Inspiring Developers | Best of 2021 Part 5

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increasing your revenue by learning from your competitors they just release a free guide on that actually so head over to appfigures.com app f i g u r e s dot com forward slash on o n forward slash gain dev unchained to try app figures for free if you like it then use our special code gdu 3030 to get 30 off for the next three months [Music] what's up everybody welcome to another episode of gamedev unchained they don't want a game development podcast about game development in the lifestyle thereof i am your host brandon pham back at it to conclude this best of 2021 series with a part five of five hopefully you guys have been joined this past week worth of recap episodes of the year to kind of set up what this next year of

excitement is looking like for every successful team whether big or small it is always made up of a individual effort combined with other amazing individuals right so i want to kind of isolate these amazing people that i was able to interview last year unfortunately i was only able to kind of pick four but uh within these interviews i found very encouraging inspirational conversations and i definitely want to kind of give it its limelight and if you guys have the time you guys like the little short clips here i really really encourage you guys to kind of listen to the full episode whenever you can so first up this is with scott mcgrath and stark uh scott and i actually go way back at the beginning of my career and worked at 2k and shipped bioshock together and he was very interesting

because he made the move from designer to programmer so we reconnected and was able to kind of catch up at the beginning of the year for an hour uh about what's been going on and how he was able to basically be a professional [Music] at major companies for two different career paths right so he's currently at massive entertainment uh previously just shipped division two and working on probably the next one who knows but uh it was a very interesting talk so this is from episode 251 from designer to programmer with scott lagrasta enjoy conversation but i guess it is like two separate minds where it's like one is very creative and one's very like by the numbers right yeah and it does vary from like studio to studio like i have been like you know when we were working on bio too like i feel like we had a really good relationship with the other programmers they're like they're all great people a lot of them really helped

me and in my transition to engineering and like yeah i i was still in contact with them and consider them friends and then i have worked at other studios where like they're like on my do not hire list like if i see that person's resume come across like you know somebody's desk or whatever i'm like maybe you should not hire that person there yeah super rude like you know maybe they're really talented and maybe they're uh technically competent but like i i'm a tool for this man i don't have the patience for like people who are like who like are rude or proud beat others or demean others just because they think it makes them better like i'm not like miss me with that totally yeah i mean i think everybody who's been through this uh have basically a list that the uh that they keep up with um but i i also kind of am drawn to what you said before like you know you kind of being sequentially in the area a lot like a lot of those companies for a good period just shut down once uh you know one after another and yeah

just trying to be a developer in that area for a while just felt very disheartening and um can really burn someone out unless you focus on you know getting the work done and moving on uh everything else become a distraction and there's a lot that i tried to convey to listeners a lot to you know i went through that period you know just office politics and all that stuff and yeah it definitely wears you down and by the end of it it serves no purpose you know uh for for yourself so a couple of things that you kind of pointed out like i didn't know that you had a tech art background before going designs i just assumed that you've always been a designer so so was the design was more about you wanting that the creative control over the game that you put out and then going back figuring out you know what happened there where you felt design wasn't fulfilling enough yeah well it's uh it's interesting well i mean it's it's unique at least like

my career path like the first you know sort of ten years or so where i did design work that was really largely influenced by a single conversation early in my career and it's really wild to think about that now um where it was just a series of sort of two chance meetings where um i had you know i i just started in qa and i was like all right i'm you know this is again this is like 2004 or whatever when you know that was uh you know a pretty viable path into the industry still um but i was like all right i'm in i i've got my foot in the door i'm gonna move up now how do i do that and i was i was of two minds i was like okay well i like the design seems really interesting like that seems where like the fun is where you really define what the game is about but i love like you know the engineering puzzles and like those really unique challenges um you know like it's i like to say it's like detective work but you might not realize that you're also the person who committed the crime um and so i was sitting there like you know trying to figure out what i was going to do and um and somebody came up to me and it turned out it was i forget his exact

position but he was some like big wig in the programming you know uh department there and i was like oh hey cool like i'd really like to know you know what's what's my path to being a programmer here and he said oh where's your degree from i was like i don't have a cs degree and he just shook his head and was like if you don't have a cs degree you're not going to be a programmer and i was like oh okay uh all right well that sucks and so i was kind of bummed out about that and then you know a couple days later um uh one of the lead designers came around and we had a conversation and it was totally the opposite where he was just like he's like yeah like you know we'll like let me know what you're interested in we'll get you on the design track you know we love moving people up it'll be great like you know just you know put your time in in qa and uh and learn the ropes and uh and yeah we'll see if we can find some work for you and he absolutely did like you know like i said 10 11 months later he was my boss um so just those two like like you know you sort of see the like you look you like look down the the you know the road that diverges in the yellow wood and you see one way that you

