The Halo Effect, 3x Gaming Entrepreneur Alex Seropian

my brother-in-law was at a company that made commercials video production I went over to his Studio I put on a freaking tie and I did a YouTube video basically you know I was like hey I'm Alex and I'm a programmer I made this video game and I'm gonna blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah I'm looking to raise some money to and I gave my gave it to my dad and said hey show this to all your friends and I think I raised probably 10K wow enough to do one printing run of cardboard boxes and then we we you know I I wrote a program that would like you know automatically cut you know take it Take a Load diskettes into the computer you know and and copy them and we we you know shrink wrap stuff in my basement and it was yeah it was totally bootstrap welcome to the gaming Founders podcast a show where we interview the founders that have shaped the gaming industry I'm Eden Chen the CEO of pragma a back-end

game engine founded by engineering leaders that built the platforms for some of the largest live service games like League Legends fortnite Destiny 2 and plants for zombies 2. pragma power services like accounts matchmaking and player data for the world's most ambitious live service games and I'm Kevin Zane partner at upfront Ventures we're a venture capital firm based in LA and San Francisco I lead game Investments both in studios as well as the pick and shovel tools that power game developers and content creators to do their best work including pragma we interview Founders on their origin Stories the tactics that help them survive and thrive and key lessons for anyone interested in building the next generation of leading gaming companies learn more And subscribe today at pragma.gg gaming founders [Music] welcome listeners today's episode is with Alex seropian three times gaming founder behind Bungie wide load and Industrial toys from putting Xbox on the

map with Halo to focusing on mobile Shooters before most mobile Gamers can be hardcore Alex has been at the Forefront of each PC console and mobile wave in a rare feat Alex also successfully exited each of those companies to Microsoft Disney and EA respectively listen in to hear how he built then evolved each startup to the vastly different cultures at these three large gaming incumbents well welcome to the gaming Founders podcast Alex it's awesome to have you here we've known each other for a few years but it's also been a while since we've last caught up so excited to hear about everything that's been going on was was your latest Adventure at industrial toys and EA but maybe before jumping into that you know you're found in multiple gaming companies how did you get into games to begin with well first off Kevin great to see you thanks for uh thanks for having me it's great great to chat with you and Eden today um well

let's see I you know my first exposure to video games was back in the 80s when my dad brought home an Atari 2600 in fact it wasn't it wasn't actually an Atari 2600 it was the Sears telegames which was like the generic knockoff it was like the Rebrand they took the Atari must have done some deal with Sears I don't know if anybody remembers Sears used to be a really big store yes and uh is there ah yeah it's just like the logo yeah yeah yeah the what the one in like where I'm from in Chicago is uh is gone it's like it's just an empty lot now but anyways he brought home the Sears telegames it was Atari 2600 my neighbor down the block had the the intellivision which was like the Rival unit you know to be like my games are better than yours no but the television we had way better games but uh I love the 2600 I still have a box of I don't know probably three dozen cards it's like

what I spent my you know like parents would give me some money to go get lunch or whatever and I keep the change that's what I spent all of that change on was Atari carts that and in our where I grew up was this little town in New York called Ardsley and it uh had a really small little downtown which was about two miles from my house I would walk down to the center of Ardsley to a store called Big Top which is like a little toy store and they had two stand up arcade which would rotate out like every so often so uh Defender was in there I remember Space Invaders being in their Defender being in there and a couple other sort of like side side scrolling Shooters you know like that and those were really my my my intro to games and we would go down to uh Yonkers to White Plains you know to Yonkers to Nathan's Hot Dogs where they had a huge arcade and in the late 80s like when I was in high school man pole position do you remember that was an Atari game too they

had like the sit they had the sit-down cabinet with like the eight eight seats and you could use seats they were networked that simple it was four or eight but it was a bunch you know as they were networked and you would race you know AI Cars Plus you know and those were and those were expensive I think those those might have been like a dollar per play you know but that was so cool so cool so that was my exposure to it and then the first time I ever saw a computer was in sixth grade our Middle School had Commodore Peg computers with the they were color right one color green the green phosphorus monitors I'll just text and uh you know the upper the older kids were writing basic and uh you know so I was like I would read because you know you it was all just there I'd read their code very intrigued by it so you're a soft top programmer then yeah that's it that's when I started teaching myself how to code how quickly did you make

that transition from coding to saying I want to make games for a living well let's see from coding to I want to make games about like 30 seconds right because that's what that's like you know I looking at that code on the Commodore pet and like I saw somebody playing so like it was it was like one of those Canyon diver games and it was all ASCII right so it's got like two walls which are just X's you know streaming down the screen and then you've got like a little the little thing in the the v in the middle that you're trying to avoid the walls it's like oh I I could do that and it started figuring out how to write the code for that doing it for a living I don't know you know it's like I the other thing that I was really into was like business so those two things and business I didn't call it business I was like you know I was going door to door selling popsicles in the summer you know when my dad got that our first computer at home we had a it was a Mac it was this Mac and uh we had uh yeah we had an image writer an apple imitator printer and you could get a printhead for that

