Nikolai Bæk Kristensen is a co-founder of Cottonhammer Studios, a new indie game studio started by experienced developers after the mass layoffs of 2023-2024. We discuss their upcoming game Ringfall, how the studio is structured, and the many strategic benefits of indie vs AA/AAA.
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Chapters
00:00 Start
1:35 Growing Up as an Outsider
6:34 Finding My Place in Boarding School
10:45 The Harsh Reality of Game Development
20:42 The Impact of Layoffs
29:22 The Dangers of Corporate Culture
32:51 Starting Cotton Hammer Studios
1:02:16 Embracing the Punk Rock Spirit in Gaming
1:09:04 Indie vs. AAA Games
1:17:50 Hierarchy in Game Development
1:23:27 Responsibility in Leadership
1:30:09 The Value of Small Projects
1:36:23 The Myth of the Magnum Opus
1:44:16 Indie Development Strategies
2:00:53 Taking Control of Your Career
2:05:31 Marketing and Awareness
Transcript
Tyler:
[0:00] I met a traveler from an antique land who said two vast and trunkless legs of stone stand in the desert near them on the sand half sunk in shattered visage lies whose frown and wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command tell that its sculptor well those passions read which yet survive stamped on these lifeless things the hand that mocked them and the heart that fed and on the pedestal these words appear my name is ozymandias king of kings look upon my works ye mighty and despair no thing beside remains round the decay of that colossal wreck boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away.
Tyler:
[0:53] Percy Shelley, Ozymandias, 1819.
Music:
[0:58] Music
Tyler:
[1:35] So what, what was growing up like weird,
Nikolai:
[1:39] You know? Yeah. Like, um, got moved around quite a bit, eventually settling like in this area, Northern Jutland as it were. And you know, being like being me, I was, I was an outsider, man. I was weird. And having, having Asperger's, having autism at, in, in this area at that time in the nineties, man that was like you were cooked you were absolutely cooked like uh you you you will like shit that people don't like and you will like why don't you like soccer man or football as as we call it why don't you like football like i don't i just don't i it's it's weird to me and people are screaming like what the hell is going on here so a little bit of an outsider but you know that's how it was over time you know going to then eventually go into a boarding school where it was a performing arts boarding school that's sort of the culture shock that you need as that type of person like an autistic weirdo because then you're put in a room with other autistic weirdos and you kind of realize like oh okay yeah you know like now i get it how old.
Tyler:
[2:56] Were you when they did that like
Nikolai:
[2:57] Uh i was like uh, 16 maybe just old enough to.
Tyler:
[3:07] Just like go
Nikolai:
[3:09] No actually no no no like actually i i i have a friend well i had a friend but he's you know still kind of you know if if we were to talk today i would be like hey man uh my friend mark at the time he was like i'm after school i'm going to this boarding school thing it's for musicians and i'm gonna be a famous musician and obviously neither of us fucking became famous musicians. Right. Um, but, but he, he was like, I'm going there and I was like, what's it like? And he was like, ah, it's a, it's a music boarding school here, pictures. I don't know if it was on a phone. He showed me, it was probably on a computer, and I was like, okay, so like, what's, what's it like? What, like, if you go at our grade, what, what, what do you have to do? It's like basically nothing really like no school. It's just like a summer camp. But for musicians like yeah yeah yeah let's see i i want to go too.
Nikolai:
[4:09] And then i was the one pushing for it i was like i want to go here my parents were like we don't have the money to put send you there and i was like i'll find i'll find a way and eventually we we figure it out like hey we can we can like get like have my dog have puppies sell the puppies because you know those are pure bread all that sell enough of those to basically pimping on my fucking dog, man. We sold all those puppies. And then like at the end, you know, yeah, I had enough money. I was able to go. And after that, you know, I was more well adjusted. I was able to socialize. I think that's like really important for weird kids to just be, go to a fucking boarding school or whatever, be around like 50 other weird kids. Yes.
Nikolai:
[5:00] Learn like social hierarchies talking to people at like it was uh yeah it's vista top it's um you know if you're here up in northern yodland north of the fjord you just go west you go west man and you keep going west blacus or no no no no no uh blacus is sort of close-ish um but way way way further further west it's you know two hours ish by by bus and once you get there the whole biome is different it's like going to a different biome in minecraft right okay because it's uh the trees are different the ground is different um and yeah because it was like very rural it was like between a sort of big city and another sort of big city just slap dab in the middle all the locals hated us because they're just rural locals in like a small provincial town and here come all these weird kids with long hair and nose rings and whatever else.
Nikolai:
[6:14] Yeah exactly like if i was like today if that happened in my town i would also be like jesus fucking christ these fucking kids like i i want to move um but yeah we basically just went there was that we're there for like a year made friendships.
Nikolai:
[6:35] Out into the world after that by that time you're like either 18 or almost 18 so i just said sayonara i'm moving into the city i'm becoming a rat person, Which is exactly what I did, man. Just, uh, coasting off of doing, uh, doing shit. I'll say it, I'll say it that way to keep it kosher.
Tyler:
[7:00] Okay.
Nikolai:
[7:03] No, no violent, weird crap, but like I was, it was not all above board, you know? You make some mistakes when you're 18 and 20.
Tyler:
[7:15] What did you do after that?
Nikolai:
[7:17] Well, shit, I just coasted for like the longest time and yeah, fell into depression, became weird and recluse and like, ah, my life, ah, what do I do? And, you know, eventually I was like, ah, well, I'm going to go to university. I'm going to finish a university degree. I'm going to get it. And I went to university, kind of got my shit together, got that degree. And after that you know i i was like well i'm just gonna be weird on the internet for a while and that's um.
Nikolai:
[7:54] That's sort of where, you know, my first job in the, in the industry came about actually from Fiverr. And, uh, I was just trying to like get anything. Like, do you need a graphic designer? I can, I can design your logos. I'm great with that. Uh, do you, do you need like a voiceover artist? I can do that. I can do anything. Like, of course I was shit at all of those things.
Nikolai:
[8:22] But got into video games and by that time I was like okay well we gotta get a little serious here and, that's sort of exactly around the time that you met me, going into 3D Realms just after a couple of months stint at the previous thing where the project doesn't even bear mentioning because they butchered it, it was not a great situation, but we've seen that many times across the.
Tyler:
[8:54] Board many
Nikolai:
[8:56] Such cases one might say.
Tyler:
[8:58] Yeah yeah i i feel sorry for i don't even like to use the like the the words the industry like every time i hear someone else say it i get like kind of like this just vibe from it i'm like but i feel like so many people come into video games as a business or whatever with just this bright eyes and it just it just sucks your fucking soul out immediately it's like so depressing compared to what you initially kind of think of it as and it always has the same effect like i you know you get that job and you show up and it's like this office is amazing everything's wonderful i was that way i was like oh my god we have a fucking i had come from the air force too so i was like we have a coffee machine yeah yeah it's milk for you i feel like i live in fucking star trek and there's beer in the fridge at work and we can do whatever we want and there's yeah yeah
Nikolai:
[9:57] We're on wall street right now well we're we're the wolf on wall street and we're having coffee with the milk already in it.
Tyler:
[10:03] What yeah it was like me and vince used to call fred the willy wonka video games like you that actually yeah come with me and you'll be and then you know after a while it turns like the oompa loompa start fucking capping people in the fucking bathroom and dragging them out the back door um every time someone new would get laid off we would immediately play the the layla second part from goodfellas when they like are whacking all the fucking people to make sure that no one gets caught. Like no one rats out or whatever. They just kill it. They keep finding bodies and freezers. And I was like, every time.
Nikolai:
[10:45] But that that is it right like the the thing about that is like every it's every industry where when you're a kid you really think that is going to be amazing same thing with animators right the animation industry that that was sort of how i got into video games was be like be a key animator do key animations do concept art and i was like whoa this is the thing i always wanted and like a couple of months into it i was like waking up and i was like jesus christ oh my god ah okay i have to do this it just turned into a job man it turns into a job so quick but you don't you have no idea like the first three months because i was on trial period for the first three months basically they could let me go at any point and not lose a fucking thing so that's you know they have all the incentive to get rid of me if i'm not doing things right i was constantly my shoulders were like up around my my fucking ears and i was like oh when are they gonna realize i don't know what the fuck i'm doing what are they gonna realize i've been bullshitting this whole time i.
Tyler:
[11:51] Felt like i had diplomatic immunity or some shit like i compared to the air force like denmark as a whole and slipgate specifically i felt like i could do anything i wanted and no one would do like there were no real consequence like what are you gonna do like like fire me doesn't sound very scary next to like send you to fort leavenworth and make you turn big rocks into little rocks until you're dead or whatever i'm like
Nikolai:
[12:11] Yeah yeah exactly i'm.
Tyler:
[12:14] Literally i felt like jango like when he's like they're like you're free now and he's like what do what does that mean
Nikolai:
[12:19] Yeah what do i do what does free mean where do i go yeah.
Tyler:
[12:23] Um but yeah it it was really like seriously like one of the best working environments in so many ways but for me like the biggest thing that i've struggled and ultimately i think was kind of congratulations everybody listening on Tempest Rising, congrats. They weathered the storm and I'm very happy for them. But I think what caused, and not just in Slipgate, I mean like industry-wide after COVID, what caused so many problems was there was like a real lack of structure and across the board like no one i literally would like talk to people and be like who is your supervisor and i don't know who my supervisor is and i'm like that doesn't how do you even work do you have a contract that says you work here like what is this and and that multiplied by the number of people in the games industry at the time especially those who were under the you know embracer umbrella because they just bought up all these companies didn't audit them
Tyler:
[13:27] Financially personnel they just kind of like yeah do whatever you want spend millions and millions of dollars and then they tighten up after like two years of that um but i was so frustrated with the lack of a clear hierarchy like i don't know who to ask to do what i remember who was the fucking skinny kid that worked for you guys that with the glasses blonde hair uh
Tyler:
[13:55] You sofas one of them sorry
Nikolai:
[13:59] Sofas skinny guy with glasses who worked who worked in the department that's sofas.
Tyler:
[14:04] So henrik and you had left for the day and i needed qa to do something very important i don't even remember what it was so it probably wasn't that important but i like go over there i'm like hey uh need this to get done like now and he's like i can't do that i'm like why not and he's like well Henrik's not here and he's head of QA he would have to approve that so it'll have to wait till tomorrow and I'm like what let's let's start again I'm gonna ask you another series of questions and from now on your answers your options are yes or I will figure it out and that those are all your options and then like after like five minutes of me going in on this I stopped and I'm like I'm not staff sergeant. I'm this, this guy doesn't even work for me. He didn't sign up for this. Like, I don't know what I'm doing right now. And I like apologize. I just walked away.
Nikolai:
[15:02] Don't. Well, that's, that's odd because, you know, at least when I was there, you know, I, I kind of just, you know, that hierarchy thing is, you know, oh, he's head of QA and he would have to approve. Everybody's gone home. What are you doing? like you're doing you're working overtime first of all but also you can take like 30 minutes to do something else i'm not gonna explode.
Tyler:
[15:30] If you are on a ship and the captain is not on the ship the next highest ranking person after the captain is the captain of the ship until the captain comes back like in star trek when they're like uh you know data you you know you're in charge before they leave they're like you you have the deck it's yours until i return yeah that's that's how that works and that's how my i've learned a lot since then but that is how i was programmed by the fucking u.s military to think so in my mind it's like you're in here you're the person at the helm of this spaceship drive it because no one else is here to do it and that would always be the case like all the way up the corporate chain there's always like this like two week fucking delay to get anything done because you have to like wait for oh i'm on vacation especially you fucking europeans and your goddamn vacations i'm on holiday i'm
Nikolai:
[16:30] On you're telling me dude.
