Can the industry go fully remote? | Roundtable News Episode 253

[Music] what's up everybody welcome to another episode of game dev unchained the number one development podcast about game development and the lifestyle thereof i am your host brandon pham and this is a special episode a roundtable news episode and i am bringing the uh unofficial second host ray graham how are you doing i'm doing good what's up randy all right so a regular on this segment of the show and also jason lee a return from previous episodes earlier this year how are you doing jason um pretty good excited to be back awesome well well thank you for spending the time uh it's late in the night but as always we work from home so it doesn't matter anymore uh

including weekends so i want to thank you both for coming on and for those who are seeing the title of this episode [Music] uh we are going to fully discuss about should the industry go forward and we'll go off tangent here and there but i would love to kind of start this discussion because i think it is one of those this is the year if anything that we're going to either start crawling out of this uh pandemic or slowly seeing what is the next stage for game developers out there um and i would love to kind of hear both of your guys's own personal experience so far within your companies uh within your network and any thoughts whatsoever so let's go ahead and uh i'll throw it over to rey first to kind of get this party started so you're kind of more used to this i think um even before we were forcefully gone going to remote right right can you kind of talk about

your experience before during and what you think will be happening as we transition sure um yeah yeah before a little bit because i would have um i'd either be traveling a lot or or i would um have like early morning meetings so i would have to like you know take take the means from home or work from home one day a week or a couple days a week and so that was um that was kind of a it wasn't that big of a deal to not be working in the office all the time but i i'll say that now like now that we're doing it 24 7 it's definitely um it's like we're making it happen and work is getting done and people are remaining uh productive but with all the other pressures of of what's going on in the world with covid and everything else that's going on it really makes working at home even harder for folks it's definitely a mental health strain and so it's more than just can um

can you work from home and do remote work like right now everybody's doing it pretty much on hard mode at this point right and so it's like even harder to to uh to get stuff done or even or even get the energy to get out of bed to to work from home at this time right but you know we're just making it happen and things are remarkably remarkably happening but still it's it's uh it's taken a lot of effort for sure so jason i'm gonna throw this question over to you so we we we kind of went over this uh a few episodes ago when we were talking to each other but i would love to kind of get more insight on on that side as well because um to kind of go off of what rey is talking about everyone's doing this on hard mode right now so i would think that once things get easier and people can actually enjoy themselves outside the home that it'll be more welcomed uh what you can uh give you a little insight of what's

happening on on your side yeah so um pixelmatic studio is based out in shanghai um but a majority of our senior staff are sort of distributed all around the world from like france vancouver um you know in um in alberta like in some places in the states so there it really is just sort of spread out so we've been really working remote much before um being working remote uh was common with all these game studios um but i have to say um working remote was a lot more enjoyable before the whole kobit crisis because you know you were able i was able to sort of integrate more of that sort of uh go out go for a quick run and then come home and then you know focus on my work um also the kids are back in school now but um you know for a while they were uh sort of staying at home uh

schools were closed so it was also like i have a daughter so it's also very difficult for me to focus on my work you know when she's running around the house uh making all this noise right yeah um so yeah in that respect you know there was a lot of adjustments that needed to be made but um i think uh for us uh we've just uh you know aside from that just working remote overall i think like i think it just works for us as a studio um we've had to make some adjustments in how we communicate each other with each other a lot better i think that that was one of the biggest challenges um our producers really had to step it up to make sure you know work and communication and vision and all that is sort of communicated across all different disciplines like clearly what they were supposed to do why we were doing it uh and make sure that flu uh sort of flowed properly but um you know that that was one of the biggest issues but other than that

like once we got that resolved just through sort of uh creating better processes um yeah working remote um yeah aside from not being able to go out for runs and stuff uh you know uh has been pretty good um for us yeah i think i kind of sign off on that um you know i was working remote a little before the pandemic and my kids are still at home all the time bothering me so uh it is an extra challenge i think parents are facing uh i do want to bring up the fact that i believe mid last year uh the i think the most uh the biggest company that had an issue with remote was netflix where they kind of straight up and said this is undoable we as soon as we can get back in the office and to me that was the silicon valley that was the most relaxed before with vacation forever policies so it was very surprising to kind of hear their take on it saying that this is unworkable and i wonder how many companies where it's not popular to say that

um are kind of holding back right now and i would love to kind of hear your thoughts uh we'll go with you first jason like what what are your what are those worries that you think or insights that you feel that that might be an issue where not a lot of companies are all in and i'm really looking forward to going back in the office so um one of the challenges we had early on was to communicate passion and uh sort of vision it's a lot easier to do that uh communicating energy to your team how excited you are you know like what it is you're building in a very short period of time when you're sort of all grouped together in a meeting room right um trying to verbalize um vision and creativity is one of the hardest things to do and makes trying to make sure that's communicated properly to somebody else right so we have to create different visual different processes to do that um properly and i would say that if you're

not used to working remote that is probably going to be the one of the biggest challenges it's going to feel like you're running up against the wall because um you know people that are supposed to take your cue and you know produce work from it are probably going to have a very difficult time yeah definitely and ray i wouldn't ask the same kind of question you know you becoming the programmer i mean jason is like always the designer and they always have to talk all the time do programmers is a lot more straightforward here's my code leave me alone i mean what what kind of problems are you seeing being you know be manager of global teams um and and issues with that i would i would usually say i'll just gonna refute your first comment and say that programmers actually do talk to each other oh i didn't know that and especially when your team is is global or cross-functional um talking across teams becomes like super important um and so and so yeah so communication

