How to Brand a New Game Studio with Joe Nickolls, President of Timbre Games

all right um we're kicking it off my guest today joe nichols president and co-founder of timber games vancouver previously vp of maxis at the electronic arts i just like to say the full name studio director capcom executive producer of microsoft joe how long have you been in games um 23 years you're a vet a senior i know and and i know i know that this podcast is going to be very good not because of the topic and not because i know you from before but you because because you've been in radio for 10 years uh yeah it was my first gig before i got on the video game that was i was on the air and a lot of self policing on that microphone lights on well wait a minute how come timber games doesn't have a podcast why don't you say that um we are you're going to have a podcast but uh you know we're still ramping everything up but we have a plan um we have a whole bunch of stuff we're

going to launch including probably the world's first clog and we can talk about that later clog yeah what what's that we know what a blog is [Music] isn't that what news like newspapers used to do that i don't know like having read an actual newspaper in a long time but they had clogs right totally so it's so it's not new it's like you're bringing clocks back right [Laughter] so i want to talk to you about employ employer branding because you've been doing a phenomenal job at timber games and i've been really the admirer of the brand building strategy we've had since kicking off timber games vancouver you know the comic strips that we talked about they kind of ooze the fun that you

guys are having your website is very different stands out a lot everything that you do the communication that you have the website the video on the website seems very joyful and it really sits with the how you've set which is building a studio where culture drives creative a studio that brings values into experiences you make so joe i want to start off with like why did you start timber games like where did the uh come from and can you talk a little bit about timber games and sumo and and pipe work like how does that all work together so as got to the point where i was thinking i didn't want to be in a different country than my my then my daughters um one was uh finishing university in london over the uk and another one was going to film school in l.a and i thought you know um they ended up going back to canada and when there's a pandemic on like you you kind of want to be in the same country as your kids anyway like you know any given day um

we thought well even if we had to get back to canada um from you know from from the bay area which is an easy flight we'd be in quarantine for a couple weeks and it would just be weird and couldn't really help kids out so i ended up saying hey i'm gonna do this out of vancouver for a while um long story short for um exciting reasons like corporate taxation et cetera et cetera and the position i was in i couldn't be in a different country and run the thing from canada when it's an american thing but vice versa um and so i i said i mean i'm going to stay in canada i belong here he's right along i need to stay here and i said well you know we really gotta figure this out because you know the way this is working with max is gonna find a different solution i said well i think maybe i'll just go um and see what i can do up here and we looked at some opportunities but uh but i was really thinking i was

it was ready to to do something else um and uh so how did this all start uh i started a while back i went to gdc uh interesting guy um uh we're kind of like you know joe brown we're kind of like pendant teller um you know his studio pipeworks was looking to do some expansion they wanted to do something in vancouver because he had some experience there so we started to work on that um what would that look like and then he called me he said hey um uh you know spammer and the spender in the works um we're being acquired by sumo like oh oh okay so what does that mean um let's uh uh let's keep talking and see how it goes is it okay and then we think that zuma was all for us and hey yeah we really want to do this

um and so it kept moving forward and then we pulled the trigger and uh and so to start let's start at the studio and it was it was really cool because um i purchased it has been around for about 20 years and people just didn't know about them right they've been around for a long time survivors and uh and they got acquired by superman because obviously they do something good enough for vidcon people want to buy them so civil came in but sumo has been like such a such a breath of fresh air without that whole studio operates like they're really cool really care about the people and um have great job using great systems and there's you know for the 14th studio now that they are so we set it up and uh so we start coming up with what are we going to call what are we going to call a studio how's this going to get here so timber was not the original name of the studio we initially started out and we we wanted to have something super west coast because that's where we are um you know let's come up something really

sounds like uh where we set up shop and so we're you know we're thinking oh it's gonna be like trees is an interesting name for it there's a spruce uh and it grows almost exclusively exclusively down the west coast canada and goes down to around oregon and then stops i'm like wow that's super but deep we get some research on you know what um sitka is actually an indigenous name um and there's a civil tribe in alaska um and we thought man there is no way we are going to you know how dare we name a game studio um on something that does not belong to us and so we we stopped but um very canadian way of thinking very canadian you know

over the past few days yeah that's true anyway so we we teamed up with the um uh i got it uh used to work with jeff and i years ago when he a rich current and he said well let's really kind of figure out how we're going to brand your studio let's figure out what names work and so we have all these different names on a whiteboard just like everybody comes and participates in and timber is actually kind of a play on words if you look at how it's spelled um you know it's re not er and it uh if you're if you're really pronouncing it correctly it's actually um the correct way to pronounce um the sound or the tone of something so when you say oh i'm listening to that what's the pitch what's the timber people would often say timber exactly but well people call it temper timber feels like wood we're on the west coast there's tons of wood here and

we felt that um the the timber of something the sound and bringing things together really kind of started to feel good then we had our logo and our logo was really meant to be all these different colors coming together and um yeah people said it looks everything it looks kind of like a campfire and if you like to get around to gather a campfire and we started all the stuff started flowing his temper we're gonna call this hills jumper and we we asked so everything as always starts from ggc we've had our lunches at gdc as well it's a it's a place to meet and connect um it's also interesting that you started off thinking when when you were naming your studio very location-based i had the same thing i'm almost like ashamed to say what i wanted to call my studio first luckily there are investors who are like dude i don't think this is a very very good name i actually was i was very big into

biking and i was i was really especially the show vikings i was like damn like got the god sounds like such a dope place maybe you should call the studio that way and that's that town actually doesn't exist except in the show you know like maybe you have like a dragon boat thing on the front like ukraine has that type of thing in the flag where they kind of have a dragon boat on it that's a good idea luckily the investors shout out to uh play ventures we're very clear on like that's that's not the best the name you can go with maybe maybe continue thinking so so i i i get it that's starting to think around where you are and really locating and probably a good thing for you because you've been out of the vancouver area and coming back and kind of falling in love again with with uh vancouver is like one of the most beautiful cities for folks who haven't been there uh also a massive gaming scene huge so that that's another one huge gaming very boomy brazilian game studios and

you know even when we were deciding what are we going to call the studio and what does it mean and why are we getting behind this name what did the logo look like we did a huge board of all the logos of all the games that we could find and it's so funny because you get some of the logos which is like you know [Music] um but you're right there's a ton of studios in vancouver and that actually um was actually more of a help than entrance because we looked at what all the studios in vancouver are doing it's like okay we're not gonna do that mm-hmm um [Music] exactly so yes yeah

