Sometimes Moo Yu has to surround his workstation with boxes. It’s the only way he gets any peace. From 11am to 3pm, on a pretty much daily basis, his cat, Yorda (named after the character in Ico, of course), becomes a particularly insistent interloper. It demands attention, even when its owner is mired in a tricky coding task. Yu used to work at Media Molecule on LittleBigPLanet, and then joined the Moshi Monsters team at Mind Candy. Now he has his own mini-studio, Mugathur, and he’s working from home on a new project. The cat doesn’t really care about any of this, she just wants some company. Hence the boxes.
Steve Gaynor, the co-creator of Gone Home, has two cats, Delicious and Adventurous. Together they share their house in Portland, Oregon, with other members of the Fullbright development team. The cats have become such an intrinsic part of the set up here that they were written into the game, hidden away for determined players to find. “Delicious likes to wander around screaming for no reason until she settles down and sits on a chair next to me for a while,” says Gaynor. “Adventurous tends to curl up on Karla’s desk on a bag she keeps there specifically for Adventurous to lie on. They do not care about video games.”
James Silva shares a studio with his wife Michelle and their two cats, Neko and Gato. The couple named their weekly blog updates, Good Morning Gato – they are convinced Neko is jealous of this. James describes Gato as a lunatic because it spends many hours every day transporting socks from one part of the house to another. James watches as he writes games. “It’s fun to imagine how a cat must view the world,” he says. “Perching on a desk overlooking the backyard? More like Monitoring the Realm of Rain and Terror for birds – or rather, Socks-That-Fly. Don’t abandon your post, the Neighbour Demon Cat is sure to invade any moment now! He’ll desecrate your Font of Unending Nourishment and steal away your Tall Creatures! That sounds quite game-like, but to cats, that’s life every day. Because they are insane.”
Feline allure
What is it about indie developers and cats? Every day my twitter stream contains posts from lone coders and designers, sharing the exploits of their feline cohabitants. Every day more photos and videos, more loving chastisement. Yeah sure, everyone on the internet is obsessed with cats. From ‘I Can Has Cheezburger’, to Chris Torres’ Nyan Cat illustration, to the millions of ‘cat does dumb stuff’ YouTube videos, cats are inescapable online. They creep into your Facebook feed, they skulk on Twitter, they miaow at you from Vine. They’re everywhere. And, of course, there are plenty of compelling theories as to why this is. For some psychologists it’s about evolution and survival: with their big eyes and small faces cats resemble babies, and we are genetically programmed to love our infants. Jungians also see in their independence a kind of symbolic freedom – this reflects the role of the cat in folklore where they are supernatural beings, wiser than us and separate. Because of this separation, they are both dangerous and alluring.
But what is it specifically that game designers are drawn too?
Because not only do they have cats, right now there are several indie titles in development specifically about cats. There is Mew-Genics from Team Meat, a highly eccentric cat breeding simulation, inspired by the many cats owned by co-founders Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes. “Tommy and I have both always had cats growing up and the game started as an experiment on how interesting and different each of our cats are,” he says. “But why are they so different? Did they experience some trauma growing up? Did they learn from watching others? We wanted to simulate all the weird shit cats do in game form and owning so many was definitely a huge factor in starting it.”
Rhodri Broadbent of Cardiff-based studio Dakko Dakko has based his beautifully colourful Wii U title, Scram Kitty and His Buddy on Rails, around his two cats, Hogarth and Percival. They scamper about his office as he works, or sit next to him and watch. “It’s weird how they tie me to a routine, as well,” he says. “If I’m not flinging a toy bird around for the room for them every night at 23:45, Percy will start walking across the keyboard and yelling at me, and eventually start throwing toys off the desk”
Then there is Catlateral Damage from Chris Chung, in which you play as a cat, who is also a jerk to his owner. The latter says something really telling about the relationship between coders and cats. It is not always one of mutual affection – there is often antagonism. “Suki either sits on the keyboard or rubs against the screen and won’t go away,” says Jake Birkett of Grey Alien Games. “She has also interrupted my train of thought by coming into my office to mewl for food. As you are probably aware, programmers hate interruptions as they lose their train of thought – like smashing down a Jenga puzzle – and have to spend ages ‘reloading’ their brains before they can carry on. But all this is outweighed by the benefit I get from solving problems while taking a break to stroke her. If I’m super-stressed by something, she helps me chill out.”
At Futurelab, the Brighton studio behind the brilliant shooter series Velocity, the office cat Ralph takes delight in obstructing work. When a laptop screen is lifted, he shoots over to claim it by rubbing his face on the display. “Board games at our place don’t end when the game ends, they end when Ralph decides it’s time to stop,” explains co-founder James Marsden. “He makes this clear by walking across the board – very carefully as to not disturb any pieces - and then he lies down on it, ending the game.”
