WFH Orders, Magic Leap Selling, Naughty Dog Crunches, Gamestop | Game Dev Unchained Episode 219

I [Music] what's up everybody welcome to another episode of game dev Unchained in number one game development podcasts about game development I am your host and Brandon Pham I got a introduce myself let no need for an introduction for my other guests it is that time of the month it is a roundtable news episode and that means we're gonna have a panel of game developers giving their opinions on the state of game development regarding on game news right so without further ado I'm gonna go ahead and switch over to my cam I mean great Raven Graham I don't know why I keep calling you retards and then Richard Q that is joining me coming from both in California and both from their homes how

you guys doing doing good doing good man doing good all right I guess things safe uh is it supposed to be this split screen thing or is it a man just hold on dude I'm a one-man team all right you start seeing me right here but I'm gonna switch to your camera - oh there we go there we go so as you go we're gonna sing some topics here but in the meantime I want to talk to you guys uh what is the status right now the last time we talked let's kind of start with Richard you were mentioning that you were still going to GDC and no that has changed ray I mean how did that go so yeah like a month ago I think yeah GDC was still

cancelled but like there's like this interesting reddit thread that I saw where it's like when did ready to get serious when did covet 19 get serious to you right and it was a serious thread so you know like it's mostly serious and I think for me when like the NBA was like cancelled like that's when I was like oh crap so this isn't just like it's you know cuz that game can yeah it's like the real deal because like you know NBA makes substantially more money like when they're playing and all that stuff whereas conventions yeah it's like whatever right so I think like I forget what the turning point was but it was always very sketchy like whether or not we were like going to travel to GDC and all that so we've had to pivot a lot of our plans and everything and change up a lot of our PR strategies but ya know like definitely now it's like home quarantine and you know I mean everybody's doing it now so like it's it's a pretty much the norm now but like

back then yeah you know I feel kind of foolish but I am on record thing I'm gonna fly to San Francisco yeah that didn't happen that's not gonna happen for a long time yeah I mean Ray was in ground zero and he's like mmm but mr. king of the castle how have things changed since this kind of forced remote work from home pretty much across the industry right now yeah like honestly for me have already missed a beat right is you know I already worked from home a lot already um I have meetings with people all around the world so really whether I'm in the office over at my house it doesn't really matter the big part is like some of the stuff I do outside of work you know like I I teach kids on the side on Saturdays and that now is also online and and I don't really go outside a lot like I used to

so so that has changed drastically you know and everywhere I go if I do go out everywhere I go is pretty much empty but uh but yeah I'm and it's in terms of work it's it's business as usual man we're still trucking along so interviewing still doing meetings but this is all of its own resume so this is I like that I like that it's all over zoom relax it's definitely do whatever whatever your haters well I mean right you're kind of bringing up a good point you're in your company have been set up for remote work in the infrastructure you guys had this for four years now so the transition was flawless but the thing is a lot of triple-a companies aren't really set up for this I mean with very few people out of the office so kind of reaching out what what type of stories are you hearing what cut but difficulties are you hearing you to Richard are you

hearing for your friends about how this positioning is happening right now because yeah oh yeah yeah yeah it's actually hilarious yeah it's late go ahead Richard oh okay sure sure so so kind of as he said like for us business is normal for indie we were already set up to work remotely anyway we've got folks like who are working like internationally - so this didn't really change much and for my side job with working with Tencent like it was already remote like so you know I just had my first call with the designers over in Jensen over zoom which was a pretty marvelous software and and it actually went just as just as normal you know but yeah for everyone else though I think like for people who are like worked for companies that like you know day in day

out you've been going there for like over five years like I talked to them and they're kind of freaking out it's like oh my god working from home like it's so lonely I'm so used to all the distractions or you know I'm not trying to like you know point fingers at anybody but it's like yeah I could do this for a while like working from home you just kind of get used to it you know so I think it's gonna be a huge inflection point for the industry like for a little glow like that industry for everybody when they realize like wait working from home actually we can kind of get used to it and there's like we can be more productive and you know I think that a lot of like industries are going to reflect on just like what some of the benefits are not every industry benefits oh I'm working from home but like there's certainly you know video games are affected quite greatly by it well what kind of um and I guess I'll go back to this with Ruth ray right here I mean what kind of stories are you hearing from your industry friends about this transition like what difficulties are you seeing since not all is that

