I interviewed Pirate Queen: The Forgotten Legend director Eloise Singer & writer Maja Bodenstein a few days after the launch of their game on March 7th. See more context in the rough transcript below.
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Rough Transcript
[00:00:05.412] Kent Bye: The Voices of VR Podcast. Hello, my name is Kent Bye and welcome to the Voices of VR podcast. It's a podcast that looks at the structures and forms of immersive storytelling and the future of spatial computing. You can support the podcast at patreon.com slash Voices of VR. So today's episode, I'm featuring a immersive game that's called the Pirate Queen of Forgotten Legend that got released on March 7th, 2024. So I've previously covered this piece on episode 1245, since it was being shown at Tribeca 2023 and actually ended up winning the Storiescapes Award. So in today's episode, I'll be talking to both the director, Eloise Singer, as well as the writer, Maya Bodenstein. So this is featuring the story of Sheng Xi, who became one of the most powerful pirates in history in the 19th century in the South China Sea. And so it's basically telling the story of how you're coming into power, but also there's all these escape room mechanics and there's some embodied gameplay. So it's really trying to blend together the affordances of the escape room mechanics, the embodied gameplay, as well as cinematic storytelling. And so there ends up being some really epic cinematic sequences in this piece as well. One other quick note about this interview is that we talk about some issues that if you're switching between the story mode versus the escape room mode, that they've made it a little bit more seamless so you can jump back and forth between those. And so that's something that they're either actively working on or have already shipped. So that's what we're covering on today's episode, Eloise's VR podcast. So this interview with Eloise and Maya happened on Monday, March 11th, 2024. So with that, let's go ahead and dive right in.
[00:01:42.276] Eloise Singer: I'm Eloise Singer. I am an exec producer and the CEO and creative director of Singer Studios. And I make VR narrative games. Specifically, we have just launched a game called The Pirate Queen on MetaQuest and Steam, which is very exciting. So we're here to talk to you about that, which I'm really looking forward to.
[00:02:08.257] Maja Bodenstein: Great. And I'm Maja Bunstein. This is actually my first time writing for VR. I am a narrative designer and yeah, I come from a film and TV writing background. So it's been a great adventure just trying VR for the first time.
[00:02:22.085] Kent Bye: Great. Maybe each of you could give a bit more context as to your background and your journey into working with VR.
[00:02:29.188] Eloise Singer: Sure thing. So I started out working in a film like Maya and I worked predominantly at a studio called Pinewood Studios in the UK where we make films like James Bond and the Great British Bake Off TV series and a lot of amazing movies. And then I worked freelance in production on products like The Crown and Ready Player One. And then seven years ago, nearly to the day, I set up my own production company and we started making a lot of short films and made a feature film that we sold to Amazon and then I produced a film called Rare Beasts which premiered at Venice and South By and was directed by Billy Piper. And then I recently just exec'd a film called The Last Rifleman with Taze Brosnan that went on to Universal. And it was just before the pandemic that we started developing The Pirate Queen into a film. with the producers of The Farewell, who just premiered The Farewell at Sundance and they had just won the Golden Globes, and it was all going great and brilliant and all very exciting. And then the pandemic struck and we had to down tools on the film because no one had any idea what was going to happen with the future, to be honest. And so we were kind of looking to different ways of telling the Pirate Queen and what we could do And I called a friend of mine who is an amazing guy called Dave Ranyard, and he used to work as the head of PlayStation Studios in London. And I said, listen, what about if we made this into a game? And he was like, yeah, I think it could be brilliant as a VR game. So we made a prototype sort of a short version of the game and we brought Myra on board to be the writer and we made this short game with funding from the BFI and Creative England, so two public funds in the UK, and we then got nominated for a bunch of awards and we got selected for the Raindance Film Festival and we won the Discovery Award at Raindance. And then we showed that to Meta, and Meta were like, this is incredible. We were like, ah, thanks so much. And then from there, Meta decided to fund the full version of their game. So that's kind of how I came into VR. And then from that, and developing Pirate Queen, we then developed Mrs. Bends, which is a project that we were spoken to you about. Kent that premiered at Venice a couple of years ago and then went south by and then to Sheffield. So now my company sort of splits between creating films, creating podcasts and creating VR.
[00:05:14.706] Maja Bodenstein: Wow, that was a massive journey that just covered so many years. So, yeah, no, I first met Eloise in, I think, October 2020, because Eloise at that time was looking for a writer of Chinese heritage or East Asian heritage. And at that point, I had just been selected for a fellowship of British East Asian writers and directors who are working in TV and stage and film. And yes, so that's how we were introduced. At that point, it was pretty open in terms of the brief. It was just that we knew it would be a game about Zhang Xi, who I already was familiar with because I'd grown up in Hong Kong. One of the things that you do at school is you literally go to the island where Zhang Bozai had his treasure cave, apparently. and you'll climb around and feel very exciting like pirates. So I was really excited to have a chance to pitch for this and I think that's actually where the root of the idea that would develop into the eventual scenario that we have for the full game came about. We thought It's such a huge, expansive life, really, that she had. And how can we sort of condense that to this three, four hour experience that's really immersive? So we thought about, well, let's just try and condense a bunch of events and create this one night where essentially she takes the reins of power. You could dispute whether that happened exactly like that, but I think what we try to do is just capture the essence of all this sort of work she had put into just creating this power structure where she would, at the end, have a lot of control and try to make that really dramatic for the player experiencing it firsthand. Then, yeah, we went to Raindance and everything came from there and it was just a great experience. a lot to learn, how to expand that little demo version that we had, which I think lasted about half an hour, Eloise?
