How has the Pandemic Impacted the Game Industry in 2021 | Best of 2021 Part 1

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what's up everybody welcome to another episode of game dev unchained the no one game development podcast about game development and the lifestyle thereof i am your host brandon fam as always we're bringing you the greatest and latest news about game developers and talking to game developers around the world about what those news mean to us so it's no surprise it's been quite a while for your uh loyal listeners out there i was kind of absent unannounced in truth a lot of it was i was kind of burnt out and needed a break uh and with the time given you know i had a lot of time to to reflect on where i want the podcast to go but also it gave me a lot of concentration to kind of grow my my studio that i've been forming uh for four to five years now and i needed that time to kind of concentrate on that but also i realized there was a lot of things

that was happening since basically november of 2021 that you know the the industry did not sleep you know it kept on going and a lot of things have been happening and so i want to dedicate the next five days to kind of get myself back on the wagon uh to get into the rhythm of the podcast again and bring you guys everything that you deserved uh that you didn't get uh in the closing year but uh catch you guys up to what's going on in history so to kind of kick off this year with the bang but also recap what last year worth of episodes uh i wanted to kind of start this off with starting today and for the rest of the week uh kind of like a revisit about all the episodes on various different topics last year and bring to you guys and in that way usher in the new episodes that are coming this year

so without further ado the first episode was uh recorded earlier in the year of 2021 as a reminder we kind of came out of the pandemic and with 2021 starting to get people back into the workplace but not really knowing what that persisted and a lot of that was a lot of developers that i've had on the podcast asking about how they reacted to coming back and reacted to how their respective countries reacted to the pandemic so obviously what we knew about the pandemic and the virus itself last year to what we know now is a lot different so dave mervick we had him on a few times and he's a senior narrative designer for little nightmares and at that point little nightmares 2 was coming out but we dedicated the whole episode to basically talking about

what was going on oh and how that affected our game dev lives this is from episode 255 getting creative after a world-changing event with dave vermeck enjoy but i hope everything's okay i just kind of caught the last something about your dad yeah yeah i was just saying like when when my dad was out in west africa uh when ebola hits i'd say and but it's like it's only because i had like a personal connection to someone out there that i was like really kind of struck by that and he had to get out very quick but like it was the same like you were saying you know oh this is over in china and like it makes you feel like really ashamed of like your reaction to that it's like how many people are affected by that out there ah but it only counts when it comes over here you know what i mean like oh now we take it seriously now we have to well in the case of the us and the uk do

nothing until it's like out clearly out of control but you know it's just yeah you're just like that why didn't we take it seriously why didn't anyone take it seriously when when you have a shot i keep yeah but you're always thinking these like even though it's like a whole continent it's still so parochial you know and like uh closed closed off i'm like well it's fine unless it comes here but now it's too late i've seen outbreak you know dustin hoffman was on top of it but no one else was it's funny that you're bringing but i would say that um there's something that to that i think one of the things that uh researchers are kind of coming out of this a lot of the we country that's like socialist type of countries are paneling this a bit better the wii kind of first type of mentality and then the eye countries such as ours are really struggling with this and not even about things happening over the fence in other

countries and continents but like i see it within my neighborhood like while it's you know this this so-and-so who lives down the street they they got it but it's not our our little bubble so we don't and it's like all the way to the last minute of just pushing you know the the thinking keep pulling the next ladder up though yeah yeah really oh right now it's you lot i'm fine still loo yeah and i'm still seeing that it's like um even when my uh my my sister-in-law's boyfriend got it and he works as a emt at a hospital so of course he got it right but then luckily he didn't spread it within our bubble and then the next you know it's very weird you see these internal struggles with them like like my um immediate family is very closed off like we're treating this very seriously and then our other parts of our family are just hanging out every week in this family gathering which is the number one spreader uh funny enough but then that circle just got back together as soon as

as he kicked it i was like guys that was a close call that was a real thing there that could have like killed the whole family there right there but everyone just i don't know maybe the struggle is real and i think i do understand and sympathize it's like eight like a year in maybe almost now and if we had taking control like new zealand uh people would have just told me about it hunkered down six weeks and just moved on with their life but no we're dragging this on because of our stubbornness i think and and it's like i think both the us and the uk had the worst people in charge at the worst possible time i mean yeah you know we we could like someone said recently like the uk could have had a situation like new zealand if they hadn't destroyed that guy and instead they got the worst government in the world who've done who've done so much to damage the chances of of people getting through this you know it's ridiculous and my sister got it when she's she works for

the nhs um and i was more angry than she was at the the token gesture that came every thursday where people would go outside and clap for health workers for a minute i i found that insulting yeah but this isn't that podcast does it but it i i am you know what i mean it's just no i i think it's selling the nhs out from under people telling them they're not absolutely unprepared for something like this because they live on the edge all the time because there's no profit in looking after people but we will give you a round of applause every week oh well thanks for that man but you know i mean obviously this this affects everybody right i know we're a game development podcast but like look at how we're i think there's a mental toll even with me i was working from home before i'm kind of kind of want to dig into if you had a history of working from home

