Campus Magazin Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg 22/23

Your current game is about three women of different
generations. I read somewhere that it’s a kind of interactive
novel?
That was our early concept. The game mechanics is a
hidden-object game. The narrative is very important to
us, and that’s also one of the areas in which we set ourselves
apart from our competition. We tell the stories
of three German women in Berlin: the first one lives
in the 1940s during the Nazi period, the second in the
1970s during the flower-power hippie movement, and
Putting oneself in someone else’s shoes
is an intellectual endeavour so I really
welcome it when men take on the roles
of the women in our games.
The contemporary woman is in her late thirties, lives in
Berlin and has a good job at an advertising agency. She is
free to do whatever she wants, but she lacks a sense of
meaning to her life. She doesn’t dare to quit her job to
realise her dream of becoming a performance artist. She
is a woman in whom we, and many people of our generation,
see something of ourselves reflected. And that not
only in Germany. Above all else, I think the last woman
shows how global everything has become, how similar
the people of our generation are – even when they live
in different cities. And that feeling of «you really can do
anything». But what is the right life really? It’s not just
people in Berlin who feel like that, but probably also
people in London or New York and other cities.
But at the same time it is a very western picture. In other
countries around the world, society is even tighter than
it was in Germany in the 1940s. Did you consider showing
other cultures too?
the third is of our generation. It’s all about individual
fulfilment and to what extent we are influenced by our
environments. It’s certainly a serious theme and one we
trust there is an audience for. We go further than pure
– let’s say, slightly frivolous – entertainment, which also
has its place of course. But we believe that there is also
a market for stories that go deeper. Another way we
set ourselves apart is our art style, which is more modern
and in my opinion fancier than much of what’s available
in the App Store right now. Of course, we now need
to validate that.
The first woman from the 1940s is very much trapped
in the social context and marries the German soldier;
the woman from the hippie generation rebels against
everything. What about the woman who lives in our
time?
Yes, that’s a very interesting issue you bring up. When
we talk about our current concept, it strikes me that I
sometimes feel almost ashamed of myself that we are
telling such a German story. But at the same time, I think
it is justified in the sense that these are the personal perspectives
of Franziska and myself that are being narrated
here. We were the ones who founded the studio, after
all. And these stories about the three German women are
personally inspired by our mothers and grandmothers.
But looking forward to the future, for the next game we
are seeking to appoint a new game director, a woman
from Afghanistan or Turkey or another cultural sphere
who can share her perspective. Here at Fein the focus is
on telling real and personal life stories, and representing
real women and real problems experienced by women.
As a man, I have to say that I can see myself in your current
game, just as I could in PERFECT WOMAN. In this
day and age, these themes are relevant to all genders, not
just women.
Yes, absolutely. That was the underlying idea for PER-
FECT WOMAN. If you tried to become the perfect
woman, the game became harder and harder, and it’s always
easier if you, how can I say, had unconventional
life goals. In life, it’s not enough for us these days to have
an amazing career. You also want to have a great family,
a great relationship and to have exciting holidays all the
time, and always be up to date with the news and so on.
Everyone is on a self-optimisation trip all the time and I
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