Lateral Up with Kylan Coats | Game Dev Unchained Episode 0201

I [Music] ladies and gentlemen boys and girls welcome back to the only place you should be getting your podcast information about game developers and the lifestyle of game developers that's right we gated up the game day launching podcast I'm gonna have to bring you this awesome body has grown very Charles how can we do the heavy lifting on his side of the table what's up everybody welcome to another episode of game dev unchain the original podcast that brought you to us right bringing along with me our special guests Kyle and cokes so I'm gonna unmute you right now and we should be able to hear you : hey how's it going I got the audio going oh man I always have that thing perfectly timed it's uncanny thank you so much for joining us this is

the part of the podcast where we hand the mic to you for a second to kind of give our audience and listeners out there a little intro who you are where you been were you hitting yeah all right cool so I've been I've been in the industry for about 11 or 12 years mainly doing UX UI work yeah right over over the last about a year and a half decided to make the jump to go full-time indie so actually started up a little indie studio called crispy creative focusing on UX UI work for games and for tech and also working on our on our first game so that's kind of me in a nutshell it's a two for one kind of person right there not only does crispy media do fantastic UI work for your game but they're also working on the game themselves that's the one-two punch that

a lot of indie Studios should look at doing I would suggest being valuable to other companies keep your lights on while you work on your baby and then boom hit the world with your your brilliant piece of content Kyla I'm so happy to have you with us it's so great to see you again cuz absolutely good to see you guys yeah we worked at one of the studios in the past actually so we got to hang out with Colin actually twice at was obsidian but then also we really became like solid friends when we were working together at unbroken Studios that's when the bromance bromance really starts maybe you work twice together you're legally married by the step yeah that's awesome so so of course with anybody that goes and make the dive my favourite question to start off with was when was it comfortable for you to actually make the jump when was that moment where you felt where everything was lining up and there's enough risks and reward for you to be like I can do this I can at least try and give it a try there was I was so the last my last

full-time job was that obscenity of entertainment as Larry kind of mentioned I had been there for about four and a half years worked on a couple projects the last project was I was outer worlds which should be released later on this year it's kind of cool and then unfortunately I'd hit by layoffs pretty unexpectedly and then coming home and talking to my husband and he said hey you've always wanted to start your own studio you've always wanted to make your own game why not now and that's that was kind of the start the the first year was to see like is this possible can I can I make a living doing freelance work keep the mortgage paid keep the lights on mm-hmm and it it turned out really well it was a bit of a trial run of just is this

when is the money gonna run out you know when am i what am I gonna have to go back to full-time work and the work kept coming thankfully it was very lucky in that so the beginning of this year was okay you know there's enough of a network of a clientele what's why don't we try to go full-time indie development and and space out the contract work a little bit more and and it's kind of the same thing like until the money runs out we'll keep doing it so first I'd like to say shoutout to significant others forcing and enabling us to follow our dreams let's say it's huge you know they have business with lawyers and behind you to say like hey we got this give it a shot I know you're not gonna be happy when we're 80 and you didn't so let's just find out we can recover so I'm really happy that you have that in your life first oh yeah super lucky there yeah

second is like even if the jumping point wasn't a comfortable transition the fact that you did it right like I commend you for regardless of how you got to being an indie you're in Indy and you're giving it a shot like you didn't immediately like well I need to find a new job instead of you said I need to make this work I'm going to start my studio and how I'm gonna do it is by being you I still getting contract work and then working on my game on the side mm-hmm for sure and I guess I will say a little bit of I had been I've been thinking about doing independent development for four years for a long long time and at the at the age that I met at the point in my life that I men I had been working towards that so I'm in my mid-30s that was kind of always even when I was in my undergrad that seemed like an ideal point to try to start my own business because if everything explodes there's still enough time to go

