Transcript

Aaron Nemoyten (00:00)
So since this podcast is called Make Games Drink Coffee, have to ask if you’re drinking anything right now. I know that it’s late for you, so coffee.

Sahil Bajaj (00:06)
The

mug is coffee, but the insides is chamomile tea because it is 8.45pm. So chamomile tea.

Aaron Nemoyten (00:13)
Yes, so you want

Sahil Bajaj (01:02)
My name is Sahil Bajaj. I am a narrative designer and game writer who is from India, but I’m based in Dubai.

I started my career working with Sweet Baby Inc. on not a video game. I started my work with an escape room where we got to do some like character work, but also puzzle design. It was really cool. It was really unique. It was a project called the Blackwood Charter. The idea of it was they wanted to be a bed and breakfast escape room. This was also happening

during the heyday of COVID. So I don’t know where that went, but was really cool that I got to do that because escape rooms are like, a lot of games are escape rooms, right? Like it’s kind of like the niche of it.

Beyond that, I worked on Validate’s Struggling Singles in Your Area as a narrative editor. It was my first game that made it to a console.

ever since then, all my work has been NDA stuff, at least on the professional side. And the tragedy is, I don’t know when that will come out, if it’ll come out. So I’ve kind of been gone from the game, so to speak, because I was hoping these games would come out. And as you know, in the games industry, once you put out something, you get more work.

But apart from that, I’ve done some video game journalism for Fan Byte, which again came at a weird time. I feel like my whole career is I came to the industry at a weird time because my first job came one year after COVID and my games journalism gig at Fan Byte came after what was an exodus of journalists at Fan Byte.

and up until this year was working on a game called Private Eye the Young Heir. It’s a detective game inspired by The Return of Orbert Dinn. That game was supposed to come out in July but I think it got delayed indefinitely. So hopefully my work will be seen when that comes out, whenever that does.

Aaron Nemoyten (03:12)
So you were born in India, I believe, and I looked at your LinkedIn and it looked like your upper higher education, whatever you want to call it, is all in the United

Sahil Bajaj (03:15)
Yes.

Aaron Nemoyten (03:22)
Now you’re in Dubai, but also you sent a list of a lot of your favorite things and they’re all sort of Western slash American things. So I’m kind of wondering how you feel culturally with these experiences and influences. How much time did you spend in India versus in the United States and how did that shape your sort of perception of entertainment culture and what you’re into and stuff?

Sahil Bajaj (03:50)
That is a very interesting question. think, so, you know, I was born in India. I think I came to the UAE, not Dubai, when I was like a month, month-ish, maybe like 40-something days. And yeah, yeah. And so…

Aaron Nemoyten (04:04)
okay. So you

never really had time to like be in Indian culture like that.

Sahil Bajaj (04:11)
No, but the thing is, this is a fun part about Dubai that a lot of people know, Dubai is half India, okay? The part of Dubai that you see on TikTok or Instagram or whatever, the bougie part of Dubai. Yeah, that’s tourists, white people kind of thing. But the rest of Dubai is mostly immigrants and a big hefty chunk. I’d say around

are people from Southeast Asia, whether it’s Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis. And so I never felt like I was away from Indian culture. it’s weird because Indian culture, it’s this thing of, you know, when you are an immigrant,

in America, right? Like I’ve heard this from Indian immigrants who are in America, like now Americans. And you sort of relinquish your Indian culture to fit in, right? And so it’s like that rite of passage kind of thing that you have to do because you want to feel welcomed and you want to just be a part of the gang. And I kind of had that.

but it wasn’t because I wanted to be a part of the gang. It was more so because I think like culturally, when it comes to pop culture and like mainstream media, India has sort of fallen back or it’s in a place where it’s just like, it’s not interesting to me.

so when it comes to western culture stuff yeah I grew up watching it like I learned English from

watching things like The Simpsons, How I Met Your Mother, the Big Bang Theory and then playing video games and stuff. And so all my English sort of developed because of pop culture and stuff, and because being a writer, English was my favorite class.

lot of my interests are rooted in, you know, whatever is coming out of the West, but a lot of like, you know, technique and like things that I latch onto are me trying to find like the common ground between like Western stuff, but also the Indian culture things that I saw while I was growing up.

Now I feel very distant from it, but I am still like, you know, proudly Indian and like, you know, if I see something good, I’ll recognize it. But a lot of the times nowadays, it’s just Indian media is not for me. And that’s fine. But I wish, you know, there was Indian media for me.

