The Challenges of Finishing a Game with Drew Smith | 364

[Music] What's up everybody? Welcome to another episode of GameDev Unchained, the number one game development podcast about game development and the lifestyle thereof. I am your host Brandon Bam and with me a special colleague, friend from a long time for a long time, Drew Smith. How you doing, Drew?
Doing all right. How are you?
Good, man. So, this is the part of the podcast where I introduce our guest, which is yourself to introduce yourself to the listeners and viewers out there about where you've been, where you at, where you heading. Just a little recap before we get into the meat of the episode.
All right. Uh, let's see where to start. I feel like I like a one-word answer. Like what I have in all my business cards that I have for at least 10 years is like semifunctional human. Yeah,
I think that should basically say everything to know.

Uh, I've been to a lot of different places, worked worked several places in games. I've career now been almost 20 years, 19 years. Uh, started at Take 2. Um, and was there for a while in New York and then came out to Cali to work at 2K and that's where I think we originally met, right? Y
um, and that was 2010. Uh, and then I was a producer there. worked on stuff like top spin for um the bureau XCOM declassified and uh Bioshock 2 and then Den um along with a bunch of other things that I was doing left went to Bungie worked there on Destiny pre pre-announce um there's some interesting stories about being uh at the Sony event where it was announced uh and then um heading to uh through that game worked on stuff all the way through Destiny 2 went to Google for a bit, went to Twitch for a little bit, and then started my own studio. And that's kind of the a brief history of time, as they say.

Well, Drew, uh, we do share, like you said, we met at 2K. Am I my I'll start with this. My impression of you when we first met. It's like, man, this guy is a big deal, man. It's like I I just remember you're always having to present
at least representing the corporate side because uh that that office was unique because we had the
visual concept guys at the top. We have the Marin team, you know, which is a whole separate team. All everyone's working on their own thing. And then we had corporate publishing, you know, your guys' team there. Everyone was in one building. And uh every time you came down to talk to us, I was like, "Oh, corporate's talking to us about something." Uh so that to me it was like man this guy's doing well uh ever since then for sure.
Uh it's funny because like I would think of my and like how I view myself and this is like years on right. I think that any when I you didn't ask this question but I'm kind of leading into this.

Yeah.
When I started in games like all I wanted to do is make games
but I didn't really know how to do that. And like I got um I got the job at Take 2 just through random like LinkedIn stalking. Stalking is not even the right word. I was just messaging people and being like, "Hey, I really want to talk to you about there's like someone at Xbox, someone at Vendi back in the day like
just hustling.
Just hustling. Try and like and take two was like I this is not a joke. I'm not making this up. Like I literally offered to clean toilets. I said I'll come in and clean the bathrooms one day a week or whatever." like I'm in the city now for for school and
um and they ended up coming back and like offering me to interview for a job in channel marketing at that time.
That's awesome.
I didn't know anything about channel marketing. I didn't have any idea what that was. I was like, "Sounds great."
Yeah.
Like it's not making games, but I'll do it. Yeah.
But yeah, it's funny cuz you're talking about that and like it was a slow transition like and one I'm very thankful for uh because people like saw

like hey he he really should be making stuff like
well it's great because you you know I think back then a lot of there wasn't ever a direct channel to get into games right it was still kind of hazy even from
from a person that went through a game art school right at that time and then
uh did the application process and got in somehow. It wasn't even like a sure path really. Um there wasn't any
it wasn't like it was nomen and there was like a lot of people on faculty that had like instant track. You were still pretty much on your own after you graduated. Uh not a lot of schools were well connected at that time.
Totally. So it's it's it's it's kind of nostalgic to kind of hear that type of story. How you literally just through passion, through hustling, through uh

infinite trial and error, you still got in. And uh I think that's the great thing about um just the idea of having such a big office like that and everybody coming in and just being a part of it. And I I I keep going back to this. I feel like remote wise that's harder to do nowadays. I think
I agree.
And uh I'm sure you know I'm assuming you're still in the Bay, right? In the Bay Area out of all the locations, especially in California, the Bay Area definitely took a like a whole 180 with this remote. Like it used to be so I mean that's where everyone was moving to to to go to get jobs and now everyone's doing it at home.
Um would love to kind of hear like just quickly your your your experience that transition during that time of what you saw maybe what you yourself were going through about how area kind of changed in a big way.
Oh man, and it's it's so it's

interesting because I have a um the perspective I have on the Bay Area specifically is
I've I call them tours. I've done three tours here. The first one I moved in 2010 which was the 2K like time frame. Yeah. Yeah.
And I was here through not all the way through 2012 cuz I moved to Seattle for Bungie at that point.
Um I moved back here in January of 15, so 10 years ago, which is nuts
for that was for Google. Um and then was here till 2020.
And then during pandemic, like the pandemic changed a lot, right? Like for as as everyone knows. Um, in 2020, like toward the I think it was November of that year, we moved to Brooklyn. Uh, and part of that was like we're having a kid. We wanted to be near family because family couldn't travel because COVID was so bad and my parents were old and her parents were old and um, so we were back out there for a year and then we were in LA for two years because to be close to

her family and then we moved back here at the end of 2023. So we had this like three-year gap. Yeah.
So when we left um SF became very strange just in that one year and everywhere it did because of COVID, right? Like everything was closed. It was like you were afraid to walk near people. I afraid is the right word, but you weren't walking near people.
Yeah.
Um coffee shops like had like the doorfront service where like the counter was at the door and you could get coffee at the door. Um, I think the thing that like I've noticed city-wise before we get into like maybe companies,
um, cuz that's a little different cuz, you know, starting a studio and us being remote first, um,
is that like a lot of the stuff's gone. Like a lot of the stuff that was here is gone in the city. Like it feels like it's changed in some real ways.
I'm not even talking about downtown. like we live between we're like on the border Castro and Mission like near

