Interview with developer of Lobotomy corporation
1.Hello, i’m the Blinkraven, from russian translation team (Tales&Stories Team) , you can call me Blink or Roman. What is your name and what your role one Project moon company?
Hello, I am Kim Ji-hoon, who is the director of ProjectMoon.
2.Can you tell a bit about the company? How did you all gathered and found the company? What is your main goal in foundation Project moon game studio?
At first, I gathered friends from university game production clubs and formed a team. I started with four people, but I felt the shortage of art and programming through the project (LobotomyCorp). So I took part in university events, festivals, and various other places to gather other members. Lobotomy Corporation was finally developed with 10 people.
I always want to make a work with the theme of “human hymn(人間 讚歌)”. As the light shines most strongly in the darkness, I think that human beings shine in despair. The goal of the ProjectMoon is to make the content of the subculture series continuously. I want to try various contents such as comics, novels, animations as well as games one day.
3.What inspired you to create Lobotomy corp. ? Did you already have experience in making games on Unity or is it your debut?
Lobotomy Corporation was inspired by SCP Foundation, Cabin in the woods, Warehouse13, and many other institutions that deal with monsters and supernatural tools. Originally, When I saw the works mentioned above, I wanted to play a game of monster management, however, there isn’t the game like that so I made it.
There have been many attempts to make games, but Lobotomy Corporation is the first finished game.
4.What do you think is the main key feature of the game? What should the game reveal with it stoyline and gameplay?
I think managing monsters and suppressing them are the most important features of game play. In the story, we paid attention to the wounds that each character had and the process of accepting them.
5.As we know, as basis for the plot of storyline contents were taken many elements of relegions and mythologies and others. Why Kaballah in the first place?
As mentioned earlier, it was clearest to convey the theme of human hymn through Kabbalah. I wanted to show through Kabbalah that a human being follows the path to becoming fully self. Likewise, we wanted to show the limits of seeing the world only through the perspective of Kabbalah.
6.Contrary to the established stereotype that almost all Korean games are focused on the grind component, there is also a thoughtful game world in your game, details of which are revealed when communicating with the sephiras, who are responsible for departaments. The question is: how often did the storyline changes during development? How much cardinally? I still remember those days of Beta-version, when Angela was an old AI-computer that uses perforated tape.
From the very beginning to the beta version, and until now, the topic of the story has not changed. However, ‘Sephira’ characters were added in the process of storytelling. When I wanted to communicate the story, I felt the limitations of the dialogue between the player and Angela. So I decided to make many changes in the summer of 2017.
7.Where did the ideas for the abnormalities come from? Did many of them personify human sins, is it really so?
It is hard to say that Abnormalities come from a variety of materials and are specific to one thing. Memes, original sin, urban legend, fairy tales, legends, and social phenomena. However, they have a common interpretation to match the story of the game.
8.The game has a hidden mechanics, forcing the player to “accidentally” re-play the game again and again, to uncover all the story plot twists, to study all the abnormalities. How much in your opinion the game is replayable?
If the players have seen all of the stories and unlocked Abnormalities’ information, I think they really enjoyed all the content of the game. And I was intending to make the player try multiple retries in this process. Because the company turned into a mess through the Abnormalities and watching the situation was also intended to be a fun factor, I wanted to make the watching the situation in the retry of the game was also worth.
9.Approximately in July 2017, you decidet to radically change both the UI and gameplay in general. What was the reason for this? What did not suit in so-called [Legacy]-version of the game? Although the storyline also moved from “dead end”, sephiras (visually they weve very interesting), the entire visual part of the game changed at all. And then closer to november, you changed again the visual part, making the game to look like as it is now. Was it hard to make that decisions?
The biggest reason for the change was ‘it was not fun and it did not fit the intention’. This was a difficult decision for us, but the decision we had to do at the same time. I thought the pre-change game was just mimicking the western art style and indie game style. I thought I have to change the game style to what I can best create and the style that I like, in order to make a game that is sustainable in the future. So I decided to change everything. The process of changing was very painful, but after the change everything became clear how to build and develop the story.
10.Oh, and earlier in [Legacy]-version of the game, for normally walkthrough it was required to monitor a lot of parameters and key features, but during development, some functions were removed, some - simplified. Was this done because of fan complaints, or did you find these systems reduntant and uncomfortable for the game?
