Kevin Driewer is an artist and level designer currently working on In The Keep's upcoming FPS game Stellar Valkyrie. Kevin also illustrates a series of children's books called Pitter Patter the Pirate Hamster written by his wife Nikki Olson. We're discussing the trials and advice on finding work in the games industry, living with epilepsy, game soundtracks, and plenty more.
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Chapters
1:00 Industry Challenges
36:36 Job Market Realities
1:19:47 Creative Constraints and Game Design
1:20:32 The Impact of Epilepsy
1:25:09 Employment and Disability
1:28:10 The Joy of Game Development
1:37:05 The Challenge of Large Organizations
1:47:24 Food Waste and Industry Struggles
1:51:22 The Evolution of Gaming
2:10:17 Opportunities in Game Soundtracks
2:13:20 Looking Ahead in Game Development
Transcript
Music:
[0:00] Music
Speaker0:
[0:30] I was telling you before we started recording like I've been getting and it's honestly like this year like now it's 2025 but you know this past year 2024 at the end of 2023 there's been so many people uh they got laid off in the games industry in general um and I keep getting a lot of people writing me calling me asking me like how do I find work how do I find a job what do I do.
Speaker0:
[1:00] Etc and then i was thinking about doing like a like a just an episode about just that and then you messaged me basically all the same questions yesterday um because you know like what you're doing within the keep right now is like contract work but i mean like you're people are talking about like i want a job i want to i want to get a fucking 401k and health insurance plan and all kind of stuff and or whatever and in some cases it's just i want to work in the games industry with no requirements whatsoever and i feel like a lot of people actually get screwed, because they're just willing to do anything to be in the games industry and so i've seen people.
Speaker0:
[1:41] Like getting paid in my opinion like less than half of what they ought to be paid, for the position they were working but because they were i'm not gonna say dumb i'll say naive enough to just oh well i don't want to ask for more because then i might lose job you know or they wouldn't they wouldn't have given me the position if i asked for more that kind of thing, um and i don't necessarily think it's all there's a lot of abuse out there but a lot of it is just like folks ought to know in my opinion like what what to do and how to advocate for themselves so this is going to be a conversation that is largely at least the start of it will be about that and then also like we'll talk about your work and how you got into the in the keep team and stellar valkyrie and everything and just who you are as a person so just relax um take some of your gummies or whatever you're going to do and we'll uh we'll ride it up um so just to begin with like trying to like introduce yourself like who you are what you do currently um you know what your aspirations are and then we'll try to go from there sure.
Speaker1:
[2:51] Um so my aspirations ever since i was a child it was actually i wanted to work at in software because i grew up playing do google i grew up playing doom wolfenstein 3d and it wasn't until about 2006 so about six seven years after i started playing these games that i realized uh
Speaker0:
[3:17] Hey you.
Speaker1:
[3:18] Can make this these levels and a piece of software called doom builder and i started doing that got really into it was pretty isolated but i would say i was semi-known in the doom community on z daemon for making my capture flag stuff and being obnoxious here and there
Speaker0:
[3:44] As it were as as everyone everyone in the z daemon community has like this story of like you know i i used to be a terrible person uh like all the administrators for z daemon have at one point in time or another been like banned from z daemon i've noticed like everybody has at some point just maybe except for af domains like they've all just been kicked out like you're you're such a troublemaker and then later came back and became like a moderator or a you know even a developer for the community so that's very interesting oh.
Speaker1:
[4:17] Yeah i was so addicted that i had to ban myself once like not no joke
Speaker0:
[4:22] For people listening uh just to be clear z daemon is a is a source port it's an online multiplayer source port for doom 2 that is very very popular amongst uh old people and me yeah.
Speaker1:
[4:35] And on this platform you can you can upload your own your own content and play with other people um capture flag co-op survival free for all deathmatch all all that fun stuff but it was once i had been working really hard on a project that was very dear to me uh called black girls capture a flag that i was kind of like you You know, I could use this as a portfolio piece and wanted to go to school for animation. So I went to Milwaukee Area Technical College here in Milwaukee, where I live currently. And I, I did just that. I got an associate's degree in animation or I pretty much, it's an associate's degree. So it's not, it's, I know the fundamentals of 3d modeling. I used motion capture, Photoshop, illustrator, um, life drawing. I had classes of literally just drawing cartoon characters. But after getting that um that degree i did one of my actually one of my professors he worked for ea
Speaker1:
[5:55] And he the company's name was um digital iris they're i think they're defunct right now they're not really doing anything their website's still up as far as i know but i was the lead designer on that project um and you can actually see digital iris's name credited in dead space 2 just a fun fact but it wasn't until about 2014 or 2015 that i had to leave the company because they took the game i was working on a completely different direction so that's kind of where i had a big a big gap in my resume showing what i actually did like with my degree so i mean i took took up whatever job i could at that point to pay the bills um unfortunately i've been stuck in automotive um for the last 10 years now pays the bills get 401k all that fun jazz not fun but you get the point yeah um but it wasn't until last year that i kind of came hat in hands to a Z Damon is he a moderator at this point Uber yeah
Speaker0:
[7:12] So Uber is a developer he like yeah he I don't know they got some, cause it's I have tons of podcasts early on in the show about this subject so I'm not gonna rehash it all but basically like it's super controversial, that ZDAMON is closed source as opposed to open source like Zandronim or Otomex, some other source boards that people use.
Speaker0:
[7:43] Very few people actually have access to the code and I believe that Uber is one of the people who can fuck with it. I don't know if that's for a fact but I do believe that he can see some stuff. But anyway, he in particular like he he develops he like when they would have like their very specific like holiday sessions like we're going to do survival and christmas world or whatever uber has been doing that for years like all these different holidays and stuff um halloween jams and that kind of thing and then he would be like sort of the the person who makes all the maps for people to do those sessions with and then i think that's how he worked his way up i would have to have uber on one day like I actually have a recording somewhere from I, probably four or five years ago where we interviewed uber for uh it was uber and af domains for uh, talking to him with flambeau which was like this like kind of z daemon oriented spinoff show we did, and he had literally just got braces like the day before and we were all shit-faced so we decided it's probably best not to put this out into the world it wasn't that it was like we didn't say anything wrong it was just like you can't fucking understand half of what's being said anyway so i.
Speaker1:
[9:05] Get it i had braces when i was a kid it was horrible
Speaker0:
[9:07] Me too yeah i had braces and like all the way through middle school so like basically i came to high school like a new man like look at my shiny non-brace having teeth ladies look at.
Speaker1:
[9:18] My shiny teeth
Speaker0:
[9:20] Hi it's me i'm tired no um yeah so i think that's that's where uber stands with the zdmi community, I mean, I met him through that, and then he later became like a professor of game design college there in the Netherlands. Yeah. So you went to him.
Speaker1:
[9:43] Yeah, I went to him kind of hat in hand saying, hey, I heard through one of my friends on CD that you're making a game. Can I help contribute some textures or something here and there? And he was like, sure, we can use whatever help we want or we need. I was kind of like, cool, I'll, I'll start making some textures for you guys. And he was kind of like, he texted me back a while back or a while later. I don't know if it was actually not sure if it was him, but I got a message from somebody saying, didn't you make black rose capture flag? And I was like, yes, I did. Did you also make this, I feel ashamed even bringing it up, uh, mess with your mind for ZDaven? I'm like, yes. I was like, would you like to do some levels? I'm like, ah, that is exactly what I would love to do. Right. So I started making up this ice planet, which I didn't even fully understand the game at the point at that time. Um, yeah. But fortunately, the game needed a ice world. So we've kept it so far. I mean, it's changed drastically, but yeah, we got that ice world. And I'm currently working on the fire world as well. I'm not sure how much I could talk about the game.
Speaker0:
[11:09] Talk about whatever you want. I mean, the basic idea is you can talk about the game. I just don't want the story spoiled. like just to be clear with it like with everybody's NDA it's it is nothing to do with like don't show people what you're working on don't talk about like oh it's gonna have a you know an ice world or whatever I mean there's some things where it's like I'd rather we not make promises that I'm not 100% certain we can keep you know so if you were to say some shit like you know.
Speaker0:
[11:40] Well we're gonna have I don't know just insert like we're gonna have RTX, functionality and Jeezy did like Well, first of all, we're not planning that, but second of all, like, don't set people up to think that's going to happen, and then we're not able to, you know, implement it. I know that somebody actually did make a mod for it, but at this point, it's like, if we start fucking with the version of GZ Doom, you know, we're using, there's a lot of stability issues. It was some, you know, like, you could never foresee these challenges kind of stuff with Stellar Valkyrie, but yeah. Just don't spoil the story. That's my biggest thing. that's to me the crux of the game is kind of oriented around that um it's gonna be probably one of the more narratively driven games ever made in cheesy doom oh for sure and heavily inspired by like the work that happened on adventures of square which i was a huge fan of and i can't believe it wasn't a commercial product i was like this there's no excuse for this not to be a commercial product like you should all be rich like uh matt tropiano and jimmy and and you know and captain jay and all those guys like that you got zazer but y'all should all be fucking filthy rich from this game it's amazing it's really really good and it's just free i.
Speaker1:
[12:56] I would i hope so that would be like dream come true yeah
Speaker0:
[13:00] But i was you know at the time i was actually just explaining this to uh my wife last night because she was asking me like how did you get into all this fucking nerd shit and i'm like long story long story babe but like you know it was uh 2019 2020 when.
Speaker0:
[13:20] I don't know if it was nash but i think i heard through nash that you know basically like hey doom gz doom doesn't need an iwad anymore or i was like what for real and then i just smelled money i was like i like look like vince mcmahon was just dollar bills in front of my face like dude, this is like there's because i knew from the podcast even just and hanging out with like different folks playing playing quake and doom and shit like that i was like man there's so many people who have been honing their craft at this for like, 25 years that have never made a commercial game and now they can do exactly what they're already doing and charge money for it on Steam and then of course you see Hedon and you know there were several others I think Hedon was for me like the biggest example like it could be really successful, um you know and then that was like the slew of GZ Doom on Steam games and I was like, oh my god like we could totally do this so i grabbed you know scumhead and i grabbed uber and i was like you guys know what you're doing i'll handle all the business you have six months, and uh that six months turned into you and me are still talking in 2025 so.
Speaker1:
[14:34] Well one thing i think we have a lot going for us is i don't i have almost all those games on my steam account and none of them have the goofy, stupid humor that we've put into this game so far. Like I've almost pissed myself at our brainstorming sessions.
Speaker0:
[14:58] Well it's just ridiculous i'm really close with uh like bridge burner and major arlene and the whole hellforge studios community like i i like them and everything and i i love like um an example would be like project absentia is somewhat similar.
Speaker0:
[15:13] In many ways it's just it was originally literally a my little pony mod and i i talked sonya into like no you should totally like.
Speaker0:
[15:22] Take all the hasbro sue me.
Speaker0:
[15:25] Shit out and just do this as a game and.
Speaker0:
[15:28] It probably won't make you like millions of dollars but at least you're you're doing what you already want to be doing and getting potentially paid for it and putting that on your resume you know uh and then that's how like waffle iron studios was formed and uh you know they've done pretty pretty decent so far so uh and and then that connection with hellforge but the thing is that like most of most of the games that have come out the gz doom uh supplies you know whatever are like these really serious doom alike games and i was like i don't want to fucking make doom i just want to use the doom engine to make something fun um and and adventures of square square were literally i was like like like that you know like it could be kid friendly like it could be you know stop thinking about like the mature audience think about like what if you made something that the whole family can enjoy and which is weird coming from me because i you know i cuss all the time and everything but like i was like i want something that like my kids could play and enjoy the same way that you know i still like mario i still like zelda i still like you know buck bumble kind of like that kind of shit as an adult i'm like why can't that be something that we do um which was something that i think a lot of people didn't expect from in the key because it had like especially the podcast was so like you know i'm not holding back anything i say and all that kind of thing but that's what i really genuinely wanted to make um with stellar valkyrie anyway so now we.
