The Real OG Jane Whittaker Unfiltered: 44 years in gaming, Alien vs Predator & Why fun still wins

But by the way, if you're at this point, uh, like this always kind of bangs my head, like how was it during the 198385 video game crash? Like if if I guess you're the only person I know. We can Yeah, we can ask. I was I was I was there. I mean, we we went from millions of sales. I mean, we would we'd release on cassette in those days. We do we'd release the cassette and you go and do a million units without thinking about it. I mean, people love that these days. I mean, it just it just everything sold. And I still we haven't built those numbers up now because there's so many. I'll explain why later. But um yeah, it's all all of a sudden we release something. It's like what is happening here? It's not actually doing the numbers anymore. And and you know the the situation the global economy and we've been through some of that recently just just changed everything. I say the word studio loosely. It was was just a small conglomeration of guys. I mean, someone someone said to me in all sorted myself in a couple of weeks ago that when when I was doing the the original 8-bit games, you could you could put all

all the 8bit developers who had made a chart game on a bus together and go on a trip. It's [Music] diceled up. We're the two and a half gamers. The midnight crew talking UA adverts and game design too. Mate, feel shak insight. We're rocking those vibes till the early day. Master eyes on the prize. Tracking data through the cyerspace skies. Felix colors like a wizard in disguise. Jacks lift us to the high. Two and a half gamers talking smack. Slow hockey sick. Got your back. Ads are beautiful. They light the way. Click it fast. Don't delay. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Yeah, we can we can definitely start it. Okay. Hello everybody. This is

Mate Lanchar and this is Jakob and we are your hosts and we have very very very special guests. Guest, not guests but guest with lots of experience. I'm looking around for the others guys but Yeah. Yeah. That's got but it's multiple guests in in one guest. It's multiple guests in one guest because you have so many years of experience. Jane, welcome to two and a half gamers. For people who don't know, which I'm not sure if there is any like can you introduce yourself and talk about like what whatever you've done before in so many games. Yeah. Well, firstly, it's such a pleasure to be here with you guys and thank you for the invite. It means a lot. So, and thank you to everybody who's who's watching. 44 years in games. I my first uh game was in the early 1980s for the Sinclair ZedX81 in 1981. Yeah, I know you're going to laugh cuz I'm so darn old. We were not here. Well, we were here. Yeah, we were already here. Uh not 81.

No, we were not here. Not 81. No, no, no. No. Yeah. Okay, there we go. I knew it. I knew it. Uh don't get me Don't get me laughing. We're being professional now. Uh I was Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, 1981, the Sinclair X81 onto the Sinclair Spectrum. And I went I went through the whole thing, the Commodore 64, the Atari ST, the AmIGGA PCs, and I I've worked on I believe pretty much every gaming system um that's been released uh that's that's done well in the mass market. Uh apart from Sega. I've never done Sega game, but I've I've I've done the PlayStations, Nintendos, PCs, all all of it. first first job was um at 14 I was I was I was doing some side work on the the franchise with um Sid Meer in his in his first company. Okay. So Sid Sid had a had a company called Micropros and that was that was some of my my first work um in my teens

you know done done for the bedroom like it's all indie then guys. I mean we talk about indie developers now it's all we had. Yeah. It's a different world. Yeah. Yeah, for those who who don't know, like Sid is the guy who did Civilization. Yeah. Exactly right. Exactly right. And a very nice man, too. Yeah. I mean, we we spoke about games publishers in those days. What the meant was that was your kitchen, you know. So, so the indie developer was a bedroom. The kitchen the kitchen was the publishing room. Um, so I I worked with Sid and I I got to work through during my years with people such as Mike Singleton. Now, a lot of you won't younger people won't know Mike, but Mike Mike was credited as the the father of open world gaming. Um we sadly lost him. He passed away from cancer but he he did a multitude of open world title including the the Midwinter franchise. Uh and I was very lucky to work with him on that. So that my background in open world etc. That comes all all the way back to to to me being relatively young and working with Mike. So if you don't know Mike Singleton, Google him. He was is regarded as the

father of home computing. Um and he he did millions upon millions of units in the 1980s and he was my mentor. Uh, so between him and working with Sid and Wild while Wild Bill Steelely, the other co-founder was with with Sid Me, I had a really good start. And then so I'm I'm yapping away already. This is supposed to be the quick introduction. Look at this. Yeah. I mean, look, usually usually finally talking open world games, the games I play. It's the games I play too. It's the games the games I make and the games I play. And then uh I moved on to to various companies including Atari. probably best known for really invested predator Atari um and which was the best selling console game for the Atari Jaguar and launched PC games and all sorts of things based on that work. Hello everybody, thanks for uh joining this episode. Are you wondering what's the latest development with Epic versus Apple mean for your mobile games? Well, for an ever growing number of game

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for sponsoring this episode. Now let's get back to the content. Bye-bye. But by the way, if you're at this point, uh, like this always kind of bangs my head. Like how was it during the 198385 video game crash? Like if if I guess you're the only person I know. Yeah, we can ask. Yeah, I was I was I was there. I mean, we we went from millions of sales. I mean, we would we'd release on cassette in those days. We do we'd release the cassette and you go and do a million units without thinking about it. I mean, people love that these days. I mean, it just it just everything sold. And I still we haven't built those numbers up now because there's so many. I'll explain why later. But um yeah, it's all all of a sudden we release something. It's like what's happening here? It's not actually doing the numbers anymore. And and you know the the situation the global economy and we've been through some of that recently just just changed everything. So so for me I was lucky I was able to continue on. Um the sal sal sal sal sal sal sal sal sal sal sal sal sal sal sal sal sal sal sal sal sal sal sal sal sal sal sal sal sal sal sal sal sal sal sal sal sal sal sal sal sales were down but I I I

kept plugging away but many many small developers unfortunately fell by the wayside and never came back. It sort of rationalized the industry. It wasn't just the sales it's about who's who's still going to be around which studio is still going to be around. I mean we I say the word studio loosely. It was it was just a small conglomeration of guys. Yeah. Someone someone said to me in all sering myself here a couple of weeks ago that when when I was doing the the original 8bit games that you could you could put all all the 8-bit developers who had made a chart game on a bus together and go on a trip. So that was that was the size of the industry. So it was a big hit for us but and and there's probably some truth in that. There were probably maybe 50 60 of us who were actually I mean there were lots of people doing it as a hobby but those of us are actually selling uh you know worldwide it was very very small. I mean you see more than that on a single game now. So we we're really pioneers I think and it it taught me a lot. Yeah. And then I went to Atari as I mentioned in Instant Predator teams got

