The Outer Worlds 2 developer Obsidian has turned its studio into a real world RPG

One of our kind of core foundational pillars is build upon past success, which is take what we have, iterate on that, improve, and then chip it and improve again. We don't want to put ourselves in a situation where we have one bad project and then the studio goes away. The Outer Worlds 2 and Ungrounded got a main spot in the Xbox showcases is wild. Uh maybe mildly irresponsible. I don't know. [music]
Hello and welcome to the Game Business Show. Last week, Xbox released the anticipated RPG, The Outer Worlds 2. The game was developed by the firm's Obsidian Studio, which is the developer that spent 22 years building hit RPGs based on Dungeons and Dragons, Fallout, Star Wars, and even South Park. Obsidian was acquired by Microsoft in 2018 and has gone on to release six games as part of the Xbox family of studios. Three of those games came out in the last year alongside the aforementioned The Outer Worlds 2. The studio released the fantasy RPG Avoured back in February. And in July, it released Grounded 2 into

early access, a game it developed in partnership with Idos Montreal. So, when Microsoft asked if he'd like to chat to the studio, of course, I was interested to hear all about how they make games. They have an innovative approach to game development, and I wanted to find out more. So, here it is. My interview with Obsidian's VP of production, Justin Brit, and VP of operations, Marcus Morgan. Enjoy. Hello, Marcus. Hello, Justin. Welcome to the show. How you doing?
Doing great.
Wonderful. How are you?
I'm I'm all right. I'm all right. I mean, you must be a little bit busy. It's big year for Obsidian. The year Obsidian from what people are telling me. Um, Evowed, Grounded 2, The Outer Worlds 2. Even the upcoming Fallout TV show is based on a game that you made. Um,
nice. You should give us credit for that one, too. That'd be awesome. I'm sure our friends over at Bethesda would love that.
Well, how how has it been? How's it been for the team juggling so many big launches like that? I mean, I guess everyone enjoys a nice uh uh you know,

launch party here and there, but it's um how has that been? [sighs]
Uh yeah, certainly had a few launch parties this year. Um no, it's it's been a really busy year. Um for sure. Uh but what's really nice though is that we do have a lot of teams at the studio who are working on these games. They've been working on these games for years. And so like 90% of the work of actually making the game and making it come out has all gone super well and we're really happy with how it's been going. but also of course we have a bunch of people at the studio and Xbox that support all the launches and for them it's been a very very busy year that includes sort of myself and Marcus but it's um it's been a fun kind of busy for sure
there been three very different games in in many ways but what would you say what do you think the Obsidian connection
they're completely different why are you asking this question
games once an RPG no I think
you have a real way to put this Marus
no the the one of the things that we we kind of talk about a lot as a studios. The roots of our studio are based in D&D, right? And all of us try to think about ourselves as like dungeon masters

that we create a setting, we create a world, we create a set of experiences that lets players go on the journeys that they want to go on. And so obviously the cleanest way to make that connection is in some of more more traditional RPGs. you know, things like Avowed, things like The Outer Worlds where it's like you're building your character, you have your stats, you go decide what factions you want to align with. But even with things like Grounded, you know, what we get from the players there is there's this sandbox that they go and go on adventures that feel like '90s nostalgic adventures. They might have a little different flavor to them, but it's still about creating that sense of player agency, a player journey. Um, Granada just happens to be with friends. Some of them are on your own with in our RPGs, but that's always at the heart of our games is how do we be great DMs that let our players go on incredible adventures.
Yeah. Yeah. Even though, you know, Grounded is a survival game, you really can't take the Obsidian out of Grounded. Um, Grounded One made by a whole bunch of people who worked on games like Pills

of Eternity, Cotor, other stuff like that. Grounded 2, our game director, Chris Parker, he's one of the founders of the studio, is honestly has been making RPGs for decades now. Um, [snorts] and so that like drive to how do we um encourage player freedom or how do we say yes to the player when we can find its way into any game we make, including and especially Grounded. And we think it's what makes it as fun as it is.
I mean, even for funsy, remember, Grounded One had multiple endings that you could you could you could you could unlock. So like we even keep that kind of DNA. So there's always going to be that thread even when we experiment with different genres.
Yep. The Outward Worlds 2 will be will mean you've released, I think, six games since you were acquired by Microsoft, which is an astounding um output. Um really, and I know they're all different sizes and scales and that kind of stuff, but then there are many studios in that time that haven't put out one. Um what's your secret? How do you do that?
I mean, before we went through the