Speaker0:
[16:55] Have you we have maria we actually did pull in captain jay from from the adventures of square team i was literally like i was like looking for a great pixel artist and i kept telling people they're like well what kind of pixel are you looking for i'm like well i really want it to be like adventures of square and then jimmy uh was like you know captain j probably would be open to it i was like really like i assumed he was probably just like i thought he would be like some executive like actual game designer somewhere, um who just did that as a hobby since it was free but no he's like he's like yeah i'm open to it like totally like give me a hundred bucks i'm like no bro we're gonna pay we're gonna pay you way better than that because no um yeah i love the whole team and i love the project, I couldn't do it without the art team. That's something that I've learned over time with game design in general. Take out your pens if you're an aspiring game dev out there. 70% of your budget is art. Period. That's just the fact. With every game you'll ever make, if you're shooting below that and trying to make it work, you're probably not going to have a very good game or you're going to be ripping off your artist.
Speaker1:
[18:10] You need a good art team. And shout out to Maria and Jay, you guys, you guys are awesome. I can count on you guys for almost anything and I can count on you guys for everything.
Speaker0:
[18:22] And GERB too, for, for stepping in on the models, stuff. It's, it's been very interesting. This whole process has been a wild ride because I'd had no aspirations whatsoever of being a game developer ever. I just thought I wanted to, I was just like fucking, you know, drunk in my spare bedroom with a microphone, wanting to talk to people about Quake. And that turned into, you know, now I'm interviewing like, you know, Dr. Justin Sledge about like esoteric ancient religion shit. And like, you could have never, never, never could have guessed where this whole journey would have taken us. But, um, with you, so you, you were doing like these fucking weird, you know, whack ass offensive damn mods and stuff.
Speaker1:
[19:04] Oh yeah. I'm not proud of those at all. They were hilarious at the time. Like they're fun play, but like, oh no. Oh, they were they're offensive did
Speaker0:
[19:17] You ever happen to hear my uh my interview with uh sergeant mark ford.
Speaker1:
[19:21] I i it's been a while but yeah i like he was just from what i remember it was he just wanted to be the military i think and couldn't so he focused on coding and made these really awesome uh the And yeah, first time I saw that in Z-DOOM, I was like, holy shit, this is ridiculous. Like it, it's a modern game just squished down into Doom. The art is amazing. The sound is amazing. Playing is fun. I remember flipping off an imp for the first time and almost falling over laughing. That's awesome. Like the, the, the things you can do with the Doom engine in general is ridiculous. Like people look at it oh that's cute then like uh no sit down and look at this game wow that's pretty cool it's like that's the same game that's that's pretty much what he did I love it
Speaker0:
[20:17] Yeah he definitely made doom like for instance like if I were to take just blank like blank slate doom 2 to a 20 year old right now, and be like play this they'd be like yeah this is kind of fun but it's dumb you know like it's it's so old and then if you put brutal doom in front of them like i did this to my brother um i was like try this try this and he was like addicted to it like he was like on my laptop on the kitchen counter for hours like i like every day i would you know every time i would come home and be like dude you still have that game i'm like dude i will show you how to get it you know on your on your laptop it's like you could run it on a fucking toaster um, But it was really important to the preservation of the Doom IP. I mean, tell me that Doom Eternal is not looking at Brutal Doom for a lot of the decisions they made. Or even Doom 2016 with the brutality killings and all the melee stuff and all that. It's a lot. It dramatically changed the course of the IP for Doom. oh but it's i mean that he is a case study for i was an idiot when i was a kid yeah.
Speaker1:
[21:28] Yeah i
Speaker0:
[21:31] Did some shit that i'm not proud of and you know the internet keeps everything forever and but people didn't know that.
Speaker1:
[21:37] Yeah i'm actually a little jealous of them because i mean i'm sitting in my office and i've dedicated this room to my doom room i have posters and banners all over it and i'm reminded when i walk in here there's a banner over my window of doom eternal i remember playing it and being like uh sergeant mark four had an inspiration in that game one of the best-selling games of that year and it's that that's remarkable i would i've my life could end that day after playing that if i was sergeant mark four and be proud right like i would have been happy with what i accomplished in my life that is amazing i'm really i'm proud of him for him that's really cool so
Speaker0:
[22:24] I want to kind of like get back to the sort of the topic at hand here is so what you you worked for this other studio um you had an associate's degree at this point um, And then ever since that kind of like fell apart, you've not worked in the game industry at all until you came back to in the keep, you know, as a contractor. So I'm just, I want to kind of get into that. Like, what, what does that entail? Like, how does that affect the psyche? Because I, I had a totally unique from what I understand path and, you know, working in games. So I did, I didn't go to, I went to college for one semester. I took one class, aced it. And then I was like, this is a waste of time. I should be making an actual game instead of spending all of my free time doing this. Like just basically paying someone else to let me teach myself how to do something. So yeah, I took like a three-day business course that was like free for military members while I was still in. And that's how I ended up running this business. So like for the different paths that people take, you know, what was your experience? It's like getting the degree getting the job and then now like you know finding that you couldn't find work in the industry.
Speaker1:
[23:40] Um mainly it was it was um kind of a depressing point for me uh we were making a third person style mech shooter at that company and then they went from that changing the entire game to be a real-time strategy. So, for anybody who's not familiar with games, really, it would be like taking Call of Duty and then turn it into chess. It makes no sense. So, being the lead designer, I'm like, I'm about to turn 26. I need health insurance. I need a full-time job. So, I can't keep driving from my home, which is 45 minutes from The studio that we worked at was required to go in twice a week. I, I couldn't keep doing that. So I had to call it quits there and it just got stagnant from there. There was, there's no game studios in the area. I'm sure if I was smarter back then, I would have looked for some startup companies other than that one. Um.
Speaker1:
[24:57] Yeah it was kind of a depressing point for me at that stage my life um i did pick up drawing during that time though um fast forwarding a little bit to a couple years ago when i started up by it was 2020 so it wasn't terribly it was about four five years but i started illustrating children's books with my wife so that was kind of the the bridge between me working at the game studio doing the children's books and then going to uber was kind of like hey i also draw cartoons if you need like kiddish kind of cartoon drawings at all for anything like that so i like had a little art portfolio going so that was kind of the only thing that was the little breadcrumb trail left of my portfolio right
Speaker0:
[25:58] For the record i think that's so much cooler than being like i think that like, owning a family uh children's book company sounds way cooler than video game industry like just.
Speaker1:
[26:10] I i
Speaker0:
[26:11] Wish i had done something like that and so like in and i think we had talked about like what if you make like a side scroller adventure with your hamster character and all that kind of like I just love like creativity and stuff like me and my wife spent all of New Year's Eve making Dreamcatchers together like I think stuff like that is so cool, and it's way less fucking hard than making a video game.
Speaker1:
[26:34] It gets frustrating though we squabble over what to put on what page or I'll draw the pose slightly different for the character and I'll be in Photoshop drawing it for like an hour finishing the background and she'll be like no I want it this way and I'm like are you fucking kidding me and then like it it eventually will be like you know what we'll come back to it tomorrow but like that that moment it's just frustrating uh but when you when you see the final result of it and you actually hold the book in your hand it it's all worth it we just finished our third book oh pitter pitter pirate hamster uh i'll
Speaker0:
[27:15] Put the links and everything in the.
Speaker1:
[27:16] Links and everything yeah
Speaker0:
[27:18] Well i'll even do like an amazon affiliate link so that if they click on it and buy your book we get money.
Speaker1:
[27:22] Available at all fine bookstores everywhere is
Speaker0:
[27:26] It actually um on shelves and stuff at this point.
Speaker1:
[27:28] Um it's print on demand i believe so i mean my wife's the marketing person she i i am just the illustrator i i draw i come up with the character designs she approves the designs of the characters um and then she writes the story and I kind of write up a bunch of poses. She'll tell me if she has an exact idea for a page and then I'll draw it until she's like, yeah, that's exactly what I want. Then I'll take it to the computer and I'll sketch it up. Then I'll get approval of that. And then I draw it finally on the computer. So one page could take an entire day unless it's something really simple.
Speaker1:
[28:10] In our third book that's yet to be published, It is, it is finished. It's just got to be published yet. There's literally one page that's a walnut floating away in the ocean. So that was like a stupidly easy page to do where there'll be another page where I actually put my 3d modeling to use in this, where we have a, a craft boat or a boat floating in the ocean. I mean, I need it at the right angle. So I actually went into Blender, and I modeled the ship, and I took a plane, I made it a grid, essentially, and made it kind of look like waves and water. And it tilted, rotated the boat around, so it was just that right angle. And I hit print screen, I threw up in Photoshop, and I just traced over it. So it looks like I kind of half-assed it, but in all reality, it's like, no, that actually did take me quite a little bit of effort to do that.
Speaker0:
[29:11] So well listen man i i gotta you know impending baby showers and stuff like so you could you could maybe like send i i've officially now as far as i know we're we're even stevens on the sweater situation so you could you could hit me hit me with some children's books for my for my kiddo i would read them to to sleep with pitter patter and all that i've.
Speaker1:
[29:34] Yet to buy this question trick
Speaker0:
[29:35] Um buy your sweater um anyway, So I find it really interesting that you basically do run a small business. I mean, out of your house between you and your wife, making children's books and stuff. And so the first thing I tell everybody who's like, how do I get a job in the games industry? The very first thing I want to tell them is don't. Like, not like don't work in the games industry, but I mean, like you don't try to get, you can. I mean, I'll explore those options too. But I mean, you'll be far better off as an independent contractor. And the reason for that is there's a lot of reasons for it.
Speaker0:
[30:18] If you work at a company as an employee, they're inevitably going to cut people. You know, at the end of a project, they're going to cut everybody they don't need for the next project. That's just the name of the game. There's very few positions at a game studio that are like permanent positions where, you know, if you're like head of production, you know, your marketing team that, you know, then a lot of that goes into publishing too. These people are relatively stable and even they're, you know, subject to the chopping block as any company, you know, would have it. But if you're an artist and I hired an artist for, we have this project that's going to last three, four years. And then when that project's done, if the next project we take on does not specifically call for what you can do, I'm cutting you. So I'm likely not to employ you at all. I'm likely to just offer you a contract for that duration of time. I mean, that's going to be the vast majority of your of your work. There's some. Some ways around that, like, let's say you're a you're a unity programmer, that kind of thing, or you're a, you know, you're a level designer or, you know, blender artist or rigor, like certain things that are going to kind of be needed for every project that you do as a studio.
Speaker0:
[31:42] That you have a little bit more leeway, you know, but then there's also like the, where do you sit in the line of the people who do that? A very small studio. If you're the only guy like in the keep, right? Like if you're the only guy who does what you do, we're not getting rid of you, you know, but if, if there's like three or four of you, right. And well, the next project only, you know, we only really need one or whatever the hell we don't need three. I don't know, but there's all that, all of those things to take into account. So I'm not even just saying like, don't try to get employed i'm saying like it's not likely that you will find a employment where they're paying half your taxes and you have a 401 okay and you can retire off of it so the best thing that you could do for yourself not just you i mean i'm talking to anyone listening is to form an llc.
Speaker0:
[32:30] Like a partnership with somebody that you really like and trust or if you're an artist make an art studio that you can pimp yourself out to lots of different studios with like i've known many people who do this where it's like two or three artists maybe maybe more and you know uh let's say i have a unity project or something coming up i know it's going to last three years then i'm bidding for their time like i i literally hired you because i couldn't like in we could not afford some of the the i'm not saying better but i'm saying people who do this for themselves like they start a company and they're like yeah you know you hired me and my you know my other partners as a company uh we charge this much money per level you know and we'll do all the tech you know texturing or whatever it is like all whatever services they provide and i literally like i was like i can't afford like for the budget we have for this project that's not really feasible so i had to go looking for like folks like i literally had to go looking for folks like yourself who weren't going to ask me for as much um i'm glad that we did because i like the team that we're building and ultimately the goal within the keep is to have you know these are our people this is the kind of games we make you know.
Speaker0:
[33:39] And we grew that from the ground up and then hopefully then we can be in a position to like, long-term contract or employ people that sort of thing um but it's just it's very very very very very unlikely to get hired full-time and not get laid off in the games industry period it's always going to be a per project sort of thing and unless you work for a company like let's say you work for creative assembly you know and they they just make total war i mean they have other things but like that's that's there's always going to be the need for everything every person in every position involved in the making of a total war game that that that has some stability aspects to it but your average game studios not got one franchise a lot of game studios are themselves contracting to publishers who hold IPs and they just need a developer to make what they want made. And so then the whole company itself is in fact an independent contractor with several maybe employees but likely independent contractors working within that company. Am I making sense?
