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AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND, Jan 31, 2025 – Instinctively Real Media, a global technology marketing and communications agency specialising in industry sectors of Media & Entertainment, Games, immersive experiences, high-performance technology, digital twins and avatars interviews PikPok, a leading developer and publisher of critically acclaimed cross-platform games; the company is headquartered in New Zealand and studio in Colombia.
PikPok’s Design Manager and Narrative Director Rick Stemm explains why great story is the Holy Grail to gamer experience
PikPok: Rick Stemm, Design Manager and Narrative Director
Please introduce yourself; explain what are your specialities and role at PikPok in Wellington and more about the studio.
PikPok is New Zealand’s largest and oldest game developer, and I am a Design Manager and the Narrative Director there. I actually originated both of my roles! My former colleague (now in London, originally from India – we’re quite an international place) were the first two Game Design Managers, as that department had grown enough to need them. I also worked determinedly to grow a proper narrative department, and am proud (of my team especially, and myself, and PikPok for supporting) to run New Zealand’s largest game narrative team. There’s five of us, although NZ is small, it’s still an accomplishment!
PikPok rose to prominence making quality mobile games early on, but these days we do everything – mobile, console, PC; free to play and premium experiences; original works and working with other large IPs; and now are starting to get more into XR (extended reality) as well.
[Into the Dead: Our Darkest Days trailer: https://youtu.be/yoH4pOuSWPI]
Into The Dead®: Our Darkest Days. Demo downloadable on Steam, planned release date Q2 2025
An interesting and challenging combination of these factors means I have to support designers and writers working on a huge variety of projects, with different formats, tones, voices, audiences, core gameplay. There’s always a lot to learn.
What have been your and PikPok’s experiences in the XR space and how do you envisage the future of storytelling with NPCs for a more immersive and interactive experience in XR?
Rival Stars Horse Racing franchise for SteamVR, MetaQuest and Apple VisionPro: Step into the stirrups for a first-person experience of raising a world-class stable of foals into future raceway and cross country champions
PikPok is relatively new to this space, though we have experience through our branch in PikPok Medellin, Colombia, and we released Rival Stars Horse Racing®: VR Edition for MetaQuest and Steam VR on the 20th January! While we’ve delivered really cool stuff there, the sky’s the limit – especially in narrative!
Rival Stars Horse Racing, Story Mode and Multiplayer racing modes: Immersive experiences recreates the equestrian lifestyle through gameplay mechanics and character interactions. Groom, feed, and bond interactions. Train and ride with lifelike, intuitive controls.
For example, I have a theatre background, and I actually get bored with a lot of VR storytelling, which seems to have a lot of NPCs standing around talking at you while you stand there and listen. Where’s the embodiment? Where’s the theatrical blocking and movement? Where are the player-driven connection moments with these people? You are existing in this space as immersively as ever, but character interactions often have you as such a passive observer. Obviously some games do it well, and obviously it’s not easy, but I don’t think we’re anywhere close to seeing the full realization of this medium yet, and that’s exciting. We can still innovate!
Can you talk about some of the most exciting projects you’re working on or have worked on within your career?
Gladly! First, I’ll mention Heroes Must Die. It’s a video game, theatre show, transmedia combo! The game is the first indie game I made and published myself. It’s fine, ha. I mean it’s funny and has some neat mechanics I think, but pretty low budget, honestly. The coolest part is its sequel, a theatre show I wrote, produced and staged. It’s set in the world of the game, follows the characters after the game. The audience interacts with it like a game, pushing buttons (holding A/B/X/Y paddles) to make choices, control the characters, which will branch the show. And it is staged like a video game! We have the Kuroko, the black-clad stagehands, doing puppet monsters and health bars and magic. We did a whole platform/dungeon delve scene, with this ten meter set full of ‘traps’ and ‘moving platforms’ that the characters descend like a real-time video game level. It was wild.
The second, I can’t say much about as it’s what I’m working on now. PikPok’s new XR game has some fundamentally new ideas, new technology, new experience opportunities that I think can change how people engage with XR, how we think about the medium’s potential. The tech work done so far has been phenomenal, and I’m just pitching stories to the team now, thinking about how to put the player at the center of this new opportunity, how to nudge game design to that more real life-space which VR can be so good at. The company and the team have done so much good work before I even came on, from an innovative idea from Mario Wynands, our CEO. So keep an eye out!
How do you ensure that the narrative and gameplay are seamlessly integrated in a way that enhances both player experience and storytelling? Can you give an example of a project where you successfully balanced both elements?
