This is an audio transcript of the Life and Art from FT Weekend podcast episode: ‘Culture chat — why writers love video games, with Naomi Alderman’
Lilah Raptopoulos
Welcome to Life and Art from FT Weekend. I’m Lilah Raptopoulos, and this is our Friday chat show. Today we are talking for the first time about a video game. We’ve chosen the game What Remains of Edith Finch, which was released in 2017 by Giant Sparrow and is considered a modern indie classic. The game is a walk-through that follows a character named Edith Finch, who has been given a key to her Gothic childhood home by her mother. Her family, the Finch family, all died too young and presumed to be cursed and are nicknamed the unluckiest family in America. After every death or disappearance, their bedrooms were locked up and kept preserved inside the house. So Edith is back to find out what happened to them.
[AUDIO CLIP FROM ‘WHAT REMAINS OF EDITH FINCH’ PLAYING]
Lilah Raptopoulos
It’s been seven years since this game has been released, and it’s still looked at as a model for what storytelling games can do. So we’re excited to talk about that and also what all games can do that other forms of storytelling can’t. So let’s get into it. I’m here in New York. I have two very special guests with me today, both in London. We have our friend and the FT’s award-winning UK political columnist, Stephen Bush. Stephen writes the excellent newsletter Inside Politics and is a lover of games. Welcome, Stephen.
Stephen Bush
Thanks so much for having me on again.
Lilah Raptopoulos
So good to have you here. We also have the novelist and storyteller Naomi Alderman with us. You may know Naomi’s novel, The Power, about what would happen if women developed the power to hurt and kill people with their fingertips. Her most recent novel is The Future, about saving the world from evil tech giants. And Naomi is a game developer herself who created the popular running game Zombies, Run!, among others. Naomi, it’s such a thrill to have you here. Welcome.
Naomi Alderman
Delightful to be here. Thank you so much.
Lilah Raptopoulos
OK, so first off, what did we think? Did we enjoy this game? Did you both know about this game already? Naomi?
Naomi Alderman
Well, I did know about it. I hadn’t played it before you asked me to. I had a sort of idea that it was something a little bit, maybe creepy or disturbing. And indeed, at various points during playing this game, I did say out loud, what a horrible game, which is not necessarily to say that I didn’t enjoy it, but that every single character that you play dies. And obviously we can get into the ways in which that’s a comment on and a playfulness with what happens in games, which is that you tend to die a lot. That’s a normal experience of playing games. And yet at the same time, if you are somebody who might be disturbed by playing a baby that drowns in a bath, you know, maybe steer clear of this one.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Stephen, what about you? How did you feel about the game?
Stephen Bush
Yeah. So I played this one when it came out, I think. And the thing which was nice is I forgot, I had forgotten how much I’d forgotten about it, if that makes sense. I did very much enjoy it. I mean, as a teenager, I had a gothy phase, you know, the Lemony Snicket and Roald Dahl’s adult short stories. And it has that same kind of enchanting nastiness to it, where your character is trying to solve a mystery and the things that are happening are kind of grimmer and darker and more depressing as you go. And yeah, I very much enjoyed it in that spirit.
[AUDIO CLIP FROM ‘WHAT REMAINS OF EDITH FINCH’ PLAYING]
Lilah Raptopoulos
I have to admit to both of you that as you’re both experienced gamers, but I’m a very inexperienced gamer, so there are a lot of things that I was doing in that game that I thought, is this how games are? Or is this unique to this game?
Naomi Alderman
I’m an experienced gamer, but I’m a bad gamer and I’m happy to hold my hands up to it. I’m extremely dyspraxic. I have very poor reflexes and often have to have a YouTube video sitting next to me to show me what to do, and I think that’s a completely legit way to play a game.
Lilah Raptopoulos
OK, thank you. Great.
Stephen Bush
Similarly, I play a lot on what they sometimes call casual or sometimes narrative on Baldur’s Gate 3, what they call Explorer Mode.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. All of this makes me feel better about the fact that I spent a lot of time just walking into walls and trying to get keys and locks and going the wrong way for way too long, and then spending two minutes walking back to where I came from.
Naomi Alderman
Yeah, it’s very normal.
Lilah Raptopoulos
OK. Great.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
So the way the game works, you follow what you think is Edith, the narrator, as she’s walking through this house. So you’re playing as her initially, and then when you go into each bedroom, each bedroom is sort of a shrine to one of the family members that’s died. Within these little shrines, you find a book or a letter or a comic book that kind of tells the story of the family member who died. And so as you’re reading it, you sort of enter into their point of view and become them and then basically live out their final moments and inevitably die in every one of them. So you’re just dying over and over again.
