Co-directors Jason Sikorsky and Tad Sallee discuss their five-year journey creating Going Postal: The Legacy Foretold, a documentary on the game Postal and its creators, Running With Scissors. They explore filmmaking challenges, the gaming industry's volatility, and aim to inspire future creators. The film is set for release in Spring 2025 and is available for pre-order now!
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Chapters
1:02 Early Days and Film School Connections
3:20 Discovering Mike J
4:30 The Lengthy Filming Process
6:02 Fan Interactions and Stories
7:39 Exploring Uwe Boll’s Works
53:46 The Complexity of Postal
57:34 The Role of Vince in Postal
1:00:35 Real-Time Updates in Gaming
1:03:07 The Journey to Tucson
1:08:04 Future Projects and Aspirations
1:15:36 Balancing Life and Filmmaking
1:23:14 The Controversial History of Postal
1:26:46 Future Documentary Ideas
1:37:52 The Volatility of the Gaming Industry
1:44:32 Reflections on the Documentary Journey
Transcript
Music:
[0:00] Music
Jason:
[0:33] Lived in uh tucson uh together and we had both gone to the university of arizona um neither of us actually met each other during our tenure at the university but um we both were in film school and i guess we never had the same class because i never saw tad and tad never saw me granted we were like in different programs but i feel like our paths should have still crossed at some point,
Jason:
[0:56] anywho fast forward a couple years after we graduate i graduated 2013 tad wouldn't you graduate.
Tad:
[1:02] 2014 or 2015 one of the two yeah it's
Jason:
[1:08] One of those years i graduated college yeah yeah well it was around probably 15 or 16 that we met right.
Tad:
[1:17] Yeah yeah it would have been around then because i remember i was i mean we were both kind of looking for work and that's really how we met was at a clinique gig so basically we were handing out bottles of clinique and it was kind of a marketing position where you had to be boots on the ground like talking to people handing out this product and we weren't getting paid much but it was like enough for us to want to do this because like it's Clinique like how uh how how are you gonna take the bottle from us like we're guys like what do we know about Clinique and um so we ended up talking and we met each other that way and we're like kind of shocked that we had never met each other before up until that point um yeah we were in the film program and we both had a love for movies for film for television just kind of clicked and then from there the magic just transpired we uh we started working together um we ended up living together at one point for quite a while too like jason was saying and that's kind of where the idea for a film or something related because we were doing films and we were doing stuff but we hadn't done our own project so it was
Tad:
[2:25] When jason was directing the show um and i was assistant director on it that he brought me on for and i approached jason i was like hey i want to do something with video games because we both have a love for video games and um we kind of had an idea for like a youtube channel just basically like kind of a deep dive into like an mtv version of going into development offices
Tad:
[2:47] And so we went to the last e3 in 2019 to kind of get ideas to kind of spiral in our head
Tad:
[2:55] And it's funny I was just talking to a friend of mine yesterday about that last E3 because that was the last E3 that has ever happened might ever happen again right oh sorry And we were kind of going around to meeting developers, meeting people to kind
Tad:
[3:09] of just get general ideas. And we kind of left that with some ideas, but nothing firm. And then it wasn't until Jason, you knew somebody that knew Mike J, right?
Jason:
[3:21] Yeah, this girl that I was kind of seeing at the time, she was hanging out at my house.
Jason:
[3:27] And I told her, oh, I'm trying to make this YouTube channel with my friend. It's going to be about video games or films yada yada and she was like oh that's a really cool idea i actually know someone that works on video games and um i looked at her and i was like sure tucson really i'm like what what game and she's like um it's like some game called postal and um i i was just in shock i was like wait postal i'm like uh i remember watching that movie as a kid and i remember looking into the video game series at that time too so i was familiar with it i i hadn't played the game i just seen the movie that uva bold directed um and sure enough uh she pulls up the game and verifies with me that it's the postal and um she puts me in touch with mike jay and me and tad go and sit down for ramen and um two hours later he kind of just deep dives into the whole history of Postal and we're sitting there just like,
Jason:
[4:28] wow, this is insane.
Jason:
[4:31] First of all, super cool to meet you and super cool that you're here in Tucson. And can we please make a feature documentary about you and running with scissors and it kind of just blossomed from there.
Tad:
[4:42] Yeah. Well, we were originally, I think when we heard his story,
Tad:
[4:45] we're like, okay, I don't know if this is a YouTube series anymore. I think this has to be something bigger because you can't entail 25 years of
Tad:
[4:54] history and condense it into, you know, whatever short form content you do for YouTube. Um and even condensing that to what ended up being a two-hour film uh it was originally longer but it's it was difficult to be able to condense it even at two hours and we want we wanted to cut it down to even a shorter runtime but it was tough because the company is just so rich in culture and history and the things that have transpired to running with scissors that have not transpired to other companies before so we're like okay this is a documentary we pitched it to vince and mike and they were super down which was cool but that just i don't think that that they understood that that was going to entail us literally following them around for like five years and interviewing them dozens and dozens of times um so i'm sure they're happy that we're done with that process now and that we're you know finishing up the film because it was uh it took a lot longer than we anticipated originally we wanted to come out in 2022 um if
Jason:
[5:53] You if you look at old posters we printed it says coming 2022 which is hilarious
Jason:
[5:59] to think about now looking back three years.
Ty:
[6:02] Consider yourselves official members of the video game community on that part because that is common practice with us so it's like yeah yeah at my office that i had uh set up in the three realms building there was this poster it wasn't really a poster it was like a like a christmas card almost but it was framed and it had like signatures from everybody on the team it was like duke nukem forever coming in 2000 or whatever 2001 there's some ridiculous like totally not the real thing age and i just kept that next to my desk because i was like anytime i get down about myself or i feel like being late is bad i'll just remember that like the failure of this game is the reason why i'm here like if this game didn't fucking tank i wouldn't have made it to this point in my life so i totally get it and you know congratulate yourselves because being late is being on time in the video game industry yeah
Jason:
[6:57] Yeah i mean it's uh we appreciate that um we we definitely felt that we needed to take those extra couple years uh to really polish this into a uh well-produced documentary it was it was initially um actually you know i'd say we didn't really know what we were getting into we had never made a movie before we we knew what we wanted to come out on top with um but i think the main thing is we just didn't realize how much time and energy it takes to make a two-hour documentary on top of having full-time jobs.
Ty:
[7:32] Yeah, it was going to be actually another question I had, but basically,
Ty:
[7:35] this is your first ever real movie. Both of you, yeah?
Jason:
[7:40] Yeah, it's our first feature, our first feature, for sure.
Ty:
[7:45] Did you have friends or mentors to walk you through that process, or did you just jump in both feet and go for it? what was that like
Jason:
[7:55] Do you want to start sure um.
Tad:
[7:59] Yeah, I mean, both me and Jason have had experiences working in film and TV
Tad:
[8:04] before we started this project. So we had experiences. We knew what we wanted to get into. We had a crew that we had been working with that was already fantastic. So we already had pretty much all of our T's crossed, which was great. And we had had experiences working in well-produced stuff, which was nice. So we had the connections there. um it wasn't really until like post-production where we were like uh we had the opportunity to meet somebody that was a high-ranking producer in hollywood and we sat down and had lunch with with him and um uh we kind of just generally was talking about the film and and he he gave us some ideas and one of them actually transpired to uh what we included in the film which is a little more of a controversial take into the film.
Tad:
[8:53] And so we kind of took what he said and really integrated that into the movie, which is something that it needed. And so it was nice to hear from somebody who's actually producing stuff for film and television right now, what their thoughts were. And so we really took that and ran with it. So it was nice to have that. For the most part, on our day-to-day when we're editing, I mean, we're watching it, we're sending it out to people, we're getting feedback. We had rough cut screenings like we had a lot of um people and running with scissors of course too uh that would give us feedback um so we had a lot of people there that were giving us feedback as we were actually producing the film so that really helped and then it's nice to have a full team because you really this took this took a village we had four or five editors throughout the whole project um that would do uh assistant editing while i was doing the main project so it's nice because you have everybody that's kind of coming together and giving each other feedback and so that helps because you're essentially screening it to other people while you're making it, making the film. Um, but there was nobody who was really like, this is how you do it. Like we were pretty much from, from the get go kind of making it up as we go along.
Ty:
[10:02] Hmm.
Jason:
[10:04] Yeah, I think we took everything that we had previously had done, whether on our own or the sets that we were a part of or projects that we had worked on and and took a lot of those SOPs and kind of applied it to our process. Um you know the thing about like uh fictional narrative filmmaking versus documentary filmmaking is there there's a lot of flex um you're you're obviously uh telling us you know at least for the most part for a documentary you're telling the story of of how things went down you're kind of uncovering different facts and archival footage and you're kind of really piecing together what had already happened or what is happening. And for us, that process, definitely for me, was pretty fresh.
Jason:
[10:50] I hadn't worked on a documentary before, but we understood the general direction of what to do and how to do it. But I will say it has a sense of flexibility that I think is more appealing for how we operated over the years. Um, I think for the most part, having full-time jobs being the main component of us being able to do this at ease or more at ease. Um, I had a, I had a really good time learning on my own and learning from my team. Um, I think our second and our third project is going to be even better and smoother. Um, but like Ted said, we really did learn as we went along. And I hope that doesn't deter anyone from thinking that we cut corners by actually, you know, we actually took the long route on things for this documentary. We spent extra time because we were learning and making it as we went.
Ty:
[11:48] Did you have any other documentaries that were maybe like influences like this is kind of the tone that we want to take with it or like just stuff that you liked and put pieces of it into there?
Jason:
[11:58] Yeah, I think both of us had a lot of influences. Personally, I've always loved documentaries, but it wasn't until I started producing this with Tad that I became a big fan of documentaries. And I mean, we watched anything and everything that would help us along the way. I know one of our favorite documentaries is a Netflix-produced miniseries called Pepsi, Where's My Jet?
Jason:
[12:23] And there's a lot of components we took creatively from that project that really helped us kind of tell this story and how to tell it. It used a lot of archival footage. It was very based around a phenomenon that happened in the 90s. Um it's about two characters that kind of have a huge age gap that kind of come together and become buddies through you know this endeavor they're trying to overcome um if you if you haven't seen it watch it it's fantastic um but i'm just you know recollecting just uh random aspects of it that we really liked and the king of kong i don't know if you've seen that documentary um but it's about this uh gentleman who's trying to beat the the high score of donkey kong and he kind of goes through all these like hoops and hurdles to just make sure he beats this beats this score and um the the current score holder is sort of the antagonist and so they kind of go through this journey of of how this guy can overcome and be be better um so you know the like we've seen tons of game documentaries over the years anything based on games i'm sure tad has a couple favorites of his own as well.
