Sam Marshall is the head of DOSMan Games, an indie publisher and studio focusing on bite-sized retro FPS games. Their titles to date include Flash of the Blade X, Reverend, Reaper, DOSMan: Space Aliens in Space, Satan, and the upcoming ancient Egypt themed Skarab.
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Books Mentioned
Chapters
00:00 Start
4:26 Working at PEGI
6:45 Reality TV Obsessions
20:52 Video Game Sound Design
24:29 New Game Developments
30:42 Dystopian Futures
34:05 The Complexity of Religious Themes
40:44 Founding DOSMAN
53:31 The Rise of Boomer Shooters
1:04:29 Arcade Racing Resurgence
1:07:49 The Future of Game Development
1:18:27 Pricing Strategies for Indie Games
1:25:26 Building a Game Studio Brand
1:43:13 Exploring Cyberpunk Themes
1:47:23 Collaborating with Musicians
1:58:21 Current Projects and Future Plans
Transcript
Tyler:
[0:00] If, for instance, I determine the weight of each stone in a bed of pebbles and get an average weight of 145 grams, this tells me very little about the real nature of the pebbles.
Tyler:
[0:11] Anyone who thought, on the basis of these findings, that he could pick up a pebble of 145 grams at the first try would be in for a serious disappointment.
Tyler:
[0:20] Indeed, it might well happen that however long he searched, he would not find a single pebble weighing exactly 145 grams. The statistical method shows the fact, in light, of the ideal average, but does not give us a picture of their empirical reality. While reflecting on an undisputable aspect of reality, it can falsify the actual truth in a most misleading way. This is particularly true of theories which are based on statistics. The distinctive thing about real facts, however, is their individuality. Not to put too fine a point on it, one could say, the real picture consists of nothing but exceptions to the rule. And that, in consequence, absolute reality has predominantly the character of irregularity. Carl Jung in The Undiscovered Self.
Sam:
[1:13] Life started in a hospital, as it does for most.
Tyler:
[1:16] You know, that's tragic. You should really think about it. Like, the first thing you do in your life is you're in the hospital. It's like, fuck, you got injured. Is birth an injury?
Sam:
[1:26] Well, I was £9.3, so I think that's debatable.
Tyler:
[1:30] I think you injured your mom.
Sam:
[1:33] But yeah, I decided as a young lad, and then played some PS1 games kind of growing up, and never thought I'd ever be any sort of creative or making anything. And then suddenly found an engine that I could work in, and now I make games. that's the uh that's the abridged version.
Tyler:
[1:57] So it would be great if that was not the abridged version like that's the synopsis of my life is video
Sam:
[2:06] Game video game video game yeah and uh and a lot of jean-claude van damme in the in between yeah.
Tyler:
[2:13] He was your father right like you guys was it strained with him traveling so much for film shoots or
Sam:
[2:19] I feel like as much as i like van damme he would more fit creepy uncle.
Tyler:
[2:23] Vibes having a belgian uncle would suck
Sam:
[2:28] Um yeah okay so okay so.
Tyler:
[2:32] Anyway growing up uh in in the in the uk and everything you got what you had like maybe mega drive or did you skip place straight to the playstation or what was kind of the
Sam:
[2:45] My my parents were a bit uh a bit weird with it like um they were very much like oh you shouldn't be playing video games and and even like when i was like using my imagination indoors it was more like you should go outside um so i did that too, I didn't have a console growing up for a long time. When I stayed at, we had like a childminder. I'd stay at hers and her grandson had Quake and Doom up on the PC upstairs. So I'd try like the first level of that and absolutely be terrible at it as like a five or six year old and then get found out and brought downstairs.
Tyler:
[3:21] But a childminder is what we would call a babysitter, right?
Sam:
[3:25] Yeah, yeah. Okay.
Tyler:
[3:27] Yeah. It's just one of them things. Even having been to the UK, I don't think anyone's ever said those words to me. Child-minded.
Sam:
[3:35] I don't think it's something that would just come up in casual conversation.
Tyler:
[3:38] I know, right? It's just one of those, like, okay. It's another one on the list of, like, tires with a Y.
Sam:
[3:47] But, yeah, like, I didn't have a console until I was probably 10 or 11, which is when a friend of the family just gave us a PS1 and a bunch of football games. Soccer, to you guys. Right. And from there, I just kind of became completely absorbed in them and slowly started finding where my tastes sort of lied there, which surprisingly wasn't in soccer games. And, you know, started playing first-person shooters.
Sam:
[4:21] TimeSplitters was coming around pretty soon after that, which was sort of my big FPS introduction. um and then yeah played a few other things here and there uh did some writing about video games as well and then we sort of come towards me entering the industry uh started working at peggy the aid rating place in europe for video games uh and from there managed to use that as like a launch pad into uh into working at a game publisher uh and whilst at the game publisher i was like, I like publishing these people's games, but you know what I'd like more would be publishing my games. And then... did that and made them.
Tyler:
[5:04] I i gotta ask like okay so if you worked at peggy were you like deciding what rating a game should get yeah
Sam:
[5:13] Well you have like uh you have like a questionnaire you've got to like abide by which has got like a bunch of rule stacks and stuff how.
Tyler:
[5:21] Much like gray area is there really or is it pretty pretty scientific uh
Sam:
[5:26] I mean there's a little bit of gray area there's stuff like uh a bit of blood mist is allowed but like a blood splat might be a bit more uh veering towards 16 uh there's probably 12 or 14 what you've got out there uh it's it's a weird little career and uh and something that has pretty much zero transferable skills which was quite interesting to come out of feel.
Tyler:
[5:50] Like it would have certain transferable skills like you could probably like off the top of your head just kind of tell somebody what their rating is going to be on a game like they don't have to work like you're like oh well that that's how to go you can't have that it's gonna be you know for mature whatever peggy would call those things it's one of the more annoying things i would hate to be like on whatever the german version of that is oh
Sam:
[6:13] Yeah and the uh the australian one as.
Tyler:
[6:15] Well yeah why are they so fucking uptight what australia of all places like so uptight about these things like oh you're gonna corrupt our youth or whatever i'm Like, fucking send them outside is way scarier than anything I'm going to put in this video game.
Sam:
[6:29] In Australia, it's probably more common for parents to want their kids to say inside and not be productive.
Tyler:
[6:34] Yeah, it's just a weird place to be, like, prudish. But, I mean, much respect in all that, Australia. You know, that's fine.
Sam:
[6:42] Yeah, I mean, I've been watching Married at First Sight Australia this year.
Tyler:
[6:46] You seem like...
Sam:
[6:47] I'm not even joking. I actually love it.
Tyler:
[6:50] It's like wrestling, is it? My wife loves, uh, uh, love is blind. Like all the weird things that come from that or the, the ultimatum, like the one where like they, like my partner doesn't want to marry me. Uh, so we're going to go on this dating show where we both get to date other people. And I wonder if they'll decide to marry me. And the answer is no. And then the South Africa version is like way better. Cause it's just like, you know, in the American version, it's like, oh, he kissed another girl or some shit. in the south african version is like they're just full-on fucking people and like i do not see what is the problem here there's
Sam:
[7:28] Just there's something amazing about reality tv like uh and usually it's not from america and uh the uk where you get the good stuff like you guys had some you had some interesting things geordie short.
Tyler:
[7:40] I think the greatest american reality show ever was robin big i
Sam:
[7:45] Don't even know what that is what is that.
Tyler:
[7:47] It was uh rob dyrdek the pro skateboarder and his bodyguard it was a it was really popular i don't know why but it was really popular on mtv like 20 years ago like it was before he did like ridiculousness and fantasy factory and all that this was like his first reality show and it wasn't even about skateboarding it was just them doing fucking goofy bro shit most of the time but you know rob dierdeck is just one of those psychopaths that like you know he had ambition he was like a fucking nobody skateboarder kind of guy and he was like I want to be a fucking millionaire so he would just do crazy stuff like I'm gonna I'm gonna set as many world records in a month as I can and then I'm gonna set the world record for most world records And then they would just film him doing that. It was fucking fun. Like, actually, I know it's all bullshit. Don't get me wrong. But, like, it was fun to watch as a, you know, as a redneck kid who was basically doing all the same stuff but with less money. Like, oh, I want to do that. Like, yeah.
Sam:
[8:44] But I'm sanctioned. Or Jackass.
Tyler:
[8:47] Jackass was also.
Sam:
[8:48] Like, come on.
Tyler:
[8:49] Yeah. But, oh, God, we're going to have a reality TV. This is probably the first time this has ever happened on the show. Reality TV.
Sam:
[8:56] It's going to be the longest episode ever. It's just going to be us sitting here for 10 hours watching entire seasons of The Bachelor.
Tyler:
[9:02] Yeah, I just don't do the dating stuff. There's something about it that rubs me the wrong way.
Sam:
[9:07] I think for me, it is kind of similar to wrestling. You've got your heels, you've got your baby faces, and you've got your characters who you just look at and you're like, why are they acting like that? That's a Vince McMahon creation. Well, that's a Russo creation.
Tyler:
[9:23] That's how I feel about it. like when i'm watching it i i just wish that we could like for me it would be easier if i knew for sure this guy's bullshitting me otherwise i actually hate them and i find that difficult to live with like i'm like i don't understand like i hate you for what you're doing and i hate this fucking stupid bitch that you're dating before letting you get away with it and then not putting two and two together that you're a psychopath for
Sam:
[9:48] Someone who doesn't do the whole dating reality show thing you have a lot of
Sam:
[9:51] opinions about the whole dating reality show.
Tyler:
[9:52] Thing because my wife loves you she loves him so much man um and she like she will always ask me questions like if we were on love is blind do you think that we would still have ended up together and i say things like i would not be on that show and if i were you can guarantee i'm there for the paycheck and not because i think that there's some actual love that's going to happen between me and someone else on the show she's like but but if you say you would you know outcome would be better for you. And I'm like, oh yeah,
Sam:
[10:21] Yeah, yeah, totally.
Tyler:
[10:23] I mean, that, that was,
Sam:
[10:23] That was an easy test. That was an easy test to mess up.
Tyler:
[10:28] Um i would never go on such a show because i've already found the love of my life and she's like well but we didn't know each other yet you know i'm like well as someone who has found the love of his life i can't even put myself into the mindset of such a situation right um it's like it's like well those james bond movies or something where you're like trying to dodge laser beams in a i think
Sam:
[10:52] That's the perfect uh comparison to marriage.
Tyler:
[10:56] Yeah man um well what so the bachelor what what what is it what why why that why do you like that i've
Sam:
[11:04] Got no idea i've never seen an episode of the bachelor it's on my list i have a big list of ones i want to start watching most of most of the stuff i want to see though it was such no i'm gonna sound really british it it was such drivel.
Tyler:
[11:17] That um that
Sam:
[11:19] You can't find it anywhere anymore like a lot of the early mtv dating shows like there's like two episodes on youtube and that's it there's one that was like date my mom.
Tyler:
[11:28] Aren't they on max or something like isn't all of mtv's uh library on one of the streaming sites now i'm
Sam:
[11:38] Gonna bring up the tab for after we finish uh and i'm gonna to find out the answer to that question.
Tyler:
[11:43] Now i'm helping you oh
Sam:
[11:46] God damn i can't use max in the uk what is this oh.
Tyler:
[11:49] Wow okay maybe the answer is that you need to come move into you should move to south carolina and buy this house that they're selling right behind my house and then we could have joined fences and when my wife wants to watch reality show she'll have someone to do that with while i run a video game empire out of my garage
Sam:
[12:08] I think the real answer to this is i just need better taste in TV shows.
Tyler:
[12:13] I love pro wrestling. I watch Monday Night Raw every Monday. There is a three-hour block in my schedule. It's like, do not bother me for work things or whatever now because I'm watching it.
Sam:
[12:26] I haven't really bothered with a lot of the new stuff. Like, I went through when WWE Network was still around, and I watched the entirety of Raw and all the pay-per-views from 97 to 98, so the whole year through.
Tyler:
[12:42] Yeah, and The Undertaker and Stone Cold.
Sam:
[12:45] Yeah, and Senor Sincere, whatever his name is. Everyone's favorite wrestler. And then you've got the shit like the Gang Wars era. with loads of factions that nobody cared about and the Nation of Domination DX. Yes. Like, for me, that's just, it carries so much more. I think people were a lot more charismatic back then. Or the writing was better, or I'm just sucking the nostalgia to the whole.
Tyler:
[13:12] I think the lines were a lot blurred, a lot more blurred between reality and what, you know, and fake hood.
Tyler:
[13:20] Hey, Fabe is the proper term. But yeah, like the Bret Hart thing kind of changed the whole dynamic of the sport but before that it was like it was like are they this is real like are they for real really and when we were two or two three years old it was totally real like Kane really did set that guy on fire like that happened and he got away with it the cops didn't even do anything about it that's what was so exciting about it to me is like there's no consequences like you just do whatever you want when you're grown up and you're a wrestler could do anything you want um i
Sam:
[13:52] Think what what really irks me about like when i've tried modern wrestling is that there is no one that as soon as their theme tune hits you get the goosebumps like it with the undertaker there is no one uh that i think has the charisma of like uh austin or angle or early the rock i don't know what happened with the rock but i'm certain he was replaced by some weird different person at some point. Because up to 2010 he was The Rock and now he's.
Tyler:
[14:22] Once he started in the movie career he became dwayne the rock johnson and then he became toying johnson but now he's the the final boss the rock like he owns the entire company and he's trying to get cody rhodes to sell him his soul it's amazing i love it
Sam:
[14:37] It's strange man like even when the rock was in his earlier films like scorpion king walking tall uh up to like faster with billy bob thornton.
Tyler:
[14:46] Yeah there
Sam:
[14:47] Was something there was something about his movies which are really kind of captivating.
Tyler:
[14:50] I love yeah
Sam:
[14:52] Amazing uh but there's something about modern rock that feels super inauthentic and a bit worm like wormy.
