LIVE | Roundtable News: Union Busting and Selling IPs

[Music] what's up everybody welcome to another episode of game dev unchained the one number one game development but game development number one game development podcast about game development a lifetime style thereof i am very under fam your host and with me it's ray graham how are you doing rick how you doing brian what's up what's happening hey man it's been a while so every once a month we talk about the latest and greatest game news brought to you by game devs discussed by game devs to talk about things that matter to you how it affects you so uh before i get started a little catch up right i haven't seen you for about a month what's been happening nothing just working man just out here and living life trying to any any murmurs any any change in tides

with the i mean where we're uh a lot of people are going back to work now i i think in the last month i've been hearing more and more friends doing hybrid you know only force wednesday's meeting i i've heard extremities of uh uh game companies actually flying people that actually pieced out out of state right permanently doing accommodations paying for hotels like once every two weeks just so that the team can get together are these things you're hearing i'm definitely seeing more more of an urge now of people wanting to get together um people that i've never met even in some cases get together to do more team bonding things and off sites i'm seeing more more and more of that happening i'm also hearing stories of offside happened and one of the people that went to the off-site test deposit for covid they had to spend the rest of the rest of the off-site in a hotel room uh so it's so still too early

so there's there's definitely uh you know i don't think it's i don't think it's avoidable at this point right people's people are tired they want to get together and then it's happening and i'm also hearing of like you know uh certain offices having you know events at the office to kind of try to lure people back with like free food and free alcohol like there are people back into the office um and they don't really announce when things are happening right they just kind of say hey today we're going to do something for the people that are in the office and because you know it gives you a feeling of missing out so you're like oh maybe i should be in the office right so i'm seeing i do think there is a overall scheming going on you know there's like a slow breadcrumbing people back into the office do you feel like that's the idea like people used to it again and then only two days becomes three days and then three days suddenly becomes just five days this week out of this month and then you know what it's working so well why don't everybody come back in hey we're sorry we gotta let you go

we're we're having like very valuable candidates that lives near the office now thank you for your services i don't know if that i don't know if that part's gonna happen quite frankly um because like i think the labor market right now is super hot right and still very much very much in favor of the person looking for work right now honestly um but but i am seeing a lot of like messages being sent oh i was just in the office and it was such an amazing experience i highly recommend that if you are in the area you should come by the office i'm seeing a lot of that kind of stuff which is like yeah i see what you guys are doing [Laughter] yeah i just don't believe any word of it um i mean like i'm pretty real no i'm gonna be real it'll be real like i i was at the office during gdc and it's a nice break yeah and it was nice to see people like i i have no doubt that especially after the two years that we've had seeing people again

is no doubt a good experience like like i don't think i don't think there's any lies to be found there oh well i mean the garden of eden can get to feel like a prison after a while you know i mean there's a change of scenery you know we all love our wives and husbands or yadda yadda yadda but you know that spacing is is good sometimes you're okay honey you're okay yeah you know a change of scenery is always uh promoted especially for work um but i think overall if people have to pick and choose it's always going to be home right we'll i'll go out for lunch you know we'll make adjustments so it's it's never like a one early you know it's never gonna be in office no one's gonna choose that i do hear like uh a lot of conspiracy a lot of these places do these surveys now right it's like hey guess what 53 of people say they want to be back in the office like

i've been seeing these kind of reports uh from people it's like i don't know and and my friends who are looking around like i'm a manager of this company and none of the nobody i talked to have said that they if it's 50 it should be you know pretty frequently um but i i do feel like there is some kind of strings being pulled here i think everybody i think everybody's different there's some people that just don't like being home at all and every chance they could get they're going to be back in the office and then there's others that are never in the office and then there's a group of apple employees that are quitting and sending letters yeah saying say that apple's forced to return the office is just not what's up for them you know what i mean so so i i'm seeing it all over the place but i'm definitely seeing messages being sent hey y'all maybe you should consider coming to the office every once in a while i am seeing an increase in the piece of that for sure

well that that is a perfect segue to something i want to talk about yeah so let's go straight to this is the round table news episode therefore anything that we talk about uh is our own opinion please do not try to get either of us fired um mostly talk on behalf of ray here and uh let's get right to it guys um let's see here oh what's wrong what's wrong i just saw the headlines all right spicy spicy headlight so it's spicy because of a couple reasons but um let me try to go full screen here so people can read off of it uh let's see that's two full screen let's do this you got a wazing dinner there you go all right so uh the big headline here is like i i i kind of make this hypothesis a while back i was saying that at some point it's a seller's market right now uh i i would say it's really

starting to be a buyer's market again that thing will reverse and when it reverse it's gonna be reversing hard right the main reasoning is that uh i'm hearing too much uh issues um with with aaa remote you know the fact is overall uh you know sales and growth have slowed down um i think most most people are not having an easy time working from home right the adjustment period maybe another few years it could work but most people are not that disciplined unfortunately and the people who are thriving have been doing side gigs forever or are uh or at least freelance or have done extra projects before so they kind of have this rhythm uh have kind of like this office space dedicated this time and um for that reason and the reason why i think most employee employers are kind

of luring people back because they see the statute they're saying we're losing money and it's not working but how do we convince people to come back right so this is what we're seeing and i saw this headlines earlier uh and i feel like the tech jobs um were leading the way at the beginning pandemic and let's say netflix right netflix made a shitload of money um at the beginning uh and are now showing really slow growth or at least a huge drop in subscription slowly for the first time yeah slowing growth for the first slowing growth right where uh instead of going for hiring push they're actually doing layoffs now all right so uh same with uh meta in this past month meta reported um i thought the money train on that would last a little longer to kind of to kind of power uh zuckerberg's dream project right for the next 10 years

because that's he says so himself but the vr game is a slow game and it's going to take a while for for to see every our uh an roi or a return on investment uh but basically the shareholder is saying you don't have that much time so for the first time they're actually pausing hiring over at meta right uh so we're seeing that netflix meta and we're kind of seeing that with uh uh not too much of layoff at google but google is kind of doing the um everyone's back in the office now i mean they're they're not everyone but they're like 50 they're trying to get everyone back in the office they're very committed to the physical location right um what else so like i'm sure you're you've heard some of this right i know i'm talking a lot about tech companies but they're kind of like the leaders of this movement for us but i feel like yeah but also i think um talking about the tech companies is interesting um so

like there's a couple like okay i'm going to caveat everything i'm about to say with i am not an economist i this is not financial advice et cetera et cetera et cetera right yeah um but like i think what you're seeing is [Music] the information that people can query about people um that change that apple made really infected facebook's ad revenue yeah right meanwhile facebook is also pouring money into metaverse but pouring money right billions of dollars right yeah and um and at the same time inflation is like going through the roof at the same time [Music] everybody's working from home and pandemic slowdowns

and then at the same time global market sell-off in high-risk growth stocks right so all around it it doesn't look good for for the bottom line right and and then the investors because facebook is above the company has facebook has to do something to stem spending to make the numbers look good and and show better better trajectory on on their path right so enter enter facebook hiring freeze right i think it's a combination of all of those events that that led to that in particular so i wouldn't necessarily say it's the job market's cooling down we'll see right oh you know like what happens over the next couple of months we'll see when the new inflation numbers come out is inflation going down there's place going up uh i i think you'll see some some market reactions there that may help

uh facebook's fortunes and i think right now all of the high growth speculative tech stocks are just getting hammered right because future money is not worth so much when you have high inflation right and it might make better sense to hold on to that money or put it put the money into something else that it's not facebook netflix uber etc right and so that's where you're seeing just people pulling their money out of the market to to go do something else with it maybe yeah maybe even just sit on it and and wait this whole thing out but yeah yeah putting in crypto or an ft's down too right crypto's taking a dump yeah crypto there's no there's no safe harbor when it comes to these like anything that's highly speculative and a little bit more risky and focused on growth is just taking a beating right now yeah who would have thought uh how fake

money that has no real value would not work out that's crazy so you're you're saying that mostly it's not exactly a cool off it's just people are scared and yeah well i think there's definitely a lot of fear going on um and i don't know if it's the market cooling off or like but but i definitely know it's impacting all of these companies is back in their bottom lines they already were some of them were already not profitable anyway but then when you start seeing um and in netflix's case there's their numbers they there's really like apple tv plus disney plus paramount plus there's so much competition out there right now it was bound to take a chunk out of their subscription numbers you know what i mean um even though they were looking sitting high and pretty during the pandemic but their their competitors were were sitting pretty high and pretty too you know what i mean yeah

