Inside the Indie Mind: Zach Barth (Zachtronics)

[Music] hi is this on okay I'm Chris graft I'm editor-in chief of gamma Sutra we are a website about game development um and uh we have here Zach bar hi welcome Zach yeah Zach Zach is the maker of games that uh make me feel like an idiot and also a genius um these games include if uh you know just in case no one knows you just showed up randomly this talk at 5:30 on Monday space cam TI 100 infin Factory Ironclad attack this these aren't all of them either Opus Magnum infin minor Shenzhen iio which is up for the igf Excellence in design this year what do you think about that that's pretty

pretty neat huh guess we'll see so um hopefully you can get a few um few insights uh from Zack that may or may absolutely not be applicable to your uh current uh stat as a game develop learn anything here yeah there might not be a lesson yeah so so anyhow um first thing I want to ask uh because your games are so unique so I want to hear how you define them so what is a a zonics game in your in your mind oh okay so there's a term that I've seen online at the Zack like which I'm not really a fan of you can't say that you like that when it's you know so uh the term I like to use a zonic Style zonic Style puzzle game uh so um notably like ironcloud tactics is a game by Z actronics that does not fit that really and like from like a marketing standpoint like all of our other games and then Ironclad tactics it did not sell very well so um but the rest of our puzzle games have done you know they're sort of like in

the same magnitude as each other um probably the biggest thing that defines them is their open-endedness right like they're I mean even the word the word puzzle game is really useless because there's so many different kinds of games that fall into the bucket of puzzle games um so our but our our puzzle games things they have in common is they're usually about like an engineering topic we give you a set of tools um and then with those tools we give you a set of challenges that are created they're they're I me I don't know what defines an open-ended challenge other than that there's a lot of different solutions that you can build to these challenges so I guess by definition they're open-ended yeah and an interesting um description I heard you actually say you they're like about optimization yeah well that's like as like a second order thing like you can play as actronics game and never worry about optimizing but they facilitate optimization because there's so many different pzz like like a puzzle game with one solution there's just one solution so if you get there you're done that's literally all there is if a puzzle has like a thousand Solutions maybe you can come up with criteria where some of them are better than others and if you can create criteria that Mak some solutions better

than others now you have an optimization game and people can try to like go from a bad solution to a better solution instead of merely getting the solution yeah so that optim in practice optimization is a large part of it for a lot of people we we recently added something called hermit mode to Opus Magnum one% of our players turn on hermit mode uh which is where it shuts off all the histograms and leaderboards because a lot we we have we've actually gotten a fair number of people who are like I like I like these games but I actually get like either derailed or demoralized by seeing other people's scores and so like we reluctantly added this feature but like it was good it was there's 1% of people that are maybe actual Hermits yeah exactly you know it's cool like you should be able to play the game that way if you want like I I think that's fair you it's worked out yeah well that's very thoughtful of you to do that um so um one of the games in your early career and I I want to talk about this it's um of course infinim Miner and uh I would like to know what it was like making something like in fin minor um coming up with that

concept and then seeing it um totally explode and U in the form of someone else's game and in a bank account that was not yours yeah yeah it was I mean one way to describe it maybe is that it was like a car crash in slow motion like over the course of like a bunch of years just uh there's there's a lot of complex emotions that come with something like that like there's I there's stuff I've talked about publicly and then there's like I don't talk about all my feelings publicly and let's talk about the feelings you haven't made public yet oh God there's too many so I don't I don't I don't really remember a lot of it super well it's been years I mean it's been like when I don't even know when infm came out like 2009 right like it's been a long time there's a lot of stuff there's there's a lot of moments that I remember I mean there I was I was a CA um and was was working the igf uh this the the volunteers here I was working the igf festival award ceremony when Notch was up and won every award or whatever and I was sitting in the back just yelling at people who wereing to record it be like turn off your camera

