Interview with Luis Hernandez of Necrophone Games

When I did my raving review for Jazzpunk, I ended up sending off questions to Luis Hernandez. Luis is one half of Necrophone Games or better known as the creators of Jazzpunk.

Luis Hernandez of Necrophone

What were the main inspirations for the title? I caught some Fear and Loathing references with one of the NPCs and the way he talks for one.

LH: There are probably too many to list adequately, the style of Jazzpunk is a synthesis of a lot of my favourite movies, literature, architecture/music/design movements, cartoonists, etc.  Lots of William Gibson,  Ridley Scott, Terry Gilliam. Designers like Josef Albers and Gerd Arntz had an immense influence on the style. There are a myriad of references to 1940s wireless culture, 50s modernism, 70s phreak culture, 80s hacker culture, 90s net culture;  we tried to find a way to cohesively assemble these into a functioning, albeit surreal alternate reality.

What parts of Jazzpunk are you most proud of?

LH: there’s a lot of engineer humor and other kinds of subversive stuff that we were able to kind of sneak in there. I think it goes under the radar for most, but occasionally I get an email from someone that noticed it,  and am delighted about that.  I’m quite proud of the soundtrack as well.

When you sat down and began to design JP what ended up being the initial rough blueprint for the game?

LH: Unlike how a lot of AAA games are developed,  Jazzpunk doesn’t stem from a rigid design document; its something that evolved slowly over a longer span of time. I knew I wanted to make a stylized  experimental game that contained elements of espionage, cyberpunk, and vintage technology. so jazzpunk stems from a synthesis of experimenting with those elements.

I’m not entirely sure whether Polyblank was a male or female. I completely didn’t think about the gender of the character until the dress up part. Even then, I’m not entirely convinced gender matters in the role of Polyblank. Comments?

LH: Polyblank is Polyblank.

One of the interesting things that Jazzpunk brought to the forefront of my mind is similarities between the Information Era and the beginning of the Cold War. There are some parallels that seem to be drawn in JP, was this a byproduct of the satire or an intentional goal of the project?

LH: I’ve always been fascinated with how technology and ‘data processing’ has affected the geo-political structure of our world, dating back to ancient times, even. Reading on cryptography and ciphers, and how integral the development of computers were to military power during  WW2 and beyond; its hard for that to not factor itself in, when you’re designing an alternate history for that era. Analog computers, Theremins and espionage all have a fascinating, odd, and tightly-wound history.

Who are Necrophone Games? You guys have come up with a certainly memorable title in Jazzpunk and one that is the start of my game of the year contender list. What got you into video games, and who do you guys admire most in the industry?

LH: We’re basically two friends that started a Band,  but instead of playing death metal in a garage, we make videogames.  My background is in arts, electronics and the game modding scene. I used to make lots of weird half-life maps and stuff, back in the late 90s, early 2000s. I also spent many years building analog synthesizers, doing experimental photography, sculpture. Of a lot of that work, its DNA survives in the game development stuff that I do these days.

Jess Brouse is the other half of Necrophone Games, he is the programmer on Jazzpunk.  Jess worked in Web and Mobile games for a number of years. Prior to that he was building robots, guitars, other electronics and experimental software stuff,  lots of game prototypes. He’s got a background in New Media, as well.

I’ve been playing videogames since I was a kid, but I think I was often just mimicking enjoyment, I didn’t actually enjoy many games back in the day. I remember game genie-ing my NES games and getting a lot more fun out of them, though. I wanted to explore spaces,  and games didn’t seem to want to let you do that back then. It wasn’t until the 32 bit era that I really fell in love with the medium. I remember first playing games like Resident Evil 1 where you could explore a physical “3d” (pre-rendered) space and interact with everything, that was a really exciting time.

As a developer I recognize that credit is often misplaced in the industry, and the figure head of a studio often receives all of the credit, whether its justified or not. As a result, I tend to refer to “studios” that meant a lot to me, rather than individual figure heads.  Studios like  Smilebit, Luxoflux, Team Silent, Team Ico, the original KCEJ before the company restructured,  AM2 of CRI. Lots and lots of Japanese studios from yester-year who did extraordinary work with the limited technology available to them. I have immense respect for those people. Its a shame to see a lot of them got burnt out and left the industry or don’t have the same clout that they used to.

Everyone has a personal hall of fame with games. What’s in your top 5?

LH: Oh, I thought this would be hard, but this is really easy, because it hasn’t changed in years.  Silent Hill 2, Jet Set Radio, Shenmue II, Metal Gear Solid 1 (for the psx), ICO/SOTC (I realize they’re different games but in my brain they’re kind of duct-taped together).

Any hints on future projects and what you guys would like to do?

LH: I want to get back to experimenting with the medium again. hoping we have a bit more freedom to do that now.  Theres a lot of commercially-available stuff now that didn’t exist when we started Jazzpunk. Oculus Rift, Razor Hydra, leap motion, Kinect, physically based rendering, linear space lighting, 3d scanning, etc etc. lots of exciting gadgets out there.

I’d like to thank Luis Hernandez for giving me a pretty great interview. Jazzpunk is $15 on Steam, go on out and buy it for one of the best unique adventures gaming has to offer.