before maybe a few days in there but even this was like very taxing this is because i'm used to like working at home and then taking a break and i hang out in the weekend and then come back this is like in prison man it's like i'm constantly locked to work it's like what else are you gonna do but not be productive you're gonna you know you gotta have things to do and we're just finding things to do and it's very i think as a creative there's a limit to that where you can be really creative but then i'm at that point where i'm like i need to get the out and do something because i'm just sourcing from the same garbage i'm recycling from my filth to try to come up with something creative but as a narrative designer what what are you what are your struggles through this like how are you how is it hampering your creativity your inspiration um i think probably i mean i i've always worked from home a bit you know like because i can

you know so because i i live out like an hour outside of town now so like sometimes it was just better i've got no one to meet so i'd expect to i just stay at home and read and work and all that stuff but now it's this thing of like no you can't go in and as soon as someone says you can't you have to do the thing that you're you are doing then you suddenly don't want to do that you you feel you know so and for me like it's this sort of when i need to see people i need to be able to go and see people because i really i feed off that like we've got such a great uh group of people at tarsha as well like i genuinely i i i imagine everyone says this you know they could barely even if you're american they have an american accent in my head but like it's it's just a great group of people and i i look forward to seeing seeing them when they get in and like suddenly when you don't get that you don't get don't get the energy to when you walk away to sit down and work

you don't have that anymore it's just like well i'm at home uh i'll take the dog out i guess and maybe have a coffee and then i don't know i mean at the minute the phase i'm in now is like like i said it's lots of research and i'm writing and trying out of ideas i am so it's kind of fine it's what i'd be doing anyway you know but uh yeah i the the hard thing and i think for all of us we all miss because we don't i have breakfast together every friday friday morning and it's just a lovely thing that get some music on just sit sit at a table and with people you know usually abuse the guy who thinks every marvel movie is great he knows who he is [Applause] you like the last part of black panther really you really like that last fighting scene you don't think it was overblown cg fest i've actually stopped now same with star wars i just stopped yes

i i ran out of fake smiles [Laughter] comes a time in everyone's life and you've got no more fake smiles to give yeah but uh yeah you're talking about stuff that you know we've had a lot of people on and kind of speaking to the same same struggles it's like um like these human beings can go only so far like you can't really feed off each other and then they become like work they feel like work now you have to schedule it to kind of just brainstorm and it's not spontaneous anymore and that's not how these kind of creative sessions you know you want to go at it but this is what we got um are you finding a certain rhythm now do you what what benefits are you seeing from this what cons do you think it's just irreplaceable until you guys can get back in the office like what kind of discussions are you having internally in with your team of what's working with this and what's definitely not working as soon as this

is over we gotta do some type of hybrid approach i mean everything's working but that's how it is it's like nothing's nothing's better than it was before yeah but we're making it work and i think that's that's the difference now is in the very beginning it was just like a struggle you know to get group group discussions at all functional because and you know it can be awkward anyway particularly if you're in like brainstorming or feedback or something no one quite knows when to jump in even if you're in the same room together but when you've just got to have like this one digital hand you know or like keep your poker face while someone's saying something that you absolutely just disagree with something which i absolutely fail at every time i i watch my own face going you suck at this so fast to profile picture mode yeah yeah yeah

but it is it's things like that where you need the energy of the room and you you vibe off people you know you can see if someone's enjoying what you're saying or if they're not enjoying what you're saying and now all you have is what you see on the video and you don't know what maybe they're checking their emails if you just don't know sometimes like because everyone's got to juggle so much maybe they have to quickly check something or someone's bothering them or maybe their kid just comes in and you're like oh well that moment's gone and that happens to me all you know my lad will run in and just wants to sit with me and play with ps4 controller i'm like sorry i am listening but i have this also so you know we make it all work now but nothing's better we had a lovely thing today actually like uh a lovely colleague of ours is is moving on um and she was having like an exit interview and uh our hr manager kind of arranged a surprise goodbye for us so we all jumped

in at the end of this exit interview very nice and said troy and all this and that's uh northern for goodbye i forgot myself sometimes so you you kind of have to be a bit more creative but it all kind of feels patchwork doesn't it you know like yeah nobody would enjoy a digital surprise party no i'm playing for like all right is this the best we get then we'll take it you know it feels better than nothing so but uh yeah i think if anything what i'm finding uh with developers is that we're since we're home a lot i am seeing you know when i started this whole thing my kids more i'm i might i'm able to kind of remind myself to take more breaks you know and enjoy you know what we're working towards this whole time is to enjoy family life and time at home as best you can because we really think about it you know eight hours away from home or ten hours plus depending on your commute

every day five days a week i mean that's uh at some point now i was joking especially when we were finishing a project i was seeing my my cubicle buddy more than my wife for months on end right yeah so i mean there was always something like that for game developers that we felt kind of locked to our table and and i think i love the fact that dynamic has changed and i think the the poor part of it is that um it's kind of thrown into the extreme situation of uh where we're parents and teachers now and now they're always at home as well and it's like all right i need some break from people to concentrate and it's just it's hard to balance it's not something that we should be getting used to but temporarily we have to yeah i think what where we are now like because a lot of people had like been interested in you know like for example like flexible working hours um

