Mastering Metaverse: John Krajewski’s Eco Adventure | 330

foreign what's up everybody welcome to another episode of Game Dev Unchained the number one game development podcast about game development and the lifestyle thereof I am your host Brandon Pham and with me joining is John yeah how's that close John karjevsky thanks great to be here nice to meet you nice to meet you John uh so this is part of the podcast where I let our guests which is yourself to introduce yourself to the listeners out there of where you been where you're at right now where you're heading just a little short preview uh before we get going sure yeah so I'm a Founder CEO of company called strange Loop games and we're building a virtual world game called Eco which is currently out on Steam and taking it to the next level expanding it creating some new stuff for

it so a pretty exciting place right now my background is I used to work at EA over in Brisbane Australia I worked at Midway before that so I've worked in a number of AAA titles and then started my own shop about uh 14 years ago we've grown it to 32 people got an awesome team really passionate Global team we run a remote Studio we hire from our community a lot uh so yeah it's been uh it's been a fun ride and our latest game has really been uh resonated with people more than any of the other ones we've done so this is something that we're like expanding we want to turn it into a platform and really start to to grow it a lot for those who haven't clicked through can you kind of talk about what your latest game is and sure so games called Eco and the idea is you are building a virtual Society inside of an ecosystem so everything you do impacts the environment and you were doing this with other people so you have to make

decisions as a group and decide kind of the course of this world uh and the threat to the world is there's a meteor that's going to hit the planet in the 30 real life days and so you have to build up technology you start from just a pure Wilderness and you are Building Technology doing research creating an industry an economy a government advancing this world all the way to you know the modern day where you can have the technology to stop this this meteor from uh impacting the Earth so not only can you there's kind of these bookended threats so there's this meteor is going to hit the planet but you can also destroy the ecosystem in the process so a huge part of the game is uh kind of just leading this group like running this virtual Society because it's all real people you have to make decisions as a group so you can create a government you can create laws those laws are binding within the server so players are really able to kind of craft you know not just the physical shape of

this world and their their homes and buildings and towns and Roads and everything but also like the Civic structure so you're creating the government you're creating the economy you're defining how things should work you're creating a constitution uh within the economy you can buy and sell Goods but also Services you can have contracts between each other so it's really the game the focus of the game is this this idea of a like a living kind of society that grows over time that you're advancing with other people and all the just emerging stuff that happens from there so uh yeah it's been a been super fun to work on and uh still in Early Access but we're uh and we got a big update coming uh Eco 10 is about to release which has a bunch of new stuff and uh yeah and then we have big plans for it beyond that as well well I wanted to say congratulations for you guys a success and uh can you can I give us a little idea when you guys first released an early uh release yeah we were 2018 on Steam uh

we were a couple we're like a few months before that on our website but uh yes it's been five years in early development um and we've had a chance to grow the team from our basically you know being able to have Revenue during that time lets us like actually grow the team and start to accelerate development uh we're currently raising funding uh talking to some VCS so that'll kind of be used for our next stage uh but yeah it's been a good process there's a lot of things I want to Circle back to just the idea of early release and you know the whole mystery there when it comes to like you know the decision making but the number one reason why I was super excited to talk to you is like of course you know you're doing everything you can to avoid the word metaverse like the last two years right you know that was one of the buzzwords and it got exciting and then now it's kind of you know has like a bad taste in people's mouth because of how people were branding it but you know

to us this is just a regular game to our industry you know we've been building these kind of ecosystems this idea of like like MMOs like people socializing um for listeners out there I would love to kind of hear your view on what is the concept of a metaverse uh and for those who are not familiar with it and you know what what what is your idea that a metaverse quote unquote should aspire to you know at least the good things that people are attracted to yeah yeah exactly you notice I kind of avoid that word just because it is such a like loaded term now yeah um I mean I think there's a lot of really great ideas that come with the metaverse but it has been pretty deeply associated with some stuff that consumers are you know especially gamers are not particularly into uh namely web3 and crypto yeah um and I feel like a lot of the ideas that we're kind of crystallizing is the metaverse are really just old ideas was

basically like second life again it's like okay we already had this we've had this for like 20 years this isn't exactly new you're just adding like crypto purchases in it and calling it a metaverse yeah but I think there is this potential for I mean kind of the way that I see the metaverse is this transition from worlds being just places where customers go and they pay and they get an experience you know in like a game two they are citizens of these worlds they're creating these worlds they are the value in these worlds and they get to share in that value as well so this idea that you know it's it's not just a a theme park you go into you have the experience but like you're going there you're like kind of building this like life in a sense you're having these relationships with other people that are meaningful you're doing meaningful things you're doing these big goals kind of societal goals and it's a world where like your decisions matter there's like consequences to the world so those are kind of the three like key factors I

think that would make up a really interesting metaverse and some people are working on those I think a lot of the metaverse things that came out before were not really in that direction as much they were more just kind of experiences versus like you know places where you're creating something so for me that's really exciting that idea that you know you can have these these worlds that have their life of their own created by the players you know they're kind of these living breathing entities of their own and then you can start to connect them as well so that's where the meta part of the metaverse comes in is that you can connect this is what we're building with Eco so you can have Eco world that connects to a different Eco world or another SQL world or like a a modded world that somebody's made and you can actually move between these and players kind of Define how those connections work uh So within that world you know you you can host not just an individual world but like this galaxy of Worlds that you can move between and connect to and you can take that even a

