Bringing "The Most Powerful Pirate In History" To Life - “The Pirate Queen” with Lucy Liu Interview

We enjoyed having a conversation with our friends at Screen Rant about all things The Pirate Queen. We discussed working with Lucy Liu, bringing Cheng Shih's story to life and the endless quest for historical accuracy.

Screen Rant: I'm curious how you first came across the real life story of this pirate queen; was sort of finding that story what came first, or did you already know you wanted to develop a game and then you came across her story and were like, "Wow, this is this is the one."

Eloise Singer: Really good question, it definitely was story first. A friend of mine told me the story, she was like, "Have you ever heard that the most powerful pirate in history was a woman in 19th century China?" And I was like, "Hm, sounds not true. No it's not, don't be silly." [Laughs] And she was like, "No, no, genuinely it is." So we started looking into it, and I was like, "Oh my god, this is extraordinary, this is such a phenomenal story." And the more we dived into it, the more we learned about how she literally paved the way for equality; she set out these laws within her fleet, the men and women had to be treated equally, and that if men acted outside the realms of monogamy, then they would literally be killed, which was so extraordinary for the time. Classic a pirate extreme of being like, "You're not going to get a slap on the wrist, we're literally gonna throw you overboard." [Laughs] Which I thought was hilarious.

So the more we learned about it, the more fascinating it sort of became, and then we started developing it actually into a film. I teamed up with a production company based in Beijing called Seesaw [Productions], who at the time were releasing a movie called The Farewell, which then got nominated for the Golden Globes and won a BAFTA and premiered at Sundance, so they were getting loads of traction, and then our project because of it was getting loads of traction. It was all very exciting, and we were funded by the British Film Institute to develop it; it was all going great. And then my friend who was a producer in Beijing called me and she was like, "Eloise, there's this really weird virus that's going around in China at the moment, and I think we're gonna have to stop and pause on development." And I was like, "Oh, God, I'm so sorry, I hope everything's okay," and then cut to like two months later and the pandemic struck.

So at that point, I was like, "Well, the story is so incredible we need to find a way to make it." And I had become quite good friends with a chap called Dr. Dave Ranyard, and he used to be the head of PlayStation Studios in London. We had spoken about The Pirate Queen previously, like a year before, and he was like, "This would make an amazing game." And I was like, "I would love to make it into a game, but I have no idea how to do that. It's not a world that I come from." And he was like, "Well, if you ever think of it, then just let me know." Then when the pandemic struck, I was like, "Well, this is actually a perfect time to make it into a game." Because we can all work remotely, we can still tell the story in a really exciting and interesting way and be super immersive.

So I called Dave and I said, "What do you think?" And he was like, "Yeah, let's do it." So we made a prototype of the VR game; we got funding from a public fund over here called Creative England and developed a short version of the game. Then that suddenly did really well and then got nominated for a bunch of awards, and then won Best Debut at Raindance. Then we showed that to Meta and we were like, "Listen, we've got this idea of how we can develop it into like this really big, really cool game." And they played the prototype, the demo, and they were like, "This is amazing." And so there and then they were like, "Yeah, we'll fund you, we'll give you the funding to make the full version of the game."

That was coming up on two years ago, and then we've just been developing the full version of the game. Then we got selected to premiere it at Tribeca, so we went to Tribeca. Lucy [Liu] is obviously on board to voice the project and to be the exec producer. Then we won Tribeca, which was exciting. And I literally flew back from New York because we just recorded the final session with Lucy which is really fun. Now we're coming up to beta and getting ready to release, which is really cool.

And I of course have to ask you about your collaboration with Lucy Liu. It's so cool that she's involved. I'm really curious how that collaboration first came about and what it was like working together?

Eloise Singer: We reached out to her and her team and just said, "We're working on this project, this is what it's about. It's premiering at Tribeca, it's really exciting." And they came back and they were like, "This is so cool, we love it. This is really exciting." So we recorded the first part of the game that then premiered at Tribeca at the beginning of this year. And when we were speaking with Lucy and her team, we were like, "No, we'd love for you to be an exec on the project as well," and she loved the idea.

So we recorded with her the beginning of this year; can't remember when it was actually, this year has been a bit of a blur [Laughs], but I think it was around May. Then we literally just did the second block of recording with her last week. In terms of the collaboration, Lucy is phenomenal. She's incredible, and she's an amazing human being. She's like the best person to work with, she's super collaborative and fun and has a great sense of humor; we spend most of our time laughing. She's been phenomenal, and been able to bring the part into life in a way that I genuinely could never have imagined.

I think when you work with someone, you always have an idea in your head of what it might be like. And with her, she just blew it out the water. It was one of those things where as soon as she started performing and reading the lines, I literally turned to her and there's a video of me being like, "Can I just say that this is going to be incredible?" And we both crack up and start laughing. It was one of those pinch yourself goosebump moments where you're just like, "Whoa, we're really onto something, and this is really, really special." So it's good, her performance is extraordinary, it's stellar.

