Interview with Lucky Wander Boy Author D.B. Weiss

Kevin - How did you settle upon this book, as opposed to the rest of your body of writing, as a first novel? Had Lucky Wander Boy been a long time in the making by the time it was “picked up,” or was it written in response to an offer?

D.B. - I’d been thinking about the near-total absence of videogames in fiction outside science fiction for a while, but I didn’t have a framework for these thoughts. I had written another novel or two (or three? hard to remember) that were what you might call “unsuitable for publication,” and I had other ideas for novels – like the one I’m working on now – long before LWB. But they were novels of a larger scale, and I was rightly wary about launching into them, given the way the larger scale novel before them turned out. There was no offer – the book had to be written before it was bought.

Kevin - Through other interviews, I’ve garnered that Pennyman is only a slightly autobiographical character, and beyond a] a love of video games and b] an intense hatred of Blockbuster, he is a made-up persona. However, like all people, Pennyman has anxieties about people, an almost Holdenesque means of detecting “phoniness”: are some of his peeves extensions of your own?

D.B. - Some of them are extensions of my own, and some of the human qualities he loathes are probably the ones I exhibit. Like Pennyman, my own methods of deciding who is “phony” and who isn’t are highly suspect, and probably ought to be abandoned all together. And I admit with some shame that I do rent videogames from Blockbuster, every once in a long while. I don’t think Pennyman would.

Kevin - There is a decidedly anti-”hip capitalist” slant to the book. Do you think that these sorts of companies and mindsets limit the quality and sort of video games that American gamers, in the real world, have access to?

D.B. - With increased initial outlay comes increased risk aversion, alas. The more games cost to make, the less willing developers and publishers are going to be to take the leap of faith required to make a GTAIII or an Ico or whatever. But the lessons do get learned (not at the Portal Entertainments of the world, but at other places). Ico reappears as Prince of Persia, and does well. The open-endedness of GTAIII is imported by other games in other genres. I still have a lot of hope.

Kevin - I’ve detected a lot of “mimetic” writing in LWB. I have this theory regarding the end, and I’d love to have you call bullshit on me for postulating it: the ending is structured around a video game player’s ability to redo something in a game, either resuming a saved game or simply pressing reset. To Pennyman, has the gist of his narrative life “become” a game?

D.B. - Damn. Figured out. And for Pennyman, the end result of resetting your life, or retelling the stories you tell yourself about yourself so they continue to be of your liking, is an existential dead end.

Kevin - I’d say that this is truly a multi-media book: you write about books, films, video games, and you use each of those styles within the book. Was the decision to include screenplays and such a means of changing the way that one perceives your characters, or was it done primarily for the comedic effect often solicited? (P.s. - the Lucky Wander Boy Screenplay first submitted to Portal is GOLD.)

D.B. - Mixing things up often makes a comic effect easier to achieve – each time you shift styles or formats, the shock of the new can give you a little comedic boost if you use it right. But I also wanted to display some of the different filters through which Pennyman views himself. The different modes of stories he tells himself about himself.

Kevin - Is the original Lucky Wander Boy screenplay a reaction to any video game movie in particular? The way that it totally craps on the original game reeks of Resident Evil, House of the Dead, or a select view others.

D.B. - It is the result of years of exhaustive research in the realm of terrible, techno-mystical action screenplays, produced, unproduced and unproduceable. Far more work went into the LWB screenplay excerpt than any other section of the book, except possibly the end. I think someone ought to hire me to write terrible, techno-mystical action screenplays. I think I have a knack.

Kevin - The game Lucky Wander Boy seems to be about as esoteric as games can get. You’ve said that it is a homage to games like Adventure and Raiders of the Lost Ark, but there seems to be more at work. In fact, the second and third levels read like a film by Michelangelo Antonioni. In films like Blowup, Il Deserto Rosso and L’Avventura, characters are often enveloped, eaten or utterly lost in the landscape. After these episodes, characters often undergo either intensive psychological shock or exploration, much like the transition from level 2 to 3. (BTW, just something I noticed.) Cutting to the chase: are there any films or directors that specifically influenced the style of the Lucky Wander Boy game?

D.B. - I like that Antonioni thing. Although he wasn’t a conscious influence, I’ve certainly gotten a lot out of his films, and they certainly are about people being set adrift psychologically, so who knows? As for directors I was consciously thinking about while working on LWB… Jodorowsky comes to mind, as does Takashi Miike, and Mizoguchi. I suppose I was trying to put myself in an off-kilter frame of mind, and then apply that frame of mind to Mike Judge’s Office Space.

Kevin - LWB contains a pretty big range of “gamer types,” from the ultra-completists at the convention to the casual players of the office arcade cabinet. Where would you situate yourself?

