By Joel Smart (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: July 4, 2012
A boy’s relationship with his father can be quite complex; elements of playfulness and fun mix with respect, caution and fear. It can be an awkward relationship with many sides at the best of times, but when a boy is raised in a home with an alcoholic father, the parent-child relationship can get really dicey. It’s a heavy subject, and not one you’d expect in a video game. Papo & Yo, expected out later this year on the PlayStation Network, hopes to inspire the gaming community by tackling such a tough subject in a way that players will ultimately grow from.
Raised in a troubled home, Vander Caballero often turned to games like Super Mario Bros. to find some agency and freedom in his life. As he grew up he remained devoted to gaming, and eventually went on to work at Electronics Arts. He was involved in a number of big name titles, including Army of Two. It was a job that paid well and that he found enjoyable, but eventually he just felt that the mainstream game industry was restrictive in what types of games it provided. He had a story inside of him that no major studio would take a risk on. He wanted to see games take a step forward in the types of stories and messages they tell.
“I want to grow old playing video games,” he told Gamespot in an interview at E3 this year. “Right now I’m playing the same games that I played 10 years ago … just more polygons … there’s more polish. And, I think that’s not fair for the industry, not fair for us as gamers. We have to develop the content and bring it up a notch.” He spoke of the way films have evolved over the years, and how more and more people are hoping games will do the same.
Eager to be a part of the solution, he left his job and with 14 others—all originally from major studios—he formed Minority Media, based in Montreal. In an interview with Kotaku, he spoke of a “culture of fear” within the major gaming corporations. “You hear things like ‘if you leave you will never be able to last,’” he said. But, his burning desire to do something more meaningful outweighed the comfort and wealth that EA provided.
Although the details of it were still to be decided, he has long known that he had an important narrative to share. “I have always wanted to tell the story of my childhood,” he wrote on the PlayStation Blog, “the difficulties I lived through shaped the man I’ve come to be.” More specifically, the game is about his relationship with his father, “a good man, but also an evil one,” he explained. “Like many, he used alcohol and drugs to cope with a challenging life, and I was caught in the middle of it.
Instead of telling the story literally, Caballero wanted to tell it through a certain level of abstraction. The main character, a young boy named Quinco, lives in a Brazilian shanty town or slum, known as a favela. He lives there with his best friend and protector Monster. Monster, a metaphor for his father, is a playful nine-foot-tall beast that functions as an important tool for getting around and solving puzzles – even saving his life at times. However, this creature is also addicted to a type of frog that lives in the area. When he eats the frogs, he transforms into “an evil killing machine, his fury pushing him to destroy everything that is around him – including Quinco.” It’s a balancing act that delves into the shades of grey that morality in real life often features.
He compared the storytelling to a Pixar animation like Finding Nemo. In the first few minutes of that film, Nemo lost his brothers and was soon lost at sea. Not a fun topic, but through the characters and the way the story unfolds, people wind up enjoying the experience. Caballero hopes the same will be true for those who play Papo & Yo.
Caballero was able to get funding from the Canadian government for his project, and Sony agreed to match development costs through its independent-game support program known as “Pub Fund.” He couldn’t be happier that he took the risk, he told Wired. “It is a beauty to be able, as an artist, to go deep inside your emotions and transform them into art.”
But, it hasn’t been an easy process. It took 10 years of therapy before he could start to share what he went through. “When you’re living with an addicted person, you’re always struggling to save them – knowing deep inside that there’s nothing you can do,” he told Wired. “We protect others with the desire that our protection of them will reflect back on us. That’s the struggle I want to bring to players.”
While some might criticize the personal nature of the story he’s telling, Caballero hopes people will realize that gaming can, and should, be a medium for stories like his. “I hope that’s the biggest takeaway,” he told Wired. “As much as I liked playing Super Mario Bros. as a child, it did not help me become and adult. In defeating Bowser, I was improving my gaming skills, but I wish I had more experiences that taught me about the challenges of life.”