No disrespect to East versus West, because that’s a whole other topic. But the West has some good stuff coming out of there. And as they say, as a creative, your influences come from everywhere.

Aaron Nemoyten (06:54)
So I had two questions in my notes and I’m going to combine them into one because one of them was about a bunch of your favorite media and I have listed here Atlanta, which I haven’t seen, but I know something about the lighthouse, which I have seen. Love it. They cloned Tyrone. I have seen more people need to see that. It’s fantastic. Adventure time. So all of these have this streak of being

Sahil Bajaj (06:59)
Yes.

Yes.

Aaron Nemoyten (07:21)
weird and surreal and subverting genre, but also making their characters very important and having it be very character driven.

Now you also mentioned in your bio that you wanted to experiment with the form of video games. So I’m wondering if there’s some common thing there where you want to bring the same kind of experimentation of your favorite media outside of video games to what you’re going to do in video games. And I’m wondering if you’ve really, if you feel like you’ve gotten a chance to do that yet, or if that’s something that you’re going to have to do on your own or you’re just looking for the right project.

Sahil Bajaj (07:57)
So, yeah, when it comes to experimenting with video games, think like for me, is trying to, you as any creative, you just want to do what like is in your head. You want to like make that reality. And so when it comes to experimenting with games and storytelling specifically, I do want to try things and a big part of, you know, what makes all those things shine.

is comedy the Lighthouse is funny. They Cloned Tyrone is funny Atlanta’s funny Adventure Time is funny And I really really think that when it comes to like, you know Experimentation as a genre some of the ripest things to come out in recent times have been comedy games Like what the golf right the whole game? Is you know jokes golf jokes turned into levels?

Aaron Nemoyten (08:49)
Yeah.

Sahil Bajaj (08:55)
and references and it’s hilarious, it’s

But what the golf and then thank goodness you’re here or goose game, you are an active participant in comedy. And that is riveting to me from the perspective of a player, you know, who you control, you are participating in it, right? In thank goodness you’re here, your mechanic is you jump and you slap.

It’s this kind of humor that if you appreciate, you just really like it, right? Like you can slap like the vendor of like a food cart or like a food restaurant. And after doing that a few times, he closes the restaurant saying, closed because slap on bomba. It’s hilarious. You’re actively participating in causing chaos in this world and that’s leading to funnies. That’s why Goose Game is funny.

That’s why, thank goodness you’re here is funny. That’s why what the golf is funny. And this is a very niche example. That’s why prop hunt is funny.

that idea is very fascinating to me and I think I want to experiment with that more I think comedy games are really neat way to do that and as for being able to do that at all I For my for my current twine,

for those who don’t know I am making a twine about Dubai and the absurdity of it by tying several important themes like immigrants, the Dubai life, shawarma, and of course dragons into this ridiculous comedy twine called the last dragon in Dubai.

Aaron Nemoyten (10:28)
you

Sahil Bajaj (10:34)
and I was trying to find a way to make it, you know, obviously funny from a reading perspective, but also funny from a playing perspective. And I don’t know if I’ve nailed it yet, but one thing that I have done, which is a result of, you know, me sort of looking at comedy from a theory perspective,

you know the idea of yes and jokes? I don’t know if it’s an imp, yeah, like yes and jokes, right? Like improv where someone starts a bit and the other person just continues it and goes back and forth, escalating the joke, which is, know, a joke gets funnier as it escalates, right? You start with the small thing and then it goes bigger and bigger and bigger.

And so yes and jokes is a phenomenal way to have a player participate in the telling of the joke because their choices are furthering the joke. As opposed to having a player select a choice and then telling a joke like that, that doesn’t feel as impactful. Whereas you’re making this choice has now led to this direct consequence that is making the joke funnier in this string.

And so, you know, that’s just like one example of how I’m trying to experiment in games is like, how can I make the participation of the audience be more impactful, more from a playing perspective, because that’s like what narrative design is, right? Like you want to make it feel cohesive, but also how can I, you know,

make something either funny or dramatic or whatever through the means of participation as opposed to like a voiceover or a cut scene.

Aaron Nemoyten (12:12)
I really like that. I mean, I think what you’re touching on here is the idea designing game mechanics to accommodate comedy explicitly.

Sahil Bajaj (12:24)
Yes.

