Hidden in Plain Sight

Around the world, Shakira is known as many things. Primarily, of course, as a popstar who occasionally does an incredibly bad impression of a wolf but some may know her as partner to Gerard “we stick him up front and hoof it to him when tiki-taka has failed” Pique. Regardless, in her native Colombia the name “Shakira” is associated with being a tastemaker in videogames. At BlueKeycard, we are lucky enough to speak to her in this regard. This interview definitely happened and isn’t at all wholly made up, it definitely happened. Definitely.

Hi, great for you to join us.

It’s an honour to be here. In Colombia, BlueKeycard is something of a national religion. When they find out I’ve been on the site they’ll finally consider me to be a star.

So, for Shakira, what came first videogames or music?

It was always both. I grew up with a Master System, I loved Alex Kidd.

When did you first combine your two passions?

Oh, I’m sure for plenty of people the first time they came into contact with me was my hit Whenever, Wherever. Little known trivia, the music video has 3D elements that were created and outputted from a Sega Saturn. Sega and slightly wonky 3D is my heritage.

In the video, you jump off those slightly-wonky mountains. Does that represent the fate of the Saturn commercially?

It does. I love that you picked up on that!

I can tell the difference between breasts and mountains too.

Ha! People never let me forget that line.

Seriously, “Lucky that my breasts are small and humble, so that you don’t confuse them for mountains” is one of the top lines in any pop hit.

Thanks!

Your song, Waka Waka (This Time For Africa) was, I assume, a homage to Pac-Man?

Si. I’d been spending lots of time with the Pac-Man Championship Edition

It wasn’t a very good song, was it?

In retrospect I’m not sure that “waka waka ay ay” really summed up anything other than Pac-Man, perhaps Fozzie Bear, but I felt if I did a bad job they might eventually question why a Colombian was singing the song for Africa… It didn’t work.

You’re friends with Shigeru Miyamota, I believe?

We used to be. Twilight Princess, ah-woo-woo? Of course, many people would assume that my popular hit “She Wolf” was influenced by seeing Link turn into a wolf, but actually I had the core of my popular hit “She Wolf” long before the single came out, it was ideally meant to be on my previous album but I couldn’t quite make it work. At one point I mentioned it to Miyamoto to see if he had any suggestions, but in the end he just stole the idea and made Twilight Princess! He sent me a copy of the game on the GameCube and I loved it, I was really touched that he thought to pass it on.

Why did you stop speaking to him then?

We stopped speaking when I first played the Wii version with the stupid waggle controls.

A little trivia, the original version was “She-Fox” to hark back to my time growing up with the wonderful Psycho Fox, which along with the other games I used to keep in my closet, hence the lyrics.

You really came to prominence as a curator with the Xbox Live Indie Games, the ones that Microsoft hid away for reasons of plausible deniability…

Yes, so many innovative ideas. There were a lot of great games. The one we’re going to talk about today, Hidden in Plain Sight, was a huge part of my life. It’s a lo-fi, single screen, party game by a solo developer, Adam Spragg. I really have played it for hours.

OK, I’m going to read out a few lines from one of your songs and you can say what comes to mind about Hidden in Plain Sight.

Great!

“Mi Casa, Su Casa”

Haha, Wyclef. He would come over all the time, at the time he had a fairly crap internet connection so he was all about the local multiplayer. He’d discover a new game and send me a fax about it, detailing the game and if it was something really good he’d just say “Mi Casa, Su Casa?” Of course Hidden in Plain Sight was one of those, Mashed too. Wyclef Jean loved Mashed, a real favourite of his.

“Oh boy I can see your body moving, half animal, half-man”

Oh, that’s definitely the running race mode. Oh, I’ve spent so long on that, probably my second favourite of the modes in Hidden in Plain Sight. You each control one unmarked character in a race to the right-hand side of the screen, by either walking or running whilst a variety of computer-controlled characters do the same. You can win by just getting to the other side first, but if you work out who the other player is controlling you get one shot at taking them out. Miss and they’ll likely sprint for the end.

Written out like that, perhaps it doesn’t sound that great but it is so good!

“I don’t really know what I’m doing but you seem to have a plan”

Ha, the dedicated sniper mode! A darkened screen, one player controls a gun with a torch on it whilst the other player tries to avoid being caught in the spotlight.

I’m famous for achieving success, but even I’m not afraid to admit I make a useless sniper in this mode. Wyclef puts it on just to annoy me, it works! He always hid from me, he definitely had a plan!

“The tension, this is perfection”

“Ha, wow. The ninja party. Oh, so much time has been spent on that. I swear when I put a 360 in our recording studio so the other people on the record could try it we got so close to getting everyone fired by the label for doing no work, haha. Oh, it really is perfection. Each player uses an identical ninja in a screen packed with identical NPC ninjas, the only weapon is your bare hand or a smoke bomb to hide behind. Simply touch all the statues or take out the other players. Everything about it is perfect. The tension at the start when you can’t work out which ninja you are, the tension when the sound effect to signify a statue has been touched. And, haha, oh I screamed every time I got caught and taken out. It feels like the silliest game, but also so deadly serious it could be a re-enactment of a training scene from Batman Begins. So good!”

So do you think it oversells itself at all?

HIPS DON’T LIE.

Thanks again to definitely-real Shakira for building us up to that single punchline.

Words by Andrew Revell

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Originally published at BlueKeycard.