PAX WEST 2017 Extra Credits Panel

[Music] what time is it I have closed hey everybody welcome to the extra credits panel at pax 2077 2017 thank you all so very much for coming and for managing to find it despite like as I understand it I think the programs have us in a different theater at a different time so you all here are an elite group you have solved my scheduling puzzle so we have a few things that we're gonna do here tonight mostly Q&A as we usually do so have a few questions prepared before we do that I suppose we should just introduce ourselves really quick so you can all know who is here I am Dan I am one of the co-creators of extra credits and also the voice sounding a little bit lower pitch than usual I hope that's okay and you know let's just go down the

table here and introduce ourselves all right hey everybody I am James [Applause] I once was a video game designer but now thanks to all of you everyone knows me as a beam person on the Internet hello I am Scott I'm also being personal me oh I don't get applause for that James does [Applause] [Music] hello I'm Surya I am the shadowy puppet master and I also sometimes write extra history hi there I am Carrie I do audio and

video at-at work for extra paths in history I just noticed oh hi I'm low I'm one of the artists for extra history with my cohort David hey so who couldn't be here right now and he says hi [Applause] I am Belinda I'm the community manager who reads your YouTube comments to know if you are naughty or nice and can we get a quick round of applause for the folks in blue who make this all happen [Applause] and especially this time yes go ahead no I so every year there's sort of a

tradition at PAX where I end up asking for something completely absurd from the enforcers and it comes up what do I tell everyone there's nothing the enforcers can't do and it's always a random cable or like but always something very obscure and this year one of them yesterday caught me as we were walking by and said what what crazy thing are you gonna need this year so I jokingly said I would need a man's hat filled with perfume with plug floating in it nothing they can't do [Applause] it comes with a note are we gonna read this the note says for jamesport now compliments of wyvern theater a single plum floating in perfume served in a man's hat [Music] [Applause]

yes the quote was incorrect on your tech request you and your lies alright so that is that's everybody here on the team most of the team that we have present so I guess since we only got an hour and there's a lot of you and I assume some of you have questions maybe we're just going to jump right to that part we've got a video thing maybe to show at the end but we'll save that for later in the meantime our lovely artist Scott will be just doodling I think are we doing any announcements of the nearest future all right we are filled with mystery I got it anyway if any of you happen to have any questions you would like to ask anybody here about anything we do or don't do but we won't be able to give as many good answers for that there is a microphone right there which any of you whom has a question for us may line up at and ask a question at hello what is your favorite video

that you have made boom fail faster yeah I think that video applies to every creative endeavor you could ever try just do it and it won't be great the first time out but you'll learn from it I think for me it's got to be the games compulsion videos just because I they're hard for me to even watch but like the number of people who have come up and said I realized I wasn't alone when I saw that I mean that's something that music actually did for me in high school which is the way I felt about a lot of things and I'm it's just infinitely humbling that people come up and say that about something we did so that one's mine extra frames is kind of my baby so the I think the one on mass effects animation

is my current favorite and my next favorite is still in the works and won't be done for a long time but it's good though I'm a big fan of the accessibility one I think was the one one or two before that the video shown only here uh I mean that's usually I've been asked that before and that's usually what I go with but the one I did recently everyone really liked the thoughtful animations that uh yes red herring yeah the red herring episode thank you hey favorites I'm suddenly realizing I can't remember 388 extra credit videos and 135 extra history videos um yeah that's how we track them yeah I know that I absolutely loved a couple of specific moments in our accessibility

video and I'm going to mention it because we have the writer here [Applause] and just to call out another writer I also absolutely adored the Hiawatha episodes who wrote the light of what the episodes thank you yeah I'm glad you like them rocked Oh what was the name I'm trying remember the name of the video we did last week before before accessibility we really should be able to remember what we but the reason several is have electronics though the reason I like that video was because I had the fewest number of dislikes I have seen to be fair we're usually working on like eight or nine videos at once in a given times I am

