White Paper Games’ first release, Ether One, was all about the unreliability of memory. So there is perhaps irony in asking the team to take us back over a decade, when the studio’s original members were studying at Preston’s University Of Central Lancashire. As Pete Bottomley and James Burton reminisce, one event in particular stands out from the hazy mists of memory: a talk given by The Chinese Room’s Dan Pinchbeck.
Bottomley acknowledges the influence of Dear Esther, The Chinese Room’s own debut, on Ether One. After all, both are short first-person narrative games – ‘walking sims’, to use the pejorative – set in the kind of low-key British location then rarely seen in games, and both explore topics of grief and memory. This isn’t the event’s only significance, though: it was also the first time Bottomley and Burton met. So, can they remember what words they exchanged? “‘Oh, here’s your ticket,’” Bottomley recalls. “I didn’t see him for the rest of the day, and didn’t talk to him again for maybe a couple of years.”
Not quite the equivalent of that ’76 Sex Pistols Manchester gig, then – but important groundwork was laid that day. Bottomley cites the example set by Pinchbeck as an influence on the decision, when he and fellow co-founder Benjamin Hill completed their game design Masters in 2011, not to pursue opportunities in existing studios but to “do our own thing”. They began work on their first game after graduation and, by the time White Paper Games was established in 2012, had assembled a team of five, all connected through their working and living situations at UCLan. (Bottomley and Burton now teach at the university one day a week.)
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der April 2022-Ausgabe von Edge.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
Bereits Abonnent ? Anmelden
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der April 2022-Ausgabe von Edge.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
Bereits Abonnent? Anmelden
NO MORE ROOM IN HELL 2
You're not alone in the dark
WINDBLOWN
Life after Dead Cells
COLLECTED WORKS - JOSH SAWYER
Journeying to the Forgotten Realms, Infinity and beyond with the RPG veteran
SCREENBOUND
Going deep in a mind-bending hybrid of perspectives
Trigger Happy
Shoot first, ask questions later
Grand strategist
Paradox's Mattias Lilja addresses the publisher's recent difficulties - and the plan to right the ship
Diablo IV
A progress report on the games we just can't quit
Ghosts 'n Goblins Resurrection
In Capcom's diabolical tribute, evil goes far deeper than the demons on the screen
SERENITY FORGE
How a near-death experience lit a fire in the Colorado-based developer and publisher
THE MAKING OF...ALIEN: ISOLATION
How a strategy-led studio built a survival horror masterpiece in Ridley Scott's image