D.B. - I’m a gamer of the “don’t play at all for three weeks, then play for six hours a day for a whole week” variety. I think I’ll be playing a lot more in the coming year, once I finish the next book I’m working on, and once some of the games that are on deck get released (Fable, Psychonauts, Doom III, etc.).

Kevin - There are many instances of “cult” entertainments being mentioned in Lucky Wander Boy. While I don’t accuse you of listening to Rush’s 2112 more than the next guy, I’d like to know if you are drawn to the sorts of culture that Pennyman is, things that stray from the mainstream.

D.B. - I am drawn to them, although I probably drew myself to them even more than usual while working on the book. What’s strange about cult entertainments now is that they’re every bit as easy to get your hands on as the new Justin Timberlake album. So the hunter/gather aspect of “cult” has been lost. I think this change has both positive and negative aspects. There is something a bit ominous about it – it reminds me of MTV, where I worked very briefly right after college, until I was invited to leave. Everyone decorates their cubicles with the promo “flair” supplied by the record companies. And all the cubicles were decked out differently, of course, as befits such a bastion of fierce- individuality-as-brand-identity – but for the most part, everyone was picking and choosing from the same flair drawer.

Then again, there was always something sort of ridiculous about the bullshit schwags who would run around telling you how great this album or that movie was, because there are only three copies of it in existence, and they had one, and no, you couldn’t hear or watch it. At the end of the day, rarity should not be the primary arbiter of value in cultural productions. There’s no reason that the best album of the year might not sell 10 million copies. Actually, there are a lot of reasons why it probably won’t nowadays, but there’s not really room to go into them here.

Kevin - You have Adam pick on Double Dragon as an example of a game that is too “realist,” the beginning of the end. However, I’d argue that it was one of the first games to accurately render urban environments, as well as the sort of game that introduced console games to the concept of the urban dystopia. Do you hold Double Dragon in contempt or is that a fictional construct?

D.B. - Totally fictional. I love Double Dragon and I love lots of its fighting game descendants, even though I’m no good at remembering all the combinations you need to be a real contender. I just enjoy pounding on the buttons like a lab monkey working for his crack pellet, and pretending I’m responsible for all the wonderful fake violence on the screen. And I’m trying to think of an urban dystopia game that predates Double Dragon, but I’m blanking. There’s got to be one, doesn’t there?

Kevin - There is an explicit link between religious experience and video games in Lucky Wander Boy. From instances of sensory depravation to sacrifice to sexual peaking, Adam plays games with all of his heart and soul. Also, you speak of the “aura” of the game. Do you believe that the game- playing act can include these connotations? Additionally, there are many instances of ritual in the book - does the book suggest transcendence through gaming?

D.B. - I wouldn’t suggest seeking transcendence through gaming – but then, I wouldn’t suggest seeking transcendence through anything, so I’m probably not the person to ask. I don’t think video games are quite at the point yet where they can induce serious altered states without, shall we say, outside assistance. But it seems more and more likely that “transcendental religious experience” is primarily the result of a specific kind activity in a specific region of the brain. There are so many kinds of experiences that can trigger these experiences, I don’t see any reason why video games couldn’t conceivably trigger them as well. “Tekken Godhead Simulator II”? Hell, I’ll buy it.

Kevin - What is the best console game of all time? Which games are you currently playing, and which have you constantly kept in rotation?

D.B. - Hmmm. I probably missed out on a whole generation of contenders, in the Genesis, Saturn, Dreamcast, N64 era when I wasn’t playing very often. So maybe I’m not the best person to ask. Zelda wins lots of polls, but I never played it much. Sea Battle was a big one for me. Pitfall was a big one for me. In those days, I was really more into arcade machines. As far as simple perfection in head-to-head mode goes, I haven’t seen a game that plays as smoothly as Halo. I know there are a lot of people who swear by the Unreal games and many others, but on consoles, in head-to-head mode, I don’t see how they’re even comparable. I have played the hell out of both Ratchet and Clank games, I’ve played way too much Morrowind. And Crimson Skies looks like it might ruin some parties and piss off some girlfriends in the near future.

Kevin - What is your impression of the current console generation, and of “next gen” gaming in general. You’ve said elsewhere that you like all games, old and new, but how do you spend your time?

D.B. - What I said before about money and gaming goes for this as well. When games were being made on a shoestring, all sorts of wild, surrealistic, abstract visions found their way into the mainstream of gaming, often by necessity – there’s a good reason I can’t think of any “realistic urban dystopia” off-hand that came out before 1987. Graphics limitations meant abstraction by default. It’s a shame that more of the strangeness hasn’t survived – but I suppose it’s inevitable as well. “I’ve got an idea for a game that is the weirdest, most singular thing you’ve ever seen. It’s not like anything you’ve ever played before. I can’t even use another game as a reference point to describe it. Give me five or six million dollars, and I’ll make it for you.”

