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Denim, and that type we split. We work together. It’s a big enough project that it takes two people, it appeals to both of us—

Miguel: And it usually comes to 50/50.

E.J.: Yeah, we’ll do a 50/50 on those. Then there’s like the sort of corporate slash sort of freelance kind of jobs—

Gelman: Little one-time jobs.

E.J.: Yeah, mostly taken for money. And then either I’ll take it or he’ll take it, and then whoever took the job would be compensated fully for that job.

Gelman: Do you keep timesheets?

E.J.: If they need it.

Miguel: We don’t keep them for our own records.

E.J.: I mean, we probably should, but we just don’t.

Miguel: We don’t have to answer to anybody except for ourselves. Not even to each other. Which I think is a good idea.

Gelman: Tell me about your gaming obsession.

Miguel: I think we’re just children of the times.

E.J.: Going back to why we don’t expand, it’s that’s more of the goal. We want to progress ourselves into more complex, interesting work, as opposed to like starting a company here and getting stuck doing web design for 20 years. A game developer would laugh at us if we said that this stuff is related, but I think it is.

Miguel: It’s not.

E.J.: I think it’s like a baby step towards that. I mean obviously there’s a lot to learn before you get up to that.

Miguel: I mean if we do web design, we’re building atmospheres, and we just want to take it to the next level, at least in my view. Not necessarily narratives, but we build spaces, we build atmospheres. I mean, for web designers, we barely surf, we don’t check out of the well designed sites, in terms of how they’re structured, but we’re obsessed with interaction and setting up atmospheres and setting up reactions and things like that.

E.J.: And I think that’s where gaming is definitely the next level of that. But it’s not one step later, it’s like ten. [laughs] It’s like ten steps beyond that. Also, just in terms of what it is, just putting together our technology and talents, that’s what you get out of it.

Gelman: But at the moment, most of your games you do for yourself, just experimenting with it?

E.J.: The things like Star Pong and that little puzzle game, whatever, that’s an experiment, but also there are people, these web gaming companies, gaming studios that, you know, Coca-Cola will maybe want a game. So they can make a decent amount of money for that. But I think the games that are really just experiments are also for portfolio development.

Gelman: What do you like about games? Do you love their character, or as you said, the atmosphere, rules and certain paths, or what?

Miguel: No matter where the technology goes, it seems to me that it’s all about the story. It’s about storytelling. You know, paintings told stories, now video games tell stories- they’re just telling really bad ones.

E.J.: [laughs]

Miguel: Like really, really, bad ones. So I think like these little web games are just putting our toe in the water. Just getting our feet wet, in terms of knowing the logistics of gaming rules and boundaries. But the last thing we would ever want is to be a Flash game company.

E.J.: No.

Miguel: You know, we want-

E.J.: To just move towards something bigger with it.

Miguel: It’s the hand-holds that we’ve always been doing is creating reactive-

E.J.: It’s like creating systems.

Gelman: Narratives.

E.J.: That’s the cool thing, is that it’s not a narrative. A website is almost a little more-

Miguel: It’s a non-linear narrative. There’s no beginning or end. It’s just a narrative to envelope yourself in.

E.J.: And people can get more out of it. You know with a website, people can only get out of it what you put in front of them. With games, it’s more about setting up the system and setting up the atmosphere, and they can get whatever they want.

Gelman: Well, I would argue with that. I would say maybe if you talk the about majority of existing websites, they’re two dimensional. But you can make the web experience just as interesting as any game.

Miguel: Sometimes. But the thing is that-

Gelman: With the environment, and the narrative, and certain rewards.

Miguel: But what’s the longest amount of time you’ve ever spent on one website?

Gelman: I don’t spend much time on the web.

E.J.: Exactly.

Miguel: Us being web designers, we probably check out the web even less. The fact is that there are basic rules that go with all mediums. And the web isn’t one of them. The web is almost harsh. Like you want to get your information and get out. And what we do, the little amount of time you’re on a website, we give you a little taste in your mouth. Hopefully you’ll know next time. But I think that depth you can reach on the web is minimal, because it’s a medium where we’re just trained to be there as little as possible. Video games-

E.J.: Of course, if you try to find something you need, and you’ll spend all day. [laughs]

Miguel: Right. Exactly. But we’re trying to spend less time. That’s why everyone wants faster computers so we can spend less time. But in terms of game consoles, it’s one of those mediums where you sit down, and when you get up, you have no idea how much time has passed. And it’s enveloping. And that’s kind of a logical progression to what we’re after.

Gelman: What kind of games do you play?