Speaker1:
[34:54] Oh yeah.
Speaker0:
[34:57] So then you would need to take it upon yourself to set aside retirement you know if you save up 100k and put it in a hedge fund or that kind of shit to set yourself up for retirement rather than depending on the company to give you a 401k, because even if you have there's certain situations where like maybe you are employed for a good duration with a company and they have a 401k plan and then you can just, take that and apply it to something else later, you know like you can well I have a new 401k So I'm just transferring everything from my old one to that one that you could play it that that way and that there's nothing wrong with that. I did that with the military. Like I have my thrift savings plan that I saved up while I was in the Air Force. And if I ever were to take another job that has a 401k, like a Roth IRA or something like that, I could then apply it to that.
Speaker0:
[35:49] Or I could just wait till I'm 65 and see what the military, you know, what the with the VA and all that stuff works out to. Like that's that's possible too but i've just accepted a long time ago that i'm not going to depend on that like what i need to do is just take it upon my own it's my own responsibility to set aside my own retirement fund um and that's a shitty thing with being employed, is that you're forever dependent on someone else to take care of all that shit for you it's nice that they take care of it for you but then you don't have any power over it you can't make your own decisions about how you want to handle them. So it's take on more responsibility, yes, but also have the freedom to determine what you want to do with it.
Speaker0:
[36:37] And i guess i guess my question to you is um why is it that you have like why do you have it in your mind that you you know you need a job job in the in the games industry and then like what you don't have to name them if you don't want to but like what companies are you looking at like what's the none of this is to like point you out or make you look bad in any way it's more like so i can answer questions that are useful to lots of people who have the same questions.
Speaker1:
[37:00] Oh no it's fine i'm i'm open about it i mean given um i recent diagnosis of epilepsy i really have no choice but very limited i can't drive um for up to 90 days after a seizure and i have a moments weekly so i'm depending on others drive me around so i was looking really hard at my degree and what i'm doing here in the keep but i'm like you know i'm building a portfolio right now why not start looking around at jobs and not to repeat everything i don't want to but yeah i was looking at any and every game company startup and big and yeah the qualifications are either you need to ship games you need to have a bachelor's degree some of them require master's degrees i'm like three triple a ship titles i'm like
Speaker1:
[37:58] That's that's weeding out a lot of people and i remember hearing from uh you i think michael brought it up that you get hired for a contract work the game's done you get laid off so i mean even the just the other day i was looking on everything i was like is there anything even like a online kind of help desk thing i could put pretty much just be ai these days but anything relating to my degree like hey i have an animation degree i work i do some work at a game company anything i can do so that's kind of why i messaged you in the first place like i got frustrated i was looking for an hour and a half nothing popping up that
Speaker0:
[38:43] And that's the thing that i think about a lot too because i i really really want to get the studio to the point where it's like self-sustaining and everyone can just be like you know maybe on like a monthly stipend or some shit like that you know as contractors but then i think um.
Speaker0:
[39:00] In general, the most valuable thing I can offer someone like you is to say, well, if you help me make this game, you can put it on your portfolio that you made a game. Yeah.
Speaker0:
[39:12] And then hopefully that'll make you look better when you go to someone who can actually offer you what you deserve. But i i would i would say this that and in the in those in those things where they're saying like you need a master's degree i mean a bachelor's degree minimum five years experience that kind of stuff i i know how that appears to someone who's just like looking for work especially people who are just straight up unemployed and they're like i'll do anything and then you see that and it's super discouraging my advice and you can quote me internet is to uh fucking lie.
Speaker0:
[39:51] And i bet you they don't check and what's more important to every everybody if you find someone in the games industry that disagrees with me on this they're probably an asshole no one gives a fuck what your degree is what it's in how many years of experience you may or may not have that that can influence you know maybe the decision at the end of the day depending on who you're competing with the question is what can you do what can you actually do what have you done that proves to me that you can do what i'm i'm gonna pay you to do and if you if you have the gift of gab like if you can get into that first and second phase interview and just convince them that you're the guy for the job no one gives a fuck if you have a master's degree or not i don't give a fuck i will never care about that it's impressive it's like oh wow you have a master's degree What games have you made? I know a lot of people who have bachelor's degrees in game designs that have never made a fucking game in their life.
Speaker0:
[40:47] You know, and it's, it's not, it doesn't do any, me any good. Like I know so many people who have, I, I w I walked into, for instance, like when the first time I walked into like the slip gate office and people are like, Oh, you know, everybody's kind of, everybody was new, had moved from different countries. They're like, what did you do? How did you get into this? And there's so many people that were like, um, not in management positions who were, who were like, Oh, I've been in the industry for 16 years. I have this, you know, I got my degree in this and that at uni. And uh you know it was just like the only job i could you know find at the time and it seems like a really good opportunity and then they're like how did you do it and i was like i didn't do any of that shit i made a fucking stupid podcast i ended up knowing a lot of indie devs i came in through the realms deep thing and then i talked to my way like i literally like was in denmark in 2021 riding in a lamborghini with fred on he was like driving me back to our hotel or whatever, and he was just like what do you want to do like i want i want to work with a guy like you who will just get shit done but like what in the games industry would you want to do and so i just was like well i want to be a project manager i want to be a producer and i want to work in marketing and he's like yeah but like you know do you do you have any experience like doing that and i was like well not in the games industry but i'm a staff sergeant in the air force i'm pretty sure i can tell people what to do and get a project done and he's like gave me a shot.
Speaker0:
[42:15] But it wasn't because i had a master's degree or a portfolio or any of that shit it was just that i was able to convince someone to trust me that i could manage a team and so i would my advice to anybody out there if you're applying for jobs do not just see the qualification you don't have and then give up and like don't even send in your shit just try it, And if they're the kind of people who sort it by algorithms and they don't even look or they have so many that they can't even pay attention, you probably weren't going to get it anyway or they're assholes who don't care about people. They just filter everything out based on that. So you would literally be better off just like getting your foot in the door for the conversation. I've seen – I'll use Vince Steele professionally as an example. No actual experience in the games industry, no experience in marketing. Now he's working in marketing at Sabre.
Speaker0:
[43:17] But simply based on he did a lot of work in marketing within the Keep through Realms Deep. And then when it came time, I was like, hey, we really need to hire a brand guy, somebody who can manage a brand and pretty versatile, can get shit done, all that sort of thing. And I was like, oh, dude, Vince, the guy that helped us with Realms Deep, he's looking for a job right now. They hired him. and they didn't look at his fucking you know they're like they didn't ask him about his do you have a master's degree in in marketing statistics or any of that shit they were just like uh well we know we can trust you to do stuff because as a contractor you did a lot of really great shit and you clearly have a get it done attitude so give him a shot boom now that went from being hired at 3d realms for like a junior position to working at saber in the marketing division over the course of a few years so I just I just err on the side of like actually have the conversation before you just discount oh I don't have a bachelor's degree I don't have a master's degree I don't have six years experience maybe I only have three I don't really I don't care about that I just care about what you can do and honestly if you have less than what I'm looking for but can do the same job that someone with those qualifications would or could do I I could probably get away with paying you a bit less than I would have had to offer that person and more likely to hire you.
Speaker0:
[44:42] Um yeah so the first piece of advice is lie lie your way advice lie lie it's.
Speaker1:
[44:53] Actually kind of funny like um i at a very small scale i feel kind of the same way i'm like hey i can do textures and now i'm the lead designer on this project like oh i i can also do 3d models like you can like yeah i like went to school for that i can know how to do that bought a freaking mic so i could make centipede sounds apparently
Speaker0:
[45:19] We we talk about you behind your back like we'll we'll get angry at each other but hey don't distract him like i know that you like kevin can do like blundership but like we need him on levels right now so could you just shut up and i'm like i'm sorry, my bad but you're like really like you've been you've become a bit of a swiss army knife where it's like well kevin can do levels and he can do art and he could do textures and he could do fucking 3d models and all this kind of shit and then what the this happens at scale so at a small studio it's relatively manageable but i've seen this happen at scale you know where you have i drew out a diagram this is when i first arrived in denmark because i had already kind of in my mind like realized this isn't the most well organized and i'm i'm not saying it was a, disorganized company but i mean i'm coming from the military and then i'm very deeply confused about how people delegate tasks at a game studio this is my first look at it so i drew out like a.
Speaker0:
[46:22] What i would call a chain of command i don't really know what that is in the corporate world necessarily but you know a chart it's like boom this person's in charge of these people and these people reported this you know that kind of thing and what i realized i'm not going to say his name or what he did but one dude was doing on on paper you know being paid one person's salary was effectively doing what i would consider to be eight people's jobs like what should be eight different people each with their own department was one person and when you're scaling when you're like when you're first you know trying to get to that point where you can hire you know more people to do that that happens and it's a normal part of doing business but i was just like you know if we could just take less stress off of this guy like give him four jobs instead of eight you know and then and then hire a couple more people to manage those things we would probably have a net better results across the entire studio across the whole company not Not because he's not doing a great job, but just simply because he's doing people's jobs.
Speaker0:
[47:28] Um, and there, there were multiple, I've seen this many, many times, like multiple situations where you have like one person who's willing and able to do a lot of things and you'll burn them out. Like you'll, they'll say yes to everything because they can, and they want to, maybe they need money. And then ultimately they get to a point where they've taken off, they've bit off more than they can chew. And then they burn out. I've done this. I have for sure. Me personally have definitely done that because I'm such a, like, I don't give a fuck if I have to like die for it. It we're getting this mission accomplished and maybe that's something i need to discuss with the va at some point but yeah uh you you know you come to a day when it's like fuck i just gotta like i can't work for two weeks because i'm fucking literally having a mental breakdown from all the shit i've taken on and as a manager you have to be careful about that too um so i guess the point with that is it's great to be versatile but it's also like once you once you're in the environment it's it's very important to like have your own boundaries and be able to say either no or pay me more or you know or and i'm just gonna i'm gonna stick in my lane like you hired me as a level designer don't do this to me but do it to everybody else you hired me as a level designer my contract says level designer i know that you need a you know me to do these other things and i can do them but uh there's that old parable i guess about like the welder you know and he they.
Speaker0:
[48:52] Bring him in for a job interview and they're like well let's see what you can weld and he's like goes over to one you know chain or whatever and he does like a half-ass shitty job and then he's like give me another chain and then he does a perfect pristine greatest welding job you've ever seen or they're like well why would you do this one like that and he's like that's what i charge for fifty thousand dollars a year and this is the one i do for eighty thousand dollars a year this is the kind of work i do depending on how much you pay me so it's not just like do yes do your best every time of course that is a matter but once you have established like, Like I'm doing this for a living, whether you hire me or not, or whether you keep me or not, that kind of thing. Then you can really start to leverage yourself and be like, no, I need you to pay me more if I'm going to take on more responsibility.
Speaker0:
[49:41] We're not there yet, I guess, in the beginning stages of looking for a job. But I mean, even at the point where you get to a studio and they make you that initial offer, I've personally been very crafty with this, I think. But you know don't just take the first offer blindly you know do your research and see like what does this sort of position typically pay what should i expect what do i need in order to spend 40 hours a week maybe more often in the in the video games industry often way more, uh what you know doing this as a job and a lot a lot of contracts will just say like overtime is expected and then this this salary takes that into consideration to avoid having to pay overtime hours oh.
Speaker1:
[50:31] Yeah i've noticed that too and uh looking at job postings it's like you might be working upwards of 60 hours a week and i'm like
Speaker0:
[50:39] Nope dream.
Speaker1:
[50:42] Dream job but if i'm qualified I would sacrifice some of that free time to do that.
Speaker0:
[50:49] In general, unless you are just going to be an independent contractor and set your own hours and decide how much you take on for yourself. If you want a job in the games industry, everybody listening, and you expect to have like a Monday through Friday, nine to five gig. Go work, do something else. Even if they tell you that's what it's going to be, I recommend personally do find something else to do. Because no matter what, eventually there will be a time when you have a deadline and some people, you know, fucked off, didn't do their job or got laid off or money short, whatever. And or a parent company or a client, whatever. Like we we need it by this time no matter what you will work more than 40 hours in a week it's it's gonna happen if if you can find show me a game studio that never does that and i will show you uh someone who's out of business.