Tyler:
[15:01] Like he he yeah remember when he became the corporate champion like he he sold his soul to go you know be vince mcmahon's guy he's currently assuming that role like he's become the devil you know trying to take people you know and like all right well i need you to do what i want you to do kind of shit and i think it's nice i so you say like there's people like there's no one whose music hits and i just get the goosebumps but like dude cm punk is my fucking hero like from when i was a teenager cm punk was i dressed like him i walked like him i tried to talk like him i wanted to be him i dyed my hair the same color as him whatever i had to do to be cm punk i showed up to wrestling school and the guy was like you're a giant cm punk mark aren't you we have one of you over there you will be a tag team like the punks yeah the chick magnets or whatever but no i just i love that shit i don't know why but it's the same thing though the comparison of reality tv is totally real like it it's the same shit it's just drama and in this case it's sweaty men drama instead of uh the opposite estrogen fueled cat fighting hatred i
Sam:
[16:15] Gotta love my homoeroticism i mean uh there's a lot of that arnie sly had a ton of that as well oh.
Tyler:
[16:23] They're like the gorgeous george back in like the 60s was sort of like he was like the influence for you know like muhammad ali like the the whole idea of a masculine man dressing in like sequin robes and shit that that whole deal but gorgeous george like he was in an era when it was not okay to be gay like it was like it not in the area he was in you know like georgia south carolina that whole deal and he was just working it dude he had the crowd wanting to kill him and then you have gold dust and it was like the late 90s kind of equivalent to that where and he didn't even do like gold dust didn't do anything overt it would be very subtle like he would just kind of like sniff a guy like and then people go crazy it's like the most of it is so great i i think that's what i like about wrestling though is that once you've kind of conditions it's a 40 or a even pavlovian kind of response like you've conditioned the crowd to kind of know what the tells are and then you kind of have control over them and someone can just like the rock could do like a very subtle like eyebrow thing. And then people, the whole arena goes wild. I did, I did my psychology final on stone cold, Steve Austin's music where it was like, you know, they conditioned the audience.
Tyler:
[17:43] That when you hear that before the music starts, before he even shows up, they hear glass breaking on the loudspeaker and they're going to eat shit because they know it's Stone Cold. That was so interesting.
Sam:
[17:54] It's way cooler than Pavlov's dog.
Tyler:
[17:56] Yeah. Yeah. But it's the same principle. It's exactly the same. You're conditioning the crowd to respond to certain stimuli. That's, that's what it is. Um, CM Punk, fucking John Cena, you know, come on. Everybody loses their mind when they hear John Cena's theme song.
Sam:
[18:10] Yeah, but Cena was still big when I was into it though. I kind of tuned out just before I think Sam Punk came back, so like when they brought back ECW and stuff that was like when I sort of tuned out.
Tyler:
[18:22] The rated R superstar even his music was like before anything happens like you think you know me oh my god it's Edge oh my god yeah that
Sam:
[18:33] Song's what like 2002 2004 Edge.
Tyler:
[18:40] Would have been yeah altar bridge was the
Sam:
[18:42] Theme song for sure.
Tyler:
[18:43] Um but edge would have been kind of john cena's main rival like when john cena was like rising to the tippy top of being a star he edge was the heel that kind of made that happen um and then before that there was like him and the hardys and the dudley boys with those triple threat ladder matches and shit like dude like somebody interviewed him one time they're like that you know like when you speared uh jeff hardy off the top of a 20 foot ladder like how did you do that without getting hurt and he's like what do you mean without getting hurt it hurt really bad like it was terrible we took years off our lives doing that shit to
Sam:
[19:24] Be fair uh it's always jeff fucking coming off shit isn't it jeff.
Tyler:
[19:28] Hardy is a madman like like people give him so much shit for being like on on pills and stuff but i'm like he's in a lot of pain probably like that dude's been through a lot oh yeah yeah like mankind or mick foley is a an anomaly that he's not strung out on drugs like to be to have gone through so much pain in his life like the things that he did the stunts that he pulled off the undertaker you know like the people always talk about when he got thrown off the cell you know like the top of the hell in the cell through the table and that was bad but then he he gets back up and then he goes to the top of the cell again, and then he goes through the top of the cell by accident. And there's a shot where his nose is, his, his tooth is hanging out of his nose. Like, how does that even happen? Like what went on inside of here where your tooth is hanging out of your nose, like a booger, bro. Like that's insane. I would cry if I stubbed my toe right now, like for sure.
Sam:
[20:24] Oh yeah. Yeah. I'm, I'm like, I could never do what they do. I'm a, I'm a complete person.
Tyler:
[20:29] But, uh, I was, I was going to tie this into video games somehow.
Sam:
[20:33] Work it i i will sit here and all same.
Tyler:
[20:37] Thing with video games like when you're just use the classical noom as an example the sound that enemies make is a is a cue you know when you hear uh the sound of a cacodemon same thing you're like pavlovian response
Sam:
[20:52] I have to respond to.
Tyler:
[20:53] This now immediately before everything else like this doesn't matter what's that um okay i did it i think i pulled it off
Sam:
[21:01] Yeah i think i think that worked i think that definitely worked, it's uh it's something i think i need to work on a little bit because um what we do with with a lot of the games that we put out at least the ones that we develop internally is um a lot of the characters will have so many different enemies and uh well like four variants of oh this is the enemy that has the sword this is these are pistol enemies uh and then they all have a different thing to sort of say when they when they first come out right um so there isn't much of the player being like oh that's a threat uh unless they start hearing like the weapon firing or something like that or unless they're visually paying attention yeah so yeah that's something that i want to work on moving forward i think i think uh you know like.
Tyler:
[21:47] In the classic kind of 90s boomer shooters they usually just kind of a new enemy showed up when it showed up
Sam:
[21:53] And you You just had.
Tyler:
[21:54] To figure that out. The debut of the Archvile is fucking terrible. It's like, you don't even know it's there. You just keep, like, why do these enemies keep coming back? It's ridiculous.
Sam:
[22:06] Legitimately, I think it would be a better game without the Archviles.
Tyler:
[22:09] Yeah, yeah. But starting from Doom 3 on, they do a much better job of like, here's a new enemy. And then by the time you get to Doom Eternal, it's like, no, for real. Here's a new enemy. It's new. And then same thing with weapons, especially the super shotgun and new internal. It's like, yeah, you're going to need it. Like really important, really important weapon. Don't hate. You can't miss it. Right.
Sam:
[22:39] But the shotgun comes out covered in yellow paint.
Tyler:
[22:42] That, that is the essence of show business. Like if you go to the circus, like they, you know, the, the ring announcers or the ring leader, whatever that guy's called that his job is to make sure that the crowd understands what's going on because otherwise they don't or even uh like in working in pro wrestling like the the ring announcer it you know the person who comes out and says the following match is a triple threat match and the stipulations are you know whatever if the crowd doesn't understand that it's just like what is i don't even know what's going on right now i'm like i'm gonna go get a beer let me know if something happens okay like the the drama is is what keeps people involved so yeah Now we're going to fire a little person out of a cannon through that ring over there. And just in case you didn't miss the ring, it's on fire. It's the thing that's on fire over here.
Sam:
[23:33] It's definitely a good way to pull the attention.
Tyler:
[23:37] For sure. But in games, I think that is important. And there's this subtlety factor. There's like, how do you do it? And that's the name of the fucking UX. The UX experience. There's something wrong with that word. but yeah the UXX experience maybe that's for porn sites but you know you gotta get the player to know what the hell's going on and how to do things and all that kind of that deal you're you're at least the DOS man stuff is fairly simple pretty straightforward like if you've played a first person shooter before you kind of know the name of the game yeah
Sam:
[24:13] We don't got anything too too metal with we signed some stuff that annoyingly that because I haven't announced it, I can't talk too much about it at the moment. Right. That pushes those boundaries a little bit and does kind of leave a bit more up to the player to sort of work things out.
Sam:
[24:30] So we've got one that's quite sort of narrative heavy, and then we've got one that has all this kind of crazy combat-y stuff going on as well. And maybe we'll talk about those another time.
Tyler:
[24:41] Yeah, I'm going to make sure I have your Steam page pulled up just so I don't accidentally say one that's not already on there because I think I've touched them all to some degree now.
Sam:
[24:50] Yeah yeah you haven't played the one i've been showing you some clips of lately.
Tyler:
[24:55] But uh i have not but i will no
Sam:
[24:58] Except me oh the important one right oh that.
Tyler:
[25:04] Means it sucks it does but yeah like so so far like i really like space aliens in space i know you kind of dismissed it You're like, oh yeah, that one, but it has some really good ideas in it. And it's adorable.
Sam:
[25:22] I wouldn't say that I'm dismissive of it. Up to a point, it's one of my favorite ones that we've done, that we've developed internally. It's just, for me, I think when I play that, I see sort of when it was made, in terms of me kind of learning level design and me sort of learning how to work with the game engine. And some of it I would do differently if I did it again. but i feel that way with literally every single project that we do like by the time that uh, i'm looking back on it like a couple of months later i'm thinking oh um i should have done that i should have done that uh now i've learned this i should go back and implement this um and if i did i would just only have one game and that would be it you've.
Tyler:
[26:07] Done a good job so far of kind of like covering all of the classic genre tropes, but without being like offensive, which is difficult.
Tyler:
[26:16] Like, like flash of the blade could have very easily been, uh, you know, Super, super fun.
Sam:
[26:23] Oh, yeah. It could have been Shadow Warrior. Yeah.
Tyler:
[26:28] Yeah. Shadow Warrior is a fun game. I'm not going to take away from it, but it makes some... There's this one gag where you walk into this restaurant, and it's like the soup of the day. It was cream of some young guy or something like that. I'm like, oh, that's a great joke, but I don't think it's supposed to be funny anymore.
Sam:
[26:47] I managed to avoid putting in the kabuki screen.
Tyler:
[26:51] Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Sam:
[26:53] I was quite proud of myself for avoiding that one. Yeah. Yeah, low-hanging fruit.
Tyler:
[26:58] Lo Wang has very ambiguous ethnic backgrounds. Like, I don't know, he's not Japanese, he's not Chinese, he's not this, he's not that. He's just all of the, whatever makes sense at the time.
Sam:
[27:11] I mean, I think what actually helped us make it less stereotypical was we didn't base it on Eastern ninja movies. we based it on western ninja movies and i think like during the 80s anyway western ninja movies were a lot more uh a lot less about stereotypes at least the ones i was watching uh things like revenge of the ninja uh ninja 3 the domination uh they're just cool they're like look this is shokasugi he's a ninja man uh and he's fucking shit up and you're like yeah he's cool i want to be him and.
Tyler:
[27:47] I really i really like the you know like bruce lee films and like all of them to be honest with you and you know like shaolin versus wu-tang that kind of stuff but honestly a lot of the kung fu movies i watched were directly because i heard them in a wu-tang clan song i was like oh that must be good all those all those
Sam:
[28:07] Intros are second in the wu-tang songs like him of.
Tyler:
[28:11] Chess Is like a sword fight You must think first Before you move The Shaolin and the Wu-Tang Could be dangerous
Sam:
[28:17] Yeah, yeah, yeah My father was the executioner For the Shogun Yeah.
Tyler:
[28:23] Yeah, or like Ghostface Killah, like all his solo stuff is like, man, I didn't even know Kung Fu movies had dialogue like this. Sometimes I'd be like, I think he's just like making shit up. Like he's got some young kid in there just like shooting lines. But no, there was a time a while back when, who's that director that made Spy Kids? Robert Rodriguez. I guess he had the, he had his own TV like network channel called L Ray, where he had the library for all of those old, like Kung Fu movies. They got shipped to America, all of it. And it was just like every, you know, Thursday or whatever was like Kung Fu movie Thursday. And I was like, this is my jam, bro. This is what I'm going to watch.
Sam:
[29:10] You tell me about these things. I get so jealous. I was here in the UK watching like soap operas and stuff. Well, you guys have.
Tyler:
[29:17] Your own kind of versions of cool shit that in America, it's hard to get too it's like yeah we have like a whole network just called brit box now where we get all the bbc shit like all the all the great sitcoms and dramas that have come out of the uk downton abbey was huge here huge every
Sam:
[29:34] Dog a bounty hunter.
Tyler:
[29:39] I think the uk had fucking very superior sitcoms for a certain run like black books and fucking the peep show. Come on, man. You guys had some good shit.
Sam:
[29:52] I'm weird with sitcoms. It takes a very specific formula to sort of get me going. I like the American office. I don't like the UK office. Okay. I like, I like new girl.
Tyler:
[30:04] Okay.
Sam:
[30:05] Parks and recreation, but that's like kind of it.
Tyler:
[30:08] You guys have black man.
Sam:
[30:10] Yeah. We've got black mirror. Yeah.
Tyler:
[30:12] Yeah.
Sam:
[30:12] That's good. I like black mirror. I wouldn't describe it as a sitcom.
Tyler:
[30:15] But no, I mean, kind of, but the first episode is a kind of sitcom. It's like that could happen in real life. It's so funny. That was, what, 10 or so years ago that Black Mirror had this, you know, the British Prime Minister fucks a pig episode. It's like, yeah, it could happen, like tomorrow for all we know. We live in a different age now.
Sam:
[30:39] Like anything could happen.
Tyler:
[30:40] Who knows?
Sam:
[30:42] I believe we'll eventually end up in some weird dystopian world, And I think we're heading towards it.
Tyler:
[30:47] You know, I think that we live in a weird dystopian world and we just continue to up the ante for what a dystopian future looks like. It's like we're just like, oh, yeah, well, it could be worse, right? And that's a natural human kind of thing. We do kind of live in a strange. Like imagine if you go back to 1900 and you're like made a movie about like there will be a war so big that hundreds of millions of people die in trenches and there will people start gassing each other and there will be machine guns, which nobody had seen except in like Russia and Japan.