go and then the other way you could have gone and so when i hit the point um uh after shipping bio2 um uh we were i think a lot of people were really um uh sort of in this like fugue state like we didn't quite know what was coming next um and we didn't know if he wanted to be there and we gelled really well as a team the design team like that they were some of the most brilliant designers i've worked with were you know were were part of the bioshock 2 design team you just need to look at like what they went on to do to see how true that is but um but nothing interesting was coming along and so all the really like you know the these like really sharp people that um we had gelled together as a team started just dropping off and leaving and so we hired replacements and you know they they were like they were good people too like they were you know they were competent and they were nice and i have nothing bad to say about them but they just were not motivated by the same

uh feature sets that like they hired for when they were hiring for bio2 like when they were hiring fire 2 they wanted very systems driven people who were really like you know sort of interested in pushing what um what you could do with sort of narrative and gains and that sort of thing and then when we were hiring up for the subsequent project xcom um or i should say the bureau i guess when you were hiring up for that like we knew the game's gonna be different and so we hired a different set of people and they weren't people who are interested in systemic gameplay um and you know and so i feel like when we hit that point like i felt a little a little aimless and um i had been throwing myself into my indie work a lot because i i realized you know that the the game that i've been working on sort of like to teach myself unity and and uh sort of make a little side project um was really really what was keeping me going um and when i thought about the problems i enjoyed solving the most on it it was the programming problems um it

was like you know just like the weird vector math and these weird transformations and like oh can i make the shader do this like those sorts of things were what i was really gravitating towards the design was kind of suffering as a result and like as proud as i am of having shipped that game like it's not a super well designed game and i'll admit that um but i you know i love it um [Music] and so uh yeah i said i thought about the the problems that i enjoyed solving and i thought that i would have the conversation again with somebody else and be like okay like sure i don't have a cs degree but like it's just knowledge right like you can get that like so i went and talked to uh one of the one of the programmers there at a 2k at the time and basically recounted sort of this this story about like oh yeah this guy told me i'd never you know be a programmer because i didn't have a cs degree and he just kind of like chugged and shook his head and he was like just learn the stuff like nobody cares where you got your degree from the important thing is the knowledge it's just a leon yeah no actually it was it was olaf all off

yeah uh yeah just do it and uh so yeah and so sort of spurred on by that like him and him and uh mark fletcher like they definitely really uh really helped me along by you know giving me book recommendations and showing me what i needed to know there was so much stuff i didn't know i needed to know and you know all these these huge gaps that i uh that um i had because i didn't have that formal education like i had a very practical self-taught like i'm going to learn this because i need to know for the thing i'm working on um which you know gets things done but it doesn't give you a strong foundation for uh you know being part of a team uh that people can you know somebody who can make code that people can read and it's like you know stable and reliable and developable easily and all that stuff um so yeah once i once i filled in those gaps um i was i was able to to make the jump there's several ways that first of all uh we're gonna find that first programmer that like threw you off the scent

uh from your true calling uh i mean he's he's either like super wise or like it doesn't matter what i say if you really want to pursue it which you know you need to be if you want to be a programmer you're going to re disregard what i say right or he was just being a-ho for job security sake it's like no i don't want to spend the time long game reverse psychology like he's stroking his beard like maybe 10 years yeah my experience with programmers it's more like the latter they're like just super you know force honesty yeah it's like no you can't do it get out get away um a second part of that like um yeah i mean a lot of what development game development is and what i like about this industry it's still very uh knowledge base uh rather than degrees and it's still true for every discipline even programmers uh i think besides maybe mobile industry

where they have like straight-up statisticians analyzing data every day uh who needs to be that these ivy league schools uh other parts of the industry don't need that and it's all about can you do the work i do agree with you you know there are some great uh i mean you got that indirectly right by being surrounded by established programmers you know that that is one thing that's at school it does provide like like-minded people before getting in the industry you kind of looked up because you were already a professional industry in design and you just had access um but i i do you kind of brought back memories yeah there was a weird period uh after bioshock 2 and on the artist side felt the same thing man a lot of my circles were disappearing or moving on and i felt like i was being left behind a bit and this this new crew super green didn't understand the history

that we went through and so i got a little jaded as well um and knew that you know uh i had to leave uh because because of that reason because it's it's just weird right when when your old friends are gone and now you're gonna make new friends and i don't want to make new friends right uh and i also agree that first career with the og crew was like everyone was legit right you know top dollar it was it was uh tandem to how the industry uh well not the industry the company itself was set up for success right then we were like a premier studio and then it kind of faltered uh after bioshock a bit and everyone felt that which is fine but it's one of those periods that you know being older and wiser hopefully i would have just told myself to just focus on the work and like you said if you're on status you should leave and it's something that ray actually told me early in my career it's like if

