PlayJob Podcast #2: Zhenghua Yang

I'm good all right hey guys my name is Thomas brush I am the creator of a game called pin stripe and also a game called once upon a coma both games are highly acclaimed indie games like sort of gives me a little bit of credibility about why I'm talking about indie games so without further ado I have one of the coolest indie developers with me and he's actually running an indie studio and I I feel terrible about this Z because I've been calling you Z for so long and you just told me how to say your full name do you want to introduce yourself and tell people how to say your full name yeah yeah I know totally so my that I guess the Americanized pronunciation of my name is string hua yang and but but it's it's just way too long I'm Way too Chinese or or anyway yeah I love that so what do you do man

yeah so so yeah typically called people come easy I run a video game studio here in Colorado called serenity Forge and yeah I mean our our team is seventeen people now I can't believe it it's kind of crazy holy crap really yeah it's been growing up wait did you just say seventeen people yeah seventeen full-time I dude okay so just full disclosure everybody me and Z Xia's is the publisher of Once Upon a coma he's the owner of serenity fortune so just putting that out there and Z dude like we've been working on Once Upon a coma for almost like two years now maybe even more and I did not know that there were 17 people working for you yeah I mean that is HUGE yeah when we first started I think it was life lesson it was like lesson eight is when we first started talking and yeah it's been it's been growing it's been kind of crazy you know how like well I don't know if you ever had this situation before because you kind of mostly fly solo with your project yeah

but but like I remember when our team got to like nine people and I remember like walking out of the office and I was like I have no idea what this guy in the corner did all day like no clue what this guy did nowadays is like nowadays is like a common curse I don't know what the [ __ ] half of the company does well that's that's there's a ton of stuff that I want to bring up in this conversation because you are you are an anomaly in the game industry because the game industry you know I mean there's tons of wonderful people out there in the game industry but there's a lot of terrible companies and they just crank it like they hire people get you know work them like they're animals and then they fire them you know to get things done and and just get a bunch of projects done and from what I've learned about your company as you treat your employees with you let them like come and go as they please essentially just as long as they're working hard and they get projects done yeah I mean there's uh

there's definitely a few like unique things that we do here at first of all everyone is like full-time and they they don't just work on one thing you know because I think a lot of game companies like they would come up with an idea get the funding and they go around and you know bring on a bunch of contractors and once they're done they let them go for us when we hire we hire them like for life essentially so that when they're on this project they were working on it was they're done they were gonna be jumping on another project or someone could be working on like three different projects at the same time doing various different tasks yeah yeah yeah and also like you said we don't count vacation days we don't count sick days you just get paid a monthly salary whether or not you show up as long as you get yourself done and you know it's apparent like it when you're not with someone it's like low performing it's obvious like people can tell and yeah you know what that actually happens then that's a conversation we have to have to see what's going on outside of work and all that but ultimately we trust each other so it should it shouldn't be a big

problem well I've got a really interesting question for you and I think it's gonna be the title of this podcast but first before I ask you that really awesome wonderful question I'm gonna keep people hanging and we're gonna do the tradition of this podcast now you brought your drink correct yes yes I did okay so usually with this podcast will drink beer together but Z is one of those amazing people who doesn't drink beer and I think that's honestly really admirable I don't actually know why you do that but you did bring something to the show what what did you bring yeah so I mean I can go into it forever because I'm a tea fanatic but also so I've brought this new tea that came out this year I brought it was from China shipped here by one of my family members the Chinese pronunciation of the tea is called two dogs I which is I guess yeah I guess it roughly translates um kind of

roughly translates to apricot kernel fragrance I think is the best way to translate it it sounds delicious yeah it's a it's an oolong tea that came from a town in China called the full wall which is a translates to Phoenix it came from Phoenix County in the Hunan promised so yeah it has a very unique aroma it's very weighty and almost kind of nutty in a lot of ways uh and then won multiple prizes top ten teas right now in China is just very very hot you know highly regarded something that I've been enjoying for a while now dude that is so impressive that you just said all those cool I love that I love like whenever people speak its Mandarin you called Mandarin not Chinese right yeah yeah man drew whenever people speak Mandarin I automatically go that person is a genius it just sounds it sounds so smart and so succinct so congratulations on that it's beautiful is the one native language

