How Portal Was Written | Erik Wolpaw (Portal) — The Examined Game

SPEAKER_02 0:00

You're typically not there for the story, you're there for the game, and so you're you're writing in the margins. Um, and the environment is a is a terrific margin to to write in.

SPEAKER_00 0:15

Hi there, my name is Stephen Lake, and welcome to the Examined Game. Today we're talking with Eric Woolpo, the veteran Valve writer, whose credits include Portal 1 and 2, Half-Life 2, Episodes 1 and 2, Left for Dead 1 and 2, Half-Life Alex, and Psychonauts. So I got to speak with Eric about world building on a budget. It's a brilliant conversation that really highlights the importance of writing in a video game. Portal is such a great game mechanically, and it's the writing that we hear as we enter these different spaces that really builds out this world and gets more and more fleshed out. We also talk about the pressure that comes from writing a funny game and how important writing is, especially when you're doing it from the margins, so as not to detract from people's desire to basically push forward through the game itself. Please rate the episode if you enjoy it. Thank you very much. What's a good early kind of like gaming, not necessarily even video games, but just like example of play or interaction or books or something that you can, you know, comes to mind from your sort of younger years. You can kind of draw a line from that point to what you ended up going on to do with your work.

SPEAKER_02 1:21

Yeah, it's kind of uh the earliest memory I have of like gaming is uh there was a bookstore down at the end of our street when I was a kid, a couple blocks away, and they had uh Avalon Hill games, and I would walk over there every day and look. There was a there's a Starship Troopers game, Avalon Hill, old Starship Troopers game that had for whatever reason the cover of it just spoke to me. Like I was fascinated with this. And eventually I managed to talk my parents into uh buying it. And I can't remember how I mean I was way too young for it. And even today, I I eventually bought a copy on eBay a few years ago. And I mean, the rules are just it's not a especially streamlined game.

SPEAKER_00 2:12

Is it like a tabletop game?

SPEAKER_02 2:13

Is it like a an actual board game, Avalon Hillop? Uh, but that kind of led me to uh it came with a catalog of other Avalon Hill games, and uh there were some that were tagged as like beginner, and so I uh uh got one called Tactics 2 after that, which was more my speed, but I didn't really have anyone to play it with, so I just would you know play it myself. It is a war game, simple with little you know pieces and those, you know, the war gamey markings on them that I don't even know they're like little squares, they're like military markings. Anyway, so that put me on the path of uh yeah, I don't know. I I come from a family on my dad's side of lawyers. My dad was a lawyer, his his dad was a lawyer, all his dad's brothers were lawyers, so they're people interested in interpreting rules systems. So I yeah, but I instead of becoming a lawyer, I just uh went the gaming route. Uh, but you know, I think there's a similar impulse there to navigate and think about rules systems.

SPEAKER_00 3:20

Can you elaborate on that a little more? Because it's I mean it makes total sense. It's just it's not one of those careers that I'm always interested in what people's parents did, but I've never made that connection about my lawyering.

SPEAKER_02 3:31

You know, when you think about you know, I'm not a lawyer, so I don't exactly you know, I grew up around lawyers, but you know, they they look at sets of rules and case histories, and they I think to be a good lawyer you have to be sort of fascinated with with reading through these things and looking for you know, thinking about how they work and arguing about them. And uh I feel like rules for games are are similar. You've got rules, and you know, there's arguments about them, and you have to like thinking about them. You know, most I think, I mean, I like board games a lot, but I'm happy to just sit and read board game rules, you know, and never play them. There's just something fascinating about the structure of rules to me. Uh, I can't explain it more than it sort of speaks to me. Uh and I I just feel like there, I I don't know that it's you know, I don't know if being interested in rules is genetic, but clearly uh I come from a family of people that were mostly lawyers, the men.

SPEAKER_00 4:35

And then in terms of were you sort of interested in writing from a young age as well?

SPEAKER_02 4:40

Yeah, uh you know, I always would write things just to uh entertain friends or myself, and uh throughout the I still have it. There's a I think it's from the fourth or fifth grade, we would get instead of report cards, they were little just a little piece of paper that had a written like here's how we did. And it was an English class, and I still have, I remember it clearly, and also still have it, that the teacher's comment was Eric is very good at entertaining himself, which sounds like a compliment, but I don't think it was meant that way. But that's kind of what it was. I would what whenever I thought I could get away with it, and even if I didn't think I could get away with it, I would take whatever project we were working on and kind of ignore 90% of what we were asked to do and just write something that I thought was entertaining. Uh in fact, I didn't actually graduate high school because uh instead of writing the final paper uh that we were supposed to write, I just wrote I put a lot of effort into it, you know, 30 pages of um of gags basically. Uh and so they I thought I was gonna get away with it because I I basically, if they had if the teacher had failed me on this paper, I would have gotten through with a D, like I was doing well enough otherwise. But there's a lot of information about this. But the uh uh instead she gave me an incomplete, which was kind of a checkmate move, which meant I just couldn't graduate. So I went and got my GD like the next next week, uh, which is I don't know, in the US, that's like the high school, you can just take a test and show.

SPEAKER_01 6:27

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:28

So I went through all 12 years. I just kind of that last little hump. Uh, again, because of my uh desire to entertain myself, I guess. Uh, but that was always centered around like writing, yeah, or assembling like kind of little multimedia things that I thought were would were fun. You know, that was how I got motivated to do things.

SPEAKER_00 6:50

Uh and then is there like an obvious line or or pattern there to to why why specifically video games?