Tyler:
[16:31] I'm on maternity leave i'm on this i'm on that i'm like who the fuck after you makes decisions like i don't have time to wait for you like you i have a gun to my head to get this game out by january the fucking eighth or whatever and it has to be done and it's millions of dollars are on the fucking line and i'm waiting on somebody to fucking get back from their vacation because they felt a little depressed after their birthday or some shit i don't get it this is not computer computing for me but no
Nikolai:
[17:01] Yeah exactly like but that's such a weird thing because that was never the milieu I was trying to like kind of create at the QA office.
Nikolai:
[17:16] So it's weird to me that Sophos especially was like, I feel like, like after a while I was there, he would just be like, sure. Okay.
Nikolai:
[17:26] Like, and, and that's the thing. Work will always be here when you come back. Don't worry about it. There's always more to do. So like take 30 minutes. I had to tell those guys like a million times, you know, there's a soft rule. It's not really a hard rule, but essentially after every 45 minutes, you have to get up for 15 minutes and do something because you know companies don't want you to get blood clots in your legs and shit that's their version of doing it like ah shit okay well we're gonna have to let them have that 15 minutes every time they get up and i'd get up because i'd be like oh yeah i'm going outside i'm gonna get a cup of coffee uh anyone want to come with me anyone want to like just take take five and people know uh i'm i'm busy with uh with graven or whatever and i was like eventually i'd be like that's not a question i'm i'm telling you to get up and do something else i've done because you're gonna yeah exactly you're gonna lose your fucking mind if you just sit there for like eight hours straight only stopping to for bathroom breaks and going to lunch that's not a life true.
Tyler:
[18:39] Story when faith was my not like direct subordinate but in the military i was like the head of what you call flight weather i would basically like you brief pilots they call like a call center yeah what's the weather gonna be for this this that whatever route and we would just take care of that all day long and on this particular day she was like clearly not having a good day and i was like let's go talk about it and then she tells me what's going on i'm like okay um i'm gonna go back inside and talk to the captain and you can just go home she's like i can't go home i'm like What do you mean? She's like, well, I have work to do. I'm like, I'm not asking you. Like, this is an order. Go back to your fucking dorm room and get through, like, whatever it is you're going through, deal with that. And I will handle it with everything above me is my problem. This is a direct shit goes downhill. So I'm telling you now to leave. And then when I go inside, someone's going to ask me what happened to your subordinate. And then I will say, I told her to go home. And if they have a problem with that, I will be the one punished for it. Not you. That's how this works. And coming into just in general, like the, the way that structure was laid out was all very flat. I always had, I hate that fucking turn.
Nikolai:
[20:03] Flat. It's a flat hierarchy. It's a flat hierarchy, guys.
Tyler:
[20:06] I hate it. I hate it. I still can't. Like, and then they changed it to flat-ish because I gave them so much shit for it. Like when they were doing the employee handbook, I was like, this is dumb. I don't want this here. And they were like, well, and then they literally put flat dash I S H.
Nikolai:
[20:22] Oh, fuck off. They're just saying it. Yeah. Don't say it.
Tyler:
[20:26] I got so mad. I told like Becker was like, well, we have two weeks to finish this and then we have to turn it in. And then I just said, fuck it. I don't care. I don't care. Like your employee handbook is, I'm going to wipe my ass with it when you publish it. And he's like, but we really want your input. I'm like, I gave you my input, throw it away. That's my input.
Tyler:
[20:43] I was such a dick and i really did have like emotional issues with like how to just be fucking normal around people when it came to work because i was so used to that structure that way and but on the other hand that the lack of the lack of understanding that in in that northern european way of doing things while working for a company that's owned by russia and america
Tyler:
[21:11] Ultimately came down to where it was and i think for me and vents in particular i think it was even more difficult because we would know that shit ahead of time yeah i would be like hey you guys really should fucking finish this game like if you have to work a couple extra hours a day or whatever like i would definitely get past this milestone for tempest and then someone else would be like you know and rightfully so like we really need a break we've been working all week and like I think it's time we all just kind of like take a break to breathe and all that shit and then I would know in the back of my head like do your kind of get laid off next week but i can't tell you that kind of shit and it would be better if we really impressed it was such a hard situation to be in and it's always like that fred told me like first day like don't get too close to people like and he was right he was 100 right to give me that advice because i always tried to be everybody's fucking best friend and i care i really care about people i hope that shows through like i really really fucking that's just
Nikolai:
[22:09] Like a character trait of yours man.
Tyler:
[22:10] Like yeah when
Nikolai:
[22:11] It like you're like don't take this the wrong way you're like a human golden retriever like everybody everybody you meet man is just like hey my name is tyler who are you what's your name and even if they're like extremely danish and they don't know how to do that like a an adult dane is extremely hard to get in under their skin they're like they almost get scared they're like uh uh my name is jonas and i'm such and such.
Tyler:
[22:37] Uh like where are you from yeah
Nikolai:
[22:40] Exactly you're just like.
Tyler:
[22:41] Tell me more who are you what underwear are you wearing right now show me like no i really like i really fucking like truly care about people and like you know on the corporate side people are like don't get so close because you might have to like look that motherfucker in the eyes and tell them they're gone you know at a certain point that's gonna suck for you and then i would i was always like i would rather that news come from someone who cares about me enough to look me in the eye and say it than to just have like a mass you know christmas eve layoff session oh
Nikolai:
[23:12] Man that was brutal it was so funny too like i don't know how like can we actually talk about that whole shebang like.
Tyler:
[23:23] Fuck them if you you should have put me under indy there's really nothing like that i don't have anything bad to say about people at all it's more just like lessons learned mistakes were made to me at this point so yeah with all due respect to everyone who was in the and i was also concerned about the people who had to do this like yeah for like for instance like mickle and veeney like our hr and our finance department like they they had it worse than anybody because they had looked every single person in the eye and tell them like we have to let you go and all that stuff and it's not our fault. Like, there's nothing we can do about it except tell you the bad news. So I felt bad for them, but to me, it's like this happened to a hundred thousand people i don't know how many it's been at this point but like over the course of
Nikolai:
[24:14] Oh like the whole industry yeah like yeah it's it's been nuts i don't know if a hundred thousand could even do it yeah but it was so fucking funny like in like gallows humor way because, you know we were all sitting there we got the we got the call like if you get an email you're laid off so check your email it's like oh man like this is brutal like it would almost be better if you just went through a list and just told like you know albert anderson you are laid off uh burt burterson you're laid off like in.
Tyler:
[24:48] Reverse alphabetical order too like just to make it more
Nikolai:
[24:51] Yeah yeah exactly like make it even worse uh but i was i was sitting there i was hyping up the entire qa department because i was like no don't worry about it guys guys guys like take a breather it'll be fine like me and i could put in a lot of work to make sure that you will not be burned here we're pretty essential you know i'm sorry to say like we're pretty essential here and while i'm saying this i get the notification like ding and in the middle of my sentence it was like uh so ultimately just take a breather we're not gonna oh.
Nikolai:
[25:30] And i was pulled into the call and and just like you said man uh i had to get in between some explosive uh people who were like righteous rightfully mad you know they were rightfully upset and like kind of popping off at vinnie and i had to get in between her and them like uh let's all breathe here like vinnie's also in a hard position like i get everybody's mad but let's work on finding actual solutions to what we're doing here we need stuff in writing blah blah blah, It was, it was just so fucking funny when like I was sitting there and like halfway through my sentence, I get the hammer swing is so fucking, so, so fucking dark. But yeah, like ultimately, you know, it's line go up. And I think that's what a lot of people in the games industry are done with. Like even like, um, gamers, gamers, epic gamers, they hate the corporatism of it. There you know you know what i mean with line go up like during during covid everybody was at home so the games industry like experienced the craziest boom
Nikolai:
[26:38] in the world yep and line went up exponentially like crazy high yeah.
Tyler:
[26:45] And that happening for the rest of time like
Nikolai:
[26:48] Exactly like people on our level and even like executives in games industry they know that that's not going to happen they could see the writing on the wall but people who are like board members of some kind of evil holding company they're gonna say why why line not go up though can you explain that to me like oh well covid like yeah but why it's the patrick bateman thing of like why isn't it possible it's just not but why not you stupid bastard it.
Tyler:
[27:20] Was all in my opinion could have been prevented by simply analyzing the data which didn't really happen like I knew the the day I remember I was talking to Jahar the day that they announced like we've been acquired by Sabre and Embrace Your Group I was like this is limited like this is gonna I said this will last about two years and then they will realize that they're losing money they'll audit all their books and then they'll start closing companies i swear to god like this this conversation happened because i it's so clearly there if you're looking at the big picture and and i just made up my mind like i'm gonna go do this i'm gonna like i'm gonna take that risk and i'm gonna learn from it and this is probably this is probably gonna burn me to a certain degree but like i will come out understanding a lot more about this business than i would if i stay here in america and whatever and i had a couple opportunities like i i had thought about moving to poland which i'm glad i didn't because i would have probably at like hyper strange or somewhere like that which i liked hyper strange at the time but they were eating up worse than we were and then i think i had also had i had thought about trying to apply like dread xp too because i was at the time close to their leadership and then they sacked all of that leadership later so i chose 3d realms because it was like what's going to look better on resume? You know, like.
Nikolai:
[28:47] Yeah, like what's going to look better when I get out of there?
Tyler:
[28:50] If I go to Denmark and they offer me, you know, this amount of money versus if I go to Poland and they offer this amount, like the next time I'm up for a job and I need to apply, which I'm not going to do now, but, you know, thinking long term. And they're like, how much are you worth? What do you want for a salary? If I'm starting with Danish salaries a lot more than if I start with Polish salary.
Nikolai:
[29:12] Yeah.
Tyler:
[29:14] It made sense. And I took that risk and I'm glad I did.
Tyler:
[29:18] But I kind of always felt like this is a losing battle. No matter what we do, even if the games are all good and everything makes a little bit of money, they're spending more than they're ever going to get in return in terms of buying up all these companies.
Nikolai:
[29:32] Oh, yeah.
Tyler:
[29:34] Really short-sighted um and they i don't know i don't think they care like i don't know anyone in the upper echelon of embracer group and i don't really give a fuck to meet them at this point but i imagine they're like shit all they care about is their bottom line like any company would that's normal it's not okay but it is normal so exactly
Nikolai:
[29:54] It's the corporatism which you know the the the The thing about the explosion, the implosion really of the AAA and AA gaming industry is the thing of what's good for the goose is good for the gander and what's not good for the goose is not good for the gander. But that's fine if you're not a goose.
Tyler:
[30:16] It takes a long fucking time to make a game, but it shouldn't take five years and three times the budget to make a game. And we on our end like everybody got in covid like we kept making up every excuse not to deliver shit and then wonder why they start asking questions like it's obvious like do we we didn't deliver on what we were contracted to deliver and that that's just fucking true like there's no reason why phantom fury and graven and wrath a on a ruin should have taken as long as they did i understand all of the circumstances that led up to this kingpin reloaded all that stuff yeah um like i i understand why like every individual reason but to the people in the corporate office like none of that shit matters they're like why is this product that i agreed to when i bought this company still not done and why is it in and they would audit this shit you know like saber would play test our games and be like what the fuck is this and i would be like you know shit man I don't know what to tell you
Nikolai:
[31:24] Shit dog I don't have a good.
Tyler:
[31:25] Reason for that like this yeah yeah exactly please don't cancel it because it definitely won't make money if you cancel it but then when you're especially something as small as kingpin is like you look at how much money you've spent you look at your potential return on that and it's negative what do you do and i don't know we also slipgate had too many fucking projects like
Nikolai:
[31:50] Well that's 100 one of the issues that's like what the main complaint i've heard from like everybody who got laid off was there were too many things and like when we were in it we were like there are too many things but always with the idea that let's just get them out let's just get them out and then we'll have three projects probably uh and then we just focus on that it's like tell me.