is definitely a thing that has to still be tight even even for engineers mr mr fam no idea i thought you guys just writing code all the time all right no but uh but yeah i know so this that's still that's the thing that we that we have to that we have to worry about and deal with especially my position where yeah i'm dealing with multiple teams across multiple time zones it's uh communication is something that uh is is very it's very important and and these days it's it's very hard um the one thing that i didn't think i would be missing is like yeah what uh jason was kind of alluding to before being able to convey passion and and to say it's it's a lot easier to convey your emotions and stuff when you're in person seeing each other in a meeting room talking all together and then over zoom something's just lost and then on top of everything else that's going on it's even harder to keep that energy up

uh i would say and so it's it's so it's like i'm i'm experiencing those same kind of issues right now so a lot of these issues are do you think it's just over time you guys feel over time it's gonna find solutions through practice do better programs do through better slack upgrades or whatever right uh or is it just someone one of those things that at least for me like i'm finding the same thing it's like usually something that would be easily explained by turning around in my chair and talking to a person i would have to over explain like five times as much just to make sure that there isn't any miscommunication is this something that can be resolved over time or is just something that has it's just just communication online it's that's just got you over communicate to kind of compensate for for things so jason i'll ask you first yeah i mean for us i i

what i what we real what we decided or what i decided to try and do and that it seems to work or at least have been working so far was to uh approach every sort of sprint or squirrel meetings in the same way as if i was there in person with the same level of energy right i have to like consciously push myself to do that like be the cheerleader because they're looking at me right they're looking at me and they're believing in my vision that what we're making is great so i have to make sure every time i'm there to sort of talk about my vision i'm there to excite them right and i have to make that extra effort to do that yeah so you know i i mean i that those are those simple things like that i think uh were things that uh we had to change also some production processes i think we had we also had to change in the way we uh break apart vision and um in ways that we sort of visualize like people like

again like um communicating vision through words is one of the hardest hardest hardest things to do in the world where you know your you people understand exactly what you want to create what's in your mind right so you know you have to do other things where you know you you like through concept art and i mean when you when i'm communicating with programmers to be honest that's a lot easier because i i find that engineers just you know it's it's either like you there's a specific answer to things right whereas when i'm trying to communicate with artists it's a lot harder um because how do you feel about it though yeah it's exactly right yeah it's about tone there's tone and feel but then there's also how they perceive what you're trying to say it might be different than what you're thinking right so it you know taking that into account and taking the time to do take more time to sort of plan out and make sure they understand what you're trying to do um you have to spend more time in that

process before uh sort of uh you get into okay let's let's just break apart and do the work uh it's not so i don't think that sort of it you can't do approach it in the same process as you do in the office space right you just you really need to take the time to make sure everybody understands how to oppose things so this question goes back to you right like being the technical guy who is seemingly uh easier to talk to i guess online than i am i don't know how true that is but i'll take jason's word for it uh there are obviously some challenges as well right um i mean being a manager you're constantly were before making sure to that everyone's on the same page right now you're just constantly more in meetings uh and then is there an adverse effect to that just being always in meetings communicating have you found a balance what has worked

and what hasn't worked i mean i'm sure there was some kind of trial and error at first right yeah i i guess and i think the main my main thing that we've had to deal with or i've had to change is every communication every follow-up is a meeting yeah okay like like some conversations that would just happen organically when you're in the office now it's like oh no i have to book time yeah to talk to that person about this thing all right because now i will not i have no chance of seeing them right and i have no chance of seeing what they're doing or or uh i can't just drop in at their desk right so so now it's it's serious meeting fatigue because of all these meetings i have to get booked to follow up on things and know when something's happening um so that's the one thing that i've definitely uh had to have changed and also making it making the conscious effort to do that because again it's it's not an organic

thing where you just see a person be able to talk to them and see how they're doing uh you actually have to go out your way and and really say hey no i need to spend time with each individual person to see how see how they're doing and see see where things are going yeah yeah and i'll leave this on you ray uh before turning this over to jason so being at home all the time there's a whole as manager's mental component mentor mental morality not morality but um just keeping morale what do you call it just morale office morale up as a manager now that everyone's like locked in the homes and of course that affects work so therefore it affects you as a manager to manage that person are you guys finding in situations where you kind of have to be like checking in more than often doing more than you were you're signed up to do before as kind of like part-time therapists to make sure that everything at home is good or is it just one of those things that we're just learning as

we're going because as you guys can imagine people are kind of like stressed out aside from work to do work i would love to hear your thoughts about the ray i think as a manager you have to do that regardless yeah right and now in this situation you have to be extra mindful of it right um so it's not like something that so it's not like something new i'm doing or you always care about the well-being of the team and the mental health and all that and how everything's going but when you know that there's pressures are ratcheted up at this point now you just have to be extra diligent with falling off on that and make sure that folks are in the right mindset yeah i'll ask more specifically because some some contractors some employees are parents and then like jason and i and we kind of suffered through the that that uh variable i would say so what what kind of breaks are we giving

