Interview with the Designer of RIOT (video game)
Rezine: How many are you to work on the game?
Leonard Menchiari: Mainly 2 (me Leonard Menchiari - graphics/design/idea/directing; Marco Agricola - programmer). In addition we have Giacomo Langella for music, and Michele Postpischl who is doing an amazing job with sound design and Fabrizio Zagaglia who is helping us part time with some VFX and shaders.
Rezine: Was there a lot of change to the team since the beginning of the development?
Menchiari: Yes, I had to restart the project 3-4 times so many teams changed throughout development. Now we have a small, but incredibly efficient and powerful team.
Rezine: Is this a first experience in the video game development or you guys have previous experience?
Menchiari: As the creator I can say that this was my first experience. My coder had some other game development experiences and Fabrizio was able to make a whole complex and beautiful 3D game all by himself.
Rezine: How does it feel to be your own boss?
Menchiari: It's challenging, but I couldn't do otherwise at first. The whole idea came from inside me, so I was the only one that could communicate fully what this game was going to be about (not just through words, but by constantly pushing the project forward in the right direction). I'm very thrilled that all the team is now on the same page, so right now we're at the point that I'm not the only one in charge, but we are all helping each other out to reach the best possible experience that we can achieve with our bare hands.
Rezine: Do you feel better to work on your own stuff?
Menchiari: I previously worked on the cinematic side of a Valve series that unfortunately got shut down (very interesting project with a very nice team), other than that we've always been on our own.
Questions about the game:
Rezine: Do you see your game as point of view about riots and protests?
Menchiari: I have personally experienced riots, yes, and I feel that even though many happened and are still happening today, most of the themes are still very stereotypical and do not dig deeper on what happens behind the real psychological and political side of them.
Rezine: Is the game a way for you to protest?
Menchiari: After watching television and newspapers straight up lie brutally to millions of people about certain events that I've experienced with my own eyes, I felt the need to show other sides of what happened during some of the protests that the national media was unable to express. I am not going to give opinions, I will however show certain events that happened and that people should know. Everything that lies behind the game you can research and find on the internet, so that you can gather your own opinions yourself.
Politic and social movements change quickly did your views and opinions changed during the development of the game? Whatever opinions I had were so obvious that I was not able to change, but other more complex ones were left open for the people to decide, so those didn't affect me much throughout the development.
Rezine: Are you involved politically?
Menchiari: We are all involved politically in one way or another, even if you decide not to be you still are.
Rezine: Did any members of the team have been involved in riots?
Menchiari: Unfortunately, I am the only one that was able to see riots, even if all of the team was definitely involved with protests of some kind at some point.
Rezine: The game is inspired by real life events, can you tell us which events?
Menchiari: Main events are Italy (noTAV movement), Keratea in Greece, Indignados in Spain, and the Tahrir revolution in Egypt. Other protests will be unlocked after playing such as Foxconn riots, Ukraine, Occupy Oakland, Notredame Des Landes, Brazil, Turkey, and several more.
Rezine: In the games what do the rioters protest about?
Menchiari: Each protest is different based on the event that is happening around the world. The list is very long so you would have to play it in order to read all of them.
Rezine: Do you want your game to be educational?
Menchiari: For those who want to learn, yes. For those who just want to enjoy the experience, hopefully they will enjoy the experience. So I guess it's a mix of both aspects.
Rezine: Do you feel that games are not enough socially involved?
Menchiari: Games can be very socially involved, and it's very inspiring to see how many are able to express extremely deep concepts through very simple gameplay. Games like Papers Please, This War of Mine, Cart Life, are great examples of games that represent real situations and give you really powerful understanding of a world after a very short gameplay time.
Rezine: The game has an old school look, is there a reason for that?
Menchiari: I made a style I wanted to play, and I realized that by having very few pixels you also end up using more imagination, which helps with immersion.
Any game that inspired you? Graphically I was initially inspired by Sword and Sorcery, but over the years, I ended up developing a more specific style based on riot videos and old Lucasarts games.
Rezine: It will be possible for players to create their own scenario, will there be a mod for my city?
Menchiari: If you want you can create it, yes. The editor will not be out immediately, since we want to focus on the actual game first, but we've been working on some pretty interesting ways of developing something very intuitive and user friendly