GDN got the chance to speak with John Johnson, CEO and Creative Director at Smoking Gun Interactive about the project currently named X which is spanning media including comics, websites and of course, video games. The graphic novel is being penned by Douglas Rushkoff and is working to draw gamers into the universe along with the interactive online experience. 

[GDN] Please tell us some background behind Smoking Gun Interactive?

After Company of Heroes, Drew Dunlop, Angie Pytlewski and I had some questions to answer - what direction would drive us personally, and where do we now go from here. The three of us had worked together for seven years, and we all felt that we shared a vision of what gaming could be. We founded Smoking Gun Interactive to build on that vision.

Since then, we’ve been growing the company – while many of our seniors and leads were with us on the Company of Heroes team, we also have a diverse talented group that comes from outside of that world. The most important thing is that we all share the same vision, and the drive to accomplish these ambitious goals that we’ve set for ourselves.

[GDN] The creation of the eXoriare.com combined with the release of the first part of the graphic novel is a very unique concept, but many may view this as a marketing ploy to gauge feedback and interest - what’s the deal?

We didn’t approach exoriare as a comic-IP with links to puzzles, or a casual online mini-game with a massive back-story. Rather, our first goal was to build this rich, compelling universe, then provide different ways for the community to explore and interact with it, really becoming a part of this world as we continue to build it. Whatever media we are working in, our goal is to deliver something that you could never have expected. This approach has been part of our mission statement from day one – exoriare is just an early fulfillment of that promise. We find this to be a much more compelling way to learn about our IP rather than just read about it.

[GDN] Can you tell our readers how Smoking Gun Interactive met up with Douglas Rushkoff and how the collaboration on the graphic novel X began?

 With our goals for the studio, we realized very early on that we’d soon be bumping into various media that we may not have an expertise in. This is where our approach of building the universe first pays off. So, we did a huge amount of research and developed a massive story bible. This gave us the grounding, and the ability to approach Rushkoff, and ask him if he’d be interested in exploring this universe with us.

I don’t think we could have dreamed of a better collaborator than Rushkoff. Besides being an acclaimed graphic novelist, his interests overlap a wide range of subjects and themes that we’ll be exploring with “X”.