back and and salvage a career full time so it's uh yeah it wasn't complete leap of faith I had been thinking about it for a while but that final kick off the cliff was definitely more from the husband of like just go do it freaking go and if you don't mind telling us right now how far along are you on your own game I guess in your aim division so so right now that we have a prototype there's a gameplay loop which is really exciting looking at doing a crowdfunding campaign later on this year to to show yeah so that's all the work that goes into that yeah back all this but yeah so so it actually it started like January 1st was really when I had a concept in mind and that's one started doing paper prototypes digital

prototyping seeing like is there something here I'd done market research over the last year for a couple other games those other games didn't really nothing panned out there that is just it just wasn't fun but I had that market research it seemed to point in a certain direction you know a certain genre and that was where it's like hey let's taking that genre is this fun is is there something here that we can go forward with and I keep saying we I'm the one full-time developer it's not this huge studio it's I'm the one full-time person and I work with a variety of contractors literally around the world that I've I've either met personally or have been connected to through other other people in my network so so it's not a huge endeavor it's all self-funded it's all scrappy bootstrapped all that kind of stuff and

yeah but it's exciting yeah yeah like however we make the leave it's the leap that is required I think for anybody that wants to do things full-time I I also greatly advise anybody who goes into this business the game development industry to always have some type of Ali's interest in business because it being so volatile us constantly being moved around and we're talking about you moving between our least going between obsidian and in LA right that that commute alone would really bring someone to hell and it's like oh it's only an hour away without the free time when that 405 that's what I mean but it might as well just live in a different City at that point because that hour and a half if you're lucky plus you know plus all those traffic time

can really really tear it down because eventually you either have the the grit to kind of go through traffic or eventually go through the train which doubles your time even more that that's the reality of it there's not a lot of game development within Orange County but as we all know the Orange County's the best place to live in California and that's I mean I I actually live in Long Beach which is like right in between the west side which is a lot of Studios Santa Monica you know Sony's over there he a naughty dog all those around that and then Irvine which is the Orange County hub for in that obsidian that yeah and that's that's actually why we bought the house where we got it because it was like okay well we live in an unstable industry yeah if if something goes wrong in one area I have I still have some semblance of access to the other kind of hub in the area um and

also I mean I you know sorry it's alright so there's a cluster of game developers in Long Beach just waiting for the to hit the fan basically everything there really is like not not even joking the more that I hang out around here the more I I talk to people who they work at Blizzard or they work at Naughty Dog or they work at Sony Santa Monica and they all live in Long Beach not only for the affordability but the location and you have estrangement with LA yeah yeah I mean it's the blue line is shut down right now but when it opens back up it's much more accessible no one ever rushes the blue line it's like a spike of have to type of measure the blue line is just the roughest line out of all the metro trains from experience pretty three it's great get to downtown LA it's great but that's that's it music order ship the residence

on you're just trying not to touch too many things I yeah you guys down I call them encounters on the blue line where it's just you know you're minding your own business doing your own thing and then all of a sudden randomly like oh okay you're just gonna go yeah no problem but yeah I mean that's the realities of Los Angeles like if you're trying to get around especially I don't know what it was like did you ever take the treat you take the treat sounds like you two taking the train to commute before I mean I've not not to commute it's just it's never made sense timewise for for me to drive down to Irvine I mean that's ladies it's about 45 minutes to an hour from Long Beach to obsidian my my first development job was in Santa Monica and I was actually living in Pasadena at the time so that was an hour and a half one way and that you know but it was it was

my first dev like take what you can get you know but that was that was brutal that was really really rough and yeah listened to a lot of audiobooks a lot of podcasts so yeah we thrive Carlin let me ask you a question on behalf of all the people who might soon be in a position like yours or who want to be in a position like yours which is I am a talented and valued developer in the industry but I want to do my own thing right I guess was it always your plan from day one of you starting your studio to do like moonlighting in game development or did you start with just game development and then realize you needed to start moonlighting to make it work I'd always wanted to start my own studio I always wanted to run my own business if for nothing else and just as a life experience to to be your own boss and there was a bit of I mean I've been critical of the the bosses of my former

