How To Make Indie Games In 2025 (Thomas Mahler) — Full Time Game Dev Podcast Ep. 040

I had an incredible conversation with the creator of the Orie franchise and also a game called No Rest For The Wicked it looks incredible his name is Thomas maler and talking to Thomas was honestly a dream come true for me and he did not disappoint here's the thing about Thomas uh he once worked for blizzard and he's sort of completely 180d and he's now an indie Legend the best part is he's super honest and in a way he's radical in his approach to making games so for example here's some radical things he said in our conversation uh he thinks that talent doesn't exist he thinks bad code doesn't matter uh he actually disagrees with me he disagree he disagrees with me on the whole concept of you know creating a hook for your indie game we'll talk all about that he's a massive proponent of Early Access for Indies um and he also has some strong words for AAA surprise surprise and lastly and I don't even

know if I agree with him fully here he believes anyone anyone can make a rock solid indie game it doesn't matter what your talent is you can do it there's a ton in this conversation it's so good I loved this conversation so honest and real but yeah you're going to learn a ton I think this one's going to help you level up so stick around to the end let's jump in but before we continue this interview I do want to thank this episode sponsor ofon sound if you're looking going to get some great quality music and sound effects for your current or future projects I could definitely recommend aani sound their entire premium Music and Sound Library is specifically designed for game development and there's no AI used in their production all of their packs are onetime payment with no subscription and everything is completely royaltyfree including commercial use that's important right now they're doing this spring into development bundle it's honestly a really good value for your money and a great addition to any devel velers toolbox it includes six music

packs and seven sound effect packs all in different genres which make it a great base for almost any project on top of all of this you're going to get their music plug-in and frequency link plugin which makes music and sound integration a lot easier so if you're looking to add some high quality music sound effects and tools to your library at a very reasonable price definitely check out their bundle before the offer Ends by simply clicking the link in the description um cool dude it's so good to have you on clearly you know thanks for having me yeah you bet you know you're a huge inspiration to me we were talking before we started the podcast and I was like I'm pretty sure you're an inspiration to like most top tier game devs like team Cherry like when I see Hollow KN it's like it's it looks like it was inspired by aie I don't know if it was um but uh have you talked to that that team at all no but I would love to um cuz I I can really um sympathize with what position there because making a

Metro is so unbelievably hard it's so hard and like the the the stuff I see about like Silk song right and people are like oh why is it still not out and so on like I was always there on wisps right and on blind Forest it's just like imagine right like I don't know if you ever tried to make a Metro V or anything but like literally the entire game world is connected and if you change something in this level over there it could have some concept quence in this level underneath here right and it's just it's the worst it's so hard like you have to just keep everything like it's it's basically like hey you have a riddle in your head a huge riddle for like four or five years or something and it all has to work and it's just the worst so so I I I I I I'm really looking forward to what they have what they're working on I wasn't the hugest fan of hollow night just but that's me that's purely yeah that's purely pacing and so on um

but that's you know like I me Lori right so it's kind of like out there what I enjoy but I'm really looking forward to what they they're going to do ultimately what I always want to see developers doing is to push shras forward right um and I think we did that with Ori that you know like that we you know that Metro venas weren't really a thing for for quite some time um and then in 2010 I think I approached Microsoft with like why is that you know like can we like would you guys be interested in us making a Metro here right and we also make like we will make it very platforming focused and so on and uh they were interested in that frankly also like the Microsoft people we had on our s side back then were just excellent um so they they got that and then I think we pushed thean forward quite a bit with that because now like there's a Metro every releasing every week I which is great you know I I kind of tell my audience like I don't I don't tell them not to pursue their dream game like if

they want to make it Metroid Vania do it you know but it it's not the best business decision it's really hard yeah it's like making a fighting game or something at the start right well an MPG hey you know that that's my my first one of my big questions I had for you was we live in the Tik Tock era and and the YouTube era like what I mean is like everything is is short and quick and you you give my I I've even fallen into this and I'm doing it now with my current game where I don't want the player to get lost I don't want them to spend too much time getting lost especially the first five minutes of the game you want them to get instant gratification or just they're hooked do you do you feel anything like there's something wrong with that because I look at old games and even like Hollow night and maybe even ay where it's like there you trust the player to be p patient and they play

the game slowly at the beginning right now it just I mean I was talking to my publisher about this they the first like two minutes you want to capture their attention and I was curious do you have a problem with that do you do you think we should trust players more or should we give them what culture is asking for do you know what I mean well I can I can give you like I can tell you something that happened to me and I still haven't figured it out um but let me tell you the story because it's funny um so when we started on AI um we initially pitched a whole different game to Microsoft there's even like still a YouTube video out there was called War soup like I came from working on Starcraft and I wanted to kind of like mix Halo and Starcraft and do a first person shooter in a way that I've never seen before um but that be that that very quickly became too big for us and we said okay let's pull it back we'll make a 2d thing first and so on and that that became ay um and then during pre-production Microsoft was always on my body regarding hey what you guys are doing is

pretty fun but what's the hook and I'm like well what do you mean it's it's it's a it's a metroda and it has platforming in it and you know we have these story moments and and that's what we're doing and then they were like yeah that's all cool but what's the hook and I'm like wait what I I just told you what the hook is well that's not the hook so what's the so I still to this day I don't understand like what is the hook of War yeah I don't know if there was a hook you know I was I was studying Ory today just to get a refresher and I was was like there's no hook here I will say though the hook is correct me if I'm wrong here well I I don't know if I could correct you because I still to this day I don't know what I think I think you do have a hook so like I what when I talk on my do during live streams I'll sometimes review people's games and I'm not perfect or anything but I'll I'll look at people's steam pages and I'll look for three things I'll look for a visual and and you're you're smarter than me so tell me if you think this is smart or not I'll look for a visual hook a mechanical hook or a

story hook I'll look for one of the three now if you can have all three more power to you you know but with aie it's purely visual like the visuals carry that game and it carried the marketing of that game from its Inception till now like it's just gorgeous right so purely it's a visual hook right now also the mechanics are a little bit interesting because and again correct me if I'm wrong floaty fast fast moving sort of abstract platforming and not tile based is very different than most Metroid vanas correct so it's almost a Twist I'm I'm looking at it always in a different way um and maybe that's just how my brain works or how how as a designer look at things so what was going on in my head when I was looking at Ori is I was just looking at games like Super Meat Boy and um I

was a huge fan obviously of um Super Metroid and Symphony of the Night and all the igarashi castlevanias and so on and the thing that always bugged me about that is that you know as much as an amazing game as as much as Super Metroid is an amazing game um I never felt like hey the platforming is on a on on on a level that is that could be up there with Mario or something right and I was always wondering like why even even if you play Symphony of the Night today um that's Castlevania for the younger audience um even if you play that the platform is very basic right and to me it's like well if you look at that game a huge part of it is jumping through that castle right and so my whole thinking was just well why isn't that more fun why isn't it you know like why wouldn't that be as good as Mario if that's one of the core mechanics in that game right and so I approached it from that angle um I think it's interesting that you Chann brought up the visuals

cuz to me like I came from blizzard cinematics I was an artist for a long long time and to me it was always kind of a given that we would make games that look good right because like we at at blizzard like back then cinematics and so on right like in the you know the the the stuff that reproduced like it was just on a different level right and then right to me like it's you know I I came from art school and so on so I I never really doubted that we would make something that looks appealing to to people right yeah uh the the much harder thing was making sure that the gaml is tuned right that the gaml is fun cuz even if the visuals like if you have that visual Hook and the game is just not fun and there's plenty of examples of games like that out there right it's not going to do anything right so so I think that to me was the the the hardest thing to tackle to like we spent a year and a half on blind Forest back then I remember that just tuning the mechanics right just making sure that if you if you play around in a blockout environment and you play this little