kind of set up for this or prepared for this since because the obviously kind of happened over a weekend and everybody was suddenly at home you know but I would say I would say that a lot of the studios absolutely an asset for this right without naming any studios there was a few that have really stringent security requirements for the computers that are in their office right so you can't you cannot work from home right there's no infrastructure set up there's no you can't get into the perforce or you can even get into the work network they don't they don't know what VPN is right like there's there so many so many companies that were completely not set up for this and there are some that were like okay this is the new world we're gonna buy 400 laptops or there was there are some that are like oh okay we're gonna we're gonna install Citrix and then everybody can just tunnel in from their home computer using Citrix to their work reader and then if it will be

right and then there's others where they're arguing over who should get access to the a hundred licenses of Citrix right like so alright so you know there's there's wide variety of responses that it was all like a lot of folks were trying to figure it out and they're scrambling right now and and I and they probably really it really brought it to the surface like how how the video game industry Jesus used to having a studio of 800 people in some location all working together in one place and really not prepared at all for remote working and there's a lot of issues with that aside from security as you can imagine right with software that's suddenly having to work the laptop solution is probably like the the best solution because it from one source and then suddenly it's kind of dispersed but that takes a long

time to suddenly have these computers especially with deliveries kind of coming to a halt with the actual energy supplies being being kind of the priority so Richard I kind of want to hear your side like what kind of things are you hearing from your friends within the industry just suddenly transitioning and not being very prepared all of a sudden the main thing that I'm hearing from my friends is that it's really hard like a lot of the stuff that we need transition into working from home if you're like working on an individual project or you're a leader like you have to learn how to communicate with other people if that's the hardest part because there's so much in person-to-person interactions that you just sort of lose and so things naturally slow down not only because like work is a lot slower but then also it's like people just generally don't like not developers but like consumers

generally aren't as interested in like investing money into new things so there's definitely like you know how like the stock market is taking a crash like that also is sort of reflected in how people are thinking about new technologies and new spending so there's a I mean people are playing a lot more games but they're also much more like worried about like their 401ks worried about their kids worrying about their family they're worrying about people that are affected by kovat themselves so you know in addition to working from home being just a bit more challenging like there's a lot of just like cabin fever like the feeling like you know they just want to get out and do stuff but they can't and there's a lot of friends of mine who are just discovering for the first time how they can actually work from home amidst a pandemic so it's kind of a weird I don't I don't think we're ever going to go through something like this in the rest of our lives it's definitely a once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing hopefully and yeah so projects have slowed down it's harder to get news

out it's harder to because everyone's now online so everyone like if there's no like big announcements especially I know we're going to talk about some of this later but like you know when the ps5 was announced I was like really what like it's just news non-stop was like no just like Cove it everywhere like everyone's just like oh crap you know are we on the curve going up and so it's it's a different kind of working from home though it's definitely affected by just like you can't talk about the working with the tap working from home without thinking about the reasons why we're working from home so that's like the biggest change yeah the industry's definitely got thrown into the biggest fire possible for remote work I would say a large part of the triple-a industries was never really set up for this but suddenly we're kind of thrown in with this and with all the kids kind of canceled school they have to kind of balance the distraction of just the kiddos running around and suddenly having to be totally

disappointed in doing so I mean Richard you're totally been in that situation so you're kind of used to it but even with the challenges I'm just suddenly the kids starting summer early basically it's a different thing that mentality to like well I'm basically that I have to sit there at home school them in a way and at the same time get stuff done on this like intense yeah jewel for a prologue yeah yeah person yeah for sure like I remember like I'm sure everyone kind of remembers when like [ __ ] hit the fan for me I was driving to my 401k financial advisor and because I was gonna ask him like hey man so my huh my 401k turned into a 201k like what's going on you're even trying to do any of that right now like you should no no I I actually just

