Comics Bulletin logo
Search
  • Columns
    Random
    • The Phoenix Cactus Comic-Con: Less Than Zero

      Jon Dantzler
      June 5, 2012
      Columns, The Burning Mind
    Recent
    • The Full Run: Usagi Yojimbo – The Wanderer’s Road Part 2

      Daniel Gehen
      December 4, 2020
    • The Full Run: Usagi Yojimbo – The Wanderer’s Road Part 1

      Daniel Gehen
      October 30, 2020
    • Comictober 2020: DRACULA MOTHERF**KER

      Daniel Gehen
      October 27, 2020
    • What Looks Good
    • Comics Bulletin Soapbox
    • The Full Run
    • Leading Question
    • Top 10
    • The Long-Form
    • Jumping On
    • Comics in Color
    • Slouches Towards Comics
  • Big Two
    Random
    • Exclusive Marvel Preview: "Ms. Marvel" #6

      Jon Dantzler
      April 21, 2016
      Marvel Comics, Previews
    Recent
    • 4.5

      DCeased: Dead Planet #7 Presents a Hopeful Future (Review)

      Daniel Gehen
      January 22, 2021
    • Retro Review: Detective Comics #826 Remains a Holiday Classic

      Daniel Gehen
      December 3, 2020
    • Stan Lee

      nguyen ly
      November 7, 2020
    • DC Comics
    • Big Two Reviews
    • Marvel Comics
  • Indie
    Random
    • This Reindeer Wants Revenge In Chainsaw Reindeer One-Shot From Action Lab

      Jon Dantzler
      July 30, 2019
      Action Lab Entertainment, News, Press Release, Previews
    Recent
    • Review: The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist

      Daniel Gehen
      December 14, 2020
    • The Full Run: Usagi Yojimbo – The Wanderer’s Road Part 2

      Daniel Gehen
      December 4, 2020
    • 4.5

      TMNT: The Last Ronin #1 Lives Up to the Hype (Review)

      Daniel Gehen
      October 29, 2020
    • Reviews
    • Archie Comics
    • Boom! Studios
    • Dark Horse
    • IDW
    • Image
    • Oni Press
    • Valiant
  • Reviews
    Random
    • 2.5

      SUNDAY SLUGFEST: Point One #1

      Jon Dantzler
      November 13, 2011
      Reviews, Slugfest
    Recent
    • 4.5

      DCeased: Dead Planet #7 Presents a Hopeful Future (Review)

      Daniel Gehen
      January 22, 2021
    • Review: The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist

      Daniel Gehen
      December 14, 2020
    • Retro Review: Detective Comics #826 Remains a Holiday Classic

      Daniel Gehen
      December 3, 2020
    • Singles Going Steady
    • Slugfest
    • Manga
      • Reviews
    • Small Press
      • Reviews
      • ICYMI
      • Tiny Pages Made of Ashes
  • Interviews
    Random
    • Tony Lee: Watching Everything

      Jon Dantzler
      October 1, 2011
      Interviews
    Recent
    • Interview: Jon Davis-Hunt Talks SHADOWMAN

      Daniel Gehen
      June 8, 2020
    • Interview: Becky Cloonan talks DARK AGNES and Her Personal Influences

      Mike Nickells
      March 4, 2020
    • Simon Roy

      Interview: Simon Roy on His Inspirations and Collaborations on PROTECTOR

      Mike Nickells
      January 29, 2020
    • Audio Interview
    • Video Interview
  • Classic Comics
    Random
    • Child of Tomorrow and Other Stories by Al Feldstein

      Jon Dantzler
      May 2, 2014
      Classic Comics Cavalcade, Columns
    Recent
    • Countdown to the King: Marvel’s Godzilla

      Daniel Gehen
      May 29, 2019
    • Honoring A Legend: Fantagraphics To Resurrect Tomi Ungerer Classics

      Daniel Gehen
      February 15, 2019
    • Reliving the Craziest Decade in Comics History: An interview with Jason Sacks

      Mark Stack
      January 2, 2019
    • Classic Comics Cavalcade
    • Classic Interviews
  • News
    Random
    • Kickstarter Spotlight: Fist of Justice: Changes

      Jon Dantzler
      May 28, 2015
      Kickstarter Spotlight, News
    Recent
    • 2020 Ringo Awards Winners Announced

      Daniel Gehen
      October 26, 2020
    • BAD IDEA Announces 2021 Publishing Slate

      Daniel Gehen
      September 29, 2020
    • A Full Replay of NCSFest 2020 is now Available

      Daniel Gehen
      September 15, 2020
    • Press Release
    • Kickstarter Spotlight
  • Books
    Random
    • Classic Comics Cavalcade: 'Grave Business' by Graham Ingels

      Jon Dantzler
      September 25, 2015
      Books, Classic Comics, Classic Comics Cavalcade, Columns
    Recent
    • Collecting Profile: Disney Frozen

      CB Staff
      November 22, 2019
    • Collecting Profile: NFL Superpro

      CB Staff
      August 31, 2019
    • “THE BEST OF WITZEND” is a Wonderful Celebration of Artistic Freedom

