Preface
Life is made up of many small moments. You are born, you grow, you meet people, you go your separate ways, you fall in love, make a family, and you die. Such events are major milestones for an individual and those around them, yet they won’t be chiseled in history. That’s often why games are themed around major world events, like the survival of mankind or war–to provide an escape from the tedious and ordinary aspects of life.
But is this really the case? Does discovery and surprise not exist in our everyday lives? Is an individual’s life story not worthy of being told? Is everything surrounding you right now completely irrelevant, isolated, and uninteresting to anyone but you?
There is proof to the contrary, and that proof is Unpacking.
At first glance, Unpacking appears to depict an ordinary woman moving abodes. You open boxes, take out the clothing and items inside, and then put them away. You repeat this cycle over and over. Moreover, what’s shown on screen is only your rooms and items, with the characters–including the protagonist–almost never shown, with nearly no text to reveal the story to be told. All scenes are quiet and restrained.
And yet, this experience leaves a more memorable impression on the player than any grand AAA title.
Where does the inspirational magic of Unpacking come from, and how was it created?
Our team of reporters at I.N.T. interviewed Tim Dawson, one of the game’s directors, to get to the bottom of these secrets.
This article tells the story of how Unpacking was born as an extension of everyday life, the three pillars of game design that comprise its moving experience, and Dawson’s own tumultuous career. Here, you’ll find our four-hour-long interview, full of discovery and surprise, to be the story of life.
Questions, Planning, and Editor: Jini
Interviewer: Daichi Saito
Author: Shu Chiba
Photographer: Akihiko Iyoda
English Translation: Caitlin Beggs Kojima
English Translation Review: Tomoko Kono
(Interviewee Tim Dawson with interviewer Daichi Saito)
An Idea Born From the Love Between Two Game Nerds
Saito:
Nice to meet you. I am Saito, the co-editor of I.N.T.. Actually, I had planned to attend this interview with our other co-editor, Jini, but he has come down with a cold during our long trip, so I will be conducting the interview based on a list of questions he made. Thank you for taking the time to sit down with us.
Dawson:
Nice to meet you. Thank you, Saito-san and Jini-san, too, for coming all the way to Australia. I’m sorry that Wren, the other director of Unpacking, was unable to join us, meaning I’m the only one able to do the interview today…
Saito:
Actually, there’s something we wanted to hear from you, Tim. As a matter of fact, there is a question Jini prepared to ask you specifically before we jump into Unpacking…
Dawson:
What would that be?
Saito:
Do you by chance happen to love shooting games? Regarding your studio’s previous work, Assault Android Cactus, it was a flashy, hard-hitting twin-stick shooter set in space. Compared to Unpacking, it was a title much more geared toward [hardcore] gamers.
(Witch Beam’s debut title Assault Android Cactus)
Dawson:
Yeah, I love shooting games! Actually, I’m a fan of Japanese vertically scrolling shooters, like those by CAVE. My favorite is Treasure’s Radiant Silvergun. Of course, I also love Treasure’s Ikaruga which they released afterward, but I prefer Radiant. These two games were also the source of inspiration for Assault Android Cactus.
Saito:
I knew it. I’m involved in shooting games often too, and I produced the game DRANIUS… But why did you, someone who’s worked on such hardcore shooters, get involved with a peaceful, calm game like Unpacking, which can even be described as a Zen puzzle game?
Dawson:
Because I met my co-developer, Wren. I first met her at the [gaming] industry event BIG Dev Meetup in 2016. She was a fan of Assault Android Cactus, and she came to talk to me after learning that I, the game’s developer, was from the same area.
Afterward, she invited me for coffee. It wasn’t a date–more like a conversation between industry colleagues, but once we started talking, we really hit it off. We ended up staying at the cafe until closing time, and even after they kicked us out, we still hadn’t finished talking, so we continued our conversation at a bubble tea shop that was still open. We grew closer from then on.
Saito:
That’s so nice. I know how happy it can be to talk with a girl who likes games. Who was the first to confess their feelings?
Dawson:
She was. But I turned her down at first. Dating someone I met through work seemed like an abuse of my position and inappropriate, so I suggested we continue being friends. But as we spent a lot of time together as friends, I grew more and more attracted to her way of thinking and speaking.
Saito:
That’s nice. Wren is a powerful heroine.
