Welcome to Spotlight. I’m Robin Basselin.
And I’m Luke Haley. Spotlight uses a special English method of broadcasting. It is easier
for people to understand, no matter where in the world they live.
Imagine something that you want to do with your life: a goal. Do you want to go somewhere
special? Do you want to work with particular people, or have a family?
What if you were never able to complete your goals? Would you wish to live your life again?
Many people have asked questions like these over the centuries. But there is a recent
video game that looks at them in a new way. Today’s Spotlight is on the video game "To
the Moon".
Kan Gao lives in Canada. He is a video game designer. He made To the Moon. So far he has
made five games with his independent game company, Freebird Games. But he did not always
design video games. When Kan started, he was a college student. He studied business and
computers. In his extra time he wrote and made simple games. He used a program called
RPG maker X. RPG is short for Role Playing Game. In an RPG, people play a role, or character
in a video game. The game has a story that the character moves in and creates. The imaginary
world of this story is very important for these kinds of games.
The story of To The Moon is very personal for Gao. The idea came from several tragic
events in his life. He says:
“A few years ago, my grandfather went into hospital. He needed an immediate operation
for a heart condition. He survived the operation just fine. But when I visited him it made
me understand that these things are a part of life. This happens to everyone. It made
me wonder: when it is my turn to be lying there, will I question what I have done with
my life?”
These questions led Gao to make To the Moon. It took him a year and a half to make. For
most of that time, he was at university. He would go to classes, and do his homework.
Then, he would work late into the night on his project. Kan also wrote the music for
the game. He says that doing both made work on the game easier. When he was unable to
finish part of the story, he would write music for that part. And this would help him understand
the story better. Music is a very important part of the game. It helps communicate who
the characters are. And it fills the story with emotion.
The story that Gao finally wrote is about a group of scientists in the future. These
scientists can go into a person’s memory. They can change how a person remembers their
life. But they can only do so right before the person dies. In the game, a person plays
as two of these scientists, Dr. Rosaline and Dr. Watts. These two explore a dying person’s
memory. His name is Johnny. As he is dying, Johnny wishes that he had gone to the moon.
The doctors cannot take him there. But they can replace his memory. Their job is to make
him believe that he did go to the moon.
As the game continues, the player starts to learn more and more about Johnny. The player
travels back through his memories. The player sees Johnny when he was a small child. The
player witnesses the happiest and the most tragic periods of his life. But through it
all the player wonders why a person would have their memories replaced. What was so
terrible that Johnny wanted to forget? Is his goal so important that he would give up
everything else in his life? Johnny’s story is interesting because it makes us wonder:
What is more important - the life that we live, or the one that we might have lived?
This story was very interesting, but Kan Gao was not sure that his game would be a success.
For one thing, the game did not look modern. The tool he used to create the game is not
high quality. Most people today think games created like this look old and strange.
To the Moon also does not play like a traditional game. In most games the player causes events
to happen. In To the Moon, he witnesses events. But he does very little to change them. He
guides the doctors from one part of Johnny’s memory to another. But there is no way to
lose. Because of this, some people do not even think To the Moon is a real game.
To the Moon is very different from other games. Most game companies have hundreds of people
working on a game. Each game costs millions of dollars to make. Kan Gao worked with just
three other people. His earlier games did not sell very well. But it had always been
his dream to make games. So he and the others at his company worked very hard to make the
game as good as possible. They released the game in 2011. No one expected it to be very
popular, but it was a great success! It even began to win awards. People who give expert
opinions on games gave it good reviews. They said To the Moon was different and interesting.
They praised its music and its beautiful story. Some even claimed that the game changed their
lives. David Yeager of RPGfan.com says:
“There is joy in this game. It is the kind of joy that makes a grown man like me cry
in front of his computer. There is a wonder here that only the best films and books can
provide. They make you look at life a little bit differently for a while. They make you
wonder how you ever forgot how amazing it is to be alive, to simply exist. This game
did that for me.”
To the Moon was such a success that Kan Gao is now planning another game. He wants to
continue making stories about Dr. Rosaline and Dr. Watts. And now many video game players
are waiting to play his next game. He is still young, and has many years of making games
left. But it seems that by making a game about giving people their dreams, Kan Gao has come
closer to living his own.
The writer of this program was Dan Christmann. The producer was Luke Haley. The voices you
heard were from the United Kingdom and the United States. All quotes were adapted for
this program and voiced by Spotlight. You can listen to this program again, and read
it, on the internet at www.radioenglish.net. This program is called, ‘To The Moon’.
Tell us what you think about today’s program. You can leave a comment on our website. Or
email us at radio@radioenglish.net. And find us on Facebook - just search for Spotlight
Radio. We hope you can join us again for the next Spotlight program. Goodbye.