![]() ![]() My physical and mental health were negatively affected by cultures of stress and crunch at multiple places I worked. Matthew: While they were not universally bad, I definitely had some unfortunate experiences. You also wrote a book called “Surviving the game industry.” Could you tell us about specific experiences you had back in your AAA days that led to a burnout? ![]() GWO: E liza feels almost painfully personal. ![]() In that respect, Eliza could be seen as an expansion and deepening of the studio’s worldview, rather than a reversal. All of the team’s games, starting from SpaceChem in 2011 and running through games like Infinifactory, Opus Magnum, and EXAPUNKS, explore the consequences and implications of the engineering work its players perform. Matthew: Eliza is a unique experiment for the studio, but people familiar with the stories in other Zachtronics games might see there’s more in common with Eliza than first appearances would suggest. GWO: Where does Eliza stand in the lineup of Zachtronics titles? Since most of what you do in a typical Zachtronics game is manipulate abstract symbols, there needs to be some kind of meaning eventually. He wants to understand why players would be performing these actions before he asks them to do it. Also, even though it might not be apparent at first glance, Zach takes story seriously and considers it from the beginning of every project- even the ones about assembly language programming. All of Zach’s games start with something grounded, even when they take place in a fantasy world. I’m not interested in “telling stories” for their own sake for me, the stories have to connect to something in order to make them real. However, that was part of the appeal to me. Matthew: It’s true that Zachtronics isn’t the first studio you’d think of when it comes to story. GWO: Of all studios out there, why did you join Zachtronics after going indie? Not exactly a go-to studio for story-driven games. In particular, we investigated the way computers and humans can combine their different problem-solving approaches to tackle complex problems in science like protein folding. The work was very interesting and I greatly enjoyed my time there. This role was much like the producer role I held previously it involved the day-to-day management of this research group. Matthew: I worked at a games research lab called the Center for Game Science. GWO: You also worked at a games research lab at the University of Washington. I concentrated on several areas including design, animation, and audio. That meant creating production plans, making sure all the right assets were created in the right order and on schedule, ensuring we had enough staff, and so on. Matthew: When I worked at these studios I was a producer. GWO: Matthew, before joining Zachtronics you worked at Bungie, Treyarch, and 343 Industries. Matthew Seiji Burns, writer, composer, and game developer. Good folks at GOG.com put us in touch with Matthew Seiji Burns, the man who wrote Eliza, composed the music for the game and is otherwise responsible for its production. In contrast to the programming puzzle games the studio is famous for, Eliza is a visual novel about an AI counseling program, the people who develop it, and the people who use it. You might want to check out a small review of the game that we posted earlier. Eliza is the latest title from Zachtronics that took everyone by surprise. ![]()
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