Sam:
[31:21] Entire french armies are cut in half on the battlefield in a matter of hours and then you said that to them like ah no and then now that's like history that they that happened yeah totally twice i think i think when i think of dystopian i think of just like i think of one thing in particular and that's yeah which is amazing it does not get its fucking do like what what what What a film. I don't know why it is. It's just my brain does weird connections to things. But I don't think of anything else except equilibrium when I think about dystopian. That's crazy.
Tyler:
[31:57] I think of Blade Runner. I think of Alien. It's a great example. I think of every single fucking thing that H.G. Wells wrote. I think of Asimov, especially. You know, like The Last Question. iRobot. There's so many options for dystopia.
Sam:
[32:15] I feel like you're looking at me And you're thinking oh this guy must read I.
Tyler:
[32:20] Read This guy must read
Sam:
[32:26] I can read But it just doesn't happen Very often.
Tyler:
[32:31] I mean they made movies out of a lot of these things
Sam:
[32:34] Oh perfect That would be great.
Tyler:
[32:37] Around the world in 80 days was a Jackie Chan movie And I think One of these
Sam:
[32:43] Days I'll watch the Bible and get up to Smashwood.
Tyler:
[32:46] You can watch the Bible. You can totally watch it. There's even a, I bought my wife a comic book version, the Action Bible. Oh, wow. Not like for like religious reasons, but she was just like, you know, I don't really know these stories. And like people, you know, obviously it comes up all the time and culture and all that kind of stuff. So I'd like to be familiar with that material, but I don't want to read this giant book in old English. So I was like, okay. So we got the Action Bible. we've been reading that together we just we just got to moses which was fun like because if you don't know
Sam:
[33:18] This stuff at all.
Tyler:
[33:19] Like when you get to the part where like abraham's about to sacrifice his own son or whatever and she's like i didn't know that it was this drop like there's so much drama in here i'm like oh it's crazy like there's a whole part where like yeah they get a lot out of like sodom and gomorrah and it's like in in the comic book version is a little bit more like kid friendly too so I'm like okay so just to explain the context here basically like those guys are demanding that
Sam:
[33:45] He send his guests out.
Tyler:
[33:47] Who are angels because they look pretty and these men want to rape them in the streets and And that's why people don't think it's okay to be gay. But I think that the lesson here is that it's not okay to rape strangers or anyone at all.
Sam:
[34:03] That's not a good lesson. That's just common sense.
Tyler:
[34:05] Yeah, it should be, but it wasn't at the time. Somebody needed a book to tell them that. Like, oh, can you imagine being the first person? Like, we should have an instruction manual, like how not to rape. How should we present that?
Sam:
[34:17] Yeah, you know, maybe that's a good idea. Getting shunned by their friend group because of it as well.
Tyler:
[34:23] Yeah, I mean, truly, there's some wild stuff that happens in there, man. Like, crazy.
Sam:
[34:30] I mean, I come from a somewhat religious, I'm not religious, but I come from a religious background. My granddad is a vicar.
Tyler:
[34:39] That's cool.
Sam:
[34:40] But most of the stuff I learned about religion, I learned from Dante's Inferno. Okay. The video game. Yeah. Which is also amazing.
Tyler:
[34:48] I like that you clarified the video game. I didn't read the book.
Sam:
[34:52] Not only reading but reading poems come on yeah.
Tyler:
[34:56] Epic poems beowulf you know there's some good ones yeah
Sam:
[35:01] I like the scene in i like the line in in beowulf with angelina jolie that's.
Tyler:
[35:07] Great yeah but yeah so like but it's actually crazy your grandfather was a wicca i mean he probably would have been in the sort of the early stage and wicca even existed too so That's vicar,
Sam:
[35:20] Like a, like a Christian, uh, equivalent of a priest.
Tyler:
[35:24] Like a reverend.
Sam:
[35:26] There we go. I think you can call them reverends, yeah.
Tyler:
[35:29] Okay. Never even heard that word. You said he was a vicar. I thought you meant like he was a witch. Oh, no, no, no. That's interesting. Tell me more.
Sam:
[35:41] No wonder you're so cursed. He just likes Jesus. No idea is exciting.
Tyler:
[35:47] It can be.
Sam:
[35:48] There's some stuff that...
Tyler:
[35:49] It's interesting where the dividing line on what is and what is not magical is, like, if you go to, like, a proper Catholic church and they're, like, burning incense and, like, reading Latin and stuff, I'm like, this kind of seems like a little magic going on, bro.
Sam:
[36:03] Maybe.
Tyler:
[36:04] Perhaps. And then you have the, like, Aleister Crowley basically, like, replicates all of that stuff in the Order Template, whatever his thing's called, but it's, like, basically just like Catholic Mass. You wouldn't even know the difference if you just didn't go to church and you walked into a, like a fucking Thelemic ritual you'd be like oh I'm
Sam:
[36:23] At church okay it happens to me all the time you know yeah but it's something we've found, quite interesting recently because we back in July we put we published a game called Reverend but made by this this Swedish guy who's on films for Troma.
Tyler:
[36:44] Why didn't you call it Vicka should have been Vicka well
Sam:
[36:47] Because maybe the rest of the world would have had a idea what we're talking about localization but like it's not like a anti-religious game by any means but like it's got like out-of-down crosses in there and you're you're shooting uh demons and you're like chasing after the the archbishop uh the archbishop vile um and and he was telling me like oh i went to this sort of uh mass at christmas and i and i felt really like out of place because of what I'd done, what I'd made. makes sense because of reverend uh and then after that we published uh we published satan as well, um and we've actually had a guy who's reached out to us and he's covered a couple of our games who is a reverend uh a vicar uh and he's and he's done like oh reverend playing reverend a reverend reviews satan uh and he's doing all this uh all these little ad libs and quips during it saying like oh as usually happens in the church and like as most vicars as most reverends do.
Tyler:
[37:50] I i can legally introduce myself with the title like reverend or whatever i want like i i am an ordained minister like for real and it's not like i don't like preach at a church or anything but i got it so that i could marry my friend and his wife like years ago and then i was like okay well that's neat actually you do have like at least in the states you have like legal things you can and can't do like because of that so like if you told me a secret you know as a confession that i cannot be compelled in any court to talk about it i can just be like oh it was a confession so even in the military that was actually kind of nice because like i could be like you know you have like real um what's the word like confidentiality you know like yeah if you want to talk to me about something. Just say it's a confession. Don't worry about it. It'll just be our little secret. Between you and me and the big man upstairs.
Sam:
[38:43] Let me think about my legal secrets and come back to you on that. It doesn't have.
Tyler:
[38:47] To be illegal. It can just be something you don't want people to know about. It doesn't have to be that you... If you did commit a crime, don't tell me about it. How about that? Because I don't know if my license even extends to the UK. It'd be interesting. I wonder if that actually would count. You should look into that. Like, can I practice in the UK? Like, if I want to start my own Church of Cthulhu and...
Sam:
[39:12] Oh, hell yeah.
Tyler:
[39:13] That'd be interesting. Yeah.
Sam:
[39:15] I'll find you a building. I've got a shed.
Tyler:
[39:18] Yeah. It all started on a podcast talking about reality TV. How do you condition people to follow specific responses? And then they began the Church of Doss Man.
Sam:
[39:33] The Church of Reverend Cthulhu and Dotsdam.
Tyler:
[39:37] The Flying Spaghetti Monster kind of shit. The states have really strict laws about how you have to respect people's religious freedom. So, let's say you're a sergeant in the military, and you are also a worshiper of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Tyler:
[39:57] You're legal. the same way that a Muslim would be allowed to wear their turban you can walk around with a spaghetti colander on your head. Now, no one really does this, but if you wanted to argue it in court, you probably could get away with it, for real.
Sam:
[40:12] In theory, it would have just an extra layer of armor.
Tyler:
[40:16] I mean, I think that a spaghetti colander...
Sam:
[40:18] I think it's a good idea.
Tyler:
[40:19] Yeah, it's like, if it's aluminum, even better, because then you can't get your brain read by the aliens. It's like, perfect.
Sam:
[40:25] Yeah, it should be regulation.
Tyler:
[40:29] I think the whole world should worship with spider-flags mini-monster. Pastafarianism, that's the name of the religion.
Sam:
[40:37] Oh, gotcha, gotcha. I'll look into that. I'll bring up another tab for that when I'm finding out how to VPN myself into getting to Macs.
Tyler:
[40:45] Let's back up a little bit. Let's talk about, like, are you already working at PERP when you founded DOSMAN?
Sam:
[40:53] Yeah, yeah, so, I've been at PERP for about a year doing, like, some production stuff, on the console titles, and sort of, I don't even know how it really happened, but I knew about this game engine, EasyFPS, for a couple of years. I think E1M1 or Reload had done like a game jam on it where we had loads of.
Sam:
[41:23] People signed up to it and stuff and made games on it and I thought like, oh, this is super cool what you can do with this. so many beginners are trying it out which is kind of I guess a deciding factor there I mean I was having a chat with my friend who now does DOSBEN with me, and just saying like oh I wonder if I could make a game in this so I went out and I took photos of my phone of a bunch of different textures and things like that I recorded, me like punching and things like that to use for weapon sprites and to use for enemy sprites. And I put together a game in about two weeks and, called concrete visions and it's still on itch but it's it's kind of horrible considering i made it in two weeks and it's the very first thing i ever did in game death uh but i was like okay i i've made something here uh i've actually made a game and everything here is me and that's probably why it sucked but it was all me and you did it uh yeah i did it yeah it's something it's something to look back on and poke fun at like i went back and played it a couple of weeks ago and oh my god what was i thinking but.
Tyler:
[42:37] You did it that's the important part you did in fact complete and publish a game which is you know most most folks never get there
Sam:
[42:46] It's it's uh it's a lesson learned it's a step towards the goal but that step would be like moldy and like having mushrooms growing out of it yes but um but but yeah it was kind of from there it just it just snowballed like uh i then did the original version of flash of the blade where i thought why don't i try drawing and doing pixel art um and i wouldn't say that went well either i was on sort of like a one hit kill train at the time and one hit kill doesn't work very well with very dark foggy games, with hit scan enemies I found that quite quickly because you would just load into the level and immediately die and not even know where you got shot from.
Sam:
[43:33] But like then it kind of took off from there because I started working with an artist who'd made a few easy FPS editor games I'd liked in the past, and we just ended up sort of, really working well together and we had the guy who i was doing dost man with was doing composing for the games as well so we had a composer we had an artist and we had me doing like all the level design all the sort of game design aspects uh finding sounds uh out in the wild and stuff um and i think we got to a point where we we started to make games that people enjoyed and games that people find fun um and it just sort of tied in with me sort of learning everything for my day job at perp on steam and things like that so i could just learn things doing dustman and apply it to perp and learn things at perp and apply it to dustman uh and it it came together quite nicely uh and now we've got quite a strong library i think considering we've been making games since november 2023 yeah tracks yeah that yeah that is correct that is the date.
Tyler:
[44:49] Think your first or at least of what's on steam flash of the blade was january 25th 2024 and then you have a pretty steady you know flow through 2024 and now you know satan came out in january 2025 yep and more to come like it's actually what's what's impressive you know especially for a smaller publisher is like you know in the keep you're right we've been working on the same game for five fucking years um and it's going to come out this year i promise promise i'll
Sam:
[45:19] Hold you to.
Tyler:
[45:20] That and you can i'm come hell or high water stellar valkyrie is coming out this year for sure but it's been a long journey of like you said you know learning and then i literally went away for two years to go like you know do the 3d realms thing and learn everything that i could god bless those guys for you know i really felt like they like i got taken under a wing like
Sam:
[45:41] You know that you.
Tyler:
[45:43] You got potential kid and i was like thank you i really want to learn a lot and then i think i offered a lot to you like i you know for a company that's growing like coming out of the military i was like i i kind of know a thing or two about organizations and leadership so um it was good it was a good synergy there for a while and but taking lessons learned from here and applying it there vice versa um i i had i got to experience some things where i was like i'm not gonna or i am gonna do that with my project like i want to make sure that i don't make this mistake or that i do take this lesson learned and make sure that it it works you know out in the long run uh and just in general man like it's very impressive to have five games and basically less than a year period i
Sam:
[46:29] Mean i mean i think a lot of sort of differences how long are you like making stellar valkyrie like uh in terms of play time.
Tyler:
[46:35] I have no idea Not even there yet. It's eight levels in total, but the length of the playthrough through a certain level is pretty... I would say that you're going to have people who can speedrun these things in a few minutes, but getting the full gameplay and unlocking every secret and every little interactive thing that you can do is probably going to be a lot.
Tyler:
[47:00] And then I think the thing that's... The pre-production on Stellar Valkyrie was a lot too, because we had a script you know with a full storyline and voice actors and everything done before we even like really put pen to paper on the rest of it so and that was a big part of it too um so there was like experimentation going on like well you know this would be like the first world and like we rebuilt the first level like dozens of times really like just you know what if we did this what if we did that to kind of decide what kind of game it would be in that domain but But then on the other end of it, it's like me and Chris meticulously writing dialogue and then going and auditioning voice actors and making sure that it was what we wanted it to be. And then recording it over and over again. And then like sound designer, Ben, you know, because we're all part time too. This is, you know, everybody's doing this in their free time. So it was like making an appointment with him. Like, OK, can you make this voice sound like that or whatever? And it's just lots of stuff like that. And then the music. It's just so many things. As opposed to if I had just said, okay, I'm going to make a first-person shooter, it's going to take, you know, I need textures, I need sound design, I need, you know, gun sounds, I need to draw sprites for everything and just get it done. I could have done that.
Sam:
[48:21] And I kind of wish I had to some degree.
Tyler:
[48:23] I'm kidding, I'm wrong. Feature creep gets the best.