[00:07:08.540] Eloise Singer: Yeah, it was about that, yeah.
[00:07:11.446] Maja Bodenstein: about that into a much bigger adventure. We did that by discussing how we could really bring you into the world. If we leave the ship, can we see the rest of the fleet? How can we try and explain more about the world in the particular historical setting and introduce as much of the different factions, both on land and on sea, as we could and still make it really fun with exciting gameplay for the player?
[00:07:38.258] Kent Bye: Yeah, well, since both of you have such a background in both the production of film and writing for film and TV, like, I'm very curious to hear the initial stages of developing this out in terms of like, when you pitch different films, you have sometimes a treatment or a pitch that you put together that really At this point, I feel like there's a pretty tight loop between a pitch and then how it eventually comes out as a film. I know obviously there's still a lot of variables for how it actually gets shot and actors and everything else as it comes together. But I feel like sometimes within the context of XR, it's sometimes more difficult to say, here is what we're going to do and have that. that clear idea of what's going to happen because it's much more iterative. You have to actually design the space and be immersed into it. And it's much more like game design as a completely different production process than film. So you're stepping in between these two different worlds and combining these two things. So I'd love to hear you elaborate on that process a little bit.
[00:08:33.247] Eloise Singer: So can I just jump in and say that the reason that Myra is chuckling is because this is like one of the biggest learning curves for both of us in terms of how to tell this story. I mean, Myra, why don't you jump in and describe the beautiful process that we went through?
[00:08:52.552] Maja Bodenstein: Yeah, so we came with it definitely thinking we could design this the way we would design a film, and we had very grandiose ideas. Very grandiose. Very grandiose. I've always been a gamer, but not so much in the XR space, always been traditional games. I think I've just been playing Untitled Goose Game, and I've been very inspired by stealth mechanics, and let's do this, and let's have branching narratives in Mass Effect, but just I mean, insane. But I think how it happened is that I came up with a one pager just outlining how you would feel, who this would be for, what it might sort of look like. So very, very broad. And then we had a discussion about that and we thought, OK, great. That sounds really fun. Let's sort of develop it. And I think we had a chat with Dave quite early on and he basically told us, this is nuts. like scale it down big time and also you probably won't have access to characters, you won't have access to a lot of the things I think that we take for granted, you know, coming from film that you would have people on screen. So then I think that we shuffled our thinking around how can we still have stakes and how can we still make you feel like you're part of a populated world when we essentially can't show you characters and you can't interact with them. So we went back, and I think we just kept going back and forth. It was amazing to see the space come to life while we were doing that. I think the initial idea was that even for the demo, you would have three main stages. By the time we'd built one, we realized realized, okay, I think that is all we'll have time to do. And the script just kept getting trimmed more and more. I think we had something like 34 pages, and in the end we only really realized the first 10. But that was still a half hour scenario that we took to Raindance.
[00:10:49.566] Eloise Singer: Yeah I mean it was a really interesting one because when we started the prototype we were given public funding so for that the pitch was very very light and we just said you know we're planning to develop this prototype, this short game and it's going to be about this character and that's sort of all we needed to do really to get the funding. It was more sort of the team makeup and how we're going to go about it rather than what the actual narrative was going to be. So when we bought Majorana, when we started developing it, we honestly, we made like a Hollywood movie and drafted this idea. And it was amazing. It was genuinely, it was iconic. And we were so proud of ourselves. And when we took it out to the team, we were like, we have just designed like the ultimate experience. And then obviously the team came back and they were like, this is fantastic as a movie, but one, this won't actually work in VR because it's not interactive enough and it's not tactile. And two, I mean, the budget will absolutely not stretch. So for us, I think that understanding of scope was a huge lesson, as Maya says, in terms of characters and just realising that the expense of characters, but not only just that, but different locations and everything that we wanted to do and achieve and just general mechanics, I mean, in the really, really early days. We came up with this idea of having a rope swing that you as the player could literally climb and grab a rope and swing from one ship to the other, which we soon realised would not work in VR because it would just cause you to be incredibly motion sick. And so there were just huge amounts of iterations based on the scope. So I think then when we descoped it and we redesigned it to be a lot more of a escape room-esque type game for the prototype and put in a lot more puzzle mechanics and really made it a lot more tactile and incorporated a lot more environmental storytelling as well, which as you know, Kent, is kind of something that we love to do at Singer. And we were finding that that really, really worked in VR and made a lot of sense. And so then when it came to pitching it to Meta, we sort of took that approach but then built it out and Maya worked on sort of a broad brushstroke idea of what a longer version of the game would look like and what locations it would be and sort of what basic gameplay mechanics we would have in it. And we worked with our designer as well at the time to kind of iron out what those mechanics would be and what would be achievable in VR. But again, we had a very similar thing where we sat down to create the full version of the game. We realized again that it's all about scope and lines and delivery and what was going to be realistic. And so it was about de-scoping just to make sure that we were able to achieve what we wanted to and also tell the story that we wanted to. And what we found was the tighter we got the narrative, the more compelling the story was, and the more we were able to grow and build her arc and her narrative. And actually, it just became more and more rounded. in that iterative process, which was really nice and really affirming. But it was a very interesting approach. And they say in film that you actually make a movie, you make three movies, you have your movie that's your script, you have your movie that you're shooting, and you have your movie in the edit. And with this, In a sense, it was quite similar. It was kind of the idea of the game that we had when we first fleshed it out, and then going through that iterative process, going through the design stages. And because the development of the game is so long, you know, we've been developing this since Meta came on board for 18 months. But before that, it was even longer, and the whole journey has been in total about five years. So through that time, there's been a huge amount of iteration, and I think it's just made the game stronger and the narrative more compelling for it.