yeah man I was boring just yeah I never really asked you that question all these years I didn't really ask you if you were natively born in China yeah okay that's awesome well okay I brought tea as well to be to sort of drink tea together but in my case I got Evan Williams cheap whiskey from Costco I'm gonna pull my tea oh wow yeah so dude how do you say cheers Andrian yeah it's a Gumby ganbei all right dude ganbei yeah cheers Cheers all right let's get talking so the question I have for you z is when does a studio get big enough to not be called an indie studio that's I that's a really loaded question yeah so that would consider you guys in indie studio yeah yeah I mean I actually think

it's not necessarily the size but I think a lot of times is like source of funding right yeah and also just culture you can have you can have like a three-person team and if this team is you know backed by a venture capitalist and you know investors and and you know started by someone who's very renowned in industry and you know that that might be just like a like a legit company you're not necessarily a start-up alright yeah I've seen I've seen like there are a couple games out there that it's really it's kind of tough to consider them as indie like like opponents so killing floor um yeah yeah killing I don't know if you heard about them it's by a company called tripwire interactive they were like you know less than 10 people at one point before they made killing floor they were just 100% bootstrap no investors but then you let you know let you look at their games and it's like holy [ __ ] like they make some pretty crazy stuff same what Aven colony which is developed by Paul tozeur it was

a good friend of mine his team is three people but they're making this game that looks like Sim City and he he was the AI director behind all the Metroid Prime games that you worked at rare you know it's just like a lot of times it's hard it's kind of like a thin line so I think god yeah I think it has to do with the team culture right if you're making a game that you really believe versus you're making a game to try to generate your annual margins I think that's probably what really defines what idea is okay yeah I I'm going through this phase where I'm getting kind of pissed off with the constant use of the term indie game because it's becoming more like I just scrolled through the Nintendo switch store and it's just it's slowly becoming more and more loaded with indie games which is amazing like that's awesome but there's like I don't know if I'm right here I could be completely way off base but it seems like there's way more indie games than regular games on the switch store and it just seems like gaint like indie

games are like just normal games now like in the 90s you wouldn't call Super Mario an indie game but it it behaves as an indie game like if you play it now it feels like an indie game so I don't know like the whole idea of games being independent I just wish we had a different word maybe just small games but then again they're not all small games you know in my case my games are small but I think I think it's just become an overused term and I don't know if it's very descriptive you know what I mean yeah I I fully understand its I firmly believe I try to not use the word nd all together with industry I actually snow I'm starting to do that yeah I stopped defining serenity for it as an indie studio about like two years ago and I think I'm really helped us in like just placing ourselves in the industry then people see us more as more of a

company um as a startup you know I I someone who is here to create products and also you know find solutions for real world needs and all that so so I don't know if for us it definitely helped for me I helped with my personal identity you know I can okay I can still define myself as an indie game dev just because I have been like I was a freshman in college making my own you know solo games before so I can kind of like understand what that feels but unless if you're in that scenario unless if you're a college kid you know making games in your basement I really don't feel like indie is an appropriate term for yeah anything well I mean it's like if you if you're not a regular consumer of indie games whenever you hear that term you're gonna think okay so this game is artsy it's silly it's short and like maybe it's something maybe pixel art the pixel art is like you constantly see that in indie games and that's just not the case with a lot of these these new indie games coming out yeah they're just games that are smaller in scale and

I think that's really really special with quote-unquote indie games I think what makes them really special is because they're so low budget because there's such a small scale they got a the developers got to make sure that the gameplay mechanics in the hook of the game is perfect and really really special otherwise you've just got a mediocre game all together right so there's there's a focus on gameplay and making unique things like didn't the whole concept for portal start as an indie game or at least an indie idea y'all started with a really small team and then they took that really legit like diamond in the rough concept and turned it into this triple-a title yeah yeah I mean I would almost argue that the difference between an indie studio versus a non indie studio is whether or not you care about your business outcome like if you're if you're releasing your game and you don't care whether or not it makes any money at all then I would say you're an indie developer otherwise that's hilarious

