David Mervik
speaker
115 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Apr 2025
last heard Apr 2025
David Mervik’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Yeah, it was a really useful way of looking at the game all over, really, with the way the puzzles were designed. We always come back to this when we talk about the core of how we design puzzles for those games. It's the door, the simplest thing that you do in that game is quite early on where you can't get through a door, you can't get to a handle. So that becomes a little challenge in itself.
And I see that with my kids now. They can't do the most basic stuff. So they have to build this assault course to get up to do the most work. I'm just like, I take no joy in getting my toothbrush down from the cupboard. Whereas they've been like Indiana Jones trying to get theirs down from the shelf. So it's a whole different way of looking at the world when you think about it in that way.
And I think that's something that made it... Not easy, I wouldn't at all say it was easy to design levels for those games, but it always gave you something to fall back on. How do we approach this? What's the core of it? Is things out of your reach at all times? What's a ladder? It's not a ladder, it's a bookcase. It's those kind of things that made it very playful.
I wasn't actually narrative director on those games. I only became narrative director for Re-Animal. But I did, I was one of the creators of the IP in the beginning. It just came about as part of like, you know, something we were talking about and, and, you know, I was the only story guy still on. Um, yes.
I mean, we didn't really. I mean, it was just a thing that... It felt in the water anyway. We were kind of... As much as you love making something, we were always... Driven by creating new stuff. Creating new worlds. Figuring new things out. It's one of those. A bit like it was back in the day. With LittleBigPlanet. Do we step away from LittleBigPlanet. Which is just lovely. We know what it is.
We know how to make those games. Or do we do what we love doing. Which is creating new stuff. We made that decision to do new stuff. We were thinking similarly again.
um nothing nothing solid at all we had a great relationship with Bandai and you know and all this and so it was a great a great setup just like it was with Sony but then we were acquired by uh Embracer and then that decision was kind of out of our hands it was just like you know um Bandai owned the IP um and Embracer didn't so
it wasn't really a thing that we could do anymore simple as that so and again it was kind of like it took the pressure off that decision because you would have agonized over it for a lot longer like oh we really want to do something new but oh And all this, and so it's like, right, no, we have to do something new. And they wanted that for us. It sounds freeing in a way, yeah.
That's what I was going to say. In a way, yeah. We probably would have procrastinated for a lot longer.
Um, don't really see it as competing i would say is my main feeling because there's not enough representation well let's say it's competing okay you you can say it's competing if that makes you happy it does yeah it does no but i mean it's not it's not out there enough you know i i and i am a massive 3d platformer fiend and
i want as many of them out there as possible and and and for those people that were back in the day like when res evil came out and then you got silent hill comes out you're like you know it's all you're getting what you need and that's for me it's like i think it's great that there's a little nightmares coming and that there's a real animal coming and i hope
that just leads to more of those kind of games coming out as long as we're always the best one i don't mind nobody ever minds having a whole bunch of great games to play that's that's no exactly i just think you know there's there's so much content out there it's like with the movies and tv shows on stream and you're like how do you sift through
Oh, I love it. No, I mean, one of the things that we do is we try to, well, we don't try, we do. We always focus on quality over quantity. I almost said it wrong then. That's just a product of sleep.
deprivation um there's like it's quality over quantity all the time god that would have been an absolute yeah Tasha is quantity over quality that's official that's me on the unemployment no it's like making these kind of really shorter more focused experiences because you don't want
things to feel like filler you don't want people to start losing just going yeah all right then and and they're like some of my favorite experiences as well like that oh i played this for a few days i loved it for those few days and it did what it did and it's done but when i look at a game it's sort of like ah between 80 and 100 hours i'm like oh really
And one new TV show, the first season is 24 episodes. I don't know if you've got that good a story that you've got 24 episodes worth.
Right. It's like, you know what? I love a 90-minute movie. That's like putting my slippers on. When I watch a 90-minute movie, I'm like, go on!
Yeah. In this case, yes. It's not like we just keep going that way. You know, it's always, you're always at the will of the game. And that sounds quite hippie, but you know, like it was once we'd, A little bit. Yeah, sorry. I don't feel good having said that.
Once you've settled on a world that you're interested in and a theme that you're interested in and the kind of story you want to tell, then you start getting a feeling for what feels right and what feels wrong. The stuff that started to feel right was that this is a bit grittier. It should be a little bit more hard-edged.
And I just, I probably said the word violence more than anyone healthy ever should, you know, but that's been from the very beginning, even when I'm like kind of looking at, yeah, even the way things were illustrated, like, I think if there's a bit, felt a bit more violent, you know, I think it would feel a bit more fitting.
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