[00:14:37.088] Maja Bodenstein: I think that was really interesting. It's that you don't necessarily, definitely in film, you don't necessarily get a chance to experience it and then go back and, I mean, you do with the edit, but you don't do with the writing necessarily, go back and tweak it because it's not fun. And I think that was such a fun thing to really explore and see, OK, this is really working. People are liking this section. Can we have more of it? Because it forces you to think about story in a different way. you just start thinking in a way that's really, really direct to your audience. There's nothing between you. You have a responsibility to make sure that they have a good time and they feel like they have agency in the story that's unfolding around them. So that was really, really unique. And I think what that really offered as well is that you almost have a shortcut to empathy. Because I think sometimes when you have someone in front of you and you're meant to be putting yourself into them, you might be put off by the differences between you and the character. But in this one, I thought it was fascinating that it doesn't matter where you're from, who you are, what your gender is, you just take on the role of this amazing Chinese woman who lived 200 years ago. You just go through all the same things that she did. I think from a storytelling point of view, really understanding that and then seeing how you can manipulate it. That also informed the gameplay a little bit, I think, just to make sure that we really find ways to make you act in the way that she might have considered it, to really build on a sense of connection was really interesting.
[00:16:05.696] Kent Bye: Yeah, maybe it's worth diving into a little bit more of who the main protagonist of this story is, one of the most powerful pirates in history. And synchronistically at the same time at South by Southwest XR Experience, there was a second episode of Madam Pirate, who is essentially covering the same story of Chengshi. Love to have you maybe elaborate on, Eloise, how you came across this story, and then Maya just fleshing out a little bit about who this main character is.
[00:16:37.291] Eloise Singer: Yeah, absolutely. I actually played Madame Pirate yesterday and it's a really beautiful experience. It's stunning and the music in it is fantastic. So I really, really enjoyed it. And it's so beautiful to see different iterations of the story being told and being told in such different ways as well. It warms my heart that more people are learning about her story. But the way that I came across it was that a friend of mine told me about her story and just said, did you know that the most powerful pirate in history was a woman? And I was like, are you serious? Because, you know, when you ask anyone who's the most powerful pirate, they always say, well, it was Blackbeard, or some people are like, oh, yeah, isn't it Captain Jack Sparrow? And I'm like, that's not even a real person, but good try. So it was incredible to hear that I was a woman in 19th century China, and the more that I looked into her, the more I thought she was absolutely extraordinary, and the code of laws that she created to ensure gender equality on her ship just blew my mind. I just thought she was such a pioneer, terrifying and ruthless, and literally every form of a pirate that you could ever imagine, because she was cutthroat, quite literally, but just like a really compelling and interesting character from history that seemingly was lost. And the more I asked people about her, the more I realized that no one knew her story. And so I thought it would be a really good opportunity to delve into it and to tell her narrative. But yeah, Maya, I'll pass over to you because it's always so fascinating to hear your perspective on Chengxi and the amount of research that you've done into it.
[00:18:12.177] Maja Bodenstein: Yeah, I mean, first of all, I just want to say I love the amount of different stories that we are getting about her now. I feel like it's really hit the zeitgeist because obviously we've just had an episode on Doctor Who that was very much inspired by her life. There are amazing pieces on stage. I think there's more coming out as well. And obviously this Madame Pirate, it's so exciting. I'm really jealous that you get to play it actually. So I love this. I love that more people are becoming aware. And I can't wait to see all the other things that are going to come about from this. Because we have so many different tellings of many, many famous people who tend to be white and male. And I just love that that canon is broadening out with time. But yeah, no, she was this incredible woman. We sort of don't really know much of her early life. I think the accepted knowledge is that she might have been Tanka heritage, but she was a sex worker initially. So whether she was a prostitute or a madam, again, I think there's some ambiguity. But essentially, that's how she met Giang Yat, who was the leader of the pirate fleet as it was. And it's a fascinating piece of history as well, how that pirate fleet came into formation. It's all to do with the Vietnamese Tây Sơn Rebellion. creating this avenue to piracy. Then after the fall, you suddenly had all these pirates. Rather than fight each other, these seven men, who each led one of the pirate fleets, joined together and signed a declaration. That's actually the basis of them all coming together. But she met him and essentially negotiated her marriage to him, saying that, you know, I'll be your wife, but I want to have 50% control of the fleet. So fascinating. I think she really knew her own worth. Then it's very much that they combined her business acumen with everything he knew about piracy to build this empire. They did a lot with making sure they had a solid foundation on land as well. So It just is a really fascinating piece of history. I encourage everyone to learn in whatever way you can, because I think they controlled a lot of the salt trade at one point, and they were just really, really good at piracy. After his death, which did happen at the time that we set it, basically, there was a power vacuum. For a moment, there was this gap in who would become the successor. Even though it wasn't her necessarily, she ensured that she very much stayed in power by fostering all the family unions and just making sure that they were still loyal to her. Then she married Zeng Bocai, who is played by Ryan Lee in our game, who had always very much been Zeng Yat-Seng's second already, and very much a bit of a boy toy. to her with the age difference. But by marrying him, she was able to really make sure that she was firmly in command of the largest fleet. She could not be dethroned, essentially. It's just really fascinating to see a woman of humble origin really negotiate her way through marriage, one of the few ways that was accessible to a woman back then, to ensure that she had a really, really big stake in this enormous fleet. So yeah, that's sort of also the starting point of our narrative, because we just thought it's amazing that she managed to do that.
