La Plus Que Calme by Viktor Kraus
On November 13th, just one week after release, No Players Online was delisted from Steam until December 3rd, when it was reinstated and a statement was released by studio Beeswax Games, clarifying that its takedown was due to a DMCA claim made by a former friend. It’s hard to overstate how much of an effect something like this can have on a small company. Obviously financially, but also in terms of reputation, momentum, and loss of goodwill from any lack of transparency. It’s a weird situation, something that doesn’t happen often, so I sat down with Adam Pype of Beeswax Games to talk about both the incident with Steam and No Players Online itself, a conversation I was excited to have, especially after buying and playing No Players Online myself.
No Players Online doesn’t give away too much on its face. Its description is simple: “you find an abandoned fps game on an old computer. you decide to play it.” And play you certainly do, but beyond the empty, eerie capture-the-flag style map that the player uses to traverse some of the game’s larger themes and threads, there’s a stylish desktop with secrets to uncover. Little mini games that have souls of their own, digital occultism that runs through everything, and a lot of little touches here and there that relay an attention to detail and personal experience. No Players Online is comfortable in and unironic about its own genre. Some of the humor is nostalgic, the horror creeping and suffocating, complementing the sometimes morbid nature of obsessive grief. Everything gets space to breathe and build, resulting in an experience that I had a lot of thoughts about.
Adam: I’m one-third of Beeswax Games, it’s me and Tibau Van Den Broeck who’s a generalist – I’m also a generalist – so we both do a bit of the art, a bit of the code. We work together with Viktor Kraus who does all the audio, so it’s a small little game studio, I suppose.
We made a game called No Players Online that was released recently, but before that, we made a game called SPOOKWARE which was kind of like WarioWare meets Paper Mario but spooky. So, both No Players Online and SPOOKWARE are based on games that I made on my own before we started the company. I was doing game-a-month at the time, in which I make a game every month and kept that up for 32 months-
Franny: Oh wow! That’s impressive.
Adam: Thank you! So, we got a lot of different concepts from that and then SPOOKWARE was the first thing that we were approached for to expand that into a bigger thing, so we did that, and then after we did that, we took No Players Online which was a small game jam thing that I did with Viktor back in 2019. We decided that because it was always kind of the most popular thing that we put out that we should really make it bigger, and so we spent two and a half years expanding it, kind of rebuilding it from scratch, like a spiritual successor, same title but bigger game, much bigger game. The original was about ten minutes long, and the new release is about three hours long.
Franny: And I know you already made a couple statements about it, but if you’d like to reiterate what happened with it being pulled off of Steam?
Adam: It really sucks because this was a former friend, so it was someone who I really trusted who basically went kind of rogue and he filed a DMCA claim to Steam like a week after we released the game, and Steam is kind of required to take it down a game when a DMCA is filed, even when it’s not real or in the right. And then we file a counter-claim and then it needs to be down for like ten more business days or something like that, so in effect the game was down for like three weeks just after release. Which, of course, is not great.
Franny: I briefly tried to read up on like, US and UK copyright laws and it seems like copyright laws in the US are more reactive and standardized where a single claim can be very effective, especially when the allegedly infringed product is virtual and access to it can be easily revoked, whereas it seems a little more localised in the UK and I think that would give someone more of a grace period to allow for like a quicker and clearer resolution. In this case, having No Players Online pulled from the platform over an unsubstantiated claim, puts your team into a kind of guilty until proven innocent situation. So, what were the immediate consequences of this from the perspective of you and your team and how have you been recovering?
Adam: Definitely it came to a big shock. It didn’t come completely out of nowhere, like there were some warning signs before it happened, already having complications with this person, but we really didn’t think they would go that far. But they did, and then we were kind of just shocked that it happened. I was personally very emotionally hit by it because I really used to trust this person.
But then I called my publisher like “what’s the next step” and there’s nothing you can do, the only thing was we got the lawyer and filed a counter-claim, we did all the steps correctly right away, but the reality is still the game is down for three weeks just a week after release. With Steam it’s so important that you keep that momentum of launch, because during the launch is when you make the most sales, normally, so it’s super critical. I mean obviously the loss was inevitable, but we were mostly worried about what the long term was going to look like for this game. Like, if all the momentum is killed, with the way the Steam algorithm works, it’ll get pushed down way more, effectively it’s like your game gets no downloads for like three weeks. And, you know, our game was in New & Trending before it got taken down, so obviously it’s not there now that it’s gone back up.