uncertain what we have and haven't launched so there's keep cutting there's game AI booths there's marks and old mechanics and red herrings I think Jamie is the one you're thinking about yeah it was it was very like non-controversial everyone was like yeah this is a great idea what was the really short one we did fail faster awesome for a second yes it was per second that one was thought one was great too it was unfortunate that it came out on April 1st y'all thought we were kidding it was a good goof though it was a good goof alright a real quick question for James the Hat may have actually already answered my question but at this point do you actually need the things you are asking the enforces for are you just messing with them at this point so I would like to say I do and they clearly do okay I'm

gonna need that hat this is a need it's it's really about the flavouring of the plum right to get it just you're basing this blob thank you [Laughter] hi I've been thank you very much I've been watching you guys before you were even called extra cuts like this this question is likely for James but anyone can answer do you think with the recent rise in like popularity like dandy and utter role-playing like pen and paper role-playing games both offline online with like world 20 do you think [Applause] please continue do you see game developers trying to capture that cooperative storytelling or improv and openness in future games so this is actually a really good question

because it's something that has been to the Holy Grail for RPGs for a very long time we've all talked about wanting to be able to do it the problem is the flexibility of the tools because right your imagination is the limit when you're sitting down for a DMD game and every time we've said we're gonna do it we we have failed I hope so I know there are a lot of people who for a long time have wanted to do so and I think in the next 20 years we'll have the ability to really deliver on that experience but for right now like having a key part of that is that social interaction not only with the other players but with the GM right and that's the element that we're really lacking right now so people are trying but I don't think we're very near to be successful the way I would like to see us be thank you thank you because they brought it up really quickly just piracy probably my favorite episode for

that ten word phrase my question in some video I don't remember there was I think you said that you were friends or yeah friends with like who was a Davie reading can you explain that I don't know one of these panels he came up as like hey I made the Stanley parable it was right after we had launched the games you may not have tried with the Stanley parable he came up to us said hi and we've just hung out ever since if you ever come to Magfest he's usually there and sometimes we drag him up onto the panel yeah he's very nice yeah thank you hello given that it's been five years since your mechanics dynamics analysis video and ten years since the original paper has been published besides mastery what additional aesthetics have you discovered that aren't covered by an NDA I need to

actually use it every year someone asks us and there's a great question and I have a bunch that I have written at home and then every time every asks is a blank episode time yeah I should do an updated you're right but I you are you probably actually just inspired an episode because I should do an updated MD a plus plus right awesome yes I will do [Music] Oh first off I'd like to say thank you James for being here on time today you don't like my stylish crawl in after all you come in styling that's great I have a question that's mostly targeted towards view probably because of your experience at DigiPen I'm currently in the master's program and I'm going to be soon taking on the game development semester thing I'm what would I what

should I look for in in my first time constructing a team I know it's a complex question but so like raw so there's a couple things first raw skill is not as important as ability to work together sometimes you just look for like oh this person's amazing artist this person is amazing coder but if they can't work as a team it's yeah so that bru number one number two for anybody who's starting a project in game development it's very easy to let the first third of that project just sort of slip by as it doesn't feel real because there aren't deadlines make sure you don't let that happen or at the end of the semester you will be crunching a great deal otherwise I mean just communication all the things you said right like prototype early fail faster communicate and fire early if you have to right and don't worry about it being a masterpiece especially if this is your first time with the team like this is

this is to learn you'll get to that masterpiece on time three or four so this whole project is a bail faster experience yeah thanks they may have any other thoughts from like other development experiences on like working with formulating of team I've never like I've never had any that weren't already like I didn't have to work on any student teams or anything like that right assemble a team myself for a game anyway so Daniel's best advice would be do your project the night before [Laughter] and then found a company from it that seemed like a good plan yeah sometimes it works let's see I would I noticed you you have a lot of people that work here and I'm wondering how you find people a lot of them have

been sort of by accident some of them have come to us like Scott emailed me random like originally like way back in the day I was found in a field sometimes so like Lil was a friend of a friend and who we ended up getting in touch with I should actually tell the one about David who's not here yeah Riley I feel like this is important because a lot of times in our modern world we like trivialize doing anything because because it feels good or because like you want to express your passion about something David who does the extra history episodes or is one of the artists for extra history he did a poster for us I'm just a random fan poster like that might be five years ago now yeah and we were talking about artists for extra history when we were first gonna get it going and I remembered he did this poster and I dug

