The story so far... Matazone, video games, research, and writing. Oh my!
AKA, roughly two decades of creativity in one epic introduction post.
Hello dear friends, it’s been too long - literally years! Welcome to my Substack.
I’m going to tell you the story how I went from making online animations to writing for commercial video games, and a bit about what I have planned for the future.
But first…
Perhaps you remember Mittens & Snowdrop?
Or Mr Snaffleburger?
Maybe it was Sarah, the Little Goth Girl that you saw first?
Or does the heroic, bloodthirsty-but-zen toy bunny Samurai Lapin live in the shadows of your mind?
Hi! I’m Mata, the person who made all those. (And if you never saw those, it’s still great to have you here!)
The Matazone years…
Some time back in 2000, I had a nightmare about zombies. It scared me so much, it woke me up. Lying there in bed, half-asleep, I pondered how it would have been funny if the zombies were replaced by kittens. This was the seed for the first Mittens & Snowdrop animation.
I put it online and emailed it to 20 friends, thinking it might amuse them. These were the days before social media (hallowed days). Within a week, over 3,000 people had watched it. Unintentionally, I’d stumbled on one of the basic rules of subversive writing: make cute things sinister (see also ‘Wednesday Addams’).
For the next seven years, I released a new animation or game every two weeks. My main site, matazone.co.uk, was getting over 50k visitors per week, and I created a couple of spin-off games that peaked at over 250k visitors per week. There was a lively forum with over 2k wonderful members. I had a local printer making T-shirts for me, and I personally packaged and sent them all over the world: Brooklyn, London, Jerusalem, Melbourne, Tokyo, and more.
At the same time, the web wasn’t ready for ‘content generators’ - my goodness, that’s a horrible phrase, but there it is. People like me made things and shared them without any solid systems for making a living out of them. PayPal was in its infancy, YouTube didn’t exist, advertising wasn’t easy to set up. It was very intense trying to make a living!
While all this was going on, I was working on a PhD. Top tip: launching/running a small business and doing a PhD are two of the most time-consuming things you can do, so don’t do them both at once! Nonetheless, in 2006 I finished my study into the cyberpunk author William Gibson, and successfully became Doctor Mata Haggis. Yes. I’m a doctor of cyberpunk.
The web was changing. Companies were employing dozens of people to make broadcast-quality Flash animations to combine viral marketing with organised mass-produced merchandising. For me, continuing to work alone was impossible: I either needed to massively expand or find another route to survival. I didn’t have the money to expand, so I took my experience making Flash games and applied to the wider video game industry.
Designing video games
I joined Criterion, part of Electronic Arts, and became a designer on Burnout Paradise. Unknown to me at the time, this was to become a landmark in the increasingly online world of video games.
My main contribution to the design of the game came up in a design meeting, where we were considering how to make online racing against friends more fun. I said: “When we play this in the studio, we don’t race; we do stunts with each other and tricks off the ramps. Why don’t we make that part of the game?” A producer in the room remembers me saying this and something clicking into place. A whole non-competitive side of the online game was born.
For me, though, this seemed obvious. The underlying ethics of my Matazone community was about how people don’t always want to compete, we sometimes just want to play together, to be together, to love together. Bringing that into the hyper-masculine world of racing cars and high-speed crashes added a new and friendly social dimension to the game.
As part of the development team, we also had a competition to set the default speed records on the roads around Paradise City. If you buy the game today (it’s been updated for modern consoles and computers) you’ll still see my name on the South Bay Expressway.
One of my main jobs at Criterion was placing ‘props’. These are items that we use to decorate the virtual world to make it look lived-in. I placed near enough every lamppost, every road-sign, every trash can, every box… Anything that you can hit in the game and it moves, I put there. This was not done randomly: I tried to create small stories with how I combined and aligned the objects.
What I was doing was environmental storytelling. I used digital tools to create small set-pieces of roadworkers’ tools, a traffic cone that had been stolen by students and tossed onto a roof, or an area where a dangerous landslide had removed a barrier and warning signs had been placed for driver-safety. I had to combine player-essential information, realism, and fun. This was superb experience for my future career path.
After Criterion, I moved to Rebellion in Oxford and worked on the 2010 game Aliens Versus Predator (AVP).
By the time we released AVP, I was the lead campaign designer for the marine’s campaign. In my time at Criterion, I missed writing my animations, so pushed to work on the narrative for Aliens Versus Predator and the team at Rebellion kindly supported me in this, so I had a lot of fun combining storytelling and gameplay, working with these brilliant and famous film franchises.
Incidentally, although it was a first-person shooter, you did occasionally see the lead character’s face, and in those moment you saw he is an African-American man.