I've not changed any of my investments at all cuz like I thought about it talking through it I'm not changing anything but really what it what it was it's like I just wanted to talk to him and get his take on it and then it was like I got into my car went to go pick up my kids and then checked on my phone it's like Oh schools canceled for Oh two weeks that's not too bad then when I talk to some parent there no no no no dude that's that's April 20th not not March 20th I was like oh [ __ ] look wait there go on for five weeks and I'm like wait is this like the last time I'm going to see you like I and everyone was started panicking like all the teachers all the parents was like looking at each other and then and then I was like Leo um come here come here we're getting out of here right now and we're gonna go buy some toilet paper you know like you know not really that but I didn't know what to do at the time it was just like literally like in ten minutes like everything just completely

changed and yeah it's it's definitely a crazy crazy situation we're in now yeah I mean GDC richer still thinks that the kid's gonna be back in April 20th but bro I got cancelled till May I pulled by a daughter out of preschool she's done preschool for the rest of the year and you know I'm pretty much assuming that my son doesn't have any school for the rest of this year and who knows what happens in fall Hut no idea probably that's going to be pushed back for a couple months who knows me but you know what's crazy about all this right I see I got a lot of folks to have kids in many different cities yeah and there's some folks that kids are like yeah I don't know what I'm gonna do with my kids they're out of school that's it right and then there's others that I oh no my kids are doing classes online yeah yeah right and like in the school set up zoom and do dis to do this teaching online that's what's happening right now right so so it's just shocking

to me at how how different different schools are handling this right some schools are just like nope we're done and those who's right now now you're gonna still learn right so yeah I find it really interesting yeah I mean this yeah that's that was actually my number one concerned oh sorry no go ahead what was your number one concern okay okay no number one concern actually pick up the kids was like I want their education to continue I think it's important that they learn and our school has like these programs on Chromebook that the kids used as part of their homework assignment and now they I swear I got like 30 emails today that from all from our elementary school that has like updated programs and assignments and stuff like that you know and some people are actually attending school through zoom I was super happy to hear that our school had actually moved on enhancing our kids is program so you know my wife and I take you know we sub

out for like the homeschooling stuff it's not too bad but like it's definitely a change mm-hmm yeah it's gonna be interesting to see what groups of kids actually succeed in our super discipline at least I'm looking at my kids some of them are looking at it like early vacation and an extra fortnight time but I'm looking my kids is just rating like surpass and play not just catch up but like really leapfrog over these lazy kids right so since the cancellation 30 recess anymore so you know I've been kind of toying what they do I never really really are wanted to

pull him out of school in homeschool but it's something I've been kind of just playing around for the last six months just because my kid especially has just been really bored with school he's that type that type of genius right so but this kind of throws back to you Ray like there's a lot of children kind of at home right now and you being the program or the group there's a lot of advantages to having that skillset as part of the homeschooling curriculum is there any resources out there that you feel children canet access to and this can go for you to Richard any game design stuff that we can add to these parents that are trying to just keep the kids busy while they try to work get them involved well you thee as some free that's a free classes that we announced during this time that you're trapped indoors there's a lot of our learning content it's actually free right now so nine year old

can mom can pick this up and yeah people-people free speech I was like a friend of mine there's actually not I was actually done at a friend of mine this weekend right and he mentioned how he thought c-sharp was too too much for his daughter right now because she's like 11 and I was like man I've seen some kids doing stuff in unity and c-sharp at the age of nine in ten and I was blown away right so so I don't think I don't think that is too young at all and I definitely think it's a good way to really start them young if that's something they want to do so yeah so like you know there's a lot of learning content that's actually free right now we did a blog post about it so that's what's up all right all right anything that you found my right what are you doing you with your kids man yeah so so they have their Chromebooks tough lessons from school I mean my kids

are already into a lot of stem stuff so awesomo is really good for that I think Ozma was like one of the best like it's actually I love their technology and having the interactivity with the objects and the camera scanning down like you know there's like a programming one there's like serving pizza there's even like fun like frozen games for my daughter those I think are super what I would recommend my kids are four and six so your mileage will vary depending on how old you are wait Osmos wait well is this yeah exactly that is there air did you have this yeah that's it dude dude like what the heck you guys complaining about my broadcasting skills alright this is what I can do I can do this oh yeah you could search for Osmo yeah this one's super good and everything yeah yeah yeah I would just jump through like cuz you just need to wait everything Osmos where the heck we where no no I look up no no I don't know what this is actually yeah