a bit bigger then. Would you believe there were two of us programming in Predator? Yeah, I would to say like for one, three maybe, but yeah, two those if I understand those are still the times where there was like programmer was the only guy doing the game meaning like the game design as well, right? The game design, the programming, the art, which was mostly like programmer generated, if I get Yeah, absolutely right. And the music and I I I did an 8 bit game. I went on an 8bit game called Flying Shark for for Firebed and Rainbed, which was Sid's another one of Sid's companies. Fire bed Rainbed was uh Sid bought that. And I did an arcade conversion, a Tato arcade coin up that I went with along with others on the flying shot. And I I was asked to do the music for the the music drivers. I didn't actually compose the music, but I to write in the music driver code for the Amstrad version of the Amstrad computer. And my gosh, was I lost. I had no idea. I don't know anything about musical and musical notes. Like I I got it out. I got, you know, you can go and play the game now. It's got my my sound drivers that were actually driving the music. But I'd never never done sound before or since

because we just had to do everything then. You're quite right. It was everything. I I I still design now as well as write code and everything because I I still I still something of an allrounder and that's because I had to be when I when I started the business. That's exactly right. M there's no other way. But with early invest became I guess my signature game. Everyone talks to me about it. But the the coding was was myself and Mike being the primary coding. We had we had a really great guy called Mike Puler who did the compression system called Jag Peg which is like a JPEG for the Atari Jager but the but the actual Jag peg. What a great name. Sounds like somebody put your washing on the line. I've got my Jag peg. Yeah, but yeah. So Mike beaten and myself. Mike Mike did the the 3D engine. It's fantastic program. It came from Argonaut. That's going back to the 80s as well. Argonaut did things like Starglide, all these some of these big games. Uh, and he Mike built the the 3D engine. And then my job was anything

that happens in the world was me. Player interaction, AI, game play, anything else. So Mike Mike built the environment and anything that moves in it was me is what we always say and that that was it in programs. We had we had some good artists, really good artists, and some some great musicians, too. And the best producer in the world, a guy called Purple Hampton, Atari, became a very famous Atari producer. But but in terms of the actual day-to-day code, me and Mike, you know, that that actually is still Atari's biggest console game. What's the name of the game? Alien versus Predator. Oh, hello. Hello there. I didn't see you. Thank you very much for coming to this episode. Uh, it's brought to you by our sponsors, PVX Partners, the simplest and most effective credit line for marketing. If you're scaling your business uh and need funding, here's the deal. With PVX partners, you can grow your game easily and your business. There's no equity dilution. You can repay as you get paid, and it's flexible, fast, and fully tailored to

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started. That's vibe.co. Join them. And thank you very much for joining us for this special episode. Now, let's get back to it. Thank you. Well, this is Ellia. Yeah, they were talking about elevation already. Yeah, already. So, but it was just the two of us. Yeah. Do you think it's it would be a different game if you had the tools that are here? Well, they're here now, but if you had the tools back then, would it be different? It be it'd be massively different. I think um the I mean, I'm actually working on my personal uh survival game now. I've just got just been mentioned on over a thousand websites in the last week talking about I wanted to go back and do a modern survival game based on what I learned. So, it's something we can talk about later, guys. I'll put shameless I'll put two or three shameless plugs in along the way. Uh, no worries. You put it here, of course. Come on. It's super It's super interesting. But yeah, and but yeah, I mean, the the the biggest issue we had was was cartridge space. We There was so

much we wanted to put into MVP and we we we used the cartridge. There wasn't a bite of memory left on on the cartridge. So, people saying, you know, why didn't you do this and why didn't you do that? You could have you could have had aliens climbing walls and all of these things. Well, actually, no, there wasn't even there wasn't even space for another line of code on that cartridge. We literally maxed the cartridge out that to that that's why that's why Mike Puler had to do a compression system because we had to decompress real time even to get the game we had to fit on the cartridge. So, we we we were totally maxed out. So, that so the the biggest tool I would have liked was a bigger cartridge. Italy. Um, within a couple of weeks of shipping, they doubled the cartridge size for everybody because they found out how to make bigger cartridges just after we shipped, of course. But yeah, I mean, but and these days, of course, you write in C++. Those days, it was all in pure assembler. We everything was written in binary assembly. I had a programmer on my team in my first project that was talking to me about assembler that that I remember,

but that's all of it. Oh, there's a So, it was 68 68,000 assembler and there were there were two custom microprocessors in there that John Mat uh designed for the for the console and they were called Tom and Jerry which I've always loved. So, I always like to mention them. So, we had a 68,000 processor and Tom and Jerry and we and we had to code those direct to the metal as they say actually in binary assembler. No no C++ or no no Visual Studio development environment or anything. We just we just sat there with with with binary files. Had to link them together to make that game. Different world than what it is now. I can tell. Well, only from the outside obviously. Yeah. Well, world's changed massively in our industry. And then for from from there I went uh to Metro Gold May or MGM because I I'd done well on the movie based game. I I got asked if I wanted to to go to MGM and I I became development director at MGM and and a senior vice president there. So I I I I

looked after the James Bond franchise and the James Bond games for MGM, including Golden Eye in64, which people always talk to me about, too. I didn't I didn't write the code for Golden Eye. I'm not taking the credit for for the code for Golden Eye, but I was I was I was the one at MGM who thought it was a really great idea that we do this with Nintendo and find a good team. So we we signed up Rare, a team called Rare, who were my favorite team at the time. Nintendo and MGM got together and we hired Rare to do uh Golden N64. And that's so I sort of went from ABP straight straight to Golden Eyes as I left and went to MGM. I was I got a couple of lucky breaks there. As I say, people say people keep saying to me, I don't think you coded uh Golden Lions. He told No, I didn't. Just just be absolutely clear. No, I didn't. I was on the management team at MGM that made the that made the decisions and the game design decisions with Nintendo uh because I got promoted. Yeah. But there's so much more. So much more. Yeah, there's lots lots. And then and then from there, many years at Electronic Arts.