you know working from home where possible and all this because everyone has different responsibilities and they do you know particularly in sweden they want to help you have that work-life balance you know where you can't and so it all it had been like on the on the boil a little bit but there was no pressure and now it had to happen like literally in our case over the weekend and [Music] so now like when this finally if ever is all over and now we have that infrastructure it's just working so you know it's it's that's the kind of thing they're thinking it's like if you you know it's there for you now if you if you want to work from home it's better for you and the team to work from home do that but what what we want is for you to want to come in we want to make this a place that you don't want to be away from for too long and i think that's a really nice mindset that they're going to just make the office a really cool place and obviously we miss each other loads

but you know it's available now like like you say though there are positives to this situation where people have found out that there's some stuff that kind of works about being away from the office and they can make it work after all so i think might might hopefully will find that there's like a nice balance to be struck there where people can be productive in a really cool way like sometimes i have ideas in the middle of the night i come down and do a few hours then yeah and do less hours in the day you just can't you can't be creative from nine to five sometimes you know it doesn't work that way yeah i definitely uh sign off on that i think different people i'm i'm an early bird i've always been um i think part of that is being a family man i have to you know if i want real work done i have to wake up earlier than everybody to kind of get it done um but uh you know there was a restriction to that with studios especially it's one of those um it's appearances right right so if i'm

showing up four hours earlier than ever but no one sees that they just see the guy who's leaving at four or five p.m it's like so there was a period in my my my uh career that i had to kind of balance that out it's like you know i get creative in the morning but i can't show up too early otherwise i'm spending 12 hours for no reason just to show that i'm there yeah so it's always weird but now i think with this it kind of allows people to just check my checking dude everyone's kind of doing the same you know you see that i'm putting in the time you're seeing the good work that's coming through it's purely about work and then the office is just irreplaceable in terms of team gatherings and just brainstorming and i think that's the best of both options i definitely see a lot of studios going that way um i think i think that focus on on the output is so much better than hours checking your hours yeah have you have you done your eight hours a day all right yeah what

have you done well not that much well that that doesn't matter in the end then does it we're here to make a game i'd rather someone came in for three hours and nailed it yeah and what took the rest of the day off is the only thing that matters in the end is the job obviously you kind of you don't mess anyone else up yeah you know i love that i love that it's breaking that barrier that industrial revolution nine to five so unsecured isn't it it's very old and as creatives it just doesn't work it's never worked for me um i never liked it you know after 2 p.m after lunch i'm done i have a big meal and i'm like mentally checked out it's just like waiting around and just just around with colleagues at that point which is valuable in itself but that's a reality i don't know anyone that's super efficient really after lunch it's just people counting the clock to get out there's a big push in sweden for like the six hour day the second episode i want to highlight today is with jay wilson jay wilson is

best known for his time at blizzard as the uh creative director for diablo iii and since then he retired and uh was focusing on his writing career uh with his first novel um currently out actually it was nice to talk to him because to kind of see his being absent from the industry for a little while and coming back to kind of gain his perspective on what was going on we were able to kind of talk about the online communication challenges that the epidemic kind of gave us between devs the adverse effect when it comes to meeting online only and not having basically colleagues and talent around an office to discuss game design specifically and if uh you know the global the opening of global talent with basically remote working becoming a a thing

uh being a threat to people who are just living in the united states for u.s jobs you know we covered like a variety of different topics and it's a great episode uh that you guys should definitely revisit and listen fully but here's an excerpt for those who are curious this is again episode 254 how has the industry changed with jay wilson check it out my i'm gonna be a little on the mean side there and say welcome to the world of people who don't work well in offices they've lived in your world all um and you know if they could [Music] live through that and suck it up and try it out you can do the same thing yeah i think there's a lot of um a lot of people being exposed right now in this in this new time uh this actually leads into my next uh uh line of questioning so

uh what happens now right so this is the year the anticipate that at least near the end uh we're going to start seeing game developers slowly crawling back into the workforce into an office right just maybe slivers of it maybe uh at the end of the year with the vaccines vaccines coming out i mean i don't know if you're still in orange county i mean the numbers are pretty crazy right now i actually live in portland oregon even better so the numbers are spiking but uh i think everyone is kind of seeing the light at the end of tunnel at least where there is seems to be an ending somewhat right um i would love to kind of hear uh what you think is gonna happen now with part of it is what you said might be a hybrid approach um and part of it is uh how i guess pro tips that you think where we are changing