you all the most games no just look Osmo and look up ipad oak and uh yeah smell and ipad yeah oh I see yes like basically those things also actually see our kids hands-on yeah and you can just choose it you could go up to different it's different ages and stuff like that honestly like for one of one of our contractors like just to you know throw it back to Ray a bit like so we're doing our project in unity and with all of the extra time that one of our QA lead has she I've asked her to just actually start learning unity so so she can actually help out more because she's got like triple her hours now so oh yeah coding Jam yeah yeah this is fun do you prove this is this just I I actually have heard of Oslo I haven't really looked in too much into it but it was pretty cool for sure yeah yeah that's pretty good

this looks uh been me jumping yeah yeah for sure for sure for the other one that I know is called lil bitts as well like you can learn circuits and stuff like yeah yeah yeah little bits little bit was good yeah okay oh man alright yeah this one's uh yeah yeah yeah I mean that the purpose of actually this all happening is that you know I feel like I'm actually uh more active in my kids education in a room full of strangers not just telling them any um yeah I I at least have all my sudden I'm kind of seeing him more interested in this kind of more like what you call it um what's the hands well my hands are I'm learning rate type of effect yeah like whatever I

Montessori yeah you know yeah yeah miking yeah but yeah this is awesome yeah oh yeah check that out alright I think that's gonna be very helpful for our viewers out there and listeners just having these resources because we are having influx of parents just not knowing what to do with kids and suddenly having to be parents again which is a funny way of slaughter I said though if you yeah if you are older though like learning and you're interested in video games or engineering learning a game engine is always very good I mean there's great examples out there I've already I've already said many many many times that I have used unity for almost all my projects the last like five years both professionally and personally so I definitely think like if you have the bandwidth for it and you are interested in giving into the game industry no matter what type of

person you are to definitely give it a shot and go for it I mean that's how I got my break in the industry and unity is certainly very powerful so there you go right great time while your kids are kind of running about - can I introduce them too - what you do right I think at least with my kids they still don't really understand exactly what I do that's not to say that I'm lazy I don't know what you do either man here talk to us both good son I mean we love the industry for a reason so the next topic I want to talk about is magic leap right I don't know how much you guys have heard about this but magic leap have been they said that they probably been leaking info to try to kind of raise their prices on potential buyers out there as a way to kind of you know it's it's a crap it's not doing well they're

not finding a way to actually make money off of it I want to know I want to know your thoughts let's start with Ray you know you've been kind of impressed with their tech initially but it's kind of been in a slow grind what are your feelings in the know and I think the tech is still good right oh you like for what it is but trying to sell something for like $2,500 and not really giving consumers any sort of reason to spend that kind of money and it was never for consumers who never made it to actually being a consumer device yet it was just it was just doomed because there's no market for it right cool cool tech also has to get into the hands of the people right and so not doing that you know and of course the company was overvalued they threw a bunch of money into it because AR is the new thing so I don't know where they go

from here have no idea because they've been real quiet lately and then I did hear about how they had they're trying to sell the company but like I have no idea what's going on and and but it's none of this is shocking or news right because you know they just came out and they everybody was like cool and then just went about their business right so how far away do you think Richard I know you've never been a huge fan of a arabe VR but you've been kind of more hopeful with AR technology and magically seems to be still in the forefront of this do you feel like the future is still too far away for medically to kind of profit or make a make a stand with this or do you think that they're just just feeling out the the industry right now to see if there's even any interest I think they're definitely I'm trying to catch up on this because I had heard rumors about it most of the articles I'm like

glancing through right now put it in a pretty negative light yeah I like honestly like honestly like when I when I read through some of this it's just like I'm a gamer man like I need games in order to attract me in order to a thing maybe you're you're crazy love for your half-life VR game Brandon will be the game that actually changes like my opinion on these things maybe it was something else but notes yeah killer all I know is that for for yeah I mean so I look at the technology and I'm like dude does this work with like for people like me with glasses that's like always the thing that I'm super sensitive about so I feel like I'm not even like the target consumer for a lot of these things I'm always just thinking like dude I just gonna be like this big bulky thing on my head on top of my glasses so I don't know yeah I mean I remember seeing like magic leap