[00:21:23.952] Kent Bye: Yeah, and so I had a chance to talk to you, Eloise and Siobhan, one of the producers, back at Tribeca in episode 1245, where we talked about the limitations of not being able to have any of the characters. And so you end up having to do a lot more off-screen dialogue, and also you hear the voice of the main protagonist, but also just quite a lot of environmental storytelling and using objects to be able to tell this story. So I'd love to hear a little bit more of elaboration of both the research phase, but also trying to translate all of the complexity of the story down into both the environments, the offscreen dialogue, some paintings and information that are contained in the context of the objects that you're discovering. And so, yeah, I'd love to hear about that process of both researching and developing how to tell the story.
[00:22:14.485] Maja Bodenstein: Mai, do you want to kick off in terms of the research and then I can kind of weigh in on... Definitely, because I think the issue you have with a lot of stories that aren't set at court is basically that there's very little stuff preserved because everyday things are often much harder to get an image of because they're not recorded. They're so commonplace, you take them for granted. So a lot of the stuff that the pirates use, we don't necessarily have first-hand sources. So it was very much trying to find things that were contemporary, that were right for the time and the place, and then just making informed guesses. I think certainly for the objects, because they were pirates, one of the things that's so fun about it is that they would have things from all over the world, because they would plunder and ransom. Thus, you have a collection of East and Western artifacts. in the ships. For example, one of the crates has the inscription of the East India Trading Company, and that would be because the British ships are one of the ones that they obviously would capture and loot. But for the Chinese objects, we did a lot of research. We had a brilliant researcher too, actually, Lucia and Cui Ning, who helped us with looking into museum collections. So we looked at various things that were online that were period appropriate, and then just thought about maybe this would work in a pirate context. And then I think very, very initially, I just came up with a list, like brainstorming, what might you find? And then we try and see Can we find historical artefacts online with high enough quality images that the artists can use it? Also, of course, would this kind of object work as an interactable? Can you do something with it? Is it fun to look at, or does it tell you something about history? I think what's really fun about this game is that you get to pick everything up. A lot of the times, these artefacts are in museums only. You can't really find them. You certainly don't know the size, So you might have heard about Chinese women who had bound feet, but you might not actually know what a lotus shoe looks like, which is what they would wear, and how small it is. I remember having friends pick them up and going like, Oh my God, I never knew that it's that big. So I think we try to find objects that would be really impactful, but just really focus on them being period appropriate and that they could have been in an environment like this.
[00:24:27.150] Eloise Singer: I think as well what was so fun was just the learning and not taking things for granted and not assuming. So for example, when we first started developing ships and the infrastructure for the ships, we put in nails into the ships because we assumed that ships would be built with wood and nails. And then after discussing it with our researchers and then coming back and being like, well, actually at the time in China, we didn't use nails. We used dovetail joints. and so it's like the wooden joints that you get on a ship that was incorporated into the ships of the times. So we then learned that instead of using nails, in China they used dovetail joints. And it was kind of those things that were so informative and so fun for us as a team to incorporate because it was just lessons that we were learning as we were developing as well, which was really, really nice. And in terms of the characters and incidental storytelling, obviously, one of the things that we really wanted to do was to incorporate as many objects as we could around the room so that once we were in a space, you could go and pick something up and learn more about either the time or the place or her journey and what she was motivated by or what she felt was important to her. And you could do that through picking up these objects. So, for example, you can pick up a toy in one of the cabins and learn more about the relationship that she has with her kids and why that was a motivating factor for her to go on this journey and become leader of the fleet. And at the same time, actually, for the full version of the game, so the version that you played in Tribeca, didn't have any characters. But for the full version, we do have silhouetted characters. So you can approach a window and there will be a character who appears as a silhouette and you'll have a dialogue conversation with that character. And I think that's also just helped really bring the game alive. in a really nice, immersive way. So it's been really fun incorporating that in. And as well, when you're rowing through different environments, there are characters who are driving boats and you have to avoid getting caught by them. So it's been really nice to build on what we had at Tribeca and make the game feel even bigger and more expansive than the version that we showed at Tribeca.