I was very aware that diversity in video games was awful - almost every hero was a generic stubbly white guy. There were technical reasons that we couldn’t swap the rig across to playing as a woman (which I suggested to match the Aliens movies), but the team were happy to switch over to having a black male lead. This wasn’t a big discussion. Sometimes, all it takes to improve diversity is for someone to suggest it.
I’m not saying I’ve always got representation right - I’m always learning - but it’s a common thread over the years that I’ve tried to create with characters that are outside the industry norms. Everyone deserves to have heroes that reflect themselves. Visibility matters. If we don’t see ourselves represented in society, including our media, then how will we ever feel part of that world?
Part of this comes down to something that is core to me: I want to leave this world a better place from my presence in it. Kindness, generosity, acceptance, and inclusion are vital for us all to survive the coming decades. Everyone has a part to play to create a liveable and better future.
And so, when the opportunity arose, I moved into teaching.
Teaching and researching video games
In 2010, I moved to The Netherlands and joined Breda University of Applied Sciences (then called ‘NHTV’) as a senior lecturer in game design. Using knowledge from my time creating games and animations, I taught classes on interface design, level design, and storytelling.
Soon, I was also asked to take over teaching a class about ethical challenges for video games: addiction, violence, sexism, racism, and more. This was when fourth wave feminism - also known as intersectional feminism - was developing fast. It was an exciting time of growth for me, with new concepts that helped me unpick systemic prejudices that I’d never had the language to think about or explain before.
In the following decade I would read, listen, and build my knowledge of diversity and feminism. I’ve now given talks about inclusion and the value of diversity across the world: in the US, Brazil, a pan-African conference, TEDx, the UK, and many more.
Of course, we’ve also seen massive challenges to intersectional progress, both in video games and the wider world. I’m convinced that intersectional feminism is a significant and powerful tool to lead us to a better world, including climate justice and better living standards. Who would have thought zombie kittens could lead to this?
Around 2016, I became the Professor of Creative & Entertainment Games at my university, which is still my main job today. I bring together international teams around cutting-edge technologies in video games and related media, such as virtual production, to create new knowledge, insights, and influence policies that can improve lives for digital creatives. Yes, I’m a doctor of cyberpunk and a professor of video games.
But that professorship didn’t arrive without reason…
Writing for video games
From 2013 to 2016, I had the pleasure of working with a wonderful small game development team called Sassybot to create the LGBTQ+ drama video game Fragments of Him.
I poured my heart and soul into the game. Frankly, it broke me. I opened so many boxes full of grief that I still haven’t quite repacked them all.
The effort pushed my writing skills further than I’d ever taken them before, resulting in multiple award nominations from all over the world, including the SXSW festival and the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain, and one audience-choice win from Develop:Brighton. This response was a big part of why I was awarded my professorship.
Although it broke me, it also reformed me. I became a better person for making it. I was more open to love, kinder to myself, and met many incredible and inspiring people.
Fragments of Him is fiction, but based heavily on experiences from my own life and the lives of friends. Sometimes, telling a personal story is the best way to open yourself up to love. Storytelling transforms both the teller and the listener.
This game built my reputation as a trustworthy, high-quality writer, resulting in my working on a variety of very different games, such as Resident Evil: Resistance, Dying Light 2, and most recently Superfuse.
I bring my love of great storytelling, inclusive narratives, and engaging gameplay to every company I work with, often performing this writing consultancy as part of my professorship.
And, again, how did making animations about zombie kittens lead me to this? It’s a wonderful life, sometimes.
Now, and the future
Eagle-eyed folks might have seen that all the Mr Snaffleburger animations are on the Matazone YouTube channel. More of the vintage animations will turn up there eventually.
You might also notice that I never truly stopped writing.
Back in the days of Matazone, every year I created a Halloween special, sharing a chilling tale for goth-Christmas. There’s going to be a lot more of that in the future.
Starting next week, there will be monthly stories of the weird, uncanny, supernatural, and strange hauntings beamed directly into your inbox/Substack app. A week later, paying subscribers to The Inciting Incident will get story insights into the creative process, diving into why the stories are the way they are.
There will be a mix of free and paid content on here, talking about video games, the craft of storytelling, horror, and more.
I’ll be feeling my way into this, but I’m so happy you’re with me on this next chapter of my creative journey. Who knows where making zombie kittens will lead to next?
It’s been a crazy two decades, and I can’t wait to see where we go from here.
Until next time, thank you for reading.
Love to you all. Be kind to yourself and others.
Mata
It’s a pleasure to see your writing back in my inbox, and a greater one to hear about the path your life has taken since I first stumbled on Matazone in my early teens. Congratulations on what looks to have been a fantastic journey so far, and I look forward to hearing more from you going forward :)