so so and then that's that's another point that leads to this conversation is because you're coming out of bank like your studio is in vancouver where there's a lot of gaming development talent but also a lot of competition so i think that's where employer branding really comes to play yeah um [Music] you know and so so is that the reason why you invested so much in in you know setting up the logo setting up the name really looking at the landscape and kind of finding your niche there well yeah we we really had to think about what do we stand for and what do we want to be known for and how are we going to get people to walk away from amazing video game companies it was an exercise that we went through because we wanted to be very clear and transparent about the journey of setting up a video game studio most video game studios my experience bam there's a there's a there's a launch and um there's a logo and there's a

whole bunch of guys standing there like doing this all leaning against each other yeah yeah the rock band and put our vision and values in and and really walk the walk um about what we say we're gonna do and really you know delivering on on that promise of what we're gonna do um and man it's been amazing like we we cannot keep up with the amount of people that have been calling us that want to work with us um we don't have enough roles for all the people that have applied to us just yet but we are growing really quickly and that's amazing you know the first like uh i'll give you an example like we need an i.t guy everybody needs an i.t guy because what's terrifying is i've been kind of like the part-time id

um and time well well-spent there's a there's the most expensive i.t guy in the city um the people there really well chris rowe who runs that studio worked with me at capcom and uh and you know they are in the process of looking for the it specialist as well and so we went about why don't we partner on this and we'll share one um and so uh let's let's partner with a recruiting agency that we've hooked up with that that is doing a great job for us put the thing out we need an it guy in the first day we've got 100 resumes oh my god and you know i look at a bunch of iq resumes and i'm like yeah that's pretty cool there's a lot of letters and pluses and minuses and asterisks on this yeah

but it's been amazing um really amazing uh the response we've had and people are coming to us because they're looking for something different they want to do video games um but let's have a great time making video games and let's have a great experience together making games because you can work just about anywhere make tons of dough uh making video games but it always comes down to the people you work with and another product you make yeah that's that's such a good that's that's exactly the point like people are looking for something different they're looking for a community they're looking for for for yeah i mean i think i think people are looking for community like a lot of the times when when i'm going through the hiring and we kind of bring the person in especially now we can actually bring the person in i don't have to test anybody or wear masks right so kind of showing what it is like and that's usually the question where people ask like what is it like working at you know our company that's probably the

people ask the same thing and that's what they want to know and that's the atmosphere you get when you walk into the studio you're kind of seeing could i be you know could i enjoy my time here so well you've talked about that and that's people think they already know what it's like to work with us before they work with us because of the message that we've been sending out and you know the message that we really do send out it is hilarious like we laugh ourselves sick every single day i mean it's just kind of ridiculous to get up to um but we're still making stuff i mean we've already signed our first deal we started first deal within like three weeks of starting the studio um with a major aaa publisher um and they came to us yeah we love what you're doing um we like the message you have people you can work with yeah we got these people we got our folks down the pipe works that are part of the journey too that was great let's do it okay we got we got three people we got three people there's three of us and and folks

now we're like okay um this is happening folks and uh you know careful be careful what you wish for it's like i'm still figuring out okay the desk should be yet just like oh yeah by the way [Music] and that's been yeah love it um how long have you spent time how how long did you spend on setting up vision and values for timber before kind of announcing and having the uh the coming out party um i'm gonna say we spent a few months on it um back and forth zoe and jeff and i were the three amigos um you know uh jeff coates is our uh creative director for the studio now jeff and i worked together um at um uh capcom i hired him to be the studio art director but jeff's been as long as i have um he's one of the founding creators of ssx and dozens of other games um and he's the one that draws pictures of me wearing jorts for some reason um humiliation comic um

he's got an amazing eye for quality and um and it was really important for him uh what the vision and values were and so i remember calling jeff uh when i was in california said i think i want to do a thing you want to let's see let's do a thing i said okay i'm not ready yet but let's talk and we kept on talking here we are and then zoey was an easy one said hey you know what like what do you think about zoe to run production for us he goes oh my god it loves it what is it right um and you know zoe has been super successful in her career um she brings such an amazing um uh she much the wealth of knowledge of everything from proper management of getting a video game done but also diversity inclusion all of the things that people talk about and put things on websites but sometimes don't always put their best foot forward um so it keeps us honest accountable and on in line and um and so the three of us sat down and said okay let's talk about the things that are important to us because

we've all been doing this for such a long time we've seen good bad and ugly and we said okay these are things that are important to us and these are the things we want to uh bestow upon people so they can um they know what it's like to work with us and so we led with vision and values first and that's where culture drives creative came from because the culture of the team is going to drive the final product so um of course so then of course you know who we are what do we do and um and people like it they they they want to know what is it like to work in a studio like ours because they have choices they have amazing choices not enough not just in vancouver but ever in canada so yeah a lot of time working on those things so and and where did this sort of um um like appreciation towards employer branding come from or you know because you clearly spent a lot of time thinking about this clearly spent a lot of time in strategizing how you're going to stand out uh what kind of employer are you going to be what kind of values

you're going to have have you always been this way or is this a new thing um i think i've gotten more into it later rather than earlier um you know one of the amazing things that working at max's is you know when i got to max's like i huge shoes to fill when they hired me um i'm like i'm a six foot five white guy um which there's millions of us around um and yeah but but you got a cool tattoo well yeah yeah well there's a tree on it right so um but yeah the vision and values are always really important because people want to know where they stand people want to know hey am i doing the right thing it's more than hated

because as you know i mean you're doing it um as you know you spend probably more time with the people you work with in your family um often enough and if you're not that sadly bigoted and if it's not working um uh you're gonna leave and so it's really important for us to feel uh for all of everyone that works with us to feel like they they are contributing towards that um that goal i learned a lot from ea i learned a lot from working at maxis because max is something completely different than not anything i'd ever done um i've worked on everything from you know fifa champions league and um and and the simpsons and and everything in between like mowing down zombies maxes all kinds of stuff and um and maxis was such a different product because there's no winner you know access game there's no windows it's just an experience and so um we went through a lot of branding and efficient value exercises that will take a lot of things that i learned and applied to what we're doing in timber that's um yeah so

so essentially this this type of approach came over time and and that's what usually happens that you get more touchy-feely the older the more the more years you you accumulated the uh in the industry especially the bigger the companies you work for because the bigger the company i think the more convoluted the values are the more studios you have at different locations the more different values these studios have that they're kind of like their mini companies and then the more locations you have the more sort of a little bit of a game of thrones is going on politics comes in that's that's totally understandable that's how people are that we are very tribal and um and i think that probably has influenced you a bit as well as you've been in big companies and kind of coming back and starting small again be like i don't want that i want to start fresh and i feel like i need to invest into people right well i have a lot of sayings a lot of weird things yeah you know