don't record this yeah and like and just having to like I had to be back there watching it it's like wow that's like a weird thing like it was it was weird and it was complicated and like it's like my in the back with a bottle of wine just like I wish right like no not even just had to sit there and watch it and there's just weird stuff like the time I was at Target with my wife and there's like a whole rack of like Minecraft oh God and it's just like oh yeah those are t-shirts for kids like yeah well sorry I had to no it's okay I mean it's there there's a lot of stuff there right and so now I'm totally okay with it just because like it happens right and like as we we can see like it doesn't necessarily make your life better or make you happier to have a success like that and like just just just that's not based on anything that happen that sounds like I'm trying to be mean but it's true right like success like we act like success is the goal but like success is not everything like there's more to life

than succeeding financially it helps I guess but it's not going to help you make more money unfortunately yeah um and that's why that's why I brought it up not just to you know like pick at the scab um but but the idea of success as as in India especially today um it's such a hardfought thing to achieve and you fight tooth and nail for something and then you see in that particular it snatched away in such a dramatic way um I don't know what my question was there yeah that's okay yeah there's not an answer either so it's okay you already gave you already great gave a great answer so yeah um so even even though um you know there was INF minor um you've managed to keep on making games and and you know how do you what's what's your mindset you know when uh maybe post infom minor even you're just like okay I'm just going to keep on doing it and

you keep on doing it well and you maintain productivity so how do you get in that mindset and how do you put it into practice so notably infin Miner was a free game I did not sell it we didn't sell games back then I just made it and that I mean it perhaps if I had if it had been a couple years later when we were selling games maybe it would have ended up differently um so infin Miner comes out it does its little thing I I was honestly more upset with infin Miner that like I made this game that people liked it but like it wasn't really good enough and like people liked parts of it that I wasn't able to really capitalize on and then like people the it was in C and it was unobfuscated so then like the source code like I was publishing the source code without even realizing it basically and like people were making like hacked versions of the clients that ran the way they wanted and like I'm making games because I want to do something like I want to exercise my vision creatively and it turns out that when you're just kind of putting games out there in this weird amorphous way like you're not in control necessarily and so I made this game and I wasn't in control I was really upset I was like it I'm I'm going to stop making games am I allowed to use profanity in this yeah yeah okay um yeah so I I I actually there's like a post if you go back on my old blog it's like I'm going

to stop making games for a while sorry guys and I was like really like what the hell I don't know I I was I was in a in a weird State I guess but uh like a year later I was like man I got to make some games you know and that was when after seeing games starting to be sold I was like we should make a game and sell it and so I got some friends usually I just kind of would make games by myself and then like force a friend to play it I don't mean to interrupt but like just it's interesting he you go you know what I might do I might make a game and then have people give me money for it no it's crazy I made I made my flash games and people are like you should put it on congregate you should make you can get money for that I'm just like no I don't want I don't want I I really wanted nothing to do with that and in retrospect it's crazy I'm like money hungry now you know like oh yeah yeah I got it what's that space cam money yeah exactly yeah well so so we made space cam I I recruited some friends to help with it like we you know like I guess like braid had come out at that point in like World of Goo and it's like okay there's like a pattern here we can make a game and sell it we applied to be on Steam they rejected us um that was imagine that right yeah seriously um I don't think you have that problem anymore yeah so we were're like you know

hell with it like we'll make our own store and sell it ourselves we made spacecam uh I everybody was all rev share because back when you did that I guess people still do that but it was all rev share I paid some dude uh $5,000 I think to do all the art that was the total cost I'm like if we're lucky we'll make 10 grand off this game and then like the game comes out like it starts picking up steam Rock Paper Shotgun covers it you know we $100,000 300 I said to myself I was like if we can make $100,000 on this game I'm gonna quit my job I worked at Microsoft I was not a fan um I'm gonna quit my job and we're gonna go into or whatever I guess we didn't call it that we're gonna make games and so we got the 100,000 I'm like Ah that's not enough actually to run a studio I need more M then so I was like if we get to 300,000 we're going to do it and we did and and then like we're like yeah okay we quit we quit Microsoft and we we started up the studio and that was that was sort of how we made that transition and I think from then on it's just been every day like get up make games yeah and then then then you go to you go to Target and you see space cam shirts right kids are wear you got you got to make your