uh to parents even though we have deadlines uh obviously there are adjustments there i'm assuming for scheduling to accommodate for that but um how do you see that being a long-term thing where this could be a long-term thing uh with parents stuck with kids for a long time um and still having to hit the same deadlines as others so for me yeah i'll throw it back to jason real quick and then i'll i'll let ray kind of spit on that answer yeah um i mean for us uh we don't uh like what's that drive due dates it's more of uh the person working on what they need to do um you know gives us the amount of time it's going to take that person to do what they need to do right for the work so i mean it's deep it's different depending on everybody uh i mean

um working at home i mean personally i i i actually do more work i found in that respect that when i work from home and i get more stuff done than when i was in the office maybe due to the fact that um you know there's less travel time i think i spent about two hours just traveling back and forth from work all the time so i don't have to worry about that um i don't have to worry about what i'm gonna wear yeah you know that too just a good shirt from now on [Laughter] yeah so and also it's like i can take uh you know mini breaks here and there at any time um you know and then i can work throughout the night if i like it just you know i just find that i work not because unlike when i was working in an office where you know okay well it's time to go to work and it's every okay it's time to go home

um to fill in those hours i i just work because um i'm at home and in some ways maybe it's not too good because i spent too much time working because of that but um yeah no i mean i i don't think that's a problem with us and i don't uh i haven't heard that's a problem with anybody in our studio and plus they sign up for their own work we never really pressure them then um trying to make sure they get it done by like you need to get things done by the state we get them to own up basically how long is it going to take you to do it okay you know then you own it right yeah so i think before i throw this back to ray i would like to ask just as a general feel of the industry as um you know there's there are more people there are certain people that can do more work just but based on their lifestyle if they're single and they can do it and they have all the time in the world versus parents or especially in this time i wonder if that ever will play a big factor as this extends in the

hiring process and as managers like does that play doesn't that be your opinion or one that reflects your company or anything i just want to see realistically does that affect us as game developers um if if i know for a fact that non-parents may have more ability to kind of take care of things if i have like this tight three to six month deadline to hit um is the question i'm kind of getting at yeah that's illegal brandon i know it's illegal but there's other ways again not asking for what you guys do for your personal company but i'm just saying it is a thought it's a lot it's it's flat out illegal it's like they're so like there's no thinking about that like you know that that's just not right not moral and also illegal well i hope everyone is legally going about it right but it is one of those things that i do hear at least through

friends that are not through our own industry where their peers are able to kind of get the work done and then they are kind of like struggling behind because they are parents so at least as parents i am hearing from parents working through the pandemic that's not necessarily in the game industry but i i feel like it is a mark against them you know uh for reasons that are not their own no well like yeah like right now if your kids are home you're going to get less done if you're a parent yeah right um and at least how we approach that is when the where the covet started and folks were expecting things to be done on a certain deadline the answer was like well that thing may not be shipped at this date because so-and-so has kids at home and that's that's going to impact the amount of output that they can do yeah right like is this something that you have to take into account when when do the estimates for time and so then you cut scope you do you do

less in the time that you have because you understand that folks are in these uh precarious uh positions right um and then there's other people that have no kids at home at all are not married or are single yeah yeah they could do a lot of work but after 12 months of being in your house alone uh that also has a mental toll on people and those folks will also get less work done too if their mental health is being affected right so um so i think it's affecting everybody like across the board i think people are working more like what jason was saying i'm working more because like i don't have the commute as well it is absolutely terrible that people are working more but but then also because of all of this people also being less productive due to all the other extra pressures yes yes sure um so i i kind of unless jason you have something to add to that oh um i mean i i do i remember

some of my friends um with you know not working remote uh when they were working in the office um that they intentionally stayed late so they actually worked harder it is an escape i would say that because uh before i went full remote right before the pandemic it is nice to kind of have that break or at least physically have a separation from work from home um just like most people during the epidemic you know i build a gym in my garage right because the gyms are all closed and i find it very funny that immediately if my wife has an errand she can just walk into the gym and tell me whereas when i was at the gym it would be like i'll be back in an hour so that those little instances i see

is piling up where overall you know super happy to have this opportunity but yeah there are those little things there's like especially as a family man you do appreciate those isolation moments where you you are yourself to concentrate on something um that i think it is a byproduct of yeah this is great but there was some great moments in the office too just being focused i don't know rave you can relate i'm sure you like office time right i don't actually like it that part of it i'm not missing the office at all you know like i miss seeing people and talking to people that i work with but exactly i don't miss i'm not like at the office escape home right in my case yeah yeah you like home i think we all are forced to like home as well um i think also i would love to kind of touch a point one of the biggest

concerns in game development i i felt like there was a huge resistance especially from bigger companies you know outside of ray and his company there was very few companies that were open to people just like yeah just stay home do the work i'll see you later um more more companies we're against that for the fact that for some reason there's a negative connotation with game developers being lazy for some reason right but i think it's way opposite of the fact like you said jason i think most game developers who are professional or our senior uh who likes getting their work done and i'm proud of it are getting their work done and actually uh are spending more time at home focusing on work uh i wonder if any of that remnants uh if that have been completely squashed and how you guys feel about if there are certain companies that are wanting to get back to the office as much as possible um i would love to kind of explore the