you don't like something just leave just go somewhere else um don't hold on to false hope of changing the industry for the better or changing the the company for the better right that was that was definitely a younger attitude that i've learned in the hard ways like yeah you can't pay attention to any of that stuff because we're there to make gains and we don't have any control even at a lead level you have very little control um what's impressive is that you were able to reset i mean i would love to kind of hear your your thinking process you know you were mentioning how it led up to that you were kind of discovering and you had help from your colleagues in the programming department to kind of lead you to shortcut your education a bit due to books and and knowledge that actually are useful you don't have to go through the crap um like how difficult was it uh was it a necessary step for you go to go and need to

practice all this stuff to kind of okay because i always imagine for for developers when they're working at a studio um especially if they want a promotion or uh which is supposed to be a lot easier than actual like a whole discipline jump right from design a program like within a studio that's very hard i i would imagine and i've seen uh for people to talk to an old employer like hey i'm actually want to be a programmer now it's like well we didn't hire you for that just go back to work this next episode uh i try to do this as often as i can and it's to bring any developers who are made up of a team of one or two people uh at at a lot of times uh in a lot of instances and this is with abby and tony from black tabby games so abby and tony uh both founded black tabby games together and been shipping

narrative driven story games abby interesting enough had created a cult following because she established herself as a comic artist independently before jumping into games and have been very successful at it so it was great to kind of talk to these two power couple and about the process and how they were basically doing everything on their own from coming with the idea but as well as marketing and how viable of an option that has been for them so enjoy episode 261 abby and tony from black tabby games is there anything you can kind of uh shell out there for for for listeners well i think it does kind of you have to be able to uh be working on something where you can't kind of enter the state where you just kind of lose yourself into it but there are ways you

can get there i think uh so there are some apps that you can use where it has you focus for 45 to 50 minutes on and then like 10 minutes off and it seems like that is kind of a good system i've heard there have been studies on this and apparently that's just kind of a good cycle to get into so you can reward yourself and i feel like that's also important to reward yourself after certain landmarks so even if the reward is just wow you did it you reached the next goal so actually tony wound up drawing up a um a pie chart for me when i was in my deadline for the crossroads at midnight yeah where uh every time i finished a page i could enter it into the pie chart and it would move a little bit so that was pretty good tiny sliver yeah it's a nice motivator to see it keep uh keep going and i see a lot of cartoonists doing that actually with really tough deadlines where they wind up coming after the chart or some kind of a system where they get to fill in something to say yes i have finished part of this and to just see how far it's progressed as you go is really

satisfying so that's something oh and have a nice schedule having a schedule is wonderful i love it wake up at a certain time every day make sure that you stop working at a certain time every day even if that time is like 11 00 pm right before you go to bed so also probably just sit down and do the thing oh yeah it's a job that feels like the most important yeah like you have to have a oh deadlines self-opposed deadlines are incredible like say i will have a page done by this day just to get started just so that you have something where it says no no you have to sit down and start this at some point i think something that was super helpful for us is we had a bunch of our close friends and family do like alpha testing of our early builds and that added this social pressure of oh gosh we haven't delivered a build to them with more content in like a couple weeks you gotta really get in the zone you promised me something that's that's your that's my major that's for sure

i've had i've had to do a lot of projects where nobody got to see it to be fair i feel like your motivator is uh honestly you just are incredibly disciplined and sit down and crank stuff out it's true like i it's not that i doubt that the methods you you shared are like helpful but i feel like do you use any of the things you just you like i use the pie chart you use a pie chart but after that you just sit down and do the work i do just sit down and do the work in fact i actually kind of sometimes find those little apps where it's like grow a tree in 50 minutes and then you get a break uh a little distracting because then it makes me take breaks yeah yeah yeah but i think you're just fall far along yeah you're have you already have it formed yeah exactly so you're there yeah but i will say the tree app actually was very useful yeah you like that yeah i was doing the first draft of the first episode of scarlet hollow

because it was just so different from anything i had worked on before so i do feel like that's kind of like more of an entry level how do i get into working in in this certain way kind of thing yeah yeah it was a slog it's very different for writing comics and i feel like there's something too where it's like people have a tendency to view or to like assume that a project they're working on should like move or progress at a linear pace but i feel like at least for me when i'm sitting down and doing like you're putting the scripts into the engine and doing edits and stuff like sometimes it's just i need to sit down and move incredibly slowly for an hour while my brain shifts into gear uh and then at that point like i'm able to move a lot more quickly but i feel like if i were to just you know kind of do half an hour of