process of of joining Xbox, we were a multi-team studio. And when we went through the the process of joining the company, um the Xbox leadership was super clear with us of like they bought us because they liked who we were. And so when we sat down and said, "How are we going to do things moving forward?" It was continue to do the things that worked well for us before. And so we just kind of maintained that muscle of always being um multi-team, really investing in making sure that we're making both different gains, but also we're always building up like different groups, leadership groups, and everything else. And in years like this, that pays off really well. Um, uh, to kind of keep that muscle alive and active as opposed to just like, you know, focusing on one game.
Yeah, this the simple answer that's not that sexy or exciting is, yeah, we have multiple teams. So, you know, we can ship multiple games and some other studios really oriented around just making one game. Um, but I think I think the other part of it like like Justin says that we think about a lot is how we scope or scale how many games we make always comes down to what are the amount

of leadership teams and great ideas that we have at the studio and if we have those those teams and we have those ideas then we try to make the game. Um, you know, I think ultimately we want to put as many awesome games as possible and and I think that's just kind of the teams all kind of rallying behind that idea and wanting to to do the same.
Yep.
Yes. got multiple teams making multiple games, but even within that, there's no six, sevenyear development cycles by the looks of it, at least on the outside in in your world. And I just wanted I always wonder because you've spent so long as an independent company where you basically had to put stuff out or you know, you weren't around, right? Um I wonder if that set you up to deliver that regularity or if there's just a just the way you are as a studio, you like to iterate rather than just disappear for six, seven years and then come out with something else. I I think what you just noted is a big part of it. One of our kind of core foundational pillars is build upon past success, which is, you know, take what we have, iterate on that, improve and and then ship it and improve again. And I think
it's a part of what we believe helps us

make better games is that iterative process, whether that's in like an early access state with the grounded or whether that's just with how, you know, the Outerorlds 2 is building upon a lot of the aspects of the Outer Worlds one. um where we keep a lot of our same tech stack and we kind of iterate on that. Um so that is a big big part of it. I'll say too, I don't know, like maybe just culturally here is there is a desire to see people play our stuff like like we really are like anxious to be like, "Oh, I want to see how players react to this thing." And so even though some of our other games aren't early access, for example, every team does this, but we are like really obsessed about like having early play tests, having early like user research, like going through that iterative process. And so I think ultimately, you know, the most fun part about game development is people playing your game. And I think maybe we have a little bit of like anxiousness to be like, how can we can we get have people play this? Like we want to see people's reaction to it. And I think maybe that's just like a cultural throughine through the studio as well.
Yeah. Yeah. We're kind of impatient at the end of the day. [laughter]

Well, Justin, you said before we pressed record, we talked about the fact that you've got you don't have a high turnover Obsidian. People stay, right? And that must make it easier to it gives you a shorthand with people and it gives you an understanding of how each other work in a way that perhaps um a studio that might be growing a lot or has had a lot of you know churn would struggle. Is that is that I may have just answered the question the answer might be yes to that.
I mean it's obviously yeah hugely helpful for sure and it's something that we talk to people about. Um, you know, when people join the studio, um, usually after the first couple of months, I sit down with every person who who joins. I'm like, "Hey, you know, our goal is for you to be here for 10, 20 years if you want to be. We hope it's a place that you want to be here for 10, 20 years because there's just so much that you learn going through the process of shipping a game." And it is just realistically different from company to company. And so, yeah, we place a huge value on people going through and and and learning like the this is what

Obsidian game is. This is what it means to be at the start of a project. is what it means to be at the end of the project. And um you know thankfully because we are a multi-team studio but we're all in the same location um we all talk to each other. Um that uh I think one of the the reasons we're able to kind of keep people for longer is that we do have that variety of people can work on different things over years over projects. They work with different teams. They work with different people. And so, um, that thing kind of makes it stay fresh even if you're working in the same studio for a long time. And then we get the benefit of people who understand what is Obsidian and what's our like ethos and our process and our just like style of making games. And so all that stuff really pays dividends over the years. For sure.
We definitely try to just, you know, like Justin said, I do think that that plays a role and maybe that's a big part of like that ties into all these things kind of build upon each other. Like why do we ship so often? How do we keep kind of a, you know, there's a creative freshness that can kind of come by being able to go to multiple projects. Even if

