Developer Interview: Stout Games’ Jeroen D. Stout on ‘Dinner Date’

Not long ago, I had a chance to play Stout Games’ ‘Dinner Date,’ a curious character-study that puts players inside the subconscious of Julian Luxemburg, an everyday bloke waiting for a date to arrive at his flat. I was immediately stricken by how unique and engaging the game turned out (see the review), and also how well it pushes the boundaries of what we’ve traditionally come to expect from character-development in games.

I reached out to Stout Games’ founder and auteur, Jeroen D. Stout, to ask him about (among other things) Dinner Date’s design and development. He also shared some of the challenges inherent in bringing aspects of the narrative richness of other established media (novels, movies, etc.) to the growing subset of gamers seeking more intellectually and emotionally engaging experiences. If you’re that sort of gamer, Stout Games is almost certainly a studio you should put on your radar.

IGC: It’s not every day that you encounter a game about being stood up. What inspired you to tackle such a traditionally atypical subject?

JS: I am quite aware being stood up is atypical for games, but I think it is not illogical. After all, it is a subject which is explored to great extents in all other media. It is in a way rather atypical for a medium to wait so long before ensuing the approach of these subjects.

The raw idea of a man being stood up emerged when I was considering a game focussing on sitting at a table. I think what gave me the final push to write on this subject was that I never considered releasing Dinner Date initially. Writing the story for it was my pet writing project for which nobody was going to judge me. Since I had settled on a ‘man at a dinner table’ theme, I thought it would be tremendous to write the story as if I was writing a play.

It very much became a character portrait, and especially about a problem which becomes more clear throughout the game, which is far more severe than Julian’s present issue. What interested me was relating how there are social issues which may be caused by problems we do not want to be aware of – you can hear Julian approach his problem, and the ending is very telling. He is exemplary of the type of person who has difficulty achieving a ‘sense of self,’ and explores how his situation makes that difficult for him.

I am fascinated by character studies, and approaching a game as [a character study] was a choice I did not think very heavily on when I made it. It has, however, become an essential part of how I approach games now. It is very limiting intellectually to think about games when writing for games because you will hardly find any good quality characters. Trying to approach the quality such as one finds in good literature is far more demanding and forces you to think far more astutely. It is a challenge which has only just begun for games – and certainly for me after just one released game.

IGC: From a design standpoint, how did you decide on things like player-perspective and the user interface? Were you influenced by any other types of media, either specifically, or in a general sense?

JS: I feel most interested in 1st-person perspectives because they are most personal. You can show a lot of things in 3rd-person, but it does not have the incredibly intimate relationship of 1st-person. To know what it is like to watch from the eyes of another person and to find yourself in their head is something which I find thrilling. 1st-person narration is done a lot in books, but very little in film – even Being John Malcovich used a device and ‘excused’ the use of it. But there is an comedic series called Peep Show which is exclusively shot in 1st person and it always gives me a strange sense of personal presence.

The user interface was inspired by a previous project in which I had to show conversational subjects on-screen, and felt that having a static list did not in any way correspond to the dynamic behaviour of conversation. I think going for moving, bouncing bubbles is something which, to me, feels more like what awareness of ‘possible actions’ is like – less like a task list and more like something peripheral to your vision. A little more abstract, as well, so as to hint that you are doing things which are subjective: It is Julian’s way of eating, you are just instigating it. It is a choice of form which I like, but it is very much still just an attempt at visualising something new.

IGC: Describe the processes you used to write and implement the game’s stream-of-consciousness-style narration, and how this factored into things like story-pacing and the flow of the game, for example.

JS: I habitually started on the story by working on a ‘curve’ which describes tensions. I had thought of the ending, and it was a case of working backwards to reach that point. Because I had chosen to write a linear story, I was free to retain the style of arches and I could make each chapter embody a slightly different sensation. I thought about the order in which I introduced actions and giving the player some room to explore them – so Julian starts eating in chapter two and you can – while he is thinking about bread – eat bread.

Your actions, of course, do not drive the story, and rather are derived from it. They are fulfilling in the light of what transpires. What actions were possible to do changed after I wrote the story and implemented it, because the last chapter suddenly had a slightly different tone and so the actions also had to become quite different. This was something I only felt I could think more clearly about after working on the game for a while.

It is an interesting challenge to think about story and actions and how they fit together. In a way, it is giving the player access to actions normally described to emphasize the character. ‘He lifted the spoon, but dejectedly returned the soup to the bowl’ is something which signifies something, and it is fulfilling that these actions can be done rather then seen.

IGC: Even though players direct Julian Luxemburg’s subconscious, they’re never in complete control of his actions. Was this always your intent? Were there any hurdles to immersing the player because of this approach?

JS: I wanted to make the smaller actions playable, so I very much at the start of Dinner Date decided to make a sincere try, and to deny the player all other control. Because most games allow you to do the most gigantic things – and yet very few allow you to hug someone or sit at a kitchen table. The latter is more ‘play, as in theatre’ than occupying yourself with finding a way to solve the game.

There, in a way, is no purpose of having control over Julian because the game is his character portrait, and to exhibit a character he needs to be free to be himself. I recognise that this relation between player and character can become more sophisticated, but as initial steps it is logical to me to have a more extreme divide.

I think the largest challenge for immersion is explaining the purpose and functioning of the game. The introduction to the game says very specifically that you are his subconsciousness and cannot change him in any way, yet there are still people who write, quite surprised, that they cannot change him.

