INTERVIEW: Running with Scissors on Going Postal (Again)

Postal 2, released in 2003, was not short of controversy. Though, despite the protest from conservative parents, it was realized by gamers that the game was ahead of its time. Despite its option for violence, it’s possible to play through the game completely peacefully, albeit difficultly. Postal 2 captures the mundane real life experiences of standing in line at a checkout, except in the game you have the option to mow everyone down with a shotgun, using a cat as a silencer. Postal 2 was ahead of its time because the protagonist, simply named The Postal Dude, inhabited a breathing world. A world where people went about their day to day business, not completely scripted like other games. Chalk that up with a nobody-is-safe sense of humor that makes South Park seem like the polite jokes parents say over Thanksgiving dinner.

After a sequel, the aptly named Postal 3, that was disowned by both developer Running With Scissors (who outsourced the project to a Russian developer) and fans alike, Postal 2: Paradise Lost was released 12 years after the original, debuting last month. This has The Postal Dude revisiting the not so aptly named town of Paradise, except in a post-apocalyptic vision that pokes more fun at tropes, stereotypes and society than previously thought possible. Postal 2: Paradise Lost isn’t just an apology to players of Postal 3, nor is it just a thank you to people who have stuck by the franchise and supported it since its release on Steam, Postal 2: Paradise Lost is an installment of pure enjoyment from a developer who still believes in staying loyal to fans and its product in an age of microtransactions and running franchises into the ground.

Running With Scissors were kind enough to join me to answer a few questions I had about Postal 2: Paradise Lost, the series and video game culture in general. I am joined by Vince Desi (CEO), Mike J (Business Development) and Jon Merchant (Direct Development)

Postal 2 & Postal 2: Paradise Lost are available for purchase on Steam, as well as other Postal products through the Running With Scissors website.

First off, Postal 2 was released in 2003, Paradise Lost being the new DLC released in 2015, largely thanks to the game’s second life on Stream. In this modern age, do you see the fan support of the internet, Steam and Netflix as a way to help art have a second life beyond its initial restrictions?

VD: Yes and that’s a beautiful thing.  People, gamers, actually exercising their opinions and having an effect.  Historically classics be it film, books, or art were revisited by parents and grandparents, teachers sharing with their students icons of the past, but here today the Net has given birth, has in effect become the conduit, the pipeline, the things past.  We are living in very interesting times, my friend.

JM: Absolutely. We made a lot of promises to our community to spend time updating and improving POSTAL 2 if we got onto Steam, and that’s exactly what we did and are still doing, so the game is not only getting a second life, it’s still evolving. Digital distribution and social media allow us to connect directly with our fans and get real time feedback in a way that we could only have dreamed of ten years ago.
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Paradise Lost features the town of Paradise again, but much different than fans would remember it from the original game. What were the challenges to using the same town, but reworking it to make it interesting and not a simple rehash?

JM: This presented us with a few design challenges – such as how we would handle level transitions and sky boxes between neighbouring weather zones. The main problem though, came from the added weather effects. While it sounds ludicrous given the age of Postal 2, we didn’t have much CPU overhead to work with as the Unreal engine 2 is not a multi-threaded and Single core speed has advanced only slightly in 11 years.  Originally we planned for the nuclear winter maps to have blizzard like conditions but even after some optimizations, it was clear the snow fall could only be light to maintain framerate. So we instead turn our attention to other details such as having NPC’s and the Dude leave footprints in the snow as they walked, and also making sure NPC’s were dressed appropriately for the weather they were in.

To further help make paradise feel new and fresh, much thought was put into the starting potions of each day and the location of the errands so that previously underutilized areas of Paradise would get more attention.  We also put quite a bit of effort into addressing one of the key complaints about POSTAL 2 by making interior areas and houses much more detailed.

 

Running With Scissors features in the game. What’s it like knowing that you can be killed, urinated upon and lots of other creative designs that the player may choose to do so, and why did you choose to put yourselves in the game?

VD: The layout of the original Postal was based on Tucson, Arizona and its surroundings.  Then in Postal 2 we added the RWS team and a replica of our office.  Postal is a crazy themed fun place for players to exercise their fantasies and inner demons.  It’s like a blast of energy for  your alter ego in a satirical social setting. Piss away, shoot away, hit me with a shovel and set me on fire, c’mon you got to luv that!  I always found it unfortunately weird when a reviewer would tell me how much they loved playing but couldn’t write it in their review because of their editor/publisher.

MJ: WE LOVE IT!  Personally I love when I get an email from a fan saying “Hi MikeJ, I just chopped your stupid head off, pissed down your neck hole, burnt your severed head and kicked your dumb body around your stupid bathroom office”.  That is true love, and I love our fans!

JM: If you’ve not pissed on Mike J since the 2014 updates, go try it out, you might find his reaction differs from the other NPC’s.

 

A lot has changed in the world since the release of Postal 2, what did you feel were the biggest cultural reflections to put into Paradise Lost and what would have you liked to include if resources weren’t an issue?