SPEAKER_02 6:59

You know, I mean games were just uh there was a parallel route of you know, I we were interested in we being my my friends all through you know grade school and high school, we typically were interested in two things, which were making each other laugh and games. Uh that was kind of the through line. Um and so yeah, throughout all this, from you know, Pong, Atari, DCI, like I was obsessed with games, and the writing was sort of secondary, uh, which is you know, eventually ended up writing about games. Um because I, you know, I programmed, you know, I taught myself to program when I was a kid, but couldn't really make it, especially now that I've worked professionally at game companies with people who just have a uh natural talent for it. I I never had full natural talent for programming. I could do it, I could do some, and I, you know, I I I was okay, but not not great like the people I work with. So that wasn't gonna be my in into the industry. I might just assumed at some point that I wasn't ever gonna work in the industry. But then it, you know, one thing led to another, and it turned out that without knowing it, I'd kind of had the perfect set of experiences and knowledge to to be good at this one specific thing, which was writing for games. I suppose even you know, in the period that I that I was most active writing for games. Do you play? Do you game a lot? Oh still a ton. Uh yeah, like uh I'm I'm eager. I'm not I'm eager to try the uh the Vampire Survivor, their new game, their like uh card game came out today. Uh I've been playing Neo 3 a ton. Mugenix has got actually this last few weeks it's been huge. Yeah, but I still my love of games never never left me. Slay the Spider 2. I cannot wait. Uh wait for what, sorry? Oh, Slay the Spider. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um but yeah, I play a lot of games. I play board games a lot. Um yeah, I just I I just love love games. But you you playing anything now?

SPEAKER_00 9:16

I'm playing I'm I'm I actually just finally finished it's the first time I've completed a JRPG in years, the Final Fantasy VII remake, the first one. Oh yeah, uh yeah. I felt very proud of myself. Um what else am I playing? Um I'm still chipping away at Claire Obscure. Um and I just I it's actually a well, but it's for some reason it just came to mind because you talk about writing. Um there's a game, it's a text, is it text parser, text phaser game parser, you know, where you sort of type the called the Crimson Diamond. And it's one of these uh I don't know if you remember the Laura Bow mystery games from back in the day.

SPEAKER_02 9:58

No Sierra ones. Adventure game, I adventure for ending up finding my way into the game industry mostly through writing. I typically play story-like games that are uh it's just there there are the Yakuza games for some reason, the stories in those really really draw me in. I love those, but a lot of story heavy games I'm I'm I don't play. Um but uh adventure games are I I just don't have the brain for the kind of puzzle structure of adventure games. Um so I those ones never got their hooks in me.

SPEAKER_00 10:38

I go back to them. The thing for me, whenever I and particularly that game, as you'll see with the artwork, if I'm playing an adventure game, it's because I have a strong desire to regress, you know, sort of trying to go back to, you know, just my my much younger self, you know, and try and tap into whatever that that feeling of wonder was back then. But surprisingly kind of action and RPG-centered nowadays. I actually just started um Avoid.

SPEAKER_02 11:08

Oh, I played some, you know, I played Avowed for a while. I I was enjoying it. Uh uh this was must have been six months ago. I also played Claire Obscure, not to the finish, but I was enjoying the story in that as a rare game that had a lot of story, but I also thought mechanically that the combat system in Claire Obscure was pretty pretty entertaining, that sort of rhythm-based um combat system.

SPEAKER_00 11:35

I don't know why I gave up. I sort of hated it at first and then I fell in love with it. Not the story, but the mechanic. But once I got my head around it, I was just like completely sold on it.

SPEAKER_02 11:45

And a vow, if I remember right, had a I mean, not not as um unique a system, but it was pretty solid combat in a vowed as well.

SPEAKER_00 11:54

It it it it feels it for sort of first person RPG, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:58

Yeah, I I love all the I mean the Souls games love them. Uh you know, and I like that they're all story light for the most I mean there's lots of story if you feel like digging through the lore in the eye descriptions and everything, but uh yeah, though the all the from games are are I love we my son and I have been playing Night Rain. Well, we we haven't played probably in two months now, but we we run a lot of entertainment out of Night Rain as well.

SPEAKER_00 12:29

How how old is he, just out of interest? He's uh 15. Okay. I just it's in I was interested for context of what age someone's out on their gaming journey, you know.

SPEAKER_02 12:39

Yeah, he's um it was interesting because he you know, we I was still working at Valve when he was young. I mean, like in Bellevue, you know, down there, and we would go to Valve every weekend. He just spent a lot of time, you know, kids are always hanging out at Valve, but he was too young to kind of appreciate it at the time, and now you know, like he likes TF2, and he so about six months ago I had to go to Valve for a week, and so I brought him with me, and that was that was exciting for him because he was able to go now, you know, appreciating oh, it's it's Valve. Uh so I was glad that he was able to have that experience, you know, before he was 18. How old are your kids?

SPEAKER_00 13:20

Uh 19 and 17.

SPEAKER_02 13:23

Oh, so they're yeah, I mean, they're getting older. Are they gamers as well? I assume any teenager probably is.

SPEAKER_00 13:31

Like, yeah, grew up, loved gaming, you know, and just like and you know, as friends online and playing, you know, um Call of Duty and and things like that, and then gravitating more into kind of like single player stuff more recently, and then I played a lot of Switch, you know, introduced her to like Stardew Valley, she's put a crazy amount of of time into. Um, and then we play a lot of the um, you know, the uh split fiction and uh the the other one they did before. I hate that one, I forget the name of games.

SPEAKER_02 14:04

Oh, it takes two, is it?

SPEAKER_00 14:05

It takes two, yeah, you know, so anything sort of co-opy um that isn't too um contentious so we don't fall out of each other while we're playing it. Yeah. Um yeah, but that's that's been a big uh bonding point for us, especially them being like my stepkids, so it was kind of like you know, when you're trying to find common common ground, you know, at that early point of the relationship, you're like, Oh, do you Yeah. How how young were they when you first they weren't actually too young, so they're like 12 and 14. So um that that that age where it's sort of like an you know they're not young enough where they're just gonna like like you um out out the gate. So you sort of gotta find something to uh you know. I know you've obviously talked about it before, but maybe just to sort of go over what that that journey was from, you know, obviously you writing about games first and then oh sure.

