House of Games Episode #11 — Mulle Meck
The story about Mulle Meck turns 30 years old this year, and a new game is in development for the first time in a long time. Tune in to this week’s episode to hear Simon Bergqvist and Anna Frew from Shaping Games discuss the new game and what to expect!
Your Hosts and Their Games
- http://eepurl.com/h31Y0L — The signup link for the Mulle Meck Reboot newsletter.
- https://shapinggames.com/ — The homepage for Shaping Games.
- https://tossvr.com/ — The homepage for the game “TOSS!🍌”.
- https://www.play-asia.com/red-colony-trilogy/13/70fmjh — The official store page for the physical release of the Red Colony trilogy.
- https://www.nintendo.com/store/products/knifeboy-rebooted-switch/ — The Nintendo Switch store page for KnifeBoy Rebooted.
- https://store.steampowered.com/search/?developer=RunicCodes&ndl=1&ignore_preferences=1 — Rune’s Steam store page.
- https://ottowretling.medium.com/list/our-first-game-175f8c8b7ce1 — Otto’s blog about the development of “Tulip Craze”.
- https://discord.gg/mYM72SQ9CP — The discord server for Game Hub Umeå.
Games, Game Engines, and Consoles
- https://www.hazelight.se/games/it-takes-two/ — The homepage for the page It Takes Two.
- https://returntomonkeyisland.com/ — The homepage for the game “Return to Monkey Island”.
- https://revolution.co.uk/games_catalog/broken-sword-1/ — The homepage for the game “Broken Sword 1, Shadow of the Templars: Director’s Cut”.
- https://www.ea.com/games/the-sims — The homepage for the “The Sims” franchise.
- https://game.capcom.com/residentevil/en/ — The homepage for the Resident Evil franchise.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donkey_Kong_Country — The Wikipedia page for the game Donkey Kong Country.
- https://unity.com/ — The homepage for the Unity game engine.
- https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US — The homepage for the Unreal game engine.
- https://www.nintendo.com/switch/ — The homepage for the Nintendo Switch gaming console.
Articles and Other Links
- https://www.mullemeck.se/ — The homepage for the Mulle Meck franchise.
- https://i.imgur.com/lzr2LML.jpg — Apicture of the Chinese cover of a Mulle Meck book.
- http://www.georgejohansson.se/ — The homepage for George Johansson, the author of Mulle Meck.
- http://ahlbom.com/ — The homepage for Jens Ahlbom, the illustrator of Mulle Meck.
- https://newsroom.notified.com/news/182995/mulle-meck-fyller-30-ar-och-firas-pa-ecar-exp — An article about the Mulle Meck exhibition at the Stockholm eCar Expo (in Swedish).
- https://www.mullemeck.se/2022/06/30/figge-ferrum/ — The character page about Figge Ferrum, one of the characters from the Mulle Meck universe.
- https://levelskip.com/action-adventure/Why-David-Hayter-Was-REALLY-Replaced-in-Metal-Gear-Solid-V-The-Phantom-Pain — An article about why David Hayter was replaced as a voice actor for the game “Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain”.
- https://thespaces.com/a-60-ft-high-greta-thunberg-mural-pops-up-in-san-francisco/ — An article about the 60-ft-high(~18 meters) mural of Greta Thunberg in San Francisco.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greta_Thunberg — The Wikipedia page for Greta Thunberg.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lennart_J%C3%A4hkel — The Wikipedia page for Lennart Jähkel, the Swedish voice actor for Mulle Meck.
- https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levande_B%C3%B6cker — The Wikipedia page for the video game developer Levande Böcker (in Swedish).
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bamse — The Wikipedia page for the Bamse franchise.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Little_Ghost_Godfrey — The Wikipedia page for “The Little Ghost Godfrey” (Swedish: Lilla spöket Laban).
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_and_click — The Wikipedia page for the point-and-click genre of video games.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metroidvania — The Wikipedia page for the Metroidvania genre of video games.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_strategy — The Wikipedia page for the Real-time strategy (RTS) genre of video games.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2.5D — The Wikipedia page for the 2.5D (two-and-a-half dimensional) perspective in games.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surströmming — The Wikipedia page for Surströmming(Fermented herring).
Transcription
Rune
Halli hello everyone, and welcome to the most *rebooted* game dev podcast in the world, House of Games! I’m your co-host Rune, and today I’m joined by, not 1, not 2, but three hosts. Now, today we’re gonna talk about a…I guess a reboot. So, let’s head inside the House of Games, and see what this week’s episode has to offer.
Otto
Welcome to our guests Anna and Simon from Shaping Games! So first of all, I guess the best thing would be for you to introduce yourselves. Who are you? Could you tell us something about what you do, and… and why you’re here perhaps?
Simon
Sure, I’m Simon Bergqvist, and I’m the director of Shaping Games.
We’re working on a Mulle Meck reboot and have also worked on games with “Lilla Spöket Laban” in the past, and I think we were invited because of Mulle Meck, since it’s so beloved, and we’re working on bringing that to life now.
Anna
Yes, so good morning, everyone, I’m Anna Frew. I also work at Shaping Games, and I’m a project manager there, and I can only apologize for the drilling that started as soon as we began the podcast. So, if my voice is accompanied by a drone, then that is my neighbours building something in the background.
Rune
Maybe it’s Mulle Meck himself?
Anna
Maybe it’s Mulle Meck, that’s it! The spirit of Mulle is with us today, yeah.
