What the Dispatch team didn’t expect from their fandom — BBC News

[0:00] this went a bit viral i'm sure you've seen it yeah yeah why did he take a detour when it would age [0:06] him so horribly dennis knows the answer you want to get people hurt get people killed a real hero [0:16] puts their ass on the line come on betting a nomination for even like best game must be [0:23] amazing how did you feel when you got that news uh it was crazy i think it came out so i knew when [0:29] the long list came out that was a surprise and then we're all thinking like okay well we'll wait [0:34] for the official nominations yeah exactly exactly uh and then yeah no when the official nominations [0:40] came in i was like oh i guess we're flying to london awesome yeah interesting how you're both [0:58] coming across very humble about this because you say it was a surprise to you for the fans and the [1:03] people who played it it wasn't so much of a surprise especially when you had talents such as like [1:07] alana pierce jacksepticeye people like that was that an intentional thing to cast people with that [1:12] kind of audience and was it kind of a way of getting that audience to play the game or was [1:17] it just they're the right people yeah i mean it was a it was certainly a combination of there was some [1:23] strategy there um but i mean everyone in the cast is there because first and foremost like we're fans [1:29] of them and and and then you know we're fans of a lot of people who didn't make sense to be in dispatch [1:34] so then you know you go through the process of of auditioning and and and starting to sort of figure [1:40] out who sort of fits the roles like for instance we brought um charlie i'm always critical in for [1:45] gollum originally and then through that process we we kind of like hey read this and then he started [1:51] reading sonar and we were like oh yes this this is it this is bringing something um and then once we [1:56] kind of once we kind of get them in those roles we start to tweak the characters and start to sort [2:01] of you know um make sure that we play to the strengths and and yeah so then it just ended up [2:07] being um you know they some of these people have a lot of you know people who pay attention to what [2:12] they're doing and follow them and that's obviously great when you're selling a video game uh but that [2:16] was kind of ancillary to the fact that we're just fans of these people was there anyone that you [2:20] approached that you're a huge fan of that couldn't make it work we had we early on we i won't say for [2:27] what characters um because i don't want to make people sad but we we we had a couple people we [2:32] went out to who um we thought would be great for certain characters and they just really didn't like [2:38] the material they didn't like the character and um and we were just kind of like made this question [2:43] like uh-oh like did we do did we write something bad here like is this so it wasn't yeah it wasn't a [2:48] good sign um but then we found people who really responded to the material and then and and liked it and [2:54] did a great job take your clothes off uh what's happening right now it's better if you keep your [3:09] identity a secret here i remembered you being bigger um well originally because it was written [3:17] for live action um and we had a modest budget we did not ever expect to have aaron paul um and uh so [3:26] i don't i don't know that he was i mean i guess what we could say when we were writing the live action [3:31] thing um the uh original intent was that robert was gonna be half korean because uh our writer pierre [3:37] who could not be here uh is half korean so it was felt felt right and we were looking at steven yun [3:43] and basically right at the same time he got invincible or he's a half korean uh superhero so [3:51] we were like well that's done i guess robert's gotta be white now you know it's immediately a hard [3:56] pivot but no but when when we started casting for the animated uh version it was um yeah he was just [4:04] at the top of the list you know we had we were there were there was like the the list of names [4:08] where you're like well there's no way we're gonna get these people and aaron aaron was up there and [4:13] he was the first person we reached out to and on that list and and he immediately responded to the [4:19] material and which we were like thank god um and and then from there it was just like so easy to cast [4:25] because once aaron's on board and and he was a huge supporter it wasn't just that he was there to [4:30] like play the role he was there he was helping us you know when we were looking for you know funding [4:36] and like he was he was really like kind of more of a producer in a lot of ways yeah his support [4:40] really meant a lot to us and then we got jeffrey on board and then everyone else looks at that cast [4:44] and they're like i'm in you know instantly the game dispatch nearly wasn't made can you tell us the [4:50] story of that story time uh yeah so i mean we started ad hoc in 2018. we were basically hired [4:58] to make um a live action interactive experience and it was kind of up to us to what that would be [5:04] and so we came up with two ideas and one of them was dispatch and uh that got funded in greenlit and [5:10] we started going into production and making a you know basically like a tv show and that was march of [5:17] 2020 and right around then something happened in across the globe and uh and that got shut down and [5:25] then we went into a bunch of other projects and eventually came back to the idea of like well [5:30] instead of this being live action let's make this animated um so we we did all that work and then [5:35] there were other reasons why we almost didn't make it and funding collapsed and publishers pulled out and [5:41] um you know along the way everyone was telling us narrative games are dead like that's the that was [5:47] kind of the common wisdom i guess among publishers and other studios at the time as people were saying [5:53] kind of hey this is nice that you want to make this but just so you know there's probably not a huge [5:57] market or a huge fan base out there yeah and so we i think we thought that there was a way bigger [6:03] audience for these types of games and so when we created dispatch one of the things we did was just go [6:09] through and audit all of our past games and say what are the things that we liked about them what [6:14] are the things that fans liked what are the things they hated and that we always thought could be [6:18] better and we sort of strategically just said all right our next project we're not going to do all [6:23] these things that we don't like and that fans don't like and we're going to really lean into all of the [6:27] things that we thought could be better um and it was kind of a gamble i