through like five years of Facebook posts which was an interesting experience and and pound it and then found his name found his deviantART looked through it and then we hired him right because he did a random poster that we thought was cool just for on a lark five years ago so it's been through a lot of different means like Dan Jones like when we got we got him on the team it was because is a friend of Lily's and Scott's and Scott came to us saying this guy's great but some bad news his name's Dan he has brown hair he likes green and we did find lil in a field she was wandering in rags screaming if it hadn't been for Saraya I don't know where I would be wandering a field in rags screaming I think at that point I would have wandered into a town in rags and screaming and god knows what would have happened after that but

instead she's doing art for extra history she bought me my first pair of shoes look so styling in those shoes dude I really do so everywhere thank you recurrent recurring veteran to this panel welcome back okay so I have a quick question I'd like to ask him specifically I'm Dan I'd like to know to know are you gonna make that are you gonna make that um Dan recommends thing that you did back in around Christmas a like a yearly thing maybe so it depends on how much spare time I have but uh that was really fun to do and in recommending a bunch of things I got to kind of come through the comments and a lot of people recommended a lot of great

channels to me that I can now help to boost this year so if I have time I may not make like a full three videos long thing but making at least another one I might I might do as I found some other good ones and trying to think of it if I have another question I'm gonna actually ask you to go to the back if you have another question cuz I we have limited time so I want to keep it to one question per person thank you oh there hey um I mean it's been spending ten minutes trying to get this as concise as possible but it's a little complicated so and I believe it was in the past year you did the I think it was a to powder on like economies in mmo's and similar games and how hyperinflation tends to be a problem and one thing as I was watching that episode there was one one

solution that I don't think you mentioned and it's hmm basically using instead of instead of fiat money which is money that has value because we say it does is commodity money so money that is inherently useful the only game I know up off of the top of my head that has done this is path of exile but I haven't played enough of that to know how it actually works at like high level player economy I have but I have not dug that deeply into it but just to say it's a really interesting idea and for all these episodes right we are by no means definitively right and in fact this is exactly what I hope all the episodes will do which is inspire you guys to

think further than I do and then that way I can retire and play your games and they will be better than anything I ever did so yeah I was just curious any thoughts on that concept we might need to drop us a little bit there we go oh oh is you I'm just gonna blame you because I'm okay [Applause] thank you - boomer for the thoughts on that no I mean I think that a commodity money solution where the money itself has intrinsic value within the game for example if potions were the currency like health potions or whatever worth of currency within a game I can see that as a potential way to mitigate the hyperinflation and you avoid the problem

with commodity money in a real world environment which is that there's actually limited quantities of its you can't expand the economy in the way that you can by mining monsters all day long thank you Hey so what videos have you wanted to make for a long time but you just haven't had the time or the opportunity to do it yet oh so for it could help meets blood-borne two years now three right so basically since blood-borne came out I have felt that I'm just gonna hum lightly into this might actually whatever a be else moves towards there Mike I'm just get start humming quietly okay I believe that I think there's an alternate narrative to blood-borne which is fascinating if you

assume that all of blood-borne is a psychological landscape if you do a sort of Jungian analysis of blood-borne taking and like it we sort of did with Silent Hill 2 like why people really like Silent Hill 2 if you do that for blood-borne you'll find that there's another story going on that I think is really good and I've always want to do that one but it's gonna take so much time and effort and I would have to brush up a lot on my own but I do it so we'll see if that one ever happens but that's mine yeah mine is it's stuff I am working on it's just going to take me a darn long time and I wish i if I had more time it would come out faster but it'll come out but yeah so someday - another extra frames thing and it's actually a lot of extra frames things that if I ever finished them will come out back-to-back and be just like almost a full month of videos but as you can but as you might imagine that takes a

long time so yeah someday anyone else gonna mine is pretty much every topic every patron ever suggests on patreon yeah I have to read through through those like every time - just make sure that they're following the rules and every single time there's just like a giant list of like that sounds really cool that sounds really cool that sounds really cool okay that all sounds really cool yep good you know it kills me then we're looking through them and I end up Wikipedia rabbit hauling into all the people in those events and I go we can do all the thing on that guy yeah so I'm excited for the extra history stuff that we get to like basically every time a topic gets picked I go oh cool this will be fun that's literally what he's typed to me several times oh yeah thank you thank you also because of your shirt eventually I do want to do a walpole episode yes