thing that would print on cloth so I got I got that and I started making t-shirts and so I would I would go around handing out a little Flyers like hey you've sent me a picture I'll put it on a t-shirt for you and that was um I loved that kind of thing when I was in college I would take my chemistry notes and I would put them in quarkxpress on the Mac I would format them and I would sell them you know I was like basically going around saying hey don't go to class lecture at 7 30 in the morning it's too early I'll go you just buy the notes so those two things kind of like were the that was where my passions intersected was you know the it like writing code is like just an incredible uh way to express and to build because you can you can try stuff and iterate so quickly it's you know software is so unforgiving and forgiving that way you know and it's it's such a great creative expression and then when you do that in the context of a game where it's it's

can be beautiful and and there's it's artistic and it brings together you know you know graphics and sound and this wonderful thing we call gameplay it really is uh very satisfying you know if if uh if you're into it that's what I found really cool about making games that's amazing so then how did how did the idea for Bungie come about were you working on it was was other people or did you think about co-founders or you just decided to start making and selling games I would say one of the things I really had going for me is I didn't know anything so it I it was but you don't when you don't know like what's possible sometimes it it empowers you to try things that that maybe are you know over your skis a little bit and so when I was in high school me and my brother were like let's make a game for this Mac we're gonna make a football game this was before Madden and that was when I started learning you know the how to do

user interfaces graphical user interfaces and uh programming in c this is before C plus plus really sort of and that didn't go too far you know we we did a few things but it didn't turn to anything but that was really when in my head I thought and we I had we had the name Bungie then now in my head that was hey this maybe this is a thing that I might want to do and then you know I went to college and I learned more programming taught myself more I took some classes and when I was getting out of college I I knew I wanted to do something with code and you know I I went interviewed it like Morgan Stanley had this really amazing tech tech program back then where you can get into technical finance and you know like Arthur Anderson in the in the the Consulting companies were sort of like the place to go if you had like a engineering background and uh I like I didn't want to take I didn't want to get a job I didn't want to have a boss I still don't want to get a job I still don't want to have a pause

but but I thought you know hey I'm gonna try making a game and I'm gonna try launching it and you know I the things that I had been playing were you know I had a Mac I've been playing games on the Mac there weren't a ton but there was one company that um I followed which was making you know they were putting out games it just they had a portfolio and I can't even I remember the name of the guy who started it Daryl Peck and I can't remember the name of his company but it was very inspiring to me the whole idea of doing that whole like the whole thing like making the game packaging it marketing it putting it in a box and and that's that was my vision my naive Vision was that I could do all that stuff and get distribution and all of this um and so that was senior year of college there was no strategy there was no strategy other than I could put some numbers on a spreadsheet I could if I make a game and I could sell this many units this is what the return could be and then I just got got to work trying to reverse engineer all those challenges

of like how do I make a game like this I who do I need I need artists you know how do I get distribution well I'm going to call it Distributors and ask them and it was probably luck that I had a Mac because on the PC side things were you know the companies that were doing that were a lot more mature um yeah more competitive more competitive on the Mac I could call it Mac warehouse and it said you got something we'll take it and that's how I got my first orders in the first couple of games that you know they didn't do so much but you know by the time we got to the third one and I had met Jason by then you know Jason was in one of my classes he was the guy who actually when the teacher said you can't run the software on your own computer because you need eight megabytes of ram Jason was the guy who raises haters oh I got it makes a ram no problem and I was like who's that guy and uh and that and so by the time we got to the third game we were making enough to hire people and and and that's when we started thinking about trying to be competitive with not just on the Mac

but with games in general where did the name Bungie come from I just said it's always been curious he said he had it in your head okay that's company lore that I'm I'm not able to disclose there is a story behind it but I'm not the one who's gonna tell it okay all right all right beer conversation all right we got yeah yeah I mean you call uh call it Yoshida and ask him because he paid three billion bucks he should know the secret by now that's right kept the name yeah yeah so then did you bootstrap bungee or were you did you raise any outside capital or publish your money like what was the environment like basically bootstrap check this out Kevin this is the this is awesome I've got I've got a trunk a trunk like a big case in my basement in Chicago that every once in a while I gotta open that thing up and like unpack because it's got all the all the from like founding Bunchy and in there are some VHS tapes and this is

how I bootstrap the company my brother-in-law was a had a company that made commercials video production I went over to his Studio I put on a freaking tie and I did a YouTube video basically you know I was like hey I am Alex and I'm a programmer I made this video game and I'm gonna blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah I'm looking to raise some money to and I gave my gave it to my dad and said hey show this to all your friends and I think I raised probably 10K wow enough to do one printing run one of cardboard boxes and don't don't tell anybody but the diskettes that we stuffed in those boxes came from my summer internship they're very free and easy with this get distribution then so that was and then we we you know I I wrote a program that would like you know automatically cut you know take it Take a Load diskettes into the computer you know and and copy them and we we you