Forest spirit and I I don't even give you any graphics or anything right that already has to be so much fun that you just you know can't stop playing right and I had this all the time CU we like on both Ori games we crafted the entire world just with blockouts like just with you know black fields and like paint like basically drew the these fields and so on and only at the very end of that when we already agreed like hey this level is really fun to play now art can go in and like do some set dressing and and so on right that was always the idea um and I think that that's what made it work because a lot of times in play testing I had to quickly look at a bug and fix something right and I'm I'm playing and I'm like ah [ __ ] I just had to look at this bug and I've been playing 20 minutes you know like I constantly at these moments and that that to me then shows you that you tackled it right that it's like hey yeah that that is really good yeah but yeah the whole hook question I I still don't understand that I I I don't don't like I'm not a very um Bottoms Up kind of

person right like I'm very like I came from art school I studied traditional sculpture um and I was an artist for a long time and to me a lot of it just comes boils down to that feel right like and to and for what I appreciate for example in game designers is when I can give you something like a character control or something right and that you can just tweak the numbers and the Valu that feels exactly right right and the there's a there's a huge kind of like art there right with just making sure that every jump every move every ability feels exactly right that the input um is correct right that you get input back at the exact right frame and so on and I do think people noticed that right like there was always this whole thing of like Call of Duty versus battlefield or something right and it's like hey Call of Duty was the only game that was 60 FPS back then and it was just such a clear well that's a huge reason of why it's so much better than anything else you well you know when I think about when I think about

hooks um by the way the first time this concept of hooks was presented to me was um the creator of earthworm JY ah I can't remember his name what's that Dave Perry yes Dave Perry he took me out to lunch um I flew out to for some podcast um for my first game and then he took me out to lunch because he was I I emailed him and said hey I'm in town and so I was super young I was like 26 or something and he he brought the concept of hooks immediately you know mhm and I've been fascinated by the concept of hook hooks ever since um I see a hook as the doorway I don't see it as the house so like game feel and good mechanics and all that stuff that's when you get in the door right um that's why I say for me and I'm not arguing with you I would never argue with you it's your game but the way I see your hook is as I see the visuals are the doorway they're the way

you get in right and then once players are in they're not relying on the hook anymore they could they could give a [ __ ] about the hook it's more like is the game actually fun and that's the house right so I think yeah so like for me I think people listening right now I think I would probably agree with Microsoft which is like if you're going to try and compete and I would love your thoughts on this if you're trying to compete with let's say 10,000 games I released or 20,000 games are released on Steam this year you better have something that catches people's attention from a marketing perspective something quick and fast and hooky when I see Orie or when I see no rest for the wicked I'm like immediately hooked and it's because of the visuals would you agree with that by the way if you're like me and you always dreamt of making an indie game as a full-time job I have a free webinar below that goes into exactly how to make six figures with was just a demo I was just like you for

years I thought I had to make a game in its entirety before getting a paycheck but there's actually three ways to make six figures before even finishing your game I've done this multiple times so check it out below if you do want to go full-time Indie and thanks for watching um not really because I'm again like I I my my my my my brain doesn't think that way right like I'm I'm I I think a lot broader I'm just like there's always been this discussion of um oh you need this one thing right like the portal mechanic or something right from Portal where it's like oh this is immediately interesting right um and obviously like if you have something like that great right but I also grew up with you know mamoto right and mhm uh playing something like Super Mario Bros 3 right where it's like where the interesting thing was well every world had a different mechanic to it right like hey here's the world that is this then there's the whole water areas right

then here's a level where the Mario is super tiny and everything else is huge and so on and I always appreciated that that that feeling of man there's enough ideas in there other Studios would make six games out of that you know um and that's kind of like what I've been following and generally to me it's always about is the game really good right like is the experience really good it's similar to films right like it's it's very like every now and then a film comes out where you feel like man I wouldn't cut anything like this is just fantastic um and it doesn't have any lengths and this is just really good every scene is there for a reason right yeah and I think if you achieve that if you achieve that level of like everything here is there for a reason MH um I think that's the thing that people want right it's purely it boils down to the quality of the thing right does every single component is every single component at that level where it's just pure choice and if you do that I think your game

will do well it doesn't matter if there's 10,000 other games coming out right because if there's this if you if you manage to make this one thing right this this game that is just so good I think it'll do well would uh if Mario let's say if Mario 64 it was released right now let's say some random kid made a game and it's called Mario 64 would it do well that's a that's a really good question it's something that I ask myself all the time um because one of my favorite games if not my actual favorite game is Zelda Link to the Past on the Super Nintendo that game did so much for me in terms of just like just even privately right that came out during a time where um where I was a kid and kind of like I just played this all the time when my mom was at work and so on yeah and um and I asked my myself that question quite often because for

example I I had people at blizzard that were interested in making um indie games and we discussed that back then exactly that question right like hey if something like a link to the past would come out today would that still work and I you think it would and we haven't really seen much of that right like something that is at that level like back then they worked like for three or four years on that game um and I think it would still take about that time to make that right yeah and if you look at I I'm always on the lookout for indie games that hit that level right that are like that like something like a link to the past and you barely ever see it um so I I think the answer is yes right the same thing by the way is true with 3D Platformers there aren't that many 3D Platformers out theree not that are on that level where the controls like I mean Super Mario 64 is something where mamoto did the same thing right we spent a year and a half or even longer on just

controll how does how should Mario control right that is so fun that's you see that still today that people are doing speed runs and just get a huge kick out of how tightly you know it's designed and how broken it is right and but how you can use the momentum in different ways and so on um so I think yes right I think if you are an IND Dev and you would make something that is on exactly that quality level yes I think you would have success with that my uh my devil's advocate argument and people who follow me they know that this is this is a disagreement between you and me because just by listening they're like yeah Thomas disagrees because the reason why I I tend to disagree is because 99.9% of Indie developers they can't make a game like Orie they can't make a game like Super Mario 64 or Mario 64 they can't they can't do it like I can't do it because

it's it's a it's a highly talented skill to be able to make something that you've made um most people don't have that uh taste that level of taste um I think just realistically probably Pro like if you look at the probability curve most people are in the middle here and so my theory is at least have something that can Market your game that that brings you some kind of Revenue right it helps you it helps you get some kind of coverage because I think most Indies most Indies aren't going to be able to make any money now I think a good chunk of Indies this is just my opinion a good chunk of Indies they have a decent game it's fine it might even be good fine is not enough good is not enough right like we live in a hit driven market right mhm um and that is that's that's just not enough and I think I think in generally what you what you are talking about is almost