being stuck give up a little bit and then come back again like that would kind of reset and i would never get into the sort of flow state needed to get it done that is true like this also works um kind of as the months progress during especially these like episode breaks that we do so it starts out really slow where we're both kind of not doing very well at doing our parts and then it speeds up a lot as the deadline approaches so sometimes that's just how people work we're both very good at crunch we're great at crunch which i wish we weren't great at i wish we were just good at working very consistently so that we could just not have to have those few weeks at the end where we're going non-stop yeah that's just how it is yeah i think yeah the key thing that i've learned is it's um just accountability either other people or yourself it's like a checklist for yourself and like yeah i didn't get to this just it's just people and i think that's the thing with games you just got to have deadlines

no deadlines you're you're creating forever and you know there's no one's going to see it like why does it matter um and i think that's the problem where a lot of developers just kind of just are too relaxed and you know it's ready when it's ready it's just it's the worst model that you can have for for a creative like yeah don't worry about it i feel i feel like you need a push and pull of those two things um because i'm i'm personally very much in favor of uh delaying stuff if it needs extra time in the oven but there needs to be that balance struck between this is being delayed because delaying it'll make it better versus this is being delayed because that means we can push off our deadline and i'm scared it's not good enough as it is it's that phrase right perfect is the enemy of the good so or the done which i bought this also

so it's true it's good to just finish something like there's always stuff you can go back and fix i feel that way about all of my projects but at the same time i'm more invested in having people read it than making sure that it is the absolute most flawless version of itself yeah well that that other thing just doesn't exist too yeah it always changes that could be i'm always getting better so i'm going to look at anything that i did even as soon like recent as a year ago and just be like well i could fix that good or now and in a year i'll say the same that's when you make a sequel that's what sequels are for yeah or like re-releases like releases remastering yeah that's the whole point uh i do want to ask you about this so you kind of mention you guys kind of settling on kickstarter platform uh to kind of do this crowdfunding obviously there's plenty others or even self-hosting you also mentioned two-thirds of that was mostly from your own audience and one-third was through discovery that pays for the taxes and fees and

everything after looking at that was there ever a consideration of just self crowdfunding on your own website cut out all the fees or is it still worth it to have on kickstart for exposure would love to hear your thoughts okay definitely use kickstarter don't use any other website either kickstarter has the name recognition people trust it people uh you will get uh like kickstarter has its own built-in audience of people who are willing to go there and fund projects uh it it it makes you whatever you're making more reputable yeah it's a difference of thousands like even if you're looking at money yeah even if you're looking at another crowdfunding platform like indiegogo like i would say just alone the fact that kickstarter will only give you the money if you fund like makes people treat your project more seriously yeah you see a game on indiegogo that's trying to raise like a hundred thousand dollars and they're at like 20 000 like are you are are you going to back that knowing that

like they feel they might not even come close to getting what they need to finish it especially when crowdfunding projects are already a bit of a risky investment yeah um yeah yeah like uh i always kind of um take note of that like the the there was like a few years ago where kickstarter was everything and then like a lot of bad apples happened where they were just taking people's money and that kind of ruined it for the rest of us are we still in that kind of phase with distrust has it damaged is the damage there to stay with the stigma of crowdfunding or do you feel like that's disappearing slowly like what are your analytes i think it's like always kind of been a certain level of distrust because some people just don't follow through even if they don't mean to scam people things happen things fall through um or sometimes they did need to scam

people but that's just kind of a risk so it's always been there if anything i feel like it's uh kind of reached a threshold of reputability where it's just not gonna go past a certain point where you shouldn't work with them anymore unless they do something really bad there was all that stuff that happened with uh the union unionizing there but i'm not actually but they have a union they have a union now oh who has a kickstarter sorry yeah yeah can i talk about that a bit i'm not familiar with that side too much i would suggest people look up articles about oh yeah so the the company itself has has a union yeah the workers unionized uh management did what management does whatever there's a union uh oh come on guys you know push back pretty hard but the union wound up forming um so i don't know there's like this balancing act where i personally my takeaway is well they have a union and that's great um and not they have a

union and their management is mad at the union um management is always gonna be because management is always gonna be mad at unions uh yeah but i i think one of the things with like reputability on the platform too is everyone at this point knows that crowdfunding is a risk and it's a question of what kind of reliability you can project as a creator because i have done seven kickstarters now all funded all fulfilled you can look at that track record just by clicking on her account we like made a conscious decision to run this through abby's kickstarter account and not make a new one for our studio because someone can click through and see oh this person over the past decade has run like six projects all of them funded all of them were fulfilled i can reasonably trust that my money is going to go towards getting a product here whereas a lot of times

you'll see you know somebody goes to kickstarter they've never backed any other projects they've never launched any other projects and i think that raises some red flags i know that's how i that's the first thing i always do when i'm looking at a campaign and deciding oh do i want to like put some money down on supporting this it's first and foremost have they run a kickstarter before um and like have they been active on the platform because someone who's active on the platform like kind of unders like would inherently understand more of the risks that are at play they've seen what have happened with other with other projects um and then there's like subtler signs too i think uh something that also stands out to me and i think this is the case for you too but like sometimes you see a project that's like asking for way too little money and at that point like the red flags go up