When veteran indie coder Dominic Camus emailed me, his message had the subject header “My cat is an asshole”. The cat’s name is Reeve (after Reeve Tuesti in Final Fantasy VII), but Camus tends to refer to him as Sodpot. Their relationship is … adversarial. “The Sodpot likes to pretend he doesn’t care about anyone else,” explains Camus. “But he secretly likes the company, so he’ll edge closer and closer to what I’m doing. Then he’ll knock my graphics tablet over and the noise will startle him and he’ll run for it. If I ignore him for long enough he’ll stick his face in my water. He has his own water, of course, but where’s the fun in that? Some days I look at my cat and think, ‘My project may have overrun its one year deadline by two years, but at least I’m not an asshole.’”
Code of cats
Like game code, cats are never yours, never quite in your control. Cats are computer programs with fur. They are systems to be observed. “I think there’s something to be learned about what is ‘interesting’ from watching animals in general, and the cat just happens to be a captive study case,” says Ed Key, developer of procedurally generated exploration game, Proteus. “If you’re playing by waving around a toy or a bit of paper or whatever, you have to put some real effort into making it “lifelike” and interesting or the cat gets bored because it’s predictable. I also enjoy watching him sometimes assume that a toy is going to appear around a certain corner and ignoring it until it does what he was expecting. I’ve never seen him watching things in Proteus, but I feel like the principles apply to its design.”
James Woodward, co-founder of Milkcap Studios concurs. “Cats are simply fascinating animals,” he says. “You can waste hours of your day watching them play – they do the most ridiculous things. I think people who like cats have a big respect for their independent nature; if it does not like you, then it’ll not get near – you have to earn their trust.”
Like indie developers, cats can get by with minimal contact. They don’t need you; they don’t need you to go out, or cling to social scenes. “The indie developer’s life is one well suited to the introvert,” says Daniel Cook of Seattle studio SpryFox. “You’ve got long hours spent essentially alone with most of your thoughts buzzing about inside your own noggin. Cats are generally amendable to this sort of life. They sleep a lot and don’t require you constantly taking them out to poop. Yet at the same time, they do act as a social companion. I also feel that both games and cats are surrealist entities. There’s something nonsensical about game design, like those odd connections between mushrooms and jumping that provoke gasps of bewildered delight. Cats regularly provoke similar moments of delighted mystery.”
Loners together
Cats and game developers, then, have similar standpoints on life and society. They can co-exist selfishly. A lot of the developers I spoke to have rescue cats, or have just taken in wandering moggies that followed them home – there is something telling in that. Indie devs are the outsiders of game development, the waifs and strays of a multigazillion-dollar industry. The romantic loners. Lost cats are sort of kindred spirits. Edmund McMillen from Team Meat rescued his cat Guppy while working as an animal control officer, and it later appeared in The Binding of Isaac.
Futurlab’s cat Ralph is a rescue cat, as is Redirection developer Daniel Ratcliffe’s cat Alan, who has, “a cut in his ear and a shortened tale from his time spent on the streets.” Alex May, co-creator of Eufloria now working on Starboretum, told me about his cat, Paws: “She followed me and my ex-girlfriend half way back to our flat in the rain, so we took her in. She had no collar or chip, and nobody came forward to claim her when we put up signs and went to the vets. So this became her home.”
James Silva, creator of indie hits I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES 1N IT and Dishwasher: Dead Samurai, extends the cat/games creation metaphor: “I think that to some extent cats’ personalities overlap with a personality seen often indie development: they’re quiet, non-confrontational, clever, curious, moody, obsessive. A dog owner’s approach to getting a game made would be to rally team members and deliver pitches; a cat owner’s approach is to hole up at his desk and write code for 14 hours in his pajamas.”
From talking to developers, companionship is a key element too, but again, it’s about limits, it’s about cats providing the right sort of company, the sort that isn’t too intrusive if you’re hunched over a C++ listing at three in the morning. “When I’m working through the night spending eight hours tracking down a tricky bug, the company is nice,” says Mike Heald, currently working on Spheretic, a steampunk take on Sonic the Hedgehog. “There’s also something about a cat’s purr that can take the stress out of any situation, and that’s a useful skill to have around when you’re a solo developer with literally every aspect of your product depending on you.” John Ribbins, the creative director at Roll7, agrees. “It’s hard to get too stressed out when there’s a fluffy little murderer wandering around making odd noises and slowly torturing spiders to death,” he says. “I once watched my cat take five minutes to eat a daddy longlegs. It was more harrowing than anything I’ve seen on Liveleak.
