Crucial Remote Work Strategies with Andy Duthie, Executive Producer at My.Games

hey folks and welcome to the deconstructor of fun podcast I'm your host Mishka katoff and the guest of this episode is Andy duthy executive producer of hawed now if you don't know hawed it's a game that launched two weeks from now so on 15th of February and it has attracted well over a million players till date that's a good amount for a triaa games as a service title now Andy is a very interesting character uh he has a successful track record in leading AAA and doublea teams uh he worked well over a decade at Rockstar where he shipped games like GTA 3 GTA 4 GTA 5 and worked extensively on GTA Online Andy has played a Hands-On role in driving change within the organizations refining processes introducing efficient project management strategies throughout his career at several other companies and this episode we'll definitely peel back the curtain on

remote Team Management because that's something that Andy is very passionate about and as a matter of fact Hawk was fully developed uh with a remote team and yes the C the focus will be on the crucial remote working strategies as Andy has worked of course on site in hybrid setups and and and fully remote and he'll be going through a list of things that you should be doing things that you should be avoiding and things you should be thinking about uh in terms of your setup so if remote working is something that is very interesting for you this is a fascinating podcast episode diving deep into a production of a title of a new title with a big team with a AAA setup with live operations all done fully remote so tons of learnings and um a lot of people say you can't do this well Haw is a prime example of a of a game that Soares despite uh being remotely developed

second thing that I want to say is events so we have I think six or even seven events coming in in March alone so everything around think Istanbul and GDC if you want to be part of these events or any of the future events which we have already planned do sign up for the deconstructor fund newsletter there's a link in description you sign up and at the beginning of every newsletter will be putting in the links for upcoming events and we have all kinds of fun events in different setup so we have the big ones like the think Istanbul or U game night that is coming in on in GDC where hundreds of people gathered together and learn but at least have fun and then we have a lot of more focused smaller events they could be mixers uh they could be round taes Where We Gather Professionals of a specific craft together uh for a brunch event you'll be able to connect with uh with not only like-minded but but um but people you could actually share information with and learn from from them and and create

industry contacts important stuff so anyways all kinds of fun events we love doing them we love seeing you um around the world uh joining us at these events so do sign up for the deconstructor fund newsletter and uh sign up for the events that are interesting for you uh they are they're fun guaranteed fun anyways ladies and gentlemen without further Ado Andy duthy executive producer of haw duthy welcome to the podcast hi everyone my name is Andy duthy and I've been in the industry for over 20 years working in both development while at Rockstar Games and then in publishing and production while at builda Rocket boy game Forge Clan games and now I'm at my dot games where I'm currently the executive producer on a new free-to-play title uh a new free-to-play treasure hunting title hawed no well Andy you're making my my day super easy you're just running through the introduction I don't have to do do it so so thank you for that and

you're you're joining straight out of U the uh schwartzal the Dark Forest of Germany where you currently live so uh and I understand you uh you broke your rib just before the interview yeah I've uh had a good start to the week with falling flat in my face and landing on my arm and now my ribs broken so getting old is not easy yeah but I'm just saying like complimenting you on like thank you for having the uh the the scheduled time here despite coming in very injured you're you're ready to go to talk about your background remote team best practices and hawked so thank you yeah I'm on some fun drugs so it's G to get me through okay well that's going to make a fun episode so so let's let's see where we uh where we land so so you gave a your background a little bit so uh you worked at at Rockstar North for a good good amount of time working on um GTA online and and GTA 5 if I'm correct yeah actually I worked on all the GTA from

three onwards oh wow yeah so I was uh I was a developer um well I started as lead QA on GTA 3 um and then moved to Mission scriptor and designer for um Vice City and San Andreas and then from there just continued working on them all the way through to yeah finished as producer of GTA online we're not going to talk too much about Rockstar um but I I have to ask like how do like if you can talk about this like how how do the ideas of these different settings come about because is it developed out of Edinburgh yeah that's right yeah the main development studios in Edinburgh and so yeah it was uh at the time it was um the president of Rockstar North was Lesley Benes and a lot of the overarching ideas came from a combination of himself working with uh the the team that was in New York so Sam and Dan Hower uh who led Rockstar New York and then the three of them really

came up with the setting yeah cuz it's interesting like like I've been to any B and I'm kind of find it confusing that they would come up with a like how well they would depict in in some sense like the uh the different settings whether it's the other San Andreas or the Weiss or uh or other other locations that are so far removed from Scotland so yeah it was always really surprising when we were across in America doing research trips or anything and we got speaking to people and then they would just ask like oh what do you do and you know work for Rockstar and they're like oh wow and they'd be like but you've got Scottish accent and be like yeah GTA is made in in Edinburgh and so yeah it was always really surprising for the Americans of of how well we would uh yeah just put things together and how funny it was for them yeah for sure and and just kind of like a it's probably even more interesting when when it's coming from the outside where you can you can take the elements that are more globally ex like interesting rather than uh than

somebody who's in that doesn't find them so interesting as as uh as as you you guys yeah we could definitely do a bit of tongue-in cheek humor around that as well because we weren't looking from the outside in exactly as you said so it it always worked out really well for us so um so I wanted to talk about a little bit like as we're on the topic so of course after GTA you worked at game Forge uh at clang and now my games but I wanted to to talk a little bit about the learnings you got from GTA online because that is well it is Rockstar's most successful title or can you call it a title it is kind of like an extension of a title yeah for for us it definitely was it was a separate uh beast in itself completely away from um what we had for GTA 5 so yeah very much we we was individually developed inhouse so yeah yeah and in many ways it is uh almost as

a poster child for console PC games as a service type of a title like those I mean titles like GTA online I think most of the big franchises have tried to do some have been successful other less than successful so I'm I'm really curious of like you were there since the beginning of online if I'm correct and and can can you talk a little bit about the uh the development side of online like what is the team how does it run I can imagine just the uh the content cat like how how often you do updates like like I've never been in a well free to play or or games as a service um AAA or PC version I've been on the mobile side and mobile is much more compact much more I would assume fastpaced so I'm really curious in how how the the content treadmill runs on such a massive title yeah I mean it was super like everything we did at Rockstar was super fastpaced that was always like a key metric for us one of our key key kpis was getting everything done as quickly

as we could and out into the players hands um but like GTA online was it was an incredible learning for us all because um it was the first time we'd done a a game as a service as a gas game and it was actually a huge culture shock for us as well because we've been really used to working super hard on a title putting it out the door and then that was it we would take a break then we' come back do a research trip and come back into the next project and with GT online this was we pushed ourselves really hard released it and then realized oh we've actually got to now release something next month and then next month in the next month and so it was a really yeah it was it took us a little bit of time to get the pace of it without burning out and um we definitely pushed ourselves probably beyond the limits to start with until we got into that Rhythm um but I think that yeah just uh once we were once we actually got into um a good rhythm with all of our releases we started to look at who