      Daniel Gehen
      September 15, 2018
    • Review: ‘Machete Squad’ is a Disappointing Afghan Memoir

      Jason Sacks
      July 31, 2018
    • Review: ‘Out of Nothing’ is the Antidote to Our Sick Times

      Jason Sacks
      July 23, 2018
    • Review: ‘Bizarre Romance’ Shows Rough Edges in the Early Days of a New Marriage

      Jason Sacks
      July 10, 2018
What's New
  • Collecting Profile: If I win Powerball, I will buy Amazing Fantasy 15
  • DCeased: Dead Planet #7 Presents a Hopeful Future (Review)
  • Collecting Profile: Batwoman
  • Collecting Profile: Daredevil
  • Collecting Profile: Floronic Man
  • Review of Cheetah in Wonder Woman 1984
  • RSS Feed
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Google+
  • Contact Us
  • Write for us!
  • Visit Video Game Break!
Home
Interviews

An Island in The Sun: An Interview With Proteus Co-Creator Ed Key

Jon Dantzler
February 12, 2013
Interviews

Proteus opened the 2013 indie gates with its mysterious narrative, mysterious art style, and…well, mysterious gameplay. Equally mysterious were the two minds behind it. Composer David Kanaga had previously made a name for himself with several other projects, but despite experience with commercial games, programmer Ed Key was virtually unknown.

Last week I hopped on Skype with Ed, the other half of Proteus, in search of answers about the game. Greeted by the avatar of a man with a thick beard and intent gaze – every bit the image of someone who might explore his virtual island – I found not only pieces of Proteus but a discussion about game design, digital storytelling, and the project’s early days.

 

Jon Dantzler for Comics Bulletin: Proteus being defined as an “antigame” by GamaSutra – and your response – has generated a lot of controversy and debate within the gaming community. Did you anticipate Proteus getting so much attention?

Ed Key: Uh…no. (laughs) Dear Esther came out last year, and there was a lot of debate that went around that. And it seemed like that debate was kinda’ done with? So, no. I don’t know if it’s how I phrased things, or what. But no, I don’t call Proteus an antigame. I know that some people do call things antigames, but I dunno.

It’s in this weird place because it’s being sold where games are sold, it’s being covered by press that cover games, and it’s difficult to classify. You have these things like train simulators, which aren’t games, and which are sold and covered and those places but don’t seem to trigger the same kind of uproar and debate about them. But I don’t want to call Proteus a simulator, because that’s not what it is. So the other option is to call it something really wordy and pretentious, like an “interactive art experience.” Game is a short word, you can just say it.

Let me add to that, even though I don’t think that’s necessarily the important aspect of it, it does have game-like boxes. Like it has an end state, and a definite route to get to that state. But it’s deliberately as thin and lightweight as possible.

CB: Going off of that: because Proteus doesn’t have any real “goals,” aside from exploration, do you think there’s a trend in the mainstream industry toward “handholding” players?

Key: Oh, yeah, totally. It’s very much like handholding your way through areas, just basically following directions. That’s…not fun. (laughs) And the flipside of that, every time you do something, you want it to be validated by the game system. You want it to just say “Oh, you discovered X, well done!” (laughs) I didn’t really do any of that in Proteus. You can kind of quantify certain things. You can quantify if you discover, say, some creature. But there’s things that you can’t really quantify, random little situations and bits thrown out. Things that get kinda strung together as you play through it. Seeing a picturesque sunset in some valley. You can go halfway and quantify some of those things, but I have this kind of theory that it would give less weight to things that aren’t quantifiable.

 

 

CB: You have mentioned that Proteus was influenced by Ultima and The Elder Scrolls, and was originally going to be a sort of open-world RPG. What made you take such a radically different direction?

Key: See, that was a long time ago; it was one of a few projects I was working on. I really like those kinda games. I was heading in that direction, procedurally generating towns, and I was getting a bit bogged down with it. Making things like that can sorta feel like making a lo-fi version of something else. So, I got with [Proteus composer] David Kanaga about doing some music for it, and he’s really into doing “reactive” music, so we came up with this plan to have the environment kinda feed into the music, to make it an exploration game.

CB: So Proteus is procedural. But the question is how procedural is Proteus, exactly? There are certain sights you typically see every game, but I didn’t even see some parts until my third play through. So how much of the game is random and how much isn’t?

Key: Well, so…one of the original principles…it’s not strictly stuck to. (laughs) One of the original principles was to be able to see everything on the first play through. You play through again because you want to, or you’re curious about things you might have missed. So yeah, the island is made of the same components, really. You’ll get different landscapes, but everything from the plants to animals to locations all have this scripting system to where they kind of know where they want to go. So it keeps this consistent feel to it.

And the music…I wouldn’t really call it randomly generated. It’s a bunch of static files, but it’s dynamically mixed based on where you are. And there are event-based sounds. But yeah, the music is kind of more authored than the island, so they complement each other.