MJ: We just chose to continue to make fun of everyone and everything.  We made fun of the game industry, we made fun of ourselves, we made fun of Post Apocalyptic games and movies.

JM: Postal 2 and Paradise Lost differ quite a bit in tone and that was intentional. P2 was a game that was more grounded in reality, a satirical look at American culture as it was in 2003. The premise of Paradise Lost was far more outlandish and so is the humour, rather than it being a satire of culture it’s more poking fun at post-apocalyptic games in general. The only real cultural reflection based on the real world you’ll fine in PL are the digs we made at the state of the gaming industry right now. I expect this will be just as topical in a few years, if not more so than it is now.

Postal 2 was originally criticized due to controversy. Do you feel it’s less likely to happen now after video games have been looked at more and more – or do you feel RWS is scapegoated for this?

VD: We just got banned by GOOGLE for violence so I have no fuckin’ idea anymore.  We live in a world where sex change is promoted on TV while we’re dickless watching terrorists behead Christians on the net, how big does Kim Kardashians ass have to get before we get our priorities straight?  All I would like to see is for art in any form to be respected for what it is.  Something is terribly wrong when a small independent American developer is embraced like royalty in Russia and condemned at home. Truly a tale of two worlds that even the internet has not been able to bridge.

JM: Heh, as well Google just refused Postal 1 on their Android store despite the fact they sell all the GTA games among others, it’s a bizarre situation we didn’t see coming so yes, I’d say that makes us somewhat of a scapegoat to some still. Mostly though, we are greeted with enthusiasm from any potential partner we contact and have formed some great relationships the last couple years, so Google’s hypocritical decision to not sell POSTAL does not hurt us the way it might once have.

 

RWS has disowned Postal 3 and has a forum in which to communicate with fans – why do you see this direct communication with fans in the 21st century as being important, and why do other developers not do
it?

VD:  From our very beginning we have been pro fan and I’ve personally answered over 10,000 emails from our fans and that was last century HA!  For us its a natural part of who we are and our evolution, we identify with our fans, we are blessed by their support.  I sincerely feel and believe we have an obligation to support them.  One of the things I enjoy most is communicating directly with fans, its educational and inspiring.  I can’t even imagine being a part of RWS if it wasn’t for our fans, I have no clue as to what other devs are thinking.

MJ: What is this POSTAL 3 you speak of?

JM. Very important. We love our customers! They enable us to do the jobs we love and we will never, ever loose sight of that. It’s not like we have to force that though, Gamers are generally great people.

You often hear from the media that many gamers are a bunch of whiny over entitled hyper-consumers, but in our experience the exact opposite is true, all they ask for is for a bit of transparency and not to have their intelligence insulted. We experienced this recently with the release of Paradise lost – there were a few unfortunate launch issues for some users meaning they were not able to start the game and this is a totally legitimate reason to be outraged. We made no excuses and put our hands up, admitted we fucked up and did all we could do to communicate what we were doing to address the issues, while helping as many as we could with manual work arounds until the official patch arrived shortly after.

Not only were these gamers forgiving, they were outright grateful to the point many were singing our praises.  This was humbling, and an eye opener to how today’s gamers feel treated by those whose livelihoods they create. Saying sorry, not trying to bullshit them, and offering support seems to me like the bare minimum a studio should do in this situation, and that was all it took to satisfy these so called ‘entitled’ gamers.

Paradise Lost explores the apocalypse, in 2015 with this being a popular trend were there certain things you were worried about exploring that may have been exhausted in other media?

MJ: We don’t worry about much, we make what makes us laugh and what we would like to see on screen.  We have never really cared what other people thought….

JM – Not at all, as PL is more a tribute / spoof of the genre that does not try to actually emulate them in anyway mechanically. Well, other than the vending machines ;)

Postal 2 and the DLC focuses a lot on contempt for society and, weirdly enough, child stars, why is this?

MJ: Gotta have an outlet right?  P2 and PL give the gamers a chance to do things they would NEVER do in a public setting and vent their frustrations.  At the same time our game also allows you to do all the tasks and complete the game without venting any frustration and completely passive.  It#s all about choice…but we do love us some child stars…I guess since we don’t allow kids in our games, whats the next best thing?

 

Paradise Lost features lots of the same characters from Postal 2, but a change in them since the original release. Obviously nobody in the series is safe from satire, but did you feel it was important to re-challenge some of the stereotypes you created in 2003?

VD We don’t take it that serious. First and foremost is “will it be fun”, it’s really that simple.

 

Finally, the obligatory remake/sequel to movie and game/what’s next for RWS if you wouldn’t mind summing it up in one place to get it out the way for now and future interviews.

VD: For years and years the most common repetitive question from gamers is: “when will Postal be on console?  Now that we feel good about the Postal 2 series being fulfilled, I think its time we honor that request and introduce Postal to the console world.