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At the DevGAMM event in Madeira, acclaimed Polish science-fiction author Jacek Dukaj caught up with us to discuss narrative, collaborative storytelling, and how Dukaj Games is transforming The Cathedral and other concepts from his work into interactive video game experiences.
"Hi Gamereactor friends, I'm at the Madeira Games Summit in the beautiful Madeira and I'm here joined by Jacek, who's just been part of a fireside chat at the venue. Which were the main topics you guys discussed? You're all into narrative of course, you're a writer, you're now a video game developer, so which would you say was the takeaway from this chat you just had on stage? Well so far everyone in gaming seems to be focused very much on storytelling in a linear traditional way and my partner discussion was an example of this approach to storytelling in games. I'm more a systemic player, I want open words, as much freedom as possible for players to create stories for themselves, so this was this opposition that played out throughout the whole conversation and I think both approaches will be given a new tools to go further in both directions. I mean storytelling will be made cheaper and easier in a cinema-like style thanks to AI and new tools that will be given with AI and thanks to AI and also this kind of approach that I prefer when you give freedom to players and they are creating stories for themselves, interaction with environment, you know, emergent storytelling and so on. It also will be made possible to achieve with much smaller budgets and on a smaller scale, so we'll see how it plays out. Why I am in the second camp? I think it's mostly because I think it's what makes games unique, whereas linear storytelling can be produced for movies, in literature and so on. Only in games you can get this type of freedom, this type of agency, so this is the thing that makes games unique."
"All right, fantastic. Talking about narrative that has been designed beforehand and narrative that can change, as you just said, for players, what can we expect in terms of the cathedral and the adaptation if you want to give players freedom and you're going to change the narrative or if we can expect it to be real, really to the letter, coming from your universe? This still will be quite a traditional and small game, but it's not focused so much about the story, about going from point A to point B, as much about atmosphere, emotions, aesthetics, ideas."
"So you are given a path, a set of tasks, a set of places to go through, to live through, in order for something to you as a player to happen to you in your mind, in your emotions, in the way you look at the world. This is the goal. Not in our storytelling per se, as you have a set of events, conversations, confrontations and so on, but a set of much more diffused, soft experiences delivered thanks to traditional game mechanics. For those who are not into the universe and the lore you created, which would you say is the main message you wanted to convey with the novel? What is unique about Cathedral is that it is set up as a mostly traditional science fiction story, which means it happens in space, there is some futuristic technology involved, but everything that is unique to the story involves things that are connected with religion, with metaphysics, with things that are really not so simple to talk about. You cannot really quantify them, you cannot put them into numbers. So they are from different dimensions, from different types of literature. So usually I interwove two completely different realms of literature, realms of culture, put one into another and see how they play with each other."
"And in this case it's metaphysics, religion against the backdrop of hard science fiction, when everything has to be explained, put into scientific terms and so on. So in this case it is a deep space setting, a swarm of planetoids and on one of them this cathedral grows, which is based not on bricks, mortar, but on nanotechnology, which goes slightly awry, so it cannot be predicted, solved by mathematical simulation. It surprises everyone, it grows in an unpredictable way and the cathedral itself is more like organism than building and was under an impression of Sagrada Familia by Gaudi when I was writing it. So it's this kind of aesthetics."
"It's very organic.
So the technology, fictional technology, which I use in the story is the basis of much of the world and the devices used in story and in the game. This crystallogen, in English translation, zywokrys in Polish, which is kind of nano-organic matter with the infusion of kerosene in it. So in this kind of environment you get very strange aesthetics, very strange climate and also a story on one character that has to go to different stages of grief, different stages of redemption and then achieve some peace of mind at the end."
"So it's not extremely dystopian, is it? A little bit? But then there is hope, it's positive, is it?
No, it's not dystopian at all.
So this is not the spectrum in which we are creating this story, not utopia, dystopia. It's more like emotional, aesthetical, somewhat metaphysical experience."
"That's for the cathedral. If I'm correct, from that work you also want to do a little spin-off of a game as a puzzle, if I'm correct? And then there are two other books?
We are testing it right now, if it can be turned into a mobile game, something very simple, cheap.
We are at the stage of mathematical prototype. Using this crystallogen I mentioned as a building block and making something like an interactive puzzle. You are the one that sets the initial terms for this crystallogen structure to grow. And we'll see how well it can be created, shaped, designed as a game."
"As a game. Perhaps it can be an accompanying game to the other game about the cathedral.
But we don't want to realize it before the cathedral. The cathedral should set up the stage, the world, the lore for it.
All right. What drove you to move from a writer, a static writer, to a sort of a dynamic storyteller with video games? And which other two works are you adapting into video games?
So, I was a player of games from my childhood. So, there was not a single point of transition."
"I always played games and was fascinated by the games as a new form of culture, new form of art.
So, even in my early writings there is a lot of things that can be described as a world building based on the set of rules taken from games. So, you treat the whole world as a kind of a game.
You set up those rules. You look in what way it will develop. What kind of peculiar features it has. So, I've written something that was titled Irehare, novella, short novel, that was published, I think, 10 years before Matrix and it's basically the Matrix in different aesthetics. And also later on I published a novel, Line of Resistance, which is more like a theoretical approach to this problem, mainly asking yourself in what way you can treat your whole life as a game. Can you gamify the whole world of human experiences?
I will be going in this direction anyway. What is the end game then? So, these things interested me basically my whole life. So, I'm no stranger to games as a new form of culture and at some point there were so many proposals directed at me like we want to make game out of this, out of this."
"Eventually I decided it's better to make them myself than to give the power of creation to other people and don't control the end result. That would be dystopian. Okay, final one.
Your world of sci-fi you have just defined or described. We've enjoyed other Polish sci-fi works as of late, such as Cyberpunk or Chronos. What will you say is special about you guys in Poland to tell these stories and what makes you pretty different? There is some tone to it, there is some, I cannot point my finger on it, there is something you guys have with science fiction that conveys us differently. What would you say is the ingredient? I think there are two main reasons. One is that we had a very strong literary movement in 70s and 80s called sociological science fiction. You have to remember it was still during the communist era. So, it was written under censorship and basically all of this was used as a pretext of deep sociological critique of communist system. Because it was possible to write science fiction critiquing communist role, but not so-called serious literature, because censors didn't really focus on science fiction. So, a lot of really good works drawing from the tradition of Orwell, Zamiatin, all those big creation of dystopia."
"They laid the foundations for later generations of Polish science fiction writers, also game designers, because those that set up the biggest, most successful Polish game dev companies, they are all from this generation that was raised on those science fiction novels. So, they have it in their DNA. So, this is the way that something like Polish school of science fiction games came to be."
"That's extremely interesting to me. So, I'm looking forward to learning more about all your fiction. I will read The Cathedral and then I will be ready to play again. Another book of mine was released in English translation recently, Eyes. I don't know if you have time to read it, because it's the longest novel of mine, but at least it's available in English. Now you know? All right, I'm looking forward to traveling to The Cathedral. So, thank you so much for your time Jacek."