you love the same genre, even if we're all kind of bound by the same kind of player agency focus, it still does come with like, oh, it's nice to I'm on a fantasy game for a couple years, then I get to work on kind of a sci-fi game. Um, that that keeps you um it's a little bit easier where you can stay in one place and still enjoy that. Um, can I say one small thing about this 20 like multi-year thing because we just rolled out this this this uh um we kind of have these uh employee tenure gifts that we just rolled out that are just a lot of fun and just speak to why we want people to be here forever. Yours is right behind you. It's that staff way
and and so we just kind of kind of put these out of like you know every milestone up to 20 years when you join the studio you pick a class. It's it's a warrior, a rogue, um, or a wizard class. And then you go on that journey of collecting every item. So, you start with some some dice. Here I have like the the warrior kind of kind of D&D dice is like like created by our D&D thing. And then you get the various aspects of

those things. So, you get like a shield and then an axe and then a helm. The wizards get a cloak. And I just think it speaks to like our hope. We It's funny we create this thing of like I don't know. But we just hope people want to be here for 20 like 20 years. And it always kind of goes back to those roots of like building your character, kind of finding your your way. So it's just a fun plug for that, too. Just because we just rolled them out recently.
That's really cool. So you literally you can you literally level up
your own system here.
Exactly. [laughter]
Yeah. We we couldn't help but RPG. Also, it made it really really complicated to try to like logistically put all that stuff out, but it was it's like a fun little nod to to that to all those pieces.
How many different classes can you pick? I mean, how deep have you gone with this?
We we only did three classes. We only did three classes for now, but we did talk about uh if you want to stay for more than 20 years like Justin and I plan to do, then you can start to multiclass. So, you can start to collect these other [laughter] other elements of the different classes too. So, um it's and and you know, you accelerate the

rate that you get it, but the the longer you stay, you know.
So, really to complete all three classes, you need to stick around for 60 years. Is that
That's right.
Yeah. That'd be a reasonable amount of time. [laughter]
That's a really But that's really fun. That's really I was I interestingly I did an interview um um with Machine Games. So one of your sister studios and they were telling me about you know just we started they randomly told me they had a fight club in the basement of their studio but which isn't I don't I don't think that's necessarily a retention tool but it but it was the most suddenly the interview went oh I love the idea of this. I get a sense of your studio culture and how your teams work. You just like to beat each other up in the basement. That's great. Well, machine games obviously failed the first rule of Fight Club, which
I think I know that's the [laughter] you you may have read that feature. That's how I opened it the but no, that's really that's wonderful. I just like the idea of you leveling up as you go as you stick around at Obsidian. It's it's really cool. I mean, I did read that you were looking you did consider becoming a bigger studio, but you opted against that to instead work with partners. Is that right?

Um, I mean, that's part of it. just I mean the reality is that like the games that we're putting out this year are super ambitious at the end of the day and we are bigger than when we joined Xbox but we're not significantly bigger and so the only way that we're going to do that and be able to scale and also be able to like just be flexible in terms of hey sometimes projects need more of a certain role is we did just find codev partners that we could work with [snorts] um or outsourcing groups and during uh co times it became a lot uh more streamlined for us to work with external folks like people around the world. We were already doing a lot of online meetings and so as the needs for things like Avow and Grounded 2 and um Outerorlds 2 were really ramping up that was the way that we were able to still make those games really really awesome without like becoming a studio of you know a giant giant giant studio where we would no longer fit in this location.
Yeah. The the other piece of that is you know and I guess the all again all these things kind of tie together is you know

one of the aspects that we really like is to kind of stay lean and invested and that's mainly so that people it's not about like cost cutting measures or anything like that. It's more about one kind of tighter teams build stronger communities and that helps align on like creative vision and then two it does just keep our kind of culture and like what we want kind of built around here. It it just it helps to maintain it. When you grow so big, you can start to feel like a cog in in the machine where you don't feel yourself or see yourself represented in the games that you make. And so it was just one of those pieces that we never wanted to to lose as we scale. And how can we find ways to still deliver the games that are kind of expected of us by the players, by Xbox, by everyone else, but keep what kind of makes, you know, the endearing kind of aspects of our game special um is is kind of keeping that team size. So that was one of those things that we're always trying to find that balance of. Um but it's it's it's an important piece that we see is is like valuable of having kind of teams that are really