we are going to be working a new environment how game devs and teams can be effective in this new type of industry uh same game industry but a new type of office environment right and i i completely agree with you the visibility thinking it's huge in office you always it's weird but you have to you have to overly say hi to people to make them realize that you actually are there doing work otherwise it's very easy to sit in your cubicle and disappear and i think a lot of game developers make that mistake it's like oh it's about all about the work right as long as my work shows then i'm good it's not that right so um and then you add this extra element with online connectivity and remote working and now we're going to see kind of what is the best of both worlds there for a developer or team to really navigate through this in a successful way well i think you're going to see um more of a hybrid approach i think you're going to see a lot more game developers

who are okay with people working from home as part of their time working the benefits um are very high for no other you know i used to spend when i worked at blizzard i didn't work that far from from blizzard and i still lost an hour to an hour and a half every day commuting um and so that's a lot of lost time but i still think that the benefits of and the natural desire that management has towards towards a single development location is is strong and i think as the pandemic goes away as we've seen in locations where there are parts of the world where the pandemic is is either under control or even completely contained

and if you talk to people from those parts of the world they're like everything's like it was before um i think we thrive on normalcy um and we'll move back towards it as quickly as we can but i do think we'll be one more open towards people working from home we've already seen some of the big developers not always in game development but in technology in general say yeah we're okay with it i think google has said yeah you can work from home for the foreseeable future even after the pandemic so i think we're going to see a lot more of that um i think we're going to see like good managers looking at their people and realizing how they're most productive and putting them in those situations whether that be work from home work in the office um or a hybrid um i also think you're gonna see a lot more uh remote studios um so that is gonna be a thing i think it's going to work

better with small teams um you know just naturally small teams communication is less of an issue in general and as a result i think remote lends itself to a small team better than it will too so by small i mean under 45 i know that's a really specific number but it's been my experience that there are break points in in team size and 45 is one of those break points i don't know why it's not 50 but it feels like over 45 is right around where you you you get this new like you need another layer of management you need better to up your communication and i think probably bigger than that you're gonna find challenges working remote not to say it can't work it's just gonna be harder um and so i think you're gonna see a lot of smaller studios

that are more successful for no other reason then it's again very difficult to get people to move for a small studio but um if you work remote you can hire from anywhere in the world and actually speaking of from anywhere in the world although the remote working is great and i really do think the the people with uh professionalism and awesome work are never uh should be never feeling insecure about their job but overall we are opening up a barrier of entry where uh overseas now that you know everybody can connect remotely unless a studio really has strict rules about time zones there's a new level of talent that can be invited within a studio setting for any of the disciplines now and uh at a fraction of the salary even right so the from that perspective i would love

to kind of hear your thoughts about how real is that scenario where uh where it used to be you know we worked with people with visas before and they're super talented and stuff but now you don't need that and because of the visa thing it prevented a lot of talent from getting into these great companies working on these great projects right good and bad right mostly bad yeah there still are legal issues with you can't just hire and and have someone from another country work for you without working out um i i don't know the exact details of that but it it's not as simple i think as as oh you no longer need a visa but that being said like there are a lot of scenarios where and already companies where they do that where they they actually um have

groups that are or or individuals that are working on the other side of the world um and from what i've understood there are a lot of benefits in you think of it like oh well that's a downside because um one group is working at a different time than another group and so their ability to communicate is not as good um because of the difference there you know why one person sleeping when another group is awake but actually from what i've heard um the group when one group sunsets the other group starts and can address issues for the group that is off and so you get this interesting back and forth um that i from what i understand is can can work quite well um but yeah i i think that um i i think the idea that if you have a remote company you can

hire from a much broader talent set and and from a much broader um geographical you know um i don't know the words i was meant to i was gonna say words there and um i don't know the words i was gonna say but from anywhere in the world basically um that that um idea well yeah that's why you do remote like you because you can hire from anywhere in the world and i i don't when i say like oh you can hire from anywhere i i really do mean i'm not just talking about anywhere in the us um or anywhere in north america if you really think like oh yeah you hire from anywhere because from every company i've ever worked for we've always hired from all over the world i've never worked in a studio where we where we didn't um have people from europe people from australia people from asia who we pulled into the company

and i can't imagine that it would be more difficult it seemed like it would be easier if for no other reason you don't have to talk somebody into leaving their life behind this third episode that i want to highlight about how the pandemic kind of was changing the industry is with rade prakapovic so he's from sozap and our focus for that episode was about the moba market so the moment market has always been industry changing industry leading for often game related and it was great to have them on to kind of discuss what the pandemic was kind of altering and changing as you can probably guess there was an increase of players for the mobile market uh as everyone's kind of spending more time at home but we were able to discuss his general outlook on the industry and the new challenges that came from the pandemic itself so this episode is surely a great listen

for those who are curious to listen to the full thing it is episode 278 uh so zap in the moment market after the pandemic with raid prakapovic enjoy there is kind of like a coldness when it becomes uh virtual only where it really is becoming the focus of it's just about work right and um yeah it's it's different it is different i mean as a ceo of company like shows up now where we're 30 30 uh men and women strong now uh we have to have half the people in serbia in the serbian office right and i speak to them more or less daily right but it's when i actually go down and i'm increasing that because of the code situation i've not been able to do that for this past time but now i'm slowly increasing uh my physical visits to serbia because i don't know i mean