Naomi Alderman
Just dying over and over again. But in various different genres.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. And because I’m a novice and you’re both experts, I really wanted to ask you about, like, what devices were happening to make me feel so emotional. My experience as I was playing was that there was this tension between me being the character with stuff happening to me, and me feeling like I had some autonomy in this world that had been created, but also knowing that I really didn’t have any autonomy. There was one direction the story could go. I actually had to keep killing myself, and I don’t know, that really worked on me. It really made me feel a lot of emotions that I don’t feel when I’m reading. So I’m curious what was happening? Like, what was the game doing to me in that moment?
Stephen Bush
Yeah. So what I think is interesting — and I’m going to go first partly because I want Naomi’s sort of professional view, having, you know, done both these mediums of fiction — what I think it, because in some ways it is a routine horror story of the kind we’ve described where you go like, why doesn’t she just leave? But what this game successfully does is if this were a short story, the thing that the novelist would have to do is get the part of the reader’s brain which goes, why doesn’t she just leave, to shut up. But the thing that the device of the video game allows the storyteller to do is you have the controller, you’re interested in it. The question of why don’t I just leave never occurs to you. And I think part of that is because ultimately, with a novel, there are two people present: the novelist and whatever baggage the reader brings with them. And then with different mediums, whether it’s film or radio, you kind of add more and more variables. And for good and for ill, the thing that a video game can do that no other medium can do is make the player complicit. But that also means it can sometimes get away with plot holes that I think you otherwise wouldn’t in any other media.
Naomi Alderman
Yeah, I think that’s obviously true. What I’ve written down here on my notebook is complicity. That is absolutely what video games can do, which no other genre can really do as well. So what you’re describing, that feeling of, oh, it feels like it’s happening to me, that is, but somehow neurologically, you move a little controller, a figure moves on the screen and you go, oh, that’s me. And you don’t need . . . the figure could be a little white square, but if you can control it, like you can control your arms and your legs, then that’s you. You recognise it as you. And this . . . it means that there’s a kind of intensity to video game storytelling, which can be more like a story in a dream where when you have a dream, you know, in the dream it feels so intense and overwhelming, oh my God, I’m in the action story. Oh, everything’s happening. And then you wake up and you go, oh, that was a dream in which I climbed over a wall. But it feels much more intense if you’re actually doing it, if it feels like really you.
So I think that’s right, that video games get away with some things that otherwise, I mean, I’m going to get myself in trouble here. I, you know, I had a very good time playing Red Dead Redemption. However, I think the main storyline in that if you were to turn that into a movie, you’d have to get some good writers in to create some more story, because there’s not much to it. The basic story of it is you’re trying to get home to your wife, and that’s all. That’s fine, but you probably need at least another 30 things to turn that into an actual movie.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Can I . . . yeah, could I just jump in here and ask you, so this game is considered an indie game and a visual novel, and it has all these names. And I’d love for you to help put it in context of where it fits in within the universe of games like somewhere between Tetris and Red Dead Redemption 2. You’ve talked about Red Dead Redemption. There’s also Grand Theft Auto. There’s The Last of Us, which had a TV adaptation recently. What’s the difference between those and a game like Edith Finch?
Naomi Alderman
OK, so the thing to know is the difference, I think, between AAA and indie games. So, AAA games tend to be enormous-budget games made by huge studios. They’re generally made for the big consoles. So either for PlayStation or for Xbox. They will have 40, 50, 60 hours of gameplay in there. And they tend these days to be trying to do everything. They’ll have one storyline that you can follow, but also lots of other things that you can go and do. And they tend to be very high budget and you buy them for, I don’t know, £60, £70, £80.
Since the point came that people were able to download a game via the internet, you didn’t need to get it into shops, since then, there’s been a really interesting development of indie, independent games, which aren’t so high-budget, can sometimes be made by just one person or a small team, and are often doing incredibly interesting artistic things. So a recent game is called Pentiment. It’s a game about medieval manuscripts. It’s done extremely well. The other thing that listeners may not be aware of is that video games are an enormous industry. They are the largest entertainment industry in the world and still growing. You know, music and certainly novels absolutely cannot rival video games in any way. And so the size of that industry means that there’s room for lots of interesting, independent things to flower and to do very well financially.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah, yeah. I have this crazy stat, which is that the worldwide gaming industry is almost worth more now than the books and film industries combined. And for context, gaming’s valuation is 280bn and the fiction market is 11bn.