conversation with you guys uh ray since you're on why don't you go yeah i would no i'll just say my in my experience is not the laziness connotation that is the issue right most most game companies there's two issues i think one of them is is security right so a lot of the bigger game companies are super paranoid about security and the security of their assets and the ip and then the you know i'll i won't name any names ubisoft but like you know there's there's others that are even more paranoid about that stuff right and then the other part of it is like folks just think you know making a video game is a creative endeavor and being able to bounce ideas off people real time that are sitting right next to you is it is better than than uh doing it remotely and so something so for those two reasons i think are the major reasons why folks don't want to embrace working from home 24 7. like game companies right

how about you jason what do you think yeah no i agree with ray um i mean um you know i i think the best world is sort of where um you know you can sort of mix the two um where you know that there are so in in those sort of moments when you need to sort of pass around vision pass around energy like once a week or something you know you arrange something where you guys all get together and sort of have that conversation but at the same time i think working remote is extremely valuable in in times like um you know when you just need to sit down and get your done you don't want people to bother you right for myself it's like when i need to get creative you know i found it really extremely hard to do it in the office and have people walking all around me right um i just needed to sort of isolate myself in an area i was just like quiet um even like running outside for like an hour i found that was way more helpful you

know in sort of pumping out my creative juices then sitting in an office um just staring at the screen maybe you know browsing through youtube right so um yeah i mean i see advantages of both sides um i think going forward um from what i've heard from some studios at least in vancouver that working remote is going to be more of a regular thing they're probably going they're not probably they're probably not going to sort of say um you know everybody just works fully remote like we do but uh more arranged with things where you know you have to come into the office maybe you know twice a week but you know beyond that you guys can work remote and then other people that actually works off on the island they live on an island or something like that they're allowed to probably work remote for like two three weeks but have to come in uh for a couple couple times a month hey guys let's take a break and have a

word from our sponsor this episode is sponsored by app figures app figure is all about giving givemakers the tools they need to get more downloads and revenue you may already know them for analytics and app story optimization now app figures can help you track competitors from how many downloads they're getting and how much money they're making to their audience demographics and even which sdks they use their competitor intelligent gives you great context say a competitor as a new feature or was mentioned in the news with app figures you can see if that brought in more downloads got a great idea for an app or a game with app figures you can figure out how big the market is and how much money you could be making with it and that's just scratching the surface whether you're growing your app or building a new one app figures has the tools you need to reduce risk and get more downloads you don't need a large budget or a data science degree to do this kind of stuff anymore app figures has made it affordable and simple on top of tools app figures also provides a lot of guides and tutorials take you step by step through gaining more visibility

with aso and increasing your revenue by learning from your competitors they just release a free guide on that actually so head over to appfigures.com app f i g u r e s dot com forward slash on o n forward slash game dev unchained to try app figures for free if you like it then use our special code gdu3030 to get 30 off for the next three months you're welcome yes let's let's explore a couple of those so first of all the the the collaboration is key i i think it is still irreplaceable uh regardless of the zooms and all these whiteboard digital whiteboards just just doesn't feel the same um yet so i do think there is some relevance to having some kind of location for a lot of teams to kind of meet at if they need to uh i i also do agree that you know most most companies are going to do hybrid

where they require some days of the week um and i really do feel not all is going to do fully remote that i think that will be still proven difficult the the ip protection thing i would love to kind of dig into that more with you guys so a lot of the big companies are of course folding right now otherwise they can't get things done obviously they have hundreds of employees that have their own uh uh solutions uh companies have solutions like sending desktops going through vpn and just setting up all these like cloud computers you know these are solutions that are really born out of this pandemic that are if anything uh being accelerated uh to kind of make it work which is great right because i think it once that system is up uh they're gonna keep utilizing it and not completely scrap it once epidemic is over so for that alone that kind of feels like it's gonna open up a lot of global talent and i would love to kind

of hear you guys more about that so um you know i think before the pandemic the industry was moving a lot of companies were moving towards more contract work uh and then full time for like a very core group right and i think that's kind of still continuing so i wonder how much this opens up uh in terms of balancing the two are our companies gonna be uh of course you're gonna hire more people that don't have to relocate but are they more going into getting more contract freelancing work just giving more people opportunity without having to fully embrace them into health benefits and all this stuff i would love to kind of hear you guys thoughts about that because that was a big i wouldn't say issue but that was a direction that we were going in in the game industry before i see how that is that changing exploding uh now and and and later why don't you go first chase

um for us um so we hire a lot of contract workers um but uh you know going forward what we realize is um you know budget wise it's a lot more efficient if we sort of uh start to train them up and um uh sort of bring them in-house um so um we have started to hire people for more sort of permanent positions where we can train them and sort of grow them within the studio in shanghai um but still like a majority of our uh art and our sort of trailer work and stuff like that is sort of outsourced um uh so yeah it's not done internally um as for uh the security part um for us it's not a big issue uh because

we're not we're not ubisoft we're not like really well known um we i mean it's fine if people know what we're doing it's it's advertising for us so um you know even now like our game is like just before at the bring you know at the uh we're just about to go alpha in like a month and we've already been talking about our game and what it is and what players are gonna experience and all that we don't hide anything right uh because it's not there's no point in us when we're not we're not like um you know uh world of warcraft where we need to like keep these secrets for a grand reveal right it's just we don't have anybody to reveal to right now we know we just need to get people excited and want to come in and try our other game right so oh yeah that's not a big issue yeah how about you ray yeah i hope i hope we're not moving towards um more contracting you know

