the computer am is demented demented because the flaws in the humans who programmed em have shown up in the computer and as a consequence it's madness it's paranoia its hatred of humanity manifests itself in a way that eventually leads it to destroy the entire human race and because it is trapped in the center of the earth because it has this this giant intellect and can do nothing with it it is forever a prisoner in its own madhouse and brings the last five people left on earth saves them saves those five people and brings them down below to the center of the earth to so that so that AM can torment them endlessly throughout eternity makes them almost immortal so that so that their torment never ceases and in that way ham amuses itself I wrote I have no miles and one night and when blue/white did of passion I sat down at a typewriter like like Captain Nemo sitting down at his organic cotton candy minor and the next day lo and behold there was I have no mouth and I'm assuming it's remained virtually unchanged from that first draft all the years that it has existed it's now one of the ten most reprinted stories in the English language is taught in hundreds of universities when David Sears began working on it and I said to him I want a game that you cannot possibly win he said well that might that might frustrate the player a little I said a noble endeavor as far as I'm concerned what better fun is there to frustrate game players but he said no no there probably should be a point to it the game is very different from the story in that we explore the backstory of all five of these characters that's that's one of the major differences I originally said that what I want the game to be is not a shoot-'em-up on arcade kind of thing what I wanted was a game that taught ethics that if if in fact you could not win this game at least you could lose the better the more ethically you played the better choices you made as a human being the better you could the better you could wind up as it turns out there is a different ending now the game has evolved I wrote the initial dialogue I wrote the initial scenes I conceived of many of the smaller things we're days you know bothers me games games are what you use to wile away your time games are what their virtue from the important things in life I put things in everything I do that are intended to rattle the cage stir the soup people say well you only write the shock yeah okay I mean that is a noble endeavor to shock I mean they're already enough people in the world we'll put you to sleep with their assurances no no don't worry about it don't worry about the innit don't worry about fascism don't worry about the Ku Klux Klan don't don't don't don't worry about the far-right none of these things really matter everything is fine home that is not the way the world runs I use the trope of the Holocaust frequently in my work and when someone says well it's going to trivialize because it's in a game nothing nothing can trivialize the Holocaust I don't care whether you mentioned in a comic book on bubblegum wrappers in computer games or write it in graffiti on the wall never forget never forget and putting it in this in this game is intended to annoy people to shock people to upset people and I'm a visitor in this in this medium I don't for a moment pretend to be a gaming person the extent of my gaming experience is that coming back from England I played Jurassic Park for three wasted hours on a plane on a TV set about this big and at the end of three hours I said how can people spend years doing this it is an utter and absolute stupid waste of time because somebody asked me to do it you know basically it seemed like a good idea to dive you know that yo mama you know put it away III don't think about these things more than that at one game is all I'm ever going to do I mean I'm making this announcement right now and I know the people at cyber Jews are going to love these because they wanted to do a sequel to this there will be no sequel as far as I'm concerned there may be something in the contract that I don't know about that they can go for but as far as I know this is the game I mean you'll hear my voice was not effective here my voice is the voice of an the demented computer but but in all of the dialogue you will hear my smart mouth of the way I speak in the way my stories read I think that any product I don't care whether it's peanut butter or computer games can benefit from better storytelling I mean we are a storytelling species that's what we do there was a game I looked at called Wolfenstein I probably shouldn't be bad-mouthing another game but I looked at this and I found it certifiably demented I mean here is this thing where you know people get large holes blown in them as they run around for catacombs McNutt sees and I thought well I probably this was not this was not the end the end result of us getting the opposable thumb I think people should use the level of technology that best suits the job form follows function if a shovel is going to dig the hole best then you don't need a backhoe if a typewriter can do the job or a quill pen for a computer use whatever does the job for I use these two fingers I taught myself to type and I type 120 words a minute with two figures I seldom make mistakes I put what pounds of energy when I hit the computer the damn thing doesn't spring back and so I make nothing but typos I like to look at a manuscript I like to look at the shape of an eight and a half by 11 page it has meaning for me it has vibrancy it has light and there's my energy is in every one of those keys every image that is struck on that page came from me hitting it like that it is my foot-pounds of energy my contact with my reader is closer in that way how do I know I'm not you know I told you I'm not a computer guy designed the story I did the dialogue I embed all the stuff it's going to get cyber dreams in trouble but I have no idea the game is intended to keep you at a tilt from the start to the finish this is the sort of game that Franz Kafka would have would have either written or enjoyed playing I think it is it is not a game to put you to sleep it's not it's not Donkey Kong and it definitely it definitely is not Mario's art should always be harder you should pull it out with some pain it should cost you something to produce