but um you know one of the things i used to say a lot is that people who know the least about video games is that people that make video games the reason i say um is because sometimes you get people that are so head down and making one kind of game they have no time to go out and play other people's games and enjoy other products because they're so ingrained into the massive product that they make and it's easy to get tunnel vision it's easy to be you know on a track and you think oh we make as we make this and you gotta kind of stop and look around and go like there's all these other really amazing games out there um and it's important uh we have a feel anyway you know we are as a group our team gets together we talk about video games all the time we talk about the games we like we share games with each other um so we find all these little indie games oh my god this is an amazing indie game we end up playing the crap out of it and um and we take a little bit of memory experience that we have playing other people's games and think about okay wow that really never really got to be in

this part how can i actually create that what we're doing yeah kind of falling back in love with games you know it's you know we have one of the things that we've really talked about is um you can make video games for a game reviewer or you can make a video game for a game or a person that plays games um and sometimes they're different sometimes you go so deep on features um that no one's ever gonna use to satisfy a metacritic number uh but sometimes you just focus on what that true experience is just make it really really awesome those are the ones we're looking to break through and have people get excited about it yeah uh one of the values that we have in our is you know the vision that we have is we really want to make it easier for people to feel awesome when they play the game not switching it on easy mode but getting you quick to the fun and making you feel like man i'm really enjoying myself and i don't feel like i'm not good enough to play this game right away and i'm not talking about yeah super

easy one-button games that's not what we're saying but there's so many games that that i'd love to play i don't have time to play right i think this is an amazing game and i want to play it i don't have the time to invest in it eve online are you kidding me oh no somebody i i just had a conversation today about it it's an amazing game and you know what i find is it is enjoyable condensed deep enough that if you want to take take it further you can but you can still a really satisfying experience and

not be that great because we want more people to play games and if you make it easier for them to get into it they'll have more fun playing it you'll make another game productive sessions as a product manager would say you feel good after spending time on it that's uh that that's a that's a people trait in an audience so i'm too much of a like i've been i've been reading so much audience data and productivity is a big thing for especially a little bit more mature players like ourselves who don't have independent time who may have one two three daughters exactly so we value our productivity um so i wanted to so talking about productivity how do you measure the effectiveness or the roi for brand building for your studio like do you look at linkedin followers um do you look at the quantity of applications you mentioned hunter application for the for the it person uh do you look at the quality of applications or or all three yeah what

are your metrics it's kind of all the above you know um each one of us has uh areas that we kind of lean into um so jeff codes is like this look he's got like thousands of instagram followers because he's been doing doing cartoon art and strips for a long time and um you know uh the only person that he has maybe drawn more than me but that's now not happening but he was trump um he used to draw okay cartoons all the time um because um you know i i really want to bring people on board and so he leans in on other things right so each one of us kind of listens to different areas um we have a temper page we have a timber you know page on linkedin we have temperature everywhere um and then we

look at what is working with people and we look at the things we get the most engagement yeah and we find the things that give the most engagement with us is when we're just our normal human cells and we talk about some of the problems or we talk about some of the things that we're doing just to uh um to build a studio because it's it's different uh than than a lot of stuff on linkedin like you put on something that like we're hiring come over the greatest place ever and then they'll highlight yeah they used to work at you know whatever yeah and they've made bazillions of dollars and they do this thing they hold these people on a pedestal and what we're trying to do we try to hold all of our people on a pedestal we just got it um leanna is an animator like leon's got a great story everywhere hey her name is hannah uh leanna she's an animator um and uh we brought her on board um and we announced her just as if we'd announced uh uh you know a new creative director of the studio because she's an amazing part of our studio and so was cat so we

heard cass and she's you know done amazing work we try to highlight everybody to bring a human element of it and what we're finding like wow there are hiring all these people that seem like good and normal um and the one message that we haven't really beat loudly like everyone everyone goes with the d or they talk about diversity right there everybody likes to go there like that we don't wear that shirt where that flag um that shouldn't be that that's normal that should be just a normal thing don't highlight it too hard because it's like you know that's that's normal behavior as of today um we are i think we're 67 women in timber games um and that's awesome that we set out to hit a particular number but um we we are we are that and we are finding that we're getting this great talent um and you know part of it is having zoe to help us understand um how game studios have perhaps

incorrectly gone after um challenge and tried to say hey we're diverse and inclusive and uh you know you're you're here's your is your flak jacket and your and your skull thank you and we asked this one person why they wanted to work for us um and she teared up she said because you guys look like me and it was a really profound moment you know i see a studio that i can see myself in i see a studio where a bunch of the people have just interviewed me it feels like me and i want to work there and that was really good yeah and so that that's that's a long-winded answer that i just gave you what's really resonating with folks um every time we yeah i'll try to announce it in pairs um and say we have these two people joining us to really not to say hey look at us how look how

diverse we are people are figuring it out by all the announcements last week i heard a woman and it's not about look let's look that's for hiring women you know i'm talking about it i'm making it sound like that but it's you know 2021. it's it's a it's a no no you're raising a very important topic because this is something that i've been talking like we don't have enough women in our company i'll be honest and and i kind of sat down on it i've actually recorded already a podcast with some of the women in the industry uh working at different companies and i was like hey how can we hire more women because the women in our company and even um women who have been contracting with our company have expressed uh that they like working with us they join us but then on the outside we have this you know the skull and bones kind of approach and you're absolutely right with that like i'm i'm actually in the process of totally redesigning talking to you know being very inclusive to to the folks in the company that we have but especially talking to our our feed

my you know my female co-workers trying to understand like how we should change because the fact is like you know the diversity what not the fact is in my experience women are no better than men but they're no worse they're equal so so the fact that we can't hire enough women means that we're missing out on a huge percentage of potentially really great candidates because every every female that we've hired has been fantastic and um we definitely so so you've done a great job and i think what you mentioned in the beginning is part of your founding team was a female and since the beginning you were able to position yourself in a way that it's not off-putting your job ads are not aggressive they don't talk about superstars they don't talk about veterans they don't talk about any of that but they are normal and their normality is like one of the things that has come up with a lot of the females that apply for different jobs they find this sort of a jargon of of you know

um how would i put it status quite off-putting and and intimidating and they end up not applying versus with men like sometimes when you if you're looking for a lead product manager sometimes just put in a director of product management and you'll get a lead applying for that position because he wants to go up and then you end up hiring that person as a lead and maybe maybe they will grow to a director of product but with women it's a totally different approach and then the language that you use overall in your site and so forth that matters and finally like what you have been doing really well this is just me kind of reciting what i've learned and what i'm going to put into action is like showing as much as possible of what it is like working at your company showing pictures uh showing videos um kind of like giving a glimpse of what it's like so it doesn't feel that intimidating and it's much more welcoming and through that hopefully one day we'll get applicants would say i want to work here because you guys look like me yeah you know um and it it's still business it's still gonna make good video games right you