Yeah. And then from there, a barking dog. This is the Look at that. Where does he find that? Yeah. Yeah. I I I saw him. He's He's typing and just looking elsewhere like, okay, he's just going to bring this up for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Because people definitely need to see this like because I I I don't think so. They'll grasp like what we're talking about when talking about these. It looks It looks It looks very crude now, but it was groundbreaking at the time, of course. No, 100%. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But we're we're talking 32 years old. Yeah. So, I I I love it. And there the game I'm working on now, uh, which we're calling Zeno. Um, there you go. Look at that shotgun collector. I used to love wandering around like that. This is pre Wolfenstein, isn't it? Yeah, it's around the same time. I don't show it's pre-rafter, but around around the same time. And what what we did uh and I say we this is all Mike's work and not mine is you'll find there's floors and ceilings. We're one of the first to do floors and ceilings in a in an FPS. But

see if you if you go back to Wolfenstein etc. There's no floor no ceiling in the rendering. There's no ceiling. That's true. Yeah, that's true. So we this is this is this is a mistake I made. I when I killed the aliens when you kill an alien you get the acid damage and after I shipped I suddenly realized I'd not removed the aliens. So they they don't time out. So there's the acid damage is always there. Actually it means as you see it hasn't it hasn't disappeared. So you're going to still take the damage. But what it what it did mean is people now actually think where should I kill this? So it's not just shooting something as it arrives like that. It's where should I kill this so I can get through the doors and avoid the problems. Okay. Actually fortuitous error really. So I have it. So this is released 1994. 1994. regular Atari links and Doom is 1993. Yeah, but you said you said Wolfenstein. So, but but the we we started the coding of this in '92 was a two-year project.

So, I don't know when John and started started Doom. We're in that same We're in that same ballpark, aren't we? This time 1992. There we go. Doom and and then Yeah. Yeah, that's amazing. That's amazing. I'm not going to upset Mr. Carmarmac and Mr. Romero. I uh I get on well with both and I was I was recently on a BA judging panel. John Romero and I sat together and judged BAFTA games. So, I'm not going to offend him. No worries. No worries. But this launched the the whole idea of AP franchise, the Dark Horse comics and everything. It's I'm a massive fan of the franchise. like uh that that's like I think well some somebody came to us at Atari and said Fox I believe and said you know we would you can you do an alien game. We said yeah can can you do a Predator game like yeah great not both not both at the same time because we need the people. So we say okay we'll put them together

Alien versus Predator. It's actually having like a pretty big resurgence these days if I understand like with all the new Alien movie and like the second one being ordered and the series and something. So yeah, the film's live and kicking and I was I was I mean I was getting mesmerized watching that. I'd not seen that in a while. Yeah. So I I recently got called the the father of the survival game because of this because it was not it's not an FPS. There's more it's more about survival and strategy and stealth. So I I was uh I was told by one of the big gaming sites that was the father of the survival game. So the the the new game now uh Cenomorph is is not the alien license, but I'm going back to the things I've learned about survival and stealth and crafting and all these things and bringing that into into the modern world. For 30 years, people have asked me to go back and do and do another uh creature game. So that's that's what I'm doing now. We've got investment, we've got funding, we've got a publisher, and uh and away we go. It's good that you you found that, Jacob, because we that's exactly what I'm doing now is my personal sequel. We just we

just made the announcement recently. That's great. Oh, yes. Yeah. Where where did we stop? I think I cut your timeline there. Yeah. With EA, I think, but I this Yeah. So, EA had some some years at EA and I was I was very lucky. I came into EA just after Peter Mullen left. Yeah. Sorry. Good character. Yeah. Yeah. So, I I I picked up on some of Peter's titles, etc., and led those. So, I was the fancy title of executive in charge of production. By the way, again, one of these questions is burning me. What happened with Dungeon Keeper franchise, right? They're doing nothing. Yeah, there there there were internal changes at here. Um, Bullfrogs No More. I I I agree with you. I loved Dungeon Keeper. I didn't work on Dungeon. Dungeon Keeper 1 and two is my like my best games ever made. Like seriously, I could play there like million times. Well, I was I was I was at Bullfrog in production for Dungeon Keeper 2. Was it three Keeper games? I

was at in the I I joined Bullfrog in 97. So, you guys work out which Dungeon Keeper it was and we we had we had Theme Park World and lots of things going on. And I I also led a project called Indestructibles. when Peter left um he left a portfolio of game ideas uh and my job was to to pick up on some of those game ideas and bring them to life. So it was really interesting to say you know thanks Peter's here what you've left me and one of those was was Indestructibles uh which was a superhero game and it been it been tried on console by a guy called Sean Cooper at Bullfrog before uh but in 97 I was asked to do a PC version uh which was really interesting. I got to work with who I are. I consider to be the best programmer in the world, the engine programmer, Yansovski. You can Google it. You're not developers, but developers use the books called graphics gems and all this sort of thing. Like big developer guides, and Yan's like the regular contributor, Mr. Mr. 3D. So, I

was really lucky to work with him. And so, we we we worked on a superhero game that never shipped, ironically, the the one that got away at Bullfrog because Marvel Marvel didn't like it and they didn't want to license it. So, like, you're stealing all our characters. like, "No, we'll we're licensed, you know, we'll do we're happy to take the Marvel license, but it all all went horribly wrong." So, we we we built a game and between Marvel and DC complaining about who has what rights to what, it got shelled, but it's it's a really fun game to work on. Do I get that right that before it was the norm that you would build the game and then ask for the license? Absolutely right. Now, now the other way around now, but for obvious reasons, all these problems don't occur. and it it was like accepted normal because if I understand this is how also Starcraft came to life whereas guys build it for Warhammer and then didn't get the license and then went their own way. That that wouldn't surprise me. That would not surprise me. I mean I I actually got involved in World of Warcraft too. So I told you I've been involved in so many games.

