Interview with Deirdra Kiai: Adventure Game Programmer

Deirdra Kiai, a junior in college (somewhere in Canada, has her personal website states), has accomplished much more than other college students. Or anyone, for that matter. She has two freeware adventure games on her website, Cubert Badbone, P.I. and The Game that Takes Place on a Cruise Ship. Both were made completely by her–everything from writing to art to programming.

I Eat Games: Can you give me a little background about your adventure game projects?
Deirdra: Sure. Cubert Badbone, P.I. was an idea I came up with almost eight years ago, when I was but a kid of thirteen.

How did you come up with that idea?
I’m not sure. I think I was randomly lying in bed one night when it just came to me. This was, of course, shortly after I discovered the in-progress SCRAMM engine (which was essentially supposed to be a clone of SCUMM), so somehow, I got it into my head that I could make a game just like Monkey Island and Grim Fandango, my favourites at the time.

How did Monkey Island + Grim Fandago = strange human abducting mystery?
You know, that’s a very good question. I’m not too sure of that, myself. My brain worked in strange ways back then.

I understand. How about the game design? Why did you choose to do [Cubert Badbone] in black and white?
I just thought it looked cool and pseudo-noirish. I had originally planned the game in bright, vibrant colours, but one day, for the hell of it, I decided to make myself a trailer of the game’s intro to try out the black and white art style. It was well-received, so after a redesign or two, I decided to go with that look for the whole game.

I’m glad that worked out. I really liked how the black and white worked with the mystery theme. And Cubert Badbone’s internalizing.
Ah, yes. I had fun with the narration.

What was the best part of working with Cubert? How about The Game that Takes Place on a Cruise Ship (TGTTPOACS)?
The best part… hmm… where to start. When I was making Cubert, I’d gotten myself into beta testing the SLUDGE engine (SCRAMM sadly turned out to be vapourware), so I thought it was pretty cool to give the developer of said engine feedback as I used the tools. And with TGTTPOACS… well, I was a bit more experienced when I started on that, so I really liked experimenting with branching narratives and creating puzzles that deviated from your usual inventory-based stuff.

Was it harder to do branching storylines than to have a more linear one? Did you feel that something had to give because you had four endings?
The challenge for me was making each story path equally satisfying. Most games with multiple endings have one good ending and several bad endings, and I didn’t want to go that route.

What do you think is the hardest part of creating an adventure game?
Sitting yourself down and making yourself do all the work. The easiest and funnest part for me is to have the neat ideas floating in my head, but actually committing them to something tangible… well, that takes time. And quite a bit of effort. But without that, there IS no game to speak of, so that’s what keeps me going.

Since making yourself sit down and do the work is a challenge, do you have some kind of way to motivate yourself?
I try to vary the work I do. One day, I’ll draw some graphics, another day, I’ll do some programming, and another day, I’ll make some music. It makes things feel new and fresh to me, which keeps me excited about the project. Too much of the same thing makes me bored, I find.

About how long does it take for you to go from having an idea for a game to releasing it?
So far? An average of about two and a half years, because I procrastinate and have to juggle school and my life along with my games. I’m hoping to drastically shorten that time in the future, though.

Are you in college right now?
Yes. I’m almost three quarters of the way into my computer science degree.

That’s very cool. So what do you want to do after you get your degree?
At this point, I’d really like to program and/or design games professionally. I did, after all, spend the better part of 2006 as an intern at Telltale Games, and really enjoyed the work they were doing there.

Wow! Telltale games… that’s pretty impressive. What did you learn from that internship?
A hell of a lot. The one thing I really took away from it, though, was that it takes an awful lot of teamwork to make a really professional-quality game. As a person used to making my games all by myself, it amazed me to see how much more got done with a dedicated team, with each person focussing on his/her own strengths.

What would you say your game development strengths are?
Design and programming, because I’ve been learning the latter at school and doing the former in my own spare time for years. I like to think that I can write, although I still have a ways to learn on that front, and as for art and animation, I was never really taught how to do it professionally, so while I can whip up something cute-looking and useable, I can’t do all the beautiful, fancy stuff that professional artists do. Same goes for music.

I liked your style in Cubert and TGTTPOACS.
I’m glad you liked my style.

With a CS degree and an internship at TellTale Games under her belt, Deirdra Kiai will definitely be someone to watch in the future.

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