know we have an announcement yeah but we're you know you know oh my god i want to work there okay yeah yeah it looks really cool that's fun and you know work really hard we've all been doing it for a long time so we know how to make good video games yeah of course uh so the time there will you know obviously the time will come but we announced here's what we're working on look at all this cool stuff that we're doing um and then that volcano will become complete but people kind of say yeah like you know um you know what have you guys done it's like well we're actually actively really working hard on a whole bunch of stuff right now we just can't talk about it like like everyone um but yeah uh but rather than lead with hey here's the game that we make let's lead with here's who we are and then by the way when you when you talk to us we show you what we're actually making you'll go oh yeah i'd like to work there and i'd like to make that thing uh you don't have to be hyper aggressive and uh to make a triple a product um yeah

we've turned you know we've turned products down like like i can't believe we need to say this we have turned products down people have come to us and said we'd like you to make this with us i'm like yeah we can't do that so why not because that's not our job yeah but look at billions of dollars yeah it's a zombie mowing game but it's fun and you feel good of course so how much time you spend in recruiting and would you recommend other executives to use similar amount of time or or less time or more time in your position are you are you spending just the right time [Music] to understand the leadership of the studio

right now and more senior folks now and uh and i need to make sure i spent that extra time really leaning in to make sure that they are the right people that they're going to represent the studio properly but um you know even though zoe and i and jeff and now keith um our tech director um have large networks um we can't really go after our networks because we've all worked at companies and i don't want to do that nor can i do that i'm not gonna phone a va and rattle the chain and say hey you know down there yeah um but we ended up hiring a recruiting agency um uh because we couldn't keep up with the demand and they're called rom rhum um and what was interesting we were interviewing them because you know we're paying the bill we're gonna hire them to do our recruiting with us and you know we thought okay we really like them let's work with them and we found out later that they were actually interviewing us whether or not they liked us or not because they turned clients away and uh when they've been really helping us um so what they've been doing is they've been helping source

uh source candidates and and kind of prevent some candidates before i really lean in on it but each one of us uh you know in the leadership team uh spends a lot of time recruiting because we need to make sure we can find the best possible talent um to make the kind of products um that we want and it's man one of what a hard lesson we've all had to learn because you know um just as well as anyone you have friends that are in the industry and your friends will look to you and say you're my friend you're totally gonna hire me right and sometimes you have to go yeah and it's the hardest thing to do because sometimes you have friends who work with years ago and they were amazing and what they did but then years go by and then you know you look at where they are and where you're going and people change and then people have expectations yeah but we're tight right you're totally hiring me actually not going to hire you because yeah you're my really good friend but i don't you don't do the thing that i need right

now so i'm not and that's been really challenging even tougher thing is letting go yeah oh my god absolutely i had to do it i had to do a couple times so at a year yeah i was like so yeah and it's like but then years go by and then you pass that person at a at e3 or gdc and i think okay this person's gonna punch me in the throat he's like nope like you move on and then it's okay yeah yeah it's letting anybody go is like super difficult like one thing that i've uh really leaned in nowadays is just i i work twice as hard to help the person find their next position if they're being let go then i work to get them join us yeah i think that's uh that's a really important maybe maybe it's just the guilt but i also kind of like wanted to you know there's there's no bad blood after that right uh and it

also it opens up in my opinion because because in finland uh i don't know what the employment laws are in canada is it that will employment or um yeah it's it's it's not easy to say goodbye to someone in canada there's a lot of steps happening okay so we have we have the same thing here like once the probation period ends you're married good luck so so so probation periods are taken extremely serious we have a six-month probation period uh in europe as as it is and um we have to take it extremely seriously and a lot of companies don't uh especially at scale they don't do that i think it's it's a little bit foolish and and we have to so every time like if that six month didn't work out like there's different options of course you can prolong it saying like hey you had a your cat died i know it was a bad situation you had a good start kind of dipped that was the cat uh do you want to kind of give it another go and continue we'll continue this or or otherwise and and also there's a situation where somebody just clicks immediately and delivers extremely well so you just want to cut

the uh cut the probation time like you're good welcome welcome to the team uh but then there are the situations where somebody comes in and and they just can't find their spot and can't really deliver and you have to make that call and i think a lot of people who work at larger companies where not you know really sitting on the p l not really thinking long term they don't want to do the uncomfortable thing so they're like you know it's fine we'll just we'll just hire somebody above them or next to them or you know below like we'll do something with that person he's not like she or he is not that negative like you know they're okay it's fine let's keep them right i think that's very foolish um as you know i spent a lot of time in helsinki um because uh track 20 rolled up to me at my axis i remember the first time i went to helsinki and i met all the fans um at track 20. and it's like this big loud canadian he shows up and he's like blah

blah blah he's talking to the whole team you know i'm the new guy the other guy was moving on to something uh something else and and of course it's like uh man like i didn't know what to expect when i got to finland but man i i missed them i missed the fins so bad i really do because they were they were just they got to know them because they were so different than anything i'd ever experienced so i finished my whole preamble um here's where we're going is we're going to do um if anybody doesn't want to do that and they think that man i'm going to hate this i think i might want to quit i said have a conversation with me first and if you want to quit um and it's because you think it's something that's made you know if you have a viewpoint that that's not correct or something then let's talk about it but if you

really don't want to be here and you know you're a decent person let me help you find atlantic let me put some effort into helping you with my homework get you a job outside of the studio um and it's really weird when a couple of people take you up on it and then of course the second time you visit you go oh my god joe's gonna let her go i'm not letting anyone go on just have a conversation with people and it was really good they built trust and that's how you build relationships sometimes the uh one of the greatest people ever in the studio will be even greater doing something else in a different studio and sometimes yeah you can see that you're not asking for thanks later but you know the deep down i'm so glad that i've gone off to do this other thing because as you know you can see um things in people and how they work that they can't see themselves and often some people around them can't see and you can think you'd be so much better doing your own thing or you'd be so much better doing that why um a lot of times they need it

yeah and it's also just finding yourself in in a little bit of in a situation where you can't win like sometimes people want to take a position that they they can't succeed and then there's a little bit of an ego where they still think they can do it at that point it's just good to have a conversation like i i don't think this is it's not you it's it's where you are uh i i don't think you're gonna win and just think about it and come back tomorrow or at the end of the week and let's talk about the the next things because i doubt it not going to happen like you don't have the the qualities or the organizations too different but anyways uh it's a it's a it's a tough situation it's it's always tough i don't know like i don't know anybody who who enjoys fighting except donald trump you mentioned him but you've mentioned him before that that was a comic i think that's the only person in the world that actually has made it into a brand but um but

