Kyle Balda: Why This Hollywood Director Is Now Making Games, Why Game Dev Is So Hard | Ep. #053

Imagine for a second a Hollywood film producer wearing a tuxedo, smoking a cigar, stepping out of his Rolls-Royce onto the red carpet. Now imagine him glancing just past the flashing cameras and looking into the crowd and he spots a scrappy hoodiewearing gamedev drinking a Red Bull. And I want you to think that producer envies the gamedev. In my opinion, this is happening in the film industry. Something about the game industry is enticing to the film industry and it's starting to look like they want in. Annaperna, Bad Robot, Sky Dance, Lionsgate, Blumbhouse, these are some of the film studios that are starting their own game studios. So, I just had to talk to someone in the industry to better understand what exactly is going on here. So, I reached out to Kyle Balda. He's the director of Minions, Despicable Me Three, and the upcoming Hugh Jackman Sheep Detective movie, Three Bags Full. Not only is Kyle

Balda, well, kind of the opposite of what you might expect from, you know, a Hollywood director. He's incredibly humble and he's down to earth, he's also insanely curious about gamedev, and he's actually making his own game called Dashimi. And this is mainly because, well, he has an extensive career in 3D art and animation. I honestly had so many questions right out of the gate for Kyle because, well, I'm a game developer. I'm a YouTuber, but I'm also a short horror film director. I asked him why film directors and studios are stepping into the game industry. And how exactly does the game industry compare to the film industry? Why does the film industry feel exclusive whereas the indie game industry is much more, I don't know, democratized and accessible? How does the film industry and the game industry compare technically? Is it harder to make a game than a movie? And is AI good for the game and film industry? This conversation was fascinating and I felt so honored to be able to talk to Kyle. So stick around to glean as much as you can from somebody with 30 years of experience in the 3D

and animation industry. And by the way, if you want to make, I don't know, animated films, animations, video games, it doesn't matter. It's important to understand how to create both 2D art and 3D art. So, I wanted to give you a chance to check out my 2D art course, which dives into everything I've learned as a Time magazine featured game artist. For the next several days, it's 25% off. Plus, you're going to get my 3D art course completely free, but only for this sale. There's just 50 seats available, and then this sale will be closing. If you enroll today, you'll not only get my 2D and 3D art courses, but hey, you'll also get my custom color templates, my brushes, and I'll also throw in my pixel art course completely free. Join hundreds of students on their game art journey and learn from an actual published indie game dev featured by Rolling Stone, Time Magazine, and PC Gamer. That sounds really cocky to say, but I don't know. It gives me some credibility. So, click the link below before the sale expires or the seats sell out. Why? Why is it that the game like the

indie game industry in particular, it seems so accessible? Because I've been doing this half of my life. And if I want to make a game, I just make a game and I just release a game and it's no big deal. I'm not wor worried about guilds. I'm not worried about distribution. You you might worry about funding. Like if you need a bigger team and you might need like a half a million bucks, that's that's one thing. But even still, you don't have to go through like a huge massive production studio. Whereas with film, it just feels like film is it's so hard to get into and you need to like go to school and you got to be part of these guilds. And is that is my perception true there? I think it's true. I mean, it's there's it's funny because when I think about game development, it probably was different, you know, like 30 years ago where you could not just anybody could make a game and get it released. There was more like distributors that you had to depend on certain game platforms, things like that. But now it's more democratized. You can you can make a game, you can, you know, put it on Steam, you can get it out there in the world. Uh, and I would say one thing that comes to mind

that's comparable with filmm is YouTube, you know, like that's the closest thing where there's no one standing in the way. But you have to figure out how to pay for it, how to make it.
I know. Yeah. And it's um and it can be something like uh you know you look at some early indie filmmakers who became big filmmakers like Edgar Wright or you know making their own film with no budget just friends getting together and then entering it in festivals or you know doing whatever they can to get it seen. That's probably the closest comparison I can think. But if you're talking about something with like a lot of VFX, that landscape's changing so much and it and VFX was, you know, historically has been so expensive to do and needing so many people to do. So if you wanted to tell a story that had any sort of world building or was high concept in any way, uh then instantly the the price tag is going up. You know, it's not about two people in a room having a relationship. it's about, you know, maybe that relationship is one of them is a ghost or a robot or something

has to happen that's kind of supernatural. So that just brings more people involved and it makes it um makes it more expensive. Uh unless you're that person who has all those skills, which which maybe you don't. And if you talk about like a feature film, especially in animation, I remember when I was a kid, I was so into animation, I thought I was going to make a animated feature film, you know, this is like a 12-year-old. Um, and so just started drawing it. And, you know, it's
I don't think I even completely digested how huge that was.
Yeah.
I just like at my 12-year-old brain just moved on to something else that was interesting.
Yeah, exactly.
There's there's no time to finish it. I would still be working on it. So, are you saying that that feature films are just more expensive than games?
Um, I think certain types of feature films are, you know, there's it's sort of similar to games that you have AAA games and you have independent, you

know.
Sure.
Um, and you have that equivalent in in film. But I think that from what I can say or like try to communicate is that you a single artist who has a knowledge of like a game engine uh can put something together with a certain amount of time, you know, like um Stardew Valley is a great example, you know, doing everything that still takes a lot of time and maybe he could have done it faster if he had like hired a team. I'm sure he could have, but you know, wanted it done in a certain way. I think that with if I talk about an animated film, uh, you know, just the numbers just start to get really big. You just think about like how how many seconds of animation can I do a week? Maybe 7 seconds. Uh, maybe three
with a team.
No, just by myself.
Oh, gotcha. Gotcha.
Yeah. Um,
crap.
If it's computer animation, 7 seconds a week. Uh, think about how many weeks it's going to take to do like a 80 minute, 90 minute film. And that's just the animation. And that's not like if

it's computer animation, that's not that's not the modeling. It's not the the the sets, the texturing, the lighting. I haven't even talked about like sound or music or voices or anything like that. So,
and l licensing it all as well, right?
Yeah. Get so quickly. Yeah,
dude. Okay. So, that's that's what's crazy is what something I've been struggling with because I was watching I was watching 2001 of Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubri and I shouldn't say this out loud. I got so bored and I'm just like I am so I I am I am classic like millennial or young younger person who just can't sit through a movie. And what I ended up doing was scrolling Instagram while I was watching it. And I I started thinking about how why is it that studios want to invest all this time and money in like animated films for example when the younger generation is they're going to end up just scrolling their phone. So, I'm trying to figure out like I guess the question here is like why why should an animation studio spend all

