Heath C. Michaels is a filmmaker, entrepreneur, and solo video game developer. His newest game Night Jackal: Blood Debt is a narrative driven retro first person shooter set for release on 9 Oct 2025. We discuss his experience in the U.S. Navy, attending film school with Danny McBride & Jody Hill, working on films with Jan de Bont, and working with DOSMan Games.
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Chapters
00:00 Start
2:55 Nostalgia for Arcades
14:20 Military to Film School
26:33 The Creative Process
31:51 Crafting Night Jackal
41:00 Satire in Superhero Themes
1:05:05 Journey into Film
1:13:45 The Indie Game Experience
1:19:20 Diving into Horror Games
1:29:51 The Challenges of Solo Development
1:38:43 The Boomer Shooter Market
1:50:51 The Importance of Learning to Code
1:54:27 The Role of a Publisher
Transcript
Music:
[0:00] Music
Heath:
[0:33] I mean i started building games when i got my first computer which was a trs80 microcomputer this is back in the 80s and it was like a little bitty computer you get from radio shack and so just like basic stuff that i would it was like a lot of procedural code and all in basic and uh, that's basically i just i just enjoyed it it was just like there was a power to to creating something in that on the computer and seeing it up on the screen, so I always had an interest I just love gaming mostly on consoles I've never been a big PC gamer, um but I'm a filmmaker and that's really where my interests were when I especially when I was you know getting older I always wanted to go make movies and so I was out in Hollywood for, 26 years and I decided to leave my wife and I have two kids and I was like and
Heath:
[1:29] it's not a city for for family and so I was moved.
Heath:
[1:34] But while I was out there, I did do some, some development, but most of it would just been indie. Like the stuff that I did professionally was mostly browser. Like, I don't know if you remember the old flash games back in the day. Not, not newsground talking about like, if you go to a website and there would be some sort of like flash element or flash games, I used to build those for studios.
Tyler:
[1:58] So I'm a lot younger than you. like but not to throw shade or anything well you
Heath:
[2:03] Didn't have to say a lot no.
Tyler:
[2:05] I'm centuries no no um i've just i just want to clarify that like so for me flash games were the first like really the only thing i remember about like pc gaming as a kid i wasn't exposed to you know doom or any like any of the multitude of like real pc games out there like when i was a it was just like that was what it looked like aside from you know your Microsoft games your Minesweep your Ski Free that kind of shit but similarly growing up every video game was just like a console like that to me it was synonymous and then maybe like arcade had already kind of like come and went it was a novelty by the time that i remember being excited about games oh
Heath:
[2:52] God did you you miss the arcades oh my god dude i.
Tyler:
[2:56] Like arcades but yeah they
Heath:
[2:58] Were the best.
Tyler:
[2:58] You know like by the time i think i was old enough to be interested in games at all arcades had already become like you know an arcade machine in the pizza hut while you're waiting for your pizza or that kind of thing or going to chucky cheese but not like spending a lot of time you know going to the arcade to try to get the next high score on donkey conley that's that's all documentaries by the time i come to the picture oh
Heath:
[3:25] Man you know i used to i used to go to putt putt golf and games where i grew up and uh they used to have putt-putt which was you know miniature golf and then inside they had an arcade and every like saturday morning they had for like hours every twenty dollars got you thirty tokens thirty dollars worth of tokens and uh every kid would come and it was just packed and we'd play everything i mean it was so much fun i mean it was like and they'd always have new games rotated in and out like it was it was something else.
Tyler:
[3:56] I uh for a little while when i was younger i worked for an electrician like basically as his apprentice and i was tasked to design the lighting for this uh it was like a laser tag arena but they also of course have an arcade and so that was like really really cool because i got to like spend a lot of time around these machines before you know like not paying money to do it you know that kind of thing no lines or and that was a really really cool experience i think i i probably just blew through all of my lunch breaks on uh terminator salvation the rail shooter game oh yeah i love that stuff yeah i love light gun games i think that's something that arcade you know does right that even even with vr um i don't think it's been really fully explored yet and like taken to the next level
Heath:
[4:43] Right yeah i agree i think um i mean i light rail makes sense because it's it's it's truly, most of the games right now you see in arcades are like super um super interactive like you have to have some sort of tool or something to interact with the screen as opposed to a joystick because anybody can interact that way at home so they have most of those what are they fudruckers and, Dave and Buster's or whatever. I don't know. It's like all those. My kid is like whenever he goes to a birthday party, like they would, you know, sometimes it would be like a Dave and Buster's or something and we all got to go play video games and that's pretty much all they have was like the light guns.
Tyler:
[5:26] Even at Dave and Buster's, like what kind of really pisses me off is I go there and I want to play, you know, the classic arcade games but what they have are these sort of like bastardized, flashy versions of those games. So like if you want to play Space Invaders, you have to play the the giant space invaders that doesn't really follow the same rules with like the crazy light display all that shit i was like dude i just want to stand at the cabinet you know at the time with a cold beer in my hand and whatever you just like enjoy this thing uh i remember we had a really sick arcade bar i used to live in downtown tucson they had this really like nice arcade bar that had all these classic machines miss pac-man And just like virtually a museum. Honestly, they probably would have made more money as a video game museum than they ultimately did as a nightclub for whatever time that lasted. But, you know, you go to a place and you want to enjoy that thing. And then you have like, I don't know, just like super loud bass music and a DJ screaming and like girls booty dancing on you and knocking you around.
Tyler:
[6:30] And you're like, dude, I'm just trying to like play some freaking Space Invaders right now. Right. Yeah. What were the games specifically that caught your eye and made you think, this is achievable?
Heath:
[6:43] Oh let me shit there was one i don't get a cuss right oh.
Tyler:
[6:47] Please yeah i'd be insulted if you
Heath:
[6:49] Didn't well i just want to make sure i don't know i never know like where the line is on these on podcasts but uh no of course there was there was a wrestling game it was called map mania you probably have never heard of it but that was you know that one i.
Tyler:
[7:03] I love wrestling games specifically so i've like
Heath:
[7:05] Oh this is this is the best one it's like 2d sprites oh you gotta they have video on youtube where i sometimes i'll go and i'll look at it and just i mean i've dumped and it was a lot back then like i would get you save up money and you have like 40 right 40 is a lot of money to a kid and i would dump all of that into mat mania and i was so addicted to that game and it's
Heath:
[7:30] just the funnest game and it's like i think it's made by tato yeah.
Tyler:
[7:35] I found it and yeah we'll have to make sure people who are listening along like can grab it it's a matt mat space mania
Heath:
[7:42] Yeah that's what that mania yeah epic yeah yeah it's awesome and what's so funny about it is you play it the last guy you play which is basically a hulk hogan ripoff yeah i think the guy before him is like the ultimate warrior ripoff but there's another guy named coco savage who is the hardest he's like right in the middle he's like the hardest one to to fight is.
Tyler:
[8:05] Is coco savage supposed to be macho man or coco beware or like somewhere in between
Heath:
[8:10] I don't know that's a good question yeah um but but that's yeah it's a good game another one is legend of cage i don't know if you remember this one is a ninja one legend of cage yes no.
Tyler:
[8:25] This is complete news to me
Heath:
[8:27] Yeah so that's what i mean it's like these were all the arcade games and i would go and just be and just absolutely addicted to these really cool games i'm surprised arcades aren't a thing the amount of fun that we had as kids and i mean because it was so loud you'd go into an arcade it would be so loud and just you know music and and sound like i sent you that um sony uh uh daytona usa song that used to be playing on the on the Daytona USA video game and you'd walk into an arcade and you could hear of course I was like.
Tyler:
[9:02] Overpowering all the other machines
Heath:
[9:04] Like this guy just bellowing out Dave, just really super loud it just yeah it's incredible i think that's a.
Tyler:
[9:11] Another cool thing about arcades that we do not have at all anymore is aside from maybe going to an expo like if you're at gamescom or at pax or something like that you see physical representations so like part of the appeal of an arcade game is does it catch your attention physically in the arcade you know like the way it's designed the way it looks the way it sounds the lights on them everything gets calculated into that yeah right um and then honestly a shitty uh game could be popular because it's really flashy and then vice versa but then ultimately like we kind of narrowed down what you know what stood the test of time gameplay was i think yeah and
Heath:
[9:51] I'd say also uh street fighter street fighter yeah.
Tyler:
[9:53] Street fighter 2 i think is a lot of people like kind of loved
Heath:
[9:57] It i was okay but i what i would do is i would play and if i was getting my ass beat i would just go i was always as Blanca Blanca Blanca whatever and I just do the little uh was it like crouch down and one of the buttons you tap and he just has the electricity uh and you just shock everybody and if you didn't know how to counter that attack which
Heath:
[10:17] a lot of people didn't uh was a pretty good cheap move.
Tyler:
[10:19] I've always been terrible at fighter games it's like so bad even like I think when I was a kid the really popular of course we had all the wrestling games but aside from that because but I think by the time you know I remember playing like Smackdown versus Raw wrestling games had become more technical than the classic arcade style stuff like i just totally sidetrack here i think wrestlemania 2000 was like the most well-designed gameplay wise and there are other games that sort of share the controller schemes and the way that you actually choose to do moves that borrows from an earlier arcade interpretation versus later when they started to have like okay you're gonna have a series of grapples and then you know have to capitalize on that or like submission meters and stuff like that which is still cool but different but yeah I think that fighting fighting games are always just like really confusing to me like i'm not fast enough which is ironic because i like to quake which is way faster just in a completely different way i guess it's the memorization of patterns um like on the fly that really sucks and then when you're practicing with other people like if you're playing with a friend or in my case like your big brother or something they don't really give you the time to like stop and like okay you need to take your time and study this and like figure out what this combo is or how to do that or anything like that it's just you get creamed and then it's like all right kid pass the controller so it was kind of school of hard knocks gaming in a way
Heath:
[11:43] Right no no no for sure uh i mean i was never really great at fighter games like fighting games but i i did like street fighter 2 i just thought it was fun i i actually do better against the computer than i do other people because you always find those guys that like they always have the quarters lined up this used to be a thing that put the quarters up on the screen and that means like that there's how many games i'm playing you know or same as.
Tyler:
[12:07] The pool hall you know you put your quarters on the side of the pool table to indicate you're in line yeah
Heath:
[12:12] Yeah well they would they would just back them up with quarters saying this is how many games i'm playing and like it would always be some guy was just like too good for it and he was so cocky and he always picked like was a dawson or whatever they got the long arms and you were like why you're like it was it just sucked to play them and you just wanted to play the computer yeah so.
Tyler:
[12:33] This is like you know video games is a hobby meanwhile your real dream was filmmaking so when when did you like start to go in that direction
Heath:
[12:42] I mean it was just i was young i mean it's like i had the two interests i had video games and you know film those are the two things i was most interested in um and then as i got older just tech in general was something that really just something kind of cool about being able to, put something into a machine that then you know kind of does back what you ask it to do and, um i don't know it film was ever since i was i mean look i saw the original now i'm really going to date myself i saw the original star wars when i was really really young in the theater um and i was hooked to.
Tyler:
[13:24] Be fair movies stayed in the theater longer than than they do now so it could be arranged there it doesn't necessarily have to be like the day it
Heath:
[13:32] Was it was it was probably 1977 but i was like really i was like i was like three years old or so but uh you know i was probably too young to be but i i just remember it i remember going home and i had all these stuffed animals in my in my room and i just redid the whole movie with like you know kermit was uh luke skywalker and cookie monster was like darth vader whatever, and just loved it and i was hooked and every time that there was come like 1980 and then 1983 with the return of jet i every time the one of those movies came out i was and so i went to film school, i went to military 91 and then 94 i'm not 95 i went to film school and uh so i was there four years 99 i moved out to la and i just now moved to austin texas
Heath:
[14:18] because i was like done with la yeah.
Tyler:
[14:20] Yeah that's a good move and then a lot of people obviously felt the same way that you did but there's a lot in between there um so out of did you i'm assuming you finished high school do you go to film school do you
Heath:
[14:34] Yeah i went to film school in 95 to 99 i.
Tyler:
[14:38] Was born in may 1995
Heath:
[14:40] Okay so i was a freshman i was out in the military and a freshman so right there you go and you were in diapers right.
Tyler:
[14:46] No you were fighting the cold war
Heath:
[14:48] Thanks um, well i'm not quite that old.
Tyler:
[14:54] This is like the first generation in a long time that gets to like throw the previous generation's military under the bus it's like there's always that like you old timers and i think like outside of desert storm nothing really happened for a while
Heath:
[15:06] Well that that's why i joined was desert storm that was the that was when i joined and um that was 91 and by the time i went to boot camp it was over so i was at that point consider peace time So.