hello so on all of your shows what are your favorite little recurring characters we've already been seeing Scott to animate the heck snake snake is my favorite character [Applause] ya know the hex nick is my favorite character and every time it pops up it just makes me giddy I've got to go with Walpole the fact that all of you guys made Sir Robert Walpole a tiny internet meme it's just the best thing ever I like Robert of Flanders we cool small dev is one of my favorites just freaking small dev is also amazing heck snake kills yeah can I mention that we have

stickers of all three of those characters right now at the booth Scott also does this thing and I don't know how many of you get to catch it but I get to frame through each episode so I catch it every time he makes word puns when he doesn't know what else to do he puts like Mario's overalls up for the word over all he shead once and this is a couple years ago now so he once did daniel said for example and he kind of slurred it for example and so scott drew the word example in bubble letters with fur on it okay so he threw up the letter O and like a bottle of cheese dip people whether I my favorite one of those is when I had he said who knows so I had a picture of Matt Smith with an arrow pointing to his nose oh that one

hurt me and it was so good I guess not necessarily surf the poison hater but actually like then the nametag sorts the poison hated please don't poison me like just I I want that to have legs around and sing hi I belong to someone that doesn't want this I was a big fan of the Hicks neck and I still am but then and the accessibility episode we saw our favorite dad Craig so one of the things I really like about the episodes is that they often feature like cameos from game characters and its really kind of fun finding those Easter eggs in the videos so I hope that we see more of Craig and other daddies in future episodes she's not kidding she caught Craig like I didn't have audio playing on that episode yet and she saw him just

standing there she hadn't seen him with the stroller she knew him from the pose and the hair it was intense got some Craig fans on the team thank you hello hello so we hear a lot of stories about people who end up breaking into the industry through lots of grit and determination and all that but there's understandably a survivorship bias in those stories would you guys willing to share some war stories of times where you're kind of in you're out you're in you're out or like say a contract is ended in your back out or you're working on an amateur title at home and financial obligations compel you to get a job that doesn't leave you enough time to do that or anything else like that when you're in the penumbra of the industry so to speak so for me personally one literally every we joke about it it's not that funny but anybody

entering the industry like anybody who's been around for a while will tell you just be prepared to be unemployed about five or ten times before you retire out of this but for me after I left Activision I started a sort of strategy MMO company it was really weird was at the same time like riot and all that was starting and then the economy tanked and our investors basically needed their money back and so moved to sell the thing and it was okay but I didn't see anything from it at the same time my family was suffered a lot when the economy crashed and basically whatever I had left was going to my my folks because because they're they're old and I remember just having all like moving

back into not even a studio apartment a really tiny studio apartment with just like nothing and I started my consulting firm because I wanted to see more games per year and I want to be to answer more of these questions and because I never wanted to do a job in which my main task would be answering email again and I was like I'm gonna determine to do this but I think I made like $9,000 the first year to live on and now it does fine right now I actually want more time to be doing extra grades the last time doing like so the design consulting stuff but I had to do some real sort of like soul-searching and questioning of whether this is worth it or whether or not I should just go back and like start sending out resumes and trying to get something back in one

of the like big corporate shops and now there's anything wrong with this there's that turn out amazing games I play all the time but it wasn't it wasn't my thing so that was that was me when the economy turned south like that there wasn't a lot for me to fall back on after this industry and it's it sucks and it's tough and like if I had had any other responsibilities like if it had been more than just my folks if I had had kids or whatever I don't know if I could have done it so it is it's tough let me tell you about the day before yesterday how dark do we want to get here guys I'm asking because dark I mean we're talking like how dark the water is in that plum Hat I I feel like we're we're at that point yeah if you're willing to share then I feel like we'll be open right like that's kind of what we try to do hi