Dawson:
And so we started dating, and before long we moved in together. It was just when Wren’s roommate moved out, so we decided that I would move into her room. At the time, I was busy working on the Switch version of Cactus while also considering what to do for our next game.
And I was talking to Wren the whole time about ideas for our next game while unpacking my stuff from the move. Then suddenly she said, “Unpacking is like a game, isn’t it?” What a great idea! I got excited, talking with her about an unpacking game all while we worked.
Most of our ideas never make it past the conversation. But even after we finished putting everything away, the idea of an unpacking game stuck in the back of my mind. A few days later, I brought it up again, and she gave me a strange look, wondering why I still wanted to talk about it.
Saito:
So Wren wasn’t too enthusiastic about it?
Dawson:
She just didn’t think that I would seriously make into a project. We talk about all sorts of ideas on a daily basis, so she considered it just another casual conversation topic.
I have a tendency to come up with lots of simple ideas one after another and tell those around me about them right away. This such a bad habit of mine that my co-creator for Cactus, Sanatana Mishra, said I needed to limit my ideas for games to one per day. I’m always talking about multiple new ideas each day without any follow-through, so he was telling me I needed to focus more on one idea and improve it.
Saito:
I sometimes do the same, exasperating my friends. But multiple ideas a day is impressive.
Dawson:
Not all my ideas are the best of quality. But Wren’s idea at that time was a true gemstone waiting to be polished.
Right at that point in time, we received aid through a Swedish accelerator program called “Stugan,” and we were to spend several months in the Swedish countryside developing games. During our stay, we turned the unpacking game that we had been refining for a while into a prototype, then pitched it to the other participants. We developed it for several months, but the prototype that we finally created didn’t really click for us. But for the time being, we posted a video of it to Twitter.
(A GIF of the actual prototype. It received 3,800 retweets and 10,000 likes. https://x.com/unpackingalife/status/1031725059860180993)
We got a big response when we did that. When we returned to Australia, we were flooded with inquiries from [potential] publishers and backing organizations. In a single night, we came into the limelight like never before. That was in 2019.
The First of the Three Pillars of Game Design: Contemplation
Saito:
So that’s how you began developing [the game] full-scale. Now I’d like to ask you how Unpacking was created.
Before, Wren said at a talk at GDC 2023 that Unpacking had three core [points], three pillars of design: Contemplation, Discovery, and Expression. Please explain these three in detail for us.
Dawson:
First, contemplation. The contemplation that takes place in Unpacking is prompting the player to make an inference about the items they pick up. For example, let’s say they take a toaster out of the box. As the player thinks of a suitable place for the toaster, they will remember the toaster they have in their own home, and before long they think about the connotations the toaster has for the game’s protagonist. Though it’s just an everyday object, it vastly expands their imagination.
(Your toaster when you first lived on your own. You remember that you put it up on the top of the cupboard because you never really used it much.)
Saito:
Oh, yes, I did do some thinking each time I picked up an item.
Dawson:
Contemplation also has the effect of controlling the game’s tempo. I believe that the slower and more repetitive a game’s tempo, the more it gives the player the time and space to think deeply about the subject matter. For example, in JRPGs like Final Fantasy and Persona, you repeatedly battle monotonous, weak enemies while exploring an expansive field. It seems like a tedious cycle at first glance, but it actually gives the player time to think about the characters and events in between the lines of the story. The reason why large-scale JRPGs have such long play times is so that you can spend lots of time with the characters and world and ponder deeply about them.
Saito:
I see. Large-scale JPRGs seem like the complete opposite of Unpacking, so it’s intriguing that they share some mechanistic objectives.
Dawson:
You open boxes, feel the rhythm, and enjoy peaceful vibes while immersed in a chill mood. That’s the concept of Unpacking.
Saito:
In that regard, the coordination of sounds and animations plays an important role in how Unpacking is experienced. The sound effects when placing an item couple well with the animations and give the player a sense of satisfaction. This contributes to the [peaceful] vibes in Unpacking that you mention.
Dawson:
Yes, sounds are extremely important to animations. Sounds bring the items to life. The background music and sounds were single-handedly undertaken by Jeff van Dyck, one of Witch Beam’s co-founders. Each item in this game is allotted a specific sound effect, and matching and adjusting them was a tremendous amount of work… Jeff had his wife and daughter help him, ultimately creating over 14,000 sounds.
Saito:
14,000?! That’s an astounding number.