SPEAKER_02 14:59

Uh so it started with uh my friend and at the time business partner, we were running a database uh marketing company together. Uh it's more sort of a database management company. Um I wasn't big, it was just the two of us, but um I was in Cleveland, but we started uh initially as a way to test some web database stuff. We made uh a website that was about games called Old Man Murray, and that um we just kept doing it and it was fun and it was something we did, you know, we liked writing, and this was uh letting us you know put writing out in front of somebody, we weren't sure who, but the site kind of caught on uh after about a year of us working on it, uh, you know, in the early internet, and from there it got noticed by some editors at GameSpot and a few other places. So I started writing for them. And one of the editors, uh Ron Dulan at GameSpot, uh they were in San Francisco, knew Tim Schaefer, and he he knew old man Murray, but he was also looking for someone who could help him write on Psychonauts, uh, which was the game they were Doublefine was working on at the time, and also do a little bit of programming, which was again that was right up my alley. So uh, you know, I went flew down to San Francisco and spent a day with Tim and we hit it off. And so I started I worked on Psychonauts for about a year, uh and then uh left Double Fine and moved uh anyway, we we moved back to Minnesota, my wife and I. And uh meanwhile the people at Valve had been uh readers of Old Man Murray, and we had corresponded with Gabe and other people at Valve. And after my wife and I had moved back to or moved to Minnesota, I Chet and I got an email from Gabe saying, Would you like to come down to Valve? You know, we're looking to hire some writers, and you know, we know we like what you guys have done in the past. And this was before Psychonauts had come out. I don't think he knew that uh Psychonauts that I worked on Psychonauts or that Psychonauts would even turn out to be a decent game. Uh so we went we went to Valve. This was in late 2004, maybe September of 2004. And we spent a couple days at Valve, talked to people, and uh they hired us. And so we started in November, I believe, of 2004. Um right after, it was like a week or two after Half-Life 2 shipped. So the the studio was in kind of resting mode, and you know, everybody was pretty pretty wiped out from shipping Half-Life, and that and and then that's kind of it. That's where I've been since 2004. Uh, I just stayed at uh at Valve.

SPEAKER_00 18:15

And what was your first project that you started to get hands-on with?

SPEAKER_02 18:19

Well, when we got there, there was uh initiative to there's a thing called SFM, which is Source Filmmaker, which they were just starting with, and they wanted to do some shorts with Source Filmmaker, so they initially hired uh Chet and I to do work on these shorts, um which was fine. None of these ones ever came out, the ones we were initially working on. Uh but both of Chet and I were more interested in games, and you know, you're tantalizingly close to working on some games. So what we ended up doing was fairly quickly after, well, in valve terms, fairly quickly, but it probably took about eight, eight or nine months of us spinning our wheels on this these SFM shorts. But they were starting episode one was being worked on uh Half-Life episode, and then came out early in our relatively early in our in our time there. But even before that, the they were working on episode two and team fortress two and portal, and so both of us trans, you know, I transitioned over to Portal One exclusively, and Chet was more working on the episodes with Mark Laidlaw, and then Chet and I were together working on TF2 at the time, and so they're mainly that the first major thing we were sort of involved, Chet Morso involved in shipping episode one, but really the orange box was was the real first thing. So that was you know three titles plus shipping, reshipping, uh a couple other titles, I guess episode one and and uh Half-Life 2 were both in that box as well. It was a wonderful box. Yeah, yeah, it was uh it was something. I it didn't seem so strange at the time that you would ship, I even though I think it was even at the time. Uh but the crazy thing is, is uh Chet was I was talking to Chet, well, actually it's been a couple months now, but that people forget there was people were angry about it when we announced it, partly because we had said there was gonna be a black box and an orange box, and the black box wasn't gonna have Half-Life 2 and Episode 1 because you might already have that. And then at some point they were just like, look, we're just gonna ship it all together. But they were like, We could have, we could have got I thought it was gonna be the black box for ten dollars. Uh, but I think once it came out, people were happy they got their money's worth with it.

SPEAKER_00 20:55

I mean, it's it's something I haven't thought about a lot because I, you know, I I mainly just think about the games themselves, you know, but the the you know, the the episodes in Portal, which I was exposed to at that time. But um, you know, and this wasn't on my sort of list of questions, but it just comes to mind.

SPEAKER_02 21:10

I mean, in terms of like, do you know how much forethought was put into that as this kind of packaging idea, or was it kind of one of these like let's just because it was I I don't think I was privy to those conversations, even though Valve was it's still pretty small, but back then, you know, I I don't know exactly, I think it was like 60 people total you know, was what were working there, but um there I can I do know the most amount of thought that I was around was the poor guy Greg Coomer who was in charge of making the cover art for it, because there was almost no way to do it to not make it look like some sort of Walmart value package uh because you had these I gotta look it up three wildly different IPs, you know, kind of packaged together. Uh I so yeah, I don't know exactly how I uh clearly somebody thought about it, but I think part of it too was just we were in the position, as small as we were, that these three things were gonna be done more or less at the same time. Like it or it was clear that that was a possibility. And I think they were just thinking this would be this would be cool. And partly because maybe you know episode two team fortress two and portal were sort of smaller than a typical full release. Although if you when you put the three of them together they're sort of bigger than a full release. But uh so I think that may have factored into it a little bit too although I'm at this point I'm just guessing.

SPEAKER_00 22:43

Uh and just something that comes to mind I was just wondering you know you spoke about the the early writing and just the idea of doing stuff to make your friends laugh and obviously like comedy and humor is the you know the the the channel with which you was able to very you know um well communicate sort of stories you know and I'm I was just interested to say with Psychonauts and obviously Portal both of which are games that are you know extraordinarily sort of funny amongst many other things were those sort of um was that the intention like was was was the sort of the the the driving narrative narrative for Portal always going to be something that was like very humorous or was that just that that was your kind of the way that you all decided to take it yeah that you know that's my default mode of write where I'm comfortable so you know and for psychonauts obviously I was hired because it was a game that was you know Tim writes funny games he wanted somebody to write funny with portal I it could have gone anyway.