mean we went in just going [6:33] like this is what we think something like this should be and then we'll see if other people agree [6:39] and they have yeah fortunately you said earlier that you had two ideas and dispatch is one that [6:44] got made what was the other one i think we're holding boilers uh yeah yeah we'll uh we'll let [6:51] you know when that yeah we were it's it's it's good enough still to where it might be something we do [6:55] in the future so i don't want to burn it here so would you go for dispatch two first or would you go [6:59] for this other idea first or both at the same time ask the fans yeah uh yeah right now i i think [7:06] we're we're we're in the middle of figuring out what's what's next so yeah but i'd love to know [7:12] are you definitely going to do a dispatch too i think i'm sure you would i'm sure you would [7:17] yeah i mean look dispatch was successful enough to where it's kind of like it would be crazy for [7:22] me to say no but at the same time you know there are other things we're talking about doing and so [7:28] we've kind of had to we had we were hoping it would be successful but we were planning for it not [7:33] to be successful right so um we're figuring out what's next and yeah hopefully hopefully some cool [7:40] stuff on the horizon so in terms of the fans you said about the fan the fandom is huge like honestly [7:45] just going over onto reddit and having a look i was like wow i thought i liked the game i don't [7:49] like it as much as these because me neither like the episodic kind of full amount really worked and [7:56] it really brought this sense of community was there any particular character that people latched [8:01] onto that you were surprised by as being a standout i was surprised by all of the fan-based romance [8:08] art that has come out taking different characters that were never even hardly talking to each other [8:14] in the actual game i mean i was surprised that the blonde blazer hate in the beginning of the the [8:19] process when the episodes were coming out where people sort of jumped on the bandwagon as thinking oh [8:25] she's too good she's too nice clearly there's going to be a plot twist coming later and we were kind of [8:30] i don't know protective and offended by it we're like no she's just a good person like why can we [8:36] not accept this these days you could romance certain characters personally blazer for me forever i love [8:41] her yes love her there was other characters that people wish that you could have romanced there was [8:46] a tweet where someone was saying they were furious that they couldn't romance miller i can't say an email [8:51] and then someone from your team replied and said maybe you are making the wrong choices [8:56] all right was this trolling or is there actually a way that you can romance if that that would be [9:02] weird if people hadn't figured that out no there's definitely not a way to romance i mean there isn't [9:06] a an official way to romance you can do whatever you want at home you know you could you can sort [9:10] of there are body pillows you can yeah um yeah no that and and i was the person who said that and [9:17] i've i've learned a lot from from it from this experience of launching the game where a lot of people are looking at [9:23] everything you write so uh yes no there's nothing you can't romance malevola i'm sorry i made a joke [9:30] uh uh and yeah we've we've we've gotten sort of yeah accused of like baiting people out for that stuff [9:37] and lesson learned do you think if enough people express express interest you do some kind of dlc where [9:43] that would be a possibility really everything we do just has to come back to do we feel like it's right [9:47] for the story that we want to tell because there's a lot of people who will say i want to be able to [9:53] romance this character and there's other people who would say if you do that i will hate you forever [9:57] so we can't really please everyone so we just kind of have to go all right well what what makes sense [10:02] in the world that we've created so i've spoken to quite a few people recently who are involved [10:07] at like creators of things that have spurred off into fandoms and a lot of them have kind of alluded [10:12] to the fact that the fandom can sometimes become so overwhelming that it's amazing at the beginning [10:17] but then you have to separate yourself from it like you've just said you make one comment [10:20] and then that's it how is your experience with the fandom been in that sense i i definitely i i was [10:25] more involved on the like community side when we were launching we were a small team so everyone's [10:29] wearing like five different hats uh we've since hired an official community person thank you jackie [10:34] um but yeah i it's been uh it's been it's been hard because like you want to engage with people you [10:42] want to like sometimes they have a question and i have the answer but it's like saying the answer will [10:47] make them happy and make someone else sad and so it's just like okay i'm trying to you know we're [10:52] learning this is the first time anything like this has happened to us you know tell me why you look [10:56] like black einstein sorry i never noticed it's the powers i can move 50 times faster than the average [11:06] person but i didn't realize until it was too late and i was aging 50 times faster when i use my powers this [11:12] went a bit viral i'm sure you've seen it yeah yeah why did he take a detour when it would age him [11:19] so horribly dennis knows the answer uh not being a straight line looks more visually interesting there [11:27] you have it so it wasn't even like a joke or you went trolling you just thought that looks a bit [11:32] prettier no i think i i think uh this was on an episode dennis and i didn't direct but i think [11:38] literally probably what it was was a board artist just drew it that way just to make it look good [11:42] and then they just went all the way through months of production and then someone just did that in [11:47] the v effect and we're like okay or there was you know some sort of traffic accident and that's true [11:53] to avoid hitting someone that's math yeah i didn't wanted to go the right flow of traffic there's one [11:58] way streets that's the complex answer yeah avoiding like the boys kind of first scene kind of incident [12:04] yeah i got it yeah and and there have this is where like we could have just leaned into like fan [12:09] theories but people are saying like he was he was enjoying his run so much that he just wanted to [12:13] sort of extend the time and that's a better answer that's nice um but i'm really bad at just taking [12:19] those easy wins and but and claiming that for myself but i only came in as i thought we were playing [12:26] magic the gathering tonight i am hoping we still may