Finding Love in Warframe: 1999 - An Interview With Kat Kingsley

With the release of Warframe: 1999 came the KIM Messenger, an in-game messaging system where you can talk to the brand new Syndicate, The Hex, personally. Players are also granted the option to explore deeper relationships with these characters should they choose to do so. It’s a much more intricate system than one would think as there are hundreds of different potential possibilities depending on who you talk to and what you say. For what appears to just be a silly little system, it’s quite a beast and some of the most endearing writing I’ve experienced in recent memory. It easily became one of the most notable additions to all of Warframe, and here to shed some more light on it is the current Principal Writer for Warframe: Kat Kingsley.


Kat: Hi. I'm Kat. I'm the principal writer here for Warframe. I was the system designer and the primary writer for the romance system that came out with 1999. And I was the primary writer for the new conversations that are going to come out with Techrot Encore.

Matt: That is amazing. Well, first of all, good morning, I am Matt Reyes from the Geekly Grind. For those who don't know, Kat is a USA Today bestseller and a true aficionado of dark fantasy and horror romance, writing such hits as the Maze of Shadow series. Thank you so much for taking time out of your day today to join me.

Kat: My pleasure. 

Matt: So given your accolades within this realm of dark fantasy, Warframe certainly must stick out with its very unique style and its approach to how it handles everything. How familiar were you with Warframe prior to your opportunity? 

Kat: So hysterically enough, a bunch of my moderators on my Discord for my fans are hardcore Warframe players long before I ever knew, like, this was ever a blip on my radar. And so I was, I worked at Volition Games prior to this. And I was there as a UX designer, then as one of the design managers, and then I was the chief of staff there. And writing was sort of like my side hustle. And it was a very separate universe. And then Volition Games was shut down, and I was sort of kept around to help sort of bury the body, so to speak. And then as after that was finished, a couple of weeks went by, and I was having, like, the existential crisis because at that point, you know, game dev was going through a crisis. You know, there were all the layoffs and no one was hiring. And I get this message on LinkedIn from one Rebecca Ford and it's just a random message saying, “Hi. Are you the author Katherine Ann Kingsley? If so, would you like to have a conversation about potentially coming to write for Warframe?” And I just went and sat on my carpet and, like, had a breakdown and got up and I was like, yes. I would love to have a conversation about this, I had to pull myself together. An hour later, we were on the funniest Google call you've ever had you've ever seen because we were both trying to play it cool. Because I'm like, oh, no. Interview with potential new boss. And she's like, oh, no. Talking to my favorite author. And, like, so we're both trying to play and yeah. And, about a week later, I had the job. And so, I had two weeks before I started, and I went to my Discord, and I was like, hi, friends who played Warframe. I need you all to carry me through this game real fast.

The things that I love about Warframe and dark fantasy are not as far apart as you would think. Warframe is what I would call sci-fi fantasy. It's like high science fiction. It's not like Star Trek where everything is trying to be very based in hard science. It very much plays with the fantastical. We have, you know, the Man in the Wall and the Indifference. We have this sort of like cosmic horror kind of vibe to it. And so it very much plays with dread and emotion, and it very much plays with the very same concepts that you get in dark fantasy and high fantasy and things like that. And we have dragons, we have earl worms, we have things like that. And so when I was playing through it, I saw very much the same similar tropes and the same kind of storylines that I love to tell when I write a novel or a series. So I instantly clicked with it. And the fact that, you know, watching a YouTube video that's like Warframe lore but only what matters is still, like, almost an hour long, the kind of lore that you have to try to keep straight in your head, it took me about a year to really master it. So there's a lot, but what's there is just so wonderful and intricate that being able to have the opportunity to add to it in a meaningful way and being able to bring my own contributions to it has just been such an honor and a pleasure and a joy. Yeah. Absolutely.

Matt: I saw that you were the chief of staff back at Volition. I'm a huge Saints Row fan, so that made me really happy to see. Eventually, the stars aligned for you after Volition unfortunately shut down. So what's cool is you got the opportunity to work with Digital Extremes to blend your skills as a writer, which was just a hobby for you, but now you get to combine that with your design expertise in the gaming industry.

Kat: Right. 

Matt: What was your process for using the skills that you learned previously and beyond to create meaningful relationships with these characters?

Kat: Well, Digital Extremes really is unique in the size of the company that it is. There's so much trust that they give the developers here. And the leadership is so wonderful in the way that they structure it. Rebecca was like, okay. Think about how you would like this to be done. I'll come talk to you in a week because she was busy. This was, like, right before TennoCon last year. And I went into Miro, which is our whiteboard software, and I started, you know, doodling out some system design stuff. And she came back and she went, oh, okay. You're not gonna need a system designer then. Never mind. I guess alright. Okay. Cool.