Tyler:
[32:14] Name any other game studio on earth who has more than one or maybe two at one time projects going on you can tell me publishers who have several studios working on several different things but can you tell me another one game studio with seven or eight games at one time i i'd bet you can't
Nikolai:
[32:33] No like there are there are none and if there are any like they they are they they're probably bankrupt because uh But yeah, you can't do that. You can't run that many things. But we always just had the idea that like once
Nikolai:
[32:48] we get all these out, we can go back to a reasonable place. But, you know, I'm just glad that in the end, like the people who are still there, you know, have Tempest Rising. Because Tempest Rising is doing fucking good. That's running numbers.
Tyler:
[33:05] So what went through your mind when you got called into the office and it was like, this is a sorry goodbye? for you.
Nikolai:
[33:12] Well, I wasn't even called into the office. But yeah, it was over Zoom or whatever. Yeah, it was over Zoom. Like, mass Zoom meeting. What was going through my mind, you know, I was in shock, kind of, because I was...
Nikolai:
[33:30] A lot of millennials are the new company men that's the that's the thing of like the boomers were company men the gen xers are more you know let's you know make our own thing let's open up a lemonade stand or whatever and the millennials are once again the company men and sort of we will do anything that's also why you know oh no i don't need to take a break uh you know uh i'll just work for eight hours straight because we're like if i just do well enough my contributions will be uh will be recognized and i'll have like a safe place so i was like in shock because i was ready to like work at 3d realms slipgate and just move up the ladder little by little make more and more money until eventually you know i'm at a place where i want to be so i was like fuck what do i do now shit well i i guess i'll just like try to find a different job like maybe maybe in the games industry if i can find it uh turns out every every studio had a hard time at the time so that's not happening and that's like maybe something else something else man like they They're surely going to need a tech-savvy manager type in another business out there.
Nikolai:
[34:56] So I was immediately thinking, well, not immediately. At first, I was just like, well, this was a gut punch. I'm just going to eat chips and watch TV for a while, wallow in sadness for a bit, and then get back on the horse and look for things. And luckily, I didn't have to do that because the opportunity came along. Me, you, Mary, Oliver also got together and kind of started dreaming a little bit. Now we're at a point where it's looking up. We're all working pro bono right now, which kind of sucks. But rather I actually posted this on LinkedIn kind of a cringe kind of a cringe poll but it's the proverb of like a morsel in peace is better than a banquet in strife, like the idea being that if you work with people that you really like that you really fuck with that's better than being at say a saber where everybody's biting each other's heads off and you can't feel like you're yourself. Yeah i mean.
Tyler:
[36:24] Like the different types of responses you get from people from different because we had a very like international kind of thing going on and like so say saber did not realize this when they pulled the plug on like start laying everybody off but you know for the average american when you're fired you're you're fucking you're gone unless you have some sick ass contract like that's that's the end of the fucking line like hey you know it's been great but uh we can't keep you so please leave now and don't come back and good luck out there call me if you need a reference maybe
Tyler:
[37:04] Um and for the most of the contractors that was in fact the case you know wherever they were in the world but like for the for the danes in particular there's like this three to five month clause in everyone every contract it's like you you get severance and you keep working basically until you're done and all that stuff so even though it was really hard for everybody like all the danes like with maybe what a couple of exceptions whose names will not be mentioned here took it pretty fucking well they're like okay well you know i'll go i'll be okay i will figure this out the i will go draw unemployment or whatever the fuck until i get back on my feet and all that kind of thing you know it sucks but have a beer peace out and then like on the other and all the immigrants especially people who had like moved you know oh yeah afforded their life from another continent to be there or whatever the fuck is like if i lose this job and i don't find another job in denmark i have to leave this country and like that was a different set of fucking it's a whole different roll of the dice it's like oh my god like this for you know like for me in my mind like if i if i get laid off here this is a lot more complicated than just like well i'll just go home and like go to the kamuna and they'll help me figure it out i was like oh my god i'm fucked so
Nikolai:
[38:20] Yeah because you have to go home and essentially start over man.
Tyler:
[38:24] Yeah but i i'm like i'm very very like i'm super blessed man like i had i kept telling you guys like the worst thing that could happen to me is if i have to go back to america i'll just go back to my family farm and like plant tomatoes or some shit i'll be okay like yeah and that was true Pretty good gig,
Nikolai:
[38:41] You know.
Tyler:
[38:42] It was, it was true. I took it pretty hard and all that kind of stuff, like just the whole situation. But like, that was always true for me. It was like the worst thing that could happen is I just have to go home. So, but there was not, not everybody was like that. There were, there were lots of people who had like got that job, bought a house, took out a mortgage, had a couple of kids. Uh, some people had moved, you know, from Russia and then to have kids and shit. Like it was crazy or like cloud and Aurora, you know, like they fucking had the most epic journey of any person I've ever heard of to get to Denmark. Like cause he was Filipino and then he had moved to Romania and then he'd like snuck into russia somehow married a russian woman and then they were in saint petersburg somehow and then they fucking you know the war started and they had to escape and then they make it all the way to the fucking philippines and they can't get a visa for a russian national out of the philippines so they had to go back to russia and then like sneak through finland or i don't even know how the fuck they did it all ended up in denmark immediately have a kid they put down roots And then it's like, oh my God, if your job's in jeopardy, like that's bad. It's like really, really not good.
Nikolai:
[39:51] Yeah. Yeah.
Tyler:
[39:52] Yeah. A lot of people in that situation.
Nikolai:
[39:55] So it was, it was fucking like, I wish man, that I had talked more to Claude, Cloud, not Claude. I want to call him Claude because Cloud.
Tyler:
[40:04] What's wrong with you Danish people? He still lives.
Nikolai:
[40:07] Oh shit. He's still here. Yeah. Fuck. I might have to hit him up.
Tyler:
[40:11] They just had the Tempest Rising party, like launch party or whatever, like yesterday. day and
Nikolai:
[40:16] Well i wasn't invited.
Tyler:
[40:17] That's funny because luke and luca were there and even some of the folks that were like you know gone like luca doesn't work for slipgate anymore but she was at the party because she was with luke and all the shit tower towers was there i can't believe you get invited that's fucking terrible shame on you i'm
Nikolai:
[40:38] Sorry oh my god no no it's all good.
Tyler:
[40:42] I didn't get invited either no one asked me oh really I got a special thanks in the credit for the game I am grateful for that all I did for Tempest was scream and yell at everyone every day so hopefully that helped it was enough that they thanked me for it later
Nikolai:
[41:00] Well yeah a special thanks is a lot I don't think I'm in the fucking credits even though I was doing the QA you should check.
Tyler:
[41:10] You should check i'll i'll
Nikolai:
[41:12] Check i'll have a look i'll have a look moby games or whatever it's called uh but.
Tyler:
[41:16] I'm happy the game turned out good by the way people go buy tempest rising like
Nikolai:
[41:20] It's yeah yeah go buy tempest rising yeah and also keep a fucking eye out on ringfall keep an eye out please uh.
Tyler:
[41:28] Wishlist ringfall and stellar valkyrie and call us to ragnar and follow us on x and all that stuff in the at in the keep at cotton hammer studio is it studios on on x is
Nikolai:
[41:42] That add cotton hammer dev add cotton hammer dev otherwise it would be way too long man yeah like the longer it is the worse the worse it is.
Tyler:
[41:51] And uh and send us money
Nikolai:
[41:53] Yeah please po.
Tyler:
[41:55] I'm just playing
Nikolai:
[41:56] Um send money to my wallet specifically.
Tyler:
[42:01] But i overall like after every i'm i'm legitimately like i was like surprised because i kept up with people after the fact i was like is the game gonna do well okay i care about a lot of people who are still there i'm like i want this to go well i always wanted it to go well i was just terrified that it wouldn't given the circumstances but apparently it happened it's getting really good ratings people are happy with it
Nikolai:
[42:22] Yeah so yeah it's pretty huge.
Tyler:
[42:27] In a way we made it
Nikolai:
[42:29] In a way in a way we made in a way that's from a certain point of view.
Tyler:
[42:36] Yeah so how uh how is cotton hammer studios like set up like how did you guys end up doing that
Nikolai:
[42:45] Well we are running it in sort of like f that hierarchy.
Nikolai:
[42:52] No it's um me and um we were all we were all sort of like going by the by the seat of our pants really yeah and eventually greg and i kind of like we had a talk and we were like well i want to keep working on this i want like we both want it to have our own independent like let's work on the shit that we want to do and let's have full control let's let's try this shit man like, you know it's a lot of companies have just been started with a thousand dollars and a good idea we're both like yeah let's do it you know uh we'll we'll set something up we set it up, and sort of started with um you know hey if anybody needs to anybody in the group needs to have like a secondary gig or a like primary gig get some money go and do that secure the bag because we need to eat but also we really want to keep doing this and the the you know patches the carrot is if you're in on the ground level, there's probably good things in the next 5-10 years. We'll probably be in a pretty good position. We don't have to worry about being in any industry and layoffs just suddenly happening.
Nikolai:
[44:22] And so we, we got set up. We luckily Trevor and Greg, no fucking everyone. So we got good deals on stuff like a website. We got good deals on, you know, file sharing, all that.
Nikolai:
[44:38] And that really came in handy when we got Rick and Jesse there, uh, Trevor's good friends. And sort of the idea people behind, like, what is ring fall like mechanically? and, yeah we treat it as you know a secret company where we work but, it's not our main thing we can't go full send on this we have like saw some avenues for getting money so that we can actually treat it like a company get it actually off the ground because if we can do that, shit that's the start of something really big but yeah we do have to do different gigs and you know make music videos and some of us work for like the American government and, some of us working in different games right now i don't know if you you know uh gen hunter, yeah yeah gen hunter that's looking really good like i'm on the periphery on that but we we got we got uh some people working on that as well.
Tyler:
[46:00] We uh we're in
Tyler:
[46:03] The keep has always been the same and i i i got i really praised myself on this blow a little smoke up my own ass like i never understood the logic in the putting all your eggs in one basket taking out a huge business loan and then just trying to run a company from the jump like a large company i took a three-day free business class that the air force offered and came out of that with like okay reaffirming all of my prior beliefs instead of borrowing someone else's money i'm just gonna keep it really really low key and very slowly iteratively and we've been in business for six years at this point so i've at least not gone bankrupt which i'm proud of and you know and we don't just have to do like what we do on the surface like i have this podcast which doesn't make like a lot of money but it's it's a great marketing tool and i love it so it won't go anywhere but like the the games i'm like look look at what we had to deal with with you know with graven with wrath with with ion fury like all that stuff like i don't want to be in that situation i don't want somebody holding a fucking noose over my head saying like get it done or whatever so i was just like okay well then everyone on the team can be part-time and i'm not going to make those guarantees to people i'm not going to say like we're all doing this or whatever you know for and then I'm going to give you a raise or whatever the fuck I'm like including myself everyone's a contractor
Tyler:
[47:32] No matter what, the business has to stay afloat. So if we have to go get other jobs or find other sources of income or whatever the fuck, we'll do that. But we're not going to sink the ship betting on our future selves. We'll just wait until a game comes out or a product or whatever it is that we do to make money. And then we will leave that money there, pay people what they're owed, but never step beyond what we can actually afford. I treat my personal finances that way too. with the exception my wife talked me into the mortgage and i was like you know this goes against everything i believe in but you know it's
Nikolai:
[48:06] What are you gonna do you know like show up with a bag full of gold doubloons and fucking buy the whole thing out right.
