Poppy Playtime was released on Steam in 2021, tasking players with exploring an abandoned factory stuffed with terrifying toy-like creatures, including the iconic, blue-haired Huggy Wuggy. It quickly became a phenomenon: according to Video Game Insights, the game has sold around 3.2 million units on Steam alone, with millions more players on console and mobile.
The story of the game has been continued over DLC, with Chapter 5 set to be released on February 18. Ahead of its launch, GamesIndustry.biz spoke with George Krstic, senior director of creative development at the game’s developer, US indie studio Mob Entertainment.
Krstic has an impressive CV when it comes to writing for TV and games, with a career spanning EA, Netflix, Nickelodeon, Hasbro, Disney, Warner Bros., and Riot Games. He spent five years as director of story at Blizzard, and most recently, was head of creative for Dungeons & Dragons at Wizards of the Coast.
Here, he explains the key to Poppy Playtime’s ongoing appeal, along with Mob Entertainment’s transmedia ambitions, including a film deal with Legendary.
You were head of creative for Dungeons & Dragons, so what made you decide to join Mob Entertainment?
I’ve always loved horror, I’ve absolutely adored horror games. I felt that it would fuse together the aspects that I love about literary horror, about film horror, and it gave you a hand in it: you were the character, you were walking through that village.
And the fact that we’re speaking to a new generation of game players and horror fans is super, super energizing for me. When I was coming up, we had our horror films and certain novelists, and now it is Poppy Playtime for a big chunk of people. It’s really resonated with this new generation.
I was going to ask about the audience. Who is playing Poppy Playtime? Who do you imagine when you’re designing?
What’s interesting is we have a base of younger players, then we have a base of slightly older players, and then we have a lot of folks who just want to watch streamers playing it. So we’re trying to build a game that can be fun for all of those demographics.
And it’s been interesting. It’s been challenging. We also have players who want more horror and less cute, and some who want more cute and less horror. I liken it to when you’re sitting in a mixing booth for a film or a show: you have this big board and you have all these sliders. So we’re just trying to tune the sliders.
Poppy Playtime is interesting, because it’s kind of kiddie-coded with fluffy animals and things, but actually it’s not for kids at all. So how do you manage that balance?
In a way, it is for kids. We have these core pillars that we hew to, and one of them is the mixture of creepy and cute, right? There should be a certain amount of comfort – stuffed animals and bright colours and smiling things – but then also every once in a while, more than once in a while, we show teeth.
We have to always find that balance of creepy and cute. Go too creepy, it’s no good: we’re going to alienate people. Go too cute, and it’s the same thing.
We also have this philosophy that we call weaponized nostalgia. There’s this nostalgia for the 1990s and the early 2000s, so we’re taking all those wonderful feels, and we’re weaponizing them and making them scary. Oh, you like that Toys R Us colour palette? Well, there’s a monster behind that.
In terms of your design, I wonder how much you are designing for streamers rather than players?
There are these aspects that we call streamable moments. They might be jump scares, or they might be chases, or they might be those high points in the game that attract attention. We always keep that in mind, but never to the detriment of the game flow or the fun of the game.
Much like a horror film, it’s all tension and release, tension and release. Some of these moments might be release, some of them might be tension. The takeaway is we want people to engage with our lore.
It’s interesting how horror is having a moment now, especially in games. Why do you think that is?
I never thought horror went away. I know a lot of people are saying horror’s having a moment, but it’s been here for a really, really long time. Horror movies always do well, horror games always do well, fiction horror does great. It’s always been around. I think it just fuses into different forms, which are then noticed by different people.
I think horror has been here with us probably since the first fire was created and we saw flickering shadows on the cave wall, but I think now we’re finding different ways to explore it. [Poppy Playtime is] still kind of the same story: like, “What is out there beyond the campfire?” And then our minds are much more terrifying than what’s out there. That’s the secret to terror. It’s far worse in here than it can ever be out there.
I guess in that sense, do you have to restrain yourself by not showing the creature?
Absolutely. We talk about Jaws a lot, we talk about Alien a lot.
There’s another aspect in some of the Eastern storytelling: you don’t get an answer to everything, and that’s OK. In some of the cosmic horror literature, you’re not held by the hand, you’re not told what happened to that village, or where that old god came from, or what the motivations are, and that’s OK.
I know sometimes in Western storytelling, especially on big franchises, we want to turn on the lights on everything. That’s expected and almost needed. And that’s something that we’d like to push back on a little bit. If you turn on the fluorescence at 100%, all the mystery is gone.