it's so all these things just the whole situation of what's going on in the world right now and then war in ukraine doesn't help at all either right so all of this stuff that's going on in the world right now is making people say no i let me take a more conservative approach you know and that is impacting all their stocks their bottom lines their earnings and then they're starting to figure out how to how to stem the tide and the first thing the number one cost for a lot of these companies is head count right yeah so layoffs employees all that stuff yeah no it definitely so all the companies i kind of was bringing up and then reading off of it it makes sense that it starts with those first because those were the first ones that actually benefited with the pandemic went down you know all the all the money went to tech netflix had like a record-breaking quarter uh facebook was you know seeing a huge jump um even robin hood right i was i'm reading here and robin hood is kind of being hit with a lot of layoffs right now

um based off this news article saying that it's cutting nine percent of his workforce uh after the company's headcount grew from around 700 uh employees in 2019 to 3 800 at the end of 2010 i'm surprised i'm surprised you're not talking about public talk peloton took a huge well let's talk about peloton peloton is one of the big tech companies i had money in peloton i uh i had it when it was like 40 dollars went always 100 right 100 past 100 100 like 10 or something and then um yeah i think peloton is i peloton as a product is still solid man it's one of the best i think community well obviously the first and still the best because there's a lot of people copying um it's it's packaging right now yeah but i still think uh out of everyone uh the quality of it is uh ranked among the best

um so i think he just got hit with like a barrage of bad bad press um first reporting with the kid king was it the kid being stuck on it it was malfunctioning oh yeah yeah yeah it had no bar so you can't if you stick your arm underneath it of course but like um even then it was they had a like a like a lock safe system in its treadmill where this wasn't uh yeah it had its treadmill right lock safe uh mechanism where the key is disconnected you can't activate it right but people leave the keys in so i think that was kind of unfair where they got it completely i mean that's pretty much all treadmills right there no i mean they they recalled it because they they they had it there's there was something wrong right and they're like and they're like they recalled it and that's the right thing to do but like that wasn't even the their problems the main problem was like pandemic growth oh yeah they weren't even able to meet

it yeah well not just that but then they scaled up hugely to meet that demand and assumed that that demand would be there forever and then as soon as they're like oh wait a second the man is not there anymore people started going like gyms opened again and people started uh going going back to the gym or or not being at home all the time and immediately i believe that demand tapered off they saw it in their numbers they announced oh hey we have to adjust our adjust our findings and then all the investors everybody was like oh no the worst thing you could do is miss your targets and and and not meet expectations and then it just it just fell off um i did i definitely did though by end when it when it cratered you know and so i i do think it is still a good company in a long term play over three years but but it's it's another one of those things where it was like they thought the pandemic growth was going to last

forever you know yeah and then nf8 and i think they scaled up too late too because there was it was a year in man yeah there was definitely yeah there was definitely a time where they couldn't meet demand but then they they got back in control of it and scaled up hugely and spent a lot of money in it and then it was like oh wait no we shouldn't do this right yeah it's unfortunate i heard they had like a whole sex in the city episode about a fictional character that died using it too yeah and it was a fake character it was enough to kind of completely tank it uh but i mean there are rumors still responding to that was funny yeah there are rumors that you know amazon apple there's still i mean there's been rumors like one of those companies should buy them but they should be bought yeah i think it's a solid bike it's a great company but the most the reason why we're talking about all these tech companies is because they are the beginning of the pandemic

profiting and benefiting and now we're starting to see that these companies are the first to kind of have a uh kind of sort of a backlash from growing too fast uh during those two years uh and so that also means you know games and game companies that benefited uh are gonna start to see the effects no let me pull it up you know war zone warzone was the hottest [ __ ] ever during the pandemic everybody and their mom was playing it because they had to but you know aside from activision's many many issues that keeps popping up every week uh you know there's someone new suing them over something uh call of duty last year vanguard especially uh didn't meet numbers and there was starting to be like a fall um in interest a huge fault

let me kind of look this up um the number was pretty staggering um in terms of drops but isn't that it's not because it's not because warzone is the popular game everybody's playing war zone and then you come up with vanguard and everybody's like nah i'm tired of that i'm i'm over here playing wars on you like like haven't we been saying for years that we're tired of calling dewey's campaign and the same old thing no i think that's part of it there's you know call of duty fatigue you know for sure um but uh in vanguard you know every once in a while there's a there's a entry to the series that isn't as popular you know this this year people are looking forward to the rumor next modern warfare from infinity ward so it might see a kick up but uh i think it just so happened that no matter what call of duty came out

this is the year where you know kind of like the start of the pandemic um companies or licenses or whatever got to kick their their start in the fall and and war zone like look at this it lost a third of its players over this last year i mean that's huge 35 uh drop and you can't completely just uh 33 33 drop off so if one from 150 million monthly after the users to 100 million right and so yeah vanguard is part of it but you know there's probably in reality just a lot of people out in the world again going back to jobs um [Music] yeah can't play as much can't play can't play as much looking forward to being on vacation you know hanging out with friends you know all the stuff that we were complaining about during that year you can do now um

with most mass lifted and people obviously less fearful of the virus right life i think if anything is pretty much closer to normal uh there's still some people wearing masks but when i go outside it's it feels like pretty pandemic um you know i'm hanging out in disneyland every weekend i don't i don't there's like it's not the same anymore so that is the i think in large part has to do with people kind of just going back to their their lives right which is why i'm trying to connect the dots here it's kind of you know this is naturally how people are there was a tremendous growth in the game sector now we're going to see that dramatic drop as expected right just like stocks yeah i don't know if it's going to be that dramatic because i think 150 to 100 man millions monthly i think in a lot of these cases it's it's more we just keep pumping them out and you

were just like bro slow down please relax you know and then they announce like the next call they're going to take a year off or something yeah they're going to do air once they're going to return to the model when it's ready um yeah so it's not even every three years or four years it's more like because warzone and their online component is so strong as a business model now they can just chill on it for a while they can chill on it all right which is you know they've always planned it to be that way so it's not like a surprise like um like uh they're not graduating sorry grand theft auto online man like like that's still going super strong def online red dead online i mean grand theft auto online is probably more popular but you know every year they can just uh re-polish grand theft auto 5 and not even release it popular it has spent like what two console generations like yeah that's what i mean for a while right like yeah ps6 will come out uh i'm gonna announce it first

grand theft auto five re re-polish will be will be a launch title all right crazy like they they just they're milking it and getting i mean what else does take two have now besides nba 2k and grand theft auto i mean what is a gear what's what's a game every year that what was the last game that was a big deal it's been a while quite a shock but yeah no like within the last couple years what was the last 2k take two game that day last couple years was probably red dead right rec dead was four years ago man i lost all track of time yeah red dead was four years ago yeah yeah isn't this crazy what take two games i like that model though where they're like let's just release one amazing game what an amazing game that you're going to play for a while and then gives us time to make something that's really differentiated instead of just churning out something year after year and they they have nba debbie you

make it sound like they plan for that [ __ ] man it's literally oh [ __ ] these are the games that are selling and thank god that they're still selling i think though i think by the time they did red dead they understood what was up right because it that was already like what six years of uh grand theft auto online right you know what i mean so well let's see all these game studios that are not delivering right now all right so uh [Laughter] let's see he's uh he's gonna be pissed right so uh well you know we got rockstar you know uh two out of three of the games that we're still talking about red dead grand theft uh grand theft auto that's why they're the darlings that's why they're the masters 2k you got the nba 2k games obviously delivering every year still awesome and then you know this private division that's the indie publishing arm i guess what projects do they have under that let me i'm curious it's so private that no one even talks about all these all the all the world