employers not not just obsidian but other other studios that I've been at so starting my own studio was a bit of like you know a put up or shut up like if you think you can do better do it yourself right so that's always been it's always a plan a goal of mine when I tried to do development while I was still working full-time it it was just really hard it was hard to get enough traction to get enough momentum behind something yeah and that added into you know go in eight hours a day put in all the creative energy into that project and then add on an extra two hours you know two and a half hours of driving time to that as well getting home I just didn't have a lot there wasn't a lot left to to do my own development so full-time indie that that always was

the goal but even when I first started out I was like I don't know enough I need to get some experience I need to know more about everything and that's why I've stayed in full-time work for as long as I have or a long as I did so sorry I did I get off so your question I mean just mainly it's it's it's not that you got off it's I'll give you an opportunity to clarify the explicitness of what I was asking which is just all right you've got your studio going now right day one comes along employed in the game industry you know you want to make your own game but you were also telling us that you took on work when you could to do UI design like that's part of your company which is crispy media would be on us for your project while you specifically are working on developing your own game so I guess just take me through that decision to like hybridize you're nobody hmm for sure so that was always a kind of hedging your

bets making getting diverse revenue streams in to make sure that it's a sustainable business I looked at a lot of looked at other studios that would would try to diversify their their revenue streams us to us to games that did Monument Valley they were kind of the main inspiration behind it so they're a creative agency first doing websites doing products app design all of that and then they made Monument Valley as an exploration of like hey we haven't done a video game before what is this like and it came out hugely successful so you know and now they're yeah I think they just announced they're working on the third one yeah so so that was always that was always in the back of my head mainly because I'm a worrier and I don't like

putting all my eggs in one basket on on anything thankfully ux/ui it's a discipline that has transferable skills outside of games so some of my clients have been you know tech companies that have been redesigning UI for for nutrition apps you know or doing doing websites so that is a it's not always the most exciting work but it's it it's not terrible either you know like I'm not designing weapons systems for the military or something like that like it's it is bringing in funds it's broadening my network of people that you can then draw from to work on your own project your own game and and yeah so that's that's always been the goal is to to try to diversify as much as possible for for bringing in bringing in revenue

and that's just for sustainability different disciplines it gets a little bit harder so game does like systems design level design that's a pretty niche discipline but as as tech grows and advances there's possibility of doing stuff for was it good Alexa like the Alexa games Amazon Alexa and and Google home they're looking at developing games or game like experiences where the skills from systems and level designs can actually transfer over in a tech I haven't heard so just that space game I do you mind kind of explaining more about how the applications of games in Alexa that the sound device yeah so like I the first thing I could think it was like this is low-hanging fruit but Alexis perfect for like bringing back choose your own adventure right she'll read passage ask

you a question you answer it she voice recognizes and I see the next piece so like a dialogue tree and that was just what came to mind and nice talking to him just right now I see it's something I think that could be easily so it's less visual but audio or is it still with this okay okay no no all audio with a lot of the speech of text or speech recognition um that helps to that helps a lot of the interactivity one of my good friends he was actually working on a version of Jeopardy for for for audio devices any true which is perfect it totally works I'm smart oh yeah so I really see that Lane opened up like all those little party game for people so yeah like the board like the analog gaming side of things have been making it come back for years now and if they can actually market those devices

as the Center as a referee yeah holy moly well it's I love the idea of the personal experiences coming back again right so like with a Nana like if we play Catan we're playing Catan yeah but if we have Alexa it's like having a console that is dedicated assuming this light of music and the cube at home it's a console that's dedicated to providing me interpersonal experiences with people real that analog style of game night I see but this week we're playing a whole different game yeah so instead of buying 20 30 50 100 $50 box two games $30 scale and there's like some cool games you could be buying like little $2 apps or even if it's just added in for free I don't know what the revenue plane is but let's just that's very professor yeah put Alexa in the middle of the room and let's all sit around and play who doesn't have it oh my god that could be cool all right and where do we get this money me where do I sign up well that's that's exciting thing