Tyler:
[48:12] If it was up to me i probably would have gone the rest of my life like that like until i have that bag of gold doubloons wouldn't have bought a house but regardless like keeping everything manageable like i can afford this even if this and that and that goes wrong the core of the company won't go under and so you know and then i have like some of the devs working on stellar valkyrie like if another person comes along to me with a with a paying gig i'd like hey you know maybe that'll make this game take longer but you know this is money now and we need money so we'll do this for a while we'll come back to stellar valkyrie and then even if even if that means our game doesn't come out soon we know we'll never have to compromise what our game is yeah we'll never you know we'll never be in danger of going out of business because we said no to money at the time so that I think that's the much much brighter long-term way to do it and if you're if your goal is to just like inflate a company and then sell it for a profit and you
Nikolai:
[49:18] Know yeah buy a fucking yacht go to Bolivia or something. That's a good way to do it.
Tyler:
[49:24] If you're going to see what the art you want to make, then you can't be... You can't sell yourself. It's all I'm saying.
Nikolai:
[49:33] That's exactly right, man.
Tyler:
[49:35] And you end up, potentially, if you build a big 250-person company, and then something goes wrong, then you have to lay off all of those people, and you're in debt. Why do that when you don't have to? I would rather do it the way we're doing it. And I think you're, I think you guys have the right idea. Of course we had all those like, like tavern talks and coffee shop talks there for when you guys were first starting it. And I was like, do this, don't do that. You know, like, um, but yeah, I'm, I'm really, I'm really glad that lots of other people are starting to see the light in that way. It's not just me with this mindset. yeah look at night dive they they just did what they were doing for a very very long time and then when it made sense they sold to someone that they trusted instead of just yeah so so many tech companies period like you make something and then you don't even intend to like actually sell what it is that you've made you just wait for like google or someone to come along and acquire you and then dissolve what you did so that you don't compete with them and then you walk away with a million dollars and like a million dollars is great but i would much rather make something i care about and i would rather not compromise my values or my morals to get there
Nikolai:
[50:50] Yeah exactly you want to have your own lemonade stand yeah like foregoing publishers and stuff it's both the most idiotic thing you can do and also the best thing that you can do like the reason that you know the idea the the project that i'm not going to speak too much on kind of fell apart was because of publishing you know i i approached publishers and i was like here's the idea here's the here's the game they were like we love it but yeah and then like oh okay what what do you what do you need what what's like oh but we need like what's the angle what could you add this and like add this and eventually you know you're left with an unworkable mess and it was all because you were trying to get that publisher money and put yourself in a position where you behold into someone. Yeah. And like the money is nice. Getting a big bag of money is nice, especially if you can do what you want. But what we're trying to do is we're trying to go for grants. We're trying to, you know, put the logo on the splash screen and then you get the money. Just finish the game. Or and more importantly like crowdfunding we want to like why go through a publisher why not just sell the game to the people.
Tyler:
[52:08] Directing that yeah
Nikolai:
[52:10] Exactly you're you're you're selling it directly to them instead of going by like the big walmart or something it's actually fucking drop shipping but for games but.
Tyler:
[52:21] Aside from the technical side of the deal like when it comes to you know how you do your revenue split what your milestone structure is and you know what whether or not they try to compromise your game and all that kind of stuff like the bottom line with working with any investor publisher or not to me is like is your marketing arm significant to the point where if i give you 50 of my profit the 50 i make after that is going to be more than the 100 i would have made by myself exactly and then there's the timeline part of it where it's like with this much money can i make the game in a short enough amount of time where i can then go on to make another thing that makes me even still more money or am i because so many people end up in those deals where it's like i'm giving you 50 sometimes 60 percent of my profits and i'm not your marketing isn't even making the game more available or or more popular it's just that i'm i'm basically giving you money for nothing and so many people end up in those situations where like that's always my first question is like if you think you need a publisher are you going to like do they are they going to help you reach enough more people so that you ultimately in the long run make more off of this product whatever that happens to be aside from whether or not they're going to change your game
Nikolai:
[53:47] Oh yeah that's that's a good question too like there i saw the thing it's completely tertiary to the point too uh blue ocean games uh with a 30 million dollar indie investment fund, they are trying to like do publishing but different and it looks really good if it's does what it says on the tin but you know the the bottom line being like you could get up to three hundred thousand dollars for your game you don't even need to show us like a working like mvp you just give us a good idea and then we'll give you the money but and you retain your ip rights which is like huge but you give us 20 per like 30 or 20 percent of the game's revenue, and you give us 20 or 30 percent of your full company revenue we get stake in the company and we get that revenue in perpetuity. Whereas like these deals aren't getting better, man. These deals are getting worse. Like the Atlanta Calrissian, uh, these, this, this deal is getting worse all the time. And to where it really makes more sense to like, just try and get some guys together, make something fun and try to sell it for like 20 bucks.
Nikolai:
[55:09] And if it, if it sells, you know, you make that 20 bucks you get that money but for the rest of it you know.
Nikolai:
[55:21] You know what have you lost you're not like beholden to anybody you haven't lost the big bucks and you're not going bankrupt that being you're not having to lay off like 100 people, so keeping it small i think that's that was what i was saying with what's good for the goose is good for the gander is all this triple a and double a nightmare bullshit that's going on it's bad for double a and triple a but it's pretty okay for indie because what you're what you see now is like a bunch of people who are like developers really want to make something, but they can't get you know into the double or triple a industry so what are you gonna well the best routes are Indy and that's where we see like people who are swinging, below their weight in a way going into Indy but also having a good home there, I like it man even though we're all doing this pro bono, If people want to crowdfund Ringfall and see a return to forum to that whole genre and get a, fun multiplayer game that you can play with your friends for $20 or something like that, more power to them. I would be super glad to be part of that. More so than working on the next.
Nikolai:
[56:50] Starfield or the next Total War expansion or whatever even though that sounds cool as shit like.
Tyler:
[56:58] That's one of the things about the whole like the entirety of the triple a industry that is so readily apparent and yet like the average consumer doesn't technically like they don't ever have any reason to think about this but like is this game actually better is this 70 new god of war actually better like more bang for your buck than the $15 RPG that somebody handcrafted on Steam or on itch.io or whatever like is it actually a better experience or is it simply that they have way better marketing because they spent millions of dollars on it like perfect example remember I bet you remember this conversation when I was negotiating with the UFC and I was like I'm gonna get I don't remember it might have been graven or something one of our games in like featured on the ufc or whatever in like logo in the octagon shit and then remember that and everybody's like oh that's fucking crazy it's way too much money you know like and honestly like it might have been too much money for projects that we had at the time but like imagine if tempest rising or something like that you know some really big project that we had ended up i was like if i already had this connection
Tyler:
[58:11] And then that opportunity went away last weekend Doom the Dark Ages had a custom intro for Drew McIntyre with the Doom guy on stage with him and shit as he walked to the ring and I was like
Nikolai:
[58:28] Fuck bro that's that's it there it is somebody's doing my idea it's.
Tyler:
[58:33] Not i'm not the first person to have this idea but the thing is i'm not i have nothing bad to say about doom the dark ages or whatever but i'm just saying is doom the dark ages really better as a game than some other equally good first person shooter game that does everything that you would ever want a first person shooter game to do probably stole most of its ideas from doom or is it just because it's more apparent in your mind because it has the name doom on it and it's being advertised in places like that like that's that's why marketing is so important and like it's hugely important like whatever your budget is for your game you should expect to spend 10 or so maybe more percent on just marketing like because it doesn't do you any good to make the best game in the world unless people know that it exists and want to buy it
Nikolai:
[59:19] Exactly fortnight.
Tyler:
[59:21] Targeting children is why fortnight is popular it's not because fortnight's a great game because it really sucks but it does what it's supposed to do it's dependable and it's in every place that you go like everyone knows the name my grandmother probably has heard of fortnite from tv commercials and shit
Nikolai:
[59:38] Oh yeah everybody has fucking heard of fortnite at this point but you're you're exactly right and that's more to the corporatism part of it too like i really think that the biggest problem in video games is the fucking corporatism like once games became a like the biggest in entertainment industry arm that's when it became very hard to find good shit i don't know if i've told you um people in my family actually know uh the guys who started io interactive of and and this i i i've got a point with all this but they told me about when they were making the first hitman game and these were guys who were like just smoking dope long long hair you know total total hippie punk rock you know outsider types people kept being like when are you gonna get a real job man like you're making this silly video game when are you gonna get a real job they were like i don't know man like maybe maybe at some point i don't know and then they made like one of the biggest franchises in the universe and it wasn't big because the new game.
Nikolai:
[1:00:53] Has you know the fucking uh marketing on a bus it became what it is because the first game which was made by these guys who were smoking dope like going around on roller skates doing weird shit that being kind of layabouts, punk rock underground types were just driven by passion.
Nikolai:
[1:01:15] They made an amazing game, and that's why it became what it is. And I think that's what we need to get back to. And I've mentioned punk rock to you a lot, because fucking games need to get back to punk rock and be able to say, oh, Jack Thompson thinks that games are bad for you and they'll create a serial killer. Fuck you here's postal man we need to get back to that but if we just keep like, gedaddling in like oh dooms 7 is coming out this week finally uh you know we got the new elder scrolls albeit you know elder scrolls the oblivion remake looks really fucking good but that has that same vibe it has that same flavor and i think what a lot of people need to do now is to just collectively.
Nikolai:
[1:02:16] Decide like okay we're not we don't put on suits man we wear the hoodies we have long hair we're weird you know we're underground outsiders and we make cool shit and I'm seeing inklings of that happening and I love that shit that's what you guys are doing in a way like you call us a Ragnar and you know all that like that's that's that is the kind of shit that i would expect like somebody who's like smoking a doobie rolling around roller skates you know like when are you gonna get a real job i don't know man.
Nikolai:
[1:02:52] Not to denigrate it, but you're not wearing suits. I do have a real deal. I know.
Tyler:
[1:03:00] I'm self-employed and I make money. In the Keep is, believe it or not, a profitable business. And it has been for six fucking years. Everybody who has a contract gets paid what they've agreed to. It's not a lot, but none of us are starving to death. And we all know what the deal is. and I my mortgage payment gets paid every month and it's okay the thing the thing is that I just instead of trying to do that in six months with a loan I just like why don't I just go work for another company and learn all this shit myself from the inside like why why go into debt to go to college for I was gonna go for a game design degree I had signed up for school and everything I took one semester and I was like this is a waste of fucking time oh yeah like this is like literally stupid you know and you talk to people like like i'm like look at the people who are the top of the heat in video games like i like tim willits i asked him like to his face like dude
Tyler:
[1:04:01] Do you care like do you really give a fuck if somebody has a game design degree or like what it like in my case i can show you a podcast where i have like thousands of hours of me talking to people who are more qualified to talk about video games than your fucking community college professor is who's never published anything so like which of these matters to you and i just took that route and it it was long and arduous and everything but like we're we're not going broke anytime soon and we're making it's taken way longer than i wanted it to but we're making exactly the game that we want to make so yeah i would just say people like why like which one do you care about more like do you want the fast like don't be hedonistic about it If you have to compromising time and hard work for what you want is better than taking the carrot right now and not having a carrot later.
Nikolai:
[1:04:54] So exactly. Like if you want, if you, if you're like waiting for a corporatist slop and triple A slop, like maybe, you know, interrogate why that is. I don't think that's what most people want anymore. I think that's why we're seeing so many games, like not just, you know, fail. Cause like when we saw games fail, it's like, ah, well, that's a shame. We've seen games explode, like actually just like the worst, the worst failure that you've ever seen. And I think it's because people are like fed up and I think it actually relates
Nikolai:
[1:05:33] to something completely tertiary, man. It's a tangent. uh you've seen the minecraft movie yeah no.
