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dylan ho – Transcript
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- Dylan Ho is developing a game where five characters from different universes try to return home, resulting in people slowly dropping off as they say goodbye.
- The game narrative explores platonic, romantic, and parental relationships, examining how losing them reflects the players' own lives and unmet needs.
- Dylan Ho explains that the game uses mechanics like removing toys or taking away mechanics to narratively drive the experience and allow the story to shine.
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This is like maybe you just see a whole it come back >> then you can just satisfy your aspiration >> and then at this point if you look at that your aspiration because if you change your cup I don't know or something and you're basically like in you're enabling your own like
greed or whatever to flow you're just giving power to I guess like improve motivations and then you can really use it.
>> It's quite interesting. >> It's quite interesting. The brainstorm face is always fun. I'm just going to >> Hi guys. >> Uh 20 minutes.
>> 30 minutes. Okay, just check. Okay.
>> Um, yes. Tell me tell me like >> like what are you working on and like which part of it like excited you? Um, so I'm working on a game where it's a the highlevel synopsis is uh just five characters from different universes get pulled into one place and they're all trying to respectively head back to their own universe. But this means that
as you play the game, people slowly drop off. So it's this whole game about um saying goodbye to people that you care about. >> Um sorry, what was the second part of the question? >> Okay, how how did it how did you come up with this idea? I think I was always decently not say obsessed but like I had a lingering thought of um saying goodbye in different stages of my life. So it comes for most kind of relationships
there's four kinds right um the three that I'm focusing on is uh friends uh uh platonic friends uh romantic relationships and of course like parental kinds of relationships and I've seen those kind of things come and go from graduating from different stages of school in Singapore to uh of course going through my own relationship experiences and of course uh seeing how parents find it difficult to uh distance
themselves from their children and stuff like that. And of course, all these kinds, there's the good kinds, there's the bad kinds, and they all have this commonality of um of being very external. But for most people when I do talk to them, but uh in my own experience with all of them, I've come to realize that they all become more reflective of myself than they are of the relationship itself. And this was Yes.
>> Can I process that that >> Sorry. Okay. Sorry, you got a bit too deep too fast. But uh that is the core concept of what I'm trying to explore. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> Which is that >> um >> like >> how how how relationships and how you interact with >> losing them is ve uh is very telling of the kind of life we want to live.
>> Wow. >> Yes. >> That's that's deep. break it down for me like how life >> um >> not just about the lives we want to live but the kind of struggles that we fail to face ourselves. So for example um let's say let's say a parent has uh has troubles distancing themselves from a child and uh for a disclaimer this is
not a personal retelling of my own parents I love my parents um um but um and let's say this parent really loves their children right but and they want their children to do very well do well in school and all these kinds of things um such that and I think in Singapore it's typical like let's say the child wants to be more creative and they start saying oh but they worry about the pragmatism of it whether you earn money
or what not >> and over time this is a recurring theme especially in Singapore and one thing I've noticed after speaking to quite a number of creatives in my recent few years is uh how there's this very contradicting >> uh opinion of on one end they do love them on their other end are they do they truly love them if they don't accept them for who they are
uh so it becomes this very weird thing so and then after thinking a bit behind and doing this weird interest I have in terms of reading psychology papers um um I am of the opinion that sometimes it's quite a number of underdeveloped adults in terms of uh emotional maturity >> they tend to project their wants onto their own children. Um such that the
this kind of cognitive dissonance of loving their child but not really loving who they are is more reflective of their unmet needs as their as their own selves as a parent. >> So this is just one example of how uh the lack and loss of a relationship can reflect someone else's uh some your own perspective of your own life.
>> Wow. >> Yeah. That's really deep. Was there was there like um he got >> you can if you want. >> I ask you like what inspired you to create this game? Like was there any defining moment that made me like like I want to create I want to tell a story about this. Um the start of it was generally um oh uh me graduating from different parts of school and and and
wanting to retell the ideas of of saying goodbye to people knowing that um you will say goodbye to them eventually and sorry let me try to be more succinct on that.
Uh I think the core idea of it and I actually even had a previous game idea 3 years ago that I tried but failed. um did start many years ago when I started graduating from like secondary school JC Uni. Um I had this whole core idea of um saying goodbye to friends. I wasn't very focused on the types of relationship part yet. But in recent experiences over the past few years uh there were three
spe particular experiences. um two of them were personally done by were I personally experienced from a relationship plus um platonic relationship end. So th those two inspired the exact details of what I'll write in the story. Um whereas for the parental one it's my own I some half experienced it not from my own parents but uh I could see from how other
parents treated their own children and to some degree me and how it was a very strong reflection of the struggles that they have fundamentally as people. even extracting away the label of a parent um it was very telling of them as people. So those were experiences that I felt like if I could have a conversation with these people um and show them this story that they will
be able to go through the kind of pain that comes with uh self-reflection and growth but be able to go through sorry let me rephrase that um in the hopes that I was hoping that if I could write this story of those experiences they wouldn't have had to go through the that pain of the ugliness of all the mess that messy relationships tend to come up with and yet come out with the value
such that in the future they won't have to go through that because the values are already learned >> and this is especially true since the game is supposed to be for breaking. So instead of a TV show or a story book where the where the story happens outside and external from your own life, it's a game where people interact with you and the relationships are even though it's digital, it's not real people. It is a relationship that feels realistically yours. It feels like a
lived experience that you've gone through, but in reality, you don't have the consequences, >> but you still have the pain, the emotional pain. So, you still go through that growth.
>> So, that was the whole idea for it. >> So, I I want to backtrack a little bit. So the concept that you're already designing into the game is >> how um >> or rather like the the the main concept is that how people the relationship with >> okay how how the relationship that other that you have with other people >> and shapes other relationships >> shapes your own relationship with
yourself. >> Oh >> really. Okay. Okay. So, my relationship with you as a friend shapes the relationship with >> me between me and myself. >> Correct. >> Yeah. That's the best way to summarize it. >> That's the most success
you also. >> Correct. >> Right. So it works both ways. >> It works both ways. >> Yes. Yeah. >> Okay. Um so wow. Um take us through like how >> I I realize that you there's very strong emphasis on like >> the psychology aspect and also the storytelling like how you want to tell the story >> like how how did that
>> like where did that part of you come from? the idea of storytelling. >> Storytelling like that like why you so interested in psychology and everything like what got you started in on it? >> Um >> okay you're focusing on the storytelling part.
>> Okay. >> Um >> I think at first it's I wasn't that focused on the story telling part. I was focused on like uh your psychology and how people think. >> And one of the TV shows that I've watched is a TV show called Mr. robot.
>> Mr. Robot. >> Yeah. It's um the summary of it is just um cyber sec cyber hacker in the day uh vigilant hacker in the night. And even though it's a very tech heavy series, it's a whole game about how um how this guy tries to save the world.
And throughout the series, it becomes very interpersonal towards him. And how he both lies to both himself and the viewer. And when the lies start peeling and when you start peeling the lies into re and you show reality inside, you get into the insights both on how the main character is screwing up >> and what the main character actually really needs to do in order to move and grow up. And I felt like I started trying to apply those values to my own
life. And I felt like that was something that I could spin into a story that could feel more lived in >> for other people. >> That's how I started getting interested in storytelling. >> Right. >> Yeah.