dude that's the nintendo ds all right no that's not ds it's also on pcs on every platform all right hashtag hashtag made with unity um oh i see it yeah no it's a bomb that's called the ollie world is is really dope yeah i highly recommend yeah and then next is ghost story which is ken levine never shipping a game studio continuing is isn't that a you know at some point man you gotta you gotta recognize that this guy's trouble right it's like hey here's a guy who takes forever to ship a game he closed down that studio right when they ship infinite which was critically acclaimed at least and i think sold all right oh dude borderland the borderlands phillips just released that tiny tina wonderlands game that's too capable publishing though that's not the same as 2k own that's still gearbox is it isn't gearbox owned by them now or no gearbox no gearbox

actually recently got bought by the um who they under now gearbox spot got bought by uh remember oh yeah who did they get by no they still said randy pitchford got happy that's screen excel no we're going to talk about the next embracer group no no that's korean x yeah no no they still say they're independent like at least according to the website oh they got bought by someone yeah let me look that up um you think about my 2k i thought oh wait here it goes oh yeah they they were bought they were bought by in in brazil group embracer yeah i i thought that's how you pronounce it but yes um the swedish swedish company that owns

thq nordic touch media how you spell it again e-m-b-r-a-c-e-r oh oh that's interesting all right let's go to the next piece it's the same it's the same company that bought square enix yes so let's talk about that man um continue on the trend for acquisitions square enix the studio that says you'll never sell enough for us to break even uh sold a bunch of valuable ips man i'm surprised clearly not clearly not they're valued only 300 million dollars tomb all right let me let's just let's just be real well let's be realistic real all of those are games that we liked the play we played them we enjoyed them

um but they are not games that have returned the numbers that square enix is looking for right man so it's not they're not all right i just want to see this deal with um all right so embrace a group emerged merged with gearbox they didn't buy it they merged with them um let me pull this over so you can see this they merge with gearbox uh who owns of course uh i'm just trying to find out how much they bought it for i want to compare these prices here the day 1 purchase price amounts to 363 million in total on cash and debt-free basis of which 175 million is paid in shares in uh the residual in cash uh

360 million is it really all they bought gearbox for like 360 million i thought was like a billion dollar mail no no no that'd be crazy well gearbox only has borderlands i guess they also owned brother in arms and homeworld damn yeah homework and they got the new game tiny tina's but that's borderlands spin-off isn't it i don't even know if it's been i don't know the the lore or anything like that it's kind of a tiny tina it kind of has a yeah maybe yeah maybe i'm not that well versed on the ip you know i trust you on that all right so it is more than that look look look oh i need something cleaner than three million this is just

two three million and then optional earn out of 300 million for six years that's yeah oh dude here we go i knew i read it right here we go it's a 1.3 billion dollar deal but it's it's structured it's structured basically like if we if we if you stay around for six years you'll get the rest of it kind of thing yeah the boss is right yeah yeah randy pretty much 1.3 billion dollars yeah yeah that that's crazy that seems crazy but that's why i'm saying tomb raider but it's not but that's not the full like like again like if you saw the terms on the other page right it's like part of it up 300 million up front yo and then another and then the rest of it basically what another 300 million over six years yeah and then transaction yeah and then financial earn out 750 million over six years

bro come on yeah we we've slumbered through a job before three to six years is nothing for 700 million dollars bro clock and clock out dude i'm pretty sure there's probably some financial targets on that sure maybe it's attached but still i mean to be valued i mean what do they really have besides borderlands is it billboard i guess a movie is coming out i guess they are a billion dollar franchise is that the deal they have three borderlands the movies coming out with kevin hart in it yeah see yeah now see you you're reporting on this yeah you're reporting all the information agreed the the rest of it over six years is only payable upon agreed financial and operational targets in the next six years yeah they gotta hit certain numbers they gotta hit certain numbers at certain targets over next six years they get that doe right so that's you know this is where i i don't understand these game deals nowadays because look at look at this man i'm looking at

square enix and i'm looking at those bomb ass licenses you telling me all those don't equate to borderlands and home world i'm pretty sure probably all those have not made as much money as part of this probably a tomb raider alone has like four movies two mansion little delete movies and a reboot right yeah i mean that's those and those were making money right i i don't know man i really don't know um but i i do i do know that the especially desex and thief that's those are niche those are niche audiences that something to those games you know um like we we like them we i'm sure i've played them you've played them but i think they're good games but they're square enix is like now you guys got to come correct and on top of it like you know i doc you know i also was a fancy new office in montreal and and and all the

marvel games they were making then really bring in the dough that's where enix wanted you know and and and they just didn't want to bother you know with continuing to lose money and pouring money into the into it you know what i mean look at this uh let me read this from geek culture yeah the 300 million deal dollar deal feels like a low price deal for square enix when compared to the 1.3 billion deals for gearbox all right collective profit of 4 million bro however the three countries being sold have only managed to collect a product four million dollars last year with total economy and equity and assets valued at 120 million so the assets they have are only valued at 120 million dollars uh embracer targets to close the deal by september 2022 it's coming up and has expectations for the new purchases to generate at least 50 million dollars in revenue in the third financial year after the deal closes

really what are they releasing to generate 50 million dollars for taking continents actually exploit fair 50 million is very conservative it sounds like you know what i mean well conservative it sounds like a lot if they were only making four million dollars the last year right three times being still only probably about four million last year yeah so it must be having a game being released or something right oh that's terrible man i do feel like there's some kind of like you're talking about putting you know people are nesting their money putting their money away taking less chances i feel like there's a lot of insurgents of money in the game industry all of a sudden in the past year and a half is that part of it is that theory i don't know if it like to me get investing money into a game company

seems really risky but but uh but yeah i know there's a lot of money out there flowing around uh maybe it's just like you know it's just harboring right they're just harboring the money they don't care if there's a return well i'm reading this article dude i think you always care if there's a return but it's just about like how long are you gonna wait before there to be a return but look at like we just read an article right it took this journalist five minutes to break down the math right and it still doesn't add up to the 330 million that they bought it for it's like well the last year assets no but you know what this is only generate 124 so we'll double it and buy them it's like okay but you know you know how this goes right it's like these are long-term investments you know video games long-term investment man and and on top of it like you said those like the ip is something right so pretty right now so for m embracer group however you pronounce it um the ip is worth something for them where square enix is like nah you get

out of this because they just didn't know what to do with it right in a way that they can actually generate a lot of money or the money that they expected to generate um it's a hard businessman and also like also all these companies yeah they're in they're in hot markets where it's it's hard to hire people or where it's expensive to hire people and and yeah like i think screenings just didn't have the appetite for you know well i mean they they've been pretty upfront about how they feel about tomb raider or any and it gets released by crystal which is always underwhelming yeah multiple tomb raider games avengers there's a feat there was a thief game the avengers game the guardians of the galaxy game like they poured a lot of money into this stuff and didn't really get much return right yeah i mean crystal recently just took over the uh was it the initiative yes yeah they were perfect

yeah they're working with the initiative i heard yeah yeah i think they took over perfect dark for microsoft or something i'm just surprised man here's the thing man here's the thing you know sony and microsoft going hard in the paint buying up these studios and they looked at crystal with all these ips and they're like nah does that make sense to you i mean they're buying i don't know oblivion not oblivion um obsidian in the games yeah and i don't know what do they buy that for talk or not oh come on for 300 million dollars you're telling me microsoft looked at all those ip's like nah i don't want any of that um i mean i'm gonna look i'm gonna see if we can [ __ ] our pants here i'm gonna see how much they bought obsidian for oh it wasn't it wasn't a lot i don't i seem to remember i can't remember i feel

like anything under a billion dollars these days is cheap let's see um they acquired in exile it doesn't show the price uh obsidian blah blah blah i am they're not slipping kind of shy about the pricing for this can't find it right away microsoft buys obsidian [Music] who knows i was trying to find it but i'm not seeing anything must be a new thing where they're sharing how much money they spend it because that you know that was a few years ago yeah even the veteran beat article

doesn't really mention uh instrument price 90 done oh no price well i mean would you be surprised if it's more or less that's not what but microsoft bought a city in less than the square enix licenses yeah i would not be surprised if it was less than 300 million for obsidian what if it was more i would be surprised [Laughter] you're saying obsidian is not worth more than these tomb raider games yeah that is what i'm saying yes i think that goes without saying oh my god let's see i think i'm close to finding out here uh if i don't i