when you talk about something where somebody has an idea if if if or does something if it does something good or does something let's say not so good if you are there i mean the physical presence or the physical contact even if like hey great job and i you know tap you on the shoulder naturally or you know just human interaction it i believe it feeds us with energy it feeds us with energy to perform better or to or to or or to you know go over those hurdles together like if there's 20 people in office and we have an issue it's 20 people in the office you know assisting each other getting over that hurdle whatever it may be right but if everybody's working remotely for me it's a sad it's a sad vision you know uh people remotely in front of their their screens trying to produce a product create a product i i don't see that i will be terrified if that will be our

future yeah i i think i'm still on the fence with things because um i can see both ways right a lot of companies right now you know we see it with apple we see with google we see a lot of these companies kind of backstepping on like a remote forever right and at the same time they're like we'll see you back in the office september and special case only if if you want to uh and there's like huge resistance with a lot of employees saying that they'd rather quit and do something else so we're seeing like this kind of like struggle of what's correct and what's not and i think the truth is always in between last year we did we dedicated a few episodes towards like is remote working all it is uh what it uh what was supposed to be right but the finding was pretty pretty clear like a lot of companies were struggling with it uh it wasn't all uh roses right there was a lot of challenges

um the connection like you mentioned it was a key factor of it not working uh and uh i think overall i i think overall people game developers like to think of themselves as completely self-sufficient and always get the work done but i think the large percentage of us are pretty lazy and that accountability i only think certain individuals can really do that and it's from practice of freelancing or doing side work or side hustling or started their own business before so they can self-manage i don't think a lot of people have that skill set to completely do it full-time at home just yet it takes time right and epidemic did not help yeah no i mean if if you look at the game if somebody can do it game developers can my my colleagues all the people that shows up i mean they're here because they love what they do right so i would say that

for many for many of them it works uh but in shifts it might even be good you know let's say working at home uh one week or four or one week of six or when you have your tasks you and we when we know what we have to do let's say a coming period then i see i see it as as refreshing but i i do believe that i mean i don't companies like google or apple they're so big that i can't even imagine how they keep their culture or or you know how they keep these things alive most likely they have a whole department just dedicated for this but at soza and for me especially i as a ceo wouldn't want to run a company even if it's i don't know profitable um [Music] i i don't want to run it without the human interaction but that's basically

my stance i mean i don't want to run a company even if everybody performs even if you know everybody does their tasks and we you know the results and everything is there personally i wouldn't enjoy uh being ceo of such a company yeah direction especially today and in the future i think it's it's something to strive for but again we'll see i mean sweden for sweden i know a lot of companies have uh have struggled with keeping the performance up and people our way as you said not all of us and many of us are not able to self-manage but i i do i don't see i don't see this lasting more than the pandemic if you ask me as soon as the pandemic is under control fully i think uh ninety percent of the companies uh more will go back to

outwards prior i agree i i think i'm already seeing that with a lot of the tech companies uh they're reversing their stance i like to see i like to think it's the truth is always in the middle right we obviously have one where the employees like to stay at home and then the other side you you got like yourself right who who see the benefit of being in the office and uh i i've seen both arguments um being pretty much correct because um yeah i mean some some companies can say yeah we were super efficient isn't that but even then uh collaboration is so key in a lot of these creative ventures that i i don't see a replacement for that just yet and like you said it would probably be a hybrid approach with uh so zap going back to that right um yeah you've kind of like started this company uh from from just surveying where the industry was hidden

um and uh i mean it came all true in in huge folds with with shooters especially the last few years being huge on mobile um and and continuing to be that way and especially with younger generation it seems like the the phone is probably their first console and and most likely they're gonna stick to that as their only console um even then uh i i don't i don't think it's the the mind of consoles per se you know the ps5 the xbox all sold out still even when economically with the world was so c in the disaster but it still sold out people were still being able to to afford those machines so if anything it looks like the industry had this tremendous growth over the pandemic uh people who got introduced to games early on are are discovering you know more more hardcore

games or games that are uh more time intensive i would say uh so the the growth of it and everything is i would like to ask is the expectation that you saw before like where where is it heading from here on out for the next five years you feel uh with the onslaught of uh vr becoming more popular you know apple's its rumor ar features are coming out too like a lot of these things are happening to put to add some more history i mean one when when i got the idea to start shows up and when we got the first team i mean it was only nine ten i mean if you count the outsourcing that was done with archives it was 10 10 men on that game so we had this great tag we saw we saw the future we were right about the future we had this great game idea we we had everything except the resources i

mean 10 10 guys made that game so what i've learned from that is first of all you need you need to build you need to have the studio right and source up as a studio is now starting to to let's say uh get one man on each part of the deck if we say so so that's the first thing and most of us know each other and we've done armed heist so we're we're warmed up when i look at the future uh i do see two things i do believe i i see two things one being that software is getting more and more uh how to say the toolbox is more and more complete i mean you saw that on real metahuman yeah yeah so i do see that what what needed 200 people a project that needed 200 people