this money and time on making something high quality when people are more interested in just being entertained on their phones,
right? I think it's Well, I think the one thing that's interesting is just the rhythm of films now compared to
Yeah, that's kind of what I'm asking. When 2001 came out, there was a lot less to distract people, you know, like that was the thing that you're going to do that night was to watch that movie.
And it's dude, it's so slow. Like it's like just like I was watching the the spacecraft land on the moon space station and it's just like I think it may have been like two minutes long, you know?
It's like real time.
I know. And but they put in a ton of money and effort there, you know, like like you were saying where it would take
all week to do a 7-second clip. It's like all this time and effort is spent on this one shot.
And I'm just I'm just so curious is is the is Hollywood are they do they know this and do they understand that

that the young generation they care about like a I don't know a quick fix as opposed to quality? I don't know if that's true, but like
it's one of the existential questions I think in Hollywood right now is how to compete with all the other types of media that's out there, you know, like how do we get people off Tik Tok and watch this movie for, you know, because Tik Tok is like it's like very short form, you know, and everyone's like getting I can you can sit on Tik Tok for like three or four hours and watch, you know, a hundred different things, but watching one thing, you know, so so getting audience audience's attention is really really important and I think a lot of movies are made and I think a lot of producers are making films with that in mind of like okay we can't do 2001's space odyssey now you know maybe a certain audience will show up but we're not going to the the the big audience we're not going to get uh a lot of the younger generation who don't you know this was even like a conversation that was happening I think in like the '9s

you know early 90s because uh when MTV came out and music videos came out, music videos are cut really quickly. And so this the that actually affected the pacing of cutting in in films. You know, things started to get faster.
Yeah.
And so if you watch a movie now versus back then, there's there's definitely going to be a lot of like a quicker pacing. I always think of it in terms of like is that pacing earned? Is it is it is the pacing creating a tone that's important? I would argue in the case of 2001 that it it does. Yes.
Um there's this is another really classic film is uh Bullet. You know there the Steve McQueen film where there's the classic car chase in San Francisco. Cars are flying over. You know that's the thing that you see when you watch clips from it or whenever someone talks about it. But there are shots in that movie where Steve Mun will get out of his car and you'll walk you'll watch him just walk to a door and then he'll open the door of a hotel and

watch him walk across the lobby.
Yeah. And you know, you think about Guy Richie and how he cuts and there's that sequence in Snatch where um the guy travels from New York to London and it's three shots, boom, boom, boom, and he's there.
Yeah.
You know, and it's like it's fun to see it that way.
Yeah.
So, it's just creating a different tone, but I think that you're not spending so much time on the shoe leather of like a character getting from A to B and all that.
Is this a bad thing? And by the way, this is relevant for games as well because because I and I've mentioned this before in the podcast, but like I approached my game Twisted Tower with this sort of n late 90s, early 2000s uh like audience expectation.
It's a slow build and you're slowly learning the story as you um play the game. You know, you enter this creepy theme park and it takes a while for any action to happen. And it even takes it takes a while for any question to be established or any motive for the

character. It's just this slow build. Kind of like 2001 where it's like the first 15 minutes is just seeing like apes run around, you know, and you're like, what is this? So, I I had that expectation and then I let my publisher play it and they were like, you got to give me something immediately because the player is going to expect that. And you know, you you made Minions. Uh you co-directed Minions, right? So, you know, you you you co-directed or direct that film. And did you ever get that sense of like we got to give them something now? Cuz it's going to be kids. The kids kids are going to be watching with their parents, right? Did did you get that did you and did you feel gross about it? And did you feel like it was unfair?
Right. Um well I would say for like the thing that I one of the things that I learned above all from working with Chris Melanandre who's the producer uh at elimination and he produced all the disposal me in his films is um and it was the first time I think I can actually remember hearing this term being spoken about which is rooting interest uh that you you have to know

what you want as an audience me what do I want to have happen
yes
and this is true in games this is true in in in film and you there's a buy in you're asking the audience to do like you know trust me on this uh watch this film I'm and I'm going to give you something to care about uh and I think the same is true for for a game and so the longer you make that person wait the more the trust starts to erode you know like why am I spending my time here
and there's especially now when there's so many other things I could be doing uh what's making me care about this. So, I never feel gross about it cuz I feel like like if I care about what I'm making as a director,
I want to share that with the audience immediately. Now, it doesn't mean that you have to tell them everything.
You just have to get them to want to like know what happens or what how is this character going to figure this out or how am I going to figure this out if I'm playing the character.

Sure. Have you applied any of the things you've learned in 3D animation storytelling and also film making
when it comes to storytelling? Have you applied that at least in the concepts for your next game or is it purely just puzzles? You know, does a game need a story? Right. That's that's another question.
I think there's two Well, the the main sort of idea behind uh the game that David Hearn and I are making is it is puzzle driven. Uh, one of the big big touchstones for me is Overcooked because I love just from an experience that I had where the rooting interest was in the room more than it was on the screen. I mean, it's like we have to like make these recipes and get these orders out, but my friends and I were all like yelling at each other in the best possible way about like, "Do this, get out of the way, go over there, I need that," you know, and it really felt like being in a kitchen. And I was like, "This is incredible. they these game designers have created this experience where it's like a social experience of a

game and there's no story really except for to like I mean I think there's like a very kind of thin one in the background.
Um but it's not the main the main point of it. There's other games like you know Red Dead Redemption where there's absolutely a story and there's absolutely a drive and you're trying to you know do things and and figure things out. So, so both can be valuable and that's one of the things that's cool about games is that there's there's so many different ways it can it can be, you know, sets it apart from films.
Okay. So, when it comes to the room, for example, with with Overcooked, you're saying that that the room itself roots it gives the player something to root for,
right?
And then it also grounds the player to something tangible. Is that what you mean?
There's a goal. We got to get these orders out.
And you wanted to achieve the goal for some reason. You definitely want to Yeah. You want to achieve the goal and collectively you want to achieve it.
Y
uh but I think maybe more that's what I would bring in this term that I love of like finding the fun in a game.

Yep.
You know, like what makes it fun? And I think that can be um that's similar to I think the writing process in film is like how do you find the characters and the rooting interest? How do you find the fun in a game? And it's it's through the iterative process of like trying things and and then eventually sometimes going like that didn't work and now we have to go way. Um but the fun I think in Overcooked is that shared experience and so that's what I'm rooted and that's what what I'll stay on the couch with my friends for so long with.
Do you think that um fun is the primary goal of a game and what's the primary goal of let's say an illumination film? I think it's definitely for an illumination film. It's definitely fun. It's definitely entertainment,
humor,
humor. Uh the I I can just share something personal that has been one of the most rewarding experiences of making those films has been the feedback I've gotten from people uh in the form of a letter or something that said like I was

in a really hard moment in my life and I just needed to laugh, you know? And there's been times where especially like when CO was happening and like everything was really serious. I remember there was a meeting and uh one of the the women at work was saying like you know we're not we're not curing cancer here. We're not doing something you know that's going to like change the world and I feel guilty for spending my time like animating. And it came at the time that like um like a a healthare worker, frontline healthare worker I had written to was saying like I just did a 16 hour shift at the hospital. I'm exhausted. This is giving me something to laugh and it's like re-energizing me.
And it's like, you know, we can't all be the ones curing cancer. Some of us have to be providing entertainment for the people who are curing cancer, you know.
Exactly. This will shift gear. Well, let's shift gears and talk about how you feel game development. And I know you've just been dabbling in it.
Um, and you're working with a team