[00:26:41.188] Maja Bodenstein: I think also what was fun about the silhouettes and just in general some of the visual representations is that I think we really tried to make sure that what we portrayed was culturally authentic to a point of view that we're not exoticizing things. And I remember with the silhouettes specifically, We were very keen to not make it look like the snake god scene from The Golden Child, which is a great movie, but very much of its time. And just making sure that things read the way they're meant to, and not as a completely fantasy version of China and Chineseness.
[00:27:14.672] Kent Bye: I also noticed after watching Madame Pirate, second episode, which was titled Code of Conduct, really focusing on some of the rules and regulations and laws and also how that narratively was playing so much a part of the Pirate Queen of Forgotten Legend. And so I'd love to have each of you expand upon some of those rules and how you were trying to incorporate that into how you were telling your story.
[00:27:38.625] Eloise Singer: Yeah, definitely. For us, this was such an important part of developing the story. We knew from the outset that we wanted to include this code of laws, and that was a really important factor because, again, the people who do know that Cheng Xi was the most powerful pirate in history don't necessarily know that she was quite literally paving the way for gender equality in 19th century China. And so for us, that felt like a really, really important facet to the narrative. And the way that we wanted to structure it was that we wanted to divide up the laws so that you would find different laws in each room. And then at the end, it's quite a pivotal part of why you become leader of the fleet. And that was part of the iterative process that we went through. And initially, we didn't had it like that and we just had the laws at the beginning and then we realised kind of going through that the whole through line of this game was the fact that she as a woman was becoming this leader and growing these laws at the same time. But I'll pass to Maya in terms of breaking down what the laws are and what they meant for the fleet because they are fascinating. and it definitely shows what she had to fight for and especially her background of being a sex worker and I think how that impacted her and what she wanted to do to change the narrative when she became leader, when she got the power that she had always aspired to. So yeah, I'll pass to Maya.
[00:29:03.771] Maja Bodenstein: Which you might regret. Because I always feel like my take on the Code of Laws is a little bit less on-brand. But I don't think it is, actually. I think it's just a different way of looking at it. The most interesting one is the one that comes third in our game, I think. Which is that if you take women on board, you can't rape them. They are basically protected. I'm paraphrasing here, but if you take someone to wife, then you have to stay loyal to them. So adultery was absolutely not tolerated. There were different punishments for men and women. I think for men it was either, I don't know, you got beheaded and women have to get thrown overboard. Pretty terrible stuff. But I think you can sort of see that as being gender equality. But what I think it is, is that she really knew the value of people and the value of these ransom victims as cargo as well. So I think it's actually just a different way of looking at it, because by assuming that women have value, that in itself I think is quite revolutionary at the time. I think by knowing that you add something to it and thus you shouldn't damage them, even if your goal wasn't to protect all the women for the goodness of your heart, I still think it gave them protection and power. I think again, when she retired as a pirate and negotiated her surrender, she did that by going to the local governor and bringing lots of women and children from the fleet. So I think you can see that she definitely knew they were important and they held a different status, and she really, really knew how to manipulate that and play with it to gain power. So I've always thought that was such a brilliant, interesting part of who she was and how she used those codes. And by the way, I should probably mention that there is some debate over whose laws it was. There was a mistranslation early on that it was actually Zhuang Bozai who came up with the laws. But again, they were, if not married at the point, certainly working together very, very tightly. And I just don't think it's possible that she wouldn't have had at least a very, very strong input into them. So I think it's fine to say that they're very much still her code of laws as well. The other two are basically about no one being able to keep any of the loot for themselves that had to be shared out equally. It would all be given to the treasury and that would be given to everyone. And I think the last one is just that you can't make any movements. You cannot leave the fleet and go on land unless it's sanctioned. So very much keeping tight control over everything that's going on within the fleet.
[00:31:27.611] Eloise Singer: I guess also just to jump in on that, you know, I think there's such a romanticisation of pirates and looking at Pirates of the Caribbean and other stories about pirates. Pirates have been romanticised and whilst both Mari and I do think that what she did was incredible and she really did pave the way and she was a pioneer, she also was completely and utterly ruthless. And I think one part of what we wanted to develop and especially in terms of the character was this complexity of her motivations and why she wanted to become a leader and the fact that it's driven by the fact that she was a sex worker and she did have a thirst for power as well. But the whole idea of the game and setting it on one night and making these environments really dark and immersive was to convey this idea that it is also quite a dark narrative. And so we really wanted to make it moody and to reflect that in the music. And some of the things that I spoke with Lucy Liu about when we were developing the character and finding the character together for her performance was this idea of lowering her voice to reflect the fact that she was very ruthless. character and there were moments when we were recording that Lisa would touch me and be like it sounds so scary and it was one of those things and it's because she was like in this character you know she was terrifying and so that's something that we definitely wanted to highlight whilst also balancing the fact that we did want to bring light to someone who made such a pivotal impact as a female leader.
[00:32:55.186] Kent Bye: Yeah, Eloise, maybe you want to elaborate a little bit about bringing on Lucy Liu as an executive producer and primary voice actor in this piece.