step further where you have other games that could potentially start connecting it so I kind of see it as like a bottom-up thing I like the bottom-up approach of we're creating these worlds we're allowing connections between other worlds to happen and um letting other games connect to that as well versus trying to make the Walled Garden that has like you know a million people in it in this this shared like room right like I feel like that's kind of a dead end but that's where a lot of the the direction is is focused whereas like building things up letting these communities form organically and connecting them is a lot more powerful yeah I I I completely agree with you like the the the loaded term I mean you know the idea of the metaverse is kind of like when I see people who are seeking to meet build a milk diverse or are like falling into the traps of early development of early game developers right where you're like they're trying to build many things at once and none of it

really refined and like you said it's like you got a bottom-up approach it's you know there are systems and things that needs to happen you know you're trying to make a world that a million people want to hang out with I mean can you you gotta answer the question do five people want to hang out there first uh and that alone game design wise is very difficult to kind of be captivating enough for for others to kind of spend and want to spend a lot of their time in and invest essentially um you know I would like to kind of further ass you can kind of touch this a bit being an experienced game developer um you know what's your view on on kind of like the the evolution with Virtual Worlds you know you mentioned before yeah we've had second life right to to a great success and it seems like everyone forgot about it right uh but in the attempts nowadays are like laughable compared to what we

had back then right and we're talking about decades decades after with billions of dollars billions of dollars at meta you know family known as Facebook his point he's like what is going on here so I would love to kind of hear like being from the game developer perspective building you know essentially what people want but in a very you know game developer focused way how are you viewing these takes these understandings to just make these misconceptions yeah I think that a lot of the kind of metaverse projects that came out were coming from people outside of the games industry and so that's why the ideas kind of seemed like dated to Gamers it's like we've been doing that for 20 years yeah but to this kind of new expansion of the game industry you know into this whole new potential group of people this was you know an interesting Uncharted Territory and um but yeah I think that uh

you know it's it's been a really interesting evolution of of these Virtual Worlds over time you think of like second life you think of if PlayStation had a home once yeah those ones the games like Ultima Online Ultima Online is my favorite game of all time that was the the one that really kind of piqued my interest of this like living world where anything could kind of happened it was pretty unpredictable I mean you got lots of like unbalanced stuff would happen but that was kind of part of the fun like you get your house robbed and lose like months of work yeah but it was a super fascinating game games like Eve you know they've kind of branched out into a lot of different ways like you have like Eve it's just this virtual universe that's been online for like God I don't know 15 years or something yeah and it just has this like Rich history to it you can read about these battles where people are losing hundreds of thousands of dollars real money worth of spaceships yeah like battling each other and that's just awesome that's just this this virtual place that happens uh then you kind of

have these other directions of uh I think a good example is like Grand Theft Auto uh like role play servers where people will play on Twitch and kind of you know act out these uh you know roles in the world and I think that's that kind of gives a hints at the direction that these Virtual Worlds could go where you're not just co-opting a game to you know pretends and play this kind of role play thing but you're like the game is actually simulating that there's an actual Society there that you know whatever role you're doing is needed and it fits into the gameplay in a lot deeper way so that's kind of one important Direction I see is going it's kind of what we're working on building with Eco um but yeah it's uh it's a super fascinating space and I think there's some big things that we haven't really seen a lot of yet like uh connecting worlds together there's not many games that like allow you to kind of connect to other worlds within those within that same ecosystem or to other games but there's huge

potential for like how do you define that because once you start defining that then you have this you know not just a singular place but this whole like country this whole like territory of different games you can connect to move between I mean Roblox is kind of the cool example of that because even though the the games are are very like mini games they're pretty basic like small games they're not like virtual persistent worlds but you have this meta layer that works really well where you can take your character between these two and you can have your community through all of these so seeing kind of you kind of see elements of everything I think uh popping up and that you know the games of the future are going to be combining those things so that you having all of these you're having connected worlds you're having deep and Rich worlds and created by players players are creating content players are earning money in these games um and having just like really rich like relationships and experiences so yeah it's it's very fast-moving uh the history of virtual worlds right now

I'm excited to see and help build where it goes next so being in the Forefront of uh applying a lot of these principles like with Eco it seems like you you and your team are very much kind of like looking at what's going on right now with the real world and applying you know in a in a fun way uh for people to be like you said citizens of the virtual world of Nico your games are is very deep right there's legislature there's you know it goes all the way to like what if it ends tomorrow what do you do um the type of players that are coming into the in into your universe what is the common theme here where uh you feel like it this type of thing needs to exist right for the longest time people are engrossed in in video games and are looking more and more ways to interact

be more involved basically in a 24-hour day they're looking to more spend more and more time attracted to Virtual Worlds like what what is the implicit danger and benefit of that that you're seeing like one is too much is too much right one is not enough not enough and what are they escaping from or trying to benefit from yeah but I think in there is yeah there's with games kind of this you know effective disconnecting and kind of it feels like games give you this like you know the sense of achievement is really important to games that you're doing something like valuable yeah and if that's like a replacement for the achieving things in real life you know that's not good it's substitute instead yeah I think we're games really shine where they're the best is when they're giving you that sense of achievement that comes from like achievements that are also relevant outside of the game so like in Eco you have to like run a