like the discussion between talent and just perseverance right um and I think it needs both right like and I think Talent is you know it's it's highly overrated right like I obviously I'm an Austrian um so I I read up quite a lot on moite right and moite kind of like fell into this whole oh he was a genius kid who already composed stuff at four years old and so on right but if you really read up with it well he composed [ __ ] at 4 years old it was really bad stuff right and it's like he even said of himself like I mean the reason why I'm good is because I work harder than anybody else I know and I always took that to heart right like it it's not enough for you to you know have some innate Talent or something right it never is it's I've never seen that and here's the thing like even at blizzard right like we I I worked with some of the most unbelievable Talent there and I

remember we had like a day where we just showed each other our early works right like here's how I started with 3D graphics and it was all garbage it's just just wor stuff like you had fosto de Martini for example an artist that always looked up to right and he showed some of his stuff it is just trash right because he was like 16 17 years old or something right so I I think it just takes time to learn a graft and to to become really good at it right like it's not something that happens you know like Fast right you need a good probably like three or four shitty games before you make a good game and that's why every now and then actually uh it's funny but it's happened already like three or four times that somebody knocks on my office door um and it's some kid who you know is like hey I want to learn how to make video games right yeah and I always tell them the same thing um that they need to do something simple

first right like fail really hard really quickly that you just make some you know but you try to make something happen right like here I'll try to make a really simple platform right so that a you learn how much work is required right so that you actually can honestly tell yourself do I have the perseverance to and am I crazy enough to see this through right because a lot of people I think don't have that right like they don't want to work that hard right I for you know um I do think there's a lot of people out there that just like if if you see how much work it is to create a video game it's an immediate turn off for a lot of people right know because with with games it's just all these art forms coming together right like it's not just it's it's a cumulative art for art form right where it's like hey you have the mechanical part mechanics the design and so on but then you also have the art right so just the visual aspect of it is you know like a painter just has to focus on that and give it painting some meaning right but we have

to put all these various things together right all the art has to be there the cinematography has to work the music has to be there the story has to be good the uh design needs to be great and so on and that is really hard it's really hard to craft the product with all of those things right um yeah so like I always see it just from the perspective of like I think everybody can do it but it depends on how much work are you willing to put it yeah I mean what does that even mean I actually wrote this question down in my notes by the way like can everybody do it and what does that mean when you say everybody can do it does it does it mean that it's it's the tools are available to you and with enough perseverance you'll be able to do it yes yes if you're willing to work to put in the work I'm certain I could take some some person from the street right and like if he really has the motivation right it needs that agency that motivation but you could teach that person to become

really damn good you know it just would take that amount of effort right um I can tell you something I don't really believe in innate talent I think that's a bunch of [ __ ] right like I I I was always the kid in class yes I was always the kid in class and and most artists will tell you that right I was always the kid in class who could us Drew all the time right like I've been I didn't even care about what the teachers would say in front of me right because I could read faster than they had to write the sh shitty you know read the shitty uh books in in class and so on um and but I I I just drew a lot right and that's why I got good at it right and then that that whole thing happens right where it's like oh you're so good at this it must be an innate Talent right and it's like no it's not an innate like I just you just study it right and it's the same as anything that you study you become good at it and by the way this whole thing about like art um being an a talent right that's

actually a more modern thing right like I I just recently couple years ago I read a book about denu right about that whole believe in in um uh during the Italian Renaissance and so on what did you say what did what did you say denum they called it Desu right which is do you spell from design um it's it basically it comes from design right it's okay yeah I'm looking it up here I think yeah it's Italian uh okay the idea is the idea is that it wasn't like we didn't look at Master's Master artists back then and we're like oh that person had an inate Talent right it was like you know like it making a great painting used to be the same as like making a great table or something right it's all crafts and you have to learn how to do it and some people are better at it than others because they are willing to put more time in I can tell you this I've been doing just moon right we'll soon very soon have our 15th

anniversary wow um I'm still working my ass off like it's never gotten easier it's I I still like right now we we're close to doing our week inside I think this podcast you said will only come out in April yes yes um but I am working a good 16 17 hours a day right now it's never get getting easier and you have to accept it and we always thinking hey with these tools that we have now and with all of this stuff and all that knowledge and all the experience that we have now and we made a game already right it's just as hard every [ __ ] time right it's just all it's just always hard you just have to either sign up for it or not when it comes to Talent okay me and my wife were actually talking about this last night how you are born with desire now yes maybe May there okay so like I I have to create if I don't make things I'm miserable I would rather work 24 hours a day until I die from like

exhaustion then to not create I've worked a desk job where I was a graphic designer and I had I worked so hard to get out of that job to to start my game Studio I had to do it and I think that that that is probably the minority of that is talent that right I think I think we would probably agree there without that you don't have talent right and I think the majority of people who want to make games they probably don't have that level of obsession Maybe I'm Wrong like a 14-year-old kid or 15-year-old old kid who's like oh I want to make a mcraft don't have that Obsession it's also something very different like playing a game is one thing making a game is a whole different thing right like making games is very artistic and then also very technical um and so on right so those are two different those are two different things uh just because you like playing games

doesn't mean you would actually enjoy making them right same as just because you like eating something doesn't mean that you would actually enjoy being in the kitchen and cooking that food right right exactly exactly um so yeah this that that it just takes a huge amount of work and and so on but I like if you are if you do have that in you right that whole thing of like I'm not going to let anybody stop me right and I did like I grew up with that in school right like I didn't have the greatest grades in the stuff that I wasn't interested in and I did have teachers that told me straight up like you know that I'll never become anything and all of that stuff right and uh and you know like that the most important thing is that you just never listen to that [ __ ] right that you just really listen to the people that um manage to um bring you forward in life right that that that encourage you and so on and you you draun out the negativity and

by the way I mean the Twitter thing that you just uh discussed before right like yeah there's so much negativity on there and I don't understand I I wish we would get back to a to a time where it's just he we actually push each other right and and I love seeing that at Moon by the way like we have for example our team calls we have every Tuesday at 4M we have a team call and I love it because it's all just hey here's the art team showing all the amazing work they' did they done right then here's the design team here's all the work that we've done and the idea is we Inspire each other right and we push each other forward and we want to um compete with one another right like we want to make sure that [ __ ] my thing comes up I hope my stuff is seen as good as you know as what the other department just did sure um that's that's what I think is really important that you always like always um surround yourself with people that are positive and that you know like push you forward that really know how to uplift you I

have a question about that um so like last year while I was in the middle I was doing uh Alpha Testing for my game um and it seemed like everybody that was playing that game was negative and I was just getting it felt just negative it was like constant critique of everything but looking back I'm like man I'm sure I'm really glad they were so negative because now the the demo we launched two weeks ago and it's doing really well way better right yeah way better we've got I think we're we're at very positive and we have almost a thousand reviews um for the demo which you can appar yeah you apparently you can get reviews for demos I found this out after I launched the demo reviews started coming in I was like oh no and it was the the reviews were going down it was like 83% 82 I was like no no no no but it eventually went back up and uh so all that said because