were the main developers that could uh work on each different type of release and so we had like um some of the developers were really great at bug fixing and so we would have them on at the end of every release they would be like come in they would clean the product up and then it would go out the door then we had some who would be looking a lot more further uh forwards and so they would be working on like the project which or the update which was coming three months away from now and they would start to build the architecture in place for it and then we had like the core team who was uh coming who would take the work from The Architects and start building the next release or maybe the one just after that and so there was this real treadmill that we had going where there was like some future work coming on even up to a year away uh then there was a lot closer with the core team and then we had the yeah the just the the people that came in the firefighters that came in and just cleaned the release up and kicked out of the door so yeah that's really

interesting you mentioned few things like one is get everything to players hand as soon as possible not very typical for a AAA developer to think that way yeah I think it I mean the Cadence of the updates was something that we learned very quickly that was super important for the players because we would see um and this was really clear right from the very beginning if we got into a really good Cadence and we were releasing at that time about once a month um players would come back they'd play for a couple of weeks or maybe two to three weeks and then they'd go away and do something else and then I'll play other games or and then we'd release a game Sorry we'd release the update they'd come back again another two three weeks they'd head off come back and for them I guess it was like slipping into a nice comfy pair of slippers they'd come back they'd enjoy the content they'd buy some new stuff and then they'd go play something else for a while and for us that was perfect and but then we we actually slipped on a release for a

bunch of different reasons and it was almost immediate we saw a bunch of players didn't come back again right and this wasn't it wasn't a long slip it was just like half a month to a month and so that really taught me the importance about making sure that we were that we were delivering to the players when they needed it and uh and that we were keeping consistent with the deliveries as well so yeah that was super important but the the whole thing that we were doing was trying to get um an an update to have like a really good amount of gameplay in there uh with a lot of stuff that they could buy if they wanted to buy it or like it wasn't a it's not a pay to win game it was a play to earn game right so the more you played the more you could stuff you could get and uh but we always had enough uh content in there to keep them coming like keep them busy for about two or three weeks and so yeah that really yeah just worked out really well from that side interesting so when when when you think it the other way like I'm immediately

thinking that you have this Cadence you release once a month people come back and you get into this nice Groove but you release content maybe for two to three weeks depending how active the players are and then you notice that when you release a little bit later you lose retention you you use lose your players did somebody come by and say hey I have an idea why don't we release twice a month and we'll be actually growing yeah we we could never like the the size of the updates that we were putting out we could never have gone faster and we did play around with some of that with some of that like doing a smaller update for I think it was uh July the 4th um we had just like a fireworks update or something and so we did we did investigate doing that but we always wanted each drop to be this really like decent sized drop so yeah and I think that's I think that's definitely something which uh we're still like I would I even today is um

that I want to continue with is like when we're releasing updates for the players it's not just a few bug fixes it's not just uh a few things that we're pushing out it's like each one has to be a significant um update for the players when we're doing our significant updates that is right we want to be delivering improvements to the players all the time but uh yeah it's bigger things I want to be getting out there that that makes sense and plus if the users get used to having those nice updates where when they come back there's going to be something significantly new than um than doing anything smaller doesn't really deliver and it's going to be actually negative probably in the impact so that yeah you don't want to disappoint them that's for sure and surprising but did you play around with different events like usually with uh with with the games that I worked on and mobile games as well is like even in larger teams when they pushed out those bigger events or bold beats or whatever you want to call them a different companies they still ran a

lot of smaller events so you know whether it's 4th of July or Halloween or stuff like that that were more competitive more um sort of a um modular in in the way they've been developed and that gave actually more time to focus on that bigger release so you weren't necessarily on that two like one one month Cadence you could have been on a six week or even eight weeks because the uh the live Services kept it going no and surprisingly that was not something that we really dipped too much into at the time obviously now U that's very different um like I think that as part of the liveop strategy that would' be putting forward for any title it would you want to be running multile multiple events going on at the same time so there's always something for the players to be um enjoying uh and that's definitely like how we're driving on hawked but with um GTA online it was very much focused around uh the bigger updates get the get new stuff new toys for the players to play with that's really what we're trying to deliver rather than having like this constant

okay here's uh I don't know Easter holiday and now you're going to get some Easter related uh Toys in there it was it was really just focused around the bigger things we were trying to do and it was some big really big updates that we delivered especially early on and and those bigger updates were they premeditated for a specific amount like did you have a road map of two years almost where you were developing against Dad yeah it was about a year we had a a road map uh like ahead of time and um but also we were uh some of the ideas were a little bit more shortterm as well we would we would come up with them as we were playing and investigating things and seeing what was fun and what wasn't and just take the like the each pack into a different direction so it wasn't always just purely um laid out but in terms of the like the time that it took us to actually build each um update we had to have a bit of an idea because especially for sticking a new car into the game

wasn't like we can do that tomorrow right so yeah and um and what was I'm just curious like what was the size of the team back then when you were on that monthly Cadence big that's about all I can say it was big oh okay got it so bigger than you can ever possibly imagine I would say oh wow okay so that that that makes it clear that it couldn't even grow bigger it was that big yeah exactly oh wow makes sense I mean we all know from the uh from the numbers that it's one of the most successful games ever released so of course like that probably wasn't an issue of of how many developers you can put on it as long as they're creating that content and keeping players satisfied yeah it's it's done okay it's uh it's crazy that it's still actually in the charts even today a little while ago that we made it and so yeah it's doing all right yeah yeah exactly and then then your career took you elsewhere so it took you to get Forge it took you to to clang so I believe both of them

are no one of them is in schwarzwald where you are or uh C CA right K Rua yeah that's right yeah yeah game for is in K Rua yeah and talk to me a little bit about about kind of like your next steps in in your career yeah so once I was like so I was at Rockstar for 14 years and I'd kind of seen every part of development so seen how they build worlds i' seen how they make world sound amazing and um I really wanted to go and check out the other side of the industry so getting into publishing and just understanding how we sell games because while we were at rockstar I never touched the marketing or any of that side of um of publishing at all there was really very little I did localization maybe was the only thing and so yeah I really wanted to go and see this other side and so and also as there wasn't many opportunities within Scotland for me I wanted to go and travel a little bit as well so we ended

up in Germany and I started as a senior producer in game Forge and game Forge maybe a bit of an unknown company for some people or for a lot of people but they're actually one of the biggest German Publishers and they've been running for a long long time and they've been really successful and so for me it was a super nice fit it was the team there was just great right from the start and I started there working on Orcs Must Die Unchained which was another great title to work on as I'd always loved the Orcs Must Die series uh co-op games are just super interesting for me and it was another gas game and so it was the perfect next step and so with me as producer and um I had this amazing product owner we were at the center of publishing and I learned so much in such a really short period of time and I've always said that if Rockstar was my like where I learned so it was like being in school and like from the very beginnings and learning everything uh game Forge was definitely like being a university where I kind of felt like okay now I'm becoming a professional and I'm really

understanding the full scale of everything um sadly orus died onchain didn't work out for a bunch of different reasons and uh which was sad but what did work out was all the learnings that we took for how to run a gas game and from like there was so much like we quartered the time you could do maintenances we set up cross Studio processes because the development team was in Dallas um and it actually became the B for how I organize everything uh and also yeah how we're even organizing stuff on Hawk today so and it also led me to becoming director of online operations at game Forge 2 so it was uh yeah it was a it was a great time I've got to say yeah and and you have an interesting step between so you were at game Forge came in Orcs Must Die rose up to be director of online operations then you went back to Edinburgh to work again with Leslie on build the rocket boy and uh and then came back to game Forge to