Simon
It’s just some sound effects from the games, you know.
Anna
Ambient noise, ambient noise.
Otto
So, my first question is, since we’re actually doing this podcast in English; so, I did some research on Wikipedia and “Mulle Meck” in Swedish has an English name; “Gary Gadget”, I think it is?
Anna
Yes.
Otto
How will that be going forward, is… because I’ve seen some articles about the game, and some reading, and as I see now, it’s usually referred to the Swedish name. So, going forward, do you think it’s gonna be the Swedish name only or you’re gonna be more localized as it were, with the old games?
Anna
I’m probably best place to answer that, so… When I’m not with Shaping Games, I work with the Mulle Meck IP, so I work with Jens the illustrator, and George the author, and basically, the Mulle Meck’s been known by different names in different countries. So “Gary Gadget” was the American name for Mulle Meck, and was used in the game in America, and then “Freddie Fixer” is what he’s known as in England in book-form so… Well, there’s got a few names, that have gone on over the years, and I guess because it’s an IP that’s been around for 30 years, this year, so we could all like… “Well done, Mulle! You’ve made it”. We’ve been here 30 years now, so it’s our 30 years jubilee. Of course, it’s changed as the years have gone by, and localization is always gonna have to be done at the time, and appropriately for the market that you’re working in, in that period.
Anna
So yeah, I think it’s a big fat “it depends” where… where we… publish it, and exactly how it goes.
Anna
So, for example, in the Russian market, he’s known as Mulle Meck. So yeah… Ukraine, Mulle Meck, yeah…
Otto
Interesting, yeah. …And since this ties a little bit into our last episode where we talked about reboots, and remakes, and remasters… and I read on your website that this is a reboot, so do you want to talk a little bit about… What does that mean? Is… Does it mean that you want to do… like remaster the old games to just bring them to a new platform, or are you going to do new games entirely, or is it some kind of a hybrid, or what is the strategy? Is there something you can tell us?
Simon
Sure! We can tell you right away, that we’re making new games that we make sure have the same feeling as the original series. It’s not a remake, it’s not a remaster. We’re not remaking it bit for bit, but we’re looking a lot at the original game series, and trying to understand what was so great about them, and also, you know… bringing in a new story, bringing in new gameplay, and modernizing it, while doing that, because there are some parts of the original games that weren’t necessarily so fun, that we could definitely make a lot more fun with the tools we have today.
Anna
Yes, technology’s moved on a lot in the meantime, so there’s some really… hilarious things that you would just absolutely not do with modern technology, but were totally appropriate at the time.
Rune
I watched some gameplay of Mulle Meck yesterday. Of course, I played it when I was a kid as well, it was funny to watch the gameplay, because I never made it to like… I was very young, I guess. So I didn’t quite get it, that you had to get “this” to get stronger engine, and all that stuff. …But I was thinking, it… it sort of felt like… like a point-and-click “
Rune
…But I was thinking, it… it sort of felt like… like a point-and-click “Metroidvania” type of game when I just watched the game… like “Let’s Play” of the game, because you have these… you need these items to make it further into the game, and it’s also some backtracking, and obviously it’s a point-and-click adventure, so is the the reboot… is it gonna be that as well; a point-and-click, or is it gonna… How far… How close to the original game do you think it will be by the time it’s done?
Simon
Well, for this first game in the reboot series, we’re staying very close to the original in terms of that sort of gameplay. Like building your car, going out onto the map and driving around, visiting people in the community… So, it’s gonna be a similar gameplay. A surprising amount of people have called it a point-and-click game recently in… in my vicinity, because that’s not something that I’ve… not a label that I’ve wanted to put on it myself. So, I’m very interested in hearing like, your thoughts on how… how you would categorize it as a point-and-click game.
Rune
Well, you… simply ’cause you move… use the mouse, and move around, and pick up stuff and place them… like I haven’t played that many point-and-click adventures. I remember playing Broken Sword on PlayStation 1 back the day, as well, and Mulle Meck when I was a kid. Of course, back then, I didn’t think about it as a as a point-and-click adventure, but now that I look at it, I just… I don’t know… That’s… but like point-and-click Metroidvania is something I think about, because of that sort of back-and-forth, but I’m interested; What do you consider the game being?
Simon
Yeah, because when I think point-and-click, I think back to games like (Return to) Monkey Island, and you know… very role play game-ish point-and-click games where you move around and pick up items and do quests. …Which I realize as I say it, is very much what you do in Mulle Meck, but with a car instead of your legs basically. So, I… I’m sort of buying into it more and more as people tell me that they think it’s a point-and-click game, but it’s not come naturally to me.
Anna
No…I guess it’s how you define point-and-click in terms of mechanics. So does point-and-click mean you must *only* navigate the world using a mouse and clicking, or… could a point-and-click still be done on a mobile with a touch screen, and in the original format, you were driving using the arrow keys for example. So, is it no longer a point-and-click because you’re using arrow keys? It’s like… where… where’s the line? I don’t… I don’t know! I guess it depends on who you’re talking to.