Tyler:
[15:17] We got all mixed up here. Hold on. So you go to the military first and then go to film school. Okay. Right. And is that how you paid for it? Was it a GI Bill?
Heath:
[15:25] Gotta get the GI Bill, son. But, you know, I kind of messed up on the GI Bill because I get the GI Bill. And I go to college and I'm thinking, OK, I've got these college loans and then I'm going to use the GI Bill because I, you know, I need money and it's kind of hard to work. Because the school I went to, the film school, it was a conservatory. It's an art school. So you don't have a lot of free time and it's hard to balance work with it. Um, so I, I think my junior year and senior year, I moved off campus. And so I was, I was using the GI bill to help subsidize me, to help pay rent and stuff.
Tyler:
[16:06] Yeah.
Heath:
[16:06] Well, you're not supposed to do that. And I didn't know. And so the registrar or, well, I don't know, I guess there would be financial aid department at the school was like, Hey, we made a mistake that cause they're supposed to tell you. Um because i'm you know i don't have any idea that that's how it's supposed to work i give them all the information they don't take the financial aid it's not you know it's not it's coming to me directly but they were like no no it's you're supposed to give it to us i said well nobody explained that anyway so i get halfway through my senior year and they're like talking about kicking me out because i owe them i forget how much money and i'm like you got to be kidding me so they were able to do some magic and then the film school was able to put some funds you know whatever and then i had to pay them back before end of year so i was
Heath:
[16:54] able that way i had to go and get a job and get the money but it was kind of kind of sucked okay.
Tyler:
[17:00] So you you joined because of desert storm
Heath:
[17:03] Yeah you.
Tyler:
[17:04] Were like it's time to go man this is my chance or what was the
Heath:
[17:08] Well i think i think it's what most people do when i watched jarhead.
Tyler:
[17:12] Like three days ago so
Heath:
[17:13] Oh, okay. There you go. Yeah, no, it's like, you know, I was just like any, you know, red-blooded young kid, you know, you get out of high school and then there's, you know, there's something going on and, you know, you got to... It's just like after 9-11, everybody, there's so many people enlisted. I've got friends, obviously younger than me, who went on the tour duty to Iraq and all that. And my neighbor over here, and he's a veteran, he's a good friend. I just met him since I moved here, but we quickly became friends. And he did the same thing where after 9-11, he joined.
Tyler:
[17:52] I think my generation was ISIS. That was what was super big in the news. We were having to go back to Iraq. You know, this is 2016 is when I enlisted and I've been listening, you know, there was that age. I was 18, 19 and Sam Harris in my ears all the time. And I was kind of, I'm not going to say radicalized, but I was pretty like, I felt good about joining the military.
Tyler:
[18:15] Like I really thought I was doing the right thing when I did it. Sure. Sure. Yeah.
Heath:
[18:19] Well, I mean, that's when you're young, you do, you, you, you want to go and do something patriotic, you know, and you feel like you have a duty, especially, I don't know. I just think it's something that young men just experience. I don't know.
Tyler:
[18:30] Sure.
Heath:
[18:31] I've never seen that in young women. Like, you know, that I've talked to even ones that join, they were like, that'll really just like, you know, job.
Tyler:
[18:41] Extraordinarily rare that you find like a female service member who is like, I joined because I want to go kill the bad guys like that. It's very rarely what they say and are not. Yeah. Not that they don't exist. Uh, shout out to master Sergeant Annie, retired um probably the baddest female who's ever been in the military as far as i'm concerned but yeah like i i know that that exists it's just not common sure sure sure sure yeah what was it like though and it's the navy you're you go out uh you want to ship at any point are you stateside
Heath:
[19:13] Yeah i was on a ship called uss bowen okay um it was a fast frigate fft uh it was a vietnam class ship right and so i was in the communication center i was a rating and so i just handled the communications and um set up like satellite cryptographic communications things like that you had to have to get in the door you have to have a confidential security clearance i had a top secret because i had to deal with crypto um a little different than blockchain crypto um but yeah um it was definitely crypto and we'd have like a safe in the back that had two locks on it And I knew the
Heath:
[19:50] combination of one and somebody else had to know the combination of the other. And like, so we could get in there. It's like two person integrity. They called it.
Tyler:
[19:57] Right.
Heath:
[19:58] Yeah. But yeah, it was cool. I, I, I enjoy going out to sea. I love being out on the water. I wish when I was in LA, I could have enjoyed that more, but, uh, yeah, I do.
Tyler:
[20:09] There's something really romantic about being on a boat like that. Like the Air Force, we just don't get that. Like there's no, even if you're in a fob or whatever, there's no like sense of adventure. Like we're cutting new ground or like going to a place that other people haven't been or something. And there's just something about the ocean where you kind of always have that. As long as you can't see land, right? Yeah.
Heath:
[20:31] Um yeah i there's something about like standing out on the deck and looking in all directions and there's nothing but water as far as the eye can see were.
Tyler:
[20:43] You already pretty tech savvy before that or did you gain a lot from the navy
Heath:
[20:47] Oh for sure i mean i was already um like i like i told you at the beginning i was when i was a kid i would program in basic and make little games and animations and things like that um but i took the asvab i i scored a little higher than like one of my friends we went in on a buddy system so we we matched i said okay well let's just find something we can both agree on that that your score kind of matches and so we picked radium and and i wanted something more technical and then uh so i went into that and i i was just i was really good i I almost made naval history, believe it or not. My ops, which is the third in command of the ship, was going to promote me, go run it up the chain of command and promote me to, was it watch supervisor? Because I was an E3 doing watch supervisor work, but I couldn't have the title of watch supervisor. And basically that just means that I run the shift. And like, you have to at least be a petty officer, which would be E4. And I was in E3, E2, E3 doing it. And so he said he was going to run it up. And then I got in some trouble. And so that kind of blew that up. But that's a long story.
Tyler:
[22:02] Yeah, it's just so much fun you could get yourself into. It's kind of a classic thing about, like, if you take a bunch of dumbass kids, you know, and stick them on a boat together for a long time or anywhere, just put them somewhere together long enough and they will find ways to get in trouble, to blow things up, to, yeah.
Heath:
[22:19] Yeah, I mean, plus, like, you know, you're a sailor and you go out to the bars or whatever and people get a little buzzed and then rowdy. I mean, there's a reason why sailors have the, the, you know, the reputation they have. And so there would be fights and things like that. And you get in trouble, you know, and like you wind up coming back to the ship and then you got to stand in front of the big man and go to captain's mast.
Tyler:
[22:44] And then I feel like there's a, there's a reputation is you're like simultaneously expected to be above your reputation and then also to uphold it. Because i know like if you're a sailor and you get your ass kicked in a bar fight by some other branch like everyone hates you you've made the navy look bad if you're supposed to i i don't understand it i but i you know all of the every time i ever went to training it was always joint force and it was always with other branches and everyone clicks up like that um
Heath:
[23:13] You know it's i think it's a it's a young people thing you know like when when you get a little older do you are you part of the legion or anything like that are you joining the american legion or no no no oh i love like the leader should i yeah yeah totally it's it's fun yeah it's just another it's a group of people and like you know but it's like high school you know like i mean some of these guys are high school about it and uh there's politics you know i i like to go and like sometimes they have free food and things like that and like like in la there was a historic legion it was called post 43 still a member of it uh through 2026 um but it's been in movies they film there um i mean it was even an episode of like the simpsons you know but they, it's got an art deco bar and a cabaret room and they'll have like we'd go on a sunday because they'd have big band play and so there'd be these people to come in then they play big band music and it was great and you see a lot of
Heath:
[24:10] old people up there dancing and who doesn't want to see that I loved it. I would go and I'd watch like the really, really old timers get up and dance to the big bands. And it was just fun.
Tyler:
[24:23] Yeah, man. I think everybody has to have, this kind of ties into both, you know, the tribalism of kids in their uniforms and also just like needing to be a part of a group. Socialization, I should say. I mean, around here, it wasn't too long ago. I took my wife and the baby to this place. I'm going to shoot. I'm going to name it again later on the podcast when I have time to make sure I say the name right. But it's like a bluegrass. Uh venue slash store so you like walk in and they have like you know guitars and stuff on display but once you get into the proper it's like a dance hall and a full stage and they just let people like on friday nights anybody who wants to show up and play music is allowed to granted it's you're kind of expected to not play like death metal or something you're gonna get booed off the stage but just like you know if the crowd is old you know most people there are retired plus you know 65 kind of but seeing them like having that community in a place to you know celebrate this thing that they love and all that kind of thing even though it's like not really my scene i mean i'm a musician don't get me wrong but like it's it would be really difficult for me to sell myself as like a country bluegrass musician at this time but like you can learn so much from seeing people uh to get get together and exchange ideas no matter what that is if it's the american legion or freemasons or whatever the heck it is that you do i'm a big proponent of that yeah
Heath:
[25:47] Yeah and i think i think a big part of it is look look most of what i gravitate towards has a very youthful group around it like video games typically very youthful um same with movies to some extent and then so i you know i i'm around young people all the time and it's great and i also want to talk to old people i don't people my own age too so i i i like to you know meet the talk to people who are middle age you know as well and people who are older and people are younger, i just find it fascinating like you know i may not have a lot in common with the uh with the guys out there dancing at the the the the dance hall you know listening to the old big band, I like watching them because I know that they're happy and they're,
Heath:
[26:31] you know, they lived a life. It's just fun. I don't know. It's just, it's a human element to it. I'm just a curious person.
Tyler:
[26:37] Like I, I want to know what people are thinking about and why they think it, or why do they do this thing? No matter what, I could walk into bluegrass hall or, uh, you know, go, go to, I don't know, a Colombian cocaine, like smuggling ring and probably have interesting conversations with both. Um, I, I love creativity in any form. You know, I just like, it's, worshipful how how much genius and like beauty comes out of just the simple act of creation right which is so hard to explain do you feel do you feel like you were innately creative or were you sort of like a sponge or a what like i feel like a lot of people who are artistic kind of either are going to be people who are successful because they're really good at talking and being social or they're people who are quiet and like observe other people and that's why they're good at filmmaking or that's why they're good at telling stories because they experience life that way you know what i mean uh community had that episode where ahmed uh ahmed yeah he does that right like he's like the weird autistic guy and they find out there's a reality show about them because through his lens that's how he sees it like i'm a passenger i've
Heath:
[27:48] Heard good things about that show and uh i haven't watched them i like everybody that's on it.
Tyler:
[27:53] Oh yeah joel mckale and yeah
Heath:
[27:55] They're all great but i i've just never brought myself to watch it you know there's just certain shows that people swear by that's one and then uh the wire
Heath:
[28:04] is another that people swear by and i've never seen that and people.
Tyler:
[28:07] I think the wires overrated to
Heath:
[28:08] Be okay good good okay i watched the first season and i i thought it was good but i wasn't like sucked in everybody's like oh it gets better in season two.
Tyler:
[28:16] I think it's it's like the beatles where it's like it's cutting edge at the time and then by the time you or i come to it right i've seen the shield they've seen justified or like way grittier cop shoes. But it was the first one watch
Heath:
[28:30] Your mouth about the beatles now come on i.
Tyler:
[28:32] Love the beatles too but i'm just saying like i'm just if you heard the beatles in 1961 or whatever is and it was like the first time you heard music like that versus you hear the beatles and now i've heard nirvana all the way back as far as rock and roll goes it's just different it's not the same that's
Heath:
[28:50] That's likely the most gen z thing you've said so far it's true it is well you know it's it's funny because it i've heard other gen zers like say things similar to what you said where uh what was the one i heard recently was.
Tyler:
[29:04] This
Heath:
[29:05] Is the best time for music because you can listen to all the new stuff and the old stuff and i just thought it was like such a funny funny but.
Tyler:
[29:13] It's not the same as like when it's part of the zeitgeist that you're experiencing at that time exactly that's a different thing like it would be difficult for me to explain to like my son how big of a deal Biggie Smalls was 50 years from now. But at the time, it was like amazing. It transcended everything.
Heath:
[29:32] Movies and video games, all the same. It's like, I mean, look, we were talking about Star Wars. I don't think the original trilogy excites people as much. I mean, people look at me and go, that was okay. But at the time, it was a phenomenon.
Heath:
[29:47] And it really is based on where you are in the world at a time. It's new. It's fresh. A hundred percent. You know, I go back and listen to music that I listened to back when I was younger. Like, I started listening to Beastie Boys again because my son, I'm trying to find music for him.