Yeah. I mean it's just great age. Great age guys. I keep telling there was a there was a a chap called Peter Reszon a lovely man who was was also passed now he he looked after uh the UK side of Blizzard uh and they they needed some help out in the states on on 3D engine design and landscape design and I I went out and helped and advised on this project and it had multiple names during development and Peter sent me across to Los Angeles. It was all really really nice and uh you know a few months later someone said to me we're calling it World of Warcraft and that and I so I I it wasn't when I was working on it but yeah so I helped architect landscape and things just I just I just brought in because my 3D knowledge that was what like 2001 2002. Yeah. If not a bit if not a bit before World Warcraft like what 2004 or six the release. Yeah I mean we we we probably started a bit before that. Yeah. But yeah, early 2000 really that was but that but that was a guy called Peter Reson who who who looked after Blizzard

and Vendi was Blizzard Vivventi Universal and Universal Studios owned it all. Yeah. So I was Peter was a dear friend. He said you do you want to go and help fix and I got flown out to LA and got the star treatment. It was really nice. I'd only just returned from living in the US and I was like oh okay I'll go back out to LA again but they they gave me a great times. I don't know if I'm credited or not. I don't really care. I'm not I'm not a credit person, but I just it just it was very nice just to to be on that gig to help get that thing going, you know. I say it didn't become World of Warcraft until after I'd left. So So continuing open world, lots of stuff at here. And then Microsoft, I became famous for the Microsoft Flight Simulator franchise again cuz I'm an open world person. Yeah, makes it makes sense. You don't get a bigger world than the whole world. But the big the big thing with Microsoft Flight Simulator is we have to create every inch of the world cuz you could take off and fly from anywhere to anywhere. So you are building the ultimate technically it's the most difficult home world you're going to make cuz on the ground I'm doing the air as well. Yeah. Um so I worked on that

and I I did the official expansion packs for Steam the Steam version of Flight Simulator 10 or Flight Simulator X as people call it. So all the all the official expansion packs for Steam was was me on my own. I just sat and solo wrote those. Even though I was working as a as an executive and a board level VP at the time on my evenings I was doing the official expansion packs for Flight Simulator. I've wor I've worked with Train Simulator too cuz of course that's a big open world thing. Uh only in April I shipped an expansion pack for Train Sim World uh with with Dove Games with my team. A fantastic guy. I'm going to give him a plug. Mike Meden on my team uh and uh my my programmer Aaron uh we we we created some some expansion pack content for that. So I've been around lots and lots of games, but the general theme is it's it's explorable worlds, health, uh and and survival. So So usually one or or

more of those elements are sort of defined every game I've done in my career. So that's that's sort of the specialization of what we do. Have you ever get in any relationship with Ultima Online at some point? Um, yes. When when I was when I was Yeah, cuz I I I say this cuz uh Richard Gary and I get on really well. So, Richard's made some lovely testimonials on my behalf recently. I can share them with you guys if you want to put them on screen. But he says but what he was talking about um him him and I being the sage gurus of the games industry which was from Richard Gary which was lovely thing for him to say. So yeah know who know Richard Gary is a very very important game industry person who's credited with Ultima online basically. Yeah and which became you know which was all part of EA Origin. So we still have the origin story here now and of course that was Rich's business. I mean, yeah, we we can see it quite quite clearly here. Oh, yeah. There's on your

page. Yeah. Is that a quote? Is it from I need my glasses on. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, that's that's the quote from Richard, which I'm very proud of. Really? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Not only Richard, but also some other guys. Oh, there's Sam. Yeah. From Sam Tamil, Mr. Atari. Yeah. Brass. Yeah. Yeah. No, it doesn't. Pretty pretty interesting. Yeah. But but for those who don't know, Ultima Online is in my opinion the open world MMO RPG game released in 199. It is the ultimate Jacob. I played it for like three to four years I think constantly when I was younger on like a check shards open server when we were literally like you know there were all these things around us like World of Warcraft lineages and all these like new games but we were still playing this game. It's just so good. It it Richard nailed it. And there was no leveling system by the way for for those who don't know like in Ultim

online there's no leveling system. You literally learn by doing. Like the moment you do something, you improve your skill in it and that's it. Like that was it. Like you start chopping wood, your lumberjacking skill increases. Yeah, that's that's that's what I'm doing in the new game by the way. The same thing cuz I I I found some of these leveling systems to be artificial and then and then you end up in a situation where you I don't you're level 50 in the level one zone and you're just swatting everything or likewise they're too strong for you, they're too strong for you or too weak for you. So on the new game, we've been working on ideas of avoiding these sort of leveling traps and making it more organic where you you learn as you grow and as you go for that very reason. I mean the people do the level scaling and all the rest of it is still not a great answer. Oh well, the best answer is to avoid that sort of leveling. Yeah. Yeah. We played Diablo 4 together. It was [ __ ] terrible. Yeah. You got to go round and round the same thing. Yeah. I was like, come on. Like the monsters get level up faster than you and therefore you never progress pretty much. Yeah. Oh, it was so Oh my god. Yeah, they don't they don't make

games these days this way. Basically, like Ultima Online did. Like even like the specialization because I remember that there was literally like me going every day to the craftsman guild trying to like buy materials or stuff or literally order some armors or whatever from people that were like specializing in craftsmanships were like completely unusable in battle, but they were still like the richest people on the server because they were selling all this [ __ ] Yeah, exactly. And then creating it own world within the world, didn't it? Yeah, exactly. And then we were the ones that were actually fighting and using it or, you know, to battle player killers or go to dungeons and stuff like that. And we were equally wealthy basically because we were putting in the time in the dungeons, but they were putting the time in the forge. Yeah. You couldn't do it without them. You couldn't Yeah, you couldn't do without them. Of course. I can I I can give you a little Richard Garriat um anecdote because he you know he did he did the trip he went up into space and then he went he wanted to go as deep as he could so he went to the Mariana Trench

um and I think Richard and I must have got some sort of record because we were emailing each other while he was in the trench. So we we sent I think we sent the the only email that was from you know from that that low in the world in the Mar trench because he he set up an internet connection on on his trip and we were emailing backwards and forwards while he was was going down there going down into the trench. So I suppose that's a nice little anecdote there. Probably the the deepest email ever sent. Yeah. Oh man, how can you like how can you translate all the the learnings from AP to to Zeno the new game? Like you you said you're trying to avoid the leveling. What else? Tell tell us a little bit more. I want I want lots of stealth, lots lots of smart crafting. It's it's a survival game. It's not a shooter. If you want to run around and shoot anything, well, you're quite welcome if you find some weapons, but it's not.