Tyler:
[1:05:41] But i've heard people
Nikolai:
[1:05:41] But but but you've seen the but you've seen the the freak outs about the chicken jockey scene surely it's everywhere like people are free okay well i don't.
Tyler:
[1:05:54] Know what he's talking
Nikolai:
[1:05:54] About you're living under a fucking rock bro like in the theaters you know when the chicken jockey scene happens people freak out and they're throwing popcorn and like hooting and hollering and making a big scene, and i've seen a lot of critics be like this is the death of cinema this is what's wrong with cinema, because people are acting like like apes this is so uncouth and i'm like no that's the consumer to use your terms saying hey this fucking slop that you're giving us it's slop it's bad like they're not hooting and hollering because they're stupid they're hooting and hollering because you're stupid you're feeding them slop and you think that they're gonna sit there and act like it's citizen kane like oh oh wow so poignant a minecraft movie exactly and who walked.
Tyler:
[1:06:52] Into the minecraft movie thinking they were gonna see a fucking you know cinematic masterpiece like they thought it was gonna be the godfather part two or some shit like
Nikolai:
[1:07:00] Well that's the thing right it's definitely one of the movies of all time but what.
Tyler:
[1:07:05] Is a chicken jockey or what even is that
Nikolai:
[1:07:07] Uh in minecraft man you haven't played it but you know there's an enemy in minecraft with a little zombie riding on the back of a chicken and they're like pretty, pretty dangerous in the game and in the movie they have you know jack black is all tied up on rope and Jason Momoa has to fight the chicken jockey and Jack Black says chicken jockey and every like that's become a meme in and of itself I have it on a soundboard why is this a thing.
Tyler:
[1:07:37] What's wrong with this
Nikolai:
[1:07:38] Offensive like it's not offensive what.
Tyler:
[1:07:41] Is the outrage like
Nikolai:
[1:07:42] The outrage is that like in the theaters people are not just throwing popcorn they're going actually crazy like i saw a clip where somebody had a chicken they brought an actual chicken in and they were holding it at the top of their head like fucking simba and the fucking lion king like people are going nuts throwing
Nikolai:
[1:08:01] everything everywhere and like getting out of their seats and screaming and these aren't.
Tyler:
[1:08:07] People these are npcs man we live in a simulator i'm convinced of this by the
Nikolai:
[1:08:10] Way that's what i'm saying they're not npcs they're not npcs they're just regular people and like the the the reaction to the people going crazy over the chicken jockey is to deride those people and say oh wow how why are they doing this do they not see and it's like what are you talking about it's the chicken jockey scene from the minecraft movie you're serving up slop and then being mad when people are like this is fucking slop like no they're they're informed like consumers to use the fucking gross language of like gordon gecko types they're informed consumers and they're in an indirect way telling you hey if you're gonna serve me actual shit i'm going to act like a like a monkey i'm going to jump up and down and act like an idiot. So...
Nikolai:
[1:09:05] And that's what i think a lot of people are doing with the games industry too like you'll get a um what was that one not even forespoken it was very recent uh avowed you know just a game that was such absolute garbage on arrival that everybody's just like stepping on it like nobody's being kind to it and that's the consumer is essentially i hate using that word man but, that's the that's the audience saying hey this is slop why are you giving me slop i know that it costs uh 13 million to make but why like i don't want this i want to i want oblivion remade remade i want an oblivion remake and i want it to be good and that's sort of what you circumvent by making cool indie shit you say hey this is a pretty good game it's 15 20 if you don't like it it's no big deal but we're not asking for a hundred dollars for it we're not like expecting you to sit there like it's citizen kane it.
Tyler:
[1:10:14] You know in a way
Nikolai:
[1:10:16] All the best games.
Tyler:
[1:10:18] Are the ones who are who there's a singular vision behind it like you know maybe one or a small group of people who have like a very clear idea of what it is that they want to do and then if they make it all the way to the end with that same vision it tends to be better than like what you're talking about earlier like you go to talk to a publisher and they're like well what if you added this and what if you added this and like change that and like whatever and then by the time you have like this frankenstein of like very short-sighted stupid ideas that are just like some guy in the marketing department is like well this is you know vampire survivor likes are doing really well right now so like what if we try to do that and like That's not what we're trying to make here.
Nikolai:
[1:10:59] Yeah, no. Yeah, exactly.
Tyler:
[1:11:01] Like, you know, what if you could make it more like, it's the same thing you hear in Hollywood where they're talking about showing somebody a movie script and then by the time the movie comes out, it's like people are mad at the director and the writer saying like, oh, how the fuck do you make this crap?
Tyler:
[1:11:15] And it's like, I didn't intend to make crap. I had a really good idea. And so like Robert Rodriguez is probably one of the only, him and Tarantino too, some of the more independent filmmakers that have their own money. You know, to make what you want.
Nikolai:
[1:11:28] You call them auteurs, right? Auteur.
Tyler:
[1:11:31] But they're, they're not beholden, like no one else is telling them what they have to do. And therefore, when they make something, you know that you're going to get what they intended for you to get. Whether or not you like that is neither here nor there, but it's something that's like pure. It's something that's real.
Tyler:
[1:11:46] It's something that you can, you can say like, you don't judge it the same way. And if I know you spent $400 million and, you know, had all the best people on the team and all of this, fucking corporate crap behind it and like everyone had a i don't know there was a tequila bar and a you know catering and all this shit that you paid billion like all that shit i don't care about any of this stuff like what does the final product look like and if you give me if you tell me you did all that stuff and you still made crap that just makes you look even worse whereas it's like if i know that you guys had a fifty thousand dollar budget to make whatever game you wanted whatever you come out with if you make it successfully even if it's not the greatest fucking you know citizen can of gaming or whatever like you said it's still it's more impressive it's like you only had El Mariachi right was made for $7,000 yeah
Nikolai:
[1:12:41] The whole $7,000. Holy fucking shit. I didn't know that.
Tyler:
[1:12:45] Robert Rodriguez had seven grand and just went to Mexico, found a bunch of people. And he was, he was the entire crew. He wrote it, shot it, produced it, directed, edited it himself, you know, did all the music himself and then sold it to like the fucking Spanish, you know, direct to Spanish movie market. And it was like, it wasn't like a hit movie, like fucking Titanic was, but if you only spend seven grand everything you make after seven grand is profit this is every fucking indie gamer indie game designer aspiring or not whatever out there like think about this if you only spend seven thousand dollars on your game maybe it's more than that but whatever you only have to make seven thousand dollars back before you start making profit if you spend two hundred and fifty thousand dollars on your game you have to make two hundred and $50,000 back and then split that profit 50% or whatever with your publisher and 30% before either of you touch it goes to Steam.
Nikolai:
[1:13:44] Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Tyler:
[1:13:45] Think about the situation you're putting yourself in. Not that that's wrong. There's certainly publishers I would love to work with because I trust that they have a really strong marketing arm. Hopefully, depending on the project, hopefully you have really really strong marketing that should be your like number one priority with the public i'd rather take zero dollars from a publisher who has a huge marketing arm than i would take a quarter million dollars from a publisher who has 10 000 you know people on x or whatever the fuck or some way that i know that they're going to get my game in front of people because it's like now i owe you money and you're not going to sell copies yeah
Nikolai:
[1:14:28] That's that's a pretty good way of putting it like now i owe you money and i'm
Nikolai:
[1:14:32] not gonna not gonna be able to make it back and it's your fault.
Tyler:
[1:14:35] Yeah like if you if you make a game any game and you put it on steam at all like anything the part is like porn if you want you'll probably make like 10 grand over time so if you spend 500 bucks in your basement or whatever you know on mountain dew and and cocaine or whatever gets you through making that game but you make a game that makes even even 501 dollars you've turned a profit but if you're you have 70 people working on this fucking like frankenstein monster and you're splitting all that money and you're taking a fucking 250 000 a million dollar loan whatever the fuck now you're fucked you're screwed in the long term there's a very look your chances are much lower of being successful and that that's the reason to be indie that's that's why it's
Nikolai:
[1:15:28] Like you yeah.
Tyler:
[1:15:29] You don't owe anybody anything
Nikolai:
[1:15:33] You know the people who made what the gulf uh uh gulf.
Tyler:
[1:15:38] Of america try
Nikolai:
[1:15:39] But try uh triband i think they're called um i was over at a thing that they held to talk about like games and like what do you do what's up and this was like uh this was like at this point years ago right i went with Gustau and all those guys.
Nikolai:
[1:16:01] And they basically went over like if you're a indie developer here's what you do start small like one of their tactics and I'm giving the secrets away for free one of the tactics is make a fucking tech demo and I keep seeing this actually with like game jams and these like, indie developers that.
Nikolai:
[1:16:27] Suddenly they're just spouting out of the ground it's almost as if they were working with game companies and then they're no longer working there and they come up with the sickest ideas and they do devlogs of like, yeah, today I added this feature to my little tech demo and it's just the smallest thing in the world, but I look at that and I'm like, you probably made this with a full budget of a thousand dollars and it you know if you put this on steam right now it would make more than a thousand dollars so keep you know keep picking at it keep keep making it bigger and better and then put it on steam yeah you know exactly like you said like seven grand you only have to make seven grand how much is that in steam sales if i'm not saying for go publishers because that's kind of insane you know, it's, it's, But it might behoove you and stay small, just like you said. In a perfect world where rainfall explodes and everybody loves it, I will never, I say never, but I don't know. As I see it right now, I would never get more than 25 people on board, including me, at any given time.
Nikolai:
[1:17:47] Because even 25 people, that sounds like a lot to me.
Tyler:
[1:17:50] Anything more than 10 maybe 12 people you have to start delegating authority like that that's one of the first things that i like really brought to the table i think with with slipgate it was like okay i'll give you the best example i walked in i'm not going to say the name of the game people could probably put it together but i walked into a sprint meeting i was supposed to take over project there's like 60 or more people for two hours in a meeting where they're going over everything all at once and i'm like oh right yeah yeah i'm like why don't you just have a 30 minute or one hour meeting with just the leads of each department and the producer and the director and then because also there's like all this international shit too it's not just the number of people in a meeting but it's like scheduling times for when you have people in this country and this country and this country and this times all that stuff and then let that lead go have their own individual meeting with their team because there's like no reason why if I'm the rigging person on the rigging team I don't need to spend two hours of my working day listening to 99% shit I do not care about and does not have anything to do with me.
Tyler:
[1:19:20] Just to be like, turn my camera on and my microphone on for five seconds and be like, yeah, we're good. Click. This is fucking stupid. This is a huge waste of time and it's demoralizing to the people who are doing it. I'm like, why don't we just delegate? So anytime you have more than 10 people, each group of 10 people should have a leader, delegate, make a nice hierarchy chart. It's very simple. Since the time of Moses and Jethro, this has been the way. It always has been. It always will be. No one person can carry 60 people on their back. Like, you can't even remember 60 people's fucking names, you know? No. If you have, like, three, five, ten people, you'd be like, how's your wife? Oh, you're sick today. Okay, I can handle that. That's fine. But when it's, like, 70, 80, 100, 250, whatever the fuck people, and they're all, like, running around like chickens with their head cut off, and they need to get something done, they go to the boss, and the boss is like, who the fuck are you? I don't know who you are. What tribe are you from? Like, who is your father?