SPEAKER_02 23:46

I'm not sure that the you know the the Narbacular drop team port slash portal team had an idea one way or the other but you know once they dropped me into it I was like I I may as well lean on whatever my quote unquote strengths are like why make this harder than it needs to be uh plus you know I I just thought that would that seem to be the the way to go um so it wasn't planned that way but once we yeah everybody was quickly on board with it there was nobody who was like I think this needs to be significantly more serious you know is there I can't I can't imagine there's something much more pressureful than the I feel like humor in a game like especially if someone pegs it oh this is supposed to be like a a funny game it's sort of it it I it's the sort of thing that I think can make a player sort of want to sit back and be like go on then like prove it to me you know yeah like it's it could it can it's rough for sure uh less rough in portal because it was a little bit it wasn't necessarily sold as that um probably harder when it came to portal to because people knew that you know there was going to be some some humor in it um but uh yeah it it's it's a constant you know it's a challenge uh for sure it's just something I'm you know I feel like everyone's just comparing every game that's got a hint of humor to it to like Monkey Island you know which is sort of um yeah yeah it's uh you know you're you're going against although with games especially at the time you weren't going against that many memorable ones so the the field was still sort of open yeah like you said most of the ones that were notable were adventure games um and yeah portal's kind of in a weird way an adventure game it's you know a it's a puzzle game which adventure games are just has a more narrowly focused uh puzzle mechanic I guess and I guess I'm just interested because because obviously the game just like did so well and people just absolutely like loved it and and so much about you know the characters and everything they just seem to resonate with.

SPEAKER_00 26:14

Were you aware at the time of the sort of it's got a very kind of impactful ending you know it sort of feels quite meaningful and heavy's not the word but I guess I just wonder if when you're doing that you you realize that you're making something with that level of depth no I well no you I mean you're just trying to well a you're trying to get through just every day and you know you're making a game there's eight gazillion decisions you have to make because literally everything's manufactured you know so no I and also because as rigorously as Valve playtests because we were shipping the orange box you know the TF2 people working on TF2 people working on uh episode two there wasn't a ton of oversight on the first portal like it was only near the end that people from Valve really kind of tuned in and were playing something near final and we're starting to like we started to get some feedback like whoa this that was way better than we thought it was going to be um and plus it you know games are typically pretty bad until near the end and then they they start coming together.

SPEAKER_02 27:30

But you know you just try and go moment to moment and you have these little epiphanies about oh this would be good here this would be good there. I mean try I I personally try not to go in with like a theme necess you know that I'm trying to push necessarily because that you end up getting kind of pedantic sometimes about it. It's the theme typically will emerge from characters or just the things that you think are interesting or yeah a lot of the decisions you make are just what's going to work with the mechanics of the game how is this going to fit in what can we do with not our monetary budget necessarily but you know there was I'm gonna say seven seven people working on portal plus me it was the Narbacular drop kids plus me basically um you know and as it started to get together or come together at the end it we got the song from Jonathan Colton and you know you're just running out of resources uh by the end like at the very end I had this idea that I wanted to do for the credits the credits come up in the text prints and it's like this kind of ASCII terminal thing. But everybody was too busy to do anything. So luckily I mean with a little bit of programming background I was able to do that that programming myself by just you know kind of going around stone souping it and asking people for a little help here and there. But yeah you just start to you know you especially on something small like portal there's just decisions that are made because there's all these practical constraints on what's even possible. Which is nice most of the time usually that having these constraints helps focus your your mind a little bit. When it's a complete blank sight you do whatever you want that that's genuinely terrifying.

SPEAKER_00 29:30

But when there's constraints and even in the case of portal you know all the mechanics were there and there's certain things in place it's like okay now I just have to figure out a way that to make these you know connect these dots and make this entertaining there's many less problems to solve I guess uh with more constraints um that's that's what I was gonna ask was just just uh I'm just honing in on portal just but you know but for this particular thing what state was the game in when you sort of came on board you know to start building that that world around it most of the if I remember correctly most of the puzzle track was in the breaking out into the uh you know going into a fire pit and then breaking into the behind the scenes part was already there was no actual end narratively obviously because there was no narrative at all when I got there um but also just mechanically there was no there was nothing at the the very end um but so that's basically where it was you know and there was roughed in using Half-Li assets which for the most part ended up you know that's what we shipped was was these half-life sort of looking environments even though they were you know kit bash a little bit to make it look somewhat different we we were obviously we're able to get some new art in there and so what was your sort of first and this sort of comes onto this topic of you know and it it's the question could just as much be world building on a budget as is sort of what you would talk about world building given any any kind of limited constraint right be it the you know the structure the the the order the game is already laid out what was your sort of first uh step in starting to kind of iterate on that it was well so I had remembered from Psychonauts we we would do temp voices uh a lot and sometimes it was just you know we just take people from the office or me or Tim and uh for I don't know what the reason was for some character situation we I used a text to speech and there was something funny about the text to speech just inherently funny to me about the text to speech uh and so I had I remembered that and so when I started thinking about what we could do with portal I was like well why don't we just start with putting a little announcement at the beginning and end of every chamber or at the beginning it may have just been at the end of the chambers as kind of little reward for you know maybe there'd be a little gag or something just a little institutional voice um and we'll use the text a speech and then that'll be a placeholder and we'll we'll figure something out you know we had grander ideas of having characters or you know actual animated characters and things.

SPEAKER_02 32:36

But that started succeeding it was you know people liked it and then so you're like well okay so this is working to some extent so why what if we pursue this a little bit and then at some point it's obvious in retrospect but the it hit us that the the game is not you fighting monsters or soldiers or whatever it's you versus the environment and this voice is sort of the voice of your enemy which is the environment so why don't we just lean into that that the the the environment is already mechanically your antagonist so why not just give a voice to it you know this the voice is the facility um and then things that that kind of drove most of the the decisions that that happened after that just out of interest was it like out the gate obvious that like the the facility that Gladys would have this kind of disregard for your life? Yeah I mean it was something I was uh and this is this is not profound or deep but I was kind I'd been thinking about this thing because right after we started on uh at Valve I I had an ulcerative colitis and I had a year of these three surgeries that were really gnarly and uh when I'm sitting I I remember specifically sitting laying in this bed uh after one of the surgeries and just thinking because everybody when you're in the hospital is usually nice to you but it's very institutional and I was just thinking what if these people were pretending to be nice and they actually don't have my best interest at heart which again isn't a profound insight but it was something I felt deeply uh which did inspire you know some of it just an institution that says it has my best interest at heart but I suspect over time that maybe it doesn't it's interesting because it sort of says it a lot as well right like it's constantly repeating itself around that whilst whilst obviously behaving in a completely contradictory uh way yeah and then eventually you and again the the riding into the fire pit and then escaping behind the scenes was just there.