A lot of visibility is just taken away. So, the only thing we could do was make a statement because not only did people not know why it was taken down, people thought it was part of the ARG – which would have been kind of crazy, no matter how much it could do for the ARG it would not make up for the loss in revenue. People even thought “oh maybe they got a DMCA from Microsoft because they used Minesweeper.” (laughs) There were a lot of theories going about, but we were obviously going to be careful, because also just legally we wanted to make all of the right moves and stuff. Not that we were, in any case, in the wrong or anything, like you said, basically treated as if we were guilty. And we obviously also have to say publicly that we didn’t steal anything, all of it is our own work. Some people even thought it was like “oh, did they use a ton of AI” or something. (laughs)
Franny: And those are things that you want to set the record straight on right away.
Adam: Yeah, exactly, but the thing is we couldn’t even set the record straight right away because if we did that right away, then all of the publicity from that statement would have gone to nothing because the game is still not available. So, we waited until the game got back up, so that at least, you know, people could sympathize with the situation and then hopefully convert that back into sales a little bit, so that it can recover, which is what we eventually did.
It was a really annoying three weeks. The only thing we could do was in the background prepare a statement, and then just wait and in the meantime look at the fact that the game was not available. It was so annoying because even like I think Pyrocynical was about to stream the game, looked it up on Steam and it wasn’t there, so he didn’t play it. So many potential people who could have played it. I would be like at events or something and people would ask me “what’s your game” and it’s like “oh yeah, it’s called No Players Online but it’s not up right now.” (laughs)
At least, itch kept the game up even though they also got a DMCA claim, but I think, this is just my guess, I think it’s because the people at itch know me a little better.
Franny: And you’re not like an unknown person, you had the first iteration of No Players Online featured on let’s plays from big creators, articles written about it, there was momentum. And now Steam removed your access to a global market around a really critical time. What was the communication like between the studio and Valve during this process?
Adam: The game gets taken down, the whole DMCA thing goes through the legal department in Valve, so it’s not the same department that does store management and stuff, so they were just like, “this is the DMCA you got, you have these next steps” very generally, but after the game got back up, we didn’t actually message Steam. Our thinking as well was: it’s also not good for Steam that like this game – that was doing well – gets such a big hit. So, we asked if we could get another round of visibility, or maybe like a daily deal or something, but they couldn’t do a daily deal so soon after release so “ask again later.”
It’s just weird, I don’t understand why Steam wouldn’t want to help the game, like it’s obviously a very unique situation, but also I obviously understand why they took the game down, I completely understand why they want to do the right move and go through that legal process, but it’s definitely kind of baffling to us. At least, the statement and stuff, the community and people reacting to it and we had a lot of people help out and press reach out. It really, really helped a lot.
The game has somewhat recovered in sales, it hasn’t recovered like the period it lost, but it seems to have gotten some of its momentum back. So, we’re feeling at least a little bit more optimistic for the future, like the long tail of the game. But still, the damage is there, and I don’t know how things work behind the scenes with Steam, I don’t know how it looks in the algorithm, and it’s annoying that it’s all so opaque.
Franny: I would imagine it would be nice to have more transparency. Personal details aside, but in terms of what occurs with the person who made the false DMCA claim, what kind of consequence they face when they don’t share the same stake in Steam as you.
Adam: When you file a DMCA, it does say “if you do this and it’s not true, you are committing perjury and you will be liable for damages.” Obviously if you do a DMCA, it’s very serious. The law should ultimately be on our side. And we’ve already spent a ton of money just on legal costs and stuff, just getting the game reinstated. It’s just a really annoying situation.
Also, what was kind of morbidly funny was that after the game got reinstated we had a bunch of bundles like with Inscryption and Hypnospace Outlaw, all of those bundles were gone when the game got reinstated, so we tried to get them back up but when we tried, it would just give an error message and we contacted Steam support and Steam found a new bug. I guess it never happened before that a game would get DMCA’d with a bunch of bundles and then get reinstated.
