Interview with Sebastien Hamon

By Jen

Sebastien Hamon is with Xilam, developers of Stupid Invaders.

I have seen in various places around the Internet, maybe even your own web site (the details escape me for the moment), that Stupid Invaders is based on a TV show, Space Goofs. Is that true? Hardly anyone has ever heard of Space Goofs, and I have received several emails telling me what show Stupid Invaders was really based on. Damned if I can think of any right now, but they weren't Space Goofs.

Well. Stupid Invaders is really based on Space Goofs (Home to Rent in the UK). The show used to be on air a couple of years ago in the states. Maybe it disappeared too quickly. Maybe the game is going to make it popular again, that would be great, it is a good show ... Which is the reason why we decided to push it into the videogames world.

You are a sick puppy. Did your mother drop you on your head when you were a baby? She might not have told you about it—do you have any odd scars or mysterious lumps on your head? Maybe she left you out in the sun too long one day. Care to speculate?

Oh no. Nothing quite like it. My mother is an angel, I've been incredibly well educated as a kid, as my brothers and sisters were. I mean, educated the French way of course, to help us develop our intellectual and physical possibilities; to preserve us the best future possible. Ooooh of course, French education may seem a little bit hard sometimes, I mean to American standards, but nothing special here. We get trained to live with as little as possible, who knows what could happen. As a kid my mother was feeding me with a bowl of little rocks in the morning and a glass of sand before going to bed, typical French recipes you know. We were getting up quite early, my brothers and sisters and I, right from the age of 4, at 5 o'clock in the morning just in time to get the handcart and go to work to the next town two hours from our small village. Then I used to work in the coal mine for 15 hours straight, with a small break of 15 minutes where our boss—a very old and strong guy—used to kick us in the stomach while declaiming Baudelaire poetry for our own sake. No handcart to come back home after work, so we had to walk back without any shoes as our boss was keeping them to sell them and make money (he promised to give us the money back. Never did. Probably forgot, never mind). We were late, usually, so our mother was kicking us in the stomach to teach us good manners, which is great. I mean, quite great. And then she was kicking us in the stomach again when discovering we didn't any more shoes. At night, while we tried to sleep in the same bed all 10 brothers and sisters (it was very hard to get some sleep as we didn't have any roof and the rain didn't stop from 1972 to 1985), our father was coming to kiss us goodnight when coming back from pubs where he had to work for long hours (our father was a professional drinker, as most French people are). Well, not really kissing us goodnight, but at least punching us goodnight in the face. I had a great childhood.

Do you play adventure games? What are your favorites? Have you ever played Down in the Dumps or U.F.O.s? Both of them have similarities to Stupid Invaders.

I didn't play adventure games for a long time now. My favourites are most certainly Sam and Max and Day of the Tentacle, both great and funny. I used to love Sherlock Holmes too, on the ZX Spectrum and Masquerade on the Apple II. Do you remember those games? Hardly any graphics at all, just text. English text, which means I didn't understand a single word of what was going on. I should play them again with emulators, maybe they suck ... Anyway. Down in the Dumps? Oh, yeah, I know this one. But if Stupid Invaders has similarities, it's just plain random: the guys who designed Space Goofs, the series which the game is based on, never heard of this game (I think they never heard of any game at all by the way), and Thomas Szabo and Nicolas Gallet, who wrote the first draft of the Stupid Invaders story, never played it either. More odd things, it happened that two of our animators who jumped in the development of the game used to work as animators for Down in the Dumps (which was another French title by the way). It's a very small world out there ... I don't know U.F.O.s, I mean the UFO game I know is no adventure game, it's a strategy one.

If you could marry any celebrity, would it be Pamela Lee Anderson? Why or why not?

Nope. Definitely not. Too thin, too blonde, too full of weird chemicals in the chest.

Stupid Invaders's release date is looming large. Any future plans? Are you going to start work on another game?

Yes, we do have plans. Very serious ones. In fact, we are starting the predevelopment of Stupid Invaders 2 in December, to evacuate the frustration we had on the first game and try to create an even more stupid game. Which is very important, I mean stupidity ... We are also planning on working on a stupid platform game, which is another story.

Bolok seems awfully familiar. Did you base him on any person from real life? He's kind of cute, in an ugly sort of way.

He is cute, yes. And yes, he is based on someone familiar. The design of this character is based on Jack Palance, the famous actor.

Who's your favorite alien? I'm partial to the red one. The purple one is stuck up.

My personal favourite is Candy, the green messed up one, the one with sexual identities problems (I don't have any problem of this sort, do I?). The team members have different favourite ones. Frederic the lead programmer loves Bud big time, the orange one. Thomas hates Stereo, the red one; he tried to kill right at the beginning of the story, arguing the fact his two heads were useless. We had to fight to keep him alive.

Have you ever been treated for mental illness? Inpatient or outpatient?

I am treated right now, as I speak. My personal psychiatrist is sitting next to me, pumping weird chemicals in my arm every 10 minutes to help me concentrate.

How long did it take to develop Stupid Invaders?

It's been a little bit more than two years in the making. Very tiring and stressful. We learned the hard way, as Stupid Invaders is our first game. What kept us from stopping the development to go back fishing is definitely the fact we have so much fun every day.

Have you ever been arrested?

Just once. But I am innocent. That's not me! Leave me alone! It's an old story!

What's your favorite kind of beer? If you don't drink beer, what's your favorite kind of soda?

I like Bass. I like Guinness too. I like dark beers, usually. British dark beers. I hate Budweiser, tastes like water. Water is the worst enemy of a French man.

Why did you decide to release a Dreamcast version of Stupid Invaders? Do you perceive consoles as the future of adventure gaming?

There was absolutely no marketing reason behind this decision. When we started the game, the Dreamcast was the next gaming platform, everybody predicted its fast disappearance, but we tried to believe in the console anyway. We wanted to experience the console development process; producing a videogame is incredibly expensive nowadays. If you want to create a real good game, you've got to find as much possibilities to get you money back (to be able to create another better one after). Multiple platform is a way to be more lucky. Stupid Invaders is going to be available on the Macintosh too, right now it is nearly finished, our programmer is working on the installer. I honestly don't know if this kind of classical adventure game is going to be welcomed on console or not. Time will tell.

Is there anything in particular you would like to tell our readers to entice them to buy Stupid Invaders?

Does "the most stupid game ever" make any sense to you?

Are you married? You're cute.

I am. I mean, married. Not sure I'm really cute, you may have seen me from very far.

You're French. Do French people really drink Perrier?

Yes we do. But we have to, there are laws regarding the drinking of Perrier. People from the government do control our Perrier drinking. They can test your stomach whenever they want to check if you drank your daily litre of Perrier. Did I mention they've got the right to kick you in the stomach if you didn't?

Thank you for taking the time to answer my silly questions. As for me, Stupid Invaders is my most-anticipated game of the year, and I appreciate all of your great work on it.

What could I say? This is just great ... Hope you will still love it after playing it.