Aaron Nemoyten (12:25)
I’m curious now because, you know, we talked about like humor and game mechanics and I’m thinking about an analog to that where it’s finding the humor in the thing that is not explicitly written or spoken word. And I’m wondering if you have thoughts about Tim and Eric comedy.

Sahil Bajaj (12:48)
I think that’s the whole package, right? What makes a game good is that whole cohesive package. For example, I’ll give you a Destiny example because that’s the closest thing coming to me right now is you could have the visuals of Destiny and you could have a visual of the gun, but the sound a scout rifle makes or the different scout rifles makes, they add to…

that feeling of, this is like this sci-fi futuristic gun, or this is a gun that’s like coming from the old world, right? Or like, likewise in the visuals. This could be a generic like blocky gun, which that actually did happen in Destiny, where some guns just got glitched and they were just blocks. And they had the sounds, they had like everything, but they were just blocks. And that took away from the experience, right? And so I think overall, you know, leaning into that kind of humor,

Obviously the writing has to be good, but a lot of it is just like that visceral experience. Like, too many cooks? Too many cooks. Yeah, like, you know, classic, but just like pure writing is not enough. The whole experience which leans into the genre it pulls from is why it slaps, right?

Aaron Nemoyten (13:57)
Yeah

I’ve noticed that narrative designers and writers are some of the most sort of freelance slash mercenary people in game development, maybe apart from audio and music. How do you see that as, is that a good thing because you get to work on lots of different things and have a variety of experiences or would you rather sort of settle down and just be able to work consistently on one game for a long time or at one studio for a long time? How do you feel about that?

Sahil Bajaj (15:48)
Right.

It’s hard because I definitely have posture syndrome for being a narrative designer because the last time I had something that was out was 2022. I worked on things after that, but they had been out. But still, I’m going to allow myself to be like, I am a narrative designer. I have a peer, people see me as that. But I think it’s a mixed bag for me because on one hand,

This is a comparative thing that I learned when I went to GDC this year. AAA isn’t very kind on you doing freelance work and working on multiple projects, even if they have nothing to do with your projects. So that freedom is essential, and that’s a big part of why several people that I know and respect and love do freelance work, right? Because they want to have the freedom.

to work on different things because that’s where they’re at as a creative. That being said, narrative design and writing is first on the chopping block because a lot of people think they can do it. Because like, you know, the director will write it or somebody else will write it. Like my buddy John, my buddy John is going to write the story. John doesn’t know shit. But, but, but.

Aaron Nemoyten (17:30)
You

Sahil Bajaj (17:35)
But no, everyone thinks that they can write and when they can’t, someone else comes in to do damage control often at difficult times. And so I think it’s bad that any developer doesn’t get a chance to shine because obviously freelancing is cool, but when you look at these institutions…

you know, fighting people, that’s institutional knowledge that’s going away. I’ll give you an example, like, you know, Destiny 2, their narrative team, one of the strongest narrative teams, like, in the industry. But like, a lot of people engage with their game because if you aren’t like, already a fan, it’s hard to engage, like, as a player, but you can’t engage as like, you know, someone who is in the vicinity of Destiny, right? And

You know, they were doing something nobody else was. Like, I’m talking, you know, when it came to like writing for Destiny, they had to obviously like, like, you know, write the seasonal story. But the storytelling that is done within like a seasonal activity, right? Within like everything that is pertaining to a season, whether it’s a loot, locations, whatever. There is a lot going on there and they have to account for a lot of things.

And when it comes to, especially something that’s like specialized, like life service games, you kinda like don’t have a lot of people doing that. And so when Bungee, lays off all these people, especially the narrative team, because like, again, in the games industry, know, John can write, my buddy John got this. Narrative is first on the block and it’s like,

That is institutional knowledge that made this game tick that you just don’t have anymore. And I don’t know if we’ll see something like that again, because the people that made it happen are scattered now, right? They’ve gone to other places. And like as a collective, it is very vital that you get to learn from your experiences and work together to do more of it.

Aaron Nemoyten (19:27)
Mm.

Sahil Bajaj (19:52)
And that only comes from being allowed to stay in an institution long term. But in today’s games industry, that is not a reality for game devs in general, right? Like if you look back like five, six years ago, like they’d be doing things like, yeah, we had a developer at the studio for like 10 years. We commemorated this with like a sword. Or in the case of someone at Bungie, they were there for like 20 something years. They gave them a replica of like a heavy weapon. That’s like an exotic, right? It’s like…

Aaron Nemoyten (20:22)
That’s so cool. Yeah.