be a COO for the company so can you talk to me a little bit about the the steps in between because build the rocket boy seems like um you know from everything that we've seen it seems like GTA online just reimagined yeah it was a definitely a fun little time and like I've never had any regrets in my career uh I do Wonder um what where I would be now if I hadn't taken like that next step to move from uh game for to build a rocket boy and the reason I ended up there was like while I was at Rockstar and especially on GTA Online um Leslie benz's uh so the president of Rockstar North he reached out to let me know that he was building a new studio and he wanted me to um come and work with him on it um it would eventually become called build a rocket boy although the name came in later and so I went there as production director to just help the company get on its feet I was one of the very early employees there and this this was actually my first time working remotely as well cuz

this was back in 2017 so before Corona had hit and it was so it wasn't something that was forced upon me to go into home office it was something which I made a conscious choice to do and so how I did it was I was H staying in Germany traveling two weeks working for two weeks in Scotland going back and working two weeks in Germany remotely um and so it was yeah just an incredible experience and the so it was great getting in to something brand new and getting the chance to build yeah a whole studio getting all the processes from scratch getting like a clean slate and being able to build this up working alongside Leslie which was just a dream and also I got to work super closely with Amazon and see how they were doing things because we were using The LumberYard engine and then also there was we've got some really big investors from China as well and and it was really amazing to see how they were doing things and then we had aist studio in Budapest so we were spreading production

between Budapest Edinburgh uh Amazon and China and uh it was my job to keep everything weaved together so I learned a lot about yeah how to manage teams internationally at this point and and also how to build a company uh at speed which is always the uh Rockstar way while also building um a game at the same time which was interesting that uh that sounds like a like a handful and that is not a a small Studio either I mean no with the operations in edoro the budapes like how many hundreds of people are we talking about yeah like I don't know what the size is now but when I joined um even on just on the scripting team we had four scriptors when I joined and we built up to 25 scriptors within six months or something and so and the scale of the rest of the company was similarly built like that so yeah it was uh like a really full AAA sized company um when we

left nice and and um so three years there then going back to be a COO at game Forge and then um do you want to talk a little bit about that because like now you're taking a step from being director from running the production to just running the whole company operations yeah I've had a I've had a weird career or maybe a lucky career unlucky career I'm not sure but every two years or every project I've changed my and I've jumped up uh like for quite some time through the early days and this was another jump and and really this came about because I was um while I was traveling backwards and forth forwards and it was starting to take a toll on me mentally and physically and also as you just said the work was incredibly demanding and I was wearing way too many hats and so my friends at game Forge came back and asked me to come back and kind of finish the job that I'd started before because i' I'd started um working as director of online operations where I was putting all the

processes into place cleaning up the uh publishing side of the company and just getting yeah everything into a really good shape and so um they they got in touch with me and I spoke to Leslie and we talked it through and in the end I actually agreed to stay on at build a rocket boy as a contractor for six months while I was actually running a CO for game Forge it for six months as so yeah I was doing both and that was probably a bit crazy but uh yeah it was really great because I really I wanted to make sure that Builder rocket boy was in safe hands and they were you moving forwards with everything that we' built already but also I really wanted game Forge to be you know leveling up basically and so so yeah I went back in as uh Chief oper Chief Operating Officer um and because I knew the company so well and what it was missing from a time before I actually spent six months uh prior to joining working with a chief

product officer on like a I think it was like a 23 page breakdown of everything that was wrong with the company and so as soon as it got in it was um we just got in and we started cleaning up all the processes and just building this really well oil machine and it that uh was such a learning for me I think it was probably a step too far for me at the time because I don't think I was uh like I had the drive and ambition and understanding of what needed to happen but I don't think I was in the best mental state to be able to bring everybody along with me and that's something that I've learned since then and I've been yeah working on and so that was interesting times and then slap bang in the middle of it Corona hit and that was a really uh yeah just such a culture shock for everybody like game Forge is an incredibly social company and I think that this was around the time that we yeah started struggling probably as a executive team team half the executives wanted to ignore Corona

and continue like it wasn't happening where the other half where which I was in we were secluding ourselves and following all the rules because yeah Germany was very clear on what you could and couldn't do and so and we missed out in these late night work these late night work sessions and talking about what we're doing and all those little magic moments of where you can sink on everything and I like I think it it's um it's something that I've come to realize just how important those moments are for companies and how you need to really work uh very hard to kind of catch them in a home office situation yes and and and so all of the other leadership of game Forge is in kle right yeah that's right yeah all and you still didn't even meet like outside or didn't like K is probably not a big town like 300,000 yeah well some no it's yeah it's a small place but some D like like I said there was half of the um Executives were still going going into the offices and uh continuing working

there but for me I I was really F on the rules and stayed at home and secluded you must love Germany you must love Germany a cultural fit actually I I really do I I really I can imagine it's h i mean the bureaucracy is tough there's no lying about that and it's um but as a country it's a beautiful sunny warm place and that's just something I've never experienced at Scotland well yeah the weather is always better no matter where you go from Scotland but and plus you're in south of Germany for you know most of the listeners when we're talking about schwartzal that's closer to the French border yeah that's right yeah I'm about half an hour from France yeah exactly so it's smack metal into Europe yep yeah and it's warm 40 degrees in summer and so it's uh it's just a lovely Place yeah yeah for sure um so that's interesting point that you made uh the the mental state to push

through the changes um can you elaborate a little bit on that yeah so change management is something that I've I've learned so much um through my different uh jobs as I've been going and um I've learned how to like I mean I've experienced how to do it wrong and I've uh worked out how to do things a lot better now as I've kind of gone forwards and um definitely the at that time I was making yeah huge amounts of changes to the company and like I think that definitely didn't bring everybody along as well as I could have done and so I'm I'm very uh I look back on it as a great learning I think that's the easiest thing to say and and and yeah definitely taking that forwards um I think that from a change man management perspective the the biggest thing that I've learned is that you need to just explain what you're doing and I know this sounds super simple explain what you're doing

listen to everybody's feedback bring their feedback into what you're doing and then explain again what you're doing and then keep going until everybody feels comfortable with what's going on and some of the like and some of this was brought from Rockstar but some of the early mistakes I made was I was just like okay we're going to change this now do this now and that was it and it was because that was how we did things at Rockstar you rolled out a new process and the next day everybody had to follow it um later on it was very much this uh yeah building up um making sure everybody was feeling comfortable with a change and so yeah that's that's definitely been an interesting learnings for sure yeah I I understand 100% what what you're saying so when you're introducing new strategy or when you're as you said driving through change it is the most grindi project that you can assume like it's not an OP yes and it's not enough just to have that clear strategy but it is as you said it's the uh it's the core Loop of