about game developers there's we can tell obviously chalk up to why game developers are having trouble right now and why business is is an avenue that everybody should look into you but also as an industry were thriving in so many ways Alexa Google home these are avenues that I haven't even looked at myself but like Don gaming development we're talking about enterprise practical applications are using game tech right now in there like Tesla was talking about how they're incorporating games within there - man Tesla put chess yeah but they're starting to put like legitimate games within the car that's a plan right because everything's automative now okay they want to make it so that you don't drive and a certain point how do we kill a time and their future proofing it yeah by we had this is a great way to YouTube is in there like oh oh man I would love

to own like a dopant we're going off let's talk your game a little bit specifically because you teased us with the idea that you started your own game so can you tell our audience a little bit about what your game is about and what's exciting about why someone would want to play it like I know personally so I'm asking on behalf of the audience absolutely so so the game it's called a long journey to an uncertain end and this is actually the first time it's ever been announced so you guys getting exclusive I should have had some fireworks too she would know it's there you go so it's it's a sci-fi survival strategy game aimed at being accessible and aimed at an older more casual audience so older that's 25 to 45 year olds it's a the gamer audience that's

you don't have time to and you know eighty hours a week playing fortnight to get at something to get to try to get good you you're playing games on your iPad while you're sitting and watching Netflix with your family so it's the the game is is focused focused to that market premise of the game you are a sentient spaceship fleeing an abusive relationship from your former owner so in this universe which is a mobius think Fifth Element and Firefly style universe city and spaceships are not only quite rare but also quite illegal mm-hmm so as you are fleeing your ex you pick up other crew members who are going through their own journeys send them out on jobs and different planets moons Space Station's they'll do their jobs according to their skills

bring back resources to keep you refueled or paired and keep you going as you make your way further and further routes into into the universe whether they call it when you're recruiting why you were keeping what is that fortune is it folks well that's that's recruiting so what's another rock term and what's the name of this this ex overlord that you have in your you know Oh your ex it's still figuring that out so there so the ex yeah your excellent rock rock ish like like moissanite voice at night I see I see where you going with that now you got my joke it's a long turn around but I love him and I love the idea of this because obviously it's relatable to everybody in space is all you can get away with a lot of things when it comes to story and design I'm excited to hear

that we are gonna see another space game with really interesting story and gameplay mechanics get crowdfunded yeah because I've seen them be very successful yeah you could ask for hope so so just put star or citizen within the title and you're good hundreds of guys for it that's all right can I ask why Kickstarter versus maybe traditional methods like I'm assuming you a publisher contacts well first of all is it Kickstarter have you looked at all different platform crafts funny yeah he didn't say kicks like this is where I'm actually really interested because years have gone by and then kick started up and down up and down mostly because you know but you don't really pay attention as much on the Kickstarter front to focus on gaming as a real threat like have you done your study on this side like what's the glanced it right there with the crowdfunding now so which one did you land so I why also if you don't mind for sure so so there's a variety of

platforms what's the with the research that I did Kickstarter still seems to be the most trusted version out of all of them yeah I I did a but now where did I get to that through a Twitter poll of from its peers in all fairness it's like a few hundred people responded so I was like okay seems decent enough yeah but also just to him you know doing research there's IndieGoGo there's GoFundMe there's a there's other you know I mean patreon is kind of crowdfunding but it's it's not for a project so Kickstarter seem to be the most widely widely trusted but also widely known so if you say hey I'm doing a Kickstarter people like oh I already know where to go right I already know what it is it's big so you know I and