Speaker1:
[51:49] Promise well it scales just like any other uh industry like say if you were to be getting a management position at walmart i'm certain you'd be working 55 60 hours a week easily that's why yeah so if you're looking at a big company i'm not throwing shade at you id software i love you but if you were to apply id software or i am fuck y'all wow give
Speaker0:
[52:21] Me my license i want licenses for all the old engines i'll pay you for them but until you let that happen suck suck it um and doom eternal sucks i'm just playing i'm just.
Speaker1:
[52:35] Even working there i'm sure those people get super burned out except for maybe some of the people who have been been there since the beginning which i think is tom hall i'm correct i may be wrong yeah i mean you you said it best uh a while back in this conversation look look for something small and i'm i'm actually really starting to believe in in the keep with uh it's getting that same vibe from i have the masters of doom on my shelf in front of me where the small team of people came together made a game and started something really awesome so i mean i'm putting my heart into these games are working on right now and I really hope they pay off your childhood dream come true.
Speaker0:
[53:27] Yeah, I think that's a good place to kind of pivot into another aspect of how do I become a full-time game dev? So, I mean, if anybody wants to, Thomas Brush, the guy that made Pinstripe and lots of other games, he, on his website, literally has a course that he teaches. It's like a webinar kind of thing, but it's just like how do I become a full-time game dev and there's lots of ways to do that but like his sort of approach to it I took like the first part of it I don't think I need the whole class but I was just like let's see what people are doing you know what are folks teaching and, so his approach to it was literally like you know basically how to make a demo so that you can get, either grant money or a publisher to pick up a game and then you can just take your payments while you work on the game until it's shipped and then how to negotiate for revenue splits and like, you know, kind of what you should look for in a contract and all that kind of stuff. That is very useful. Um, yeah.
Speaker0:
[54:24] Another at this is still technically being a contractor and not being a an employee but let's say that you you were going to make a game like you were going to make pitter patter the game and that that was your dream and you need money in order to be able to quit your day job to do that full-time then hit his sort of approach to like how do i become a full-time game dev is like and everything it's like start a youtube channel you know grow your social media community all that all that sort of stuff it's just way more involved than just make a game and even when you decide to make a game and like god i could i could like just list off like hundreds and hundreds of people i know who have fallen into this trap of trying to make their dream game as their first game like the like the the only thing they care about is just i want to make this and i wanted to have blackjack and hookers and you know poker in the back and all that kind of you know everything.
Speaker0:
[55:25] Um instead of just kind of like taking it iteratively so if you look around at like indie devs who are genuinely very successful there are a few edge cases you know like your stardew valley type things but just just base level how do i become a full-time game dev it's it's to have a high output rate basically like turn over good enough games to sell quickly and they don't have to be the best game in the world they just have to be enough that people will pay for them and then once you have like david samansky right has like 15 games or something like that on steam and for years he was just doing that then he made dust he finally had a hit and now people buy dusk and every other game he ever made all at once all the time um and now anything he puts his name on is like all the dust people and all the people who know the rest of his work are interested in it because he built a brand around his name.
Speaker0:
[56:20] Um, he's not, you know, he's not even like looking for a job at this point. I'm sure he's doing very well and kind of picks and chooses what he wants to do. But like, he's a great example. Airdorff is another great example. A lot of the people who end up at New Blood are going to be people who I would cite as like folks who are pretty damn smart about how they approach the indie games industry. They're not looking at it like I need to make a living off this. They're looking at it like just constantly outputting and building up a portfolio until eventually you get hit. If you go back and listen to Burning Bridges with Bridgeburner a podcast that I used to produce and hopefully it will come back at some point Bridgeburner.
Speaker0:
[56:58] Interviews John Romero and within the first five minutes of the conversation, Bridge is like, oh let's talk about your early work, let's go back to Wolfenstein and Doom and Quake and John goes, you know, Wolfenstein was like my 87th game.
Speaker0:
[57:19] And that like that sunk in pretty hard i'm like you know that's the way to do it that's why he is who he is like it wasn't like he just hit the ground running with the you know a killer game from the jump he made like 80 some odd games iteratively over a long period of time and then, you know then commander keen then wolfenstein 3d then doom then doom 2 then quake 1 and then you know and then he could just, he never had to work again if he didn't want to he did and still does but he does not have to.
Speaker1:
[57:53] Yeah I believe he's more of a passion creator at this point with his company over in Ireland yep I actually sent a resume out over there hoping to get feedback I haven't heard from him yet it's been about a month but yeah But he just said that actually holds true, as far as I know, to the children's book industry. My wife said that you usually don't start profiting until about the fourth or fifth book. And we're just on our third. And I keep on saying to myself, come on, pitter-patter, pay the bills, pay the bills, pay the bills. So we have a whiteboard on our fridge that's got the name of the next four or five book titles. She's got a, she wants to write. I'm like, it'd be great to pump things out faster. It takes this last one took a year and a half. One of them took just under a year. And the first one took about a year to do so, I mean. You don't all also when you're making games you don't want to make something that's bad you want to make something that's fun and something that you can turn around in quantity like you have enough that people be interested in your games like or your books
Speaker0:
[59:14] And the the thing is once you on top of it just being like don't see a profit until your fourth or fifth book or whatever it's like it's once people start to see you're like literally like on a shelf or you know in advertising and he's like oh it's a whole series like these are serious this is a not just a standalone thing or whatever they take you more seriously and then instead of you know by the time you get to book four people aren't just going to buy book four they're going to buy one two three four you know then and then they're going to continue to buy them afterwards and then you can be like and here's the collection of books one through five and you know and then after that like the same way they do comic books you know you you have your issue every month and then you know eventually you sell the trade paperback and eventually you sell the compendium and the omnibus etc you're building a brand over time and I think a lot of people really struggle with the bargaining with time part of this, it's the chances of just like magically going from point A to point B in terms of like I want to be full time in the games industry is actually pretty low you have to be willing to, you know have very very very delayed gratification in a lot of cases.
Speaker1:
[1:00:23] Oh yeah it's a process
Speaker0:
[1:00:24] And i would also say um, it on top of everything that we've said so far i forgot to mention this and it's pretty, substantial uh it's also very unlikely you're going to be working on something that you personally are passionate about in a lot of cases you're you're as a hired hand you were probably going to be helping other people who have money accomplish their dreams before or not even their dreams and in the worst case scenario uh basically just you know pumping out some shit that no one really cares about, but it makes money because people keep buying it.
Speaker1:
[1:00:58] Oh, very sure. Like you might want to, you might go in there expecting to work on the next hit action game that you love. And then you're making a My Little Pony rip off or something like you never, you might not know what the project is. You could be told it's a first person shooter, but it's like a snowball fight or something. That actually sounds kind of fun.
Speaker0:
[1:01:19] There's not a lot that sucks for like on one hand i'm like i'm just so grateful to be in the position that i'm in to work in video games and get paid very well for it and all that kind of thing and then it still sucks when someone comes to you with a project and they're like look i know it's not the best one we're not really that passionate about it but kind of got to do a favor for the money kind of deal and you're like but it's crap this is gonna hurt like they're like well it sucks to suck you're gonna have to be in charge of that one and i mean that's with every job you're never gonna totally avoid that but it's still it it doesn't really matter how much money you're making or how grateful you are to be in the position you're in that still sucks and so i would i would personally imagine i i have no intention of ever working for epic so i don't give a fuck but i mean like if i were like really like i really wanted to be in the games industry and i'm super passionate like in your case about like you know doom engine stuff and that kind of thing and then i ended up being like a fucking artist on fortnight just pumping out fucking crap all day long while that's a nice way to make a living i feel like the another thing to really consider is does this make.
Speaker0:
[1:02:32] Me happy do i actually want to spend my time doing this or do i just think i want to be in the games industry because i feel like you can't really know that probably until you've done it but like ask yourself that question ahead of time like do i do i just want do i just not like the situation i'm in and want to get out of it and that looks like the light at the end of the tunnel or you know is this actually what i want to spend my time doing and what are you willing to compromise on oh.
Speaker1:
[1:03:04] Yeah absolutely yeah i've thought about that quite a bit um given the fact that my day job is literally putting boxes on shelves but like
Speaker0:
[1:03:15] Yeah coming.
Speaker1:
[1:03:18] Um with my background with um the doom community like just just using the engine was enough for me to be like yeah i'm i'm all about that it wasn't the fact that i was working on a first person shooter or anything it was like i know how to do geometry and what the engine can and cannot do for the most part that made me be like yeah i want a part of this so that's that's why i came over to uber and and you and i was like can i can i be a part of this team.
Speaker0:
[1:03:54] Yeah, I, I'm really looking forward to, I, I think I had like almost tried to make this transition and didn't, but thinking about the profitability of a project and how to scale a company. And I, I'm not going to claim to be some kind of business genius, but what I will say is that I was from day one, extremely careful about scale. And I'm still delayed on, you know, my initial estimate of how long it would take by a factor of years. So i'm just saying i was very very careful to not scale too fast or to like take on way way way more than i could chew and even that was not enough to protect us from you know things being delayed so when you go to put a game on say steam like my goal is to ship a game it's going to cost ten dollars i'm going to put it on steam first and foremost steam is going to make 30 of that right, and then you're left with the rest and you've got to divide that up again between yourself and every single other person that you choose to work with on the way um unless you dupe them into doing it for free or some shit which i think is kind of fucked up but i mean if they agree to it uh.
Speaker0:
[1:05:05] I don't know that's between y'all but you know it it's really hard to make a profit on a video game simply because let's say it costs you time or money somewhere in the area of man an indie game and i mean an indie game can cost a quarter million dollars that's a low budget.
Speaker0:
[1:05:29] When you're talking about publishing budgets like a hundred thousand to two hundred fifty thousand is like your your low-end deals yeah it's.
Speaker0:
[1:05:41] So you not only have to earn back $250,000 and do all the work over the course of years, then you have to also sell enough to make a profit from that and pay everyone equitably between you, the publisher, everybody. It's got to get their piece of that. And hopefully you make a profit on it. That's the game you're playing. In the world of very very very indie games and i mean true indies no publishers involved like actual independent if you can keep your budget really low you can make a profit like if you can make a game for a couple grand and make six grand on that game that's not that hard i mean you do the math if you want to sell let's just say your goal is 10 you sell 10 000 copies right.
Speaker0:
[1:06:30] Which is not undoable and you're making a simple game you're going to charge 10 bucks for it you basically need to, you know sell enough copies of that game at that price to go over your very small hopefully budget to turn a profit and the faster you can do it the more likely you are to see a return on investment, and I feel like people don't really think that through a lot of the time when they're going to make an indie game and they end up spending quite a lot of time and money, and so yeah mostly time you know in the in the realm of like hobbyists you know indie developers but i mean potentially also money to try to make it happen and then they don't think about like you know if i only make six grand for six years of work like is that really a way to make a living No, like what you needed to do was to, you know, keep expenses. This is the same thing that they're doing at the corporate level, just with more time and more money. Expenses low, profits high. Turn around rate fast. That's the way to do it.
Speaker1:
[1:07:37] I kind of think of that while I'm working on levels, I'm like, man, I really want to put my heart into this level and give it a lot of detail. But at the same time, I got to get that level done. Like, we need this game done. I'm looking at this level world like, wow, I just learned how to do slopes in a really cool way. I'm going through everything and I'll come to a part that's just starting and be like, I got to stop playing with slopes. Like, it looks fine. We got to finish this level. So spending too much time on a project too, I mean, my capture flag thing for the ZDame community, I started it in 2007 or 8. I didn't call it done saying it was finished until two years ago. That's stupid. If I really wanted that project done, I could have done that within a year.
Speaker0:
[1:08:32] But I mean, it was a passion project. yeah there's a there like i'm not saying that you could go on the internet and just start making unity turnover shit you know like a lot of people do that i mean i'm not saying make crap on purpose, there's got to be a median like being a perfectionist so is a terrible way to make a make money in the games industry or anything you know like anytime where you're like time dependent, there there's a balance between how much time do you have and how perfect do you want to be that equals money, and anything deviating from you know on the left or right side of that is unacceptable it won't work so like Dai Katana our good pal John Romero you know just got.