Otto
Actually, I was gonna bring up that exact point, that the… to nitpick, you *can* actually drive the car, or boat, or airplane with the arrow keys, so it’s not *entirely* a point-and- click, but I would think that the… one of the defining things with a point-and-click game, what you expect from it… because if you would make a hard-line, you could call the real time strategy games point-and-click as well, because that’s what you do in there, but the difference is that *usually* what you expect with a point-and-click game is that it lacks sort of a “real-time” element to it …often. So that usually… except for some… some minor things maybe, …that… you… when you click something, there’s no… there’s no… not going to be an immediate reaction before you click something else, or… or something, you’re sort of, more… it’s more of a… what would you call it? Like a visual novel almost, I guess. …But I’m not sure I would categorize it as a… the franchise at least, as a point-and-click. Especially with the airplane game, because you could… that’s more 3D, so not sure…
Anna
Yeah, it’s interesting what you say about “time-basing”, ’cause as someone with repetitive strain injury in my hand, I very much notice it if a game is only pointing and clicking, so it’s like “Oh, so is ‘The Sims’ a point-and-click then, because you …there is only one mechanic in ‘The Sims’ and that is pointing and clicking”, but it *does* have that time element to it that you’re talking about, so stuff is going on in the world when you are not doing pointing and clicking. So perhaps what you’re talking about; is, is it still going to be this kind of “storybook”, almost? …and I guess there’s a natural connection there, because it is a children’s book IP, so that’s what you associate with it as well.
Simon
To bring it back to what you asked me, like “What do I consider Mulle Meck to be then?” I don’t think I’ve been able to put a label or a genre on it like that yet. I’ve broken it down more in terms of what the gameplay loop is and realized that you know you… you build your car, you go out into the world, you do a quest, then you get an item of some sort, and then you return, iterate on your car, and rinse and repeat, you know. …But I… I don’t know what genre Mulle Meck is really, so this is a great discussion.
Rune
Yeah, I asked you… well, I just kind of thought point-and-click, but… I told Otto in the previous episodes that one of my games here in Japan was considered a graphic novel with gameplay, while in the west it was approached as a 2D B-movie, sort of “Resident Evil Adventure”, so it is really weird and I recently released a game, and then I sort of like “Ah, is this a Metroidvania, or is it just like a 2D platformer, adventure exploring game?” I… I sort of… I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but I agree I guess, maybe that it’s… I don’t like to do that… like to… to say what exact genre it is, because it becomes so wishy-washy nowadays, because games are so many things you… for example, like …adventure games always have a little bit of RPG mechanics in them and so on. So, it… Everything becomes quite blurry. I like to say, “It is what it is”, but then of course, as a reviewer, or someone who’s gonna recommend your game or something, they might wanna put a label on the game to sort of interest others, or themselves even, because obviously if you have a point-and-click sort of hashtag on your game, let’s say on Steam, then you will get a lot of point-and-click fans. That’s gonna come up in their algorithms and all that. So, I guess that’s what genres are important to, why they are important, but at the same time, I sort of think that “It is what it is”.
Anna
Yeah… I guess genres and marketing tools, is what you’re thinking about there …and being careful about “Okay, if we say it’s a point-and-click”; making sure it *really is* a point-and-click, so that people who… then want to literally buy into it being a point-and-click, aren’t then left *bitterly* disappointed because we do not meet the expectations of a point-and-click.
Simon
I think this applies to making a game like Mulle Meck, where I’m not really sure what the genre is, but I’ve… I’ve had the opposite experience of what you’re talking about here, with another game that I’ve been working on, where when we finally discovered what genre, it was, that made it so much easier to go forward. It was a VR game that I’m working on called “TOSS!🍌”, and we realized that this is a platformer, and that allowed us to finally start putting a lot of platformer elements into that game. So that… that was something that… that made it easier to keep going and explore what the game just might be.
Rune
Interesting, so you realized that sort of halfway through the project almost?
Simon
Sort of, yeah. …And it’s a VR game, so we had to explore the gameplay, like the core game loop a lot first, and just making sure that the controls were feeling great, and we’ve made… we had made something that was fun, and we wanted to explore like “How can we make it more fun?” …and to do that, we sort of had to put that label on it to know which direction we could go. …Putting those boundaries on it made it easier to feel the creative freedom flowing.
Rune
That’s interesting yeah… That’s cool…
Otto
Before we continue talking about the future, I’m interested in the past of Mulle Meck. So, you talked a little bit about things you would *not do* with the technology these days. So do you have access to the original source code, or are you working like only from a compiled copy and trying to reverse engineer that somehow, or how is the situation basically?
Anna
Well, the technology is totally different. Even if you were going to do a straight remake, (which are not) …it would not make sense to use the original code, because it wouldn’t work.
Simon
Yeah… remember that the first game came out in 1997. it’s been quite a while, it’s now 2023. …for posterity to whomever is listening to this in 20 years. …and we’re now working with actual game engines instead of building something on our own, so we’re looking at it as something where we explore it more… I want to call it “spiritually”, or you know… we’re lifting out all the things that we want to add to a new game. So, we’re not reusing, or we’re not looking at the original code, or anything like that. We’re making something new.
Otto
So what tech stack are you using? Are you using Unity, or Unreal, or any of those engines?
Simon
We’re using Unity, plain and simple.
Anna
Yeah!
Rune
I have a question too, about… You mentioned that you also worked on “Laban”… did you say that; “Laban”?
Simon
That’s right, “Lilla Spöket Laban”, or “Little Ghost Godfrey”.
Rune
Is that a Swedish thing, or is that…
Anna
Yes!
Rune
Okay, so is that like… Sorry for my stupidity and ignorance but, “Is that like the same sort of creators who made ‘Mulle Meck’ and ‘Laban’, and… and how do you get these IPs?” …is I guess, my question.