Dawson:
There needs to be a massive variation of sounds based on the combinations of the material of the item itself and the material of where it’s placed. First, a surface where an item can be placed within the game’s environment is categorized into one of eight types, like carpet and tile. Then the item that is placed there is also categorized into one of multiple materials, like ceramic or wood. And the player can place anything anywhere. So we needed to handle and anticipate all irregular combinations of surfaces and materials. We usually managed the sound effects in a spreadsheet, and we had such a huge number [of sounds] that we had to create tools just for the sheets.
(A sound for placing a pot in the bathtub was prepared too, of course.)
Saito:
Managing 14,000 sounds is mind-boggling…
Despite Unpacking’s simple appearance, you’ve done some impressive things with it technically–not only with the sounds but the graphics as well. I’ve produced 2D games, and seeing how you can rotate the 2D objects and stack them up truly astounded me with how much effort it must have required.
Dawson:
The trickiest thing with the graphics was positioning the contents of the drawers. When changing the placement of items within a drawer, they quickly jumped to the wrong place or went out of alignment to a large degree. Technically, we resolved this by adjusting things like depth, positions, layer groups, and masking.
(To verify the correlation between the depths of items, they arranged 1×1 accessories around a 1×4 rolling pin.)
Dawson:
In our initial plans, we wanted to implement a mode that allowed the player to customize their room, but we were confronted with the technical complexity of such a feat and shelved the idea.
The Second of the Three Pillars of Game Design: Discovery
Dawson:
Discovery is the jack-in-the-box-like feeling of not knowing what will come flying out of the boxes.
Firstly, I think games need [an element] of surprise. You need something to take you by surprise, like looking at what comes out [of the box] and wondering what it is. For example, shoes always come out of the boxes in pairs, but in one stage, only one boot comes out. The player is puzzled, wondering where the other boot is as they continue playing, and when they find it [in a box] in the kitchen, they’re surprised, thinking, “Why is it here?!” These unexpected [moments] plant the seeds of imagination within the player.
As soon as you think you’ve understood the protagonist’s personality by delving into their items that come out of the boxes, another surprise happens in an instant that overturns [your assumptions of] them. This amplifies the sense of discovery.
(A handheld game device, lost among underwear, suddenly appears when you are unpacking clothes in the bedroom. Such surprises provoke the player to ask the question, “Why?”)
Saito:
The feeling that this life is real is [one of] Unpacking’s charms. You mentioned a moment ago that the sense that you are peeking into other person’s life is important, but did you create so many items so as to give their life more reality?
Dawson:
No, we tried to minimize the number of items as much as possible so as to convey the personality and topic of the main character with the least amount of effort. However, in order to make things realistic, we ended up needing that [huge] amount of items.
Saito:
On the topic of discovery, the player learns part-way through the game that the protagonist is bisexual.
Dawson:
If you decide on certain attributes for the protagonist, they need to feel real as a person with those attributes. Authenticity–in other words, making something feel genuine–is crucial for games. Ever since Wren, who is bisexual herself, proposed making the protagonist bisexual, we were careful with researching and portraying that.
(Unpacking won Gayming Magazine’s “Best LGBTQ Indie Game Award” of the year in 2022.)
Saito:
When you portray the protagonist in a relationship with someone of a different gender from before, it’s not presented in a showy or shocking way, but very nonchalantly. It’s as if you were saying, “This is just another chapter in life.”
Dawson:
In truth, we tried to adjust it so that it was not sensational in order for it to line up with the other discoveries as much as possible. However, we cannot deny that we intended to surprise the player with the [protagonist] dating someone of a different gender from before. We wanted the player to at least discover that surprise through their own activity.
What’s interesting is that each player realizes [this] at different points. While some guess the change in the partner’s gender right away, others first come to the realization when they are unpacking the new partner’s things and find women’s clothing.
I don’t like having the game force the player to look at something or think a certain way at a specific moment. Even if there is something I’d like them to discover, I think it’s better to give the player opportunities to make the realization on their own. Or give them to the opportunity to not realize.
The protagonist is an artist, a gamer, Jewish, a woman, lives in Australia, was born in the late 80s, and likes movies. Players with similar attributes will likely identify with certain details.
(A menorah used in the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah.)
Dawson:
But on the other hand, you don’t need to worry if you don’t catch onto such details. They are there for those who will. Unpacking excuses players for overlooking them. You don’t need to understand every nook and cranny of the story and character in order to clear the level.