Nikolai:
[1:20:24] Yeah, exactly. I know exactly what project you're talking about, man. But that, it surprises me. Because in the QA department, that's what I did, man. Like, I went to all the sprint meetings and all that shit. Like, all the testers were very welcome, very welcome. But I was like, don't, don't come. don't come because i'll we'll have a startup for 15 minutes in the morning i'll tell you exactly what went down you don't have to spend like yeah exactly like you said two hours is insane but we would have like one hour meetings not be like it's this is a sprint meeting or an hour bro it's not supposed to go this long if everybody does that in the in any given department that's going to go fucking nuts but that's that's where the flat hierarchy comes in like flat hierarchies sound really nice.
Tyler:
[1:21:20] If you have 12 people a flat hierarchy is perfect
Nikolai:
[1:21:24] It's it's it's workable it's doable.
Tyler:
[1:21:26] You have 250 people you need 10 flat hierarchies minimum like you know what i'm saying 10
Nikolai:
[1:21:32] Flat hierarchies in a in an arranged order from top to bottom yeah.
Tyler:
[1:21:38] This person reports to this person and this person reports to that person and that way you don't have to talk to to there's no reason why like the king of rome does not stand in front of the entire country and and all at once tell everyone and address every individual issue you you need to have your advisors all come to you like these are the problems of this region these are the problems of that region talk to the budget guy figure out how we can best spend and how many men we can allocate. Play an RTS game, and then... Play civilization like for three hours and then start a company. If that's, uh, it's a better, it's a better deal.
Nikolai:
[1:22:20] Um, you know, it's, it's a very Danish things who want flat hierarchies, but even in a really small group, it can't be done. Like it's the, it's, it's, you know, too many cooks in the kitchen. That's a saying, but what if every cook was in every kitchen at the same time, all of them sticking their finger in the fucking soup or.
Tyler:
[1:22:43] Worse like there's a kitchen full of like sous chefs and no chef
Nikolai:
[1:22:46] It's like yeah yeah yeah yeah nobody to tell you what to do it's, a flat hierarchy sound really nice on an emotional pathos level because no nobody's nobody's better than anybody it's like no i'm not saying that anybody's better than anybody but some people just need to be told like no here's exactly what needs to be done by monday don't think too much about it you you do this and i'll go talk to you know the emperor or who the fuck ever you.
Tyler:
[1:23:15] Know what the word sergeant means
Nikolai:
[1:23:17] Uh no it.
Tyler:
[1:23:19] Means literally in french servant
Nikolai:
[1:23:21] Oh so the sergeant is like to the general that's their servant.
Tyler:
[1:23:27] And to the people below you like i never thought about when I put on Staff Sergeant I didn't think about it like, I'm in charge now, I'm the big man on campus, I'm like, now I'm responsible for all these people now I have three or four people and every other person who works when I'm on duty under me are my responsibility, it's not as simple as I'm in charge of you and you'll do what the fuck I tell you to, it's like your problems are my problems I am here to make your life better you're here to make my life better but I'm here to make all of your lives better and that that's the way i think people ought to look at it in a quite literal sense like i'm not here to boss you around i'm here to help you i'm here to take your problems and make them not problems for you and therefore not for the whole group because if you know you have like one person who's i don't know just use slipkid as a example you have one marketing dude who shows up fucking like half the time fucked up and angry and upset all you know like throwing shit at the wall, that's a problem for the whole company. So you have to take that dude and shove him in a fucking room and put a door between him and the rest of the company or get rid of him. That's the other option. That's what I would have chosen, but they gave me an office.
Nikolai:
[1:24:43] Yeah, they gave you the nice office. They gave you the fucking nice one.
Tyler:
[1:24:47] Kind of took it, you know, if you want to. Like, I remember they, I think Vini or whatever published like that. This is the new seating chart. And they put like us across from, I don't know, like production or whatever. And then like all the meeting rooms were still meeting rooms. And I just screenshotted it and rewrote like a crossed out meeting room. And I put former meeting room number two will now be the marketing office. Pasted that into the announcements chat. Showed up early like at like six o'clock the next day and moved all my shit in there and just waited for someone to say anything about it. No one did.
Nikolai:
[1:25:21] Well, no, I'm talking about the, I'm talking about the downstairs next to the fucking QA. Yeah. The nice one. You had your own little kitchen, man. You had your,
Nikolai:
[1:25:29] like, it was nice, bro. It was, it was fucking good.
Tyler:
[1:25:33] We really needed, uh, regardless of that, like we needed a door between us and everyone else, or otherwise we couldn't honestly talk about what was going on because yeah i mean no no disrespect to anybody at all it's just like if we know something's about to get canceled or shit canned or you know whatever the fuck is going to happen and i can't openly talk about that because the dude across the hall is overhearing me explain this that's bad for the whole group and yeah so i was like insistent like george was too like we have to have a safe space to have conversations at and it can't just be like it was so annoying we like we'd be like game launch day or whatever and we don't want to be around the whole group and then we'd have to take over a meeting room and then somebody would come in on friday morning and be like could you guys like get out of our way so we can have breakfast i'm like you don't fucking deserve breakfast you even even ship a game you're shipping a game yeah we're publishing a game today what are you doing like having breakfast no
Nikolai:
[1:26:35] I remember the vibe i definitely remember remember the vibe and in that situation you need a locked door and a big red telephone that goes directly to george and goes directly to fred and whoever.
Tyler:
[1:26:47] And you guys too like qa that was one of the things that i fucking frustrated the shit out of me i was like dude if qa tells you to do something you kind of have to do it like i hated the whole you having to argue with game directors shit i'm like if you tell this motherfucker to fix something that should be his first priority until it's done like end of discussion and i remember like you you struggling with that that
Nikolai:
[1:27:10] Was the thing like it was only at the very tail end where i was like yeah i had like i was talking to like the the top brass like the upper management and stuff like i was like yeah i have to put my foot down and say like no you have to do this and they were like well you always had that power i was like excuse me like i can tell people no and this is final and they were like yeah you could you could cut out whole sections of a game if you want like.
Tyler:
[1:27:37] And
Nikolai:
[1:27:38] If you if it makes sense i was like why did you not tell me and why why did why did you make it seem like i was beholden to these motherfuckers and afterward i was like no actually we're this is how we're doing it it was way too late for any of that i wish you know i wish i'd done that more often i.
Tyler:
[1:28:01] Think ua marketing and especially finance should be like at the top of the heap in a company like that like if if your finance guy comes over and tells you to do something that should be the first thing because like if he's not happy or she's not happy guess what none of us are getting paid like yeah
Nikolai:
[1:28:19] Exactly numbers are numbers are not happening the way i want them to we need to structure it so it does.
Tyler:
[1:28:26] Yeah like
Nikolai:
[1:28:27] Tell people what to do.
Tyler:
[1:28:30] I'd like to spend uh the next six weeks center and another in another sprint on this new idea that i just had or like polishing blah blah blah or whatever the fuck and i'm like that's great and all but that's six weeks of five people's salaries that now have to be reallocated for you and so if this guy says no to that then that's it's not happening and that's another reason like if you want to be if you want to have that kind of power you have to remain indie because then you don't have to deal with that side of the business um and then there's there's always going to be passion there should be passion like there should be people who are like standing up and arguing for their point of view like i think the game will be better in the long run but like you have to make the case Like, okay, if you spend six weeks polishing these trees, am I going to make back more money than what it costs me to let you do that?
Nikolai:
[1:29:21] Yeah, nah, nah. I don't know if you're referring to the actual tree that I'm thinking of. That was a fucking debacle, man. Like, uh, big learning experience. I think we both learned a lot from working at Slipgate and be able to bring that to the fore. Like just now, you know, some of us were talking about, uh, not me, but some of us were talking about in Cotton Hammer. Maybe we should make a small, tiny thing, put that out there, just as a tech demo. I try to, in a very diplomatic way, be like, no, I don't think so. But in my mind, I'm like, are you fucking kidding right now? Are you fucking joking?
Tyler:
[1:30:10] I think it makes sense to any company, but as an indie company, it would be better to have three five ten small projects out there making you money passively and then once you have that revenue source focus on the big mac and mopus thing you know the thing that you all want to make like call us regnar has been in development for like 10 years maybe more at this point i came in after several years of it already being worked on there was already a demo at that point and i don't know when the end is because like until i'm 100 sure i have like the funds to make it exactly like i want to like it's it's not really going to progress a lot like it'll just be going at the pace of three people working on it and that's okay i'm not upset about that but if you
Tyler:
[1:31:05] Are if you're in one of these situations where you have a like a an end date like you have to finish it at this point and you have to earn a certain amount of money back and you can only spend so much money to get there like there's just too many moving parts to be able to make those creative decisions like I'm going to spend six weeks working on trees and
Tyler:
[1:31:25] It's just different. Yeah, exactly. All the more reason to be indie. And to your, on In the Keep side, and I hope that you guys relatively do the same, once I'm done with Stellar Valkyrie and the two or three other games that I do after that, you know, and they're all out there and whether they make a million dollars or whatever, I don't care. But they're just sitting there accruing income, you know, because they're available and people can just continue to buy them and keep up with the marketing or whatever the fuck. Then I have money to play around with and if I want to come back to call off Sregnar and say like okay I'm gonna put 20 grand into this or whatever you know 30 I don't know if I make $500,000 just fund the whole game then I can make those kinds of calls but like there's so many instances of people who are just quite literally spending money they don't have to try to do something that is not that important and having that oversight where someone can step in like a QA lead and say this is this is not the priority the pro the priority is that this entire system breaks down can we focus on that because this way we're you know it's nice because you get to look at a pretty tree and this way it's nice because the game doesn't break when you go to look at the tree can we can we agree on that and it's it's hard to it's it can be hard to have those conversations too because you know the person who's in charge of trees is always going to trees are your number one priority.
Nikolai:
[1:32:51] Yeah. Yeah.
Tyler:
[1:32:52] Obviously. And when you set up a company, you know, period like even if it's a small company like one of the best pieces of advice i was ever given was like you have to have at the o level like uh like clearly defined roles like you can't have your ceo also be your cfo because your ceo is always going to want to make shit like like fred schreiber great example always going to have like that super creative like hardcore energy like oh yeah we can do this and we can do that and we can make this and it'll be like huh and if he's also the finance officer finances will always be second to executive like you know what i mean so you need to have two people who equally represent those roles and your your operations officer should be the same and your tech officer should be the same because the last thing you want to do is have a great amazing idea and you don't have the technology or the money to make it happen or the operations to make it happen and yeah so it's just important that all of those people sit on a like a even plane that should be your flattest hierarchy should be at the very top exactly
Nikolai:
[1:33:57] Yeah that's that's the thing like if i want something to look a certain way i can say it as much as i want but if greg is not fucking with it if he's like no that's not possible sorry like he'll say that and i might be like damn it man.
Tyler:
[1:34:12] Why why
Nikolai:
[1:34:13] Isn't it possible it's just not but that's the thing actually you said like magnum opus i think magnum opus is a dangerous fucking word and is a dangerous concept because everybody everybody treats their first thing like it's their magnum opus and i'm of the different you know opinion like i've, I've written so many stories that it's silly and none of them will ever be the magnum opus. But when I started writing in earnest, I was like my first story. It has to be, you know, the, it has to be the game of Thrones of its time. I have to make the magnum opus. And it was only once I got over that, that I was able to write, like, just write a fucking, just write a short story. Give me, give me 5,000 words and make it interesting.
Tyler:
[1:35:05] Right. the lord of the rings was not tolkien's first time putting pen to paper that's exactly
Nikolai:
[1:35:10] Exactly it's and it's the t.s elliot uh uh situation of verse not good enough to warrant so much of it, um but i i'll try to like in my own like sometimes brutal way help people when they're like kind of spinning their wheels like that. Cause I, I, I knew a guy who was like, I didn't know him, but he was present in a space that I was. He was like, I'm working on so many projects and, uh, I'm like a prolific writer. I'm prolific. I write every day. And I was like, show me one, show me one story. He was like, well, I haven't actually finished any of them. Like, okay. What the pick one pick one story that and and finish it i'll next week i want you to come back and tell me i finished it here you go please read it and he was like well i i have this this one script and this fan fiction and this like and i have this in the like no stop stop stop stop, you're working on 5 000 different stories and all of them have to be your mac mopes and you're spinning your wheels and you're never going to get anywhere. Just make something.
