Jon Chang from BPRE: "Much of it is already reality ...”

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"Black Powder \\ Red Earth" (BPRE) is a four-part graphic novel that describes the work of PMCs in the Middle East of the future (HERE is our book review of it). Jon Chang is the creative mind behind the project. And at the same time a musician, game developer, and co-founder of Haley Strategic. SPARTANAT talked to him about the relevance of his comic and the development of games.

SPARTANAT: "Black Powder \\ Red Earth" takes place in the near future Iraq. Do you think it paints a realistic picture?

Jon Chang: The world of "Black Powder \\ Red Earth" and the people who inhabit it are the result of a decade of scientific exploration and more than five years of intense engagement with the players, places, and scenarios. It evolves in the story, guided by the historical background of the region.

BPRE was created to show as realistically as possible both the motivations of the players and their actions. So, BPRE opens a window into a possible future and almost appears more like a documentary than a traditionally told story. The game we are currently developing captures only a small piece of this world that we have built with the graphic novel.

SPARTANAT: You show us Private Military Contractors (PMCs) in action. Do you have personal experience in this business sector?

Jon Chang: PMCs have very different functions in today's foreign policy. In the case of BPRE, the company Cold Harbor is more of a defense contractor than a classic PMC. Their client is not the U.S. government, but a consortium of Gulf states that want to limit and push back Iran's influence on the post-Iraqi states of Basra, Baghdad, and Kurdistan.

As mentioned earlier, I have studied the topic for a very long time, conducted interviews, analyzed the business as it was and is today. Based on that, I projected where the development would lead. Since I wrote BPRE in 2009, many events mentioned in it have become reality. Much earlier than I myself had assumed ...

SPARTANAT: Do the characters in BPRE come from your imagination or do you know some of the people involved in the story in real life?

Jon Chang: The characters populating the world of BPRE are real people or an amalgam of several real people. Oftentimes, I use their words or paraphrase what they have told me to develop them as they appear to the reader.

Every scene in "Black Powder \\ Red Earth" retells a real event, but they have been condensed and adapted to the perspective of speculative storytelling. The mission that forms the arc of the plot is also based on a real operation carried out in 2009. However, the goals and conditions have been adjusted to fit the requirements of our story.

SPARTANAT: There was also a role-playing game based on BPRE (partially on Facebook). How did that work?

Jon Chang: The role-playing game evolved from a First Person Shooter (FPS) that we developed. In short, Echelon was working on an FPS that plays similarly to "Call of Duty Modern Warfare" but with the social/online elements of "Battlefield 3." When we approached the publishers with it, we found that none of them understood the model (it was very new at the time). Or they understood it but the risk was too great for them. Since we couldn't raise enough money to sell the license or to further finance the development of our title, we decided to turn it into the best social game that we could implement.

It was very different from other FB games, focusing more on narrative elements and attempting to provide a serious role-playing experience. But ultimately, the project did not gain enough momentum, partly because it started with the second wave of Facebook games like "Farmville," which stigmatized virtually all FB games for most potential players.

On the other hand, we made many mistakes ourselves, but that's probably the case with any project. What we couldn't foresee was that we would be unable to compete against the power of other Facebook game developers. They had teams of 50 to 100 people who could work on a game, while we were just six in our studio. And we were faced with the fact that our lead designer for the FB game fell very ill in 2010 and simply couldn't continue. He passed away in 2012. We still miss Phil, both for his enthusiasm and the creativity he brought to the table.

Work on the game that we want to develop now started in 2011. Initially as a board game and now as a rough digital prototype, developed by me and Markus Eslitzbichler, a developer with whom I have worked on various projects and small games for over ten years.

SPARTANAT: BPRE as a shooter with financing through an internet project did not work on the first attempt. Will the game be released in the near future or has the project been shelved?

Jon Chang: The future of BPRE is completely open. We have ideas for games and movies as well as a new series of graphic novels. At the moment, we are focused on the new game, with a subsequent graphic novel series as the organic next step (i.e., we are still in a very early development stage).

We hope that with BPRE we will tap into a market that likes the same things in games as we do. A reactive environment determined by the skills and decisions of the player; actions ranging from intrigue and surveillance to full-scale direct action orders.

It's a long road, but I think with the team we have now, it will be a smarter path …

JON CHANG (1973-) was the frontman of the band Discordance Axis and now GridLink. He divides his working time between Echelon Software and Haley Strategic, developing games, producing short films, writing books/graphic novels, developing training programs, dealing with nylon, studying the history of the Middle East and its foreign policy, creating brands for defense and energy companies, and whatever else people pay him for. His first book, the graphic novel "Black Powder \\ Red Earth," is described as a kind of "Syriana meets Black Hawk Down."

Black Powder \\ Red Earth on INTERNET

Black Powder \\ Red Earth on FACEBOOK

HERE is the SPARTANAT book review of "Black Powder \\ Red Earth"