two years ago three years ago right i do believe it's going to need less and less people as we go forward i mean i believe unreal and unity they're buying up different services and i do believe that you know in five years from now most likely it will be easier for smaller studios to to to engage in these uh how to say larger titles let's say battle royale 100 people networking you know creating characters creating those terrains and assets all of that so i do see a future where smaller studios if they are creative enough can can compete for the top for the top experience for the users at the same time i do believe that the future will be uh people have people not have a

playstation or an xbox or a pc people have their input device like a controller for example the ps5 controls now are awesome with all these skeptical feedback and stuff so i do see that in the future you're gonna buy your your input device your hand handheld control and that's going to be what you have and then when you when you play you you play on any any screen via your control the control you like the control you chose that that's what i see so uh i see a cross cross platform cross-device future that is what i see along with as i said unreal in unity all the other engines getting more and more pre pre-stuffed with functionality and tools which which makes for an exciting future i mean what if what if what if a man studio could make

gta 5 experiences let's say five to ten years from now yeah i i think you're absolutely correct man like the tools are enabling smaller teams uh to repeat what larger teams used to do like five years ago right so it that is certainly the trend where the tools are just getting rid of the uh the the the boring labor that most game developers never wanted to do beforehand right so it gives it it opens up inside the outsource or it's being fixed with these tools and just allowing us to be creatives again and um like he said the the uh fortnite was a big thing for industry in many ways but the most important thing it did was it forced play uh you know and i think between them and war zone like the shooters of

course leading the way again on a lot of these uh innovations that was huge you know for the longest time when at least you know when we were growing up x-blocks playing against playstation players was was never never a thing you know that they're competing products and they're allowing their player base to play with each other on a single game and now it's becoming so standard now now it becomes weird it's like why why can't i play with everyone that plays this game uh so that was a huge uh step towards a future that you're you're kind of talking about where input devices are kind of like your choice but the content is just free for everyone not free but like just for anyone to play who wants it's accessible it's accessible i mean if i don't know again i'm not a developer and i i'm for sure not as as uh technically i don't have that understanding that my colleague and cto and family partner

christopher blumen has but i like that i don't have that because that that makes me think um a bit even outside of the box if you understand what i mean i mean i i would love i would love for our next shooter to be accessible through a browser oh yeah you know you you you go let's play let's play a session right you enter the computer you open a browser i would love for our our next shooter to be uh as you say cross-platform and the same experience on all devices i think the only the only uh obstacle that but it's gonna be solved it is the the input devices like if i have this carbon fiber handheld control that feels my you know what i'm thinking so if i think shoot it shoots right if i i have that control and you're on a mobile for sure it's going to be uh an unfair advantage that i have right but but all these things i mean if you look at some of the mobile games today that are free to play

they have this how to say capped capped experience uh i i like to play um some games and then if i and most of the free-to-play games are you know paid to win in some way but many of them have these tournaments or events where people's equipment and what they have inside the game is kept to a certain level right to to level the playing field and for sure i mean uh you're gonna see most likely the same same type of solutions coming up for somebody on mobile playing somebody on a pc or what that may be but but the most important thing i would like to say is that people are people like to be entertained digital entertainment and in the video games uh i do see i do see them you know hbo netflix prime all of these things if you do you stream we stream tv series or movies

i mean games are going to go the same way last but not least you can't talk about the game industry and how the pandemic can affect it without talking about vr so vr has always been a topic that i am personally interested year after year and it's kind of great to kind of see how it progressed and grew from where we're standing here so i was able to kind of bring on a vr expert who worked on the hololens project and many other vr sets and projects scott rogers we were able to cover a lot of topics like online education the social networking aspect and how it helps vr um went back in the history of the nintendo virtual boy to what it is now with the oculus 2 and the other vr aspects that are non-gaming specific especially in a world that everyone's remote but still want to be connected

what virtual office could look like so we went through all the ranges of things that i am curious about and hopefully you listeners were curious about how vr kind of plays into this overarching um story of how we connect to each other as developers but as players check out the full episode episode 260 what's next for vr with scott rogers yeah i think um there's so much of a learning curve that we're we're adjusting to i think even before i uh especially with the younger generation they were okay with the social networking taking over the life and then we're vastly realizing that is not enough uh and it's actually detrimental to us socializing right we would have thought right uh but that actually brings up to the main meet of this topic that i wanted to talk to you about so i came across some very uh great insights that you had about vr and vr if anything i believe

have gotten a recent boost for a few things i think because of facebook taking over oculus oculus treating their devices like phones so they're they're we're seeing iterations a lot faster a lot more evolution of that device and more acceptance and now it's it's crazy to see how quick of a turnaround now that the quest 2 doesn't require any wires any any cameras set up that's a huge plus and it seems to be one step closer for uh general consumption right right and well i i would also add to that that the interesting thing about virtual reality is people often forget that it doesn't just mean a device with the goggles like we are right now brandon you and i are experiencing virtual reality and and particularly you know that you have me on your virtual television set and you are sitting in your virtual you know secret lair somewhere and um and so virtual reality takes many forms it's