apologize reach out to polygons yeah that's odd yeah well i mean the crazy thing is initiative is a newly formed microsoft studio and they have all these money to buy studios and they couldn't put more to to make that studio work i mean is that so much poison in the weld over there or something no i i think it's just you know it's it's the standard build versus buy right do you build up a whole new video game team that has ever worked together before uh or do you just buy a whole ready-made studio and have ready-made content already made i ip and a loyal fan base right you know and it's like

which one of those is the cheaper option and i think like in this you know we talk about the job market in this job market trying to hire people and get them on your team and it just takes such a long time and it costs it costs real money so so if you could buy a whole a whole studio that has ip and is ready ready to go like why not yeah uh i mean i think that's just the fundamentals of a bad i agree with you man game game businesses are hard to invest in man because it has so much to do with people yeah right and every studio is it's not just the people individually it's the makeup of people's personality like how well did they fit together to deliver and even if they had a hit before it's not a guarantee because the the the makeshift of people leaving and coming changes every time it changes the calculation if it's at least a team that has kind of made something before that

gives you a little bit more faith that they can do something again yeah it's slightly better than a new team completely uh you're counting on the leadership but we've seen that time and time again all these people who leave uh you know lead of a battlefield right uh just completely flopping uh because oh guess what it took a thousand people to make that game work so this one guy doesn't you know can't can't con can't make up the difference there um so i mean there's only a few studios like that man the rockstar team even rockstar you know they change up a lot but somehow i think they've kept the most pivotal people i mean how how else do they make a team like that work it amazes me every time yeah well i don't want to you know speculate yeah well more than speculation but but i don't want to basically be just throwing folks up under the buses and

stuff right but like everyone's under the bus it takes a lot you know rockstar games take a long time to come out like for reasons you know what i mean and it's and when you take that long and you work hard and you have really picky people at the top who are the creative decision makers right you're gonna end up producing something that is of their their quality expectations right and their quality expectations seems to always sell right but then it takes a long time for those games to get made because of the process of making them and burning people out and upsetting people and pushing them to the limit right but a good game ends up coming down in the end but that's why it takes so long for those games to get made you know what i mean yeah but those games the definition of long that's why development stories

i hear well i mean the the definition of long development have changed greatly since grand theft auto 5. you know that that was an eight year or was it red dead you know eight years is kind of fair i would still say eight years is a long it is a long time but then you look at games like star citizen and other games who are ambitious and they're never coming out i would not i would not count games that have not come out as a law developer you know what i mean like i mean most games are coming out like the call of duty stuff we were talking about before they're coming out they're turning those things out every two to three years turning it out you know what i mean so yeah and they got team staggered and so they could have one every year and they just got a little pipe find out it's a well-oiled machine right but that's those can't come on man those games do not they do not compare to grand theft auto that game is insane i'm not gonna agree i agree but that but but but even in that eight year time frame

a lot of that insane amount of detail is also achieved by just pushing people through it here's the thing i i do feel that they have some type of magic sauce over there they're some kind of demonic satanic rituals because like you give that amount of time to any other developer that is not rockstar and try to make those games they're not going to be able to do it so there's more to it than the amount of time there's definitely the right people well i said i i said also like you have people at the top making the creative decisions that are the same it's the housers right like it's it's like those guys right that's the decisions they've always made the decisions right but i'm still yeah even then i'm so impressed like how can these two guys be that damn consistent and have that ability to control well

they are consistent what are you talking about i mean what grand theft auto have been a myth what red dead have been a mess it's only gotten better and bigger like look at cyberpunk they they tried to do a grand theft auto cyberpunk and they fell flat on their face [ __ ] up running away and like i hear stories of the tools that they use to make you know a rock star you know in the team the tools that they have and it's nothing but endless stream of complaints about about the tools uh the how to make the game the editor and stuff of course yeah that's proprietary yeah and then what you see is really just brute force you know you're just seeing like brute force and and and uh unyielding desire for quality and that's why it takes that's why it takes so long right then better tools maybe to be quicker actually you know what i mean like the only games and franchises that

kind of come close or you know your old pals at ubisoft you know the assassin's creed they do have kind of like well i mean like in terms of open world it's not close right it's not closed as in like detailed and grand theft auto but they are the closest in terms of the ability to deliver open world games on a consistent basis one of the companies can do that besides them okay on a consistent basis there's far cry there's assassin's creed you know they watch dogs you know these are huge ips that have an audience of their own what's that um ubisoft massive game that the vision was huge division yeah yeah i mean that's a lot of like open world ips and consistently they've been able to still i mean even with assassin's creed it was just overkill right over saturation and they took a break and when they came back it was you know they just picked it up again yeah that

was definitely a pretty decent game yeah so i you know you being part of that machine what what were you seeing over there that might be somewhat rel relative to the rockstar philosophy a giant bonfire and bodies being thrown in it that's what i saw it's a lot of people thrown into this and that works seriously i'm not like i'm dead serious yeah i guess it works but like but now but now everybody i know that's been there has quit what a perfect segue all right let's talk about this either either quitting or starting unions right so infamously a couple years ago uh unionization i think it was three gdc's ago right or four you know when unionization was starting to pick up pace people are starting to talk about it right out of the hitting hidden corners out of their you know uh dark dark rooms right it was at

least openly being discussed and you were laughing he's like i'll be it'll be forever good luck is what you said right in style yeah and i was telling you it's only a matter of time because we're upset we're mad as hell what's that what's that quote and we're not going to take it anymore no i just want to put on a record right that i am 100 for unions i just never i just never fought that it would reach this point that it would even yeah like is that it has happened but i would never thought it would have resulted in what is there like three unions now or something like that or and then like maybe a couple others that are trying to organize i never thought we would get to that point yeah well let's talk and catch people up a bit right for people who aren't paying attention so uh i think raven qa raven software from uh activision was one of the first big ones right that was announcing uh uh unionization um because quality

assurance i thought they all got fired or something like that or something like that i mean i mean the same story they were overworked and they felt like they were underpaid right and um activision and response instead had a massive qa hiring push they basically full-time converted all contractors qa like a thousand of them uh except for the ones who are on strike or unionizing that that original group that made it happen right so in a way success right uh does that that group just have to take a hit yeah that's that's that's what happened right yeah they they unionized and then activision was like okay all the people that are not in the union we're gonna like increase your benefits and wages of things and full-time hiring full-time which is what they wanted is that it's hilarious it's okay one one it's hilarious yes two it's a very [ __ ] baby dude it's super awesome thing yeah yeah yeah but it's hilarious uh and then the second one is this uh

recent one unless there's one that i forgot in between but bioware edmonton it's not even them right it's it's a group out of keyword studios that was helping with bioware edmonton right so it's the headlines are kind of um misleading misleading of course yeah but it's like basically a co-development studio that was helping bioware and they were still uh they were on location funny enough and um you know their their paying wages was below everybody else in that area um which is is is messed up right but um what we're seeing is that's what happens if you work for like a contractor right they hire you low and then contract you out you super high and double yeah double the rate um exploited yes definitely uh but what it was interesting is that a large part of the courage

for people to uh unionize is because the epidemic or epidemic definitely you know sped through a lot of this there's a lot of anti-corporate sentiment in the air right now for game studios employees over game studios and not being in the office definitely helps people be more brave about speaking out there's a lot more support of ill-treatment of you know under representative people like qa and in this case contractors so the the timing the trifecta of what needed to happen happened and this is gonna i mean i'll my take it is gonna snowball um like injustice any slight of injustice people are gonna threaten unionization and i think employers are because it's a seller's market sorta i'm

saying that i feel like it's crawling out of the seller's market but we're still in that space where employers are still fearful of losing people so oh what's your take what do you think like within the next year or two we're going to start hearing more major companies having to kind of fold do you see this as a global u.s thing where the global us game devs are are gonna band together what do you think because i'm not even seeing the companies folding i'm seeing them employ union buster techniques to try to stop it or so do anything yeah um but i think yeah like i i think it's a whole combination of things like you know the whole you know b2 movement a lot of the reckoning happening at the companies around harassment and treatment of employees just came to a head and pandemic and all the things he said right and then people were just like yeah you know we've been talking about unions for a long time right and people just like it's it's time to finally do