Franny: What’s been a bright spot for you and your team?
Adam: Definitely the reaction of people, how many people reached out that were showing their support and stuff, I think a lot of people wanted us to succeed, especially in the Belgium games industry, because it is such a small industry, so everyone is always really supportive of each other. I mean, I think everyone found the whole situation quite baffling, and I was happy that we could make that statement and finally kind of talk about it publicly so that people were aware. I was really happy how many people just helped out, and at least it does seem like maybe long-term the game will be okay. But it shows, you know, that a lot of people care about the game and care about us doing well. It would just have been nice if Steam cared a bit more.
Franny: I gotta wonder if there’s going to be any sort of internal dialogue within Valve about their reaction to this, especially because it’s a games platform, I would imagine they’d want to support the games that are on it in the ways they can.
Adam: And normally they are very supportive. I guess their hand was just a bit forced in this situation, and it’s such a unique situation that doesn’t happen a lot. I don’t know who in Steam has the authority to make an exception, it’s such a big company as well. I think also, the nice thing about itch not taking the game down, at least the game was still available somewhere while it was down, and I think what’s so nice about a site like itch is that it’s much smaller and they can kind of just call the shot be like, “okay, we kind of trust this developer, we’ll keep the game up.” I think it’s great that even itch kind of took that risk as well, you know, for us, which is just like crazy. (laughs) I mean, I love itch, it has obviously made my career I think, and dealing with Steam as such a big corporate thing is just different, I guess. It needs to draw the right kind of attention before they do something.
Franny: They’re definitely different ecosystems.
Adam: It should be noted that Steam is just so, so much more important than itch, like when our game was released on Steam, the amount of units that sold on the first day was quite a lot, but on itch it was barely a hundred. As much as I love itch, unfortunately Steam is still the monopoly. It’s just incomparable, there’s not a real alternative, it’s just not the same volume.
Franny: We saw your statement going around, so I bought No Players Online and played it and I really, really enjoyed it. I really liked how it utilized that nostalgic feeling of early operating systems. I feel like we’re seeing more and more of these digital forensic/desktop exploration type games and it’s always stunning to see how different developers interpret their own vision, almost always inspired by personal memories.
You even capture a few specific things that stood out to me like the pirated visual novel with the personalized gotcha moment of your love interest calling you a thief undeserving of love. That one popped me, and the accompanying key gen, I had one that I used when I was a kid that was all swirly and blue and it had this ethereal, oceanic music that played every time you opened it. I’ve spent this whole time thinking that was so unique, so we either encountered the same type of key gen or that was its own aesthetic back then and I didn’t really notice.
Adam: I definitely did my fair share of piracy as a kid for sure, and I feel this is 100% a trope of the key gen with the Sega-ass-chiptune music that’s always such a banger and super loud for no reason.
Franny: This obviously just isn’t a desktop exploration kind of game, there’s a lot more to it, but are you pulling from a lot of your own personal experience and memories, with the design and feeling of it?
Adam: Definitely, I mean in terms of the desktop itself, I try to go for something that feels somewhere between Windows 95 and XP, and I specifically wanted to do that because I feel like a lot of the retro desktop games go more for 95, but I’m too young to have really used Windows 95, so most of my memories are like XP. For me, it was like even though we set the game in the 90s, I wanted it to have an XP flavor because that was what I knew as a kid.
Franny: I can see it in the soft edges and the shading, the kind of metallic sheen on everything.
Adam: Exactly, it’s much more bubbly, I suppose. I’m really happy with how it turned out, it’s actually funny because when we started working on the game, well usually when we make games we don’t do that much planning beforehand, we kind of just take it more organically, and in my mind it was like: okay, the desktop is going to be like a little bit of work and then most of it is gonna be the game. But, the desktop ended up taking most of the work because apparently it’s really hard to make a desktop interface.