Tyler:
[30:03] And
Heath:
[30:04] I turned that stuff on and I'm like wow like these are good songs but they just don't have the resonance that they had for me and when I was a kid.
Tyler:
[30:12] I feel like they like the Beastie Boys specifically and I think this is why Rick Rubin ultimately kind of left the whole thing behind him and went on to other genres it's like they played out the whole hip-hop thing to the nth degree it's like it started off it was fresh it was new it was interesting and then it kind of came full cycle and by the time the beastie boys are sort of six albums into their career it's it's more like that we've done everything that we've could do with this it it's sort of hollow at a certain point it doesn't have that youthful like soul to back it up anymore emotionally if i go back and listen to like brass monkey now it's it's stupid it's a cool beat and everything but it's just like what am i getting out of this what are they even talking about
Heath:
[30:57] They're talking about a drink.
Tyler:
[30:58] Yeah yeah but
Heath:
[31:00] Uh i mean what to say it's also of a different time i mean they were today they would be considered really misogynistic and uh um but i play for my son and like i show him like the some some of the videos and they're a little probably a little too adult for him so he goes to the school and he's like i'm a beastie boy and pushes people down i'm like okay let's probably.
Tyler:
[31:19] Probably need
Heath:
[31:20] To cut that out but uh probably doesn't need to be doing that But I mean, you know, of the time it was, I remember when that Beastie Boys came out, I was in Myrtle Beach. You know that. Uh, and I was there at the beach with my parents and we're in one of the condos in the water. And I was, I had no idea. I mean, I'm just a kid. I wish my parents would have said, you know, fucking stop.
Heath:
[31:47] But I would sit out there with a little boom box and play the tape and was done. I flip it over, play it. It was loud. And I just had it blaring out where everybody's down there trying to enjoy their beach day and enjoy it by the pool. And I'm just sitting there, this idiot kid blaring, uh, uh, licensed to ill. So, uh, there's a little factoid for you.
Tyler:
[32:07] The other thing about them is that after licensed to ill, they never do another record that sounds even kind of close to it. Really? Like Paul's boutique or, you know, like completely, totally different kind of music. No punk rock influence really anymore. Um, but yeah, I love that stuff. That largely that came through
Heath:
[32:27] My nation had a little bit of that. I think ill communication was them getting back a little bit more to that.
Tyler:
[32:32] Sure. Sure. Yeah.
Heath:
[32:33] Like it was much more mature. I think there was a maturity to it. They licensed ill felt very sort of, like you said, like punk influence and like very, very immature, but in a fun way, like the way punk is, is immature.
Tyler:
[32:48] So when you, when you get out of
Tyler:
[32:50] the Navy and you decide like you picked a school, right. You go do that. Obviously we kind of already covered, you almost got kicked out and everything, but like, what was that experience like for you to kind of, first of all, to transition out of the military to civilian life, but also going to film school.
Heath:
[33:05] I had no problems with the transition and transition was pretty easy. I was ready to get out. It was time. You know, I wasn't in for what I wanted to serve for. I went in for the, you know, during Desert Storm and that was over, but I served my time. I mean, I love my job in the military, but I get out and I go back home for about a year and get, go back to school and get some of the courses I need. And I applied to college and I just, I went to, uh, back then it was called North Carolina School of the Arts. Now it's UNCSA. So it's University of North Carolina School of the Arts. And I had a film school there and I was the third graduating class. So it was brand new, but it was a great school. Um, I went to school with Danny McBride. I don't know if you know him.
Tyler:
[33:47] Oh everybody loves standing and in charleston you know he's the king of him and bill murray are like co-kings of charleston right but
Heath:
[33:55] Yeah so i went with uh danny mcbride uh and of course jody hill and ben bass uh late ben bass but um yeah we we all came out to la at the same time.
Tyler:
[34:06] I just want to clarify jody hill is not jonah hill no right the the two get mixed up too often and like Jody Hill himself being the genius he is I just don't want that to get misconstrued well
Heath:
[34:20] It's funny Jody and I were roommates when we first moved out to Burbank and then Danny used to crash on our couch or our futon.
Tyler:
[34:28] That's so cool man we
Heath:
[34:31] Couldn't afford a couch.
Tyler:
[34:31] I thought that Vice Principles was the funniest fucking show ever made like I love the gemstones everything that both of them have ever done but Vice Principles was like perfect and so short-lived. Phenomenal. Yeah.
Heath:
[34:48] Yeah. That's a good one. Eastbound and Down's got a soft spot in my art.
Tyler:
[34:52] I think it's Walton Goggins for me. Like I mentioned already, the, the, you said the wire, the first thing that comes to mind is the shield. And then I said justified. And it's like that dude for me, just he's hilarious and fantastic actor.
Heath:
[35:04] But, um, for sure, for sure.
Tyler:
[35:07] You're, so you're meeting all these people. You don't know by the way that they're going to go on to be multi-mega celebrities
Heath:
[35:13] And no and we used to work together in school like jody and i we were like freaking frack dude we were we were connected at the hip we were, basically i was his cameraman he was my cameraman whenever we'd go off and shoot things and uh he uh,
Heath:
[35:31] Yeah, and then when we came out, we all just kind of roomed together for a while. And then he went off with him and Danny. Well, Danny came back to Virginia and left L.A. And he wound up, I think it was a substitute teacher for a while. He did some teaching. And Jody was like, I'm going to make a movie. And somehow thought that Danny should act in it. Danny wasn't an actor.
Tyler:
[35:57] How did you guys fund movies in North Carolina at the time? like how are you getting money
Heath:
[36:02] Well how did he well jody uh i think he got it from his dad i think he saved money he worked at the man show um for a while i don't know if you remember that show with jimmy kimmel and and um i.
Tyler:
[36:16] Remember doug stanhope on it
Heath:
[36:17] Oh yeah doug stanhope and uh joe rogan they came later but he used to work on it when jimmy kimmel and adam carolla were on it and he uh just he was a story editor he saved up his money and then his parents helped him out he got the loan and I think he had a girlfriend at the time that had access to money I don't know they that's kind of how most of it happens another one of my friends did something similar like he left school he saved up money and he came back and he shot a film in my house that uh part of in my house that uh Roger Ebert I think said it was his top five of the year so um but they just go back and they go to their families and just get the money and that's a big part of it, Yeah, I mean, back then, if you went to college, you usually had money. You either had really exceptional grades or you had family that was subsidizing you. Because they used to look at your parents' income. And the only reason I was able to go was because I was a veteran, so you're considered an independent student. So I could go at 22 and go into the college and get full loan benefits. And whereas if I was 18 and I never served, they would look at my parents' income. And, you know, you have to be pretty low income back then to get a college loan. So it was a huge disparity. People that were mostly in the middle class didn't go to college. It was mostly upper middle class and then really.
Tyler:
[37:42] Especially film school. I mean, of all things. yeah yeah
Heath:
[37:46] Anytime you get in a bfa yeah you know you're not you're not a very serious person.
Tyler:
[37:53] You might be but yeah yeah i know i know what you mean
Heath:
[37:59] But i mean i could have gotten a gone into computer science i would just, my my love was for storytelling i've always had a creative mind and uh and technical it's been a sort of a warring dissonance there in my head so you know that's why whenever i do make a game i try to i always try to bring in some story element to it and you know be very uh very much focusing on that.
Tyler:
[38:25] Well you know this far into the interview we haven't even like mentioned the name of the game that we're here to talk about so um night jackal has really cool this is by the way night jackal blood depth being the sequel to your original game night jackal which is on steam right um but it for a boomer shooter has a lot of sort of like cinematic elements a lot of like rich storytelling that you really don't see in other even just to like throw out other dosman games like i had uh oh quarter main you know i had covered that game and it's a completely different experience you know like your game having like these kind of slow moments where you're like walking up and like emerging into like oh there's a woman here and she's saying something to me like that none of that happens in a nazi shooter game right not to disparage it just completely a different way of using the same medium so
Heath:
[39:22] Yeah i don't know if that's a strength or weakness because it's going to be interesting to see how the audience reacts because i'm not making this game is nothing like uh what the other boomer shooters are and i don't know if that's a strength or a weakness so we will find out when whenever people play it i can't wait and it's gonna you know we got about two weeks and then uh we're gonna see how people respond to it i think some people are going to be pleasantly surprised. And I think some people are going to, you know, assume that it was going to be, you know, a straightforward boomer shooter, but it is, it has a lot of story elements. It gets into, it's a lot of twists, a lot of, a lot of kind of wild things happen. And then, you know, I make the ending, I love the ending. And so the final boss is a lot of fun. That's all I got to say. And there's also another boss that you never got to, uh, Paradoxia, that is fun you get to fight a superhero and like it's like you know it's a lot of fun to fight him.
Tyler:
[40:22] I'm definitely going to finish it up it's just like i got the build the latest build that you sent me what yesterday and then i'm just trying to like grab a couple hours while the baby was asleep during the day today but yeah i'm probably gonna keep going um but yeah it's it's such an interesting concept and so there's a few things that i had like kind of written in my notes that i wanted to like pick your brain about like where did this come from where did this idea come from And I feel like you could tell me if I'm wrong. I feel like you're a person who likes Alan Moore a lot.
Heath:
[40:53] Oh, I love Alan Moore. Yeah.
Tyler:
[40:55] So I have the audience can't see these, but I'm a gigantic fan.
Tyler:
[40:58] And I just immediately like kind of caught that. Okay. We've got a superhero, but he's, he's a fucked up person. He's just having sex with multiple girls at one time. And like all that kind of thing in the prison yard scene, which is like right where I left off. I just finished that. So I'm not too far in, but yeah, I just, picked up on that really, really quickly. And the grappling hook also reminded me of Rorschach perfectly.
Heath:
[41:20] It's funny you say Rorschach, because most people equate him to Batman.
Tyler:
[41:24] Or Night Owl, which would be the Watchmen equivalent to Batman. Yeah. Definitely. For sure.
Heath:
[41:31] Yeah, he's kind of... So, Night Jackal is... He's satirical of those characters that are extremely privileged and rich, and... Have a perfect moral compass like batman you know uh he's a little bit of that uh booster gold you know uh but batman's a really good one to sort of uh satirize because he you know there's no there's no kid that rate that's raised in that kind of environment that goes on to be, uh to have such a perfect moral compass i mean i don't give a shit if your parents got killed by you know a thug or not a criminal element piece i mean you.
Tyler:
[42:12] I feel like you're more likely to be to be a little fucked up right and not have a yeah they call
Heath:
[42:19] It affluenza they have they have a term for it where it's like you just don't relate with society and here he is he's like the savior and he's like so smart and yeah i was like that's such bullshit you know i love i love batman don't get me wrong he's a perfectly good character but it's bullshit is.
Tyler:
[42:34] You know it's i like frank miller batman specifically and like anything that deviates like not to say that i don't enjoy like corny michael keaton or even like adam west as satire but when i think about batman for me that's the dark knight rises or that kind of shit yeah so
Heath:
[42:54] You must have been a big fan of the nolan films.
Tyler:
[42:55] I i did really really really like those films i even liked the the the batman with uh robert pattinson to it for what it is i thought it was really solid movie um even though i think it like the things that it did differently like changing the riddler or like odd to be angry about when the the jim carrey riddler while it was awesome because it's jim carrey was not really like the riddler same with the the penguin the way that uh they do the danny devito penguin being totally bastardized from
Tyler:
[43:29] the way that a batman fan who reads comic books knows the penguin So, I don't know. For me, I like the gritty, dark, kung fu, badass Batman. Not the... Swanky silly nipple suit batman yeah
Heath:
[43:45] Oh god that's the schumacher.
Tyler:
[43:47] Yeah well
Heath:
[43:49] Like well that's the thing schumacher i mean he schumacher surprises you because he's he created the worst batman and then at the same time he's made the client and falling down which are just classics so.
Tyler:
[44:03] I think a lot of people are under pressure when you're when you're on like a big name like at a big ip like that you you're gonna have producers you're gonna have people in your ear fucking with you it's the same as like uh lynch when he did uh dune it's like not it's not the movie he would have made if he could do whatever he wanted right yeah
Heath:
[44:21] I've never seen that one.
Tyler:
[44:22] Oh it have you seen the new dune like the more recent i saw the
Heath:
[44:26] Very first one and yeah i mean i'm just not a big fan i don't get what people see in that but i haven't read the books.