know shrink wrap stuff in my basement and it was yeah it was totally bootstrap wow what was the landscape of like games back then who were the like Main players that you were really really interested in thinking about oh inline design I remembered the name of Daryl Peck's company it was called inline design they're really sort of a footnote in the gaming industry but um there was a Mac Mac Focus game publisher that and that really was my inspiration when when we started for like how to set up a publishing company but you know this was 1991 and it was really sort of early days uh in PC gaming it was it was like you know Wolfenstein I think was about to come out then you know as we were going uh we our first 3D game was Pathways into darkness which was you know it was two and a half D you know like a three three D walls basically orthogonal 3D walls with texture mapping on it and that was around when

Wolfenstein had come out Doom was coming out when we did marathon and uh you know Warcraft from blizzard was coming out when we did myth so even though we were on the Mac we we did intersect with our p our PC counterparts quite a bit I do remember I remember we had long discussions with GT interactive uh back in the Doom days about possible acquisition uh you know when we were doing marathon and same with I think it was Sierra then that owned I think Sierra was the owner of Blizzard back then and I do remember going meeting up with Alan Adam and you know the one of the blizzard Founders and um Ken and and Roberta Williams uh at Sierra about teaming up you know when when myth came out so it was like we were doing stuff I guess on the Mac side that was happening on the PC side as well but it was like it was in that I guess I would call it kind of like that Golden Era you know could Command and Conquer Red Alert that was like that was coming out

in those days like really influential pivotal classic games happening back then what was the team size like when you were working on marathon and into myth yeah Marathon was like a really small team it was probably about seven folks and you know we had we had a couple of Engineers uh a couple of designers you know I did I did all the audio myself um we had like I mean we were self-publishing too so maybe we had about 10 and we did we made some really rookie mistakes like we we would go one of the things so rookie mistakes I think we did some really cool stuff too like we really embraced community so we would we would be online to the extent that there was online but we would go to like the Mac Mac world trade shows and we would set up a booth and we would bring our our Early Access demo software there people would come and play it and we would take pre-orders you know and we would sort of like our own version of Early Access except we we weren't you

know we're still not good at estimating you know like you know we we would tell people you know hey when's it going to be done I just need a few more weeks you know and that that went on for for way longer than a few more weeks and and uh that that was a an early lesson about a managing customer expectations um especially in the software business but those kinds of community building things we we always did and obviously now it's like table Stakes but uh you know back back then it was a little unique to actually answer the phone or you know answer an email or show up in person or a you know a fan might be and I think that really helped pay dividends for us how did the idea for Halo come about and you know what led you ultimately to joining Microsoft and and that becoming kind of the hit it was obviously at the launch of Xbox well you know that was we started working on Halo probably I'm guessing it must have been

like 98. we had already done a few uh the whole like series of marathon games we did you know if you count the skus we did like four or five man we did a version of marathon for the Pippin I don't know if you know what the Pippin was no but Apple had done Apple did a deal with Bandai Namco to make a game console called the people it never released but um Marathon ran on it crazily enough but um uh after you know we had done myth and myth 2 was coming out and we had a studio in San Jose that was working on a game uh called Oni which we released with uh uh Rockstar and it alongside of that Jason started up a small team to work on new ideas which would eventually become Halo but the idea didn't originate as we know it to be now it originated as sort of the next gen version of our RTS game so you know myth was kind of kind of sort of like God view it had this cool 3D

terrain but the characters were Billboards that walked around and the idea was to really blow out the the engine so everything was 3D you could do some really cool stuff with the camera you could do cool stuff with with physics physics were a big part of the original myth you know and that's how it started and it started in a different a new universe a Sci-Fi feature you know universe and the the evolution from there was super iterative who put features and things into the engine want to see it closer I do remember when uh you know Charlie one of the engineers implemented the suspension on the the warthog which was you know on a strategy game map driving around and you'd really want to see it so you the camera closer and we had done a whole bunch of FPS games um and so when we started putting in multiplayer features that getting the camera closer we we just kind of tried it out and pivoted a

bit and everything and then it was the third person shooter and then it continued to evolve uh through play test and iteration to become first person and that the the first time you really took it out to show it was a very you know this was the first time anybody had seen like this so it was really impactful really cool demo of starting off in this in a room basically in first person running around and and seeing the the rendering features up close and then character runs outside into you know an environment that looks like Halo right with the skies and the water and and the trees and it's like oh inside outside is amazing and then they get into a vehicle and drive off headless wow but it it started as a strategy game fascinating I had no idea I'm thinking about just are there Reflections on your end on you know obviously you talked about some of these like legendary games like you know Command and Conquer and and Warcraft and I grew up playing those