but but it's it's extremely tough it's extremely tough especially since we're in these type of situations in these simple positions where we actually put in a lot of work to get that person in and really put in a lot of work to make them fit in and make them succeed in in the position that they've taken so so yeah um very very important part so i wanted to uh i wanted to kind of a little bit shift our discussion about mission values uh all this super touchy feely stuff uh because you know like a lot of the times people feel like this whole employer branding is just a very functional thing it's it's what you do to lower the cost of work force acquisition and maybe improve your retention of likes extremely functional but i think it's more than that i think it's a you know it's in a big way an extension of the company culture and the uh the employer brand should very much mirror the existing and the

aspiring values of the company values and the mission so with that kind of lead in how did you align uh how did you as studio co-founders align on the company mission and the values of the studio mission and the values um so again we've all been doing this a long time and we thought about one of the things we really hated about making video games things we liked about making video games of all the things we liked about it and then all the things we didn't like about it and said okay what are the behaviors that we've seen that cause the things that you don't like about it and kind of looked at those things that okay can we can we find a way to diffuse those problems and lean in all the other things um happier people do better work people that feel uh included and part of community do greater work and it's infectious to other people um we you know we're all remote right now we're not in an office right now we're all wrong oh you are going to stay we're waiting to get an office right but

we want to make sure we find the right office with the right amount of people and we're gonna be a hybrid approach we're gonna have um there's some people who will never come to the company there are some people that will just be remote uh all the time and we are you know we've got a couple of people that don't we have a person in montreal we have another contract person um that is doing some work with us um we are going to embrace if you want to come into the office and do it go for it you don't want to go in the outcome of the office you want to come in for just company meetings or what have you you can do that too we're going to really lean into the hybrid role um people like to say hybrid but hybrid means different things to different people but people are often the choice would you like to work like this and if they if it works out well then great then they can stay like that but um you know really leaning into the things that we enjoyed about all the companies that we worked at and then the things that we didn't enjoy um let's figure out how to work around that so you know um we want we have a lot of values that we that we push like you know we consider ourselves pursue pursuers of fun

um because it's video games we come on it's a video game it's supposed to be fun it's not not supposed to make you stressed out and cramp up every time you got to play so be enjoyable yeah let's lean into that we pursuer of fun that's i i like that way better than deconstructor okay we consider ourselves pursuers we consider us visionary explorers um you know we're going to grab the machete and go through the forest we don't know what we're going to find in all cases but let's have a look um and we might find this is a really dumb idea or is a really great idea but if we just sit back and don't do anything you can guarantee the results would be we didn't do anything um one thing that we have is a value which zoe actually came up with and we kind of thought about and said yeah that's really dope is clarity we think we need to be creators of clarity what that really means is people want to know what's expected of them at work they want to know what am i supposed to do do

i know where we're going do i know why we are going to do that and that's all the people that work for us but it's also for the people of player games like what am i doing in the game how do i know where to go and that's you know the ui but we think clarity is really important because how many times have you sat down with the game that everyone's playing and you feel like you're the only idiot that doesn't know how to do the one thing because it's not you know all these ux people give you this amazing journey but this is the thing that you missed because you skipped past one button press a couple screens ago and you can't get forward um we think it's a really important thing to make sure that everybody knows where to go and how to succeed and it's the same thing for the people who work with us how do i how do i know what i'm doing is the right thing and i'm doing the right work but how what's my path i can tell you half the people that have come to work with us have come to work with us because we have given them in their opinion

a path of how they can grow their career and the companies they were at they felt they were not going anywhere and they didn't even know how to get where they were thinking they wanted to go so we're trying to provide a very clear path for someone that comes in as x and they want to get the y um i very i i like that that clarity it's so much better than transparency nobody's transparent like what are you talking about transparency right no we won't no um yeah people don't come up with that um we are we consider ourselves diversity champions not that we are we and having the right conversation with the right people because you know there's nothing worse than you it's funny because you know this jeff and i said we had keith for the four founders uh and

jeff and i keep laughing okay you got the three whitest guys ever um and then you've got zoe um and uh we're making sure that we do not we get we get counsel we're doing this right i am i using the right language we have a lot of people tell us i mean our staff now they tell us right away it's like uh yeah i can't say that you shouldn't go that way oh no your staff is language policing you policing but just kind of like you know should i say this yeah and we're not afraid to tell each other as a group whether we're doing a good job or a bad job you know nothing's like there's some people that can't handle a compliment right i could say you know jeff i thought what you did today was amazing like i thought that pitch was incredible and like i'm so grateful to work with you and people oh my god whatever like

you know you get embarrassed by that yeah we are we're so used to giving people feedback uh on both skills on that that that's just become natural um and so what we if we think we're being diverse maybe we're not um we think that we are making strides to be a diverse studio it's easy for me to say hey we're 67 female that's kind of a big deal in video game land but it's a big deal it's not it's not we're not hanging on right like do we have do we have people of minorities working with us um and and minorities in vancouver are different than minorities in other cities because every city's got a different demographic yeah and you know there's some one of the sumo studios is called the chinese room and they put up this video that was amazing they're talking about bringing in interns and people that want to join the workforce and they said hey um are you in a different field you'd like to try working with something like that you know we'd like to hear from you are you

uh just starting out your career on an interview i'd like to hear you are you a mature a mature person that has been doing something else for 30 years i just hate you hate your life i want to do something else let's find another this is their path here for you and that you know i'm an older guy and i went that speaks to a lot of people that i know that think that no future they cannot do this because they've been working and they can never do anything creative like this and really they are actually very creative and they don't think they can get it so it's not diversity just it's like sometimes the diversity is invisible i like to also just talk about the diversity of mind because i mean vancouver could be a great example it's it's quite diverse city a lot of asian people live in vancouver um but you know if you go down to the ground level like you might look different but you went to the same schools you're really canadian like you're born

here you you watch hockey you like the canucks you know it's uh it's like there's not much different ways of thinking maybe your parents were thinking differently yeah you for sure are are very canadian so that that might not bring that much diversity we we do the three p's we have three the three p's of diversity and there's people products and places diverse people diverse products and there are places where we make them um we're just getting rolling in vancouver like that's where we're starting but we are looking at other places in british columbia whether it's vancouver island the interior of this province and then we're looking east you know we're looking east asia wherever nice we bring people on board to uh this timber group um you know when uh sims has tapped out simpson's tapped out made by an old pile of people in prince edward island out on the east coast of canada right who would have thought like the helsinki of canada maybe but um

what there's a great group of mobile talent there i didn't want to leave there it's like why do i have to leave it's mobile talent why do i have to go move to a big city to do the work that i'm doing just fine here and so we look at these exactly across canada that's what i've got in my head we're starting in vancouver now unfortunately canada is like the longest country to get across eight hours just to fly across it but yeah there's there's lots of places um and so we want to bring in the diverse locations as well as people yeah all right winnipeg edmonton calgary everything in the middle race for impact but you know what's really fun is um video games for the longest time been so west coast it's always been the west [Music] and then i look at something like toronto why is toronto very few video game