Sam:
[48:27] You've had a bunch go on sort of during it as well. Not even just being away in Denmark sort of stuff, but you've had staff changes there as well. And I think when we first spoke about it, you were quite keen to get it out quite fast. And of course, all those things have sort of come at you. and the fact that you've kept resilient and kept pushing through and finding more people who sort of see your vision the way that you want it uh that's awesome.
Tyler:
[48:57] I i did really think originally that it would be maybe six months to a year depth cycle yeah but then we you know kind of first of all it took longer than that in the first place and then yes gumhead uh after vomitorium he had to go do his thing like and it was obvious too it wasn't there was no bad blood about that or anything on my end i was just like i get it man like if i had a hundred thousand dollars i wouldn't be fucking doing this i'd be making whatever i wanted so like go you know and morta looks amazing um and i think that there's there's some stuff in morta that i can tell like i'm not accusing him of any kind of like plagiarism i just mean like i think we helped each other out like he learned some stuff we definitely learned a lot from him because he's like you had published a lot of games and they're not necessarily like the most amazing game in the world his artwork has always been amazing but his game design you know up and down throughout uh like shrine trying to you could see him growing and learning and then uh like lycanthorne that you know was him experiment with the open world thing and then you have like lavatorium going full-on 3d metroidvania With the Dark Souls elements too. I could see him growing as a game designer. And I think that's probably from working with other people to a degree. Because he hadn't really done that before.
Sam:
[50:18] I mean, weird sidebar. But Shrine is actually one of the first... Well, it's the first mod that I ever played. And it's the first modern PC title that I dived into. When I got into PC gaming. so I think I got into PC gaming like 2019, 2020 um and Shrine was oh it's free, it's on Steam I'll see if I can run that I had this old like Windows 7, desktop PC from like 2010 or something and I'd been playing old disc based PC games so I had like Vivisector, I had a few other bits, Evolver uh which is amazing um but then i was like let me see what this sort of theme stuff is about uh and shrine was one of those games that i picked up and i was like amazed at how cool it was i had no idea what gz doom was at the time but but i thought oh this is this is great like this looks absolutely beautiful i love all the enemy designs i love the i love the artwork uh and i had so much fun with shrine man.
Tyler:
[51:28] That's great i'm trying to remember the first like mod that i played ever honestly it might have been brutal doom oh yeah yeah i feel like i was i had gotten into the doom and quake stuff and then somebody was like dude you gotta play brutal doom and it was like on a zendronum server like we're gonna co-op this together it'd be great and um actually it was my it was my friend steve who did the original in the keep logo yeah um so that was yeah that was probably my introduction to it and then i got into you know more sophisticated things like Russian overkill and gameplay mod stuff. That was kind of the jam. More or less
Sam:
[52:09] Straight up doom but.
Tyler:
[52:09] Just crazy weapons and monster stuff and z daemon uh they did the like survival thing where you know you play through an entire map pack and then now we're going to turn it up a notch and it's like random enemies and you know all that kind of stuff so it's a double damage whatever
Sam:
[52:25] A lot of my a lot of my sort of mod experience has been more on total conversion side things like harmony yeah did you ever play the demo for membrane no no dude dude i'm gonna send you the demo for membrane it was a it was a gz doom project uh probably going back about 10 years at this point where you're shooting aliens uh like proper green aliens um here we go yeah 2016 it was posted on doom world ah okay so we are we are.
Tyler:
[52:58] Going back when I was graduating high school and joining the Air
Sam:
[53:03] Force. I don't know, how do I how did I stumble upon this? I wasn't even into PC gaming at the time.
Tyler:
[53:09] No, I did a little bit of like, you know, like if you go back, because the boomer shooter thing you know, like I've said this, I don't know how many times on the podcast, but like Dusk was kind of like the thing that took it off, like made it a thing but prior to that there were others, like there was Rack there was Strafe like digital games, high hell.
Tyler:
[53:32] Um, but they didn't really catch on. Like they just didn't nail the formula and hit it the right time. Dusk was like, boom.
Sam:
[53:39] I think, I think a really good sort of showcase of that is, uh, retro blazer because retro blazer had its, uh, Kickstarter just before the, just before the boom of the boomer shooter.
Tyler:
[53:52] You're going to say hi to Sam. My wife brought me a coffee. She's so wonderful. He wants to watch, uh, uh, love is
Sam:
[53:58] Blind with your hair. Yes! Do you like Meredith first? Just came out today and I'm already avocado. Thank you, baby. You're welcome. Okay.
Tyler:
[54:13] So, Membrane, I'm sorry.
Sam:
[54:16] Yeah, I was saying... I was saying... I think a good sign of what happened with the boomer shooter, boom, is Retro Blazer. Because it had its kickstart just kind of... I think a year before Dusk came out. And just didn't... It didn't find the audience it needed because no one was used to that sort of old-school FPS gameplay at the time. So it ended up not succeeding in its Kickstarter, but then it's still sort of kept going throughout the years. And one of my favorite things I've been able to do since joining Perp is I have now signed Retroblazer. So now it's happening. Now it's definitely happening.
Tyler:
[54:57] Right.
Sam:
[54:58] But it's like a proper throwback shooter. It's made in dark places. uh it's it's fresh because it's techno egyptian which i feel like nothing no one else can really say that they are there uh the.
Tyler:
[55:12] Other one that comes to mind is total chaos is actually coming out uh through apogee now but that was one of the like most impressive doom mods that had ever been done you know there for a while oh definitely definitely yeah this looks great like i'm looking at the little trailer for it right now.
Sam:
[55:31] For a membrane?
Tyler:
[55:32] Yeah. And this is, you say this is the same folks that are making Retro Blazer?
Sam:
[55:37] Oh, no, no, no, no.
Tyler:
[55:39] No? I totally misunderstood you then.
Sam:
[55:41] I just jumped onto a second tangent from my first time. Don't have me back. No one will ever be able to follow.
Tyler:
[55:50] That's okay.
Sam:
[55:52] But yeah, different developers, different developer teams. But membrane is cancelled, Retro Blazer is coming out.
Tyler:
[55:59] Gotcha That's fucking awesome, man.
Sam:
[56:03] I'd recommend you download the demo for Membrane because it's really sick.
Tyler:
[56:09] Yeah, I'm going to give it a try. I'm in a race with time to finish Baldur's Gate before my child is born. And then I know I can't spend eight hours on an RPG, you know, stay up all night, just losing myself in that world for a while at least.
Sam:
[56:30] You're gonna have to abandon uh mid to long length games i'll tell you what would work quite well for you some bite-sized boomershoes i.
Tyler:
[56:39] Know that's probably like well just bite-sized games in general too like there's so much good stuff like horror games that are shorter and more manageable or at least play you can play them in a iterative way as opposed to you know if you're playing a shooter you hit save you come back to it six weeks later push you know yeah just start shooting shit again but when it comes to like a fucking immersive world with an rpg and a story and everything it's like i gotta remember what i was doing what was i doing how do
Sam:
[57:09] I oh definitely but what i like about a lot of the parts of horror is that it is it can be super short but really sticks with the things like the night of the scissors like it's it's like an hour long game but but it's it i i still think about it now like it it it's super awesome and there's another one set in like an old uh arcade and you've got to play the arcade genes and the monster coming out after you uh and it is called oh no i remember everything why don't i remember what this game is called uh that.
Tyler:
[57:45] Sounds like one of the dread x collections where you hit like no
Sam:
[57:49] It was it was published by bonus stage uh hold on i'm on their thing uh it's
Sam:
[57:57] called janitor bleeds there we go.
Tyler:
[57:59] Janitor bleeds i kind of i hadn't seem open for this because i i anticipated you and i would just be naming off random games the whole time so man this i wish steam had like an affiliate program so bad like because i do like the amazon affiliate thing yeah like i do that with like books I mentioned or whatever I'm like you know this is if you want to buy a book you know I'll get a few cents or whatever the fuck you know if you click on this but yeah if steam would let you do that I would be fucking oh yeah
Sam:
[58:27] I mean you know me i know everything nobody knows.
Tyler:
[58:31] That that is the truth so you you uh did you work on e1m1 or was it not till reload that you kind of got involved uh
Sam:
[58:42] Sort of behind the scenes.
Tyler:
[58:44] Uh okay as
Sam:
[58:46] Much as i could be like uh i did i did some some writing like a bunch of years ago for for websites and stuff but with uh with e1m1 and reload i was little miss little mr behind the scenes suggesting games and stuff.
Tyler:
[58:59] I i thought about buying e1 and one at one point like the company not the not a magazine like i like
Sam:
[59:07] I thought about i think you'd have done well honestly i.
Tyler:
[59:11] I it was just too much drama like i didn't i didn't want to get involved in the whole debacle between you know jake and and zach at the time and everything it was a discussion because we did that we did that quake you know like extra magazine we're just quake stuff it was me and a morpher like did all that everything and it was like in the keep on the front cover and i was like yeah this could be really cool but then yeah just i don't want to i don't want to get between that but
Sam:
[59:41] That is super awesome though i've got a i've got a copy of that issue i think one of the only one of the only copies in existence that's.
Tyler:
[59:48] Awesome i wish i had a copy of it
Sam:
[59:53] I'll rip it in half and send you half of.
Tyler:
[59:55] It um but there was some great stuff it was like really really important i think to a lot of not not just like the magazine itself but the community that was built around that magazine was such a dependable like you know hey you guys like boomer shooters we're making boomer shooters 3d realms had several copies of you want them to sing around the office just like all of you know because Ion Fury was on the cover whatever that kind of thing
Sam:
[1:00:19] I think Arthur Struck was on the cover as well yeah.
Tyler:
[1:00:24] Um, yeah, it's funny because Aftershock took forever to come out. I was the producer on Aftershock and or the technically brand manager on Aftershock. Like I didn't like manage the development of the project. I've managed the marketing of the project, but it was, uh, it was like, it took forever to get that fucking shit done. Um, it was really good though.
Sam:
[1:00:43] I liked it. Well, what I found crazy is, uh, probably about a year ago, whenever it was that the Graven came out of early access, was that January last year?
Tyler:
[1:00:52] Yes. January 2024 time frame and then Wrath was shortly thereafter February or March I
Sam:
[1:01:00] Was flicking through the old physical issues of 1M1 and I opened the very first issue that they did so the issue 0 the one that was released to like, get people to sign up to the first Kickstarter and the very first game that's written about in there is Graven and I was like it's crazy that I'm flicking through this now and this game has only just come out.
Tyler:
[1:01:24] Yeah and
Sam:
[1:01:26] Then i went to the next next page i think the next page was quarter k.
Tyler:
[1:01:28] Yeah yeah and quarter k i think is eventually still going to come out but it's like it like essentially um like saber didn't want to fund it anymore and i won't get into all the background but it's just like you know this doesn't make sense for our portfolio we have all this other stuff like tempest rising is obviously the big thing at slipgate now um which should be coming out probably around the same time that we released this podcast or you know thereabouts and i mean that yeah you gotta make business decisions at a certain
Sam:
[1:02:01] Point feel feel free to cut this out if i'm completely off base and uh wrong but i feel like quarter k is a lot more commercial than an rts in 2025.
Tyler:
[1:02:12] How many
Sam:
[1:02:15] Rts success stories are there like a year.
Tyler:
[1:02:17] How about we i'll tell you this off the air i'll tell you what i think about this not not on the air because there's there's more to this puzzle but i don't think i'm supposed to devil fred shriver is still the number one patreon supporter of my podcast so he might actually hear it but i i think that just my honest opinion actually is that the idea is to make rts cool again like they really want that um it also just sheer dollar amount invested into it if you really you know Look at it like we you want to get a return on that investment if you lose quarter K you lose you know a few hundred thousand dollars if you lose all something like tippet's rising it's a that's a make or breaker for a whole company kind of thing um but yeah maybe like sidebar on that and then the audience could just be pissed at us you can comment speculate in the comments um what will they say i
Sam:
[1:03:14] Think that there's so many genres which i'd love to see like a proper resurgence of uh i feel like we haven't had proper good arcade races in a long time except maybe like one or two every couple of years like god are the days of burnout uh and the hot wheels games being good uh and and like the the need for speed games of like the early 2000s flat out underground so need.
Tyler:
[1:03:39] For speed underground 2 is the greatest fucking racing game ever ever there's nothing even close to it it's the best
Sam:
[1:03:46] I put burnout 3 above it.
Tyler:
[1:03:48] Really oh hell yeah okay okay i'll actually i'll go back and play burnout 3 and then i'll come back to you with it i
Sam:
[1:03:56] Will say riders on the storm is infinitely better with snoop dogg.
Tyler:
[1:04:02] That that track rules that honestly like so many good tracks are on that like 24 is by ti is on that fucking soundtrack like oh dude it was perfect the games it changed my life and that was
Sam:
[1:04:16] A midnight club age as well.
Tyler:
[1:04:17] Midnight club was really big uh yeah just there's not a lot of arcade shooters anymore follow me the guy that was making unleash hell um which he's still making
Sam:
[1:04:29] Hover muscle right.
Tyler:
[1:04:30] Yeah so hover muscle was like kind of he he and i were talking about like there's no arcade racers anymore and like it would be totally dope so i think he's like first of all he's dealt with a lot of like real life shit but he's also like still working on both projects i mean when he can and everything and i'm hoping that at least one of them sees the light of day um by all as far as i know they're both still intended to come out it's just like the timeline has been like way longer than he thought um but i would love to see more like genuine arcade racers there's been a few but they're not like like arcadey so much like art of rally which is kind of like the top down racer sort of thing third person race didn't really hit for me pretty game very pretty
Sam:
[1:05:17] Game let me introduce you to one.
Tyler:
[1:05:18] I don't
Sam:
[1:05:20] Know when it's coming out but there's a prologue on Steam it's called Night Runners and it's very sort of Japanese tuna, Skylines and shit like that and it's absolutely stunning it looks like a PS2 game but like how you remember PS2 games looking not how they actually looked, let me pull up the page for you but um I.
