Crunch Culture, Google Stadia, Over Saturation of Games, and Virtual Reality | Roundtable News

I [Music] what's up everybody welcome to game dev Unchained the number one game development podcast about game development and a lifestyle thereof do cameras which doing cameras which this is your host Brandon Pham and this is a special episode a roundtable news episode where we bring a panelists of Game Developers to share their opinions of the greatest and biggest piece of information and we're gonna break it down and see how it's relevant to game developers out there so without further ado I'm going to introduce our panel over here and some familiar faces right so BAM this is how we see all three of us so of course on my right we got ray

Graham how you doing ray and then all my other we got Richard Q so I don't think you guys actually I've ever met but I know you guys listens to the podcasts on a usual basis so you know each other as being past guests before so uh not gonna bother with the introductions so I'm just gonna go right into the biggest meat of the last month so with the year 2020 kind of taking a turn one of the biggest piece of news that has been affecting developers out there it has been a return or at least a bigger impact about crunch culture this is something that has been kind of HID lighting Gamasutra I've been kind of seeing it kind of cropping up in all the news outlets as being apparently still a problem so I kind of want to go around the panel like has there really been a reasoning for this Rian's of talking about how crunch is bad again all of a

sudden at least in my own view of things so ray where you want to go first yeah well yeah I don't know if it's all of a sudden right because CD Projekt RED and and the whole cyberpunk summer Punk delay as I think sprung forth more and more discussion about this again because somebody that was on that team said oh yeah we're gonna still be crunching to get the game done by I think it's like what is it September October yeah and so everybody I think that kind of spurred everybody talked about it again do you feel like overall III think like the overall survey there was like a state of the industry that everyone's kind of doing Gamasutra has been doing one I know HUD a kind of been sharing their news and

overall at least the last couple years what I saw was there's been actually a decrease in overall crunchiness so there's been an effect in the last two years where developers have been at least conscious of their rights as game developers and maybe because of the a lot of the expose articles that's been kind of turning a light onto the game industry as a whole has been making an impact is this an assessment that you agree Richard what how do you feel about it well actually since you gave us a hint and said that you read the kamasutra state of the industry I just sped read it I think that so for the people who haven't read it yet like what are the reasons you believe caused you to work those maximum number of hours a week basically more than 40 hours self

pressure I personally wasn't working hard and I felt I needed slash wanted to I think like a lot of the video game industry still runs and it will probably always run on the idea that this is an art form you want to express yourself you want to get your best stuff out there in front of players when you think about a game like cyberpunk with a ton of high and it's a large you know box priced game like you have people who really want to make sure that they get their stuff out there and it's the best that it can be whenever I read about articles of crunch like being that like the last one I remember was with Rob Grand Theft Auto Rockstar and yeah that's another like a big-ass game that takes a lot of effort and energy and you really only get like one big shot to make that super awesome first impression and to like meet everyone's expectations around your game so I definitely can relate to that

I think like that's a main reason why like 40 hours plus is still always going to be around so I mean yeah it will you will be saying right I'm saying part of it like yeah so some people would like to believe that it's just how I get my best stuff out and I need to work harder to get my best stuff out right the like but you're on the team like that even when even when I saw the same the state of the industry survey where it's like oh it's self pressure it's I want to do it right a lot of times it may feel like that or you may tell yourself that but but you know at the same time it's you want to make sure that you're pulling your weight on the team and everybody else is there Nate there's nobody to tell you to go home there's also somebody telling you that all are somebody setting the schedule up in such a way where in order for you to get your best stuff out you have to crunch right rather than setting it up

in such a way where you can have a time to polish and meth and we have a regular work/life balance and still produce high quality stuff right like ie people always use like yeah we always want to cram more stuff in and make it great right but that's where the management people run to be teams need to be like nah nah this is good enough all right or put time in to get that polish in right so that people don't have to give up something yeah I mean to add to that like I totally agree like so I think it's on both sides like people are willing to put in the hours I don't know how many I don't have any stats off the top my head but like how many of the people who are crunching like what age are they like is this our first game I mean you can look at the people themselves but ultimately it does come down to how the team is managed how the schedule is set up like is there time to polish is there time to accurately estimate how long any major task is going to take since I shifted to

like indie stuff and I'm working with my family I need to make sure that it's like really tightly scoped to keep that work-life balance going and it's given me a lot of empathy towards understanding precisely how much time is needed for a feature to get done and I don't think that in larger corporations like that much attention can be given across the entire project so it's not saying to anyone's fault but it's definitely like how like people want to give their best effort but also just like you know do they have enough time to do it and are they overcast yeah I think at least my measure by default with the crunching is that anything more than five people it becomes a choice because essentially when you're working with the large team there's a lot of gates in place to kind of prevent problems with delay of game or quality stuff not getting in right to me it