Miguel: We play all the mainstream video games. But you know-

Gelman: X-Box? PlayStation?

Miguel: We have them all. But we would-people will have a collection, and sometimes there is one that you wouldn’t notice but we love, like-

E.J.: The Infornographic game of the year this year was definitely Splinter Cell.

Miguel: Splinter Cell. Well, that’s hard to deny. But the one the year before was Ico. I think that game for me really blew my mind. It was a game in the purest sense. And it had a sensibility that-

Gelman: Do you have it here?

Miguel: I wish we did. I wish we did.

Gelman: So it’s a home activity.

Miguel: Yeah.

E.J.: Oh, we’ve like-that was sort of our dream when we first got this office, was like first thing we’ve got to do is get a TV and get our game stuff here, but it was like-

Gelman: You couldn’t get anything done.

E.J.: Yeah, it sort of occurred to us-like I’d be here we’d be getting a lot of stuff done, and say, "Oh, I want to take a break, and go home."

Miguel: One night we had a projector here, and projected the X-Box up onto that wall, and it was just too dangerous. We got no work done. We couldn’t do it. It’d be too much; but we talk about it during work, and talk outside of work, and I don’t know what would happen if we got a TV in here. I mean, we’re always talking about it. Ico was the first game that I would collect as a piece of art. That I would like to own-that after I won it, I wouldn’t want to sell it. It was marketed very heavily in Japan, but here there was barely anything. So we have an odd collection of games, and we collect games from different angles. And we look at them the same way we look at websites, "Oh, I like this part of this website." It serves its purpose.

Gelman: That’s that game called?

E.J.: Ico. I-C-O. It was almost like Zelda, but it had way more-it didn’t have that sort of cutesy little video game angle to it. It had more of an environment, more subtle and subdued.

Miguel: It was very, very cool. It had a very simple basis. But if you just see someone play that for a minute, just the way it’s portrayed, and-just the fact that you’re not trying to just get by a level and kill a monster, you’re taking a girl with you. But you’re holding the little girl by the hand. You have to look out for her, and she’s very weak. And there’s just like a lot of-there’s meaning to it. And there’s no points, there’s no ammo.

Gelman: And this is Sony?

E.J.: PlayStation 2.

Miguel: And, I challenged one of my video game designer friends who actually designed-he was actually one of the art directors for Tony Hawk Pro Skater, one of the most successful video games ever-I challenged him when he played it to see if he could tell where the game was made. Was it European, or American, or if it was Japanese? And this guy’s been playing video games since-he’s older than us-he’s been making video games professionally, games that you’ve probably played, and he couldn’t tell. And I thought that was the mark of a great game. He thought the game was European until the very end. Then I guess it kind of spoils it. I mean, I think that’s the mark of a great game when things are like, they refute convention. They defy convention and they are what they are. And that’s the type of things that I would like to do.

E.J.: And hopefully, the guy he’s talking about is actually starting a game studio here in New York. We’ve been talking with them, and-

Gelman: You’re going to collaborate.

E.J.: Well, I mean as much as we can, you know. We’re not vets in terms of doing that kind of design work and development work, but we do have out own expertise that we can bring, in terms of like branding and interface development also. I think-

Miguel: Reaction time, speed, and we’ve played every game there is to play.

E.J.: So we can learn from that, go in at some level, sort of as a junior, and learn from them. But also bring something new to that. ‘Cause there’s a lot of clichés in game design that-

Miguel: Ico was a good game, with the way it was set up. It was like an hour-long vignette. It was a mood, it was a place that you liked to be, and it kept you there.

E.J.: There was like no music. All you hear are the footsteps.

Miguel: Yeah, there was no music. It was like the haiku of video games.

Gelman: [laughs]

Miguel: It was really, really sweet. And it impressed this guy. And I would hope-he [points to E.J.] was the one who rented it. He was bold enough to rent it, because it was one of those games that-

E.J.: I think I bought it.

Miguel: No, you rented it first. And then you told me to look at it, and I was like, "Huh?" And then I really liked it.

Gelman: When did you move to this office?

Miguel: Last summer.

E.J.: End of summer. August.

Gelman: Did you decide that you wanted to have an office in the Lower East Side, or did-

E.J.: I think, I mean, it’s perfect for us. We were in Williamsburg for a while-

Miguel: It was very nice. Super modern, glass walls, a beautiful view of the city-it was great.

Gelman: So why did you move from Brooklyn?

Miguel: It was inconvenient for him.