it's not fun it sucks and it is one of those things that makes you question your existence at 3 a.m. in the morning and it makes it really difficult to wake up the next day to figure out what is this all for and it feels pointless because when you have that one thing that you focus on that you really love and that you want to keep doing it but you can't because you can't survive on it that's where my attention came from anyway like if I'm being perfectly honest right now I'm working three jobs including this one and sometimes it is really good and sometimes it's really not and it helps when you have a really great support network of people who can help you through that and to be able to encourage you to keep going and to let you know that it's all gonna be okay and during the times and you're constantly questioning whether or not what you're doing is pointless or not tell that part

of your brain to shut up because it's not pointless and it's remembering to do that that is the most difficult part of it in my opinion and how much darker do we want to go I'm about 10 feet I can do we want to go but it's for me anyway as a freelancer and as an artist fracture history and as a production assistant in an office space sometimes balancing the time yet that's the hardest part is feeling as though you are being due attention to everything that you need to and keeping specific goals in mind and sometimes it's as simple as having that very generic cliche in the movie posted on your mirror to look at every morning to remind yourself why you're doing it in terms of a specific war story there was a point when I was living in LA and I had a mobile app development job and it was also a freelance of the on call like

I literally got a call from them the day before can you come in today for so many hours of work and maybe not even that and for months they had told me hey we could we're thinking about bringing you on full-time is just taking a little longer it's taking a little longer it's taking a little longer and I'm starving it's taking a little longer this sucks and I decided that a large change in my life was necessary end up moving up here literally on the car drive up here I get a call that says hey can you come in tomorrow oh I'm sorry actually I'm moving to Seattle I'm more than happy to do remote work for you though oh darn I'm sorry we were hoping to like talk to you about full-time even though you've been emailing us about it for months and now we decide to bring it up and it's those moments that encourage such a seed of bitterness in you and it's really difficult to uproot and I can't say that I wouldn't have gotten it out of me if it weren't for these people thank you very much for opening [Applause]

hi hey I got a question for you back up yeah I can do it I can do that in fact on that note I'm kind of a two cents guy and um I know it's really easy for everybody to measure themselves by like their job and their money making and they're worth but just to kind of encourage you guys like if you can measure yourselves by love and fandom you got a group here guys you're doing an incredible job [Applause] never please never ever ever feel like you're not doing well enough honestly and truly please don't hey but on the note of being overburdened and overwhelmed I bring it up a bit no I'm a husband I got a full-time job I

got three kids I love my job I love my kids love my wife everything's incredible but I also am a partner with a guy doing a daily posting YouTube channel a small YouTube channel no but how do you guys manage I know the extra credits is honestly kind of a side project for you guys with all of your full-time jobs in everything else is going on how do you balance that how do you manage to do all of these things at once three jobs or extra credits and extra play whatever else you got how do you balance that who feels like they do balance yeah well thanks I wish I had an answer view I mean I actually like like balance is subjective right yeah okay yes work but yeah I worked my day job and then I go home and then I work on

extra credits and then maybe I'll like watch a show or play a game for an hour then I go to bed for the most part I'm eventually I hope to achieve balance that's like my long-term goal but in the short term I'm just trying to keep a job and the channel going and growing in all that short answer if when you figure it out let us know yeah in the short term complaining helps I like talking to my dogs they're always willing to listen to me about how mad how bad it is do you have an answer which is that I'm doing what I would do in my spare time anyway so yeah it's like 18 hours a day but and yet two different jobs at least but like all of its stuff that like you said I love it therefore like I'm just doing what I would do and I don't know what I would do if I didn't go home and write scripts at 3:00 a.m. right and so I balance really is subjective but for me that that's that's I guess

what keeps me going I don't know if I I think I wouldn't feel like I had a nine-to-five that I felt like was much less satisfying I don't know if I'd feel eyes in balance as trying could have more free time if I wanted to but I do like there are plenty of little projects I take on for the channel that I'd choose to do instead of take advantage of that free time so that's probably true very true yeah you don't know how many times he comes to me and he's like I have a new idea I want to play all the games in something anything sonic final fantasy something I don't know he just he comes up with these ideas and it means he's got a forever long list of things he wants to do eventually yeah it is self-inflicted but if my wife was here she tell you the same thing so yeah for real yeah how long is your channel and going just over a year now like it

