Whispers – A postmortem from the programmer’s side

As I work on the nitty gritty of a game (fiddling with code and what are - fundamentally - mechanical systems, testing and retesting the same two lines of dialogs over and over) the grand idea behind the game tends to blur for me. Whispers is a game that is inspired by the personal and aspires to reach towards the player in an interaction that wants to be felt as much as it wants to be read. II’s a game that is evocative of an experience that most - if not all - femme-presenting folk in the industry have had. Yet, while I was tinkering with code, the personal fell into the back seat. 

As a bumbling game developer, it was the first time I integrated text written by someone else into code. As such, I tried – and only got halfway there – to make a .json dialog system, the “proper” way, if my learning experiences are anything to go by. I did not have much time – we made Whispers for the Just Play game jam – but I figured so many games have similar systems that it shouldn’t be too hard to find proper documentation. The system had to account for more than one character, a few variables and dialogue branches, several endings and... that was it. 

I am sure someone with more experience could’ve completed the system within my timeframe, but I could not. With video games, we’re always underestimating how complicated a seemingly simple mechanic really is.  In the end, I had to make a number of concessions and, frankly, just plain weird design decisions to simply make the text work. I don’t regret doing the process: it’s always a learning experience. 

When coding or designing in a game engine, every problem has a mechanical solution. Elisabeth’s text, on the other hand, is about a human story, something eminently emotional.  

For me, here lies the biggest challenge of making games that evoke human emotions. Much more than other mediums, video games are inherently mechanical objects that we need to translate through a bunch of computer systems and it’s all too, easy, while working in those, to lose view of what the final product will feel like. 

On the other hand, playing Whispers a few days after I finished working on it, it became obvious to me that the idiosyncrasies of my dialogue system don’t mean much anymore. They will be invisible to most players. Elisabeth’s writing still shines through and what became a blur while I was working returned to focus. Any wonky code I wrote or did not implement the “proper” way doesn’t matter as long as it works. For this game to work, it needs to be played, it needs to be thought about and, most importantly, it needs to be felt. 

- Olivier