The point is it's how do I survive in this environment? Not not and this doesn't mean going scrabbling around for four pieces of food or something. This is the actual the actual environment's out for you and the and the creatures in the environment are out for you. So it's about how how do I act smartly to live in this environment. How do I learn the behaviors of the people who live there and the creatures that live there? How do how do I adapt to to this world? So, so, so it means survival in the actual sense of I have to think about what I'm doing in this universe, not not just, you know, collect 10 pieces of magnesium and turn it into something else cuz that's that's not my idea of crafting and stuff like that. That drives me crazy. Yeah. But then there's like the fear and tension like anything like around the honestly what I I I I got famous for was the was the fear and tension in AP and other titles. I did too. I didn't I don't think I scared anyone in Flight Simulator, but I certainly did in I I I certainly did in AP and that and that fear and the tension. You you're quite right. That's that's the driving force of this game

once you got the mechanics of that survival. I want you to be going around every corner and not knowing what on earth around that corner. Don't don't go rushing around the corner because you don't know who's going to be sat waiting for you. And I want that sense all the time. Dark brooding places, forests, caves, just just this complete tension and and fear. When going back to AP, when when we're building AP, we used to we used to work right through into late into night at the Atari offices. Uh, and we we turn the lights off and we actually we actually got scared play testing our own game. I I can imagine and then we didn't even want to walk home or whatever in the in the middle of the night from the Atari office. And then that was when we were coding the thing and I wanted I wanted to to bring that back to to bring that entire sense back. So you're quite right. That's that's the driving force behind that to to to to look at survival to to look at strategy to to create a crafting system. Mike Maiden and Sean Delaney are working with me on that right now. Create a crafting system where isn't collect 10 of these and 15 of those. It's much more

organic where you you actually bring things together and find parts and improvise. Improvisation is a big thing. Yeah. Absolutely right. Uh, and but over over the top of all that, I want this this whole thing of tension, of fear. Um, you know, we we didn't put music in AVP as you're playing. Uh, and people said, "Why didn't you?" Because we wanted you to hear the heartbeats, wanted to hear the predator laughing at you, uh, and all these things. I learned such a great deal about building tension in games. And that, so this what I'm shipping across. So, we're not, as I say, we're not using the alien license because I want to create creatures that aren't limited by somebody else's IP. We we want to do some new things, but certainly the tension because I mean there's loads of alien games now. So I didn't want to do it. You don't need you need to have a license to be successful. You can just look at Hell Divers, you know, like they don't have the license successful. But it it wasn't even that. I mean, we could have got the license. I I have good relationship with Disney. It's Disney's now. But I genuinely wanted to to be able to do

things that we couldn't fit within a license. But taking those core ideas of It's limit It's limiting of course. Yeah, it's limiting. That's exactly Yeah. But these games are like quite popular these days if I understand like something like I don't know Sons of the Forest or these other like horror based survival games of the forest is very good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For those who don't know this uh uh again I can do a little bit of a screen. Yeah you can. Yeah. 225K reviews here on Steam. And this is basically kind of similar what uh J is saying that like survival stuff in this kind of a horror based. I don't know if these are cannibals against your zombies or something like that. And this this Yeah, this really blow up last year. Yeah, but from what I think what I understood from from Jay, like it's not going to be more about like shooting these like but more like crafting and trying to survive in the wilderness. You can shoot. You're going to have to you're going to have to make a weapon in the first place. You're going to have to you're going to have to actually do do I hit hit them with a piece of wood? Do I do I go and find something? Do a a lot

of salvage and improvisation. But yeah, so you can if you want if you want to go out and fight, great, but you might be smarter actually avoiding some enemies. So Sons of the Forest was became very combat focused. This this game can be. It's up to you. It depends how you want to play it. But me personally, I want it to be focused in combat when you need to combat and be smart when you can. So, you know, setting traps away from your base and base building and you know, maybe a quarter of a mile away, you know, a couple of kilometers away having having some traps set in the forest and you know, you hear a little ding and someone's getting caught in the net. All all this sort of business. Not not not just that visceral combat, which everyone's doing now. I'm not going to say it's not a combat, but it's like mix the combat with being clever about how you do it. Don't just go rushing into situations. Yeah. Try and create other opportunities for for bringing the enemy down if you even need to. Even even try and avoid the enemy even knowing you're there for as

long as you can. You're first building up your base, you know, don't make a lot of noise. Be very very quiet. Perhaps you want to put your base underground or something. So, literally try and avoid the enemy until you're smart enough to go out and face them. Do you also have some kind of maintenance mechanics like uh don't starve or something similar where you have like water or health or I don't mean health like food food gauge or something like that? We're working on the on the UI, but yes, I mean, yes, that there's food and everything, but it's it's it's not in, you know, if I if I don't eat within 40 seconds, I'm going to get hurt. Yeah. Screen's going to go red. That's just annoying. But it's agree. But but it is there is requirement that you you eat and drink to survive, but not not in such a way where it's just where it just becomes an obstacle where you're trying to do something else. I think that's been done a bit too far. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So it's you're halfway on a raiding mission who's like, "Oh my gosh, if I don't eat this sausage now and I'm done for." Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I fully agree with this. Like I can't play these games where like I I want to take care of myself first and then I need to take also care of the character in like in the video game and feed him and drink and stuff like that which is like annoying. Yeah. Because then then it's the game is all about like just eating and trying to hunt for food and then just you don't explore anything else because you because you don't have time to you just Yeah. So, so, so yes, there's there is a survival element, but not not to where it becomes super intrusive. It's about surviving about not surviving against your own body. It's about surviving against the environment and what's out there. That's that's that's a personal thing. I'm glad you guys are validating it as gamers. So, thank you. Well, it's going to be PC, Steam, or you're thinking about PC and consoles. PC. Yeah, PC and consoles. Uh that's no more mobile. I mean of I mean we have a PC segment now. So we keep reviewing PC games from time to time more and more these days because because of the forces that are

pretty much pushing a lot of the PC successful games into mobile if they want or not basically. Yeah. I've never done a mobile game I have to say. So there you go. You found my my career gap. I've never done I've only ever done PCs and consoles. Only Yeah. You have only 40 years of experience. Oh my god. I'm No, it's not good enough, is it? I should be should be doing mobile games. Yeah. Thank you very much for listening, guys. So, we end here. Yes. Sorry. You're done. No, but are you thinking about mobile or not? Really? It's just I mean for this game it's not going to fit. I have some ideas about companion apps on mobile and things that that fit into the IP that we're creating. So, this I'm not saying there won't be things on mobile, but you're not going to be able to fit this onto any sort of meaningful way. Okay. How close are you with uh with the release? Uh we're about two years, give or take. We we've got we we're putting the game playing now. We've got some engine stuff done and the the design team are working now. We have this lovely lady called Blair who's a concept artist. She was she she won the