Dolores Park if that matters to anybody.
Yeah.
Um but I lived in this area for you know a long time. At least two of those tours I've spent there and it's it's like a it's not a different place but it is a different place like the city itself. I think in terms of working I mean you you talk about 2K and in like the 2010 time like it's a very different company back then. It's much smaller. Everything's contained in one building. Obviously, there's like Marin and having worked at Marin like together, right? But even even before that, there's obviously Foraxis and there's yeah, Visual Concepts was upstairs and other companies were out, you know, spread about 2K check and uh stuff like that. But um I I the even though you know I'm at a studio now where it's separate from anything and we're we're remote like I said you you miss a lot like you you meet people that way. It's

not I'm not I'm not arguing for people to go back to work or not to go back to work. I think that's the decision of whatever company. But I do believe in game development specifically, specifically dev, right, more than anything else. Uh that there's some like some community that forms that way. Like there there are moments that can come up like when you're in dev that because you're around other people that are working uh and you can have these like conversations really quickly that are lost a little bit. Like I don't know if I would know the people I know now if I were coming up at this moment and remote.
If that does that make sense?
Yeah.
And I think that that's that's changed like that's that's a different you know it's a different world
right and uh well I kind of want to transition to this because there's not a lot of I'm I'm very used to be on the developer side. I think most uh general uh experience about understanding the development side and then there's the

corporate side right
and uh is the the show the office right you get a little glimpse of the slight differences of of the two groups
um just out of curiosity right and you were kind of mentioning you know being part of the predestiny um uh announcement right um What is such what are the key differences being on the corporate side on during development after development just your whole experience your perspective I mean I'm sure you had some a lot of retrospective experience of like oh okay you know this is all I know and now stepping back
from it all was like oh okay I can see what what the developers are talking about would love to have some insight into that
it's it's interesting because like
yeah like uh I I feel really fortunate to have been able to start in like in channel

marketing like even though before I said I didn't know what it was I didn't know like I feel fortunate because it gave me a perspective that I would not have had otherwise and like what you're talking about and then flowing through that into uh publishing into dev and then and then to like BD and then back to dev right it's like I've been like run the gam of like like game development from every aspect.
I I think that when you're in the corporate side and if you haven't been on the dev side, um a lot of it is and this I think this goes both ways. I think that dev does like has the same view of corporate that corporate may have you a view of dev. Not not exactly but I mean there's there's misunderstanding.
Yeah. um there there's a genuine like lack of knowledge around maybe what you're asking for like I'll give you something really simple there's a lesson that I learned really early uh I would be uh

managing like I say uninteresting because it's not like it's not interesting in terms of game development but it's a necessity it's like okay there's a lot of retail marketing that had to happen and this is where I started and you have to get assets to give to retailers and every retailer wants their own special, you know, assets, blah blah blah. Um, that means you're asking publishing, right? Publishing marketing for like, hey, I want I need screenshots. I need like an original screenshots for, I don't know, GTA or like, you know, Bioshock or whatever, right? At least those games. And what you don't know at that time, you in your mind, you're like, what? Why is this difficult? You're like, and one, you're not, it's not like you're being
I think it's more of a genuine question than like like being angry like how why is this so hard? Like can we just get screenshots?
Yeah. Yeah.
What you don't realize is that when you're asking that of the, you know, the marketing team, the publishing side, it's not even getting to dev, right? But

what has to happen is the dev or the the publishing producer then needs to ask like the marketing people ask the publishing producer to get screenshots from the dev side and the dev team has to approve like someone on the team creative director studio whoever it is right whatever that person wherever that flows to that person has to approve those screenshots and if you're dealing with anyone like on any project basically like they they care about how that's presented
and That means that it's not just going in and like capturing one screenshot. It's like here's 500 screenshots and we'll approve one of them.
Yeah.
Right. So, it's a lot of work and it's a lot of work getting stacked onto someone who has a million other things to do.
Yeah. you know, when I I'll I'll tell an ancillary story in a second, but um I think that that that kind of basic level thing like not understanding what a request means, uh is is a common like um misunderstanding

I think that happens between the between the groups.
Uh and I would say like it leads to it can lead to like frustration across the board. Uh, I I could say like as a flip, like when working as a producer on the dev side, like if I was getting asked for something that wasn't about making the game better, I'd be like, "Yeah, get out of here."
I'm like, "No, like we're not doing that." I'm like, "Are you paying me?" Like me, not me personally. Like, are you giving us money? Are you developing this on your own? No, we're not doing that. That's crazy. Why would I do that?
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. I'm like, "This game needs to be good."
I know. It's it's it's always like a back and forth. um challenge
and and I would say I would say that just in that same thing like the flip of that is
is that on the dev side um maybe that individual screenshot isn't meaningful you know maybe it is maybe it isn't uh but um I the overall aggregate of like

what marketing's doing is important and that's not always seen right like I there's various teams for dev for marketing and various skill levels for all those things. But at the end of the day, like especially now, if you don't have good publicity, then uh you know, you're in a scenario where it's not it's not great. My doorbell's ringing.
If you hear that in the background
slightly.
Yeah. No.
Yes.
Is it okay?
Yeah. Yeah, it's fine. Um, I will I will say this, you know, um, it's kind of popular nowadays to kind of uh downplay AAA development like being too slow,
racked with problems, this and that. Um, being part of those teams myself and then, you know, you you have as well, of course, multiple times. Uh, it is nothing like it. You know, it's exciting for the many