Nikolai:
[1:36:24] And I'm the same, same way with Ringfall. I'm sure in a way that you're the same way with the Colossus Ragnar where, you, ring fall is never going to be any of our magnum opuses there's never there's there's not going to be a magnum opus i don't want to fucking hear that word i want to make a cool game hopefully that does really well and if it does we can make another cool game and another and another and then eventually we'll have 10 cool games under our belts we'll all have enough money to buy like a steak once in a while and none of us will rip our hairs out because we didn't make uh we didn't make oblivion you know we didn't make the original battlefield or whatever like who cares would be cool to make something that everybody loves but i think it's so fucking dangerous to like even say the word magnum opus.
Tyler:
[1:37:16] It the thing like eventually you can do that but like it's probably going to happen in your mid 40s when you've you know you have all your checklist down it's like okay i have i have steady work i have a house i have a wife i have a kid i have a tree i have a dog all
Nikolai:
[1:37:34] Of my i.
Tyler:
[1:37:35] Don't i don't have any additional things that i need to worry about before and then and i have some money now i can play around that's why everything happens in like 30 year cycles with like zeitgeist and art it's like you know movies made in 2020 in 2030 are gonna be like set in the early 2000s because the people like you and i will be old enough and we'll have the stability and the money to make the shit that we've always wanted to make right that's
Nikolai:
[1:38:05] Actually a good point yeah.
Tyler:
[1:38:06] And that's true everything that's why like fucking stranger things comes out in 2015 because it's set in the 80s by people who grew up in the 80s or were now old enough to make the shit that they always wanted to make. That's why that happens.
Tyler:
[1:38:21] So, like, delaying your, you know, gratification and, like, having, you know, having reasonable goals, you know, stepping stones on your way to whatever you're, we're not going to use the word, but your big thing is okay.
Tyler:
[1:38:36] I've had one, a couple, one script in particular
Tyler:
[1:38:41] That I've just shelved since the dawn of this company because i knew i couldn't you know afford to make it like i and eventually i will do that game and i will be very proud of it when it comes out but like i don't i literally like couldn't have done it the way that i wanted to at the time like the whole team was like yeah fuck it let's just make this space bird game instead because that's an attainable and even that was bigger than you know we could have imagined in terms of like actual execution i didn't know that i was gonna go spend two years in Europe not working on it so but even that was like okay but if I spend these two years over there with with Nikolai you know and all that shit learning about this stuff I'll be better at making this game when I come back to it so I'm hoping like I don't think Stellarocker is going to be the greatest game ever made but I do hope that like the the delay the effort that was put into like setting that aside to do something bigger to come back to it will show in its final release it won't be it won't be the same game i originally envisioned it won't it won't be like as as what's the word i'm looking for it it will be
Tyler:
[1:39:51] The version of this game that happens when you know a lot more you know with four or five more years of experience in the industry than oh i use that word then you then i would have if i had just thrown something together in six months and like said okay fuck it because my original idea was like let's spend a couple grand make a fps in the doom engine we'll take six months maximum to do it we'll put it out there it'll make a couple thousand dollars we'll reinvest into the next thing That was always the goal. Like it was never to make the fucking greatest game of all time. I already have the greatest game of all time. It's sitting on a shelf and it will come out when I'm ready. It just only exists in my head and only I can play it.
Nikolai:
[1:40:33] Well, once you do pick up the greatest game of all time from the shelf and actually start making it, you're going to be so, you're going to have so many games under your belt and so much experience that, and it, yeah, it'll be so much easier to make because you'll have so much more knowledge that it's not going to be a magnum opus for you it's just going to be this is the fucking project i always wanted to make but the magnum opus it has like this vibe of like, you know uh the meme of like nobody thought obama could ever do it oh nobody's thought obama could do it nobody thought that you could do it but but there here he is you.
Tyler:
[1:41:11] Run yeah yeah exactly same thing
Nikolai:
[1:41:14] So like it you know i'm not sure if there are any like young guys in their 20s like thinking i want to be the game designer i have this brilliant idea in my head listening right now but if you are fucking stop uh make something small and something attainable and send it to me and then you know i'll i'll be very happy that you did and then you can go on to do the next thing because otherwise you're going to spin your wheels like when, I had my biggest like I also have everybody has that game that they want to make that they, you know it's their magnum opus and it's going to sit on the shelf maybe but, If I started that when I started in the gaming industry, one of the questions I had was, what is the Godot engine or Godot or whatever? Like Unreal Engine, where do you get that? Like I was so fucking ignorant, but I still have this idea.
Tyler:
[1:42:16] I just have people who do know around me. Just delegate.
Nikolai:
[1:42:22] I'm in the shit, man. I own the mechanic shop, but i'm underneath the tires fucking scraping rust off a buick it's getting in my mouth getting my eyes and into my bloodstream but i i like i like that i i like doing that shit but at the time i was so ignorant but i had ideas even now i'm like i'm in no way ready to make that game i can i can mull on it but no it's it's not gonna happen not in not before 2030 bro not before then.
Tyler:
[1:43:02] For instance i'll always bring him up but like my friend uh bridge burner interviewed john romero one time and it was the like the opening opening line was the funniest thing in the world to me because it's like so prolific he goes well let's talk about your early work like and he says wolfenstein doom and quake and john romero goes well you know wolfenstein was like my 87th game yeah exactly no exaggeration like literally it's like the 87th game i published and i'm like that that's the answer that's how you get to that point you know you just make them it's like when i started stellar valkyrie my moby games list or whatever would have read
Tyler:
[1:43:50] Exactly and yeah when i finished stellar valkyrie my movie games will it'll be something like postal ghostware slayers x super buff ripout kingpin phantom fury heading out tempest rising command and conquer And Stellar Valkyrie. So, like, that'll be okay. I'm fine with it. Like, I'd prefer it.
Tyler:
[1:44:16] If I needed to go get a job somewhere, and they're like, what have you worked on? And at the time that I originally came to work for Slipgate or 3D Realms or whatever, the answer was nothing. And now it's like, well, I did all these games. All of this stuff. Like, they all have my name on it. What do you think of any of those? You know, there's some in there I'm more proud of than others. but whatever yeah
Nikolai:
[1:44:40] Look yeah i i actually just checked just because you know let.
Tyler:
[1:44:44] Me look you up
Nikolai:
[1:44:45] I i am on tempest rising and i'm very thankful thank you thank you guys if you're if you're listening that's that's huge because uh yeah the numbers on that they don't really line up with what i did and what i done did but there it is yeah that's fine that is fine but the uh it's always like when i talk to young guys who are like in the artist space or want to make games or want to make movies or want to like write stories i always take on like the persona of a like a jaded grandpa almost where because because they're all like i'm i want my first thing to be yeah you know like Citizen Kane and I know who they are because I was them. I was you. I, you listening right now, I was you shut up and make something. I got, I don't, I don't care about your big aspirations and how prolific you are. You haven't made one thing. Show me one thing. And if you are, then you know what? You get a kiss on the cheek and you get a pat on the ass. And I'll, I'll tell you, you know what? That was great. Go make something again.
Tyler:
[1:45:58] I'll throw someone under the bus because I love them so much. Who is the head of production at 3d realms uh kim right kim has two games ever well
Nikolai:
[1:46:13] He wasn't in the game industry before he came on that was the thing.
Tyler:
[1:46:17] Yeah and that's not a criticism like he did a bunch of tech shit before he came to the games industry and yet you know kim is what 489 years old and I'm 29 and I'm just like from a games perspective like what have you done I made a lot more games than Kim has no disrespect to Kim love Kim just one of those things where it's like what do you want your body of work to look like and what's more valuable at the end of the day like I think John Romero has probably made 87 games since Quake.
Nikolai:
[1:46:51] Oh, like, abso-fucking-lutely, like, shit that you haven't seen. Shit that he's just made a full-ass game, like, in the, like, DOS, right, on an old computer that he dusted off. And he made a full-ass game. He made Skyrim on a DOS computer and just threw it away, because it was like, yeah, no, it wasn't what I wanted.
Tyler:
[1:47:12] But according to Moby Games, John Romero to date has published 144 games. And I bet you that doesn't include all of the stuff that he wrote as a teenager and was just publishing in magazines and shit.
Nikolai:
[1:47:28] No, fuck no. Like that, that was the thing. Like back then you would get a floppy disk in a magazine. Like I was barely even born at the time, but like, I know about that. Right.
Tyler:
[1:47:42] When he started out because he grew up in in tucson like at the same he literally grew up on the same air force base that i've served on and they had those old computers where you would print code and then you would feed in like the dot machine you would feed that into the computer so with before they even were shipping floppy disks around they would in the magazines like write out the code and then you would at your home computer your i don't know amiga or whatever the fuck your apple more likely type that code into your machine and hit enter and then play that game if you typed it in correctly that's crazy but that's how it was and that
Nikolai:
[1:48:26] Is nutty man that is nutty but yeah yeah so so in in so many words like just get shit done get small things done like the like the fry band guys you know were harping on on they kept saying you know just make a small tech demo like once in a while we'll just you know have people.
Nikolai:
[1:48:48] They were a small company too at the time i don't know how big they are now but they were like we'll just have people like send them to their desks and they'll just make a little tech demo and at the end of the week we'll look at it and oh that's cool like a little blob that hops between like uh you know platforms and you know you can speed up so you become like a flubber like flubber of the game 2d imagine that that's already a tech demo that you can make out there um and and you know if it's really good then we just put some graphics slap some graphics on it slap some more logic on it put some art on it and put it on steam and there it is a super cheap game nobody in that room made skyrim 2 nobody in that room made doom the new age or whatever like they just made a cute little fun thing they had a full-ass office in copenhagen i don't know a lot of people probably don't know but that is expensive as fuck like you can't do that if you don't have a good turnaround money-wise so they were doing okay keep it small keep it simple that's what we're doing man like, every time like a really big idea crosses the.
Nikolai:
[1:50:11] The airwaves I want to bat it down like an angry cat I'm like no no we're not doing that no no no absolutely not.
Tyler:
[1:50:20] 90% of an executive's job is to say no
Nikolai:
[1:50:26] Yeah yeah yeah yeah and they'll keep me in check too you know I'll be like oh we can do this and like no okay usually it's Trevor saying like nope, fuck fine i'm not fine but it's not what i wanted.
Tyler:
[1:50:42] Yeah yeah we're like oh can we have key lime pie is like no like but i want key lime pie well we don't have any limes so yeah you're just gonna have key pie you
Nikolai:
[1:50:58] Can make a key pie that would be cool or we could just have like uh or we could just have sardines on rye bread we have that, it's it's it's crazy to to say but keeping each other in check like that that
Nikolai:
[1:51:17] is the only way that a cool idea survives.
Tyler:
[1:51:20] True and and like having that like open collaborative process where people feel comfortable telling someone no i think is also really important we touched on that a bit earlier with like qa department stuff but like that you can't have like someone who just runs away with every idea they have all the time and doesn't respect what other people tell them like we can't do that or it would be better if we did this or whatever and every person that that's the argument i guess for a flat hierarchy in a lot of ways it's like everyone feels comfortable telling this other person like
Tyler:
[1:51:59] Or not reasonable or this is why or whatever the fuck you know and then also at the same time but hey what if we did this like let's divert from that plan and that's also good too like i know you have this really in mind but like it would be what if we had this idea what if we changed it this way um what you know and it's like that kind of creative insight from sometimes from the bottom where it's like you you realize that you know things have been done a certain way for a certain amount of time and like oh but there's a better way to do it and being able to go and say what if we change the whole process of how we do this it would be more efficient it would be easier on me if you could make my job easier i could do more things for you and or you know in a faster amount of time or whatever that kind of stuff so yeah running a company's hard it is you You guys will do fine. I'm sure.