Tyler:
[1:05:48] Should have got to bring me the the piss shit two cup I have a really nice playstation 2 commemorative cup
Sam:
[1:05:58] Oh, Night Runners. Let me... Yeah, like that... Night Runners is absolutely stunning. And I can't wait for more of that. But I mean, I think this is the game that really brought into my head, like, oh, we need more of this.
Tyler:
[1:06:12] Oh, I love... I'm a sucker for trailers that start off with, like, do you remember?
Sam:
[1:06:18] But a big Earth, Wind & Fire guy...
Tyler:
[1:06:23] I've seen Earth, Wind & Fire live in concert, and they are amazing, still.
Sam:
[1:06:26] That sounds incredible.
Tyler:
[1:06:28] Yeah, that's a throwback, bro. But yeah, I love that stuff. Funk, like 70s, 80s funk music. Oh my gosh. Yeah, this looks dope. This looks like exactly what I want in my life.
Sam:
[1:06:44] When is it supposed to... I don't know when it's coming out.
Tyler:
[1:06:48] Let's get them on the Planet Gem. I'm going to hunt them down.
Sam:
[1:06:52] It was Kickstart, I think. So it probably says on the Kickstarter what their due date is.
Tyler:
[1:06:56] Yeah i just need to need to find their they don't have their contact information on steam
Sam:
[1:07:03] I have their contact information if you want it.
Tyler:
[1:07:05] Yeah let's make that happen you can be on the podcast with me we'll pick their we'll be like when are you when is it coming out
Sam:
[1:07:10] Bitch when is it coming out would you like would you like to sign with dosman games.
Tyler:
[1:07:15] Yeah sure
Sam:
[1:07:16] Yeah you don't you don't fit the uh you don't fit the games at all but but are you.
Tyler:
[1:07:21] Are you having trouble with your milestone development pipeline? I can help you do that.
Sam:
[1:07:27] Okay, so all of the estimated delivery on the Nightrunner stuff is May 2025. So, maybe it's coming out very soon.
Tyler:
[1:07:38] Just in time for my birthday. Wink, wink, everybody.
Sam:
[1:07:45] Oh, wow, I feel like I'm in 4D. I got the sound of wink, wink,
Sam:
[1:07:48] and the visual of wink, wink. yeah.
Tyler:
[1:07:50] Smell a vision version is coming out soon
Sam:
[1:07:53] But uh yeah it's it's it's weird like uh i i of course i love all these different uh genres i love horror games i love racing games uh i love rts games as well um but for for me like uh i feel like we're creating something quite specific with dosman um where we're doing not not only just bite-sized fps games but they're bite-sized fps games created in a very specific game engine um and they're all the same price and they're all the same they all get like the same push uh and i and i i i think i'm probably wrong but i think by doing all that and sort of setting expectations it's uh, It's a good idea. Question mark. I think, I think people making art is a good idea.
Tyler:
[1:08:46] Whether or not it makes sense. Business wise, it's always going to be the question that we have to intend with. But I mean, I'm a, I'm a patron of the arts over here, man. I mean, in the keep is a business, but Tyler Brenner is a patron of the arts. So I just want to see like beautiful, cool things get made period. And whatever we have to do to get that to happen without anyone dying is, as I'm, I'm for.
Sam:
[1:09:08] Me too. Me too. definitely so.
Tyler:
[1:09:12] Do do you worked on did you write for
Sam:
[1:09:17] Uh
Tyler:
[1:09:18] Reload magazine and then were you already kind of like coming up with ideas of what you thought your games would be when you started putting them together or was that kind of a later development like in your rolodex
Sam:
[1:09:33] Of concepts so the sort of the first the first thing that happened with with concrete visions, which is the very first prototype thing that we did was i realized what i could do which was not draw take photos of things and i was like oh maybe i'll make something that sort of, don't play it and listen to this but condemned like um it's nothing like condemned it's, a far cry from condemned uh but that just sort of fell into place because of that because i was doing the photo source textures i was like okay uh something like something that feels like urban because that's what's around me i don't have like pyramids around me or like a lot of different things i just live in a city um from there it kind of became a bit more thought out uh so i was like oh well at the moment i'm watching a lot of ninja movies so let's make a ninja game. Uh, and then once I, uh, started collaborating with, with Fred, uh, Fred Ritchie, the, the artist.
Sam:
[1:10:36] Um, we just, we spent like a short little while with a Excel spreadsheet and we jotted down themes that we wanted to do. So we were like, oh, we want to do a medieval. We want to do a ancient Egypt. We want to do, uh, like a space, space game, a sci-fi game. Uh, and then we literally put it into a spin the wheel to work out what we were going to do. That's awesome. We've still got, we've still got that wheel. It's got a bunch of different things on it that we're planning to do.
Tyler:
[1:11:06] When you spin a cowboy western game, can I be a cowboy in the game? Yeah. That'd be pretty dope. I think I have the accent for it. I could pull it off. Make my grandfather proud.
Sam:
[1:11:19] You can be the cow if you want. That's what I'm saying.
Tyler:
[1:11:23] You know, I think I probably brought this up with you before, but all of your games remind me of what Duke Nukem Time to Kill did in one game. where it's like, okay, instead of Duke in space and Duke in ancient Rome and Duke in the Old West, you just do it all in one, and that was really, really cool. That game had a huge impact on me, like enormous impact on who I would become as a video game player and then later developer. I really, really, really liked the continually going to different time spaces. That trope has been done. It's not...
Sam:
[1:11:59] Time splitters would be a good case of that.
Tyler:
[1:12:03] Yeah, yeah. There's so many cool things you can do when you just introduce a little bit of a sci-fi element.
Sam:
[1:12:10] We've been pretty good with it as well, with the sort of results of the spin the wheel. We've not landed on anything and been like, oh, God, let's re-spin that. We've abandoned one project, which I think is pretty good, considering how long we've been going. We just sort of realized it wasn't going to be very doable. Yeah. which was we wanted to do something that was like the army men games.
Tyler:
[1:12:34] Yeah.
Sam:
[1:12:35] Toy soldiers. Like a little toy soldier playing around in a house where everything's like oversized. But we realized the sheer amount of detail we need to make to make it feel like a lived-in house would just be too much. Like we'd have to be modeling forks and knives and spoons and plates, and that would just be some of what's on the dining table level. And then we'd think about like half a – we need all these different soaps to
Sam:
[1:12:59] be in the, uh, bathroom level, all this, all this different stuff to be here. And I played, uh.
Tyler:
[1:13:06] Air combat, which was like the heli, like the miniature, same thing, but with a helicopter. And it was really, really fun too. On the G game boy color. I want to say.
Sam:
[1:13:15] Oh, wow.
Tyler:
[1:13:16] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Way back.
Sam:
[1:13:20] They, they, they did a, they did a couple of the army men games, which were like inside people's houses as well, rather than sort of the more. Cause those army main games were cool like the i think yeah the air attack ones yeah um but that they didn't really feel much like they were toys at all it just felt like okay yeah it's just an army game but they happen to be toys whereas in the house ones it feels more like okay yeah they're toys i.
Tyler:
[1:13:45] Think that's awesome though there's just there's a never-ending like rolodex or spinning wheel of ideas that you can just throw into it. It's actually really smart what you're doing. You have the idea of what the gameplay is. The engine is there. The mechanics are pretty much set in stone.
Sam:
[1:14:05] And it's just.
Tyler:
[1:14:06] You can infinitely forever invent new creative settings and backgrounds for that to take place in. And that's probably never going to get old for a lot of people.
Sam:
[1:14:17] I mean, we're getting deeper as well with each release. like um, when we were playing when we were making uh flash of the blade we were like okay let's experiment with gravity and player vision so we're like okay so we'll have lower gravity so you can do the sort of ninja gliding jumps and we'll have uh areas which the player can't really see past their face and they have to rely on sound to know where there's ninjas are coming from so there's like a wheat field level where you've got to attack the ninjas in the wheat field uh or you can just kind of bunny hop around and round them up and then kill them like you wouldn't call it two zombies, and then we were like okay with Doss Man, Space Aliens in Space let's play around with.
Sam:
[1:15:04] Dialogue let's get some like visual novel sections in the game and really lean into story, with Reaper there was a lot we wanted to lean into but everything sort of broke like a couple of months before release so we just sort of, it came out yeah uh and with with scarab we're playing with things like traps and enemies having different phases so like some of the some of the bosses will start by attacking you one way and then partway through the fight they'll attack you a different way um and the stuff that we're adding in is feels bigger than that so now we're adding in in our future games things like lifts some elevators uh and swimming dashing like we're i feel like we're starting to get to a point where we know the engine well enough to push it in different directions so it won't feel like, what i really don't want to happen with with the dossman games is for people to feel like oh it's just a reskin of the last one and i feel like the more we learn the less positive possible that that is yeah you just.
Tyler:
[1:16:11] Keep getting better
Sam:
[1:16:12] Yeah as long as people can see that we're improving and we are kind of working out different ways to do cool things in the engine the the less likely that will happen the more people will appreciate what we're doing well.
Tyler:
[1:16:24] Now that you've got a flow you know like of several releases what's like the turnaround on a typical dos mana game you would say like average you know from from idea from from the click of the wheel on the this is the genre to completion, what does that look like?
Sam:
[1:16:41] We've never had a project at the same amount of time. But what I'm most proud of is the remake of Flash of the Blade, which isn't much of a remake, just one level is similar in layout. It took us three weeks from concept to release.
Tyler:
[1:17:00] It makes sense.
Sam:
[1:17:01] So, so, so like, uh, the, the artist is, is he's super fast. He, he's basically, he's got a template for each like, uh, width of enemy. So he's got like, oh, skinny guy, medium guy, fat guy. Um, and he just kind of paints over those and makes it work. Um, so he, he can put stuff together really, really fast.
Tyler:
[1:17:22] That's really smart.
Sam:
[1:17:23] It takes me to make different, uh, environments for them to be in.
Tyler:
[1:17:27] It's almost like a, like a, henry ford assembly line for for video game production at that point which is cool it's really from business standpoint it's really really smart
Sam:
[1:17:37] We've made it we've made a video game factory farm yeah i.
Tyler:
[1:17:42] Like it i like it but
Sam:
[1:17:44] Um but yeah like uh some of our some of our projects have taken us what we consider to be too long reaper took probably about 10 months, and by the end of reaper none of us wanted to be working at reaper anymore and i think that was a big wake-up call as to how we wanted to sort of present and how we wanted to shake DOS man moving forward into sort of bite-sized experiences into being, smaller dev cycles allowing us to explore different themes a lot faster while still having fun doing what we're doing because although we are like earning money from our games on steam and whatnot we still want it to feel like a hobby
Sam:
[1:18:24] because that's where we get the joy from it and.
Tyler:
[1:18:28] They're all like three bucks i mean it's it's a fucking steal i genuinely think you could charge significantly more but uh i admire your uh generosity
Sam:
[1:18:39] The the i've had this conversation with a bunch of people uh both involved in a financial uh perspective and not uh but there are two games which, three games which stopped me from wanting to charge more and that is chop goblins which is four bucks uh zort which is about five bucks yep and um cultic which is 10 bucks right i don't feel like our games are long enough or at a good enough level to compete with either of those three i.
Tyler:
[1:19:19] Don't think you're
Sam:
[1:19:20] Really necessarily competing.
Tyler:
[1:19:23] Let's just spitball here. If you released every one of these games right now, as if they had never been three bucks, but they were $7.99,
Sam:
[1:19:33] And then you were.
Tyler:
[1:19:33] Still offering a 50% discount, people would still buy them, and you would be making an extra dollar per game.
Sam:
[1:19:41] Yeah.
Tyler:
[1:19:44] You're probably going to move more copies simply by being on sale versus if you're as it stands or the three dollar game you put it on a 50 discount for a dollar 50 steam takes 50 cents now you're making a dollar per unit sold and splitting that between you whoever your developer may be what you know all that i just feel like you i just feel like you could be doing yourself a few favors like as in terms of like getting your own business off the ground and like being able to like use your money to like not just pay yourself but i mean like invest in more stuff going forward and far be it for me to give business advice it's not like i fucking released a game this year so oh
Sam:
[1:20:24] But you will oh yeah.
Tyler:
[1:20:26] I shall and i can't wait i can't wait for stellar valkyrie but also just like i can't wait to take every lesson i've learned from stellar valkyrie and apply that to more things going forward because that's gonna be stellar
Sam:
[1:20:39] Valkyrie 2 yeah.
Tyler:
[1:20:39] Interstellar valkyrie um i don't know i don't know if i want to do that i mean like if there's like so much demand like if it's like some kind of huge hit and people are like we want it now like i might change my mind but i have other things i'd like to do first
Sam:
[1:20:57] Um what in your opinion would be a huge hit a huge hit what in your opinion would be a success.
Tyler:
[1:21:04] Like do you mean like relative to stellar valkyrie or do you mean like what kind of game do i think would
Sam:
[1:21:09] Be a huge hit like if like it stellar valkyrie releases in uh.
Tyler:
[1:21:15] I'm gonna pull
Sam:
[1:21:16] A date out my ass and you're gonna be like okay yeah that's not the actual date uh stellar valky releases on the 2nd of november 2025 uh at uh 12 p.m uh gmt right and uh it sells well we're not even talking about money actually we'll say it gets x amount of steam reviews uh what number does x have to be for you to be happy.
Tyler:
[1:21:42] Definitely thinking money and not steam reviews but i
Sam:
[1:21:46] Just didn't want to put you on the on the spot to be financially talking.