games and then you know Halo was one of the most influential games for me and all my friends I mean it's their reflection on just like the the just crazy impact that you've had on the industry you know through through this title you know it's just it's it's crazy to think about now you know in retrospective me just processing that it is crazy I I'm just super lucky to have had the the opportunities that I've had uh and uh to have met the people that have met along the way I'll tell you the thing that is that continues to surprise me in a really nice way is I'll ha you know we'll hire somebody in the studio and they're you know they've been working in games and they will come and tell me that their first experience playing game like made them want to get into this industry was playing Halo and that's I think the you know the best the best compliment one could get and is is

super flattering and I think that's really cool I think we you know you are asking about how did the Microsoft deal come about and and how how did that turn into a successful partnership the way it did there was definitely an element of timing but I you know I think I think it's a common phrase something like there's no such thing as luck there's just good preparation and I think we were we were well prepared for an opportunity like that where Microsoft was building a console that was It was kind of based on a PC and and we were just pretty good at making games and content for a PC and and moving it to a console like the Xbox was well within our reach and they had figured out how to how to get this project at Microsoft's off the ground to build the hardware and they were you know very interested and aggressive about getting software because they I think they had figured out you know software is what's going to make this thing popular and uh and you know our path is intersected at the right points where we

were looking for you know we we had just maybe a year or 18 months ago we had done a we had done an equity distribution deal with take two interactive uh where we raced we raised some production financing out of that and and a distribution deal and we had three titles in production we knew Halo was was um Halo was working you know that that it was getting the kind of response that we wanted to get and we knew we needed a a big stage and we needed uh the support to be able to make it big and that was a big part of why we did the deal with Microsoft because it was the biggest stage we could foresee you know the launch of a new console the the investment to be a launch title and you know if we showed up with the right software the sky was the limit and you know it was it was not nowhere near a sure thing up until we released the game

there were lots of challenges and lots of doubts that we went to E3 maybe but E3 is in May and we came out and I thought would we launched in October so it was like six months before launch we had a horrible showing at E3 I mean we showed up game was running like in the low 20s FPA yes we had one map that was it's like our first map and it was kind of it's kind of cool but there wasn't too much there and the response was super meh like did you see Halo 83 yeah I saw it was it was okay it was kind of chuggy a little bit you know it was sort of the response and we're like I think that's right around where we we basically took those three teams that we had running and we brought them all together to to finish finish the game and it's really a testament testimony to the talent leadership that we had in the studio that that the the folks who were delivering on their features on their systems were able to get them to the Finish Line at quality so it was it was definitely no sure

thing but I think I think it was it was a really great opportunity that that we were able to execute against and that that's what what helped make it make it so big and were you guys kind of left alone to to run independently was in Microsoft for Halo 1 or did they were they able to help significantly in getting the game out when we were acquired it was after Microsoft had done a couple of Acquisitions before us and they had they had made some decisions that they wanted to back away from for instance they acquired a company called faza interactive faza was actually literally down the block from us in Chicago and when that team joined Microsoft they they didn't leave them intact alone they sort of integrated them into their existing structure so the artists there would end up reporting to an art lead and you know Engineers report to an engineering lead so it it was interruptive in terms of what their workflow and culture was like and you know when we got there we talked a lot

about how we were going to set things up and there were a couple of things that we did differently which I think had a lot of impact one was we kept the team structured the way it was so there was no we were you know nobody came in to help us run anything which which was good the other was that we built out our own space so when we got there they didn't have a concept of open work plan everybody was in an office in fact that was very much part of the cultures like every engineer has their own office they can focus close the door get to work and we operated it in this open environment which was you meant to drive collaboration meant to meant to expose information so that we could iterate quickly an engineer could see a designer or an artist implementing something and go I can make that easier for you and they could write some code to help improve the pipeline or or get visibility into what kind of content was coming up next so that they could be prepared to deliver their part of whatever you know all of that stuff is

pretty important to our workflow and and setting the studio up the way we did it was not how it would have happened if we didn't raise our hand and say we should do it this way and to Microsoft's credit I think they had they had uh they had taken the approach of well what you got must be working pretty well so okay go ahead do it the way you think it should be done that said they they did some very good things for us besides letting us you know sink or swim Microsoft's like QA and test and research uh it's excellent and that was uh it and it went beyond just traditional tests it included you know the support that we got from that group included things like you know build Automation and all sorts of things that would help us make our game better take some of the infrastructure off our hands and that was um I think that was super productive those are the kinds of Central Services that when done right can can accelerate

you know and team and then Halo was obviously a huge hit and then a bunch of sequels were made I'm curious you know maybe for Halo 2 did anything change kind of culturally or the relationship was Microsoft you know now that they've seen you have this huge hitter where you guys still largely left to to kind of run independently it was mostly independent but there was some you know when we did the first one it was to release with the release of the console so this is the first time that we ever had a deadline like a hard deadline like we'd never done a film Game we'd never you know so we really burned you know to achieve that like we we canceled two projects to put those people on this one thing we we busted him we worked weekends nights Etc like to make that happen and with Halo 2 you know that there was a lot of debate about how much new stuff should we do