SPEAKER_00 35:14

I don't know if that was there already but that was before there was even any idea. There was no yeah other than again the story such as it was was that you escaped this death trap at the uh so that you know uh in narratively that was in there there being you know the Nebracular drop kids heads uh and it you know was a it was a cool beat so we kept it and it just seemed great to be like this this voice that was kind of uh again institutional and you're not even sure if it's live or recorded suddenly notices that you are have gotten somewhere you're not supposed to get and then becomes nervous about it uh and then more directly antagonistic um so it just fit yeah everything just kind of fell into place uh and is it is it difficult to write a good nemesis bad guy I mean I it's probably more difficult to write a good guy because they're they're less interesting but uh uh I mean everything at least for me for writing things is is always hard I'd rather just not but uh uh yeah it it it it's easier than than some things and we uh you know we find kind of found the voice of it well which is this computer voice um which we might have actually gone with a text to speech program but they were too expensive and we also did need it the voice to act at some point and then the text to speech the artifacts are sometimes I'm talking about you know this 2006 text now it's just the AI stuff is you know a lot more robust but uh at the you just weren't in control of it enough uh and also again there was no pricing model no nobody wrote these uh text to speech programs thought about shipping them in games like it would have been prohibitively expensive um so we got Ellen luckily and also because we knew at some point you know especially towards the end she was going to need to act and the text of speech was not going to be able to do that and so you know again the the the thing that I was just really interested to dig in with you about was like this illusion that I think good writing does where it really makes the world feel so much so much bigger than whatever is being presented to you right and and again obviously I think the reason why why Portal is such an interesting case study for that is because it's lit literally like just these you know white paneled rooms right but I just wonder from a writing perspective um you know and again we've talked about like with Left for Dead with the you know um papers left around the graffiti and the environmental storytelling that that is done so well in video games like do you are you able to sort of put into words what it is that happens when you sort of when good writing can kind of tap into the imagination of a player to basically fill in like huge swathes of information that they're not that isn't being stuck in front of them visually yeah I mean some of it is and I think people do the like I'm not a big proponent probably because of laziness of laying out lots and lots of like quote unquote world building stuff that doesn't go into the game.

SPEAKER_02 39:01

We do Jay my current writing partner Jay Pinkard and I'll do some but some of it's um we try and start with the characters first and then build out what we need and no more than we need no more than we need or if the artists need some information uh to do their job we'll try and fill that out but we try and go not too too far out uh it's kind of like you know the level designers there's doors and they they try and think about things logically but you know there's many doors and areas that you don't get to they don't model those out just so they know where things are. But I think if you just yeah I'm not I'm not a hundred percent sure how much some of it it's just a gut feel there's no like formula like okay this would be interesting like the behind the scenes or not the behind the scenes there's there's some graffiti um in portal there's the rat man den and there's a few little pieces of graffiti and they're mainly there to just to reinforce that something may be going on here that you are not you know not everything is is as it seems or that what they're telling you is not not necessarily true. And we we wrote a or I wrote a few things about mainly just to entertain myself or to entertain you know the team about Cave Johnson which I he doesn't appear at all in the game and and a few things uh about the world there um and you know we've probably gone too far sometimes but I I enjoy just not knowing um you know having having the sense that maybe there's more but not not necessarily having it all filled in uh things you know there's a you know famously uh Cormack McCarthy you know when people would ask him what ended the world in the road he'd be like did you read the book it who cares I don't care what ended the world um you know and some of it we had some of it was like because it was in the Half-Life universe we had to address we felt like addressing some of that we had this or I think I did and then the team did this kind of snobs versus slobs thing where black mesa were the fancy pants you know government funded people and this aperture was the scrappy scrappy underdogs and so we set that up in a couple of environmental places. I mean like you said games are the maybe the best medium for environmental storytelling just because you most games especially of a certain type you know you kind of explore the world at your own pace.

SPEAKER_00 41:59

So it's almost like wandering through a museum you know you can set up little exhibits for people um uh and you also don't have a lot of time to have scenes of people talking or you you hopefully don't you know slow the game down all the time to uh you know you're not you're typically not there for the story you're there for the game and so you're you're writing in the margins um and the environment is a is a terrific margin to to write in and just you know on that note when you talked about like that not not going overkill you know with with with the writing or fleshing out characters or well like what is like you know what what what does one need to know about the character to be able to sort of start moving forward with the development of the game or story is it just like how much background or like what is their objective so it's sort of simple as that yeah typically it's it may not even necessarily be that it's like what role what role will they play and then what is a personality like what role would they play in the broader story and then what's a personality that seems like it would be interesting in that role you know for instance in Portal 2 we had Wheatley and it took us a while to arrive at the fact that he was he was a moron and was very self-conscious about that.

SPEAKER_02 43:29

You know that ends up being his sort of defining characteristic but you know he we had his voice in our head especially a lot of times we'll honestly start with a voice like an actor that we're like well if we could get him we like or her we like this voice and so what can we do with that um because one of the things in you know you can't really get Daniel day Lewis not because you can't get him but Game production tends to be you sort of need to lean into what the actor is going to be very naturally immediately good at because you don't have months of rehearsal or any rehearsal. Uh, you got very limited time with the actors. So um you sort of also base the character on what is going to be comfortable. Uh, there's a little bit of back and forth. Like you might cast uh somebody who you know um will be able to voice this the character traits that that you already have. But it's a it's a just a weird organic process of being sit if at least for me and us, not with Portal, because I was mostly by myself, but since then, you know, me and Jay sitting in a room and just trying to like I mean they call it breaking story, or like, okay, well what what could happen? And then you just you sit in a room for weeks and you you talk about it and you think about it, and it's constantly on your mind, and you hope you come to to some general uh path that you can take.

