Adrian Husby is a game designer at Krillbite Studio and the game director for the upcoming game Mosaic. He has previously worked on the experimental horror game Among the Sleep. He lives in a boat, walks on mountains and hunts his own food.
What’s wrong with Jonathan Jones?
He’s probably a great father, loving husband and productive member of his local community.
Are there video games you wouldn’t consider art? If so: Aren’t there just two categories in the world – good art and bad art?
No reason to start separating art from not-art in my mind, or I’d get dangerously close to a Jones argument.
Does the aspect of interactivity & fun make games more or less artistic?
No.
How important is weirdness for art in general and video games in particular?
97,3%.
What are some of your favourite strange/avant-garde games?
Blabla by Vincent Morisset, Plug & Play and Kids by Michael Frei and Mario von Rickenbach, The Graveyard by Tale of Tales. Also, work by Nathalie Lawhead, Rod Humble, Anna Anthropy and Jason Rohrer, to name a few.
Where are video games today, evolution-wise? What could/should the future of video games look like?
Video games are in a really good place! A lot of people seem to dislike the explosive growth in games being released in recent years, but to me that’s one of the best characteristics of any healthy art form.
“Mosaic” could also be a slang expression for a “young, highly promiscuous woman,” right?
Sure!
Subversion can be a protagonist in its own right – what are some of the subversive strategies you would like to employ in your next project?
We’re making a game within the game called BlipBlop, which is an abusive free-to-play clicker clone with microtransactions! (No joke.)
Why did you make an almost disappointingly non-weird entity like a beetle Thumper’s hero?
That’s a great question!
First off beetles are innocent little beings, easily overlooked, unseen underfoot – quite like the person sitting next to you on your daily commute. Most of us pay them no mind, other than the occasional “eeww!”. Some even bathe them in pesticides when they’re getting too close!
But little attention do we give to the fact that it’s one of the most diverse orders of the animal kingdom, boasting 350,000+ species on record (and counting). Beetles are also found almost everywhere in the world, they come in mind-boggling shapes, sizes, colors, reproduce in various different ways, have variable diets. As such they symbolise our shared wacky humanity, our commonality in all its forms.
Lastly, the Greek etymology of beetle is koleos, or “sheath”, referring to the sheathed wings sported by most beetles. So even though we typically view them as ground-locked creatures, they are of an ethereal nature, creatures of the air.
Beetles will whizz around in our consciousness forever.
Image source: © Bjørnar Frøyse