Stephen Bush
Yeah, I think so. So basically the thing which is again interesting about them from a management perspective, right, is that your AAA game, partly because it’s so expensive, essentially has to have the kind of epic scope and visuals of a blockbuster movie. It has to work in a way that when I pick it up at the end of a long day and it goes and, OK, yes, I can still follow it. Whereas, most indie stuff is consciously intended to be, if not completed in a sitting.
Naomi Alderman
In a weekend.
Stephen Bush
In a weekend, yeah.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Right, right. Edith Finch was about three hours for me.
Stephen Bush
Yeah, right. And partly because of their price, but also because sometimes of what the artist wants to achieve, they are consciously one and done. So, but those are essentially, I think, kind of the way to think about it as a different type of storytelling.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Lilah Raptopoulos
OK. I want to ask you both for the last part of our conversation, I’d love to kind of zoom out and talk about what games can teach us about storytelling. We’ve touched on this, but Naomi, I wanted to ask you. You know, I feel like you’re a storyteller that’s really always playing with form. Your novel The Power made me imagine what it would be like if I had the power. As in, like, more physical strength than men. Sometimes I’m sure many women tell you this, but I use that phrase in scenarios where I feel like a man is afraid of me. A lot of women do say like, I feel like I had the power. You made a podcast in 2018 called The Walk. That’s a podcast that really feels like a video game. I just feel like you’re very good at putting us in a point of view. And playing Edith Finch made me want to ask you what you’re doing and what you think other forms of storytelling can learn from video games?
Naomi Alderman
I am very interested in worlds, and that is also something that games can do in a way that is more difficult for novels. So I suppose something about making games has also made me feel quite confident that I know how to build a world that seals around you, whether the water goes over the top of your head and you’re there. And I’m very interested in giving readers that type of experience. You know, I’m thrilled that people, readers of the book, feel what it’s like to have a skein and can and as if they could actually electrocute people because, yeah, I love to give a reader that experience. I think if asked what you can . . . what I’ve learned from games that I’ve taken to novels, games must leave room for the player. It’s a game. A game is nothing if there isn’t room for the player to have to do things in order to complete the story. And I — I think — tend to be a writer who would really love to be, as anyone was reading the book, looking over their shoulder, going, have you got that bit? Did you understand that? Can I explain it to you more? And so I think on that level, games have been a very good discipline for me to go, no, no, no, they’re going to make of it what they make of it. It’s OK for somebody to play your game and not finish it, or get halfway through, or do something radically different than what you expected. And to just take my hand off the steering wheel a bit there, I think, that’s been very, very useful.
Lilah Raptopoulos
That’s so interesting. Stephen, you’re an avid gamer and reader, and also you write non-fiction as a journalist. I’d love to know how you think games like Edith Finch could influence other forms of storytelling, like writing.
Stephen Bush
Yeah. So I think the thing which is distinctly interesting about video games is one, there are two things that the author, in its broadest sense, can’t control. The first is that they can’t control what order . . . well, actually, and this is one of the things which makes Edith Finch slightly atypical. And broadly speaking, you do play it through in a certain order, right? We might have all been sitting in different places and felt different responses to it. But what makes a lot of video games such interesting ways of telling a story is that even though as you play through it, you discover the same information about someone because you discover it in a different order, the way that you feel about the characters is different. If we think about Little Women, right? Like if the order that we discover things about Jo and (inaudible) would change how we would feel about those characters. And I think that’s the thing is that I think the thing . . . in an odd way, the thing which is useful for anyone in any creative endeavour . . . so I include, you know, any of us who write journalistic features in this, is the thing that a game designer has to let go of a lot of the time, in some ways is the controlled release of information, because the order the player discovers things will be different unless it’s a very, very linear gaming experience. Whereas broadly speaking, in any other form of storytelling, the order in which you chuck information at the viewer, the reader, the listener is your choice. And that is the thing which makes it such a fun medium to think about as well, is because it involves a lot of control.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Mm-hmm. Does it . . . does anything about it inform how you write features? Or I mean, of course, we . . . it’s not like we can let go of that control. There’s only one way, one direction people read. But does it make you play a little with writing?