Simon
No, not at all actually. About two years back now, I think, I… I was in touch with two very different people regarding two very different IPs. One of them being Mulle Meck, and that’s how Anna and I met, and another person that wanted to make a game with “Lilla Spöket Laban” and needed someone to develop it. So, it’s… it’s two different… very different IPs.
Rune
Okay cool!
Otto
Would you say that in a… given that you would be able to get every IP that you wanted to work on, and given that you… let’s pretend that you have unlimited resources, is there any additional games that you would…
Rune
Can we tweak the question to “It has to be a sort of child IPs, like ‘Mulle Meck’ and ‘Laban’”. So, what would be… what would be your sort of…
Otto
Yeah, exactly! That was exactly what I was coming to, so…
Rune
Okay… okay…
Otto
Yeah, what I was gonna say was that in the 90s *especially*, and early 2000s, I… I would say that in Sweden, we had like a really big gaming scene for children. We had a lot of games coming out, …that I don’t know if that was… (beyond maybe ,the US and Japan) …that… that was very common in the rest of the world. …That we had like that amount of children’s games from all kinds of book IPs, and… and similar things. So, given that you would have unlimited resources, would you want to do more, like reboots or something else with the things that we have in the “back catalogue”, so to speak?
Simon
Yeah, you’re thinking of all the multimedia games that came out back then, which was sort of like the genre of them, I suppose. …Binging it back to the discussion on point-and-click games. I think you could just sort of call them all “multimedia games”, which isn’t really a term that’s used anymore. I… I guess I’m sort of on this quest to recreate my childhood… …But yeah, that’s definitely the kind of games that we want to be working on. That’s what Shaping Games is all about; creating what I… I believe is meaningful games, which would be *games for kids, that teach them great values*. That’s really the goal and the vision of the company, to… to work on these kinds of games.
Anna
Yes, and I guess there’s a bit of a literary connection going on. Certainly, at this stage, in terms of using children’s IP that doesn’t only exist within the gaming sphere, but also has this wealth of material within other things. …Like the books, or small films, or audio. Just lots of beautiful illustration as well. I think one of the major attractions, (certainly for me) …in working with children is there’s just some really great art out there that I’d love to work with and do more stuff with.
Rune
I watched “Bamse”, the movies recently and *damn* is that graphics… I mean, it’s like Ghibli studio quality, it’s so beautiful looking. Yeah, and I was thinking how cool it would be to, as someone who have a… my son turns three next month, like I was thinking it would be cool to make… like a imagine like Donkey Kong Country to this sort of Adventure game but you can play two player with your son. Obviously, he’s three, so he won’t be good at it but just like in Donkey Kong, you can pick up your little monkey friend…
So let’s say we play together, and then I need to help my son at times and pick him up and sort of help him and that this will also make us bond, was my idea, and then let’s say there is like a… a door that you can’t open, and I was also imagining this being like “Bamse” game, so you’re playing with “Bamse” and “Lille Skutt” and they’re beautiful graphics, the style they have there, and then like you imagine there’s a door, and then I can’t get through because I’m Bamse, and I’m too big and then I sort of chop him off my shoulder; Lille Skutt, and then my son has to sort of run around this door and open it from the other side, so that would be like a quite simple thing, maybe no enemies or no pitfalls or anything like that, but just to sort of… so the father in this case has to rely on his son too. So that’s like a…. it will sort of create some sort of “We help each other out”- scenario there.
Anna
Co-parent-child co-op, yeah!
Rune
I thought like… Now that kids like us, or adults like us, we grew up when games were… I mean you know when we started playing games, we’re all kids, and then now, the kids are the ones who makes the games, so to speak and that’s it’s interesting that… and I hope we see those types of games where I don’t know, you can sort of make the the child and the the parents bond in a different way but at the same time make it fun for both the parents and the the kids. So, I hope you guys keep making awesome children games… children’s games.
Simon
Yeah, we’ve been discussing how you would be able to go about mechanics like that in general, like because we’ve been having the same sort of ideas, and we’ve been looking at the same at the market that you’re talking about here which would be nostalgics and gamers that are now parents and want to play games with their kids and bond. It’s a very interesting market I think, and I love your idea, it sounds sort of like “It Takes Two” but for… but with Bamse.
Anna
Yeah…
Simon
We can get Josef Fares on the project!
Rune
Yeah, yeah! One more thing, like it’s not about kids, but it you said it’s an interesting market to explore, and I think that’s quite like the people who made games when we grew up, they are now getting really old, that’s also a quite interesting market to explore. Sort of games that are sort of adapted to all people who are kind of slow and you know… not as quick as they used to be. So that’s also quite an interesting thing that I would think we will see more of in the future too. When every… like 80-year-old is retired and… and can’t play games as he used to, or whatever. So that’s also quite interesting.
Anna
“Then you throw Grandpa Lille Skutt through the door and then grandpa does it”. …Because there are certain things around kind of dexterity and reaction time that would still be relevant in an older age group.
Rune
True that! Yeah, yeah.
Simon
…and I’m… I’m of the same mindset, I believe that games will be able to become this generational thing, and I think you sort of have to be brave to start building for that right now, because that’s… that means that your game has to be around for a *very* long time, if… if you wanted to, you know, sort of come back later and be played by three generations at the same time; Like a grandpa, a parent and their kid. …and technology doesn’t really have… it’s not well-known for being so allowing for old games to be played, but it would be interesting to see, like when we could be there, when we could make things that are stable enough to actually last for 20 years digitally. Because right now, we don’t really have that.