it's a there's trust there of like I'm just not throwing my money out into the ether and you can I mean you could still run away with it which is there's still a trust issue with Kickstarter campaigns in general with crowdfunding in general mm-hm and that seems to be the one of the biggest hurdles is is building that trust of like look we're actually gonna make something we're not just gonna take your money and leave we're actually gonna make something were able to make something were able to complete this to the level that we're pitching to you and so so that was something that I that keeps me up at night a little bit is how do I make sure that we can we can sell that this game is actually gonna be made yeah but out of the poll go fund me was actually the second most trusted one all but for as far as like discoverability GoFundMe is terrible like there's there's no search ability

it's really awful so I I think that the the trust factor comes in there's because most of the GoFundMe projects are for medical bills you know they're there for the quite personal she's plant very personalized yeah they're like yeah that's a healthy go fund me no I'm surprised IndieGoGo is in second for a far down there yeah I guess I y'all never should really see it being covered in the press by with any projects or anything I like initiative finally like kickstart a team is kind of like let's let's get some games let's get some people back on our side you know with the Tres issue or issue they have a team like let's pay key rate some of this or getting a cut of three million plus dollars and I think games have done it the most consistently right or not consistently but the most frequently right what and there's been you know there was that

huge rush you know three four or five years ago yeah you know everyone and their mom had a Kickstarter and yeah there's huge you know huge campaigns that that blew up that didn't go anywhere you know so of course after that rush then there was like the dearth so people like well no one's getting funded anymore so forget it and it seems like enough time has passed now that we're how if I want to say it's matured enough but it's maybe stabilized a bit Tom was yeah so from from what I was reading there are still a decent amount of games that the video games that show up on Kickstarter and that the percent percentage of them getting funded are getting is is growing now less games means that less games

being on Kickstarter means less games need to be successfully funded for that percentage to get higher if that makes sense so but it does seem to be stabilizing a little bit more and people are kind of getting their understanding this is how you do a successful crowdfunding campaign yeah you know if I've only put up a couple sketches no video and say hey you know if you give me a thousand bucks I'll call you on your phone or something like that's not gonna be successful that's not gonna work but uh but when you put in thought when you put in a lot of effort a lot a lot of effort into the assets into the trailer into building up that trust then it's much easier for people to say hey you know what here's here's five bucks here's ten bucks looks like this game is gonna already be made if I can just get it cheaper now sure you know why not here's here's 20 bucks and and you know

I I get a thirty dollar game when it's released for twenty bucks now I feel like then you get to see the development process sorry I feel like that's a huge strategy for a success on Kickstarter for games is to definitely give them that feeling of like oh damn like it's underway a deal the team is competent and look at this stuff they've already produced yes I believe that this is going to be successful and like Colin said I'll gladly give you guys twenty bucks because I know it's gonna be thirty nine or give me whatever one it's done yeah it's how mighty them or not get me oh yeah this looks like it'll be done so here take my money now yeah and it feels like as long as they see the value in it like people are willing to give in the money I think a lot of the misconception out there is that you know people tend to buy $10 jeans more than $20 now if the $20 game is what they want they'll go over the $20 game which is what we're finding out a lot lately yeah I feel like there's first four games anywhere between free and about $69 right now yeah some games are getting more but like those are

collector's editions versions of a game that you could get cheaper so I don't count them the same way as the minimum barrier to entry is the $60 purchase right and that I mean it goes to like with crowdfunding with Kickstarter kind of like how how Netflix has done you know Netflix will take chances on these really kind of out there shows that may not necessarily get made by big networks crowdfunding this is a new it's from the beginning but that allows games that are a little bit more non-traditional I don't wanna say riskier because I think if you keep doing the same thing that's that's actually riskier than doing something different especially in entertainment so that you know that that's where the advantage is for for long journey one of the big one of the big pillars of it is as diversity is inclusivity doing stuff we're doing

stuff that I was told we couldn't do when I was working in triple-a when I was working at bigger studios so you know that means the the crew members are all there's a diversity matrix that they have to fulfill so nobody can be they have nobody can be all four of these nobody can be both or both cisgendered which is the opposite of transgender no one can be cisgender and heterosexual and monogamous and able-bodied every crew member has to be something different so you might have a transgender lesbian accountants or something as a crew member you know or a heterosexual disabled pickpocket or something as a crew member so that's those are the dopes character right there's like excuse me can you help me with this real quick while it