Blizzard scholarship awards and she's as as I'm talking to you, I've got on Discord showing me monsters, so it's it's good to see. That's perfect. Yeah, it's good. I I thought she was doing portraits of me, but apparently not. It's monsters for the game, so we're okay. Yeah. So it's there's a lot going on. So we just we're just starting to put pieces together and we we've sorted a publisher. We got we got some funding to push it to the finish line which is exciting. Yeah. How is it that if when you don't really need to do it all alone? Yeah. Glad the change. I the the biggest thing for me is trying not to interfere other people and be a control freak. And I don't mean that in some egotistical way. the team will tell you that I'm I'm only negotiist on Thursdays, you know, but but it's like I can do that. I can do that. I can do that. And the guys keep saying, "Yeah, but there's only one of you now, and these games have bigger." Yeah. Yeah. Do you want Do you want to do You can't clone yourself, unfortunately. Exactly. And that's exactly what they're saying. Do you want to do the business? Do you want to do the game design? I I can't do the art.

So, the artists are safe. I can't draw stickman. My art is terrible. But, you know, code code and things I still interfere with. And I've I have actually architected the AI system to being serious for a second. AI is big part of my thing as you saw from AVP and uh all the other projects along the way. So I've created a um a complex what I hope is a leading edge AI system for the programs to use. So the so so again it's it's not this creature patrols left and right goes and has a break and does it again. Um does go ahead. Yeah, exactly. We have cre we have a we have a learning system where where the where the creatures learn by what they see. So if if they see you do something, they will learn. Each creature actually has its own brain and learns. And then the intelligent creatures when they meet other intelligent creatures will pass on what they've found out. So you might have some guy who understands what trick you did to catch other guy cuz he's been told. So the creatures will meet each

other will pass on knowledge of what they've learned about you. If they don't if if you meet a creature who doesn't know anything about you, then they fall into the trap that the first creature did. If the first creature got to him before you did, he's told them. That's very interesting mechanic. Yeah. The smart the smart thing is is don't let anyone tell tales. So you you should not left any survivors basically. Yeah. Yeah. Certainly on the certainly so on the bad guys or or the nice thing is so it's really complicated cuz that's what I do. You could get them all thinking you're doing one thing. I think they all tell each other that you're doing one thing and you keep doing it over and over so they think this is your pattern and then you go and do something else completely to to confuse them. So you can you can you can use it you know to to to lie to them about about your techniques and tricks. Yeah. I think that's new. I thought so myself. I don't definitely by the way if you this topic do you use any AI actively during development or like what's what's

the current take regarding production that you have there? Absolutely no AI whatsoever. No AI whatsoever. Apart from apart from my handwritten AI code handwritten of course. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But no not no AI generation of art or anything else. And I know some people do and it saves them time and money but we're well the whole team like myself are absolute perfectionist and just want to make everything handcrafted. So I'm not I'm not going to do a big procedural weld either. The world's handcrafted. Yes, it costs more time and money but I think the results will be worth it off the back end. I think people are going to enjoy the game more. So I I like the idea that if you go around every corner, there might be something there that's been crafted. Every every bit of terrain has a reason. They can you can create enormous worlds with procedural, but it it becomes repetitive very quickly. Yeah. So we we are we are looking at ways of creating big worlds handcrafted. We have some landscape creation tools, but it's but it's handcrafting. The tools will speed up the handcrafting

rather than proceduralize. Yeah. Yeah, but the thing is like in this case you actually want to explore the world. If it's just randomly generated by AI, you don't you don't just rock is the differentiation. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Why would you bother just stay at home in your little base and say I don't need to go out there cuz I've seen it already. So So here you could you could walk quarter of a kilometer in one direction and just see various things and then you suddenly walk in other direction and the landscape might change absolutely completely like oh god. But even even the transitions between landscape types, everything has a plausible reason to support my work in open wells. I went away and I I did a I did a bachelor's degree in natural sciences just just so I could study geology and physics and all these things at degree level. So so my open wells actually can be believable. Yeah. So you know what you're doing. Yeah. Okay. So a fiveyear natural sciences degree alongside the day job to so so when we create worlds it's it's plausible. I mean, I'm pretty

sure like if if you say this to someone, it's like nowadays in gaming industry, it's like no, I don't need this. I don't need this. It's too much work. That's that's such a big difference between then and now. And and we had this discussion, Yako, like the games that are made now, it's they're nowhere near the quality they were back back in like a couple of years ago. Not quality, like the effort. That's the thing. Effort. Effort. Yes. Effort's the thing. quality like you know technology gets better like rendering and all these things gets better and so on so forth but the effort that you had to put in before in order to achieve that 3D engine where you actually could go through the 3D environment because you had to do it yourself like wasn't really on the table before there's no Unity or Unreal to do that we had I I agree with you I don't blame the devs for that there's a lot of commercial pressure on them to get things out quickly but I I'm I'm very lucky that we've being funded and I've I've I've had a background where I have been a perfectionist and the team

perfectionists. So hopefully that'll show through in the I'm not saying I'm perfect. It's not a sales pitch, but I I've I've always genuinely been a perfectionist because I've had to be cuz there weren't any tools. Uh and that and that that comes through into into what we're doing as a team that that level of perfectionism. And again, I'm not I'm not saying that as some sort of BS sales pitch. It's just it's just I'll do the sales pitch later. You know, you always leave them with the sales pitch. It's it's just it's just a different way of thinking where we're not under that pressure. So I don't blame any of the devs whatsoever. It's just a the situation in us, you know, get this thing out, get it shipped. One of the things I used to say to teams when I was looking after production electronic arts, they used to come to me and say, "We've got this great new engine or we've got this great new lighting system. We've got this, this, and this." Like, yeah, but does it make the game more fun? Are these technical things helping the game or are they hindering the game? Uh, so there is a bit of a of a pondance now to to create really smart tech, but then you look at the game under it, it's