government with real people you have to like have debates and like decide how you want to run this world and then see how it runs and you actually like you know see what happens the pollution level see what happens to your economy your Society so you're really uh kind of using these real world models within the game such that it's valuable outside of the game as well so I think that gives a lot of additional like you know value kind of takes it out of the realm of being like kind of exploitative or just like a distraction to something that like can be useful to you outside of the game and the relationships that you build inside of a game are meaningful you know their relationships with real people and that's you know intrinsically like valuable so I think for me it's like it's not so much the time spent playing games it's like what you're doing that matters you know screen not all screen time is created equally I think that if you're just spending time like in these worlds where you're just like blasting people up and just kind of getting lost in that

it's not necessarily a good thing whereas if you are you know building something you're creating something you're connecting with people you're uh you know you're learning stuff I think games have a tremendous ability to just be educational in a way that isn't like hitting you over the head with it I mean I kind of think of eco eco actually had a grant from Department of Education because it simulates all these Real World Systems so I think of doing that in a way that's like you know it's naturally fun to learn I think school kind of makes it unfun so there's there's a ton of potential in making games that have these rich deep kind of simulations of the real world that you have to understand in order to succeed in the world then you take outside of it as well so yeah I think that's that's kind of the direction to go yeah there's definitely a lot of um as game developers we see a lot of benefits in real world situations I mean we're seeing a lot of non-game designers trying to gamify

things for Education right and I think we we had a guess on that was talking about that movement and although the attempt is great it's kind of like how the tech Tech Bros are kind of taking the metaverse into like this direction and they're not quite doing you know the the the depth that a game developer would do to kind of apply these principles in into educational system as as good as we would right uh just surface level stuff um I would love to kind of hear your thoughts on that because a lot of what you're doing is like you know it's very educational you're taking real world systems and applying it into the game so that people are learning by accident or at least thinking about it right yeah and I'm sure that that was a huge Elise informational Discovery to kind of make it work within the game itself what were you finding that was missing

that people were had at least uh uh are able to reach for it but are not simply looking for the answers themselves so that you have to kind of trick them into like hey let's learn about this stuff right and right yeah I think with the traditional kind of educational games it's usually putting a game wrapper around educational framework so you still have all the you know the trappings of Education of like homework and tests and quizzes and grades and you know I I think games like they don't really need that you know they're kind of their own motivating factor like you play a game you're instantly you know you're motivated by it because you care about it you're not motivated by it because you have to do it to get a grade or you're in trouble with your parents or something so just that that underlying feature of like what's motivating about it is so much more powerful than games you know which just because people voluntarily will play games they don't usually voluntarily want to do homework

so I think it's a better base to start from it's better to start with the game framework and to kind of redesign education to to fit that so for me it was just kind of thinking about like my experience with games what uh what was really impactful playing for me in games like I remember playing civilization uh when I was a kid and like I hated history when I was a kid I was like oh this is just a bunch of boring dates and like names and like stupid things yeah and then I I play Civilization and it's like oh my God I'm in it I can like see how all of this is connected I can like put myself in the shoes of like somebody trying to like build this you know City build this technology you have these like Heroes that come up from like actual people Through the Ages it's like oh what did this guy do and you're just and I would go and like read all the histories of these people and that just to me just gave me this like context that I totally lacked from history and I started to love it after that so and that was all just from a game and

I think that that's kind of a you know that I don't think that we need to like completely replace education with games but I think that games can be such they can form a better kind of motivational framework you know that we don't we shouldn't ignore that with education this idea of like why do I need to learn this you know well because you're going to get a grade and you have to do it or it's like games it's like you want to learn it you know it motivates you in a way so I think that the education has a ton to learn from games and it'll kind of it'll take time for it to get there um but yeah we've had classrooms that use eco and they'll actually have like their classroom in this Eco World figuring out what they want to do and they'll like talk about it inside the classrooms this really cool experience of what they're what's going on in these these worlds you know it's all just kind of naturally happening it's not being like forced upon them and it can kind of connect well to their classwork as well so they're like you know they write a write a essay about it or like have a group discussion about it so I think that uh yeah there's a ton of

potential there that's that's kind of taken a long time and their education is a very hard industry to move but uh you know because it's very tied up and like government mandates and like you know it's a government-run thing so it's it's not going to move as fast as like business does so we kind of take it from the aspect of like we build a great game that people want to play it has these educational elements you can bring it into the classroom if you want or it's just you know naturally you're going to be learning as you play I think that's that's the right route to go now naturally when you guys are building a game such as eco if you were to just track you know from the date of when you guys went into early release which is 2017 2018 right uh to now in the past five years things have changed greatly even if you look at the last year with AI technology you're talking about you know do students being demotivated naturally right if there's ever a time to be even more demotivated to actually research and

learn things it's kind of now as well I'd love to kind of hear your thoughts as kind of like a uh semi-educator uh looking at the landscape of like in terms of motivation being a game developer as well what is going on with the youth out here do they have a chance to know to kind of aspire to learn anything when the answers especially in this kind of influencer I want my information now impatient kind of General attitude towards learning things what chance do they have I mean what are your thoughts about what's going on right now sure yeah I mean it's such a time of like uncertainty like we don't What's It Gonna what are kids that are going to school now gonna need to know how to do in the future it's like that's really hard to say because hey I'm it's kind of set to like change the entire world and and really fundamental ways I think and we just had some recent breakthroughs that kind of show the