conversation and tuning and one-on ones and group discussions and make as you said making sure that people are buying in and what does it take for them to buy in into this strategy what elements do they want to change because you're starting and then that goes one layer at a time so you're starting with the top you might be even starting with the board then you go through the management team or leadership team then you go through management teams then you go through this then you go through that then you're trying to coach the lieutenants to drive change through their processes and everything happened so slowly and I can understand that you came in uh you had the list and the list was very long and you start to do this grindy thing you're like I don't have time for this first of all like we need to make all these things happen because these are the the the challenges the 11 pages that we have with the company so I don't have time to get everybody along and I just need to make these happens and what happen What likely probably happens with these type of situations if if the culture is not tuned to that like a rockstar culture that was very attuned to strong leaders then um it starts

revolting and and uh and that's never good for a change yeah yeah no absolutely yeah definitely and I think that it's uh you were yeah spot on in what you said you said it starts at the top and that's exactly where um you have to make sure that everybody's on board and is really behind the changes and is moving forward with the changes as well and I think that's where we ended up at game Forge it was different uh parts of the executive team were looking at it in different ways and so yes it was an interes in learning so it's also why I I don't want to back on an executive team again I'm happy being an executive producer yeah yeah and that is that is a perfectly valid um Revelation like you don't have to always be moving it's not even moving up it's more like like moving away from development and into this concept phase and conversational and selling type of a type of a position position rather than working on directly on on on development so uh it's it's

good that that you kind of went in that direction and said hey this is not me I don't want to do this and then you moved away you went to become a head of production at clang and clang is a Berlin based uh developer startup um you know pretty sizable of an organization they've have built this sort of a um world you would say yeah yeah ex with all the exactly with with all the uh with all the the hype elements you can find from AI to um crypto I think at one point was there but can you talk a little bit about like you're moving away from from this executive role back to heading a production yeah and it was exactly as you said it was because I wanted to be back in touch with games I I'd moved to the point where I was four levels away from actually touching a game and so it was it was I wasn't I was dealing with uh discussions about what we would be doing in the next year but without actually having the fun of

getting a chance to play any of the games that we were making and so it was just too slow for me and I really like I mean my whole career has been I've loved playing games and even from a very early age that's what it's all I wanted to do and so I got um the offer yeah I took I took a big drop to go from Co back to head of production but it was a conscious choice I wanted to get back into games and I wanted to go into a um a comp which was doing something interesting and like you said they were making a life simulator um called seed which is was yeah a really great idea and when I met with the CEO there Munday um he just explained it in such a great way that really connected with me it was also the some of the core team is from Eve on line and I'd always been a huge e on line player and so this was another great reason to go there and so it was H for me it was a perfect opportunity and and yeah um when I went into the company I don't think they really had a good uh

like a solid development process at that time they were kind of in the middle of overhauling their game and also the company alongside it there' been a lot of people leaving and so I got the opportunity to bring in some of the stuff I'd learned and to get the train tracks underneath everybody and start moving forwards um I think one of the they also gave me the opportunity to get um a really interesting chunk of formal learning as well so through my career I'd never actually done formal training I went to University as an accountant in finance and I've got a degree in honors degree in accounting and finance and then came in through the back door into gaming and so I'd never gone and understood what agile was what waterfall was none of that we never spoke about any of this at Rockstar we built our own processes and we did it the best way that we thought was the like the fastest way um to do everything and there I got the opportunity to go and learn um about

the yeah like Mel scrum and understand everything around it and being fully trained from the experts in it and that was definitely a missing piece of experience for me was to um understand yeah how to build an Angel road map while still staying on track with development and I definitely really appreciate that even so late in my career so it was yeah it was it was awesome I really enjoyed my time there and it was some just really really great people that I've met friends for life for sure yeah interesting and well that's that's that's fascinating like running one of the biggest teams in in gaming with Rockstar on with uh with GTA online and still not having the uh the sort of formal education about production processes could come in as a bit of a um Revelation for many people yeah we just we never knew what well I think it's not that we weren't doing anything um that is being done these days it's just that we never called it

that we learned how to do things we were we were agile were incredibly agile uh we just never called it agile back then because none of us had gone to University to learn that this was exactly the words that you should use in this time and so we just yeah we got things done and uh as fast as possible and that was our agile methodology right so it's Rockstar development yeah it was just later onast as possible yeah exactly and so it was just later on that kind of looked back and realized like now I can look back and realize what I was doing and how it kind of fit into into different ways so like our car manufacturing was very waterfall based and it was really clean and all the processes were all the yeah disciplines were really set up in a great way so it was interesting to do that and that and and so this this role came about during the co times uh 21 so probably like in the uh in the midst of the lockdowns and probably I would assume I mean having

traveled to to Berlin during those times myself that was a remote role for sure yeah that's right yeah so I was only 6 hours away but it was still remote for me and um all of the team was pretty much uh spread around there was a core team in Berlin um and after like through my time there we moved even further away from the office some people moved to Spain some to Italy and it kind of the company spread out I believe recently they've actually just pulled the company back together again which is an interesting choice to make but yeah it was a very much a remote role and I run it as a remote role I I would go there like once um a month for a like week or so and uh at the start as we got through it I I went less and less um but yeah it was it was good it was a full remote roll and and currently my games EX executive producer on Hawk Haw has already launched it is a a shooter title

A Cooperative PVP looks a little bit like fortnite uh really exciting looking of a game you're an executive producer on that and that is also a fully remote team if I'm correct yeah yeah and uh like that was actually another jump as well so when I was head of production at clang even though it I was back in games I still felt really uncomfortable in the position that I was in and a lot of it was because um as head of production or as and this was the same feeling I had as coo and director online operations I would put the plans in place I put the strategies in place for how to improve things how to do things but I was never directly accountable for actually doing this stuff so if a if if a engineering team didn't want to do didn't want to follow the path that we' laid out I wasn't the one who was leading them in order to pull the man I was leading the leader of that leader of that lead and then I decided to make an active choice to move to executive producer and um and

luckily enough I found uh yeah this amazing company called my. games which um was set up fully for remote working and uh and and then even better they made me executive producer and haw and honestly I couldn't be happier it's I'm now I'm running the development and Publishing teams and I'm doing it on a title that I actually love just playing outside of work like really it's um something which I uh I love playing in my personal time and so yeah it's just another lucky step in my career I think that's and a great a gift I'm very grateful for well that's that's awesome to hear because I mean work is majority of our time nowadays to be honest so if you're doing something you love chances are your your life is a a lot happier and even a broken rip doesn't make you sad that's for sure so I wanted to because like I wanted to go through your history really through all these positions at these great companies and and the evolution and the sort of exploration of these titles

because some of them like Rockstar has been on site with a gigantic team then you have a sort of a hybrid type of a position with with Bild the rocket boy then you have the game Forge which is also hybrid in a way that you have the on-site leadership team but then you do have the remote Studios that you're guiding and then finally going to a fully remote with clang uh and then continuing now to to uh to Hawk and my do games what are the sort of a because you you touched upon on on several issues like with with game Forge like how the leadership team became misaligned after uh people weren't spending that time together anymore so so I'm curious to to hear from from your perspective looking at back at at your at your career thus far like what are the the sort of a best practices when it comes to remote work on AAA titles so like I I think even clang can go towards that direction of at least double A of a