yeah well you I think indie developers to remain sane need to have that posture yeah because otherwise like for me like when I when I launched the Pinstripe last year it was like the hardest month of my life it was insane because I had I didn't have expectations like I didn't think I'm gonna make a million bucks but I had this some Koch subconscious feeling that please god I hope I make some money here you know and I think that any developers need to they're almost required mentally and emotionally to make games just because they love them because like you said you just don't know how it's gonna do oh yeah I mean it kind of like the whole spirit of India is to create art right in a way create something I make people think or something like that so if you are yeah doing that but then when you're releasing the game you start thinking about oh what my game make money well the problem is you never intended to make money while you're making that game why are you like you know why are you

slapping that crack new criteria for success awesome yeah you didn't do during the past you know four or five years of making your game so I feel like there's a identity crisis for a lot of these indie developers do it I think so I think so and you know dude I'm just gonna say it I hate hanging out on Facebook and seeing all the all the stupid memes about I'm an indie developer and I made $10 a month that kind of stuff I think it's really damaging to the indie let's just want to stop saying Andy but I don't know what else to say but it's damaging to the Indy mentality because it starts turning it into what was me I'm a exhausted indie developer who's not making any money when in reality we should be we should be posting celebratory posts about how fun it is and how lucky we are that we get to even make games like this this whole concept of sitting in your garage which I'm in my garage right now and making games that would have was never really a thing I mean maybe it was for like Rare where when they were making banjo kazooie but like that really wasn't a thing in the triple-a

industry in like the 90s in the early 2000s like this is the coolest job in the world so I don't want to complain about how much money I'm making or or whatever and I'm certainly guilty of that but seeing these memes on Facebook it's just kind of frustrating you know what I mean yeah I I know exactly which I'm a part of and I want to be a part of them but I'd also want to encourage them to be more positive right yeah so like what I personally felt I'm kind of split like I completely agree with you on but at the same time I want to just take a quick step back and look at I guess I the best way to say it is like the socio-economic situation right of these game developers and I think it's kind of crazy if you look at these people making these posts they're usually like you know non-american sometimes not even European right there agent yeah South American African you know like a Middle Eastern like tons of different descents and it's awesome

and yeah it's like it's really cool that these people are going on Facebook making fun of their own careers and you know actually making a video games like imagine that it's about like 30 years ago or even 20 years ago it's like it would never happen for anyone from like China or something like that because they just don't have that resource so a part of me I would say that I'm really glad that our industry has evolved so much and the barrier of entry is so low that anyone like literally anyone middle school or high schoolers can pick up unity and start making their own games and start you know like Denny identifying themselves as a game developer and that that to me like that's the positive side of well let's uh let's let's let's um this is relevant politically but we're not gonna get into politics I promise but let's talk about borders right so do you think that steam should have borders should should game platforms have borders or barriers of entry what do you think about that so so I know I my my I Mike had my thought on what Steve's been

doing for the past couple years I kind of flip-flop every decision they make yeah so I remember when the one green light first got shut down and $100 like $100 copay to get into yeah name thing came up I remember hating that like I absolutely hated it because it's like when Steven green light first happened for for game developers that's like oh cool now I have a doorway to like actually show off my game is being voted on so it's like a curated people actually want these games it seemed like it made sense or at least made some sense at the time I can't speak for like larger studios obviously yeah oh and then the $100 copay happened and then now it just became an app store right oh and it's literally the same as the App Store only on PC and and we all know how the app store didn't do very well where release is not great for developers in general it's it's not good at all if anybody's ever released a game on the App Store they know how little money you actually

made yeah zero dollars and I released a game on the App Store and that's fine I'm not like I'm not gonna be a hypocrite here and complain about it but it's it's tough because you're right it's just so crowded yeah and like but they're there barry of entry was completely void they didn't have one right yeah i mean you could say that the entire mobile game industry was shaped by how that economic that financial model is structured by app yeah right and kind of how crowded and how how shitty I ended up becoming um but but then so so you know how recently Steve announced that now they're like okay like adult games as well and pretty much anything goes yeah and when I saw that I was actually kind of excited for that um you know like I mean there's there's the the segments of obviously now can play at all games I'll Steven yeah that's like no beneficial sounds so excited a lot every different degrees but to me that actually means that steam is even more accessible than the App Store which is kind of crazy to think