Tad:
[13:32] Yeah, there's so many documentaries these days, it's hard to keep up. And especially in the video game industry, there's actually not a lot of video game documentaries, which I guess is good for us. Because throughout my whole process, I was like, I want to be one of the better video game documentaries. That's my goal. I want to be able to not just tell a story, but have an emotional story too. And that helps based on just running with scissors, they're underdogs. They've always been kicked when they're down. So that really helped with the story. Um, and then throughout the process with Postal 4, you know, cause we were filming during the making of Postal 4. Like we started when they basically started making Postal 4. And so we always thought throughout this whole process, like, oh, Postal 4 is going to come out. It's going to be this like huge comeback for Running With Scissors and it's going to be great for the film. We're going to have this huge happy ending. They finally have come back from all of their transgressions. They've, you know, they've been kicked down and finally they get to show the man that they have made a good game. and then it comes out and it's the worst video game of 2022 by metacritic which is crazy but also i think it and i tell jason it's so
Jason:
[14:39] Very postal at the same time.
Tad:
[14:40] Totally that helped us in a way too because they still keep going on they still are continuing to make games they're still updating postal for like even though they were kicked down again and again and now again they've come back or they're not saying hey we're killing running with scissors we're still making games there's a really good quote in the film from a gentleman named Brock Wilber who wrote the postal book who interviewed Mike and Vince and he basically just goes into this kind of dialogue about how they were kicked down so many times and how they keep coming back up and there's not any other video game developer out there that has done that so that really helped our story in a way just naturally we didn't have to adjust any of the storyline we didn't have to like fake anything like running with scissors story is great for film because it's constantly ups and downs and mostly downs for the most part um so
Ty:
[15:41] They truly are the sisyphus of the video game studios like they just keep doing it over and over totally uh yeah i wanted to kind of dig into like your discovery of how it went along like just the actual story of the studio starting with you know vents and then actually postal 2 despite everything still considered to be amongst video game people like one of the coolest games ever and then postal 3 is dog shit garbage right um did you guys did you guys talk to uh vojtek mrochik during the film at all
Jason:
[16:17] No, we did not.
Ty:
[16:18] So, Postal Brain Damage. So, this is when I entered the story, was unveiling Postal Brain Damage to the world at the first Realms Deep, right? And that was the skit that the three of us literally met each other to do. Yeah. It was like that whole thing. So, that's like the best Postal game because it wasn't made by Running With Scissors in a strange way.
Jason:
[16:41] Is that different from Hyper Strange?
Ty:
[16:44] Yeah, that's Hyper Strange. boy tech was at the time the head of production in hyper strange
Jason:
[16:49] Gotcha gotcha we uh we interviewed chemik over at hyper strange, yeah yeah sorry i wasn't i wasn't associating uh the two together at the time but yeah no continue on it's it is a great game.
Ty:
[17:03] Uh it's just like it's the best it's like everything that's good about postal and a game that works functionally as expected you can't get any better than that and then so i thought that would be the comeback but postal four was like right around the corner and then it seems like postal four somehow kind of even though the game was very successful it's like it somehow still is the story the story is still that they put out a shitty game when in fact they put out a great game almost at the same time that is so wild
Jason:
[17:35] Yeah no it's it's funny that you say that because we actually don't include hyper strange or postal brain damage at all in our uh in our feature at least to to a narrative level there there's shots of b-roll and gameplay um little little clips of uh of animation from the game um but we actually thought that it retracted from the overall running with scissors story um we i am editing actually in fact the postal brain damage special feature that will be a standalone piece that tells their coming of together coming up together process of creating brain damage eventually um but we just couldn't quite fit it in the story without it detracting from the whole uh aspect of them being like resilient and never giving up and this and that winning it's like.
Jason:
[18:32] Yeah it was it so there was like um two major factors that played into us not including it one was the runtime um our film was toward creeping up towards three hours and if there was one or two sections that we had to cut back on it was really brain damage was one of them unfortunately um the other thing is again it just narratively didn't quite fit um the ebb and flows of what we were looking for um but yes you you're you're absolutely right brain damage is a very highly rated postal game but i think a big factor for us too was they didn't technically develop it right so we were trying to associate the games that were mostly running with scissors uh i guess, involvement and granted you can make an argument that postal three they didn't develop that but i think they had a closer hand in uh in how that played out versus brain damage um but yeah i mean um i i think if you if you uh watch the standalone piece for brain damage you'll get a good grasp of of how it came and went in the story um but i'm sure there's going to be some fans that watch the documentary and be like hey why didn't you include brain damage at all it.
Ty:
[19:47] It's so i mean as you said it's sort of more it ironically being called going postal it's more of a documentary about running with scissors than it is about postal in general i get that um and the story behind the scenes is better than any of the games in my opinion i think i've the first time i ever interviewed mike that was like the biggest thing i was like you guys are like the south park of games except less successful like that this franchise has sort of single-handedly been the the bastard that just kept on going for no reason like even even if you were like please begging people don't buy our games because they suck people still keep down for whatever reason i uh go ahead
Tad:
[20:27] I was just going to say, it's funny you say Running With Scissors. I always thought that Running With Scissors was a good alternative title for the film because it really is about them. And I had told Jason at one point or time or another when we were working on getting close to the end of post-production that, hey, what do you think about making a narrative film, making like an actual narrative movie, but it's about Running With Scissors and we cast actors to play in Mike and Vince. And so in my head, I'm like, who do we cast as Vince? Who do we cast as Mike? And like, tell the story that we're telling in the documentary, but from a narrative perspective, because you're right, their story is, it's a movie at the very end of the day. And it makes it really good for us. But I think it would be a really, really interesting narrative film because there's so much drama. There's so much that happens when you see the film. I think, you know, I'm not completely taking it off our list of possible items for a next project, but I think it would be really cool.
Ty:
[21:19] I think vince's life alone is a great narrative movie like that is an insane journey uh the the first time that i met him i actually like went out to his house to record a podcast and like sat across the desk you know in the big place and everything and i had personally never been in a house that big because i'm poor motherfucker from alabama so i'm like oh my gosh this is what i'm gonna be like one day when i'm successful at video games and you're looking at all the you know the old Atari Hanna-Barbera stuff that he has and I mean he produced the first ever WWF game um all of this way before he became famous too it's like way before Postal um it just had this incredibly storied life and I mean like crime and it's all there it's it's biblical almost the things that this man did to get where he is um and then you know Mike comes in you know basically as a young teenager almost and like just like oh I need a job ends up kind of walking in around Postal 2 time frame and then just kind of inherits this whole legacy of everything that came before that unwittingly in some ways and is in many ways like the perfect guy to be more of like the voice of the company because I'm sure as you guys have seen Vince is very vocal, not the best person you'd want to like maybe do your tweets and stuff that's right not great PR
Tad:
[22:39] For sure but you know hey Mike fits that role pretty good he does a great job at TikTok for sure
Ty:
[22:45] In a weird way or
Jason:
[22:46] The best ever depends on how you look at it.
Ty:
[22:49] Did you guys find especially with Vince when the camera's on versus the camera's off different versions of him because I did
Tad:
[23:01] That's a good question i don't know
Jason:
[23:03] Yeah i was just gonna say i was gonna say personally he was more or less himself with the camera on or off at least at least um you know for the portions of us filming the documentary and mind you we spent a lot of time with him with the cameras on and off and maybe it sort of melded together um i i think he started realizing that in order for the documentary to be successful he had to be as much of himself and sometimes himself was like up here and then we turn off the cameras and stay up here or he come down a little bit but um yeah i mean he he kind of remained pretty consistent i think for better for worse sometimes yeah for sure i want to hear your perspective actually what what was the what was the sort of on and off camera personalities you saw well.
Ty:
[23:53] For me it's not like it wasn't that he like changes personality so much as i think that in the context that i was interviewing him it was like what advice do you as a veteran of this industry have to give to a young man who wants to make video games you know yeah so he kind of is in like grandpa mode with me and then when they when we're off it's like okay we're not recording anymore then he's like let me tell you about this hooker i knew in new york you know and like all this kind of stuff like okay this is i should have kept the fucking microphone on but yeah it was the way we wanted it that way anyway um and
Jason:
[24:26] It is it's just interesting um well actually you know now that you say that i i did see a very like wise vince full of wisdom and full of uh like advice and just kind of just you know letting you know what life was like for him and how he can give you sort of a piece of what he went through in order for you to kind of progress um you know for for your own projects or your own life and um and then there was the the vince where he would just like you said would tell these like off-the-cuff stories of all the craziness he went through um i guess i sort of embodied all that together into into one sort of personality and i think that to me now that i'm really thinking about it i i you know i think this comes with age, right? He's older now. He's been around the block. That sort of youthful version of himself that he puts in front of the cameras is the loud outspoken version of him that got him to where he is today. He's the one that had all those interviews on CNN and Fox, MSNBC that kind of like perpetuated the controversy early on and clearly how he was up until that point. And I think now that he's an older gentleman um he's kind of relaxed a bit and calmed down so it is interesting to see that kind of um two sides of the coin.
Tad:
[25:48] There was a lot that we had to cut from the film, though, of Vince. Some of it was just too, we could not include. And, you know, that comes with any film, but, like, there was some stuff that we knew automatically, like, okay, that's definitely not going to make the film, just because Vince is very outspoken. Just like last week, we did one of the special features on the film where we sat down with Mike and Vince and chatted about their experiences working with us and working on the project. And we asked Vince, you know, like, hey, what would you have liked to have seen in the film? Um and his uh his his comment is hilarious because it's like so vince and there's this story he's shown us and always told us about this dildo that he's received from this fan this image and has postal three on it and ty if you know vince he's probably shown you because he shows a lot of people and um we don't include that in the film because it's just you know we're pushing the r rating already as we are with mike and vince we couldn't include it in vince like why didn't you include the dildo that's why that's what i wanted in the movie sorry my
Ty:
[26:50] You guys met john st john oh yeah
Tad:
[26:53] Oh yeah i have i
Ty:
[26:54] Have a friend who will remain unnamed who made a duke newcomb butt plug and mailed it to john st john uh and i was i was the broker of the deal i was like john doesn't want to give some random guy an address i'm like hey john i have this guy who wants to send you a butt plug I love you.
Tad:
[27:11] Is it for John or was it for John?
Jason:
[27:16] It was for Duke Nukem, which means it's for John and Duke.