reasons that we may or may not like, right? Um there's
so many people on it. There's so many people that are working on different things to uh ensure it success, right? So many moving parts that
and a lot of times you're not even aware that it's happening, right? You can't you can't know everything in such a big project like that. uh and uh and and when it releases, when it's out in the public, you're guaranteed that everyone's going to hear about it whether they pick it up or not, everybody will hear about it
and everybody will have an opinion on it. And um and that's something is is super exciting that
uh smaller projects don't have that luxury, you know, they they it's a lot of hoping and praying and it's a lot about bootstrapping and it's a lot about building it from the ground up. um been in being in the industry for so long, being in various different uh being a part of various different levels of projects, you know, would love to kind

of hear your experience and what you see so far with everything because now it's all about Yes. big projects, but the small projects are getting kind of bigger now, too. And it's it's a it's a interesting time to compare
uh and see what's up. Yeah,
there's kind of like I think I I'm It's funny because I I'm looking off to the side and there's a poster there's a Bastion poster over here that's signed by that team from like you know 2010 whenever Greg left 2K and went over there and I was at PAT like and I think about and I the reason I say that the only reason I bring this up is because there is a team that has from that moment with seven people on Bastion and I think I don't know it's like in the low 20s now 16 years later
like they have never
maybe bitten off more they can more than they can chew in terms of cost and you know what they're what they're making
but I but I the reason I say that is cuz

like everyone knows if you're a game developer you know about feature creep
right and that's just it all that is like the simplest way to talk about that for everybody right is like it's just a desire to make the game better like really it's like oh my god someone watched a movie the other night or someone played a game and they're like, you know, would be amazing if that guy could triple jump and backflip off the wall
and someone's like, that's a good idea. Like, we should do that. And you're like, no.
Yeah.
No, maybe you should. But I I think that the reason like the smaller games are getting bigger, right? Like they're they cost more and it's more difficult. We'll come back to the marketing in a second, but um or like the ability of AAA and like where it is now is I was thinking about this yesterday. We were talking about the game we're working on and we were talking about doing it like episodically and I immediately start thinking of like all the episodic games that have ever existed. Halflife Sin I think was another episodic game that like had one episode and didn't make it.

Then you can think about telltale like they did it and I was like why not always true but why does episodic not work generally
and I and if I think about it just from like my own desire to like make this game and then make another game or like other parts. It's like because every single time you're going to deal with feature creep
because you're going to want to do better than the last one. And that means something, right? It means like you're going to like I what that means is it's un unknowable but it's like oh we're not going to make the exact same game because who's going to go back and play the exact same game right like you need to add new features there need to be new verbs in that game. Um, so I think that that's probably a cause for why, you know, like we're I'm not calling anybody out in terms of like any issues, but it's like just where they are, right? It's like why like there's not a Hollow Night 2 now or like
Yeah.
I don't I don't think the followup to Cupheads come out. It's like
you think that like oh is they could turn this around and make a new one. No, they have to figure out what new things

they're going to do and why this is better, why they're one uping from the last one,
right? Um, but for the for the AAA side, I would say like it's there's also the cost aspect which has gotten really really big over the years. This isn't exactly what you were saying, but like that's a that's a I I think you're right. Like generally people have a good time. Any how any game project gets done is a miracle. Yeah. Like I think I think everyone that's worked in games and like worked on games like says that because you go through it and you're like for the longest time with like Destiny it was not clear. Maybe it was clear to some people but I think on the team like there we're like what are we making like kind of confused about it in some way but then it comes together and like the end like that that like final like crunch time and I don't I don't mean it in terms of crunch work. I just mean in terms of like that final bit is like when all the pieces start to fall into place and then the picture like that's blurry for so long starts to become

really focused and you're like oh this is it like now I see what we're doing or now we see what we're doing. But yeah, I think AAA like just it's I mean there's so many things going on with that industry right now that make it that make it difficult and have made it like prohibitively expensive and um while fun to work in also difficult to work in because of company bets and you know trends and etc etc. Yeah, there's defin u it is a miracle every time a game project finishes um or ships, right? And it is it is definitely um anti-creative to finish things.
Totally.
Yeah. And uh it's exactly what we need as as creatives like a date, right? Uh like you said, it's it's so easy. I I've realized over the years that creative teams are are largely pretty

unfocused when it comes to everybody just wants to keep playing and adding things, right? And um
and then we always look at producers as a bad guy.
It's like why why you want us to stop playing?
Uh yeah, we got to start selling. It's an entertainment product. We're making something,
you know, and we have a budget and everything, right? So, it is still uh what I find too and I don't maybe we can talk more about this like what's the we're still having a lot of trouble with that like uh we're if anything we're going in the opposite direction. These games are are getting longer to make and um budgets are ballooning.
Yeah.
And uh
the lifespan of the game developer is already short. So I I I do see like the as as things as industry grows as as uh there's more and more new blood that that that are aheads of these projects

um which also means the veterans are are vastly leaving right so with games projects being long 8 to 10 years with the short lifespan of a game developer there's not a lot of experienced people making these 8 to 10 year projects right If you really think about it, um, a person might have that opportunity in a director level maybe twice, right?
Like how many times can they really do it to say that they've done this a long time? Uh, and I think part of that is attributing to a lot of AAA failures lately. It's just uh either very buggy or uh just overall impression of AAA hasn't been good uh in in in the eyes of uh gamers. Would love to hear your opinions on that. What what you're kind of feeling as a fan, but as also as a developer, what's going on where I don't I just don't feel like there's a lot of AAA games like hitting