about because we always assume App Store is the most accessible thing that's out yeah um so with that I actually what I realized is that Steve doesn't want to I mean it's obvious that they didn't want to do this but they don't want to do curation at all they're just purely a platform um it's the same as something like game Joe or itch where anyone can be on there and there's absolutely no criteria to be on Steam which means that curation they're just essentially this is their way of handing off curation to other third parties and you can start to see right like youtubers and streamers the reason why this this whole phenomenon in the past few years about their you know them getting bigger it's because steam is handing off curation to other people ah so you know I think it's a it's a giant shift in the industry and I'm kind of excited to see what's gonna happen yeah but I'm not super sold still on how youtubers as streamers currently work you know exactly well have you have any of your Studios games suffered at the hands of the overcrowded system uh I

mean it's hard to tell right I I could say that every game suffered you know what it probably did yeah by the hollow night yeah but Ellen I didn't suffer yeah and play it's just doing so well dude even on switch hollow night is killing it right but you could also say that our games only exist because of the capitalism that goes into the game industry right now right yeah um if it wasn't for steam being so open then there's not gonna be as many gamers in the world therefore you have a smaller amount of you know audience to sell to so maybe we end up selling less so it is kind of hard to tell I think on it I would be lying if I said I knew an actual answer to that question yeah I don't know dude I have no idea I part of me selfishly wants these massive barriers of entry you know like a thousand dollars to get in get your game into the store just so there's less competition but then again

like a ton of competition doesn't mean that nobody's gonna rise to the top you know like their if your game is great it will probably rise to the top in steam but that does mean that they're I mean it feels almost like America like that there is no middle class it's just you either fail big or you you did really well I mean it that I could be completely wrong there in the case of pinstripe it was probably in the middle like it did pretty good and it's still doing pretty good but it's certainly I've heard a lot of stories about how either you make very little money or you make a lot you know it's very polarized right and I think it's gonna become more like that - especially with Steve just opening up like that until until we get curation you know until someone steps in it really takes care of curation but I'll tell them you know well then you know back to your original point a part of your philosophy is that you don't really care about any of this because you just want to make great games right um so so this is I'm gonna go ahead and

dive into a like a little bit of maybe maybe in an issue that I see with the game industry and people getting this development um yeah you know whatever I talk to other game developers I feel like 90% of the time they fall into one of two buckets they are either designing a game and developing a game that they really want to play so that they you know start making that game which is you know a pretty pretty large majority wouldn't be cool if this game was like that you know and then the other bucket I see is a lot of people who are just making a game that they think is gonna be the next big thing so I think I make a lot of money off of it right it's like oh I'm gonna make League of Legends but better you know the next League of Legends the next blockchain game or like whatever may be right it's one of these two bodies and I feel like for our in our perspective at least the way I see it I always try to look at these buckets as tools to achieve what we really want to do so my criteria for making games as

always I don't necessarily want to make a game that I really want to play sometimes I don't really want to make a game that makes a lot of money sometimes both of which are important and they're pillars for why we decide things but the ultimate goal is how much value we're actually creating for society it's like if I make this game and imagine a scenario where a million people plays this game overnight how is the world going to change that happens great and it's such a crazy time oh yeah I never even thought that way what you got to think about it as game designers ice can developers we have this inherent duty to shape our future kids play games way more so I mean kids play games and watch people play games way more so than they watch TV or read books or watch movies anymore um so we are you know directly affecting what the world is gonna be like years down the road I mean you you just became a dad you understand that you know well yeah yeah we have that kind of just responsibility you're like shaping a whole generation right now what game dude my daughter is already

addicted to the television oh no and I just said television like I'm an old person with television as opposed to TV but she's addicted to TV and it's my fault too cuz she you know she's screaming her head off and I don't know what's wrong so I'll just turn on baby Einstein stick her in a rocker and I'm like oh she's happy now so it's it you're totally right people especially people like me and whoever else has kids in who are making games we do have a responsibility to make it they don't have to be like necessarily like I don't know exactly what you're trying to say but I think I understand what you're saying is they they make a positive impact that doesn't mean that you know there's no swearing or whatever it just mean all that it's trying to convey a message that is positive and good for for America and the world and I see that in your work now my question for you is this is something that I've been wanting to talk to you about since I met you and