becomes more about peer pressure and bad planning than actually trying to push this game that is so close to being the best right it's not it's not about a Ledge and so my my understanding with that and my you know there was a certain point in my career where I just said no right just like straight up me oh just looking at them and said no and a lot of that is because of experience but just not wanting to be taken advantage of and fall into the peer pressure of things and so I just see the long game of crunching so once I'm here myself be feeding but like isn't my voice enough Richard so uh so with crunching I think essentially I agree with I think we all agree right with smaller teams because there's so many so many factors that so many

variables at hand that you're juggling with many disciplines at once and you're essentially maybe working on this game for the first time as a group that it's hard to account for all things and with largest teams until we fixed that problem we're a five year game is actually being made the last two years or last year I'm not crunching the first three years of this five-year development no I mean that's its most of these games that get delayed like we were talking about a cyber Punk right that game is essentially just being locked down the last two years of development there was a lot of high high ranking officers kind of leaving at right pretty much right after the first trailer announcement was made right a lot of high departure is being made shortly after that because the game was nothing but like an idea

right it wasn't fully fleshed out and we're problems already happening so you guys can speak on this right you guys have been lead some major games most people kind of stick to the end just to get that credit but for you to leave before the game is out and a allegedly it's getting a bunch of hype right it usually means because of production problems that you just don't believe in or agree with the creative control what's happening with the project's not because it's super tight at least in most of the cases correct yeah like like cyber oh sorry I don't know if you oh yeah yeah all right so I was gonna say was like yeah I think like on games like that which have a lot of hype to it I mean so much of like what you have to do when you like manage a product like that

I just like hype it up and you need to get people excited you need to get people to get invest into it like way way way back then like pre-sales matter but now it's a much different like sort of market that doesn't matter as much but you still want to stand out you know the industry is only getting larger and larger and there's still more money that goes into these games people are spending more like the just the spending patterns of like consumers is like always just like increased over time for game like I I haven't like done like a full analysis on this but I think like if you were to like make a checkbox of like things on a product that would contribute to crunch I think the stuff likes you know like how long has it been in development you know how is it a new IP like how much like content is being promised and stuff I mean I think there's a correlation that you can draw I mean it's not like you know these companies are actually thinking about like how their product is

similar to other big products and how should they scope their stuff differently so I think like a lot of these like Jam ups that you see with big delays like for cyberpunk and even like Final Fantasy 7 remake these things like just just part of the game industry and like you never know like sometimes it's like maybe sometimes it's not the development team's fault maybe they've gotta work wait for things like like gold masters or regulations or other geopolitical stuff like who knows like there's definitely reasons for these delays and sometimes it's due to poor planning and I would like to say that most of the time it's not because of that but you never really know well I mean crunch I think we're always gonna be crunching to be honest although there is a decrease over time even the state of the industry is saying that most people are still working over 40 hours on average even it's two-three hours over whatever it still counts right it just starts with upper management especially with these triple-a studios

as easy I just can't imagine the more successful they are with crunch the more likely they're going to keep that inside because it's working right yeah but let's move on I want to move on to like yeah like an update of status with law I mean the best way to kind of talk about this is stadia right so I think we made some predictions and everyone kind of had like an idea that stadia was gonna be a flop right that it's not gonna be as exciting as everybody wanted it to be I mean we had hopes that it would usher this all-new new era but essentially we're still kind of having like this very slow start to it all and Google if anything there was like a whole reddit forum dedicated to how quiet they've been on updates and what's going on with the system and all these early adopters which we'll just

call them suckers for believing in to the system they didn't see it coming they stressed it in - but - you wait okay but Richard you don't know Ray's background but a lot of this friends is kind of hitting this division at Google right now a lot of X you be soft was it Toronto people over there kind of taken taking control so right you want to kind of speak on behalf of their since she have Google Stadium house okay first hand yeah I've played it and I've played it over a Wi-Fi connection hmm and it's and it's good okay right it's good for what it is it's good for what it is right and it's like oh this is cool the

problem is Google stadia right now is there's just no games and the games that are there are games that you could play on any other system and there's no real reason if you're a gamer there's no real reason to play it on Google's data because you either have Xbox a piece for you a PC you could play any one of those games on any one of those one of those devices right so there's no reason for you to get a stadium right what they need to work on is the things that separate stadia from regular games and they really need to focus on that and quite frankly they just got started on that stuff late right so it's gonna be a while before you see any of those games cover up and so it's just a matter of folk and they maintain the stuff while those games come out and then there's the whole article or the ABC said well it's up to the publishers to announce the games rights but like and everybody was like yeah yeah that makes sense but no it doesn't right because