literally just thank you very much yeah we have like 130 subscribers so please you know cut we're on your tail we're on our way you know but no send me a link to one of them sometime I will thank you very much I love to see it absolutely thank you thank you all very much one thing I wanted to briefly add about the balancing time thing and what not like [Laughter] for me like it's not just like balancing time between working on different projects it's also balancing time for mental health and especially if you are any kind of content creator that's especially important because as a content creator whether that's a YouTube channel or being like a writer or you know like whatever like running a website like you are socially interacting with people online whether directly or indirectly and that can take as much of a toll on you as if you were going out and socializing with people at

like a normal like day day office job and so I would encourage everyone if you are a content creator or just trying to fit more projects into your life to remember to take some time for your mental health and for your physical health like taking time to cook and eat meals properly and sleep and play a game don't just like dwell on the negativity of the day so that's all I wanted to add hello again so you very recently released a great video on accessibility which is something that is you know very important given the you know the video games are rough for people who have everything going for them sometimes I have a little bit of world with like

microphones and speakers everywhere we have haptic feedback and Rumble packs and not Rumble all these different ways to interface with things and in many cases the games we play don't actually need the visual elements and for some people the visual element is not available or sometimes even the audio element is not available or it's only you know semi available fully able people playing pokemon go on the streets is dangerous because you're looking down the entire time at something which is basically just a google map with dots on it have you looked into or are you planning anything on things like audio games especially those that like emphasize descriptions that are not

keyed for people who can see because generally speaking audio content assumes you know what blue and green are instead of describing something as an object itself or even things like tactile games or tactile interfaces where you know you you know you can feel that you're near a Pikachu and you're about to capture it and you know if you at least have some way of knowing what's going on you can play so there are a number of audio games I played through that I think are something that I would like to talk about but since I haven't actually worked on one myself if anybody has worked on one feel free to come up to me after this because they won't be able to we have to run oh email send an email to contact at extra - credits dotnet yes

will do there you go but yes I think that it's a really interesting field and I think that there are lots of design opportunities because it's so unexplored but I haven't worked on one myself thank you thank you hi happy pax if this is a short enough question it happens to be I have a second one for extra history but I have a programmer friend and he's wondering if or he's wondering what's the best use of neural networks you've seen in a game having to do with AI that's also one tell him to write us because I want more time to think about that one got it alright second question then okay so for extra history do you have any plans or ideas to cover the revolution rise and/or fall of Soviet Russia so there's there's a couple of

things first it's right on the cusp of serve our cutoff point right because we one of the things for the days you don't know we talked about is I feel like a hundred years it takes about 100 years to get historical perspective on something and Soviet Russia is a super weird one because our historical perspectives are all messed up because that was still a huge deal for us not so very long ago my family fled the revolution to get here so I've always wanted to do it you've always wanted to flee a revolution oh yeah my grandmother would talk about walking around with newspapers for shoes and eating a huge for to to his dying day a onions like we eat apples because that's what they had yes that's exactly what I want to be doing so I do have a it is

not done basting sir I would love to short version is I would love to I have to think about whether or not I am capable of doing it unbiased and if not I might pitch it to you Saraya all right all right okay yeah so if not then poor Poland might make for a good episode just saying there yes being a flat plane between Russia and Germany is rough so hello first off I want to just start off by saying that you guys have my utmost respect it's not an exaggeration to say that I've personally been inspired in my career by the work that you guys have done I want to just say thank you for that first of all and surfer the question about two years ago

the world suffered a tremendous loss with the last airing of James recommends and I wanted to ask if right now you made an episode what would you recommend so I will definitely give you that it'll probably give away some of the games might not try it but I just wanna clear something up remember I was talking about that one room really small apartment I had the reason that every James recommends is for a super weird camera angle is because I didn't have enough room in my apartment to leave the camera set up so I would always have like try and get it in like between books and other things half the time I was like holding it between my knees or something to try and make it work it's actually if we ever got a recording space I would love to do again but I will give you short lists hell-blade hell-blade i think is super underselling um if any of you guys get a chance to play pray for triple-a stuff I think plays really interesting we're yeah and