i think the game industry is already volatile career enough and so um we take this moment to say hey because you work a remote we shouldn't have you as a full-time employee i don't know if i i'm not too happy if that is if that is the future basically i should say yeah well i would love to kind of hear more uh on that point because like now globally companies have the pick of the crop it might if the borders are not an issue anymore right um you can hire anyone from anywhere and now they've you know have that chance to work with you without having to relocate to the united states or canada or wherever right where most of the jobs are uh i i don't know i feel like they are going to be leaning more to why not like uh unless it's like what jason said it's like the the company sees an investment in that person it's cheaper to tr to train that person up i feel like in most cases that is the case

than to kind of reteach someone something that someone else left but i would love to kind of hear you guys thoughts about that because i think it is one of those issues that will be cropping up now that there are no borders uh now in the future right yeah but this is like what you just said right like just the fact that somebody's in a different country working for you doesn't mean like oh they're not a full-time employee right you know what i mean yeah there's probably more more legal stuff and business stuff you got to set up entities and all these different locations right so that like there's a there's a cost to that uh but like you said like pulling somebody in and uh bringing them in training them up giving them a career path is way more favorable than just random disposable bodies right um so like i don't think like with this with this move uh remote then it's all of a sudden it's like oh yeah everybody's a contractor now like i don't see the straight line between those two

things okay yeah uh unless jason you have something to add to that um i think uh also working remote uh is somewhat limited in terms of like um area like for us like our designers are in vancouver uh for specifically for communication reasons and you know we need to be on the time same time zone because we need to communicate often so um uh you know i think there's that to consider because like uh you know some of our staff that's in france um you know we i find it really hard to find the right time for us to be able to have meetings together uh the time zone is a killer right so yeah yeah and i think that's actually that's a good point that's killing but that's that's an issue for me too right because i have teams of teams in the west coast i have teams in montreal uk and in korea right and so getting uh

everybody together um is really difficult um and impossible like somebody's gonna lose out really badly like no matter how whichever configuration you wanna do if you want everybody to be able to get together um and so yeah so it's it's a real it's a real struggle and it's much easier to do this communication meetings when when folks are in the same time zone like for sure yeah yeah i would love to kind of ask more about that the time zone thing is a real issue um it's one of the reasons i think original reasons why everybody wanted to get everybody in one office to better communication and then slowly where you know before the pandemic you know people were spreading out and now completely you know we we have friends that are still in the united states time zone where like hey i'm just gonna be in big bear uh for the next six months and just hit me up then so that's fine but uh it does open up that that that time zone thing being a problem uh

how how are your teams kind of circumventing around that where like you said it is kind of impossible he's like dude i don't wake up at 12 a.m i can't meet with you it's everything has to be through email uh or someone has to sacrifice like is what type of solutions are around that or you do meetings and batches right like yeah typical manager asking for more meetings okay okay right well i'm not asking for them trust me i'm not asking for them but like if you have to talk to folks you gotta talk to folks right so my days are usually you know 7 a.m meetings and also 5 pm meetings you know what i mean right like that's that's that's my day right so um and you just have to you have to make work because you know they're tiny and and that's that's been the state like even before chronovirus that that has been the state if i'm in the office in san francisco i still got to talk to the folks that are in korea right so that's still

an issue but yeah but to make sure that everybody's on the same page it's easy just to fly everybody to one location and do some sort of off-site right yeah but with chronovirus it's it's uh it's that's just not that part of it is not happening right so so you have to work extra hard at like the team cohesion and the team communication so for you and your team you do see after this over the flying back to one location to kind of sync up once in a while it's happening again so that'll be the hybrid yeah yeah there's definitely huge advantages to doing that you know what i mean like you know we did that i think udd does that for um we have a hack week where everybody gets together and works on stuff in one big room in in copenhagen for like a week right and there's huge advantages um to doing that to get to know people get the bond with folks and work on interesting things um so i look forward to going back to at least being able to do that on the

odd occasion yeah so you do want to be back in the office then all right not necessarily just a little yeah that's the thing too you know that's the thing too when people talk about like a remote work right um having the ability to uh your office is now just a bunch of meeting rooms yeah you know and then folks could be remote and then like oh i need to talk to joe blow about x y and z let's all get together at the office and and talk together like you have the opportunity after the flexibility to do that you know what i mean yeah um because yeah because i don't think we're even though we're gonna go towards more towards remote work i don't think it's gonna be 100 like you'd ever see your teammates ever again because i i don't think it's that works right yeah definitely hard well jason i would love to kind of hear your thoughts about it uh you know you've always had like a like a you know a team over in shanghai that you're always constantly communicating has that

what ways have that changed with the pandemic has that changed i imagine you know you had to kind of like a similar thing where your teams would fly to us a location once in a while to sync up or has it always been uh like we had a lot of our vancouver team go over to shanghai um uh let's say early before like november or or maybe earlier than that october november in the uh before the coronavirus stuff and then we visited the shanghai team we stayed there for like a week um and for that it was mostly a lot of the team here never got to meet the team there so it was more immediately yeah meeting get to know who you've been talking to on slack or you know on zoom um you know that that deal um yeah but in the same way like i have meetings from you know 9 30 in the morning uh to like 8 30 at night because shanghai they work with you know they when they get into the office it's