And so she just sort of let me handle all of the design because she's like, oh, you're capable of doing this? Cool. Never mind. And she just sort of, like, let me handle all of that. And so there was just a sort of a whole lot of trust in it's sort of a meritocracy in that way of, like, the company is willing to let people who can do, do. And so the team largely responsible for creating the romance system was Leonard, who is the the head of the sort of, like, the programming of it, Paulina, who is the graphic designer, and Tatum can get you their full names. And then, you know, we had, Paul who was, you know, the head of the QA department, was, like, the one who was gonna QA test all of it. And, you know, people would come in and out and, like, help us as we were as needed. But it was primarily the three of us and then QA handling the lion's share of the whole system for about a year. And Rev would come in and, like, approve things, and then she would, you know, go do what she needed to do.

And that's a whole lot of trust for this thing that was this whole little subsystem of and so it was a really wonderful and unique way of managing something like that. So it was a great deal of fun to be able to work on it with such a small team. Would you say it's the most free you've ever felt? On and on in such a large company, definitely. Working at Digital Extremes feels like a 12 person company that's 500 people. So it feels like a small company that's just huge. And that's a compliment. 

Matt: When I was there, it generally felt very cozy. It's very welcoming. They're very accepting of anybody and everybody.

Kat: It's incredibly friendly. I have struck up friendships with people here that I know will last a lifetime, and I've worked places for a decade and haven't struck up the same kinds of friendships that I have with the people here. 

Matt: Well, speaking of history, Warframe is gonna be turning 12 years old very, very soon. That being said, there's also twelve years of history worth sifting through. So what was the biggest challenge of condensing the entirety of the drifter's past into these bite sized conversations?

Kat: I think oh, I had so much fun trying to explain the lore as Drifter to the Hex. It was so much fun for me because this was me having conversations with our lead writer because I would sit there and go, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Did Hunhow have sex with a ship? And he would go, well, technically, I think the ship had sex with Hunhow. And I was like, hold up. Yep. And I would be like, I gotta- I gotta go get a- I gotta go get coffee. It's too early for this. And I would just, like, literally, like, walk away and be like, alright. Okay. I'm ready for this now. And so these are the conversations, like, when Quincy says WTF, did I just read after you explained something to him? Those are the emotions I was having while learning all of this information and trying to get it straight in my head. 

I described a lot of what I was doing writing those conversations as you're watching Shakespeare. You're watching a high performance of Hamlet or Macbeth. And I am those two old Muppets up in the, like, the second like, up in the balcony. I'm Statler and Waldorf just kind of pseudo teasing it, but also not because we're presenting it in a very straightforward way. But stripped of a lot of its grandeur that makes it so wonderful and so deep and so impactful, but I'm kind of giving players the cliffnotes version.

And it was a lot of fun to be able to do that. And I saw a lot of instances of people being like, oh, that's what oh, okay. So that's what actually happened. Although there was one instance of, I was watching a streamer the next day, and he went “Wait, I thought this is how this happened…” And I went, oh no. And I checked with somebody, and they were like, well, if you interpreted the way that this was written, I think the streamer is right. And I'm like, editing, editing, editing. So there's, like, so many lore codex entries that could be interpreted one way or the other and that's, like, the weird minutiae that can get you sometimes. And so, yeah, it's like that's that's the part that I would have to have worked here for twelve years to really have that kind of mastery. And there are a few people in this world, and I think they're all streamers, that have all of that in their head. And I, just a year in, still feel like I haven't quite got it, but I'll get there.

Matt: I mean, I've been playing for years, and I'm even going through the romance system and I forgot about some of these things that happened. I can get this specific, but we'd be here for a while. So going forward, all the time, players have crushes with all their favorite characters. It's a tale as old as time. I mean, look at Tifa Lockhart, right? However, this is one of those few times where these, like, new characters are introduced, but there's the opportunity to have a romantic relationship with them that's built up through genuine emotion. There's also the option to go a step further and act a little risque with the character of their choice. So what was it like riding that fine line between the wholesome and the suggestive?

Kat: So it was really interesting because I also wanted to make sure that if the character was flirtatious with the player, that the player could shut that down, and the character would never do it again. We all played Baldur's Gate III when Gale was bugged and, like, holy crap, Gale. We're all not that into you. Like, we all had that instance. So it was interesting because I also wanted to make sure that it felt very genuine and very real for the specific character that you were speaking to. 