you're the platform Boulder the platform is supposed to be hyping up the platform so that people will want to announce their games on the platform right and so like they're really they're really falling down on the whole publishing side of things that actually get engaged on the Kraftwerk before it was like it's decent they can do it does what it's supposed to do right and then there's some features that they have announced that really set it apart but there's no games that are really using those features right now right it's um I mean the treating gamers like they never heard announcements before I mean like it was literally at e3 when they announced their stadia already and it's the Sony and Microsoft and Nintendo announcing games it so it's not like of course you be something all these guys have their own conference but essentially you're going to a Sony thing to kind of figure out what's an exclusive or what's so impressive about

their individual ecosystem that I need the buy-in but before I kind of move over to Ritchie real quick Kiki breakdown ray how much money you wasted on that like the pricing system it's what's confusing to me because I think everybody bought into the idea because there are all ten dollars and then I can just play whatever I think that's the that's the lie that's not true that's not true that's not true right and first of all it was a gift so I didn't pay the hundred thirty bucks on the one nobody else paid under 30 bucks right secondly secondly I think I'm still on the free the free three months that you get with it of pro right right and with that with that pro thing you get you get a free game are there some games that you get from free with the pro and then and then you also get a discount on some of the full price games if you're a pro member or whatever right and that pro subscription

is what gets you 4k resolution at 60 frames and all of that right but if you wanted if you want if you wanted to paint no money I don't know if they've rolled that out yet but there's a there is going to be a free tier that they roll out where you just get 1080p at 30 frames and it's a free tier and you just pay full price for the games I thought we've talked about this before and I think paying full price for the games is the only way that you could make sure that the content creators get any money out of this mmm do you know in size can you tell people are you getting paid yeah because they've been very no but I mean I think it's I think you paying 60 bucks for a full game they're gonna take so sort of cut and the developer gets the rest but if you're doing it like Netflix where you pay $12 a month and you get unlimited games to play the value proposition of putting your game on so a system like that diminishes really quickly unless you're getting a large amount of money upfront

yeah that's the Netflix my look I paid for the like yeah yeah exactly and it doesn't work for concentrators I think in the video game space so the only way to do it is the charge full price but then the charge full price for a game that I could play on my xbox that I actually have just in my hand for some folks that's not good right however I think screaming is here to stay like I think I think is a future like you know Nvidia is doing something right now Microsoft is beta testing X cloud like as much as we want to hate I don't think that this this is going anywhere yeah so I'm gonna switch it over to Richard what are your thoughts about all this so far I think he hit the nail on the head I think that the pricing model is really quite I think it is what it has to be now until like stuff gets like figured out like like what exactly makes sense for

people like because frankly like when I hear like all I need to pay more money in order for like I have better like 4k resolution or whatever like people haven't made those kinds of like pricing decisions since like for a long time in my opinion like I remember like over a decade ago I would care about like what's a processor I use like oh I had a Pentium one or two or three or four whatever and then thinking about like oh does my broadband actually support this like game playing at a resolution playing you know what I mean like that that stuff is not what people are used to especially because like you know pcs technologies like like tabled off in terms of like how powerful has to be in like what you get out of it and then like you know the consoles are always really strong and you know the iPhone is already pretty good and Android is good so I think once um that becomes a little bit like more stabilized and I think they'll be easier for people to understand what the value prop is like

if you told after a verdict hardcore game or like you know how much does it cost to do stadia you know like when people don't know how to compare apples to oranges then it's gonna be really tough and I say apples to oranges because like you know the biggest complaint with stadia is like no games are exclusive but then at some point there will be exclusive games I was actually trying to find during your chat just now like what games are going to be coming out exclusive but I guess like if it's exclusive they're not going to reveal it Phil so later if they're scrambling games games right now but still like yet - exclusive games are not very interesting doesn't matter right yeah yeah I think that cloud is definitely here to stay I've always felt and like people I've worked with like have heard me say this before like but

the but the best game would be the kind that you can like take anywhere with you play on PC or play on mobile or play on console and then depend like you know you design game systems that sort of engage you for like sitting down for one minute or playing for half an hour and then you could just take that experience anywhere with you I'm still not sure exactly what that game looks like and one of the biggest advantage like how that what that game would look like with cloud because one of the biggest thing about cloud is that you have like this awesome processor and then the fidelity of the graphics is awesome and you can take it anywhere with you but that doesn't necessarily mean that they did the game in fidelity the fidelity of like the graphics and like this the the FPS doesn't necessarily isn't necessarily the thing that you need in order to play a game that you would play everywhere you know like I feel like those kind of games are already exist on mobile so it's a very I think it's a tough niche to sort of like carve out but it's definitely like the