how much it should this be new levels and content that go into the existing systems you know how important is the date there was a lot of debate about uh when it needed to be done by Etc so that it was you know the right words for but just like that that part of the relationship was not a foregone conclusion you know but the first one is like okay there's nothing for us to talk about we know what the objective here is and what the challenges are we just need to self-solve and but the second one there was there was a little bit more kind of thinking and negotiating around those things which but it added a little bit of stress at the beginning how did your uh role change over time obviously you and you and Jason were you know Founders and you know this is the podcast where we talk a lot about the founder stuff you know a lot of times there's drama between Founders and roles that are splitting off like what's your mindset as you guys are getting more successful is your main focus still game development are you

hiring and managing how is that kind of Shifting what's where's your like head at as as you continue to get more successful and grow my job changed quite a bit when we got to Microsoft and you know Jason was able to remain focused on building the best possible the game and software we were a studio within a publishing organization and the publishing organization had a lot of the functions that we Bungie had as an independent company the pr marketing distribution Finance HR all that kind of stuff that we had been managing ourselves were we were now integrating those things uh from uh Microsoft so a lot of my role shifted from I would call entrepreneurial duties where it's like okay there's lots of challenges here to figure out to set up these these parts of the business or to scale them and turn to well we we have we have a strategy and we have a goal I need to

manage and Marshal the the team that I have and the resources that I have around us to achieve those goals and that and that's just it's a different mindset and I'll tell you for me I mean it ended up being the reason why not the reason I I came back to Chicago I have a family but it definitely was part of my psyche I guess that the guy identify as that entrepreneur who wants to build the thing and you know a large part of that role was was no longer needed and so they for me it made it made the success was fantastic you know we would meet with the finance team you know every month and it was you know the the revenue side of the p l was like way above plan and you know we almost just stopped and went to go to lunch before we even looked at the cost side of the P analysis yeah what's the point but it was it was less about building and more about managing you know and uh I think for an entrepreneur you know I found our

entrepreneurs sometimes that's that's a difficult transition yeah that makes sense and at some point you decided to leave Bungie and I think Jason stuck around right what was that it was it kind of what you just mentioned in terms of just like you've been managing and ready to kind of do something new and get back to the entrepreneurial Roots yeah you know I also I sort of felt like I I needed a rest you know it's like is the only time in my career that I've ever taken a break you know I took three months off at when I came back to Chicago and we had our first our daughter was born and I was looking for a break and I was also thinking about my future I don't know if this is common with with entrepreneurs and Founders but I find if I if if I'm doing something where there's like there's a future that's defined like hey this is this is what you're going to be with the path that you're on I find it terrifying like I'm an optimist I'm a dreamer and I I am totally fine looking at a spectrum of

results as long as one of them is like you know climbing the mountain with the flag in Victory you know there's probably a hundred other ones laying in a ditch somewhere that's sort of the journey that I'm interested in it's like I would like to try and go do this thing because I think it could be meaningful I think it could be impactful I think it'll just be really cool I wanted I want to use this thing that I I'm going to attempt to build but to like be on a set path that has a set destination which is sort of in the middle I'll tell you that's why I left Disney because I was in I was in a conference room in a meeting where you know we were talking about strategy and I was listening to somebody who had been at the company for 20 five years give their opinion and it was a middle of the road like non-controversial opinion with if and in that moment I looked and I went I guess if I'm gonna build a career here that's how I have to do it and it really scared me off so I can't remember I can't

remember what oh the question was really like so when I did when I did what was sort of it like then when you know I I honestly I felt like we had knocked it out of the park the team was like doing great I you know my my role was less about securing the future and and figuring everything out I this is a good time take a break let's go start a family and then we'll we'll tuck into what's next yeah that makes a lot of sense I mean I feel like as if I'm a multi-time Founder as well and um not nowhere near the success that you've had but you know I feel like even for me I tie so much of my identity to my work um my company and you know I see a lot of Founders that try transition into different roles uh you know whether it be chairman or they're just not involved in their company anymore it was that hard sort of separating yourself from you're the company that you started and yeah obviously you retired and you were looking for a break but did you kind of

look back and have regret or was it like okay I'm ready for the next thing no regret I mean I don't know they just they just cashed a three billion dollar check that that would be like um I uh I've met a lot of my foundational friends in this industry through that whole experience and I'm still friends with with uh with them and and to me you know somebody somebody on a couple of occasions I've heard somebody say either about a thing or to me like hey it's not it's business it's not personal and it has always kind of rubbed me the wrong way you know because I mean I understand like oh we have to think about the greater good of this whole organization more than an individual I understand that but like the idea that this business we're in making video games is anything but personal is I you know I don't know I don't agree with it