Rune
It’s funny when you said three generations, all I thought about was like a three-player game where you play with your grandpa and your son and yourself, and the grandpa is like this slow player, and then you’re the quick one and then your kid, and then you had this…
Anna
…is the chaotic one, yeah!
Rune
Yeah, yeah, yeah…
Anna
…or in my family it’s probably grandma that’s the chaotic one going around messing… messing with things that… my mother has a reputation for saying she doesn’t understand what’s going on in games but then *annihilating* everyone else, so she’s going “Oh, I don’t know what I’m doing”, and then like destroys everything.
Rune
…but imagine that game with like some sort of story too and then eventually you put your grandma in like a wheelchair in the game and then she’s like “This is humiliating!” and… but it’s just like… it has something to do with the story so the three of you can sort of bond over this beautiful story, told through three generations in the game.
Otto
I’m interested in the new game, so I have a couple of questions; so, the first two that I can think of is, first of all- and most importantly; what will you do about voice acting? Because I think a lot of older fans that would want to introduce this franchise to their kids are hoping for reusing the same… (if possible) …voice actors for the new games. And secondly; I read somewhere that… a rumour that this game will focus more on electric vehicles, and also what can you tell us in general about the new game? What can you expect?
Simon
I’ll start with your second part of the question about the new game that’s true, we’ve confirmed it publicly before…
Anna
Yes!
Simon
…that the game that we’re making right now is about electrical cars, and electrical vehicles and it really feels like the the best way to treat a reboot in this time and age; to have it be familiar but something new at the same time. So, we’re gonna have Mulle exploring… you know, *learning* to begin with, how to make electrical vehicles, because that’s not his forte, that’s not what he does in… in general, work with wires and electrical stuff like that, so he’s gonna need some help from friends around the community. That means that we’re also going to have some different kind of car parts that you’re going to need to find, and get, and upgrade your car with to be able to go further, and have stronger engines and so forth, and instead of having gas stations, of course we’re wanting Mulle to actually build sustainable charging stations around the town, like solar stations and hydro stations and stuff like that, so that’s going to be sort of like this joint effort to make the community better while also allowing Mulle to travel further, because now he has a charging station that he can stop by as he explores the map.
Anna
…And this is *all* totally in line with what’s going on in the book world in Mulle Meck as well.
So, on the 3rd of February, in Friends Arena in Stockholm, we will be launching “Mulle Meck Builds an Electric Car”; the latest book in the series, and so, there’s… We don’t have the whole Arena just foe the launch of this book. It’s part of the Stockholm eCarExpo. I’m assuming this podcast is going to come out after, but for anyone who happened to have been there, may have seen an exhibition that we’re putting together where kids can come and interact with like this giant cog wall that we’re building, up one of the sides and then they can build the cogs… turn the wheel and it lights up some lights on Mulle Meck’s new version of an electric car, and you can go and mess with the car, and build other stuff, which is why I have loads of cogs behind me… at the moment…
Rune
Oh cool!
Anna
…Getting ready for this book launch. So, Mulle Meck Builds an Electric Car is happening in story on the literary… literary side as well. So, this all kind of syncs up with the wider story, and thought process that’s going around for the original creators as well, so it’s not something that only Simon and I are interested in. It’s something that the original creators of Mulle Meck are also very passionate about.
Rune
…And the… The voice actor question: I also have a little side question there, is the original game… Does it have this Lennart “Jenkel” (Jähkel) as a voice actor? Is that Mulle Meck’s voice, or who is it? It sounds like…
Anna
Yes!
Rune
It is him?
Anna
Yes, it is him, and he’s still… he still does the audio books to this day for the Mulle Meck titles, yeah. So, he’s still around as part of working with Mulle Meck stuff. To be clear, Simon and I have not formally made any kind of arrangements, so we don’t want to make promises about exactly who’s going to be doing what, but from a wish-point-of-view, we would love to have him again.
Rune
Oh cool!
Otto
Fingers crossed!
Simon
Exactly, and we do have some contact with “Figge Ferrum”, or the voice actor of Figge Ferrum, among others who have expressed interest. So, we’ll see who we’re able to bring back, and who we’re gonna have to, you know, find a new voice for. That’s going to be a fun part of the project when we get there.
Rune
It would be fun if Lennart “Jenkel” (Jähkel) asked for…
Simon
Jähkel, Lennart Jähkel.
Rune
Lennart Jähkel, it would be fun if he asked for too much money and then you guys did this Konami-Kojima thing where David Hayter for Metal Gear Solid; Snake’s voice, apparently was like… he became a little bit *angry noise*, and then Kojima just hired a different actor, and made him talk less in the game. …But we don’t want that in Mulle Meck. Yeah, that was some controversy back in the day. Hopefully, you get him!
Simon
Yeah, let’s hope we… we do get him and don’t have any Metal Gear Solid controversies on our hands.
Otto
I have another, sort of… I don’t know what we call it; “a factoid”, or something? I have a… sort of an ongoing debate with a friend, because we’ve talked about these games for a long time, and both of us grew up with it and I… I don’t think you, perhaps could answer this question, but I’m just gonna put this out there, so if anyone listening to this podcast knows the answer to this question; I’m inviting them to comment, but have I heard, or my friend claims that there is a… a rumour that the source code for the original car game with Mulle Meck was sold to another company and turned into an invoicing system. The architecture of the… the first game was like really good, so you could use it for like invoicing and stuff, but he claims that there was like an article talking about it, but I can’t for the life of me find it, so…
Anna
I can safely say that neither I, nor the creators of Mulle Meck have ever heard of this. …but I love it as a story, yeah.