member.
I'm curious how you feel game development is different than film making because I've I've done three short horror films and I'm going to hopefully next year I want to work on a full length. So I'm in in a weird way I'm kind of jumping into your world and you're jumping into my world. Um, I don't know if this is just hubris or what, but it for me establishing a rooting interest or creating a setup and a payoff, creating characters that you care about, telling a story that with with a a specific rhythm. This is so much easier in film. It's so much easier in film because you edit it and it's one and done. And and you can test it and then tweak it and test it and tweak it. And to tweak something, it doesn't really cost that much. You know, you just bring in a different shot or do a different angle. You have all this coverage and then you can just figure it out. In games, it's so hard because the player has so much control. So to establish a setup and a payoff, it's in my opinion, it's just harder with games. So I'm curious,

do you think making films is harder than making games or vice versa? I think it's I think it's just different honestly. Um because the like I do think like with with a game because there's you know as we talked about there's like narrative driven games and then there's like puzzle or experiential games. Uh and in either one of them you just have to care about what you're doing first. Is that easier to do in in a film? I think it's more you have more control over the audience's experience. uh you know so you can you can really drive them towards something now you it can be too heavy-handed also I mean sometimes audience can see through you and see like like how how manipulative you're being and it's if that happens then they don't trust you anymore you know that's
right
um so you have to have subtlety to do that but I think that there's versions of it like you know if you're gray boxing a game you're you know and it's like I've I've watched a lot of your

material and I I definitely I think share your mindset of like I can't see it in gray box. I need to I need to
Oh, do you? That makes me feel better.
Yeah. I mean I because that's part of it. It's like the environment, you know what I mean? So So being in the environment like the animation has to be just right, you know, to like feel the squishiness of it or whatever it is, you know, like that's so much of the experience for me. But but I also from let's say like definitely from an animation film director see the value of gray boxing because that's something like storyboarding you know where it's not completely finished but you're just trying to get the scaffolding down you're just trying to get the architecture down.
Sure. And so there's like this there's this balance you have to do where uh I think one thing where they're really true um really similar games and and film is that when you start you have infinite options you can do anything. Uh and so then but you have to start making choices about things and then the more

choices that you make it's like the world of your options starts to get smaller and smaller. So the more choices you make, the less options you have. And then by the end, you know, you you could of course for a film and for a game say, you know what, we need to change this level or we need to change this sequence in act one. But now it's going to be so much more expensive than it was, you know, 6 months or two years ago when you didn't have to do anything because you're you don't have any more time, you know, like it's you're maybe you're paying people and you all these different things. So you're trying to create a situation where you can work as fluidly and freely as possible but still have a little bit of like a sense of what it's going to be. And I think finding that balance is so specific to what even within a movie like there's so many different types of movie you can't even like within the same franchise like you know Rise of G is really different than Minions except for that they both

have minions in them but there's a lot of tone in it too. Oh, I kind of want to shift gears or or transition to talking about the production process that you've established because you're you're um how long have you been in the animation industry? A
little over 30 years.
Okay. And it is very similar because it's I mean you you're you're fluent in Blender, right?
Uh I'm definitely fluent in like the up until the post stuff like um well post in the animation world which
Right. Right. But like modeling and stuff like that,
right? Exactly.
Okay. So you've you've I asked that because because I use Blender as well for games. So there is there is a crossover with animation and games for sure um just because of 3D tools. But when it comes to production, something that I struggle with and I feel guilty about often and also makes me feel kind of like an impostor. And I'm sure a lot of people feel this way as well listening right now is that I don't have a process. I have never had a process of making a game that's budget friendly or

on schedule. It's it's this I I've compared it to archaeological digging where the the game exists somewhere in the ether or in the ground,
right?
And I'm just using any tool at my disposal to dig it up and find out what it even is.
Yeah. Yeah.
Is that true in this Well, first off, do you relate to that? And then second, is this true in like working with elimination and and creating these films that have these massive budgets and you've got hundreds if not thousands of people involved
and everything is hinging on your ability to direct.
You've got to follow the schedule.
Do you have that freedom to treat it like an archaeological dig?
You do.
Yeah.
Okay. Can you tell me about that?
Yeah. Well, there's I can give you two examples because um when I first before Illumination, I had worked at uh ILM and Pixar and Pixar was making their

own films.
Wow. Um, and then I was living in France, uh, just because that's where my curiosity took me. And I was like working on, now I'm working on independent animation films. And by that it's like there was a film that um, I worked on called Dragon Hunters. And it was a co-production between, I think, three different um, financers. And so this is really different than working like Illumination is like all under one roof, you know. Uh, Universal's distributing the movies. Elimination is making the the films. Um, they have their own studio. So, it's all it's all inside and and when you have a co-production, uh, then you have like multiple people to answer to because they're all the ones paying for it. This was a new experience for me because, uh, I had by the time the movie came to me where I was working, I was working at McGuff, which later became Illumination. They it already came as like a story reel, an edited animatic of a storyboard. The Pixar way is that that's like a living

thing. It can be changed and it should be constantly be changed because what happens is uh and this is going to maybe be a little bit of a long answer, but
I would love it. I love I love long answers. Go for it. What happens is is like you get the script, you you get a scene in the script and you know it's that's scaffolding. It's a script is never meant to be a finished product or finished piece of art. Uh, so you start to storyboard that and in the same way that on like a live action shoot, you start to shoot it. Uh, you've staged it, you know, and maybe rehearsals can help too, like where you can figure some stuff out early, but even the actors could be like, I'm really not feeling this line. Uh, do I have to say that I feel this way? Can't I just show that I'm feeling this way? Yeah, let's try it like that. And it's fluid, you know, and so things are changing.
Uh, in animation that is happening with storyboards. So, you you board it, you get some temporary dialogue for it, you

edit it, you see how it's feeling. That's not quite working. I don't have rooting interest. I don't care. Whatever. Uh let's go and rework it. Uh maybe it needs to be funnier. Maybe it needs maybe the staging needs to be more interesting. Uh whatever it is, and you and you redo it. But on this project, the the way that it happened is that they wrote a script and then they shopped it around and they got a bunch of different people to invest in it. And so now everyone is like expecting that script to be made and you start storyboarding things and you realize maybe this scene could be better or this could be funnier but we can't change it because everyone's already agreed on it. We have to make this.
Yeah.
And that is very very rigid you know and I think that once you start like thinking about the budget that you're spending on this you you want it to pay off. You want people to show up and see the movie. And so you can't just go like, well, it cost us X million, you know, to make this film and we had one shot at it doing the script and it

worked or it didn't work.
Yeah.
Uh that's not the mentality at all. So, you know, what happens a lot with animation films different than live action is that you'll start working on it even before the script is finished. And typically like you know you're about uh maybe 3 5 months out from like locking everything and the script is still being being written. You're still writing act three trying to resolve some things and that's always going to make you have to go back to act one and change some things. Um whole sequences will be uh storyboarded and thrown out. I think um I heard Pete Doctor in a podcast say once that Inside Out was boarded like eight times, you know, before they finally got to it. But that's the thing is that when you watch how genius that movie is, like that takes a lot of work. That takes a lot of iteration and a lot of, you know, trial and error. Uh so you have to have the the resources to be able to do that and things are planned to some degree.