of negativity it actually turned out that it was very helpful and it helped the game so I asked this to Ken LaVine you know and I want to ask you as well how do you know how to parse who's saying what who do you listen to you know who do you listen to when it comes to your career your dreams but also like is your game any good is this worth pursuing you know I think it was down to trust ultimately right like I I have to have like or the people in my team for example have to trust me that I'm not a bozo that I generally like even if they don't agree with something that I'm pushing for right that it it might be a thing of like oh you don't get it yet right but you might get it once it's kind of put together and so on because we're trying to do new things and Innovative things in in in a lot of ways right and a lot of times like I think we all as humans we're kind of like lazy at heart right and so it's

very easy to just say to do the easy thing right and I think that's that's probably a survival me mechanism of our brain or something to do the whole oh just let's do the easy thing that the thing that already all these other people are doing it works why why don't we just do that right and the reason why you don't just do that is well you want to push things forward right they want to up the empty right and and um and reach Greater Heights and push Shas forward and so on um and I I think that stuff is really really important um sorry I forgot the original well you're the re I think the reason you said that is because sometimes you're going to feel like or the team might not trust you or they need to trust you because because you're going to start you're going to start basically spinning the chamber I mean an example of this is for no rest of the wicked or no rest for the wicked it's like on the steam page at the very what does it say it says you're you're pushing what what is what's last sentence of the steam page and I know you wrote it intentionally um I can't I

can't remember what it was reinvent I think is what you mean right yes yes and can you say that one more time um so that people can hear it I'm not sure if you well it's it's basically what we had in there was like um something blah blah blah and then set to reinvent the genre right that is what we set out to do because literally no rest to the Wicket was started because I played Diablo I back then in the 2000s or something right and I loved it obviously I also played Diablo 1 right but then Diablo I came out I played it with my friend right and I I vividly remember how I was so excited about the future right like I was just playing Diablo I with my friend till like 5: in the morning right and like internet was still new and all of this stuff and just now it's just oh my God like like if we have these games today imagine what we'll playing five years from now yeah and then nothing happened that was it um like World of Warcraft came out but that created its own thing right but like in the arpg

front um you could very well make the argument that if you compare Diablo 3 to Diablo I um that it was very much simplified mechanically and wow and so on and that was like such a what the hell happened you know like I that idea that I had in my head of like what a Diablo 3 could become and how you could push every single component forward right wasn't really realized there and again I don't want to step on people's toes a lot of times I I get a ton of [ __ ] for like saying something bad about some developer something but to me it's just we all artists we're all trying to push the art forward right and I look at something like that and I'm like well I would love to do my own thing right and take a pass at that right similar to how hey if somebody plays some Melody right and some other musician goes well wait there's something there what if you do this right yeah and then something forms right and that's the creative process so yeah ultimately I just I I had some

frustration there with like how ergs evolved and then it became very clear that I was like okay look I did my thing with Metras I would really like to take a stab at ergs because I do think there's so much potential there and it's not being handled right now and then Diablo 4 came out and some other games came out and I was like this is still not it this is not where that next leap is and I always look for these kind of things right like if you compare Super Mario BR one to Super Mario BR 3 it's just such a very clear that was obviously the right direction right that was so clearly just better in every way right and so I'm still looking for and I hope I deliver that with no rest for the Wicket right that you take something that Diablo 2 and then you ask the question what is the next step right and in order to reach that next step you need to look at every single component is the combat really what it should be right and what it can be um that's another thing with these RPGs right everybody just copied the Diablo formula

like to the T and I just don't think that that point and click combat is the best thing you could do that's why we went for something completely different basically it's dark souls right I mean it's Souls like and it's certainly inspired yes it's certainly inspired by things like dark souls and Monster Hunter and so on but we have an I I thought it should all be based on animations right that it just needs to feel direct right right not like hey I click somewhere on the screen and then my character walks over and does a hit right yeah but no give more control to the player and have him really be in complete control of the action very similar by the way to what I did with AI right where reactive where I looked at Super Metroid and and Symphony of the Night and thought ahuh mechanically that could be better right and so same thing here right where I look at that combat and when it's good it's not great you know so how can we make it great uh is is it stiff what I

mean is um did you feel like for example Castle or Castlevania s be the night did you feel like the platforming was stiff and you wanted it more fluid and floaty okay yes I wanted it to feel more akin to Mario right like that kind of thing that it could be like that it could stand on its on its own as a platformer right that kind of thing and if you take something like super metroid or Symphony of the Knight and you rip the all the Metroid elements out I don't think those games could would be great by themselves as Platformers right simply because it's not designed that way and the mechanics are not are not that but Mario is and so that's the thing right like it's just making sure when you have a recipe that every single component is at the highest level possible okay now when it comes to Diablo versus no rest for the wicked what do you feel Diablo specifically was lacking I'm not trying try to create a headline here I promise what do you feel

I'm genuinely curious cuz like is it cuz like Soul when I play Dark Souls and by the way I don't like darkart Souls because my brain can't handle it and I'm not patient enough um and I'm not good at memorizing things uh patterns I'm really bad with that stuff um when I play a Dark Souls game it feels heavy and stiff MH which is by Design right yes same response to Hunter okay would you say that no rest for the wicked is intentionally stiff no and and weighty okay so we do have weapons that make you feel that way right like if I if I have a heavy great sword and you swing that you want to feel the weight right and that's just one thing like so I look at it like similar to fighting games right like it's perfectly fine if you don't want to play sangi right but a lot of people do right and and but there should be an option for you to play Rio or Ken

right that kind of thing and that's what we have there as well you asked the question regarding where I think Diablo went wrong and I think it's just looking at the components specifically right like if I would have designed Diablo 3 back then or even like Diablo 4 I would have really like you have to have the guts to rip it all up right and I do think um that probably was happening back then with Jason uh Josh mky right the guy who was also handling the Diablo 3 expansion um from what I know and this are just rumors and so on right but he was trying to do something that was um very different than what Diablo um ultimately Diablo 4 ultimately became right um and I'm like so from what I heard is that blizzard kind of like you know weid that project because hey it wasn't Diablo enough right and I think that's that's a huge problem right like you have to every now and then you have to have your Super Mario 64 moment you have to have the guts to say look

that old formula was really good and we could keep making something like that in the future but isn't there something greater there right like that that thing that mamoto did from going from like stuff like Super Mario World and Yoshi's Island and so on to Mario 64 where it's just you can take nothing with you right like you basically have to start completely from scratch because making a 3D platformer especially when there were no 3D Platformers I can't even [ __ ] fathom how difficult it must have been to think of the concept of I know a camera right a camera and how should that even work right it's wild yeah it's crazy and um and but that's that's what I think should have happened there right that you really look that okay let's take combat what could we change about the combat can we really tear it up right or are we just shipping yet another warmed up version of what we already had with some bells and whistles and some mechanics slightly changed and so right and I I I think that's what it