Simon
Yeah, that’s amazing. I do have contact with people who have actually worked on the original games. A lot of people who have messaged me, saying that they would love to, you know, just tell us a little bit about how it was to work on it back in the day. So, I… I’m gonna bring this up the next time I see someone or talk to someone.
Anna
Yeah, that’s it! I’m gon- I’m gonna ask, but I feel like it probably would have been mentioned *at some point*.
Otto
Well, it seems so very, like disconnected with children’s games, and like a very …like an invoice system, very like the opposite.
Anna
Yeah, I find that… I find that quite surprising!
Otto
Yeah, yeah, I don’t know where he got it from, but he claims to have read like an article that like mentioned that… Like because of how the architecture were, it was like really suitable for that purpose but…
Anna
I mean, maybe there was one particular developer that worked on it, that was like “*snaps with fingers* …I know *exactly* where this could be reused!”, yeah…
Simon
A part of me wants to find out the truth, a part of me wants just this to stay a myth forever, and not look behind the curtains…
Anna
Yeah, it’s kind of more fun to leave it alone in many ways, because that’s really funny.
Otto
So, I’m curious also about Shaping Games in general, so I read on your website that you’re doing not only games, but a lot of other software and consultancy work as well. Do you want to talk more about that?
Simon
Well, it used to be like that, but we’re sort of moving away from that in general so… we’re sort of focusing the company more, and more as time moves on, which is a very natural process. The company is quite new, I… I started it last fall, 2021, so it’s… it’s not even been a year and a half that it’s existed, and basically, we’re now a video game company, and not a consultancy company anymore, and are focusing on children’s games.
Rune
Would you want to make your own children’s Game IP in the future, or do you guys enjoy sort of working on existing IP, and *if* you want to do your own, what challenges do you see in that?
Simon
We’re creative people and there… Every… every creative person has a lot of stories within them that they want to tell in different ways, but for what Shaping Games is right now, it’s a company that brings existing IPs to life, and renews them and develops them further, and not a company that makes their own IPs. That’s the focus that we’re… that we have today.
Anna
’Cause something we think really carefully about, and something that really interests particularly, me is the notion of legacy, and how to take things like these kinds of IPs, where the original creators are moving into their 80s, and they’re about to round off the story as it were… as it was, and so how can we work with these IPs in a way that’s true to the creator’s original intentions, but still keep them up-to-date, aligned with modern values, and relevant for children and young people today? So, for me I find that very interesting, treading this balance between being very respectful of the original IP, but finding creative ways to align it with a modern society, basically.
Simon
Yeah, and just as I mentioned before, finding boundaries is a way to find creative freedom as well.
Anna
Yeah absolutely, that’s it. Rules are super useful when it comes to creative stuff. When you’re given a creative brief suddenly, you’re aware and you can think of how to do things, where if it’s like “Make anything!”, then it’s so much harder…
Rune
Yeah, I was thinking like, as a creative person as well, I was thinking it would be more fun to make own IP, but as I’m thinking now, like… There is a lot of nostalgia with… like I said I mentioned before I would like to make this “Bamse” game, and also that’s not my own IP but *damn*, would it be fun to work on some of these old IPs that you… you grew up loving? It would be… I… I imagine it’s like an honour almost to… to work on these things, but also are you scared of sort of upsetting the artists who originally made them, or are you in constant contact with them?
Anna
We talk to them all the time, I’m not so worried about scaring the creat… like annoying the creators or upsetting them in any way. I’m more conscious of the fact that it will be impossible for us not to annoy *someone* when we reboot it. It’s like “There is no way of making this game that will result in nobody complaining about some element of it”. So I think for us, it’s more about making sure that we’re true to the values we want to be communicating, and having reasons behind our decisions to keep something, or get rid of it that we’re confident in, and can stand by, because… because we’re working with a nostalgic IP, we’re gonna get quizzed on “Why did you keep that, and not that?”, and for some people, that may be a very precious part of their childhood, so we need to have a good reason why it’s like “That’s staying in the childhood, and not being brought through”.
Simon
…And I feel mostly confident in… in the fact that we, you know, we will get some sort of backlash.
We will have people complaining, and that’s all right. Like that’s… it’s going to happen, same sort of goes with the creators I suppose. Like we might not always see eye-to-eye, and that’s also okay, because we’ll just keep the dialogue up and things will turn themselves out. We are allowed to, you know… While we do have these boundaries, we are allowed to create new stuff within it. We can create new characters for example, and we can figure out the story on our own, but we do make sure that we… we get as much help as we can from the original creators, because “Why not?”, it helps everyone, everyone becomes more happy if we do that.
Anna
Yeah, everyone benefits from more communication, and if we’ve done something that’s really not true to the IP, then it’s got a bit wrong, actually. …Because we want it to fit with the IP. That’s why we’re working with it, because we like it.
Simon
Yeah, we’re aligned, basically, with what we want, and what the original creators want. So, it’s… it’s gonna be okay.
Otto
Another question I have about the new game, so I would say that the… the old games were kind of 2.5D, so would you say that the new games are 3D entirely, or something more similar to the old games?