Ty:
[27:20] One of my favorite things about Postal in general is the type of person who becomes a hyper fan of Postal, aside from us gentlemen, is a deranged lunatic. And it's also similar some of my best friends are these people but i'm talking about like the fringe of the fringe type folks that just this is my game this speaks to my soul which i don't possess right that kind of thing uh so what was that experience like for you getting to know the the postal fan base
Tad:
[27:50] That fans are awesome i'd
Jason:
[27:52] Take that one because he he personally interviewed more more fans than i can count yeah.
Tad:
[27:58] Yeah they were i mean it was awesome because they were always so willing to to chat and i mean obviously you say hey we're doing a documentary but i found that it wasn't just like you know because we're doing a film but they wanted to just chat to another postal fan they wanted to just have a conversation and that's really what it was and i think that's for me where i really found that the the story there is and and when i had asked mike like what's your favorite part of the film his thing was about the fans because there's a section in the film about, you know, kind of their comments. And all of them had these emotional stories about really how it had actually changed their lives. And that was the thing that really affected me. And I was like, okay, this is the story that I think I'd always wanted to tell is, you know, Postal gets a bad rap because it's controversial, it's edgy, it's out there. But there are fans, and sure, there's a, you know, this very small percentage of fans that take it and they, you know, might actually go Postal, but a majority of them, it's helped them
Tad:
[28:58] Overcome things. It's overcome family issues. It's overcome emotional issues in their lives, made them better people. There's this one gentleman who unfortunately has passed since I interviewed him. His name is Brian. And he was a huge fan of Postal. And his wife has now kind of taken the legacy. And he was always shy and very to himself. And Postal and the community really helped him kind of branch out and and become a person within the community and and i think stories like that are always super important because and you hear that from video games but when you hear it firsthand from people it's uh it's it's really emotional and really powerful so that was kind of like my goal in the film is is to chat with the fans and really and i didn't have to pull anything out of them it was just honest they were all you know huge fans of postal and very um you think like all these postal fans are like crazy and like insane and like they're a community like they all love each other they're all very supportive they're not mean people and i think they get a bad rap because you hear postal and you're like oh man those guys are crazy they probably live in their mom's basements i'm sure there's a fraction of them that do but like you know who doesn't and they were all together so it was it was really cool really powerful stuff
Ty:
[30:16] I feel obligated to redact on my like my description is of the type of person who like emails Mike J you know like his inbox on the daily is debauchery constantly and you know that might be a small tiny fraction of it but those people are there and he's one of the few people I have met in the games industry who personally like communicates with his fans on a daily basis like I know people who have just have years-long email chains like oh my god I love this could you please shoot a bullet hole in my sign that kind of thing and it's it makes such a big difference um and he's an interesting character in that he is got this character that he plays and then he's got the biggest heart it kills me to say this i'm gonna start crying but he's like the biggest heart in the world he's the nicest person like he personally is more than most people i think i could count on my hand who have like made me what i am in the games industry today and mike is he gave me the rub dude he was he put me over like the undertaker put over Brock Lesnar like big time. So I have super big respect for just what a good person he is, despite how much of an asshole he wants you to think he is.
Jason:
[31:24] Yeah. Yeah. No, you're, you're, uh, your description of mike jay is pretty pretty accurate and it was it was really awesome to be able to see that because he does have this sort of character um that he he plays right but he really is a kind person and he was very helpful with the project both him and vince um and it's interesting to see that they these these almost characters that they've played for so long who's basically themselves too at the same time but i think the interaction with the fans kind of bring it out out of them and they sort of engage with each other and they bring it out of each other and sometimes it gets i guess to be a little too much and uh sometimes maybe the the over communication can um perpetuate like certain stereotypes like we were talking about earlier of like what kind of fans can be but um yeah i mean like diving into the community of postal was was really fascinating them you know i i kind of describe them or think of them as sort of like insane clown posse fans yes they're uh a good point yeah yeah they're uh yeah totally totally, um they're very dedicated they're very obsessive um they they they bleed it they live it they breathe it um there's no rhyme or reason as to why it's so attractive to them but it is um.
Jason:
[32:50] I don't know any Postal fan that can tell me why they love it to convince me that I should love it in the same way. It's just different. It's so different, the attachment. Much like people's attachment to wrestling as well. It's very fascinating to see people just really cling on to it.
Jason:
[33:12] If you really count up the number of games that have come out over the years, right like people still chalk up postal 2 as being their favorite and that came out how many years ago at this point right and um they still love it and they're still part of the story and they're still eating up everything they do in the future and it might not be the best games that they've ever made that are coming out now but they're still part of that ride they're on the roller coaster and they're along for the ride and they won't hop off i.
Ty:
[33:41] I personally as a as a guy who makes video games. Look at Postal 2 as like a really good case it's a great case study in The content is more important than the technical skill. That game is still literally broken to this day. And if not for the community of people who have stepped in. The studio now is largely made up of people who were fans. Got into making games because of the game. And want to continue to perpetuate what they love. And that speaks for itself. That it still has that sort of legacy. There are very few other games that I would say come close. And they're pretty much around the same time period. I mean, especially end of the 90s going into the early 2000s when you have Doom and Quake and Mortal Kombat and Postal are like, they're the Marilyn Manson and Ozzy Osbourne of video games. They're the decline of Western Civilization Part 3 if we're going to talk about old school documentaries and shit. That should have been what that was.
Ty:
[34:44] They're so infamous. And then at the same time, these are the things that we're still talking about 25 going on 30 with Doom, you know, years later. We're talking about them. People are actively still playing them, still updating them, modding them. I'm making a game in the Doom engine as we speak. I mean, it's wild because I don't see that happening with a lot of modern games. And that's due to the change in the industry, the change in the way that people exchange and stuff. But most of the games that people are still going to talk about from today, 30 years from now, are going to be like, remember when we used to play this multiplayer franchise game together, not this single player experience that we had separately, but bond over. And I think that says a lot about the type of person and also the time frame that these things came out at. It's very, very interesting, man. I'm actually jealous of you guys getting to spend all this time deep diving into just one thing. Because I've had to broad brush all of history
Tad:
[35:44] There's a negative to it, too, where you get sucked into it. I mean, me and Jason always say, you know, we're a part of Postal now, and it's because we've worked on this for so long. But, you know, it's eaten up a lot of our lives. I mean, we've seen a lot of people come and go. You know, like I said, people have unfortunately passed away during the making of the project. Like, it's definitely...
Jason:
[36:03] Five years is a long time.
Tad:
[36:04] Yeah. Like, most... I don't know many documentaries that do five years. Like, it's very rare that a documentary is going to go as long as we do. Unless you're telling a long story, but you're taking breaks. We were constantly doing Postal. If it's not, we were filming, we were in post-production, then we were back to filming. And there were quite a few times in which me and Jason, like yesterday, me and Jason were chatting with each other and we're like, we had never interviewed Vince about Postal 2. There was a whole section of the film that was missing that we were like, and we didn't realize this until we went into post-production. We're like, shit, where is Postal 2 from Vince? And I was like, well, we have to have, we definitely have it. We interviewed Vince six times. It's somewhere there. And we never did. we had to have Vince re-interviewed a couple of years ago and that would happen pretty much constantly you know or the story would change or we would need to add something but yeah it was a long project I know that we're excited to take a little bit of a break before we start the next one so I can just catch up on sleep because I have been up till 2-3am every night working on this film up until this point
Jason:
[37:05] You said you were working on a game?
Ty:
[37:07] Oh yeah yeah in the keeps got two games uh currently in the works and maybe some other things we'll talk about on the air but yeah it's i had a
Jason:
[37:17] Backtrack there for a second because that's awesome.
Ty:
[37:19] You guys met me when i was just starting out i mean the my involvement in all of this stuff pretty much began i mean i was already doing my podcast but when i got involved in realms deep and then that sketch that you guys filmed of me basically robbing mike jared and unveiling that trailer and all that stuff yeah led to the rest of my career i mean that that's a for me personally you you guys changed my life in a way you guys and i'm so crazy fred all sort of just aligned for me at the same time because it's just like 20 2019 going into 2020 time frame maybe yeah i mean i was still in the air force you guys visited me on base as a matter of fact to film yeah yeah and yeah so i didn't really i didn't know what i was going to do when i got out i knew that i loved games and i knew that i wanted to be a podcaster but i didn't know what i would do for work when i got out and that event is how i ended up professionally working in video games and in to keep became a game studio marketing company broadcast company we did all kinds of shit but it all in a way goes back to that moment so thank you guys appreciate it
Jason:
[38:33] And then well thank you man um and i'm excited for people to see your interview in the documentary you had some really great things to say.
Ty:
[38:42] I don't know if they were great, but I definitely said some shit at the time.
Jason:
[38:48] Well, you know, I think the one thing that you touched upon that I thought was really helpful in the documentary is somebody being able to say eloquently what Mike, Jay and Vince are like and how their relationship is. And I think like that sort of dynamic is very important to sort of address on the nose, especially towards the end of the documentary. and you kind of covered that. So your soundbites were helpful in kind of wrapping the film up.
Ty:
[39:16] Dude, I'm just happy that I could have done part of it at all.
Jason:
[39:20] Yeah, here you are. Here we are five years later, man. Crazy.
Ty:
[39:26] So who amongst all of the different people that you interviewed, we already kind of talked about fans. So like just the other video game people maybe or folks that were involved in Postal or adjacent games, who were some of the more interesting folks that you got to talk to in the film?
Tad:
[39:41] Yeah we got to chat to a ton of people which was really cool and Vince would always text us and be like hey I have my friend coming in from Activision can you want to come down to Tucson and interview him and it's like holy crap uh yeah that'd be cool and then that would happen pretty frequently where we would just like meet random people through Vince because Vince has such a rich history in the video game industry um I mean John St. John is is one of my like idols I have a I have a you're looking at my background here I have a Duke Nukem collection here so like I always loved john st john so meeting him was really surreal to me and um and then meeting everybody from the postal movie i can't say i have a favorite because there's so many good sound bites from from everybody in the film um but uh and then uva bowl too with the postal movie when we first started this project we all sat down as a crew to watch the postal movie and um funny enough most of all of our crew like fell asleep except like me and jason and seeing uh seeing uva bowl and chatting with him was was really cool um we have like over 40 interviews that we had done throughout the whole film so it's hard off the top of my head i don't know jason are there any is there anybody that stands out to you that you're like these are the coolest yeah
Jason:
[40:53] No i mean um i honestly uh chatting with uva bowl was was awesome um you know i i had said earlier that i'd seen the postal movie as a kid and um early on i had seen house of the dead uh his like first big movie that he made in from a video game property and i was i think in fifth grade and i remember watching it and thinking, man this is a odd movie but you know as a young kid you can't put your like thumb on it um but there was something bizarre about his filmmaking style that kind of fascinated me and i just kept following his career up until pretty avidly up until high school and um.