The values, genders and final observations of the Abnormality that were in the “legacy version” have been removed. Employee values and gender were changed to construct gameplay more clearly. The final observation of the Abnormality is something that has been removed due to the difficulties of realistic development. It was difficult to develop the final observation while adding various stories and scripts of Sephira through the changes, due to time and financial problems. I am sorry for this part too.
11.As I remember, earlier you had financial problems during game development. How did you manage to raise money for development? Did you have to lose something, or try to economize on something for the sake of further development?
We have not overcome financial problems using special methods. Thanks to the translation teams in Russia, China and Japan, we were able to make more sales in different countries, and as a result, we only got enough money to keep the team for a while. And now, after the development of LobotomyCorproation, only 4 team members are staying and developing. Other team members are seeking another job or going back to school. Although the size and speed of development can be reduced, I think we can keep the team longer.
12.Have you thought at the stage of development - of choosing a platform to make the game cross-platform of just PC-exclusive? For now it’s very popular to make games on mobile devices, and your game with small edits of the interface could go well on mobile devices.
I focused on PC from the beginning. And Lobotomy Corporation is not going to switch to other platforms. Because the UX of the game is focused solely on PC, I thought that there would be a lot of changes if we were going to change to another platform. But the following work will consider expanding to other platforms, including PCs.
13.From the point of view of the Korean game developer, is there a great competition among your collegues in the game development industry of indie gaming? How populat are indie-games in Korea, that oriented on single player play?
There are also many indie game developers in Korea. Most of them are mobile-based indie games. So I did not see any other team in terms of competition. Compared to the indie game sector, Korea has a small sector of single-player games.
14.How, from the professional point of view, do you think that the opinion that in Korea games play only in online games is not exaggerated?
Korea is focused on mobile games and online games. But I do not think this is unconditionally bad. Because there are a lot of players in the world such as a person who loves a single game, a person who likes online games, and a person who likes mobile games. So I think it has its own meaning.
15.Has the game paid off since getting into Early access on Steam, and until now? What was your mood when you learned that the game was so popular in the world (well, and in particular in Russia)?
As a creator, there will be no greater joy. It is hard to find the driving force that makes our work world fun in many countries and expects what will happen. I want to create interesting stories and games that only we can show in the future!
Let’s talk about future plans:
1.Since the release of version 1.0 (and the came out from Early Access), many players have already been able to find all the storyline endings that are hidden in the game. What do you expect the expected percentages of finding endings to be?
I think 80% of the players who have cleared up to Day50 have seen a hidden ending. If the player went to Day 50, wouldn’t they want to fill in 100% of the encyclopedia?
2.In the so-called “true ending” or 100% of the Seed of light, Angela takes the complex under her control and came out from the facility to the surface for herself. Do you already have storyline sheets for the sequel and will somehow “bad” endings influence or somehow be mentioned in the sequel?
Yes. The ending of Lobotomy Corporation has had a big impact on the world, and the results will be shown in the sequel.
3.By your calculations, how much time will it take to develop a sequel, so that at least the first pl15.Has the game paid off since getting into Early access on Steam, and until now? What was your mood when you learned that the game was so popular in the world (well, and in particular in Russia)?
The development period is one year and six months until early release. We plan to spend about six months in the Eary Access period. But it always didn’t go as planned. ;) I do not know if we will release the demo version, but I think I could show the gameplay within a year.
4.As for now are popular tactical turn-based games in various variations, whether it will affect the sequel or its gameplay will be like the first part - in real time with an active pause?
I’m not going to make a turn-based game as much as possible. I want to create a game that is played in as real-time as possible.
5.As I know, you monitor the appearance of content on your game on the Internet. Do you know about different memes, video parodies, etc.? What do you think about it?
Yes. We monitor videos, pictures, streaming, etc. uploaded by various fans. We are gaining great strength through the watching of enjoying the gameplay and delicate creation. In addition, problems with bugs and balances are also monitored through monitoring the world community.
6.Well, finally, your opinion about indie-game industry as a whole? What is the future of indie-games in game-development?
I think indie games are something that is unique and interesting. There are so many indie games coming out every day. What I think will become more important in the future is the unique universe of the work itself. Each game, even if it is individually, can survive in a number of indie games if it happens in a gigantic connected world. But most importantly, it has to be an attractive world, and the game must be fun.