something about this let's go right well the other ones game workers unite right but that that one was it's kind of not wasn't like really focused on an individual company per se it was kind of more just trying to try to unionize everybody um so i haven't really seen much traction i guess but they i'm sure they've helped out like the the the blizzard employees and things like that right um so yeah so like i don't know what to do i don't know how it's gonna go like i i think there is slowly some momentum growing and and hopefully we'll see more momentum growing but like all it all it takes is for you know labor market to change you know jobs being hard to find you know some studios closing up shop right for people that start becoming a little bit more fearful again about their jobs i guess oh yeah but we'll we'll see then yeah maybe maybe it has it does have enough steam yeah i feel like at this point if you're

an employer that um how can you not look at robots to replace people as soon as possible because you know they are at the end it's the bottom line right um most companies are not making money because of everybody being remote they're losing they're still paying for offices they're still paying for all these things and games are being delayed right they're being pushed back um uh milestones are being hit uh slower right because not everyone is being disciplined or uh in producers perspective they're not being monitored enough right right that's their thinking i'm just explaining what their thinking is right and so now they're being hit with labor issues right and i don't know how this is gonna work out

because even with unionization or uh there's at some point there needs to hit a compromise right both parties will have to approach the table and there needs to be a fair deal that needs to be proposed and then shook on right right now i feel like employees are very much enjoying their freedom and life and their power right now and the other side that is paying the bill saying that we can't keep paying all this stuff without seeing revenue come in right so uh how does this work how can it work you know you can't completely fold on one side or the other uh and expect everything to be all all awesome after the pandemic i mean look at netflix look at facebook all the money in the world they're just looking at year to year and they're like this can't continue

you know if we keep paying everyone out and letting everybody do what they need to in five ten years there won't be a company left i mean that's how they make decisions right yeah i and i and i but i don't think it's you don't think it's that bad games make less money than meta yeah i don't think people working at home is like some huge like i think they're saving so much on like electrical costs and sure and food in the studio and at least the studios that give people free food at least yeah right like i i mean i'm pretty sure there's a lot of money being saved elsewhere um i i can buy that oh you know projects are being delayed because collaboration's harder especially for a studio that doesn't that never was able to manage remote work in the first place right yeah but but cost them a lot of money and all of this kind of stuff i i don't think so i don't think so we'll see we'll see

we'll see like you know games you know games get delayed all the time you know what i mean so for for various reasons right and and i'm not seeing it like a lot of people are like i'm seeing a lot of a lot of delays right but like are we really seeing more than any other year i'm not too sure well i will say this all right um never a day uh that i thought blizzard will be a problem um with their infinite amount of ips their proven track record of making hits but before the endemic you know what was happening they were losing a lot of people like higher-ups because of the scandals um people are retiring frankly because activision was peddling or meddling too much into their affairs right so leadership was like i'm done i don't need to prove anything anymore and now i think we're starting to see that the titan over there i don't know if it was because of those

key key roles being missing but you know we were just talking about how how how does the rockstar machine work with a changing of guards you know hundreds of people would leave and come but like the hauser brothers and the key key roles there kept gta 4 to gta 5 without losing any of its quality right yeah it took a little longer but still reasonable for a game of that size that at this point more uh more uh more than its loss in time and development have made up for its you know uh eight years i mean if anything it's been out for 10 years right 10 year plus and still making that much more money so they've proven that it works right so when i look at blizzard i look at one great companies before the epidemic and what's happening now and they're completely losing were they before the pendant well they were starting to right i mean

wow you remember wow right they were losing subscriptions year after year so wait when you say before they pet that you're talking before before the 15 years pentagon before well well i'm talking about the downfall was beginning to happen all right and it had an uptick with overwatch too which was a new ip very small well overwatch was huge but they didn't capitalize on it right and then all these other ips came out but you know overwatch was the latest entry right new ip i think it's the newest ip right or was it hearthstone um maybe overwatch maybe i wouldn't call her set a new ip because it's based off of warcraft right right so overwatch was the new original ip but i will just say we'll just throw a hearthstone which proved like hey we still are have skinned in the game we're still awesome you know we can come up with new ideas and still be a hit and have a huge fan following alright that kind of showed it right but since then i think i'm beginning to see some

what you call it kinks in the armor right so showing some weakness right and they've lost like this this lawsuit was announced on friday was it the discriminating lawsuit oh my god another lawsuit seen as much as 7.7 billion a race from its market value so that might be activision blizzard overall but blizzard in particular hasn't the microsoft deal happened yet there's still there's a lot of pushback like what i'm seeing in the news is that obviously people are speculating that kodak rushed that deal so that he would escape liability uh he knew a lot of this um suing would happen right so he kind of just um sold it which they feel was below market value uh so there's a lot of issues with that but i'm i'm trying to point out blizzard here because i feel like

these great companies that were great before are starting to show signs of failure because of the business model kind of feeling no people been saying blizzard has been failing on the downward slope ever since activision bought them and and then people were like quitting and leaving as soon as activision bought blizzard there's been a steady trickle of people leaving is it because of activism management because i feel like activision was hands off and then slowly and then slowly and slowly more activision involvement in the operations right and then the whole esports division got fired or laid off all right esports got laid off if you remember that right um so so like slowly over time the focus got shifted big time they've been on a downward downward shift like ever since even when overwatch came by you're big enough overwatch a lot of people are like ah that game's trash right right so um

you know there was a lot of that you know and a lot of the big heavy hitters left blizzard you know and they went to perform their own studios or or retire or whatever right so so i think it's been a long a long slope for them you know and but activision because it's so big and blizzard is still a big name right you know still able to make money wow still doing very well you know it's it's funny i just saw a recent more recent number and it's like it you know the percentage of users is down like 20 or so like that and it's still 26 million players yeah for wow that's crazy man that's a lot of people it's a lot of people playing and and ed uh we we just we call that like a fall from grace you know that's crazy right so um because it's development team it's definitely still profitable yeah yeah yeah there's no way they're spending 26 million a year oh no they're squeezing they're squeezing money out of that game

you know what i mean so let's grant that bottle situation well grand theft auto still like 100 mil how much grand theft auto i'm just going to end it with this how much does grand theft auto sell last year one second as as of as of november total sales is 155 million units since it's released in 2013 so that is that is yes that is eight years eight years 155 million units grant that photo yeah how much did they sell last year though that's the thing that's just gta 5. that's crazy

i'm just trying to see how much so why why even release grand theft auto 6 i will i would i'm hearing this though grand theft auto 6 is having a lot of issues um with this development i've been hearing a lot of rumors about how it's um i mean and i think because of what the one one of the hauser brothers retired right since since fred dead yeah i i wouldn't know but i know uh yeah one of the houser brother retired and this is kind of a similar thing yeah this is a similar theme because i'm seeing um you know the guy the respawn guy right one of the something went down with that i think

one you know there's like two studio heads they've been together since infinity ward and then after titanfall and apex or something one one of them left um but not completely gone i think he went on to do something else yeah he leaves yeah yeah game director yeah yep it's interesting man it's definitely a new generation like all the people that i grew up with are either disbanded you know blizzard used to be the big the big gun uh there's dude when i when i grew up when i grew up the big gun was sierra online right yeah this year online was a publisher for a lot of valve games at one point right yeah and another even before valve even before valve we're talking sierra online

was like king's quest man please quest all those games and then um and then like interplay you know you know like for for back in the day and micro pros right yeah so like you know it happened times times changed yeah it kind of changed and and maybe maybe the next big purchase somebody's gonna buy ubisoft there's been there's been rumblings you know what i mean is it still rumpling there's been rumblings but it's owned by two brothers right yeah it's only owned by a family not just two i think there's like more than more than two of them are they just gonna in and out what's the plan there like is just ego why hold on to it anymore it's a family it's a family business that they started themselves like they still have control over her and they they those guys that's that's the one thing i will not shade ubisoft for yeah um like the people that run the company at the top care about video games yeah

period like like they care about video games um now whether you know they know how to handle sexual harassment claims and all that kind of stuff and then they're are currently facing a mass exodus of people leaving the studio that's a totally different thing but but they but they they definitely care about you yo i need to read into this and maybe i can bring someone on but how bad is the sexual harassment is it just i thought you guys are the nicest people in canada you saw you saw all of the news about it it was an endless stream of allegations right it was a lot it was all in the news it was like you could read it for yourself but it was a lot activision's kind of dominated headlines i just i only seen like a few ubisoft thing i didn't read too deeply into it is it men and women or just women we mean in terms of what sexual harassment there's all sorts of claims being made about hr not repaying