[00:33:03.269] Eloise Singer: Yeah, absolutely. So we, after we were accepted into Tribeca, we reached out to Lucy's team with the project. And we just said, you know, we're working on this VR narrative game, and we'd love to chat with you about it. And the team was fascinated. And Lucy had never heard about this story before. And she was really, really taken with it. And so we sort of discussed the approach and what we wanted to do with it and shared a lot of materials in terms of the visuals and shared a lot of information about the authenticity and the historical accuracy and what our intentions were with telling this narrative. Her team responded really, really warmly to that, so they came on board and we set up two recording sessions. The first session was before Tribeca and we recorded the version that went to Tribeca and then we by the skin of our teeth managed to record the second before we thought And so there was a lot of talk about how video games were going to have this strike. And so we had to very, very quickly move and record with Lucy before we thought the strike was going to be in place. And we literally recorded the day before they were going to call the strike. And then thankfully, the strike wasn't called. But we managed to get it in and then as a result now we are able to release our game, which is very exciting. But yeah, I think the challenges of last year with the writing strikes and the video game and the actor strikes definitely had a toll on development and added some extra hurdles that we didn't anticipate. But I'm really pleased that it all worked out and Lucy's voice in it is completely and utterly incredible. So it's just the perfect person to voice Chengxi.
[00:34:52.938] Kent Bye: Nice. And as I play through the game, there's a lot of different genres I'd say that are being blended in, in terms of the embodied gameplay that you have, the types of escape room mechanics, primarily like environmental storytelling and escape room, I'd say are the key genres, but there is some embodied interactions that you have, but also there are some moments that feel very cinematic, almost like an action movie in some ways that in the midst of this context that gets a little bit more intense, let's just say later in the film, where it's a combination of that embodied interactions with the intensity of what feels like a action escape sequence of sorts. So I'd love to hear you elaborate on what you are drawing upon in terms of the different genres to blend together to be able to tell the story.
[00:35:38.556] Eloise Singer: Yeah, I think we really wanted to focus on pacing with the game, and that was something that was really, really important from the outset. I mean, we loved the fact that the prototype had escape room mechanics in it, and that was something that we really wanted to focus on for the whole game. And sort of through the iteration and development process, we found that by combining rooms that had escape room mechanics and puzzle-based elements with sequences that were a lot more tactile and action-esque, so whether it was rowing past rival patrol boats or whether it was climbing up the side of ships, those were all elements that for us felt really important because this is a pirate narrative and this is an experience that we want people to feel that they have those elements that are full-on pirate-esque, but at the same time we wanted to do something that was nuanced and different and also conveyed the story that we wanted to tell. So it was a really nice blend between, as you say, sort of different genres, and at the same time the game is intended for new adopters to VR. So we wanted to create something that felt very, very accessible and sort of hit our audience, which is predominantly sort of story seekers rather than the traditional hardcore gamers and so that meant moving away from shooting mechanics or stabbing mechanics which are in quite a few VR games and we wanted to do something different because ultimately this narrative we want and the intention has always been to reach as wide an audience as possible and so by creating a game that felt more violent it would limit us in how many younger players we could reach. So we wanted to create something that didn't have the violence in it, but still allowed you to feel like a pirate in VR. And the response to that has actually been wonderful and really, really nice. So I'm really pleased that we took that creative risk. And yeah, I've been able to create something that is accessible to everyone.
[00:37:36.802] Maja Bodenstein: I think the really cinematic moments are also just really useful to give you a sense of scale. I think that's something that can be quite difficult. You can tell someone it was a massive fleet at its height. It had up to 70,000 men and you can't picture what that means to have that many ships. So having those moments where you've just fought really hard, and you catch your breath and actually you get to climb up really high up to the crow's nest and you get to see everyone around you. I think for me it's one of my favourite moments because you really get the payoff of this is what you're fighting for and this is how many people we're talking about. I think it just really helps you get a sense of the story and the world in a way that you couldn't have if you were just doing lots of escape roomy stuff where you're always indoors, or you're just doing one action sequence after another. So I think varying it has actually given us a lot of room to really broaden the world.
[00:38:28.065] Kent Bye: Yeah. And Maya, I'm wondering if you can maybe provide a bit more context as to the conflicts that are featured a little bit in this piece. When I talked to the creators of Madame Pirate, they were talking about how she was able to go to battle with the British army and Chinese Navy, and maybe just talk about like the different antagonists that are, you don't, we don't actually see them, but we just feel the presence in a way.
[00:38:51.879] Maja Bodenstein: Yes, we actually had a lot more in our insanely utopian vision of it. But I think at one point we wanted to include a character based on a British prisoner who was really kept with them by the pirates, but it felt very, very dark. There was no way to pull that off. But essentially, yes, we wanted to introduce some of the Western forces because at that point it was mainly the British and the Portuguese Navy who were active in the same arena. We settled on the British Navy mainly because, well, we had skill set funding and we really wanted to bring apart the British element of it. Then the Chinese Imperial Navy, we couldn't quite fit in. We had this massive set piece plan, but it was just quite a lot technically. I think also to try and explain having so many different factions around muddled it a little bit in the amount of intrigue you could fit into the storyline. But we still try to have little hints to it, because there was definitely a lot of interaction between the pirates and the people on land. Not officially, but you definitely would have had people knowing that, well, if I work with them, they won't come and plunder my villages necessarily. So there were definitely deals going on. We try to have a little hint of that when you go to your main antagonist's cabin and you find evidence that he's been treating with them. But we try to focus mainly on the leader of the Black Flag fleet, which I've always felt a little bit bad about. But he did also sort of go nuts in the later years and just go on this massive massacre. So I don't feel too badly about it. But he was the sort of second most powerful pirate within the fleet and had been very loyal to Tseng Yat for a very long time. So we just increase and heighten the conflicts a little bit. I did read somewhere that I think he did suggest a marriage alliance to make himself the strongest pirate. And she obviously didn't do that. So it just felt like really right ground to explore that sense of competition and how you might feel if you thought this was a done deal and be beneficial to everyone. And this woman, a sex worker, just says, no, I'm going to go my own way. So that's really where the inspiration for his character came from. And yeah, I think that's where we got to with that.