there's always going to be fallout because sometimes what's hardest is that once you start animating, you know, like then you're at that 7 seconds a week, you know, metric versus uh in a week a storyboard artist can maybe do, you know, like a small scene. Um, now it just gets more expensive to do. And then if you have to throw out animation, it can be very painful. It can certainly be painful for the morale of the team.
Sure. because nobody likes to see the work that they're doing not be used, you know?
Yeah. Yeah. And I think I think that that gets even more complicated with games. And I'm not sure if you've found that to be true in your process so far, but like for me, you pacing is so is such a huge part of film making and storytelling is the pacing and the rhythm. Mhm.
Uh, and cutting it just the right moment to get that reaction, you know, whether it's a joke or whether it's a a jump scare or a a beat, you know, an emotional beat for the story. With

games, man, you know, you the player can just stand around and look at the ground, you know, and and all of a sudden you're like, wait a second, that's where the jump scare is supposed to be, and you decided to look at the ground. So, it's particularly hard with games and giving them the agency, but also giving yourself as as the director of the game agency. You got to find that balance and it's tough. So, that that brings me to the next thing I wanted to ask you about, man, cuz I've been asking a lot of people in the game industry about AI and boy, you know, you get some spicy responses. Yeah. Um, lot of opinions.
What are your thoughts on all this, man? like how does this affect the film industry, the animation industry, the game industry? Is this good? Is this a net positive? What are your thoughts?
I guess the first way for even just for my own sanity, just the first way I try to answer the question for myself is that whether it's good or whether it's bad, it's happening. You know,
it is happening
and no matter how scary it is or how

great it is, like you can't put the genie back in the model, you know, it's it's
it's it's out there and it's and it's it's it's moving. Um, I think that there's like any kind of technology, it brings a lot of bad stuff with all the good stuff that it brings. Uh there's defin I I think the the most immediate place that I feel the pain of it is sort of in the community of artists that I work with especially when I see an artist who is witnessing their own work being used as like the D you know it's you know that's that you know and they have that sense of it's violating you know you feel like you've been ripped off and and you have been and so it's that's like a big problem in it. Um, so there's there's that aspect of it. There's the other aspect of it is the and I think we're just kind of starting to see things like when I I watch I watch a lot of YouTube. I love YouTube. I love video essays on on any subject, but I'm more and more I'm hearing the AI

narrator voice, you know?
Right.
Me too, man. I hate it.
Yeah. It's so obvious. It's I don't know why people think they can get away with it.
And it makes everything feel like it's the same thing. So, it just homogenizes everything.
And that's the thing that I'm afraid of with like, you know, it it being used too much in films or games or whatever is that it's just going to make it's going to take the soul out of stuff. Um, but is it a powerful tool and can it be used as a great tool? Um, I there's So, my wife and I were in Paris recently. We just got back from holiday and uh was kind of walking around our old neighborhoods and uh we used to live there and we went to the Picasso Museum and she asked me, "Do you think Picasso would use AI if he was alive today?" And my gut reaction was he absolutely would uh because he was constantly embracing like new technologies. And I and the reason I thought about it was like I don't know if you've ever seen the photographs that he did where he'd do like long long

exposures and he would take a flashlight and he would paint. I don't know if I can like factually credit him as being the first person to ever done that, but what I think is cool is that he took this new technology and he used it in a way that other people are not using it.
Yeah, these are really cool.
I think if you can do that with it, then you're you're you're still innovating and you're still, you know, keeping the human side of it. Well, my my hope is that here here's the big problem with it is that when I see a flashlight painting from Picasso, it's distinguishable from another kind of painting, his typical traditional kinds of paintings. So, my brain can go, it can switch gears and go, okay,
he's not saying the flashlight, he invented a flashlight, right? So, he's not saying that when he's doing this,
right?
He's saying, look at how I've embraced it.
Exactly. you look at what I'm doing with this technology. And so my hope is that
man, I really hope that there's some

kind of certification system where people can go, okay, this is an AI painting. And by the way, you know, you could tell they're AI right now, but I think at 5 years, we won't be able to. It won't have that boring uh polished feel that AI has right now. But my hope is that we can go, okay, here's this art realm or this this part of the industry that's AI and because I know it's AI and the author or the artist is being transparent about it, I don't feel like I'm being tricked. And so suddenly you're you'll embrace it more. Kind of like with this flashlight painting, it's like I look at it and I go, he's using a flashlight. That's kind of obvious. Um and he's being honest about it. Um, so there is that uh it something feels like I'm being lied to with AI stuff, but like other stuff like AI code or having AI maybe help with some plot holes in a screenplay that's a

it feels like that's not as sleazy and that's not as gross. Do you think that do you feel like there's levels of grossness
with AI?
Yeah.
Why Why do we feel that way? Is it because you you're you're partial to animation and you don't want AI touching animation because that's your job? Is that why?
Yeah, it's interesting because like the Well, I I think AI is really a game changer. So, I can always I I love using examples of things that have happened already, but I I will say with a grain of salt that that this may not date very well and next year like AI might be doing something that just is like
It's funny whenever I ask this. I asked this to Ken Lavine and he said the same thing. He was like, "Everybody's going to write articles about how dumb I am with what I'm about to say
in five years, you know." So, go ahead.
But I mean, this debate when computer animation came out, everyone is like, "Is this the end of stopotion? Is this the end of cell animation?" And it certainly changed it. And there isn't as much of it, definitely. Uh, but it

wasn't the end of storytelling, you know, and that's the thing is like it's now we're seeing something that maybe can encroach in on storytelling, which is that's that's the scary part for me is like will will AI ever do that? But there's one thing I guess one thing that I like that I have some hope in is that the like you just mentioned 2001 as you know like and that was a a time and a place that was relevant and it like it it had uh it resonated with with people. I'm talking just about the pacing or whatever.
Yeah.
Um and the and you and you think about like what was what was like the collective psyche at that time that that came out. space exploration was totally new. So to watch in real time a lunar lander is mindblowing, you know, is like that could be happening right now or that's about to happen. So now we're in this other realm where AI is changing things and we're having these existential crisis about AI. So how