needed and I think that's the the fear always is that well but fans might not want that right but fans will come with you if you just make a really good thing you have to have that trust in yourself that because you're the person who does it right like you will move it into the right direction trust me if if if I do it and I love it right I love the project that I'm do that I'm making I always have the Bel of like well if I really love it there must be thousands of hopefully hundreds hundreds of thousands millions of people who feel like me right and so that's how I operate right and it doesn't matter if it's different or that kind of thing I I don't care if it's good it's good okay um let's talk about Early Access um and this is the segue here is no rest for the wicked you did Early Access I think you launched it was it April 18th 2024 um for No Rest for for the W this is your first game since you know wrapping

up I think youve wrapped up the uh the AY franchise um I can talk about that okay so you're this is your this is a you're taking a break um let's just say that uh do you feel like you know this is a we can cut this I don't care you do whatever you want do you feel like you know better than the audience you know better than your players what this game is supposed to be um yes ultimately yes I I basically like again like I I think about it just in the sense of Ori was sort of my Mario right and I always wanted no rest for the Wicket to become my selda and that's very obvious if you look at it now right yeah um it's just with or it was kind of like I I focus on the platforming and so on and I like the analogy right like mamoto was doing or like Mario first and then a

year later so he that Zelda um and I always like that kind of idea of like okay now we do an adventure game that is not as focused on like platforming and those kind of things yeah and um that's how I approached it and ultimately I never really had a doubt of would people play that right because I remember A Link to the Past did so well on the Super Nintendo right like it was always like in the top 10 or something of the sales charts even like four years after the Super Nintendo launched right and even in prototyping um I we have this thing at Moon where I usually do the prototypes um while people are finishing up games and so on right and the same thing was true for Wicket and I just saw so many things that like I just put this character controller together and was like coding it up and you know and it was fun it was just fun already right and I was like I was trying all these crazy things like oh my God I could even like do a little Tower Defense thing with with that character control and I could do this and I could do that and I could do farming like in stardo Valley and like and it's just holy [ __ ] there's

so much we can do with this you know and so I never really had any doubt that you know would people play that or how would they react right because to me it was just well if you know if I deliver my Zelda there should be lots of people who love s was the uh was the audience reaction and player reaction to No Rest For The Wicked was it a positive one for you when you did Early Access um yeah so we released our first trailer on on during the game trailers uh sorry not game trailers the uh game awards right yeah and um I still associate jefff key with game trailers for some reason um during the game awards and like a lot of people said it was the one of the most interesting one of the most striking looking um um trailers shown there and so that was good that was nice to see but then ultimately the game came out and so on and the the thing that we tried to do hoped we would get right is that we would form a little community that

people would be really passionate about playing this and so on and that ultimately did happen so that's something I'm really proud of and so generally we're doing really well with that early access was a toll Shot in the Dark by the way like we had no clue we've already been working for a couple of years right and then well we had no idea if it would sell or anything there every now and then it's the we have to make these decisions where we basically bet the entire company right where it's like well if this is not going to work I'm you know like let me jooy the unemployment line and but it's okay you know like it's just I I have this belief of like I'm not stupid right right I'm I'm GNA figure it out but if it's right it's right if my heart tells me I am passionate about this I want to do this I want to move forward with this then yeah you have to have the guts to just say [ __ ] it let's do it right was the uh was the launch of a Early Access game w is it beneficial like in the sense that you can read reviews and figure out where you failed and where

you're where you're where it's working like I I love Early Access by the way like I just it's the best it's just giving people something and like so for example right like Microsoft always had this thing with creators with designers and so on where they always warned designers like oh for user research right don't take it too hard on and all of this stuff and I'm just oh my God I love user research sessions because it's just hey there's nothing better for a designer than than hey I created this thing I give it to somebody and I watch them play and I watch their faces you know and their hands while they're playing and it's just that's the highest high that you will ever get right when you see a moment works and they are really enjoying themselves or not right like if not then as you said with NE with criticism and negative feedback and so on then you win either way right because the negative thing immediately medely a light should go off in your head oh but I can fix that right I I know how to do this better then right

and then you just fix all those things um and if it's good great you know like then you get the you know like you get the celebrate right yeah um so so I I always love um doing these tests and like just giving the game to people and Early Access is exactly that early access is just you give the game to a lot a lot of people and with no rest for the Wicket like there is zero chance I I like I don't care how smart you are as a designer right there is zero chance that you could design an erpg that is as complex on that level of complexity that you put out there and it's fully done and finished right right right just it's it's impossible it's just it doesn't work um so so then you release that into Early Access and you get all the feedback right and you get all the the data and so on and you just look at that right and then you get to shape it again and so on a lot of like I'm again like I I

grew up being a sculptor right and a lot of it is just molding right and like yes oh and now I see the thing that you're seeing right and and now I can make this better and like I can add a little bit more detail here and I can do that right and that's what Early Access is like to me and that's right amazing I love that because whenever when we did or it was always a packaged product right like it came out and hands off you can never touch it any more but then you see all the videos of like reviews and so on you like godamn we didn't fix this one thing I I open the [ __ ] for that six months ago you know well this is why Thomas this is why I don't know if I believe in the concept of feature creep anymore and I want to get your opinion on this I I think I said this last week during a live stream it just sort of it occurred to me that Fe the idea of feature creep assumes that you know what works for your game and what doesn't like without

without feature creepe sometimes okay here's an example we we did a we did Alpha Testing last year for our game Twisted Tower and we found out that people loved popping balloons you have a a mallet it's a first person shooter and you walk into this uh it's like a theme park but it's like horrifying and you can pop balloons with this Hammer now 2021 to version of thas would say do not spend money or time creating variations of balloons to pop no do exactly that and and CR boxes but that's that's feature creep right and I'm sure I'm sure and it's no slight to my publisher but I'm sure they would have said Thomas this should not be in your Milestones but now that we've released the demo now that we've done testing it's like I think this game is about balloons like they love the they love the balloons but like but feature creep feature creep is

necessary in my opinion it's it's it's not necessarily feature creep it's just I would call it feature crep it's like to me it's more like follow the fun right you do these tests and you just try to really shape it and try to see what is the thing that people really enjoy right crash bandicot is a really good example right where at first they didn't have the stupid boxes everywhere right but everybody love jumping on these boxes and crashing through them right and so they add other [ __ ] on boxes do it right and it's just that's good follow follow the fun right and do more of that like if people enjoy something just do more of it and try to fit the right balance of like where it's not untasteful or something right but if you already see something like that if people really see oh my God shooting these [ __ ] balloons is like super fun then by all means you know add a million more that's right well that brings me to my what I wanted to ask you about AAA um it sure seems like AAA is you remember the Steve Jobs commercials or the Apple commercials where you had