I think that if this type of game gains a foothold and we see more people making them, it will become self-evident and more common to wish to see a game in which you see things from the eyes of a Winston [as in Orwell's novel, 1984], to do this actions, and notice how the palette of actions changes as he falls out of grace with Big Brother. Or less epic, to play as a mother consoling her child. Or to play an old couple walking through the park. Or to be a 17th century courtier debating intrigue while playing croquet…

There are things which I will never do in real life but may in increasingly sophisticated ways find myself doing in games. Not being in full control means more cohesion and more integration with an interesting narrative, to me. I want to pretend to be those characters in an interesting way rather than overrule them.

IGC: Given how clearly Dinner Date defines Julian as a character, was he based on a specific person? Did your concept of Julian grow and evolve throughout development, or does he manifest in the game as you always intended?

JS: He is fully constructed, though while I chose some significant attributes, some of the particulars started emerging as I wrote the script. In a way the character becomes what makes sense, like filling in the missing piece of a photo. The dialogue was finished and recorded quite early in production, but I spent a long time doing remake after remake of his animations and kitchen when I started to feel inclined to make it a commercial release. In doing this, I did feel Julian evolved, because some of the things you see in his kitchen are illustrative of him. In finding the right type of music the composer, Than van Nispen tot Pannerden, I explored many options. That the start of the game is more upbeat and jazzy changed the way the story feels a lot. The central arch of Julian is how I conceived it, but his more real-life attributes were a process of finding them as new elements were made.

IGC: If you met Julian in real life, how do you think you’d get along?

JS: Somehow, I think that if I met Julian in real life, I would not see the side of him you see in Dinner Date. Because in the same way he has a wildly different mental life from his friends but still seems to get on with them by fitting in, so probably would he behave different if you or I met him.

It is quite interesting in that I also wrote him in a way which does not show you how he behaves around other people. I imagine that if I met him while he was out with his friends I would not think much of him – perhaps if for some odd reason we would discuss poetry, and he would be the dark horse of the conversation and have a chance to quote Byron, he would catch my attention.

IGC: The majority of game protagonists these days tend to be heroic, type-A personalities, but Julian is a character whose neuroses and insecurities are on full display to the player. Were you ever concerned that certain aspects of Julian’s personality might alienate some players, or make them uncomfortable, or was that a conscious choice?

JS: I have mostly stopped thinking about the way games usually do things. Because I want to get more towards the ambience and subject matter of literature I also imagine players who will like that type of thing and worry less about the ‘average gamer’, if there is such a thing.

Reactions have been encouraging in that way. I think there is a large group of people interested in different games and it is slowly taking shape. My favourite reactions are always from people who take Julian serious and discuss his personality and how they experienced playing with him. It feels very heart-warming to see people talk about games on that level.

IGC: Did you end up needing to cut any content during design or development? Anything you wish you’d been able to include that didn’t end up making the final cut?

JS: There were some small reactions which Julian would do, such as recognising that the player was refraining from eating. But I thought it felt a little juvenile to almost wink to the player and say ‘you are not eating soup!’ and I felt it encouraged you to think about the game on a ‘what can I do to make it respond?’ type of level, rather than be interested in Julian.

In terms of corner-cutting, for a while I thought about doing the tutorial in a supermarket and this was really just scrapped because it was too expensive to build an entire set and make all the object-handling animations for that one minute segment. Similarly, there was a scene at the end of the game which I designed for a while but scrapped because it involved building another set. I think this is quite a normal problem for games because a game is essentially ‘shot on a soundstage’ where you cannot go out and find a location which looks like what you need, and get a group of extras to fill the background.

IGC: Have you played anything lately that really impressed you?

JS: I am looking forward to playing Amnesia soon, I have not had the chance. I also cannot wait for the upcoming Dear Esther update, it looks absolutely stunning. And although I look forward to some fellow Nuovo candidates as well, I fear recently my main area of interest has become a little bit silent. I thought some non-narrative games like Eufloria and Flotilla were nice because they have a certain charm and easiness.

Actually, in lieu of interesting games I have been working on a digital collection of paintings in the classical styles, and spend a lot of free time reading the good literature. In a way that does not make it incredibly enticing to go back to the computer and play games, it continually feels like things lack grace and sophistication. Games have quite a pristine amount of ‘other culture’ to measure up to for me. As a consumer of media it is not a problem, I have ample brilliant things to delve in to. But I do miss the sensation of playing.

IGC: What’s next for Stout Games? Anything new in the works that you can talk about?

JS: There certainly is a new game which is currently still very far away. After Dinner Date’s reception I find it is easier to think about how to explore characters and dynamics in a game. I am not going copy the same formula with a new story, as tempting as that is. It is terribly tempting, actually, because you can make so many actions playable which have never been playable before and I am impatient to do a wide variety of things in games. It is tempting in the way of standing in a chocolaterie, every which way one turns there is a type of activity which seems enticing to try.

But I have considered the options and want to focus on finding more sophisticated ways of making character interaction playable. The new game will certainly contain an element of young, suddenly blossoming romance. Interactively experiencing the sensation of closeness and romance from the perspective of someone who is not yourself seems incredibly interesting to me – and making it will pose hurdles on every single capacity I have been training myself in. It really is quite simply an idea which is impossible to resist.

IGC: Thanks very much for taking the time to discuss Dinner Date!

Dinner Date is currently available for purchase from the Stout Games website for Windows PC, for $12.45. Dinner Date has also been nominated for this year’s Nuovo Award at IGF.

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