How do you think the story of the game being based on a real person changes things for the player? Do you think it would be different if the protagonist was entirely fictional?

Eloise Singer: That's a really good question. I think it's a bit more resonant being based on a true character, because it's a real lived experience, and in terms of the emotional depth, we can really dig into that because you're stepping into her shoes. You have to go through this journey that she went through and face the adversity that she did. And so I think, as a player, you're really connecting with that, because you really feel like you're stepping back in history and experiencing the world that she did, and that's really interesting and really powerful.

And it adds a lot more nuance to developing the character as well, because we can add layers of complexity in terms of the relationship that she had with her husband, the relationship she had with her adversity, and those things are all grounded in historical accuracy which makes for a really interesting story. Don't get me wrong, I love fictional characters, and I think I'll tell stories of fictional characters in the future. But for this, it feels really powerful that it's based on someone from history.

And talking about the world, I know there's a lot of different varied historic locations from the 1800s in this game, what are you most excited to see players explore after the game releases?

Eloise Singer: I think the environments themselves are so detailed, there's so much in them and we've created so many little things that you can do and discover if you want to. So as a studio, we kind of specialize in environmental storytelling, which means that you can kind of go around the room and pick up different objects and get more of the story if you want, or you can just play the game as you want and you'll still get the story, but not in as much depth. And there are so many little bits, like you can go into a kitchen and pick up different pots and pans and just learn about that time and that place, and especially from her eyes, so she'll comment on things or make jokes, and you're just getting more of a sense of the world.

And so there are lots of little nuggets that are in there that if you find them, you can discover, which I think is always really fun. And then in terms of the actual gameplay, there's one level - the Sampan Maze - I'm really excited for people to play, because it's basically an obstacle course. It's very fun, you duck and dive and climb over things. And it's in this huge conglomerate of sampans, so you're sort of climbing over different boats and dodging swinging cargo and stuff like that. It's a really fun level in VR; it's really tactile and really cool.

But to be honest, I'm just excited for everyone to play it. We've been working on something for so long, and it feels like it's all coming together and it's all taking shape. So our team are getting really excited, which is really nice.

What do you think will surprise players most about this game?

Eloise Singer: I think the depth in story, probably. It's a really great story, and it's really emotive. And the world that we're creating and the accuracy of the world - everything that we've created is as historically accurate as we could possibly get it. So, for example, there are mats on the floor, and we researched into whether the reeds in the mats were woven left to right or right to left just to make sure that it was accurate.

When we first developed the game, we created the ships with nails, because that's how we thought the ship was built from all the references that we found. And we have researchers and accuracy checkers, and they came back and they were like, "Actually no, in China we created ships using dovetail joints rather than nails." So all of our ships, we then had to remove all nails and create dovetail joints to make sure that it was accurate.

So I think the surprise will be the environments that you step into, because it's so immersive and super, super detailed. Every time we've shown it at festivals, people will put on a headset and they'll be like, "Oh my god, this is so beautiful." Hopefully that will be something that people are really wowed by.

What were the biggest challenges that were involved in bringing this story to life?

Eloise Singer: Definitely making sure that we were being really factually accurate and culturally sensitive. That was a really big challenge, especially because we're based in the UK. Half of our team have East Asian heritage and either speak Mandarin or Cantonese, and that was really, really important to us. Our writer Maja [Bodenstein] is German Chinese, so she speaks Mandarin.

And we brought on both factually accurate sensitive checkers and researchers to ensure that everything that we were doing was really grounded in accuracy. Because for us, and for all of us, I think culture is such an important part of your identity as a human. And if we're going to be telling a story in a specific culture and time and place, then we really do need to ensure that we're being as accurate as we possibly can be.

And I think in line with that, the challenge was just finding all of the articles and the research and trying to get access to everything. Because so much was from quite a long time ago in 19th century China. It's quite hard to find these research documents. Thankfully, we had amazing researchers who specialized in this time period who really were able to dig into both the English documentation but also the Chinese documentation, so that was really great. So I think that was a really big challenge for us. And then the classic dev challenges that come with any game of funding, and we're a relatively new studio, so a lot of lessons and mistakes that were learned along the way.

Ensuring that we were finding the fun as well is a really big thing for any game, but just making sure that things feel fun. And there'll be things that we develop where we're like, "Yeah, that doesn't work." [Laughs] or, "Yeah, that looks great." It's obviously a lot of iteration, and time sometimes doesn't permit you to iterate as much as you want. So it's making those creative decisions and choices that ultimately mean that you have to sacrifice things to make sure that you're delivering a game which is polished and fun and enjoyable for everyone. Those are the biggest challenges, I think.

Read the whole interview here.