title it's not a mobile game it is a cross-platform title with a very ambitious goals so um yeah please please walk me through for through uh through these learnings yeah and and remote working has been like part of my life now for seven years and like I said it was I was there already in in doing it before Corona and so um I have learned a lot and uh I think the absolute biggest initial point is is really focused towards companies themselves rather than just team members and employees and what you can how you what how you best to work in a remote environment and it's really if you're are you sure you want to do it if so commit and don't go half in and I think a lot of companies around Corona time they kind of went half in and now they're pulling themselves back out and and it's really painful for a lot of employees so like I've got friends of mine that were like I said moved across to Italy moved to span and they were promised that they were going to be in a remote working company and

now they're not and now they've got to either move back or find something else and so if you're going to do it then do it fully um the hybrid style companies um it's really difficult to do hybrid well uh because you end up um either with some people who are just misaligned right you're just you're not there dayto day you're not hearing everything so either you're if it's a hybrid one then you probably want to have like three days in the office with everybody there together or and then the other two days doing remote working uh if you try and do it like half half then it becomes a real pain especially for meetings where half the team's remote half the teams in the office and you can't properly hear what's happening and so yeah just commit and thankfully like my games they are absolutely wonderfully set up for home office and every day I'm working with colleagues all over the world and there's never an issue with us uh being misaligned we've got everything uh set

up as as best we possibly can and then we're doing it as like high level as you can so I think that's I think that's a big thing and just so how do so once you have committed MH the second point is really to Define really clear goals that are written down and accessible for everyone and I mentioned game forgees uh a really socialable company and so we had goals but a lot of them were just we were discussing them and they were um between each other but we never really put them on paper and adjusted them on a regular basis and shared them with the full company and made it really clear what we were doing and so to have a really good heartbeat of the company you need to have a bunch of different goals set up for different lengths so what I mean is we'll on hawked we'll have short-term goals which will be around about a month and it's like build this feature or drive um this part of publishing forwards and uh and then

we'll give ownership to the teams and make sure that they're driving on it and then we'll have midterm plans which will be more like a month more like a quarterly plan so it's things like plan the next update that we've got increase our market share in Asia or raise player Happiness by 10% that that kind of high level kpis that we're trying to improve or maybe happiness is a bad one CU it's always interesting thing more engagement is probably the better phrase there and then we'll have long-term goals which are usually in the form of financial targets for us and it's could or it could be finish this phase of development and release or get another million players this year or yeah that's the um kind of goals that we're hitting which we actually just hit with Haw we hit we've hit our million player Mark so if we're congratulations the first one so that's super super exciting for us uh and yeah and the most important thing through all of that as while you're building the goals is do it with your team together don't do it don't have one

person just telling everybody else what to do because ideas should come from everyone and everywhere and be tied into your overall goals but the only way that you can make people accountable and give them ownership as if you're all coming up with it together and so that's a big part of planning we will do that so yeah being goal oriented is um super important um if I can just intervene before you go down the list um two questions like first f one for the first part which is commit and don't go half in do you consider a hybrid better or worse than fully onsite or fully remote yeah I actually do I I think it's uh worse than uh either I feel that it's a a a half way of doing it because it ends up with most of the people having to be there anyway because they're going to have to go into the office and do a couple of days a week right so you're

generally in the area anyway and if you're in the area anyway why not just be in the office together and learn everything right um it's I think it's definitely a personal thing it's I I don't think it's a professional um a professional like thing that I would say uh but for me remote working is actually the fullway if I opened a studio tomorrow I would be fully remote I would I don't even think I would bother with a studio at all I would have uh areas that we could work together if we needed to go and do meetings or things like that specifically around topics but otherwise I would go full remote so yeah yeah interesting I because I was visiting one of one of one Studio recently and they were working in a hybrid mode and everybody lived as you said in the same city nevertheless they worked hybrid and they came in on two days a week so those were set days and I

came in on a day that was not marked as um you know a working day and we're talking about a studio in a in a large city uh with well over well over 100 I would say between 100 and 200 places or desks so everybody had a desk and it was empty you and and it is kind of confusing that um that you're paying this rent in the middle of the city and most of the time it is actually empty and that particular Studio was was also thinking about because they were growing and they were thinking about going to a larger Studio space and they needed more desks because they've set it up in a way that everybody has to be on two days a week so everybody comes in then and then on the other time it is a ghost town yeah and uh imagine just how much money they're burning on those ghost towns I would much rather take that money and put it into the development of the game game rather than into the uh into yeah um the uh building itself and so yeah no

definitely that's exactly one of the big reasons why and also I just think that everybody in the world these days is much better suited to working remotely as well we've gone through it all together and it's much easier to work with um outsourcers and everything like that too yeah yeah well you're a proponent that and I wanted to ask the second question of doing goals together like how do you do that Ely you mentioned that you build through short-term goals those are the the tasks basically you have to complete then the midterm goals which are quarterly kpis to improve long-term goals which are usually Financial targets all of them done together how yeah yeah yeah yeah very much so and uh so we we talk a lot um in order to this was one of my points I was going to talk um a little bit ahead with I'll just pull it up just now it's um you got to meet regularly with your people in a remote office and you got to you got to talk and like I said

when you're not in the office together you miss those little moments of magic and so you've got to create them again and so I'll do things like we'll have a Friday strategy meeting uh I I do it late in a Friday and it's actually specifically around us trying to get through like get the week out of our heads before we go into the weekend and so we'll spend some time in there and we'll talk about are the top five issues that we've got right now and then we'll start putting together plans of how we're going to do it and then some of these will become long-term plans some of these will become short-term plans when we're building our business models we do it together as a a leadership team and so it's not the full poked team that's like completely all together building it it's more a Subs a subset of each um uh department so I've got my development director my creative director I've got the marketing brand manager we've got our publish and producer and we all do it together and then we they in turn will be going and

speaking to their team understanding what needs to be improved and the ideas will flow up so for example a great a great one just now is we're in the process of updating um or releasing the game and we released it on all the different platforms except for Xbox One um we saw that the performance on Xbox One just wasn't where we wanted it to be and so one of the team members um was taking a look at the performance and has some really good ideas about how we can improve it and so we made the call to hold back Xbox One and Implement his improvements or the improvements he was putting forwards and then we'll release it later on and so that became a goal which came up through the leads into the plan into our plans and now we've uh built everything forwards like that and so it's really sitting down and talking with everyone and again listening to them is so important because when you everybody tell you the pain points sometimes they're not so good at understanding like how to fix things but

they're very good at telling you where the problems are and so like it's definitely one of the things I I learned along the way is just to listen to everybody like in any position and not to be uh yeah precious or egotistical which I've seen others being yeah and so creating moments of magic really focusing on listening and and having you mention strategic or tactical meetings um on weekly weekly basis so those are remote meetings right everything's remote Y how do you make a good remote meeting this is a good remote meeting I'm just saying but this is a different one this is a podcast so yeah yeah yeah no exactly being efficient uh I think definitely is um is one of the key points so going in with a really good agenda making sure that everybody understands why they're there and then I if it's a team which I've not been having regular meetings with then the first thing I'll do is definitely set the scene for the meeting hey this is