Jason:
[41:33] So being able to actually speak with him uh was was really awesome and i will never forget this um when the imdb boards used to be live i used to always go to uva bull movie boards and just like, put fuel to the fire um everybody used to say this and that about his movies how they're like the worst movies ever and this is the reason and they're so bad and um you know i i used to chime in and say this and that and this one account i think it was like bowl king some numbers would always comment on everyone's post saying like fuck you or screw you or you don't know what you're talking about and i always thought man is this actually uva bowl like on the imdb boards and everyone be like who is this are you uva bowl and he'd be like yes i'm uva bowl and so i private I messaged him one time and I said, if you're Uwe Boll, prove it. And he emailed me a picture of Uwe Boll signed. And to this day, I don't know if that was actually him or not. And I never asked Uwe about it. I'm sure he doesn't remember at all. But I just like always kept that memory as like sort of maybe an interaction with a film director from from like when I was in middle school.
Jason:
[42:47] And so, yeah, I mean, that there was a lot of interviews like that that were just like full circle john st john obviously i was a huge duke newcomb fan as well um and just like anybody that worked you know in one degree of anything that i had admired as a kid growing up the the whole documentary really oh that's awesome man look at that mouse.
Ty:
[43:07] Pad that i lifted from the 3d realms office but this is the old like straight out of the warehouse you know john st john duke newcomb shit
Jason:
[43:14] So oh man yeah yeah we're clearly we're all big duke newcomb fans so it was it was It was really cool to be able to sit down with John St. John and just hear him go on and on about Dirk. He loves talking about himself, so it makes that much easier to want to talk about it. Yeah, there was a lot of a lot of characters that we interviewed that just really made me, realize that i'm in the right place i'm i'm doing what i love which is filmmaking and i'm doing it about something else that i love which is video games so it was it's a good marriage of the two and it it was it was a lot of fun i.
Tad:
[43:51] Can watch your oh sorry you go ahead i was gonna say i can just imagine uva bull getting your email jason and just being like this fan i'm going to prove it to him and getting so worked up that he's gonna write it he's gonna sign a photo of himself to show it to you
Jason:
[44:07] That okay that's that the thing is it's like when you think about it anybody can do that but at the same time who would do that so then i was like it's uva bull it has to be him and um ever since then i stopped actually that was the moment that made me stop talking shit about movies and just stop talking shit on the internet because i did say something mean and I never thought someone would call me out. And the man himself, I guess, called me out. And I had a huge learning lesson that day. And it was, watch what you say online. You could hurt someone's feelings. You could damage what they think of you, of what they think of themselves. And it's just not worth it. And I took that to heart until this day. I tried to stray away from people talking smack. And speaking of, we've had to deal with Postal fans over the years um but like nothing too heinous it's mostly like you guys are taking forever making this documentary when is it coming out and then we would just politely respond back and so everyone's been pretty cool though yeah.
Ty:
[45:13] There's worse problems to have than people wanting to see your documentary
Jason:
[45:16] Exactly good perspective there what's.
Ty:
[45:20] Your favorite uve bowl movie
Jason:
[45:23] Wow. I've never been asked that before. Um, okay. I will give you my top three.
Tad:
[45:29] Okay.
Jason:
[45:30] Um, let's see tunnel rats. I would say is probably his best film that I've seen. Um, it's about the, the tunnel rats during the Vietnam war, uh, the guys that would actually go down with a pistol and a flashlight and crawl down into the Viet Cong tunnels and try to clear them out. It was actually a decent movie. Um, especially because he actually tried to be serious with this, with a serious tone and uh serious i guess content so it kind of worked um aside from that uh house of the dead i have to say is up there just because it is like the first movie i watched uh by him, and um man it's so i'm doing top three just because it's hilarious and uh probably my third favorite, in the name of a king i watched that movie in theaters with my friends when it came out and i remember non-stop laughing in the theater for the entire two hours and whatever minutes and not because it was a funny movie but because it was just so perplexingly bad that uh it actually tickled me no disrespect if you ever listen to this but i did enjoy it i enjoyed it for a different reason than you intended but i enjoyed it.
Tad:
[46:51] In the name gets the gets some flack unfortunately for sure uh and you'll find out when you watch the film but it was competing with postal at the time um and it's why universal ended up saying hey we're not going to release postal because in the name of the king bombed so hard um and in a way so when we started started production i watched in the name of the king because i was so curious because mike j goes on this rant about how bad in the name of the king is and i was like well it can't be that bad and jason's told me about it over the years and i ended up watching it so it definitely is in my top three too just because of how like bad and there's some like really odd dialogue that just like doesn't match and there's some accents that are just way off in the film there's a quote that me and jason always say all the time which is from um ron perlman uh and it's give me the chicken and it's really hilarious because it's just like all of these like historians chatting or like this this like um this like dialogue that's like very uh old-esque and and and then all of a sudden ron perlman is saying this like really out of out of context just a bit but um yeah and the name of the king is is up there probably my number third two would be House of the Dead and then number one is actually probably one that I don't know
Jason:
[48:07] You're going to say Postal Movie aren't you? I'm not going to say Postal Movie it's Far Cry.
Tad:
[48:13] I really enjoy Far Cry. Far Cry, I think it gets a lot of flack, unfortunately, but it's an entertaining movie. It has nothing to do with the games, though. It's far-fetched. I'd say Postal is number four. Postal is still an entertaining movie. And sometimes they fluctuate depending on how drunk you are. If I'm at a good drunk, oh, okay, Postal movie will probably be number two for me because it's a better movie when you're drunk. And I think that's just kind of Uwe Boll's film catalog. But um but yeah
Jason:
[48:45] What if what are your favorite uva bowl movies.
Ty:
[48:48] I i have to i have to start with saying like to me what's interesting about uva bowl aside from who he is and everything else about him is the number of video game franchises that are somewhat major that he's been given like despite himself i don't know the guy so i don't come we'll box we have to i'm just kidding please don't i've already my mike jay already kicks my ass every year i don't need any more to this um you know like alone in the dark and like all these different franchises that he's gotten his hands on postal being one of them and everything but i was gonna say like i think to this day my my favorite movie of his is rampage just from how ridiculous it is like that movie's fucking that's
Jason:
[49:29] I forgot about rampage that's actually a good one.
Ty:
[49:32] It's super like straight like it's so serious the whole way through there's no like the only comedy is if you get so uncomfortable that you start laughing because it's just like, does this ever lighten up? No. It's 100% serious. And that was, I think, my introduction to him. I didn't know any of the comedic aspects of it when I watched that movie. I'm like, this guy, no wonder they don't like him. This dude's a psycho. This is scary.
Jason:
[49:58] Yeah, I think they made a second and third one, if I'm not mistaken. But yeah, that's actually one of his better movies for sure.
Ty:
[50:06] Yeah, it's like almost a Judge Dredd kind of situation, but worse.
Tad:
[50:11] Yeah, and that's what they always kind of compared like Postal should have been, or at least Mike and Vince. Like, you know, it was darker. Their original script is darker and edgier. And I think that's closer to what Rampage is. That's crazy. Uwe Boll's still making movies, you know. He made a comeback in the last couple of years. And it's uh you know it's interesting we sent uva the film last year to watch the documentary and um and it was it was really cool to hear his feedback he really loved the film which was great and then like two weeks later he does the kickstarter for postal 2 the movie again
Jason:
[50:48] Yeah interesting timing and.
Tad:
[50:52] We're like hmm i wonder if uh uva saw the film and was like hey everybody that was in the postal movie loved making it so maybe they want to again and um unfortunately that that kickstarter i think didn't happen i think it failed or they stopped it but um it was interesting timing like jason said we're we're almost like did we influence ufable to want to make postal too i'd love to see it we'll see if it happens someday maybe
Ty:
[51:21] You'll get like a special thanks or something in the credits or
Jason:
[51:26] Yeah i mean it's it is really cool to be able to interact with all these people whether it's like a fan or or a filmmaker or a game dev um it's it's really opened up doors for us to interact with all these people that we've only you know been on the outside or outskirts of and um you know being able to be in it uh has really opened my eyes and in many ways as to like just in life in general you know when you deep dive into a subculture uh how how deep it can be for something that's so simple i mean the postal games are just they're just games right they're simple games nothing much to them but behind these games is this vast story with all these people that are involved and it's like wait 25 years of postal is a thing there's that much history behind these games and um just digging and digging and digging and it was it was crazy to find as much as we did it's non-stop i mean i i think we learned something new about postal every week every month every day it just it never ends but um you know eventually i think we're gonna have to step back and just uh let the documentary speak for itself and and uh yeah you've.
Ty:
[52:42] Already foretold the legacy so there's nothing this is the end there's nothing else
Jason:
[52:48] Nothing else nothing else after this.
Ty:
[52:50] Um honestly i think that postal is especially postal two postal one has it definitely has its place in gaming history but as even even talking about the film very dark right uh but postal two really does for me at least inspire a lot of thought about like the morality of the person playing the game and of course that was reflected in the media I mean, this was, I showed, by the way, I showed my grandmother the trailer and she said it looks awful because of the subject matter. So that's probably the highest review I think you're going to get.
Tad:
[53:28] Tell grandma, thank you.
Ty:
[53:30] I will. She'll probably listen to this. But like, it's so interesting. I've talked about this probably a few times on the podcast, but the game gets all this flack for being this violent video game
Ty:
[53:45] where in which you go postal. And of course that's in the name but the design of the game is such that if you don't shoot anybody nothing bad happens to you like it is actually like a trick that they play on you that what do you do if we just put you in a game have some people be mean to you and there's a gun there and every single person just picks it up and starts you know going crazy totally yeah that's the game you're playing but i don't know it just raises so many crazy questions about like what is it about society that needs this sort of thing and I even said before it's sort of the South Park of video games and one of the most interesting things community wise and on the Running With Scissors side is that they do live updates you know like before games did this so like Grand Theft Auto if you're talking about if you're trying to describe Postal 2 to somebody now like well it's kind of like Grand Theft actually it's a lot like man Grand Theft Auto and Postal have a lot and you know what it's just like Grand Theft Auto
Ty:
[54:43] It just falls into that and like man they were doing a lot of really innovative things before most people were even into it and the story being like basically you have this you know wife who's just awful to you and who knows what Postal God did to deserve it I don't know but you know that's the plan from his perspective here and there's like almost this sort of like real trauma that only someone who has experienced this could possibly put the anger in to make this game and
Ty:
[55:11] The experience of living that that's why i think it's so relatable to people it's like it's of course no one is encouraging anyone to go postal but being able to do that in a simulated environment and just get all that fucking anger out in a situation that a lot of people do find themselves in i can understand why that would be something that's good and arguably has been a net positive for the world uh in a strange back ass words way yeah
Jason:
[55:37] No i think i think you're totally right and I think that's why a lot of fans
Jason:
[55:41] and like you see a type of fan that that gravitates towards a game like this, right? It's usually people that feel like they they need to have an outlet to get their anger out, their frustrations out. And there's a couple of soundbites from, I think, early early on in Postal's development when it was featured at E3 by CNN or some guy was like, yeah, just it's a good way to get get it out that way. And um people identified with postal from the from the get-go that uh it was
Jason:
[56:15] a way to you know not do it in real life but do it with a game.
