Guano factories, alien pigs, toy towns … the bizarre inspirations behind PlayStation's Hohokum

… guano factories

Haggett: Part of the process of making Hohokum has been a sense of trying to make it feel well-rounded. Even though its world is crazy, and a lot of the stuff in it is surreal and strange, it’s nice to have a game that has a logic to it, that mirrors the logic of our world. In our world, we produce stuff, and we produce that stuff in factories. It makes sense that in Hohokum there are factories and farms and all kinds of different things like that.

My parents have lived in the Middle East for quite a long time. One of my overriding memories is going to [see them] when they were living in Bahrain, which is a little island in the Persian Gulf. It’s run out of oil now, but it still has tons of natural gas.

Almost all of it is desert, and almost all of the desert is crisscrossed by miles and miles of rusty pipes — these weird little rusty tanks and funny little machines that you have no idea what they are. Everywhere you go, you’re always seeing these pipes. Sometimes off in the distance and sometimes right up alongside the road. Presumably most of them are in use. It seems like they’re still doing stuff. When you look at a guano factory, it has a similar feel to it: a mess of pipes that go all over the place.

Hogg: Pipes. That’s my only contribution to that bit, the word “pipes.” I enjoyed drawing those pipes.

Above: Bahrain

Image Credit: Bloomberg

Above: Hohokum

Image Credit: SCEA

… Selk’nam people

(Warning: A slightly NSFW image is at the bottom of this section.)

Hogg: The last one is the Selk’nam people of southern Argentina. They are a tribal people from the very bottom of South America, the very tip. They don’t exist anymore, because they were wiped out in a genocide, unfortunately. But they’re amazing. I don’t really want to talk about the bit of the game that’s partly inspired by these people, because it’s a bit that we want to be a surprise to players.

If you go and look at pictures of what these people looked like, what they dressed up like, they’re pretty awesome. Their whole way of life was amazing.

Their whole religion, their traditions, was focused around a thing called a Hain. It’s like a religious festival where the gods would appear and perform various dances and things. As far as anyone was concerned, you were looking at the gods. They weren’t people dressed up as the gods; they were the gods.

They were pretty scary as well. As far as anyone can tell, all of the women in this society and all the people below a certain age really believed that those strange-looking figures that appeared during the Hain were the gods, much in the same way that kids of a certain age really believe in Santa.

But the gods are just a selection of the men of the tribe dressed up, and all of the men in this society know that. When they reach a certain age, they are initiated into the secret. It’s a closely guarded secret, that all of these deities —

Haggett: The initiation ceremony is basically these young teenage boys being taken away by the gods, completely terrified of what’s going to happen, and then the men are like, “Hey, guys, it’s us! Don’t worry!”

Hogg: It’s just your uncle.

Haggett: “This is all nonsense! Don’t tell any of the women.”

Hogg: It’s all a bit dodgy. But the interesting thing for me is that they didn’t have any other religion. Their entire religion is a kind of phony one, where half the population doesn’t really believe it. It’s really unusual. Most people living in tribal settings believe their religion so strongly, to a point where they’ll do quite nasty things in the name of their religion. Whereas this tribe of people, the Selk’nam, as far as anyone can tell, it was all a big joke.

But they got wiped out by people who were there to build farms and things in that part of the world. It’s really sad. But yeah, the costumes are incredible. They’re some of the best, weirdest tribal costumes you’ll ever see.

It’s nice to do an interview like this and have an opportunity to talk about it in a more explicit way. Hopefully, if anyone is interested, they can find out about some of the stuff that’s knocking around our heads while making this game, and they can look for examples.

Above: Selk’nam people

Image Credit: thestorybehindthefaces.com

Above: Hohokum masks

Image Credit: SCEA