[00:41:03.352] Kent Bye: Okay, that helps. You mentioned the black flags, there's red flags. Maybe you could describe the significance of these flags.
[00:41:11.794] Maja Bodenstein: Yes. Initially, there were seven different pirate fleets and they were all known by the name of the flag. But one of them actually dropped out and I believe went over and joined the Imperial Navy instead, which was fascinating. We tried to make him a character actually in the game, but that was one of the things that was cut due to scope. And yeah, there were six. There was the Red Flag, which is her fleet, which was the biggest by far. I think there were about 40,000 people. Then the second strongest was the Black Flag Fleet. Then you had much, much smaller ones, the Green, Blue, Yellow and White. They had different alliances. The smaller fleets tended to stick closer to one of the bigger ones. So really, really fascinating history again. I think it's worth reading up about each of the captains because they were all characters in their own right and they had all fought in the Vietnamese Succession War. So yeah, really fascinating.
[00:42:06.954] Kent Bye: So in playing through this experience, I first played it through Tribeca where I believe at that point, the story mode was on where all the hints were in there. And when I played it at home, I turned all that off, but I had forgotten some of the different steps that I had taken. And then I found myself. Like there's a bit of non-linearity of some of the puzzles. And I think I had solved like one of the ones where I was ready to open the door, but yet I hadn't done all the other things. And so I had the hardest time of figuring out what I didn't do. And then I had to actually like switch to the story mode to get the hints. But when I switched to story mode, it actually restarted me with the whole chapter. I know with Asgard's Wrath, they had the ability to kind of dynamically switch between like story modes at any moment. But I feel like in maybe the way that this was built, there's like certain game states that were more difficult to dynamically switch in the middle of a chapter. So I'd love to hear a little bit about that development process, because the story mode is really not trying to get you stuck. But at the same time, I found the story mode sometimes to be too easy, so that I wasn't getting the mental friction. especially the first room, I played it through on the regular mode throughout the entirety of the rest of the experience. And I didn't run into that again, but I did run into it in the very first room just because I had put in the wrong size into one of the wrong things, if you know what I mean. And so I felt lost at that moment, but you'd love to hear that tension between trying to avoid that at all costs of finding people coming to a stop of not knowing what to do versus like making it easy enough for people to follow the story without making it feel too easy. So it's a difficult balancing thing there. I'd love to hear you maybe elaborate on that.
[00:43:45.707] Eloise Singer: Yeah definitely, I mean for us the story mode we wanted an experience where the players could play through the story and have hints as and when they need and it just meant that those who may be newer to VR or less confident in VR were able to experience the whole thing because for us the most important thing was for everyone to experience the whole game and to get to the end and to have that payoff of becoming leader of the fleet. And I know that there are so many games where people just aren't able to finish the game because they're so challenging. And so we wanted an option where you can definitely finish the whole game if you want to. And then with the harder modes, that was always one that without the guidance, you kind of had to try and work it out for yourself. And that's much more for people who are really into puzzlers, who like getting lost or confused, or feel the challenge of trying to have to work something out and really enjoy trying to solve everything for themselves. And we definitely found through festivals, to be honest, of showing the game at different festivals, that there were really two clear demographics, which was one that just wanted to be guided through the experience and wanted the solutions as they were going through and really enjoyed VR for the experience, but not necessarily wanting to be challenged in that way. And then players who really wanted the complexities of having to figure stuff out for themselves. And they didn't mind sitting in a room, one of the rooms in the game for sort of 30 minutes, trying to work out where to go next or what to do next. And they didn't want the hints. So that's kind of where it all stemmed from. And it feels like having those two different options means that we're sort of able to cater to two different audiences.
[00:45:34.145] Maja Bodenstein: I mean, I feel like we definitely tried to write it so that the hints would update and you could do things in different options. I think obviously with the descope, you end up sort of taking a lot of that out because we're just trying to get a game as beautifully made as we can. But I'm sorry you got lost with the things that you're meant to put in the things. We tried to plan for that, I think, but it's difficult because obviously there are different game states and some of the hints might not trigger as and when they might, because for the more experienced mode, we've built in the bell system, so you can always ring for a hint, but I think you might've done something else, so you might not get the right hint, unfortunately. But yeah, it's something we were very much aware of when we were developing it and writing it and just trying to make it fun, even if you sort of have to backtrack a little bit to still give you some stakes in what you're doing.