potential for that like you know that for for a long time there was like nothing and then suddenly there's a chat gbt out of nowhere and it's not like chat gbt like started as a baby and you had to like grow up and learn like it was born like knowing everything and it can answer millions of people in seconds like yeah and it's just boom there and there's gonna be more breakthroughs like that that are just gonna like transform the world I think so in terms of like what what should you study in a world where this is going on you know I don't think you can really like predict like here's the skills you're gonna need here's what's particularly what you're going to need and what what's better to focus on is and just your like curiosity your adaptability you know that interest in the world and developing that so that you're you know as this world like evolves and changes in really deep and fundamental ways you're like connected to it engaging and curious about it you can adapt to it you can like function really well inside of this

society as it changes and figure out kind of your place in there so it's a big change for Education because education traditionally has always been about like we're going to train people to be this role that we know we need in society we don't have that anymore we don't know what roles we're gonna need like 20 years from now so so you have to train them in a different way you have to train them to be like students of the world students of you know life and like love learning love uh you know curia have curiosity about everything and that's where games I think Excel well beyond like classwork is that they engage you and stuff they kind of show you like here's why this you know civilization like here's why history is interesting it's like oh let me get into that let me explore that you know it just kind of breeds this culture of like mind that you are approaching things in a different way that you are the agent who is like deciding what you want to learn you were adapting and exploring and you have curiosity about all these different elements and I think that's the skills

that we're going to need so that's why I see games as like such a key part of what we're doing with uh education in this kind of new world that's happening right now yeah this is there's definitely um curiosity is King right and I feel like yeah it is in danger right now of uh everything with AI tools AI chat Bots kind of coming abroad and taking over day one um games I agree is a great engaging tool to kind of make this happen I'm even to the extreme that as an educator I feel like you need to have some kind of strong game design background at least take a class right in college uh there is this subculture that's been brewing that I've always poked fun of but like the soap culture and the gamer Community but overall I I think all youth are kind of having this where they they would rather watch people play games than play games now

right I mean it's not like the industry's hurting we're growing stronger than ever a lot of you know Gamers that want to play in terms of Industry we're grown right but there's this culture of just people just strictly watching people play games and there's overall on YouTube people just watching people watch Heat like reaction videos like it's a thing right I don't quite exactly understand I don't even know if there's studies out there that does this threaten people to interact to even engage now or is it just like one of these small Brewing past time things that you know they just multitask and if they're not playing at least they're involved in Simone I guess that's not such a bad thing uh yeah kind of your thoughts about that sure yeah well for us twitch uh and streaming is is like our main marketing Source people who you know when somebody streams the game our sales or we just

see it like boost up so like be like hey friend sales in France or 10x what they usually are what's going on oh this French streamer with like two million people is playing Eco right now so there is a lot of connection between like you know you watch people play something and then you might try it it's kind of a way to discover things yeah but even if you already know it it's also a way to like kind of connect I think and it's this feeling of like I think it's kind of a neat direction that the thing you're watching is something that you can participate in you know it's very different from a TV show where it's you know purely imaginative uh which is great but it's just it's kind of a different thing of this is It's almost like watching a sport or something that you can play and I think that those connections are going to grow deeper so that you know you can watch something and then like participate as a viewer in a way that you start to you know that that bland between audience and like participants starts to starts

to kind of become like a spectrum so that you can participate in the you know in the world through twitch perhaps actually we're building a plug-in for Eco so that if you're watching an Eco stream you'll get this panel that pops up on Twitch that says you know like here's the elections that are going on you know you can vote in these elections and so then twitch viewers can have a say in these in the like government of the game so it adds this element of like the audiences is part of the experience they're connecting to the experience more and that's something that we just want to keep expanding is like you can jump into these worlds you know eventually that you have like a streamer that has a whole kind of Galaxy of connected worlds you're able to go and like join and play and interact in this world that they're uh playing in and be part of it so I really see like it's a step towards merging this like audience creators and participants you know just watching somebody play a video game that I also play is

interesting but then once you can like participate in that in a deeper way it's the next level so I think it's a it's kind of a cool effect I mean there's probably a lot of I'm sure there's a lot of people that are just watching and not actually playing but I think it's you know there's the potential there to to bring people into the fold to have this really deeper richer more connected experience through streaming so I see it as a positive thing yeah uh over the past years I guess you know since social media got kind of introduced uh there does seem to be like a hunger for for connection right especially with the pandemic during the pandemic and I still see kind of residue from that uh funny enough like there's more social isolation like people I see it with my kids even with my he's a teenager like just to compare it to where I was at

that age it was easier for me to kind of make friends and be outside right and there's definitely like this struggle I feel like of how he can step outside of his comfort and just make friends you know uh where I can only equate it to just we have this accessibility that is greater than ever you know in the click of a button a text you can instantly connect with people right but it also feels like there's a wedge to how things used to be yeah uh just being in kind of like these Virtual Worlds a lot building Eco and then seeing this happening I'm sure you're seeing with the youths and you know younger kids nowadays what do you make of that yeah I remember growing up and like going through trails in my in the woods behind my house and like going on rope swings over like Ravines and crazy dangerous [ __ ] that like it's gone