it's it's just a beautiful subject you people a lot of people may know this but some of the listeners might not know this but you did something that is probably on anyone's bucket list anyone who wants to be you know successful in their life you you pulled it off you did a TED talk and I want to hear more about that story because this is why that what you mentioned in your TED talk this is why you want to make games that are meaningful because games from what I have heard you were almost died you were almost dead and games saved your life yeah I mean it's a it's a pretty well-known story nowadays yeah a lot but so what happened is throughout like middle school in high school I was I was very overweight I was you know 200 250 pounds I was yeah I know I was I played tons of video games I would play game himself until like you know five or six o'clock in the morning and then like you

know jump into bed before my mom comes into my room to try to wake me up and I'll wake up and they go to school and they're just like fall asleep during class and you know I didn't I did terribly at school I didn't have any friends in school because I was just spending so much time playing games and it was really bad for me I had a huge addiction issue and what and what happened is you know I moved out in my house for a college and within the first couple months of college obviously I'd completely like you know I destroyed my body essentially playing video games and and within two months of school I was I was diagnosed with a severe severe illness what was it called oh if you don't mind me asking yeah no it's a it's a very severe form of the short version is called ITP but the full name is chronic refractory idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura which basically just means that my body believes that

all of my platelets in my body are are harmful germs so my immune system kills all the platelets in my body so I just bleed all the time and nothing there's nothing in my blood that can stop and transfusions don't work either because as soon as the transfusion enters my body my immune system kills it like so it's Rosie that's crazy I'm so sorry about like so sorry had to go through that yeah yeah I mean it's it's all right thankfully it doesn't like I don't feel anything it's just it was a it was a really scary experience because but you're still fighting that yeah I still have it I actually got a lot a lot better recently my blood tests came back and I for the first time in my life I was with like actually like barely made it to the normal range like the healthy range which was crazy I that was phenomenal earlier this you're a miracle D that's awesome yeah and but yeah I mean that was kind of like the main thing that happened to me and I was hospitalized for two years so our Halloween night of 2008 I was told I was gonna die in three hours and

that was right after I was admitted to the hospital I waist yeah miles away from home I was in Illinois with my parents were in Colorado I called them that night when the nurse came in and gave me my will to fill out my pair of Z I'm so sorry like I'm just I'm I want to know how you felt like how did know so many of us are so like I'm so lucky like my life is pretty good I haven't really had anything bad happen and I'm just I'm just lucky and I'm blessed and and I hope that it stays that way I just want to know like how does that feel to be told that you're gonna die you know that I feel like I called that moment being extremely well it was a very memorable moment I'll tell you that was bad um but the the one thing that really surprised me looking back at it is when the nurse came in to tell me that I was gonna die I felt fine I felt okay with that I was actually very content with that idea um and I was

like okay yeah I guess I guess so that's fine I mean like it's not like I'm gonna feel pain or anything um but then like maybe within a couple seconds afterwards my mind jumped into like the consequences of like that and I realized my parents my you know people like Kevin so Kevin and I are actually high school friends alright like you know make you my new Kevin is huh oh yeah yeah character Kevin is one of the cofounders of the company he you know started the company with me essentially and we've been working together on games since we were in high school so incredible yeah yeah it's crazy and he's still here so anyway so like I thought about my family and all the people that cared about me and I just realized about I just realized like what I did that you know like they said so many years these put so much of themselves you loving me and caring about me for so many years and now like due to my choices of not taking care of myself I'm

essentially robbing my parents of their child right and that's a totally selfless way to think wow I'm really impressed I would be thinking that way yeah yeah I I mean like I I care about that you know I thought about them and I thought about how I you know way like I'm taking me away from them and that house-call painful that must be for them so that's when I started actually crying like you know I sat there and cried for a pretty long time I called my parents I told them I'm gonna die in three hours they jumped in a car you know halfway during work and just started driving from Colorado hoping that they could make it obviously and yeah I mean it was it was a pretty crazy moment there and here's another cool fun small tidbit and that was I was watching The Shining at the time my favorite movie oh really my favorite movies yeah yeah I used to have a big poster of that movie is awesome dude yeah I never watched it before I always knew it was a good one so weird movie to watch when you're young all your deathbed yeah I remember being my