attention and things that's every game studio like i mean i mean it was all in the news like you you saw i got to dig into it yeah yeah and it's still happening or is it done no well now what's happening is mass accidents we were quitting left or right oh man why are these people going start their own studio going to other studios you know a lot a lot of that because they're just new studios popping up all the time and there's there's i know a few people have left some of them going to long-standing studios other studios but us you know going to first party studios you know like it's a mix but but they're definitely getting the hell up at a ooby and also you know sledgehammer opened an office in toronto that just basically took everybody took a lot of people from from the toronto studio so let me kind of uh segue to the end of this which is i feel

let's start with some theories here right i feel that we're returning to pre-epidemic uh days right in terms of uh where we were in terms of people going back in the office um hybrid uh but eventually full time is my my thinking on that sure uh-huh um they're just playing nice right now hey man just think about the worst boss that you've had right the money hungry one sometime with bleach hair right no hayden but just think about that guy you think he's happy that employees have all the cards right now in terms of power you think he's not scheming you don't think this guy climbed to the top knowing how to play right so he's gonna hang out with you all right do this little dance with you saying that's cool hybrid's cool i respect that right i respect you

you don't think he's slowly you know trying to find your replacement in the background you know that intern that intern that is way cheaper than you out of school willing to work after pay like i i think it's very i see a lot of friends right i see a lot of friends and i'm sure i'm sure you have some too who bought these nice ass farms in the middle of ohio right i think and they're like oh i'm perma remote i'm good i'm forever gonna be like this until i'm 65. all right i was like really dude yeah they're gonna constantly want to to to to value my skills right those guys who live on those farms are the first to be you know uh a blunt instrument right there they're not they're they're too busy enjoying life to be uh learning the next update on zbrush you know what i mean they're slowly going to lose that skill

or very fastly they're going to lose that skill right yeah and and as soon as soon as that boss train up that intern to replace you and is willing to go back to the office you're gone right mark my words in two three years we're gonna have a lot of friends right uh going on linkedin uh and and their their images are of them on their farm looking for jobs and they can't find it it's like hey i'm stuck in ohio i got this nice ass farm and nobody wants to hire me it's like oh really yeah they don't want to hire you and pay you that six figure salary that you got used to for a couple years that you took full advantage of because you want to live on your farm people in video games getting six figure salaries hey man this people this is this is how

this is how bad and how how how how how how what you call it um uh uh transfixed they are on this illusion right that they can go in mid usa and still keep their california salary and think this is how it's going to be until they're 65 because they are valuable because this is a seller's market and the sales market stays this way right it's ridiculous i'm sitting there thinking it's like man you are very confident that they won't be able to find someone younger and cheaper than you after this whole thing is over okay so a couple things okay remind me to not have you as my employer you want me to be hey i'm giving you just a preview of how it's going to go down right i'm not actually doing these things right if anything i am your best

friend right now telling you how it's going to run about saying anything about anything i'm just saying this should not be your plate wait wait no um no you don't agree to this you really think this is going to continue that the people on their farms are going to be okay i would i would say that your telling of it is a bit extreme is what i would say right and i and i definitely would would say everybody on the farm is not doing a side hustle up skilling themselves doing all that like i'm pretty sure they're doing all of those things but they have to fight though hell no i'm pretty sure there's i'm pretty sure there's people doing that and i'm pretty sure they're looking up how to grow apples girls they have the also additional flexibility to grow some apples and to enjoy their life because not everything is is work you know is that well that's the thing that's the downfall when you start not making it about work in a skill heavy industry and i will say that a lot of

studios i'm seeing spaying up promising the the promising remote fully remote team promising we will not crunch you we are a community we want to really build something great and and and do it in a way that's sustainable and ethical you know what i mean right like there is there's a lot of that sentiment too oh my god and so so that is that is opportunities for people to move into those kind of roles once their boss at the evil corporation decides it's over for them right um but i i just i just don't see it and i think i think too like especially those people are probably the more experienced people and either either you cherish the experience that people bring to the table or you just start making some [ __ ] you have a team of people that just

don't know what they're doing right maybe that's the way the video game industry is going and we're gonna end up with like lower quality stuff in in the long term maybe if if what you if your cynical view is what actually happens um being in the industry being at countless studios like yourself yeah most people don't know what they're doing most people are trash man and that's from upper management to the new new kid in the building right i'm not i'm not disagreeing it's trash and like you saying that every new studio that pops up saying like hey we're here to look to change things we're not crunching we're going to be diverse it's all red flags to me man it's like what about the game what about the game talk about your game what is your idea that is so great right to me like they tell you when you when you apply that the game is everybody has this i've heard a lot of

really good game ideas recently like yeah i've heard many good ideas right and i've read through many of them in the trash right and that's where they are because you know like you execution is everything right everybody has a good idea and the dynamic of a team is so random right it's almost like a lottery um you know if you happen to have a game that somebody wants to play out there it's like super by luck right um so i really do feel that yeah it's great that these new companies have these goals and these ambitions like they're going to change things and have a hit right but the fact is i always look at the leaders who already are making hits struggling right you're looking at activision looking at these major companies they know how to make games they know how to uh survive through a bad year and still be profitable are they struggling because they've just got complacent and and are not really

focused on what makes games great are they struggling because like why are they struggling they're struggling because games are hard right and uh no matter how much they know about how to make a successful formula no matter what components they have and they can replace because people are interchangeable um it takes a very rare luck to actually make it all work right and they they're very good at still being profitable year after year even though it's not as profitable right so when a new company a new you know everyone is super happy and positive come into the game industry and saying like i can do it better i laugh because it's like all right so suddenly you have the missing formula that these bigger companies haven't figured out and is able to replicate at you know any bad year that they have honestly for a lot of these things it's it's it's because the big companies are big

is why this bother they're not as innovative sure but even then they could innovate they could take risks they could move but here's the thing i look at bull you know no take apart from these big companies let's compare small companies to small companies i look at this indie market millions of games every year and most of them are trash right what's worse is some of them are really actually really good still don't make money right it's like oh my god it's very hard right so i i like as soon as like the year where they have to start to start missing bills right right these small companies with these uh you know uh positive impact all this crap that they always spout day one right on their web page as soon as they miss a bill all that what's the first thing that goes out the trash what's the person that got a chat all right you guys got to come in saturday all right we gotta make this work or else we don't get paid

you know i'll give you i'll give you that that that definitely when times are hard that's when your values are are tested and done and a lot of times people choose yeah so what i'm what i'm guessing is these new studios trust me you know we're in kind of like this green area of the pandemic where everyone's hopeful and cheerful and there's new beginning and this forever remote is promising and and is feels like the future i'm giving you 18 months you know a game cycle where you're gonna start seeing all this money invested in these new studios are gonna freeze up they're like oh [ __ ] these aaa guys don't know what they're doing what [Music] you mean because they made a hit before they can't replicate that hit what

i mean chances are higher but yes it's going to be the same [ __ ] story man these people don't know how to make games and now they have a chance and they're still gonna not know how to make games because even if you're a creative director of a successful franchise you leave and you form your own studio guess what the first mistake they're not a creative director anymore man you're running the business you're doing all these other damn things you're not looking at the damn game you think you're going to be able to do all that and run a business and pay people and run these monday meetings and be able to like talk to steve about how how six months ago you paid him a certain salary and now you gotta pay him higher because he feels like it right he's like these are new problems that's why you gotta hire a business partner that will do the business yeah and now you got to deal with this dude or they do the creative director part for you whichever part you don't want to do yeah and that's even by chance all

right coming from a guy who worked with friends and it didn't work out right it's it's a whole different equation man there's always something if you never dealt with it before chances are you're going to mess up the first time right so i'm just seeing in a year and a half all these people who are super green um with all these hopeful ideas are gonna crash and maybe some will survive but most will crash yeah and i think it's gonna be i'm seeing more more at least what i'm seeing is more experienced people taking the leap and so like i have some hope for them because they're experienced but like you said man this is hard of course it's very hard anything could happen man anything can happen anything can happen and building a team is hard finding the right people trying to write you know getting funding finding money even though money's just flowing like crazy right now it still requires work you know so still hard work so yeah