it's not just um you know the the traditional where the goggles play a first-person shooter but in this you know kind of stereoscopic vision perspective like the old days i mean virtual reality the concept has been around for a very long time uh the application of it has even been around for a long time and and this is something that in my history class i part of the goal of the history class is to just let people know that things come around again and again you know history repeats itself and video games are no different trends in video games and ideas and and even applications of play uh get reused over and over again and so um one of the big one of the weeks we spend is a really hard look at the history of virtual reality and the fact that it really started in like commercially it started in the 80s it there had been experiments all the way

going back to the early 60s in it but then uh it went through just like the traditional video game industry it had a kind of a boom and a bust and by 1992 or 93 it was kind of gone it was it was passe partially because the technology just wasn't there yet and uh you know the graphic resolution and the frame rate and you know all the things that contributed towards a good experience hadn't really been perfected now people fortunately did do that and they spent the time but i think it i think the things that vr are now benefiting from are a lot of things that came from the video game industry i think that you know for example this or the film industry so this you know green screening for example to allow you to make these fun backgrounds and uh digital imagery you know creating a digital set that's that's movies and that's video games right so um vr is now having this resurgence this

this evolution because those other industries were moving forward where maybe vr was kind of standing still for a while um but but i think now we're we're you know in a better place and the experiences can be much more convincing and much less painful on the user i think that um there's still several obstacles though in its way from it being to the point where i think it can be yeah i think for uh in a little while we'll kind of deep dive into what those uh blockers are to kind of make it uh what's blocking us from the matrix basically i do want to sign off like i was a huge fan of the virtual boy i never owned one but they used to have these kind of setups at these malls and anytime that we would go back to the mall i would immediately go back and i think i was playing the mario on those virtual boys and it at that point it was very you know

all all red graphics so oh it's a terrible it's a it's a terrible device i'm honestly surprised that you liked it i liked it because it was different yeah well yeah yeah i remember i remember going to an e3 in los angeles when before it came out and i waited in line for like an hour to use the virtual boy because i was you know i liked nintendo and i always respected their hardware and and their inventions and i the later on i found out the guy who invented it was the same guy who did the game boy and his name is gunpai yokai and he's amazing he's unfortunately he's passed um but he was um i don't think nintendo would have existed without a guy like him and miyamoto i think are to the two rock stars miyamoto gets all the credit but but gumpa yokai is like the he's the true wizard oh yeah yeah he did he did the light gun he did the game boy he did uh he was the producer for donkey kong he you know he's got his credits are amazing um but anyway um so virtual boy

was like his baby but i also heard that years later i heard that the reason why it was all red was to keep the cost down it was too expensive to do the you know blue and green that you need to make full three you know full color uh so they were they were trying to keep it from being you know a thousand dollars so i think it was still what three four hundred dollars right was the was the msrp yeah so anyway i waited in line for this thing and i um i get to it and it's literally this um it looks like a view master on it on a tripod and a really flimsy tripod like people kept knocking it over it it it was like you had to like cr the way they had it set up you had to like crouch down and put your head into it it was very uncomfortable and it was heavy so and they had no there was no head strap or anything like that so you couldn't like lock into it right and it just in my i walked away being like

profoundly disappointed by the virtual boy because i saw that the idea was good the idea of this headset where the game fully encompasses your field of vision and you've got the speakers on so you're you're you know unknown you're immersed in the world but the experience the and there's a there's a video that i show uh or used to show um by a uh a youtuber named the angry video game nerd or something like that and he's got actually a really good segment on the virtual boy and he's foul-mouthed and he's he's kind of a crude personality but he shows like every game on the game boy and rants about it and how terrible it is and and all that it's pretty it's a pretty funny video worth watching um but it really does highlight the things that were poor about that system uh and it's it's too i don't it's too bad mainly because i don't think nintendo will ever try to make something like that again because that that system tanks so badly i think that they they

are probably haunted by the specter of the virtual boy and if they had their druthers they would probably you know destroy every copy that was in existence i think nintendo kept the spirit at least of their innovation i think out of world console makers they've been always the one taking the risk oh absolutely yeah yeah i mean the wii and and and all that is you know of course the switch kind of this is killing yeah the switch right yeah it's the spiritual successors to well game boy really is the thing that's amazing about gunpayoka's legacy is if you look at the form factor of the game and watch which is another thing he invented that form factor has been the basis for every piece of nintendo hardware with the exception of what was there was one system that wasn't quite i think it might have been the the gamecube or something like that but like every other piece of technology and hardware that nintendo has made really you can see a very clear line

between the evolution of the game and watch to the to the two screen game and watch which really looks like a ds yeah if you look at right if you know that two screen donkey kong system um and uh and it just you know the the form factor uh just worked you know in it and it support it supported nintendo literally for like 30 40 years so uh yeah so i think oculus kind of had the same effect i think but finally realizing the capabilities of today's technology to kind of make it you know less like a toy but more realistic i think right outside of the core players uh uh by the wires by the setup like i i own the original well not the original but the oculus two right basically with wires the camera set up yeah even though i was excited and i saw the huge potential i had a lot of fun the setup killed me every time because i