Stephen Bush
Yeah, I think it does. One, it makes me think about perspectives. I think it’s a useful discipline to start from the perspective of OK, to take the election that is taking up all of my working hours. Like, you know, like if I am playing through this game as Rishi Sunak and I don’t have an earlier save I can load be like, can I go back and not lose to Liz Truss, I have to sit and be like, OK, what are the . . . what is the perspective he is bringing to it? And as a discipline, I find that very helpful.
Lilah Raptopoulos
That’s a great point. Stephen and Naomi, I can ask you questions forever. Please come back. Thank you so much. We will be back in just a minute for More or Less.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Lilah Raptopoulos
Welcome back for More or Less, the part of the show where each guest says something they want to see more of or less of in culture. Stephen, what do you have?
Stephen Bush
So I’m actually gonna go with something quite lowbrow. I mean, I would both like to see more of the Planet of the Apes films. I think they are far and away the sort of best and most intelligent of the mainstream US blockbusters, but also actually the most recent one, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, is a rare US blockbuster, which I wish had been longer. At 2 hours and 24 minutes, yeah, I wish we could have given all of The Batman’s running time to it. Yeah, I mean, it just . . . yeah, it’s great. It has lots of unique kind of themes about, you know, freedom and difference and how we live together and . . . But I just wanted to have a little bit longer to breathe.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Cool. Naomi, what about you?
Naomi Alderman
Well, I would love a bit more Gothic body horror. I read a wonderful novel, called Leech by a writer called Hiron Ennes. It’s a novel in which, I don’t want to spoil it, but the main character is a doctor who is arriving at this cursed Gothic castle to investigate the death of the previous doctor. When the new doctor dissects the previous doctor’s eye, they find a black tendril something moving behind the previous doctor’s eye. They have . . . the previous doctor was infected with something. And how can you find out that he has been infected? And what this thing is? Are you infected already? So I really love a bit of gothic body horror. And really, that is one of those novels which messed me up reading novels for about a week after which is unusual for me because I just couldn’t think of anything that I would enjoy reading more.
Lilah Raptopoulos
OK. Well, then we have to read it. You heard of it here first. That sounds incredible. Mine is also a more. And I would be curious what you both think too. It’s more rereading. This is something that I don’t do nearly enough, but the other day I picked up Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott, this classic book on writing. I first read it maybe 15 years ago, and rereading it was nuts. I just remembered almost nothing from the book. It was like a whole new book. Her voice was very familiar, but totally new experience reading it now. I also reread the novel The Bastard of Istanbul this year by Elif Shafak. Also excellent. And so, yeah, that’s my more. It’s easy to feel pressure to always pick up something new, but reread. Don’t forget your old friends once in a while.
Naomi Alderman
I absolutely agree with that. I grew up rereading a lot, partly because I was a very orthodox Jew, and at a certain point on a Saturday, you’ve just run out of books in the house and you’ve got to reread something that you’ve read before. And you always find something new. And I actually I’ve been thinking to myself, oh, maybe I can just say to myself that one or two months of the year are just rereading months. Yeah, in a great book, there’s always more to find.
Lilah Raptopoulos
That’s a great idea. Yeah.
Stephen Bush
The nice thing about elections, in addition to the fact that, you know, we’re lucky to have them and, you know, most people out of the history in the world, et cetera, et cetera, is that because I’ve got quite a lot on I return to things that I know I will like. And you know, so for example, I’m rereading Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and you’re like oh there’s so much in this. And the nice thing is because elections happen fairly regularly, if we’re lucky, you return to them at discrete intervals. And because you are different, they are different.
Naomi Alderman
Yes, yes.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Yes. Naomi and Stephen, thank you so much. This was just such a pleasure of ours to have you. Please come back.
Naomi Alderman
This was a real treat. Thank you so much.
Stephen Bush
Thank you.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Lilah Raptopoulos
That’s the show. Thank you for listening to Life and Art from FT Weekend. If this is your first time listening, go ahead and subscribe. We publish Mondays and Fridays and we’re so happy to have you. And if you’re a longtime listener, please do share this with a friend who you think might like it. That really helps support the show. As usual, there are tons of relevant links in the show notes, including Naomi and Stephen’s recommendations and places to find them on the internet. And also in the show notes are ways to stay in touch with me on email and on Instagram.
I’m Lilah Raptopoulos and here’s our talented team. Katya Kumkova is our senior producer. Lulu Smyth is our producer. Our sound engineers are Breen Turner and Sam Giovinco, with original music by Metaphor Music. Topher Forhecz is our executive producer and our global head of audio is Cheryl Brumley. Have a wonderful weekend and we’ll find each other again on Monday.