PC and mac and you had the GU you you had the PC guy who was like straight laced and he was always saying this is how you do things and then you had the Mac guy who was like cool and he was free and he was open he could do whatever you wanted I'm thinking about Triple A versus Indie right now and it it sure seems like Triple A Lock they've locked themselves into this this mindset of number one you have to spend a ton of money number two yes you have to accomplish all these different cultural things in your game to make everybody happy and then number three you have have 50 producers that's right and lock yourself into the gdd and whatever all the stuff is that we have to do for this kind of genre yes what are your thoughts on triaa is triaa going to survive yeah it's it's in real trouble right now and I mean basically what you're like what I'm seeing and this is I think what everybody's seeing now is that I I think we've seen the fall of the original game developers you know and their retirement and so on

right and I can very much tell you that that's been the case at blizzard right all the original Talent has left right there is no Mike MIM anymore there is no Rob Paro Frank Pierce is gone all these people are gone right and I I think like I mean video games are still very young you know like it's still a fairly young medium right like you still have people like mamoto doing it right now but like barely right like they're they're all started to either retired already or you know or or already have retired you look at BioWare right and once the doctors were not there anymore Boop you know everything kind of like didn't work as well anymore right and I I think it's that I think what you're really seeing is okay here's these companies that were initially created by Just creatives Right by and that back then those triaa Studios where what in these studios are now right they just made fun stuff with like a 10 10 person Team 15 person team that used to be AAA you know like in the

'90s early 2000s and so on um and then that changed right and it became Factory and I think what you're seeing right now is well these people all left for business reasons or hey my shares got bought out and I'm not happy anymore I don't want to be an employee any of that kind of stuff right and then now what what are you left with right you're left with like a name right like oh you know like here's a name and some IPS and but if you don't have anybody who can actually do something with that yeah you know like it's it's just factory work right and I think that's what people are seeing now that there's no love and passion there right like I I I remember over hearing uh Nick Carpenter um being frustrated at blizzard because when we when I was there we were already growing to 150 people in the cinematics team right and there's this rule of 100 or something right where once you pass 100 people

working on something things go to [ __ ] cuz like with under 100 you can still departmentalize things and then you still have departments that are like four to five people and then here's three more that work on this and then there's 10 people that work on this larger thing right yeah but once you reach that factory kind of level even if you're one of the main people and one of the main creative heads or one of the main Engineers or something right like you don't really matter that much anymore and I think that drains on you every day right that you're basically seeing I'm completely [ __ ] replaceable right it doesn't if I would leave tomorrow right like it like maybe the studio gets hit a little bit um but it doesn't really matter right yeah and so but the output is that it's not a person's Vision anymore right like I wouldn't like there's a good question for like why a book still you know to this day being written by one person wouldn't be we we be way faster if we would have books being written by 10 15

people right and of course we would but the quality would be utter [ __ ] nobody would want to read that same thing with directors right like why don't we have like 10 movie directors or well they do movie is not being like for example The Hobbit The Hobbit series that sure it's Peter Jackson but you had they had all these other directors who were directing in different locations and look look what you got you got this it it was like a McDouble from McDonald's that's what that movie was like whereas Lord of the Rings is like a really nice hamburger I don't know like a like from a custom Chef you know uh so it's it's it's happening and I think it happens behind the scenes I think a lot of a lot of writers will also you know they'll have plenty of Ghost Riders and stuff and it it comes AC it comes across as watered down and it's subconsciously so like you can feel it you can feel it or you can smell it it's like a SC as an artist I think everybody has that like you just like try to write a poem or something

right and every now and then you'll have that moment of inspiration where it's like wow that line is really good what I wrote here is like that touches me on some level right and there's Humanity in that right but if you remove that if you just have 10 people produce that every day right and they don't have that moment of like you know real Humanity right then who gives a [ __ ] that's I I think that's by the way that's why people have this thing with AI right now right producing that it's just producing that right where it's like it it does very generic stuff um I recently tried to use AI for a quest in the rest for the wicked it's the most generic [ __ ] I know I know it's good for code and I I it's good for code like it's great for code love I've been using it for code and and I've been told by some of my friends who are game devs that I need to not say that publicly but I'm just like look

claud's here to stay it's going to be here to stay and it's great it's super helpful Jonathan Blow I'd love to talk to Jonathan Blow about this because he's all he's he's definitely been saying lately that software is getting bloated and I'm like it's just going to get exponentially worth worse with like Claude yeah but it's here to stay right like what are your thoughts on that do you think do you think there's a way to avoid no no of course it is like it's this whole thing of like you know we used to have typists like the US employed millions of typists in the 70s or something right then the computer came along and it was just hey wait we don't have to write up these letters anymore on typewriters right yeah and it's no you write it once on the computer and then you can print it a million times if you'd like to right so typists went away right and the same thing like if I if I have to write some code and I'm like oh my God I don't know all these API calls or you know some some [ __ ] what would I do I would just look it up anyway right

like I would just use Google search and like H I don't know how does this function work what do I have to pass into it and so on right you're doing that already anyway right and with AI it's just it's literally just spitting out the stuff that it was trained on and so if it's useful it's useful right but AI should be seen as just another tool in your toolbox right because that's what it is I use it a lot actually just to for brainstorming right where I know well it's never going to give me a design or anything right but just hey come up with 50 different ideas for spells right and like maybe there's two three five things in there that I could actually use right yeah but that's that's I think really useful and for code it's really useful but also just for code that it's actually been trained on because for example our gameplay programers hat it because it's just we have very specific code that has to be written for our quantum network ler and so on and it's just dog [ __ ] because it doesn't it doesn't like it doesn't understand that code right yeah um but yeah AI I think it's the same as like I

I love what George brusser recently on Twitter uh posted about about AI that it's just literally he saw the same thing when Photoshop came about right but it's like oh my God that's cheating right it can literally flip the pixels for you you know and it's like yeah that's shitty work who wants to do that yeah it makes me think you know it makes me think that um a it will eventually find itself in a situation where it's primarily used as a tool and not like a paintbrush like a a a paintbrush is used to be inventive and a screwdriver is used to be constructive M and maybe I'm just generalizing it but I just don't see AI as being ultimately inventive like inventing something cuz like in its very

nature it's the opposite of inventive right right it certainly can't do that yet like in its nature it's also still quite stupid right because it's studed everything about Shakespeare but if you even try to just like write me a page of some here's some story outline right write me one page that is similar to what Shakespeare would write yeah it it just feels so hard it it's just it's just the worst [ __ ] [ __ ] well I think I think I think the the difference between sorry to interrupt but I think the difference between an llm and a human is that human beings we we are kind of llms like we take inspiration and we we we distill it down but we mix it with something that's inherently in us something right whatever it is I think it's the soul I think it's a Divine Consciousness to some degree something that's magical there's something magical that when you when you combine that or multiply against our inspiration from other you know sources like I could take

inspiration from Bioshock for example and I can mix that with Thomas brush and boom something comes out whereas with Claud it's like Claud Claude is nothing Claude does not exist do you know what I mean um so you can't mix Claude with something else all you can do is mix something else does that make sense I'm not sure if that's but I'm sure all of these discussions had been had before you know like in 80s when synthesizers came out and it was this whole oh my God we don't have to use instruments anymore and what happens to all these people that play instruments and nothing happened right like they're all still employed they all have their jobs it didn't matter you know like yes the synthesizers were used and are used and so on right and lots of people can now make music that can't play an instrument and that's ultimately a good thing right yeah yeah um you know you had all these musicians that couldn't even read notes right and still we're making music and that's great you know like because art should be just it should be liberating right there there's there there's a