So for Quincy, it would feel very different and happen in a very specific and very different way. And it is scripted back end wise as far as the branching narrative works in a very different way than it would for Letty or it would for Aoi or it would for Arthur. So every single character you have to approach with a completely blank slate. And every single character you have to think about, like, okay. So how would this function on a nuts and bolts level for this personality? Like, if you flirt with Amir, you short circuit the poor boy. And he just, like, takes off. But it's a good thing, he just panics and takes off. But you've actually gained chemistry with him. He just panics because, you know, he's not used to that kind of attention. And it isn't until he realizes that you're genuine with it that he starts reciprocating the flirting. And you can kind of get him into playing along and maybe tricking him into thinking that you're joking. Like, there's so with every character, you and and there's an interesting parallel with Quincy, where Quincy will also flirt with you in a fake way because it's safe. Amir will flirt with you in a fake way because it's safe for very different reasons. Because those two are basically brothers and they don't know it.

And so you have to again sort of take these characters and examine them individually and approach them in that way. And luckily, the system that we created from a back end as far as the way that we handled how the conversations were written, We're doing, like, basically, just logic checks to you set a variable and then you check for that flag, and then you're just doing a true false statement. They are as complicated as the person writing them wants to make them. And I'm a crazy person, so a lot of those conversations are just insane because I'm insane. And I'm just like, well, okay. Here we go. Just like, some of the Quincy conversations are just spaghetti. Like, it is just insane. It's insane what they look like on paper, to try to give them that sense of realism and to give people that sense of having earned those interactions. And I feel like when the risque moments hit, I never wanted them to feel like they happened unexpectedly or they felt unearned, basically. Like, when those moments happen, either you're selecting them on purpose or the character is saying them to you and it should feel genuine. Like, genuine and in line with those characters at that moment in time. Because nothing is weirder than when a character comes at you with, like, hey, baby. And you're like, woah. Woah. Holy crap. 

Matt: Wasn't that Quincy? Didn't didn't Quincy start off immediately?

Kat: Yeah. But it works for him. Because that's he's trying to and this is kind of spoilers for the the original Hex. He's trying to gain leverage in every conversation, so he's trying to figure out what works and where he can get leverage. So if that's a means of getting leverage, great. You can also tell Quincy, like, hey, man. This is not my speed. And he's like, alright. Cool. And, like, it doesn't cost you any points with him. So because it was also important for me, like, if you ever tell a character I'm not into you, it doesn't cost you anything. It doesn't lock you out of anything. You never lose chemistry points for that, because people should not be penalized for not being attracted to a character or not wanting to interact with a character in a romantic way. So it was always very important for me from the very first moment of designing the system that all of the characters had equal weight in interaction both romantically and platonically. So that people had a reason to talk to Quincy as a friend even if they didn't ever wanna romance him. Because, like, the majority of our audience are straight white males. And it's like, they're not gonna wanna talk to Quincy if they're just gonna wanna romance him. So I have to build the system. Otherwise, we're just gonna make owies for the rest of our company. You know what I mean? So being able to make sure that there are reasons and engaging compelling stories behind all of these characters that go above and beyond the romance system was always from the forefront part of the design.

Matt: So, with that in mind, going forward, the new Protoframes, the brand new Protoframes that that have been announced, they are confirmed to not be romanceable, including the guitar. We can only romance the original Hex members. So what ultimately led to that decision

Kat: We wanted to explore a little bit of what stories we could tell with the system that were not just in quotation marks, that weren't specifically romance. Also, the romance stories are enormous. They are incredibly time intensive. They require a lot of time with the VO, for voice over, but they also didn't wanna deliver the same thing four more times. So we wanted to mix it up and say, instead of giving you four more of the thing we gave you six of a couple months ago, we wanted to give you some new things that are strange and unique and fun and are fascinating new takes on this thing that you think you know. And so one is a Doctor and Jekyll horror story, and the other one is, you know, a little bit more of a modern, you know, just story of what it's like to grow up in the Internet age. And the other one is a little bit of a I think it was it was shown on the devstream, judging by the noise I'm getting on my Discord, is a little bit more about getting mom and dad back together. So it's a little bit more Drifter’s playing the Parent Trap. And so, so, Velamir and Minerva, who are Proto Sayrn and Proto Frost, were married and have now separated, and it's your job to either get them back together or not. And so it's a love story told in a different way. It's an adaptation of the system telling different stories. And we kind of wanna see how that goes. And we think there are still compelling stories that are just slightly different uses of the system than we've done before. So on the subject of compelling stories, so more like, not even just in this universe, but just in general.