Simon
First, I want to know what makes you consider them 2.5D?
Otto
So, I would say… I would say that it is because you have basically… regardless if it’s a car, or a boat, or a plane, you have only like two axes to move in usually… (or maybe I guess with planes you have technically three… three directions) …but usually there’s sort of an overlay like on a map where you have like “backwards-forwards” and “right-to-left” basically, and that I would say is 2.5D…
Simon
Sure.
Otto
…but a 3D game would be where the camera is not like from the top, but rather like from behind and then you can go anywhere, and like “forwards-backwards”, “left-and-right” and then you can go “up-and-down” also. Something like that.
Simon
I think I… I understand what you’re getting at. It’s sort of like this top-down angle that you have on the map that makes it feel 2.5D for you then like this… because it’s sort of tilted, it’s not right from above, it’s not from the side, it’s somewhere in between, and we’re definitely looking at having a very similar feel to it in… in this game that we’re working on right now, pretty much the same feel actually, just better. Like one of the things that we realized as we started to look at the original game, “Mulle Meck bygger bilar” (Bygg bilar med Mulle Meck), like the footage from that game is that whenever you started driving the engine sound would just go “VRRRRRR”, like super loud… Sorry headphone listeners! …And then, as you just touched a wall or something it instantly dropped to zero, and you just stopped, so it wasn’t that much fun to drive around, because you sort of just stopped all the time, especially when you were a kid and that became sort of part of the challenge, not to go into walls, and that’s something that you know, we want to smooth out in these new games so it’s just to make that part of the experience more pleasurable, but yeah like it’s a very similar 2.5D feeling if… if you will, yeah.
Rune
How far along are you with this game? Have you not started or 20% in, or where are you at, if you can answer that?
Simon
Yeah, we can. We’re in the prototype phase at the moment, so we’re experimenting with stuff like this; how we’re gonna use the technology to be able to, for example, avoid walls, and how we’re gonna make the new game feel and we’re working on sort of this prototype/vertical slice thing at the moment.
Otto
Two quick questions; so first of all, do you know which platforms that you want to release it on, and also, are you doing localization like the earlier games, or are you focusing firstly on, for example Swedish, and then maybe branching out after that?
Simon
That’s great, I wanted to bring us back to that topic on localization actually, since we started with that, and I felt like we had some stuff hanging in the air. …But we’re focusing on Swedish first, despite our working language being English.
The game is being made for the Swedish audience first. The reason that we speak English is because some people in our work team don’t speak Swedish. We’re an international crowd, and we want to keep it that way. It’s part of making the company more inclusive, and having more cultures and eyes on it, that will help us make the best game possible. What was the first part of the question again? Sorry…
Anna
Which platforms?
Otto
Yeah, exactly, exactly. Where do you want to release it? Like on consoles and PC, or only PC, or you know…?
Simon
We’ve realized that this game, just like the original game series, is made for kids first and foremost, even if we do have people that used to play the original series, even if we do have nostalgics like myself.
Nostalgics aren’t the main audience. Like we need to make something that’s fun for kids first and foremost, and kids do enjoy playing on mobile today, and some enjoy playing on PC as well. Nostalgics definitely enjoyed playing the original game on PC, and we we want to, you know be where our audience is. So, we’re right now looking at mobile and PC, but we haven’t set it in stone yet. That’s part of the prototyping as well, and part of, you know, making an entire go-to-market strategy for the game. …and we are interested in console as well of course, but we’ll probably not start up with that. We would probably wait a bit until we make it for console and release it on something like mobile and PC first.
Rune
I think Nintendo Switch will be perfect for this type of game. I know someone who know how to port to Nintendo Switch, and also if you want to translate this to Japanese, I know someone downstairs.
Simon
All right, maybe… we might be in touch, yeah. The Nintendo Switch does feel great for this type of game, it does, I agree.
Anna
Do you also happen to know anyone that does Chinese translation? …Because that… that’s our biggest market for Mulle Meck books, we sell more in China than anywhere else.
Rune
I know someone who speaks Chinese in Umeå.
Anna
Oh, there we go!
Rune
Good friend with us, as a matter of fact, and she speaks Swedish too, and she’s lived in Sweden, I think long enough to sort of get the Swedish culture, because that’s something…
Anna
That’s important …yeah.
Rune
that I thought was interesting. Yeah, like when my wife translated my games, it was like they’re very “Japanesy”, so she sort of got a hang of it, and its very “anime”, but when she helped me translate my latest game… It’s very “westerny”, and it was a bit like… I had to come in and explain a lot of things, and she didn’t quite get it, but the first three games she translated was perfect, and like from the Japanese reviews, they were very sort of pleased with the translation. So, I think that… that… that cultural thing is important when you translate games, and I also talked to a lot of translators here in Tokyo that work on translations, and they basically rewrite the games, which you never think about when you play games. …But it’s like almost a completely different game because they have to… sort of translate it from a culture to another culture, not just a language. …because Google can do that.
Anna
Yeah, you need to take the cultural references, because… sadly, not everybody knows what “surströmming” is, for example.
Simon
…Sadly.
Rune
But… my… our friend in Umeå, she’s lived in Sweden long enough.
Anna
Yeah, she knows things like that. So yeah, it’s taking the things that work in Sweden with a Nordic audience and for anyone else, make no sense.
Rune
…And she has a child so maybe she’s even…. maybe she’s perfect for this!
Anna
Yeah, maybe, well maybe she’s already reading the books? Who knows?