For example, when you move into the college dorm and find tampons and sanitary pads, they are there to make you aware that [the protagonist] is a woman. It doesn’t matter if you’re a male player, don’t have a lot of understanding of these items and simply know that they go in the bathroom, and you awkwardly brush it off. Not all people with differing attributes and personalities can fully grasp a person’s life.
Saito:
Understanding others has become an important theme in this day and age. Would you consider this game a sincere response to that?
Dawson:
If possible, we want [players] to learn at least a little bit about her, the protagonist. Unpacking is designed to encourage such compassion. It has many hooks that make you care for the character and want to delve more deeply into [her life], and the more you think about the meaning of her items and their relation to one another, the more interesting the game becomes.
It was difficult for us as the game’s developers to allow the player to progress through the game while overlooking important elements. No one wants their creations to be misunderstood. But we decided that it’s better for a portion of players to overlook things than to shove the information in their faces. It’s better for them to feel that they’ve realized, learned, and discovered these things on their own.
Saito:
DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) is currently a hot topic in the gaming industry, and it’s been disputed among gamers. How do you, Tim, view this?
Dawson:
As one single creator, I recognize the importance of including diverse perspectives. A game becomes richer when you actually include them, not just preach about equality. I believe it’s good to incorporate these experiences into your game.
Many of my ideas for Unpacking were suggested by Wren. I feel that my own views have broadened through depicting a character and setting that I’ve never handled before. I can’t deny that as a result, the game took on marketable elements. New stories open up new markets. If I was able to create something that resonates with those who feel they have been ignored by the video game market up until now, then that is good for not only business but the world as well.
The Last of the Three Pillars of Game Design: Expression
Saito:
Regarding the third pillar, expression, Wren said previously that after seeing that players tended to place items according to their own rules during the play-testing, you deliberately gave some wiggle room in terms of what’s considered a “correct” placement.
Dawson:
Yes.
(Unpacking automatically records your process of putting items away. The resulting GIF can be shared on social media for everyone to see.)
Saito:
Nonetheless, the rigid rules of puzzle games must have conflicted with the degree of free expression you wanted to grant the player. How did you strike a balance between degree of freedom and storytelling?
Dawson:
We really struggled with the balance between the two.
In the initial stages of development, we had not decided how strict we wanted it to be as a puzzle game. We even considered making it more Tetris-like in which you needed to fit all the items in the correct direction in prescribed positions.
(The bathtub is not a suitable location for a pot, so it is outlined in red.)
Dawson:
However, when I showed someone the demo, I received strong backlash due to the red outlines being displayed so frequently. I think they felt they were being criticized. That reaction made me realize that we needed to loosen up the restrictions on the players.
And at a certain point, we realized that the essential point of the game was not putting away items, but making sure that the player could decide where to put them away. People have preferences for where they place things. Even if someone else’s layout makes no sense to you, that person has their own sense and reason for it. So restricting that person from placing an item a certain way would be very stressful for them.
We believed that we should grant freedom to the player. We wanted to make [our game] as open as possible and, at the very least, not scold the player. So we decided to use the red lines only to point out obvious errors, not to enforce our own preferences.
Saito:
I have ADHD tendencies, and I unintentionally leave things on the floor. I have several friends who are the same way. Those players who feel that it’s okay for a room to be a little on the untidy side tend to dislike the strict nature of puzzles, but I feel that Unpacking is broad-minded enough to accept such people too.
Dawson:
Games should not be too judgmental toward players. For example, there’s a diary in the first stage, and when the player is done putting everything in its place and thinks they have cleared the stage, the diary is shown with a red flashing outline.
When the player sees this, they don’t think that they need to put away the diary because the game told them to; they take it upon themselves and think, “This diary should be put away somewhere.” As a result, the player can understand the character and story more deeply, as well as become more immersed in their play. Tolerance elevates the experience.
However, this balance is extremely difficult to achieve. I made a tool to quickly reassign items, making it easier to move items under development. I made lots of other tools too, and they were all for making adjustments.
Saito:
There’s a hidden mode called “Dark Star Mode” which you can enter by putting the items away in all incorrect places. The story told is just a tad different. I like [the protagonist’s] personality in that mode.
(Dark Star mode in which you must make sure all items are outlined in red.)