deaf I was like at least I get to watch you know this really renowned movie before I die it's my god maybe I'll make it to the end you know yeah awesome there yeah so what's what you had a point there yeah so watching The Shining oh no this it's just a funny tidbit kind of weird like it's not something that you really like tell people what you're talking about that was like - that would be a really cool TED talk The Shining saved my life oh okay I don't know about that oh but but that movie does hold a special place in my heart because cool well dude that's amazing and and so how did you well first up I want to ask you this like really quickly and then we can move on to how video games saved your life do you really think that it was your fault that you got sick I don't know um so my illness is actually the first case in the world there hasn't been a case before there was a whole

research paper if you like to look up my illness that's published in 2010 that was a regard my case um yeah yeah but but I I really don't know I I think I probably could have taken care of myself better but the truth is I was just some teenager you know what could I have known every um so I don't really blame myself in that I don't blame my heritage I don't blame anyone I think it was just about to happen and honestly looking back at it I'm really happy it did because without this illness I don't think I would be Who I am today yeah dude no way like I mean I can't the reason why I signed with you guys like immediately like we were well isn't a meet we talked about some other projects but when we talked about once upon in coma I signed with you immediately because I get this sense when I hear you talk that you've almost like this sounds really like a more like an Eastern religion type thing but you've almost like elevated yourself in a way above people your age cuz you're a young guy but you talk in a way that's like you're

4550 years older and means so many 50 year olds don't talk the way you talk which is this mentality that what you do has an impact on the people around you and so often I get caught up on how I can achieve stuff for myself especially with like making in games like sometimes it's even 80% of the time that I'm working on a game I'm thinking okay how do I make this game great so that it benefits me and you're thinking completely the opposite you're thinking because of all that [ __ ] that went down in with with your sickness suddenly you're thinking how do I make a game that helps people maybe that we're in a situation that I was in or something where someone is suffering maybe how do I make a game that helps them and you did that right you made a game called what was that called loving life living life that's right so right after I got out of the hospital so there's only eventually I recovered there to kind of close off the story here I recovered in the next two years I do too still unknown reasons

they ended up actually taking me off of all medication because nothing was working so they just told me to go home and wait it out and and I started recovering as soon as I started moving August I moved home I so yeah I mean oh great yeah I was able to eventually transfer back into college and start my freshman year you can call righto and I remember my it's my first semester of college I looked back and it was like hey you know like why don't I make video games to help other people and the first game that I made was a visual novel called loving life it's free to download and I'd release it online just just as a tool almost helped other people or like as a way for me to kind of conclude my story and it was it was just a non fictional story about how I how I what I went through so so you you're kind of one of those guys that uses video games as often as you can to communicate how you're feeling I think because didn't you ask your wife to marry you with a video game yeah that's right yeah I thought oh cool man you

totally got you totally beat me there I just I just asked my wife to marry me that's I just got on one knee but you did it in a video game yeah it's I I spent I spent some time making her an RPG where you know we ended up well I put like every single scenario that we're really like memorable to me in the ending game so that she could walk through essentially like walk in my shoes and kind of see the other side of the story like what I was feeling in those moments and then like you know kind of show her to the big picture that's so cool well not to downplay any of this amazing like I love talking about the emotional side of videogames but I want to get into how much time do you got dude cuz let's see here it's 4:30 over here do you have about 20 minutes 30 minutes to talk er no I'm good okay okay well let's go 30 more minutes and then we can get into the the cheat codes section of the game which is the three secrets but maybe twenty thirty minutes of just chatting about what I want to talk about is more of the business side of things

because you run your indie studio not indie studio we can't use that word into your video game studio is different than say the Double Fine's of the world because it correct me if I'm wrong because you take on client work that's just just to help fund these indie games am I correct about that yeah I mean let me let me clarify you know we're not we're different from them not because we like not because we really wanted to but honestly I actually blame myself for just being too stupid to do two like feet like you know how like a lot of like game companies would go out there and see funding and they you know give you vesser's now they have like five million dollars to invest in other games a lot of it but they only have 70% of their company you know it's it's true but at the same time like they they have a lot to work with for us I just I just hate that feeling

