Magical Girls X Hollows - An Experiment

I’ve had a weird couple of months. Mainly because I’ve been working on [SECRET UNANNOUNCED PROJECTS] that I can’t tell you about.

COME AT ME, SONY INTERACTIVE LLC

I’m not unused to NDAs, given my career before games design - back in my mid-twenties I was a games journalist for a bit. I’m very glad that I did it fifteen years ago instead of right now, because aside from more free games than I knew what to do with, the main upside of the job was being wined and dined by keen PRs who had worked out that for the low cost of six beers poured directly into one dork they could almost guarantee a decent preview article.

Most previews and reviews came with an NDA to sign, especially if I was dealing with an international company. I heard that Rockstar’s contracts are the most punishing, and bear in mind this was fifteen years ago now, so presumably these days they just inject a miniature explosive into your carotid artery that will detonate if you award GTA 6 anything other than a perfect score and be done with it.

My favourite one, and I’m going to break it now so strap in, was for the Tomb Raider reboot (also called Tomb Raider) released in 2013. It’s the one where you got to see Laura Croft’s first kill in a cutscene (emotive! Harrowing! Foundational!) and her subsequent one hundred and fifty-odd kills during normal gameplay (neutral! Unremarked-upon! Basically Fine!), and also the one where the lovingly-rendered protagonist was brutally torn to shreds in such a wide variety of ways that it started to feel a bit weird. 

There is a light supernatural undertone in the game, especially towards the end, which is common in your Tombs Raider and your Indianas Jones and your Uncharteds: turns out that there’s like, oh, ten percent wizard behind everything. Monstrous blue guys with ancient grenade launchers in a city of gold. A cult to the mother goddess in the mountains of somewhere or other. Only The Penitent Man May Pass. You get it. 

If I ever mention that there is a light supernatural undertone in the game, like I did in that previous paragraph, then in accordance with the document I signed thirteen years ago I am legally obligated to pay Sony Interactive LLC to sue me into the fucking ground. Most other companies at least had the decency to pay for the lawsuit themselves, but Sony? If I said that maybe a ghost was there? Or that you opened a door with a glowing rune instead of a keycard? All my money gone.

Ridiculous business. Given the spread of information about Tomb Raider (2013) available on the internet since its release, I have to assume that Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC are no longer interested in taking the shirt off my back because I at any point suggested a witch may have been involved.

But we’ll see. If next month’s post is 12 Ways Astrobot Is Better Than Mario, you’ll know. 

(I wrote this quite good piece about the game later that year for The Average Gamer where I lauded Rhianna Pratchett’s narrative design in, perhaps, quite a verbose trying-to-prove-myself sort of way.

I enjoyed writing for The Average Gamer - the editor, Debbie, would accept basically any pitch I flung overarm in her direction and she paid okay, too. My other articles there include Guns Don’t Kill People, Cigarettes Do (an exploration into the relative risks and rewards of smoking in video games) and Adam Jensen - Death Vendor (a portrait of ennui through the medium of hucking fully-stocked vending machines at unsuspecting corporate security guards))

I COULDN’T POSSIBLY SAY

There’s something quite cool, I think - or rather, I think that other people seem to think there’s something quite cool - about not being able to mention what you’re working on, but that you ARE working on it. It establishes an immediate in-group and out-group. It lets the listener know that there’s something above them, and they’ll be granted knowledge when capital deems it most profitable.

Personally, I hate it. (You could probably tell that from the previous paragraph.)

Running off dopamine alone, the bit of my job I enjoy most is telling other people about half-finished things I have written. Less than half. Quarter-finished. One-sixteenth complete. Ideally just the sell at the top and none of the hard work of mechanising it. Maybe just the name and the tagline. If it’s great, I’m a genius, and if someone finds fault with it, well, it’s not done yet is it so reel yer fucking neck in, eh? 

But as RRD grows ever-larger - there are eleven of us right now, bumping around the virtual office like a bunch of chubby bees in a modem - the dreaded serpent of Oversight looms over every discussion. We’ve drawn the attention of outside interests, eager to work with us (and who, I must be clear, we are eager to work with) and suddenly we’ve got Stakeholders that don’t work with us and/or who maybe even don’t understand what we do involved, wedging their greasy fingers reckon-wise in my otherwise pristine and perfect work. 

Reader: I am working on a game for a charity. I can’t say which one yet and I don’t one hundred percent know why I can’t. People keep using phrases like “keep the powder dry,” which I believe is an attempt to tell me to shut the fuck up about something but in an exciting way that evokes muskets or cocaine or, I dunno, Angel Delight. Many thrilling powders to consider. 

Similarly, during the last days of September we finished a collaboration with another company on a standalone product that unites one thing of ours and one thing of theirs in what I hope is a neat combination. I believe I am not allowed to mention specifics on what our thing is and what their thing is for just over three weeks. And it’s printing now, as I type! 

(You can’t tell, but I just cut a page of text from this essay whinging about an attempt at a licensed project we did last year that frustratingly went nowhere because, you know, dry powder.) 

I’m tired of it. I like being able to tell people about what I’m doing. All of this is to say that: I’ve had one hand tied behind my back when it comes to talking about my work for a while now, and I’m grumpy about it, so I’m going to get in trouble by talking about a Magical Girls X Hollows game I’ve been writing in my spare time that I have no plan for.