[00:46:24.423] Kent Bye: Yeah, I did make good use of the bell throughout the course of the experience. And I think because there was an inventory system, I was like putting stuff into my inventory system thinking at that point of the game, I didn't realize that the inventory system would sort of reset after the stage, dropping the stuff that was not essential. So yeah, anyway, I eventually obviously figured it out and was able to make it through. But yeah, I guess as we start to wrap up, I'd love to hear what each of you think the ultimate potential of virtual reality and this type of blending of storytelling and gameplay might be and what it might be able to enable.
[00:46:58.963] Eloise Singer: I think I'm really interested about how the industry is now going to shift with the release of the Apple Vision Pro and what that is going to do in terms of the hardware that we have and how things are going to change. I think the Apple Vision Pro is a massive shift in the industry and I was very lucky to try one last year before it was released and just seeing the scope and the capacity of what the Apple Vision Pro can do in terms of the flexibility between MR and VR and hand tracking and eye tracking and all of those different aspects is really exciting and it definitely feels like it's going to start widening VR to a much wider audience. I think we still have a a long way to go with it and price points, et cetera, need to be revised for it to go more mainstream. But yeah, I think that VR is in a really interesting space at the moment where some new hardware is going to be coming out that computes with the Vision Pro. And it feels like that is quite a pivotal moment for the industry.
[00:48:02.780] Maja Bodenstein: Yeah, I mean, my confession is that my favorite types of games to play in VR are actually the dance and exercise games. Huge lifesaver during the pandemic and the lockdowns. It just was so good. And I think What really struck me is the potential to really immerse yourself in an atmosphere is so great and unusual. So in film, I write a lot of horror as well, and I feel like that's really driven by putting yourself into the position of the story of the character that you're seeing on screen. So by cutting out that middleman, I think you just have this ability to really experience something so intensely and so directly. I feel there's so much potential for storytelling. And I also think from a cultural point of view, you get to really immerse yourself in a different time, in a different place, which I think hopefully will make people more open to accepting them and have them be a little bit braver, a little bit more open hearted to experience all sorts of different stories that don't necessarily reflect your own. So I think there's so much to play for, and also just so much fun to be had, like being a virtual space dancer.
[00:49:10.102] Kent Bye: Awesome. Is there anything else that's left unsaid that you'd like to say to the broader immersive community?
[00:49:15.272] Eloise Singer: I think being at South By, it's just, it's always so wonderful to see the projects that are being shown and how diverse VR is and the ability to tell stories in completely different ways. And I think it's really highlighted here and being able to see people create 2D animations in VR versus people who are making 3D interactive narrative games to people who are making installations and there's just such a range and I think that's the beauty about VR is that you're given a blank canvas in the form of digital tech and you can create whatever you want in that space and I think that's always a really exciting thing and place to be and I'm always just amazed at what everyone else is making. Yeah, it's exciting. I think it's an amazing community.
[00:50:07.045] Maja Bodenstein: in that it's so worth going to a convention or a show and just experiencing as many different types of experience as you can, because you just might not know what really does it for you. So I think try it all out, give it a go, and then something might really resonate and inspire you to tell stories in this medium as well. It's so new. There's so much room for people to join in and help develop what's to come. So yeah, it's an exciting time and I hope it reaches people.
[00:50:33.646] Kent Bye: Awesome. Well, always. And Maya, thanks so much for joining me today to break down the pirate queen, a forgotten legend that was released on the quest on March 7th, as well as on steam. Really enjoyed playing through the game. Like I said, there's a nice blend of the embodied interactions that I can see Maya that your, your enjoyment of the fitness games. There's certainly some kind of like. Rowing exercises that you have to do in this game that may be encouraging people to do that type of embodied interactions but also just the Environmental storytelling and the way that you're telling a story and escape room mechanics and also we didn't mention it But you know enjoyed trying to find all of the little trinkets in each of the different sections I wasn't able to find all of them on my first pass-through and so there's an opportunity for me to go back and Dig around a little bit more exploring the environments and so yeah, just a really beautiful environmental designs and storytelling and yeah overall some real epic cinematic moments there near the end as well that I quite enjoyed. So managed to make my way through it and enjoyed playing through it. So again, thanks again for joining me to help break down both your journey and your process of making it.
[00:51:34.774] Maja Bodenstein: Thank you so much for having us.
[00:51:36.875] Eloise Singer: Thank you so much. Yeah, thank you so much. It's been wonderful chatting as always.
[00:51:41.477] Kent Bye: So thanks again for listening to this interview. This is usually where I would share some additional takeaways, but I've started to do a little bit more real-time takeaways at the end of my conversations with folks to give some of my impressions. And I think as time goes on, I'm going to figure out how to use XR technologies within the context of the VoicesofVR.com website itself to do these type of spatial visualizations. So I'm putting a lot of my energy on thinking about that a lot more right now. But if you do want a little bit more in-depth conversations around some of these different ideas around immersive storytelling, I highly recommend a talk that I gave on YouTube. You can search for StoryCon Keynote, Kent Bye. I did a whole primer on presence, immersive storytelling, and experiential design. So, that's all that I have for today, and I just want to thank you all for listening to the Voices of VR podcast. And if you enjoy the podcast, then please do spread the word, tell your friends, and consider becoming a member of the Patreon. This is a listener-supported podcast, and so I do rely upon donations from people like yourself in order to continue to bring you this coverage. So you could become a member and donate today at patreon.com slash voicesofvr. Thanks for listening.