That said, a lot of the ho-hum sameness permeating gaming is avoidable, and is probably not even a good idea from a business standpoint. Why ride out the diminishing returns of something that’s been done to death? You know you’re going to need a source of alternative energy to revitalize things sooner or later. Why not take a calculated risk, and be the one who grabs the brass ring and comes out with the next GTAIII (which will by necessity be almost nothing at all like GTAIII), instead of satisfying yourselves with the scraps to be had from GTAIII clones?

Kevin - What does the future hold for gaming in general? Before gaming can go totally “mainstream,” will it require a “parenting” generation? Will the world not get it until games have been a part of every stage of a person’s life?

D.B. - There are a lot of people out there who know far more than I do about the landscape making prognostications. Massively multiplayer games (RPG and otherwise) will obviously play a huge role in the true mainstreaming of gaming, because they create a version of communal experience with strangers, which is key. I think spectating will play a role in this as well – when Madden 2010 is indistinguishable from an NFL game, watching the best Madden players in the world compete will be as exciting as watching an NFL game, if you can get over the fact that all the Madden player is risking is mild tendonitis and carpal tunnel syndrome. Eventually, with advances in AI, the trend might swing back toward single player games. That’s going to take longer than the futurist types predict, I think, but it may happen in games first, because there will be more money put toward AI development in gaming than anywhere else.

And the point you make is also a good one. Those of us in our 20s and 30s are the beachhead generation. My kids will grow up with them. The resistance to gaming by nitwits like Joe Lieberman will fizzle like Estes Kefauver’s anti-comics crusade.

Kevin - What project (assuming it isn’t hush-hush) are you currently working on? Any plans to write about games, as fiction or as non-fiction, in the near future?

D.B. - I’m working on a novel set in the 17th century, that is slightly more than twice as long as LWB. But I’m sure I’ll be doing some quasi-journalistic stuff about games, sooner or later.

Kevin - Of all of the non-fiction works out there “about” video games and gaming, which is your favorite? Did you use these sorts of books while writing Lucky Wander Boy?

D.B. - There were a lot of very helpful books – Steven Kent’s First Quarter, Leonard Hermann’s Phoenix… but the best book about gaming for my money has to be Van Burnham’s Supercade: A Visual History of the Videogame Age 1971-1984, and not just because she gave me a blurb for the book. Seeing gorgeous, coffee table screen shots from all these games, being able to examine their visual design in a way I never could back when I was playing them… my fingerprints are on every page of that book.

Kevin - Is there a future in the field of video game scholarship? Could the Catalogue of Obsolete Entertainments one day find a publishing deal?

D.B. - There’s definitely a future in the field of video game scholarship. This will be both a good thing, and a bad thing. There will be people like Henry Jenkins, Gonzalo Frasca, Kurt Squire, Mark J.P. Wolf and others who think and write about games in an illuminating way. I hope they will help to bring gaming into its own as the Eighth Lively Art, as Eisenstein, Bazin, Kracauer and others did for film.

But videogame scholarship faces several potential hurdles, in terms of actually joining the fray, and having any kind of impact on the games themselves. The first of these has to do with the structure of the gaming industry itself. With PC gaming taking a serious (and likely permanent) back seat to console gaming, the freedom to innovate has been seriously curtailed in the lion’s share of the gaming world. Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo don’t hand their proprietary development hardware out to just anybody, nor should they (see “Great Videogame Crash of 1983” for further details). But as stated earlier, making games that cut the production value muster for these platforms is expensive, and people with ten million dollars to spend on developing a game tend not to be the kinds of people who want to spend it on a high-end realization of the ideas laid out in a theoretical essay. There could be – probably will be, already has been – a bifurcation, in which the PC market becomes the side show where theoretical ideas can find their way into actual games, and then be cherry-picked, diluted, and put on display in the big tent. So perhaps it won’t be all that different from film after all. Film theory influences Godard influences Tarantino.

Some might say true criticism shouldn’t be concerned at all with impacting the objects of criticism – that criticism is a world unto itself, only worthwhile and honest to the extent that it is isolated from crass, market-driven concerns. Good work can come from this kind of thinking too, but in general, I’m suspicious of the attitude. In literary criticism, it seems to be held primarily by people whose surface high-mindedness is only a mask for their personal ambition and desire to be adored – people who pretend to declare the Death of the Author, when all they’re really declaring is the Birth of the Critic.