like kind of invested in each other in the creative journey all that sort of thing.
Yeah.
Obviously you work with Ardos Montreal with on on is IDOS Montreal? I think that right with um with um Grounded 2 does they've got their own culture and their own sort of vibe which I guess they might end up bringing into your games. I mean how do you manage that? Is that or is that not how it works? Because the leaders of the games are the leadership of the games are Obsidian people.
Yeah, I think part of it like like the start of that goes to how we went about selecting who we wanted to partner with.
And the truth is Idos absolutely has their own culture, their own style. They also have multiple teams.
But what we were trying to find was where was that that overlap um from like a a a more like spiritual level, right? We and Idos share a lot of same things with regards to world building. I mean, we like, you know, they have RPG roots and things like DSX. Um, and they do great things with characters and all that sort of thing. So, um, that's where

it started from was like where is there enough overlap so it doesn't change what what you know we believe are represents Obsidian games. Um, and I think they kind of in their own flare or style still represent that um, in their own way. And then Chris, you kind of hit on it. there's such a collaboration and there's always going to be kind of a retention of keeping that Obsidian kind of flare and spirit in it by having leadership here and deeply involved in kind of the process of of making Grounded 2 that we don't stray too far away. We take it that, you know, we're we're really complenting each other's strengths but not losing kind of the spirit of of Obsidian in in any of our games. Yeah, I think there's a certain magic to um if we look back on Obsidian's early history, we obviously made a lot of sequels to other people's games and I think we were able to take a lot of the work that those uh original games had and we kind of put our own spin on what those games could be. Um very much this relationship with Idos Montreal. Um uh

we've been very specific about like what must be grounded and we are very heavily involved in it. Um, but at the same time, we did intentionally thought it would be a good thing for the game and for the franchise to say, "Hey, I was Montreal. Yeah, bring some of your culture, bring some of your ideas to what this game could be, and let's make a game in collaboration that could be an evolution on what we did before because we found that so valuable kind of in the reverse end when we were doing sequels to other people's stuff." Hm. I read an interview with Fergus um who said I quite like this quote. He said the aim of the studio is to make amazing games not perfect games which I think it's it's an interesting one. Um but but at the same time your day your games do get often going to get I mean the outer worlds gets compared to Fallout gets compared to the big RPGs at the moment because you've worked on some of the biggest you know IPs and franchises in the world. I think there is certainly a level of perhaps an expectation um uh uh where these games are some of these other games are super ambitious. They've been developed so long. How do you try

to sort of compete in that sort of tier of games whilst staying true to your goals of not being too big, not getting too unwieldy? How how do you do that? [snorts]
Well, you think more sand or globally better.
It's a complicated question. Look, I I think in full transparency, the journey around The Outer Worlds 2 and Avowed put that to the test quite a bit. And I I think that was it was some of the thing of a little bit of um self-doubt or or self-questing of like, hey, should we be chasing after these aspects? Should we should we be, you know, this component of AAA? should we do? And as we went through that journey, like the the lesson we learned and what we took away was stay true to our roots and keep building the games we make as opposed to chasing kind of after whomever else. We are always inspired by

and we love kind of all of the RPGs that exist, but we also have our style of RPG. And I think I think after going through that together as a as a team of like the the through the development cycle of both those games, I think it only instilled more confidence in us to keep trying to chart the course to create our own kind of category of RPG that just doesn't always have to be compared directly but is is just Obsidian. I think one of the things I think about a lot is when I look at Lyrian's RPGs and then I look at Bethesda's RPGs or C CDPR's RPGs,
they're compared, but they all are very different, right? Like I I want a different experience when I go play Balders's Gate than I do when I go play Cyberpunk. And to your point, Chris, like we've worked on, you know, we we worked on on Neverwinter, we've worked on Fallout. And so it it's it can't help but be somewhat like are we just trying to be that? And I think our goal with

the Outer Worlds with Avow is to more clearly define like, well, what is it to be Obsidian as its standalone as opposed to it always being like a a chase after kind of kind of what already exists. Um, and we're we're you know, we're still figuring that out, but we have kind of more of a sense of of confidence and an idea of like what that means with The Outer Worlds, you know, tighter, more focused game that still has some New Vegasy vibes, but is but is not, you know, it is more of a a a refined and deep experience that doesn't worry as as much about breath as it does about depth. like these are some of the elements that we're really shooting for to try to carve out our own own lane as opposed to like then we don't have to worry about what anyone else does other than be inspired by by if they do something cool that we want to we want to borrow or iterate on [clears throat]
Dustin you don't need to add anything there just not enthusiastic
put more succinctly our view on is simply that there are so many great single player RPG games out there and so many great single RPG companies