It’s just a lot of really tiny things that you don’t think about, and we also really wanted it to be fully featured, like you can drag files around and make files. We really wanted it to feel like an actual desktop and have that feeling of- I don’t know, Windows XP used to be really so cozy, like your little desktop where you can make your little files. Maybe that’s just nostalgia, but that’s definitely something that I wanted to do and by making things a bit more squishy, we wanted it to be a little cute even though it’s still a horror game. But then, at a certain point we did have to cut some corners, we made it so that you can’t move folders around, because it would have made it too difficult.
Especially because the desktop is not just there as a window dressing, like a fancy menu for the games, but it’s very much a live feature. A lot of people don’t know this, so I don’t even know why we added this because it’s kind of unnecessary, but the older games that you download in the game, all of their folders are live, so if you move the graphic assets or music around different folders of different games, the games update and have those assets, it all works. It’s a very unnecessary feature, but we do use some of it for especially the ARG stuff without spoiling so much. The point was very much: we’ll make a desktop that is actually real and then we’ll try and actually do things with it, and I’m pretty sure we kind of ended up doing that. Pretty happy.
Franny: I would say also what stood out to me was the visuals are so striking – the low poly but with the vibrant colors and dramatic shadows. It reminds me a lot of Buckshot Roulette and other games like that, at least visually. Was there any kind of specific inspiration or aesthetic discipline that you tapped into for No Players Online?
Adam: The biggest inspiration for No Players Online was the original one. (laughs)
Franny: Oh, absolutely.
Adam: If you play the original one, we created a new map, it’s very similar but not quite. It was actually fun to kind of remake my own game because I didn’t research my own game, like when I started working on it, it was already many years since I made No Players Online from 2019. I kind of remade it just from memory, so like I remade the map just from how I remember it, you know? And I made the gun and all the visuals, so it’s like I wanted to basically do an updated nostalgic remake or something of my own game.
But then also, for example like you said with those striking shadows, that was very deliberate because usually when people do this kind of VFX stuff, you get a shader from the internet or something, and then use it outright, but we kind of adapted shaders that were made by Modus Interactive, which is a really good programmer for this kind of PSX stuff. We adapted it to put in a lot of the normal Unity new material stuff. So, you would have real shadows but still have a lot of the PSX elements but just kind of pick and choose the ones that give it the texture without it actually being limiting, so it has a lot of new rendering features of a modern game. Personally, I really like doing lighting in games, that’s one of my maybe specialties.
Franny: I know there have been a few reviews claiming it’s not scary enough, however, I honestly think you – especially with the visuals alongside the other elements – conveyed the sense of horror you were going for very well. Computers, especially in their early days, have always kind of been more of a math made manifest, so you’re expecting a predictable series of events when you use a computer, so there’s usually this unsettling quality to moments where things act up or you get a virus and in No Players Online that dread combined with the later on explicit occultism really makes those unsettling moments more affecting. Especially as you build up the context between the player and John and Sarah, it really does present this horrifying atmosphere that’s not immediately in your face but kind of slowly consuming the world around you.
Adam: Well, thank you! I think, it’s interesting that you say that because one of the first sounds that we ever added to the game was the drone on the guest desktop, as as soon as we added that to what was at that point just a normal desktop, immediately it made it feel so fucking ominous. And that was very much a direction we wanted to go in for the horror of it. A lot of the time there’s really nothing explicitly scary on the screen but it’s just the atmosphere of it is scary even though there’s nothing going on.
So, the original No Players Online in 2019, I made that game very specifically because I wanted to make something scary, that was like the only goal I had with that game. But for the new game, I wanted it to be about something actually. For me, I still wanted it to be scary, but I wanted to use more of a horror setting and have the scary be in what it means and the context of it, but not necessarily something that’s really classically horrifying. It would have been easy to take the original concept and you’re alone in a multiplayer game and we’ll extend that experience for a couple of hours and then there’s a monster or something with some scares.