why we're here this is the type of meeting so for example if I know that um people are going to come in with uh defensive attitudes or um maybe just be negative attitudes then I'll call it a green flag meeting and I'll tell them at the start hey this is a green flag meeting so we're going to focus on positivity and focus on positive attitudes and actually bring forward positive ideas let's keep the negativity out this is just brainstorming doesn't matter if we're all wrong let's just talk about it and so just try to set the scene right at the very beginning of the meeting is uh super important then once you're flowing just keep everybody talking and asking questions and um and seeing where they go with it uh also you've got to lead the meeting pretty tightly as well so that people aren't going too far away from the um the agenda or they spend ages talking about something that's yeah just way too in depth and so I'm I've learned pretty to be pretty good at uh grabbing the mic back and just being

like okay thanks that's really awesome we'll can maybe take that into the next meeting and then finishing off with a good protocol and uh making sure because we talk a lot and sometimes you forget the next day what we've actually covered and what we've talked about so making sure that you've written it down as well is the important part yeah basically sending a memo and and following it up and and and keeping clear on that yeah your action points yeah these are so I understand these are very orchestrated meetings in many ways because there is an agenda before you start a meeting um tight reins around the topic of course keeping the meeting focused asking questions um how do you do a meeting where you mine for information and usually what I mean by that is let's say we're having a meeting and there's several people not one onone and often times what I suggest and what I've done as well is mine for conflict meaning finding people who are disagreeing and having them actually

debating each other uh openly about the issue so that the decision can be made rather than you know people having as you know the buy and those difficult like no let's air everything out so it is quite easy to do that when you're in the same setting because you can read the body language quite fast when somebody's taking a step back or they move in or they start looking at different Direction so do they start drawing something you're like hey what do like Jessica what do you think about what Paul is saying that that kind of stuff so how do you do that how do you mind for conflict yeah playing I mean Playing devil's advocate is the is exactly that and that was something which uh I saw um in some of my previous teams it was just people who were just amazing at doing that and just always being there just naturally taking the opposite opinion in order to uh promote conversation and so it was something that I learned as well and um I think that you're right it's when you when you

do again like I was saying with the asking of questions that that would be some of the questions I would be asking is just making sure that we're being candid and being honest about our how we're feeling about something and so um definitely the end of the uh topic I will take a pause wait 10 seconds ask if anybody's got an ideas if there anybody's got any problems with it and that pause and silence is often enough to promote somebody to come up and talk but this also is really important where you have to build your whole uh like leadership team around not being afraid to come and talk and bring up the opinions right because I've seen leaders who will just be who will drive by fear and then nobody wants to say anything and uh that's really important that you make people feel psychologically safe to be able to come and bring forward those points for um and talk against people and then for you to just make sure that it's an actual uh discussion and not a

two people ending up arguing about something right so yeah it's uh I think that's a really important part for it yeah and then people naturally do it people will naturally come and talk then yeah and it's and and part of it is also I mean this these are just very practical things but when mining for conflict it's very important to let the participants know that you are mining for conflict and that conflict is good and when they are having conflict you should interrupt and say this is good this is very good I I like this is exactly what we want because at some point when people are on the same team they will start pulling back well well okay you know they're kind of like calming it down and finding a middle ground but you don't want that you want them to go all in so that you can make that decision after truly understanding the positions of everybody rather than the sort of a um um you know water down version that where everybody is UN happy yeah to be creative you have to destroy I think that's the easy part of it so

there has to be a bit of spice in there as well sometimes yeah it makes the meetings interesting I'm I'm asking of this because I bet most of the people who are having meetings are just dissatisfied with the meetings that is why people don't want to have meetings and and I think the problem with with the meetings then is not not the fact that you have meetings which I assume especially in a remote setup you have to have extra amount of meetings but I'm just diving deep deep into this topic is because when you have meetings and when you have a lot of meetings you have to invest significant portion of your efforts to make those meetings interesting otherwise people will be highly disengaged during the meetings trying to do their own work behind close camera or just typing or just Googling or doing something else and the whole purpose goes out like they you know it's a it's a it's a tough one with with with a remote meetings because you can't see the actions unlike you can have a proper debate and proper conversations where everybody is is uh looking each other in the eye so that's

why I was kind of diving deeper into the meeting part yeah like I'm really lucky with the teams that I've got is that they are really engaged like the hawk team is everybody's super motivated right now to make Hulk the biggest success we can do and so uh I don't think we've really struggled with that point in the past it's definitely been an is issue especially people just turning their cameras off and that like you just don't know what they're up to and even if they're there um and so yeah you've got to make sure that you're getting engagement from your teams but I think that comes into one of my other points is that just giving condid feedback um is really important and and especially in a remote environment and if you're not feeling that somebody's being engaged is just coming and having a chat with them and really explaining how it makes you feel um when they're not being engaged and uh and I've found that that's to be really effective way of understanding what what the problems are we also do a lot of uh um like team surveys and just uh on a regular basis

to understand where the problems are what uh what people are feeling uh what we can be doing better from a leadership team and and uh we do that through our retrospectives and so and then making sure that we follow up with actually um doing action points from their feedback as well so we are constantly improving as a as a team and all of these things help to make the team feel engaged and make them feel heard and part of the yeah part of the story so how do you do how do you give candid feedback well like what are your um learnings there yeah so I mean being Scottish it's uh pretty easy for me to um uh go and be quite um pointed about what's up uh I think that yeah like I said just explaining what the problem is and making sure that you you're not uh pointing fingers at a person you're just

explaining what the problem is that's really important to start with so for example if you say that Bobby is uh is um a problem because he's not doing this whereas you actually look at what the problem is and you investigate what the problem is and then you try and and then you go and talk about that problem specifically to the team then that's a much more useful thing then explaining how it feels for you uh why is it a problem what does it make you feel and how does it um impact the team and then just being really like uh straightforward with them and I this is always how I've done it it's just being neutrally toned uh listening to what they've got to say as well once they do it and then trying to come to a conclusion so yeah so basically using the uh I don't know if you've had this framework but non-violent communication framework yeah exactly yep yeah yeah the the there's uh you can easily so for people just search it on on on Google and you'll find the the framework for

that uh that's that's a very good point and something that I've also learned I think it might have been actually a person from Rockstar that that uh that helped me to give feedback um if I remember correctly but it was you're smiling you're like oh no no not that type of feedback but I was wondering what you were going with that one no no no it was actually good one it was more about um it was more about the sort of American or Ang anglo-american way of giving a sandwich where you're offering a compliment then you're following with the feedback and then you're ending with a compliment where the person is really confused in the end what happened and thinks everything was great because they received double compliments uh and the actual beef was was left untouched and so that was an important part that was is giving to me as a feedback is like when you give feedback just focus purely on that