because like that's you walk into a game Studio that's all that is there are people and the creative and the the cool stuff that comes out of it is all based on those relationships so I sort of feel like this business is entirely personal so yeah I don't I mean I I love the journey that I've taken I it's given it's afforded me the opportunity to you know have have a family and to have you know a personal identity that's not you know a company and yeah so it's been it's been really interesting the like I said I've been I've been very lucky to to have gotten opportunities to do various things my like my the time I spent at Disney was a huge learning experience um what a great company I was gonna ask you about that so much interesting stuff yeah what was the I mean Disney has sort of gotten deep into games out of games deep into games I mean they've done sort of back and forth multiple times so during the era when you know you you were with wide load and

you joined Disney you know sold it to like what was that time like at Disney and what were you guys working towards Disney is a very fascinating company it's amazing like after I was there for just a few months I reflected on the fact that like at my Microsoft you know we were this game team right and if you look around at all the other business units and all the other teams there is definitely a lot of Excellence at Microsoft but at the time it was oh okay there's the Excel team over there and a Windows team over here like when you're you're at Disney and you look around you know that there's Excellence everywhere and it's like oh there's Pixar huh oh there's there's the guys that made uh Phineas and Ferb huh oh look there's Disney World like everything is like is top of its game in entertainment and it's just super inspiring like just

going going up to Pixar and see how they do stuff it's like incredibly inspiring but when I when I got there um you know it was at the height of Disney's you know investment of building a vertical gaming Enterprise they were they had multiple Studios there was 750 folks in you're in the org it was had been doing well and it was trying to scale to to sort of own their uh be a whole vertically integrated publisher and you know but the role that I came in was basically Chief creative and it was I was a kid in a candy store man like I had an office up on the on the Loft overlooking the the whole operation and I had the keys to the Vault I was spinning up you know I had I had a Space Mountain game I was trying to sign with gearbox I had I had signed Iron Man with Avalanche Studios the guys that did just cause I it was just Black Widow with Platinum Games it's like come on are you kidding me right this is amazing and I think the challenge I think the

challenge for for Disney getting into games that way is that it's it it's hard I mean and it's expensive and above where the games business ended which at the Graham Hopper there was no muscle memory there were no scars no wins in the game business um so the idea that something could take you know three or four years or you might have to you might have to chase the 25 million dollar investment with another 20 to get to Great was not really a it wasn't a thing so in terms of sort of executive sponsorship and confidence to to sort of really execute on that scale it was a it was a challenge and you know maybe not all the teams were capable of getting there as well so so you know when I got there it was like you know it was the day they announced the Marvel acquisition it I mean it was literally like that anything is possible

and then a lot of things started to change uh you know free to play but just had just started coming and mobile just started you know happening some of the larger bets uh that Disney had placed um in the Years prior uh we you know were taking longer to come to fruition Etc and and ultimately you know it was sort of like a two-step pivot of trying to transition into like Facebook and lower lower cost games that were free to play and then eventually falling back on the licensing business which is where they are today and you know there's really really good stuff coming out right now is this just being done on a different model will they come back around will they come back to it I don't know maybe the unlock for them is is looking at games as a as a generative source of Ip like they look at some of the other media that they that they fund and currently it's really more of a place to

to to exploit existing IP which is smart and I think doing it on the licensing model that they're doing now is also is is also pretty smart for them yeah I mean I I've always contemplated the parks business which is extremely high Capital kind of intensity the cruise business as being like supportive to their IP and I'm I mean video games had I guess like massive capital investment but no ongoing benefit long term whereas like now as they're shipped more as a service they thinking to me would be like how is this different than just like large build-outs of theme parks that yeah can benefit an IP I would be surprised if they did not if they didn't invest in some sort of multi-property metaverse of their own kind of thing at some point yeah that makes sense yeah so after Disney it sounded like you you you left and you know made the transition over to

mobile what was the the sort of inspiration for industrial toys when I was at Disney we were looking very um intently at mobile um and it was very clear in the early days just a trajectory uh that the platform was going on was um was crazy and even I I've looked back at my pitch decks from when I when we did our a round it's like our projections which at the time we thought oh these are a little aggressive we're like really conservative when you look in the rear view mirror right um but like just just looking at what was working on the platform back then and I guess this was 2003 2012 maybe 2012 2013 something like that look at looking this was pre-super cell right they're like looking at um what was working on the platform the the kind of investment needed to to stand something up and what segments and or players or genres were just not being served at all that was really the the