taller they see at dinner yeah yeah yeah just take my bike out my dog would come with me it was great having those Adventures but that's really not like culturally acceptable anymore at least typically in the US I mean I hope there's still parents that kind of allow that but really the the territory that kids have swapped to is to do that kind of thing to have these like character building Adventures is games yeah so that kind of is uh you know a safer alternative um I wouldn't say like it should be a replacement because I think you know those experiences were great for me they let you just learn about like Risk taking and whatever else but you can also have experiences in games that you can't have in reality you know you're building these these really deep intricate structures or solving these like world-changing problems or like you know trying out all these different kind of like skills and doing different things so I think there are advantages to that idea that like video games are the new like territory for people to to

kind of explore and build themselves and as you have uh you know all these Virtual Worlds that are featuring lots of real people you can actually have relationships and things that start to become meaningful you know and that the the Fidelity of these relationships is continuing to grow so like I remember when I was a kid you would just you know what I'd play Ultima Online and there were people in the game and we'd like chat or whatever and you'd see their like little Avatar but now it's like you have voice chat you have uh you know really detailed avatars we're actually making a feature where your webcam will analyze your face and match your Avatar's expression in the game so that just facilitates a lot more like kind of human connection within these games where you can like see them talking you know you see their lips are like sync to what they're saying you see their expressions see their hands moving you can have deeper relationships because of that so I I really think that that gives a lot of uh additional value to you know people are spending a lot of

time in these games is that you're connecting with real people you're doing interesting stuff you know and then the environment of the game makes a big difference for how that social Dynamic plays out you know if it's like a shooting game or you're playing something like rust where it's like everyone's kind of an [ __ ] because you kind of have to be in that game or you're playing something you know like our game is more about like building a society collaborating you know you have conflicts but like trying to resolve them or like how do you handle those is a big part of the game and that just kind of breeds a different kind of relationship than other like a you know a shooting game or a violent game that I think is uh you know makes for really powerful connections so yeah it's it's a pretty interesting evolving space and I hope we don't lose that like going out in the woods and you know riding your bikes till till dinner though that would be a shame [Music] I I definitely see kids more Elisa not

I think by habit they just don't know how to do those things anymore like it's really it's weird it's because I always see my kids like hey yeah just hang out because he does all these activities obviously you know always surrounded more so than me right with strangers that he sees three times a week for basketball practice or whatever right so yeah you want to hang out just hang out with them I mean I didn't have cell phones back then and yeah I feel bad enough that I gave him a cell phone it's like well you know it's a hand-me-down just might as well just have it then in the closet right but he's having just this difficult time to just like hey you want to hang out you know I was like can you ask for me it's like why would I ask his parents yeah you're 12. all right so it's like it's uh it's it's a weird thing that I attribute to like right you know it's just a weird time plus I can't imagine being a kid through covet either like the I feel like there's going to be a long-term study of

like oh kids in their teenage years grade school years that went through that you know what kind of like long-term effect doesn't yeah bears are really like taken from them I think that's yeah yeah isolating so like I think those are gonna be we're gonna find out 10 years oh yeah it did [ __ ] them up that's surprised do you think with your kids is it social media that's kind of having the opposite effect of like building walls between them or what do you think is the source of that well I mean a lot of that too is like I I I'm like here right as a kid I kind of grew up through just hanging out and seeing my mom at night I really didn't even have any censorship in terms of what I played and you know I was playing GTA I was playing whatever I want watch whatever I want I have very little restrictions uh and I was a pretty straight edge kid just by you know my moral compass was good or whatever so I didn't really get in too much trouble right just typical teenage trouble but I can see it with even with my wife

how she's like worried about like well I mean there's there's pedophiles outside it's like outside everywhere like there's everywhere it's like he's just going across the street with his friend I think a lot of it's parental why is this just this she just there's this inclination that the world is more dangerous now which I feel like cannot be true it's got to be safe for now more than before um just the pure fact that everyone's everybody wants to be isolated and stay at home right and we work in the district everybody's at home you're just more like aware of stuff that happens so even though there's not more of it where like more sense of this yeah my wife is guilty being on next door all the time it's like get off that app there's like you're seeing things that I never see I was like there's five coyotes just parading in our neighborhoods I never see any of this but like yeah the accessibility of information in in that case is like where it is

detrimental to the actual reality of things right yeah so I I think it definitely uh kind of pollutes kind of like this fictional idea of what's actually happening because it is a lot of information and I I don't think we're supposed to know everything all the time right you know it clouds judgment it feels like a negative effect of uh Information Age too much information too much information exactly um but I will kind of go back to you to kind of ask this idea of um everyone's trying to connect it's better than ever uh metaverse has a bad brand to it right now but the underlying idea is still very attractive you know I I often kind of bring up the fact that I look at Ready Player one and I'm actually attracted to that right people look you know besides the ending and the corporate and the ads or whatever you

