Not many game endings have captured our imaginations and caused us to email MP3s around the office but thanks to nerdy songwriter Jonathan Coulton, Portal has just done that. Some mild spoilage may occur...
How do you become a "nerdcore folk rock singer-songwriter", what qualifies as a 'nerdcore' song?
ZoomJonathan Coulton: In the broadest sense, I think it's safe to say that my songs about fractals, robots and evil geniuses probably qualify as nerdy just because of their subject matter. I've always been a math (sorry, I mean "maths") and science guy, so I'm generally thinking about robots and fractals all the time anyway, whether I'm writing about them or not.
But on a deeper level, I think there's a thread running through many of the songs that has more to do with how it feels to be a nerd - this kind of alienation, a sense of not belonging, not being accepted. And it's not just limited to actual nerds - I think we're all familiar with that feeling, no matter how popular we were in school.
How did you get involved with Portal?
Coulton: I was playing a show in Seattle, and a couple of the game designers came up to me after to introduce themselves. They asked if I'd ever be interested in writing music for Valve - I've always been a huge fan of Half-Life, so I said yes immediately.
A while later we got together to talk about what we were going to do, and it became clear quickly that the character in Portal was a perfect overlap of our sensibilities.
What's Ellen McLain, the voice of GLaDOS, like to work with?
Jonathan Coulton: She's great - what was most striking to me was how much of the character's voice was her. I had already played the game and assumed that most of what I was hearing was some kind of effect processing. But when she was reading and singing her lines, she already sounded like GLaDOS. It was downright creepy. And of course she's got a wonderful and expressive singing voice, so it was a pleasure to work with her.
What sort of brief were you given?
Jonathan Coulton: I had many discussions with Erik Wolpaw, the writer for Portal, about who GLaDOS was and where she was coming from. Of course I'd played the game, and we pretty much knew how it was going to end and how she was going to be feeling.
Erik did such a great job with this character - over the course of the game GLaDOS reveals herself so gradually, yet so completely. It was one of those situations where I felt like I knew her very well, so once I had found her voice I couldn't get it out of my head. It helps that my own personal conflict resolution techniques rely heavily on passive-aggressive behavior.
Why don't more games end in a song?
Jonathan Coulton: We know how to tell stories in movies, but we're still learning how to do it in games. And that's why this marriage of song and game succeeds: by the end of the game you've developed a relationship with a very complicated character. So when she starts singing, it feels almost natural.