inspiration the strategy around starting the company which which you could maybe simply say hey me Alex I'm old I'm not playing my console anymore I got this iPad and where are the games for me and so you know two and two together this platform is huge it's Global the cost of Entry is pretty low nobody's addressing the core gamer we sort of know how to do that so that's what we're gonna do and and I you know as it I think it took a little longer for the the market to catch up with that thesis then maybe we we would have thought but it's totally there now it seems like Mobile's uh oftentimes in the games industry what I've learned is like there's pretty there's I guess there's like the PC console world and then there's the mobile world and a lot of times they those worlds don't um those people don't talk with each other and there's sort of like a some wall that that separates the two in in many cases I mean in some cases there's that divide but you went from sort of this like whatever AAA PC console world

and you know decided to to make the core gamer transition which I think we're definitely starting to see more of that that's pretty interesting about the core Market you know to your point was still underserved for a while yeah I think I think we'll continue to see that happen especially as this generation of Gamers that grew up in the last you know 10 15 years you know Contin continue to play games uh you know if they attach rate for any gamer and a mobile device is one-to-one everybody has a mobile device um and everybody still likes games I think the biggest probably the biggest hurdle of for adoption and for for a triple a gamer has been you know getting into a free-to-play gaming environment and that has become super popular not just on mobile but on on PC and and more more and more on Console as well so right some of those walls I think are definitely eroding yeah yeah I mean like I love the marble snap stuff because it was like many times I felt as a core gamer playing mobile games at the

monetization tactics were just not attractive for me Marvel snap felt like they were doing the right thing by players from a monetization standpoint the core Loop was satisfying and the controls were native to a mobile device those few things elements combined in one like game was more unique than I guess what I've seen I think I I agree I think we'll we'll see that more obviously Mobile's been going through lots of shifts and challenges can you speak to kind of yeah obviously you've been doing mobile development industrial toys and there's there's announcements and things going on like um what's your view of sort of the mobile industry loaded loaded question for me uh you know I think that the mobile game business is continues to evolve on the one side it is a fantastic ecosystem there's a a lot of Gamers a lot of people uh that want to play on mobile and the kinds of games that are

appealing to that audience are they're varied so there's just a lot of opportunity uh for doing something interesting and appealing to a really large audience it's also it's got it's gotten challenging to operate within that ecosystem because it's it's gotten a very competitive just there are continues to be a lot of titles that uh come out but more so they're getting better and better which is great for the consumer but it's raised the cost of of entry for developers quite a bit and at the same time with the you know idfa rules and the the Privacy stuff that's been happening with at Apple and now Google it's just gotten more expensive to capture the right players into your ecosystem so it's put it has put pressure from a couple different directions on directions on Publishers wanting to do big impactful things it's it's it's more competitive and more expensive the competition usually extends timelines that the cost of Market is is two or three or in some

case for depending on the genre it could be seven or eight times it's as expensive as it used to be to Target players with a with a high lifetime value and so it's just it's it has it has forced companies like I I obviously Electronic Arts has done quite a bit of thinking about how they want to approach this market and ultimately is pulling back from the Standalone big budget AAA Mobile game so it's it is it's definitely changed a bit and and you also have new you have new things happening too like apple arcade which isn't like quite exactly new right now but is a is a new kind of ecosystem that's less about incentivizing daily behavior and you know generating these high ltvs as as it is about you know producing high quality content that players want to want to be in that experience every month um so there's you know on the one hand there continue to be lots of really interesting opportunities and the other hand think there's some things I've gotten a little a lot more challenging I

mean I'm curious some of you obviously Halo was revolutionary for console and kind of reinvented the shooting genre on console that you know people have always thought before that would have been tough to do coming from keyboard and my setup and I know when you did industrial toys you know there that was certainly a time when people thought oh why would why would players want to play a shooter on mobile do you feel like that shooter opportunity has that sort of finally been kind of explored and now accepted by mobile players or do you feel like there's still that that Gap but there's still an opportunity to try to build a sort of defining shooter um or a quote-unquote original shooter on mobile that that might get the same respect out of Halo got you know on console and and obviously the Dooms and the Quakes of the world on PC it's a good question Kevin I mean I I it was part of our original thesis that hey we we are going to we're going to build an FPS game that is really built for device to complete that gameplay Loop that 30 seconds of fun that everyone but he's

used to regardless of what platform they're playing on but on a mobile phone and we did try lots of different input schemes and systems we we did a few games that had very novel approaches and at the end of the day I it those didn't work and what has been working is porting the Dual joysticks to the touchscreen interface now obviously like you know 10 years ago if you asked me I would have said no it's never that's never going to work it's you really have to build a bespoke you know control scheme but the market has the market has spoken and that is what is working right now and those games are huge you know Cod mobile Pub G free fire I'm sure there's more that's going to be coming out that will be in that same sort of size but is there something new and novel that will set a new standard on mobile for FPS maybe maybe but I'm I'm not the