Our minds have an infinite budget and infinite schedule – we can’t compete with that, especially as an indie game company. So another one of our pillars is, “never turn on the lights 100%”. Yes, we have a story, yes, we know where we’re going, but if we tell you everything, what’s the joy in that?
Expanding on that, I’m wondering how much of the terror is in the lore itself – how much of the game lives off screen?
That’s a really good point, and that’s absolutely true. In our game, we have all these lore drops, we have VHS tapes, we have audio tapes, we have notes, etc., and a lot of that has happened in the past or off screen. And we see that as another path to convey the story and the terror in ways that don’t slow or stop the game completely.
Something that I always struggled with in the past with some of these other IPs is how they would literally stop the game, stop the action, and then you would have this long cinematic that you could not skip, and it would just lore at you. Sometimes when you’re in the flow of a game, you don’t want the decision to be taken out of your hands. I’ll come back and watch that wonderful cutscene that you spent $50 million on later, but right now I need to get to the next level.
I suppose there is that suspension of disbelief though, as you’re thinking, “How many VHS tapes or audio diaries do people drop?”
You definitely have to suspend your disbelief on a lot of aspects. But I think some of the best horror logic breaks down in a positive way. The films of Panos Cosmatos – Beyond the Black Rainbow and Mandy – those films are joyous. I love those films, but the logic is fuzzy. I think also for some Japanese horror games, the logic is fuzzy.
It’s OK to have those fuzzy edges. You don’t have to tell me Pyramid Head’s backstory. I don’t need to know where he was born. And in fact, if you tell me that, it kind of takes that illusion away.
What kind of transmedia avenues are you exploring for Poppy Playtime?
We have a deal with Legendary to work on a feature film.
Is that live action or animation?
We don’t know yet, it’s really early days. But what I can say is, having worked on adaptations in the past, Legendary have been amazing partners. They really understand the IP, they really care. And it’s kind of unique, at least in my experience, that you have partners who are shoulder to shoulder with you on an IP. And they also understand horror. We don’t have to lead them by the hand. So it’s been wonderful.
And then we also have a deal with Scholastic for some print publications. We already have a guidebook that’s out now, but we’re looking forward to publishing more things with them.
As a small indie studio, we’re embracing it as much as we can, as aggressively as we can. Our players and our fans are asking for more ways to connect to the IP, which we want to find.
It strikes me that the quality of video game movies has really improved over the years, perhaps because the people now commissioning and creating the movies are gamers themselves. Have you found that?
What I’ve found is that we now have a common lexicon. In the past, when I first started, there was a chasm of understanding between the industries. But now you find that when you speak to folks, you don’t have to go, “Oh, you guys may not know, but there’s this thing called Silent Hill.” They’re like, “Oh, I played one through four with my kid, and I produced one of the movies.” And you’re like, “Okay, great. So we don’t have to have those conversations.”
“When I first started, there was a chasm of understanding between the industries”
I found that to be a wonderful revelation. It’s such a load off when you sit down and you’re like, “Oh, we speak the same language.” And they understand that we know our audience, we know our player base, and they trust us when we say, “Hey guys, I think this is going to be expected.” They’re like, “Okay, cool.”
There’s that trust, there’s that common lexicon, instead of, “Hey, I’ve been making movies for 50 years, I know what I’m doing.” And the other side is like, “Hey, I’ve been making games for 50 years, I know what I’m doing.” And then there’s no conversation. I’ve been in those meetings. It’s not great. Luckily that hasn’t happened in the last ten years.
What can we look forward to in Chapter 5 of Poppy Playtime?
We’re very excited about this one. We are going to explore some new aspects of the game, some aspects of the lore. There are some questions that have been lingering through the previous chapters that we’re going to get into here.
I guess it’s almost like you’re working on a soap opera or a TV series.
Yes, it absolutely is. And that’s the thing that really drew me to Poppy. I come from an episodic narrative background, right? Episodic TV, comic books, etc. So this is like hand in glove for me. I absolutely adore it. I understand it.
We want to give everyone enough of a meal per chapter to be satisfied, but also they want to see what’s coming next.
How far ahead are you planning? A few chapters down the road?
We are trying to plan as far in advance as we possibly can. Obviously, we have a small team and we are an indie studio, so we don’t have the luxury of some other IPs, but we do like to see down the road a bit. And I think that is critical for any horror expression or any genre expression.
We’ve seen in the past with certain IPs where they clearly didn’t know where they were going, and sometimes they rushed it, and sometimes they didn’t have a clean answer. So we’re trying to avoid all that. We’re asking a lot of questions early, so then our devs know where they’re building.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