would that even affect storytelling
as a human, you know, and and that's maybe just one place where and it might only last for like the the duration that it'll last maybe will get less and less. Right.
But um what what what AI can't and also right now they're just mainly just like large language models. They're not even truly like having any sort of sentient thinking. Uh you know so what is my experience as a human living in the world of AI? What's the story there? Uh could AI write that story right now? That story hasn't been written yet and it's using what's been written already to derive from to create something. So no. So, so there's always a human experience. I believe that's going to be the growing edge in front of it. And if you make art about that experience, then you're staying ahead of that curve.
Exactly. You know, this this this talk about AI makes me think about I mean, we we talked a little bit about the creative spark, like what is it? My opinion is it's divine. It's something

divine. It's it's it's magical. It's miraculous
and it cannot be replicated no matter how hard we try with with AI. That's my opinion.
I'm curious, how do you come up with good ideas? Um, how do you know when an idea is good? How do you know when an idea is going to be profitable? Whether it's games or films, do you have any thoughts on that?
A lot. Um the I have lots of thoughts with not like necessarily like a clear recipe, you know, answer
but I first I would say I agree with you that there is like a numminous experience to creating
uh that is not concrete at all. It's like it's it's the there's this book by John Fowls called the French Lieutenants Woman uh that I read about maybe 15 20 years ago and it was written in the 60s but it's about Victorian England and about a quarter of the way through the book or so he breaks the fourth wall in the writing and starts talking to you as

the reader and says something like I don't know what's going to happen to John when he gets
what he talks as the reader
he talks to the reader. there.
Okay.
You know, he basically
suddenly he's like talking to you is like, you think that these are my puppets that I control these characters. He's like, I'm writing this not knowing what they're going to do. At first, I was bumped because I was like I was totally in the story. But then I was but then then these characters actually became more real for me because I'm like well the writer doesn't even have control over and I started thinking about how like if I'm even when I'm animating a character uh I would start to just move them around and then suddenly there's just this impulse coming from I don't know where saying like no go this way you know like the character is like this is going to make me sound crazy but it's like the character is telling me the minion is telling me
to do this you know
that's right
and it's like I I didn't think of that I like like I my ego didn't think of it at least it just came from something and

you just you just pull on those threads and you follow those things uh and it starts to become something you know and the um the one thing that I tried to even as an art student the when I first had to make my student film I waited for six weeks I didn't do any work six weeks I'm like the idea is going to come and the idea will come fully formed and then I'll just go and execute and that just I don't think that this happens. You know, there might be some rare people out there who it happens to, but I think that you get a question or like a what if this plus this and you start to play with it and it starts to grow and then it's like you it's like a garden like you can't necessarily control how things you can just like nurture it, you know, and help it. Um, so it gets it can very quickly uh you just follow it, you know, and try to like stay with it and you're just it's like surfing in a way.
You you'll take a screenplay, right? The studio will give you a screenplay and they'll say, "Now we need you to make it, right?" Have you ever written your

own screenplay? That's kind of my first question. Yeah.
And and developed it.
I'm writing I'm writing one now.
Okay.
Uh I'm about like 80% through the the first draft. uh which has already been like such a roller coaster you know in terms of like the experience that you have in trying to create something. Um I think the and this kind of connects to the other part of the question which is the usually if a script comes to me it's coming from you know a studio or producer who's saying like what would you do here as a director? What do you think's working? What do you think's not working? Uh, and then usually there's a step where I'm like working with the writer
to to take, you know, to develop it and to try to um to to shift it and give it what it needs. But there's something in it that's working. There's something in it that feels great, let's let's go with that. or with an animation film where, you know, the the writer might write an outline and then they'll start to script

it and there might be some action scene or something that's not dialogue dependent that I can start storyboarding and then we'll meet each other and there's like cross-pollination and and everything kind of comes up together. But in writing a script from scratch, the the it's just so true that the only way it gets done is by doing it. Uh, you know, and I know that sounds ridiculous, but it's it's like any sort of problem that I have in the story, if I'm not working on it, it doesn't get solved.
Yes.
You know, you can't like I mean there there's sometimes you get really lucky and you go for a walk or you're in the shower and like bing like a little go off and then you then you can't wait to go back. Uh but most of the work done is just by like trying things out, you know, and you have the characters talk and saying things and then you're like that doesn't feel right, you know, and they'll tell you like that's not me, you know.
Love that,
you know. So it's and if you start to relate to it that way, it's so much like

playing as a kid, you know, when
when when kids play with action figures or something, they don't decide on what they're going to do first and then do it. They just start, you know, and it just it's emergent, right? It just happens. Uh, I think that's really what the creative process is.
Now, the final question I have for you for this for this podcast is
Oh, wait. Can I add just one other thing?
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
There's um there's one thing too I think is really valuable that's that is similar between film and games. Uh, studio films at least. I I think independent films don't do this as much. Uh, but you have play testing in games, right? uh you have screen testing and like audience previews in films and you know some directors don't like them, some do. I I I love them. I think you learn so much about what's resonating with the audience when you watch this. Uh a lot of it can be things you thought were going to land really well that nobody cared about or things that you didn't think were funny anymore because you've seen them a hundred times and you want to cut but then they laugh at them. But whatever situation is is that you learn

what they like and what they don't like and what's working and just like in in in play testing. And I think that that um helps a lot like with this question of did I need that thing? I'll try it without. And like the audience the audience doesn't know what you cut, you know, it's it's they only know what you're showing them. And so I think a lot of it is if you can still make things work and and keep it, you know, more lean. Uh that generally is better.
You know, you mentioned some directors don't want to do screen tests. And I I dude, like 3 days ago, I was thinking, I'm not I'm not going to play test Twisted Tower. I'm just going to release it. And the reason I thought that was because I can't handle it emotionally, you know? It's like so hard to finally give it up to a testing audience. But look, would you rather the pain of a private test or would you rather the pain of a public humiliation where all these glaring issues you didn't know about? Yeah. You know, and also you can

you still have time to do something about it.
That's right. That's right. And I don't want the time to do something about it because I am exhausted and I'm ready to be done. Um, have you ever felt that way by the way where you're just ready to be done with a film?
Oh, definitely. Like,
and you just hate it.
Oh, man.
Well, that that that is a good segue to the last question I have for you, which is you compared games with films and and play testing. What what do you you know you're stepping into game development? First off, I want to know tell me a little bit about the project and why you're doing it. Like what's
why and it if we could broaden the question a little bit, why do you think a lot of studios are doing this? I know Bad Robots doing it. Uh Anna Pererna did it and then they kind of shifted gears and and renamed the studio. Blumbhouse is doing it. And then you reached out to me, I think it was six, seven months ago and said, "Yeah, I'm interested in jumping into game development." And I thought to myself, man, I'd rather be in film to be completely honest because I love telling stories and I love having controls like the in Adobe Premiere it