unfortunately yeah so I mean that's it's interesting and I think it's something that a lot of people in this room could probably relate to is there is I don't know if it's exactly impostor syndrome or what but just like yeah I don't want to I don't want to sell this no one's going to buy it did you have that in you had that in your head then just cuz there's no way that someone would give me money for this or it just seemed crazy like people weren't really buying indie games and the ones that were were like they they stuck out for un unclear reasons like why braid right like yeah like just circumstances right and and so like yeah it just didn't it wasn't even that I mean I'm chock full of imposter syndrome but like it was just like it just didn't make sense right and that was like when when Minecraft was selling with like the thing where it gets more expensive the longer you go on and like nobody knew what was going on and Humble Bundle was like a thing then and they were like oh we're not even going to pay for games anymore except we will and it's like like no one knew what was going on then right like by comparison everything is like really rigid now I think like it's either free to play and you're a horrible person or it's like sell it on Steam and sorry that was

meant to be uh an aggressive comment I don't actually believe that but yeah like it's it's kind it was it was crazy back then like the models of how you might make money or might not like I I wasn't in it for the money yeah it's but it's it's so much easier now though right in some way I mean it's not easier because like it doesn't it shouldn't be easier right like you're know there there's a fixed amount of money and you're competing and there's a bunch of stuff and you like people only buy stuff they know about and that's a tough game but like there's models for it at least I don't know if it's better I mean I don't have to say which one's better or worse I'm glad I got to do my thing when I did CU I think that was important for me yeah what about like with you know I don't even want to say it but like in Apocalypse like people were talk you know talk about that and really all that means is if there's a shi out of games everywhere like how do you navigate that I don't know I don't have to next question we launched space cam back before like it was different I mean when we when space cam got on Steam when they let us on Steam it was like they just

cut us a check right because there were that there weren't that many Indie Games there were enough indie games that like when you listed all of them we would always be there like and they were on Steam and they'd be there every sale and that was back when like the discounting was crazy like they do like one day only discounts and stuff and like you can make a lot of money just by being physically present yeah like if you came out with space cem today like without any of our previous games like I honestly don't know what would happen like and that's a lot of our stuff now I think sells well because like it's we have like this track record and we've made the same game over and over again and um that's secret and just people know about it like that really it's I don't know I don't yeah it's tough yeah okay so that partly answers my question how do you make gam so fast you just you just make the same game over and over again yeah that helps that's okay so that's part of it right that is my question how do you make games so fast because you in Indie for like 10 years right yeah I mean that's kind that's kind of but also not that long of a time but you released a whole bunch of games yeah and I mean our current goal is like I I want to release two games every year right and like that's that's I can't do

it that's not that's that's a little unrealistic but that's what I want right and I think that like wanting that to be the case is the first step right like wanting something like that um we cut a lot of Corners we like recycle a lot of just like things that we've learned like there's a reason all of our games look exactly the same I guess right like we just copy and we're literally copy and pasting code out of previous games to make our new game like it's it helps right and I I think part of it also is that like a lot of uh so I did talk at NYU and like the thing they teach at NYU Game Center is that you should like make prototypes and iterate and iterate like we just like make a game and just put it out there and like see what happens right the way you find out if your game is good is to release it right and like that's the real test and like I I can't tell if our stuff is fun like I could bring some people into the office they're all going to look like they're miserable it's a zonics game like they do not test well it does not it is impossible to tell if somebody is having fun by watching them play one of our games but like they're fun enough I guess I don't know it's it's tough so like I I don't I don't try to play that game right like we just put it out there and just try to do that and like it