really shallow. And I'm like, build a smart game, then put the tech in there to support that game, not the other way around. It's not we're not building tech demos. We just do tech demos on the Amigga, you know, amigga scrolling, bright screening around the screen and things, you know, we don't want to get back to that. So So I I'm at this stage now of my life. I say to everyone, build the game. Game play first. game play fast, make it beautiful, yes, but to support the game, not the other way around. Don't build a game around a tech demo. Yeah, that's that's I think even the current market force that driving like all these successes where you have like I don't know hell diverse balders gate or these other games where or power world where they are driven by kind of double A or small team kind of setup where again as you said they go gameplay first don't have the budget of the big corpse but they can still beat them at the absolutely right absolutely right and look and look at Boulders get three I mean Larian did fantastic things I keep evangelizing them on LinkedIn because I know quite a lot of the guys I'm friends with quite a lot of them and I absolutely class that as my favorite

game of all time because it's smart, it's clever, there's so many ways of doing things. You don't you don't need big budgets for a clever game design. You need clever designers and and that's and that's exactly what they've got in spades and that and that perfectionism comes through in what they do. And I honestly think it's the best game ever made for me personally. I think if you have a big budget, it always kind of limits your way of like how we think about stuff and the like the way of creating and ideating because then like oh we have so much money I don't care but if you have very low amount of money like you are on a small budget yes everything comes you need to be very efficient you need to be smart about things and then that's when like the run of money in the good idea so yeah it's like a small budget always pushes you to to think differently I I agree. I agree. And that's and that's something where where I mean I I keep myself very very current despite 44 years. I still keep myself technically current as you're hearing. But I also

bring some of that history with me because we had to do these games in six weeks by ourselves, you know, with with a with a with a very low budget. I mean mobile. Yes. Exactly right. But we had to do the what were the games of the day. Yeah. We we had we had six weeks start to finish. We we didn't get paid until the royalties came out, you know. I' I'd be living on toast or something for the six weeks, you know, hoping to hell the game would come out and I'd get paid. So, we didn't we didn't have the big budgets. And that's and those disciplines is something I've brought forward throughout my career of of discipline. Yeah. Yeah. I still I still eat toast every day. There you go. But but yeah, but it was exactly that. We we just didn't have massive funds, but we made games that were fun. And I think that's the key. No matter how much money you've got, being serious. That's that's what this what is this industry about is fun. It's not it's not about showing people pretty graphics. It's about are those things fun. And we we my first ever game didn't have any graphics at all. The the first game I shipped was

for the ZXH1. It didn't have graphics. It just had text. So we we were we you know, you' be having letter A would be your spaceship and the the letter X would be the bombs. But it was fun to play. That's the thing like it it doesn't really matter if if it like it looks great if it's really like you're having fun by playing the game. That's that's I mean that's why it's called a game. That's exactly right. Fun game entertainment. So I I I think use your budget to to to polish up and make the graphics and everything nice if you can for heaven's sake. The the core of your game is the game play. That's why we call it game play. It's what we want people to do. And that that should always that should always be the central focus of any product. So you I think those of us who have been around for a long time see see that and I think sometimes what it shows like the the guys who run the Larry team have been around for a very long time. It it shows that I think that experience starts to show through at least I hope it does. Maybe I'm just old as I hope so. But where do you where do you get

inspiration from? I mean the new game clearly takes inspiration from everything that you learned right in the last years but what else? I mean, of course, you have I get I get ideas in my head. I will go around um and I used to take a notebook out with me and I still do sometimes just to the supermarket and things and I'll see something in the supermarket and I'll suddenly start getting tracked onto a game. I'll be rushing and writing game notes. They just they just come rushing at me sometimes. Quite honestly, drives my wife crazy. She she's looking for the milk and beans and I'm worrying about monsters. But but yeah, so it it does I mean I even wake up with game ideas and all sorts of things, but but it is usually built around my my core interest of the AI and the stealth and the strategy and open world. So you can you can see from this where where my areas are from this call. So my brain's usually always permeating with ideas around I can understand that like I have some

similar things with RPGs basically that's also always on my brain but and then then I'm doing gachas for you. Yeah, doing gacha. What what was your favorite RPG then? Favorite RPG? I still haven't finished Balders's Gate because I have a second kid now. No, that's timeconuming. Yeah. Yeah, I'm at the end of the second act. Uh but hopefully by the end of this year I I'll finish it for now. It would be I would say Witcher 3 hands down like that. But it's a fantastic product. Absolutely agree. Again, I read I read the books before the the games so I I know the franchise very well. was a big fan and like I remember the whole like CD Project R going from nobody to this like random Witcher game and then to this multi-billion company. It's a lot of hard work that they're putting into it. And still I still prefer Witcher one before Witcher 3. Which one? Witcher one is having a remaster this year by the way. Awesome. Oh, is it really? I think I I have a very good friend working in Warso that's like leading the tech

there. Yeah, that was tells me the last things. But yeah, they're they're really doubling down on it. And I think I remember when this I I think that was the same time when Witcher 3 came out and Fallout 4 actually came out. Nobody was talking about Fallout 4 because that's why we're talking about where Big Budget doesn't always help. Look at Fallout 76. I mean, yeah, it just died despite the budget, you know. Where did you say CD Project Red came out of nowhere with Witcher three? W one and two. The the difference in quality between W which two and W which are three was just phenomenal. The other thing that I really I think was kind of a little bit beyond what I would experience before when when I was like I think like two years ago I literally modded my Skyrim with like 200 gigs of additional mods. Oh my gosh. It's a completely different game. It's completely different game. And like why do people keep making these super expensive games that are, you know, like like you said, Fallout 67 66 when

there's like so many good stuff? Like there was literally like a mod that would add 2,000 lines fully voice over for a character. Oh yeah. For one of the expansions on Skyrim, the girl, the vampire girl basically. And she would have commentary on everything. Like she would literally be like AI like you do this or that or and she would like have it in her catalog and like tell you something about it. have some like relation trees that would unlock and stuff like like it was completely different game suddenly you know now after after this call we'll be asking you if we have all these mod socks I love Skyrim get there and like I've seen Skyrim being fine-tuned to like you know with like 8K textures and all these other things that's great like you can up the graphics a lot that's one thing but there's a lot of content that people created all these being able to have multiple followers multiple quest lines multiple different things that are enriching ing the game so much. So that that's the other way for me that like sometimes you don't really need to go like I guess to look for the new one just like refine the old one and I