for either uh this does a scam and they're trying to just like make the threshold low enough that they keep whatever they're raising for or they just don't understand how expensive it is to make the thing that they're trying to make which means that they're probably not going to be able to make the thing yeah yeah hey so this next episode was uh is a long time friend with daniel he's been a key investor in major companies in the past tied into the game industry and was gracious enough to kind of come on to answer a lot of my investor questions because that world to me is a big mystery it's uh probably the same to you all who are listening and it was great to kind of get his insight as an investor of what he and a bunch of his colleagues are looking for nowadays for what is a successful viable product that can get invested so this episode is from 264

investing in the game industry with daniel the only way to kind of correct that there's only two ways right the managers have to be better at uh at nailing their vision first try which isn't gonna happen uh or the tools have to be uh fast enough so that it doesn't feel like a sacrifice in time and and content uh every time something else needs to be generated new and i think this direction the industry is moving uh and learning from uh to be better at making games so i think everything that you're doing uh with all the companies have been a great improvement in that i mean you know when i after i spent about one year in the industry and started to i mean realized like initially you almost cannot believe it that so much content is being thrown away oh yeah it's once you realize it's almost mind-boggling i mean it's like uh

uh you know it will be it will be cool to live in an alternative universe when where all the games that got scrapped got made and you could try them out probably a lot of great stuff there that never made it and it i just can't imagine the the pain of working on something you know some project work for five years and it gets cancelled and you can't show anything that you do yeah that's that's even worse i haven't personally went through that but of course we all know friends that did i don't know if any other industry has anything you know similar i mean maybe i think all parts of entertainment has something like that i mean we've heard movies being scrapped i mean i'm sure there's music movies are probably our closest cousin in terms of just scrapped work um but i've only gone as far as getting my levels cut and that hurt enough and the unfortunate thing is when we talk about seasoned developers are people who are kind of

used to that and kind of muffle that part of their creativity going forward to move forward uh and it it kind of it's a detachment mechanism basically oh i'll get cut well on to the next thing next i'll try not to hear as much yeah exactly how how do you restart your creative and passion once you build something that you love and then you just got to be detached i mean at some point you put your heart and soul in something and that's when it hurts the most when things do get cut or it's not real but also the the reasons the different reasons i've heard of things being cut it's like it's nothing to do with you yeah it's not even a good reason like it's like uh you know someone rewrote the story it's like don't change them can you it's always a it's a running joke with at least environment artists because i feel environment artists throw away the most stuff i don't know i don't know how how anyone else can

compete with us because we literally build the world and throw it away right you might have a character here and there but i can't imagine anyone throwing more stuff than us and so the running joe with us has always been designers and narrative writers right because whenever they have a new thought a whole world gets kind of tossed aside um a lot of months and years even kind of just thrown for the betterment of the game right better management but uh but yeah i think what we're talking about here is is is really relevant it's it's a pattern that i've been seeing for years where everything is moving towards proceduralism just bettering faster uh less people type of thing i would love to kind of dive in a little history of your quick sedates because it seems like it informed a lot of your decisions going forward and it was a like a learning journey for you of uh really uh confirming yourself as an investor in in the world of games right at least

game tech so from your day one of it it sounded like what you saw was impressive but also your instincts too of being ahead of the curve of this is new but no one's paying attention to it there's a huge upside to this i'm gonna get on this um from then on uh how did your role evolved i mean what what kind of things because at that time i i'm assuming that you you were just being introduced right you did your own study but like being in the trenches now you're probably learning a lot more about game games in general right yeah i mean there are so you i mean teddy and vacar were such impressive uh i mean teddy has been there is a great interview you guys did with with teddy where he goes over the history but uh you know basically scanning was everything he had been doing since he was like 10. so uh and

vacar was this amazing entrepreneur who was running a big company in in pakistan so they were able to build that so it was just a such a super team of founders uh who are you know super super dedicated and probably the best in the world at what they were doing but they were just under um overwhelmed understaffed and so we took in a bit of funding and i was mostly working on the funding side i mean i i briefly had the title as cfo but to replace myself with someone better and uh just basically we're just making sure if you know if we needed to raise money we were able to do that at a good valuation and if there was interest from others to require the company to to negotiate around those terms and and see what's what would be the best outcome for the shareholders you know who were you know we had some sharehol