is so much easier to tell a story than Unity. Um, so I want to hear your thoughts like why are you doing this?
Um, I mean I think a lot the the the general side of it is that it's another way to create. I still love film, still love animation, still storytelling in that medium. Um, but for me games are kind of special just because uh I so I grew up in the 80s. Uh, and I went to school outside of my school district. So I would take the bus as close to home as I could, which was this mall that had a video game arcade in it. And then my dad would come pick me up after uh after his war. And so I would get $1 every day to get five tokens to play video games. And I just loved video games. It was like I loved animated movies and I love video games.
Uh and then Dragons Slayer came out and it was like merged the two and it just blew my mind and I was like I have to do this some whatever this is. I have to do

this. I have to be a part of this. And so it was always a big part of of my like formative years and and what I liked. Uh and then the first job I got um after my first year at Cal Arts was at Lucas Arts working on Day of the Tentacle as an animator.
No way. Before I did anything with film, I I had a job in games and uh we were using D Paint Animator, working on the Amigas and I was, you know, animating Hogy and the other characters.
This is 1993, right? 1992 when you're working.
Yeah.
I was two years old, by the way. And like I did the whole um over my Christmas break uh at school, I came back and I did the whole opening credits animated opening credits of Day of the Tentacle and it just paid for like my groceries going to school, you know, like it just was helpful for that. Uh but it was it was still to this day one of the best jobs I had because it was it was so creative. There was such a small team of people.
Was Tim Schaer your boss?

Yeah. Yeah.
Did you talk to him?
Oh, yeah. like like like we would go have dinner and hang out and like like the everyone who worked on the game was like the friend group, you know. So
I need you I need you to get him on the podcast. I have tried so hard to get in contact with him. But anyway,
it's I mean it was such a great era, you know that I went back and worked on Grim Fandango just a little bit doing some walk cycles and things like that. Um but
so you got to you got to see the process of like how games are made like in the confines of a budget uh and a schedule.
Yes. And this was like when there were I mean the only way to make a game engine was to have somebody who would like build it from the ground up you know right and yeah
so there that part of it for me as like an animator and what I was studying was like a black box. I didn't like understand any of that stuff
but I love the like one thing as an animator and I'm sure a lot of animators can appreciate this is that when if I animate there's just a different type of satisfaction. I can animate a a shot in a movie and that shot passes by in the

movie and somebody laughed at it because it was a funny joke or something like that and that feels, you know, oh, I touched the audience, I moved them, you know, uh, or I can do a walk cycle and then put into a game controller and now I can control or I can watch somebody moving that character around
and I'm like I'm like that this is like not just 7 seconds of animation. This is like infinite anim, you know?
That's right. And so there's it's so gratifying and the level of the prototype that we have of the game right now, David, uh let some a friend of his who has a seven-year-old play it. And there's this door that was just put in there. There's nothing behind the door. And she got up to it and she couldn't open the door cuz it's not right. And she's like, I want I need to know what's behind this door, you know, and that's like makes you want to put something behind the door for the kid to go discover, you know. So um so there there that part of it it's like it's feeding the same thing. It's like the sense of

discovery or like watching somebody uh doing this thing. The one of the reasons that I gravitate towards it now is just goes back to the beginning of our conversation is that it's possible for a few people or even one person to do this, you know, on on their own. And it's there's you don't need permission. the the gatekeepers are not as as as strong. Uh, and that's good and that's bad because there's so many games and so many things it's like how do you find the ones that are like really fantastic and uh my wife is a is a novelist and we talk a lot about this where you know the there's so many people self-publishing which is fantastic that it's so uh democratic in that sense but what the publishing companies do is they filter a lot of stuff so that when you you know buy like a random house book or something like that you know that it's gone through a lot of quality control already. That's right. That's right.
And so that there's that part of it and that's like, you know, Spotify is kind of like that now with music. Um, so but

the fact that anybody can try I think is is is cool. And I'm like, well, you know, I've learned all these skills over the years and I've I never lost my love of games even though I lost the amount of time that I have to play them. Uh but I I still love them and I and I still want to engage in this and you know it's just been very gratifying you know uh to to be doing it.
You mentioned that the film industry is has more gatekeeping than let's say the the the ind the video game industry. Yeah.
Um let's let's focus specifically on independent.
Okay.
Okay. So like what you're doing you would call it independent game development, right? You don't you don't have a AAA publisher who's backing you or anything like that, right?
You're just sort of self-unding this thing for now.
Yeah. Okay. So that's yeah independent game development independent film making I just feel like it still has gatekeeping.
Is that true? Like it's still much you still have to go through some kind of independent studio. Right.

Well the so anything that I would say should preface about independent film making is just from what I've seen on the outside because I I came up in the studio system.
Okay. So, it's you're trying to get noticed. You I think a lot of it is like a this maybe is not true for everybody, but I think a lot of independent filmmakers like they do want to be maybe the next Wes Anderson or Chris Nolan or Edgar Wright. Uh you know, and like how how can they do how can they make this big movie that they have in their mind? And you have to make something smaller
um to do that, you know, and it's and there might be some people who are just like, I just want to make indie films and that's it. I don't care about, you know, like a huge uh, you know, $200 million budget film, but, you know, you're entering it in you're instantly in like competition, you know, like by entering it in festivals, trying to get attention, trying to get an agent,
um,
you know, and you're trying to
I think maybe the main thing is is that unless you want to put it on YouTube,

which is what we established is like probably the like right now the only one that I've identified, you can't you you can't just decide I'm going to make an independent film right now and put it on Hulu. You know, Hulu still decides what they're going to put. You know,
I think it's easiest with Amazon. I could be wrong. I think one of my friends put his movie on Amazon and he didn't do well, but he was able to get it on there.
Okay.
Um but I don't know if that's still easy to
like in the same way because I I don't know about that dynamic, but is like maybe the same way that you could get your um self-published book sold on Amazon or something.
Yeah. Yeah, that's right. And it's going to just it's going to collect dust. you know, you could just because you get something on a shelf somewhere doesn't mean the shelf is valuable. Um, you know, whereas Steam, like Steam is so democratic, um, if your game is good, it goes to the top.
Yeah.
Generally speaking, like if it's if it's a good game, it'll rise to the top.
So, the gatekeeper there is your audience.
The audience.
Yeah.
And that's I'm so I I I have been so

confused by this. And I have a meeting with a producer about films. Uh cuz I want to get I want to get my film financed next year after I finish Twisted Tower. And I'm like, what is this realm of like just because you make something great like in the game world, you put it out there and it and it'll probably just do well? It's so easy to market yourself.
Why is it different in film? Is it is it because it's it has a history and it's like from the 30s and 40s and the this bizarre old structure is still there in Hollywood. This distribution structure still lives on despite its irrelevancy.
Yeah. I mean it's a good question. I mean, it's funny because even like I just instantly thought about how films like back in the day of like the like really early days, you know, um they were like a to be a director on a film back in the day was not to like I have an idea for a film or I want to make this script. It was literally I'm going to direct the shoot, you know, the like it would go through a pipeline all in