identification take him that's it and then why would you accuse me of stealing anything so so that like characters like that having non-binary characters having non-binary pronouns those were all things that I was told point blank when I was doing full-time development that that's just they're not going to do it I was like now the localization issues are going to prevent us from from having anything beyond you know he/him shear and the development time is is gonna prevent us so I don't like being told no so for my own game I'm like you know what like it's all in there it's all in there you know you're a sentient spaceship the player is going to be asked to self-identify you know the crew is gonna ask you like so your

spaceship what do i what do I call you how do I refer to you and then the player gets to its to decide you know I'd be like look at my space balls it's he him you know or like like I'm a spaceship it did like call me anything you know I'm I'm beyond this like there's no gender for me I'm a spaceship so anyways that stuff doesn't seem to be able to get made in larger studios because it's seen as riskier just by looking at other areas in entertainment of more diverse characters and and the the Marvel series more diverse characters and Netflix more diverse characters and Netflix had this amazing short TV episodes called special about a disabled gay man in LA and it's hilarious it's so sweet it's hilarious and I'd never seen anything like that so

that's because it's different because it's diverse you know it stands out which is absolutely what you need to do in a crowded marketplace so I'm getting off on my own on my own so diversity tangent I do want to say though what I love about you being able to represent our champion things that you were told know about the industry one is you're helping course correct the people who believe those boundaries right because one thing I do know about big money is big money only believes in the constraints that have been proven hmm right so them saying no is because it hasn't been proven yet that you can do what you're proposing so Colin is now doing the proof of concept and guess who's gonna be the first person to rip them off five years down the line which is like oh wow remember that game a long journey that made all this money here's our four unique traits ya know characters can have and we're gonna now explore these boundaries because we've seen that like oh all the time we thought this was a pile of dirt

it's actually a pile of gold in yeah and everyone ignored it so now we'll swoop in yeah you know like I would say there would be no Black Panther had there not been a Red Tails yeah when Red Tails had to take a hit go first and like prove a cop and Red Tails was a great movie not it didn't do Black Panther but you know you didn't see studios that wanted to touch the concept of an all-black predominant lead cast and telling a black centric story mm-hmm right and that obviously a little partial me being african-american but now it's appointed spotlight back at Colin Kaunas like no I believe in this idea yeah I think that there should be more of this because you're limiting yourself to only glorifying certain types of individuals and you're leaving everyone else out so I'm gonna champion this I'm gonna do this because I asked everyone in the room should I do it and no one said no cuz I'm the only guy here so I want this going to be successful so bad because not just because obviously he's a friend

of mine and he's gone independent he's you know showing the way for the people that listen to this podcast but just because I know how much gravity that this carries with it and the positive change that could potentially occur if this ends up being a proof of concept of being a little more open to the types of stories that you tell can be favorable right yeah I I'm in full support of with any creative venture that has something to say I think it's everybody petty to kind of see the things being recycled over and over again just to make a buck right as artists I feel like that's our like first rule of not doing things we're gonna do things at all so uh this is fantastic man and you're right like if the entertainment world is more open now to accept originality in diversity and uh and the disruptors are always done at a small scale first like Larry point out like what you pointed out Thailand and it is a trend that I'm

seeing everywhere right now you know Larry talking about Black Panther I'm seeing more Asian American becoming actors and it's actually a viable choice now it's like you know what I have a saw two suns but when one of my sons like you actually ten years from now might actually be okay before it would be hell no don't do that hey you want a career it but it's different that's great yeah it opens up a lot of opportunities for people i I do think some of it has come to because entertainment media is so much more accessible now that we can we can watch films from the last 50 60 decades we can watch TV shows all this it's all available all the time all of that for the vast majority of Western media has been focused on certain certain stereotypes certain archetypes of people before you whatever came out you you watched so you you weren't able to be inundated by all of this sameness