but there's still not too much. Um, I think there's room for all of us to exist and kind of do our own thing. And so, um, really like Marca said, for us it's really just being true to what's the game we want to make and then how do we make it in a way that we feel like our studio is capable of doing that as good as we can. And as long as we're checking off those boxes, if we succeed on what we're trying to do, we're happy. Um, and so, uh, that's that's now that we are no longer working with a whole bunch of external publishers and we're working just with Xbox and we're we're coming up with the games that we want to make. Part of that is just being super super clear about like this is the bounds of what we're trying to do with this game and what we want this particular game to accomplish or we want this particular game to say about Obsidian RPGs. And as as far as we can take that, we'll be happy with it. So last point on this because I know you probably want to move down the question, but that also speaks to why I know you

know everyone on the internet on every every game we ever announce will constantly reference back to to you know when's the next New Vegas or when's the next whatever. And if you look at what we've done [laughter]
it's my favorite. A
lot of people forget we made that one.
Very happy about that. But but this year in addition to it being like you know a celebration of shipping three games all three of those games are IP that we've created that are Obsidian IP and and we are you know our history prior to Microsoft was really one surrounding around working on others IP and this is like the joy that we get of like how do we start to define our own and how do we build our own IP and and and we've gotten to the point where we have sequels to all of them right all of them are sequels to the IP we've created. I will give credit to Microsoft and and I very well will because if I was my Microsoft shoes and there's a big sort of fun irreverent RPG futuristic sort of poppy RPG coming out and I happen to

have a Fallout TV show. I'll be sitting there going to you guys, can you uh can you new Vegas this up please? Could you fall out this up? But they didn't do that. They they've they've allowed you to be you and and discover your own franchises which I think I mean I don't know I don't know if other studio I don't know if other publishers would have done that. Um, and I think that's um, yeah, that's not really your point. That's my point. But
no, but no, it's it's in all put succinctly, Xbox has been pretty supportive of the stuff we want to do. It's been great.
So,
you you tend to have quite modest expectations for your games. Like, you don't necessarily want them to be expect them to be the biggest things in the world, but The Outerorlds too, you know, had a massive slot, you know, in Microsoft's showcase at Summer GameFest. It's been promoted quite hard. You've got celebrity bat campaigns. Um, it seems to be that Xbox, at least on the outside, from my looking, it seems to be treating this as a pretty major release for them. How are you feeling about that? What are your goals for the game? What are your expectations?
Yeah, I mean, we want the Outer Worlds to to be big. You know, we we want people to really like it and that we um

we want people who play Outer Worlds want to come back and enjoy it, but also it's it is a fresh start, so people who didn't play the first one, we want it to be a kind of welcoming entry into that. Yeah. in terms of ambitions and everything else. It's not that we're not ambitious. It's that we're very realistic right at the very beginning of a project of making sure that hey, we know that we can make this game and we firmly believe that this is something that we can succeed. And that's where that like I guess um uh the conservativeness comes from is that we are pretty picky about the projects that we pick. Um and we have a pretty diligent process about it and um you know the you know we gave a talk earlier in the year about that like pickiness about our project um process um because we don't want to put ourselves in a situation where we have one bad project and then the studio goes away. I mean, this is also just being a multi-team studio and everything else, but all this does tie into just like
what do we want the game to do? What is

an Obsidian um game look like? And then how do we make sure that if we're saying we're going to make a huge bet on the Outer Worlds 2 and we think this game is going to be massive and we think it's going to be great is that we feel really strongly about that from day one. And pretty much from day one on The Outer Worlds 2, we felt, hey, this game is going to be really special. Um, we actually waited a while, little little fun story, we actually waited a while to show Xbox um the game. Um, because we knew that it was going to be something that was really special. And so when we had something great to show, we sat everyone down, we're like, "Hey, want to check out what we're doing?" And
we appropriately blew them away such that when we um yeah very very humble um uh but it then meant that when we were going into this year we did say like hey you know we want a big marketing campaign for this because we really believe in this game. So I think I think what I hope people feel regardless of the the bigger

marketing campaign and I think our belief is like like Justin said we want as many people for every one of our games to as many people to play it as possible. Like so big, small, like I think every developer wants of course the world to play their game. So yeah, the the bigger the better, but what's most important to us is do we deliver on the vision of the style of RPG that we want to make for the audience that we know loves those types of games. And I think when you look out, you know, at the industry right now, um those those niches that used to be niches can explode into these mega mega audiences, right? Look at look at souls like games from from or look at again a CRPG so like you know with like tens of millions of copy solds in B3 that is a focus on their core audience that then expands and and and kind of bleeds out into the masses and I think
that's still our approach and I think that's where we always want to kind of remain focused. So even with our marketing campaigns being kind of backed by, you know, yeah, celebrity spokespeople, hopefully you still see a