“I guess ultimately, cats are pretty cheerful on their own. My cat only really wants to hang out on her terms, and most of the time she’s happy to just be sleeping or staring at something. Which, as a game developer suits me fine, because like her, I’m pretty happy sitting in a chair, on my own, making games. But when that code won’t compile or things aren’t working right I can always go and give her some fuss, or watch her kill things or have a one-sided conversation and she’s usually pretty appreciative. Also, they have teeny tiny little teeth, so even when they’re biting you, it’s still totally adorable - the same cannot be said if you get a staffie.”
Cats make games
There are important crossovers between cat ownership and creativity that go beyond simply making games about cats. Daniel Cook at SpryFox draws more subtle inspiration – but it is there. “I’m constantly designing games that model my cats and their behaviors,” he says. “I’ve got one that is like Parking Wars with line-of-sight. Humans and their giant hands are resources to be mined as you adapt to the daily schedule.”
Alex May is similarly resourceful. “In Cottage of Doom the sound of your entrails being torn apart and eaten by zombies is Ed Key’s cat Jack eating,” he explains. Damien Sturdy, meanwhile, used his fascination with the minds of his two Bengal crosses, Tilly and Paddy, to create an artificial intelligence model, but this project then traveled full circle – into a game about cats. Or rather, a sort of stealth escape game based around a mouse having to evade hungry feline hunters. “[My cats] inspired me to build a neural network, which resulted in a rather scary simulation of a fish tank with strong and weak fish,” he says. “This extended into a basic cat AI. With the design of Cat v Mouse I’m calculating sound waves and sight for each cat. They should be as believable as possible. If you make a sound you might get away with it, but you probably won’t. Likewise if you are as silent as you can be but you stroll in range of a kitty who has her eyes open, you’re probably doomed.”
Where cat ends and owner begins
All cat owners think their cats are eccentric, mad even. That’s part of the appeal. Indie game designers give madness back sometimes. There is a good symbiosis. Mare and Raigan of Metanet Software, the creators of cult platformers N and N+, called their grey tabby cats Dr Doom and Megatron. “All the great creatives and thinkers throughout history had cats,” they tell me. “Einstein, Da Vinci, Hawking … It’s well-documented that most of humanity’s great ideas actually came from cats. Cats invented the bicycle, french cuisine, and most notably, string theory. They’re also excellent at bookkeeping, which is fantastic since neither of us really enjoy that task.”
Creative thinking is playful, all creators draw inspiration and structure from the things around them, from the joy they observe. Cats reward observation. It was the Cheshire cat that cajoled and intrigued Alice. It was Jones that got Ripley through Alien, often disappearing, often watching from the shadows, testing her resolve. Here is an important part of the appeal – the thing between game makers and cats. Game developers like systems that have the capacity to beat them; they are simultaneously appalled and challenged by bugs in their code. Cats are coding challenges incarnate, they are bugs in the household; they are a contradictory mass of strange behaviours. They are games. But they are not easy games – they don’t explain the rules, and the rules always change anyway. The best games provide chaos within structural limits. Cats are chaotic but generally they are containable. And you don’t know if they need you or not – but you don’t have to worry about that. Because they are mostly okay, and you can get on with coding.
“I like cats because they are interesting and independent companions,” says Jane Ng, a 3D artist who once worked at Double Fine, but is now at San Francisco studio, Campo Santo. When I asked her about the appeal of cats to developers, she gives me the most perfect and complete answer about feline behaviour and game designers and life.
“Cats are loving but don’t give unconditional love, which I actually quite respect. It’s kind of like I don’t want to be around people who will gush about my work even if it’s shitty, so I suppose similarly I enjoy being with a cat who also chooses to be with me – a cat will run away if it doesn’t like you. They are also clean and easy to take care of and don’t take up much room. Indie game makers often can’t afford a large living space.
“Also, cats don’t complain if you just sit in front of a computer all day working or playing games. In fact they kind of like it. I also don’t have to skip a beer with pals after dinner. I can get home however late I want because I don’t need to let my cat outside to pee.”
Cats don’t complain much. They don’t care. You can stay out, or you can stay in, and they are there, and they’ll sit by you if they want to. Sometimes you’ll be stuck on something at five am and they’re lying around nearby toying with a sock or an insect or staring madly at a spot in the corner of the room, and that one moment may be all you need to crack a physics problem or solve something to do with enemy AI. And neither of you had to explain it or feel frustrated at each other for not understanding, and absolutely no one had to be taken outside for a pee.
It’s no wonder so many game developers love cats.