That’s the Holy Grail right there! Good game narratives rarely just stand on their own as good writing. They need to put the player first; they need to understand their particular audience and what appeals to them; they need to make the story support the gameplay and the gameplay advance the story; they need to be told not just with words but with decisions and actions, mechanics and environments, art and audio, and all components within the constraints and opportunities of the tech.
So, I would say to anyone approaching this, to understand your audience and the vision of your game first. Then understand and collaborate with the other roles, so the art, design and such are always integrated. And to start fast, get drafts done and shared early to excite people about the story, get them involved, and see what’s working and not as fast as possible. The story is foundational to the player’s experience. It’s not just an entertaining tale, though that can be incredibly valuable – it’s meaning and context for everything else.
Agent Intercept®: over-the-top arcade action game available on Xbox, Steam, Playstation and Nintendo Switch
We also made it work in the subtle details – every key story point can only be solved by the player and their unique mechanics. The story of each level gives you logical reason to progress through the various tracks and boss fights. The art and music and voice acting amp up the feel at every opportunity. Every element of that game at each moment works to make you feel like a ridiculously awesome superspy saving the world from the most impossible thing you’ve ever seen – then gives you something even more impossible – all with the player at the center.
In many modern games, players can influence the direction of the story. How do you balance the need for a cohesive narrative with the player’s desire for agency and choice, particularly in a branching narrative structure?
I think it goes back to having a clear vision. If you know the strength of your game is a branching narrative, then that informs other decisions. For example, you may have no history for the main character, who is customized each time, and the core arcs come from the NPCs (Non-Player Characters) and the plotlines. You might prioritize sidequests and multiple endings over one epic core path. Conversely, if you know you have a big story to tell, you might make the decisions lighter – say you do the same things but in any order, or the dialogue options you have add personality and flavor vs direction changes. And then you make the voice of the main character(s) stronger and clearer, the main plotline tighter.
While you can balance these things, you can never be everything, can never please everybody, so decide what kind of game you’re making, and make the hell out of that. In other words, decide what kind of experience you want the player to have, and craft a story that delivers that experience.
Character development and world-building are central to creating an immersive game experience. What is your approach to developing memorable characters and crafting a world that feels rich and believable, while ensuring that both evolve naturally throughout the game?
Another big question, so I’m gonna cheat and repeat myself – have a clear vision. Know your audience and the experience you want to have. Build the world around that.
If the core game mechanic is X, make sure the world logically allows for X, and characters have reason to engage in X. Define the emotions and feelings and particular type of ‘fun’ you want for the player, and ensure the world and its people make opportunities for that.
PikPok, developer of original IP franchise, Into The Dead®: Our Darkest Days. A side-scrolling shelter survival game. Set in 1980 zombie apocalypse reaches the shores of US in Walton City, dynamic urban environments changes over time, so every playthrough is a new experience. Steam Early Access Q2 2025
All the other great writing tricks still apply – give individual characters distinct voices, make sure you have memorable moments people will want to tell their friends, collaborate with other roles to let the environment art, UI and so on tell the story to. But the core is always the vision, and the vision is always about the player experience. Easier said than done, but all the more reason to keep coming back to it.
How critical is script for the enablement of realistic game characters and interactions during gameplay and how is this achieved for an engaging player experience and cinematics?
Let me break this into two parts. First, yes, absolutely, the script is so critical. You will never have a good story experience if you think of writing as just using words to put a coat of paint on at the end, versus as a foundational exercise that can inspire so many aspects of the experience. And frankly it’s cheaper. It’s always easier to have some guidance, either broadly or specifically, when say animating or capturing cinematics. It goes faster, less wasted time, and more collaborative if you have a focus point (the script) you can all discuss.
But I don’t think ‘realistic’ is the best word. Maybe, consistent? Cohesive? Holistic? Like, stylized is just as good as real, if the style is consistent. Grounded or over the top can be equally great, depending on tone. You know what I’m going to say here – it goes back to vision.
Which conferences have you attended and what were your most memorable experiences there?
Pretty much every one in New Zealand – New Zealand Game Developers’ Conference (NZGDC), Play by Play, Script to Screen, FINS narrative conference. I’ve spoken at Victoria University, Massey University, Media Design School, U of Canterbury, Otago Polytech, Game Developers of Wellington, Christchurch game devs meetup, C.O.D.E. functions. I’ve also spoken at PAX (South and Aus), Gen Con, and other international events. It’s a great way to meet and connect people, learn, and grow the community. I think tapping into the community is one of the most important things you can do as a creative, as a professional, as a human being. So while I do admittedly like the sound of my own voice and consider myself a good public speaker, engaging so much with it for me is about being a human, connecting to my fellow humans.