like I kind of feel like important one out for them right now because I feel like they're done so like I remember like seeing that video of them reacting to some AR [ __ ] like years ago it was really cool but then it was like okay is that it like what's the actual game one of the core loops like how do i how do i progress like you know like once you get past the novelty of it it's like what else is there because a game is a lot more about the sustained sort of like interaction you have with the game itself or other players and a cool piece of hardware is just that it's a cool piece of hardware you know like I can buy sunglasses that play like music in the sides of their ears like there's always cool technology like that but you know I'm not gonna buy it just because it's not it's not necessarily a new experience and yeah I don't know man ten billion dollars seems crazy I can't even believe they've raised two billion dollars I feel like maybe I should have become an investment guy or person bro Alvin do you find a buyer at ten billion

that is the magic leap right there valued themselves at six billion in two three years later they they're trying to kind of get ten billion out of it but I think you mentioned a couple round tables before Richard that you know the gamer first kind of mentality definitely helps kind of drive the the general consumer right and the phone is the best component we know for he our technology with Pokemon go and and whatever iteration next we have with that or any other type of RPG or MMO RPG MMO stuff especially in time now right Emma Mia have been kind of been on the rise since everyone has been quarantine so I don't think anybody's yeah I definitely think that no definitely not it all comes down to the the hardware and how accessible it is and how easy it is to use it's kind of like when you know the last couple weeks I keep going like stadia

what's the value prop you know like it's one of those things where it's like like when I look at the VR headsets and yes it can give you like a are right in front of you but as like it the biggest threat to that is the phone and the phones are always going to constantly get better and even things like Pokemon go is a great example of that technology and works that have a more seamless sort of plugging into your life whereas like you have to literally give up a lot of your senses to play this game magic leap or anything that requires we are and so you know I look at a game like beat saver and that's like taking that whole concept to like the tip like up to 11 and that works and that's cool but then like that's just one game and that's not going to be enough to carry like an entire industry or at least like you know change the way that like the mass consumer thinks about the about the product so we'll see we'll say yeah no no yeah I'll add to that that so half my

pallets I actually dust it off for my vibes yesterday yeah that's it I literally literally just left the ledge and like had to spent like an hour and a half updating drivers and all the different peripherals and I bricked one of them and that I had to figure out how to restore it and then I restored it and then I installed the driver and then two hours later I was actually playing half-life Alex and it's a great game oh it's fantastic and it's a fantastic game mm-hmm it is the gold standard for a first-person shooter in VR no I also then took I also then took off my headset within an hour and then played doom entero that will just put it all in perspective for you right is doom Eternals way easier to get into way easier to play half my house is a great game again I'm playing it on a vibe and

I'm playing on the thousand dollar index right I'm playing on a lower spec hardware and like it's it stated all over the be our thing right in that game right the gravity glove stuff is amazing like it's good right but after an hour I was like okay I'm kind of I'll come back to this but I'm done let me let me play something that this require all this wire hanging out the back and and like all of this craziness in my room and like trying to make sure that I'm always facing in the right direction and that my hips also get torn off my head because they're attached to my computer but I didn't have to deal with all that nonsense I was kind of ripping me out of the immersion and just playing dude which is also another great game so so like you know I don't know if hi-5 Alice is enough but I do know that it is something that if you're making VR you definitely have to pay attention to I'm also blown away I'm blown away that valve pop they can sell it for 60 bucks and people are snatching it up which

which is a price point that most VR games do not sell so yeah I'm hearing a lot of people saying it's taking them at least 20 hours which is really long for a VR to kind of go through it me too yeah I think I was playing at the same time you were ray I put they have a better headset I have the oculus rift s so it was literally just a headset in the controllers I didn't know any camera setup so it was a lot easier but there is a there is some type of setup right just the headgear is an extra step in I do feel that pain and extra effort just putting things on to experiment I will say that like you mention play Doom eternal is a lot easier to get in and you actually probably spend a lot more time I played about two hours of Alex and I had to take it off because I was like disoriented after a while and I usually don't but I was in it that was probably the longest session I ever