you know some just financial shareholders wanted maximum return and the founders they had the more they also had uh you know i think money was almost secondary to them yeah and uh that's why the epic transaction was so you know if i may say epic because i never rare you know because they made it free which was like um i mean how often do you see an m a and then they come and then the acquired company is now free so it was a cultural fit and uh um but going back to your your yeah i think initially getting people to use photogrammetry was not as easy as it looks now a lot of people had their pipelines a lot of people were working you know i don't know what i should call it manually or non photogrammetric pipelines and uh but once some of the big guys started using it uh many people just

yeah this fall joined up um i mean now it's almost difficult to think about that there was opposition or or doubt about photogrammetry ever being in a pipeline [Music] but now it's pretty pretty or now i guess it's standard yeah it's it's definitely a shifting mindset for a lot of people i i myself was in that transitional phase i think it was early 2016 or something and it was just right after battlefield was the big photogrammetry is here everyone should use it and so we were working on cod and we were just you know doing our own scans and trying to investigate you know how this fits in our current pipeline and yeah i think there was a big mixture of you know the younger guys and gals being all up for it and being very interested and the older people who have

their set pipelines didn't want to mess with that and saw it as a threat maybe you know um or not as um it's not good enough i can i can probably make this uh in in designer faster or whatever right and not getting the potential of it so yeah there was a weird phase for a few years i i think like he said it's now it's kind of if you're making a realistic game you should be using photogrametry uh why are you sculpting rocks right it seems almost dumb uh it is dumb uh for you to to to waste your time zbrushing that right uh but it seems to be the factor and we just had louise corell who who worked at side effects for a long time uh on houdini stuff and um it was one of those factors where we kind of uh came to the conclusion because of the big guys for the industry to really change the big guys have to adopt it first and then it kind of spreads and and and

and and throughout right uh the problem with the big guys is that they are five eight year machines yeah yeah yeah and most of the research and new tool developments are happening at the beginning of their cycle so you're gonna have to wait for like the next playstation for things to basically uh get picked up and so unfortunate unfortunately we didn't have to wait that long it was around that time where big studios were adopting and it was introduced mostly too it seemed like it mostly got introduced by hobbyists or junior developers right that were toying with all these different ideas but yeah it's a funny thing to kind of take a look back at how technology or our jumps are made and it's usually not from seasoned developers which is odd but it has to be for the industry to kind of kind of adopt everything um yeah i think uh i think for with with

the with 3d artist tools there's a you know it's easier to put them in the pipeline within you know during a project i mean it's not easy but it's it's easier you can you if you're making a photorealistic game you you can start using mega scans even you know a few years in but um for some other tools like elia software which is an audio tool which is like it's a you know it's a runtime software which is you know it has to run in the game to to play all the stuff that that you can only implement at the beginning of a new game developer so you know if we're speaking to people now we have you know we have to wait until they're starting a new game where they can look at the pipeline so getting in so getting in and this was similar to quick it's a bit of a runway even to to be adopted all right last but not least this is with

rika yoshino she is currently at that game company as a art director a social art director even on recent game sky the children of lights so rico i was connected through uh meeting cecil which she so have been on this uh podcast many many times and uh was able to kind of follow her career through her uh through our conversation so it was a very interesting story she basically wanted to work for that game company since college and didn't really switch to games uh while she was studying until the last year of her college career so to have so much focus and basically end up at a leadership position at a game company that she's always wanted to work for it was quite a story and i was thankful to kind of uh be able to kind of hear it and and learn from it so

this is from episode 279 art director aspirations with rika yoshino enjoy back then we only had about like four or five women in a studio of 25-ish um and you know i think it was i dressed up i'm not sure if any other woman dressed up but they were taking a group photo um and i was just not comfortable being in a group of a dozen dressed up fancy men and i'm the only woman in there i don't know what was what that message would send out um if that photo got out into social media so those are kind of things that like kind of tug out the back of my mind um you know even though there are no ill intentions involved in anyone with anyone um so you know it is it is very interesting it's tricky and i think you just have to make sure that you understand as a woman i understand my you know my boundaries and comfort zone

and understand that you do have people around you that will be supportive of you and they'll trust you and believe you um so you know you're not alone and i think because um i guess because i still have those difficulties sometimes like it would be nice that if i could you know become a figure for someone in the future to kind of feel safe or be like a safe safe place for them yeah i completely uh understand like uh because when whenever you're at a company you're always trying to immediately look for someone that's similar because there's that instant connection and that instant support right and uh race gender that helps with uh the the advancement at least motivation to

advance in the hierarchy right because you can see that it's possible and um that comfort alone is is just rewarding in itself to to know that there's someone else uh like you there at a group setting every time i work at a company there's always you know the mail always outnumbered the women uh the only time that i felt like it was close not completely 5050 was when i was working on a mobile in studio like a tech company right so tech companies are a little different from game studios and that's when i was like oh wow this is a lot of women here right completely new to me but like whenever i worked at those studios with very few women i was like man these these women i feel bad because there's so much unwanted advances so much like just the sky swarming around that and uh it's just a lot of pressure i think on top of the actual pressures of performing well at the job right so

