rain. Or there is one about a lamb being born\u2026 it\u2019s spring time, and lambs are very cute, and they jump around, and all that\u2026 but he does not talk about any of that. He talks about the farmer having to put his hands inside the sheep and pulling the lamb out by its feet, and how the lamb is flumping on the ground in a pool of blood\u2026 you know, I used to help lambing when I was a kid. You always help out at the farms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The birth though\u2026 it is profoundly hard. It ties back to the hard morality we were talking about, in a way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>I once assisted at a cow birth myself.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There is just something incredibly profound about that. Instead of how &#8220;profound&#8221; it is to see baby animals in spring, which is comparably trivial. The birth though\u2026 it is profoundly hard. It ties back to the hard morality we were talking about, in a way. And of course, in a village, you are also closer to death\u2026 when a neighbour dies in such a place, everyone knows about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>That\u2019s actually something which is at the heart of village life, I think: That aspect of it being a very close-knit community, for better and worse. That is, to come back to videogames, something that almost all games disregard, with one sole exception\u2026 have you played, by any chance, Mother 3?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I have not, yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>It\u2019s one of the few games that border on getting what makes a village a village, I would say. (The other ones being, for different reasons, Animal Crossing and Deadly Premonition.) The whole first chapter of Mother 3 is just there to show how such a small community deals with a catastrophe in their rows.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Well, I have played the second Mother-game, Earthbound. I remember liking it; even though it has been so long that I have played it that I do not remember specific details. I do remember that I was not very fond of the combat, though. But did that game not also have a community-kind of feel to it as well?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.wixstatic.com\/media\/dd22cb_0505f3bdb5144b1f9227cffe3bae7157~mv2.png\" alt=\"\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"> <strong>It did, to a certain degree. It started in a small town, too. But that aspect is nowhere as strong as it is in Mother 3, where you have at the very beginning the death of a person, and the whole village being reunited in mourning, in trying to deal with it. Unfortunately, it moves away from that later on. The village remains important \u2013 in a way, Mother 3 is the story of this village, and how it transforms under the influence of external powers. But unfortunately, very soon, the &#8220;Hero\u2019s Journey&#8221;-structure kicks in, and you spend most of your time travelling around and fighting.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That&#8217;s a pity, really. I have to admit something to you: the whole Kickstarter thing is difficult, in a way, because you have to sell your project. So I tried to sell Beeswing on the sweet side of things, and with a focus on the storytelling. People who are familiar with my work will know that it will not just be sweet, and cute, but there are things I have to leave out for other people. I can\u2019t focus on the realistic side of it, and I did not really talk about the fact that death is a really big theme in the game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But I have to say I really don\u2019t know why death is dealt with so irresponsibly in almost all media, literature being the exception. In games, it&#8217;s reduced to mindless fighting. Whereas it is actually something that is incredibly interesting, at least for me. It\u2019s one of my favourite topics, in a way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>It\u2019s clear from your games that it is\u2026 there is a morbid streak to all of your games.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yes, they often are literally morbid. You know, morbid has got such a bad name. [laughs] It\u2019s not like I hang about graveyards, and those things\u2026 I just think that the way that Western culture deals with death is just preposterous, compared to the way African or Buddhist cultures deal with it. Here, it\u2019s all about immediate denial\u2026 I mean, I have heard people say often enough that \u201che has gone to a better place\u201d. Well, no\u2026 he\u2019s dead, you know? [laughs]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>You addressed that topic in Blues for Mittavinda and the Will You Ever Return?-games\u2026 come to think of it, in the latter, you returned to a setting you had visited once before. Which makes me wonder: are you familiar with the comic artist Gilbert Hernandez? He has been working on stories about a village, and the people living in it, for about thirty years now. The structure of this seems very well suited to the topic, I think: You start with the setting, the village, and then you build stories around that. This way, you are free to add stories over time, without losing your focus. You are deepening the narrative with each story you tell. Could you imagine doing something similar with Beeswing?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I would love to do that. I just love to tell people\u2019s stories, really. There\u2019s that Hedda Gabler-idea that your story is not complete until your death. That\u2019s why an autobiography can never really tell your own story. Of course, I am not telling my own story. I am telling the stories of the people who have inspired my life\u2019s story, these people in the village, and the seminal moments in our relationships with each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But it\u2019s funny that you should be saying that. I mean, the Kickstarter campaign is not even finished yet, and I already have got more than the money I was asking for. Of course, I have ideas of what I will do with the additional money\u2026 but I do not want to communicate stretch goals. I don\u2019t really want to ask people about more money. I know that every other person does this on Kickstarter, but I\u2019m not every other person. That attitude seems strange to me. \u201cYes, we have made 50\u2019000 dollars, but if you give us 25\u2019000 more, we will\u2026\u201d I mean, fuck off! That\u2019s just greedy, isn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>There is also that somewhat absurd moment in some campaigns, when the interest has exceeded all expectation, and you feel that the developers are just running out of ideas of what to promise. Why can\u2019t they just promise: \u201cWe will make a better game with your money\u201d? Or even: \u201cWe can make another game with it\u201d?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Absolutely. Just the other day, I was looking at the campaign, and I was thinking: \u201cGosh, it\u2019s really going well. More than 200 people are interested in this. If it goes on like that, maybe I could do another one.\u201d And I was thinking about what I would be able to do with a second one\u2026 exactly what you said: I could gather together some more stories. And I was thinking. \u201cGosh, that would be so nice\u2026 to be able to meet more people, hear their story, and share them with everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But, honestly, I&#8217;m incredibly thankful that people are considering supporting my work at all. I mean, I\u2019m just so overwhelmed that it has come to something. It\u2019s just\u2026 very touching. Very moving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Thanks for your time!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">All the games Jack made so far can be <a href=\"http:\/\/gamejolt.com\/profile\/jack-spinoza\/16561\/\">downloaded and played for free<\/a>. Beeswing <a href=\"http:\/\/jackspinoza.itch.io\/beeswing\">has been released<\/a>, and it&#8217;s lovely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Dieses Interview erschien urspr\u00fcnglich <a href=\"http:\/\/videogametourism.at\/content\/i-am-telling-stories-people-who-have-inspired-my-lifes-story-interview-jack-king-spooner\">auf Videogame Tourism<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">  <br>\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p> INTERVIEW with Jack King-Spooner on rural life, poetry, games, knights and sub-marines. Jack King-Spooner is one of the more interesting indie developers out there: His games, while made with simple tools like Adventure Games Studio, are a fascinating pastiche of different techniques, tackling topics that are rarely addressed in games. I talked to him during the Kickstarter campaign for Beeswing, a game that focusses on the small Scottish village King-Spooner grew up in, the people living in it<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":316,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-games","category-literatur"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gotohaneda.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gotohaneda.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gotohaneda.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gotohaneda.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gotohaneda.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=267"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/gotohaneda.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":740,"href":"https:\/\/gotohaneda.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267\/revisions\/740"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gotohaneda.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gotohaneda.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gotohaneda.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gotohaneda.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}