Old wounds and making sense of Swery

“I don’t believe that the sheep you’re talking about was named after you.”

That isn’t a direct quote. It’s something I remember the interpreter for Hidetaka “Swery” Suehiro (Deadly Premonition, Dark Dreams Don’t Die, The Good Life, The Missing) saying to me at dinner about a month ago. So it’s possible that I have some of the details wrong, but I strongly remember that moment as one of the most tense in my career in interviewing game developers over the past 18 years.

I was there with Swery and his interpreter, Suda51 and his interpreter, and Suda’s right-hand man Kumagai-san, to plan Suda’s panels for Momocon. One of the panels was the next day, the other was the day after. I was hosting Suda’s panel, which he had decided would be sort of a bait and switch. The plan for the first 40 minutes of the talk would go over various media that have influenced the direction of Suda’s games throughout his career, starting with work on the Super Fire Pro Wrestling before to the original titles he spearheaded like Killer7, No More Heroes, Liberation Maiden, Shadows of the Damned, and Lollipop Chainsaw. Then he wanted to bring out Swery for the last 20 minutes to talk about Hotel Barcelona, the upcoming game that Swery was directing, born from a concept Suda came up with while they were hanging out a few years ago.

THE BREAD

So I would be onstage for at least 20 minutes with Swery, maybe longer if he wanted me to host his panel as well, which would feature Suda for the full hour. But he wasn’t sure he wanted me to do that. In fact, he didn’t seem sure about me in general. I didn’t know why that was, but I had to guess it was because he had a pretty intense, online conflict with my colleagues Stephanie Sterling and Laura Kate Dale a few years back, right after the release of Deadly Premonition 2. I actually interviewed Steph about their falling out for Lock-On issue 004, a book-sized magazine about video games. Had Swery read that interview, he’d have seen that I hoped that he and Steph could patch up their relationship, that I was sad to see them exchange hostilities. And much more importantly, I had hoped Swery could set the record straight on where he stands on the acceptability of deadnaming trans people, and deliberately depicting trans characters in a negative light.

Those were the core issues that led Swery to be harshly criticized by Steph and Laura, and initially, his response was to actually patch the game with new dialogue so that it would be less insensitive to the trans community. But by and large, Steph and Laura thought the patch made the issues even worse, which led to more harsh criticism, and this time, some return fire from Swery.

I had no idea if Swery knew that I knew Steph, that we had been recording podcasts together off and on for about 15 years, that I wrote the piece for Lock-On, or anything else he might be thinking when he looked across the dinner table. And he was spending a lot of time laughing with Suda and Kumagai, coming up with puns and generally treating the dinner as an opportunity to catch up with his friends. So it wasn’t exactly the best time to broach the subject of what’s probably the most intense public feud he’s ever had with his critics. I thought maybe if I brought up how a sheep in The Good Life, his game about a human living a double life as an animal, seemed to be named after me, that may be a sort of way in to a discussion with him. And I wasn’t just making that up. In the game, the player has the option to name the sheep “Rockin’ Johnny Holmes” at one point in the story. Seemed like as good an icebreaker as any.  

Turns out, it wasn’t. After making it 100% clear that sheep and I had nothing to do with each other, he went back to his puns with friends. So I went back to talking to Vinny, the cousin of the owner of the restaurant, about the over-under on offering complimentary bread to all customers (“It costs an arm and a leg, but it keeps ‘em coming back I tell ya! THEY LOVE TO EAT IT! THE BREAD!”). And he was right. The side of me that just wanted to relax and avoid risking saying something wrong was extremely tempted by that bread, to stuff my face with it in order to prevent my mouth from saying something I’d regret. But the other part of me, the side that believes that we all screw up, and that only by facing those failures can we learn to put them in the past and do better in the future, decided to take the risk and broach the issue with Swery head on.

As it turns out, Swery has more than one side to him to, and he is working hard every day to be honest with the side of him that’s angry and in pain, while putting something positive out into the world.

