// PC GAMER — GAMING
Bryce Clark, game director of Poppy Playtime, has played 23,000 hours of Steam games: 'I'm a bit obsessed with learning the market'
"I'm always playing somewhere between three and six games at a time."
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Welcome to Disk Cleanup, our regular weekend feature delving into the PCs of PC gaming luminaries. Come back every weekend to read a new interview, digging into the important questions, like "How tidy is your desktop?" and "What game will you never uninstall?"
Bryce Clark, game director on Poppy Playtime, grew up playing DOS games on his family PC. His favourite childhood game was the 1994 fantasy RTS Dominus, which had unfortunate ramifications for his father. "It was nearly impossible to get working," Clark recalls. "My poor dad ended up spending so many hours on the hard line trying to call tech support. 'Why is this video game not working for my son?' It was a lot about troubleshooting way back."
A game developer for 20 years, Clark has worked at studios like 343 Industries and Blizzard. He joined Mob Entertainment in 2023 as its lead technical artist, and last year became Game Director for Poppy Playtime: Chapter 5, which released in February.
"Our goals were to find ways to improve the gameplay flow," Clark says. "What are the ways we can try and make chases more compelling? What can we do to make the puzzles harder in places where you do not have to complete them and easier in places where you do… and just generally trying to find ways to better integrate the narrative into the gameplay experience."
Clark took a break from mascot horror to show me around the digital toy factory of his PC. And, as you will soon discover, there are a lot of toys in Clark's factory, so many that he struggled to pick just one for most of the questions posed.
I'm a bit of an oddball in that I'm always playing somewhere between three and six games at a time. I'm a bit obsessive with learning the market, learning different genres. I love trying new and unique things as well.
I'll try to be brief about them, but most recently I've been playing a few. One's called Aethus, which is an inspiringly well-executed solo developer project that's focussed around base building, crafting, mining. But it carries, to me, a lot of Subnautica energy with the way the narrative is playing out, the exploration works with the oxygen system, delving into the depths of—instead of [an] ocean, it's caverns—learning the greater mystery.
But also, [I was] trying out most recently on Steam Strange Antiquities, the sequel to Strange Horticulture. Great mix of narrative, discovery, puzzle, mystery. Have a lot of fun with that one.