While we always have an incredible, ridiculously fun time at our Games Writing Challenge at PAX, the most memorable for me was C.O.D.E’s Festival of Interactive Narrative and Storytelling – the first time I was a keynote speaker, which really made me feel like I had contributed to this growing community. Thanks C.O.D.E!
Which pipeline tools and technologies do you rely on day-to-day; what are the key qualities they deliver and in what ways has AI been adopted, if at all?
As a Manager I’m pretty low tech, and moving into XR I am doing a lot of learning. Most of the writing and early design work is with Google Docs, Slides and others. It’s all about communication. We use Unity at PikPok and I’m proficient there, and of course we have a lot of role-specific software and in-house stuff. Honestly, my single favorite tool ever (I can see some of my coworkers rolling their eyes already after hearing me say this so much) is a whiteboard. You can just use to ideate so collaboratively and so quickly.
AI is already integrated in a lot of things like, say, Photoshop. I personally haven’t found it very useful for writing. As a Manager it’s important communication is authentic, so AI is NOT helpful there, and the LLMs aren’t quite yet to the point where they can deliver on the holistic stuff I was previously talking about – writing a story that fits the mechanics, art and so on.
But man things are progressing. What the likes of Meaning Machine and REPLIKANT are doing, for example, is really impressive. I can definitely see it having a place. Some writers and designers find it helpful to bounce ideas off. It can code better than I can (though that’s not saying much). And I could see a world where you have AI companions in games, which come from a foundation of solid, professionally created writing and voice acting, but that can fill in the gaps to create a more sustained, flexible, immersive experience. But always, always, pay artists and respect their work!
You immigrated to New Zealand from the United States. Tell us a bit about your career journey that led you to reside in Wellington.
While a lot of people in games are huge geeks, I really lived my geekdom, as I backpacked here back in 2004 because of Lord of the Rings. The Hobbit is one of the first books I ever read, which got me into reading, which got me into writing, which got me into games, and I just had to see where in the world could be Middle Earth. I had such a wonderful experience, not just with the incredible landscape but amazingly friendly people, that I promised myself I would one day live here.
In 2019 that happened as my partner and I were looking for a change, and considering a move. We were mostly thinking across the country, but endless thanks to Andy Satterthwaite, our Chief Design Officer for taking a chance on me and making the move to New Zealand a reality. I kind of applied on a whim, and while the company had great credentials and I had good experience, we more or less sealed the deal on mutual good vibes, and my life has never been the same since. It was a great lesson in the rewards of taking a leap.
What successes have you experienced professionally and what’s next for you?
I’ve lived a lot of professional lives. I’ve been an instructional designer, an art teacher, a consultant, an indie game designer, a playwright and fight choreographer. Worked in tech, sales, healthcare, education, serious games, a variety of arts. I’ve done some projects I’m very proud of – I was doing interactive theatre before it was cool, and even did a live action video game-style interactive stage show. I’ve made some cool games, including ones at PikPok which I’ve mentioned. Most teams I’ve worked with, I created or helped found.
But I’m most proud of the people I’ve engaged with. My former students, who are now studying at top universities around the States, creating amazing art, or moving into their first jobs. My team, who are writing and designing such a cool variety of stories and experiences. The greater New Zealand community – I came in just as the games industry was really growing here, and help it along! I’ve made jobs for writers, guest lectured at universities and inspired students, spoken at conferences and connected amazing creators to each other. I feel like I have helped grow the games, and particularly the games narrative community in this country, and that is so much bigger than me.
You’ve recently hosted the Wellington Writers Lunch; please tell us more about the group, mission and its community?
It’s such a small thing on the surface, but such a meaningful thing to me. Like, it’s just a lunch. It’s a lunch game writers go to. It means we have enough people employed and engaged professionally as game writers/narrative designers in Wellington, that we can feasibly have a lunch.
But that’s just it – we have enough writers in Wellington to have a lunch! There’s been a fundamental shift and growth such that we’re no longer a weird, niche thing (well not quite as much anyway) where one or two people are doing part-time, here and there. There is a community of us. That means enough people have followed their passion enough to make a living. Enough companies have seen the power of narrative and put money behind it. Enough growth has happened in the games industry here in NZ to allow this.
So while it’s just a bit of a social club where like-minded people can have a nice talk, it also represents a huge milestone – a milestone we all contributed to achieving!
Before we wrap up, is there anything else you’d like to share with your audience?
Reach out to me! Genuinely. I love meeting new people and making connections. I’ll respond. I’ll meet or talk. Reach me on LinkedIn or email.
Image Credits: PikPok
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