companies yeah but montreal montreal has a lot yeah they do but montreal has a couple speaky things because so montreal yeah of course they've got they've got ubisoft and they've got you know my friend patrick claus um and uh square enix gameloft um idols um you know which is making ways to their four-day work week um um awesome but they also have really amazing tax credits like the tax credits yes stupid it's like great incredible tax credits and uh yeah you know it makes a lot of sense to go there um yeah absolutely we'll look at everything in between um too yeah it's uh it's cheaper to hire in montreal than it is in romania so people who don't know where romania is you're not i can't say you're not missing out but like it's it let's just like they're not on the forefront in the in the european

um union great place nothing against romanians amazing people but maybe not the wealthiest country of them all let's put it this way ex-soviet union yeah exactly so but yeah there's some uh we think that there's lots of different places to make video games lots of ways to make video games and you know people and you know i'm probably the 10 million person to say this but you know the pandemic did kind of show people that we're in a bulletproof industry we actually can do it from home i was marveling because on the pandemic i remember sitting down with my boss and she said okay we're all gonna have to go home for two weeks like two weeks but how ea mobilized um everyone's machines getting sent to their home getting all the proper networks and security protocols in place and they shipped fifa like oh my god how did that even happen everyone worked from home got the biggest game in the world let's let's be honest it's the same game every

year i love it i i love it but but let's let's be absolutely honest and the content kind of you know makes itself if you will i mean there are these players who are being trained at the different clubs so shout out to fifa i play the game every week i love it it's the same game let's let's not kid ourselves yeah exactly like this they made an update they made a big update so so kudos to them they've done it also 20 years in a row yeah so yeah it's my favorite game like honestly out of out of all of them i i love it even more than nhl and i and i love it despite never watching football or soccer i don't know which one it's called in canada but uh yeah okay

it's football right but um couldn't care less about soccer but i love fiona could not care at all right so exactly exactly so a fantastic game shout out to the team so um anyway the only thing uh and one thing we just want to tell you as well that we believe that everything that we are going to create in video game land is going to have a longer tail um it's about building relationships to customers players um so we really we're really leaning in on our community because you know again buzzwords um i find and have found that you know you make the game you put the game out you do some updates and you have some live service and people are going to do what they're going to do with it and that's actually usually the most interesting stories with the people that didn't make the game that bought the game and what they did with it becomes super interesting and we think that that is absolutely the

future whether you're talking about um a long tail with lots of updates or when people can express themselves and you know i'm not even going to get into blockchain but like the whole blockchain yeah actually preserves authenticity and rarity and security i mean blockchain's a good buzzword but really is a very powerful system and if you can use it properly um it's going to be used in ways that we can't even think about right now um so we really believe that uh um a lot of what we're gonna be doing in timber is just not fire and forget we're gonna put the game out um our games out and have a relationship with the community uh and make sure that we listen to them because you know what the community right yeah exactly i mean they they pay your bills um how does you know timber is a part of sumo and pipe works how do you align your values with the sort of corporate values and corporate mission like is there any overlap or how does that work well i know for um one thing that we discovered you know we've been working with pipeworks

um for a while and um and then when sumo came into the picture i had to meet carl and paul um and uh in fact i'm pretty sure we're getting t-shirts made for them it's just like greenlit the stupid studio and all i got was it no no i agree with this studio um but um man uh sumo it does so much more than i ever thought they do they have a great community outreach they really lean in on important topics they invest in their people they invest in educating their people with stuff called dojo and udemy like it's always online learning and learning that is relevant not just you know stupid learning that you could just have a certificate that you got you never use it um and man i'm so impressed with how sumo was leaned in and supporting their people uh i didn't really know a ton about them i knew about them 100 years ago when i first worked uh a little bit with them on fifa but um man um they really care about their people uh and they really care about

their community and they're making great strides i really admire them i can't believe how um how much they align with us um so when we were leaning in and looking at what our vision of values were um and having conversations with carl and paul in particular they're saying um we love what you guys are saying um and um in fact when they shared their vision of values there was some stuff that they uh shared with us that i thought that while we thought we came up with that and actually they had to um and um uh and there's a great alignment there so that's been really refreshing um they really do they they really care about the folks um and every studio 13 of them uh we're 15 now um they're all different but they all kind of have that aligned sense of of connection to each other yeah yeah i was just looking at the uh the websites it's really cool yeah you know what like they celebrate people joining us uh joining the studio and um and uh we love that and they've been

reaching out to us all the time that's like oh my god this is really cool we love what you guys doing can't wait to meet you guys in person you know welcome to the family we feel like we've known them for a lot longer than um that we have i remember carl sent me the um the values that they had and i had a bunch that i had drafted up for max's that i you know obviously i kept the values in my head and one of the values was almost word for word the same one and this is the one we thought that we came up with but carl did do and his team let's always assume good intent um and i really love that one because um most people are really good people and most people want the best for their companies and sometimes they they slip up but always assume they're doing it uh with with the right intent to make something better assume that everyone's working with the best intent and if there are slip-ups you could say well what did you mean by that so i was doing this i was like oh um and when you assume good intent with folks they tend to

honor that and reward it and uh so we've been super excited about working with sumo that's that's awesome and and regarding your values like how do you how do you really like a lot of people let's be honest i've been at the companies where where the values have been made among the executives and kind of like you know distributed downstream not and the values have been even made in a way that that they were just voted like integrity sounds cool let's just put it in there you know that way uh instead of really thinking about what the company does and what the vision for it so forth so those are being kind of uh sad experiences uh but how do you communicate and enact company values of timber especially being remote like that's a that's that's that must be somewhat challenging right it is um but we have found using technology to remain constantly connected to everybody um

it's been a little bit easier um obviously when when we've had the new people join us we're gonna walk them through and they're on voting uh uh onboarding these are our vision and values um it's on our website we've got some vision and values in there as well um but you know we whether it's um we slack whether there's a bunch of huddles going on on slack or we just have these different channels where we're always getting we're always trying to get together we get together virtually all of us at least once or twice a week where we all talk about different things we play games together um we're playing worms which is just like [Music] game i know it's so good i've played it for it's the conversations we have we all go out for lunch every couple of weeks the whole team gets together um we get out we talk and what we found is that um

remote's okay right now it is not how we're going to stay we are going to have an office where people are going to come in when they need to there's going to be some people will be in there every day um one of our employees um uh actually who used to want used to go into the office where she used to work basically by herself and there was one other person there because she just needed to know there was someone else like there to kind of talk with and hang with because you're very social person um and when we get the office which will be in the new year really just people are gonna uh spend more time together but it's really we talk about it all the time we're constantly asking uh you know say our employees feels kind of like hierarchical but we asked we asked the team you know it's cool like do you feel like you're reacting this way are we doing the right thing um and uh they have great conversations with us it's like we've all worked in companies people where you know getting to chat with the boss is like we have to talk to their