Tyler:
[44:33] I'm not a big dune person i just uh like i feel like if you are into space fantasy like what's the space opera right like star wars that kind of shit dune is just another one of those it's really great a lot of people like it do i think it's the greatest thing ever yeah but point being like it was at that time it was like a big budget movie he's working with major you know investors and it's just it's not the same as making a racer head when you've got people barking you know down your neck making suggestions i
Heath:
[45:04] Would i would ask like what why nipples.
Tyler:
[45:06] Yeah why probably maybe an oversight maybe just like the costume designer threw it on there and no one questioned it maybe everyone was afraid to question it they're like oh that's
Heath:
[45:18] It was so bad.
Tyler:
[45:18] That's the suit um and
Heath:
[45:20] They got really corny i mean look this is this is kind of the problem i have with like and this is a little bit of a tangent but this is a problem i have with uh, Just any time you have any kind of IP and they try to continue it, they never they try to capture the original intent. And like Tim Burton is a very specific filmmaker. And what he did with the first two Batmans was unique to him. And so they try to continue that franchise. And you can tell that they're like, well, this is what this is about. It's goofy he's got nipples and it's like i don't think tim burton when he was doing this ever thought this is going to be goofy i think he was like you know and like because i can't imagine watching those other batman movies uh like the schumacher one and just say oh these these guys were taking this seriously i think they were just like this is this is going to be goofy and it's going to be fun it's for kids and it just comes out the.
Tyler:
[46:21] Mass audience you know for batman are little children who really don't care or know the difference and then at that time it's like people who saw adam west batman uh and if you want to catch both of those you have to have kind of a zany goofy batman that's kind of where the character was evolutionarily at that time and i
Heath:
[46:38] Would disagree with you a little bit okay go ahead i'm going to disagree with you a little bit because at that same time there was a year one part one year one part two uh i think it was there was a comedy so and it was the first time batman was seen on a cover holding a gun It was like a turning point, a darker Batman. And I think that's what they were tapping into with the choice of the black suit and all that. I think the people are excited. I think people are excited to see a grittier Batman. And I do think Keaton played a grittier. He's not Christian Bell. But I think he played a gritty Batman. I don't know. That's where I would disagree. I think that the comics and the fans definitely saw Batman in a different light at that point. He was certainly getting more grittier. He still had his blue and grays. But that's where I would disagree with you on it. But again, splitting hairs here. Splitting absolute hairs on it.
Tyler:
[47:32] No, to be, I'm just going to try to like make an argument for like why, why it might not be that way. It's not like a personal grudge or anything, but I feel like
Heath:
[47:43] I'm not going to take a personal grudge. I love this. I love nerding out.
Tyler:
[47:47] I feel like uh when you make a mass appeal big budget you know superhero film you're not your audience your target audience is not comic book fans that's true they are already going to watch your movie what you want to bring is like grandma and mom and dad and aunt and uncle and all your other kids who aren't into comic books to the theater to watch this thing um and it almost goes i was gonna say like generationally so you get gritty batman like a full generation after frank miller's batman run so you have the introduction of that in the comic book world and then it's like when those people who liked that as a kid get some money and the ability to make a movie or whatever that they imitate that um and i would just say that it's like also true in video games or any other art form um this like in the 80s why is it that like every horror movie has all these kids with complete like absentee parents you know they're just they have like these big affluent houses and shit like that it's because like kids that grew up in the golden age of america are now old enough to make movies about their childhood even if it's set in the present right yeah it's just weird it's like weird psychological shit like that and by the way you said earlier like a tangent this show is all tangents so you can
Heath:
[49:05] Oh i'm the i'm the king of tangents you're going down you're going down this path.
Tyler:
[49:09] Yeah let's just go down the rabbit rabbit hole i'm gonna i'm
Heath:
[49:12] Gonna take you down tangent avenue i mean that's just that's how that's how i roll.
Tyler:
[49:19] So anyway, all this mumbo-jumbo about Batman, but so that's an influence on Night Jackal and also just,
Heath:
[49:27] Right. I mean, if you look at, like, look at the first Night Jackal game, I mean, you know, you're riding around in a, it's kind of like an OutRun style, like perspective, a pseudo 3D perspective.
Heath:
[49:40] And it's all, it's all 2D, but it's, it's done. I coded it to be like a pseudo 3D look. So it looks like Outrun and Pole Position, all those kind of pseudo 3D racers. But it has the element of Spy Hunter. And I just thought it would be so great, to incorporate this idea that I had for having a character that was satirical of Batman. And he was just kind of like an awful... And you get a small glimpse of it in the first game. Like, he's just kind of an awful dude. There's like an anal joke in it and stuff. And all the things that he's saying when he's shooting the cars is uh just you know absolute depravity so uh and there is a clean version in there you can click the clean version you know but but night jackal is you know he's a he's a piece of shit let's be honest so and i think in the second game blood that you you get, more into his character but he's not so much of a piece of crap like he's you you don't get as much you don't get a lot into him being such an awful person because he's still kind of the hero of the game but uh but he does have he's got a lot of things that are messed up that is brand new to this game it's only in this game uh this this story element that uh which i don't want to give away because it'd be spoiler but there's a part that you haven't gotten to yet that gets fun.
Tyler:
[51:04] Yeah yeah it's it's really really interesting to see how like you take a character who is flawed like that and still try to find ways to make them sympathetic and the classic or at this point i guess it's classic because like kind of the breaking bad method of you take mr rogers and turn him slowly into mr you know dr jekyll and mr hyde or whatever by the end of it like you did a kind of like a slow drip and by the end of it you're cheering on the villain or something but it's it's a little bit harder to kind of like make someone sympathetic towards someone after they've already kind of grown accustomed to thinking of them in a certain way one benefit is that a lot of the people who are going to pick up the new game are likely not going to have already played the first one just because of the switch and genres and the time difference
Heath:
[51:51] Oh yeah yeah yeah and you don't need to it's not it's not a sequel it's uh it's a completely different game the first one's a racer shooter kind of game this one is a boomer shooter and, they cover they cover some similar aspects uh some of the similar aspects of the story and then um But there's like a whole, this is a much longer game, much more in depth. Sure, yeah.
Tyler:
[52:16] I think that's the, like, a great IP in anything, but in games is one that can transcend genres, right? Like, so, like, Duke Nukem or Mario, like, they can, you can make any number of different genre of games on that IP or based on those characters, that universe. So, you know.
Heath:
[52:37] And I think the big part of that is, like, not being so serious about it. Like, I think with, I love to have fun with Night Jackal, And I do not ever, I'm never precious with them. So I'm always, that's why, you know, the music is, is so good because I don't come into it trying to force it into like a peg and say, well, it's gotta be into a square hole, you know, and say, this is round circles. I got to go. I just say, I want everybody's making music on this. I give them the idea. Sometimes I give them the lyrics or I sort of, you know, give them inspiration. And then I, it's always fun. I always tell them like, have fun. And usually what they come back with unless there's like a technical mistake is 100 like there's there's never any notes i don't give them notes like hey i don't like this let's try a different path they always nail it um because they're just so good i mean it's just such an easy pathway to creating music because you know like the first night jackal song that one was based off the.
Heath:
[53:36] The uh midway song the uh for the sona sega uh daytona usa and that guy was just like do do do do do do do do i said it's a song about revenge i said here are the lyrics and it was i said it's just repetitive lyrics about like i said put some do do do in there i said put some put some you know going to get revenge and here's i said but just have fun i said here's your inspiration do something original first thing he came back with i was like i fucking love it and i honestly I think it's like one of the best things he's ever made and he even said he was like I had so much fun on this project.
Heath:
[54:10] And that's young Cray who did the first one, the first song.
Tyler:
[54:13] I think it's it's like really really good way of kind of getting you into the universes to have that kind of cheesy it even later like you because you you have different versions of different night jackal songs like in the prison yard i get i think the second version of the song that's introduced in the game um but it's i don't know why yeah but it just it just really like immerses you in the character like in the universe it feels like a cartoon or something
Heath:
[54:40] Yeah and all those lyrics are pertinent to like night jackal so that's i mean it's kind of hard to understand you know because he's belting out like the guy who's singing has just got such an incredible voice um but i mean he's talking about exactly what's happening in the story and sort of where night jackal is
Heath:
[54:58] in this in the story of the game.
Tyler:
[54:59] Yeah so forgive me if i because i know you still have a little bit of time before you actually get this thing out there for people to try so I might there might be things like that in the build that I bring up that are like already addressed or whatever to just tell me um I think it's interesting to not have this kind of character doing one-liners like Duke Nukem style as they interact with the world is that a creative choice or just something that you didn't decided not to do you know
Heath:
[55:28] The first Night Jackal game he is dropping one-liners and I remember people saying, Oh, he's kind of like Duke Nukem because it's just that's what especially when he's saying things, I think it's like my favorite line, which we made a T-shirt of is like, I hope your family gets AIDS. I mean, it's just so 1980s. It's so fitting. It's just so irreverent. But of course, I think it's funny. And I'm like, isn't it funny to see a Batman character like killing people and saying, I hope your family gets AIDS, you know, just and then you're like, but he's he sounds like Duke Nukem. And I'm like, well, shit. OK, I get where you're coming from. So this one I said I just didn't want him to be really talking that much when he's killing people because I'm very aware of the uh comparison so I said okay and also it plays into the story which I'm not going to give away yet because there is voice acting in it but there's a reason why there's a separation uh which you'll find out when you play the game but uh so that was a conscious decision I'm leaning into the very sort of like old school like you know when you have the comms when he's communicating with saying at over through the visor and you hear the you know that's like very old school like super nintendo style way of having them communicate so i stuck to that uh in the game.
Tyler:
[56:49] Yeah it really it it really does a good job of making you feel like i believe the character that you're interacting with at the at the beginning is saying um but you and that person having these conversations and it's sort of almost like a tutorial for the game kind of stopping you at certain points even even in the middle of action sometime to just kind of like reground you let you know where we're going with the story and so on a lot of shooters are afraid to do that you know a lot a lot of fps people are kind of from that half-life school where it's like never take the control out of my hands i always want to be you know whatever that kind of thing but like you said you're trying to do something a little bit different here
Heath:
[57:30] Yeah i mean.
Tyler:
[57:31] First person games can be story rich it's just a stupid boomer shooter thing like these expectations that players have of those yeah
Heath:
[57:39] But i mean if you're gonna if everything has to follow these in these tedious rules then it i mean where's the game i mean where's the fun where's the curiosity and adventure where's the exploration where are you where's the surprise we.
Tyler:
[57:55] And you used to sell games based on like you would see a visual kind of like a poster or something you wouldn't have any idea really what it was going to be like you know and then you you're ready to try something and try to love it when you get your hands on it but now the way especially on Steam the way we sell games is really that's a third order part of the process the first part is like does it fit into categories that when someone types or searches by these categories in a way that i can communicate to them this is something like other things that you'll like and that's the first way to get in front of them you know what i mean
Heath:
[58:32] I think this is kind of the anti boomer shooter to some degree and it's like it has the elements i mean you you actually go through and you're shooting you know you're you get to shoot people and and like you know you get to do all the things that you do otherwise you have all these weapons and and i i don't think you got far enough to get uh too many weapons i think you just you did you did see i've got up to.
Tyler:
[58:56] The akimbo guns and that's yeah and then i you know he gives you the chain gun in the prison scene spoiler alert
Heath:
[59:03] That's by the way did you did you right click for any of the attacks did you do the alt attack right clicks with.
Tyler:
[59:10] The chain gun
Heath:
[59:10] No with.
Tyler:
[59:13] Other guns yes yeah okay with the you know with the akumbo guns you have like the three round burst and then the single fire shot you know i didn't think there was one for the shotgun no the i know that you have like rapid fire with the
Heath:
[59:25] The batarang style weapons um and all of those is like i i just like i had so much fun designing the the like the actual gunplay like the because like when you have the fang blade which is the like the throwing star um it's very accurate i mean it's like, flawlessly accurate you can be really far away you just nail exactly what you're aiming for there's no spread and then but when you do the three off because it's such a quick uh that one's just like it's almost like a shotgun so if you're you have that weapon equipped of course the right click is really good if you're you're you're facing somebody somebody comes up to you and you're close to him but otherwise if you need the long distance that one's super accurate um, you know each one of them has there's other weapons and they have different sort of right click some of them um but i love i just i just put that animation in of the fighting where he has the kick i don't know i had to i had to add that in i've been bugging the hell out of me he just had the one-two punch and i was like i gotta add a kick in yeah the kick looks pretty good it's obligatory.
Tyler:
[1:00:35] I think at this point like every every first person shooter is got to have like after it was at anger foot i think that was like no you you must
Heath:
[1:00:42] You also have a superhero he's got it he's got a kick i mean you know what superhero is just going to go fisticuffs so you know.