you know i don't have a dedicated vr room i would have to spend 10 minutes to set it up and uh that kind of hampered the replayability of the device for me um but then of course the roof s came out and immediately that helped which is like the dedicated pc version of the quest and that helped a lot but still there is like a resistant to kind of like put it on fire it up and like kind of take your whole living room apart uh by playing all right half-life alex right half-life valves was like that was a huge turning point for me to kind of finally like finally at the beginning of vr happened it was the alex was kind of the you know they called the killer app right it's the it's the game that everybody wanted to play that everybody was excited about they're like oh you know i want to play the new half-life because i love half-life 1 and i love half-life 2 and all the episodes in that and so you know alex technically is half-life 3 right i mean it's not but it is and um and so i think that that

and i think there were a few other games on other systems as well like i think a few of the playstation games really got some attention like the resident evil one and the batman the rock steady batman game uh and and then on um uh the vive uh you have um things like like you have kind of lighter fare on the vive things like um uh space pirate simulator or uh beat saber or the rick and you know then the the kind of this the they're kind of the errors of the adventure game the click and point stuff like the rick and morty game uh you know the virtual reality and um i forget there's a few others that remind me of that that type of gameplay but i think that um i think i i first of all 100 percent agree with you brandon about the tearing apart the living room and having to set up these towers and and you know then

you uh we have to make sure there's enough room past those towers so you don't run into a wall or through a window or into your couch and and so remember earlier i was saying there's some barriers to entry still to vr and i think this is a big one i i in my mind um i'm not quite sure unless vr really gets embraced for other applications than gaming which there have been several attempts and people make lots of different products but until i think the general user thinks of it as other that something other than a gaming machine or a gaming you know that this the the you play games on it i think that it's still going to be very niche and i'm i'm a vr i love vr i i love playing vr i worked in vr for about a year and when i was at disney we did some stuff as well but um but i don't see it replacing the home console right now uh because the home

console is much it takes up less space it's much easier to just kind of sit on your couch and do things i mean we had a moment in console gaming where motion controls were big right the wii and the connect and the move uh and those were fantastic systems and they evolved very quickly and there's some really cool games for them particularly i think on the wii they still hold up to this day but but where is motion control now right like motion control has kind of been abandoned by the console makers and i think there's a reason because of that and i think it's the the commitment to the space that you need and the user many users myself included just don't have the space to adequately use something like that and so um you know it's a i mean part of it is just the fact that many people don't live in a big enough place you know they live in apartments or they live in a uh you know a small residential rather than

a house with a big room in it or something like that so i think that i mean this this ties into a whole other you know things about you know economics and and and you know cultures and things like that but i think that that is a you know we don't have the holodeck in our house like houses don't come with that room that says all right here is your bedroom you know you're going to buy a three-bedroom house with you know two bathrooms and a hologram room you know or vr room right there's not it just doesn't exist and until it becomes part of the like until things like that are common and and people expect that in you know in the in just the structure of their house right like kind of like a family room i don't do you have a do you have a living room and a family room in your house brandon yeah but i know that's rare i mean it is where i i i've rented houses that have that but i haven't i

haven't lived in a house with a living room and a family room in like in like 10 12 years right and i know and i'm i'm like you know i'm considered at an economic level where you know it's it's i'm doing better than than many right but but but that said i don't live in you know any house that would support that and therefore i don't have that space now the other half of the equation is vr is expensive right now it's i mean even though it's cost it's way more cost effective than it used to be and it's ever been but it's still exp it's still considered a luxury item and i think again um the consoles are the main way that people well then pcs are the main ways that people play games and therefore um they're like what do i i really want to spend all extra money to just do this other type of game and and i think that there's reluctance from the market because of that

again i want to thank you for you guys being patient for long time listeners uh waiting around for me to come back you know i'm feeling stronger than ever and actually and finally getting help to kind of produce this every week for you guys so there are a lot of things this year that i'm looking forward to explore more the world at mt the uh never ending acquisitions day after day we're hearing new ones and it's only january in early february and most importantly there's this whole topic when it comes to the great exit where not just our industry but other industries are well as well are re-evaluating their lives and how they want to see their work-life balance be more balanced basically and a lot of people are quitting a lot of people are quitting or even double dipping or triple dipping right people are having two three salary jobs without telling their employers this is all happening this is all changing the landscape and it's a new challenge that

i want to explore with all future guests so that you guys can tune in and listen on what's going on on the changing landscape right beneath us so keep tuning in this week for a recap of what last year looks like as we kind of lead up to this year's range of topics thank you guys [Music] [Music] thank you for listening to today's episode if you are liking the podcast go to the apple itunes store and give gamedev unchain a five-star rating this will help spread the joy and love and exposure for the podcast and we thank you very much if you want to continue the conversation go to our discord which can be found on our website

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