I think calling it explicitly a horror game is more so the problem in terms of the audience. A lot of people, when they see horror game they really expect it to be a horror horror game, but it’s more like horror as a setting, in the way that The Shining is a horror film as opposed to Saw. For our development, the beginning of it was very directly re-done from the original, so it’s the same setup with the shooter prototype and whole first sequence, but then we wanted to take this very quick story that we made in the original game of this woman who dies and is stuck in the game by the developer. But we wanted to take what is a tropey dead-wife-stuck-in-the-game story and turn it on its head a little bit and give the wife more agency, making it more about her and her getting out of the game, rather than about the developer and John and his loss. I think that was the intention further into the game when it becomes more of like a love story and that story about grief and more about her escaping what is ultimately kind of abuse in a way. The game eventually becomes more of a drama near the end, and personally I like that it goes that way, like it’s not going where you think it’s going, it’s a lot of surprises.
I think a lot of people just want to get what they expect. They’re like “oh I’m alone in the horror multiplayer game, more of that please” and then they’re happy, but you can’t please everyone, I suppose.
Franny: Everyone has their own metric for fear. I went through the CTF portion of No Players Online for the first time and this unknown player joins the game and it’s a shadowy figure in the distance, and I pause the game and go wash my dishes to recenter myself. That stuff scares me.
Adam: (laughs) That’s excellent.
I think a lot about the fact that you do put something of yourself in a game, always.
Franny: And you can do that so well with virtual spaces, especially when you grow up with things like Ben Drowned or these thousands of creepy Minecraft SMP series or whatever, or hacking, or empty lobbies of old games. Also, one of my favorite things, and correct me if I’m wrong, but it feels like at least one of the throughlines of the narrative of No Players Online is about the immutable part of oneself that’s left behind when you create something, especially for something that sticks around in a virtual space, or the ways in which creators let go of those parts of themself or perhaps refuse to, or the inherent souls that creations have. At least one of those notions is stated directly by Sarah toward the end of the game, but what are your thoughts on this beyond what was put in No Players Online?
Adam: It’s good that you got that, I think I wanted to take the setting, with the desktop and the game and the story, to use those as a vehicle to talk about a lot of the things that interest me personally. Like this culture of hobbyist game development and having these forums on the internet where people just make things for fun, the culture around that and the personalities, and that was what the whole forum was about. But hundred percent, I think for me, I used to make so many small games, the reason why No Players Online is about all these small games is the same reason that SPOOKWARE was about so many small games, it’s because the only thing I really like doing is making a lot of small games.
I think a lot about the fact that you do put something of yourself in a game, always. The kind of setting that you choose, the kind of things that you do when you make art in general it’s always a reflection of the person who makes it, and that’s also why Sarah is an artist, and John as well in a way as a game developer.
Personally, I come from more of an environment where a lot of people around me are artists. My dad works for museums and is very much in the art world, but me as someone who makes video games and is a smaller artistic side of him, it’s like a whole different ecosphere, it’s much more like an environment that came from something that was more commercial from the get go. It’s always been like, video games are too commercial to really be respected as an artform from established arts. As someone who comes from more of this environment of more classical art, that was always a thing that I struggled with and still struggle with. That is a big theme in the game for that reason, because Sarah is a very classical artist, and John is a game developer, and even though they’re both artists, their worlds are so different. And it affects their relationship to a certain degree as well, because they really don’t understand each other’s work.
Franny: And they’re expressing that grief and all of those emotions so differently throughout the game.
Adam: Exactly, exactly. And I really wanted the game to be about that stuff, making the game about the fact that you put parts of yourself in it, it’s also why I put so much of myself in there, and why there’s so many of these topics that come up in the game. It’s not just about my personal experiences with making games, but it’s also my experiences with more like the established art world and also my relationships that I’ve had. I put in a lot of elements that come from my life and my perspectives into the game. I think it makes it more interesting for sure, to write what you know and use this kind of setting as a vehicle for talking about that stuff.
Franny: Absolutely, and I feel like memory plays a big part in this, especially now that computers are really accessible and commonplace, I think we definitely tend to offload a lot of the effort of memory and presence onto our computers and social media whether it’s stuff like photos or writing or just like conversation and connection and it kind of puts us in an awkward spot when hardware can degrade and software can become corrupted or deleted, and No Players Online really couples that kind of digital dependency and impermanence with a literal external corruption with like the data and blood sacrifices, and the necromancy, and the sections with the park, and it really drives home both John’s motivation and his expression through this tech that he’s familiar with and then also Sarah’s imprisonment, merging that into this both physical and virtual space that reflects a lot of the spaces that are abandoned today, like dead MMOs and old forums. I feel like there’s something here to be discussed, like the haunted quality of those places or how, as time goes on, many of these virtual spaces also start serving as tombs.