Sahil Bajaj (20:22)
They chose it.

That doesn’t exist anymore. I’m certain that doesn’t exist anymore because people are staying in studios that long. that’s that’s like novelty. Right. Like that’s just a novelty thing. It’s not the biggest like loss here. The biggest loss is you now have this talent that didn’t get a chance to use their knowledge to go further as a creative. They are now being left scattered trying to do other things.

And while some people are succeeding at freelancing, some people are not.

And another thing is, you know, game writers are so devalued now that, you know, a big thing in AAA is to get like Hollywood screenwriters who, no disrespect,

they do not know how to do game writing. Game writing requires a different cadence. It requires a different understanding that these people are not like wiping with. And while it is possible for them to engage with game writing in a meaningful way, a lot of them are just not equipped to understand what makes a game tick and why or what they could do, like just the potential.

Aaron Nemoyten (21:34)
I’m gonna move on to the last question that I had, which is, according to your LinkedIn, I believe, you are working on Twine games for kids. Can you talk about that?

Sahil Bajaj (21:46)
Yeah.

Yes. So I got my Sweet Baby Ink gig because I made a Twine game for the Pixels writing group in 2021. It was called Barely Chillin’. And I put that game out. I was like, okay, cool. You know, it’s my portfolio piece, right?

And so I put that game out there and then I got my sweet baby gig. And then like, you know, that 2021 to 2023 stretch, right? Like, or end of 2023 stretch, like I was like employed and stuff, like I had work. I was busy. I was not paying attention to like barely chilling. And so near the

End of 2023 when I was like, you doing freelance journalism while trying to find work as like a designer and narrative and like a game writer I Got word from my aunt that hey kids at her school She’s a librarian and so she’s been making kids just like, you know, try the game out and it got to a point where kids were asking to play the game like kids were asking to play barely chillin whenever they go to the library and so

Aaron Nemoyten (22:48)
That’s so cool.

Sahil Bajaj (22:54)
For context, Barely Chillin’ is this game where you are a bear who is trying to chill in the forest, but things keep happening. Thus the pun, he is barely chilling, but he just wants to chill. And kids really resonated with that. They played the hell out of it. This thing has been played over 3,000 times.

Aaron Nemoyten (23:01)
You

Sahil Bajaj (23:13)
I have not made any money from this game, but this thing has been played by kids so much and I even spoke to some of the kids who really enjoy this. In 2024 when I was looking for work, I was asked to speak with some of the kids and they have this readers group that’s organized by the library. And yeah, I spoke to them and they’re like, hey, we really like barely chilling. Can you do more stuff like this?

And so I made a second Twine game for kids about a sand cat, and

I put that out there. And again, the reception has been great. And so what I discovered from this

you foray into writing like, you know, children’s literature for like middle there is an untapped market for both just twine games, but also educational games for kids. People are not making those anymore.

There was a recent discussion about how there isn’t like a Freddy the Fish or you know, a game like that for kids in school, right? Kids in school are now playing Roblox and they’re playing Fortnite.

And Fortnite is just toys. Fortnite is like literally, know, hey, I want to play my action figures on games. That’s great, but it’s not doing the same thing. Something like a Freddy the Fish would have or like, you know, the other educational games that I played. didn’t play Freddy the Fish, but I’m aware of his game. I think Freddy the Fish is important for a lot of people. I respect that. Right. And I feel like we don’t have entertainment like that anymore.

Like I grew up with like a different kind of game. There was like an alien game who was trying to do like math. And then like he had like a home. All these kinds of things, like no one’s doing that. And so edutainment is a dying art. And I feel like Twine games for kids was my way of trying to, you know, get back into that space, at least from like a local perspective. But I tried to speak to schools and they weren’t interested in like paying for any of this because…

You know, they were like, we don’t have the money right now.

Aaron Nemoyten (25:23)
Sahil Bajaj, thank you so much for coming on Make Games Drink Coffee. I know it is evening for you, so for you it is Make Games Drink Chamomile Tea and hopefully have a good evening. But it was great talking to you. Thank you so much.

Sahil Bajaj (25:37)
Likewise,

it was phenomenal chatting with you Aaron and I really appreciated just Yapping. I love the art of yapping. I feel like so many people especially the game dev side just love yapping. you know shout out to the power of yapping and You know make game devs drink