Interview done on July 24th 2024
Pixel artist Octavi navarro and Susanna Granell, from Barcelona, co-founders of the studio Octavi Navarro Arts & Games and authors of the renowned Midnight Scenes series (see article here), have been kind enough to agree to answer a few of my questions. Enjoy!
Pour la version française, CLIQUER ICI !
Hello Octavi and Susanna, thank you so much for accepting this interview! Your studio, Octavi Navarro Art & Games, is composed of only two people. Could you tell me a bit more about yourselves? How did you guys meet? Where did you study after high school? Why did you choose to found your own structure?
Octavi: I studied graphic design, but I never really liked it.
Susanna: Humanistic Studies here. As you can see, we don’t like to talk much about ourselves!
Octavi: We are quite jealous of our privacy and we like our work to do the talking. In 2018, I started creating my own short games, and it was about two years later that we talked about writing a game together. That game was Midnight Scenes: The Nanny and it worked very well, so that’s how our two-person studio was born.
Susanna: We have very distinct personalities, so we have different things to contribute to our games. We like to think we make a good team.
Since you decided to make games and create a video-game studio, I’m sure you both were gamers once. Maybe you still are. What games did you use to play when you were kids/teenagers? Which games have influenced you the most? If you still have time to play when you’re not creating, what kind of games do you like playing these days?
Susanna: I’m not a big gamer to be honest. My favorite hobby is reading, especially crime novels. What I really enjoy about video games is the wide range of narrative possibilities you can work with to convey emotions. It’s so perfect as a means of expression because it combines so many different artistic fields.
Octavi: Susanna not being a gamer is a big plus, in fact. She brings a different perspective. In my opinion, developers are too influenced by our own player experience and nostalgia, and we end up using the same patterns over and over. But back to your question, I started playing point-and-click adventure games at a very young age. Needless to say, those made by Lucasfilm/LucasArts were my favorite. We don’t have much time for our hobbies anymore, but I think my tastes have changed lately towards RPGs, specifically JRPGs, like Shin Megami Tensei or the Yakuza series.
Octavi, a few years ago, you were part of the team that created Thimbleweed Park. Do you still plan to work on projects that are not exclusively yours? Are the studio and the games you make your main activity and source of income now or do you have other jobs on the side?
Octavi: Right now we work exclusively on our own video games. Not having external income is a bit scary, honestly, but we’re doing fine so far. We hope it’s sustainable in the long term! In any case, if we are really excited about an external project, we jump right in. Last year, for example, we did a collaboration with one of our favorite independent studios: Killmonday Games(1). Natalia and Isak are amazing and super talented people, and they have this macabre sense of humor very similar to ours. Working with them was a dream come true.
Let’s talk about the future of Midnight Scenes and your next creations in general. From what I’ve gathered, and understandably so, this series is the most appreciated part of your ludography. The pixel art is amazing and so is the writing. Are you working on or thinking about the next episode? How many of them will you be making? A game such as Unwelcome (so scary!) is quite different from the Midnight Scenes series. Will you keep exploring other types of gameplay? Is something already in the pipeline? I had the pleasure to play the first few hours of your RPG project The Chronicler. I know it’s hard for you to find time to work on this side project, but it seems to be a dream that you cherish. Do you have a roadmap in mind?
Susanna: There’s no doubt that over time Midnight Scenes has become our most popular series. Each episode allows us to tell a unique, impactful horror story mixed with social issues we care about, such as mental illness, sexism, all the harassment the LGBTQ community suffers every day, bullying… But yeah, sometimes we feel like experimenting with different genres and that’s really fun.
Octavi: Our upcoming game The Supper: New Blood, which we just announced, will have a very bizarre story with some classic horror and very dark humor. And this time the puzzles will be more relevant than in our previous games. But we’ll keep going back to the Midnight Scenes series, that’s for sure. In my free time I like to work on The Chronicler, my own particular RPG inspired by the Ultima series. I don’t have a roadmap because I don’t want it to become « work » at this stage. It’s going slow but I’m having a lot of fun with it.
Finally, I wanted to ask you a couple of questions about AI and the state of the industry. As an independent creator myself, I find it enraging that more and more people use AI tools to create art. In my opinion, if you write a book using AI and put your name on it, it doesn’t make you a « prompt artist ». You’re simply not the author of this book. Huge structures like Ubisoft now talk about using AI to write dynamic NPC dialogues. Some developers already use it to create visuals. What do you think about that? Do you reject these technologies or do you think they’re a legitimate, acceptable new creation tool?
Octavi: My opinion is that every new technology is welcome if it helps us improve the quality of our work, but the way AI is currently being managed by corporations is neither ethical nor legal, because AI companies are offering this product that can’t work unless they feed it with copyright-protected content. Powering your business with content you don’t own, with no consent from the owner, is plain and simple theft. And of course, we know that video-game companies will keep trying to simulate the work of artists and writers with AI to increase their revenue, but I don’t think it will work the way they think it will. Every game will end up looking and feeling exactly the same, with the same level of mediocrity. Good art is 10 % skill, 90 % insecurity and vulnerability. Technology will never beat humans there, no matter how evolved it is.
What’s your take on video-game production in 2024? There are so many games being published (triple-As, countless indie gems). Do you think this abundance is smothering the industry or is it something we should be happy about?
Octavi: I love how democratized video-game creation has become in the last decade or so! We wouldn’t be able to make our games if it wasn’t for engines like Unity or Godot, and storefronts like Steam or itch. Sometimes we forget that fifteen years ago it was practically impossible to self-publish a game.
Susanna: That said, it’s obviously a double-edged sword. 15,000 games were published on Steam alone in 2023, so it’s hard to stand out in the crowd. But the thing that affects indie devs the most, in my opinion, is the competition from other entertainment choices. When you have so many TV shows, movies, and apps of all kinds to enjoy, who has time to play our new, tiny indie game?
As an amateur video-game chronicler (here it is again!), I read many video-game magazines (there has recently been an article about you in Canard PC), listen to many podcasts and watch many videos about gaming. What is the situation in Spain? Can one buy a video-game magazine in Barcelona or has video-game journalism shrunk down to YouTube and Twitch videos?
Octavi: Very few people know that during the 1980s Spain was one of the leading countries in terms of video-game production. Of course, the industry was very different at the time, but we had dozens of specialized magazines, such as Micromanía and Hobby Consolas. I grew up reading them. Nowadays, however, there’s nothing left of that. I keep up to date with the latest gaming news by watching my favorite youtubers.
Thank you so, so much, Octavi and Susanna, for your time and for making such fascinating games! I can’t wait to see what you have in stock for us in the next few months or years!
Florian Baude (Des Clics & des Lettres)
(1) Authors of two excellent horror games: Fran Bow (2015) and Little Misfortune (2019). Octavi has been working with them for a while on a mini-game for an upcoming Fran Bow DLC.