the same building and as soon as the film was done being shot, it goes on to the editor and that director never sees it again, you know. Wow. Um, so I mean pipeline.
Yeah, it was total pipeline.
I think that was how Wizard of Oz was shot. I think there was like seven directors that
that wouldn't right around that that time. It's mainly like distribution has just always been
I mean it's been the big problem for so long. How do we get this to the screens and that's going to cost money. How do you get it to the audience? And so maybe, and this is all speculation because there's so many different, you know, potential wise to all this, but maybe it's just the fact that the gatekeeper came out of necessity from like we have to get him to the screen is the only way to do that. Unless you're just going to make a film and then screen it for your friends. Uh, you can control that. Um, but how do you distribute it? How do you get it out there? Um, Steam is like great for that, you know, like in terms of what it what it does. Um, and you know, there's there

could from what you're saying with like your friend getting their film on on Amazon and being able to being able to not ask permission to be able to put it on the platform so that they can show it.
Um, it's entirely possible that that could be found and get traction. Uh, and then maybe could even just get found by a producer who says, "This person has a great point of view. I" and call them out. Um,
yeah,
you know, I think then there's like the agents and like having an agent and like how much that lubricates the whole process because they know the people and can connect you with people and they know the projects and they can bring them to you and you know so it's it has been a system that's been around for for so long it is constantly being challenged
by other mediums that are coming up around it. Um,
and I think it's also being challenged by streaming and and you know, even YouTube is starting to become
I I really do think Steam is revolutionary and because it's
it's not just a bunch of free crap

that's floating around on Steam. Now, there's plenty of that. There's there's there's a as Chris Sakowski who's like a he's a indie game marketer he he says that there's this sludge this base layer of sludge that is deep in the ocean of steam that will never see the light of day and it doesn't deserve to see the light of day it's just bad games crappy games but he's Chris Sicowski was saying like the algorithm is so good because it truly does bring up great games and AAA does not own the front page of Steam. Okay?
You know, it just doesn't. Whereas Hollywood, it seems, owns the front page of Netflix and owns the front page of Amazon and Hulu. There there's no there's no um algorithm that's pulling up, I don't think, pulling up these films and bringing them to the front page of Netflix. Um and you mentioned YouTube. Well, it's like, yeah, but you're not going to make any money, you know?
Right. I think one of my short films, this is a little flex here, but one of

them has like 650,000 views.
It did great and I made nothing. Nothing. I I made no money on that thing. Um I think I got paid $700 actually from the the channel that posted it. It's just funny, you It's like you can you can have 600,000 people watch a 15-minute short film and make no money and then you can have, you know, a 100,000 people watch an hourong film and spend $15 on it
and the it makes a ton of money, you know, right?
It just feels really strange. It feels like backwards and I'm trying to wrap my head around it. I think much of that is like is is
is the marketing of it and like making people aware of it, you know, is what makes um I mean there's been this happens a lot also too with like changing of the guards in studios. Um I think like Iron Giant is a really fantastic example.
I love that movie. My kids love that movie. such an amazing movie which wasn't like a huge box office because it was at the time where you know there was

like a lot of like rotation happening in in the executives and and it just wasn't promoted you know.
Yeah.
It wasn't like the darling of the maybe the executive that had like brought it up something along that
those lines. Um but uh but now it's like this cult you know kind of classic. Um, I guess I'm a little bit old school in the sense of if and if if someone says to me, I want to make I want to be the next Chris Nolan. I want to be the next uh VNOV or something, you know, to to this degree, what do I have to do? And they're like 18, you know. The main advice I still have is like just start making things and try and get people to see them and show what you can do, you know. Um, but it's it seems to me like I haven't seen the model of of making of having the success off of of like Chris Nolan from your YouTube video right now anyway. You know, the culture landscape might change. Um, yeah.
Last question for you before we wrap up

here. Do you have do you have like five minutes?
Yeah.
Okay. How does uh the technical process compare um game development versus let's say animating a movie like Minions?
Um you're directing both, right? So you're the director of this game, right? You're sort of just the puppeteer and you've got a team member who's helping out with the technical side of it, right?
I I see David Moore as a partner for sure.
Okay. So you're both in Unity working.
Yeah. Yeah. He's so the way that I came to know David was um he has a YouTube channel called Level Pixel Level which I found because I during co I did like a little indie animation project and I that's where I was like teaching myself Blender u and I was trying to learn how to rig characters and and he has just like these amazing tutorials on there. Very calm voice, very like it's very um and very very smart. And then I I can't remember I reached out to him. I

think I had some questions for him and he just said, "Well, just send me over, you know, a bund file and like, you know, so and then he like helped with stuff and uh we just started having conversations. Um and so when I started thinking about doing something, doing a game, I just told him first, you know, and I don't think I honest I knew that he worked in games. I didn't know like what he was doing right then. It had been maybe like a a good couple years since we had spoken.
And he just said, "Hey, do you want to do like a little informal game jam?"
Uh, and I said, "Yeah, that would be cool. That would be because, you know, he's like, I'm using Unity, I use Unreal, I'm, you know, steeped in all this stuff." So, we did a little game jam together and um sort of based off this this idea uh I had with this little wizard character. And it was just a blast and it was fun to work with him. and you know he definitely brings like this strong technical knowledge that I don't have. Uh but he also comes at it from the perspective of like what's the experience going to be? So it's not just

that he's great at coding. I mean he's really thinking about things in in a way that resonates with me really strongly. So it's been very collaborative in in that sense. But I think I mean the main way that we've divided things up now um so far has been I'm working on the characters. I'm doing the animation you know uh designing. Sometimes we're doing like a little bit of freelance work with some designers uh to to you know design a character or something. But um
and then
you're working in Blender. Is that what it is?
Working in Blender. Yeah. And and he's uh he does as well. But and and then I'm working in Unity in so much as it's very new for me. Unity to be honest.
Yeah.
You know, and so there's still a lot of like me wrapping my head around things and there's a lot of boring questions that I have for David like I can't get it to do this now. What do I do? I'm stuck. It's a totally different paradigm than sitting in Final Cut or Premiere
and taking your renders and putting it to music and stuff, you know, it's totally different. Um
because it's not
linear. It's uh it's it's experiential

with the player, you know, they determine what happens
even in the way and you can tell me if you have a different experience, but like I I just the one of the big reasons I'm doing it is because it's creating these new questions for me and I just love I love that discovery of something.
Yeah.
And I was thinking like, wow, there's okay, what we could do next. What's the next best thing to do on the game? Well, there's about three dozen things that I could do next that were
so many things,
you know, put it put it forward and Um, and what's going to be the best thing, you know, and I think that's where I started thinking about like all those options are open eventually. Eventually, it'll be like this needs to happen next otherwise nothing else can happen. That's right.
But we're at such the early days of it that it's like I could I could do more animations for this one character or I could create a new character or I could create an enemy or we could like, you know, build some levels and try to do, you know. Um, and a lot of that what I've enjoyed working with David is just like he's as he'll say, uh, it'd be

