Giant Bomb Presents: The BioForge Interview

Man I remember playing NetStorm: Islands at War and it was really incomprehensible at the time.

How did he get onto Schindlers List!?!

@vinchenzo: The interview is conversational. They sat down for an hour. They both talk, you dumb shit.

Thanks for the insanely random interview, Patrick.

Great interview, Patrick. Would love to hear more interviews from game creators of classic games.

For non-subscribers, actually seeing the entire thing (or even seeing it live and seeing the chat blow up at the best moments) is hundreds of times better than any compilation.

Not to mention so many other reasons to subscribe.

And I'm not sure how I feel about xpantherx posting subscriber content on YouTube. He used to just do Quick Looks, which were on YouTube, too. Now he's posting stuff behind the paywall, which isn't cool.

Like I've said before: I don't have a problem with taking anything down if anyone that works with Giant Bomb has a problem with it. The minimum interaction I've had with with them indicates that they seem to be cool with it, and the mods have even promoted my stuff through certain channels on the forums. If anything, I occasionally receive PMs from a handful of people telling me that they became a subscriber to the website through the stuff that I did, which is awesome to hear because I started those videos in the first place to promote the best content on the site.

A BIG GUN!

srsly though, thanks for this Pat and Mr. Demarest of course

Thanks for getting this interview, and a big thanks to Ken for doing it! He seems like a pretty cool guy, it was nice to hear him be frank and realistic about the successes and failures of the game and its place in history. The fact that he watched all of the play-through is cool enough on its own.

Loved this game so much as an adolescent. It's awesome that you were able to do an interview with this guy, it was a little like hearing an interview with one of your favorite book or movie's creator.

He had an interesting rant about games as art, and how they could never be Schindler's List... I would argue he may have missed a few in the last decade. Very interesting interview, and great post mortem for the Bioforge mini endurance.

Athlete is a term reserved for physical feats. Not mental no matter how difficult.

@avantegardener: Maybe I misheard him (I was on a pretty loud bus) but I thought he said that people aren't ready for that kind of game just now, not that such a game should or could never exist.

Sadly, yup. I wonder why the people who dislike Patrick keep checking out and commenting on the content he puts up?

Alas, this is a great interview. The fact that he actually watched the whole endurance run is majestic.

I like that Patrick can keep it somewhat casual rather than a cold, strict interview. There are times where that's necessary and Patrick have gone with a "questions only" approach numerous times, but this definitely didnt feel like an interview that required that.

Glad you got in touch with him, and I need to rewatch that endurance run again!

Good stuff. Definitely an interesting guy.

Thank you Patrick.

I don't quite get the "interactive movie" thing, and how that's different from any other narrative-based game.

@charaznable: It was the early 90s. Full 3d cutscenes and 3d gameplay in a game that is essentially an open world (however small and limited that world may have been) was still a fairly new concept.

People naturally compared that to playing a movie, even though today it's such a mundane concept that we just consider it one of many ways to tell a story in a game. Plus, the idea of "interactive movies" is a very simple way for older non-gamers to contextualize the appeal of games in general.

It isn't actually different from any other narritve-based game, but at the time, no one knew how exactly to define an interactive movie because they were basically trying to make it up as they went.

People also called Metal Gear Solid an interactive movie when that came out in '98 and the only thing movie-like about it is that it has a lot of scripted story moments. For a while, people in games had no idea what direction to take storytelling. In an interesting twist, Bioforge's take on what an "interactive movie" meant ultimately ended up being way closer to the evolution of narratives in video games than many other games that attempted to be interactive movies, such as the entire FMV genre.

Man, BioForge has justified my sub for at least one more year. Great interview. Ken seems like a pretty funny, down to earth guy.

Hi all,

Ken D here - thanks for all the appreciation - it was really fun to give the interview.

For those that are asking, the company is "appsoma.com" and yes, we are hiring :-)

Rock on, BioForge fans!

- Ken

@jeesty:

sometimes i wish i had gotten into programming so I could get involved in amazing things like that. awesome hearing the insight. also your idea for the next massively multiplayer experience i think is spot-on. and this time it would be a technical focus which makes it possible. hope you find the time and ambition to do it eventually

The Bioforge run through is absolutely one of my favorite pieces of content GiantBomb has created to date. And to follow it up with a fun interview with the creator is icing on the top. Thanks Patrick, you'll be missed.

How did I miss this?! :O

Bioforge needs a movie and Remake.

Now!

I should really go back and rewatch this.