Adam: Even the map, the CTF gulch, it kind of vaguely looks like old tombstones, like all the elements in the map, it’s kind of like a grave. And for the game, it was really important that there was so much symbolism, because we kind of know what the story is and we know the important memories of the walk in the park and stuff, and the point was, like what is haunted? They call a house haunted because it’s full of these bad memories that still remain, and that’s what the quality of something haunted actually is.
So, these games are literally haunted because they’re getting corrupted by these memories, and these memories are getting put in there because the technology that John uses, he has to give a part of his soul for it to work, so every time you combine something, every time you infuse something, even though you’re taking these games and the souls of these games, parts of both John and Sarah get stuck in there as well. That manifests itself with the given tools of whatever game that you infuse. Therefore, it’s kind of constantly this conflict and this main scene of her dying in the park, the fact that that part is repeated over and over in different ways really drives down the weight of that memory, it being the darkest thing that keeps permeating through it. That was very much the intention there, about memory.
It’s always been like, video games are too commercial to really be respected as an artform from established arts. As someone who comes from more of this environment of more classical art, that was always a thing that I struggled with and still struggle with.
What’s really fun while making the game was that – the specific sequence of them walking in the park came from a game that we made in the ARG for the original game and when we made that part, we kind of made it without thinking, well we kind of had an idea of like this is how Sarah died, but then actually it was from a YouTube comment that someone came up with the theory that she must have been blind, or going blind, and that’s why she drowned, and we kind of ran with that.
So, for the new game, a lot of the things that we do, we develop it more organically. Every time we would add elements to it, we made sure that there’s always some symbolism, either to drowning, or art, or to this park, or the dog, and these symbols are constantly repeating. That was really fun to me, because it’s like every time we’d add a new part, we could be like “this is a reference to this, and therefore this other thing becomes foreshadowing.” Like, the audio player is like a record player, there’s a record player in the game as well, but then later on Sarah is the record. It’s these objects that keep coming back, and the more times it comes back, the more important it becomes.
Like, the password for John’s account – sorry if this is a spoiler – is “sentimental” and the reason why we chose that word is because that is the song from the original game, but also because sentimentality is so much of what this game is about. It’s like, John has put sentimental value in every single object and every single small thing that reminds him of Sarah and it’s him not being able to let that go. All of these objects, like this vinyl player, the flag and the map, and all of these things have become sentimental things and that is cursing John, the fact that he put so much sentimentality into all of these things and he can’t let things go, ultimately.
Franny: You can kind of see these elements pop up like the part in the house where you have to line up the frames, to get snippets of a conversation between John and Sarah, or the part in the art gallery where you have to go into dev mode and start deleting everything, like start sacrificing those pieces to make space in the memory. I almost expected a much more hostile final confrontation with John but once you get to him, and you and Sarah and John all come together in the last few levels, he’s more worried about what you’re doing, he’s trying to hang onto these shreds of Sarah. He’s not even angry with the player, it reflects that theme of obsessive grief that turns this familiar technology into a metaphysical space where he just can’t let go, where otherwise it would just be a dream sequence or something.
Adam: Exactly, and there are two points – first of all, it was really important for us that there are no out of context moments in the game, like everything exists on the computer and like you say, even the memory sequence, it’s kind of alluded to that by the end of those memory sequences they’re very realistic, and the reason why they are is because it’s like the soul, it has become directed at that point to be able to shape the game.