Tyler:
[1:21:49] Yeah i could do both so i mean steam reviews wise like look most boomer shooters most boomer shooters and there are going to be the exceptions that you and i both look at like cultic etc like there are these games that are you know huge massive successes sulaco that kind of thing i'm not necessarily comparing it to that and definitely not cultic cultic is in unity it's you know it's got a full-blown fucking publisher behind it like really you know there's a lot of reasons for it to be successful besides just that it's great and it is great um but like literally for me it would be like is it financially viable like if i break even on stellar valkyrie i will call that a success like i'll be like yes i mean and it's not an expensive game and probably by your standards it is but i mean like by video game standards i have seen lesser video games cost a quarter million dollars you know and i nowhere near that like we're talking way way less digits and zeros and everything than that but uh if it if it like significantly like 1.5 2.5 increase you know from what i put into it then I would say like this is a this is a success this is massive to me like and then
Tyler:
[1:23:09] Like you said with steam reviews like I would need to see like demand like I want we want more of this but this is awesome this is great as opposed to not throwing anybody under the bus but you know like something like buff where it's like it's an amazing game and it only has you know set like 20 steam reviews or something like that or or and I don't think Omar is a millionaire yet I think he will be, but it'll be a few games from now. Something like that. And I also, like, I am very realistic for me, like, this is our studio's first game. Like, you know, and always quote John Romero, like, you know, Wolfenstein 3D was my 87th game.
Sam:
[1:23:49] You know, I'm like.
Tyler:
[1:23:50] Okay. It takes a while. And also there's like recouping on your investment with your back catalog. So in your case, you're in an excellent position where like when you do put out a game that like is a world changer, people are just going to buy every DOS man game after that. Like you just bundle them all together for cheap and boom. Now you have real revenue flow. back into your company and you're not it's not like dependent on you to deliver the next thing it's just
Sam:
[1:24:14] You have.
Tyler:
[1:24:15] A library um
Sam:
[1:24:16] That's what we sell bethesda.
Tyler:
[1:24:18] Makes money what
Sam:
[1:24:20] We see a lot is uh because we've got the the dashman collection bundle on steam whenever we do release something new we release it and we put it in that bundle so that when people are looking on the store page they say, oh, we can buy this new game that's just come out for three bucks or we could spend like ten bucks and get all of these games and then they try the game that they've got, in addition to the one that they were meaning to get they leave reviews algorithm then boosts it, it sees more people, I think the way that I envisioned things working was a bit like the horror developer Chiller's Art where they release stuff quite regularly and it's always these small sort of bite-sized experiences. And then people become not necessarily fans of the individual games but fans of the studio and they start to know what to expect from the studio. And I think that's what I would like from DOSman eventually.
Tyler:
[1:25:23] I think that's a solid way to look at it. You could just keep growing that library and eventually something will you know spark that yeah the return because we're
Sam:
[1:25:34] Not i think what's quite quite good about us being like three three bucks a game is people aren't playing our games and they're thinking oh you know what dusk is better than this oh sulaco is better than this, they're they're they're playing through and they're thinking oh uh is this worth like a quarter of nightmare reaper or i think it's even less i think it's like this is worth like uh an eighth of Nightmare Reaper and I think Nightmare.
Tyler:
[1:26:01] Reaper's amazing by the way that's a fucking great game oh yeah
Sam:
[1:26:04] I completely agree to be an eighth as good as that would make me very happy, and if people think that we are then that's awesome.
Tyler:
[1:26:14] I want, I have like multiple kind of branches of my ambition, like Stellar Valkyrie in general. Like I want to be the best of the GZ Doom games. You know, that would be great. Because, I mean, the high water mark right now is Sulaco. And there's reasons why it is what it is. And it's amazing just in terms of like what they're able to accomplish with UI in the Doom engine alone is incredible. forget about all the other amazing things to do and then i think the other one that's scary is uh divine literally scary but also like oh yeah it made me kind of like i played divine frequency and i kind of had like a come to jesus moment with myself i'm like you can't do that like that's total chaos you know that is another great example but like these games that are just they're not even the same they're not even the same fucking universe whereas you know i look at things like keyed on like uh i'm really good friends with bridge burner and major arlene so like unleash hell and all the wonderful things that they're doing uh you know let's frontier did i say something wrong unleash
Sam:
[1:27:23] Hell my bad i always do that yeah.
Tyler:
[1:27:25] Yeah age of hell yeah i'm sorry bridge
Sam:
[1:27:27] This is too too many hell games bridge.
Tyler:
[1:27:29] Well at one point in time unleash hell and age of hell were under the same brand too
Sam:
[1:27:33] So and hell slinger.
Tyler:
[1:27:34] That's what i'd all on the hellforge studio imagine imagine the seo on this but i have i have exhausted myself trying to explain that to people if you put hell on your title you're gambling for your success at that point but um yeah
Tyler:
[1:27:55] I would like to be considered one of the better ones. But the other big comparison line is that most of the titles that I just named, and also Project Absentia is another really cool one.
Sam:
[1:28:07] Oh, yeah.
Tyler:
[1:28:07] These are adult games. These are made for grown-ups only. And I am making a game that should be in the, I don't know what the PEGI rating would be, but E for everyone,
Sam:
[1:28:19] E10 plus kind of thing.
Tyler:
[1:28:21] Cartoon violence is the worst thing you're going to get in this game. And I really, I want to make a game that I can play with my kid and that my kid can go and say, my dad made this. And all the other kids are like,
Sam:
[1:28:33] This is dope.
Tyler:
[1:28:34] We want to play this. And I literally play test it on like my nephews and other stuff. We even had like our business partner, like had his mom play it just to see. And so I'm designing it around that principle. And I don't know if that necessarily translates to more copies sold, especially on Steam. but that is the ambition so I don't know what to compare it to because there's like really nothing like that in terms of the GZ Doom engine games that have come out I
Sam:
[1:29:04] Think the big issue with a lot of GZ Doom titles, I'm not going to name any because I don't want to throw any under the bus but there's a big, there's a big issue with them where they feel too much like Doom whether that's in kind of setting choice or just feeling of how the character.
Tyler:
[1:29:26] Moves and stuff. Are you saying that Age of Hell reminds you of Doom, really?
Sam:
[1:29:30] Can you not put Will's foot on? No, no. I think Age of Hell is like the...
Tyler:
[1:29:38] It's amazing.
Sam:
[1:29:40] It's like the next step in slot maps. That's how I see it. And the art is fucking incredible as well in Age of Hell. It's awesome. but um but there's a lot of games which sort of don't go anywhere which you feel very they feel too close to doom to to make a make any sort of impact um and although these games might be good and might be uh might be fun they might have their fans i think just being different enough from that is not enough to succeed on its own but it's going to give you a leg up like if you look at something like uh project absentia which is which has got all the super cool gliding and stuff like that and all the characters look like super when you look at project absentia except project absentia screenshot you immediately know it's project absentia right and i think that's the same with uh with something like sulaco you know that sulaco just looking at a screenshot, but there's some titles you look at a screenshot and you think oh is this some this is doom, So, Sal of Arcury, I think, has that it as well.
Tyler:
[1:30:51] I'm hoping so. I'm hoping that people who do not or have not ever played Doom will play the game and like it. Like, that's what I want. And whether that's the smart business decision, I mean, it could be debated forever. Because ultimately, to run an indie studio, if you can get a 250th of something like Doom 16 or Doom Eternal or whatever, that's enough money to live off for a long, long time. Don't get me wrong. There's nothing wrong with that. But yeah, I really just kind of want to make something that transcends that. I don't want to be another Doom thing that's only marketed towards Doom people who already own all the other Doom games. To me, I mean, especially working at 3DR, that market is fucking tapped, bro. Like, there's about 10,000 people. And that's about it. And you're not, you have to grow new people somehow to sustain that. And there's a cap of this.
Sam:
[1:31:47] Aren't you growing a new person? Yeah, and I'm growing up.
Tyler:
[1:31:51] And that person probably will be exposed to it. Don't get me wrong.
Sam:
[1:31:55] We'll be a Senevacary fan.
Tyler:
[1:31:57] To be honest, to be frank, not a lot of these people are having kids. So that's a little bit of a concern too. Is that same nostalgia from 25 years ago when we were all little kids playing Doom to 50 years later, is it still going to be as relevant? And I mean, probably because it's software is doing a great job of continuing the,
Sam:
[1:32:20] You know, continuing the IP. A large part of it's the 30-year cycle. I think I've caught you talking about it a couple of times, where things come back into circulation. But have we had anything that's come back on a 60-year cycle?
Tyler:
[1:32:37] In video games? In video games?
Sam:
[1:32:42] In anything.
Tyler:
[1:32:45] Like
Sam:
[1:32:45] At what point did the so look looking at that the so currently the 60s should be cool if we're going by the 60 year cycle right.
Tyler:
[1:32:56] And the 60s are cool but not because grandma has nostalgia for the 60s that she passes along to her grandkids it's like because of the historical influence of people now on this on the 60s like people love the beetles that's never going away you know people there's always going to be kids with you know colorful tie dye clothes on and peace sign necklaces like I was one of those kids don't get me wrong but it was it wasn't because you know It wasn't nostalgia for my time in the 60s. It was me listening to The Doors.
Sam:
[1:33:30] But you were growing up during the 30-year cycle.
Tyler:
[1:33:34] Okay. I mean, if we're going from 2010 back 30 years, that would land me solidly in the time when Motley Crue and Dokken were at the top of the charts in Madonna, Metallica. Metallica, but I was into those things because my parents were into those things. Like, I loved Dokken. It's amazing. I've seen them live, and they're awesome. Totally great. Yeah. Go see Dokken, kids. Do that. If you want a little taste of history.
Sam:
[1:34:09] I find trouble finding other Dokken fans. I'm so happy we hopped on this podcast.
Tyler:
[1:34:14] Oh my gosh. Dude, we were just talking about like Maiden and Proof. Tangent, everybody. Tell my chat, gpt ai generated time stamps to mark this down yeah we were talking about like priest and maiden and
Sam:
[1:34:28] Stuff like that but yeah docking.
Tyler:
[1:34:29] Gets slept on
Sam:
[1:34:30] Man they're really solid i think i'm.
Tyler:
[1:34:33] Real soundtrack oh
Sam:
[1:34:35] There's something about hair metal where it's just completely found upon by anyone in the metal community but i love the cheese like i am here for it every single day of the week, not necessarily i'm not i'm not talking poison here.
Tyler:
[1:34:49] I loved poison when i was a little kid like but when i was a little
Sam:
[1:34:53] Kid yeah i mean now now you you i'm sure you think better, but like finding stuff like uh like talking or like winger i think winger winger.
Tyler:
[1:35:06] Are great i love the like watching those old documentaries where the feud was between metallica and winger and then like Beavis and Butthead was like spoofing on that shit and stuff like but Winger is like the music for the nerdy kid and then like Metallica is like what basically losers listen to the cool guy who's not gonna get a job or do anything with his life there
Sam:
[1:35:31] Is not a single member of Metallica that I would go gay for but Kip Winger.
Tyler:
[1:35:36] Kip Winger good looking he's very pretty man speaking of poison when I was like I don't know I was probably like middle school or high school my mom had bought me like this encyclopedia of heavy metal book where it had like you know pictures of basically everything from zeppelin sabbath up to i don't know probably like early mid-2000s lamb of god
Sam:
[1:35:57] That kind of stuff.
Tyler:
[1:35:58] And in there was this big you know spread of poison and i was like i had the book open like on the school bus and i'm reading through it and then this guy walks up behind me he's like damn those chicks are fine i would totally bone all of them. I was like, those are all dudes. Nothing wrong with that. Just saying, you know.
Sam:
[1:36:19] Yeah, the look, the look what the cad dragged in. Yeah, exactly.
Tyler:
[1:36:23] Exactly. That's that. And, but Poison was like the fucking Justin Bieber of their day. And like, that's, that's what's funny about it. Like we think of it as like, you know, rock and roll, but like rock and roll was just pop music for a long, long time. Basically until Madonna.
Sam:
[1:36:37] I mean, we're talking about when, when Ted Nugent was considered a cool guy. I like Ted Nugent.
Tyler:
[1:36:43] I think stranglehold rules. I like, I like when he does like wacky shit. I'm not saying that we're going to necessarily agree on everything, but like I have a, I have a real recurring dream for a long time that me, Hank Williams, Jr. Kid Rock and Ted Nugent are fishing on a boat together, drinking beer. And I just, it's, it's not necessarily that I think that
Sam:
[1:37:05] I have a lot.
Tyler:
[1:37:06] In common with these guys, but I grew up with all people like that. Like I'm, Hank Williams Jr. lives in Jackson, Alabama. I think we have a lot to talk about. We could find some common ground. And Kid Rock just seems like
Sam:
[1:37:20] A cool guy. You guys don't get a lot of famous exports out of Alabama.
Tyler:
[1:37:27] Jimmy Buffett.
Sam:
[1:37:29] Okay, so you got Yacht Rock and you got...
Tyler:
[1:37:32] Stock Car Racing. Leonard Skinner is Southern Rock, would be the word. But, I mean, they're actually from uh florida they're not from alabama yeah so the sweet home alabama was a was a rap battle between skinnard and neil young they were having like a like a 1970s version of a rap battle between them so
Sam:
[1:37:55] Like neil young from alabama then.
Tyler:
[1:37:57] No he's from uh canada but he he put out okay history time music history lesson for the day neil young put out two songs one was called southern man and the other song was i believe actually called alabama where he was taught he was talking about you know political shit you know like basically putting down the south for all the jim crow and all that shit that had gone on and all valid complaints don't get me wrong but it came across like he was kind of saying like all southern people are dumb ignorant you know
Sam:
[1:38:33] People who support this shit.
Tyler:
[1:38:34] And then Skinnerd were a bunch of hippies that were like, we don't, we don't have those same political beliefs. And like in the song, Sweet Home Alabama, literally like the second verses, I heard Mr. Young sing about her. I heard O'Neill put her down, but I hope he'll remember that a Southern man doesn't need him around anyhow. And they talk about like in Birmingham, they love the governor. And then it says, boo, boo, boo. We all did what we could do. And they're talking about how like, there's a bunch of people in the South who were like, we don't agree with this politics. because we just don't have control over it, basically. And fuck you for fucking putting us all down. And then that was the feud between Skinner and Neil Young. You're kind of like Kendrick Lamar and Drake now. It's much higher stakes.