way of the future like like for sure it's not gonna go anywhere yeah I mean I agree I like the fact that I'm able to kind of play my games remotely I've been playing with Steam remote just being able to kind of you don't like that I love it dude does not work and especially if you're going over Wi-Fi it does not know I haven't played it through it is trashed over Wi-Fi I agree with you but I like the idea of not having to be in front of my PC like I can stream from at least my PC to my TV and I'm already happy but this is kind of leading into the GeForce now the five dollars a month subscription right there's no hidden weird Google stadia buy this freaking thumbstick for $120 all right ready you got it for free so you don't you don't know the pain that people are going through right now but you have to pay like 120 bucks to kind of get into playing google stadia which

the hardware itself doesn't just really justify it but with g-force now right which is really interesting is that it actually goes through and supports all your steam account your epic games account battlenet and you play so if you have any games that you own on those platforms you're able to play it over Wi-Fi and remotely so that's what g4 is now is this correct right I'm reading through this and this is how far so you're not just fine games in this Google stadia then that the catalog is kind of owned separately it's combining everything yep you've owned so far on PC and able to finally deliver what we all thoughts the ended be where you go about that five dollars a month versus a vessel yeah that's the first let's look the first I'm hearing that they're combining all your different services so I think that's pretty dope I know the

other thing I'm noticing here is our TX on right so we're gonna be hype it up that for a while I'm sure and I'm sure you have to used all of the ray-tracing card so nobody's buying so that's a good way to do it yeah and I kind of what I was saying earlier it's like how does that how is this like what's different about how I sit down and play this versus stadia because like what you just described it already sounds like that's better but this is part of like the confusion I have it's like wait so I can play the games that I already play cheaper but anywhere like is that is that the value prop still like I think it's hard for me just as a like not at the bleeding edge to fully understand what I'm getting here yeah look the idea is just taking Pete your games from your PC and being at the play on your Android right oh yeah okay okay I think everybody just wants that opportunity to

kind of move away from their PC and and just take their library with you and that's why one of the reason why the switch is so attractive to a lot of people is that you're able to kind of have that yeah yeah there's a fundamental difference though between the switch and like these things sorry like yeah everybody's like talking like oh yeah you can playing your mobile device right as long as you have this clunky yeah big move controller to play with because of course not every game is to know that I have touch controls right you're on the go with a xbox controller and so sort of and you'll put your phone in and you'd be on the bus playing this thing right and then the switch is made to be portable like that's what it's made to do and it just makes way more sense the you know to be portable with it you know what I mean and and then it could be docked at home and right so like the whole like playing these cloud games on your phone I understand the attractiveness of it but the

practicality of it seen is like lost ba ba seems stupid right no I just feel like switches like the closest to achieving those nask system is probably gonna hit this the best because everyone is still kind of hanging on to their hardware Google is trying to kind of get your private information through their service it's not a game first so everyone has an agenda besides playing on a mobile device right this is there any a like stats out there that says like how popular like cloud streaming is across the world because I would like bet that it's more popular outside of the United States then it would be in the United States just because I think that the idea of turning your phone or any mobile device into a really powerful like like a console quality gaming platform is slightly more attractive for

people like for more mobile centric countries like Asia that would be my guess but I'm just kind of wondering yeah the thing is like I've I've been dealing this based a little bit in Asia with the game market in Asia and they don't care at all about the consoles social connection and they don't care about the consoles at all right and of course they want though there's some bubble games like they're done beautiful and they're really push in the mobile device is hard but when it comes to like I want xbox one on my phone but I don't think they care at all they just want to be able to play the game and see the numbers go up and our friends and that's it that's it yeah I'm looking at the global availability of this geforce nail service and i'm guessing that they did their marketing research but it's making them available for North America of course Western

Europe Russia Japan and Korea that's their main guess right now not even China bro these are the those are the countries that have like most console like penetration yeah seems like it yeah yeah so at least that's what they're aiming for it's gonna be a thank you yeah yeah sooo she said Russia I was like yeah Keith like PC players yeah yeah it makes sense because they're combining all the PC services right epic same battlenet you play right those are all the PC markets so there are targeting the library yeah and the one cool thing about all the streaming services like beyond all the problems that were outlining the one cool thing is hardware upgrades right like you you just get hardware upgrades for free

as time goes on they'll just replace the GPUs upgrade them you can get faster and better over time stadia in via now Xbox will all happen I'm for all the little services that sounds cool alright so this is a topic that I was kind of thrown now I agree with you man like having a cloud-based game not worrying about hardware is the biggest appeal it actually kind of scares me if it is becoming a publicly accessible type of service it is accessible but like it publicly interested type of service I don't know how that's gonna affect game development like selling game developers essentially they ought to worry about anything are still gonna have to make their games they're still gonna have to make it to a certain hardware still have to be performing this thrown fast like there's to be