a level of lovable Jake to all of that speaks to like the core the core that we want to reach and it not quite being, you know, our goal to go, you know, full-blown AAA and what that all means. Not that I have any like thing to say about that, but just more so of we just want to be Obsidian and hopefully Obsidian can become bigger and better with each iteration.
Yeah. throughout the whole, you know, Clare Obscure, Hell Divers 2, Hollow Knight, right? A Metroid Vania doing multiple million copies of a game. We we are living in a world where those niches can break out and you have to stay true to what you're building, but I think your campaigns have I don't I'm not getting I don't get a vibe of, you know, it's very it's got that humor that you're known for and that um and that kind of thing. So, I wasn't suggesting it was, but just it's just great to have that backing, I guess. Um
100%. I think it just goes to show too how much the industry itself has grown to like for it like I think it's wild to me at least like the fact that the out world and grounded got a main spot in the Xbox showcases is wild maybe mildly

irresponsible I don't know but it it's just was kind of mind-blowing. I think it means a lot that that you know we get that level of exposure and and we just hope we can deliver like you know in a couple days when people get to play it. So
ask ask a couple questions because this is a game pass game. You've made a lot of Game Pass games now, right? You've um you've probably made more than most people. Um has has making games that go into that service, have you made any changes to your development approach, have you sort of adapted at all because players play differently in subscriptions? I don't know. Have you had you made any changes?
No, honestly, not particularly. I mean, obviously the opening of the game is always important for any game because that's just on ramp for hey, what's this game really about? And uh in a game pass world that could be more important, but kind of like Mara said, we're just we're we're making the game that we're happy with and then if that game is good, hopefully success should come and Game Pass and all the other platforms that's on. So

I don't really have much to add to that. I think we kind of just focus on making something good. um you like you have to be conscious of maybe like how the the game pass tastes are going to be indicative of like broader industry tastes. So like our our adaptation really relates to what do players want and then how do we deliver on what players want as opposed to where are players playing, right? Because you're playing on Xbox, a PC, on PlayStation, we're trying to just deliver like a specific thing there as opposed to like, you know, to a subscription service.
Yeah. Yeah. I guess I guess there because you obviously get those millions of people jump and you get those people millions of people jump in they might jump out quickly because they've got loads of other games to play. Um and I don't know if that changes anything but just I guess the important opening of any game is important right keeping people and
for sure
I'll ask one more question then it's I always end with this question which is what's your I always just I always ask the question what's your hopes for that for for your company in like 10 years time but the games industry is like you know 10 years is is a lifetime where do

you hope to see Obsidian and and the stuff that you're doing in 5 years where would you like you've had this amazing year of just really showcasing what you can and a breadth of what you can do and a variety of what you can do. But where where do you think where do you where do you go next?
So So Justin and I keep smiling at each other and I know we're both looking at each other cuz Chris actually we want to be around for 100 years. Like that is our goal. Like we like legitimately we think about like how can we we we be around and I think um I it's it is silly and and maybe naive to your point of like how the industry is structured, but that's our goal, right? Like is to kind of to be able to sustain. So um the the boring version of the answer, so then Justin can answer it better, is we want to continue getting better at doing exactly what we're doing. We want to be shipping multiple games. We want to be experimenting it with how we add RPG elements into various genres. We want to be making our core RPGs better and more deep and more reactive and giving

players more more control over what happens. We want to be still known for incredible storytelling and incredible like system and and design like th the same just keep getting better at what we are doing and keep iterating on that. Um and we hope that Y worlds 2 will show kind of that next step forward of you know one one little tagline that went around for a little while while is like the next generation of a classic RPG. Like
every time we can iterate on that generation of a classic RPG like that's that's what we want to keep doing. Um, so I know it's not like super super, but I'll say in in five years, I hope we're looking at like where we want to be in the other 25 because and we keep and we're as optimistic about trying to achieve that hundredyear goal as as we were today in this moment.
Everyone can level up to all those classes.
That's right. Justin and I are going to be very old men with giant beards and a lot of swag. Like that's [laughter] the
I couldn't have said any better myself,

Marcus. That was great. Um, yeah. I mean, the benefit of releasing as many games as that we do and that we all share options together and everything else is that we learn from each game. And so that's the goal is just keep learning, keep getting better at what we do. So, five years releasing more great RPGs.
Marcus, Justin, thank you for your time. I really appreciate it.
Thanks so much, Chris.
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