that high mark consistently
like uh this past year. I'll just close it up on what I'm asking here is like Wukong was amazing.
You know, it had a a crazy myth, but gameplay many times. It's like we've seen this type of it's just very polished, right? It's nothing like revolutionary,
but the fact that it's very polished
is impressive enough, you know, and I was like, "All right, that's a really low bara polish, right? And that's enough to be like game of the year, right?" Um, but yeah, we see that once in a while, but not as much as before anymore. Would love to hear your your your your idea of that. Like Ubisoft right now, like for example, strings of bad games. It's just a string of bugs.
They have one more game. It feels like I keep seeing headlines of like the brink of collapse. And that's a huge
a huge company
company, right?
That's right.
Yeah. Would love to hear your your opinions. you know, it's I'm I'm writing a couple

notes to myself to like remember what I wanted.
Yeah. Yeah, I just rambled a bit, but
No, it's okay. Uh, but I um the first thing I'll say is like, you know, in talking about I think one of the other things that I have that I appreciate is I've always I've always said this, but it's coming more into focus over the over the years, which is like I'm probably like like 50% science, 50% creative, right? It's like I believe I'm very strongly torn between those things or maybe it's 5149 depending on the situation, right? Cuz something has to take precedent. But I I think to your point like in making games before we talk about the AAA games and like and failures and Ubisoft and like what's going on but I the most exciting times in game development in my opinion are like concept and pre-production because concept and pre-production are like we are throwing spaghetti against the wall like like every crazy like we sit around and we're like you know what again what if we could do the triple jump with the

backflip off the Well, can we even do that? Let's prototype it and find out, oh, it works. You know, it's not fun. We're not there yet cuz that's pre-production, but we can at least show that this is a plausible system that we can have in the game. Uh, I don't know that like people outside of game development real like realize or really think about like what games are because it's really just like a there's there's a lot more than just this, but it's a series of systems, right? And like what however there there's rules and you're a player and you're interacting within that rule set and that rule set is the game
then like the art is creating the world that you're in. The narrative is driving you forward in some way. You know there's varying levels of these things right there's not like a narrative in Bilatro but uh and the music like every other aspect of it. the effects like they are all in service of design, right? Because design is what you're doing and you need to be excited about doing that or whatever the motivation you want the player to have.
Yeah.
Um

I think like the AAA space, my my take on it is we've been through I well Destiny was kind of the in some ways the progenitor of this. Uh, it started kind of the live service game model. Obviously, there was WoW before that, right? There were MMOs. There were other games that MUDs back in the late 90s. So, there's there's lots of games that were doing Ultima Online, right?
Yeah.
Um, games that have been doing something like this, but
the it kind of shifted the industry. There were some other forces at play too, but this is one of them
to start chasing this, hey, games are risky. They cost a lot of money to make in the AAA space. So, let's just make a game that someone plays indefinitely. Minecraft was another big part of this even though, you know, it was a I mean that was an indie game with one person originally.
Um I that put a lot put a lot of pressure on public companies, meaning the game

companies to make like recurring revenue in a in a predictable way. I think what has happened because of that though is we've created a space where there's um there's a lot of there's too much competition. There is also the rise of everything else trying to dominate all of everybody's time whether it's your phone or your TV, you know, outside of games or just everything is like a uh time vampire. like it's like it's like I want I want you to sit here and I want to capture all of your attention. Yeah.
Uh so that's had a big impact on games as well especially when the games are trying to do that right everything's trying to do that you then are getting to a space where you have like Ubisoft right and Ubisoft I wrote actually wrote about this last week two weeks ago something like that I remember a few weeks ago where it was like Ubisoft was really innovative for a long time like it really did really

interesting stuff I would say through even probably like to Black Flag. I I it was fading at that point, but Black Flag was a really cool game that had Assassin's Creed in it for some reason,
right? But it was like this is a really fun game. Like the riding on the waves with your pirate ship and like getting in like storms and having the crew sing like that's chef's kiss design because it's something you didn't know you wanted, but you're like, man, this is awesome.
Yeah. Uh, and they could go back to like Rainbow 6 and like uh Ghost Recon and Splinter Cell and like all the Tom Clansancy stuff. Obviously, they there was there was a lot of interesting things happening there and felt like they were pushing the envelope in certain ways. And I think when we got to maybe The Division and um Oh, what's the game that I can never remember? What's the game where you're like a hacker?
Uh, Watchd Dogs.
Thank you. I can never remember the name of that game, but you get to like Watchd Dogs and stuff. They started just adopt

this like Far Cry is another great one that they did some great
Far Cry,
but it just started Yeah. But they just turned into like, oh, everything's just going to be an open world and everything's going to be kind of the same and we want to make everything for everybody instead of something for someone,
right?
And I I think that that was a big problem. And then they were chasing trends, right? Then they were like making a bunch of live service stuff. And outside of maybe uh Rainbow Six Siege, that didn't really work out very well. You know, the only other blip I think that was received well and like people liked was For Honor.
Um that was kind I mean that was you know the what was it? Um
Deadliest Warrior the the game kind of or whatever it is like someone's like this is a great show we should make a game out of it.
Yeah. Yeah. Uh, but I think that that like that's infected a lot of the industry and it it was always there, right? Like when Call of Duty got really big after Modern Warfare, I mean it had been big before, but Modern Warfare really took off like everybody wanted multiplayer and you and I know this like on Bioshock 2. Yeah.