Tad:
[56:20] Yeah i think postal came out at a good time too right like postal one and postal two because there wasn't a whole lot of games i mean there were games out there but not a ton like there are today like there are so many games out today like between like december and january was like 100 games that came in and postal 2 is probably one of the fewer games that you could just like go out and do anything um and so that definitely resonated with a lot of people right like nowadays frederick has this great quote in the film where he says that games back then came up and were popular because they were controversial like postal nowadays running with scissors has to make great games to continue to make a profit like can't just make controversial games i'll
Ty:
[57:05] Be sounds like for
Tad:
[57:05] I don't know if postal 4 is a great game but it's definitely not controversial like postal 2 and postal 1 were um because we've we've moved past that we've we've grown as a society we're we're now more adapt to to more violent games and more violent movies and more violent music like i'm sure postal was a part of that conversation to get us to this point now but yeah it's an interesting dialogue for sure and And yeah, Frederick, like you were saying, he has some great quotes in the film.
Ty:
[57:35] He's a he's a fucking brilliant guy. And he I'll tie that in with him. And then I had one other point to make about the game in general. But Frederick coming in to talk about the game and with Realms Deep going on during the filming of this and all that stuff is really interesting because I was thinking the class of people who like when I say class, I mean, like the age frame of folks who at the time were making games. So we're talking the very popular games of the late 90s and early 2000s.
Ty:
[58:05] Actually vince is one of the few people who had like 15 years of experience in the games industry at that point versus a bunch of other people who were sort of tech upstarts like id software
Ty:
[58:13] Uh you know the unreal uh what became you know epic games and all that stuff it was all kind of popping off in these different directions most of them were like younger dudes vince was like a guy who had been making games for a long long time and really knew what he was doing and he almost did the first postal at least in his own telling of the story as a fuck you to the games industry like i'm sick of making all this fucking kitty shit you know i want to make something real and that damn that game isn't real i mean it's it's very like personal almost like he's getting his he's creating something to get his rage out at the industry and then people can relate to that because everyone feels those emotions um whereas a lot of the other ones are sort of infantile there's this sort of like you know kids playing dnd is what you know makes doom and quake you know that's that's where that comes from obviously and then you know the other genres at the time were like baldur's gate that sort of thing um and arguably that was the more mature crowd you know of of developers at that point in time you had the folks from interplay making you know that kind of stuff and everything and then then postal kind of makes this wave of like a lot of other people saw what they did and then they start to like well you make really fucking crazy edgy shit that's where kingpin and a lot of other shit comes from and like in in a weird way this all ties into my life i don't know how i ended up here um i
Jason:
[59:39] Was just gonna say you make a lot of unpacking just what you're saying you're
Jason:
[59:44] making a lot of great points there.
Ty:
[59:46] Um yeah i mean uh
Jason:
[59:47] Vince vince really did um step up and say i want to give a middle finger to the industry and to everything that i've made just because that's who i actually am and um for us to document that that whole arc from vince being a person who worked on kitty games to working on something so violent on his own was to me that was a really fascinating turn of events and not only did he flip a switch but he packed up everything in new york and moved to tucson arizona of all places to make it happen And it's just such a fascinating story to, and, and he just kept on with it. He just kept doing it for another couple decades too.
Jason:
[1:00:31] Um, but yeah, he's crazy life. He's led for sure.
Ty:
[1:00:36] And then I'm, I'm just going in loops here, but like Frederick being the commentator on that is a guy who was like, you know, essentially like a student of that frame of time and now kind of sitting where he is in the games industry commenting on all that stuff and really like getting into you know it's weird now because you can't just do that anymore you can't just be the fuck you game you do have to make a profit to survive in this industry and somehow they're still doing it uh but i wanted to tie in one more time the south part reference because i think it's still interesting that other games do this now um Postal 4 did it but even going back to Postal 2 if it's snowing outside they would update the game it would be like oh it's Christmas time in Postal or if something happens socially for instance Postal 4 launches and then shortly thereafter is when the COVID lockdown started and then boom everyone in the games were in mask and there's real-time satire of what's happening in the world in this game and you you do and don't see that in other places and usually it's like fan-made stuff but in this case it's like the company themselves are actually doing it in the same way that south part would do that with like the presidential election or something like that just like real-time feedback on what's going on in the world in this virtual world that is so innovative and no one talks about it i don't even know it probably didn't come up in your film no
Tad:
[1:02:01] It didn't yeah because it's there's i mean there's obviously a ton of stuff that that running with scissors does especially for post-avore and to be honest i am still surprised that they're still updating it like it's it's one of those games like to get the metacritic score for the worst game of 2022 when you're still updating it like you have to give running with scissors some credit and i think to your point there like they do go that extra mile more more than any other developer will um because you're not going to find the big heads the activisions they're not going to be doing that to their game and that's just another testament to I hope that what people get from watching the film is that these guys are they're dedicated to their fans really first and foremost before anything else like That's what's most important to them besides sales. It's the fans.
Ty:
[1:02:46] Obviously, it's not sales or they'd make a good game.
Jason:
[1:02:51] Yeah, no, I was just going to say, I mean, you've been a big fan of Postal and at least for the second one, right? For many years, I guess like what draws you as a fan to the game? I know you've kind of touched upon it in general, but I just like wanted to hear your thoughts.
Ty:
[1:03:08] Throwing it back to how you started this saying that you just kind of realized like we wanted to do something in gaming and it was like they just happened to be in tucson i just happened to be stationed at davis montan uh and i was already doing this podcast you know series about and at the time i was really focused on kind of the history of fps at the time that this was sort of a no pun intended a boom and boomer shooters you know it's sort of the genre yeah right and there were so many games coming out and then of course they decided to capitalize on that with uh postal brain damage now i didn't know about personal brain damage until i met mike in his office
Ty:
[1:03:45] I just knew that i was basically being sent on a mission um so i had uh i had just realized one day as i was watching i don't know like civvy one one or something on youtube and i'm doing all my research like what are the things that i need to talk about in this space and postal was just a part of gaming history it was just like and there wasn't a lot on it except for like these kind of super fans that kept bringing it up um there you guys hadn't made a documentary there wasn't a lot of that kind of shit it was just like a few of these people who also really liked all the same shit i liked kept talking about postal and saying you know this is such a big big high watermark in that in that era uh so i just went on their website and was like you know i i would literally cold email people i'm like i don't know hey would you like to be on a podcast here's my shit you know tell me if you like it uh and i realized that oh this is in fucking tucson but completely coincidence and
Jason:
[1:04:39] I'm like just right oh shit.
Ty:
[1:04:40] So i just cold emailed mike didn't even really know who they were at the time and i'm like yo dude uh i'm in tucson like can i interview you for in you know same experience you had he's like yeah i don't care i'll talk to anybody if you buy him fucking breakfast he'll be michael do anything you want if you'll buy him shit um keep that in mind fans if you if you pay for his lunch he'll show up you pay for his drinks he'll really show up and if there's if there's if there's pretty girls around he'll definitely show up that's a you can make a whole documentary about that man he's the he's he's the living walking and actual like neil strauss like from the game he's that it's amazing it's like weird to see in person because that is like a fantasy world i think to most men and then he lives it uh and totally shameless about it i i don't even know how i'm gonna derail but this is a brief story me and uh john merchant and mike and uh luke fienen who's the guy that keeps uh is is mike's henchmen are hanging out downtown and all board.
Ty:
[1:05:43] And my, uh, John just walks up to me and he goes like, Hey, last night, um, Mike went out with a, a prostitute. And then this morning his wife called him and said, Hey darling, how was your prostitute last night? And he was like, it was pretty good. And she's like, that's great, babe. And he was just like shocked and all. And I'm like, no, that's mine. And he doesn't give a fuck. Who knows it either. It's just how it is. Um what a strange character anyway that is completely derailing from the point oh
Jason:
[1:06:13] That is a very a very accurate embodiment of uh his life.
Ty:
[1:06:18] It is it's wild but i feel like it takes that sort of personality to do what they do i don't know why but yeah what the fuck was i talking about this is my own podcast and i got derailed and
Tad:
[1:06:29] That's what people are here for you know
Ty:
[1:06:31] Uh yeah so the shit coffee break coffee
Jason:
[1:06:38] Break hey it's it's hard to process all these thoughts man they just cloud your mind.
Ty:
[1:06:43] You guys have the benefit of like you know you get to frame everything the way you like it i try to do this in real time as much as i can um no no no it it's just crazy how um he and just the whole running with scissors crew like they have these very interesting stories i think we derailed off of like vents somewhere in the past few minutes and probably it'll show up in the comments but vent vents having moved all the way to tucson and then landing there all of these events that had to take place it just in order for the three of us to be having this conversation right now yeah um and i just cold emailed the guy went down had this interview with him and then that led to realms deep that led to uh you know me meeting you guys the the sketch everything all just played out in one go based on a cold email to answer your question in the longest form that i could think to do yeah
Jason:
[1:07:35] Yeah man it's uh it is pretty wild how postal has brought us all together as weird thought man we are part of the postal community yeah you are going down because of postal.
Ty:
[1:07:50] You will sit next to uve vol on the people who made movies about postal like that will be your legacy in a certain way your legacy foretold
Jason:
[1:08:01] Yeah our legacy foretold there nice plug I think we've.
Ty:
[1:08:05] Gone on about yes coming out this spring make sure you see it pre-order now on Blu-ray there you go I wanted to depart from Postal and just talk about you guys as filmmakers. This is your first feature thing. It's going to come out. You're going to have something out in the spring, free order now. And then what's next? What do you do after something like this?