E.J.: Yeah, well, ‘cause I’m in Brooklyn Heights, so I have to go to Manhattan and then over. It’s also better to have your own spot.

Gelman: Where are you from originally?

Miguel: I’m from D.C, he’s from Philadelphia. Both pretty urban centers. But no, coming down to the Lower East Side was purely a matter of convenience.

E.J.: We knew these guys that had a spot for us. I don’t know if you know Michael Felber, Steven [Klein]’s partner?

Gelman: Yes.

E.J.: He actually is the land-or he owns, well not actually owns, but he rents this spot. He rented it first, and then he sublet it to-

Miguel: OFP. A great design-

E.J.: Office for Fun and Profit.

Miguel: Yeah, a great design company. They’re super designers. They were kings at what they did. So, I guess that’s a piece of history.

Gelman: Where are they now?

Miguel: One of them works for Rock Star Games, one-

E.J.: Does he still work there?

Miguel: Yeah, I think he’s doing all the packaging and that. And one works at Deutsch, and the other guy—

E.J.: He works for some big advertising company. They asked him to open an office for them.

Miguel: So that was a case of supreme talent, but maybe not the system that we have. We have the personal mesh and connection.

E.J.: And which other company was in here? Right before us?

Miguel: That was Primate. Talented web designers. But we didn’t feel like we were playing into a community here, if that’s what you thought. Even though it did turn out-we were just about to have people over and have parties here, and we did once, but it got cold quick. So we never had the rooftop parties that we wanted, and never had the video game nights like we wanted to have. And will have this summer.

E.J.: It’ll probably be too hot. [laughs]

Gelman: Tell me about the parties that you promote.

Miguel: I’ve always been- well, both of us love hip-hop and just city music, and as soon as hip-hop started taking a downturn here in the US, I started listening to reggae, which is even rawer still-dancehall reggae. For a while, Manhattan didn’t have a dancehall reggae party, it was very inaccessible. So a DJ friend of mine just said "Let’s start our own," and we’ve been doing it for like a year and a half. Tokion has been a partner from the beginning, and Triple Five Soul-

Gelman: They’re sponsors?

Miguel: Yeah, they all sponsor it.

E.J.: He pulls all our clients into it. [laughs]

Miguel: They ask. They ask, because that’s the kind of clients that we have. They’re like our friends and people who like the same things we do. So those are our clients, but then they’re my clients too ‘cause they come to my party. It’s great. They come to our parties. We just moved it and it’s been like two years. I mean, it’s ghetto music, it’s really-we’re trying to make it accessible to Manhattan. You know we assume that-

Gelman: Do you have live musicians too?

Miguel: We’ve had artists come up and just get on the mike and say a couple things, but normally it’s like a dance party. It’s very unpretentious, very raw, you know, and to see these cool people and intellectuals just let go and go all crazy, it’s just great. I love it. That’s the part I like.

E.J.: Wait, how long have you been doing that? A year? No, over a year.

Miguel: A year and a half. And a lot of parties have come and gone since then, and I’ve been really lucky. Something about this-

Gelman: Is there a cover charge?

Miguel: No. no cover. Oh, at one point we did have to do a cover, because it got almost too popular and we were overcrowding our space, but we got a bigger space now.

Gelman: Do you have drinks there?

E.J.: It’s just a bar.

Miguel: Yeah, it’s just a bar. I mean we sometimes have drink specials on Caribbean type drinks, like Red Stripe, and rum and Coke, but that was just kind of a gimmick, you know. Most people just drink beers or whatever the fuck they want.

E.J.: I mean they’re just at bars, I mean it was at Parlay for a while, now it’s at Mission.

Miguel: In the Lower East Side.

E.J.: It’s like four blocks away?

Gelman: I need to take a flyer with me.

Miguel: Well we’re just making them, actually, and I’ll definitely give you one. I’d love to have you. I’ll put you on the list. It’s funny, ‘cause this music is, um-it’s an acquired taste. But somehow people find it interesting. We have other interests. We’re pretty broad in terms of that. Something like that we’d probably bring into games. The kind of thing that most people would rule out, just because they do.

Gelman: [to E.J.] Do you have any extracurricular activities like that?

E.J.: Yeah, I just go. [laughs]

Miguel: [laughing] His extracurricular activity is drinking at my parties. You make Flash games in your spare time.

E.J.: Not quite as fun.

Miguel: That’s not true. That’s super relative.

Gelman: Well is there anything that you haven’t been asked or haven’t said that you want to add? Is there any kind of message?

Miguel: No, we’d never be so presumptions to say we have a message to anybody.