Tyler:
[1:00:51] Yeah, it's hard to think of one. None of the good ones. There's no old school stand-up boxer superheroes.
Tyler:
[1:00:58] Has there ever been a superhero who was... Daredevil was a boxer, right?
Heath:
[1:01:03] Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was. Hell's Kitchen.
Tyler:
[1:01:04] I got it now.
Heath:
[1:01:07] That's the only one I can think of.
Tyler:
[1:01:08] Yeah. Yeah. Again, I like Frank Miller Daredevil.
Heath:
[1:01:12] Yeah.
Tyler:
[1:01:13] I think that there's just this thread of during that time frame, he was just turning all of your favorite goofy superheroes into these like maniacal kind of like anti-hero darkness grittier i
Heath:
[1:01:26] Like i like i like the goofy era too a little bit i mean not too goofy i don't the 1960s batman when we got a little too much when you're looking and you got like rip van weekle batman i go yeah i don't know if i like that but the the old daredevils like they were pretty great too there was so many great stories that i remember from you know when i was a kid in the 80s just reading these comics so they have some good.
Tyler:
[1:01:50] Stories back then too there's a really i think it's an early deadpool comic where like the story is deadpool gets sent back in time and he's literally like page for page inside of like 1960s spider-man and people think he's spider-man yeah but it's just shitting on how goofy that era seemed in retrospect um i don't know man like it's kind of like what you were saying earlier like this my generation seeing the whole thing backwards i feel jealous like i kind of wish i got to see the versions of things as they emerge
Heath:
[1:02:26] I mean, you know, the times were different, but, uh, I mean,
Heath:
[1:02:31] you know, people, people are generally the same. I think it's just tastes change over time. And, uh, you know, part of what we're in the business we're in is the taste business. You know, whether if you're a storyteller or if you're creating games, that sort of thing, um, you're just in the taste business. And so it, it changed, changes. And sometimes you just need to try new things or you can sort of do a revival of the old things. And I think with Night Jackal Blood Debt, this is, it is kind of more of the, a revival of the 1980s style. But like you said, like an Alan Moore influence. But if Alan Moore was, was funny. Because some of this is like, to me, there's not a lot of jokes in this Night Jackal game. But it's like there's just kind of funny things like that i look at and go this is just just horrible and like almost kind of a silly way but when you get to
Heath:
[1:03:26] the very end uh you know there's like two endings and uh they're both very interesting.
Tyler:
[1:03:34] Let's it
Heath:
[1:03:37] Was very fun.
Tyler:
[1:03:38] Reiterating on that theme though it's like so in the 90s when you have people making you know fps games for the first time all the jokes all the like we talk about duke newcomb or you know like a blood doom all that stuff was influenced by like the evil dead and just largely 80s stuff robocop you name it it's all kind of thrown in there and obvious about it and the music also especially in doom because they were just ripping that shit off turning it into middies uh As you go through that, as you see that kind of unfold throughout time, space, whatever, it's super interesting to see how people kind of react differently, like we were saying earlier, based on their expectations. You have basically kids who are watching shit as teenagers in the 80s, then defining the 90s with 80s stuff. And then here we are all these years later, and you're in this position where you're making a game that's reminiscent of something in the 90s. But then again it's like also reminiscent of something in the 80s without really having to be it's like accurate to the time because at the time that's what they were influenced by it's so weird
Heath:
[1:04:54] Um yeah and this game is very an anachronistic so you're definitely going to
Heath:
[1:04:59] feel uh you're not quite sure what what we're trying to go for yeah.
Tyler:
[1:05:05] I've learned to when sam comes to me and he's like hey man you should talk to this person i just i kind of like going blind like it i just like you know what we talked about in our chat and then i looked at both night jackal games and i was like okay other than that i'm just going to kind of find out um what's going on with this dude but so did did you after school did you like actually work in film and tv you said you had moved to la there for a portion of time
Heath:
[1:05:31] Yeah of course i i moved there i started working for a television show called battle dome uh which is kind of like their it's kind of like you take you know you remember the show american gladiator oh yeah so yeah so you take american gladiator and sort of put a wwe slant on it and this is basically what it was um there's all these characters and stuff like that and and um so i i used to i used to work on that and then i would work for uh yon debant and lucas foster at a place called blue tulip and you know we did um a lot of a lot of movies. Yon Dabon was, um, he was the director of, uh.
Heath:
[1:06:12] Speed and twister and lucas foster did it produced a lot of things he comes from the school of brookheimer so it was like these powerhouses and i was there learning from them and and doing my my grunt work so i would work there um and i worked on uh early stages of uh uh equilibrium i don't know if you know that movie with christian bell i do yeah kurt wimmer film so we did that And then I moved on and went into tech and I started doing a lot of tech work at that point and working for Nissan, doing their Nissan USA build out.
Heath:
[1:06:48] Disneypictures.com, I built that website out and a lot of movie stuff. So I did a lot of flash movie sites and games and I started my own company, did that for a while. And then I went off and I made a feature film for like $15,000 in L.A. And it was like a fucking nightmare to make, but it went on to do quite well. Um you know one best feature malibu international film festival which was really nice and then uh, after that because it cost so much money to do film i got back into uh working in tech again and then i would i would teeter back and forth i would write i had a writing partner it was one of the writers for eastbound and down actually and we would write a couple things we had an rl stein uh was going to this before the goosebumps movie was going to be rl stein presents and it was going to be this this story we did and we went to zemeckis with it and he passed and then producers got cold feet so we abandoned that project um had a screenplay make it into core collection in the oscars library which was awesome so all that kind of stuff i was i was dealing with never, never quite enjoyed I enjoyed all that stuff but I never quite enjoyed the, the industry like the magic you see from the outside was never what you saw
Heath:
[1:08:10] when they're making the sausage you know.
Tyler:
[1:08:11] It's how i make it's how i feel about video games and the video games business in general like yeah yeah for sure um
Heath:
[1:08:19] I think there's so much better.
Tyler:
[1:08:20] Well i would say what you and i are doing like indie games like this working with a small publisher that kind of stuff is very different than working on you know a multi-million dollar project with a big 120 person multinational team or something like that right so that i hate um i found that out you know like by trying it i'm like i hate this and everything about it like i don't even like the games that get made this way because of this culture surrounding it um and i feel like i've never been in the film business but tv sets listening to how people talk about it's largely the same it's like kind of this big boat and you even with power only have so much ability to steer it the way you want it to go so you're kind of constantly fighting the system yeah
Heath:
[1:09:10] Now where did you work if you don't mind me asking.
Tyler:
[1:09:13] So i came back to the states uh last year may of last year prior to that i had moved to denmark and i was working um for 3d realms so oh
Heath:
[1:09:25] Okay yeah yeah.
Tyler:
[1:09:27] I started off uh as a producer you know and i was managing several projects like kingpin reloaded i was the producer of that also combustion which is still yet to come out produced on that uh was it kenderman remedy i went into marketing kind of later as i was working there so i kind of transitioned from lead basically like leading teams of developers to make games to overall marketing for the game so like my title was brand manager but like honestly that doesn't communicate what i was doing it was more like product marketing managers like that like planning from from when you acquire you know a game for development all the way until post-release everything that you
Tyler:
[1:10:14] Plan to do to promote it right and a lot of that is giving feedback to all you know between the qa team and the developers which is all great experiences like i'm not complaining about having had that experience but what i learned is that i prefer video games where you know there's this sort of artisan feeling to it not a big sausage machine that's sort of like compromising your creative vision to make it more profitable yeah not that there aren't things that anyone could do to make their game better or more profitable whatever but there's a sanitization that i think comes along with just you know god we got to get this thing out and i i went through that a lot during that time also was when
Tyler:
[1:10:58] The industry was like going through this kind of massive bubble break and they were just laying off everyone left and right and the result of that is aside from like i hated losing all those colleagues and seeing people get you know lose their jobs and everything like but i feel like we've talked that to death what really hurt was seeing games that you know i had personally worked on for years and years and years just kind of get lost in the overall like money
Tyler:
[1:11:26] Discussion it's like okay well you know that that project or whatever fuck it you know because it's only worth you know this a couple hundred thousand dollars and we're moving on to something else is going to cost more like 14 million or you know that kind of thing um which financially is the right decision to make but if it's someone's life like if it'd be like if someone would just take night jackal and be like ah well you know i know you've been working on this for four years and all but fuck it uh we don't care about that anymore the the company's vision has changed so shit like that i hate that i really it was just like killing me in my soul to constantly have to fight that battle every day yeah
Heath:
[1:12:09] There there's a there's a corporate culture and is what i think is what you're talking about is like that that that corporate culture you see a lot in tech sure um yeah hollywood's a it has that corporate culture but it also has that old industry shittiness just human shittiness and uh abuse and and and that's just kind of baked in that stuff never goes away and um i mean people are pretty awful and then they because they hold over you and then this is something you you don't see in the corporate world because you know it's kind of hard for them to do that um they hold over you this reprisal professional reprisal that you're going to get blacklist and all that and that is a very serious thing that they do and, they it's a manipulation tactic largely when young people come to hollywood and they'll sort of hold it over you so that's one of the things that i don't like about the sausage.
Tyler:
[1:13:08] Participated in blacklisting someone really and yeah and i'm not going to say anybody's names or anything like that exists and there's a there's like a version of me when i was like 23 who's super bright-eyed and idealistic about like going to work for like the biggest coolest video game companies and all that kind of shit and just being so excited about the art you know that's and then getting in there you know just having that reality like see it's like once you've once you've been to a sausage factory and seen a pig get bolted in the head you can't go back to not thinking about that the next time you have your bacon, man, it's just, right.
Tyler:
[1:13:46] There's an innocence that goes away. I feel like, but yeah, like every, everybody in the entertainment business period, I think has that same, um, experience of being ripped off honestly there's all there's fraudsters everywhere that's the problem no matter what business you're in and the more the more like exclusive that businesses are difficult to obtain the the more that the people are the gatekeepers are keeping
Heath:
[1:14:12] Sure keeping.
Tyler:
[1:14:14] The walls up
Heath:
[1:14:15] No that makes sense um.
Tyler:
[1:14:17] But what you know don't let me stereotype it to death like what what was your experience
Heath:
[1:14:22] At just in which in.
Tyler:
[1:14:26] In hollywood just make you know trying to go through all that whole process make getting things made you're going you're you can't make enough money so you're doing tech work you're making websites but
Heath:
[1:14:35] You know you know the thing that drove me nuts the most um was probably uh was the the flakiness which is just something that is so well known to in uh in hollywood it's like it's one of the reasons i left too because i have a startup that i've been trying to you know get off the ground i've been networking and it's just such a flaky flaky town and so i just want to be around real people and and talk to people and i just i just don't fit that mold i never have you know i i'm a filmmaker i like story you know it's all in me but you know i'm just there's only 26 years of this shit i'm like i gotta take a break and i know i want to have more control of the things i want to do and it's fun i mean look i enjoyed writing and working with producer you think it's not fun to have rl stein like want to put his name on the thing that you're writing it's fucking cool it's fucking fun but but, you still have to wade through the bullshit like it's fun to go get the opportunity to oh yep with.
Tyler:
[1:15:47] Rl stein's people you know and get them to talk to your people and negotiate that just to get to that point and that's yeah you know there's shit that i'm never going to be able to really talk about like would have been could have been video game things that might have happened that i was over the moon excited about and just just to like your experience and like it just didn't work out
Heath:
[1:16:07] Yeah and i mean again i want to i want to be clear it's like it's there's something rewarding about uh about screenwriting and filmmaking the parts about it that i like and i and i know i'm coming off more as a writer but i was actually i was also director um i i don't like production i i understand it's a necessary evil i like the writing aspect i like the editing aspect and uh those things i always enjoyed everything else development dealing with the histrionics and the personalities and all just it's not for me but.
Heath:
[1:16:56] You get it at the end of the day, the art just, it kills you.
Heath:
[1:17:01] Cause you're just like, you love it so much. I mean, it is, it's the people that, that kind of make it suck. And I'm sure you had a similar experience in like video games. It sounds like where it's like, it's really just the people. But what I learned is I just don't give them strength. And, and largely I just, you know, whenever you have a desperation, like you're, cause that's how they set up the system. They want you to be desperate when you're coming in. And if you just don't have the desperation and you just kind of say, no, I'm not playing that game. And, you know, I have agency and this is what I will and won't do. And you set up your boundaries that people will, you know, you'll have a better experience there. So, I mean, when you're first starting off and you're young, you don't know these things. You know, you're, you're, you're just, you have no clue. You don't know how to navigate this. You know it's over time learned experiences give you the wisdom but you know i mean i remember and it would be for things that the threat of professional reprisal was always for things that were not your fault it's just it's it's a power play it's abuse like i'll give you an example of what what happened to me there was this lady who was she was a development executive this place i worked. And there was this big, the big director, Jan de Bon, I've already said, and Lucas Foster. So not a lot of people at this company. It was like very few of us.