i do i do agree that things are getting better and i feel like these smaller companies just tend to have a better ratio uh and i at least kind of see aaa companies slowly getting better right but you know like a major beast uh it takes a little longer right to move things in the right direction so it happens over time it won't happen overnight so right right i think we'll we'll get there i think we just all have to keep working towards it yes yes but uh yeah i'm glad you know you're in the position that you are and you move past all those advances right and and in a great place right now uh in a leadership position at a very great company um and being as young as you are too i mean you're you're that's a trifecta right there so like i think when i first became in a leadership

position or even when i switched to a new job right there's always that sense of imposter syndrome and and that that that kind of eats up uh from the reality of things right did you have did you kind of go through that phase being such a young developer as well as uh a female and all these things that you feel on paper should work against you but clearly have not it's all like internal thoughts on a lot of the cases did you feel uh i mean what was that change like to to finally kind of be at your dream studio and kind of leading a department um i think they're two different parts of me that think differently right i think imposter syndrome is something that just doesn't go away um and you know i think i think that's maybe what every game dev or artists creatives um suffer from you know because there's always someone

better there's always you know you're just so critical of your work um but i think you know if you kind of flip that you kind of need to understand that because you can critique your work um it's just that your eyes are getting better your perception of art in this thing is getting better so it just means that you know you just have to now raise your skills and then it's just a rinse and repeat but also at the same time um you know i there's a core part of me that i understand where you know the reason why i'm not always happy or i'm i have an imposter syndrome is because i want there's so much i want to learn and i know that there's a lot that i haven't learned so i know that there's a you know part of me that's like passionate and driven um and you know even though i feel one way i also do understand that like you know having that drive is also

a unique thing about me right that's what makes me special and that's what makes me continue growing continued learning um and you know you kind of live in this duality of you know conflicting feelings um but you know i don't know i i don't know if it's gonna sound uh it's not gonna sound reassuring because i think he will probably feel this way um no matter what you do as long as you want to keep getting better and keep growing um you know i do also think like oh i don't have enough years of experience to you know like am i really you know can people really trust me to do this but you know at the end of the day it's like i care and i'm learning and i i'm open to um you know constructive criticism and feedback um i think when you stop growing as a

person and when you stop having this fear that you're just you know if you start feeling like you're just good enough and you don't have to do anything else that's it's like you might feel fine but i think that's kind of when you when you stop being an artist when you stop being um someone who wants to make things um [Music] and you lose that drive right and you know it's it's really really interesting and i think i'm trying my best just focus on the fact that like i want to get better and because i'm still passionate i'm still you know i'm young and there's so much more that i can accomplish and if i kind of start thinking about it like that it becomes a little more more positive and you kind of stop thinking about the imposter syndrome aspect of um working as a game dev yeah i think that internal conflict is always healthy uh that means there's a lot more room to growth and humility uh to grow um

you're clearly qualified so i wouldn't uh yeah i worry about it as much uh i think uh if anything i would love to kind of talk about the you know we've had cecil on this even had eric on this at the very beginning before the launch of the game and now uh ever since the game has crossed a major milestone right 100 million downloads which is insane uh because i think it was the one of the first i would say big major release on a phone right uh you guys made like this crazy shift um double down on on phone being like the future and now slowly it's it's looking to release on on the console on the switch right so we love to kind of give some uh it gets some insight from you about that that that that journey of uh from mobile to now like what somewhat you know surprising somewhat

not surprising was this always part of the game plan uh for growth for the game yeah of course um so i actually joined that game company sky right before they went out to beta or um yeah right before beta so it was relatively early on the game back then was nothing like what what it is today um and you know when i joined they just kind of uh you know shared the news with the world about what kind of game they were working on um and you know i came in not really knowing that it was a mobile title uh because all the previous ones have been consoles and um you know i've always wanted to work on consoles uh and you know i think at first i was a little confused but um

but the first thing i did when i you know when i started working was i just i played the game and i asked a lot of questions um and one of those questions that i asked different people around you know in the studio was that why why is it mobile and why are you know what what are your thoughts on it um and ultimately i think i kind of came around and understood where they're coming from um and the main reason was being you know um we want to create something that could be played by anyone that has a big reach um phones just happen to be a device that a lot of people own right and um you know not everyone has access to phones and tablets but um there's definitely more people that own phones than they do a playstation um