SPEAKER_00 45:05

Do you find it how do you find it talking with fans of these games, you know, about their kind of a bit like you were saying with Cormant McCarthy, you know, the fact that he's he's writing this this book, he's got no interest in in going into that particular detail of of how the world world ended, but that a lot of people, you know, that's that's the the thing they're sort of transfixed on, or like the fact that you know Ratman, you know, is is this like hugely iconic, like an iconic video game character, but is basically fleshed out from a handful of scribbles on a on a wall for the most part.

SPEAKER_02 45:43

Like it's it's yeah, it uh I mean it's great, it's obviously uh flattering. Um, but you know, often I think this is the case with a lot of people that you know it was a I thought about it very and Jay thought about it these questions, many of them very intensely for a couple of years, and then we stopped, you know, stopped thinking about them. So it's not as fresh in our minds. Sometimes people will have um knowledge or make connections that that we either didn't make or have long since uh forgotten. Uh, although we do revisit aperture, you know, we have every few years in different formats. Uh Ratman actually was uh Ted Kozmaka, who's a writer at the time, took I had actually written a little biography. I don't even know, it's un unlike me. I wrote a like a four-paragraph little story about Ratman, which Ted took, which was never in anything uh and really didn't. I maybe I showed it to Kim or something. Uh but Ted took that and then made there's a comic about Ratman. Uh and he Ted wrote the comic, not what happens in the comic, but the character Rapman and kind of the idea that there was this schizophrenic person who got trapped in in the facility and was running out of meds and was slowly losing his mind. Um and then made made the comic and fleshed that out. Uh and there was a the partly because there was some thought that Ratman would appear in Portal One and for a variety of reasons, I think mainly because there was just we realized there we had no time budget time slash uh artist budget to to do that, to actually make a human character that that would show up, um other than the the Chell model, which you can see through the through the portals. Um I don't even know what question I'm I'm answering anymore, but uh yeah, I oh I know about the fancy. I mean it it it's great, it's great. Uh but I don't always have they uh often have more information uh than than I do about this stuff.

SPEAKER_00 48:16

Um and I, you know, I was just again because I suddenly think about people might be listening who are interested in writing or you know trying to improve their craft. I just wonder if there's things that on reflection that you spent like a extraordinarily large amount of time either thinking about, worrying about, or transfixed on that you probably shouldn't have or didn't need to be doing.

SPEAKER_02 48:39

I mean, maybe that's not even necessarily in writing, but just just in in in the I mean personally, I spend a lot of time and I always have been this way, a lot of mental effort procrastinating until uh I it gets to the point where it's critical and I really and I make myself crazy with that. Uh my my advice would be, and it's harder is to just write, yeah, write uh pace it out. Uh don't don't just wait till the end. But uh I don't know that other than that, there's a you know, sometimes you will go down a path, you know, specific, but this is more specific. You wouldn't necessarily know it beforehand. Um, you've just gone down a wrong path writing-wise or story-wise. But even then, a lot of times it's because another idea uh appears. I guess, and all this is very subjective, it's just the way I work and the things that I like. Like maybe writing some sort of Tolkien-esque Silmarillion is works for you. It seems like that seems like a waste of effort to me unless you're Tolkien, because I think 99% of the time it turns out you aren't Tolkien. Uh, and it's very hard to compete with real history when you're trying to make fake history. Um you know, it's you know, there's George R. Martin, there's Tolkien, and then there's a kind of steep drop-off. Um so my advice is worry about some characters, some interactions, some fun moments, like you know, the best one of the best pieces of advice is going a little bit farther afield that we I can't remember where Jay and I we read it somewhere, and it it's really is true that you say you block out the scenes that you're gonna write, the ones that you feel like are gonna be a chore to write, you should rethink those. Because if they're gonna be a chore, uh everything's a chore to some degree, but if if you're just like uh this is just gonna not be fun to write, it's probably not gonna be fun for people to experience. So uh that's the your first first uh indication that that maybe you should think more about this particular uh scene. Um, but yeah, other than that, I you you gotta try stuff. So give yourself time, especially if you get to work in a room or with a writing partner, to just like talk. Don't just talk about it, talk about it, talk about it, talk about it. Talk about it all the time. Uh think about it all the time. You know, we definitely both get in this laser focus mania mode for you know years on end where everything, everything that happens, everything you experience, everything you hear is run through this filter of like the first layer is can I use this in this thing we're working on? Um, you know, it it's this monomaniacal focus on on doing this thing. Uh so that that's important. Uh, but there are definitely things you should probably do, like learn how to work with actors, you know, try and get some acting, maybe take some. I haven't done this myself, but you know, maybe even take acting lessons. It it's it's interesting. Oh, also, uh, if you're writing by yourself, this is harder, but say things out loud. It's amazing how often, like even to this day, and even after Jay and I speak the lines to each other as we're writing, once you get in the studio, you're like, I cannot believe like this is this sounds terrible when spoken. Like things that read well don't necessarily sound sound particularly good uh when when they're when they're acted. Uh so yeah, I don't know. There's a random grab bag of of things at this point.

SPEAKER_00 52:53

No, it's it's I love that that thing about when you're just in that that zone, and it can be for years. It's the same with filmmaking, you know, where like so much of everything that you're hearing or seeing or doing is is being run through that filter, you know. I think for me it's often like I can't listen to music that I can't somehow like relate to the project that I'm I'm working on. Not not that it needs to be in it, but it has to somehow lyrically or pacing-wise or tonally, like I have to associate it with that, or else it's sort of no fun for me.

SPEAKER_02 53:26

Yeah, and it's yeah, it it can be uh I I'm I'm sort of well, I don't even know if that's the opposite. I have this thing where I will uh just listen to the same song like over and over again for months in a loop while I'm working. Like it's just it just is there in my head. I'm not it's not in my head, I'm actually listening to it. But I I don't like to listen to like a variety of music. I just like the same thing over and over and over again.