Speaker0:
[1:09:15] Way in over his head trying to make something perfect and what it resulted in was, not the best game in the world far delayed you know it's it's just you don't want that, so you gotta like What that is a big part of what all my end of things, you know, what can we do very well in this amount of time for this amount of money? Um that's and then plan on that like and then as as with stellar valkyrie i know a lot of people don't do this and if you're not i don't know how you make it happen maybe you've been successful without it make a bible like a document at the beginning where like at minimum these things have to be done and then if you you know you you and fucking maria drive me insane with like well can we have a fucking centipede lot riding that i'm like you can i'm for it it sounds really cool but i need all of these other things to be the priority like it without the game itself the centipede doesn't get shipped like but.
Speaker1:
[1:10:18] Then we get sprite feedback and it's all like everything is good to go by the end of the week and like it's going in there
Speaker0:
[1:10:24] Yeah if you can do it and not sacrifice the the important details for you know like the do like we don't deviate from the plan i mean if you have to pivot like if something doesn't work that's that's something that can be discussed but i mean the core game needs to be defined and not negotiable to us you know to a large degree before you even start like so many folks are like like it it took us just just our own like one big roadblock we ran into is it took us forever to make the first level because we were just like basically like designing all of the gameplay around like what can we do in this first level and that was like you know i wanted all the mechanics in place first and foremost like i want.
Speaker0:
[1:11:14] Basically every system essentially to work and all that kind of stuff before we started focusing on content but then you end up when the in these situations where you're like oh you've spent two years on one level it's like ah it doesn't feel good so you want to kind of like i would always recommend make something that you can sort of test every mechanic in and then block out your levels based on what you know can be done because you what you don't want to do is be at like level six of a game or something like that and then come up with a new idea for a new mechanic and then be like oh can we do that and then it it's like well first of all like pacing wise why is that even why does that only happen here you see that a lot in a lot of triple a games because they have this problem and versus like do you do you know what you can or are able to do make it fun and functional and everything early on and then kind of base your level design around that i don't Yeah, I won't lie. We've made some mistakes around that, like for sure. But it's it's definitely advice to be given to people like just try to make sure you know what the game at its core is does and how it functions before you just get like way deep into content, so to speak.
Speaker1:
[1:12:36] It's very true i mean even on my own projects i'd be like oh i learned how to do this like granted i was still learning how to use the doom engine when i was like 17 18 years old but then i'd like go back to the first level i had made and i'm like oh i'm adding all these fun doors or something to it and then the level turns into something completely different by the end of the project so yeah if you already know how to use the engine and the software and everything make sure you have an idea all written down, your Bible written down to follow that. And then if you have a fun quirk you want to throw in there, then yeah, by all means you can throw that in there. But make sure you have the core components done.
Speaker0:
[1:13:21] Yeah. Feature creep is bad. It hurts. It's to be completely frank and not to throw anybody under the bus or whatever. That's what happened with Phantom Fury. I was like, looking back on it now i don't i don't have any qualms about saying it is what it is it's not the best game in the world but it's a game and you can play it it's pretty pretty decent but like, me on the you know production end and the marketing end like looking at that project i was constantly like annoyed with you know okay we you know we have all these different crazy weapons and shit and like all you know these amazing grandeur ideas of what to do and then something as fundamental as like being able to see your reflection in the mirror wasn't really even brought up until like the very end of production and that's a result of, going crazy with all the different features you want to have and then you don't have like a defined like the core the very bare minimum viable product defined from the jump um and that you know that's something that i think everybody creative goes through it's not it's not a diss on anyone it's just like something to a lesson to be learned in the post-mortem of something like that is like.
Speaker0:
[1:14:35] Don't you know don't just think that every crazy idea you have along the way needs to be thrown in immediately and ignore the important the very important things at the at the beginning uh and with indie devs uh you you mentioned you brought up like kind of like learning how to develop in the doom engine one of the fun things about it is that unless you're doing like serious gameplay mods you kind of know what can be done like the the physics the you know mechanics of how the game is going to work are there so if you're just making like a a rescan or a you know a map pack, that kind of thing. You don't have to think about what are the potential things I could do gameplay-wise. It's more like just, that's all defined for me. I just need to make a level that works for that.
Speaker0:
[1:15:22] So that's a great way, I think, for level designers, especially to figure out how that process works for them. But on the mechanics side, someone's already done it. John Carmack did that for you 35 years ago or whatever the hell. And that's another thing about just like genres too like picking your genre like if you're going to make a boomer shooter it's pretty straightforward you know you have a, Other than coming up with your gimmick that makes your game special and stand out amongst all the other hundreds of boomer shooters out there, it's like, the type of game you're making is pretty well defined. If you're going to make a dungeon crawler, you don't have to reinvent the wheel to make a dungeon crawler. But if you're trying to do something different, then you really got to be careful about throwing everything, you know, everything that comes to mind at the wall and seeing what sticks. Because oftentimes what sticks isn't, it might work in that instance, but not for the overall game. Yeah and what I.
Speaker1:
[1:16:22] Feel about Stella Valkyrie is like we it's kind of a safe zone for us picking a boomer shooter and everybody who's working on it I think has worked on a boomer shooter so we already know what we're going to be doing like we know how everything works and yeah it just it just kind of feels right like we're hitting the ground running
Speaker0:
[1:16:44] Unfortunately it's a genre i'm like all too familiar with like i i know this genre in and out unfortunately because i kind of wish kind of wish i'd spent some time on other things i am now like i i barely play shooters anymore uh honestly it's not because i hate them it's just like i got burnt out like for years and years and years that was all all on my plate all the time so i'm trying to like branch out into i got into rts games and like i love i've always loved like party based rpgs and stuff like that um but even just like getting people to like talk me into trying stuff that i wouldn't ordinarily try like just not because i necessarily wanted to make other types of games but just like see what else is out there because it's really easy to get like tunnel vision of like.
Speaker0:
[1:17:33] This is what a game is. And then when you go to, like, if you go to, like, EGX in London or, you know, that kind of thing, just walk around, like, the indie labs and stuff and see what people are doing and get an eye-opening. Like, oh, my God, there's so many things that could happen in the world of video games that I never even think about because I'm so stuck in my own little island of Doomland or whatever. It can be really, really good and also bring a lot to the table. You know, when you're talking about what do I want to do, even if you're still going to make a boomer shooter, like what, what, what can I take? What lessons can I learn from what other people are doing with other genres?
Speaker0:
[1:18:13] And I've, I think we've done that quite a bit with stellar Valkyrie. Like it's, it's, it categorically will fall under the boomer shooter, you know, flag in a lot of ways, but I, I have tried for it to not be a doom clone.
Speaker0:
[1:18:30] Like a, just another doom mod that's being charged money for or whatever. Um and lots of people for that i i can't stand it like i just go play you know if i'm gonna make make a doom mod and then charge you money for it why don't you just go on you know zandronym or whatever and just like just go on the forums and just download any of the bajillions of other things that do that already for you if you just want to play doom but updated play brutal doom with any map pack in the world you want or play like Russian Overkill my all-time favorite mod like whatever but if you want to do something different you know like in our case I want like platformer uh elements I want it to be more like it still is a shooter and it's still first person but like more like playing a Nintendo game than like just playing a Doom mod that's that is the dream that that it would be something that like a kid can pick up and play like a anyone from you know like six to 60 we'd enjoy playing it uh it's been it's been very interesting not having uh like curse words and adult content because we've we've found so many different ways around,
Speaker0:
[1:19:46] so many ways to avoid.
Speaker1:
[1:19:47] We definitely have
Speaker0:
[1:19:49] It's actually it's like you know when the rappers that don't cuss it's like actually harder to do same thing like it is like you have to be more creative not to just throw you know the easy the low-hanging fruit at the wall every time.
Speaker1:
[1:20:07] I think our game definitely stands out from the other boobersherges that are out there right now. There are a lot of good ones out right now, but whenever I do a playthrough, like a test for my levels while I'm working on them, I just look at it and I'm like, when that gets implemented and that gets implemented and we get to this boss
Speaker1:
[1:20:29] area, this is going to get chuckles out of people. This is going to be fun. Even our last play test, i i was laughing so hard at at uh what michael had thrown in there just just for shits and giggles i think i had to turn my mic off for a second
Speaker0:
[1:20:47] So tell me about what it's like you know with your epilepsy and shit what's what's the what are the struggles and trials of that because on our end i hear people i'm not putting anybody down but like make every excuse in the world not to you know like i can't work i can't do this all that kind of shit you know like i'm disabled and i'm like dude this guy that works with me literally like has like three seizures every day and still fucking goes to his day job and then when he gets off he comes and helps us do like a lot of amazing things and never makes excuses so what's what's theirs and yeah what what what drives you what what uh is it your name um.
Speaker1:
[1:21:26] So there what research i've done there are so many types of epilepsy out there and i feel like mine's not that severe i mean i i don't i don't know what it looks like from the outside perspective because i pretty much just go unconscious and then I'm back and I have no idea how long I was out i don't know what i did during that time there are sometimes i just have a staring spell like someone deep in thought and then there are other times where i will be in one room and then i'll be in another room or i'll be like cook cooking dinner or cooking my breakfast in the morning rather and will have made myself tea as opposed to coffee or something dumb like that but for me the struggles are the big big ones transportation and i mean i'm stuck at a day job that i you know i don't like i obviously i'm trying to get out of it um what's
Speaker0:
[1:22:39] The name of the company i'm just playing dog.
Speaker1:
[1:22:40] Bullshit black star black star corporation
Speaker0:
[1:22:49] Yeah that's good.
Speaker1:
[1:22:50] Bullshit corp we
Speaker0:
[1:22:52] Should get arch for that like we should get black star core merch i'm gonna make maria do that right now keep talking.
Speaker1:
[1:22:59] Um it the troubles is really understanding how limited i am after this diagnosis because beforehand i had been hired back in this company and the only thing that had changed since was i just need my wife to drive me but now it's thinking of the what ifs like what if i were to get laid off what if they fire me or something um my job options are so limited i i have been working in automotive for 10 years i was um i mean i can't drive so right there that half the jobs in the industry i can't do another one that i did for four years was i was a louvetech i i can't operate heavy machinery or it i couldn't work on cars again if i wanted to i probably can use a push mower in my yard or um i guess more in my life my lawn i have to use a push mower um i keep on getting asked by my wife to do projects for like building a garden bed in our backyard like i can't use a miter saw there are so many restrictions on that and it that's the hardest part for me
Speaker1:
[1:24:20] Um going back to what i said about feeling like it's not that bad for me is when i was in the hospital over thanksgiving um i could see into the person's room across the hall kind of diagonally from me this poor old guy was shaking all the time that's where i'm like compared to me i have like this little staring spells for up to half a minute maybe twice a day But I'm like, that seems more severe than what I have, but the restrictions are all the same on all of us. So, I mean, even though I stare off blankly and come back, I'm still restricted in the same way as everybody else with my condition.
Speaker0:
[1:25:09] Yeah i mean it's it's weird it's it's like a rough thing uh one of the things that i enjoyed or at least observed a lot you know in denmark is that they are far more accommodating of these sorts of things when it comes to employment because you know in america it is a quote more business-friendly country uh whereas over there there are lots of rules and restrictions and like and systems in place so that like let's say you are disabled and you can only work for 20 hours a week then they'll just like the government will like help you find a company that basically like you can do that and then they'll cover the rest of your salary as if you were full-time based on that and then you're essentially um you you basically have job insurance like you you pay obviously a shitload in taxes and insurances and things like that but it's like, when you find yourself unemployed or unable to work full time.
Speaker0:
[1:26:09] They cover it and then it's just with the guarantee that whenever you're able again or, you know, if not, whatever, then that gets paid back into the system and sort of everyone's participating in that whole thing. It's very, very much a socialist thing. But what you end up with is there are people, you know, in the office, whatever the hell that just, you know, and that's their situation and everyone just accepts it as it is.