art otherwise they are its mediocrity there's an eerie look to this game eerie well maybe it's is because I'm unfamiliar with the way games are supposed to look because I haven't played that many when I look at the actual games of the character on whatever track moving through I think that's really bizarre it's strange because the movement is not you know it's very much like if it's a simulacrum of light it's not like light like say a Disney cartoon there's a there's a there's a jerkiness to it because it's because it's computer-generated but that in some way enhances the strangeness of this story if you look if you like playing computer games if you're into that kind of thing this one will unravel your pantyhose I mean it is a real nice game to play parents group exists to be alarmed if they are not alarmed this week about a computer game they will be alarmed this week about Dungeons & Dragons if it's not that it will be comic books it's not that it'll be television if it's not that it's going to be drunk they're always concerned about something else rather the fact that they don't know how to raise their children because they were bad children themselves and became bad adults this is a game that says the human condition is composed of unequal parts of courage and friendship and ethics and self-sacrifice and brutality and Vesey allottee and degeneracy and mendacity that is what I think is the nobility of this game understanding in however small measure that we are not alone then we are all inside the same skin I think the printed were he is the perfect medium I think a book is the perfect test set you can you can start wherever you want you can stop it wherever you want you can run it backward any way you want it has absolute perfect pitch and tone in color and and and and the characters look exactly as you wish them to look and they sound exactly as you wish to hear them we have produced several generations now I think of people who are sloppy they would much rather sit on their asses and watch television or sit on their asses and play computer games then expend the effort to get themselves involved with the real interactive medium which is a book there's nothing more interactive than a book I think that it is society's need to keep producing drones big business multinationals they need to have consumers and that is what we are raised to be from the moment we leave the womb we are raised to be consumers of products whether it's 27 Spider Man comics a month when the world only really needs one or it's a new car every year or it's a you know raspberry flavored tampons whatever it is we are trained to buy Ellen is a she's next I guess she's a technician now or bar she worked in on you know in an engineering firm she's a black woman who has some strange and troubling things in her past because in the game she she is often immobilized by her own hysteria she doesn't know where it comes from and her self-discovery of where it comes from is very important to proceeding in her track benny has been altered by am physically so that benny is now almost a half-man half-beast he is completely a product of of emotion now and passions he's sort of an idiot savant and he's he's one of his one of Anne's favorite toys which is not a good thing to be because hand is mad if he mad as a computer God could ever be he's the assistant to the butcher Mengele and he is a he is a man who has allowed to happen or has personally performed some of the most hideous acts that he would be can perform and is their salvation for him within the confines of this game well that's an interesting question too that the game will answer Ted is I don't know Ted is I suppose robert redford turned into a paranoid I don't know how to introduce chorister gorrister is I want to tell you in English you know I love it when people say he's innocent jump really good no no no fool that's in front of the bar of law he's innocent till proven guilty in from the bar bar but in the real world if one looks and says I don't know quacks like a duck waddles like a duck sheds water like a duck you probably a duck I mean only a fool would say Fuhrman planted a glove the reason that they make cheese in Wisconsin is that in the early you know the the early the early in times when settlers landed there they they played out the wheat fields they just they just they just you know they didn't know anything about crop rotation so after while the wheat fields died so they planted them in grasslands and Wendy and Wendy and when the Swiss and the and and the and the Scandinavians came over and they settled there they liked it just fine because they liked any cow so they turned the cows out onto the ground slant and that's why we have cheese in Wisconsin whoever invented the idea of putting a baseball cap on backwards you know I'm out here driving in the valley last year with my wife and it's 120 degrees people are frying eggs on the sidewalk and here's sand two kids at a bus stop with their hats turned backwards dropping dead of eat prostration and I Drive by they'll turn a hat around more but no but they won't machine can think therefore it sinks I think therefore I am and it also stands in the in the original story for Allied master computer you got 2,000 writers writing predicting everything wildly it's a scattergun eventually they're going to connect with a few things yes Hugo Gernsback predicted night baseball yes it Jules Verne predicted the the submarine but Leonardo da Vinci predicted the parachute and the glider thinking about these and coming up with ideas there's nothing to do with science fiction section of a god the way of popping out if you blame God or bad luck or the brakes or you know some secret mass or conspiracies or or aliens you don't ever have to take responsibility for your own life it is a game as I am told by people who have played it and and programmers that it's a game unlike any other game around at the moment and I guess that's a good thing um it would be my delight this game set a trend and all of the arcade bang-bang games that turn kids into pistol-packin Papas and mamas were subsumed into games like this in which ethical considerations and using your brain and unraveling puzzles became the modus operandi it would be my pleasure if that was it I think it will happen I think you like being diverted too much