reason why in Europe all the museums used to be free right you like you could just go to any Museum and like it used to be completely free and people could just do that because it's that's what it should be that's what art should be right it gives you that um spark of life that nothing else can quite give you right like if you love something so hard and so deep like it's like you can love a that way or you can love you know some art output right some result from that right but um not much else right I don't necessarily fall in love with the food I eat maybe some people do right but um but with music right like so for example I mean nothing hits as hard as if some musician right writes a piece of music that can directly sap into your brain and directly address some things and ultim like so with AI and so on right like you see I I see there's just I use it as a tool I use it frequently by the way I

know there's a lot of AI haters out there um I'm not I I wrote an item manager that I love for norest for the wicked that was fully written just with AI and so on and I I do the thing that Andre capari does right where it's just I don't give a [ __ ] about the code anymore even if it's like I have one script that is like 6,000 lines of code I don't give a [ __ ] it's just oh that's so relieving to hear I'm the same way man I live dude I live stream all the time and and sometimes I'll have like it's not a ton but I'll have like 500 people watching and they're like Thomas oh how can you do that code like that what's wrong with you and I just yeah it's horrible code and I'm like welcome to 2025 baby you you can get away with crappy spaghetti code and no one knows um it doesn't [ __ ] matter as long as it works right it doesn't matter it also ultimately everything has to be optimized right but it doesn't matter like I I I I can give you an analogy like so when I started out with 3D Graphics right um and mo 3D modeling

there was this whole debate on like subdivision surfaces on um everything should be modeled with quads right with like oh you can't put a triangle in there and so on right and it's just I saw so many people that were so concerned about the technical aspects right of like but I can't do this thing I can't move this Vortex here and turn it into a triangle because there's rules against it right and and it's this whole dude [ __ ] the rules just just follow shape make sure it's great you can clean it up after it's fine right but as long as it works it works you have to get to the gal you have to get to what it what the thing that you crafting wants to be do the clean up after it's fine right but but get the art out of it it reminds me of the way that uh America the the the 13 colonies the way we won the American Revolution was you had um the Bri British soldiers they were straight laced and they did everything the right way they had their lines and

they'd walk down and shoot uh in straight lines right in in rows and then the colonies were like screw that let's go run around in the woods and wear and wear camo or whatever or wear brown shirts and and green pants it's gorilla Warfare and the same is true with Indies I just feel like Indies are running circles around Triple A uh the same is true with the Press it's like shows like this and YouTubers and ticktockers they're running circles around the Press right and it's this mindset of saying why do I need to do this the way that everybody's telling me to do it what's the point um for me I've always looked at the end the the the end of the equation by the way this is always how things move forward right that's also what rock and roll was used to be about right that it's just why are we still playing this folk music something there's all this stuff that we could explore and like and then there were all the detractors of like this is Satan's

work and all of that right it's like dude we're just trying to have fun play to making art creating music and so on right and like if you can push like up the Ane right like I think a lot of times like I I I have kind of like the reputation now that I'm a little bit um that every now and then when I see things at moon right that it's like Oh Thomas writes this very much over the top right but it's like no you have to like you really have to try to push yourself and try to really up the empty cuz my thinking was always doesn't [ __ ] matter you you shoot for 15% so it's okay if you miss right because you still land at 100% but if you shoot for 90 you will land at 70 and 70 is not good enough you know yeah that brings me to my last question for you Thomas um how how do you feel being you you know you've there's a lot of questions surrounding that but the first one is um

do you exhaust yourself because you're a very salty person uh what I mean is like there's a lot of flavor in like there's most people don't have a ton of flavor like you you're I I was reading your Tweet your Twitter today or your ex profile it's like you have so many amazing takes you'll do big paragraphs uh or like like 10 or like three three paragraphs about an idea or just a thought you had and it's not even about game devb necessarily and I'm just like you're so full of um inertia or or potential energy it's just like boiling up and you're sitting here going I want to be 150% and no rest for the wicked the last sentence is uh Precision Precision action RPG set to reinvent the genre and it's like man this guy's like going all out all the time and you're a father right um two kids you've got two kids you're running a business are you are you exhausted how do you

feel um I think the important thing in life is that you just do what you love right and then everything kind of comes easy so I I I I I think that's really the trick right and that you have to teach people early on right like that it doesn't matter how long it takes right but find out your true Talent find out what you're passionate about what gives you motivation find out what it is like what task it is that you would do even if you wouldn't be paid for it and then do that right because then like right now I work in 17 18 hours a day um because we have to get um this huge update out that we're working on for for No Rest For The Wicked yeah and I love it right it's just I I can't like I literally wake up in the morning right and then I look at the watch and I'm like oh it's you know I've been working till 5:00 a.m. yesterday and then oh

it's 11:00 a.m. 11 a.m. now and I just I just want to get back to but I set up this really cool special attack yesterday I can't wait to put up set up the effects and so on right because this I still have that drive of like just being as excited as a kid of like man I can't wait to set up the special attack and then you know show it to everybody and like you know get the whole oh my God this is so cool that we finally have this right and I'm trying to to do that in other people as well right so when when we have Patrick in our team for example right he's a huge farming game fan and um and we're getting into that very soon with the sacrament update right and every now and then he does something and I'm just you know whenever he creates a cool feature or something I'm just this is so [ __ ] cool right this is so so so I think that's what's really important also in any studio right that you celebrate each other's successes right that it's that it's you know like that it's just you know that

people know hey they're being appreciated right and there's there's a weird dilemma there with this right because I not the kind of person who constantly compliments people I expect people to be great otherwise they wouldn't be working with me I'm sure they love you um yeah it's just I I I don't know why right but I'm I'm not that kind of person like I I but I love when I see them just committing something and then in the commit message I see oh I worked on this thing and I'm like [ __ ] yeah that's finally in you know like That's so exciting and then updating the ref story and then loading that in and like seeing that is just I still get a huge kick out of it so it's that and then I I did have because you said you asked about kids and so on right so for some time in the industry uh especially in the development Community I did feel that a lot of people were kind of negative against family and having kids and so on right um simply because it is energy you know

like ultimately oh yeah it boils down to a lot of energy a ton of energy it's just it's insane but it also gives back a lot right and it gives you inspiration and it gives you like because otherwise if you don't have that um and you don't have the private life side figured out right then I think you can very easily spiral out of control right and just have thoughts that are crazy and you know like really mess things up right I think the just as humans I think we need a solid base right and if you have that if you have a understanding wife that understands that you're crazy and if you have you know kids that love you and so on right I think that gives you that solid foundation and that feeling of like I know what I'm working for and I know that I have people that are behind me and so on and I don't fear anything right and that that I think is