or an xbox or even a pc right so um you know i thought about it and you know if there is a game that i could play with my mom or dad who don't play games ever um phones would be the only way to play with them and you know when i started thinking about my family that's when i was kind of convinced that might be a really interesting way to go about this and i know we did hear a lot of feedback from fans and supporters um people that were interested in this game that they wanted on a different platform why does it have to be on mobile um but our studio kind of stood by our beliefs that like games could be for everyone and should be for everyone so you know it's been on mobile but i don't think i think of this as like a mobile game um it's just mobile just happens to be a means to an end um and

you know with switch um i think switch is just like a wonderful console to have released on um after the mobile um because it's so portable and um i feel like they're they're relatively family friendly too um it's it's it's a console but it also does feel like a phone in a way it's just i think the portability probably um kind of contributes to that and um our entire team is so excited they've done such a wonderful job on making this come true everyone's been you know crunching to get this done and it's kind of finally done um and you know now we get to kind of see our game on a full screen tv it's it's pretty amazing but you know our platform choices aren't exactly i mean we do have to think about the platforms but like it's it's coming from a standpoint of like how can we connect people how can we connect as many people

friends family together rather than um which console has the most audience or which console it's best suited for um so in that way i you know everything feels very very natural to me um and i think i think we did a good thing that it's mobile like i think we maybe have created something um created a space on mobile where people can kind of find different kind of entertainment and enjoyment um out of what they can do especially in you know hard times like during during kobe with pandemic so yeah well uh i mean we're we're we're in that kind of weird phase right now not weird but exciting phase where we're transitioning out of the pandemic right i can see that you're still at home a lot of remote people are slowly crawling their way back in the

office some studios are doing the hybrid thing some studios are completely leaving it up uh to the to the artist developer whether they want to do it full time at home or not um at the same time you know we the pandemic launched two new consoles right there's a lot of exciting things that are happening with all types of engines and upgrades uh without having you know i don't want you to preteritely announce anything but what are your general thoughts of this transitional phase is that game company still remote like is are you guys still hybrid what's the for the foreseeable time um wow um it's a pretty long time um and i think because america might be like one of the few countries that's finally opening up but you know the rest of the world is not necessarily you know fully open um so that's kind of interesting to see what games can offer

um you know for those for those countries and players in that country um but yeah i i have a love hate relationship with working from home i think if you know maybe the one great thing that comes out of this pandemic is for companies to be flexible about having a hybrid or a hybrid you know system that would be a beautiful thing for me but um i like working in the office i love seeing people and i want to collaborate with them and i think especially when you create artwork it's much easier and much more productive to do it in person [Music] you don't have to go through the typing and communicating it's really hard to communicate visuals and feelings over over text sometimes right it's just much easier to see it in person but when i'm wearing a producer hat it's much easier to just work from home just take meetings and heads down and get get

um stuff out of the way and you know that's probably why i prefer a hybrid structure but i think everyone feels differently and i hope you know companies do kind of recognize that even if people do work from home we still get our stuff done all right and that concludes this best of 2021 series and like i said it's been a long time absence you know i took basically a two three month hiatus from the podcast first time ever in my five year time of podcasting this show and i basically needed to recharge was kind of burnt out but also kind of balancing everything else that i was doing so now that i'm back uh there's a lot of things that i want to uncover just about just the last three months alone the game industry decided to just keep going without me and have been a

crazy roller coaster of excitement but a lot of uncertainty as well like i mentioned at the beginning of this best of 2020 series uh there's a lot of things that i want to uncover and share with you guys the world of nft is here to stay even though developers are pushing back a great resignation and how uh the epidemic basically push people to uh want to stay at home and away from offices and generally what is up with all these acquisitions in the metaphors right there's so much to uh to uncover and i can't wait to kind of talk to experts in these fields and learn from them and share that with you guys so thank you for listening i'm hoping that you guys continue to listen and enjoy the stuff that i'm putting out there as well as coming back every tuesdays so back to the regular old schedule

uh 6 am pacific time uh to kind of listen to the latest and greatest a lot of things are happening a lot of things i want to share a lot of excitement from the game devon chain podcast team to you guys so thank you for the support and see you guys on the new episode tomorrow have a good one [Music] [Music] thank you for listening to today's episode if you are liking the podcast go to the apple itunes store and give gamedev unchain a 5 star rating this will help spread the joy and love and exposure for the podcast and we thank you very much if you want to continue the conversation go to our discord which can be found on our website www.gamedevunchain.com

you can also follow me on twitter at blue champs b-l-u-c-h-a-m-p-s you want to catch these episodes live every tuesdays and thursdays go to twitch.tv forward slash blue underscore champs email me any of your concerns or questions that you want me to read aloud at the beginning of each episode at info gamedevunchain.com and if you want to further support us and help unlock the next feature which is the voicemail future go to patreon.com forward slash blue champs this gives listeners a chance to kind of call in leave a message for both me and the guests to answer your deepest darkest questions and comment on your deepest darkest secrets thank you everybody

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