like it's 6 p.m here so yeah um yeah so like i have meetings all day long um it just goes with uh you know if you're going to have an international team it's just part of part of that process right but yeah like i mean originally what we were planning before this whole kobe thing broke up was that you know i would go visit shanghai like two three times a year right um just to make sure everything's in sync and everybody you know like we have that sort of face to face a bit but yeah we just haven't been able to do that since the whole covet thing i see so yeah i would just add two but the i'd be with my korean team at five like 5 p.m usually most days and then they like i think that's a reasonable hour but they they still are like oh man this is kind of early right someone's always complaining yeah yeah uh but yeah yeah i i feel that pain obviously so uh a little thing that you know ray

kind of mentioned we all know right the the the industry is has always been volatile and um you know at least in my career i know you guys too have moved around for a job right maybe more than once more twice more than three times and i'm asking this question from uh for a perspective from uh employer and employee manager right now that the borders are down now that people can can can have the freedom of like i don't like where i'm at see ya and then open up another zoom meeting right and it's like i'm at my new job now uh what i want i just want to kind of explore that with you guys like is too much like is there isn't it is now it's still flipped now that being a manager being an owner of a company is it a real concern is there do we have to overly make our employees comfortable to make

sure that now that they have so many choices that there are they are valuable i i wonder what that dynamic looks like right now since everybody can at least for a little while at least for a little bit of this year can switch jobs at a at a notice um or is it just fine let me go let me let me hear your thoughts uh ray why don't you go first yeah i don't know yeah i don't know um i think there's some for us like yeah like i haven't i haven't really thought too much about this um like i know in the beginning a lot of folks were like oh i could just go to the bahamas or somewhere and just chill there and work from there for like yeah a couple a couple months right um and like as long as you don't tell anybody you're doing that i think i you know just get a green screen you can actually get away with that right if you if you don't uh

tell anybody uh but if you do tell anybody then there's all sorts of like um tax pay yeah you know organizational stuff that have to get set up in the location where you're at so um so that then it becomes like a real problem like you know what i mean so especially if you're like hey i want to go somewhere where your company doesn't have an entity set up or are they really going to go through that trouble just for you so you could be on the beach like i i don't think so but i'm also asking before i throw it back to jason about like the the reality of is there a problem with too much choice you know if i if seriously i'm not happy with you ray i can switch up to another job next week without really changing my lifestyle anymore is that i mean is that a real concern or not at all no i think that's always the case though like like at least in the places where there's game companies right like if you're talking about the bay area

there is choice like folks can say screw you want to go to this other game company you know what i mean um maybe yeah maybe if folks are in a little bit more um a location with there's only one game studio or a few game studios then maybe there's a more of a concern for the for those places because like hey i could just work from i could work from thunder bay ontario and like and make video games anywhere right if um if remote work becomes more common um but like but yeah i haven't really thought about that or too too concerned about it being in the bay area you know but yeah engineers yeah people can just quit at the drop of a dime they're getting hit up with jobs like every single day so like i don't think this is going to make matters worse or anything like that well i would love to hear your thought jason um it being a buyer's market sorted right

is it what do you think is this a thing to to think about or is it just one of those okay i don't think so especially not in the gaming industry i think like um from my experience people choose the gaming industry that they apply to because they like the games that they make um or that that's my experience from interviews and stuff right um especially like engineers and stuff like they can get paid much better going to google oh they don't they shouldn't have to go you know go work at a gaming studio like a lot of the engineers that come and work at gaming studio are like hardcore gamers they love games right and that's what they want to do so they come and look there right um and you know game designers they love the game that we make you know artists love the style that we do uh so that generally is the reason why they come and work with us um yeah so i don't i don't i don't think it's it's because it's really the product right they want to be part of the

yeah i think there's overall loyalty in the game industry more than other industries in terms of people just just want to stick around the only the thing i would say is like i think it impacts the studios more if they embrace remote work like they would actually increase the pool of people they could recruit yeah more more talented yeah so i see that as a good thing like if you look at it that way okay uh one of the last few questions i want to ask you guys uh the nine to five uh philosophy has been around since the industrial revolution right so obviously that's been broken down i agree with you jason that i think for games especially for or any creative job is task driven more so than hourly um but also that raises a question with the hourly people too with the contractors it is a very odd equation where you know we're not needing to do eight hours um

i i have as an example i haven't heard too much of an issue where companies are running around like well if they haven't done eight hours today um maybe small semblance of that but i would love to kind of hear you guys is either firsthand or through network experience like has there been alarms about that particularly or is it just one of those things that people are going with the flow and suddenly if you're not unless it's for meetings the nine to five doesn't matter anymore unless you just get your work done uh you can go run or do take a break or walk your dog at any point just get the work done uh it doesn't matter what you do with your time yeah for us it's it's definitely the work that's important um i mean even during our scrums and sprints it's more about the feature and the progress of the feature within the sprint team as a whole than what each individual is doing or you know what they did that day because that's not really important

we're trying to push the product along right um so yeah yeah i mean i don't i don't think that's that important yeah yeah i mean yeah that wasn't important that was not important even when we were in the office right like if you're in the office you had to go to the doctor's appointment or you had to go walk a dog or you had to go to the gym and do a run or whatever in the middle of the work day yeah so what who cares right as long as as long as you get the as long as you get the work done right yeah even when i was in an office i used to take like half an hour coffee breaks here yeah i like everybody you gotta kill time in the office but you get i think at the same time i have to acknowledge right i i think we we around this table right here we're pretty blessed with the places we work at where that isn't the concern but i know i've been at places where you basically have to get a doctor's note for everything that you do and it is you are being watched so i wonder at least i want to love to kind of hear you guys