so if you want to get like a head on those I recently played observer which for the setting alone is worth checking out dark wood is that what it's called the top-down horror crafting game first thing I've ever seen to make top-down horror work what else is on my list oh man shouldn't give away any more you're right you just sent me two very beefy games you might not have tried scripts I mean so I just sent in but like yeah sixteen or seventeen so you have a lot coming up and can I give away at least one of the themes of one of them yeah all right so in October finally because I've wanted his every year we were doing it horror games you might not have I finally thank you very much thank you hello hey guys I've been watching guys since you

started on The Escapist Wow I've always loved your stuff so first off actually speaking of the guy who went before me before him a really great resource for like kind of more neutral understanding of like Russian history is a book called Barbarossa by Alan Clark it's it's about the German Russian conflict but it's by a British author so it's a lot more nuanced and balanced than say someone from America for obvious reasons my actual question though is you guys have done a lot of amazing episodes on like madness elder horror kind of like these HP Lovecraft themes and this is kind of a question for the extra history guys or guys and gals have you considered doing an episode on HP Lovecraft himself not to much James just yes we've considered

this there are things of which we have thought why why II ask again stay tuned yes yes that's better than I could have expected just a heads up we do have a surprise Scott video that Daniel mentioned that's gonna be at the end of the panel and we have about like six minutes so we gotta kind of watch a video and then just advance let you guys know we can't actually stay to chat or sign things because we have our little like like extra credits gathering right after this and we have to book it to that yeah party so so sorry if we can't stick around and talk now but we will be at our booth for the rest of pax so yeah till we start the video so we have six minutes of questions go go I um I just had a quick question so when you find yourselves engrossed like and through

all fascinated by a game how do you find that bleeding over into the rest of your life I just yeah go I had a dream about this war of mine where I will where I dreamed that I had found a beautiful rich person's house that was fully stocked and we were safe and then I woke up and realized that that's why one of my first playthroughs like ended with the suicide because they had lived what I just felt that was a good one that bled over pretty well I think we should do one answer purge all right so that one right thank you very much hey guys so we keep kind of circling the accessibility episode I just want to say thank you for that one a lot of massara stuff is yeah especially Sara it's very close to a lot of people in my life so seriously thank you Dan and James you guys are pretty

intimately acquainted with the souls born franchise it's a series of games that does a really good job of obscuring the lore hiding it from the player and if you don't go looking for it you almost won't find it what in your opinion like why do you guys think that's successful because games are inherently interactive and that is an interactive way of you making you engage with the narrative yeah like a big part of that game is just like collective the archaeology we have all been doing trying to uncover what's actually under like what's actually hidden in that game and it's one of the few games where every little detail in that world not every single little detail leads to some clue but a lot of them actually do and a lot of them aren't just completely random thoughtless stuff strewn about the world and that's it because we've all developed that trust that those details are there we we were we are willing to seek them out and we are often rewarded for it so yeah I would love to see more more Studios trying to get that in depth doing that kind of

thing because I think Dark Souls and blood-borne and that's as the souls born series has proven that it is really engaging for a lot of people there's actually probably an episode we should do about the at least the basic level of that yeah actually everyone a second that cool alright thank you thanks guys alright next all right hello all right there have a lot of time to do this so longtime viewer since before the escapists really and also you guys are also a huge inspiration like I'm a teacher and I love your educational episodes still waiting for that voice actor episode assuming that ever comes but but yeah on that note paper where yes on that note okay so maybe this is too specific of a question but I'm curious about indie game voice acting obviously Kickstarter projects are very visible but for indie projects would you happen to know how they search for a vo talent if they want it and if you happen to be a voiceover actor like myself how

would you advise that I search for them so I know there's a bunch of sites out there where you can post basically they look almost like dating sites we can post a profile and then clips of your voice and a lot of these things the sad thing is almost all of them and I don't know about all the Indies but almost all these sites will have things like I you will you will list with voice actor you sound like but are much cheaper to hire them I could work with that but right but yeah there's there's a number of sites that it sounds super weird but just do post on Aldi like voice acting it's like deviantART for voice acting but that's how often I find indie companies get these things know like any specific name by any chance or is that I I wish I was trying to recall but proper now is what I'm exhausted I'm terrible with thank you okay hi so I have a

