Interview with Ron "AAlgar" Watt.
Writer, Director and Designer of Brain Hotel.
Personal Web Site: www.aalgar.com

*Writer, filmmaker, and now adventure game designer, tell us, who is Ron "AAlgar" Watt?

Okay, first: I'm not really a filmmaker. Maybe some day I'll make something I'm not embarrassed to show people, but for now, I can't, in good conscience, accept that label solely on the basis of the flaming turd that was my high school "film." This isn't false modesty ‹ just a sad fact of life.

Okay, so that's who I'm not. Who I am is just some guy. I'm almost thirty years old, with a wife and a career. By all accounts, I'm a grown-up, but I just can't avoid comic books, cartoons, action figures, sugary cereal and video games. I don't want children right now, because I'm not entirely convinced that I'm not still a child myself.

Spin that however you like: full of childlike wonder, or pathetic man-child. Both are pretty accurate, honestly.

*What games inspired you in the creation of Brain Hotel?

My first computer game, on our IMB PC Junior, was the first King's Quest, so I've always had a soft spot for those early Sierra games. Looking back, they really weren't all that good though ‹ there was no real logic to the puzzles, the stories were recycled from other places and they just absolutely loved the idea of getting you 95% through the game before you fell off a cliff or realized you should have picked up the bag of flour in the second room of the game.

Still, I had a lot of fun with those games, because they were like nothing I'd ever seen before. I must have spent the better part of a year on King's Quest III, and I'm pretty sure it was during those all-night play sessions that I developed the caffeine habit that keeps me going today.

Games that were also not very kind to me, but that I remember with nothing but love, are the old Infocom text adventures, particularly the Zork series. Between Beyond Zork and Zork Zero, I was muddling my way through this fantastically weird world for almost my entire high school career. True, these games could be just as sadistic ‹ if not more so ‹ than the Sierra adventures, but they had something that those other games were lacking: a really bizarre sense of humor. They definitely punished you for not thinking like the creators, but they also rewarded you if you were in on the joke. To this day, Zork Zero stands in my mind as the perfect comedic epic.

But, naturally, the big influence for me was the classic LucasArts adventures. I played them all, pretty much as they were released: Maniac Mansion, Zak McCracken (which I think is really an under-regarded contribution to the genre), Indy and the Last Crusade, the Monkey Island games, et cetera. Not only was the writing absolute genius, but each of these games was on the cutting edge of what computers could do in terms of graphics and sound. And the Lucas gaming philosophy was the best: they didn't believe anything could be gained by penalizing the player for thinking his own way. They were the first major outfit to make it impossible (or, in some cases, at least really difficult) to die in their games. And that made them so much more fun as a result.

So yeah, if I had to pick one single game as my official inspiration, it'd probably have to be Monkey Island 2. Still my favorite all-time adventure game after all these years. And screw those whiny internet fanboys ‹ I loved the ending.

*What is "Tales of the Odd" exactly?

Tales of the Odd is my attempt to make an online comic book. It started as a daily comic strip, and gradually worked its way up to Epic Graphic Novel. I finally decided to compromise and produce the thing as a series of short stories instead. This may change again.

Since I can't draw, all the art is done digitally, either with 3D models, or with Photoshop. That's actually worked out really well for me, as I can now see an idea from its earliest spark through to a completed product. So when I've created something really crappy, there's no one else I can blame!

I've learned a lot through the course of making this comic ‹ about writing in general and about the medium of comics in particular. In the 2 years I've worked on it, I think I now have a much better sense of panel layouts, color and lighting and basic figure expression. I have a long way to go before I'd consider my work good enough for print, but I think I'll make it some day if I continue at this rate. The important thing is, I'm enjoying myself. It does wonders for a guy's psyche when he can turn a bad day at the office into some great comic pages featuring his boss as a frothing corporate tyrant.

*You designed the art and animation to reflect that of your online comic, was it difficult to switch mediums like that?

Not at all. Fortunately, the software I use to make the comic ‹ Creative Labs' Poser ‹ is actually designed for figure animation. So it was actually really easy to take my existing models and apply the animation function to them.

Okay, there were some stumbling blocks, but those mostly had to do with my general cluelessness with 3-dimensional space. All in all, it came together really well, and the fact that Poser can export its animations into Flash format just made our jobs a hell of a lot easier. While I'm not truly proud of a lot of the animation work I did, I can say that it probably shaved a few months off of our production schedule. And for easily bored people like us, that was a really good thing.

* Are you always this wordy?

Yes.

*What have been your favorite and least favorite moments in designing the game?

Favorite moment has to be the first time I played the game with the voices in. As a writer, the experience of hearing my words coming from the mouths of actual talented actors is exhilirating. Seeing each piece of the puzzle fall into place during the process has been great, but that's definitely been the best part.

My least favorite moments probably involve animation. I'm not tremendously skilled with Poser, and it kept wanting to do things like shove objects through people's hands when they tried to pick them up. I must have spent an entire weekend trying to get Ed to lift a bottle to his mouth and drink ‹ Poser kept ignoring my instructions and shoving the thing through his cheek!

Really though, aside from some minor annoyances with my lack of applicable skills and the occasional communication-related roadblock, this thing has been nothing but positive. I was sure Mark and I would be at each other's throats months ago, but that really hasn't happened. If anything, I think it's strengthened our friendship ‹ it's given us new bonding experiences, taught us more about one another's mental processes and just allowed us to be generally goofy together, which we hadn't really done for a long time.

*There is a rumor that to get this job you had to take a jello bath with the producer, is this true?

Let me make this perfectly clear: I keep my business and my pleasure separate. Those Jello baths had nothing to do with my getting this gig. And anyway, I swear a non-disclosure agreement was signed about that.

* If you had to sum up your total experience in working on Brain Hotel in one word, what would that word be?

I can't be clever in one word, so I'll just be honest: fantastic. This is the most fun I've had creating something, maybe ever. It really is a dream come true for me.