Nikolai:
[1:52:51] I'm, I'm sure once we get an actual MVP out and we can start actually, you know, showing that shit off and say, Hey, you know, here's the idea. Here's a little more than the basic, you know, non-textured buildings. And we have multiple guns. Here's the actual idea. You guys want to pay for it? I'm, I'm confident that at least some people are going to be like, yeah, you know what? I'll throw you a fiver. I'll i'll give you i'll give you 10 bucks if you you know if you uh need help funding this shit and it's in truth yes we do we're all fucking hungry we're we can't afford steak please.
Tyler:
[1:53:32] It also helps like from your side of the way if you're looking for funding whether that be from a crowd of people or whatever When you look at a lot of these indie devs with a Kickstarter or whatever, it's like, what is this? And they're like, it's my first game ever, and it's the only game I've ever wanted to make. And I just can't wait for everyone to see this amazing idea that I've been working on for 15 years finally come to life. Not quoting anyone in particular. But in your guys' case, it's like, if you're going to a publisher, if you're talking to a crowd of people, or whatever the fuck it is, and you're like, well, what have you done before? What reason do we have to trust that you'll actually be able to do what you're saying you're going to do? And everybody on your team has been involved in lots of games or many different projects and has experience. And so it's like, well, if we could all do that, imagine what we could do without our hands tied behind our back, basically. This is what we would do if we could do whatever we wanted. And that's a big selling point, huge. How many companies do you know of where it's like, well several industry veterans or whatever the fuck from this you know like they broke off and then they went and did the other thing that they wanted to do and they're like oh well i trust them because they worked at i don't know like someone left adobe to make abode or whatever
Nikolai:
[1:54:47] Oh my god you know i would i would buy that in a fucking heartbeat yeah if the if the real ones from adobe went and actually made something that was not under the adobe name oh you better believe it buddy i would fucking buy that yeah.
Tyler:
[1:55:01] A lot of people would
Nikolai:
[1:55:02] And and even yeah like saying for example uh like black isle is a really bad example because they were the real ones behind like fallout one and two but if somebody said like black isle they're you know it's not obsidian let's say obsidian we're making we're splintering off we were some of the creatives behind fallout new vegas and all the good ones we're making fall in uh new uh new nevada whatever you know something something that they wanted to make and they have you know i know there are known quantity i'm buying that i'm wishlisting that actually what that wishlisting is yeah wishlisting is all i can ask for um you know if if you like this if you like be like old cod and old halo you know wishlist this please and once it's done once we have a gmc you'll get a ping go look at it and if you want to pay 20 bucks here's a fucking cool game for you and i you know i know greg and i know what he likes and what he wants to do with the visuals it's gonna be fucking cool like i'm not even blowing smoke up my own ass because this is like my game but i just fuck with greg's vision that hard.
Tyler:
[1:56:29] What was the comparison? I said, it looks like a GI Joe meets metal gear solid.
Nikolai:
[1:56:35] Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And I, I actually showed him and I was like, Greg, Tyler gets it. Tyler gets it. And he immediately came back. Yes. You fucking get it. Yes, yes, yes. It's like, it's good. Exactly. Like that's the fucking vibe and all the particulars. It's going to be, it's going to be good, but it's not going to be our magnum opus and you know if if anybody's listening right now with a, 15 not 15 year old but like a like a two-year-old google doc that's like uh 92 000 words but it's never going to be finished like stop stop what you're doing uh open up a new google doc write a cool outline and make that or a mirror board or whatever like something small something that you could do i want to see it done next year and if it's not done next year i'm coming to your house and i'm killing you.
Tyler:
[1:57:35] The i love the scene in fight club where he is at the convenience store he takes the guy out back and he's like takes his wallet and he's like what did you like did you want to be a gas station attendant and he's like no and he's like what did you want to do when you were a kid and he's like i wanted to be a veterinarian and he's like why aren't you a veterinarian he's like too much school and he's like okay well i'll tell you what i'm gonna keep your wallet okay i know where you live i'm gonna come back to you in like two weeks and if you're not on your way to being a veterinarian i will come pay you a visit and then he's like walks away and the other guy's like the narrator he's like why would you do that you're fucking crazy and he's like tomorrow morning his breakfast will taste better than any breakfast he's ever had in his entire life he'll have a whole new outlook on everything and i think like in many ways like the the layoffs were a good thing because it lit a fire under so many people's ass to like,
Tyler:
[1:58:29] What am I doing? Like, why am I, why am I sitting here and letting myself be in a situation when I could be out there doing the thing that I wanted to do all along, which is to make cool shit and hope that people enjoy it. And, you know, have that artistic vision, whatever it is in your mind, like come to fruition. And it's like, it doesn't have to be, like you said, it doesn't have to be that one big thing. It could be like, you know, slow drip, you know, you don't inject all the morphine at one time you let it you know just little tidbits just enough to keep you going until you get there and then yeah yeah then when you're about to die that's when they hit you with the full dose it doesn't matter anymore
Nikolai:
[1:59:06] That's when they hit you with a full dose of fentanyl, no but but it's it is true what you're saying man because like when we start when i was at slipgate you know i was in the millennial company man mindset and it really is the new company man And I'm not, you know, I'm not making any aspersions cause one's not better than the other. It's just different.
Tyler:
[1:59:31] Yep.
Nikolai:
[1:59:32] Getting out of there. I was like, well, you know what, how about we, what, why don't we just start our own fucking thing? Like what's, what's stopping us? You know, like we already made a cool little game in two weeks and I'm, I can't speak too much on that, on that project, but essentially, no, it was, it was one month, but in one month we made one project. And sure, we were like four or five people. But then, you know what? Get four or five of your friends together. Make a commitment to each other that when we're not in school or when we're not at our jobs, we'll work on this thing. And in one month, you might have a cool little project that you can put on Steam. And it might do a bookshop roulette. it might become the, um, It might be the new web fishing. That was sort of a flash in the pan, but you remember web fishing. It's the concept. So simple, so small, you could make it in a month or less. And it made gangbusters.
Tyler:
[2:00:42] Before I left Europe, like kind of like it was, everybody knew I was like leaving and everything, but I went to Prague and I was just like sitting at a pub with
Tyler:
[2:00:51] George and he was like, you know, having that, what are you going to do now? You know like if you need any references to apply or whatever the fuck and i was like i was i thought in my head and i said this to george at the time it's like you know a lot of people are going to walk away from this situation like bitter and angry and they're gonna you know and they're the next thing they're going to do is go apply for more you know jobs similar to what they did before and they're going to be beholden to someone else to like decide whether or not you're valuable to them and all that kind of shit and i was like and that's fine but i'm going to not do that at all like i'm i'm going to walk away from this and i'm just going to go double down on in the keep like and it might take me a while but i'm going to take everything i've learned here and i'm just going to be my own boss from now on like i don't ever want to be in this situation again where i'm like stuck and i can't get anything done and i feel helpless to to help anybody or do anything or complete anything because you know the there's so many moving parts going around like i'm just gonna do that it makes more sense and
Nikolai:
[2:01:53] And if everybody if everything falls apart at least you know who to blame right like that was my fault right.
Tyler:
[2:02:02] When i'm 60 years old i don't want to look back at my career and just be like see like a series of jobs that i did for other people to make them happy like i you know when i look great grandkids or whatever like what did you do what did grandpa do was like i'd rather i'd rather have said like oh well in my 20s I started a company and you know and even if it doesn't work out like and then I started another company and I did a bunch of shit I went all over the world and I did all these things like or do I just want to say like I worked at you know one company for my entire life i got a watch when i left and that's it and it's a boring story it's not as interesting i'd rather be the phoenix that rises from the ashes than i would be just the person who like never did anything interesting um so i try to always just think in the long term like who do i want to be what is my story going to be and for me it won't be uh got fired once or whatever and then just played it safe after that. Nobody wants that. That's lame. Yeah.
Nikolai:
[2:03:02] Got a job at Kroger and then I was there for however many years. It's, you know, man, that actually brings a lot to mind. But the whole idea of being like, I'm a company man and I can't believe it, they sacked me. It's like Yeah, you're a company man. You're a company man. That means you're expendable. You're one of the expendables in the movie. You get killed at the first sign of danger. And if you didn't want to be that, maybe you should make web fishing. Maybe you should make something cool.
Tyler:
[2:03:49] Yeah. I mean, if you're going to die anyway, you're going to be broke anyway. Might as well be broke doing something you like doing.
Nikolai:
[2:03:55] That's the that's the morsel in uh in peace yeah.
Tyler:
[2:04:00] Man it's been uh super cool catching up with you and all that stuff i can't wait to see the what is it when it was like what's the timeline on the game like do you are you guys gonna do a demo early access like when can people expect to see something well
Nikolai:
[2:04:16] My timeline is always i'm like optimistic cautiously optimistic and i'm you know the way that things are going right now we will be in a place where in a few months or a couple of months even like not a long time man we'll be able to have an MVP out depending on how things and that'll be available for you know anyone to try out it'll just be there with a tier of crowdfunding so it'll be super cheap to get on the ground level, Might not be too many maps and shit, but that'll be very, very soon, the way that things are looking right now. And down the line, I'm very, very optimistic that this year we'll have a full GMC and the, maybe not though maybe it'll be next year that's always the caution you know you you always want to give yourself double the amount of time but we don't have a publisher we don't have anybody to be beholden to so literally when is the game out it'll be out when it's out to
Nikolai:
[2:05:28] quote the great linkara it'll be out when it's out yep.
Tyler:
[2:05:32] That's the way to do it but
Nikolai:
[2:05:34] Uh we'll make a big stink on x cotton hammer dev uh at cotton hammer dev just search cotton hammer studios if you're interested also the website uh blue sky all that shit if you're if you're interested in what we're doing uh we'll make a big stink about it and people will definitely not be able to avoid our shit yeah.
Tyler:
[2:05:58] Plus we have a big surprise for everybody that i'm not gonna spoil right now but
Nikolai:
[2:06:02] Exactly big surprise keep it on the hush man you're already giving it away it's.
Tyler:
[2:06:09] A secret um all right dude well let me know if you guys need any help i'm always here especially when you start the the marketing stuff i can uh hopefully be a big valuable asset in that way
Nikolai:
[2:06:24] Obviously man of course i'm gonna be pulling on you you're gonna be the first guy.
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Tyler:
[2:06:38] Thank you very much to Nick for coming on the show. It's super great to catch up with him. And I hope you guys will go follow Cotton Hammer Studios all over the place on X, on their website, on GetRingFall, on your wish list on Steam. Now, you son of a bitch.
Tyler:
[2:06:55] And, yeah, it's May time now. And as many of you know i have some things happening which will be taking up a lot of my time so if things are a little slow around here that's okay i promise later in may there will be lots of cool new things from in the keep so stay tuned uh thank you to all of our patreon supporters supporters supporters folks patrons and everyone else who has wonderfully contributed to our show if you're thinking of ways to do that you can of course go on my wish list it's in every article on our website uh where a podcast is posted and uh buy me a book or or you could be a patreon supporter any of those things or just go to the support tab if you feel like it if you don't that's cool just uh keep on listening tell a friend tell a friend how much you like this show i love you god love you stay in the keep
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[2:08:00] Music