It was really important that it doesn’t become this tropey thing but it’s always like everything exists within the physicality of this game, this program that John made that just becomes more and more powerful and more able to shape from their memories. There was even a fan theory that John and Sarah and everything aren’t real, it’s all just like a demon that shapes the whole experience to trick you basically into going into the game. Which I kind of like, actually, a good plot twist. (laughs)
But yeah, I think the other point is: what the original game was about as well is that my personal experience with game development is that everyone is scared about finishing things, like I used to make a lot of small games but I always finished them, and I never really leave my work unfinished. Something that I really dislike about the games industry is this tendency to leave things unfinished or this tendency to be obsessed with a project for many, many years. It’s like John is kind of this archetypal character, he’s someone who is way too ambitious with the things that he wants to make and can never, ever get it done. Ultimately, Sarah being stuck in the game and somehow he’s gonna revive her through that, it’s like an impossible task. But yet, he just keeps at it. He just keeps tinkering on the game, he can’t let it go because at a certain point he becomes more comfortable in this state of things being unfinished then actually getting it done. In a way he would actually be scared of finishing the game, or actually saving her. He finds comfort in the hope that it eventually becomes a routine for him to work on the thing a little bit every now and then. I think when you come and start messing with things and ultimately start destroying a lot of the work, he isn’t really mad at you because in a way he’s kind of enticed, like “oh this is a new thing for me to work on, a new problem.” He’s just finding an excuse to keep at it and constantly doing busy work so he never has to face the fact that he just, you know, has to kind of accept that Sarah is dead and to move on with his life, but he doesn’t want to.
Franny: I also wanted to ask about the little games inside of No Players Online, were there any that were brainstormed but never made the final cut?
Adam: Not really, actually. We were very economical. It’s the way that I work, honestly, when I put things in I put them in with the intent that it’s going to be part of the game. There’s really not much on the cutting floor.
Franny: There are so many projects in my life that are unfinished, I admire that mindset, I could take notes honestly.
Adam: The mindset that I’ve always kind of had is that if the thing is not finished it doesn’t exist. So, it’s like, to me there’s no point if it’s not finished. And it’s like, otherwise you get stuck to this idea of what it could be and it holds you back from actually finishing it and it’s so much easier to cut things that haven’t been made than to cut things that have been made. That’s always been a philosophy that I’ve used with my work.
Franny: That is so true.
Franny: A note about the music, I went back and listened to the full album. It’s a really beautiful blend of like creeping atmospheric ambiance and distorted classical melodies, with some of the pieces for the small games that are really uniquely spot-on. Sometimes diegetic, sometimes not. What did the collaboration between you and Viktor Kraus look like, did you have any specific notes or direction or was it more freeform?
Adam: I’ve been working with Viktor for a long time. The first thing we actually worked on together was the original No Players Online in 2019 and ever since every single game that I’ve made, he’s always on the audio for it. I think he’s really good because he’s really able to do a lot of different types of sounds and music, since he’s actually – you wouldn’t know it – but what he loves doing the most is like metal and hyperpop stuff.
Making this game, I felt like I was torturing him the whole time because I was making him do the opposite of what he likes to do the most in his free time. Like as little sound as possible, like droning, you know, and then there are moments where he can shine and have, for example, the music in the dating simulator, which is very much a cutesy thing. He’s also very good at doing more of a classical or even orchestral thing. I think ultimately it is the fact that he’s so good at doing so much diverse work which really complements well with my skillset and also wanting to do a lot of diverse work. And No Players Online is so many different types of games, and therefore the sound is such a nice blend of so many different things.
But then we use these genres also as symbolism, because all of the classical music and classical pieces in the game alludes to Sarah, because Sarah was very much into classical music. And then parts that are more like jazz are more like John. But then you have all of the themes for the other games but when they get added into the other games, some of the leitmotifs get carried over from those games, get distorted and reused in vague ways.
And I think what was really fun was just being able to be like, I would always give him this direction of like, “for the park sequence, you just take this classical piece that is related to Sarah, but kind of distort it so it becomes something different” and he was always able to do it.
Franny: The memory stone songs in particular were very beautiful. Very evocative of their particular tragedy that you’re slowly uncovering.
Adam: Yeah, exactly, and it also becomes much more like – like you said in the beginning almost all of the sound and music is diegetic, like the application makes the sound, stuff like that. When the morphs and the ending sequence becomes more clear, suddenly the music becomes more like instrumentation, like it’s composed for what’s actually happening on the screen, and that’s also very deliberate.
Franny: And what are you proudest of, with No Players Online?