Heath:
[1:18:25] And she would always want me to make copies of everything that went to Yon. Well, Yon was up for like big movies, Tomb Raider at the time, Spider-Man, the first Spider-Man movie before it went to Raimi. There were like five people up for it. And Raimi was not one of them, oddly enough.
Tyler:
[1:18:39] It's just so weird to me, like just to envision my childhood, if Sam Raimi didn't direct Spider-Man would be.
Heath:
[1:18:45] Well, did you know David Fincher was up for it?
Tyler:
[1:18:47] I know. It's just so weird. Like those movies, I was like, I was the perfect age, right? Yeah. perfect age this is so that era is spider-man to
Heath:
[1:19:00] Oh yeah me.
Tyler:
[1:19:00] Right just the idea of anyone but sam raimi doing it it like shakes up my whole universe so like could completely change my zeitgeist i'm
Heath:
[1:19:09] Gonna 100 say that i am so glad that he that he because of raimi spider-man i mean like you can say what you want about the third one but the first two
Heath:
[1:19:17] especially just he not i mean it's just they're such perfect films.
Tyler:
[1:19:20] The piano scene in the third movie is like the best thing i it just makes me so happy watching because i feel like part of that is like that anger that you're seeing in that scene is the filmmaker's anger at the production like yeah yeah oh my gosh that
Heath:
[1:19:38] Third one's pretty goofy but but in a good way i mean i like it's a kind of good goofy but um.
Tyler:
[1:19:43] Tofer grace as venom too was just like a mistake like he still had that that 70s show stank on him at that time i
Heath:
[1:19:51] Don't think he was a he's not a very good actor and.
Tyler:
[1:19:54] He was good in a flight risk i
Heath:
[1:19:57] Don't think i've ever seen that.
Tyler:
[1:19:58] It's a mel gibson movie um yeah it doesn't matter you don't you don't like topher grace's acting that's fine moving on no i i like
Heath:
[1:20:06] Him in in that 70s show and he seems like now that all this stuff's been coming out about danny masterson And I remember I met his sister years and years ago, which she came to NCSA when I was a counselor there. But all this stuff coming out with Danny, uh, It's kind of odd, you know, and like you see how kind of gross everybody is. And I think there was this grossness behind it, which makes sense. I mean, that's how people are. I've known some pretty bad things to happen to people.
Heath:
[1:20:36] But it seemed like Topher Grace was actually the nicest, like a nice guy and not part of that gross Hollywood. So I don't mean to throw shade at him and say he's not a good actor. I mean, I just I don't think he could pull off Eddie Brock. I think he was miscast. being.
Tyler:
[1:20:52] A like villain like that at that time i'm not saying he can't play a villain because he has in other roles and i don't question them it's just for me he look he's just the guy from that 70s show trying to play venom it didn't
Heath:
[1:21:07] Work yeah so yeah but but getting back to what i was saying it was like the so you know i helped yawn with um spider-man you know i was you know i i he knew that i was a big spider-man fan through his assistant and they were like he was like oh i want heath to read this script i wasn't supposed to it was a red script i don't mean to get him in trouble uh but uh it was a red script meaning it was on red paper so you couldn't photocopy it and it was the first iteration had electro in it it was the first script and i remember just sitting down and reading it and uh it was just kind of fun i went in and like gave he didn't know anything about spide he called him speederman or something like that because he was also from the Netherlands you know he's Dutch so, he'd be like he's he's that's what he used to call me he's he's that's his fucking Spiderman and I would tell him I'm like oh my god do you like I said it's really well written script I said I just don't know if it's Spiderman and he says yeah it's not exciting enough and I said.
Heath:
[1:22:04] Um, I said, you should look in this character, Craven the Hunter. And I started pitching him on it and all these different villains. And I went to the comic shop and bought him a bunch of stuff like Gwen Stacy's death and all that. So you could read it. Um, but anyway, my point is, is like all that kind of stuff, when you get attention from him draws out this, this ire from other people. And I was pretty low on the totem pole. In fact, I was the lowest guy on the total pole at the company.
Heath:
[1:22:30] And there was a development executive and she would tell me all the time she was like anything that comes across his desk i want a copy of it but but i'm not supposed to tell him so unethical and i'm like i'm not going to fucking make a copy for you like i didn't tell her that because she's holding professional appraisal over my head and she's having relations with a very well-connected producer in hollywood at the time and i'm like you know you can't run afoul of her but also my boss i which is yon debon i can't run afoul of him you know like make copies of scripts that are only for his eyes and then give it to so she put me in a pickle and i was really in a tough spot where i could not i had to break the world so i what i went up doing just so we're clear so because there was a copying machine and every time i would come back and make copies for jan she would know and she'd come walking through and check what i was making copies of and she and i would get in a lot of trouble she would dress me down if if if those copies i wasn't making her a copy.
Heath:
[1:23:34] So I had to go into our library of scripts and grab one, like a grab toy story or something and just, you know, and I had to put that out as a ringer and have those separated out and make copies of the actual script that was in the cabinet off to the side and just play a game of, I mean, I had to get really good at it too, because she would come by, and you have to be very careful making copies because she would check them. So I had to be really quick and put them up and make copies of the toy story. And she'd come out and be like, what are you making copies of? I was like, I said, Toy Story. She was, why is it all about that? I was like, and I'd play dumb. I was like, I don't know. I said, but I'm making you a copy. She was like, I don't need that. So that's how I got around. I had to play games like that because they're really awful and they want to ruin your career for their advancement. It's really strange.
Heath:
[1:24:24] Anyway, that was my diatribe. I hope you enjoyed my TED Talk.
Tyler:
[1:24:28] No, no, no. This is super interesting and topical. Like people are people are hungry to hear about like what's it really like and i think that the past five years have just been non-stop kind of pulling the curtains back on all these different industry all the different you know everything to do with entertainment industry and politics which is the entertainment district of the military industrial complex but yeah it's like you're talking about danny masterson but i was just recently watching the documentary about the the nickelodeon kids and how fucked up all that was with the cast of all that and zoe 101 and the amanda show which was like that's my childhood and then it's all ruined now like i'll never be able to look i'll never be able to look at anything drake bell ever did again the same way or oh whatever dan snyder all that stuff it's yeah
Heath:
[1:25:20] I mean here's what i say separate the art from the artist um because there's, People are going to be awful, but I can compartmentalize. I certainly can. Because he was in Better Off Dead. I don't know if you've ever seen that movie with John Cusack, but it's brilliant, and I would definitely watch it. It's just like, who was that other guy? Oh, shit. The guy who got canceled, Kevin, or shit. He was in Glengarry Glen Ross. He's such a great actor. Anyway, you know, these things happen and you go, look, this is an awful person, but I can't stop watching good art. And just because they did something that I dislike or there were awful people that that is just going to you're never through history. We'd have to go through and burn half of LACMA down. You know what I mean? Yeah, there's going to be.
Tyler:
[1:26:17] I'm with you like i can simultaneously like burzum and still right now emotionally not want to listen to anything diddy ever made like yeah it doesn't mean i'm never going to put on another big record and still enjoy it or anything like that but like just the raw emotional feeling like i don't like i can't listen to this right now without thinking about that so i just need time to separate sure that kind of thing and it's yeah i'm not going to stop watching quentin tarantino movies because of Harvey Weinstein either like it's right it's not negotiable yeah
Heath:
[1:26:48] Well then that's exactly the point I mean yeah I mean everybody's mileage varies like you may find something, some sort of content that you look at and go I don't, I don't mind. I can get past it.
Tyler:
[1:27:03] Sure.
Heath:
[1:27:04] But, you know, it's just, you gotta, you know, it's like, how crazy is it? Is like, if, if, if something happened that I disagree with or don't like, or if somebody's really a monster that you just don't enjoy the art, you know, cause you're thinking, Oh, I'm supporting them. You're not supporting them. You're just, you're enjoying art. Just fucking enjoy it. You know what I mean? Like just, you know, Roy and Polanski did Chinatown. Chinatown is one of the best fucking movies ever made.
Tyler:
[1:27:31] Like you read my mind, I was thinking of like Roman Polanski is like the granddaddy of them all, like the big boss of the Hollywood people who escaped, you know, being prosecuted and like that doesn't make the ninth gate any less impressive. It doesn't make Rosemary's baby any less of a great movie. like that's there you go but it does it does say a lot about the whole like conspiracy theory of like hollywood pedophilia blood-sucking you know demon worshippers when like polanski happens to also keep making movies about basically like resurrecting the devil and stuff like that but um it's wild yeah the professional wrestling business that i can talk about that firsthand like also full of just like incredibly shady power games like all the time even at the lowest levels really yeah one time i had uh i had driven from you know where mobile is mobile
Heath:
[1:28:28] Out of alabama.
Tyler:
[1:28:29] Yeah so that's where i grew up but i driven from there to jackson alabama and uh action mike jackson if anybody's old enough to remember him was the kind of the head of the territory showrunner guy up there i have nothing against him this is the only time i ever met him and for all intents and purposes he's a great dude but i brought a couple of my friends with me who were not wrestlers and those kind of old school guys like that they just told me like you're off the show for even bringing people around who are not like smart and this is in like 2013 this is not like we're not keeping kayfabe i didn't understand it but something that simple could just get you excluded from working at all you
Heath:
[1:29:15] Know what they say never meet your heroes.
Tyler:
[1:29:17] I've you know and i like i said i have nothing against him it's just that that's that's the kind of stuff you're up against just to i mean like just to be given the opportunity buck getting paid that was not even on the menu like just to get in front of a crowd and do this thing that you've been practicing to do is extremely difficult um that's why i admire like stand-up comics because they have no one else they can blame for their success or failure other than really themselves at least you know the the performance is all on one person and in your case like so you're solo dev like just you making the game
Heath:
[1:29:50] That's just me.
Tyler:
[1:29:51] Yeah. That's, that's a different beast. I don't think I could handle that. Like I need to be like part of a team and delegate tasks and stuff like that. So just being all in one, uh, as many people who do that as I know and have interviewed, talk to you, it's a, it's a rough job. It's a lot of things to consider.
Heath:
[1:30:10] It's a lot of things to consider, but also it's a lot less expensive.
Tyler:
[1:30:15] Yeah. And you don't have to argue with anybody creatively. Like, this is how I want it to be.
Heath:
[1:30:20] Yeah. And like, and also you get to take a lot of chances. Like I like things at this level. I mean, if you had a small team, you can take chances, but, um, yeah, I, I would prefer to have people to delegate. I don't like doing the production artwork as much and like, like drawing the sprites and all this kind of shit. It's like, it gets really tiring. And like, I mean, I've been working on this game. I think I started December. And so uh we're now almost finished we're just doing like the last little little things and like but outside of the move i took basically two months off to to move to austin and but uh almost two months outside of that like i've been working pretty diligently like it's been my focus um and after this i'm going right back into my startup.
Heath:
[1:31:14] So uh yeah i i i would like to have a team uh i would like to have people that that i could work with on this so that would that would that would be nice but i but the thing is is i'm capable of solo debbing as well i i just don't like to solo dev because usually takes so much of my life, like i think it was 2014 or something like that it's like i built a social network app, you know, back in the day. It was called Hearshot. And it was pretty cool, but it was like, it was formidable. I mean, I had to do all the backend and like the database schemas and all the security on it in the front end. Um, and it was back in the day when it was like hot to do it. And I got a lot of attention from like accelerators and things, but like, you know, all that stuff fizzled out because I built everything and I was paying for all the hosting. And then like, I just had to give it up, had to get rid of it. You know, it's so much better to have a team and have people and also it gives you something it gives you motivation i feel like if you got other people that are relying on you you feel that that energy and you just want to go forward and and and just keep working on it like you kind of reach a point a lot of projects you're doing it by yourself you're like i don't know like you just what am i doing.
