“The coolest new cordless phone!”
By Jim Rossignol on May 13th, 2013.
There’s a weird tension to Gone Home. On the one hand it should be the most normal thing in the world: an American household. On the other, well, it’s unusual for games to try and tell stories about everyday lives. But that’s precisely what it does, and that’s just part of what makes it so beautifully weird.
I met Fullbright’s project lead, Steve Gaynor, and talked about that. This is how we got on.
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By Nathan Grayson on March 21st, 2013.
NINETIES CHILDREN ARE OVERTAKING THE EARTH. QUAKE IN FEAR OF THEIR LIBERAL NEW IDEAS AND NOSTALGIA FOR THINGS THAT MAKE YOU FEEL OLD.
For real, though, a new generation’s filtering into the upper reaches of entertainment, and their formative influences are quite different from the cornerstones of even just a decade before. It’s quite interesting to watch, and yet – for all the recent fascination with the oddities of Western ’90s culture – we still haven’t seen a game really embrace it. Gone Home, however, is unabashedly rooted in the decade of X-Files and alternative rock, and it’s not just for cheap giggles, either. Having played a bit of the BioShock 2: Minerva’s Den-borne narrative adventure myself last year, I got this sense that its characters and themes wouldn’t really fit in any other time period. It’s excellent, then, to see that Fullbright’s going the extra mile in realizing the era’s eccentricities. See (and hear) youth in Riot Grrrl-flavored rebellion after the break.
Home Is Where The Family Isn't, Pt 2
By Nathan Grayson on November 17th, 2012.
Yesterday, we brought you word of many important things about The Fullbright Company’s brilliant-looking Gone Home – for instance, how many guns it will have. I also laid eager hands upon it, if you’d like to know how exactly a first-person ’90s-family’s-hidden-mysteries-uncover-er works. All of which brings us the second installment of my interview with Steve Gaynor and the rest of Fullbright’s merry troupe. Today, we discuss a fairly astonishing range of topics – from what it’s like to live and work together, to twist endings, to gender issues in Gone Home, to creating female characters who are believable (not just generically “strong”), to Dracula. In the process, we venture into some SEMI-SPOILERY territory, so keep that in mind before proceeding.
Home Is Where The Family Isn't, Pt 1
By Nathan Grayson on November 16th, 2012.
I recently had the privilege of putting on my ’90s-appropriate detective hat and rifling through all sorts of (metaphorical – and some literal) dirty laundry in The Fullbright Company’s Gone Home. It felt a bit like a blend of Fallout 3′s environmental sleuthing and BioShock 2: Minerva’s Den’s brilliantly down-to-earth approach to storytelling. In other words, I resented Fullbright co-founder Steve Gaynor for eventually ending my demo session – with every fiber of my being. So of course, we did what people who resent each other always do: sat down for polite conversation. Along with the rest of the four-person Fullbright team, we discussed ’90s culture, how games can be interesting even when totally devoid of action, exploring non-traditional topics in videogame stories, whether or not notes, audiotapes, and things of the like are a storytelling crutch, and of course, how many guns Gone Home has.
Enraptured
By Nathan Grayson on November 15th, 2012.
BioShock 2: Minerva’s Den was quite a special thing. It viewed the wildly fantastical world of Rapture through a surprisingly personal, down-to-earth lens, leading to one of the more brilliantly understated conclusions I’ve ever seen in a game. It was, then, with tremendous glee that we collectively squealed when we found out that the main thinkers behind Minerva were forming their own independent studio, The Fullbright Company. But what of their first game, Gone Home, which ups the character-driven mystery drama but throws out the undersea cities and drill arms (there’s not even one!) altogether? Can the seemingly simple act of exploring a house make for a good game? I recently got the chance to take a closer look.
"You don’t have to play the piano to launch a rocket ship"
By Alec Meer on July 9th, 2012.
Last week, I ran the first half of my recent chat with Steve Gaynor, formerly of Irrational and 2K Marin, and now of indie studio The Fullbright Company – who are working on mysterious, ambitious, suburban-set non-combat first-person game Gone Home. Being as I am an investigative journalist par excellence, I decided that it would be appropriate to spend the second half of the interview forgoing questioning entirely in favour of simply shouting the names of other games at him. Games like Myst, Amnesia, Jurassic Park: Trespasser, Journey and Dear Esther. Rather than hanging up in disgust, he offered fascinating, thoughtful replies on the limits of interactivity in games and the sort of scale Gone Home is intended to operate on.
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First-person observer
By Alec Meer on July 6th, 2012.
Gone Home is to be the first game from The Fullbright Company, a new indie studio whose formerly mainstream members were previously the prime creators of the excellent BioShock 2 add-on Minerva’s Den, as well as working on assorted other 2K projects. I had a chat with Mr Fullbright himself, Steve Gaynor, about their highly intriguing but equally mysterious non-combat first-person game. Why ditch the guns? Why leave cushty industry jobs to do this? How abstract will it be? How much can the physics be abused? I also made some sweeping generalisations about Columbo.
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By Alec Meer on May 8th, 2012.
Last week brought very exciting news: I bought a new clock for my wall. Also, that the core team behind the rather good Minerva’s Den add-on for BioShock 2 had gone their own way, founding indie dev The Fullbright Company with the full and noble intention of making a non-violent first-person game as their first project. Today brings yet more exciting news: I’ve just picked up some Euros for my holiday in Greece next week. Also, that the Fullbright Company have just announced and detailed said non-violent first-person game.
It’s called Gone Home, and it’s all about “exploring a modern, residential locale, and discovering the story of what happened there by investigating a deeply interactive gameworld.” It looks and sounds at least 9 intruigings about of a possible 10, even if it yet remains largely as mysterious as a cat’s inner thought processes.
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