I don't like I don't like losing control over what the vision is in the company like I I don't like having to go out there and you know make a fake pitch to some investor some rich person who knows nothing about ASI to make profit promises that I'll give them double returns or whatever I don't think we're any of this the irony irony of this is that I did that to you I pitched my game once upon a coma to you I think you just like control and power am I right about that well I wouldn't I wouldn't say I wouldn't say power necessarily because if I want a power I would have stayed at the Federal Reserve but you know what it when it comes to when I guess when it comes to just like stuff that I'm really passionate for I want to be able to have the correct message and I feel like if we have investors and I'm going around lying to them and then lying to the people I'm giving the money to I just don't feel good about myself this way I know that if I fail you know you messed MIT you know if I put some money to a game that we end up publishing and then the game fails it's I don't have to

answer to a lie that I told to someone else later I all I have an answer to is myself and my inability to make the right choices and in a way you know you it's not as scary of a thing to to make a bad investment because you guys also have this back-up plan of doing client work right yeah I have tons of backup plans it's very rare for serenity force Everett go through anything dangerous I mean women working together for a while now and you can kind of see that and I don't know dude I sometimes like I the cool thing is is that you guys you guys lend me your staff to help make my game and to me to me that is a huge risk because it's like well I'll give you one of my staff members and you can he can help you make this game that we don't even know if it's gonna do well but here you go I think that's I mean I think that's a little bit of a risky thing to do I mean it's at the very least it's very generous well the way I see it is actually twofold so number one uh it's something that makes us very

unique most game publishers do not have their own development staff so they can't do something like this and we can't so you know if for most game publishers if you need a programmer on your game or something like that they're gonna look at you and be like well we can't fund you more money so you're just gonna have to go find a partner now you have to spend all that time finding a partner it's gonna be hard right or if they're like okay we do we can give you more money so here's some money go hire your own dude and that's that's pretty rough too like you want to make a game you don't want to go like HR and do all that PR stuff or whatever um and it's it's just not it's just not great and the system is pretty clunky when you work with a publisher and for us it's just it just makes sense because we already have developers and they're already filled in on what the game is and I could easily just be like hey you work on this game today you work on this game tomorrow and it's it's just everyday life for these people and I wonder if it makes your your staff stick around longer because they just they're having fun right they're working on a variety of different projects from

maybe from government work I don't know exactly what client work government work all the way over to making a trendy weird game about a boy in a coma you know everything in between yeah I think for a lot of these people this way they have all sorts of different outlets for creativity you know if they want to do something that's really they can be really like you know brag about it at a family dinner party they can talk about how they were tall like some paramount films game or whatever or you know if they want to show it to their indie developer friends college kids or whatever they can talk about something else and it's just there's a whole variety of words here and it's never gonna get boring around here so you know you've got this really organic environment where you just you it seems like you'd make a great parent because you probably wouldn't be a helicopter dad you'd probably just sort of let your kids grow and become civilized individuals and trust them which it seems you do that with your staff my question is does that ever keep you up at night like the idea that your staff

is you you have faith in your staff and you don't really neat pick it doesn't seem like you do you don't nitpick your your game development staff does that keep you up at night at all so so this is actually something that I realized about myself very recently and I and that is specifically my leadership style um I realized that my leadership style is this weird sadistic type of decision making where I literally I intentionally set people up is there any port to fail on certain things so love that so like he'll especially with our new hires I love working with our new hires because I get to give them that just the most difficult task that I know that they cannot do and then I would give it to them and then I can kind of see from afar like kind of guide them to see like how they're gonna do it's almost like you can imagine if you have a kid and you just like toss him to a swimming pool I let them swim and I would yeah Alex and like yeah like I would stand behind a bush and see how how they do they're starting to drown I would run in

to kind of pick them up but if they're not drowning I'm starting to manage I'll be like okay that's not bad like now I kind of learn a little bit more - yeah well I had a meeting with my intern today I just hired an intern which is a big deal for me I don't have 17 staff members but I hired an intern today and I met with him for lunch and I told him I said I'm gonna give you as much as you can possibly handle until you tell me you can't handle it mainly the reason why I do it that way is because that's what I would have preferred when I was an intern I and and my my boss handed me a lot but I wish that they would have handed me more because I what I'm learning is and this kind of comes down to self development is and becoming like the best version of yourself if if you you never know exactly what you can handle especially when you're making a game until you just try it and give it a shot and so I think I think your staff will probably respect you for that because you you you're showing respect to them I mean isn't that a respectful thing to say hey I'm gonna give you a