refine like it's always the mods like I don't think so people or like companies have that exponential manpower to do this what modders do if they really fall in love with the You're quite right and that's that's why with the the game we're designing now we're we're already talking about Mike Maiden uh my my business partner on this uh Mike's Mike's already talking about how do we how do we support modders And because it it becomes your game. It's not just our game then. It's the game people want it to be. So I think modding is really really important now. Steam Workshop support etc. And you know look look what it's done for Boulders Gate 3 is given that you know a lot more noise recently. So yeah I I agree with you. I'm I pulled down mods for all sorts of things. So 100% with you and you know you you mentioned I just thinking about RPGs. I haven't mentioned one of my uh major projects getting Mr. Open world. It was a game called Power Crystal which was a big open world RPG. It never shipped but it got it got done and the the industry saw it as some of the Bethesda people very kindly said it was it's part of

their um you know inspiration for Morwind and Skyrim etc. Morowind my favorite. So we I got asked by Trip Hawkins and then for the for the audience here we should name his name that was the founder of Electronic Arts. He had a a separate spin-off 3DO probably remember the 3Dio console 3Dio Heroes of Magic. Yeah, exactly. It had one of the best games ever. Exactly. Right. And he had in the uh he launched the 3Dio M2 console and I was I was asked to be the the launch title for that. So we we put the team together. We did a huge brawling RPG Power Crystal. And then we were so pleased about it. Then we got a message the conso's been stopped like okay. So, so the first time the first time in my career I actually built a game then the machine no longer exists to put it on which was a bit gutting I have to say it still hurts but it just it's just how it was. I went I went to the mainstream EA after that anyways. No, there's no bad blood between trip and that. It's just the way it worked out with the Yeah. with the

console. But yeah, so but that was that was a big open world RPG and I'm I'm really proud that a lot of the RPG people now got to see it. Um they're saying it's inspired them. You probably find that online somewhere, Jacob, too. With some scary pictures. Oh, really? Yeah. Was that Power Crystal M2? The my M2 console is so it's 3D M1 was machine one, the original 3DO console, but the sequel is supposed to be 3D M2. 3D machine 2. I think I have it. Yeah, of course you have that. Yeah, of course. He's fast. This man's faster. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Take them a prototype. Prototype cancelled. Uh this one that's the boring pictures. That's There's one of the characters. Yeah. Yeah. These these are from it. Yeah. Okay. What's the That's one of my favorites when we did the the snow scenes. I mean, again, it doesn't look anything now, but this was this was mid90s, you know. Like, there you go. That's that's one nice town shot.

What was the what the date we're talking here? Mid90s. Mid90s. Mhm. Okay. That's very very advanced. Yeah. If you go back one, roll back one. That's that's what it actually looked like going down streets. That one didn't have the ground textures in, but you can see the sort of buildings we're doing, which wasn't wasn't bad for the day cuz these these are these are all production images. None of these are finished game images. The ones you found here are all the production diary photos. But yeah, that's really nice. Great. Even very good. Yeah. Yeah, that was very good. That was it. That was it. That's a guy called And Andrew Noble and uh Dave Tully were the artists who did that and they I think they did a fabulous job. So those are those are test characters. That's why they're very polygon. They're not the real characters. They still look good. Yeah, this feels pretty good. Yeah. Come on. They copy me at the bottom with my big hat, I think. Okay, Jane, give us the like where's the

sales pitch you were talking about? What's the sales pitch for? I was I was kidding. But yeah, but I just I just I I just hope that we just build some interest and get some excitement going for the Zenomorph games because it's as you can see 44 years I've not lost a passion and we've we've brought I think some of the best developers in the world together to create this thing. So I I just want to bang the drum and say we're doing this. We're listening. We're gamers too. We're taking what we've learned about stealth, what we've learned about open world, and we're we're putting it into Zenomorph. I mean my my partner Mike Meden, big open world guy, very big technical open world guy from the technical side. um he's he's just come off Forsa Horizon to do this with me. He was a producer of Forsa Horizon. So we know the the the team have such a pedigree in this. So we just we we want to make the game that you guys you guys the viewers, not just YouTube guys. I mean you two guys as well um want to play. So you know give us feedback, talk to us. We're going to start getting more active in the community and we're we're going to be extending off something that we all want to play because we wouldn't you know I'm not doing this for the cash and 60 years

old. I'm doing this for the cash. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, so that the big picture is we we really are genuinely trying to make something different. We we've brought in some absolutely incredible people. Mike Mike was producer on Star Citizen as well before we went to to Forza. Star Citizen. That's a story we're following pretty closely. Yeah. There's there's a huge story there. You need to talk to Mike one day. Bring Mike on here. He'll talk to you for hours when they release. Yeah. just as long as long as he doesn't break his NDAs, they'll be talking for days. But yeah, but we've we've brought people we've brought people in for from the open world genre and it's not just me. It's not just my game. I came up with a concept, but we've we've put one incredible team around it. We've got rather than being publisher funded, we've been investor funded and investors that have given us a really really good deal because the investors were all coming in were passionate for the game. Um, so it's the even the commercial side people like, you know, we want you to do this and I I I really

hope it's going to create something special. I I want to create, you know, as I'm getting older, I want to create that follow up to to the success I've had over the years on multiple projects. So, so really it's it's it's taking pieces from all the different projects I've done and what what I did right and what I did wrong cuz gosh, I made some mistakes and games, we all do. And I want to actually bring that together into a whole new survival world. Can can people learn somewhere about the project either website or discord or some kind of there's about to be awesome. You can you can Google the press release in some of the interviews we've we've done online now. So you you'll see just Google my name off there's a lot of content but we we are waiting until we're happy with things to show um which isn't too far away and then and then you'll see a blitz on content. Jane, thanks very much for coming. I hope you can come on again and we talk we continue talking because you mentioned like how many hours we have in this can be a series of multiple hours of of discussions. Oh my god. So 200.

Yeah. Very very lovely and very wholesome. Really thank you for making the time here. Yeah. Well honestly I I appreciate you two guys wanting to talk to me and share with your audience because I think it comes across I genuinely still have the passion. So I love talking to every one of you guys. Yeah, that's what we definitely need to talk about a little bit in current times. Yeah, exactly. All right, thank you very much, dear listeners. Thank you very much for coming. I joined the Slack channel. We'll I will put all the links in the show notes so you can check out how J is doing and then see you next time. Cheers. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Thank you everybody. Thank you. [Music] Hey, hey, hey. [Music]