CB: Probably the most well-known procedural game is Minecraft, which has a world that’s basically infinite. Do you think Proteus could work with a world of that size?

Key: Yeah, Minecraft is basically the size of Saturn (laughs) But yeah, I guess I started it off being an island, partly because islands are cool! But it’s also practical. If it were bigger, back when I was making decisions, I would have had to make the technology to stream in chunks. And that didn’t seem particularly necessary.

As it matured in that form, I was thinking about the familiarity of locations. I really wanted the idea of seeing the same place at different times, like you’ve been down this path before, how dramatically things change as you revisit them.

CB: So I know it’s probably frustrating to get that question “What’s it all mean?” but…without spelling it out, what sort of narrative – if any – is present in Proteus?

Key: I mean it’s certainly not a conventional narrative, where everything is really put together to tell a story, or there’s a ton of backstory. But everything is designed to be sort of harmonious. It takes little fragments of places where I’ve been and lived and puts those together. And then you have the arc of the seasons going through, which is obviously suggestive of a lot of things. I’m being vague here, but it’s meant to resonate in certain ways rather than specifically have a message.

 

 

CB: Following that, let’s talk about story in games in general. John Carmack (creator of Doom) has said that story in a game is like a story in a porn movie in that you expect it to be there but don’t really care about i
t. What are your thoughts on that?

Key: I don’t know about his particular perspective on it, but I’m a big fan of things where the player is creating their story as they go along. Although, I really enjoyed Dishonored, which I played recently, and it was an amazing world and story and restored my faith in Bethesda. I have a lot of friends who make quite story-heavy games, and I wouldn’t say “oh, why are you putting all that story in there?” But I suppose it’s my personal tendency to make something…whether it’s as minimalist as Proteus, or whether it’s something bigger, that when you play it feels like you own the experience.

There’s value in telling that experience, rather than just saying “oh, go and play that game and you’ll have the same story that I did.” Because then, it’s so much less interesting to talk about. It’s less of a personal, social thing.

CB: You said in your response to GamaSutra that sales have been good enough to potentially finance a new project. Any hints at what that might be?

Key: Well, yeah, they certainly have. It’s only the first week but it’s a good start. Even then, it’s definitely taken a lot of pressure off from before launch. One of the things I want to finish is to enter the 7-Day Roguelike competition. Just to do some little short, jam kind of projects. I wanna do something else, which is probably another exploration game, and probably…and this sounds like a reaction to the discussion last week, but to do something with more game mechanics and more traditional stuff. Something…well, roguelike. Although my contrarian nature says I might just be doing that to fit in! (laughs)

But basically, I’ve planned to do that for a while because there’s certain things I want to do, like exploration and traveling through worlds that just don’t fit in Proteus. There’s a bunch of things I’ve been thinking about doing where I’ve been like “oh, that’s for the next one.” Like a folklore setting, a forest or something.

 

Ed KeyJon Dantzler

Share On:
Tweet
Warm Bodies (2013) Review
The Walking Dead 3.09 "The Suicide King" Review

About The Author

Jon Dantzler

Related Posts

  • 4.5

    Into the Wild Black Yonder with KENTUCKY ROUTE ZERO, Act II

    Jon Dantzler
    June 13, 2013
  • 3.5

    CB Games Bundle Reviews HUMBLE INDIE BUNDLE 8

    Nick Boisson
    June 8, 2013

Latest Interviews

  • Interview: Jon Davis-Hunt Talks SHADOWMAN

    Daniel Gehen
    June 8, 2020
  • Interview: Becky Cloonan talks DARK AGNES and Her Personal Influences

    Mike Nickells
    March 4, 2020
  • Simon Roy

    Interview: Simon Roy on His Inspirations and Collaborations on PROTECTOR

    Mike Nickells
    January 29, 2020
  • Interview: V.E. Schwab on revisiting Red London in The Steel Prince

    Stephen Cook
    March 13, 2019
  • Interview: David Foster Wallace and Hellblazer, words on Wyrd with writer Curt Pires

    Stephen Cook
    February 27, 2019
  • “The Night Has Teeth” An Interview with Sarah deLaine, Artist of Image Comics’ “Little Girls”

    Jason Sacks
    February 26, 2019
  • Interview: Caitlin Kittredge talks the future of Witchblade

    Daniel Gehen
    February 12, 2019
  • Interview: Andy Nakatani and the Future of Weekly Shonen Jump

    Daniel Gehen
    December 19, 2018
  • INTERVIEW: Todd Matthy talks robots, princesses, and bridging the divide with storytelling

    Stephen Cook
    September 13, 2018
  • INTERVIEW: Gallaher & Ellis discuss THE ONLY LIVING GIRL

    Daniel Gehen, Thea Srinivasan
    September 7, 2018
RSSTwitterFacebookgoogleplusinstagramtumblr

Comics Bulletin is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for website owners to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com, audible.com, and any other website that may be affiliated with Amazon Service LLC Associates Program. As an Amazon Associate, Comics Bulletin earns from qualifying purchases.

All content on this site (c) 2018 The Respective Copyright Holders