Tyler:
[1:32:34] Um so yeah teams though with with anything because i feel like military teaches you that delegation skill and wherever you go for the rest of your life you kind of like still have that in the back of your mind at least for me so like there is a point at which there's too many people to continue to have like everyone has equal say around the table kind of thinking which is kind of where i prefer to exist like i i sort of like the 3 to 12 range kind of group size because you know everyone can kind of freely bounce each other's ideas off of each other and everyone knows each other's name that kind of shit but yeah like once you get into the you know what's it dunbar's number or whatever kind of frame you have to you have to have kind of like a hierarchy or else it falls apart and it's so difficult to make that transition i think for it for any company in any industry just going from garage to now i have employees is crazy crazy difficult yeah
Heath:
[1:33:42] No i agree i 100 agree.
Tyler:
[1:33:44] But but with your you've done now at three three games completely by yourself
Heath:
[1:33:51] Uh well i mean i factor in now this is the first time i've had a publisher like sam so um i don't know if i could say it's completely by myself because i do get feedback from sam sam you know is an important part of this um but i'm the sole dev yeah so this would actually be the fourth game, so there's night.
Tyler:
[1:34:10] Jackal there's a horror game right
Heath:
[1:34:13] Dfr yeah dfr the light which is, was my first game and i just kind of put it up and like just it was my first time building well my first game in unity then on steam and then i did a vr version because i got like the htc vive and then and like did a vr version of the game um which is really fucking scary for me i hate horror games uh i'm just not good at them i they scare the shit out of me like it's it's the worst is like watch me i mean i should just be i mean i wouldn't do it because i have no interest but like i should just be twitching out like twitch streaming out like uh me playing horror games because it would just be the most entertaining thing because i i don't know why i get so invested and um it's terrifying oh yeah it easily there's.
Tyler:
[1:35:04] Just something about like you cannot achieve that level of like immersive
Heath:
[1:35:08] Fear any.
Tyler:
[1:35:10] Other way like in games just take it to a whole new
Heath:
[1:35:12] Level i mean vr is next level resident.
Tyler:
[1:35:15] Evil tattoo on my arm and everything like just like and i'm talking like resident evil 2 fixed camera angles like it just love that stuff it's so um there's something about getting over that fear like pushing yourself a little bit further than you could the last time did you ever play alien isolation
Heath:
[1:35:38] Well, that one I actually streamed. It was back when it first came out. It was like PS4 days when they just added in like the streaming into the platform. Yeah. And back then it's like I had like 100 people watching or something or something like that. And it was I mean, that was pretty impressive for back in the day.
Heath:
[1:35:57] But it was all because it scared the shit out of me. The whole time I'm playing and I was like, I sat there and just I was like, I'm playing for the rest of the game, you know, and I just played through. Yeah it's absolutely well actually it's funny dfr the light was inspired by alien isolation because i wanted to create an intelligence where because one thing i liked that they did was they had the alien have its own uh intelligence and then they had a another intelligence that would another ai that would have feed it and just kind of push it in the direction and like if it was like, Hey, it's time to kind of go. Or if they try to pull it back, I mean, there's like two different AIs working together in the alien never knew what this sort of overseer AI had. I was like, that's kind of a cool idea. So DFR was, was that, um, a little bit like in a super bare bones, super indie, you know, like small game. But, uh, I mean, it is really a small game. Like it's just, you just play it and then you're done but like people have liked it like we've had streamers.
Heath:
[1:37:05] We me had streamers play it on on youtube and then like they've you know on twitch and they they've enjoyed it it's always been like a crowd pleaser but it's it's it's so old now i don't think it can keep up with games um yeah.
Tyler:
[1:37:18] I just think that like horror games that can be more or less beat in like two hours are perfect for streamers like they they're looking for that you know and there's a huge market and like the kind of arguably the most profitable genre like cost to receiving money for it you know maybe not maybe i'm not saying like the biggest obviously that's grand theft auto the biggest games but small investments big returns horror all the way that's no doubt like look at I mean I'm friends with Ted Henschke I need to get him back on the show sometime at some point but he was at Dread XP when they started doing like these horror collections Dread X collections or whatever and instead of trying to make one epic horror game that's eight hours long they're like here's 12 I basically like demos almost for games that you could beat all of them and
Tyler:
[1:38:18] 30 minutes to two hours, somewhere in that time frame. And based on the feedback they would get from those collections, which were already making them money, then they would decide which of these ideas to put money forward. Then that same dude leaves, I don't know what the reasoning was, but he leaves Dread XP and goes to Critical Reflex, and then now we're seeing, like, Shotgun Roulette and Mouthwashing and all these, like,
Tyler:
[1:38:41] really big horror games come out of Critical Reflex. And now, apparently, he's gone on and, like, left them and started a completely new company. So like wherever that dude goes, just like these like horror games start making money. But it's definitely a market worth keeping an eye on. And like you said, it's hard to compete with the sheer flood of other people trying to capitalize on it.
Heath:
[1:39:02] Yeah. One thing I'm not interested in is chasing markets. I mean, I guess to some degree I have chasing the market right now with the boomer shooter. No, that's entirely because Sam is so convincing.
Tyler:
[1:39:13] And like trust me you're eight years too late to chase the market on boomer shooters like that's that's done over with yeah
Heath:
[1:39:22] So so i'm chasing the market that's eight years old.
Tyler:
[1:39:25] Sure yeah but there's it's like it never goes away i'm just saying that like if you wanted to make a boomer shooter that was going to change your life monetarily speaking the time was 2019 probably yeah right um i'm also making a retro first person shooter right now too and it's just yeah it's called stellar valkyrie we've been working on it for a long time but in the keep is it'll be like our kind of debut independent uh game oh yeah that's what yeah that's right that's what you were talking about sure yeah yeah yeah um
Heath:
[1:39:57] What are you making it in.
Tyler:
[1:39:58] It's in the gz doom engine so yeah a different kind of animal um yeah i was gonna ask sorry What engine was DFR in?
Heath:
[1:40:10] Unity okay.
Tyler:
[1:40:11] So why did you choose to go from unity to easy fps editor
Heath:
[1:40:16] Uh sam so sam uh god.
Tyler:
[1:40:20] I'm seeing a thread here
Heath:
[1:40:21] Uh sam sam reached out to me yeah so sam played night jackal the first one and he loved he said he had an idea and said this could translate into a boomer shooter and he reached out to me and he told me kind of pitched that idea and i was like well you know like i like, really bizarre ideas and like the idea of like something that seems so unintuitive because it did to me at the time but i was like but that sounds fun that sounds like i can make that work or i can at least try.
Tyler:
[1:40:50] He just like find you like play the game and then hunt you down cold cold pitch this in an email kind of well i love saying you have no idea how much respect i have for
Heath:
[1:41:01] This oh no sam's great i mean look i'm gonna kiss his ass a little bit here not because he's my publisher just because he's so passionate about uh what he does so he's a he's a great guy to, i have a good bullshit detector and i mean it just comes with age i guess but he's he's so.
Heath:
[1:41:23] Genuine on about the boomer shooters he loves it you can tell it's just kind of in his soul and he's just you know just he's a good businessman too i i get that sense from him he's just a good organizer so you pick up on all that and i've worked with a lot of people and i was like all right i'm not getting the sense this guy is just trying to trying to take something from me i get a lot of like takers and it's one-sided and uh this was a guy who was like yeah i think it's i was like okay so that's how it started and i i'm not i'll be honest with you i'm not the biggest fan of easy fps editor i i think it's great i think the community is amazing i mean there really is a great community and like discord i mean they're pretty awesome and i think what they created which was never supposed to be as big as it is the the engine is phenomenal it's phenomenal what they've done with it but again they don't have a team like unity or or unreal so you know it's it was one person and then they traded and handed it off to another person so it's just only two people have ever worked on this and they've got lives they know they're doing this shit for free so i mean hats off to them i mean they did a fantastic job but, that's still the constraints of of being kind of a small one person deal um makes it very challenging because you have to get around the limitations and people.
Heath:
[1:42:47] Playing games kind of expect something that you can't deliver sometimes i mean because like the core elements the core mechanics of that engine are fantastic you've got like the good quake engine on there like you can tell so it's like the core is there it's it's great for fps's but then when you try to expand out and push it gets very it's you introduce a lot of bugs really easily and in some of them you just can't solve and you go well what are we supposed to do we go to market with you know this bug or something so you have to kind of figure out a creative way around it and um like for instance there was i was using a stable version and saves weren't working so it wasn't stable and i didn't know until i was almost done with the entire fucking game and the saves weren't working because i didn't need to save because i'm developing you.
Heath:
[1:43:40] Know i'm like just building the game up and i'm like god damn it i was like i gotta figure out how to save so then i had to go through and start downloading you know newer versions and you never want to do that when you're in the middle of production because then you're introducing yeah yeah and so i had all these things break and i had to just so the saves works i had to go back and make sure that i could fix those and it's just it's a little bit of a nightmare whereas like in unity you you would build your own safe you know and uh i mean there's benefits there's benefits the fact you don't have to to build all these extra stuff out but but they are limiting and uh i'm certainly not shitting on this engine because it is pretty great yeah uh and i and i think we really pushed it i think we pushed a lot especially with a grappling hook um.
Heath:
[1:44:28] And maybe one of the things we'll, you know, maybe I'll make some, you know, if this game does well enough, maybe it gets enough attention and people like it, we'll do a new version and really kind of do like old school Jackal in the comic book days and have them like, you know, fight these really great characters. But we'll see.
Tyler:
[1:44:48] Yeah it's it's one of those things man where like when you are setting out to make a game like this where you have potentially like a thousand different ways it could go based on the outcomes of like like what you're doing right now uh like stellar valkyrie also being a boomer shooter and everything one of one of the problems that i to face and i think you're gonna face too is trying to like get people who are not already boomer shooter fans to want it you know to like want to give it a shot then the added part of that with this easy fps engine thing and i'm gonna i have to be like honest i guess without trying to be like overly critical i think dos man or whatever could either benefit from switching it to a completely different engine altogether or at least getting to a point where like they have control of this engine and a programmer who can manipulate it because there's just like little limitations that are just part of the engine that I think kind of hurt the value because you know like historically all of the games are you know three bucks whatever it's you know nobody's nobody's under any um
Tyler:
[1:46:13] No one's falsely put into the impression that they're being asked for too much or ripped off or whatever. It is what it is. It's a simple boomer shooter. It's in this engine, whatever. But having spatial audio, which is for me, that's the number one thing about this engine as a player that just irritates me. When you don't kill an enemy in this room and you keep going in the game and you can still hear them for the whole rest of the level kind of shit. Just something that simple could really greatly improve, I think, the quality of the player's experience. But dude there's no shame and playing with the limitations you have and then seeing how that goes and then like you said coming back to it later with like a reimagined version i've told people like stellar valkyrie like if it's a huge success we'll remake it 10 years later in unity or unreal or something like that but for
Heath:
[1:47:03] Now honestly i don't think it's a bad idea to um create a Unity boomer shooter engine. I mean, there's a lot of people that do work in Unity and there's a lot of flexibility. And if you had an engine that you build, a set of classes in there that you could pull from and say, this is open source, use it, modify it. You can fork it on GitHub. I think that people would be, i mean that would give you a great deal of flexibility if i had that opportunity because there's so many things in this engine i wish i just had the source code.
Tyler:
[1:47:42] Oh yeah and i and
Heath:
[1:47:44] I just wish i could just crack it and you can't change it sometimes but like and just so we're clear because i want to make sure that it's clear i'm not shitting on the engine like the guys have made it did something so impressive and far more impressive than anything that i've done in terms of creating an engine so you know hats off to them and kudos to them but like i just the limitations really do like you say it's just it's apparent and you see them.
Tyler:
[1:48:10] Oh yeah i mean have these are just like marketing things that yeah for some reason matter a lot even though like let's just say i was to take a game developer who had never published a game before and i'm trying to like sell them a bill of goods about like why this will be a great idea for you to do you know work in this engine or whatever like someone who's brand new to it is not gonna know something like the fact that this engine doesn't have uh achievement like i can't have steam achievements is going to dramatically hurt your sales as opposed to just that one simple change like if i just had these achievements why i don't know why people want that shit uh i've never wanted a steam trading card in my life i think i've sold everyone that i've ever made but you know what i'm saying like they sell copies um and it's not that hard of a concession but in this case it's like same thing with us in the doom engine like you're you technically can't do that with the doom engine it's like against the law because of like some age-old you know way that they decided to open source the code and then so on and so forth so you can you can put a gz doom game on steam you cannot port it to console and you cannot like have it interact directly with steam unless you have some kind of workaround for that. You know what? It's just like, wow, you want something that's open source, right? Like that you can actually like manipulate. And you also want something that, you know,
Tyler:
[1:49:39] Talk about working with a team, you know, if I have a programmer working on a game and then that guy gets hit with a fucking car or something, I need to replace him. But the skill isn't something that is hireable, right? That's a problem, too, when you start to scale up.
