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Jens Peter Kurup, is a video game industry veteran known for his work on the long-running Hitman franchise. As director for the upcoming Eidos title Kane & Lynch: Dead Men, he's spent the last two years crafting one of the fall's biggest releases, a gritty drama about a pair of criminals who find themselves in some extremely nasty circumstances. We spoke about creating unlikable characters, the challenge of making games for adults and the pleasures and perils of the "money train."

Playboy: It seems like Kane & Lynch is designed to appeal to an older player. It has all these tropes from film and other media that younger people may not have a frame of reference for. Was that intentional?

Kurup: I think we were all getting a little sick of the invulnerable 25-year-old supersoldier going to save the planet again. That's hard for me to identify with. The audience is getting a little older, and I think it's time to work with some characters who are getting a little older themselves. In the story, this is the last chance for these guys. The stakes are high for them because they don't have the luxury of second chances. If they fuck this up, they've done it for real. We tried to pick up on some emotions and conflicts other than just simple anger and retribution. I'm personally annoyed that people seem to think that game characters have to be likeable. Look at Eastwood's character in Unforgiven; there's nothing likeable about that guy. I don't really like Kane or Lynch at all. Well, maybe Lynch.

Playboy: From the trailers, Lynch seems almost used for comic relief, but then he's this really darkly screwed up guy.

Kurup: The tricky thing with a character like that is you want who he is to come across quite quickly, so you give him the nasty hair and the glasses. But then you've got trouble because unless you're very careful with the details -- his accent, his dialogue -- he can become cliché very quickly. It takes a few hours in the game before you start to see his deeper layers, that he's not really a bad guy. He just got sick. And that happens to people constantly. One day they have a nervous breakdown and need to be medicated and never really regain a normal life. Lynch is actually a pretty good guy. He's not overly intelligent, but he's not completely stupid either. He just got sick.

Playboy: Why do you think most game creators shy away from those kinds of characters?

Kurup: There's always a price to be paid for having strong characters. They become less flexible for you. You can't force just anything on them, you have to worry about their reactions. If you give them time, they can become much more interesting, but strong characters also force you down a much more constrained path. You can't push them as far.

Playboy: There's been a lot of drama lately about games being rated AO, and the fact that if a game is rated AO, neither Sony, nor Microsoft nor Nintendo will even allow it to be published for their systems. As someone who designs games for adults, how do you feel about that?

Kurup: It's a tricky question because I understand their desire to protect their business, but they also own so much of the playing field that if you get closed down by them your game is doomed. It feels unfair when I see what is OK in an R-rated movie and think, "If we did that, they'd tear us apart." It's a new medium and everybody is a little bit more nervous about it. It's also a slippery medium. You can't just fast forward to one hour and 25 minutes in and say, "That frame shows too much." Games change every time you play them. It might be very mellow the first time and the second time you play it, it might be offensive. You don't have a fixed media to talk about, which is probably why people are so jumpy about it.

Playboy: Writing-wise, games are a very different challenge than other media. Do you feel like you're writing more scenario or story?

Kurup: We try to do both. We write a lot in the beginning, most of which doesn't end up in the game explicitly. I think we've reached a nice place in Kane & Lynch where it doesn't feel like the story that's driving gameplay, or that the gameplay is driving the story. You know you're in a good place when you start describing a level in terms of what the main characters are doing. You can get into trouble when you start by describing everything that's going on in the level instead of what your heroes are doing.

Playboy: What's the hardest thing about making games?

Kurup: Stopping at the right time in terms of tweaking the designs and defining the content. There's this point where you have to turn everything over to the big production team to do the nitty gritty programming work. And the earlier you can lock down what your content will be, the better quality you tend to get at the end, because you get more testing time. But you could always use more time at the beginning to develop your ideas. We call the big production process the money train. Once the money train is rolling, then my job is done. It's good and bad, but it's just one of the things you need to do to have a robust production process.

Playboy: If you had a magic wand what would you change about the world of video games?

Kurup: I would make it so we had infinite broadband available. Then people could play games without a console or any equipment except a TV and a controller. People could pay for games by the minute, instead of committing to an entire game purchase. In fact, I don't see why we couldn't have free gaming like we have free TV. Make it advertising-supported.

Playboy: Some feel that all our different forms of media are different ways that humans tell stories about themselves. How do you feel like games fit into that?

Kurup: It's a very valid medium for doing that, because it's so close to your own actions. I'm just not quite sure we're that good at it yet. I could imagine games that would allow you to develop as a person. By growing more adept within the game you might find yourself more interested in politics or economics. I can definitely see gaming or game communities helping to define you more as a person. And then there's user-generated content. I think a lot of consumers would like to create their own games. If I could have another magic wand I would create easy-to-use tools for creating games. I would love to see what games 12-year-olds would make. I would probably hate them all, but it would definitely be interesting.