FRACTURED HALF-SELVES

I didn’t call out Steph and Laura by name, but I told Swery that I was concerned that many of his fans were still upset about how York intentionally deadnamed one of the other members of the cast of Deadly Premonition 2, and that it was hard for some fans to tell if he thought that kind of behavior was acceptable, or if we were more supposed to look down on York for being hateful in that way. Swery’s interpreter told me that he personally had a hand in localizing that dialogue, and that part of the intention there was to show that this was a version of York from the past, who wasn’t as knowledgeable and aware of how to respectfully engage with trans people. Swery himself seemed pained at the fact that the topic was even being brought up, and I asked him about that. He said that he was still hurt and upset after all these years, still not alright with how everything happened, but that as a Buddhist monk, he is trying to believe in the good in everyone. He wants positivity to win, despite all the conflict in division all around us, which he believes is often born from the unseen conflicts inside us.

It’s been a theme of most of Swery’s games, this idea of seeking peace amid external and internal conflict. Deadly Premonition’s York Morgan sits beside his other self, Zach Morgan, through the bulk of his first game, before being almost completely lost to Zach and his intrenched issues in the second game. York is, in many ways, is more of a cautionary tale than a role model. He’s hyper-analytical and coldly rational, when talking about murder, sandwiches, and anything else you can imagine, regardless of if the people he’s talking to are physically real or only exist in his head. It seems like a nice way to live at first, until you see how this subtle attitude of being above it all, untethered to standard human experiences, can leave you unable to actually relate with other people, let alone apologize for anything you’ve ever done wrong.

Out of all of Swery’s protagonists, the one who gets to the other side of her internal conflict with the most mastery of her struggle is probably J.J. Macfield of The Missing. This is the game that made Swery an icon of trans representation in games, telling a story of constant pain, and the struggle to be whole again, free from threats and judgements. Where York is casual about his internal divisions, seemingly disinterested in mending them, J.J. is fighting for her life to keep herself from being torn apart.

I told Swery this, or at least, a version of this, and as soon as I brought up The Missing, the space between us at that table finally stopped feeling like an impossible space to cross. He told me that with Hotel Barcelona, a game that looks like a straightforward parody of classic horror genres, he’s actually trying to continue the themes of The Missing. Justine, the game’s protagonist, is a US Marshall, tasked to hunt down serial killers. But she also has a serial killer living inside her, and she needs his power to ever have a chance at surviving her battles with other murderers.

How can we make peace with our opposites, with the parts of ourselves and with others, that we are opposed to with all of our being? How can we work as one person, and as one human race, instead of a series of fractured half-selves tripping each over ourselves and each other?

DO YOU FEEL IT, ZACH?

I asked Swery if he wanted me to host his panel as well, and if so, if I could try to broach that topic at some point during the event. He was unsure. He did not want to bring up past conflicts at all, or talk about anything that would detract from the focus on Hotel Barcelona, the game he believes to be his best work yet.

Ultimately, he decided to bring me on as host, and had my own internal conflict about that. Would Steph and Laura see me as a traitor by “siding” with Swery? Was I even right for trusting my gut that he was not in fact a bigot or a transphobe, and was instead someone who, like York, often struggled to make sense of himself and his place in this world, and like J.J., was doing his best to get himself together, despite the traps strewn all around him?

I still don’t know the answer. But I’m hoping that after it’s released, Hotel Barcelona tells us a little more about where Swery has landed with his own internal conflicts, and who, if anyone, he sees as the bad guys. If he really is trying to continue what he started with The Missing, we can guess that in the end, he’ll find new ways to reaffirm the initial statement that kicks off that story –

“This game was made with the belief that no one is wrong for being what they are.”

That includes both Swery and his critics. Both sides are just trying to express themselves and make something worthwhile in the process. Maybe this will be the game to bring them back together again.