There was a push like and you know one of our friends led that team uh who's a amazing designer and a great person
but the multi like Bioshock didn't need multiplayer. Like nobody bought Bioshock saying this is a great story. You know it would make it better if we could have multiplayer. It's like no, but you know, the company wanted to make sure that it had multiplayer because it wanted the back of the box bullet point to try to sell more units. So, it's not like a new thing. It's just that because the business model has changed in some ways, not always, not fluidly or fluently, but um that has caused a shift in I think how the AAA gaming exists. I'll say the second thing here, which is you can look at a game like I mean two games over the past couple years. There's been there's been a several actually really good. You said Wukong. I didn't actually play Wukong, but I know it's good, but you're talking about it's just like, hey, this is very polished, but a game like um Balders's Gate 3 last year 2023 and like

Astrobot in 2024, I mean, Larian's a big studio. They did they did something that most like that AAA outside of like an independent studio would wouldn't do which is go into early access but it allowed them to make the best CRPG ever made which is a crazy thing to say when you think back to like Plscape Tournament or the original Balders's Gates or Never Winter Nights or whatever, right? they re they they and the systems to go back to that that they created in that game like I mean it's it's there's no truer representation of D and D outside of playing the actual game than that game like anything you think of you can do. I have no idea how they designed that game
like through early access.
Right. Right. Right.
Then you go to another game like Astrobot and Astrobot is I mean that's it's one of the few games I've actually platinum. It's a such a delight to play that game. It's so fun.
Yeah.
And it's just like you can It was like 60 people I think was the team. It's

like some leftovers maybe from uh Japan team but team right in Japan.
But man, like what a great game. They took something that should not have seemed like it would work and made it work.
So I I to kind of summarize this, I think that AAA has gotten very complacent and very worried about, you know, having to make a ton of money on every game. Um, which I understand from the pressure of like Wall Street, but it doesn't make for good games. You're not they're not making the Splinter Cells anymore. They're not taking the chance to try like Assassin's Creed or something, you know, the beginning of that.
Yeah.
When that came out.
Yeah, it's definitely um playing too safe and stale right now. And uh
I mean our industry has always have always a new trend have always kind of birthed itself in the indie community, you know, smaller teams and then the bigger studios kind of copy that and and run away with it a lot of times. And I'm I'm seeing that happening soon again.

Like, you know, we have the battle royale that are still they're they're fizzling out and you know um like I this past year alone I've heard so many just war zone fatigue. Um
yeah,
uh I know there's the other giants as well like Apex Legends and Fortnite of course, right? But they they are fading. Like it does feel like uh not a lot of people are playing those games as much. I I I kind of just peak at what my kid's doing. He's a teenager now.
And uh
you know, he's all about Marvel Rivals and that's what everyone's playing right now.
Yeah.
Uh but even that that's it's the Payload. It's Overwatch 2, right? With the new skin. It's like it's not new. It's somehow because Marvel because of Marvel licensing.
Uh it's exciting again, right? And um and and that's not it's not so unfamiliar for for trends to be cyclical, right? Um it does take a lot

of resource to come up with something actually new.
Uh
that's why I was so excited about Fall Guys when uh during the pandemic. Uh it was actually very different, very fun. It was uh I mean the timing of it was perfect. Everybody was in their home and they wanted to connect and it's a fun way to laugh with your friends. So it really hit the mark. Uh but that that what that was a trend that I was happily you know behind because it was a small team became a major hit
and everybody I knew was playing and laughing about it or and whatever and then Epic bought it and in my opinion he killed it. Like I know they're trying to do something with UFN with it. All right. Yeah. I don't I don't really care. It's just it's just it just feels tainted and that's what feels because a large part of that team got laid off as part of the acquisition which made it even sadder.
They kept a few uh but they just

integrated into their Fortnite mega system. Uh which I I have a lot of opinions on that.
I could see that.
I'll just say this, right? I'll just say this. And Drew, you know, I I don't want you to say things that will hurt your chances, but I'll say it, right? I'll say this. I say this many times, right?
I am not okay with the UEFN ecosystem that they're doing. Like it feels like a open platform for ripping off games
and not paying people for it.
And uh I see so many branded licensing like people just straight up put Spider-Man on there. Uh like I know like uh a recent example is body cam, you know, someone took like realistic environment and did that like police cam, right? That became a trend
and it it went viral, you know, when the team uh announced it, but then it was quickly copied, you know, on Steam. Someone else did it and someone thought that was the game and but it wasn't because they pre-released it earlier

than the original developers. But someone else just duped that in UF UEFN and that got popular. I was like, dude, this is like the early days of the app store on the iOS, right? People as soon as Flappy Birds got popular, someone, you know, there was a thousand copies of it. And I was like, I don't think this is good for G. Games already have an IP problem
where everybody just feels like there are no repercussions for copying game ideas.
Yeah.
Which is insane, right? I I feel like we're still unprotected, but for someone like Epic to promote that in a way, right, and not have any repercussion, not taking down like Squid Games, right? Squid Games season 2 came out and UFN, there's like this popular Squid Game copy. It just looks exactly like sponsored by Netflix, you know, doing fine, nothing happening. I was like, there's no policing. I was like, I don't think this is
this can't be the future. This is bad.