Speaker0:
[1:26:32] Um which is not necessarily the most productive thing in the world um as you know from the american point of view it's like well sorry i just can't work with you because you you know you can't do whatever whatever it is that they need and obviously there's going to be you're not going to be an underwater welder like there's no chance of that with your with your situation.
Speaker0:
[1:26:51] Um but with what we're doing i'm like i'm like shit yeah i don't i i don't think anyone in our discord for the game dev channel could even if i saw someone being like faulting someone else for having an issue like that or a mental health issue or whatever i'm like none of us have any room to talk like i i have missed a lot of time just on mental health shit alone like personally um i'm still talking with the va you know and all kinds of stuff there's just there's just things that i I definitely see as like an impediment to myself even if other people look at me and think like oh you're really productive I'm like I could I feel like I could be doing a lot more a lot of the time and that that is a self you know consuming you know a snake biting its own tail sort of thing that I have to deal with but I just think that it's really impressive how productive you are given the restrictions that i think a lot of people would just uh claim disability and, not work you know or have every excuse not to do and you don't seem to make any excuses for yourself at all it's very admirable it's almost it almost makes you more desirable i'm like yeah i'm like i want to keep you around just so i can be if someone else complains i'd be like yeah kevin's not complaining.
Speaker1:
[1:28:11] Well, the way I look at it is I do this stupid job or I go to work and I put boxes on shelves in the morning, but then I get to come home and I get to work on a game. Like, even though my commission is X dollars, like, I'm still enjoying this. This is something I like to do.
Speaker1:
[1:28:33] It's something I've always liked to do. so yeah honestly there are some this is me talking to my boss honestly there are some days where i'm like especially over the holidays this last year i was kind of like i'm not doing any fucking work till the second like i don't feel like it like even our meeting is like we're not doing a meeting this week i'm like are you sure like even talk about anything and you're like hey somebody go on there i can't guarantee anybody's going to be there but if you want to sit there but no for me it's like i get to sit down and i get to do what i love doing all throughout my teens and most of my 20s um and for me it's therapeutic so to see these levels come to life and i'm getting some mock textures in there and then i say like hey maria j when you guys have time like i would like some of these and then sometimes i get the same the same thought of maria like i'll i'll be like hey can i get a few textures for this level that look like this and then the next day there's like 30 textures and i'm like holy how much time do you have like that's that's amazing but i mean when When it comes to me, I've always been a sit-down
Speaker1:
[1:29:58] And work on a game with a doom engine and it's it's just a pastime it's it's a hobby i just love doing it so i'll get sucked into it for on a weekend i get sucked into that for seven hours sometimes i just love doing it
Speaker0:
[1:30:12] Yeah i find that uh there's some wisdom to it like a lot of people refuse to turn their hobby into a job for that reason it's like because when it becomes a job it becomes a job um in my case i definitely like i wouldn't say that i've lost my love for, gaming or making games or anything like that but i definitely went through a very long period where it was like after i got home at the end of the day the very last thing in the world i wanted to do was sit in front of a computer and fuck with video games like whereas when i was in the military, i would like work a 12-hour shift and then get home and like all i want to do is keep doing in to keep stuff or you know or play this new game that i'm supposed to be doing a podcast about or whatever and it was like you know i didn't care if i had to be awake for i was also younger you know like i don't care if i have to be awake for three days like i've i've got a whole i've got work to do there's you know it's all this big adventure but it's because it was just genuinely like my passion project and not like how i was making a living um even now i think i've dialed back a lot more i mean i have family to deal with like i've got the baby on the way and everything so I'm a little bit more like, I try to like set boundaries for myself, honestly, because I'll work. I'll be at this desk until 3 a.m. If I don't force myself to just go like, okay, it's 1030. Go sit down. I'm going to read until I'm tired. I'm going to have a cup of tea, you know, cut off the coffee at 5 p.m. or whatever.
Speaker0:
[1:31:36] And I'm honestly terribly undisciplined with like sleep schedules. Very much, I guess you could call me a workaholic in a way. If there's a problem that needs to be solved I will not sleep until it's solved and I'm trying to get better at reminding myself that it'll still be there tomorrow, you don't have to pull it all nighter right now but that's also I think just years of working on shift work and also just dealing with the military where it's like there is no negotiating there is no like this problem will be solved tomorrow or passing the buck along it's like no this has to be done this is very very important And now it's not that dire. And I think I'm still even years later kind of transitioning out of that mindset.
Speaker0:
[1:32:25] But to a certain degree, I take this company very, very seriously. This is now the only thing that I do is this podcast and our studio. And of course, our contract work, we do that ourselves. I'm pimping out my marketing services or whatever to whatever developers that want to work with us. As long as it's a good fit and fits my schedule, I can do that. But this is how I make my living now. It's not a side hustle anymore. And the enthusiasm level does actually go down when it becomes your job. It becomes for money. I think if you can find something that you literally don't have that effect with, you really hit the gold mine. That's the best it's going to be.
Speaker1:
[1:33:13] Oh, yeah. Yeah. I, I've always stuck to, I don't know if I heard this somewhere, if I made it up on my own, but if you love your job, you'll never work a day in your life. That's the way I look at it.
Speaker0:
[1:33:29] Yeah i think i think you still work there are days there are days when you feel like you're like oh i'm just so happy that i you know and look we look what we accomplished and then there's days where it's like i don't want to do this like i tell you what i i do not want to sit down once a month and do y'all payroll and shit you know like i don't i want to hire someone to do that for me it has to be done obviously you know like every year like i do have to file the taxes and pay those prices and shit.
Speaker0:
[1:33:58] Is is it it's the sacrifice i have to make in order to be able to do this, as the as the leader of a business you do sort of have to make a lot of sacrifices for the sake of the whole like there are things that i would like to do game wise that i'm like well i can't do that and you know reasonably compensate everyone for the work that we're asking them to do and also like doing um i can't it's meant there are lots of games i would like to be working on but i'm like you know hey like fuck you know uh maria's house got fucking crushed by a tree and so like we're gonna probably lose some productivity in that time frame and i could you know i know bosses are to be like well we have to move on and i'm like no i mean like let's just be patient and i try to be that way as much as possible and there's there's a certain point when you can't you know, you like the needs of the many outweigh the the one but as long as long as there's a way we can make it work for everyone and with a small group it's pretty doable that's what i want to be i don't i don't like the idea of having like a 80 person game studio when you know everything's like super it has to be completely organized and like you know you just people get treated like numbers. It's like a Dunbar's number thing, and I remember as I saw.
Speaker0:
[1:35:20] Slipgate and 3D Realms scaling, I knew that that would be something they ran into because when you go from 15 people who can all have a conversation in a room together versus like.
Speaker0:
[1:35:33] 200 people it was like i was like you know telling leadership like once you get to about 120 people you're not gonna know everybody's name you're not gonna know what they have for breakfast anymore.
Speaker0:
[1:35:45] You're not gonna know what they do for their hobbies you it's not like a it's not a fault on you it's just like you have to delegate responsibility of leadership to people who can have that personal relationship with the folks that work with um so me as a as a producer you know when i was working on uh kingpin we talked about that a bit in the conversation like robert had you know a situation where his daughter was very ill and he had to take time off um and i liked that i was on the ground level with those folks so that i could make sure that we were able to accommodate that as opposed to you know the guy at the corporate level doesn't know what the hell is going on with you and you know if you can't get that time to have that conversation or whatever and you have to run and jet and go deal with something real life that affects you and not the whole company um you know there's there's a lot to be said for just hr departments you know i think in america we tend to think of hr as like the people who are gonna oh don't say that or whatever because you might offend somebody but in general i mean the the folks who are looking out for the people on the ground that's a very important thing in the in the military it's a first sergeant usually um or your your base level supervisor but having a real human connection with the folks you work with i'd need that i can't stand to be a like just a
Speaker0:
[1:37:03] number in a system or a cognitive that's that's.
Speaker1:
[1:37:05] Um i'm not gonna go too far into it but what i'm dealing with at my current job i got today i went up to hr to get a um i had to ask for a copy of the handbook um because with my epilepsy disorder um i am guaranteed by law federal and state that i can take days off work unpaid due to my condition it's happened two times three times including that's three times one time i um had a seizure and then took my medicine again so i od'd on my medications so i had to stay home for monitoring and then two days i had seizures and i was like these were worse ones i should stay home in case i get a migraine or get incredibly tired and can't do my job because it affects the brain weird right but this company is so big that i'm like our dealership is like the 45th dealership they bought in my area so these people are based out up a different state. And I don't think these guys even know
Speaker1:
[1:38:16] What the state laws are here it's it's ridiculous so i mean my problem is i may need to have a day off here and there intermittently with fmla but i can't take them off unpaid they want me to use my pto first which i haven't accrued because it's the beginning of the year so i'm in a little tentative battle with hr at a different location i think is in the state that i'm in trying to get that figured out so it yeah it's really what i like about in the keep is that we're so small we all know each other's names and i when i talk to people about the game company i'm working at like oh where do you work at i'm like oh we have people home places guys and we We got a guy in Korea. We got a guy in Alabama, Netherlands. I'm here. And I think another person's Tennessee. You know, like, wow, how's that work? Help me online.
Speaker0:
[1:39:16] Yeah. It's actually, it does at a scale become a real problem, even at our scale, right? Like just, just like scheduling something that Jay can make it to, you know, we have a meeting here that's at like a normal time in the afternoon or whatever and it's like 1 or 3 a.m or some shit for him um and we we make it work because again it's a small group but i've had projects where it's like you know the the project is based in europe and then like the company hired someone in new zealand and they're exactly 12 hours opposite of europe so it's like if we have a noon meeting it's at midnight for him etc and uh you know and the way that they looked at it was sort of like well you know there's a contractor that's what agreed to that's what he wants to do that's what he wants to do and i get that like i get that but i feel like a lot like again the huge problem is that people say yes to when they ought not say yes like it's the the contractor, decide you know what what they want to do with their life but also i think it's on the employer to a degree to to tell people like nah i don't i know that you seem confident and everything but i don't think you really want what you think you want right now i.
Speaker1:
[1:40:34] Think the same thing as the uh the kids you want to be in a rock band tour the world and then like most of those bands that look like they're having fun but that job sucks
Speaker0:
[1:40:44] No they're the reason why they're drinking and doing drugs all the time is because they hate themselves they never get to.
Speaker1:
[1:40:48] See their family they're on the road all the time yeah they go to fun places yeah but they're not going to be touring them they're literally there to do their job and then leave
Speaker0:
[1:40:57] It's uh it's pretty dark actually and you know yeah you're justin bieber's of the world and you're you're pop stars and everything they look happy on stage but that's all a performance and it's really really tough um you're never sleeping properly because you're always changing time zones like every day, and as you see the musicians as they get older like really good bands like they'll you know we're just going to do an east coast tour because we'll be in one time zone all the time we can make it to the next place you know over the course of a week in a bus, it's cheaper you know I can bring the family on the road in the bus like that kind of stuff or whatever or you know like I'm only going to tour during the summer when my kids are off school.
Speaker1:
[1:41:34] Yeah or you see like there will be a an artist that's only playing in the UK and there'll be another one that's only touring North and South America because the time zones line up and they can just
Speaker0:
[1:41:51] You ever seen that Iron Maiden documentary?
Speaker1:
[1:41:53] They're all in blood country.
Speaker0:
[1:41:54] Yeah. Flight 666 or whatever. They do a world tour, but literally Bruce Dickinson is the pilot. He's flying a 737 or whatever with all the band's gear on it all around the world. It's pretty interesting. But that was his way of dealing with it. Well, if I just be a pilot and get my own airplane, it saves us a lot of effort and a lot of hassle. we could do a world tour and we could do it like over the course of these months or whatever and it cuts costs and like shit that's pretty smart and really cool.
Speaker0:
[1:42:30] And they made a documentary about it and they monetized that documentary like they literally basically it paid probably the documentary probably paid for itself just.
