The Making of Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden

In January of 2007, amateur game designers Eric Shumaker and Brian Raum released a demo for a game they thought only their closest friends would play. But its premise proved too ridiculous to resist. Tales of Game's Presents Chef Boyardee's Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden, Chapter 1 of the Hoopz Barkley SaGa thrusts ex-NBA player Charles Barkley into a dystopian future caused, in part, by the events of the movie Space Jam. The game's straight-faced humor and solid execution of Japanese role-playing game fundamentals drew attention from all across the Internet and beyond.

Now, with the release of a Mac-friendly version of Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden and the announcement of the game's sequel, Shumaker and Raum are ready to revisit the genesis of this outrageous RPG series. Warning: the postmortem you are about to read is canon.

The number one thing I'm sure people want to know is how you arrived at the concept for this game. Are you both sports fans? Did you play a lot of Japanese role-playing games growing up? When did you decide to make the connection with Space Jam?

Eric Shumaker: [laughs] I like basketball, but I don't actively follow any teams or anything. I don't think you could say I'm a sports fan, although I don't dislike them or anything. There was this Super Nintendo basketball game about Charles Barkley called Barkley Shut Up and Jam; I saw the name and thought it would be really funny to add "Gaiden" at the end.

It's really weird, but we didn't have to think too hard about what we wanted to do with the game. We knew immediately that it would be serious despite having a completely ridiculous premise. I guess when you put the words "Barkley Shut Up and Jam" and "Gaiden" together, chaos dunks, vidcons, neo-shekels, and Hoopz Barkley are just the natural by-products.

We all played a lot of Western and Japanese role-playing games growing up. We were part of the RPG Maker community--a group of people using a free engine to make JRPG-style games--so pretty much everyone there was familiar with the genre. I'm not sure when Space Jam became a part of the game. I think it was just another by-product of the creative flurry that Brian and I had immediately after conceiving the idea.

Brian Raum: I like sports, more so playing than following. I'm a rotten b-ball player, too. But I like it. I was really into the Harlem Globetrotters when I was younger. So yes, Eric came up with the name and contacted me about it asking if I wanted to help, but there's also an ancient Wikipedia edit five or six years ago that kind of informed this game's personality.

I'm almost certain we found it after we had started the game, but I'm not 100 percent sure. On Michael Jordan's page it said, regarding Space Jam, "But some fans disagree whether or not this is canon." That the movie Space Jam is canon to Michael Jordan's filmography? That the events of Space Jam and his joining with the Looney Tunes are canon to Jordan's life and career? Like, Space Jam and AAA baseball are not canon, but his time with the Bulls is? It was funny and strange, and the more time you spend thinking about how something can be canon to existence, the more bewildered you become.

This mystery, and our deliberation, was instrumental in leading us to Barkley 1's ultra-heightened sense of canonicity. But most of all we live in a world where Shaq Fu, Chaos in the Windy City, and Space Jam are actually real things. Sci-fi b-ball heroics are a rich genre that predates our contribution.

With a concept so outrageous, it would be easy to make the whole game super goofy. Instead, the tone of Barkley 1 is a juxtaposition of depressing, desolate future and humorous, almost sitcom-esque scenarios. How did you arrive at this tone?

Shumaker: A big part of it was that we wanted to poke fun at a lot of the games in the RPG Maker community. Back then, the RPG Maker community was pretty amateur--a lot of these games used resources (or entire stories) from other games and did it with a completely straight face. A good deal were very cheesy derivatives of much better commercial games, but they took themselves very seriously and tried to present themselves as completely legitimate.

On Michael Jordan's page it said, regarding Space Jam, "But some fans disagree whether or not this is canon." This mystery, and our deliberation, was instrumental in leading us to Barkley 1's ultra-heightened sense of canonicity."They weren't bad or anything; they were very cool and interesting. But this attitude of self-importance was something we wanted to make fun of. We took the completely serious tone of all these RPG Maker games and gave it a ridiculous premise. It was the contrast of the tone and the premise that I think made it funny. But it was never meant to be malicious; I think it was an affectionate parody. We love role-playing games, and we love the community we came from.

I think the RPG Maker community was one of the most creatively fertile game-making communities ever, and the big reason was that RPG Maker was a tool for idea guys and not programmers. It gave all those people who did not have the means to make a big game the tools to make their own Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest. They didn't have to focus on tiny mechanical details, but on stories and characters and worlds, and that's what made RPG Maker so attractive to so many.

At the same time, a lot of these RPG Maker dudes lacked a critical sense of self-awareness, and that's sort of what we were parodying with the game.

Raum: Another part of it was just the local culture of the message board we posted at and our group of friends. Before making Barkley 1, there were a thousand other dumb stories, forum topics, games, songs, pictures, alternate identities, practical jokes, and so on that myself and others were involved in. Much of my youth was spent sitting in front of a computer concocting increasingly ridiculous plots to entertain myself and my friends. Kind of a waste of time, but I liked it, and I think we benefited from hanging around in a place where people actively practiced comedy. I don't think for a second I am hilarious or anything, but the "tone" was muscle memory after years of wasteful forum posting. It was what was most fun to write and talk about.

It also fixes problems! People can stomach the melodrama and occasional boredom and inherent JRPG 9999-damage lunacy because of the jokes, and the seriousness grounds the game's conflict in something "real" so the player maintains interest and actually cares to finish the game instead of doing anything else.

In the end, it only cost Shumaker 20 dollars to develop Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden.

Charles Barkley is the game's hero, but he is also the most cynical toward the world. I remember a lot of funny moments, such as Cesspool X, where Barkley basically didn't give a flip about the drama around him. How did you arrive at his personality?

Shumaker: [laughs] Barkley is definitely a straight man, and I think that's something that's really important in absurd and surreal humor. He recognizes how ridiculous the things around him are, but he also accepts them as part of the natural order of his world. He's not saying "This is so weird. I can't believe this" but "This is stupid. I hate this," and I think there's a pretty significant difference.

I think the most important thing is that the world--and her characters--remains consistent throughout the whole game. There is never a point where the game winks at the player or acknowledges its own jokes. Because really, they're not jokes; they are completely consistent with the gameworld. Obviously it is ridiculous and funny to us that Space Jam was this pivotal world event, but to Barkley it is just part of life. I think that's what defines Tales of Game's style of humor: for most people, the characters are platforms for jokes. But for us, the characters are the jokes, and by remaining consistent, they maintain the joke.

It's like Hank Hill on King of the Hill: if he stopped being a tight-laced straight man and started telling jokes, he wouldn't be half as funny.