Uh, so as soon as I make something original on Steam, I'll see it on UFN. You know, see no backlash. I don't know about that.
It's I mean, it's it that's a that's an interesting topic. And yeah, it's there there's I'll take a an a devil's advocate take on that. Not because I agree or disagree with it, just cuz that's the kind of the person I am. But, you know, the number one, imitation is the biggest form of flattery.
Yeah.
Like, if you're getting people imitating, that means you've done something right because people are like, "Oh, they like we really like this." But, I think, yeah, it's it's definitely frustrating if you come up with an idea and you put that out and you make you put a lot of time and effort because it
it's difficult to make games like it's uh like and that's that's another thing that I think uh people don't realize outside of the industry they think it's pretty easy and if you go into like I haven't used UFN

so I can't speak to the UFN but let's say you go into that or Roblox or something and and you create a copy of something okay you can do that because you can take the systems and build around to like make whatever you want but you're not like hatching that thing right you're not like like putting all the care and time into it to figure out all the things that you have to to make that work. I'm also not suggesting that creators don't have to do any work that are doing that stuff, right? They do, but it's the it's the understanding why this thing works and this thing doesn't work and how those systems fit together. I have a similar take on like and I think this is another thing I wrote about recently like but on AI
uh where it's like
I don't see AI replacing like game development as a thing like when I say like replacing game developers because at the end of the day like what drives development and what makes it really interesting is creativity and what creativity is right is taking two disperate ideas and combining them in a way people haven't seen before
uh or you haven't seen before right

someone in the world there's a lot of people in the world someone might have thought of it.
Yeah.
But basically like I don't know. Um
but that's what drives game development, right? You need that and and you to to make everything work together, you need people to understand like how how these things work. Like it's it's that there was a great video a long time ago. I don't know with like Miiamoto and maybe it was IA like I might even be wrong about this. It might have been two other people, but I think I think it was Miyamoto at least. And they were talking about Mario, 8-bit Mario, right? And they were saying like, you know, they had made I don't know if it was the I think it was Donkey Kong, like maybe maybe they were talking about this, but you know, if you run and jump in Donkey Kong, you just land and stop.
And one of the things they added to uh Super Mario Brothers was if you run and stop, Mario slides, right? He slides like just a little bit. But it that like tiny decision in that game which is like

Mario now, right, is not a complex game. Like there's not a lot of I would say like verb like character evolution over the course of the game. You can do basically the same things. You can shoot fireballs, you can jump, you can land on things, right? And that's the the levels get harder, but your actions are basically the same. Uh but that little addition from the mind of you know Miiamoto at the time or who whichever designer had thought about it was brilliant because it change it gives Mario weight like it makes him feel like makes motion feel important and that's I don't see like if you're not thinking like deeply about like how you're making games. It's hard to think about like those those are the moments where it becomes different. It's not just the same, right? And if if you talk again, I didn't play Wukong and I'm not trashing Wukong at all. Um, but if you say like, "Oh, I've seen this before and it's very polished, but you need that like extra step like and you want to take what people are

familiar with. That can be a shooter, it can be a platformer, it can be whatever type of game, a puzzle game, whatever it is, and you want to push it that extra like 10 to 20%." some place that people aren't expecting. And it's those little decisions that I think are really the most crucial, the most interesting. And they come out of like going back to like that concept and to generally like that concept and pre-production time, right? Because that's where you're like spending the time to really look at this stuff. I know it's a little off of UFN, but what I'm really talking about here is like that's what you spend time when you're creating a game or a game genre or like or adjusting a game genre. like those are the decisions that people are making and yeah it gets copied it ends up somewhere else but ideally like the identifiable things are always there for the game you're working on because it's those like I don't know that if I don't know that people notice those things right like you really have to be focused

to notice like it takes uh two seconds to swing a sword in like in most swords like a light sword in in a Dark Souls game but it takes 4 seconds to swing a heavy sword.
Mhm.
That matters. Like that time matters because that has a a major impact on how you play the game, right? And what your actions are in the game. Uh it's like five, it was 4 seconds to load up a sniper rifle in uh in Team Fortress. I knew this really well because I played sniper non-competitively. I played scout when I was playing competitively, but non-competitively, I would sit there and I would count because I was like, "How long until my sniper rifle's ready? So, I'm going to pop out, shoot, hide, count to four, pop out, shoot again, right? Because I don't I I don't want to get hit in the meantime. But it's like that's a decision. That's a design decision, and that matters. And like those are the little things that make games truly great. And I think separate even like the copied stuff from like the originals. It's like a paint stroke in

like a beautiful painting or something, right? It's like, oh, this is an upstroke or a downstroke. And like you can see the way the brush like hit the It's like the people that are paying attention see that and recognize that.
Yeah. Yeah. There's such a obviously we we both have deep appreciation of creators and um just the the games u even if it's in the end not the final vision of the creator. We appreciate the effort and just seeing it through the finish line, knowing how uh torturous the process can be just shipping a game.
And um I think my my frustration is just it just goes back to like in a time like this like um I I feel developers still have a hard time really banding together.
Yeah. as a group uh like the industry is going

through the craziest moment ever and it feels extended. I I think just yesterday not just Ubisoft but like uh another big company just did like a huge round of layout.
Uh it was Boware.
Boware, right? Oh yeah, for the Dragon Age group, right?
Yeah. Um, and uh, yeah, I mean, Dragon Age, I think the I saw the headline, Dragon, the last of Dragon Ages did not do well at all. So, I think it's that team primarily being being impacted.
Um, but even then, like, wow, man, this is non-stop. Like, how how much more can we really take?
Uh, because there's a lot of people still waiting, you know, for this to blow over, right? And uh
and I know friends designers especially are are in UFN just keeping busy but then these these resources are like well you know if you have any inkling of a

good idea it's going to be duplicated you know without uh and I was like man is that the best way to do things right now. I I was just hoping that by this time we would have you know we we've been in the industry for so long 2025. I just I was just just hoping that we had like a better avenue now for for developers to just create freely without fear of being um replicated in in such an easy way.
Yeah.
Um
but I I do recognize like modding communities all this yeah are great. you know, this UFN is part of the um user generated created content community that is growing. I get it. Um, you know, I would even say like I'm I'm surprised that PlayStation isn't releasing Dream on PC. Like I think that's a missed opportunity. I mean, they to me were like kind of the original