Adam: I think what I’m most proud of is the fact that we were able to do so many different things and make a really, not short but, tight game. I think it does a lot of really interesting things, and it’s constantly surprising you. Instead of drawing things out, me personally, I want games to be shorter, I want games to be 2-3 hours long like a movie is. I think we had a good budget and good timeline for this game, and we could have made the game so much bigger, if we wanted to, but instead we used that time to refine and make sure that the pacing is very tight, and that it does a lot in a shorter time. Instead of like – constantly the game has like a new mechanic or new idea, and it’s there for five minutes and then it’s gone. I think, me personally, I really liked just to work on that constantly doing new things and I think it makes for a really surprising kind of result.
And especially what I’m really proud of is that we made the game, that we made it on time, and we did it with the time we set out to do, and we didn’t kill ourselves working on this game. We had a very good work life balance and we basically didn’t crunch at all to get the game out the door. I’m very proud of that, that it just got done.
Franny: It is a very tight, cohesive game. There are a lot of elements that might seem chaotic but it all comes together in this really nicely evolving emotional story. Also, I think I saw a big shared Google doc full of people discussing ARG stuff following the release of the game, is there more to come?
Adam: There is definitely more to come, for sure. I won’t say too much, but the original game had an ARG and so we wanted the new game to have an ARG that’s much larger than the original one. Essentially we’re kind of doing it in phases, so the first phase of it has been solved at this point, like people have gotten to the end, and it gives a hint of like there’s more to come. So, it’ll go out in parts.
Franny: Any final thoughts?
Adam: Not necessarily. I think it was interesting that you said that you found the game very scary.
Franny: (laughs) I am a little bit of a coward.
Adam: It’s really fine, I think it’s good because this is definitely the most popular thing I’ve released in a while. Also, because it is such a big game so there are a lot of things happening, it was really interesting to see just how different this experience is for so many people. When you have such a big audience you can really see the diversity of experiences that people have for just the one game. For some people, we see them play the game and they’re just not phased by anything, and they just speedrun through it and then the game is done and it’s like whatever, like they didn’t feel a thing. And then some people would cry at parts, would enter the multiplayer game and then be scared out of their minds. There was one streamer with a heartbeat monitor and their heartrate would go way up and they’d be hugging the walls scared.
Franny: There’s just something so dreadful about an empty lobby and a mysterious figure and the openness of it. It almost feels like, not in a bad way, but like suffocating. Where you really get to sit in it and let it build, and I think that was the scariest part for me.
Adam: Thank you, I’m really happy that the game does so many little things and it talks about so many different things and has all of these different moments, and because of that I think there’s different parts that resonate differently for people. I think that’s what makes it a good thing. If it were just doing one thing, it might have been really popular for a typical horror game player, but it wouldn’t have been any fun for anyone else. I think the thing that we made now, even though it might have disappointed people who really wanted a big gory scary thing, by doing that, I think we reached a different audience of people that are more interested in maybe a little more depth or something. Or maybe some other kinds of work, although I will say that I’m sometimes worried that this game might not have reached those people because it’s still labeled a horror game. A lot of people might not play something just because it says it’s a horror game even though it might be for them. If I look at most of the horror games coming out, I’m still shocked that most of them are just like: I’m in space and there’s an alien. So, it feels weird to be sharing that label with them.
Franny: It’s definitely more atmospheric horror. I don’t remember the exact wording of this post, and certainly No Players Online has reached a larger audience than this, but someone made a post somewhere that was like “you should be making art that reaches twelve specific freaks maximum and then don’t worry about everybody else.” (laughs)
Adam: (laughs) Yeah, yeah. I’m proud that the game is doing what it wants to do and that I didn’t hold back and try to do something more commercial or more broadly appealing. I think it’s very much a game that’s kind of hard to define what it is, it’s kind of hard to market it very well. I’m drawing people in mostly with the hook of like “you’re alone in this multiplayer game and it’s scary” and then that’s enough of a hook for enough people to buy it. Then, of those people who buy it, there will be some who are disappointed to find that it’s more than that, and then there are other people who will be delighted to find that it’s more than that. It’s those people that I’m happy to reach.
Franny: No matter what, you’re gonna disappoint someone somewhere, but surprising people feels so much better anyway.
Adam: Hundred percent.