great if you could do this next cuz that would help me do that. And it really is like I just love that collaboration, you know? Um, cuz then I have I have an I have a mission and then I feel like, okay, I can go do my mission. So
that's right. You know what's funny about game development that's different in my experience with films and you know I've just done short films but it's film films are for me like layered. So, it's like you start with the screenplay and then you move into the storyboarding and then you move into what well, like if you're filming live action, then you move into finding the the actors and and you know, renting locations and
all that. And then you move into actually filming and you got to get your crew together, the lighting and the sound and the director. And then you film and then you actually do the filming and then you go into post and then you edit and then you find the musician and it's a layered process that you can't kind of like building a house where it's like you can't you just cannot lay you can't start framing until

you've got the foundation.
With games it's like and this is this is a problem which is you can go in there and go I'm going to spend all my time on this this car model and it's not even programmed. You don't even know what the loop is. You don't know the mechanics are but you can start on the car if you want.
Yeah. You could start with the music if you want. You could just start whenever you want. And the problem with that is that for me that's not necessarily the best. Uh just because you have an impulse to create a beautiful car doesn't mean that that's the correct first step,
right?
You know, um so you have to learn to restrict your
impulse is that you you already have identified that it might not be the best next thing to do.
Yeah.
But if you're coming into this completely cold, you don't know that.
I know. You know,
I know. Yeah, there's no there's no framework. I mean, there there kind of is. Like, here's the thing, you know, I was talking to to Jonas Tyroller, who's another game developer, game dev YouTuber, kind of like Level Pixel Level. His process is prototyping and

gray boxing and coming up with these small little tight ideas and seeing if that they're worthy of of polishing and expanding. And I think we talked about this earlier, but it's like for me, I have to taste and feel and smell
Yeah. the entire polished five minutes of a game to know what it even is. Um, which just makes it expensive,
right?
Because then you have to tear it all down if something doesn't work. But you're like, well, I kind of want to have it the way it was, but in order to to do it right, I have to tear it all down. And so there's there's this constructive de destructive process back and forth, back and forth. Snip, snap, snip, snap,
snip, snap, snip, snap, snip, snap. I did. Okay. You've no idea the physical toll that three vasectomies have on a person.
It's so time consuming.
Do you go ahead?
I just have a question for you based off of that cuz
it's so time consuming.
Do you go ahead? I just have a question for you based off of that because the and I know like every game's different has its different problems to be solved

but
um is there a point that you can identify where you have done it to like a finished look so that you can like taste and feel it and you know what it is. Um maybe it's a level or maybe it's one character or something where it's like serves as a proof of concept for you. So now you could be like now I can gray box all the other levels and then go go do it. Is there ever like a tipping point for you? We tried that like I thought we did and and this is not a recommendation to anybody and it's not even a recommendation to you but I just know for me
as the I guess you'd call me the director of this next game
for me no like we tr like we were two and a half years into development of basically set dressing while we designed which is just so expensive and stupid. And so I was like, "Okay." I told I told my team member, I said, "Please, for the love of God, gray box, gray box before

you go in and set dress." And he was like, "Okay." Two days later, he he messaged me and he said, "Hey, I got to confess something to you. I have not been gray boxing because I just can't. I cannot do it. It it doesn't it it I have to see the world to know if this level's good." I'm not saying that's right. Right.
I'm just saying that's how it is for me and my team
what what it was last year. I have to see it
like cuz like a lot of these games well okay who was I talking to I can't remember who I was I talking to but it was someone on the podcast and we were just saying like like 70% of a game is and whether it's fun and exciting is how it feels.
You know a prototype can't necessarily prove if a game is fun. Sometimes you have to add the game feel and the game juice to know if the that loop or that mechanic is actually fun,
right?
You know, like uh if you think about like um so much of what makes Mario

Odyssey for me anyway really fun is the juice,
the particles and the sounds and and the bounciness of everything. You know, if that was all gray boxed and simple with no sound.
Yeah. You wouldn't get it. Yeah.
Yeah. I don't think you would get it. And I think you would even say this is a terrible prototype. we need to scrap it and make something else.
Yeah. It's even like I had this experience playing um Call of the Lamb and this is something David and I talk about like like you're swinging your sword or your axe, whatever you have and the grass is cutting
always. Yeah.
And you're just like, "Oh, I just do this." You know, I know. I know. And with Hollow Knight, that's true as well. I think that's probably where they got that from. In Hollow Knight, you could just cut the grass and you never get a resource from the grass,
you know? you don't get like a currency, you don't get health, nothing comes out of the grass, but yet you're doing it the whole time. You can't stop. And so, yeah, it's it's absolutely true that the often times the game feel and the game juice is what makes the loop fun.

Yeah.
Um, so I don't know, you know, I think I'm not saying that gray boxing isn't valuable cuz we actually just did it a week ago.
Well, I say we because I rehired Felipe for some extra work. He he was working with me for three years and then we had budget problems and he had to he had to leave the project but he came on recently for some sort of contracted part-time work and because we're we're making an Enderman level and what I mean by that is there's this enemy that hunts the player and if he if the player sees you, you're screwed and you're dead. It's a giant spider.
Because this level design is so linked to the mechanics of being hunted
that that required us to say we got to gray box this perfectly first.
So maybe it's just maturity and we're just growing and maturing as game developers and we've we're learning how to imagine what it looks like cuz like

that would be so valuable, wouldn't it? Like if you're going to be gray boxing, if you can imagine what it's going to look like, then you don't need to set dress.
Well, there's this narity though. I mean, like it's that maturity I think comes in like knowing like this this is what I need to do next to get it to the to make it advance. And it might be I need to get this jump exactly right or this texture exactly right or might need it might be I need to get this mechanic right. There's places too where like even in storyboarding where if it's like an action scene or there's some idea in it where the camera it has to be moving and you know and that's really hard for a storyboard artist to do is to like get the sense of a moving camera. So then then you might go we need to previs this in 3D. We need to get this to 3D right now. Uh it's going to be more expensive. Um but that's going to be the only way that we're all going to be able to see it so we know what to do next. Um, so I think it's like that's the thing where experience starts to tell you why this is valuable to do it this way, you know.
Sure. Cool, man. Well, thank you for

chatting. This was so good. This was such a fun episode. I'll leave in the description. What did you want in the description? What kind of link?
Anything?
Um, for now, um, yeah, it could just be my Instagram and my maybe. Yeah.
Okay, sounds good. Mr. Kyle, thanks for hanging out. Had a blast,
man. This was a lot of fun.
Yeah, dude. Cheers.
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