feedback do not do compliments in the same session uh it will be just simply confusing that's it yeah no absolutely and it's exactly that it is confusing people can come out with the with the idea that they've done really well because they've only heard the positive rather than the actual problem and so yeah I totally agree with that yeah that's how we that's how we get it mixed feedback is the worst feedback yep um so we have we have a quite of a list commit don't go half in Define clear goals that are that are accessible for everyone everywhere meet regularly and talk give candid feedback uh do team surveys and retrospectives uh have good meetings what else are we missing from a from a really good remote setup yeah so being data informed and this kind of touches a little bit onto the yeah metrics of um the team happiness and um I think it it is a bit of a delicate subject because um being data informed about your team and not just about the metrics on the game or the financials or anything like

that which is obviously super important in any gas game and uh We've we've definitely got it set up in a really great way uh at my games but for for looking at your team as well so if it's a development team then you probably want to be doing something like story points and understanding how long it that they're committing the right amount of work they're able to get through it on time and that they're not overburdening themselves and making sure that they're yeah uh delivering on time right and then on the publishing side we've got our uh yeah the like I said the um retrospectives have got their uh happiness surveys and we are always listening to what the team needs um looking at the number of bugs that people are putting in how that's developing as we go through the um through the project and how we're managing to get those bugs cleared so there's just so many different metrics that you can be tapping into and like I said it's a sensitive topic because you have to make sure that people feel

comfortable that they're not being watched and they're not being um uh micromanaged with these metrics and you're always trying to look at the story behind the metrics and the trends uh and really that's what I'm looking for any time is Trends so from a happiness perspective am I improving uh the service Department's relationship with my team over time rather than on one day one of our metrics is down right and so yeah definitely look at the trends that's that's a good one um i' I've seen um I've seen in companies where for example like talking about looking behind the numbers and talking about uh you know Trends is they were doing a happiness survey with all the different departments and one specific Department was always overachieving and people were really happy in that department but there wasn't a metric that that would have measured how happy PE others are with that department that

is very happy about being in that department and um and it only got through as you as you know you were having conversations with people and kind of digging for conflict and understanding what are the pain points in the organization was that this super happy Department which was a support function was not actually supporting very well others than themselves and and yeah and and so the so the people in that department love their department head but the people relying on the support from that department did not love the department head so so that kind of gives the uh the the fact that even though somebody can get a really great number it it you have to put it into a context and understand it in a broader Spectrum so understanding the organization first and then building the metrics around that is is vital yeah understanding the story like yeah exact exactly it and that's that's what I whenever I'm starting to introduce metrics into a team that's the very

first thing I'll say is uh I'm not looking at individual metrics I'm looking at the trends and I'm looking and need to understand the story behind it because like if you just look at the numbers and I've seen people do this and it it is always such a bad idea um so okay this development team is uh 50% efficient or 50% of their work they're managing to get out this month yeah okay but three of them are ill right they're two of them are on holiday so there's the story behind the reason the numbers and if you only look at it on a actual output perspective then that's the wrong way to go around it so yeah being sensitive with it and just understanding the story is the important part yeah I think the the other ones that I've got are very much um smaller pieces of feedback and more on a personal and really aimed at employee and mental health I think actually and how you how you keep yourself sane in a remote working environment because it

can um yeah it's it's not easy like when you are by yourself every day just looking at a screen I don't know how tall you are I don't know like what your dimensions are it's like we haven't met and we can't like interact and it's so interesting to kind of yeah like get into that environment where you are um feeling super comfortable with people and so I think there's definitely some don'ts around that and one of the big ones is um SL so using the communication tool slack or um and we use this at my games to De uh communicate with our development teams one of the best features they had was to add in timed messages and so like when I'm out and about like my ideas come to me whenever I'm I'll be in the shower I'll be out for a walk I'll be watching movies and previous bosses of mine would definitely just they'd get an idea and they'd send it to me it would be like middle of the night then I'd get up in the morning and it would be like oh no and one of the

things I've really tried to do is to kind of queue up messages so and send them through uh the working hours and so it's just not it because every time that you are impacting somebody's rest you're breaking them just that little bit and so I want and I want people to be having a really good working life environment where they're able to recover and then they come back in full on the next day rather than being a little bit broken and coming in just under weather or something and so unless it's something super critical then it can all usually wait till the next day and so actually just doing using um yeah timed messages so you're not poking people outside of the working hours that's a that's a really powerful point and um I think that comes through like you mentioned in your previous jobs and and then in your current you're doing these are happening differently but I would say it's it's a lot about the people in the leadership position and if the people are founders

that is the only way that they have worked because they started with so underresourced so Scrappy and this was the way like you work long hours and there's no there's no off switch you're constantly on and you assume that the team around you is also constantly on because you're in a battle and even when the organization goes into a quite of a stable position the people are still reverting back to the to what got them there and if that was their their ways of working and this reap that result you can go and say hey this is not the right way of working like excuse me which company did you build so that's their you know that's their kind of a perspective and then when you go to a more mature organization where the founders are long gone and it has evolved to the next stage then it functions in a much more professionally managed way so I think uh I think that that plays a that plays a a big role and and uh I know I've I've tried to go through those stages as well like having

been on the receiving end of that kind of a communication having been the one who gives that type of a communication as a founder and then trying to get into a position where like oh this is not critical anymore because we're not a startup anymore so so let's just leave it for the morning like even kind of like communicating that to the rest of leadership team is like we don't need to do this anymore this is uh this is not how we operate so kind of like the switch but yeah I know exactly what you're saying I'm just trying to give a perspective that from Founders perspective or others they're not trying to be you know bad people no no absolutely and that's definitely not the point it's um for sure and especially like you said moving from zero employees to 50 employees is a completely different company than 50 employees to 100 employees and that that is very much uh interesting change that you need to make in terms of culture uh within the company as well so so yeah for sure there's no question about that do you feel that there's more mental health issues um with remote setup that you

have to be proactive at at uh at U tackling than there is within the fully onsite I think I think in today's world we are just a lot more conscious about mental health as a whole and so it's difficult to say that there's more within the remote environment specifically I think there just a lot more conscious about it um like like I said earlier on I I mean I I went through um really working on my mental health myself uh like there's kind of the three things that I really worked on and this is super important for anybody in in a remote environment one of them is um eating well and I know that this is like super generic advice but I'll explain why it's super important uh because it's been ignored for such a long time but just eating well exercising well and then and really working on your mental health and so I um about three years ago I picked up a

therapist and started like looking into yeah just everything my background my um my childhood and started working in uh making myself a better person or just at least um being able to deal with difficult situations and stressful situations and I think that that has helped me to be able to work in a remote environment in such a much better way than I think I was before where if um if somebody said something I would get uh it would be frustrated and I would it would play on my mind for too long and now I'm a lot more accepting of just everybody's got different opinions and it's like we're all trying to do the best and so yeah there's uh there's been a huge change around that and I think that that those three parts is uh if you're going to be in a remote environment is really look after yourself from those sides eating well I moved into the keto diet and I'm not trying to like push specific diet onto everyone because everybody needs to find