uh like I've seen projects come out of that that's like legitimately insane.
Yeah.
Just using a controller input to make it, right? And I was like, "What? How long did this take?"
Um,
yeah, that's mindboggling, right? Sometimes you see that and you're like, "How long did you spend on this?"
Yeah. Just just joysticks, right?
Um, and especially with, you know, school programs are are uh are lessening in my opinion. Like in terms of game art focus, it's actually shrinking from what I've seen. Um, cuz I think the heyday was 2015 maybe where like every school had a game art program. Like I know in the Bay there was like multiple colleges uh that that were teaching like I I taught with at many of them and uh that's not happening as much and I would love to kind of hear because you you've been around students you've been around younger developers. Um I feel like they're kind of uh kind

of being lost in the folds right now of like well doesn't sound like I should graduate now. doesn't sound like it's even worth uh going to school right now because it's still the industry itself is going through something. I know for a fact remote uh have have had an effect. Not a lot of studios are looking for juniors as much is just that
the mentorship alone is difficult. uh the discipline of being able to self-manage uh at at such an early stage of your career is kind of
is a lot to ask uh for someone in their early 20s, right? is like what I know um from sound like dinosaurs now from working in the office you know uh that senior junior relationship was kind of uh foundational to this the culture and how can you replicate that on on on Zoom you know so would love to kind of hear your thoughts about that
yeah that's that's an interesting topic

because one like I think to like I don't close out maybe is the long term, but you know, to kind of like at least put a pin in it for now. Um, I think you you were I was going to bring up the mod thing because modding's always been there, right? And like that was Blizzard always allowed in the past like you could just go into the editor and start making I mean Dota, right? Dota came out of uh Warcraft 3 and that was just someone modding and saying, "What if we just had heroes fighting each other?" Tower Defense, too, right? Tower Defense came out of that which nobody plays anymore, but was a genre for a little bit. Um, but I think like the the the question for like those created games is like, okay, you a lot of people are going to take and copy and do the same thing and it'll be okay like and it'll get play and maybe someone will do a good job of it and maybe that'll be good because maybe that's their foray into becoming like designers, artists, like engineers, whatever, right? Like those things and

really starting to get that exposure. So that's the positive side I think. Um I would say um in terms of like and and it's and it's a good potential like jumping off point for let's just say junior artists or some other place, right? It's not it's not what you're talking about, but like they can do stuff and iterate quickly and kind of put things out, you know, either fully fleshed out or not fleshed out and get response right away. Um it's different. That's very different than like the past. You know, the modding community was existed but was relatively small. I don't know how big the creator community is. I'm not sure.
Uh in ter but I would say like in terms of the kind of mentorship programs and like junior people coming in into like studios and like learning from you know the more senior staff. Yeah, that's a loss. like it's and the pandemic I mean I think it's had farreaching effects

outside of just that like to like things unrelated to games right like a lot of kids were home from school which was a problem and
that's affected them in certain ways and like learning but it's it's related because it's all learning right it's like that you get that knowledge from tagging yourself to someone senior on your team or another team that's kind of looking out for you and helping you along doesn't happen to everybody not always there, right? Uh but I think the industry does itself a disservice by not one making sure they're bringing in fresh people.
Yeah.
Because I could think back to like if I go back to my start, right? Again, not in dev at that time. Um, like I was just a really passionate I mean I still am but I was a very passionate player who had a lot of opinions like like you should and but like really loved games, right? And again still do

and someone took a chance and said like we're going to bring this person in. And I did like I think I had several people that throughout uh Take 2, 2K, Bungie, um like those companies specifically, right? Like in dev uh that were great and like really were like um instrumental in shaping me. I have my own opinions as I just said like I always have. Uh but like you I got opportunities because of that. That's the other thing like like being in in that space being young being in the space where you're working directly with you know more senior people like helps present opportunities to you like opportunities to learn new things opportunities to in my case not normal I think for the industry as a whole but for me to switch roles multiple times right
I from going

uh from starting in like again like channel like in the on the label side or not like the parent company side to then going to publishing to then going to dev. Um, I mean those are pretty big shifts, but that those opportunities from being in the office, from having people that were senior and having people like look out and take chances, I think have made me wellrounded, right? and how I think about games because I can I can look at it holistically and I can think about like everything from like the individual systems and design and how like you know the arts driving the story forward and what the narrative is and what the beats are and what the beats are of the game you're making you know in general two like what does this look like on the street like what how do we present this to people like how what are the right ways to do this who's the audience like th those kinds of things
uh I I I I and I was I'm only saying

this to think about like how someone junior can come in and get like those opportunities. So I I think the industry needs to make sure that it's always bringing younger people in and taking care of them and fostering uh those relationships and and whether it's if it's I think it just has to be a a studio mandate.
Yeah.
Like a studio culture.
Yeah. to if you're remote to make sure that you're everything's inclusive. And what I mean by that is like you're asking people what they think and you're letting people talk and to make sure that you are um giving them the the most opportunity you can so they can grow and learn. Let them make mistakes, too.
Yeah. I I think it's such an important, like you said, important part of the studio culture. Yeah. It it almost feels like there needs to be a mandate for a percentage of team to be young juniors. Um I think our industry have been

