Question regarding House of Tales

First of all, thank you so much for taking the time to join us here - it really shows that you care about the game and about the people who want to play it!
How many people were responsible for developing the game, and could you comment if there were things you wished to do with the story that were technically impractical?

How many people: Well, two individuals (Tobias Schachte & me), and five contractor companies: Mimetic Lights, Dynamedion, The Lightworks, Virgin Lands and metricminds. (Cheers from Hot WHQ, guys!)

MOS is (among other things) the biggest planning and management job Tobias and I have ever done.

About the story and its technical limitations:

Well, there's nothing specific we left out due to tech constraints, because the game was designed to fit with our technology. I immediately skipped all stuff that seemed unrealistic to do.

Crowd scenes, e.g., are a problem, because it means a huge load of work in many aspects. I had planned for a lot more going on on New York's streets, which would have helped to visually establish an urban feel.

Also, we're not always as close to the characters as we wanted to be. Camera work could have been much more, and there's a lot of other stuff that we're working on right now.

Does this impact on your homelife?? I would imagine that it is very intense hard work making a project on this scale come together Do you actually get any free time, or always go round with a pen and paper in your pocket 'just in case' ???

Well, by all accounts you did a bang up job getting past any technical limitations this time! Do you think you'll be able to more easily overcome the difficulties you mentioned in the sequel?

Is technology still improving as fast as it has in past years, in your opinion? I've found myself wondering about that of late.

Creating MOS was, homelife-wise, the most terrible thing I've ever done in my life. I'm so happy that due to the lack of sleep I have close to no more memory of what happened during the last six weeks of production. I think we completed the game. But I'm not sure.

I was actually surprised when I played the Beta, because there were parts that nobody remembered to have implemented

Yes. But there will be new problems, and it scares me that I don't know what they are!

If Moore's Law is correct (and I think it is), then yes, there will be more progress, and technology will improve just as fast as it has in recent years.

But technology won't tell us stories, and it won't design us interesting gameplay - at least not yet...

But those parts had such a wild abandon and riveting flow - I felt surely it must have been just a brilliant move to take the gamer on a dramatic change of pace!!

Hmm you aren't claiming memory loss JUST to get out of those 3 rounds of beer you promised to buy everyone are you?!

and agreed - it takes a "story-teller" to make a great game. So keep on dreaming them up.

Uhm... what three rounds of beer...?

But seriously, there are parts of the implementation that we don't remember. All days were alike, with no sleep and absolutely nothing memorable happening. We hardly even talked - we just sat in front of our monitors in some kind of crunch-time stupor.

All I can say is: Don't try this at home.