what works for themselves keto works for me so it's a low carb diet and it just means that I'm I feel like I've got more energy and I'm I'm able to just keep going a lot further than I could before without crashing from sugar overload um I got a gym instructor and so because you're sat at your desk for so long and you're not really getting out about as much as you would have been whether you're going to the office you're moving uh around the office uh when you're just like moving from your house to your desk and back to your house again which is the same place it's uh you need to be getting that exercise going to keep yourself healthy so that you're looking after yourself and your old age and then yeah the mental health part which when I was younger it was just not something which was ever spoken about it was laughed at actually from the part of Scotland that I came from and so I'm very glad that it is something that I've invested in and it's definitely something I would um really uh advise others to invest in as well yeah good

for you to to raise that actually I've you know this is no secret I've also used um professional help on on that mental health side it's a I I understand with uh with with how it was perceived in Scotland the uh the land of the Braveheart that probably going to a shrink is not the first thing you do you rather go to a pub and um yeah yeah there's plenty of shrinks around there after a couple of pints yeah certainly is that's for sure great advice with medication uh but um but but that's a that's that's a powerful thing and and I've I've also when I started doing it I kind of like fooled myself that this was mental coaching like what athletes do um to to get on on you know in into into that type of a thing but I but I totally understand where you're coming from and it is very helpful when you find that right type of therapist it

it has to like for people who want to try a therapist that you have to remember this is like going to a restaurant there's different type of chefs you might not like all the cuisine so don't quit after your first try uh rather pick a new therapist and and see what type of a ways are working works for you but it is it is quite great and it's not always you know talking about your background and blaming your parents like that is not the uh the goal of of a therapist it's more about exploration of of you and and what are the locks like I've I've had as well like plenty of issues that I needed to actually deal with that that I didn't uh and uh and it has been quite helpful and it brings a different side of you and I've seen like like now you're talking to you under like very calm and collected and and I think that that is an evolution step probably you weren't like this in your first half or even mid half of your career and it's a lot of the uh the sort of a goals that you you put forward and

you don't achieve and then you go back to be introspective like what caused me to not succeed in that and then um improving from from inside that helps a lot with uh with with the rest of it yeah I don't know I'm just going circles but I've done through the same thing and I'm just trying to enage others to yeah I I I really think you and I could talk about that for a long time I think everything you said there is absolutely spot on for sure yeah yes yeah anyways but this is not a psychology session so so so uh so with all those uh aspects I mean there's a there's a quite of a list and and yeah taking care of yourself I think that is the the final piece and even like what I try to do as well like I mean I've gone to a therapist I understand the the point of eating well not on keto but uh but a different diet and and overall just having like even putting into your calendar the time time when you exercise is a really powerful thing and that is like the self-care and leaving your home

your your your phone away from you when you're at the gym so that in between your workouts you're not opening up a slack message and hey this just came to my mind I need to write like no just focus on you listen to a podcast listen to music take care of yourself and that is really uh important in the uh in the type of project that we do which are like 10year development of a of a live service you have to be on top of your game so taking care of yourself is really important for the goals that you're trying to achieve as a team yeah it's a marathon it's not a Sprint that's what I always say and you you need to be in good shape for that you can't just be yeah burning out too early so my dad always said don't burn the candle at both ends and I think that's a very app way of putting it so yeah um all right so so before I let you go can you talk a little bit about Hawk so you've been on the project for 8 months it's launched globally it's crossed 1 million installs uh fully remote led by you your control of the road maps team the p&l the ways of working the growth strategy um what

like tell me a little bit more about the the project and and the uh the the learnings that you're using to to drive this this one yeah it's like I said it's been such an in I'm so lucky to to be able to work on this title because it's exactly the type of game that I love to play in so we we launched h hawked on February 15th on PC PlayStation and Xbox and that was after a few months of doing Early Access on PC and where we were just learning how things were working and it's since then it's just been really great to get it out the door and see the reaction of the players and so we've like I said we've got over a million players already trying it out and um and we've we know that we've got something with a lot of potential that's what the players are telling us and like all like all gas games it is very much just the seed that we've planted right now and now we need to kind of grow it from here and so yeah really like looking at all of my um history is coming into play into this because as you said I've got to run the

development teams I've got to run the publishing teams I've got to deal with the um road maps making sure that we're doing everything right we've got to be making sure we're hitting our financial targets and it's um it's just so much fun actually that's really what it comes down to every part of my job now is fun and and after making this step and it was a scary step away from production into um into purely executive prod production it's even though it's a sounds the same it's very much not the same um I've got the uh ultimate accountability and I've got the team working around me um and it is just so enjoyable and H how big is the team right now uh we've got a full team so we've got a full development team full publishing team and I think actually half the company is probably helping us right now because we are at launch stage and um so we've uh we are um every discipline that you can imagine is involved uh with us so hundreds of people yep hundreds of

people for sure yeah and um and are you still growing the team or like what is the uh the phase of of development or just going through this this early is it like globally launched it's like it's on Steam you can download it it's free to play um yep yeah it's globally launched so it's on yeah it's on Playstation five PlayStation 4 Xbox series SN x uh the only um uh console that's not on is uh um XBox One just now so from Xbox and PlayStation and yeah free to play and right now we're at the stage where it's fully released and so we are in the live operation stage that's where we're at and so we're just building up towards our next update for it so we've just got through like the first 10 11 days of uh craziness from the actual launch and trying to get stability and it's been incredible just the amount of players that have actually hit us we hit some server issues and so now we like we had first to sort those out and now we're

getting into the point of uh actually moving towards our regular updates uh our regular events and actually our um seasonal uh releases which we call issues um hawked is very much a comic book style game and so we're we we're leaning very heavily into that with um issues for our seasonal releases yeah beautiful it's very stylized I mean if you like fortnite probably will like this game as well yeah we um I think we've got a lot more um behind the scenes than fortnite uh like the way that it's actually built up is so when you join the game you start in the rift week which is like the player Hub it's this floating submarine around uh an island um called Exile and and so you start off there and this is a little bit different because you've got this uh period in between the matches

where you come back and you get to chill out and meet all the characters that are around the um Rift wake um part of the company called Grail which is who's hired you to go and steal some treasure from the island and so it's um a really interesting uh part where you can just come and hang out with people right it's a Social Hub basically and then then once you're ready to go on an expedition you uh pack up your gear you get ready and off you go to the exile to go and steal uh some artifacts um from the island and uh Escape back to uh Rift wake again with them nice nice um everybody can download this it's um as you said free on all the platforms all the all the key uh console PC platforms and are you hiring for the project or just no we're pretty stable right now actually but because we've got through the launch period I think it's now a time where we are um in a good shape with both sides of the teams and like

that's definitely been an interesting challenge has been getting everybody into the right places uh since I joined um but no we're we're in a pretty good shape and yeah just looking forwards to the Future and growing the game that's really where we're at awesome well Andy I'm going to let you go back to uh development of this beautiful game thank you so much for for joining for the conversation a lot of uh a lot of great insights on games at service and um how to work efficiently remotely all in or all out that's that's the way that's a big question but yeah thank you so much it's been really great super interesting looking forward to speaking to you again awesome thank you and thank you everybody for listening and hawked steam Playstation Xbox all the platforms free no reason not to play so give it a go um super pretty game so thank you everybody for listening