SPEAKER_00 53:59

And and that's what I get when I'm doing that process because because you know that it it does, it really narrows the field of what tracks are sort of like um, I don't know, cognitively like resonate with me when I'm thinking about a project or editing or writing or whatever, and it is it's very limited. And when I get my you know, like whatever my stats at the end of the year for listens, it's just kind of like and I can look back at at previous years and see what I had been playing over and over and over again. Um, and it's always relative to whatever project was was going on at the time.

SPEAKER_02 54:35

Yeah, it's uh but I mean I assume everybody, the only universal thing uh when I talk to writers, professional writers, is that none of them if you none of them actually enjoy the process of writing. Uh, but I think that's probably true of most people's jobs. Uh you know, it's the classic you like to have written, not to actually write, uh, just because it's I don't even know why. You occasionally we'll get in like a fugue state, the you know, you're really in the zone where you're it's just kind of flowing out of you, but to get there, the starting is always always hard. But that but so I guess that would be the other thing. If if you don't like it, uh that's not unusual. In fact, that is I've never met a writer who enjoys the process of writing, uh, especially a professional one. Um yeah, it's it's it it's it's rough. The more fun for me at least with a room full of people or just even with just with Jay, where you're just sort of sitting there hashing it out together. But even then, you know, you get into modes where you're just both cranky and it's nothing's happening. Uh but once you know someone well enough, it's it's good to you can at some point recognize like we're at this point where we're not we're not changing the uh we're not changing the atmosphere here today. So we should probably just give up and do something, something else. Um But yeah, all that seems very specific to me, except for the nobody likes writing. Uh that that's universal.

SPEAKER_00 56:19

I mean it again, and it reminds me of like editing in documentary nonfiction, where it's just like it's just a spog. And you're kind of like it we're gonna start and when we end, we'll have something great, but in between all we can really do is just keep showing up and stay hydrated um as best as possible. And then other than maybe if you're cutting something to music, which is maybe like 2% or 1% of the overall film, and then the rest is uh is is is just chipping, chipping away.

SPEAKER_02 56:50

Yeah, there's a lot of grinding, grinding it out. Uh, and like I said, and I'm not sure if it's this way with movies, it probably is, that you know, the games are games are just bad for a very long time, and you just need to accept it and kind of like just trust the process or the people you're working with or your own experience and talent that you probably pull it out of the fire uh before before it ships. Valve makes that easier because the deadlines aren't tight or slashy non-existent because they don't have any there's like no existential threat if something doesn't ship at a particular time, uh, you know, money-wise. Um so that that's helpful. But yeah, you you just gotta kind of learn to live with the with the sort of despair that this doesn't seem good, uh that it will hopefully get good.

SPEAKER_00 57:51

Um learn to live with despair.

SPEAKER_02 57:55

That's a good pull. Especially if you're doing something that's supposed to be funny. People get over the funniness very quickly and they're sick of hearing the same joke over and over again. Um you just gotta you just gotta let it you especially also resist the urge to change a joke that you're pretty sure is working just because you're sick of hearing it. Uh, because you may not be replacing it with anything better. Luckily, often there's so much work to do that you're not you're not gonna do that anyway. But you do start second guessing yourself. Although I think you start second guessing yourself with any creative project, one that stretches over years, you know. You just start to be like, is any of this good? Is this what are we doing? Like, there's so many times when you the self-doubt is just well, it could be crippling, but luckily, I mean you've got people you're working with to kind of lean on, and you do play testing, so you get some idea that maybe some of this, these specific parts are working. Um, but the biggest thing, especially at Valve, is just like the people you work with are working at such a high level that you're like, they are gonna they're gonna kill the part that they're working on. We should be we should be fine. Um yeah, so I guess it's like being a triathlete or something. Uh you just it's like a lot of it's just mental, mentally pushing through. Uh in in this case, it's like yeah, it's mental pain rather than physical pain.

SPEAKER_00 59:29

But I think uh um I mean for me it's often like this, just as long as everyone doesn't bottom out on the same day, you know, like and that we can kind of take turns as to the Yeah, which is uh, you know, Val's a flat structure, uh, which means you know anybody can bottom out at any time.

SPEAKER_02 59:50

You know, it's one one of the appealing things about management or leadership is that those are the people that have to, I mean, it sucks to be them, but they can only bottom out in private. They cannot, you know, like when I worked at Doublefine, Tim could not have the luxury of bottoming out. Like he needed to rally the troops all the time. Uh you know, well he could privately with somebody probably despair, but he you can't show you can't publicly show despair in front of the team because it will crush them. Um so it's you know kind of the burden people talk about management or leadership as being, you know, it's all all uh more money and perks, but it it really is a there's some very significant perks you don't get, which is to to to let yourself kind of have a mental breakdown.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:48

Well, it's that thing, and again it at the times on a project been in that position, it's like, oh I yeah, I I have to be the sanest person in the room, like for the foreseeable, or at least but or at least give the good do a good impression of of a good enough impression of that person um to keep others. Um it's a really interesting thing, actually. I think but having been in that position, having been in sort of both positions, you know, where it's sort of uh the sometimes being on the more like the uh creative lead or not, not necessarily you know on on top of people and more I don't know, it's like I can feel I think I've got space in the room to be able to kind of like uh waver here, you know. But um when you've got a strong leadership, it sort of gives other people permission to like crack, you know, hopefully not too much, but like yeah, it's kind of like that's an essay part of the process, I think.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:50

Yeah, I mean I think uh you know the leadership is there to be a calm steadying force and encourage you to do your job as well as possible. You know, like on Portal 2, uh our project lead was Josh Wire, and he was great at remaining calm and encouraging everyone to do work without necessarily trying to impose his creative will on anything. You know, he was like he was just a steady hand, uh and he was he was the project lead, not creative lead. There is no real you know, everybody's sort of in charge of their whole thing. Um, and that was it was great. It was great, but I do think, again, he's my still my friend. He doesn't work at Valve anymore. I think he was silently suffering. I mean, I think it broke him, you know, he was going through a lot more than he let on. You know, it was a very stressful uh thing. So uh yeah, it's a it's a rough job. I wouldn't I've never project been a project lead and I don't really want to be one. It's I mean just do my thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:59