Matt: Whenever we are faced with any sort of challenge, we often rely on the connections that we make. We rely on that support because we need it. But creating those connections between fictional characters, such as the player directly connecting with the other characters, for me the way I see it is that's something that has to happen naturally or it most likely isn't gonna happen at all. So not necessarily just in terms of Warframe, but for you as a writer, what's the key to allowing the reader to fully resonate with a character?

Kat: That's a really good question.

So to me, one of the things that I try to do when I'm approaching designing a character is I try to find the part in them that I can connect with personally first. So for example, Amir. Amir is the chaos goblin in my brain that played Diablo II religiously in 1999. I had to bash my head into the keyboard and remember all of my leet speak. It ruined me for, like, a month because I was back to saying woot in chat, and everyone was like, Kat, you were writing in a mirror again. And I was like, stop it. But, like, there's a part of my personality in every single one of the Hex. And a tiny piece cranked up to 11, and then you build the rest of the personality around that. So that allows you as a writer to sort of connect with the character, and that gives you a framework that then allows you to sort of build the rest of them. 

But when you're now then taking a character that you may not necessarily have a lot of lived like shared lived experiences with, you need to be able to find something about them that you think is that that resonates on a level that enough people that can connect with and find a way to sort of tap into that. For example, Flare, the new Temple Protoframe, is gender fluid. So writing that character was an interesting challenge because I am myself, am not gender fluid. But I grew up feeling ostracized because I was a goth kid. I was always a gamer. I was always kind of on the outside of life, and so I was always in that out group. And so there was an otherness to me that made me feel kind of, you know, not welcome. I was not in the popular group. And so I was able to sort of connect with the character because I felt that same kind of sense of otherness. And so that's the connection that I tried to play on in those conversations is that sense of otherness, if that makes sense.

Because I feel like that's the connection that people can resonate with and not necessarily the larger tropes, but the deeper connection of not necessarily always feeling like they fit in or not necessarily feeling like they always met society's standards. And not the labels that sit on top of that, those I feel like are an easy trap for people to rely on when they're writing. You have to go down a step deeper and find the core emotions that lead to those labels right to those, and you can connect with people at a much deeper and more personal level. Does that make sense? 

Matt: Makes perfect sense. Thank you so much. Okay. So we're almost done here. I promise. Well, I'm not gonna take up too much more of your time. [But, you know, you’re somebody in the industry that has seen the worst of it.] It's been difficult because you've been because Volition shut down, and at that point, you were just completely, you know, out of luck. And at that point, it's really hard to stay motivated when you know that everything you've worked up towards can be taken away in an instant, but it doesn't always have to be that way. So if you can give any piece of advice to anybody out there that's down on their luck to stay motivated and to just keep going, what would it be? 

Kat: The thing that I learned when Volition shut down is that it wasn't about the company. It was about the people I worked with. It was about the connections I made. It was about the humans that I surrounded myself with. It was about the friendships that I made. I still talk daily with a dozen of the people that I worked with there. It's been almost two years since that place shut down. And those kinds of friendships, those kinds of lifelong relationships, those are worth their weight in gold. And if you can find them, those kinds of people will help you when you need it. And so work hard. Find places where those kinds of friendships find you as well. You know what I mean? Like, you find your tribe. And that's the thing in game design that I discovered is that, like, it can be a very frightening industry because of its unpredictability, but I've never worked in an industry where I've made friends faster and in an industry where I've laughed as hard as I have. It can be a very stressful industry, but it's also I've never had as much fun working in an industry like this. And I put a lot of effort into the stuff that I do because I care not only about the product, but about the people I work with.

And when you can find that kind of place to be and those kinds of people to surround yourself in, even if the company evaporates, those kinds of people in your life will persist. So if you keep working and you keep trying, you'll get there. I never thought I would actually successfully make it into video games, and I was 38 when I finally made it. So sometimes it takes time, but you'll get there. 

Matt: And sometimes that's all you need. And now I have one last fun question for you.
Kat: Shoot. 

Matt: If you could have any of the original Hex members as your own romantic partner in Hollvania, who would you pick?
Kat: Oh, crap. My husband's in the other room. You're gonna ask me this question? 

I feel like I have to say Arthur. That was not what I was expecting. I'll go with Arthur.
Matt: Any reason in particular or just because he’s pretty?

Kat: Nah. He’s a pretty guy. He needs happiness in his life.

Matt: And you can give it to him?

Kat: Meh, I can give him stability.