Dawson:
Dark Star mode was possible thanks to Sanatana. He wasn’t directly involved in developing Unpacking, but I would sometimes get his opinion. A game-breaking bug occurred in one version of the game, and while play-testing, even when Sanatana placed the items [in the correct spots], the star that signals that you cleared the stage wasn’t displaying. It was due to a mistake in my code. He then placed all the items in the wrong spots, half as a test and half as a joke, and it caused all the items to be outlined in red. We laughed so hard, but we also felt that while it was silly, it was one way to play the game. And thus, Dark Star mode was born.
Saito:
After all, it’s important to have fun to make things fun. (laughs)
Conveying the Small Stuff
Saito:
Now let’s move on to the story and characters. How did the story of Unpacking come about?
Dawson:
What we had in the beginning was the idea for game mechanics in which we turned moving into a game, as I said earlier. From there, Wren realized that we could convey something to the players about the character through the items that they pulled out of the boxes. So we decided to focus on her moving during each turning point in her life. I believe we had this direction solidified in the early stages [of development]. We connected the dots of the character, making the lines of the story. In short, the game mechanics gave us the ideas for the story, and the story gave us the ideas for the mechanics, reciprocally.
Saito:
There’s a trick in the first stage in which you hide the journal. This skillfully expresses the protagonist’s character.
(Just when you think, “Huh? I was certain I put the book in the bookshelf…”)
Dawson:
The mechanics came first with that one too. We wanted a way to make [the player] realize that they needed to take an item somewhere else, and when we were brainstorming situations to make this happen, we thought that a child’s journal would be perfect. It turned out to be an interesting storytelling piece.
Furthermore, we applied that [method] in the stage in which the protagonist moves in with her boyfriend. In this stage, the player must move the partner’s things to make space to place their own things. What’s interesting about this is that in the previous stages, you couldn’t move others’ possessions. However, since you’re close with your boyfriend in this stage, you can now move his items.
But the player might not realize this device, so we needed to prompt them to move items that they already had. So we purposely placed items where they would be in the way unless moved. In this way, we were able to make the player feel that the boyfriend was lazy for not preparing at all for his girlfriend to move in with him.
I’m happy we were able to naturally intertwine the mechanisms and story in this way. Both the gameplay and the story must be good before they are incorporated into a game.
Saito:
That is something that Jini, who is also a [game] critic, persistently points out, but what’s amazing about Unpacking is how it so thoroughly depicts everyday life. If you had depicted a tragic accident, for example, you could have made [the game] more sensational. In truth, I, too, succumb to the temptation or compulsion to do just that when I’m making games. I feel that I must add in some shocking event to attract the player’s attention and evoke their emotions.
Dawson:
I agree that games, especially, have a tendency to pursue shock. However, we wanted to celebrate life’s more mundane changes–small changes perhaps, but nonetheless big to the person they’re happening to.
Also, if we put really dramatic elements into the game, they’d steal focus away from the other, more humble moments. For instance, wondering if your academic or career choices are the right ones, whether your roommate accepts you, or whether you should break up with your boyfriend. These worries may not be big tragedies, but they are still all meaningful moments.
Including especially impactful and serious events would overshadow such ordinary life details. They may seem unimportant compared to “big things,” but these small things are what’s truly important.
Another point is that we didn’t want to make a game in which something bad happened, but also didn’t want to make a game in which everything went perfectly. Both good things and bad things happen in life. I made a graph that showed the ups and downs of the different parts of her life, like work, health, lifestyle, and I made sure there was a nice balance throughout the game.
Saito:
If I were producing the game, I might have butted in by suggesting that you find a bunch of passports under different names inside a drawer. (laughs) But ultimately, I think the current form of the game is the best.
Dawson:
But I had similar ideas as yours. For example, you find yourself unpacking in a tent-like place, which really means that the town is under alien attack and the protagonist has moved into a safe shelter. Things like that.
Saito:
You’re a bit of a nerd, aren’t you, Tim? (laughs)
What is interesting about Unpacking is that some parts reflect Wren’s own personal side. She is bisexual, and though she initially dated the same sex, she ended up in a long-term relationship with you, someone of the opposite sex. This sort of history is reflected [in the game]. What I’m interested in knowing is which parts were influenced by your personality, Tim.
Dawson:
The protagonist’s character is a mixture of not only Wren’s experiences, but also my own. The reason why she has bouldering and frisbee gear is because I play those sports. Incidentally, Dungeons & Dragons was my influence, too. I’d like to emphasize here that the protagonist does not completely correspond to Wren. Everyone always asked Wren if the protagonist was her, but she denied it every time. In reality, Wren and the protagonist are pretty different people.