Tad:
[1:08:30] Yeah, that's a great question. Me and Jason have definitely had a lot of talks about this. I don't know if we want to give any specific details, but we do want to keep it like there's a couple ideas for gaming related documentaries. Obviously, over the years, you know, we have so many ideas. People that we meet like duke newcomb we're always like when we started with john st john we're like man a duke newcomb documentary would be really really cool um
Ty:
[1:08:53] You'd have to get a lot of people to agree to be in the same room
Tad:
[1:08:56] Well that's like a part of it and what i tell jason is we're journalists at the end of the day and that's that's kind of the core of like what document documentaries are um now in the film we don't take a bias on video game violence we we kind of give all the information out to the audience and so i i think that's just important as is just who we are as documentarians um yeah there's there's a lot of there's a lot of stuff i know we want to take a little bit of a break but um it's kind of like i was thinking about this the other day it's it's addicting like filmmaking is addicting especially when you get to the point where we're at now where we're like the film is coming out it's finished you hear like the final music you hear the final score you hear the final sound mix and you see it like colored um you know it's taken a lot of people that that have helped us get to this point so uh and it's been an expensive process too we we started with a budget of like 40k and we're like yeah we can make the movie for that and then it spiraled to like where we're at now which is like close to 200k um to to make the film mind
Jason:
[1:09:57] You that's a low budget for for a feature film you know even for documentaries But still, man, it's an expensive process.
Tad:
[1:10:07] So hopefully first we recoup our costs.
Jason:
[1:10:10] Yeah. Yeah. There you go. Yeah, no, for sure. Yeah. You know, I think for me personally, I've always wanted to, now I don't know if this is going to be after the documentary or sometime later in life, but I've always wanted to write a book. I've been jotting some, some book, book ideas down and that that's going to be on a checklist for, for decades to come. But, I mean, following this project, though, I definitely want to just keep expressing myself creatively, whether that's in music entertainment, which is my day job through filmmaking. You know, I'm working on a YouTube series right now as well. But I think just taking everything that I've learned and just continue to grow as a filmmaker and continue to learn, whether if that's the next documentary
Jason:
[1:10:55] or, you know, a crazy book idea. Um i think me and tad are both creatives at heart and um having this project to have an outlet has been wonderful um and i think just like learning sort of the idea of working with the team has been a beautiful thing with other creatives so all in all i mean it's just finding the next project the next story to tell the next way to tell the story um and just continuing on in life and um not letting this be the first and last making this the uh the first of many.
Ty:
[1:11:30] I uh i don't know i could think of like a million different game centric things that deserve a documentary so honestly the hardest part for me like putting myself in your shoes would be just just choosing one thing like you had the benefit of stumbling into this story but like now it's like the sophomore rock album thing like you have to you have to deliver again with pressure and eyeballs on you and stuff that's that's difficult but i mean i do do come documentary if you pull it off would be very interesting um i'm trying to think of like some other like really controversial shit that hasn't already been done like there's there's a few really solid youtube channels that have extensively covered certain things like i don't know that an id software documentary i'm sure it would do well monetarily but it's like there's nothing new to say that i could think of yeah
Jason:
[1:12:21] Yeah yeah it's it you, it is interesting to try to find a story that hasn't been told that you know maybe people know of enough to where it deserves a feature documentary i i think we really did hit a gold mine with with postal um enough gamers and people of interest know it to a degree where they would probably be interested enough in watching it um but not enough people know it to where it's like in the mainstream right and that's always been sort of the postal story so finding that next story to tell where you kind of have that happy medium where you want to tell a story that hasn't been told before or tell it enough to where uh in the way that you're telling it is new or unique but also finding something that's interesting enough that keeps you afloat right i mean i think tad can agree as much as we don't want to do this for money we got to sell units we got to we got to make sure recoup our costs as much as we can so it's just like finding that that balance and And I think we do have a couple ideas under the wraps that we'll probably explore more after this documentary. But I'll tell you, at least six months of just breathing and not talking about Postal and catching up on some other video games and some movies I haven't seen over the years, that'd be amazing.
Ty:
[1:13:38] I was going to ask also just like the exhaustion of five years of focus on one thing, taking up all of your non-day job free time must be almost traumatizing. Like you're gonna almost come out of the other end of this having gone through a time warp and then catching up on everything else that you didn't focus on uh what has that been like for you like social life family life you know work life all of it you mentioned not sleeping a lot you know what what is it yeah
Tad:
[1:14:07] That's a you said it perfectly ty trauma traumatic i mean i think a Yeah, social life for sure. Like there's been many, many days and Jason can attest to this where it's, you know, hey, you want to go out tonight? Hey, you want to hang out? No, I can't. I'm working on the documentary. And I mean, that was like every day that we would have to tell our families and our friends. And I think our family and friends like bless their hearts. They have had to they've had to deal with the film just like we have because we've been so, you know, MIA working on this, like locked off in my tiny little office here, just like me and Jason cracking down, working on this film together for years and it's been it's definitely been like me and Jason have gotten closer which is great we've become better filmmakers because of it but yeah you do lose out on a lot of social life you lose out on a lot of hanging out with people and I'm sure I've missed a ton of events but truth be told I wouldn't have changed it for the world because and like me and Jason talk about all the time you have to be a certain kind of person to be a filmmaker like this especially a documentary filmmaker because it's tiresome. I mean, you're working, like me and Jason would work 9 to 5 or 9 to 5 jobs and then he'd come over until maybe 6 o'clock and we'd work until midnight maybe even later. And there were many nights where we pulled all-nighters to try to get things out to our team before and then go to work in the next morning. And then sometimes it would bleed over where we're spending a full day doing postal, taking it off from our day jobs.
Tad:
[1:15:37] But for the most part, yeah, like I said, it wouldn't change it for the world. It's been you know a really cool process and not many people can see that they're filmmakers or have made a film um you just have to get through the grind and hopefully this inspires some people because you know we're in hollywood we made a film on our own with money that we somehow found and you know earned ourselves and uh and and hopefully it does inspire people to be like you know i i hope that people see this and say i can make my own film or the project that they want to make. Maybe it's a game. Maybe it's that book. You know, you can do it. You're the only person stopping yourself. It just takes sacrifice.
Jason:
[1:16:19] Yeah. Yeah. No, no. Well said. I mean, uh, despite us having full-time jobs and everything that we have going on in our lives, I mean, we still found time to make a movie on our free time. Um, but yeah, I mean, it, it is absolutely exhausting and, you know, tag could attest to this. I, especially about five years ago, I was really big on going out and socializing and drinking and, you know, uh, extracurriculars. And, um, I really had to kind of find it in myself to hunker down and, uh, to spend more time with Tad, the documentary, the team, and make those sacrifices. I work, my day job is in music entertainment. It really heavily revolves around being out and networking and socializing. And it is a fine balance for myself personally to be able to say, no, I can't do that because I need to do this.
Jason:
[1:17:12] You know, and kudos to Tad. He's our lead editor. I mean, he's had more sleepless nights than, than I've had, but I, you know, both of us have experienced it in totality, uh, 10 times over, but man, he's, uh, he's really, he's really done a good job of, of making sure we get across the finish line. But I mean, all in all, both of us together have just had to figure out that balance. And that balance is not the easiest. I have this funny, my co-workers have a funny inside joke where whenever I don't want to do something, I say I'm working on my documentary or I'm editing. And it started off as a, it's a real thing, right? I'm like, hey guys, I can't go out with you. I can't grab dinner. I can't do this. I can't do that. i have to edit and after like the first two weeks of that they're like oh you have to edit oh you have to work on your documentary and just became this running gag over the years of just like me trying to get out of something um but it it makes me recollect at how many times it's been said and how many times i really had to have.
Jason:
[1:18:21] Find my way out of something so that we we can work on a documentary together um you know i i never really drank energy drinks or coffee consistently until this documentary and now i'm drinking coffee regularly which i never did for my entire life up until recently um because when you're doing 12 to 16 hour days between two jobs making a movie at night and doing your day job um on the opposite it it really takes a toll on you um but you know that's just what you do it's it's fun i mean like tad said we can check it off our our dream list of hey we made a movie together um but yeah i mean i i really do hope that it it's all worth it on you know just objectively we've made a very compelling documentary that's really fun to watch and um it's it's funny we always joke about how we spent five years of blood sweat and tears to make this documentary and somebody's going to watch it for two hours and never remember that they saw it on their iphone.
Tad:
[1:19:23] They'll watch it on their phone
Jason:
[1:19:24] But um you know i at the end of the day if if a handful of people watch it and they say man i really really enjoyed that or man tad and jason are really inspiring If we just get a handful of people that say that or feel that way, I think we did our job.
Tad:
[1:19:44] I can't see right now, but I'm pointing to my eyes, these dark circles. This is Postal.
Jason:
[1:19:49] You can't see our audience. Oh, yeah, I got them. Stars.
Ty:
[1:19:52] Yeah.
Jason:
[1:19:53] Stars. Postal stars.
Ty:
[1:19:55] You talk about the presidency ages people making a documentary about Postal really agey. You guys were like 19 when you started. What happened? Oh, man.
Ty:
[1:20:07] No, I can really relate to that, man. Like just the the long hours and the like and also just the grind of like in your case a much longer delay of gratification to see what the reaction is like and even with the podcast like you know it takes a long time to build a viewership um especially when you're just doing it in your spare time and you're trying to figure out like where your audience is how do you reach them i'm talking about i've been banned from so many fucking reddit forums dude it's not even funny uh just oh man just self-promotion shit but you know i would when you guys met me right i was like working 12 hour overnight shifts doing the weather for the fucking whole continent of the united states and south america and shit and then i would get off work and then continue working on this like my life depended on it and even if sometimes you know i put i would put my blood sweat tears everything into an interview and then like 50 people would see it and then and then know if that 50 people maybe one or two hit the like button or commented but to me it was always like i always looked at it everything is like it's a stepping stone because even though when i started and still sometimes i mean shit there's there's some that just don't do well um and i don't i don't really measure it in that way anymore if it's 50 people even click on the damn thing
Ty:
[1:21:26] All that matters is who saw it and how much it meant to them. Like, even if my podcast was never like a money making enterprise and it's still, you know, it's okay. It pays for itself and it's done a lot for my life. But the real value is the connections that you make. Like, I wouldn't have ended up going to Europe and working, you know, in this giant thing we call the games industry and talking to people. I wouldn't have been in a fucking documentary. i grew up watching fucking vh1 classic and seeing like chris jericho and sebastian bach and all these different documentaries and i was like man i want to be a talking head in a documentary that's the coolest job ever and you guys made that dream come true for me and it was all just persistence so it's it's really relatable and in the long hours i totally get it man it's uh it's gonna be beautiful to see and i know you're gonna touch a lot of people's lives with this thing you've already touched mine thank
Jason:
[1:22:16] You we appreciate that man that means a.