one who's gonna go after that I think I think you know if if I'm I'm thinking about what I want to do next right now and a mobile publisher or mobile developer is not on the list that's not to discourage anybody from getting into it right but uh well certainly if EA couldn't cut it that's great call for entrepreneurs to go ahead and do it very cool um and Navi one more question uh before kind of our Cornerstone question um you talked a bit about Microsoft and Disney and kind of how those two cultures were quite different but excellent in their own ways how was it like working at EA how is it how is that different or you know love to hear a bit about what that latest Adventure was like as well EA I think it may be I don't know 10 15 years ago had a pretty bad rap there was that whole EA spouse controversy and was not really a a company that developers looked at as being a a great place to go and spend their career and it was one of the companies that I had never worked with until you know we did the deal with

them about four years ago and I'll say that I've been impressed and surprised maybe I surprised maybe too hard at a word but I would say that the management team that's at the company right now I think really cares about players cares about the product they're making cares about the people that are making them they're good people that should be a given but I think in the in the history in the video game business it maybe maybe it's not um so we're saying I I would also say that you know EA has a very contrasting difference with um where other large companies I've been at like Disney and Microsoft that and and Microsoft's probably this way now but they certainly weren't when I was there the EA is very much a video game business if it's their core Focus they've been doing it for I think 40 years so you know where Disney didn't necessarily have the the experience to know which kind of pain was good pain where to where to re-up and reinvest um to to you know get to Greatness

Etc I think EA has a lot more of that experience than is um and has the vocabulary Etc that it feels a lot more like a you know a video game business than some of the other large companies that that are getting you know maybe getting into the space Etc and there's there is a lot of history there that is inspiring with all of the other games and that's not to say that EA doesn't have its challenges it's got plenty of challenges um it's a very interesting company and the fact that it's really this kind of Confederate it's a confederation of Studios you know there's there's not one culture that pervades development at every Studio has their own culture every Studio has their own processes you know not not everybody uses the same Tech the same engine the same repository the same build systems those are all fairly bespoke uh to the teams that's interesting I found that actually to be quite surprising powerful in some

ways that the teams can really stand up and own you know their what they're doing and maybe leaves a little on the table that some of that stuff really should be centralized and optimized for teams to use but um but different you know we always like to ask this question at the end you know if you could go back to you know the founding of any of your companies and kind of give yourself one one keep you suffice what would that be I probably would go back to myself at every one of them and say go fast you know I I firmly believe that business is about making the best of what you got and it's very rare that you have easy decisions to make and if you have easy decisions to make good for you and who cares you don't remember them right the things you remember and the things you've read about are the hard calls you know you've got two people that can't work together you got to figure out how to solve it the only solution is for one of them to go it's like okay well what the heck am I gonna do

um go fast means hey your job isn't to make the perfect decision it's to make the best bad decision it's like what's what is the best option here and sometimes see if you take too long doing that it's like a lot nothing else stops and going fast just just means you know take take sometimes you gotta take your emotion off the table and figure out how to do the right thing and just do it actually I want to ask a follow-up to that then was there anything you did differently kind of the second or third time around that that did help you go faster and sort of make decisions faster yeah you know I think that the hardest the hardest decisions are are always the ones that involve uh people people and personalities so if somebody maybe isn't able to scale to where you were hoping and you put them in a position you know in the past maybe that would have festered too long and long enough where that that person

would have to exit and I you know the thing that I've learned is that it it is definitely worthwhile to invest in people and if somebody is out has outpaced their scale there's always there's a oh there's a different role for sure you know that but that's something that you can do and and you could do that with I guess the word is kindness in a in a way that's like Hey we're all in this team together this you know what I really need out as role is this and you know why don't you come and do this because you're really good at it and then and we're gonna go find somebody who's done this other thing before and and it's all in the service of making the best thing or making this company as good as it can be and and that's that's just maturity you know when you're young it's really hard to have conversations like that and you know maybe after you've had them a few times it doesn't get easy but sort of understand the importance of doing it absolutely yeah I think there is a I don't know maybe it's through kind of the press and all that there is a bit of a miss about kind of the team that makes it from the beginning all the way to the end and has an incredible exit and it's

kind of everyone's the you know OG on the team and that's all gone well but I think if you look at most examples of companies there's so much change that happens and a lot of that comes with you know almost with some foresight trying to figure out what kind of team what kind of changes need to be made so that we can be ready for the next not just six months or 12 months but for the next few years and that's it's a constant thing that I found the really good Founders they're always always thinking about that including I think that's a good point exactly it's like I you know it took me a long time to figure out what I liked and what I was good at intersected and even stuff that I like that I'm like I'm not the best at this I need help with that um that that's not easy either um and and uh so figuring that stuff out I think is pretty important I probably I probably would have gone back and told myself to hire a good CEO sooner than I did and uh Etc well Alex we've already gone over thank

you so much for for taking this extra time with us it's really a pleasure getting to know a bit about all the history and all the all the work that you've done in your incredible career oh right on thank you very very flattering thank you uh for all the nice things that you guys say as I've said and and a real pleasure to chat today [Music]