(The idea of having a cosplay costume displayed in the living room came from the developers’ friend.)
Saito:
So what sort of connection did you have with the protagonist during development?
Dawson:
We modeled her as an artist.During the game, there are photos of her that you can see.
Wren and I are artists of different fields, but that created a nice sense of distance. We were able to feel that she was separate from us while also sympathizing with her. She studies art at college, works a while as an illustrator, then as a cashier at a grocery store, and then she returns to art as a picture book author. Neither Wren nor I took this life path, but we know a number of people with such careers. So for us, she was like someone we would know.
We imagined her story and lifestyle and thought of what we could show the players. Several of our ideas were never realized. For example, one of our initial ideas was to have her parents divorce while she was in college. However, we were unable to coordinate this well with the gameplay and find an impactful way to depict this. Ultimately, we came to the conclusion that it was better to abandon the idea than to get bogged down overthinking it. The same happened with her siblings. You’ll know that she had siblings from the text in the album saying, “Finally, my own room,” which means she no longer needs to share a room with her sisters. But the game doesn’t go into her family any further.
We thought a lot about the character’s aspects, constructed them organically, and imagined what and how she would feel. However, incorporating these aspects into the game depended on whether they could be expressed with items. So we kept what we could and threw out what we couldn’t. Game design is all about what you include and what you remove.
Surviving in Australia’s Game Industry
Saito:
Before coming to Australia, we, the IIN editorial team, thought for a long time about what is means to be an Australian game. Now as we interact and talk with people like this, eat the food, and walk around, I feel Australia’s charm lies in the richness of everyday life.
Perhaps “everyday” is the keyword. For example, Florence, which was developed by Mountains, is a life-sized work with an everyday story as well. What is your opinion on this?
（『Florence』）
Dawson:
Florence is indeed a game that represents Australia’s atmosphere well. As a matter of fact, that game served as a reference for us along with Gone Home and The Sims. Actually, Unpacking is set in Brisbane where we live. All stages are set in specific places that really exist. If you’ve ever been to Brisbane, I’m sure you could guess the location based on the landmarks and details.
Saito:
You yourself are from Adelaide. For college, you went to University of South Australia, and you experienced finding work in Australia. Looking at your history, it seems like you’ve had a tough career with studio closures and numerous changes of jobs.
Dawson:
The game industry is tough. Especially recently, you hear news of layoffs and studio closures around the world, but the Australian game industry has always been turbulent. My work experience is proof of that. The first studio I entered after graduating university was Ratbag Games, I think around 2004. It was a company in Adelaide that mainly created racing games, but it was bought out by the American company Midway Games and was unfortunately shutdown a few months later. From there, I made my way to Sydney and joined Team Bondi, but it soon went out of business too.
(L.A. Noire, developed by Team Bondi, was the biggest project to come out of the Australian gaming industry and was released in 2011.)
I moved one more time to Brisbane and joined the local studio for Pandemic Studios, known for its works like Star Wars: Battlefront and Destroy All Humans!, but it, too, was bought out by Electronic Arts before long, and the company ultimately closed all its locations.
But there’s more. After Pandemic, I joined The Creative Assembly. The Creative Assembly was a development studio that had already been acquired by SEGA when I joined, and was later renamed SEGA Studios Australia. I thought I might finally settle down at SEGA, but it also closed after a few years. After that, I worked at mobile game company called KIXEYE, but by then I had already decided to start my own indie studio and only intended for it to be a temporary job. I then quit KIXEYE and established Witch Beam as an official company in 2013.
Saito:
So you worked for six different companies in a span of less than ten years, and most were studios that don’t even exist today. That’s intense. It may be an industry with lots of job changes, but you rarely hear cases so extreme as yours.
Dawson:
That’s the reality of Australia for you. Others with similar careers are not hard to find. Working in such an unstable industry takes a toll on your mental health. Even if your project was coming along nicely, you never knew if the higher-ups would cancel it, or if you’d be laid off the next day. Or the entire studio may not make it to the next day. Nobody knew if the project we were working on would see the light of day. I believe Australia’s game developers shared this sense [of uneasiness].
Saito:
I’ve heard similar stories from other Australian developers. Likely, such adversity has cultivated the current Australian indie game culture of independent spirit and led to its flourishing.