Speaker0:
[1:42:41] Very very smart man I love that sort of thing it's something I was I've been talking about a lot lately is like multimedia franchises like my friend was asking me like you know how does a pokemon happen like i mean like how does or like kiss you know like that sort of thing i'm like you just if as long as you have a brand people like you can put that shit on everything like i want to have like falco lunch boxes you know i'm not sure if that's this is going to be the ip that does that but i mean like if you get a hit that people vibe with and you know look at among us and uh but minecraft that kind of thing it's like minecraft doesn't make its money off people buying minecraft they make their money off selling fucking merchandise yeah you know uh and same thing with kiss same thing with star wars great example uh star wars the movies themselves uh were the original trilogy especially the first movie it was like you spent way too much money and way too much time on this but but through merchandise sales and through you know like licensing it to book companies and all that kind of shit you make all your money back in a different way all right so i try to always think like super open-minded about that i was telling you a couple weeks ago about like you know i met with this book company they were trying to get me to like write a book and i'm like i don't know if i'm ready for that but i definitely want to hear how how you do it you know how how's this whole industry business work.
Speaker0:
[1:44:09] And yeah it's you were saying earlier it's a very interesting way to make a living and there's so many logistics involved in a physical book I mean forget about Kindle and all that kind of shit.
Speaker1:
[1:44:22] You have to take it to like a publisher and everything you can get approved that's the old way of doing it as far as I know now it's just go online and do it through Kindle
Speaker0:
[1:44:34] Even if you want to, like forget about all this you just say you want like kevin's bookstore you have to stock the store and in order to be relevant you have to constantly be buying new books and guess what the books that you don't sell have to go somewhere and they cost money too and storage costs money space costs money like you know this is the old blockbuster you know when someone first opens a blockbuster all the movies are like facing outward you know so that you can see them and then you know in a couple of months they're all turned to the side to save shelf space and.
Speaker0:
[1:45:10] Then then you know like then every you know after a movie's gone through its rental phase it's like okay well now you have to sell them for 10 bucks and put them in the bargain bin and like they're worthless after like a certain amount of time so it's like what seemed to a lot of people like a really lucrative business like oh yeah you know blockbuster you know open and get get your blockbuster franchise and and then you can you know basically just have a really it pays for itself really quickly and all that kind of thing but then what they would forget about is storage that's what killed them and it's the same thing with bookstores um and then getting transfer sporting books around like you know you have to have trucks and shit like there's all these logistics involved grocery stores and restaurants is like the hardest thing ever to make a living at because your shit perishes like you you think this not only do you have the shelving problem but you also have the problem of like and it goes bad after a certain amount of time and if you You have to be very specific about like how much milk do you buy versus how much do you expect to sell? Don't make a profit before it goes bad. And then once it goes bad, you just have to throw that shit away.
Speaker1:
[1:46:16] Depressing thinking of all the chocolate milk and ice cream that's he had shook up
Speaker0:
[1:46:21] It's rough and it's 100 true i had a friend who um he did a lot of like charity work and part of that was like working with the food bank and he would go around to the local grocery stores and just take everything that they had that they couldn't sell to the food bank and then what the food bank can accept you know as far as like non-perishable stuff a lot of what the grocery store gets rid of just goes straight to the fucking trash can. And not even because it's actually bad, just because there's a law in place where it's like, well, after this amount of time, even if it's not gone, spoiled, or whatever the fuck, you can't sell it and you can't give it away. So there's restaurants. The amount of food that gets thrown away in the dumpster behind a restaurant every single day is astounding. And then there's people starving to death.
Speaker1:
[1:47:06] What a wonderful world.
Speaker0:
[1:47:10] It's really, really tough. I do not envy anybody who's in the food service or grocery business just because of how hard it is to make a profit effectively doing that.
Speaker1:
[1:47:25] I often think about a shrink like that when I go downstairs. I've been collecting video games since I was a kid. I've never, except for once, I rage quit a game and I went and returned it. But i never got rid of a video game and i have um pretty massive video game collection in my basement i look at it every once in a while i'm like i wonder if i could open a store and then that everything you just said goes through my brain like i'd have to find a place to to keep it i if something gets sold and i promise someone to be on the shelf the next day i'd have to go buy it there's all the taxes there's the fees of like renting a physical place it it's it's ridiculous but you know to each their own if you want to try it go for it but i uh
Speaker0:
[1:48:25] I think it's the same thing with the games industry. Everything I was just saying about Blockbuster, like running a game store, you have to always have the newest, greatest shit. There's also a huge difference between, a retro game store that's basically a flea market of games and stuff like that versus if you're running a store that's supposed to stop the newest games and shit.
Speaker0:
[1:48:52] You you constantly have to be buying more and more copies of shit and like it's you run out of storage space and all that kind of stuff but also like uh choosing what to carry and usually this happens that with the bigger corporations is like they just have a deal with like certain publishers and distributors and that's kind of the kind of thing but like you know what you have to like be predictive about what are people going to buy and that that is exactly why huge franchises like fifa nfl madden uh you know like call of duty are always on the store shelves and it's not like they're not popular because they're particularly good they're popular because they're a safe gamble for the mark like on the marketing that's exactly what it is and so you're incentivized to keep having that so if you if you're a kid you live in like bumfuck nowhere.
Speaker0:
[1:49:50] Uh 15 20 years ago before like everybody was buying their games on the on the internet you'd have to walk into the store and like whatever's on the shelf and chances are whatever's on the shelf is what they think you know it's easy to obtain pay a low price for and reasonably assume people will buy so like it's not likely unless you had one of those cool game stores with like a really cool dude like you or me who's like oh man yeah we got we got a hold of this like forget about all that shit everything like this is what you want you know if you don't have that then you were just going to end up.
Speaker0:
[1:50:24] Like well I guess I'm playing Call of Duty and that's.
Speaker0:
[1:50:28] And there's no way around it. Unless you're going to order your games out of the Sears catalog, and then you don't get the chance to play them or rent them and figure out do you like them or not and all that kind of thing. It's rough. Going back to John Romero's day, this motherfucker was typing out the code of all games, mailing that shit, snail mail to a magazine. Then the magazine would print that code on a paper in their magazine. Motherfucker would have to sit down type that shit out themselves on their computer hit enter and then hope they didn't make any mistakes and that's how you play in a video game now if your game you know doesn't have a immediate action right as soon as you launch it on steam after a 30 second download on a fucking gigabyte internet uh you're not competing it's insane, it's so wild how much that's changed just in our lifetimes i mean you're older
Speaker0:
[1:51:21] than i am fucking grandpa.
Speaker1:
[1:51:23] Kids no when i was a kid it was uh the nes was still big and i remember just i still have our first game for it uh megaman 6 but i remember looking at that and thinking this is awesome and that's honestly where my love for gaming started that and our original gameboy with three shades of green like this is yeah i always found things i could control on screen or even even like pinball machines like it's it's very i always find it very interesting and to be able to make whatever comes to mind in a virtual world like within the doom engine is amazing to be able to do that that's kind of where i i got stuck i mean not stuck i mean i love doing it but where i got pulled into doing this it's if it worked if it weren't for me playing the nes as a kid or again the game boy i my life wouldn't be where it is today right to be to be blunt about it no
Speaker0:
[1:52:29] I feel you on that man uh i remember like my mom always tells me the story like when she was i was really little but she basically had to be in a physical altercation in walmart on black friday for a game boy.
Speaker1:
[1:52:42] Color for
Speaker0:
[1:52:44] For my christmas like it's just some she had She'd gotten the last one off the shelf, and then some lady comes up and tries to snatch it out of her hand. She's like, oh, hell no, bitch. My baby was playing the Game Boy Color this year, not yours. Now you just order that shit on Amazon or whatever. Delivered straight to your house. Pre-order. But it just comes with a whole new list of challenges. It used to be the challenge was to get it on the shelf in a large store. and now the challenge is, everything's on the same store and you got to get featured on the front page or get the algorithm to pick it up or whatever and like yeah and there's a bajillion other things just like what you're making that you have to compete with and stuff it's it's pretty rough and finding a niche and even selecting a niche that is not so niche that nobody cares about it um i figured that out very quickly that boomer shooters are popular with about 10 000 people on.
Speaker1:
[1:53:48] Earth and we all know each other
Speaker0:
[1:53:49] And they all we all know each other we're all linkedin we all know somebody who knows somebody and it's like if you if you're gonna make a boomer shooter that's your whole audience, that's it that and that you know 10 000 is good you know for a small living but it's not gonna make you a bajillion dollars so like when when i started to see publishers jump onto the boomer shooter craze i'm like that's not gonna do well um and you have occasionally you have like an ultra kill that like is on its surface a boomer shooter but like has so much it's popular not with boomer shooter people but with that's.
Speaker1:
[1:54:27] So funny you bring that one up because that one's on my wish list but every time it goes on sale i look at it like that doesn't really look like a boomer shooter
Speaker0:
[1:54:34] It's more like a like a devil may cry style you know it's very very good it's amazing but it's it's it's very popular and sells very well but it's because it's it's not just popular with boomer shooter people it's popular with gamers in general and that's that's the goal that's what you want if you want to make a big hit it's like you know you don't like well how come everybody doesn't listen to fucking you know this underground death metal band that I like and it's like well listening to Metallica right and then people get mad at Metallica for putting out something that lots of people like and it's like well I mean if you want to make money you kind of need a lot of people to like what you're selling and, it's just you know it's harder to make music it's it is more difficult to make music that is universally liked or art in general that like lots and lots of people are going to like um and for the sake of artistic integrity you kind of have to find a balance between, what can i actually do and make a living and also maintain you know not become nickelback.
Speaker0:
[1:55:46] Somewhere in between is probably what's best for you in the long-term mental health and financial you know department um but that's a that's a good transition like because you're you're one of those people that only listens to like weird obscure music what are you what are you listening to these days omby christ omni christ black metal band i'm assuming i don't.
Speaker1:
[1:56:08] Know they're what would they be listed as they're kind of uh new metal see what it was it say combi christ
Speaker0:
[1:56:20] Combi christ combi.
Speaker1:
[1:56:22] Christ is let me overview this bigger is an american agrotech industrial metal band
Speaker0:
[1:56:31] Yeah they're.
Speaker1:
[1:56:33] Not too obscure they they're i mean i'm pretty obscure i guess so some people may have heard of them
Speaker0:
[1:56:42] Um it's it's an interesting thing about you know music in the same way it is with with games that you you have all these labels you know you have to like label your band like just that just you and me like you just imagine someone listening to this who's not into like metal maybe they do have metallica records and they have like maybe you know stuff like that maybe like five finger death punch stuff but they're not like into metal you know and then you just said they're uh they're new metal industrial all that shit you just said is nonsense it's it but the thing is.
Speaker0:
[1:57:17] You you like there's so many bands that just like niche niche themselves into oblivion with labels like that um and then occasionally you have ones that like for whatever reason their music just transcends the genre you know it's like it they're not just popular with speed metal fans they're suddenly like they're popular with everyone like u2 one of the biggest rock bands of all time if you go back and listen to the first like few u2 records they're like a niche ass post-punk band they sound more like uh like joy division or something like that than they do like what now when you hear u2 you hear popular rock so popular soft rock music but that's not because popular soft rock music is a genre it's because what became popular by accident was this weird post-punk band um and the same with like the beatles and stuff like that too you know like the the beatles were playing rock and roll which was not necessarily the most popular thing at the moment that they did it it was just like a niche thing with young people basically out of the american you know blues and you know rhythm community that didn't became like in a weird way rock music for the longest time like when when i say pop music what do you think of.
Speaker1:
[1:58:32] Adi perry and justin fever kesha exactly hanson britney spears
Speaker0:
[1:58:39] And that and that all of those artists you just named have a sound that they share like they have qualities that they share, and that in my in my and your head means pop music when i say pop music what i mean is like Madonna, Katy Perry, that kind of shit. Lady Gaga. But pop music just means the most popular music, the music that sells the most. And so in 1965, rock and roll was pop music. Like if you were looking at the pop charts, it was all rock and roll. It was like the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, you know, Fats Domino, uh, that, that kind of shit. And even though it was like, it started off as this like relatively weird niche thing now, now even like hip hop, like, like rap music is pop music, but it's not because like pop music sounds like a certain thing. It's because this is what's popular. This is what people are listening to.
Speaker1:
[1:59:41] It's very strange. You could say that, uh, Metallica was pop.
Speaker0:
[1:59:44] You could say Nirvana.
Speaker1:
[1:59:45] Slayer was pop.