Ty:
[1:22:20] Lot I can't wait to see my family's reaction to it that's that's what I can't wait for like mom to watch this and then like all of the she's gonna put up with all the bullshit she doesn't know anything about or care about probably learn a lot and then also be like and my son was involved in this yeah
Jason:
[1:22:39] Yeah it's um I will say on the personal side it's been kind of interesting to uh Talk about to friends and family what this project is and what it is. I mean, they're like, what, what is your documentary about? And you start off by saying, well, it's about this video game that came out in the nineties that was very controversial. And oh, by the way, it was also considered a, uh, not so great of a game. It was blacklisted bands, critically panned and you go on and on and it's just like.
Jason:
[1:23:13] That's what you're working on huh.
Ty:
[1:23:15] Not okay not just the reaction of like the critical world because i think that's an important part of the story is like this game was like legal action being taken against them they're in lawsuits with the united states postal service there's fucking whole countries taking them off the store pages like you can and back in the time when there were physical copies moving too like they were losing money fucking mike and vince have like both multiple times over gone into excruciating debt and like mortgage their houses for the sake of this dumb video game and are still kicking bro still still kicking they're both really amazing dudes despite whatever bad blood there may be wink
Jason:
[1:23:55] Wink yeah yeah yeah i know that that's that's the entire portion of uh the story that i can't wait for people to just see and it's one of those things where i don't want to i don't want to tell them everything and even though it's five years in the making i want them to finally see and be like this is what we've been working on and i just want people to be like whoa okay that's interesting.
Tad:
[1:24:19] Yeah because you say you're working on this and like jason i know you can agree like you you'll tell them about the project you'll tell them what it is and people are like oh okay that sounds like oh it's a video game documentary like oh whatever but like there's heart and there's soul soul and there's like so much history like it's it's something that i think is much more digestible when you see it and you see the trailer and then you click on it because that gives you everything there's just so much history in 25 years for us to be able to explain it in just a short tagline like for you to be able to to to see it when it pops up on digital so at some point then i think you'll you'll you'll be able to really digest it right then and there because it's something you really have to see to kind of understand um just talking about it just doesn't do it justice because it it doesn't sound like i mean it sounds interesting but like to the level that Brenningham Scissors went, it definitely makes, that's why we ended up doing documentary because it just is it's such a great fit for a documentary style.
Ty:
[1:25:19] If you guys could make a film about anything in the world you wanted, I mean forget about even if people are dead, you have all the budget you want, what is it in your mind that's the most interesting story you would want to tell? That may be a really hard question.
Jason:
[1:25:35] If I had an unlimited budget and i had the the team behind it to really tell a story i i'm a big history buff i mean i can't tell you how many times i just sift through history and i'm like why is there not a movie about this um personally for me i don't know how much people are familiar with roman history but um there's a series of wars called the punic wars and uh hannibal hannibal lector you You know, that name famously comes from a general named Tanibald who fought against the Romans in the second Punic Wars. And this dude marched... Threw the Alps with elephants and his entire military and lost about half of them and fought against the Romans and crushed them in battle over and over again for 10 years, just wandered around Italy, crushing the Romans. And the Romans ended up beating him at his own game 10 years later. And it's just the most fascinating story I've ever heard. And I just, I hope one day someone makes the movie. I know it's not going to be me. It's not even Ridley Scott can probably tell this appropriately but um that's
Jason:
[1:26:44] what i personally would make a movie on if i could.
Tad:
[1:26:47] I don't have a great answer for you unfortunately i you know i think we're so rooted into documentaries that my mind is just built for like what can we do on a budget and like let's
Ty:
[1:27:00] Go with that what's that answer
Tad:
[1:27:01] For for me i think we have it really kind of goes into where we want to go with our next projects and for me it's there's so many interesting things not just about video games like um like specific video games or studios but video games any industry as a whole and there's a whole lot going on in the industry right now which i think could be discussed in a documentary and i don't see anybody really doing that so you talk about layoffs you talk about the um all of the the hacks that have been happening in the industry you see all of the crunch that these developers are going through and how it affects their lives. And I think that's kind of more of an interesting story that I'd like to explore at some point is just kind of the hustle that video game developers go through and the traumatic things they go through. A lot of them like get their social security cards and their credit cards and their identities like stolen from like these hacks and things. And I think, you know, that could be, you know, an interesting topic that we've kind of, you know explored but um
Jason:
[1:28:01] Yeah we might be the next documentary.
Tad:
[1:28:03] But let's
Ty:
[1:28:05] Sidebar on that when you get your spiel out we get a whole another hour on this if you want man
Tad:
[1:28:10] Yeah well i mean there's so much that's happening in the industry right now too you like you hear about the layoffs and you hear so i think um you know developers have it hard and i'd really like to touch on that um and and and then obviously like narrative project i'd love to do a narrative project i'm writing a script right now that i've been writing for a couple of years which is me and like jason was saying he's a history buff he knows more about world war ii than i do but i have kind of idea where it's like a time travel world war ii story that i've slowly been writing um And, uh, and I don't know, we'll, we'll see where it goes. I mean, I'm just happy to get it down on paper and just feel like, okay, this is, you know, something that I could potentially approach at some point,
Jason:
[1:28:49] But, um, You're telling me you would never make an Indiana Jones based film.
Tad:
[1:28:54] Oh man. Oh man.
Jason:
[1:28:56] He loves Indiana Jones.
Ty:
[1:28:58] I just watched Raiders of the Lost Ark for the, I've seen it many times. My wife had never seen it before.
Tad:
[1:29:03] Oh my gosh. No. It was awesome.
Ty:
[1:29:06] It was so much fun to see someone see Indy for the first time.
Jason:
[1:29:09] Oh, that's that's one of my favorite things to do is to show somebody a movie that they've never seen and just sit there and just watch their reaction. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And it's usually not what you think it would be. But, you know, you love it.
Tad:
[1:29:24] And they're like, it was fine.
Jason:
[1:29:25] What was your favorite part?
Tad:
[1:29:28] I just finished the Indiana Jones video game. And if you haven't played it, it's absolutely fantastic. Takes place right after Raiders of the Lost Ark. To me, I was in tears at the very end of the game because I'm such a big Indiana Jones fan that it did everything right. I think Machine Games did a fantastic job. Just a quick sidebar. Troy Baker is a great Indiana Jones, too. I went in very skeptic about Troy Baker as Harrison Ford, but he does a really fantastic Harrison Ford. So if you haven't played Indiana Jones of the Great Circle, definitely recommend it.
Jason:
[1:29:57] Yeah, when the game first started, I had to actually look up if it was Harrison Ford or not. Or if they were using ai i'm like man he sounds just like him like just enough to where i had to be like is it him yeah very well done.
Ty:
[1:30:13] The machine uh games guys are fantastic i mean and they come get this from the quake modding community that's where they got their start wolfenstein and then now indiana john for the longest time a lot of us thought they were going to be given quake because doom was doing so well with its software and quake was kind of like quake champions wasn't the biggest success in the world and the franchise was kind of like not getting the love that a lot of people thought they're like well it makes sense just put them on it they did a level pack for the quake remaster that was released a few years ago a couple years ago by uh night dive studios featuring machine games as level designers and everybody thought that would be the next thing and then lo and behold they hand them the fucking indiana jones ip and it's like well obviously i mean you're gonna do that but so great to see those guys Wolfenstein
Tad:
[1:31:02] 3 at this point like give the people what they want I'm sure they're working on it but you know
Ty:
[1:31:09] If I could make a documentary about any subject and I had a time machine and a budget, I would want to go back to Exodus and I would want to do like the office style with all of the people following Moses through the desert and just questioning all the decisions he's making and why this is happening. I think that would be a very interesting documentary.
Jason:
[1:31:30] Like interviewing them?
Ty:
[1:31:32] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jason:
[1:31:33] Like, you know, just the people on the ground. Why are you wandering in the desert right now?
Ty:
[1:31:37] Yeah. like what happened and they're like i don't even know why we it was like three generations ago we left egypt and i honestly i've heard it was great like this sucks uh so what happened today like um we all got bitten by snakes for no reason um and we asked moses to pray to god to stop the snakes and he told us to build a bronze snake and put it on a stick and that if we look at the snake on the stick we won't die from snake venom anymore um
Jason:
[1:32:07] You know it kind of sounds like it would be like spinal tap but yes in that setting.
Ty:
[1:32:11] This is spinal tap style would be very good for it and then meanwhile you also have like moses and aaron and caleb and joshua as like the the upper staff like the dwight and those kinds of characters sort of like they just won't listen to us like God is fucking angry man like he's really pissed about them with the golden calf thing and then on the other side of that you have like look they fucking threw a fit like he plagued half the community for the golden calf and now he tells us to build a snake I don't get it in the snake and Adam and Eve and it's just it's just too much and you could do so much storytelling with this I just think that would be a great I
Jason:
[1:32:50] Think that would be an amazing I mean at the very least a mockumentary right yes.
Tad:
[1:32:56] There's an Ah.
Jason:
[1:32:57] Oh there's there's an idea um i forgot the name of the movie but there's a mockumentary i think it was made in the 80s or 90s about filmmakers making a movie based on the bible the entire bible and it's just a hilarious take on like everything you shouldn't do as a filmmaker but i'll have to dig up the name of that mockumentary and send it to you ty because i think you would absolutely appreciate it because it sounds just like your idea just with like a little a little uh i guess a little different in the sense that's like contemporary rather than in the path.
Ty:
[1:33:37] I really love the the history of the world part one like that movie is tremendous and that sort of storytelling i love just because i think it's not just that it's biblical but it's like exploring ideas that literally most of the world can relate to and then playing comedy on that kind of stuff is really cool even you know talking about roman history that kind of stuff or you could if you could make a tell a story that pretty much anyone can kind of like relate to in some way that's the key to making something really interesting even you know to get back to it like humanizing the people who made postal difficult task but you know obviously um
Jason:
[1:34:13] Now was that mel brooks.
Ty:
[1:34:15] Yeah that was a mel brooks movie yeah
Jason:
[1:34:17] I actually i never saw that one.
Ty:
[1:34:19] Highly recommend this
Jason:
[1:34:20] One yeah i need to watch it it's one of the few that i haven't seen.
Ty:
[1:34:24] I'll spoil right
Tad:
[1:34:26] Just not too long ago history of the world part two when it came out like netflix or like amazon that's right
Ty:
[1:34:31] Definitely happens in that uh that's so many that's gonna be homework i
Tad:
[1:34:36] Don't think it got great reviews but you know that's a mel brooks movie sometimes they go they're very divisive
Ty:
[1:34:41] Um shit mel brooks i mean blazing saddles history of the world uh high anxiety is probably one of my favorite ones but just yeah they they do such a great job it's the opposite of british storytelling but still sort of doing the british comedy has that thing where it heavily focuses on like you need to have context in order to understand the jokes and then mel brooks basically does that but in a way that's uniquely american and something that everyone can appreciate and so to like he's the opposite of monty python while doing the same thing so i love that stuff they
Jason:
[1:35:16] They need to bring comedies back it's been a dry spell for a good comedy for many years so.
