Nunpuncher

Amazing as it may seem, the Boots and I are actually interviewing an Australian independent games developer. We’re in a little town called Glen Innes, and it’s bitterly cold, and raining hard. Gap Toohey is lead executive team leader of a little startup dev consisting of himself and his six brothers. They call themselves Soultweaker.

“I’m the seventh son of a seventh son,” says Gap the very first time I meet him. “So watch out.”

The team’s first game is tentatively named Moral Equivalency Simulator 2010 - though Gap tells me this is strictly a working title.

“When we get around to designing the box, we’ll probably name it something with better DIGG potential, like 10,000 Baby Corpses or maybe Nunpuncher.”

Gap is quick to highlight the game is all about challenging the way people respond to PC games.

“Too many games are too soft, you know?” says Gap. “The choices you make are too clear cut. When Russian troops invade the US, and you play the US, well it’s pretty obvious that you have a moral mandate to kick Russian arse.

“When you’re some kind of ordinary guy whose family gets brutally murdered by a bunch of Panamanian mobsters, then you’re well within your moral rights to go nuts in the slums with dual-wielded automatic pistols.

“But what about greyer choices? More difficult choices? What if you’re standing in a really long supermarket queue and the old lady at the front is paying for her week’s shopping in five cent pieces and really long rambling stories about the garden outside her window at the retirement village? And you - being the protagonist in our game - just happen to have, say, an 18 inch hunting knife?

“See, we’re interested in challenging people, morally, with the choices they make, morally in a moral situation. And you know what the moral of the story is?”

“No,” I reply, struggling to uncross my eyes a bit.

Gap leans forward, intense. “Choice is only an illusion. You can’t even finish the level without stabbing the old lady in the face. The game explores what it means to have the ability to choose morally TAKEN AWAY from you. It’s high impact. It challenges you. Well, not in the sense that a hard game challenges you, because stabbing an unarmed pensioner is pretty much just a matter of pushing the left mouse button, but challenging in the sense of morally. In a moral sense. Do you want to hear another example?”

I pull heavily on my middy of New and indicate that, if not exactly “want”, I am at least prepared to hear another example.

“Okay so,” says Gap. “You’re driving your car. It’s a big four-wheel-drive actually, probably a Hummer but we’re not sure we can get the licensing. But you’re driving this car, right, and you’re in a hurry for some reason, and you come over the hill and there’s this peloton of cyclists - is that a tautology, peloton of cyclists? - there’s this peloton, and they’re sort of blocking the road a bit, and so what you do is…”

“Look,” I interrupt him. “This is all great, right, but I’m just not sure that, you know, gaming is ready for this sort of thing. Being forced to make bad moral choices is, I guess, artistically interesting, like Death Camp Tycoon or something -”

“Hey that’s not a bad idea!” cries Gap.

“No please, look, this is what I’m saying. Maybe there’s a place in art somewhere for this kind of thing, but games probably isn’t it.” I start to get a bit of a roll on. “I mean, until you developers get beyond this whole idea of shocking us into thinking you’re doing something deep… like, you all think you’re so clever and really pushing the boundaries of art or whatever, but it’s nothing film didn’t do forty years ago, and on top of that it’s so ARTLESSLY done, you know? Making 12 year old kids massacre unarmed civilians at an airport and then just putting a little ‘this scene might be offensive’ message in the menu. What possible artistic merit does that have? And then you developers all go on about how Hollywood has done all this already which I think is exactly my point. And why are you guys aiming at splatter films anyway? Everyone has always thought that hyper-violent war and horror films are trash, so why should games even waste their time trying to reframe that crap for an interactive audience? And… are you alright?”

Apparently, Gap isn’t taking this so well. Colour drains from his face, except for two hectic spots of red high on his cheeks. “I’m the seventh son of a seventh son,” he says quietly, but I can tell the hysteria is building. “You can’t talk to me like that. I’m an artist. You’re a HACK. Get the hell out of my hot tub!”

Eldritch lightning crackles from his fingertips as the Boots and I sprint, dripping, for the bus depot. Yes - in the rain and everything.

“I told you to watch out!” Gap screams. Thunder rolls. And as the Boots and I scramble onto the night bus to Armidale, the last thing we hear is the rhythmic thudding of Gap Toohey, up there on that black mountain, letting off steam and making art, punching nuns.