is what makes it work right like the whole loving the job and then just do the right thing you know just do what feels right to you right and even if people tell you again and again you know like hey it's not the right business decision or this or that [ __ ] that right just follow your gut because I've I've learned like if I've learned anything in the last 15 years or so it's just trust your intuition right like just trust your intuition CU a lot of times you will you know look back and go man I should have done it in that way right away right because you know just follow your intuition for some reason there's this weird thing and you said you're religious right I yes I'm not yeah but but there is I don't know why right but a lot of times in life like your heart already knows where things should go and you just have to have the guts to say okay like it feels like I need to head into the direction so I'm not going to do it yeah some strange intuition it's

like uh the the the The more I've made games the more of a theist I've become um because it just feels like you know this whole simulation Theory I'm like this isn't really new it it's basically just theology it's like some Game Dev up in the clouds you know he's got this server that he's pumping energy into and that we're in this little biome of yes this game and so when I make games I'm like oh man this feels this I'm playing God here and and if I if we can create simulations here who's to say that we're not a created simulation exactly and so there's something there to that and this this idea of intuition it is strange it is strange like how but you know but so what's so hard is that some people it seems like they don't have intuition and it seems

like everything they touch just falls apart you know have you ever wondered why you seem to have a really good gut instinct but people in your family or your friends don't seem to have that where where does that come from do you have we all just I I'd like to think so where do that come from you know I think it just boils down to what is the work what are you doing as an individual right and I do think I believe in that whole thing of like everybody has their own Talent right and everybody is an individual and everybody has their thing going on and we're all different right but if we work together we can achieve things that we that we couldn't do by ourselves right and there's magic in that there's something like I think that's how Humanity survived right and like just did better right because hey hey I know how to make a house you know how to cook the other person knows how to fight now we become

a little town and you know things grow and that kind of thing um and I I I see that at Moon as well right this whole thing of like hey together we're better than we would be alone and that's a huge reason why you would not work as a solo death right but actually work with people because there's magic that happens when two people come together or more people come together and they all have a common goal and everybody can help help with their individual talents right that's really great I don't know why some people why you think that some people don't have it I I think maybe some people still haven't found the thing there after yeah um could be right but I do think everybody has the potential you know to to have that you just a lot of times like some people you know might not have found the thing yet that they would do even if they wouldn't get paid right that they are really passionate about or they didn't have the guts to follow that right like there's lots of oh I you know wanted to become

uh an astrologist but I had to go to med school and become a doctor instead right and it's like that's the worst that's like don't waste your life right know I know well it's this it really does I think it comes down to fear you keep you keep mentioning guts and whenever you say it I I I apologize if this is offensive but it makes me think of Arnold Schwarzenegger whenever you say you got to have the guts it's like that Austrian but it's like that austri intensity of like uh that he made famous which is have the guts I think I tweeted this today I tweeted what did I tweet I can't get on Twitter it's okay it's okay it works okay so I tweeted today I said uh and it's it's highly relevant to what you're talking about I said um look fear is often shrouded in wisdom you think you're being wise when in reality you're probably just scared say yes do crazy stuff take the leap go on an adventure um you're not going to be homeless you're not going to die you'll be all right and you'll have a cool story to

tell I think ultimately people are just so you know they just get so scared what if what if this happens or what if that happens and it's like or by the way [ __ ] could happen all the time you could get laid off immediately from whatever it doesn't matter right like you like life scary you know embrace it right there's this great um Game of Thrones quote right Tyrion talks to Jon Snow and he's like you know hey don't be like just wear these things like armor right on you and like nobody can hurt you and um I I recently treated something similar with just I I took that kind of like Nike thing of just do it right right and a lot of times at moon for example um somebody will have an idea sometimes it's me sometimes it's somebody else in the studio right and at a triple a studio or at most your play studos that I know like you couldn't then just go and do that right like CU it's just oh

but that hasn't been discussed with the producer and we'd have to have a meeting with that right and the production manager would have to decide on that and you know like hey then there's the creative director you would have to pitch the idea to him and so on and it's just [ __ ] all of that right like if you feel in your heart that there's some great idea here right and it could work then it's so much better to just [ __ ] do it don't think about all the edge cases don't think about all the stuff that that could fall apart and then also that's where experience matters right like that that the the biggest thing you get from experience is just that you know how to handle situations right when times get tough that you know well wait a second I've been here before right I know how to maneuver a situation like that right and that's why it's really important to you know like have people that have real experience in in around you right because they will be able to help you maneuver things and um and that like we do that 100%

intentionally right that we just say we want that feature in we haven't thought about all the edge cases yes the whole building might collapse we don't care we we don't care we like you have to do it because it could be great right it could lead to something really great it's the same as you and your balloons right if you put those balloons in and it's [ __ ] fun right and now there's this whole should we turn the whole game into a balloon popping game right if you know this is fun right and like it's the right thing just [ __ ] do it right it doesn't matter if it changes dramatically all your plans and so on right life is what happens while you're busy making other plans it it is what it is oh I love that that's a great quote to end on dude I love that's joh Lon by the way I know I know I know I know you didn't make that up but that's a good quote yes I'm going to cut that out and say that you claimed you made that up get you in more trouble um dude this

was so fun Thomas I it's it's a honor to to get to know you um I've always always wanted to talk to you so this has been really really fun I always feel a bit comfortable with that kind of stuff right because I I used to be in the same boat like when I got to Blizzard for example back then and the first time I saw like Mike Bim right or like Nick Carpenter and I was like they made all the games that I loved you know and I it was like in reverence right and like almost holy right and yes I I I never like there's always these things in life where you feel like oh once I achieve this my whole life will change and things will feel different right and they never do every day just feels like okay well that's just the next day right yes the plane Never Lands that's what I always say um you're never fully arrived you're never fully satisfied but it's fun exactly you're always a student right and if somebody like I that's why I always get uncomfortable with it right CU in my head I'm still the same as I

was when I was 22 right and it's just kind of strange when people are like oh you achieved this thing right and you made ay and all of those things it's like yes I did and so can you right like go out do something great and then we will all be swooning right like that's that's what I would love to see that people just you know like take that also as inspiration right like look at the people that you love learn from them them study their stuff go out make something better that's good man that's really good well appreciate your time link is in the description for No Rest For The Wicked you want to do that in the description sure yeah um yeah no rest for the wicked is a huge thing we have our Wicked site again like this this podcast comes out a lot later than than we're recording it right but we are working on a huge huge update called the breach um and there's a there some huge announcements regarding uh Moon Studios and so on um that we're making during the wicked inside that probably will have been mon ago or

so um but it's really exciting like I'm really excited about all of that and like where things are heading where we're going with norest of wicket for 2025 and ultimately I hope that people see you know like the same thing that I'm seeing that Ori was our Mario and like no rest for the wicked becomes a Zelda and like I'd like no rest for the wicked like I'm I'm not going to stop on it until we you know until we really reinvented the genre and did the thing that we said we would do yeah it's looking amazing man um super excited for you so links in the description for that and yeah I think that's it man really good conversation thanks absolutely thank you thas don't forget to check out ovani sound and their spring into development bundle if you want to add some highquality audio assets to your library as well as plugins to optimize your sound integration and design workflow you can check it out Simply by clicking the link in the Des description cheers