spent in VR and I was like in the shower and I was kind of just not quite out she's like oh wait okay I'm then it was really crazy never really spent that long in VR to suddenly go in the real world and I was like oh wait yeah that's right this is real life so there was a statement with Gabe saying that's closer to the matrix then we that would really think they are and it felt very true in that moment I will say this is the immersion like the feeling of immersion is really really good like I I have to say that yeah it did make me want to play it in a warehouse you know I mean because you take and walk wherever right you do have a teleport thing to kind of help but uh yeah like you said not everyone has a huge space to completely walk around the VR space when I really wanted I mean that's probably where the omnidirectional

treadmill can be very helpful it make me feel like I want to walk around like I'm that I'm probably the 1% of VR user that is at wanting to be active in the VR woman I want to walk around but I I want to go back to a month ago where I felt like half a fax would be a major milestone through VR games to kind of step up from I wonder with Rey being like the beat saber hardcore do you feel any differently after playing do you feel like there is a milestone that at least a new bar that a lot of VR games at least I mean FPS a sure thing but like ya know like I feel ya know I feel like I haven't played a lot of it I only played a little bit right and and I still think I beat sabers definite by far it's just a game this is my type of game you know to me like I just love that game right so like that's nothing

like plays really change our mind about that but you know like yeah it's holding in my hand a name of the gun and actually looking down the site and then the gun fires where I expected to fire like all that I felt really nice and the gravity gun stuff oh nice it's a little it's a little hard to kind of aim what objects you want to grab sometimes but like otherwise like it's it's very it all feels nice right and it performed really well even on my rig that's not the greatest fastest rate in the world look look very nice you know like like I know real complaints about that game right but I had this video I feel if you were to make an FPS game now you have to look at half-life Alex in VR like you just have to write because they did something do some interesting things so does that make he doesn't at least doesn't change the whole game sorry sorry doesn't change the whole game right now a VR and I don't think slow

right but it's just really well done I think a lot of people if anything are at least it's helping that industry right I think a lot of people are buying in to VR and now are more open to trying BR games and no you don't think though you don't think a lot of people tried not out or the first time actually bought a device because I have Alex like a good percentage or just too small those folks those folks would have to be some hardcore have 5 fans we drop in the kind of money they would have to drop to play that game you know you're talking between $1,000 to what's the cheapest what's the rift the rift is the quest the quest is really yeah but though the quest you go 200 yeah yeah I think the questions like 3 3 400 bucks right and and with the quest the play half live Alex you also need the sync cable to hook into the computer right which is I think this in cable sync cable by itself

is like 50 bucks or something right or 100 or 100 bucks I can remember but anyway but like like the costs of entry is still very high all right so if you're like out here in the world saying I have to play it might the next half-life game I like dropped four hundred two thousand bucks I'm questioning your your judgement or you just have a lot of free money this will be spending right so rate yeah give me some I do want it the indexes suppose we have our finger control is that really the biggest perk well figure control and we'll higher resolutions for me man so looks like faster faster refresh rate right so it's it's it's a nice headset but yeah that sucks right I just can't go back to camera setup it's really nice sweet to s you just put a headgear on and just play like I hate this location-based camera it just seems

such as well so I'm not ready to make that unless the next index until the next index but uh I mean that's just we weren't I wasn't planning on talking to Alex but it's nice to kind of hear your thoughts on it since we did talked about last time I know we're boring Richard because you only there's about a PC other PC games I'm reading no no in other news for people who aren't watching about half-life I'm reading about how the guys who made I think the pandemic the outbreak game has donated $250,000 to kovat research and they're making the game about stopping the pandemic so I don't know I did read it reviews Alex - so I am I'm I'm in yeah I'm also watching yeah it's the best time you have some next to crash to donate to Co vid because it gets your company on a bunch of headlines right now so it's a smart market for sure