Heath:
[1:49:57] Yeah, no, I agree. And I think, yeah, I didn't even know that about GZ Doom. I didn't know you couldn't put it on consoles and you couldn't communicate. But there is an EXE, apparently, that you can do Steam achievements. And I was going to try to add those in, but I was like, is it really worth it? But you're saying it probably is.
Tyler:
[1:50:20] It's 100% worth it. For the effort you're going to put into the amount that moves sales, I would say it's worth it. It's good advice.
Heath:
[1:50:29] Okay, maybe I'll have to do Steam achievements.
Tyler:
[1:50:32] Yeah, if it's possible. I don't know. like the the easy fps engine i've never worked in it myself it's just uh from the player side
Heath:
[1:50:40] The executable somebody cracked the executable pair oh but you know what it
Heath:
[1:50:45] may be the wrong version oh crap well i have to see maybe i can get kids.
Tyler:
[1:50:51] Listening at home if you're thinking about making a game and putting it on steam you will likely sell more copies of your game if it has you know achievements so if you make a decision to use an engine that doesn't allow for that just understand that you're you are making that concession um but there's other benefits
Heath:
[1:51:09] If you're younger and you're looking for an engine anyway i because i feel like young people are really good at learning new tech and uh because there's such empty slates like the older you get the more you bring your perspective and worldview and all so it's it stifles your ability to learn when you're young you can jump right into unity and in in like start you know building and do some basic tutorials and it'll stick in your head and it'll stick really well that's just the power of being young so that's what i would do i i would 100 you know work in in a in a young engine so you should learn to code anyway i think in in this day and age is just really no excuse and you need to learn because once you learn that skill you're.
Heath:
[1:51:57] Anytime you go to a new programming language or engine or framework or whatever you're working in, those things translate. I've worked in so many languages and so many frameworks, so many engines and so many IDEs and so many different things. And it all translates like it doesn't take long to kind of figure out, OK, that's what this is. And this is how I do this syntax changes. But you can jump between, I mean, any kind of ECMAScript to Python to to Rust. And I mean, you just you go and objective C, you can jump between them and you'll configure it out. It doesn't take much. You kind of understand, yeah, the little things will be different, but you'll you'll have that that skill, especially if you do it when you're young. So that's what I would do. If you're trying to build games, I would go into an engine and that's already out there like Unreal or Unity. I prefer Unity and because Unity is more developer centric. And I think Unreal is more creative centric. So, and I'm more of a developer centric guy because I like to build classes and I like, I like code to be able to do what I wanted to do.
Heath:
[1:53:03] So that's what I would do more so than doing an engine because it's a path of least resistance. And it's, if you're a little older, you know, get into the easy FPS editor, get into those things that you, that, that already have, uh, you know, the elements built in for you and you just kind of create, because there's a lot of people in the easy FPS editor forums and discord. I noticed largely just super immensely creative people, maybe not big coders.
Tyler:
[1:53:30] But that's an observation that I think is like this engine is made for people who creatively want to make this type of game and just do not know how to code. So the end of there's, that's great for those people, but like just looking at it from like a business standpoint and, you know, Sam's doing fine. I just mean choosing to work in that limited space is a is a choice that ultimately like has a price you know like anything else yeah
Heath:
[1:54:03] But i mean sam's really doing a great job of like, really like you know what i love is like whenever he does these games like he always comes up with these concepts like oh that's a really good concept uh and he partners with people like me and other developers that do more, I guess some people do more boomer shooter, typical boomer shooters.
Heath:
[1:54:24] But his concepts are always like, oh man, I would play a game like that. I think he taps into something.
Tyler:
[1:54:29] He's brilliant, like super creative guy. He's the dude in the boardroom just spitting, throwing out movie ideas you know until something sticks like and then like oh i like that like and what if he got shot by you know out of a cannon into a flaming ball and just keep going on and on i love that blood
Heath:
[1:54:47] Match looks so good have you seen anything for that.
Tyler:
[1:54:50] Yeah yeah but
Heath:
[1:54:52] Gladiator boomer shooter.
Tyler:
[1:54:54] Again he's he's just taking every like conceivable genre that i like and okay what if that was this kind of a game? And that's great. He and I, the last time he was on this podcast, we were talking about like, what if we made like a, like a 50 cents, like rapper kind of shooter game, but it's an FPS. So we have to go find a rapper to put their name on this, you know, like in like, it'd be like Travis Scott's boomer shooter, you know, that kind of thing. I don't know, but he's always, always, always throwing stuff like that against the wall. You are a unique case because, Because, you know, like a lot of this is people kind of already making their games and it's just like, hey, would you like to try to make some money at it? But in your case, it's like he found you because he had an idea for your IP and talked you into this shitty engine.
Heath:
[1:55:46] That is so great. He did. I mean, it's just like, hey, you know, check this out. And then like he showed me and I saw and I was like, I actually talked to my wife about it. And I was like, I don't know, should I get into this? And he hit me at the, just the right time where I was like, I needed a distraction and a lot of shit going on. And I was like, ah, this sounds great. I, this gives me a chance to be distracted and do something unique. And, um, you know, I needed to put my, the startup I had on like a temporary hold anyway. And I was like, great. And it's really been, it's consumed me so much now that I'm like, all right, I got to see this to its like the finish line and make sure it's really the best game it possibly can be. And then I'm going to be, you know, likely jumping ship and going into the startup industry. Next so but we'll see no.
Tyler:
[1:56:41] Dude it's really cool to see you just like being creative shifting gears especially honestly like dudes that are kind of later in life making you know transitions from one art to you know form to the next one job to the next whatever that's awesome because that's like what i aspire to i like moving from project to project and the idea of just being a nine to five kind of dude sucks like no
Heath:
[1:57:07] Well i mean there there's good good and bad on both sides i'll say that much but i mean i think the world has just shifted to where nine to five doesn't make as much sense for a lot of people anyway because you have you know the invention of the gig economy and so um i just feel like we're all just kind of stuck at the whim of that and it's kind of hard to get nailed down to a nine to five anyway. So, and you know, I, I like to build things and I like to, to make things and
Heath:
[1:57:39] then, and it's really helpful. Like I, what, one thing that I'm not is a, is a marketer. I don't get in and start like building out a game and then getting up and marketing. It's funny. Cause Sam asked me something today about like, you know, about the game. And I was just like, look, dude, the old one I did the first one, I was like, I don't know numbers i said i never looked at the fucking cells i just waited for if there's a check that came to me from steam i wasn't checked i don't care i said i built it out i did the best i could it got to where i liked it and i said here i'm gonna put it out to the world and i did no marketing everything was word of mouth and i was like that's fine i mean i did basic marketing like social media like posts and stuff but that's it.
Tyler:
[1:58:22] Art for the sake of art, man. There's nothing wrong with that at all. Honestly, like, if this was a money grab, it wouldn't be three bucks on Steam, right? Like, it's, that's just not, I've tried to tell Sam, like, your games are worth, it's a steal to anyone who's, like, if you're a fan of boomer shooters at all, like, you could wait for a Steam, like, boomer, boomstock or whatever, I think is tomorrow while we're doing this, while we're filming this, and it's, like, go grab every single one of these games on sale for less than half the price of, probably one other double a game and hours of entertainment for bargain like it's it's insane
Heath:
[1:59:00] Yeah so yeah i think we're part of boomstock actually yes.
Tyler:
[1:59:05] Yeah it's it's all happening like i think tonight and then the rest of this weekend
Heath:
[1:59:11] Amazing yeah because sam sam puts you put you into all those showcases which is really nice because i have no idea what they are so i'm like that's great put me in a very very.
Tyler:
[1:59:23] Well connected like yeah yeah his finger in a lot of pies and and i think that's why me and him get along so well like we just kind of we kind of like have really similar backgrounds we're both kind of like working in the industry wanting to ultimately own our own studios and publishing our own games and that's exactly what he's doing that's what i'm trying to do um i look up to him in that regard
Heath:
[1:59:44] It's pretty cool yeah um i i'm not as interested in publishing and being a dev uh forever i'm gonna gonna i'm gonna bail into something completely different but uh we shall see i mean well you'll still be in the in the code centric world i mean i'm still gonna be in the dev world but i i just don't want to here's my thing is like i'm not as interested in just always coding i like coding i've coded things i've coded things for myself um i mean i had a trading bot one time that was like trading crypto i mean like yeah i was doing like and and it's just things that i build and like i mean it was looking for um it would pull down like price action and it was looking for candle flow and things like that so it would try to recognize and and it would make trades and it was kind of amazing and like i was like this is pretty cool um but you reach a point where you're like well why don't I don't want to sit around just I mean like do that for myself sure if I open up a raspberry pi and do some python that's totally fine or no js or something I was like but I don't want to you know I don't want to always be the guy building things like code because you reach a point where you're like I don't know if I you know I have kids I don't want to be up till five in the morning coding because that that's something I would do I was like.
Heath:
[2:01:09] I'd much rather be running a business and be up until five in the morning on a Friday starting Monday because that's what you have to do when you work in my 500 hours weeks. But I don't know. For right now, that seems more appealing to me.
Tyler:
[2:01:24] I really enjoy the process of like setting a project up for success. Right. So yeah, something like a guy like you who comes through, it's like, you know, I don't really think about the numbers of sales or, you know, it's not my interest. Like, that's totally fine. But I would just say, like, it's so beneficial to have someone like Sam, who can just like meet you 5050 on that, you know, like, okay, let me do the rest. And I think that's what a lot of like indie developers miss out with publishers for like they get a bad rap and they should in many cases because there's so many examples of big publishers who screw people over whatever get into bad deals and predatory that all exists but then like you forget about the benefits of like having someone whose job it is to just handle all that shit you don't care about so for me instead of getting a publisher I was like let me just found one get a bunch of people who like to do that shit around me make that their job and i can be creative yeah
Heath:
[2:02:24] I mean you know you bring up a good point like i think if you're an egghead or a creative type you don't want the added layer that some people like for instance sam could do does a really good job of sure but you know it's just like certain people are just made differently you know and and it is it's one of those things like i I wish I was a better marketer. Not. It's not one of my strengths. That's okay. It doesn't have to be. But, you know, you want to find, like, some people just, it's just natural to them in that we all have our different talents, you know. So, I agree with you. It's like, you know, if you can find somebody... Because because otherwise it just doesn't happen. And you put it out to the ether. And if it's not word of mouth, carrying it off, you know, on its own, like giving it wings, then it just it peters and it dies out and you just go, well, I guess we're not going to guess we're not going to do that. So on to the next thing. And I've done that a lot on projects, which is not very smart, because like at some point you start losing money and you go, OK, I got to correct the ship. And so, but, you know, honestly, we don't, we all do this for, for a paycheck, but like, we're not, I, I'm not under any illusion, you know, or, um, uh, sorry, any illusion that this is going to be like some big payout. Like I'm going to be after this, we're all going to be triple a, you know?
Tyler:
[2:03:53] Yeah. I just, I think that there's a, an expectation and a way of making money at this that isn't based on trying to get a hit. It's like the music industry uh you know in the 50s when it was like all about like trying to get hits and like you but you could make a living as a session musician right like you don't need to be the hit writing machine you could just be the guy who's like making a living and happy to do that um regardless so like when it comes to micro indie games like this it's just that you need to ideally like in sam's case like put them out at a rate such that you're you know you're making enough to pay your bills and shit while you're you know iteratively creating a a backlog and then ideally at some point you have a library of ip and games that you can kind of sit on um book authors you know whatever that's the that's the goal yeah um yeah well
Heath:
[2:04:48] That's a good goal to.
Tyler:
[2:04:49] Have uh you know and everybody kind of aspiring to that dream but you don't you don't need to you don't need to put everything into like this idea that i'm gonna make a million dollars in this one game like you're actually like far more likely to make a million dollars if you make a hundred games yeah that's true yeah none of which individually make a million dollars so just keep that in mind to the folks listening dude this has been really cool um he thank you so much for your time hey
Heath:
[2:05:17] Thank you ty i appreciate this thanks for having me on.
Tyler:
[2:05:29] Yeah thank you so much to heath for coming on the show and uh if you're listening to this right now go check out night jackal go to dos man games website uh get everything they have it's really great value i'm really glad to be friends with these folks and uh looking forward to you guys telling me what you think of the game um so this is what tuesday right now it should be out this thursday but no matter when you're hearing this just go to
Tyler:
[2:05:53] Steam and check it out without any further ado though man i love you god love you stay in the keep
Music:
[2:06:16] Music