works for now it's not necessarily always going to work I'm not saying you should do that but that's just what we do yeah there's going to be so many like people just copying their own games over and over again after this talk yeah so okay one thing I heard I was at valve and for a lunch recently and one of the things that uh that Robin Walker said was that they've they've crunched the numbers Indies don't make enough sequels that people like the triaa people know this that if you make a sequel It's going to do it's going to do okay and in games it seem like you know movies the rules that it'll do like not necessarily as well but pretty well in games it seems like sequels just keep doing better and better and better right like if somebody if your game comes out it has like an audience there's people who are going to find about it after but like it's it's old and they don't want to jump into an old game you make a second one now they're like okay now is the time to jump in on that right like Now's the Time to get a become a space cam fan cuz space cam 2 or whatever not we're not making space cam 2 don't worry or I'm sorry either way um but yeah like it's it help and so I think in that regard like I I I would never want to make a sequel it seems like a horrible thing to have to do right but but like we're effectively making sequels in a

way that I love right which is that we get to do the part that I love doing from scratch which is coming up the world the mechanics the puzzles all the systems like our games thrive on new mechanics because figuring out the mechanics is like the core fun part of it but like we're kind of making sequels and I'm okay with it and I think that really is like part of the the help that's what's helping now I'm wondering if all your games are in the same universe they are not okay they I've got I've got head Cannon for it but yeah like they're not they're not quite yeah well so um space cam exists in the infactor universe you start up space cam there's a or infinite Factor there's a little space cam pyramid thing hanging from the the rearview mirror of your truck oh so that's like what about that everyone yeah okay yeah so um one other thing with the way you've been telling story in your games and uh it's so much more narrative uh it feels more cohesive as your games have gone on so um what's your what's your approach to that cuz because your your games are super systems based mechanical and you might think this does really lend it s well to

telling a story but they do yeah I mean so this is something it started with spacecam even right we wanted we wanted to create a world for the game to exist in that you could go into that world and this is something that we've really like refined and worked on over and over and over again and like our current writer Matthew Burns in the back raise your hand everybody clap so he he he is the the genius behind all of our our story and our writing stuff and our music and our sound and um I think that in the past couple games like the two of us have really we so our our workflow now is that when we make a puzzle game like if we made like you know like shinj iio right the way we did shin and iio um is that the story in that is that we came up with like the world and the core concept and then I I told Matthew to go come up with a list of puzzle ideas for me so I didn't have to even do anything but no um come up with narrative puzzle ideas and so in the world of shinen iio it's like the near future like kind of blown out version of like just crazy stuff getting made you know like getting engineered and made and shipped and sold as products and so like come up with like 40 like crazy product ideas that you

you're able to write about and that are like descriptive enough that I can create a puzzle that represents that and so you know he came back with this list of things and then we went through and brainstormed them and I I I checked off the ones that I thought I could make into a puzzle and struck out the ones that seem too tough to make into a puzzle and like we you know we we split off but then we come and bring it back together is that we take like a puzzle and like a story thread and then weave them together and then like try to build little things that like connect them together and then like add in things like the solitire you know I wanted to make a solitaire game for shin iio and so we like work that into the story and like just kind of just stick everything into the story and so it's not like a lot of games like kind of pretend their movies when they do story stuff and they think about it as this linear thing we we try to build like this this world and then just like plug everything into it yeah and and you and you plug the player into it too we were just talking before before this talk um and it's like I I was talking about how I like desk games where it simulates you the actual you just sitting there you know just like I'm at an office yeah and then the more that we talked about it was VR yeah you're

actually at a desk W yeah wow it's so real tactile yeah yeah yeah and and even with shenen um there's the how'd you um come up like the the manual it's like like an employee man yeah it's a 40 page binder well okay so yeah yeah it's a 40-page binder filled with like there is no tutorial in shenen iio it comes with a binder so that has like there and there's not even a tutorial in the binder there's like application notes there there's lots of things that are real Electronics things like application notes which are kind of like tutorials on how to do something there's data sheets which give you technical information about your parts uh we've got like spec sheets which are per puzzle things that tell you like you know like the client comes to you and says here's the information we want you to build this thing and so it's stuff like that and so we compiled it all into this binder but then like we had an actual writer write it and so like we it's it's this huge vehicle for us to tell story and create a sense of place yeah and it's it's it's an iteration the way we came to it is just it's an iteration on TI 100 which came with a paper manual instead of a tutorial and