question but it's kind of hefty so I'm just gonna see at the booth some other day I just wanted to say that I actually sent you guys an email about six years ago oh no no you responded to me and let me say that so I was putting together essentially for my senior project in high school I was constructing a class about storytelling in video games and how the interactive medium is important and you guys gave me some of the best advice I could have asked for and I'm actually here with two of my friends and we're doing a panel on Monday so thank you so much I just wanted to say that to you guys so you guys are great keep doing what you do and I'll see you at the booth some other day thank you very much it's about constructing deeper analysis and game theories and how to actually incorporate sort of high art into looking at games and critical analysis just because you've got a couple hundred people here where and when is the panel

that will be in the sand worm room in Monday at three o'clock our website is with a terrible fate calm check it out I'm sure all of you will like it if you like these guys because it's quite in the same vein so we'll make it worth your time though it's amazing okay sorry we do have a video from a Scott that we're gonna play so it works oh hello I didn't see you there I'm Scott as seen on time and DeWitt your favorite extra credits member and I want to welcome you once again to the packs extra credits panel this year I'd like to do something just a little bit different and tell you a story about one of my very first art jobs just a quick disclaimer I never actually signed an NDA but I also don't want to get anyone

else in trouble so no real names here that said one of my first art jobs was at a smaller studio that focused mainly on mobile and social games they had just partnered up with a bigger studio that had acquired a property that was by a pretty big name in games let's say they've done art for we'll call it black inquest it was a property about gangs drugs the seedy underbelly of organized crime and it would have made an incredible console game so naturally they wanted to put it on facebook if you love clicking cows you'll love selling the devil's lettuce now they had the property but they didn't have the funding so I was on production to make a video that would entice investors into supporting the project this video in question was a mess for starters they completely ditched this beautiful artwork found in the source material for this faux Disney thing no it wasn't badly done it's just if you

like the art direction of Dark Souls you'll love Totally Spies we finished this video more times than I can remember only to have the neighboring studio come in at the end of the day give us revisions and ask us to stay late and revise it here's how the video and the revisions went it starts off with a military woman chasing a witch that looks less like a witch and more like America's Next Top Model the witch it's also worth noting was very clearly voiced by a man whose voice was pitched up because she sounded like this the chase doesn't last long and they begin to throw down and here is where the most spectacular series of revisions comes in see this is where the combat demo started and we got all kinds of incredible feedback the background is too static do you think you get had a rat scurrying across every two seconds we explained that's too fast and they said nope it's fine and gave us her assets and told us to get to work and buy assets I mean they gave us a single static silhouette of a rat that we proceeded to make the Usain Bolt of mice

obviously that wasn't kept but it was replaced very briefly with the world's leakiest pipe in the foreground which also didn't stay very long eventually we got the combat to start with an adequately leaky pipe and a mouse that checks in on you every once in a while to see if you need anything our hero the army gal proceeds to mow down some gangsters like nothing - which lady then proceeds to summon this big demon monster thing that I animated and whoops here we go with more revisions the animation it turns out was fine but after it was finished turns out they actually wanted him to be on fire now before the animators and artists watching start screaming internally I want to point out that they did actually give me the fire assets to add to our monster unfortunately the fire looked like pixelated poorly compressed lava barf from doom it also didn't fit over the monster or animate properly this is not a this is what it actually looked like guess who had to redo it all from scratch so the demo moves along an army

girl opens fire on the demon who is now himself on fire no damage and it's the demons turn he grabs her by the throat and snaps her neck he he grabs her by the huh well I didn't want to draw that anyways she dies it's gruesome it's terrible and we were like are you sure you really want this in here and they were like oh yeah absolutely so we animate it and hoo boy it's about as not great as you can expect but what was great and I am NOT making this up I couldn't on my best day make this up it would be my greatest dream of dreams to be able to come up with something this incredible the notes we got back on that scene or this scene is a bit too dark can you throw in a beach ball to lighten up the mood and so we did [Music]

[Applause] [Music] the Deirdre Scott [Applause] right right that is about all the time we have thank you all so much for coming to our panel and have a wonderful evening [Applause] [Music]