Indie Developer Spotlight: Jake Elliott – Part 1
The tiny protagonist from "I Can Hold My Breath Forever" prepares to take the plunge.
Developer Jake Elliott makes deceptively simple interactive adventures that pack great thematic resonance.
“Beluah and the Hundred Birds,” “Dog and Bone are Friends,” and his most recent game, “I Can Hold My Breath Forever,” are all elegantly designed and atypically thought-provoking works containing themes and narrative frameworks that encourage players to interpret their in-game experiences using imaginative thinking.
His games engage players not by telling them how to feel, but by creating experiences that are just vague enough narratively so that actual interpretations of the experience can (validly) vary from one player to the next.
We got in touch with Jake, who was kind enough to provide some insight into his design philosophy, examples of where he draws inspiration for his work, and some brand new information about his next two projects.
IGC: Tell us a little about yourself, and how you got into independent game development.
JE: My background is in software art and experimental music, so I have a practice built around showing or performing work in galleries, museums, bars, and underground venues. The software art work that I do has taken a lot of forms over the last 10 years or so that I’ve been doing it, but in the last few years it’s mostly been centered around building these web-based applications that read and write absurdities using the language of social software.
As an example, I made this bot that takes answers people have given to questions on ‘Yahoo! Answers’ and then posts them to twitter. But it also tries (in a very deliberately naive way) to connect these answers with questions people are actually asking on twitter and send these answers to them directly; so it’s being social, it’s kind of playfully absurd and disorienting for the people who actually come into contact with it, and people really get engaged with this bot and write back to it, follow it on twitter, etc. [http://twitter.com/answersonly]
So I’ve been making playful and interactive software art for a while, and game development is a space in which those two features are totally central.
Last year I worked with my friends Jon Cates and Tamas Kemenczy to make an art game called “Sidequest” which was kind of a recreation of William Crowther’s classic interactive fiction game “Colossal Cave Adventure,” but in our version you control William Crowther himself as he navigates a surreal landscape made up of fragments of his life mixed with the original game. Kind of like a gamer’s “Being John Malkovich,” but much more abstract. 
We showed that at a gallery in the states and at the “Make Art” festival in France. The process of making that piece really opened me up to the idea of game development as a conceptual art practice, and a few months ago I started really seriously exploring that and made these three flash games.
IGC: What are some examples of indie work by other developers that inspire you?
JE: I’m really inspired by Anna Anthropy’s work and I’ve been following it pretty closely for a few years. I like that she applies so much care and focus to her work, but then also participates in the kind of slapdash, lo-fi development activity centered around glorioustrainwrecks.com. I really admire her skill with level design and when reading or listening to her explain her decision making in those level designs it’s really clear how much consideration she’s put into it. My favorites from her are Calamity Annie and the new one, Redder.
Also, Daniel Benmergui (Today I Die) and Nifflas (Knytt Stories) are important developers for me. I think their influence is pretty clear in my games; a lot of people told me that “I Can Hold My Breath Forever” had a really strong resemblance to Benmergui’s games (the title and the lo-fi pixely style). His games are so evocative and poetic, they really stand out.
And Nifflas’ “exploration” games are really wonderful. I’m really not interested in making games about violence, and the non-violent, exploratory, playful game worlds that Nifflas makes are very effective.
IGC: Other games aside, what other media influences your work? Are there any specific examples that really stand out?
It's "Dog" and "Bone." They're friends, don'tcha know?
JE: Definitely writing, and in particular, children’s books.
I think children’s books are written to create an evocative, playful space in the reader’s imagination, rather than to lead them along a prescribed path. My first flash game, “Dog and Bone are Friends,” was named after “Frog and Toad are Friends” by Arnold Lobel.
In the “Frog and Toad” stories, Lobel offers up a lot of rich ideas for play but they always center on the relationship between these two friends, Frog and Toad. I think it’s actually a really thorough and heartwarming study on the idea of “friendship,” but again, it’s not the kind of study where the reader is being led along or convinced; instead they’re being given some conceptual material for their imaginative and fantastic side to build from. Those are the kind of games I want to be making.
Stay tuned for Part 2 of our interview with Jake Elliott, coming shortly.
