I'm a fan of bleak, heavy media. Not in the sense that I actively crave it, but I like that it exists- for every piece of art that gives you joy and bliss I feel there also needs to be one that engages your more complicated feelings. What if your be-happy bar occasionally made you question if you could write a better future in blood?

Riris Marpaung, CEO of Game Changer Studio, developers on 1998 The Toll Keeper Story is no stranger to this kind of appetite for the bittersweet. Having put out the My Lovely trilogy, games literally all about making demonic deals to save loved ones, she's set her sights on tackling an even bigger monster: economic and civil unrest.

If you hadn't heard of 1998: The Toll Keeper story, it's got all the ingredients for a sense of dread and urgency. Economic unrest, a pregnant mother struggling to make ends meet- the vibe couldn't be more dead. I absolutely had to ask if they were worried that by setting their game against the backdrop of a real economic crisis, they might have pushed things a bit too far: 

"I hope not. That's the best answer. I hope not", she says. 

"But maybe from beginning, I need to tell the player that based on the previous game that I made, you may know now that there is no happy ending in those three games, like [My Lovely] Daughter, [My Lovely] Wife, and [My Lovely] Empress. So you might kind of got that expectation to this game as well. And I don't want to make a spoiler. So you can enjoy the game naturally while you're playing it. But yes, everything about this game, it's so sad and it's in a very difficult time".

A Game About A Troubling Time In The Past Made In A Troubling Time Now

If you've been in a coma for the past 8 years and your first act upon returning to consciousness was reading this interview, you may be surprised to know that things are kind of rubbish now. It's kind of a global experience- things are skyrocketing in price, charging money most people aren't even being paid because their job is cutting corners with things like AI. Worse still, there's a tension so thick between groups of people you could use it to insulate your house for when you can't afford to keep warm. For those of us who unfortunately were awake for the past decade, you might wonder what the point is on making a game about fictional riots when a lot of the things that cause real ones are still very much presence. 

While she says they took utmost care to respect local sensitivities with 1998 The Tollkeeper Story, they also had a duty to not present some hyper-sanitized version of it, either. She explained for some people, the riots of 1998 aren't just in the past tense- they're an ink that is dyeing the fabric of the now. 

Riris explained that like it or not, the dire situation of 1998 was a thing that happened. One of her objectives with this game was making an Indonesian game for the Indonesian people, and that recession and those riots are a part of that experience. It's a thing that happened- ingrained enough into Indonesia's culture that some of the Gamechanger Studio team's parents had to object to the game because it was an experience they lived through, too. 

"There are still a group of people doing protests in front of the president's office in Jakarta and searching for their lost family members: daughter, son, father, et cetera", she says. "They keep doing that since 1998 until today. So I think that issue is so sad for me and I don't want to hurt those victims of the riot in 1998".

She also reiterated that there was no bad blood with the employee either: 

"I told her that you can always come back to my studio when we finally will start a different project. A new project", she said. "I can understand what your parents are afraid of".

Toll Keeper's bleak setup is a reminder that amid the broad strokes of everything, it always comes down to the people affected by it.

"So many bad historical moments, even tragedies, riots, the victims are always the people", Riris explains. "And we know who the actor, who the cause of it. They who have the power. So by making this game, I want to remain the part who's supposed to be responsible for that tragedy, for that riot. Not to do it. Even if this happened back a couple of months ago. But I hope this huge tragedy that happened in 1998 will not happen again in the future".

Looking back, she stressed that even though it would be better if the riots never happened, she feels like positive have been taken since then. 

"I'm going to say from these changes, from what happened in 1998, finally we got a huge change for Indonesian people", she says. "Now, we can speak up more to the government. We can do a protest and it's written in a law. Even in a law, there's a law. It's allowed for people to do a protest, to speak up. But we had to get through that terrible tragedy in 1998"

One of the most important things I had to ask was about the game's ending. Obviously, a pregnant toll keeper isn't going to fix a country by counting people's change correctly. But even for an architect of the somber and bittersweet like Riris, it was imperative to find out if she had anything in the game's ending that could even be considered a win.

"Yes, you're not going to fix the recession in one ending", she laughs. "But you will get a different result compared to other bad endings. So all I can say is that, so, not all endings in 1998 will be bad ending, all of them. Yay. At least you can yay lah"

While the riots of 1998 might be something non-Indonesians have to read up on to fully grasp the context of 1998 The Toll Keeper Story, Riris mentioned that her ultimately, it was about giving Indonesians an Indonesian experience. The game is about a major piece of modern Indonesian history, and to their credit The Toll Keeper Story is even available on mobile- the most popular platform in Indonesia. 

The game is available no on both PC and Android devices.