opinion for our friends that are not as fortunate where time was always kind of like there's a hallway monitor uh hallway all the time right i'm just gonna say this and like i'm sure those companies exist like i did work out one way when i first started in the industry where they literally were like you have to be here at 9 30 in the morning every day yeah you have to be here and uh and i was there at 4 00 a.m the night before and and i came in like at 10 00 the next day and the dude was like what is this about you coming in late and i was like bro like i was here at 4am like right so and so like i know those companies exist um i i pray that they don't exist much longer and i don't want them to burn to the ground and i'll see i'll say that without any reservations for saying that i think those are terrible places of work you should not be there uh if you are not a slave screw that place right and and it's easy for me to say that in whatever privileged position i'm

in um but i was there i was in a place that was terrible and i looked for a new job like some straight like like i was like i need to get out of here right so like i empathize um but but i if if that's still 50 in the industry or even 60 of the industry like like that's really really bad yeah it's just it just should not be the case right yeah i would love to i would think that because of the epidemic and how we're shifted to work this way that that eliminated that part well i mean how how realistic is that well i got to see you in zoom meeting at 9 30 now like how how how exactly does a manager keep up with that in a digital workplace now so i think by default it's killed uh unless jason you think it's still remnants of that lurking in some of these companies because i'm sure you've had that experience once i've had it i was very

lucky yeah you're lucky yeah yeah i mean i started i started my uh running the game industry on relic and relic has always been pretty relaxed about stuff like that um uh like yeah definitely in situations like that if i was there to like even even if it was there till like 11 p.m um and i you know they would say yeah sleep in come in whenever you know whatever you know they wouldn't they wouldn't hassle me if i came in at 10 or even 11 the next day right um so yeah i mean i i've been blessed i i've never experienced that but i mean i've i have heard stories right um you know even like over like horrendous overtime stories at ea and stuff while i was working at relic it's just stuff that i've never experienced so i don't know yeah well you actually bring up a good point like french french culture was a big talking point up till uh everyone's at home now does this kind of eliminate that factor

of the industry that's that bad mark on us i mean how exactly are people are we asking people to crunch when they're going to be worse dude is it worse now it's very worse now is it is it self-driven or is it most like how how do people keep is it just overly tasked on on on stuff i think it's self-driven i think people are generally working more because they're home there's no commute right there's nothing to do and then on top of that with all the other things taking competing like you know if you have kids at home and if you have whatever your situation is at home uh you probably and you still need to get the game done i'm sure people are working harder and crunching more like 100 sure oh we'll love to kind of hear your thoughts too jason do you think that will be the new crunch culture in in this in this type of world um i don't know like um are we gonna have ea wives out of this

even at relic i remember you know we did have overtime once in a while here and there for like a week but then you know if there's overtime there's always other time to make up for the overtime where they give your extra days off and stuff like that right um so yeah i don't know like for me like i feel like i'm not working overtime right now um because we have to or i have to i'm just doing it because um my office is here and i you know i just have stuff to do right um nobody's telling me to do it i don't have to do it i just like head right i think that's one one of the things that ray's saying is that we're it's so convenient now and we're naturally i don't know i i think at least the senior lead guys it's very easy for us to not turn that part off it's like hey i didn't get to this earlier i guess i'll just do it now right so

i wonder if that i don't know is that like going to be a like i said i'm teasing about ea why is that going to be an article jason schweier later is that going to be a thing or is it what do you think like how bad would that get before it becomes a problem or is it just just one of those things that everyone's going along with because we literally can't go outside right now i think that's a self-control it's like it's like being an alcoholic right it's like you know if you can you got to find control you got to find balance in your life right yeah i would say there's no there's no fellow workers to guilt trip you into uh staying at the office right so if you decide like oh i'm gonna stop working at six like there's nobody looking at you crazy wondering why are you stopping no pressure right so um but i i think most basically just be self-imposed and and we we're going to be slightly less productive and thus going to make up for it by

working more one last question before we end this one uh the the show the social aspect right unlike ray i don't like zoom meeting all the time to talk about follow-ups and stuff and it doesn't have the same appeal of me talking to you getting coffee or some water some snacks right um i haven't been able to kind of find that hole just yet in this pandemic i would love to kind of hear you guys how you guys navigate around to getting some kind of that feeling back of talking to your friends in an office um i haven't heard any solutions i mean i there there are some doing more beer friday zoom meetings right but it's it's another meeting i don't know if i want to embrace that as being the solution uh with more zoom meetings but i would

love to kind of go around the table here to kind of hear what has worked what you think is in the pipeline that can work or is it just one of those things yeah that's irreplaceable so yeah i totally understand that i feel the same way i i think one of the things that you know i missed a lot and i feel was missing is uh with especially working remote international teams is culture um you know game studios are i don't know about ea ubisoft they're more of a um assembly line but you know places like relic that are more of a smaller sort of studio they have a distinct sense of culture within that studio it makes it and that's one of the reasons why the studio itself becomes very sticky people don't like to leave uh because they they love where they work right yeah and um you know that is very hard to develop when everybody's spread apart yeah so some of the things that we have