know all the dangers of it I was like oh that's really cool you know yeah uh but there are there's also this weird uh connection that people automatically make right you know VR metaverse is one of the same when it's not right I mean we've we've named all these game worlds that we've developed in the game industry for the last 20 years and they've always been just on a flat screen right not first person third person all types of perspective wow Eve all these games that has nothing to do with VR right but there's this Obsession right now that the metaverse is VR you know where sometimes I feel like it is kind of again Tech Bros not understanding why people like the metaverse per se right so all right what is your kind of take because in those last five years of course VR was got popular before you guys went into

early release but in your development you probably saw like this marriage of ideas I would love to kind of hear you take on how you can't enhance or not really uh I see it as like just another kind of entry point another way to like connect to these to these Virtual Worlds you can log in through VR or you can be like use a traditional screen or maybe have your phone and you have like kind of a different way to interact there so I like the idea of like places that you connect to and you can connect to it in in different ways so in that sense I think VR could fit in really well that it's not you know it's not something that's for everybody just because not everyone likes I get sick when I like move around in VR which you know I can only use it for a little while typically it's really cool and I wish I didn't have that but I don't really want to like spend hours in that uh you know things strapped to my face trying to like have these interactions but it does give you this

like depth of interaction with people that you don't get otherwise so I think it's a trade-off that'll you know as the technology gets better it'll evolve and become you know more adaptable I think things like uh AR is interesting as I think that can succeed VR quite a bit like you know Apple's new goggles could be really cool but just that idea of like you're still kind of in the real world will make it a lot more appealing to most consumers who don't want to just like shut off and look like an idiot wearing this thing on their face yeah um for eight hours a day but it does open up some like some really interesting new ways to connect in a deeper way it just represents you in a in a game so much deeper that you can like you know see people just look around it's just a more natural interface so I like the potential for it I think that it's not really there yet I mean we kind of thought should we add VR support to Eco it's like well there's not really a lot of demand for it to be you know some people try it out as a cool novelty

yeah but it's not gonna like move the needle much lately but I think that'll change over time especially with ar so it's uh yeah it's exciting where it's going it's still got a little ways to get there I think I would love to can I go back you know you know the studio building of what you guys got at stranger right your extensive experience working in AAA finally making that jump right um in particular you know the idea of early release is um is very steam uh Centric right I don't think any other even epic doesn't even have that yet but steam have always had like this option right it's like hey we're not ready yet we're still building we want to build it with Community uh before you guys did that what were the risks and benefits you guys were weighing uh before making that decision because obviously it's paying off you guys are still in early release building the game but before that happened like what were

you guys thinking um before we always kind of knew that would be the path that we went I mean we kind of chose the game and the design of the game based on that idea that this will be something that's interesting and a very nascent form so we did a Kickstarter we released like kind of like an alpha build right after that so people are getting into it and then by the time we did our steam release uh Early Access there were a lot of people who played that and kind of gave us a nice big boost there so it's it's great for uh you know not just earning Revenue through the course of development but kind of building that community over time too because as we you know each time we do an update people will come back and like check it out and do you know see what's new and uh you know it makes makes people a lot more forgiving of like hey this game's not done yet um so you know don't get too mad if you like find a bug or whatever um but uh and then the players can participate in that development too so

that we take a lot of feedback from the community so it gives them the opportunity to like you know represent and be uh heard in what they want in the game as well so there's there's a number of positives to players as well for that um so really just that combination of like gives us Revenue that itself will build the game so like we tried to just do a release without Early Access we would have had to find like some other funding source but with this we can just kind of bootstrap it in a way just get the minimum product out there it gets money we make it to the next level which makes it more money Etc et cetera but also just building the community getting feedback from the community as equally as valuable I'd say for the Early Access side of it and then when we do finally get the game to a point where like okay this is pretty polished now let's call it version 1.0 then we have like basically a second launch because you know when you have a launch it's really like tons of people come in and get a whole new audience that's you know prefers a polished experience has been waiting for it to exit Early Access so there's that

kind of built-in like button we can push at some point as well so it's really just a you know steam as a great system there you know they take a steep cut of 30 but like they just have they just drive the audience so well we just have this like constant kind of background people discovering the game through Steam or friends or whatever that it kind of fuels itself over time so they they definitely earn that 30 I would say like even through your development from even as early release happened you know uh the Indie scene itself have been in a weird spot I would say right so you know we the the Super Meat boys days you know where it's like a couple of guys can make something uh in in and be able to be successful with that and now we're in an age where if you have an idea that it's kind of like more encouraged to find a publisher which is

the more traditional route but brings you know you've been in the AAA space it comes with all these baggage right that yeah was the reason why a lot of people branched off and and made their own game to kind of have more control um and I still feel like we're in that stage in early release now is not a new idea but now it's more attractive to a lot of developers who's kind of been through the ringer of like oh yeah Publishers can be effective but can be ineffective when trying to make the game that you want to make can you kind of speak to that a bit about like kind of seeing well obviously you guys are self-published benefiting from it went with your gut and was right about it but uh you know I'm sure you kind of keep tabs there what's going on here like Indie publishing that sounds kind of like an oxymoron yeah but I would love to kind of hear your thoughts about you know if people are trying to get into this now with the options available