yeah that's crazy yeah i hate i hate being on the other side of pestim well on the other side of optimism oh yeah i'm usually not the pessimistic type but but i really do feel that this is gonna be bad right because just like the stock market you know everyone's super positive at the game industry right now you know we had a killer two years you know where everybody was crashing but when we're on a high i always see it going the other way pretty fast and i mean at the very least i'm seeing a whole lot of consolidation yeah in the high and middle tiers that like i think that just just the bank accounts of those companies doing the consolidation will keep a lot of people afloat because they're just gobbling up activision gobbling up bungie gobbling up whoever else right yeah yeah but haven't just got by sony right yeah like i i i think

those big behemoths are gonna hold hold the industry up i don't like seeing the consolidation honestly because that's basically all ip going to one once i had a handful of companies you know but but uh when it comes to stability and knowing where the check is coming from you can't really beat that right now yeah man our friend in the middle of ohio on the farm he needs to be able to go to a job later when this remote thing doesn't work out right he has to be able to go back to san francisco all right so let's just hope that you know his farm is worth more later uh-huh this is mad i just i i am i hope i'm wrong but my feeling is especially as an artist in a tech industry where your value is directly equated to how kept up you are with the technology and tools you moving out to a farm is

only going to make you more complacent like how are you going to be competitive there's a reason why people move to like a very fast moving city right yeah that's part of it do you not work from your home yeah i don't make art anymore that's the trick i have people skills now and that's ageless i'm just talking about these artists other people i'm the one firing those people that are in the middle of the farms you can see you can see the evolution here i do calls into the interview there's a barn in the background and you're like get out and call i don't want to talk to this guy come on let's be real man if you're on the middle farm your mind is already retired like would you really hire that person think that in next 10 years he's going to give you your best

or he's just going to give you the time that he wants to be maybe he just wants a balance in his life you know what i mean and maybe maybe he'll still give you what you need but he wants a balance you know hell no man there's like five goats in the background dude you know how many masters what are you talking about there's no way you're gonna be sitting down z brushing me that character tonight you got like a whole farm to upkeep here that's retirement man yeah you're there there's a reason why you don't hire retired people it's like those people are gone they're mentally checked out they're not gonna give your best three years of their lives it's a creative industry it's silly man but that's i i i just see i'm i'm a huge proponent for people to balance their life right but it you can't go that extreme right any extremities is terrible but you moving out into the farm in georgia where there's no game tech uh companies for a reason right

well okay i'll say this i'll say this i do think that a lot of people are only in california yeah putting up with these rents yeah putting up with these taxes because they're here because they want to work in the industry that is located here right and as soon as they're they had the opportunity to be like what do you mean i could work anywhere well then let me find the place where that resonates with me some people stay some people are like oh california is where i want to be so i'm going to stay other people bought bigger houses so that they can like be outside or be close to being outside when they work or have more space to work in right i just think that this thing was a it was an era it was a time of a lot of people assessing their lives and what they really want out of it can't knock that you know what i mean and all the places where all the places where these game companies are at right now austin

seattle california are like housing market is crazy rents are high like like and i'm not getting paid a whole lot of money either making video games let me just go somewhere where i can chill of course make them and make that money stretch more you know totally totally see that you know yeah is it of course is it you know and and i get the same amount of money i'm paying all that rent in downtown san francisco i could i could buy a whole ass farm why not of course it's the dream i'm just saying if it was always was gonna be a temporary thing like if you save all that money on the farm and then have come back there's no way that these companies are cool with everyone spread out like every time i hear a corporate if that was true corporations in the headlines would be saying that hey man 20 only wants to go back in the office but like you're you're hearing kind of like the the wheels you know those are paid articles right they're obviously trying to lure people in right their

incentive and everything that in their bones are saying we're trying to get people back in the office i definitely agree i definitely agree with you there's there are definitely some companies that are kind of like we want you to come back we want like they're kind of trying to gently nudge people right now because they just they can't they can't tell them to come back that's why our people are quitting over this yes right um and they can't they don't have the to the power yet but that powers slowly so maybe the market conditions change in a way where they can start demanding people come to them again i don't know maybe maybe remote work and hybrid is here to stay forever oh i'll share this theory and what i'm seeing right so obviously the older more disciplined seniors and lead level or the more likely able to handle remote right they're sure they're more trained right the inverse of that is the younger people are definitely at a disadvantage they're terrible they've never been in a

workforce and their first time in the company in a studio setting is on zoom right and they're having a terrible time i'm sure you you have like colleagues that are training people and they're like these kids i feel so bad for them they don't have the camaraderie because a lot of time when they zoom meetings it only works because i know you we we've talked before in the office we share memories of the office so we have this like connection uh and so it's easier to talk to to to to brainstorm to do all these different things right yeah you meet someone new in the zoom it's just like it's all work no fun right and the time that you do spend together you're trying to get off because like dude i hate talking to this guy only about this non-fun thing every time we talk right it's not like we're talking about that's the stuff that we used to hang out with i'll talk about this for some folks and i think it's it's going to be critical to do off-sites and to do planned sessions where people do get together yeah so the homeboy on the farm is going to have to take a plane

sometimes you know what i mean just to build those bonds because yes you cannot build those bonds nothing replaces in person to replace those bonds so like i think there needs to be space carved out for that but that doesn't need to be 24 7. yeah right because but i will definitely say that when i first started an industry uh you know i moved away from home and i was living in chicago right yeah and that was huge yeah the people i worked with became my friends i became the only people i hung out with i went to movies with one ate dinners with right because we're always together and those people went to other places they recommend it to you you recommended them yeah foreign and some of them still friends still friends to this day you know um and then it forms a really really close bonds but also it's not healthy right you know at the same time it's not healthy right you need to have other groups it's good it's good to have groups people you hang out with that are not people you work with you know i mean

yeah but like that but i do but i do recognize the strength of that yeah the strength of that and the journey of moving out your parents house going out your own yeah it's not just game industry job just any job like the young this generation is it z gen z yeah they're not gonna at least for the first few years are completely missing basically a lifetime full of friends or lifelong friends and i will say like where i do agree with you too is like i um a friend of mine started working at the company i work at now right and i saw him for the first time since he joined the company right and i used we used to work together somewhere else and like i was like hey what's up man give a big hug and all this kind of stuff right and one of the other people in the room was like you guys look like you shipped a game together you know yeah exactly right and it's like yeah you know like because because nothing

replaces that when you when you with your with your exactly so this is why i go back to my theory it's like yeah i would be grooming the youngsters because they have less less uh chips to bargain with right like make them go in the office which they will and i'm gonna that's the thing right there you're in a bond with a younger and if you it times the when it comes time to promote somebody are you gonna promote steve on a farm or you can vote bob who's been hanging out in the office all the time no you're 100 right there when you are remote you are at a there's a disadvantage articles written and stuff like that you are at a disadvantage when it comes to promotion pay raises performance evaluation etc yeah and guess what it is a legit concern for sure yeah in two three years time it's like hey do we need to tell steve to do this one

thing no no bob's in the office i'll just swing by his desk and tell him what to do you know what bob has been doing a lot in the last couple months i think bob needs to uh have that promotion do we even need steve anymore no no i mean bob is doing twice as much work as steve is right now if you commit to remote work and hybrid work you have to solve that problem yeah i i don't i don't see how how anyone on the farm is going to be anybody in the office there's no way there's a reason why these mecca cities are fast paced everyone's on the move everyone's super ambitious and very key word competitive right that's the competitive nature of being the office it is what pushed the game further and pushes individuals motivation further right when you're in the farm right you're just thinking about

dinner you're just thinking about what i'm gonna feed my goat there's no way no way i'll be surprised all right i'll be surprised if any of our friends on our farm is actually going to be working industry till 65 right i'll be super surprised like hey wow he really worked out this full remote thing no way i think no i think anybody who does that isn't it isn't in the mind frame i'm going to be doing this is those 65 they're in the mind frame of how do i balance my real life with my work life that's right of course well i i would i would i would say they prioritized their life over work life when they move out in the middle of a farm they already chose to to work less um and they're thinking about early retirement right i mean that's the truth of it that's okay if you're in a place where you can make them or they maybe they want that to be their steady state like just a more balanced life in general you gave up right you're professionally