Sam:
[1:39:17] And then Kid Rock thought it was so cool he pretended to be from the South.
Tyler:
[1:39:20] Well, he was from Michigan. He was from, like, not the South, but the country. He wasn't from, like, proper Detroit.
Sam:
[1:39:27] Kind of the highest of the South is sort of like North Carolina, isn't it?
Tyler:
[1:39:32] It's the Mason-Dixon line. I mean, Kentucky is further north, Maryland to a degree. Basically, I mean, the dividing line is the Confederacy and the Union.
Sam:
[1:39:44] But you wouldn't call Eminem like a Southern man.
Tyler:
[1:39:48] No, I wouldn't. I'm not saying he's Southern. I'm saying he's Michigan. you don't have to be from the south to be country you could be from fucking australia like keith urban you know and be from the most of the country is is not city there's two cities i mean uh you could be canadian like culture wall huge country store he's from calgary i think which is he
Sam:
[1:40:12] He is insane not as in like how he acts but like what happened to his voice box he sounds.
Tyler:
[1:40:19] Like somebody like when I, when I listened to like his, uh, his second record where he's like doing the, the kind of like 1860s, 1870s, uh, Saskatchewan. I think that's the name of the, one of the names of his songs even, but I almost believe like, oh, this is like an old folk song from then, but it's like, no,
Sam:
[1:40:41] That dude's like younger than us.
Tyler:
[1:40:45] Yeah. Amazing. Fuck. How did we get off on this tangent? We were talking about metal and then we ended, we got all the way to, we were talking about the 60 year versus 30 year nostalgia cycle.
Sam:
[1:40:58] Right. In relation to.
Tyler:
[1:41:00] So the question is, you know, If you are having nostalgia about your teenage years, 60 years later, you're Donald Trump's age. So how many people that age are having an influence on the zeitgeist of art is the question.
Sam:
[1:41:18] In 2070, are they going to be talking about Pitbull?
Tyler:
[1:41:23] No, they're not. They're not even talking about him in 2025. that's gonna be interesting though like you know when i when i'm an old man am i gonna be talking to my kids about like back in my day we used to listen to wholesome music where people talked about pimps and slapping hoes and dealing drugs and stuff and now you kids these days are talking about your laser sticks and your flying cars or what i don't know like
Sam:
[1:41:49] So so in your in your eyes the future is star wars.
Tyler:
[1:41:53] I mean you think you know all you kids nowadays with your techno boosted flying cars and you know lowriders were the thing when i was a kid it was you wanted your car to scrape the ground when you drove over a curve like
Sam:
[1:42:05] Don't cause right on gas yeah.
Tyler:
[1:42:08] Yeah we used to dig fossil fuels out of the ocean for for cars now you have what your flux capacitor flux you um i don't know but but then again people will probably live to be older you know like when i'm in my 70s i'm probably going to look a lot better than my grandpa looked in his 70s and maybe i will still be making shit that is relevant and maybe there will be more influence
Sam:
[1:42:38] But i just don't i don't know i don't know that's a that's an interesting.
Tyler:
[1:42:44] Philosophical question that only time will tell well
Sam:
[1:42:48] Let's reconvene in another 30 years and see what happens.
Tyler:
[1:42:51] Yes i'll
Sam:
[1:42:53] I'll be your guest on in the keep uh this this time in in 20 oh.
Tyler:
[1:42:59] It's a math problem uh
Sam:
[1:43:01] Why do you think i picked an engine that doesn't.
Tyler:
[1:43:08] 2055 yeah
Sam:
[1:43:09] In 2055 i will be your guest on should.
Tyler:
[1:43:13] Make a game like side with punk 2055 or whatever
Sam:
[1:43:20] I think I mean the, it's something we've not touched on yet cyberpunk yeah i think.
Tyler:
[1:43:26] That um i like cyberpunk once it has passed its date that it
Sam:
[1:43:31] Was talking.
Tyler:
[1:43:32] About like we live in a world now where like 2001 a space odyssey is not the future and it's also not the future they predicted and it's same thing with back to the future all that stuff it's so crazy
Sam:
[1:43:44] Oh yeah uh but.
Tyler:
[1:43:47] You don't read how do you know anything about science like cyber science fiction you don't read
Sam:
[1:43:52] Books um i was really into star wars for a while it's not really science fiction science fact it's all real star.
Tyler:
[1:44:02] Wars is fantasy set in space
Sam:
[1:44:05] Well maybe that's why i like it yeah i like uh uh trances have you seen trances.
Tyler:
[1:44:13] Yeah what's that
Sam:
[1:44:14] Dude watch trances it's uh it's like this guy is in in the future which is probably like 2025 uh future cop back to the 80s um and there's like all these people in the 80s who are trying to uh like kill him and they're all like weird ghoul people there's a scene where he gets locked in a like a tanning bed he has to try and get out and kill the ghoul yeah it's it's awesome dude but the guy the guy who's in it i think his name is tim thomason okay i found the one of the imdb you can ever have 88.
Tyler:
[1:44:50] On rotten tomatoes
Sam:
[1:44:51] It's it's a sick film okay a.
Tyler:
[1:44:55] Gruff bounty hunter travels back in time to 1980s los angeles to stop a
Sam:
[1:45:00] Twisted criminal.
Tyler:
[1:45:00] Who can transform people into zombie-like creatures.
Sam:
[1:45:04] This spring rated PG-13 Is his name Tim Thomerson?
Tyler:
[1:45:10] Yeah, Tim Thomerson, yes. And Helen Hunt. A young Helen Hunt.
Sam:
[1:45:18] Wonderful. Add this to your watch list. Watch it with your newborn baby. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Tyler:
[1:45:28] It is rated PG-13.
Sam:
[1:45:30] It's perfect.
Tyler:
[1:45:31] Excellent so i'll get with you in uh 13 and a half years let you know what i think of that or i'll let you know what my kid thinks of it do so do you uh do you think you'll make us is it one of the things on your list is like a cyberpunk
Sam:
[1:45:48] Fps it's not on the wheel at the moment but we've repeatedly add and remove from the wheel, like um to give you a little taste of what's on the wheel at the moment we've got like blade inspired so like urban 90s vampire saying we've got renegade inspired do you ever watch renegade, with Lorenzo Lamas.
Tyler:
[1:46:10] Let me pull up a picture and see if it hits me I feel like the answer is yes, but it's not like ringing bells. TV series?
Sam:
[1:46:19] Yeah. It's like a Call of Walker, Texas Ranger. Yeah.
Tyler:
[1:46:23] No, I haven't seen this.
Sam:
[1:46:25] Yeah, it's sick. But that's on there, like a renegade-inspired game. Wow. And what happens a lot is I will encounter some form of media, but never the written word. And I'll be like, oh, yeah, let's build something based off this. Like, let's take this and sort of run with it. so when we were building Scarab I was thinking a lot and listening to like there's a podcast about Egyptian mythology and stuff like that I don't think I actually applied any of that knowledge to the game but I was, enveloped in Egypt for a little while listening to a lot of Nile and then we got one of the vocalists from Nile is actually in the game as well.
Tyler:
[1:47:07] Wow that's awesome that's a nice little tidbit there
Sam:
[1:47:12] So we uh it's it's cool like it's just it's just his likeness like he he agreed to have his likeness in there and kind of helped us come up with the idea for
Sam:
[1:47:19] the character uh but his voice by someone else i think that's.
Tyler:
[1:47:23] Like really cool though just like have cross-pollination between different art mediums and stuff like hey you want to be in a game like and most musicians are like fuck yeah i want to be in a game i always wished i was in a game like you know
Sam:
[1:47:35] I i've had so much trouble with it like so much trouble with it because one of my one of my big ideas and i'll say it because it probably never going to happen at this rate but we want to make something that's like 50 cent bulletproof where we have like a a rapper is the main star and we build the game around them yeah um but the trouble is trying to try this guy.
Tyler:
[1:48:01] You need Travis Scott.
Sam:
[1:48:02] I don't need Travis Scott.
Tyler:
[1:48:04] I don't think he's good or anything, but he'll probably agree to it, is what I'm saying.
Sam:
[1:48:08] So the idea that we've got is we want to find someone who is kind of relevant during the time that, like, for example, Bulletproof is coming out, or maybe earlier, like a 90s rapper or something.
Tyler:
[1:48:19] E40, Pimp Simulator.
Sam:
[1:48:22] I guarantee he's not interested. Like, we've tried people with much less clout than E40, and they're not here to be like, oh yeah i definitely do that like what we want to do is do something like uh a proper homage sort of 90s hip-hop so soundtrack wise we're thinking like g-funk and like stuff that's got like funky drummer samples in it um oran g then like nate dog i mean nate nate dog dead so he's not he's not great that.
Tyler:
[1:48:54] That era of like if you really like the
Sam:
[1:48:56] G-funk shit.
Tyler:
[1:48:57] Like that's that's what you're going for yeah
Sam:
[1:48:58] Yeah but like we've reached out to people who we've reached out to people who have no crowd and they still said no i um i'll fucking air this guy on air because he didn't come back to me but do you remember do you remember when john cena put a rap out mail yeah.
Tyler:
[1:49:17] Of course of course i do
Sam:
[1:49:19] Yeah was it just john cena no it was labeled on that No, Gary Coleman. No, no, not Gary Coleman. It was John Cena and the trademark. The trademark being John Cena's cousin, Mark something. Yes. Cena? Mark Cena? The trademark didn't come back to me. Who's talking about the trademark in 2025? You and me. We can drag the trademark on In The Keep podcast, and no one will ever even know who the trademark is. Well, I mean.
Tyler:
[1:49:52] They probably wasn't going to sell very many copies of every game anyway. He's like, it's John Cena's cousin.
Sam:
[1:49:57] Like, okay.
Tyler:
[1:49:58] Now, if you could get John Cena to do it.
Sam:
[1:50:01] What if we can't retweet from John Cena?
Tyler:
[1:50:03] He's been in a lot of video games, that guy. He's been in a lot of video games. so
Sam:
[1:50:09] Is vin diesel but i don't see him lining up to be in the next osman.
Tyler:
[1:50:12] Title that's probably true probably can't afford him the the hard part about a lot of those folks is that it's hard to get in touch with them directly and it's stuff that they would probably want to do but like you know their agent is just going to be like ah doesn't work for our brand or whatever
Sam:
[1:50:28] Um i mean a big thing i tried to do was come up with guys who were underground enough to be like uh have that have the rights to their music themselves so that maybe they could even say like, oh yeah, we'll put some tracks that we made into the game and stuff.
Tyler:
[1:50:43] It's like Cypress Hill did with Kingpin.
Sam:
[1:50:45] Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But yeah, it's just for one reason or another, it has never come to fruition yet.
Tyler:
[1:50:54] You gotta find like an actual young up-and-coming rapper who is interested and then build the game around, like build them as if they're a legend even though they're not technically a legend yet and then that will it will like manifest come you know you'll be able to like make it happen through the secret or something like they'll get bigger for being in the game you'll your game will sell because as they get bigger everybody wins it's like it's not a bad idea I don't know like get YNW Melly or one of those fucking like shitty mumble rappers to be in there
Sam:
[1:51:28] We would do it around someone who doesn't mumble, we'd probably do it around someone who is sort of trying to tap into that old older scene with the music that they make like uh i haven't tried this one yet but like big pun's son is is rapping now chris rivers uh there's a guy who's called a young woofy woof who's doing a lot of g-funk stuff.
Tyler:
[1:51:52] Yeah the 30-year cycle i think is actually happening in hip-hop music currently like it it's really interesting because my wife listens to a lot of the more modern stuff that i can't fucking stand like i really i really can't get into uh i don't know i like kendrick lamar a lot but i mean that's that's about as deep as i go and he's not a mobile writer but um there's so many songs that are sampling a song from the nineties or the early two thousands. And then, so when I hear it, I'm like, Oh sick, man, I fucking love orangey. And then it's not that, and it's them sampling that. And then I think like, well, actually that was a sample of this song from the sixties. Yeah.
Sam:
[1:52:37] Regulators is a Malcolm McDonald.
Tyler:
[1:52:40] I think so. I think so. I'd have to look it up to be a hundred percent sure, but yeah, there, I mean,
Sam:
[1:52:44] There's so many examples of that.
Tyler:
[1:52:46] Uh, like, I don't think there's ever been a song more sampled in hip-hop than Atomic Dog by Parliament, or George Clinton anyway. Atomic Dog is in like, Bow Wow Wow, Yippee Yo, Yippee Yay was done way before fucking Snoop Dogg. That was George Clinton and so many, especially Dre. If Dre is on the track, he's probably whipping that song out at some point.
Sam:
[1:53:09] I mean, not 90% of 80s, early 90s stuff was sampling funky drama with James Brown.
Tyler:
[1:53:16] Yeah they're pulling from the shit that they listen to when they were growing up too same thing we were talking about earlier I'm trying to rack my brain for what gangster rapper can we get for your gangster rap game I'm gonna be thinking about this I'm gonna be texting you in the middle of the night thinking about
Sam:
[1:53:35] This, I've tried some deep cuts I mean the fact that I even reached out to the trademark we've been doing deep cuts here yeah.
Tyler:
[1:53:45] Scraped scraping the bottom of the barrel and getting that port
Sam:
[1:53:53] But like at the moment that's sort of pushed to the side like until we can get someone come in that sort of fits that bill.
Tyler:
[1:54:03] People listening leave it in the comments what rappers do you want to see in this
Sam:
[1:54:08] Game this hypothetical game you're doing it wrong rappers listening, do you want to be in the game.
Tyler:
[1:54:16] Aspiring young rappers who listen to in the keep all of you would you like to don't think about what it would do for your brand to be in a in a first person shooter
Sam:
[1:54:25] Video game it'd be epic it's such a.