now because we have access to all this stuff we see how what's the word not profit how how the same everything is you know games haven't been around for a super long time like film but games I think can still feel that same that same experience would steam with a lot of older games getting remastered and Reshard again we see the same protagonists the same you know brown haired brown-eyed cisgender straight male protagonists or the story of all whites colonizers or some something like that so because that's all accessible to us now when something isn't that it stands out and it's much more engaging and much more entertaining because the human

experience is so diverse you know there's there's this massive world out there and massive amount of people's stories out there that have yet to penetrate the Western market you know to the the US market I mean people in India are Tyrion telling their stories to themselves you know to each other anyways yeah and through Bollywood like their stories and China stories and the Philippine stories in Africa like that just never make it over into the west over into the European American markets we just just tell them you know like and that stands out and it's new and it's fresh and it's exciting and it's a bigger rating to to see that so to me I'm like it's safer to to be diverse it's safer to be inclusive because that's your gonna tell something that low-hanging fruit you're going to tell something that hasn't been done before you know make the black panther make the

crazier change Asians make the you know the all these other diverse oh gosh trans America came out I don't know how many years ago which is an amazing movie there are the opportunities are there it's low-hanging fruit it just takes a little bit of gumption to like we'll just do it you know like really we're we're not curing cancer you know we're not like we're not solving world hunger we're making entertainment we're making games so let's let's tell cool interesting stories with that well it's the time to do it because what I'm seeing is even if we're talking about within Hollywood or people with there's a shift in positions of power now like more diverse people are going into these positions to actually make the call they're like finance projects that wouldn't have been finding us before and I think a lot of that is helping kind of diversify everybody's

opportunity to actually succeed in any industry now so this is the perfect time to explore and be open and and be accepted with whatever story you want to tell as long as it's a good story I mean that that's that's the foundation as long it's it's a good story any story can be told and should be that way absolutely I think what's interesting about being a game developers I'm finding myself or more needing to kind of expect the unexpected right like when you go indie you know you're responsible for everything you're wearing all the hats especially you specifically right now like you do all the hats you're working with people that you of obviously contracted but the initial concept your idea right our direction your idea you know all the things that other people are feeling informed stemmed from you right and so I guess how do you deal with just random things going wrong or random things requiring your attention or just because it's not nothing is set in stone you don't have that process like we had when we had a

job where we were just the UI person who is responsible for UI maybe I get feedback or talk to other departments but I pretty much know my pipeline is gonna be repetitively making sure that the UI is good designed everyone voted for it it's in okay give me the next piece you know what I mean I guess can you tell me about how you feel like the experience which has been for you and going from I don't want to say cognitive machine but going from like specific expert to now being the overall product expert needing to know everything about everything for sure so with with the UX UI space was a bit lucky in that that touches all the disciplines so I I already had a bit of experience with with everything you know as through designing interfaces and designing the user experience you are talking to the systems designers for how are these mechanics supposed to work you're talking with the the artist the environment artist the character artist the concept artists for okay what's the

visual language we're creating for this world you're talking to the programmers like okay look this really needs to be clicking Dragonball for instance or something you know what what's the what's the development cost for this so I already had a a broad overview of all the different disciplines specifically to the like okay every all the creative direction and all of the the big choices have to come for me that has been a huge shift in a like how do you make these decisions how do you especially as a as the only full-time developer on the game I'm used to bouncing ideas off of off of other people so would that I've had to if I defined my my Canaries in the coal mine I've a define my other a sanity check group to to bounce bounce ideas