developers it's that much of a difference I think is the more of the differences to the users right and their their bandwidth caps and LTE bandwidth and 5g bandwidth and the availability of all that stuff when you're not at home and like I like I think it's a worse experience yeah right but then it's a matter of do you want to trade the convenience for that or such grace mmm answers yes I'm all about convenience man as soon as I was playing my steep my metal gear five did I was playing that over Christmas on my phone I was the happiest kid in the world man just being able yeah so I could tell that you like your cloud gaming why would you play metal gear five on your phone like because I was playing area because I like spending time with my family man so as the kids are trying to play with their train key it said all right I was sitting there with my game I mean I mean

you can also just be doing that to switch right you can't play metal your fight on the switch to there's certain games that isn't like that one this one's kind of I think it hits home once in a while we all get into like a little let me see I think we're a little stuck here at least for me how am I going yeah my nose was stuck on screen for a day it was pretty it's pretty upsetting to look at it's good now just you know alright so I'm gonna leave it on richer while I fix my camera but uh okay my question Richard maybe gonna answer this first right gaming saturation it's becoming crazier and crazier out there in the market we just had Victoria on right a

few weeks ago and she was telling us about how the week before we had her on there was a hundred and seventy games that were released on Steam within a week right and this is kind of becoming the average now every week and it's getting hard for us out there to stand out as Guinea developers it's also getting harder for gamers to kind of notice the type of games that they usually like right it's actually asking them to do more work what's your feeling on that I mean like it has to deal with the age groups that they're trying to target but also finding the right game is just becoming a lot tougher I think I think that the industry is always gonna keep expanding I think that as game developers like the collective consciousness we'll figure out ways to like hit on niches that you haven't really thought of before how to appeal

to certain demographics that haven't been appealed to before I mean then I'm just talking in generalities I think you're talking about saturation within certain like bands of a target audience so I think in general the number of games that are going to come out is always going to increase like I think I've read some articles somewhere that like people over 50 are not a tap like audience yet and I could actually see like there being many games that try to appeal to gamers who are 50 and up like I myself am going to turn 50 and up at some point and I would love to have games that are more I guess mature or whatever right but getting to your point like I think that yeah it is gonna get harder and harder for games to game developers to sort of stand out as an indie developer I think that the challenge is it's actually kind of a welcome thing for me I don't really think about how many games are coming out like every year I just try to make sure that like I thought through like all of my product planning I've I've

thought about like what people kind of want to see in the future you know I really don't know where all these new games are coming from like like what type of new games are coming out is it mostly on console or is it mostly on PC is it mostly indie I'm not quite sure but you know to me it's like nice to hear that like people are always like willing to like make games and like it it really does help push the entire industry forward but yeah you know like we kind of talked about this at the beginning of your podcast that like yeah you know like that additional pressure that desire to stand out is going to lead to like you know developers like overworking themselves and like producers and executive teams wanting to go over the top and that's going to lead to overtime and whatnot so whatever how about you Ray like you're you're meeting with a lot of these types so you're you're part of the problem but I'm also on in about I mean what would realistically I feel

like it's increasingly becoming this right a lot more gamer or Elyse awareness are becoming game developers a lot more accessibility to actually go out there and present your ideas to the world and so I don't see it slowing down yeah I see it as a good thing it's a good thing for I think lowering the bar for entry and letting all voices fear is a good thing right you know I'll make it about race and diversity a little bit were like underrepresented craters that opens the door for them you know I mean being able to make games easily and cheaply right but then when it gets to the point of like trying to capture the public's attention and be selling games yeah like I think that's just media right now right like if I want Netflix right now I have nothing but choice of what movie to watch nothing but choice

of what video game to play I was nothing but choice for what book to read what music to listen to is just so much content being produced generally across all segments of the entertainment industry but that just this assignment that it's growing and competitions of gaffers and that also means that people are going to really be making good stuff this so that they can stand out mm-hmm perfect yeah I agree with both of you I think it overall is it is a good thing that people are having a lot of choices and it just comes down to the individual or your team to kind of really appeal to their audience and and just bring it up on their shoulder and as long as it's fair competition I think everything is all gaming and fun you know that but I

think there's enough on both sides that you can hear at least once in a while like a game that is a sole developer is able to kind of break it through as long as you keep hearing stories like that it gives you a Lisa an ounce of hope if it's just like call duty every year and battle filly every year that's dominant while they are dominating the headlines and all that's all you hear you're around and I think it is pretty hopeless for the little get make it through but I think last two years or increasingly so we're starting to hear more and more about these smaller teams just prevailing through all that and actually providing a nice contrast to for the gamers to choose from well what I'm hearing I sees like yes while they're indie teams right a lot of smaller indie teams are backed by indie publishers and if 10 ratings in their development and they have they have the connections to