with what's out there what do you suggest um path forward yeah with publishing it's like you get this great boost of capital right at the beginning so like if we had taken a publisher early on we could have had a a lot bigger team from the beginning we could have moved a lot faster but that comes with risks as well because you kind of want a small team getting feedback able to like iterate on it find your core before you like dump a bunch of money onto it so you don't go in the wrong direction with all that money so there's actually kind of advantages to being small and Scrappy I think that if you take a publisher you lose that because now you're like on a you know you have a rush to like get this game built because your publisher has like you're on a timeout yeah yeah you're on a timer now and they they have their quarter leaves or whatever they need you to ship by this date so it adds a lot of pressure that that can be counterproductive to discovering a game and I think it depends what kind of game you're doing if you're doing a game that has a lot of unknowns or that

you want to kind of feel out with the community which is what we were doing then it makes sense to do the Early Access route involve the community versus trying to like get it right on the first try by dumping a bunch of money on it but there's other types of games if you're doing a more traditional game or a game that's already kind of has an established like formula to it it might be a little less risky um so I'm not I'm kind of not opposed to Publishers now that you know eco's a little bit evolved we could think about one for either Eco or for whatever we do next but also like the idea of uh you know uh VCS and like company investment I think they're kind of that aligns it more with what uh what the long-term goals are you know if it's not just Project funding being funded but it's the whole company being funded you know so that's kind of what we're we're looking at now uh but these days yeah getting started the industry has just matured so much like when I started strange Loop uh with my partner there wasn't any

like engines to use like Unity wasn't really a thing so we built our own engine for our first game which is called vessel it's this liquid physics puzzle game and that took a freaking long time so that was basically like a hobby project of mine until I quit my job and just went full time on it but for the longest time I just like building the property editing system in the like editor you know the but now Unity like gives you all of that out of the box so you you have just such an easier way to kind of jump in and start making something right away and there's so many courses and ways to learn so it's really opened up the industry a lot wider so you have you can have a lot more interesting titles which I think is awesome and along with that you know maturing of the industry the financial side has matured as well there's a lot more publisher opportunities there's kind of various grades of Publishers like an indie publisher up to like you know AAA publisher there's like funding sources there's Angel Investing so there's this whole like ecosystem that you can plug into that didn't used to exist and I think that's great it just opens

up lots of opportunities for like what is the best route that fits what I want to do with my game you know I have options for these things I can kind of learn this this Forest of different options and and choose the best one for me so maybe that's being a publisher maybe that's working with a publisher maybe that's just bootstrapping it as well um but yeah there's there's a lot of different options now which I think is a good thing for games and players yeah definitely I I think um the number one thing with with what you guys are doing is I feel like it's essential if it's like a game that you're trying to figure out and you're trying to be Scrappy I would love to kind of ask what your relationship with your team's relationship with steam right because steam itself has a platform it's kind of Indie and Scrappy like gave and the guys which is like valve is

only at 200 people right yeah they put together they figure it out they made it work became a force kind of disappeared a bit in terms of like making games themselves sometimes they make games sometimes they don't right they don't really have you know they have these summer sale these sales are successful but they don't have like a big event you know to announce like hey these are this is what we're doing with steam you know Indie publish Indie Games any developers check this out this is what we're doing for you guys they don't really because maybe they don't have the resources maybe they don't just they don't want to mess with something that's already working they don't care to make any more money than they're already making right so it's like this weird like it's a mystery of how this works and I'm about to kind of hear your Insight about what you guys are currently doing with them what that relationship was like or what you wish would be you know the case with them because they can do at least from an outside perspective I feel like I can do a lot more um given the time and just they're dominant

Still Still dominant in terms of for Indie developers yeah yeah they own the PC market basically yeah yeah it's um it's interesting because you kind of do a thought experiment of like what if steam were owned by EA or Disney or something you know you can imagine that they would just melt the hell out of it yeah and like just massively expanded into all these different kinds of things which I don't I don't know it's a little risky too I mean kind of look at how it went with like Star Wars of like okay they kind of overdid that and the brand has suffered a little bit I mean they've made like umpteen billion dollars or whatever so it's it's been successful in that that way but like you can kind of overdo it and I feel like steam's audience appreciates that reticence of the leadership of like they're very focused in what they do they provide this platform and they just do it really well consumers have so much trust in Steam

you know it's funny like if you launch on uh the epic game store people just won't even buy it because they're like no I don't want to split my library I'm dedicated to steam yeah yeah that kind of uh commitment to a platform is like crazy powerful so like shaking up the boat there's a lot of risk for them if they want to like try to do crazy weird stuff with it so I think they're kind of smart to be like all right let's let's you know be cautious with this let's be smart with this um it is kind of sad they're not they don't make as many games as they used to I mean they still do I guess it's kind of hard to do when you have like a money printer in your back room called steam that prints out like a billion dollars every day or whatever it is motivation is nothing yes it's a little harder to do that but I love that they're still private and they're still like you know they're pretty uh they're pretty tuned into the culture of games you know like they're really supportive of us when we got on there

uh we had like direct uh contact with them and they were helping us with like sales there is interaction all right so this is where it's like kind of mysterious for people outside of this uh yeah process so they do kind of help in some ways um yeah we had a contact there so we kind of asked some questions and they could kind of give us advice and we could uh you know arrange sales and stuff um so that was that was super helpful and I think that you know even though we're like a smaller game compared to like the Giant games they have out there they really put in the effort with us and like that means a lot I think that they kind of understand that like you know indie games or smaller games can grow bigger and also like you cultivate that they're kind of the avant-garde of your audience people who are playing these indie games are like really uh you know kind of taste makers in a way so that they can cater to those people they really set a good just precedence