their assistants and they'll fit you in at a certain time maybe and yeah i hated that and i never want us to be like that so uh people talk to us all the time and they said we can't believe we're loving you guys yeah yeah well that will change that will change with all the growth but i think what you i like that's i think so you can not yes i know i know and despite how how accessible you you are uh and you want to be still new people like when timber is hundreds of people they will still look at joe like a big boss oh my god he's coming here from vancouver we're down here in south sex from disco sasquatch

i'm really trying to figure out like the most difficult canadian town name that's where you need to put in the uh the studio but anyways like when you be coming in and and it will be same like probably like in helsinki like you come in and people are just quiet and they kind of look at you and try to assess but what really helps i think is those game nights because when you can play with your boss there's no hierarchy in that you know hit him with a baseball bat and worms let him fly into the water but he thought it'd be funny if he did it one day and there's a certain approach ability that we have created by making cartoon versions of ourselves it's funny i was out um i was walking down the street near my

house walking to a grocery store and i ran into a colleague of mine that actually does business development with me and um and his wife was with him and i've never met his wife and i didn't uh i didn't see him right away but she saw me and she goes oh my god are you joe and i'm like she goes i recognize you from the cartoon and rob goes away oh and she she recognized you even even without the george without the george yeah but it's become um

them literally every time people talk to us on zoom they go how tall are you guys so and and i mean it's just it's just such a great way that you're kind of laughing uh you know at yourself and with each other and that just shows the uh the culture and and makes you much more accessible so i totally understand how are you gonna uphold these these values as your team grows like how do you make sure that this culture that you've built that you've set up will be there despite and despite the rapid growth that you're seeing now and probably we'll see in the future um [Music] it it takes discipline it takes having uh difficult conversations with you know uh the founders we you know we've had a couple conversations together where we said you know we're really not acting

the way that we're supposed to act in this regard we've had some of those and it's just kind of like a check and balance that we have um every studio that i've worked at when i was at capcom um every friday 11 o'clock the entire staff got jammed into the cafeteria and i'd stand up in front of them and i would talk to them about all the things the wins and losses and things we had during the week um and i started out it was just the joe show and be like i'd be out there talking and over time they became more comfortable with it and then all the staff would come up and present at least everything together and um it became just this natural reflex we all got together on friday sometimes we talk for 10 minutes sometimes we talk for two hours um that sense of uh community with the teams and i think that we'll do it again um you know i did it with max's although maxis was way way bigger and way more terrifying when i first got there um um i got on stage um in front of like 200 people that didn't know me and i thought okay i'm gonna have to try and bring them over and i said some stuff to piss them off and said some stuff that they liked um

but they always knew that they didn't um have that conversation with me and yeah of all of us founders uh uh aligned on that we will not ever intentionally get to the point where we're freed up on the desk jumping on a cigar now you can't see joey's too busy right we're not going to do that we want people to always have that connection to us and hold us accountable because they have choices they can say you know what when i came to the valleys don't work yeah i i so one of the like i was reading the uh the book no rules rules and and um the ceo of netflix was was uh was talking about how many one-on-ones he does a year i believe it was 500 because that's the uh the amount of of sort of like vps or directors he has i think he goes down to the direct level and has at least one hour of 101 and i think that's a pretty powerful message because you can't expect that people will come

to you as the organization grows no matter you know how many cartoons you draw of yourself or how accessible you are and how many how many highs you say like you actually have to take the time of of scheduling an hour in somebody's calendar maybe even once a year hopefully like at least once a quarter and just spending that time and it's time spent like like it's it's you know it it probably not the thing you think you need to be doing is it's like next week i'm going to do 20 hours of 101s really what could be considered a chore for uh the head of a studio sometimes be the highlight of someone's month exactly and a lot of people don't do it i said i have a wall yeah but every single person that backs up and you're crazy yeah it took me eight months to have a one-on-one with every single person in maxis but i did and some were just like oh i don't want to talk to you while you're talking to me yeah so it's okay okay okay

okay maybe finding a balance between that so everybody who's listening sometimes you can have a group on one it just made me like inviting several people because i was the new person yeah i remember i had a meeting with a woman that worked at maxis and uh i just started and she was uh reporting to me and katella was a weird subject just feel this really weird thought and i said so what's going on so what's on your mind she goes can i just be honest with you well i would hope you would always want to be honest with me it's okay because i'm really disappointed that you're not a woman we didn't hire a woman i'm like oh okay and i was okay with it because it was the first time i'd ever experienced a form of discrimination i guess that tons of other people have faced forever and i thought well thanks for having the courage to say that to me and i will show you and i will earn my respect with you that you

know i'm not who you wanted um and that was okay and i'm friends and you know having having a decent relationship but what we did after as a group um i uh just like you said a group on one i changed it to ask me anything and every friday i would go into one of the meeting rooms at ea and uh it'd be like at four o'clock and we'd sit back and i'd just sit there and anyone that wanted to come and talk about anything we would do yeah i like that leadership team and so because everything and we did it every friday and they just did sometimes no one showed up uh sometimes tons of people show up but we were always there and they felt that we had access we're going to do the same thing yeah that's that's a really good one i do have to say that that that whole thing is like i'm disappointed like you're not a woman that's that's insensitive that's like you just started at a new place that is very intimidating very big um very intimidating and and just discriminating somebody on

their sex it's like that's not but you know what i thought that's totally nice and i said wow i said that's amazing that no one's ever said anything like that to me but i said i don't know that's how you must have failed so many times in your career but no one actually said and she said yeah and i went okay well i said you think we're gonna be okay so do you think we're gonna find a path to each other and talk about this and she goes yeah she just i just felt i had to tell you i i actually i didn't have them i didn't actually want them to hire you i wanted the other person like okay that's okay let's have the conversation no we didn't and and she's gone to great success and yeah because i was there she left because she was probably going to do something else that i knew she would do yeah still i don't encourage anybody to do that that's intense not a great like it's it's just not like since when that is a great start for a

relationship especially with your boss it's like um you know great that you feel some type of way but don't insult other people like there's no right to insult other people and that is an insult to be honest but i will never ever forget that i'll never forget it yeah well i wouldn't either and you have i have to say you're a better man because like i don't know like like i feel like i feel that that's just too insulting with no reason with like you don't know the other person anyway and you just decide to discriminate on that person so that's just plain plain discrimination that's it you know what like i wouldn't one thing that we really asked for support and help on and this is where you've been helping us with this and as have employees [Music] everyone has unconscious bias whether they want to believe it or not that's been i think that's been the most interesting learning certainly as we started this