Dawson:
Australian game studios, unlike those in Japan or America, have a certain weakness, which is that most of Australia’s game studios are owned by large overseas companies.
We have always been at the mercy of other countries’ economic conditions or the convenience of our parent companies. If the overseas business’s financial affairs worsen, they quickly pull funds from Australia, regardless of the local studio’s efforts or achievements. Right after the 2008 financial crisis in particular was when many Australian branches of big-name studios were closed.
(The SEGA Studios Australia website. The studio closed down in 2013.)
Dawson:
The Australian indie scene has been formed as people lost their jobs and shifted to individual development, as well as those who gathered together and made several small teams. They went independent not because they wanted to, but because they had no other choice. The biggest advantage of being indie is that you can control your own fate.
Of course, surviving in the indie [industry] is by no means easy. I know of a number of indie studios that went under. But even for studios that suffered that misfortune, the reins of their destinies were at least in their hands.
We Australian indie studios have our own mentality that has sustained us: the desire for a space to simply make good games and to simply have them played.
Saito:
Australia’s population is not that high, at around 26 million people. Despite this, it has a robust pool of game developers and boasts a track record and traditions that rival that of other countries. Even among indies, you have big hits such as Unpacking, Florence, Hollow Knight, and Cult of the Lamb constantly being produced. How is Australia, a country not in the mainstream of the gaming industry and a small country in terms of population, able to demonstrate such a huge presence in the gaming industry?
（『Hollow Knight』）
Dawson:
I can’t really give an analysis of the situation, but I personally believe it’s because Australia’s developers are brimming with talent and enthusiasm. Ratbag, the first company I worked for, was small, but all my colleagues were skilled and wonderful people. And I’m not just saying that because we are friends. After Ratbag was dissolved, my former colleagues scattered to different big-name companies worldwide, with some earning senior positions at Ubisoft and Blizzard. They had the outstanding talent to get scouted by the top companies of the industry.
Saito:
You yourself are one of those people with outstanding talent. Please tell us of the events leading up to you launching Witch Beam and what happened afterward.
Dawson:
I’ll go back to my time at SEGA. At the time, I was involved in a game connected with the London Olympics called London 2012: The Official Video Game of the Olympic Games. Sanatana Mishra, who later co-founded Witch Beam with me, worked as a designer on the team. He had just moved over to the design department from the QA department. He and I shared similar opinions on games and design, and we hit it off right away. And because we got along so well, we began planning to launch a new project within the company. During the day, we’d work on the Olympics game at the company, and at night, we’d talk about development for our new prototype. We were crazy busy, but we didn’t mind. We were dissatisfied with the direction of things at work, and we threw our frustrations into our project. We felt that this was our vision.
When we pitched our completed prototype within the company, the response was overwhelmingly positive.
Saito:
Oh, they love it! This’ll make it!
Dawson:
…But in the end, it never made it to production.
Saito:
Oh no…
Dawson:
Even so, we weren’t discouraged and made plans for our next project: a remake game Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse, originally released in 1990 for the Mega Drive. This also received a favorable reaction within the company, but sure enough, it was stalled too…
Saito:
Aw man…
Dawson:
Before long, we were put in charge of creating the prototype for the reboot of SEGA’s Golden Axe. [Our prototype] was well-received within the company, but just when we felt relieved and that this would finally be the one that made it, SEGA Australia was dissolved in the middle of development…
(Golden Axed: A Cancelled Prototype)
Saito:
It seems that you’ve had a tough life as a developer, not only in terms of studio closures, but also with your projects.
Dawson:
When I was making prototypes with Sanatana at SEGA, I felt a sense of omnipotence, like we understood exactly what we were doing. And I had the hunch that what we were working on would be a fun game. We wanted to prove that we were right.
Saito:
So Sanatana was your most trusted comrade.
Dawson:
No other designer is as knowledgeable as he is. Before founding Witch Beam, when I was conceptualizing Assault Android Cactus, I went around showing others my prototype. Everyone sang the same praises, and I felt like I was on top of the world. Then, full of confidence, I showed it to Sanatana.
But his feedback was harsh. He pointed out that the core gameplay loop was missing. I was shocked, but at the same time, I felt that it was accurate and very helpful advice. A sense for level and game design is an incredibly important quality. I’m confident in my system design skills and am well-versed in a wide range of fields, from art to programming. However, I lack insight when it comes to game design. If I was going to launch my own company, I definitely needed someone like Sanatana.