that was surely out of laziness which is that I didn't want to make a tutorial that tries to teach people how to do like fake programming so we just like we'll document it people can figure it out so and it's it's fun I mean that was that was around the same time that completely independently uh keep talking and nobody explodes or whatever like they came out with their manual and it's like yeah people like flipping through stuff like there's there's definitely a trend now for physical stuff like we're all like used to everything's on phones and you can't really touch it so people love like hipsters love physical so yeah yeah to yeah go to Kinko's print out the binder for the we did we did a deluxe edition where we actually made like a binder like we got like binders printed and we had everything printed so it's like a deluxe binder we did like a thousand of them we mailed them out by hand ourselves in one day it was insane but if you go to the igf Pavilion shinen IO is there and we actually have one of the original binders Please Don't Steal it um we have one of the original binders out and so you can see like what like the the gold standard of what this was supposed to be and if if I had my way I would get a binder out to everybody but not everybody wants it and that's really hard it turns out so so um

we we're GNA we got like five minutes before we're going to open up for q& a so if you want to keep anything in mind um uh so but we did talk on um or you had talked on on the gamma Sutra twitch stream um about intrinsic rewards and design and the thing with your games is that you is so satisfying um without you know um feeling like there's no like gotcha mechanics or anything like that we were joking that like why Zack bar why do you hate progression mechanics yeah yeah yeah are you yeah anti your rumor has it that you're anti- all progression mechanics so can you talk a little about um the uh being being rewarded as a player and enabling a player to feel that yeah so the reason I know I never would have made Minecraft is that I would never make a game about punching trees right and I I'm not a fan of like the RPG based progression mechanics and

like that kind of Stu it feels fake right like I don't it drives me crazy and so at least when it comes to designing my own games um they're really skill-based right they're really about actual skills you know they're not real world skills like I don't really care if we're teaching somebody to really program but like when you're playing our game the work you do to solve the game or whatever the the when you're playing the game you're going to be doing a real skill it might not be a real real skill like that exists outside but within the game it's going to be a real skill like we're not just going to Pat you on the back put on your resume yeah exactly yeah like we're not just going to Pat you on the back and make your numbers bigger so you're actually doing the same thing the whole time but it feels like you're going like this we're going to actually force you to go like this and like for I I can't imagine designing games that aren't like that and I think that's a limitation of me personally like if we could do that I would be much more Rich right like that's that's where the money is is games that make people feel like they're awesome you know but it's like I I just demand it that you just have to be awesome sorry like I and I think there's like an authenticity in it and obviously like that's the strength of our games and that's why we sell them right is that like some people it's the Dark Souls thing right regardless of whether Dark Souls is

actually like something that's just patting you on the back and pretending that you're great or it actually requires you to be great like that's that people so there there there is a there are enough people that feel that that's a thing they want that we can keep doing what we're doing for now yeah and um and talking about the people who you make games for um I like obviously you have some kind of magical formula where you can just really appeal to one specific Niche audience who will buy your games over and over again right you're a marketing genius [Laughter] I stumbled into something so so so how like how much of your design and the games that you make are are driven by what you know your fans like none of it I don't I don't make games to please people I think that's the like I'm not doing this for you guys sorry I'm doing it for myself and so obviously that's a lie right like I'm a designer and you have to think about who you're designing for but like also like the thing that really motivates me is not the desire to please people the thing that really deep down like the the little like the the speck of dirt at the the heart of the Pearl is that like I I just I have to