off of that's my I meet with the DD group once a week I'll show them character concept art before we start our campaign just be like hey what does this look like to y'all you know is this meeting XY and Z parameters and they'll be able to give me a quick like yeah it looks cool or what is that I've run stuff by my husband and ask him he's not interested in games at all so if he likes something I know it looks great I had to be much more let's for it not knowledge well I've had to be much more active in setting up lunches with people with former colleagues and going out and and showing them like taking taking my pitch deck taking some work-in-progress stuff and actually going and be like hey I buy you lunch can you just let me know what you think about about this plan or this design and that's how I've been able to get the

feedback with the unexpected things that come up whiskey I mean there's you know there are late nights where you'll you know you look at stuff and you've been looking at everything you know like yeah two inches from your face whether it's design Doc's or code or concept art or something like that and I found sometimes it's like look let me just let me just have a drink and calm down and helps you take a step back and then you look at it and you're like okay does this really matter like is it if it's blue or Bluegreen like is that really gonna kill the whole game probably not like okay well let's we're gonna go with this if for nothing else then a decision just needs to be made so I'd just personal health mental health making sure I go to the gym that reduces my

stress level which means I have more mental energy in order to make the decisions and just valuing the ability the ability to just make a decision sometimes like there's not necessarily a good or a bad it's just a decision needs to be made one way or the other okay and the effect of that decision needs to be kept for the remainder of the development so I was like you've had a lot of practice with decision-making and you have your methods so I have a challenge for you let's put that to the test you're gonna it's called the past five it's where I asked you five rapid-fire questions and I need five rapid-fire answers we do with all the people we prepare a podcast are you ready sir as I ever will be so let's go all right question number one who was the best movie Batman oh shoot I'm so bad with with names which era the this is gonna

sound terrible at first I was like the nipple Batman like the Batman George Clooney George Clooney that nipple George Clooney like I always say best I want to say like most in my mind that like kind of cheesy like yeah yeah like that's babies because I grew up with it but the most yeah there you go cool question number two does pineapple go on pizza if it has to if you don't have anything else not I'd rather not question number three if you could only play one game for the rest of your life if you had to pick one which game would it be to our fortress that's good one question him before if there was one superhero superpower that you could have for one day which one would you pick does it have to be a specific superhero or just a power in general just the

power like a scene so it would be oh just for one day it would be it would be flights and I'd fly somewhere else cuz airline travel is really expensive question number five what was the most memorable gaming experience that you've had thus far thus far [Music] I'd have to say Florence I don't know if you played that game it's the mobile mobile game about first love very succinct very very well done well polished no dialogue in the whole in the whole game and you just follow a you follow a a female person as she grows up

meets there meets her first love and goes to that relationship it's a very simple story it's very relatable story it was so emotionally fulfilling to go through that journey but it was also emotionally fulfilling for it too and when you finish the game it's done it's finished there's nothing else for me to see that was so gratifying to be able to walk away and know that I'd seen everything in that experience okay Colin that's it I mean that's a great commercial for that game unfortunately your time is not top ten but you have completed the challenge so one thing I will say is Kyle and I'm looking at the time we've been podcasting for about an hour now so thank you for being on this podcast with us we're so appreciative of your knowledge your expertise but also just your your good nature and your

great spirits so Brandon and I we normally take about a five minute break at the end of the podcast to go off-camera mhm and we're gonna let you talk directly to our audience to shout out promote raise awareness or just shine spotlight on something you're doing something that you're involved in or just anything you think needs a little more attention right now so without further ado sir the floor is yours all right thank you everybody gonna check out our game a long journey to an uncertain end you can go to long journey game comm all one word sign up for the newsletter you'll be able to get get updates before they go out anywhere else maybe you can get some little little extra rewards for the game as they come out if you have questions for me about ux/ui work or about the game you can follow me on twitter at crispy creative or check out our website crispy

- creative comm - on the website name so go ahead and - on over and and check us out as well as brilliant alrighty well we wish you nothing but success and good luck with the launch of your crowdfunding campaign obviously you'll get contributions from us we want to see you win man so yeah without further ado I'm saying - thank you for joining thank you [Music] you