thriving because of that reason. Like we're always evolving. We're relatively new compared to other industries and uh if anything is telling about the AAA space, it's like we're getting stale on ideas, man.
Right.
Yeah. And
but you but you look at the but you look at the indie space and it's rife with like great stuff.
New things going on. Yeah.
I just I just played um I started playing it a couple years ago and I won't go through the whole whole of this but like uh and I started I picked it up again because I I needed something to write about and I was like I was started writing about this two years ago. I should write about it now. Uh but I played Inscription and Inscription like you know it's a couple years old now but like that is a brilliant game like it is does it presents itself as one thing. It's not that thing. it changes like it's like like an escape room aspect to it. Plus, it's like it looks like it's a rog light game, but it's not really. Uh that's just kind of an illusion. And the theme changes and like it's just a what

an interesting uh what an interesting game to to create. Or like Tactical Breach Wizards, which was like it sounds like a name that came out of a random video game name generator.
Yeah.
Like you're like what? You're like, but they put that game together and you're like, this is awesome. Like you took XCOM
and like Grim Fandango, like the humor like in Grim Fandango and somehow you made those things work
uh and probably for a reasonable budget and made a really good game. Yeah, it's it's such a it's part of our DNA um to to always have a balance of young foster young talent
and experienced game developers to kind of finish the product
and um I don't know I don't know if anyone's out there thinking about this the long-term ratification of just asking that part of the game uh developing culture essentially like we're talking about like We're in 2025, pandemic 2020.

That's five years of this. Um I know a lot of students that have just they're not even in line anymore or in the back of the line. We have like directors, creative directors,
right?
You know, leads that are looking for jobs right now, right? No one is considering juniors at this point, right? Um
and it probably will be like the next two years, it feels like. Um, as this get extended, as we're hearing Ubisoft, they're most likely going to get bought up. Obviously, they have great IPs, right? But their identity is definitely changing and how they do things and through any buyout, it's going to be a huge, you know, layoff. Um, I I I I have high hopes. you know, like like you when we're talking to all our friends in network and games are always going to be around, right? This is a slump period

and um there will be a rebound. Um so I'm I'm just trying to like understand what that mean. Looking at 2027, it's like when things kind of get back on track.
Um
I don't know. Like it's really hard to tell. I I thought the worst uh everyone was saying survive until 2025. Well, here we are, right? Keep hearing layoffs though. Um I guess my my question to you is like what advice can you give to aspiring students to aspiring aspiring game developers, right? just the the new kids that are coming in the industry just waiting their turn uh to navigate in this kind of remote only world now it feels like
I I think I think there's probably a few

things one it's like if this is your calling
like if you if this is what you want to do then don't give up like and that's and part of life like and especially being young part of life is like it's hard like and things We we may have been through I mean we certainly were in games for a little bit like in like 2020 2019 2018 17 maybe you know whatever in this period of where like there's just uh so much abundance and it created like a false sense of confidence I think in everybody um and like you have you have to have the the grit and the fortitude to get through stuff like this because this this is the opposite and it hurts it hurts me like it hurts uh people that you and I both know. Um it's it's been rough. Like it's I last year was a particularly rough year for me personally. And I'm not trying to personalize this, but I'm like I feel it. But I'm not doing anything else.

Like this is it. Like and I I don't plan I don't plan to ever retire. I don't plan to stop doing it. Like I will just continue doing it for the rest of my life because I care that much about it. And I think if you feel that way coming in here, if you feel excited, like it drives you and you want to create stuff, then one, don't give up. Two, keep creating. Like, find ways to build stuff, find projects to work on. Even if you're doing stuff for free, right? It's it's the mod. It's I'm not This is not UFN or anything like that. I don't actually mean that. But I'm like, it is the mod community of the past. It's like the people that are just working tirelessly because it's like I hey I got this thing I got to get it out right I got I want to make it I want to try this. It's like keep practicing your craft. And then I would say don't be above doing other things in games, right? There's a lot of like it's not just maybe the job that you want again like I the job I took initially which I'm very thankful for was not what I

would have if I had my choice if someone had come to me and said would you like to work you know in channel which still I don't think even exists anymore but like I would have been like no
uh but it was an amazing experience and it helped make me a better developer at the end of the day and I I think that that's something you shouldn't lose sight of like if you can intern somewhere where if you can clean toilets, like just get in, just find a way. Don't doesn't have to be the perfect job because again, you're not the the age of abundance is not upon us in games right now. So, be willing to, you know, sacrifice to get where you want to be because there will be ways if you're if you're dedicated to it.
Sweet. Uh I think that's the best way to end this hour of podcasting. Uh, I will say this. Uh, this is the end of the hour. Uh, this is the part where I shut up, hand the mic over to you, Drew, to tell the good people out there how to find you, how to

fur the conversate with you. Take it away.
Uh, it's really funny. I was so tempted to like grab the microphone and then just be like speaking in like a baritone voice like inside. Um, yeah. So, uh, I'm not I'm not huge on social media. I I mostly stay off of it. Uh, however, I I do write a column, like a newsletter about game development, design, art, multiple topics, like and some game break things down. That's every two weeks. Uh, you can that's on Substack. Um, I can maybe send it to you and link to it or something like that. Um, same with Medium. Uh, it's also on LinkedIn. If you have questions, you can reach out to me like through LinkedIn. Any anyone's free to do this. Um, I always want to talk to people uh and help them because I feel like I was given that opportunity, you know, just from being persistent back in the day and I always want to pay that uh forward to others.

Um, and you know, that's those are really the main ways to to get in touch with me. Um, yeah. Well, that's I think that's it.
All right. You can see pictures of my kids sometimes on Instagram, but I don't
find find his kids on Instagram, guys.
Uh, all the links will be in the episode description below. Uh, thank you, Drew, for coming on, sharing your wisdom. It's great always touching base with you. Uh, I'll probably be in San Francisco for GDC, so we definitely need to like touch base. Uh, but uh, thank you. See you guys next week. [Music] [Music]