(Assault Android Cactus, born from the friendship between dedicated Australian developers)
Saito:
What a wonderful story of friendship. And so in 2013, you founded Witch Beam and released early access for Cactus. You won numerous awards, such as the Australian Game Developer Awards and awards at BitSummit. It was a success story.
Dawson:
No, actually, it wasn’t all that successful. We tried to raise funds for the next [stage of] development with early access proceeds, but it didn’t sell at all, and things didn’t go as planned. So we bet on the excitement of the full release in 2015, but that didn’t go well either. Undeterred, we ported the game to home consoles, but they weren’t at all popular. The free update with 25 additional levels and new character skins was pointless as well.
To this day, that game has yet to sell big. But it sold little by little over a long period of time, just enough for us to afford our office rent. At the time, Sanatana and I were the only employees, so we managed to scrape by.
Saito:
Twin-stick shooter may be a niche genre, but it’s one with a loyal fanbase, so the game received critical acclaim from that community.
Dawson:
We’ve been blessed with some incredible fans. They love the game, and they give us enthusiastic feedback whenever we add new features or polish up the game. There are still people who play the game every day. Having such a community is a true treasure.
(The main character of Assault Android Cactus making a sneaky cameo in Unpacking)
Where Witch Beam is Headed
Saito:
Please let us what’s in store for Witch Beam. Looking back at your studio’s works, Cactus, Unpacking, and the upcoming Tempopo, you have taken on many challenges. You’re a creator but also a company founder and business person. From a business point of view, you could have simply chosen to copy your own success.
Dawson:
Speaking honestly as a creator, I would like to have made Assault Android Cactus into a series. It was a game I was attached to, and I had lots of ideas for it. But we didn’t have enough sales to do that. In a sense, making a completely different game like Unpacking was a natural strategic decision in terms of business.
Unpacking’s success created a difficult situation from a creative leadership perspective. While the fans want a sequel and expansion DLCs, we don’t want to make them because Unpacking is an already-completed work. We don’t want to become a studio that makes Unpacking into a franchise.
Someday, we may return to the action [genre] and make an Assault Android Cactus sequel. Or we may make a completely different game from both Catus and Unpacking. If we do this enough, people will no longer say things like, “Why would the developer of X develop a game like Y?” Witch Beam won’t be a brand tied to a certain genre or series and will instead be a guarantee of quality. People will say, “Oh, it’s Witch Beam’s latest game. Whatever it is, it’s sure to be a good one.” That’s what I hope for the future.
Afterword
Love, friendship, effort, and, at last, triumph. Despite its low-key appearance, Unpacking is a game packed with the passions and lives of its creators.
During our interview, Dawson told us of one of his favorite jokes in the game. In the final stage, multiple copies of the same book come out of a single box. Not one, not two, but seven copies. The player, fed up at this point, clicks an eighth time to find a different item emerge. Just when they’re relieved to be done with the books, one more click reveals an eighth copy.
Dawson says, “But isn’t that life? Once you make it to a certain point, it all becomes a repetition of the same thing. And just when you think you’re doing repeating everything and let your guard down…it all starts back up again.”
That indomitable man, knocked down time and time again only to rise once more to his feet, says this with a smile.
(A fourth copy. Such is life.)
Game industries in all countries, not just Australia, have been faced with difficulties in recent years. While it’s a given that big-name companies are no utopia, according to Dawson, the indie industry is not one either. Even if you go independent, you are not completely free to create whatever you want and are restricted by financial conditions.
Yet, in the midst of all this, Dawson tries to grant freedom not just to himself but others as well. He designs games to allow players freedom, without forcing them to play in a certain way in order to tell the story he wants to tell. He envisions Witch Beam as a place of free creation for his colleagues and collaborators, and is working hard to program and create development tools to realize their dreams to the fullest. Through games, Dawson attempts to create a space for freedom.
The Australian continent was once a British colony. Although Australia is still a member of the Commonwealth of Nations and under royalty, it gradually gained autonomy between the 19th and the 20th centuries.
The Australian game industry has also struggled for decades under the control of large American and Japanese companies. The current success of Australian indie games may very well be the result of such hardships.
At any rate, there is one thing that can be said of Tim Dawson and Witch Beam: their works will always bring new surprises. We look forward to seeing what emerges from Witch Beam’s next box.