Speaker0:
[1:59:46] Nirvana was pop music. Yeah. Slayer and Metallica to a degree. Slayer was never on the Billboard Top 40.
Speaker1:
[1:59:54] They're in the big four of the most... Popular metal? Yeah. Well, they started the genre of heavy metal. So they're kind of up there. Megadeth, Metallica.
Speaker0:
[2:00:08] But Metallica is the only one of those bands that would have been competing with... Like... Pop. Artists yeah definitely they're like selling more records than michael jackson or something like that yeah slayer is not in that conversation and megadeth is nowhere in that anthrax not in that conversation metallica to a degree was yeah but they're like the only metal band that ever did that and then you later like at the end of the because what was pop what pop music in the 80s largely was hair metal bands like you know poison rat motley crew uh that's what was on popular radio and then like Guns N' Roses and Nirvana basically ended that they're like as soon as people fucking heard you know Sweet Child of Mine they're like dude fuck poison it's like fuck this shit this is what's popular now and then we get 10 years of fucking shoegazer rock yeah, That defines the whole decade of the 90s or whatever. Everybody goes from like spiking their hair up with like glitz and glamour and all that kind of shit to just, you know, dressing with like flannel t-shirts and fucking talking about shooting heroin in their toes and shit. Like it's just weird. But it's just because it was popular. Because people vibed with it. And unfortunately, most people for you, unfortunately for you, most people like Katy Perry. She seems like a lovely young lady and she does dance and sing.
Speaker1:
[2:01:37] I don't even know who really she is. I couldn't name one song.
Speaker0:
[2:01:42] Honestly, like the reason why Katy Perry, I mean, I've definitely heard her music because people around listen to it. But I mean, the reason why I know who Katy Perry is and have an image of what she looks like in my head is because she was married to Russell brand for a period of time. And I liked Russell brand. Ah, uh, but that's it. And there, there's so many instances where like my, my wife feel like she'll be like oh you know i'm surprised you even know who this is because she thinks that i only like only know niche things you only know like what you're into and i'm like i mean i was like i know who kanye west is like i don't i'm not gonna buy his record but i mean i know who kanye west is like i know who kim kardash i don't wanna i wish i didn't but it's unavoidable.
Speaker1:
[2:02:31] You sound almost a bit like me in that aspect where I've never liked the most popular thing or if it's something that everybody loves, I kind of question it in a sense. When it comes to the pets we have in our house, we have small animals. I have a chinchilla. We have hamsters. Music. I was like this Britney Spears is that good and I honestly didn't get into music till I was about 17 years old and it was the soundtrack of doom oh where are these bands making these alice and chains slayer pantera i'm like this i i like this
Speaker0:
[2:03:17] Video game soundtracks had a huge impact on my taste in music for sure like and i would specifically cite uh tony hawk pro skater and wwe smackdown versus raw those those oh i think for me it was probably two.
Speaker0:
[2:03:38] It was either two or three it was the one that had uh the ramones like blitzkrieg bop and acdc tnt on them and i was like i'd never you know my parents mostly listen to like you know like country music and shit like that because i was in alabama um which i also still i still love country music not really like countrypolitan pop shit but i mean like i have an appreciation for country music a lot but uh i didn't really know like rock and roll like hard rock and then like i hear the ramones like this is the first time i hear punk rock for real and then i hear acdc tnt and i'm skateboarding around on my stupid and i'm like dude this shit fucking rolls and i was like i was like nine years old i'm like i've immediately like went to my friends at school was like guys we're starting a rock band right now we're we're rock stars bro we're playing rock and roll and i'm like it was it changed the whole course of my life and that and uh i think maybe a little bit later but smackdown versus raw had megadeth and maryland manson in the soundtrack and even like for a long time the beautiful people was like the theme song to wwe raw and like that's, that was like how i started to listen into like more like industrial metal music because that's at the early 2000s, like that was popular.
Speaker0:
[2:04:58] Porn you know like even i love lentbiscuit i know people hate them but i fucking love but you know even the more like new metal stuff like mudvane and and slipknot and that kind of shit was like for for whatever reason very very very popular lincoln park was an extremely popular band despite being like this weird hip-hop rap shit that they were you know yeah.
Speaker1:
[2:05:20] I get all my music started from i mean even the music i was like asking people oh yeah like these what should i listen to are people that i met in the doom community that i freaking combi christ i'm listening to recently i learned about them through a uh fellow friend on on z day
Speaker0:
[2:05:44] Maybe.
Speaker1:
[2:05:45] That and um other games i have i got quake 2 on ps1 it's all remixes of uh pantera by a band called uh sonic mayhem so i wouldn't know who pantera was uh tony hawks 2 and 4 on ps1 is awesome as static x in there uh i think there's another track from acdc in there so it's so much of my life has been founded due to the gaming really sorry parents like the games raised me
Speaker0:
[2:06:25] I think it's actually quite a shame uh also need for speed underground too was a big influence on me music wise because i played the shit out of that game but for for kids today right if they're playing video games that it's actually a thing it happened probably about uh i'm gonna i'm gonna ballpark 15 no it's 2025 now about somewhere between 15 and 20 years ago uh you stopped having a lot of licensed music in game soundtracks because the record companies kind of caught on to like we're not getting our you know how much money we deserve or want or whatever the fuck so like you know back in the day we had all these games that had like real, songs in them you know like real rock bands real punk bands real hip-hop art all that kind of shit were in the games uh the old wwe games had all this licensed music in it like i actually spoke with one of the guys i was in at gamescom uh and it was when aew was putting out their fight forever wrestling game and i you know was like talking in the back with a bunch of the producers on it and one of the dudes was saying yeah man it's a shame because like back in the day uh we had these big budgets for soundtrack stuff we could get all this amazing music and you just can't do that anymore. It's really, really hard to license commercial music for game soundtracks. So kids playing Fortnite and shit, they're not hearing...
Speaker0:
[2:07:48] You know music of the zeitgeist or whatever it is it's just whatever shit that they put into it that some composer nothing against the composers who make game soundtrack don't get me wrong there's a place for that but uh like you're you're missing out on that that sort of like multimedia conglomeration collaborative process of like it used to be a cool like you would you could break a band by like putting their their song in a video game yeah like i i learned like I was playing, Red Out or something like that. The Burnout. I don't know. It was one of those games where you drive cars and you shoot people out of your windshield at a target and that kind of thing. Twisted Metal. No, it wasn't Twisted Metal. What's Twisted Metal? It had, Rob Zombie and Alice in Chains and shit like that on the soundtrack. I got really into Wolf Mother because they were also on that same soundtrack. Who is this? Never heard of these guys before. Turned out I really, really loved that band. Just because they made it onto that game soundtrack. And that was a great way for musicians to get featured. I think more musicians, like if you're like an indie musician out there, should definitely consider doing, working with game studios and shit for soundtracks and licensing your music. Because it's a great way to get discovered. It just doesn't happen anymore.
Speaker1:
[2:09:13] Back in my day yeah
Speaker0:
[2:09:16] Like the only the only games that have like budgets for that are like nfl and even nfl madden you know they just have like the the music that is already part of their ecosystem right like carrie underwood songs and fucking you know i i interviewed the guy who made the nfl madden theme song at one point because he also did uh doom 64 and quake 64 soundtrack um aubrey Hodges very interesting guy but he just made the soundtrack for NFL Madden's video games like way back in the day and wow what a what a weird career, you just don't have like you're not getting I don't know you're not gonna hear all combi Christ in a new video game this year probably should you should you should probably reach out to them be like hey you want to be in a in a video game and just we'll just slam them into uh stellar valkyrie or
Speaker0:
[2:10:13] some shit so it completely doesn't fit the theme of the game but you know.
Speaker1:
[2:10:17] Uh hidden track
Speaker0:
[2:10:19] Yeah yeah or do it like a trailer like a you know music video trailers are pretty pop we did that a bit at uh at three realms for a while there's a few games where we had you know popular enough artists do not get the game soundtrack but like a trailer music video with us. That was really cool. I just think that there's so many more opportunities to collaborate for marketing purposes for both sides. Needs to be done more. There's not enough of that Wu-Tang clan aspect. Everybody's out for themselves in a group. We've been talking for almost two hours now. I guess I kind of wanted to just sort of close out with what are your goals? What kind of games do you see yourself making in the future? Some bucket list kind of shit. What do you want to do in the industry?
Speaker1:
[2:11:24] I think stellar valkyrie is honestly i can't comment on the future it's not happened but i think it'll be i really feel it'll be the start something great um other than that i kind of just want to keep using the skills i've learned if it turns into making props for games in 3D, or if it turns into just me sketching out level designs on a piece of paper, and then putting into Blender and other 3D modeling programs, blocking in the levels, and then handing off to an art team. That's good for me, and see where it would take me, really.
Speaker0:
[2:12:09] It's very interesting how you can slowly network your way into different things. Like i i had a conversation years ago with uh chuck jones who not warner brothers, everybody thinks that but it's he's also an animator and a character designer but he worked um, back in the 90s he was really instrumental in like duke newcomb and half-life like he made a lot of really prolific video game characters yeah and then he ended up working for warner brothers, ironically right ironically ended up working for Warner Brothers on the Lord of the Rings games, And for like a huge chunk of his career, all he did all the time was design armor and weapons for orcs and Lord of the Rings. And then on the other end of that, when he finally left that job, he was like, it was like impossible to find a new gig. Because even though I had all this like, you know, Half-Life, you know, Duke Nukem, like that wasn't really relevant anymore.
Speaker0:
[2:13:17] And it's just like most of my portfolio is just orc armor. And it's like if the game doesn't require armor and weapons for orcs I don't have anything to show.
Speaker0:
[2:13:28] Then he ended up I think he came back and worked on Wrath a little bit like did some consultation shit with us but, yeah very interesting fella but I mean that could happen to you for all you know you end up just with some weird substance designer job or whatever, maybe you pay your bills making orc armor and then on the side you're making stellar valkyries and shit just be open-minded man like you just don't know you just don't know somebody that you might it might be like a weird thing with uh we're from go back to the beginning of the conversation like adventures of square when i'm like oh i can't get captain j there's no way that guy's probably like doing something else and then like you know years after adventures of square i'm like hey we're making this game kind of like adventures of square like would you would you like to work for us um dude it's been really it's really good always to talk to you man and i think, not to put anybody else down but like you have greatly been a you've been a huge asset to in the keep in general uh just by being flexible and putting in a lot of effort you sort of set the standard for like when we were kind of down in the dumps like having lost uh scum head and then trying to kind of rebuild the project after that um you you set the standard for how hard we were going to work and really like brought a lot of steam back into the whole group so i appreciate you man and got a lot of respect and love for you.
Speaker1:
[2:14:54] I love you, too. All right. This game is going to do great. Going to sell. We're going to do a good job.
Speaker0:
[2:15:00] Better. Or else.
Speaker1:
[2:15:04] Otherwise, I'm sorry.
Music:
[2:15:06] Music
Speaker0:
[2:15:15] Well, first of all, I've got to say thank you to Kevin for coming on the show and for everything that he does at In The Keep. He's really, really stellar, and I'm super happy to be working with people like him. Man, our whole team is amazing, and Kevin's one of them. And I especially want to thank Kevin's wife, Nikki Olsen, for taking care of Kevin, because I don't think we could survive without him, and I don't think he could survive without her. Shout out to the both of them. I know we mentioned it in the episode, but I'll throw a link in the show notes for their children's book series, Pitter Pattern. So, you know, if you're one of those folks out there like me with a kiddo on the way or you got a young kid or you just like children's books yourself, you know, yeah, definitely grab that. It's on Amazon and print to order. So grab several copies. I don't know. Birthdays, Christmas. It's a long way still Christmas, but, you know, for next year, have a have a bunch of them on hand just in case. Thank you to all of our supporters on Patreon. So Shannon, Bridge, Michael, Frederick and Brad, I want to give you guys a shout out. Thank you for all the love and support. if you are listening to this show and you want to support it there's lots of ways you can do it i'll throw a link to my book list you can just buy me a book if you want to that's a new way also there's like one-time donation link on the support tab at the bottom of our website and the patreon link also so consider doing that i love you god love you stay in the keep.
Music:
[2:16:36] Music