gave up in my opinion and you better be damned good at growing your own food right and be self-sustaining because there are going to be some gaps in your career right there's no way that they can keep that up there's no way an employee will will not prefer that guy willing to come to the office like if i ask one candidate over the other and say and ask both of those like can you go in the office and only one person said yes i'm gonna favorably like that person to make that sacrifice to put work before home it's just you know especially when you're running a business right you know the boss man is not gonna say hey i value that you balance your life work all right i value that you put me second right the boss pad should have asked the first place because you shouldn't know that he's in shooting up people's personal life i'm saying across the

board most bosses right now and most people who are paying the bills are upset at the situation and they're doing everything they can to scheme how to reverse this and how to shove it up steve's ass when he's coming back to beg me for his job he has all the leverage right now but like you know that ego that ego you can't undermine that ego right that ego drives people to those leadership and management roles and there's no way they're going to let go of that ego and let you know uh uh a subordinate make all the calls of how my business runs which is what you're saying i is we all have egos dude hey at one point ray at one point you felt like hey i can do that better than that guy and before you got his job i i definitely have said that you made that decision years ago

all right so i'm telling you i'm telling you man it's it's it's it's basic bias you're gonna be biased man hey you're gonna be spending time with the guy in the office more than the guy online and you're going to like the guy in the office because you're doing all these extra stuff you know that's what's that's what's saying the guy the guy online also has to travel and form those bonds but even then i mean how often can you travel like once a month every once every two weeks you know it's not going to imagine it happened when we worked at 2k you know what i mean like yeah like we had a team all the way in australia yeah i mean borrowing them over in office but it was always like like what are those guys doing man like who are these guys like oh my god right and then when they came over they were cool they come over you get to know them and they're and they're cool and then you form those bonds and then they go back and now you have a rapport you know what i mean sure but before you didn't know this guy at all france so but you know yeah but i'm i'm seeing like

you're gonna have the equivalent of that guy in the office and that guy who flies in and you're gonna pick that guy in the office every time right he's only cool because now here's the problem with the guy on the farm right at a certain point he maybe succumbed to like oh i guess i need to really fly in but right now i think we're still at a point where they're resistant it's like i'm not gonna fly [ __ ] that are you forcing me i can get another job tomorrow right so we're dealing with a lot of that attitude right so that's gonna wear down right give it six months so it's gonna wear down eventually it's gonna go like [ __ ] you i'll look for another job uh by the way by the way like every time somebody asked me right you're coming back to the office my answer is it's [ __ ] up i ain't never going back i never go back that's my that's my response right yeah i will say like i went back during gdc and i had a fun time going back to y'all of course and seeing people talking to them it was great you know and and so yeah but but being forced to 24 7. nah man yeah i'm saying that you have a year for

that so enjoy that while you have it because in a year's time they're going to be you know presenting in office ray version right they're going to show exactly the same version of you in the office oh hey ray me meet jay jay he's like yeah he's a graphic engineer as well we just got him in and he's like oh he's pretty good oh is he now and i was like let me see about that i'll see you in the office and then here we go ray and jay sitting opposite of each other jay's putting in all that time rey's in once every two weeks and then ray's coming i was like babe i think i need to be in the office more because this this new kid he's showing me up dude i played this scenario it's exactly yeah it's going to go down it's exactly how's it going down this is how everybody is going to face a situation where they're like babe i know we love our farm but i think we need to move back to the city but the

reality is this yadda yadda that's how it's going to go down man there's no way no way people are thinking that them and their farms are going to live happily ever after there's no way man i i wish that that's the case but you know i have a glimpse into these minds of madmen and ego driven maniacs and they are doing spending day and night tossing and turning about how the [ __ ] do i yeah how the [ __ ] do i get ray back in the office he's he's telling me hell no every day but like i know i can get him man i'll tell you right i'll tell you right now i'm kind of lucky but my boss doesn't even live in the same city as me yeah uh only about three people on my team are in the same city as me there you go exception to the rule yeah you're lucky you guys were lucky remote before remote was cool so those i think those are the companies that will survive but we're playing around with that

but people who were forced into this situation hell no hell no they're they're no way they're like oh i never thought this would work out but it is like i love it definitely apple is an example that apple's like hell no you guys are coming back exactly and yeah yeah and like a year ago they were saying a lot of those guys were like we're fully remote they were appeasing employees saying that we're good yeah we can do this a year later forget it uh wait do we said it they're appeasing everyone's appeasing right now and it's just less and less peasing as as the pandemic becomes you know is in the rearview mirror right it's the the further away we are from 2020 the less chance that you know you and your farm will will survive so i hate to break it to you but you know my i i have a knack of these

theories coming true man just you compile all these theories and eventually that's what we saw but anyways ray uh it's always uh a fun time chatting with you you know i like discussing uh what the future uh may may prosper um perspire uh we read a lot of these news i'm looking at a lot of these things you know a few years ago i thought remote was the the answer right for a lot of people you know uh i also were singing a different tune when the pandemic started well before the pandemic i always thought in office politics had to do with being in office right and uh seeing what the last year and a half and what studios and how they were kind of reacting to this you know the people who were making the office a torture

are still making online a torture right in in other ways right so it's like oh say bad people are always gonna be bad okay uh and unfortunately uh my colleagues let me down dude they're [ __ ] up like not everyone is doing a good job i hate to say it but that's the truth it's not everyone's doing a great job and games are being delayed and for the sake of their job they should go back in the office because they're not good at it yeah not a lot of people not a lot of people think sorry i can't can't do it yeah i i agree with that no i not everybody could do it yeah man i do i was looking at twitter the other day and a recruiter a recruiter of a major company will say hey it's it's okay you don't have to apologize when you're interviewing and your kid's popping you don't have to apologize last minute cancelling interviews that we set up for months like sincerely saying that it's okay for people to mess up

but i think but that's not okay dude it's like i think that's strictly because we we are still kind of like in a pandemic so people are willing to overlook it but if you were working at home 24 7 right then you've already figured out child care and carved out that space but most people haven't most people have child care yeah sometimes you can't get child care and the kid is just going to be bouncing around hold up in the camera yeah not even just meetings disrupting but you know if they're doing that one hour per week consistently you best believe they're doing that all day around you and that's why you can't get your job done right so most people haven't figured out so many i've seen so many babies i i've heard i've been on calls with people where their spouse is in the same room on a call yeah right so just crazy noise you know another person talking super loud and you're trying to concentrate i've seen i've seen everything i've seen cats jumping on people's keyboards right like i've seen everything

and um and yeah i think we just have to say it's okay because we're currently in a pandemic but once if it goes to 24 7 you're working at home then you gotta solve those issues oh yeah until so you're come on you're at a point where yeah it's not okay anymore it's like yo it's been a year it's been two years it's been two years figuring the [ __ ] out man they have like crappy cameras it's like doing this all day like glitching on you it's like come on get a better mic bro no i think this part yeah definitely get a better camera get a better mic but i also think um that's also kind of what spurred a lot of people to like buy houses buy bigger houses and move out so they can have more space more space to do things yeah yeah but i i i'm with you on that i think in the thick of it we were patient but i as we're kind of i would say mostly crawling out of the pandemic like i'm i'm kind of tired of people

being unprofessional on the camera you know what i mean it's like it's hitting that point so you haven't figured this [ __ ] out man but you're kidding me your kid is like five years old or like he was he was five and now he's ten he's like come on it's like you can't use the same excuse anymore we still have pandemic kills we'll see how it goes all right well i will mark this episode because i always like to see what a year and a half looks like flashing for it and i'm telling you man all my friends out there who are thinking that this is forever i i feel bad for them because they will be outdated really soon we'll see all right all right next time you're going to see it dude you're going to see that kid [Laughter] and you're going to prefer you're going to see why jay is so awesome all yeah

all right well that's it guys that it's uh that's this week's episode thanks as always to joining me ray and uh where can the good people find you you already know it's on twitter uh w-a-d-a-r-a-s-s there you go well as always uh opinions uh anything that you disagree with you know message at us we always love discussing about it but uh as always stay healthy be clean you know keep your job