ton of work because maybe I think you can handle it you know yeah I feel like III do this purely because I kind of grew the same conditions I don't know how many siblings I my parents never went to a parent-teacher conference my parents are very like laissez-faire - let me just like kind of explore my own things with given bacteria but but then like for us is also kind of culture control within the company because we want this very frantic horizontal leadership structure where we can trust each other um if we hire people and they just need constant hand-holding no one has the time and to do that like it's too much time wasted out of our day to do that we want people who can just you know I hire this person and just let them make choices for serenity for it's like they would be making so negative decisions day one uh you know during their work so so it doesn't it doesn't really stress you out or keep you up at night you're you kind of pretty relaxed about it well

the truth is I kind of set them up with an actual learning curve you know like the projects that I throw them in the beginning although they're impossible for them they're also not very dishy mental to the company a lot of times and then like eventually you you know I'll give them more more bigger tasks and when there are actually important tasks by that time they're kind of trained to it you know I like the first the first task would be like make three hundred cups of coffee not something that's really pointless but test their willpower the tests are still pretty big it generally is kind of like oh this you know yes sir very important and well-known company here reached out to us yeah I want to do a collaboration do you want to chat with them and see if we can strike a deal stuff like that exactly uh yeah okay well um let me think here if there's any there's so many question I wish I kind of want to have you on a second segment because you have so much knowledge to bring to the table and I think I think right now is

probably what I want to do is let's jump right into the hasn't really been 20 minutes yet but let's jump right into the cheat code section of the podcast but before we do that is there anything else that you want to mention about your work or your studio to maybe let people know about your work and what you guys are doing I mean not necessarily about us per se but what I want to say is you mean you keep on saying that I like this expert pasta and lard I feel I feel low fat cast is called gaming industry legends are your legend I feel a little bit uncomfortable with that considering this this particular fact and that is you were the influence that got me to become a game developer I think that's really important for me to say on this stage right here can I be honest with you about something yeah sure go ahead you've been telling me that for two years and I always assumed you were lying no no because because I thought you were like just wanted me to sign a contract you know cuz I always assume

the worst in people I'm that kind of I'm that kind of person especially when there's a contract involved but dude that means the world to me thank you I mean I don't know why you would say that though but yeah so so coma the original flash game I forced all of my friends to play that game anyone who joins serenity Forge is required to play that game it's just it's just one of those things that for the past more than ten years now that like it's a game that we cared about as a team like really I I remember just you know just loving it so much I the very first game that I personally actually designed was a 2d platformer horror game a psychological horror game and that goes yeah that just goes to show how much you fluence you had on me as a human being way before you even knew it that I exist well thanks to you that means a lot to me yeah that's it's crazy that it's been almost a decade since coma was Tacoma was released in 2009 well yeah would it be cool if we

released once upon a coma at the anniversary oh that would be you need to tell me what day it is yeah we need to talk about that after this call that could that could be really cool yeah anyway okay so guys that's the podcast the next section of the podcast is the most valuable portion of the podcast however you have to pay for it sorry and that is on patreon become a patron supporter or a patreon patron for I think it's like 10 bucks a month and you can get the next section in the next section is called cheat codes and this is a really valuable section of the podcast because this is where Z is he's written these he's planned these the secrets Allen these are these are game industry secrets that a lot of us took a long time to figure out I'm sure it took Z a long time to forget these things out but he's just gonna give it to you just really quickly in bullet points and that's incredibly important because most of us have to work really hard to learn that stuff so thanks for watching the podcast listening of the podcast please

subscribe hit the like button share this podcast if you want to hear more again my name is Thomas brush and I had Z from serenity Forge with me so thanks for watching guys see you later alright so this section of the podcast is called cheatcodes z did you write 3 cheat codes for the podcast yes I did alright so let's just jump into that first cheat code man what is it alright and that is [Music]