Uh do you uh do you sort of have your kind of go-to people or places or things or what whatever it is to help, you know, with the I mean and again it's that thing of like I I've learned quickly that what one doesn't want to become is like a just a constant complainer or or downer, but just just practicing letting that release valve out just a little bit, be it to my wife or or um yeah, I you know I try not to I've always tried never to bring it home.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:29

Like I don't complain, I don't think hopefully I've ever complained to my wife as bad as it sometimes got at Valve. Not bad in terms of it's a bad job, just the amount of stress that there was. Uh Jay, I mean Jay and I have a bad sometimes a bad relationship where we get into a cycle of despair with each other. Uh so that one's actually maybe not that healthy. But that there's the there's yeah, you it's almost different on every project. You find the people who can give you some kind of mental support when things start start getting bad. Um, Jay and I would go on long walks just in the main one one nice thing about Valve is you know, it it's pretty open-ended. We'd just in the middle of the day go out and you know, spend two hours walking around, and a little bit of exercise outside, and also just a change of scenery helped. He was a heavy smoker at the time, and even that was helpful. We'd just get up from the table once an hour to go down so he could have a smoke. Uh, and then you know, there'd be the smoking crew downstairs, and you'd you know, shoot the shit down there for a little bit. Um, but yeah, I guess everybody's just gotta deal with it. I mean, I'm I'm making it sound like the world's most awful job, but it's you know, I don't I don't think so. I think we're talking about resilience and and yeah, and it is um there is stress, and and this is things are not really, you know, I haven't worked on a the last semi-big game I worked on was Alex, but even then I was um Jay and Sean were kind of there every day, and I had already moved to Cleveland, so I would, you know, swoop in every once in a while and we'd be on Zoom. So the days of it being truly uh, you know, gruelingly, grindingly difficult are I think past for me, luckily. I'm I'm kind of uh on the other other side of that. Um but you take everything, you know, everything's always a little bit of a struggle because you want it to be good. So but not it's not like it's not like the old days um anymore.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:41

And just out of interest, did because you know you talked about the thing of you know the early younger years of writing and just sort of wanting to kind of go off and sort of please yourself. What what has been the process for you in learning how to collaborate and work with others? I mean, did is that something that actually just came very naturally?

SPEAKER_02 1:05:58

Yeah, it I Always enjoyed writing with other people, which I think just comes from because in a weird way, just sitting around with your friends trying to make each other laugh is a strangely not that different from sitting in the writer's room trying to, you know, there's a little bit more structure to the writer's room. Um, but once, you know, I had a writing partner with Chet, with Tim. Uh when in the old man Murray days, I would write with this guy, Sean Riley, and then finally settling down with Jay for the last 15 years. It made me realize, you know, I think there are writers who enjoy just the solitary act of writing, that I enjoy writing. You know, collaboration for me, I discovered was a was a much more pleasant experience than than sitting down to write by myself. Uh, and I find it actually really difficult nowadays to to re-engage the uh muscle to just sit down quietly by myself and and just write something from start to finish. You know, I'm so used to writing with Jay at this point. Um uh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:14

And actually you you mentioned about procrastination. Is that that's still uh that's not like something you've conquered to live with it?

SPEAKER_02 1:07:25

I'd like to think age has made me a little bit smarter about it, but I was very good at knowing exactly when the last possible second we could start something would be infinite. Like we would do anything, and Tim would do it. I mean, writers are classic procrastinators, like are distinctly remember working on psychonauts, and we'd sit in the room, there's stuff we needed to do for psychonauts, and instead we'd just do we'd do almost anything to not work on psychonauts. You know, we'd talk about Brutal Legend, the next game. Uh and Jay and I procrastinate. Jay's better at just not procrastinating. I think I'm the one that uh gets us to do it. We I've gotten better at it personally. Um, I think at some point when I was younger, there was, I think, maybe some benefit to it that the whatever the stress juices uh when you procrastinated to the very last second maybe made things, I don't know, spark. I I I I this may just be rationalizing. Uh it was definitely unhealthy, though. It's an unhealthy way to wear. Very stressful.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:38

Yeah, no, that's why, you know, when you put it up, I thought, oh, I can relate to that like wholeheartedly. You know, it's sort of amazing that we can do it. Yeah, yeah. And I've go through I've gone through like bouts of it, and it's to that point where you can really start to see like, especially if you're sort of, you know, with my work when so much of it is the unless you sort of self-drive, like literally nothing is gonna happen. You're not gonna get you know, you won't be employed, you won't get work, you won't start a new project, you won't develop something. So it's it's um it's it's that I don't know, it's that like painful self-awareness. Like I'm sat here again and I'm still not doing it. But it's it and it's interesting with my stepkids, and you know, I can see them struggling with that. Like they know that they shouldn't, I'm not sure, but they know that they don't want to necessarily be on the sofa for the next four hours and they want to go and finish their homework or studying, but like I don't know what it is about the human like psyche that we're not built to kind of be able to pull ourselves up from our sort of um uh the scruff of our neck to get us off our asses, you know. But I suppose it's also that thing about like the the then what the the next thing that comes with procrastination is the shame and guilt and self-condemnation, and then you feel even worse about yourself.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:01

Yeah, it feels bad, and then uh yeah, and then you finally sit down and you do it, and you're just like, why didn't I just do this earlier? It was uh you know not as bad as I thought it was gonna be. Uh and unfortunately, we live in a time where the same machine that uh I work on is also just an endless procrastination uh device. There's so much to do on this little box that I have in front of me.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:34

But yeah, okay, yeah, it's just that thing that like in until I can come to some sort of it's like I need self-acceptance, but then I also need to like do it. But like I I've never been able to sort of shame or guilt myself into doing something. I just sort of end up sat there feeling crap about myself.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:52

Yeah, because you it you just start to yeah, I it is like a therapy session, but you you know, your stomach starts to you're just like, why why am I still sitting here? Uh I should just do this. Uh and it's the easiest thing. It's a thing I, you know, it's hard work, but I know how to do it. I know I'll may not be great, but I'll finish it. Able to do it. So, what am I waiting for?