get all the websites to pay attention to these indie games and I bro don't be don't be hundred percent right I made part of like what since the last time I was on the show Brennan and talking about doing indie dev like you know I'm gonna be talking to the Victoria like in a couple days about like marketing on a zero dollar budget and then reaching out to a couple publishers to help out with marketing and I talked to someone else that I know to help out with like doing Kickstarter and then you know it's like you know is very said like it that that a lot of that comes intuitively to me because I've worked in the industry it is a big big corporation so I just know like hey you need like a marketing budget behind it and I think that yes there's more games coming out but that doesn't mean that I'm going to do things

any differently I still think that if you are smart with how you do things if you use your resources wisely if you use your connections wisely you can stand out and there's a part of me that always believes at least this is my thesis on doing our indie game that focusing on quality of the experience and then doing the right steps and then maintaining like building your brand as a studio is being like honest and transparent and that you're trying to deliver a good value should work I hope it does but yeah you're right like there's also unfair competition out there that like part of the reason why I do India is to sort of slide under it like I'm not going to try and fight on quite like like Blizzard or riot toe-to-toe there's absolutely no way that that's going to happen maybe like 15 years ago you could but there was kinds of like you know he said that market saturated and people figure it out like pretty much almost every monetization model out there with

like you know even just like the data that helps you point and predict to the next monetization model by the way that's subscriptions its those are things that like people are just more aware of nowadays than it was like a while ago and if anything just brings better decisions made by game developers and I mean the games that do get a lease across to a wide swath of game Demers I mean we're just getting higher quality products to be honest it's no more like garage band games garage bands fine actually it's just that you have to write come up with something that like a marketing strategy at least yeah yeah you need to stand out you need to stand up no matter what kind of game you are making you have to make sure that you have a very clear point of view it's still create of Artforum in my opinion like you know if you make something crappy people

aren't gonna want to play yeah you don't like so that's that's you know like that's what I'd like to believe mm-hmm I will say though if you're competing and for quality and you doing higher quality stuff I think inevitably also the cost goes up yeah right and so also the folks gotta be willing to pay $25 for indie game yeah and it should be that way it should be that way but slow indie games get like just skewers like oh you want me to pay $25 right but it's if it's high-quality and you know people gotta eat mmm and things cost money right so we have to we have been willing to pay those kind of price points yeah I mean my feeling is that I'm trying to no no no what will you censor I'll finish chef oh I think that honestly trying to for for the game we're making for from 800

we're trying to figure out should it be $15 should be $20 should be 25 25 feels like it's too much do a lot of research on Steam spy just like look through my own library and just like do a rough calculation of like how much money did i spend for this you know and then like you have to also think about like how much money you're trying to make what kind of like quality bar you're trying to go out there because like the more money you spend for a game it's always got to be a higher quality like that that's like a it's like a it's fundamental of an economic rules like gravity is for like physics although gravity is just a phenomenon that happens but anyway that's not we're not talking about physics I'm not talking about the level one level six baby anyway ya know like for me like what part of like trying to figure out the price point for our indie game is like yeah we can't just make it for like you know a

couple bucks because like we haven't stand out and like those cheap games that are out there like you know I myself would be doing myself a disservice if I do try my hardest to put something out there that was high-quality and you know the time it takes and the opportunity cost of working on this kind of game and you know just yeah the costs go up 100% is Ray said mm-hmm and I I'm a big fan for developers kind of putting the price that they feel like they deserve like I feel I think I've read this a couple places where developers at least into the developers tend to kind of under price their product more than usual and you know it doesn't have to be that way I think if you've built up a niche base have a dedicated fan that likes allegedly your game they will or would be willing to pay whatever the price to kind of just make sure they play your game as a lure yeah yeah this is one

dedicated man that gives you a million dollars finding good see I think a lot of developers kind of get lost of trying to get like 10,000 people at once but it starts with one to get to two to get the four words that give the six I still believe that like if you can appeal to one dedicated person the likelihood of that spreading and getting that person to talk about your game gives you a formula to work with to kind of decide how to actually roll out your marketing strategy but that's rep that's wrapping up that topic I want to kind of spend a little time before we end this podcast on VR right so the last roundtable news we've done which is a while ago VR to me was dead it was like just Facebook's a little experiment that Zuckerberg is just grasping for straws right because everything else is failing

over there but since then the quests has become very profitable so profitable that Facebook posted that it made up for two percent of their profits last year ninety-eight percent is still advertising but this is different from the year before for oculus where they were talking about how they were spending more money on advertising than actually selling through so their their their quests systems doing well and of course the biggest news I felt like the last few months was half life Alex right that was the first legitimate game that people were willing to shell out money oh you're not you're shaking head but valve sold out their stupid VR system that I was laughing about all right sold out right and people are lining up to play half-life Alex in the last couple of months since I have fought Alex The Walking Dead is getting a lot of buzz

