Manufacturing Discomfort with Messhof [KS01]

From Killscreen Issue 01, 2011.

Mark Essen doesn’t like interviews. He tells me this after we’ve completed our “official” talk at an outdoor bar down the street from his Brooklyn apartment while nibbling at hot dogs. It’s not his demeanor, which is entirely pleasant, but the Bard-educated game designer known as Messhof is, well, a bit taciturn. So, naturally, to grease the wheels of our conversation, I spilled an entire glass of water all over a collection of electronic noisemakers he was building for the folks who supported his game Flywrench. Essen handled the incident with complete aplomb, but I was mortified. (The noisemakers were OK.)

Discomfort around Essen is perhaps natural—not because of who he is, but because of what he makes. His games thrive on placing the player in inhospitable environments. Randy Balma: Municipal Abortionist is backed by a sickening drone, while controlling the fluttering wedged craft in Flywrench is mercilessly difficult. The horizon in The Thrill of Combat tilts and tumbles as you pilot a helicopter to kill enemies on the ground and harvest their organs. (Messhof and Stanley Kubrick share the same comedic sensibilities.) 

From the aesthetics to the gameplay, Essen’s creations give you the sense that they’d rather be left alone. They are creatures awakened from slumber as you boot them up on your PC, and they will do anything to chase you away from their habitat. Of course, that’s central to the allure. His games leave you nauseated and flustered, frustrated by their difficulty but attracted to their presence as a mosquito to a light bulb on a balmy summer evening. 

Essen’s apartment rests in the shadow of the JMZ train that jostles just overhead. His buzzer doesn’t work and the hallways are dark, and adorned with unfinished art pieces from the neighbors across the hall. His space is small—and hot. He cobbled together his makeshift workplace underneath a loft bed. In fact, little would suggest that a game designer lived there aside from a seemingly abandoned, controller-less Xbox 360 on an end table. He and his roommates play games on a projector, but I see nary a single empty game box anywhere. The space is simple, austere, and apparently fleeting as well, since he is moving to Los Angeles later in the year. He ushers me into his den and we start our conversation.