get this stuff out there like I I have I can I can see it and it has to become real and and that's really it like you just have to bring it to to fruition exactly you guys are just along for the ride so yeah y'all been played so um what do you think that we should do some questions yeah we can do questions i' I've been told that we can run over slightly so that was a mistake to tell but we have we have rules we have ground rules oh God okay I'll I'll the mean guy okay so so you can ask questions but it has to be a question and it you really can't take like more than 5 Seconds to ask the question so get straight to the point we're going to ask the question and we'll get you an answer and then we can do lots of QA Q&A so all right that's okay uh can you please talk about your the process for how you decide or how you go from these effectively programming things to making them actually fun because nobody makes a game about making like coding in C yeah okay so question how do we make programming fun the answer is that we don't we don't make something that's

well that sounds bad um so it's debatable whether they're fun oh that's the microphone that's right I don't have to lean in um it so there's a reason we haven't made a game about programming in c right it's not fun and so we designed tool sets that strip away all the stuff that actually sucks about real life our version of electronics is like monopole like weird Electronics you know like it makes it easier it makes it more fun like we we strip away the bad stuff uh so you mentioned that uh the design of the world came before the design of the puzzles at least in chenin yes um when talking about specific mechanics when how does that play into the process is that do you think of the mechanics as part of the world or is it more at the time of creating the puzzles question where do the mechanics come from answer uh the mechanics are probably the first thing right so when I say the world comes first I'm also lying the first thing that comes like is that in in my head I have to think of a mechanic that I'm like man I really want to see a game with that mechanic and like that's where it comes from so with with shenzen iio it was like man what if

TI like what if the ti nodes like in TI 100 were actually things you can move around like that's the kernel of the idea I don't know what the language is going to look like I don't because the language is like a reflection of the rest of the game we have to build a language that allows you to build the things that like we want you to build from a story standpoint so that comes later but like there's that core idea and that's a mechanical thing like I'm I'm I'm the creative director or whatever like I'm a mechanics focused person it's probably obvious so that's what comes first like truly first thank you yeah what's next stuff um so when you're designing puzzles for your games and I've in particularly in mind Opus Magnum um to what extent because there's a huge breadth that you can optimize in different ways for when you are building those puzzles and designing them as as the Creator to what extent U like how much how optimized are you going in the process of figuring out what that puzzle is when building it so do do we optimize our puzzles in advance or I no I mean like when you build the puzzle and are

you figuring out what are the maximally optimal ways in different you just I mean that that's the beauty of so the way we make our puzzles I've talked about this before I just come up with something that looks solvable and interesting and then we ship it you know and so like it's I am not the best player I'm not optimizing it like does it look interesting cool Secrets Revealed do you ever play any of the user generated levels on Steam Workshop oh no no I'm not a fan un's this guy called not made a level for Shen and IO it's so it's it's I'm torn because like I I love our players obviously because they're playing our crazy so that's cool um there there's definitely a demand for more puzzles I'm really I have a really specific thing I'm trying to do with our puzzles and oftentimes like our players are not going for that like a lot of the shinen puzzles are like build this algorithm or do this programming thing I'm really like I guess that's what the game looks like I'm doing is making these things about algorithms but it's like I really want to make a puzzle about building like a sandwich making machine that's like plays a little patriotic song and puts up a little flag like that's what I'm excited about and

so it's it's hard for that to show up in in user created puzzles so I it's not a good answer I'm sorry guys uh so I saw you Google Talk and uh I was curious if you've given any more thought to taking kind of like a useful subset of reality and trying to gamify it and kind of like teach no no there's plenty of other people trying to do that gotcha so you're just punting on the idea I not really punting on I I think that what we do is beautiful in its own right like the if you learn something that has no bearing on reality you're really just doing it for purely intrinsic reasons like there's something in that it's like uh it's it's yeah it's it's it's beautiful it's also probably more profitable so uh how do you tune difficulty and in particular how do you know when something's too easy okay question how do we tune difficulty answer poorly um it's oh God I so we collect stats so we collect metric about like how people are actually playing through our game so