right now and bomb works is another game within months of each other and I've been causing a lot of stir alright ray seems super angry at me so go ahead I can share your thoughts no I think it's the typical bias of like high only high quality games matter you know right and and because half-life Alex looks good and it's in a half-life universe Oh finally a VR game that I care about a because it looks great right but but but I can guarantee you that beats a burp obvious more honest I could tell that you're gonna thought of a beat saver all right I have beat Sabre right it had fun party yeah and that's why that's also why ACOs aquas quests is being successful as well right because it's removing from the bits the barriers as

cool as games on it right yeah dad don't look like half-life outlets right and that's it's about the games right and uh and I remember you I saw you when FX violence was announced I saw you mentioned you're all finally a VR game worth playing right it just has some some higher resolution textures and some lighting like you're all set bro super excited about it a quality assignment come on you know how do you know how many pent-up game designers there are at Bell right because they've been like fuming the last eight years and so they're like unloading finally a worthy game that they're releasing well their last game was what portal left 4 dead 2 what was it that card game with a nice game artifact was a flop all right like you know anyway like I'm just I'm just pointing out that there's a ton of good

VR games out there that you can play it off those quest they're good right and even someone BR that are good right just because it has half-life or the name and it looks nice doesn't mean it's the first legitimate VR pick a small a lot taken offense these are all right all right you blog you're taking offense to that I'm gonna go over the red red red I'm gonna talk to rich it here in the corner so I mean like for me right every system has that exclusive game that everybody that that appeals to a hardcore gamer right the Sony system the Microsoft system the Nintendo system the PC system right the one that kind of takes off is usually an exclusive game that appeals to core gamers at least in my opinion right and to me beat saber was not it I'm not ready to hang my coat on that game as being the best we are game gamer what's the core gamer market for you GE you clearly wait wait are you

bringing up the Wii U as an example of a good system where were you saying the system that doesn't really appeal to core gamers but still make some money out here at least streets right and that's something I think I think some misnomer to always gauge the success of everything by the core gamer market right sometimes it ain't about them all right I'll give you the weave but come on even the switch people are talking about Zelda right they're not talking about that oh I wonder where that tennis game is or that pulling is not even really like that that good-looking of a core game right it's just a good game yeah

all right then our definition of core gaming is kind of I think we have a miscommunication I mean to me core gaming is quality graphics opportunity right no I'm talking about this people who've been dedicated to games last five plus years right we've been playing games on a consistent level right beat Sabre kind of brings a bit about everybody you know and and in the living room that that sees it for the first time I want to try that sure but that doesn't qualify as a hardcore gamer because it's you know with Zelda it's like hey there's a history of Zelda players that heard about Zelda and want to keep playing see to me that's a hardcore game that's a guy that's been around yeah in that context to like if you look at if you expand out to the global context of bread games right like the tour gamer

the core gamer ain't nothing even the guys right so that's yeah I think always measuring success by that is always like fun I don't just don't do that I'm promising you I'm gonna I'm not gonna let a at the last round so it's one thing before I'm ready to Richard all right the phone alright the phone it's brought in by casual players because most people have phones that don't think you know fine as soon as this VR actually has glasses peripherals kind of like what Richard is wearing right now that people can have other functionality right it's still it still is a core device it's a hardcore device that's the main problem they're trying to break right now right so it for me it's a disservice to kind of not focus on that hardcore group before moving on and doing something else like beat Sivir - or something

alright Richard your thoughts on VR as a game designer ah alright as a game designer well today I learned that your definition of core gamer is very different than what my definition of core gamer is we all have different different definitions yeah yeah I think it's just it's a question of like you have to say core gamer as in hardcore gamer as in willing to pay lots of money spend a lot of time once the best quality experience you know like you have a game like Call of Duty which is all-encompassing with a massive single player game and tons of multiplayer modes and like hit social hits grinding hits everything right I think that a half-life Alex like I'm not a huge huge fan of VR because I just think that like a lot of the experience that you get from it are a bit like for me personally like with like the way that my brain works like it's disorientating and and I

don't find like scrounging through the areas and picking up loot with my actual hands to be more satisfying than just playing it and like fall out and just like finding stuff and putting it together but then again you know maybe maybe the cinematics will be much better done and maybe there'll be like really great level get makes this half-life is valve is amazing at gimmicks level gimmicks we look to them a lot when I was working at Blizzard for like good examples of that but yeah as a designer like I think that a lot of this is colored by like my time working at pocket gems at wargaming at riot I think that like the the most like the biggest games are the ones that connect people together and I think that VR inherently has issues like connecting players to other players because it's so focused on immersing one person's senses I'm not a hundred percent sure but like I would