Tyler:
[1:54:29] We'll even make the sprite so that you hold your gun sideways instead of oh yeah
Sam:
[1:54:33] It's gonna be a chrome desert eagle as well.
Tyler:
[1:54:38] You watch Dirty Harry and buy a shitty gun
Sam:
[1:54:41] Going by the 30 year cycle in 10 years I'll have been ahead of the curve when people are making bulletproof clones when people are like oh you know what was sick Def Jam Fight for New York yeah, I really hope that happens in 10 years time somebody.
Tyler:
[1:54:59] Needs to bring back Celebrity Deathmatch
Sam:
[1:55:01] That was such a fucking fun time I love that shit Oh yeah. Oh yeah. We need more Steve Austin in our lives, I think. he still.
Tyler:
[1:55:12] Makes you talk about reality TV show that motherfucker's at work bro like Broken Skull Ranch and Redneck Island and all that stuff like something called Steve Austin does not sleep
Sam:
[1:55:22] He went through such a such a great phase, between like uh with 07 and like 2013 where he was in a bunch of action movies and I think that was like the perfect The Condemned yeah The Condemned uh The Force with Michael J. White yeah yeah I think I've got just about every film that he was sort of top billing on. Like, he's the same character and everything, but it's awesome. Maybe if we can get him to front a hip-hop game.
Tyler:
[1:55:57] Broken Skull Ranch, the game. Yeah. You know, if we could get in touch with his people, it might happen.
Sam:
[1:56:06] Maybe you could get.
Tyler:
[1:56:07] Like, Scotty Too Hottie.
Sam:
[1:56:09] Maybe if I'm lucky. maybe if I'm.
Tyler:
[1:56:11] Lucky I think he's a firefighter now he might be open to it or like the green the green meanie or the blue meanie my bad the blue meanie yeah I think I think it'd be cool as a Terry Funk game oh
Sam:
[1:56:27] That would be insane.
Tyler:
[1:56:28] But like he's a cowboy like he's his character for real just bloodbath Terry there's no weapons it's just your bare hands or like things you pick up along the way barbed wire covering baseball bats and shit on fire.
Sam:
[1:56:43] I went to what you'd call a yard sale last weekend and I picked this up while it was there. You're going to love this. A tiny little Farouk action figure.
Tyler:
[1:57:00] Wow.
Sam:
[1:57:01] That's from the Nation of Domination.
Tyler:
[1:57:02] That's amazing. What if they were Farouk
Sam:
[1:57:06] In a game? That'd be cool. He'd only have to say one line as well.
Tyler:
[1:57:10] You know, he just got called out on TV recently, so he might be up for getting a little clout back. It was like a couple weeks ago. I think the New Day, like Kofi Kingston's crew, where JBL was like the featured commentator on the show, and they were talking to him about, they've dropped biggie from the new day they're like yeah we had to trim the fat we you know and they're talking to jbl and they're like you know what it's like to be a part of a tag team and you know it to trim the dead weight or whatever and they're talking about the acolytes you know with farouk and all that and i'm like damn bro i mean literally damn sorry uh russell simmons right am i getting my name's wrong you
Sam:
[1:57:51] Are that ron simmons.
Tyler:
[1:57:53] Ron Why don't I think Russell Simmons? I'm a bad person. I'm sorry. Now Farouk's definitely not doing your game.
Sam:
[1:57:59] I think you will get on that boat with Kid Rock.
Tyler:
[1:58:03] Hey, what if Kid Rock was in your game? He was a gangster rapper at one point in time. Dude, come on. Balls in your mouth. Everybody knows balls in your mouth.
Sam:
[1:58:12] Podunk.
Tyler:
[1:58:15] Insane Clown Posse might do it.
Sam:
[1:58:22] But but yeah it's it's it's one it's one idea of money uh and and i i am interested to see what we pull together after our current lineup we got we got three games in various stages of production at the moment four four games in various stages of production at the moment that are just the internal stuff that we're doing that's cool and then we've got a bunch of published stuff that coming as well so we've got a lot that we're doing a lot on our plate what.
Tyler:
[1:58:49] Was the one that i like messaged you about recently i'm like i think i like it was on twitter i was like is this it's on twitter
Sam:
[1:58:59] I mean he said yeah he said yes but we haven't done like the proper rollout of like oh here's a proper trailer here's here's all the stuff well you got.
Tyler:
[1:59:08] To give us like at least like one exclusive come on
Sam:
[1:59:10] I mean we we announced we announced scarab today so effectively it was it was announced on in the key so.
Tyler:
[1:59:19] This is the first time anyone's heard of scarab is the steam page going to be out by two well next tuesday not the one after that
Sam:
[1:59:27] The steam page was out 8 45 a.m on the friday that we recorded that, in preparation for my appearance on.
Tyler:
[1:59:36] In the camp let me uh let me make sure that's true
Sam:
[1:59:43] No it is it is it's because because we didn't want to get sued but yeah yeah.
Tyler:
[1:59:49] Yeah it is there well everybody go type in s-k-a-r-a-b and wishlist gara and i have played it and i will tell you that it is good if you like to shoot things in egypt you will be satisfied but it has better
Sam:
[2:00:05] Since he played it because uh because now we've implemented his feedback that's good yeah i love i actually like doing that like.
Tyler:
[2:00:15] Straight like just general feedback on games and stuff like i've even got a whole setup where i've got my phone where i can just hit the record button and it goes voice to text to my computer screen so i don't have to tab out and type all the time.
Sam:
[2:00:28] That's lame.
Tyler:
[2:00:30] And I hate opening up OBS and recording myself.
Sam:
[2:00:35] I'll send you links to one of our work in progress posts from now on. You can be free QA.
Tyler:
[2:00:43] I'll find a way to make money off of it.
Sam:
[2:00:47] When I bring you a hot.
Tyler:
[2:00:48] Young rapper that wants to do your game, I'll get that money back somehow. I'll be like the guy in Rocky V, like a terrible agent.
Sam:
[2:00:58] Oh, God. Or a terrible movie.
Tyler:
[2:01:01] I just watched it again last night, and it is a fucking horrendous movie. I hated that shit.
Sam:
[2:01:08] But, I mean, I love Stallone. I love Stallone films which aren't necessarily his best films. Like Over the Top is amazing. I gotcha I cry when I watch Over the Top because it makes me think of my relationship with my dad which sucks but then it's got a sick ass arm wrestling competition at the end and the tears are gone and it becomes just pure joy what.
Tyler:
[2:01:31] Is it in the 80s about like, and 90s but like the tournament movie like Bloodsport everything was a tournament Bloodsport,
Sam:
[2:01:42] Bloodfist Bloodfist 2 Bloodfist 3 What's.
Tyler:
[2:01:47] The arcade game one?
Sam:
[2:01:53] That's not the one I'm thinking of. The one with Billy Blanks?
Tyler:
[2:01:57] Probably. I don't know.
Sam:
[2:01:59] Expects No Mercy.
Tyler:
[2:02:00] No, that's not the one.
Sam:
[2:02:02] I believe you.
Tyler:
[2:02:06] I'm just thinking of...
Sam:
[2:02:07] What the hell is The Wizard?
Tyler:
[2:02:09] It's a movie... I could be completely wrong about this.
Sam:
[2:02:12] But The Wizard... Movie of Oz.
Tyler:
[2:02:17] Uh yeah okay so a boy and his brother run away from home to hitchhike across the country with help from a girl they meet to compete in the ultimate video
Sam:
[2:02:24] Game competition 1989.
Tyler:
[2:02:26] Okay that's
Sam:
[2:02:27] That sounds amazing.
Tyler:
[2:02:28] Yeah well but every there were so many fucking movies like that where it's like why was there this obsession with tournament um
Sam:
[2:02:37] I've got an australian fighting tournament film called day of the panther.
Tyler:
[2:02:42] That sounds good which
Sam:
[2:02:44] Is like just the right level of cringy.
Tyler:
[2:02:46] Cheese did you ever watch man of tai chi with the keanu reeves is the bad guy no i recommend that one it's much later on it's like mid 2000s or something like that but it's it's good that's a good one it's it's gritty there it's not like funny it's like
Sam:
[2:03:04] God damn coming in coming in brain gritty.
Tyler:
[2:03:09] Okay fine let's just stick to the funny then
Sam:
[2:03:14] What's next? Recommending books?
Tyler:
[2:03:17] I love recommending books. I think books make you smarter. It turns out that acquiring information makes your brain work more. And the actual process of reading the information means you retain it more. There's a reason why people have been doing this since the printing press and even before that.
Sam:
[2:03:36] Yeah, it's because they didn't have TV.
Tyler:
[2:03:37] Yeah i think there's there's probably a reason why like you know like in in various religions i mean like in in the book of john there's like the in the beginning there was the word and the word was god and the word was good and like i don't
Sam:
[2:03:51] Take that literally.
Tyler:
[2:03:52] If you want to but like lit what if you want to get real literal about it what you're saying is that writing things down is important like remembering things is important like or odin uh even in the eddas talking about like the runes are sacred and you don't forget them because your ability
Sam:
[2:04:09] Here's the guy from the four movies right.
Tyler:
[2:04:15] Yes that Odin the guy with the eye patch same guy for real but the idea that writing things down is the only way or at least at the time
Sam:
[2:04:27] That you can pass.
Tyler:
[2:04:28] Information across generations other than just directly storytelling and memorizing poems or whatever the fuck they were doing
Sam:
[2:04:34] At the time. Uh, yeah. I don't know.
Tyler:
[2:04:40] It's nice to know what people in the 1930s were thinking, especially when you find parallels to now and such. The 100-year cycle. I think this has been a really good podcast, man. I think you did good.
Sam:
[2:04:57] Yeah. I don't know how much we said on topic, but I've had fun.
Tyler:
[2:05:00] We talked about games, we talked about gangster rap We talked about wrestling We talked about Wi-Fi movies, reality I think we covered all the bases Yeah,
Sam:
[2:05:11] No one can come on this Podcast comment section and say Oh, they didn't talk about what one of them Talked about If.
Tyler:
[2:05:18] They managed to come up with something That'd be great, leave it in the comments And make sure you Like, subscribe, review And all that stuff on whatever listening platform of your choice, especially Spotify. I'm having a lot of trouble with people figuring out how to leave five-star reviews on Spotify. So if you could do that for me,
Sam:
[2:05:36] That'd be great.
Tyler:
[2:05:37] Thank you.
Sam:
[2:05:38] I mean, I will have a look because I didn't realize how to do that.
Tyler:
[2:05:41] Nobody, it's not even one's fault. It's actually like not very intuitive. So I'm trying to bridge the gap.
Sam:
[2:05:48] And don't forget to click through our Steam affiliate links to get your game recommendations.
Tyler:
[2:05:55] Definitely. If you have $20 right now and you're listening to this, buy the entire DOS Man Games library in one go. You'll be very occupied for at least a week or two. Then wait patiently for a Scarab to come out and buy that as well for only $3 or however many pounds sterling that is.
Sam:
[2:06:20] $2.50.
Tyler:
[2:06:21] $2.50. Think about it, Americans. That's a steal.
Sam:
[2:06:26] It shouldn't be that long I reckon I reckon we're looking at you too The Scarab You.
Tyler:
[2:06:33] Can do that And thanks for the Desecrators guys, that was a fun podcast too
Sam:
[2:06:39] I know a lot of people And they have game studios Yeah.
Tyler:
[2:06:45] You should start your own podcast It'd be cool The DOS man podcast The Fatherload I'm gonna be the Fatherload pretty soon but you could also be the father load yeah
Sam:
[2:06:56] I think i do think you should you should change your name upon upon birth.
Tyler:
[2:07:01] I just i don't know why i like i for the longest time even on discord i was just tyler brannon because i was trying to be professional or whatever and then i just got i was like nah fuck that i'm the mother load bitch
Sam:
[2:07:16] You can help me come up with one for mine.
Tyler:
[2:07:20] Uh yeah you're just the trademark you could be the trademark I bet he has a discord account and he probably plays shitty
Sam:
[2:07:29] Games I bet he hasn't trademarked it.
Tyler:
[2:07:31] I bet he's actually a really interesting very cool guy and I'd love to have the trademark on the podcast and talk about why it would be good for your brand to be in a first person shooter video game
Sam:
[2:07:42] Mark if you're listening.
Tyler:
[2:07:43] Yes damn he uses government name shit
Music:
[2:07:48] Music
Tyler:
[2:08:09] Thank you very much to Sam for coming on. Make sure you go wishless Scarab with a K right now. It's pretty freaking dope. If you like shooting stuff in ancient Egypt and all that, it is actually really good. And everything that they make over at DOS Man Games is pretty damn solid. For only three bucks a pop, or 250 pounds sterling, you could be the owner of any one of those games, or a bunch of them if you have multiple uh multiples of that amount of money or catch them on sale or buy the whole bundle or whatever just get them all it's great and uh also while we're at it check out desecrators that uh sam published over at perk games it's also really really cool and uh and check out my most recent interview with those gentlemen those fine young danish gents who uh yeah are making really cool space stuff there's so many great games coming out right now it feels like uh this month and you know just springtime of 2025 is is a you know the birth of a lot of games that have been in development for quite a long time
Sam:
[2:09:13] And looked forward.
Tyler:
[2:09:14] To for quite a long time so uh go spend some cash i know you have it thank you to all of our patreon supporters i deeply deeply appreciate it if you yourself would like to become one you can just go to in the keep.com forward slash support or find us on Patreon or support us in some other way. Then we have a coffee link on our support page. You can, you can use our Amazon affiliate link. You could, you could buy me a book on Amazon. That'd be greatly appreciated. There'll be
Sam:
[2:09:44] A link to.
Tyler:
[2:09:45] That in the article. You can, you could just tell your friends. That's the most important thing. Tell somebody how much you love this show and then tell them to listen to it. And then tell them if they don't you'll beat them up. I love you. God love you. Stay.
Music:
[2:10:02] Music