that gives us like a question of like are do we do we really screw this up is there a level that everybody's getting stuck on that we don't want them to get stuck on so we have feedback in the form of that um in general like Opus Magnum wasn't meant to be an easy game it just was when we came up with the mechanics and started coming up with puzzles it just was as difficult as it is I actually was worried that people weren't going to like the game because it was too easy but I wasn't about to make it harder because I didn't like that's not how it works right you just you come up with like a system and you just get whatever you get out of it so it turned out that went okay so yeah you briefly touched on this in terms of your setronics genre kind of being a little bit Niche but what do you think about marketing do you do you Market your games at all or think about marketing question do we Market answer no um we're we're we're we don't we don't like it's they Market themselves I don't know how you would Market I don't know if I believe in marketing well well like I mean it doesn't matter if you believe in it or not it exists I I guess um but but but like the the um um Opus Magnum yeah

Opus Magnum like every time you beat a puzzle there's a button you can push and it like poops out a gift on your desktop of like your solution and then people are like it looks beautiful people put them on Twitter like that was a marketing decision I guess but it's also a game design decision like no marketing person could tell you to do that yeah right like I don't I don't think of it as marketing I just think about it as like making a game that's like like games are meant to be played by human beings like you design for the person design for all aspects of the person yeah Zack bar marketing genius right here yeah he doesn't even know it are we are we can we keep going for like a couple more minutes okay okay um saying now as an aspiring Game Dev that's also doing well in uh what like Tech development how did you find the time and energy to work on your own game before you oh yeah okay so so we did space cam when we were at Microsoft so Microsoft is nice and that they have a good Moonlighting policy that as long as you're not touching your stuff you can do whatever I don't know if it's still that way also I'm not a lawyer so I don't know but um at the time time it was legit and um we you

know I would go to work I was on office which is like the opposite of exciting but like one of the nice things about it is that there wasn't any Crunch and so I would go to work from you know 10: to 4: and then I would I would just kidding uh I I would and then I would I would go home and then I would frantically work on Space Cam and then like on the weekends we would all get together at my house which my wife's sugarin and we would all work on spacecam and we did that for a year and then space cam was a thing so like you just do it if you want honestly I think it's the best way a lot of people I guess not a lot of people some people are like I'm going to quit my job and make Indie Games it's like that is a bad idea you're probably not going to succeed on your first one uh we did it while staying at jobs and it was amazing nobody risked anything we had fun we we didn't feel like pressure to perform or like make money or anything we just made this thing because we wanted to so but that was 10 years ago things are different so you want to make games about real skills but not real real skills how do you balance the level of abstraction of actual engineering problems oh how do I how we balance the level of it I mean we I I don't think we

come in it that way like I don't try to take a real system and then like tune it until it becomes something that's playable it's I I just sort of imagine it as like i' I've described it before as that like I'll read about something but then I'll get lazy and not understand all of it and so like but that makes me think of like what my version of it is and then I just make that happen so it's a very creative process and that that's why I think it would be impossible like I we tried making educational games it suck cuz you can't do that like you're trying to actually Port something real over as opposed to just having this like fantasy version of electronics he could we uh get a sigmar's garden Standalone game maybe on mobile oh probably not I don't know we didn't so we did shenen I shenen soliter on iOS spoiler alert did not sell many copies um we did on Steam did not sell many copies you probably already own sigmar's garden in the form of Opus Magnum so like that's the thing right so probably not all right the single tier right not everything do makes money unfortunately I think that's it did you

have a nice time yeah this is fun this is fun let's do this again next year yeah so oh yeah thing so I have some Opus Magnum ironon patches so if you've beaten the main campaign of Opus Magnum you don't have to beat the final chapter with the production puzzles but if you've seen the credits and beaten the game you can come up and get one of these for free after this talk I have a lot of these I ordered way too many so not that many people beat this game it turns out so yeah thanks everybody yeah thank you