Otto
Could you just elaborate a little bit shortly about Mulle Meck in China, because that’s completely new to me. I never would have guessed, so tell us more about that. First of all, what is he (Mulle Meck) called in China?
Anna
Pretty sure he’s still called Mulle Meck actually. Let me see, I’ve got all the books right next to me up here. I can’t read Chinese, so I’m not gonna be able to read it out to you, but the Chinese publishers are actually really, really great promoting Mulle Meck, and doing events around it. They send us pictures every year of these wonderful events they do where they like build loads of cars, and there’s like… they’re like cardboard cars, and there’s just all these children, and little cardboard cars that they say… here we go… here’s one…
*Sounds of books falling*
Oops, smashing things… it’s a high-up shelf. There we go, there’s…
Otto
Interesting, very cool! So, could you send us a photo? I would love to have something like that for our thumbnail for this episode.
Anna
Yeah, sure! Mulle Meck in Chinese, this is “Buffa hjälper till” …and here we go okay, so there’s the Swedish one, and then there’s the Chinese one, so you can see the side by side, sort of…
Simon
I think it’s interesting how we were talking about how the culture translates, and with Mulle Meck, the Mulle Meck books, they’ve just been straight-up translated, right? Nothing’s actually been changed within the books as far as I know. So that tells us that the audience that we do have in China with the books, they love it for Swedish culture. They want the Swedish culture to be, you know… what it’s all about. So that’s something… a learning that we want to bring with us to the games as well.
Rune
You should get… Greta “Thurnberg” (Thunberg) …I don’t really know what her name is… the family name, but the…
Otto
Thunberg, I think.
Rune
Yeah, if it’s about… renewal energy, and all that, it would be neat to have her in a… You know, in a corner of the game somewhere. That could be good PR.
Anna
Get her in as an easter egg somewhere.
Rune
Yeah, she’s sitting on the street, she refuses to get off the street because she’s striking! You have to change your engine to an electric engine, and then she gets off the street, then you can continue the game.
Anna
I’m not sure shutting down a climate protest is perhaps the message we want to send when we’re trying to promote sustainability!
Simon
I was imagining that Mulle would join in on the protest if anything.
Anna
Yes, I think that would make more sense that Mulle Meck who’s currently on his journey into sustainable engineering would perhaps…
Rune
Well, he would technically do that if he has a like a petrol engine, and then he’s trying to get through to the next scene, and then there’s a little girl sitting there who refuses to get off the street, and then he has to get an electric car, and then… “There you go!” …and they go… together they go to some protest-thingy to… for the environment. …But I don’t know if it’s that much about the environment, it just sounded a little bit like that when you just mentioned it; It’s about electric cars.
Simon
I… I do have one small anecdote about Greta Thunberg. I was in San Francisco this March for the Game Developers Conference (GDC), and on the street that my hotel was, walking up some of the hills in San Francisco, (well known hills) and turning back, I suddenly saw like this five meter… I don’t know like a three-four story tall mural of Greta Thunberg on the same street as my hotel was, on Mason Street in San Francisco.
Rune
Talk about *that* being Swedish culture, if anything, like she really…
Anna
She’s A-list, yeah…
Simon
Absolutely! I can send you a picture later, because that was… that was an amazing experience to be honest. Like I didn’t know how big she was until I saw that mural in San Francisco. That was amazing.
Otto
We’re about one hour into the interview, so I think maybe we should start wrapping it up, but before we go I think there’s a couple of things; so first, I think as you said Anna, this episode will probably be out after your expo at Friends Arena, but if you could send us the details, then we could at least share it as a teaser for this episode.
Anna
Sure, yeah.
Otto
Maybe we could get some additional crowd there perhaps.
Anna
Yes!
Otto
Also, before we go, do you wanna plug a website, or where can people find out more about this project as it comes out?
Simon
Yeah, you should go to shapinggames.com and find the link to the Mulle Meck reboot where you can sign up for a newsletter. This really supports us in what we’re doing. The more signups we have, the more that… that helps us where we’re at right now, which is looking for financing in general. So, all the numbers that can go up helps us in that. So, if you’re listening to this, sign up, send it to a friend, and tell them to sign up as well, and so forth. So shapinggames.com.
Otto
Perfect, and is there anything else we could direct our listeners to do to support your work, or help you make this game as good as it can be?
Simon
I guess you can just buzz about it. You know, talk to people, spread it on forums, on Reddit, or whatever. Just keep the discussion up, keep making Mulle Meck memes.
Anna
Oh, they’re so funny!
Simon
Yeah, we love collecting all the Mulle Meck memes that we find and drop them on our Slack. So, the more… the more we see, the happier… the happier we are basically, and you can also send in, if you have like any fan art, feel free to send it to contact@shapinggames.com as well. So, send the stuff, make stuff, talk, have fun with it.
Otto
Thank you so much for… to the both of you for joining us on this interview. It’s been really interesting to hear about something that you grew up with, and something that you know… there isn’t much information out about it, so I’m really happy that you took time to talk to us and our listeners and thank you to everyone who listened to this podcast. Anything that you would like to say before we close the episode?
Simon
I just also want to thank you for having us. It’s been a lot of fun.
Anna
Thanks for having us today!
Rune
Thanks for coming.
Otto
Yeah, thank you so much. All right, so thank you everyone for listening, and we will see you at the next episode, next week, so have a good one!
Everyone
Bye!