for the health of their whole ecosystem like if they didn't have Indies on the platform I think the platform would suffer a lot you know it couldn't it wouldn't survive as well if they were just like AAA Mega games yeah um so they recognized that and they they kind of cater to smaller developers which is which is great they they know their their Roots were I think like a bigger company would be like oh these aren't these aren't moving the needle like AAA let's just you know not waste our time on this we're gonna do the stuff that's like making the most money it's like no steam is building a culture they understand the culture of games they want to bring out these like unique interesting games and be a platform that like promotes those so yeah I really respect that yeah I mean there's definitely a it's a weird um it's a weird admiration that I have for them right I mean there was a couple games during covid that just broke out right and yeah fall guys you know we had Joe you know lead designer on that that broke uh recently I just talked to Max from the battle bits like these are

games that I don't feel like how could you even make those games on anything else and it blew up the same way it did on Steam right oh yeah and it's still very steam has this Market down like I don't it's weird that you know with all these platforms and avenues the only place to kind of put your game out there and have an opportunity to blow up and people discovering it it's still steam right and bad happy accident Whatever by Design but in a way it's kind of sad too it's like why is it the only source still you know um yeah I mean there used to be like Xbox Live arcade back in like yeah 2010 or whatever or braid came out there's like a whole Indie Revolution on there but that's kind of less of a thing now now they're they're much more catered to the mainstream even the App Store on on you know yeah app stores pretty dominated by like you know the big Candy

Crushers yeah whatever else and it becomes very formulaic I mean Apple kind of tried to like push against that with like apple arcade yeah so there's they kind of recognize too that the value of the like avant-garde in terms of games uh but same just really gets it and they've like you know cultivated kind of the PC Gamer mindset of like we like weird games we like interesting experiments you know we want to like try new stuff very very interested in like trying new stuff so yeah you see a lot more just variety and interesting stuff that comes out on PC yeah um I would like to do console at some point I'm going to be a little bit of a tricky Port but uh there's there's big audiences there too so yeah it's interesting I think the game you want to make you really got to think about like what platform is this going to make sense on and if you're an indie or a smaller developer just getting started steam is a you know a really good first

choice I think yeah well it's the only open Lane that I see that the idea of Early Access is it's very like oh so these are developers that understand developer means um well uh yo so we heading our uh hopefully that was painless but uh this is the part where I kind of shut up and hand over the mic to you I want to thank you on behalf of the audience for coming on but I would love to kind of talk directly to them how people could find you what exactly you want them to do uh the mic and floor is yours sure yeah so um yes our website is is play.eco we have the custom domain Eco you just go and check out our game there it's got a link to steam oh I can buy it on our website too um but uh yeah I would just say just check out the game see what we're doing we're we're planning some big things coming

forward we want to have a successor to Eco that's kind of being concepted out right now and start to transition Eco to becoming uh you know this connected space this like World of it's like galaxies of Worlds that are connected to each other so you kind of see on our website our directions that we're going for their uh company strangeloopgames.com we have uh I have some articles I wrote on just the idea of like players as Citizens this idea that they're creating the value uh worlds of consequence worlds where you're actually doing something meaningful and then building these virtual societies within it so yeah take a look at that and it'd be great to hear your feedback you know people who are other game developers are just interested in game development I think we're doing some unique stuff and it's always always great to hear people's opinions so yeah thanks for listening on behalf of everybody man I want to thank you for coming on and talking to me uh I if long time listeners know that

I've been kind of like questioning trying to understand you know the buzzword metaverse I get it as a game developer I just feel like everyone's kind of been [ __ ] up the last two years on it right so I think that's just the over sentiment of actual game developers who are looking at this is like what are you doing yeah you know I think what comes out next it won't be called the metaverse like the metaverse name has kind of been like ruined I feel like but the ideas are there and the ideas are going to be awesome when they like start to like emerge so yeah I'm excited well thanks for doing it right right I look forward to kind of seeing the updates and you know spreading the word and doing whatever I can to kind of help but uh thank you and see you guys all next week thanks a lot hello everybody Brandon here I want to talk to you today about something very special you've been on this wild ride together haven't we from my early days as a senior employee feeling a bit lost all

the way to Leading multiple Studios transitioning to smaller Indie teens into the mobile industry and now running my own game studio for the last six years throughout this time you've been here listening and learning along with me sharing this never-ending journey of Discovery this year I'm kind of on this quest of meeting serial Studio Founders discussing Acquisitions or exploring what it takes to grow Studio to over 100 Developers I've always tried to find an exciting topic to delve into and every year is a little different the focus is a little different because that's where I am in my career currently and I want to be able to share what I'm learning with you guys so I've always been to dedicate to asking the tough questions bringing you insightful answers from industry leaders and experts and now I want to share with you how I'm applying these answers to my own Journey this is why I'm excited to announce that for just 1.99 per month you can now subscribe to our exclusive content series these bonus episodes will give you a deeper look into my personal experiences and how I'm putting into practice what our esteemed guests are

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