so I want to move on to the next topic so this is something that we've been hearing as part of being in the industry but in the current trends of journalism there's a lot of expose and finally not being afraid of kind of standing up to these Triple A companies and Nate Naughty Dog just recently in the past month have been in the headlines finally talking about malpractice crunch culture and more specifically Last of Us - and one of the biggest quotes that I heard that 70% of people specifically in the designer Department have left since aren't charted - since working on that - working on lasted less - so that's a huge amount of senior staffs and leads that have been constantly changing at that studio I would love to kind of talk about what your guys thoughts are on that so let me

kind of go over to Richard here design I never really like to give you guys credit but you guys do play a big part in games and once the staff or the staff leaves there's a lot of figuring out the pipeline again and it starts with you guys and trickles down to all of us and can cause a lot of delays which they've always been having issues with so hearing that and it's not news to us but maybe news to a lot of fans what what are your thoughts about this same old same old stuff so so the idea that like people leaving Naughty Dog and they causing a huge change like sorry I wasn't quite sure what the other question was there Brandon sorry yeah so this is a car talk you ago that was released a couple weeks ago actually but the whole thing was talking about pretty much the crunch code culture there where

mm-hmm you know developers are you know I'm sure you have friends and we all have friends there right every game yeah much nine months out they're in there from Monday through Saturday they're working like less hours and the only thing they tried to make up with it is after a two three year or now four or five year game cycle they give their workers like two months off to kind of try to make up with that but the biggest thing is that every I would say summer you will see a huge listing of pretty much every position for contract work every year right so for the layman they would be thinking oh man Naughty Dog is growing but mostly it's just replenishing burnout people that's moving yet kind of want to know your thoughts about that yeah I mean like I don't think crunch culture is healthy I know like we've talked about the several times and part of it like ever since we

had like I think a roundtable like two or three months ago or I said like part of it is like people wanting to do their a good job so they actually volunteer for crunch and all that I was completely wrong with that so when I started reading more into it actually after it I started thinking back on my own experiences like crunching a little bit at Blizzard but it wasn't like crunching hard core like this I mean I couldn't I can't even imagine crunching for several years even if the game is like super great like Last of Us or any of the rockstar games are like I just it's just not it's not at all yeah I actually read about that like earlier the construction was you're getting fired did they thought that nobody was in the building when they were working that crazy yeah so yeah I'm like it's like like the rest of oh yeah yeah yeah it's a lot of live video it's like video games like Vegas yeah yeah go for it go for it well I mean in

their article it kind of highlights how owners of the buildings of one night right construction workers was working within the building and there was an accident basically something just fell off the ceiling you'll normally well that is a big problem but in this case because just how [ __ ] culture is pretty crazy at Naughty Dog they were actually people there but thankfully no one got hurt right yeah I kind of started off the article but this whole discussion about this is how they operate and big game developers are not really hold as liable because they keep pumping out success and there's a line out the door all the time for these type of game companies because of their prestigious position and until they just have a Mis man there's not really anything I don't think Naughty Dog will do it's just for

me at least right on a personal level again not reflecting any opinions of you guys I don't want you guys to be in trouble but I just want to say that it's just something that I I see Naughty Dog being one of the biggest offender and everyone kind of hold them and in the highest regard for from both fans and game developers and they're just probably permitting them to continue to kind of have this type of practice and there's a lot in the industry right well I think I think there's a quote in the article actually this says they've never seen success any other way yeah so they don't believe you there's another way of achieving it right and and so that's that right and so as long as they make good games they're high quality and then gamers and everybody else picks them up and says I can't wait to play that next last of us are the next Uncharted nothing's gonna change around this at all and then also it's

funny like in this whole Cove in nineteen era to a sauce there's a satire video game website that was there's a link from that going around where the headline was not in the midst of covin $99 permitting its developers to sleep at home it's effective review and yeah it's like hard times or whatever it was the kind memory which one it was right but yeah it's funny like it's funny it but it but it's also is funny because it's also like yeah to see something that actually happening right so yeah like you know it is what it is right like yeah they just don't know how to succeed in any other way and the game so the games coming out of never great and so they're like yeah that's we have to do it and it's not the first time I've heard from people in the industry not just not you know they hear this a lot the way to get quality is to sit here

