I've been interviewing video game designers about how Call of Cthulhu influenced them

[Uncaring Cosmos]

Loads of stuff has been written about the influence of D&D on videogaming, but I wanted to learn a bit more about the influence Call of Cthulhu might have had (e.g. the CoC sanity mechanic has made its way into various horror games over the years). So, I've been contacting video game designers and asking them if they can spare some time for a short interview.

I've got a couple of interviews done so far, and I'll post them in this thread as I finish them.

First up, I interviewed Tomas Rawlings, designer of the turn-based tactical Lovecraftian horror game Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land. Here's the video interview.

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[video=youtube;qoj0rHoZ1tg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoj0rHoZ1tg[/video]​

Next, I had the chance to interview Thomas Grip, who is probably best known as the Creative Director on the critically-acclaimed horror game Amnesia: The Dark Descent, as well as the Penumbra series of first-person survival horror games. He actually found Call of Cthulhu kind of disappointing, and said it hadn't been much of an influence.

Here's the relevant part of the interview (full interview here):

Me: I think it’s fair to say you’re a bit of an H.P. Lovecraft fan?

Thomas Grip: [Laughs] Yeah, yeah. I’m a big fan!

Me: How were you first introduced to his stories?

Thomas Grip: Actually, I remember hearing about Lovecraft for the first time and I thought he was some sort of romance novelist; some sort of Danielle Steel thing. I heard someone say: “Oh, I bought a lot of Lovecraft books” and I thought – “S**t, Lovecraft?” – and I pictured these books with a hunky guy holding a girl. But then I actually read them and it just clicked with me.

I just loved the whole thing, you know with the protagonists sending out notes between one another, and it’s shrouded in mystery, and the ancient gods – all of it just clicked with me. And it’s been something that I think has been very pronounced in my games since.

In fact, when I made my first actual horror game, I totally changed the entire story to make it more Lovecraftian because I was so into it. Fiend was the game.

Me: I remember Fiend! That was in 2001. So, you’ve been making Lovecraft games for almost fifteen years. What is it about Lovecraft that appeals to you?

Thomas Grip: There’s a faux documentary style to it. I think most of his novels are in first person – it’s been a long time since I read one, but I think most are in first person and made up of a set of documents, or diary notes, or something like that. And I don’t know why, but I find that really appealing. I’m also a big fan of “found footage” films. They can be really crappy films, but if they’re found footage I’ll like it. So, that was a great appeal to me.

Then I also loved this whole mythos thing behind Lovecraft and how vague it was. So, you could sort of glimpse into things, and it got very confusing and contradictory. I really loved that feeling of something beyond, you know?

Being an incredible fanboy, I had to buy the Call of Cthulhu RPG, but that ruined it for me because they had timelines and stuff like that. And I know I had mixed up the Elder Things with the Old Ones. No, not the Old Ones, but the… what’s it called? The big things with the claws and trumpets on their head and things like that?

Me: The Great Race?

Thomas Grip: Yes, the Great Race, exactly! So, I had mixed up those two. And that was great, because the statements were contradictory and you had this sort of great mind imagery. But then when it was all pulled together it sort of lost this thing for me a bit.

So, I think that Lovecraft was most appealing to me when I first started reading it. And then it was cool because I didn’t have a proper internet connection at the time, so I borrowed it from the library. It was a total mystery because nobody I knew had heard about him so it was just me exploring these things, and that sense of the unknown was just awesome.

More interviews (hopefully) to come!