By Harold Goldberg

Here at the New York Videogame Critics Circle, we were gobsmacked by the originality of Half Mermaid’s landmark Immortality, the Sam Barlow-led creation which serves up a mystery stippled with horror featuring a lost actress and her three unreleased movies. After I reviewed Half-Mermaid’s game for The Observer, I realized there was much more to mine as a journalist.

So I asked our intrepid interns, who range in age from 13 to 21, if they wanted to research and talk to five creative people who worked on the game. These stories, I told them, would appear on our YouTube channel and on our website with accompanying text.

Before they would do the interviews, I offered up a three-part Interview Workshop series for the five to either polish their skills or learn these skills as a new endeavor. They learned quickly from the workshops and carefully crafted their questions.

We’re super proud of what they’ve accomplished, and thank Half-Mermaid for giving do freely of their time. Here’s the schedule:

Tuesday: Sam Barlow, the creative lead, interviewed by Ronald Gordon

Wednesday: Natalie Watson, the producer, interviewed by Isaac Espinosa

Thursday: Connor Carson, the software engineer, interviewed by Khloe Wilkerson. (Note: Khloe is 13 and we asked her not to play the game because of her age. But she did a ton of research on Immortality and on Connor Carson, who used to be an NYVGCC intern herself.)

Friday: Manon Gage, the lead actress, interviewed by Makeda Byfield,

Monday: Nainita Desai, the composer, interviewed by Valeisha Jackson,

Monday: The Immortality Review by Jade Entien

Author/journalist Harold Goldberg is the founder and editor in chief of NYVGCC and the NY Game Awards. His upcoming mystery novel, The Skinny, will be published in 2023.