this new studio um and but all the stuff that goes along with starting a studio is as you know i mean you're doing it but like it's all the stuff also in the studio it's like okay you know what are you gonna make we're gonna make a video game it's gonna be a mobile game it's gonna be a pc console whatever it's gonna be a game okay we're gonna do this stuff this is the kind of business we're in it's all the other stuff that people don't realize that goes into making a game or a game studio all the stuff that people all those guys just sit around with their feet up and just you know they just print money make all the stuff you know oh yeah we can print money it's it's hard work but a lot of the work that goes into it is just it's all the people stuff it's all the people stuff yeah connecting with people and then realizing that um no one in the world really gives a crap what you worked on last they really don't care i mean the only people who care about it they have recruiters and the industry people like oh let's talk let's talk about he worked on this game you know your average bjorn walking down the road he doesn't care

we don't have much burns but that's i'll take it no no you you're absolutely right and and i think it was really important to have this discussion with you because you have such a deep you know a wealth of experience in the industry um incredibly respected in the industry as well super nice person everybody who's been listening to this would be like joe sounds like the coolest guy ever and he is he even looks like the coolest guy for anybody watching the youtube uh but but um but like it's really yeah go ahead one thing i say to people all the time um i am actually not very good at making games i'm really not people well well i i wanted to get into that like that that's exactly where i was heading i wasn't heading into saying you're not good at making games i was heading into the longer you are in the industry the more important are the touchy-feely skills over the technical skills over

your you know deep meta understanding and all over over the understanding of of the nuances of the performance marketing uh etc cetera the more important that the more you kind of um take leadership roles the more important is the actual people's rights and some people just kind of don't get it they assume the higher you get the smarter you get and the more money you will get and lean back in your chair but actually no the more time you will end up spending in dealing with people issues that's that's what happens it's my favorite part of the job like you know when i tell people um i remember getting interviewed at this uh well i remember yeah i remember getting interviewed by patrick sotoman you want to have a tough interview you know you've got yourself when he's interviewing you it's like holy crap that's like what can walking jawline and uh but i tell everyone so i'm not very good at making games but i am though getting pretty good at is

building teams building good teams that do make good games and um you know there's all kinds of um people who look at mentorships and um and i've mentored people as well and it's really funny um we were joking about i was i was the mentee i was a mentor mentoring program at ea and they would assign me some people every single person that i mentored quit and went to another company oh no i'm like maybe maybe that was actually the job maybe people were coming and i really want to do this so lucky to work with so many really really amazing people people that i used to bounce on my knee at ea and that have gone off to amazing other things and to think that i had a very small

part perhaps in the development of that person it's not meant to be about all that was so amazing out of the blue i haven't talked to her for years but i used to work with microsoft and she sent me a note and she said you know what um i've been watching what you guys have been doing and i just really wanted to uh to thank you for something that you probably don't even remember and i'm like what are you talking about and she said remember when we went to starbucks and i had that presentation that i had to work on and i was really nervous and i didn't know how i was gonna get through the presentation and you sat and rehearsed it with me you walked through it you told me um look at it this way and then present it this way and she said that i did and i crushed it she goes i never ever forgot that and she goes and i'm like doing that

[Music] and the only reason i say that is like when you have when you can give people the gift of your time if nothing more listen and if they [Music] um but if someone asks you for something and if you just take a little bit of time to um to do that well sometimes you could affect them um in a small way today but they'll that'll multiply and compound later on and they'll look back um yeah i remember that conversation i have a conversation with people that read books listen to books listen to podcasts with people like yourself self reflect have people around you who give you proper feedback that's really important that's the only way you can grow as a as a lead and

sad yeah sadly like becoming a better understander of game design or product management or technical things doesn't make you a better leader it just it makes you a better specialist but it doesn't make you a better leader and despite all of this a lot of people like i know in my first you know leadership positions couldn't care less about books you know maybe one book maybe if it had navy seals i could read it but but that's that's about it you know uh but but uh but it's it's like it's it's incredibly valuable to have these conversations to listen to these type of conversations and to um yeah just to read a wide variety of books that's what i've noticed and then just take action basically it's that network you build you know um there are people that i call friends that i didn't really know them very well i mean i'll be i'll be honest i mean when you reached out to dylan to do this i was so excited oh my god i get to talk to you

please talk to you because no no it's the other way around i just i just use everybody's expensive time for free for free mentoring and coaching this is really the other this is really this podcast is incredibly self-serving people just don't understand it it's only the things that i'm interested in and we talk about it i do like there's

tons of people that are that are in this world that are starving for the content that you're serving it's for me i like if they if they take the crumbs or the same thing if they want this portion of content go for it but this content is mainly for me i'm incredibly interested in employer branding i i i think you're doing just a triple a job on on that and i wanted to talk to you about it and also i wanted to reconnect and you know hear what's what's going on so on that note i'm going to let you go and i'm going to let myself go because it's pretty late and always like i recorded out of my home gym and people are like is that some kind of a flex it's like no looking like a sauna background there that's another one it's actually you would see like if i if i move my camera a little bit you start seeing dumbbells the thing is thing is this is not a flex you guys are 10 hours behind me or you know in past so i have to record these very late in the evening

and i'm not going to go to the office at like 9 00 30 p.m to record a podcast so hence these podcasts are out of my gym so so that so that because i because one person i thought actually mentioned in the podcast they thought it was a flex that i that i have dumbbells in the background no it's not it's like i just don't have a separate podcast studio next to my home so that's uh that's actually the fact anyway joe it was an immense pleasure and i know that everybody listening to this enjoyed it i'm gonna put your linkedin um and timber games in the description below but before i let you go what are you guys looking for what kind of a talent are you guys looking to hire in in the uh in the close proximity good engineering talent um especially uh unreal uh we're looking for unreal engineering [Music]

we are pretty good with everything else just now location vancouver or remote location vancouver or remote um ideally we're trying to keep everyone that's remote in canada for now until we can actually you know enough like our infrastructure set up that we can actually do it in other places but yeah uh pretty much anywhere in canada is open um if you'd like to look for that task watch yes i couldn't even write that that one is open too so so if you're in sasquatch edmonton winnipeg i don't i don't even know i don't even know if that's in canada but it does sound like a canadian uh so i only know the cities in canada that have an nhl team because i'm from finland so that's why i know about the winnipeg

and edmonton and calgary and toronto and montreal and quebec and vancouver so if you don't have an nhl team in ottawa if you don't have an nhl team i've never heard of you and i'm frankly not excited [Music] exactly exactly except pavel bouree was one of the best canuck players ever so yes so there's that i remember him scoring a lot anyway uh joe a pleasure everybody else thank you for listening and hope you enjoyed the podcast i know you did enjoy the podcast anyways we're we're out