bet that Facebook with like they're a are Department will be a bit more successful in trying to connect players together because that's like sort of their mission statement plus like I know like one of their product directors there and I think he's a really smart guy he used to work it riot in the social side of design so we'll see but like as in terms of like developing like super core experiences that like really for lack of a better word are like orgasmic to look at I would say half live up there I mean it's like it's like very very um it's also like the anticipation of like people want to play half-life 3 and you get to play Alex and you get to visit city 17 and then there's all these questions and you know like they're making all their half-life games free to sort of build a pipe you know so I think like there's a if there was a company that was going to really make a mark on VR and try to

optimize every single way to do it valve is definitely trying to do that with this which is uh kudos to them and I'm happy for players like you Brandon but like as a game designer I don't I don't work in valve as a fan of VR and I'm not really a big a fan so hooray for you well let me let me at least ask this question to both of you right who's making a better taking a bigger step forward for VR right is it beat Sabre for for the quest or is it valve with their half of Alex I mean which one is making the bigger impact or is there even a I think it's clearly it's be cheaper like I mean let's be real [ __ ] goofy man and yeah like you and also like you know of course valve wants

to be able to also sell the index right and it's not just the index what is it 1100 1200 but like what is it it's like a thousand bucks they sold out they sold out all right where you can afford a big ten of them right like come on man expensive right so like this is let's pump the brakes platform degrees on the excitement for all of this say I like its halflife like it's a good marketing gimmick you notice Joe Blow making a first-person game on that same system nobody would really care I can't buy friendly alright I usually had you ready explain and amazing ok I will say this though I would gladly play this and like an arcade a VR arcade you know I was I just can't see myself buying this and hooking this something right like my kids would destroy all of this like

right now I'm not trying to rag on you ready but like yeah yeah that's like that's like you know what you I bet you would Jack yourself into the matrix and just say bye bye to everything that then you'd be the first one see let me kind of I guess my background it kind of helps with this because I'm the environment artist right that's my background so I'm used to building worlds and wanting to walk through it so VR gives me that gateway to kind of appreciate the world and being able to look around and be transported over there all right Pete super is nice right if I'm like trying to kill time right but I'm not rushing home to play beat safer that is not it's not it's like the same equivalent of like I can't wait to play guitar hero tonight right it was a fad it was a time that passed it has no lasting impact of any memory and experience that I still kind of hark

back into when I'm trying to remember all the good old days of that shitty plastic guitar is like nah man it was it has no no emblem of importance in my history of gaming right but half-life is a moment that anybody can talk about and you get and you understand even if you're not a fan you like I understand the impact right no one's gonna talk about Pete Sabre five years from now like that's just the truth of it I think here I think you're also underselling the whole rhythm game genre honestly because they're still dudes that play dance revolution in New York aids and put it on two player one player playing on both ad mode and go buckwild right they're still news that do this yeah you know why because I play much longer than five years right it's a

great game whatever right but dude but I just like I said to say that now VR is arrived because this game shows up I think is very very narrow sighs all right I'm gonna have to see what quest has in store because I still you know I know Quest is kind of flying off the shelves sure well at least selling more units well I can't really name a single game besides beat Sabre that that you know what's what's I'm just going to make a wild prediction right now that somewhere someone is making some like extension to Pokemon go that you can play on a are glasses instead of VR and then people are just gonna lose their [ __ ] because they just need to find like a field of a certain size and then some central server plops down a [ __ ] like a are like a gym with like a humongous like raid Pokemon just staring at everybody and everyone's nothing like that that's what I mean by like it's gonna have that

mass multiplayer appeal but then it's got a huge IP and it's got like yeah well Pokemon gameplay is fairly like shallow overall but like you know it can get it can evolve this strong like oh yeah yeah they are definitely the future right like it's just not it's not VR right it's just like Fred and Jack into the matrix and them you know no the AR is gonna be the jumping off one put the matrix neo is not wearing a our glasses bro it's the matrix ar has to be the stepping stone but the VR is the full transportation of the experience Brandon gonna Brandon want to close around old boy we eat the steak standing here in Seger's bliss didn't sleep tonight alright and then tell me about your

dreams how do you just still in your damn room and this things pop up dude no you're the best user where you're transported to somewhere else and you believe in it I just don't think the technology is good it's not there yet right the endgame is VR but right now it's it's in transitional phase to make a are irrelevant and it's gonna be a few years but until then we have a flight Alex leading the way and beat Sabre is kind of for the old folks home get their body moving I guess alright man so uh that concludes the hour I want to thank you our panel guess regram and Richard coot for coming on and discussing these important topics so this is a monthly podcast hopefully you guys will come back but it was good to catch up with you guys to share your opinions I love when we disagree especially how wrong you guys are on

certain tips but I appreciate your opinions alright I'll keep it to myself and people out there can either agree or disagree that's the whole point of right so I want to thank you guys for spending the time and that's it I'll let you guys go all right have a good one guys until next time nice you [Music]