Tad:
[1:35:22] Keep hearing space balls twos in the works so i don't know but
Jason:
[1:35:26] I don't know.
Ty:
[1:35:26] That but
Tad:
[1:35:27] That's sounds weird
Jason:
[1:35:29] Maybe rick comes out of retirement.
Ty:
[1:35:32] Maybe What have you learned about filmmaking and the games industry specifically, you know, if you were to hypothetically make this documentary about what's going on today? What are, like, you've mentioned layoffs and things like that, but what are, like, the stories that you have heard, maybe some of the people you've talked to that have, like, brought that into your mind? Like, why is that such a big topic in your mind?
Tad:
[1:35:59] I mean, I think it's a topic just because it's so fresh. It's currently happening especially like 2024 2023 you hear about all the layoffs that are continually happening happening in the industry um i mean for us we're so centered in the postal world right now that we haven't really branched outside of like other developers other studios so i'd love to you know kind of hear their take on everything but um you know i know that uh just from from the people that i talk to in in the video game industry that you know it's a tough industry i mean you'll make a great game for five years and then it will come out and completely bomb and then your studio will be dissolved i mean like look at hi-fi rush by tango gameworks that came out a year or two ago and now the studio's dissolved and like they made a great game like arguably one of the better games that year and you can still make it and it can still you know coming and then you can make shit trash games that like suicide squad and it will you know still continue to be they'll still continue to be a studio i mean we'll see what happens there and it's just kind of a testament to see you know what's going on in the industry right now um and it'd be an interesting topic that i'd love to explore just to kind of hear from the developers themselves from like the studio heads yeah
Ty:
[1:37:12] I've been on both sides of it that's really interesting thing to talk about in general and it's something that i've obviously talked a lot about on either this or other podcasts and stuff. It's a unique time in the games industry over the past several years because there was this sort of build-up, like almost a bubble Getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And then when COVID happens, it's sort of an artificial inflation because for roughly two and a half years, everyone just kept hiring people.
Ty:
[1:37:43] Thinking that that would never end like this giant uptick in game sales that resulted from everyone being at home was going to last.
Ty:
[1:37:52] And also lots and lots of projects got started at that time and it was just based on this sort of false pretense that all of this availability that all these developers have because you were talking about people being overworked and doing crazy hours during COVID they had nothing else to do
Ty:
[1:38:08] So then I know numerous people who were like hobbyist game designers that were suddenly professional game designers being hired by all these studios because they just had all this extra money going around all these great ideas for projects and then lo and behold the bubble bursts covid comes to a you know screeching halt you know and then suddenly like a lot of these projects were in many cases like irresponsible poorly managed uh a lot like embracer group was a big part of that story because they had bought up so many companies during that time and then i even remember saying then i'm like okay this is interesting because it's going to be great to see what happens during this roughly two-year period but i was like you got two years until they start auditing the books folks have fun let's ride this wave and then suddenly you know the uh you know fiscal year comes around everybody starts measuring like all right what have we lost what what have we let go on like projects that should be over by now but have just been you know extended and allowed to continue development because of covid and not looked into properly because everyone is remote people aren't even able to like really it was
Ty:
[1:39:18] Like a good and a bad thing the remote work for games because then you have access to more people there's more of an accepted culture around folks who just don't want to leave their house and a lot of them do like to make video games i mean you do have a lot of very reclusive sorts of folks who are programmers and such that were happy to work in that fashion but maybe not happy to be in an office setting um all of those different factors play into that story it's it for a lot of people was really tragic i i was very lucky in that i was on the management side so i got to like experience most of the layoffs from like a kind of safe position and then sort of plan my out from the corporate side of video games like i had a lot of foresight and an ability to kind of like i'll just go back to america if i'll call you guys you know uh so and then focus on just like i'll just go to my own i own my own company i'll just do that whereas i saw a lot of people really really you know take take the hit yeah um people who were planning on you know like buying houses having children
Ty:
[1:40:19] Uh thinking that they have a career and then all the lo and behold they don't and then the problem even further is that you can't just go find another job because there's now 70 less jobs in the field and most of those people you're competing with every other person who's been laid off or worse right and the even more interesting story i think if you take a few years to do this will be the number of those people who found new studios right now and come out of the woodworks as big successes and it won't be everyone but there will be a lot um that kind of make their way and have great ideas and great lessons learned from that i hope to be one of them but yeah it's a lot yeah
Tad:
[1:41:03] It almost seems it's more volatile than like the film industry right now like you can i mean make a great movie and nine times out of ten it's a success but But if you make a bad film, typically you're still going to work again. But if you make a bad game, like it's it's kind of a rough idea if you're going to be working again in the industry.
Ty:
[1:41:20] It costs a lot of money. Yeah. Video game.
Tad:
[1:41:24] And then now you got the challenges of working with AI against you as a developer, because it's like, I don't know, is my job going to be safe in the next couple of years? Like there's going to be a chat bot that can do my coding for me. And I'm sure that's a, you know, a huge, huge worry in the industry right now. And unfortunately, a lot of executives, I'm sure, are trying to cut corners, which as business owners, like I understand it. But, you know, people, you know, have livelihoods they have to depend on. Right.
Ty:
[1:41:50] Another big story is the the people who are, you know, protected in that upper echelon, like the really rich guys that are rich no matter what happens. And the the interplay between like sort of that this why does the ceo you know keep going while everyone else has to eat shit for them and all that it's it's a very very honestly very compelling story but it's not done yet it's it's going to be like a big wave um i i love doing that kind of like whole industry analysis stuff um just the boomer shooter craze from roughly 2019 ish all the way up until a couple of years ago. It was like everybody was jumping on that bandwagon. This happens over and over again with just genres in general where like one game will pop off and then usually it's like an indie studio knocks it out of the park and does a great game. And then other companies that have more money and more experience capitalize on that idea to get like two or three even better higher selling games that were just like that one. And then all the other indies try to do it and then they realize that it's over you know the time to do this was four years ago um and the amount of money that people will spend trying to chase that only to realize that they can't pull it off in a lot of cases i i mean in 2021 i could not imagine spending two thousand dollars on a plane ticket
Ty:
[1:43:16] Then, within a few years, I'm like, dude, it's crazy how fast you can burn through $14 million. Just set it on fire and watch it burn.
Tad:
[1:43:26] Yeah.
Ty:
[1:43:28] Amazing. It absolutely blew my mind to see just how that can happen in real time. Understanding it and seeing how it affects the people involved. Even the people who have to make the decisions. Because there's a lot of empathy on the side of your publishers and your directors and stuff. Where they're like i do want to give this extra time i really do believe in this idea but then once you have a corporate you know entity that wants their money back now it's a you know mob boss comes in smacks you around you know probably some people vince used to know and you know no no we want our money back and the bright-eyed bushy-tailed story you know people like me even who like have the best intentions and everything kind of coming to that reality and that over the past couple of years has been a huge honestly sent me into a long wave of depression just some of the stuff that i had to like morally wrestle with um and being on we're gonna have
Jason:
[1:44:21] To pick your brain at some point.
Ty:
[1:44:23] Oh anytime dude or i'll just send you like old podcasts i did if you want yeah
Jason:
[1:44:29] There we go yeah i mean it's uh our next documentary.
Ty:
[1:44:33] I i'll as long as you guys are making movies anytime you want i will come to you we'll make it happen i like i said it was one of my dreams to be chris jericho the talking head of every documentary so i'm happy to if it's got to do with video games i'll make up something to say we've uh we've burned a full two hours here i don't want to keep you guys forever oh
Jason:
[1:44:53] Man has it been two hours already.
Ty:
[1:44:55] Well pretty close um just lessons learned things you want to say plugs you might have shout outs what's in your mind Yeah,
Jason:
[1:45:06] I mean, I hope everyone that's listening will, you know, give our documentary a chance. You can go to goingpostaldoc.com to find out more information. You can pre-order a collector's version of the documentary as a Blu-ray. Um we're going to be releasing on all streaming platforms by all streaming platforms i mean four major ways to watch it right amazon voodoo google and apple um come spring so we're really excited for the documentary to come out we put our blood sweat and tears over the last five years in this project me and tad are very gracious to be on this podcast um yeah and and and all socials are going postal doc if you want to follow us and find out more information and follow the end of our journey here for the release of our documentary.
Tad:
[1:46:01] Yes, you're the first to hear it, folks. Amazon and Apple. Spring. So, yeah, we are excited to have the film out digitally. Then you have that Blu-ray. We'll be releasing a standard edition here very shortly as well. So keep your eyes out for that. And if you're a gamer, I think you're really going to like the film. If you're not a gamer, I still think you'll enjoy a really good story. That was something me and Jason always wanted to tackle was something that's not just a video game documentary but stands on its own as a good documentary that your average mom and pop might put on. So general audiences, you know, give the film a chance. I think you'll generally enjoy it because it's got a lot of ups and downs. It's not just the nerdiness about video games, but also a story about, you know, the industry as a whole starting from the 70s all the way up into today. So we hope you give it a chance and we look forward to you seeing the journey.
Ty:
[1:46:55] Well, really guys, thank you for coming on the show. i i could i could start tearing up like you don't know what this all meant to me uh now i can tell my mom look mom i was in a movie and i'm definitely the favorite of my seven uh siblings now so yeah y'all did it for me this is better than christmas and i can't wait to see the movie i can't wait to help you guys promote it as much as i can and you know just keep making keep making stuff like this it's a you'll probably touch so many people's like lives in a similar way, and I want that joy to spread across the world. Kudos.
Music:
[1:47:32] Music
Ty:
[1:47:47] Thank y'all so much for listening. Thank you to Tad and to Jason for finally coming on the show, man. It's been a long time coming for this to happen. I'm so excited. Can't wait for y'all to see the movie. It is absolutely excellent. You know, it's more than just a piece of gaming history. It's a piece of world history because, yeah, I'm in it.
Ty:
[1:48:08] Going Postal, The Legacy Foretold, coming to amazon and to apple tv starring yours truly also some dude named john st john and some other guy named uve bowl and a bunch of other people but uh mostly me just um thank you to all of our patreon supporters shannon anthony michael frederick love you buddy and uh brad you guys rule thank you so much i literally like this show could not have survived all this time without uh specifically the five of you and also the other people who have contributed along the way if you want to support the show there's an easy way to do it go to the support tab on our website there's also a patreon button directly underneath the episodes in the podcast section without any further ado i love you god love you stay in the key
Ty:
[1:49:05] Also by The Postal Movie. Pre-ordered now. Right now. Links in the show notes.