talked about um is uh have like because we're a game studio you know and people are passionate about games um you know we have talked about like game nights and stuff like that um you know it happens a lot you know in game studios and that's sort of how you build these cultures um at relic you know they used to have a lot of like a warhammer um painting and you know all that kind of stuff uh because we're like pretty well known for things like that for us you know i mean we can have game nights over zoom right um whether it's uh you know playing among us or you know you know any other sort of social games where you get to get to know who you're working with a bit better but also you know sort of dive further into your craft and just sort of have that discussion with other people in your studio yeah yeah what fun you having ray what are you doing for your team dude like you you said your fridays man it's beer every day bro

every day that's pretty much yeah that's pretty much what we did about a lot of virtual happy hours and i'm doing virtual happy hours for some friends outside of work as well and and that's kind of keeping it interesting like but i do get get with you there's some days where i'm like you know what i've been in i've been on zoom all day yeah i am not going to this happy hour i'll see y'all later right and then i just or i just do it on my phone or something and then go outside or something for something else right yeah so so there is definitely zoom fatigue but i haven't seen anything better than than that for team bonding like i like the idea of games and and things like that are just you know but most of what we're doing is yeah getting to zoom in this just shoot shoot the right yeah i think that is the one missing factor that is leading a lot of people back to the office like what you said jason the culture part the

best parts of the office have for me have always been not about the work because i get work done faster at home in isolation like you said right but the office is the best for gathering of people uh in some cases uh ex brainstorming ideas right just any activities that revolve revolves around away from our desks i love and that is why i don't like open offices right so now you can't you can you can't focus if you actually had a office with a closed door at the office [Music] yeah so um i think for that reason alone most companies if they can already have a location is going to use that space as a building that culture space um and because since we've been through this almost a year now and not really i haven't heard any great ideas aside from happy hours and playing some games here and there but still walking away kind of empty from it it's like oh okay

i interacted with my screen again it's like my eyes i would love to kind of see everybody's eye test after this because i know my eyes have gone to all i do is look at monitors now all day um uh but i think with you guys i hope there seems to be a light at the end of tunnel and if anything that that that hybrid approach is some version of this and that um i guess my last question to you guys is uh what are the biggest changes if tomorrow comes and everybody has uh permission to get back to the office what is what do you feel like the big percentage of the industry is going and how is that changing either creative output or everything like how what has this pandemic taught us about how we work and how we should work um

just final thoughts uh why don't we go to you jason well i think um you know companies in general have feared um allowing people to work from home in general and i think this pandemic has and having people work from home have sort of you know basically taught management and you know a lot of people that you know it it actually doesn't really affect that much in terms of workflow in some cases maybe it might improve um and you may be able to find talent for specific areas of work that you're looking for that's uh much more sort of easily filled if you're looking for people remotely then um you know just someone that can come into the office all the time so i don't you know i believe remote work is here to stay um i just but i at the same time i believe there's huge advantages of having a shared space

where you can come in and sort of congregate and you know talk and socialize and stuff like that so um yeah i'm really hoping personally like the industry develops in a way where they create space for both um you know they have that space where you know people can meet and they have that space they also allow people to come kind of work from home like for us um you know that sort of shared space is usually at like a restaurant or um at a coffee shop where you know me and a bunch of our designers sort of get together and socialize that's what we used to do before colby um but yeah i'm looking forward to sort of getting back to that uh because that was really fun [Music] so ray you still like being holed up in your office what's your deal i'm kind of adjacent i think i think what will happen is yeah i think a lot of the companies and the management and all that have noticed like oh the

sky is not falling and it's not that big video um i think you probably will see more people doing partial weeks at home and partially in the office i i think that probably be the biggest change i i don't know if i don't know if companies will go full on you could be remote anywhere in the world and and we will we'll we'll work with you but but at the very least i think uh there's there would be some folks about be like you know what like i just want to stay at home for a couple days a week right stay at home quote unquote actually in the bahamas right so that's the biggest thing i learned from this episode if it's a couple days if it's a couple days a week it's really hard to be in the bahamas uh a couple yeah yeah yeah let's unless you do it like friday and monday let's see yeah yeah well every other week yeah every i'm sick dude i can't make five minutes thursday night you know there's something to that i

think i'm jealous of the friends that actually took advantage of that and been spending the last six months somewhere in the mountains and just still doing work like out of this endemic that's the one thing i mean technically i could still do it but that's the one thing like i should have done that for a couple months and and just see what that felt like you know breathing well i mean i was in orange county right so all those wildfires were happening you too ray it would have been nice to be away from all that yeah yeah this past year well the places i would have ran to were on fire so like earlier we got to stay where jason is or in vancouver you guys seem to be just fine yeah uh over everything this is like canada was just showing how modeled country can behave during this pandemic it's like wow i would go is going crazy with this is it going crazy right now um okay

i need to keep up with the news uh this past year was just to the last day just something was happening in the country but um anyways i want to thank you guys uh both for for coming on and giving your thoughts i i wanted this to be the first roundtable news topic because i do feel this is the first year finally uh a part of the year we'll be transitioning to what the next thing is it could be more the same thing but you know people will have permission getting back into the office and um it was great to kind of have you guys talk and share your experience and opinions about what that could be so thank you both for coming on uh and everything so uh without further ado uh see you guys all next week

[Music] you