and and work and and iterate and get the quality no matter what no matter what the cost right and then and then they they justify it because then the game's successful they make a lot of money the bonuses come through or and the student again right yeah and that's just that's just how it is and just to correct what I was saying if anything branded the oh sorry the the main thing that I want to say is like I think crunch culture is definitely a thing in videogame development I think earng studios do it a lot more than others I think certain countries do it a lot more than others like you know looking at 10 yeah like working with $0.10 like they don't mind me if I send my design Docs on Friday evenings because they're still working on Saturday or and like in different interests and even like let's not even listening me talk about China China like

it's the matter yeah ready back at work yes yeah yeah and then even like when you think about like Hollywood like what's that studio that like messed up on sonic and then they had to do all the reshoots for it like redo all of his it's character modeling and then as soon as they were done they just like closed the studio just like that I mean that's just like that's just like extra extra brutal I don't even know how like there's no bonuses in there for anybody it's like it's not like at least like you know you work at Naughty Dog yeah you know you you crunch like hell you know you slowly move up the corporate ladder you get a lot bigger bonuses but like in Hollywood like man you just you just I don't even know how you describe like how much money did like all of the Marvel like the MCU movies make and then look at the credits afterwards it's like you know thousands of people and yeah you have no idea what kind of working conditions they are so I think it's the same perception and people have a video games it's like [ __ ] yeah Last of Us too

but then you don't really think about how it was made like nobody wants to know how the sausage is made man although I think I think the main I think I think the main difference between video games and movies though is going to a movie job that's the job the job is to work on that film right and you are you are by default of contractor right we're in the video game industry a lot of folks you know this full-time job you know you just at that studio and every year for three four years you know you're just crunching and killing yourself right and then yeah then layoffs happened if the game doesn't do well and you're like oh what happened right so it's a little bit different but but yeah like the work and the crunch is still been he's still crazy in both cases yeah and just to kind of circle back to what you were saying for the sonic reach while they didn't reshooting this when we did the whole visual effects yeah please see movie they are visual effects coming and

they had to close down it's very similar to Life of Pi right as soon as they won the Oscar goes down and it's it was just their Vancouver right just mind you by Jews just their Vancouver studio because of course they could do the work cheaper somewhere else of course so there's it's just that particular to that was working on that reshoot in that too it's an unsustainable model uh obviously a visual effects company should be like a warning sign for game developers I mean we can never really compartmentalize all our work for a game in that way there still needs to be a core team to kind of manage all the moving parts of the game so thankfully we have that but trust me they are trying their best to kind of minimize the core team as much as possible and utilize the the outsourcing just to kind of close on this topic though with Naughty Dog one of the effects I'm hoping that this remote working is is

gonna help with and I mean it probably applies it in the most as rated was kind of mentioning before they're not really ever set up for remote working and at this huge capacity and they have this Last of Us to in crunching mentality so kind of like what you guys are talking about a lot of deadlines will be push kind of want to see how they react to this I'll be very surprised if they're gonna still March on with their dates but I would say this I am glad that I think from from the crunch culture to know crunch culture there's in between where we're actually having people crunch at home instead and sleeping in their own beds so I think that is that this essential move right here to kind of have ease that concern right just at least have these people if they're crunching they're they're working up to 2 a.m. in their own home and I take comfort in knowing that a lot of Naughty Dog's are are sitting at home right now crunching on last of just two I'm pretty

sure those tuning up the computers will go to sleep go to sleep yes yeah one last thing before I move on to the next subject with this covet going back to the first topic do you think the industry is gonna open this up more like let's take Naughty Dog for an example as we're talking about them do you think that they're gonna go back to their old ways or they're gonna mix it more with this type of mentality no all right ray shaking go ahead and take it well what do you know and there's there's no there's no big about to wisdom that I cannot part here but you know money's money the industries industry will you go back to normal everything will go back to normal it's sad but like I I'm very pessimistic on that yeah Richard yeah you feel about the same way that these big companies experiencing this for the next 2-3 months will suddenly just like scratch

all the IT infrastructures let's just go back to New York I think that the quote in the Kotaku article that said they'd not known success any other way just hints just how kind of conservative their thinking is and that kind of how short-term thinking it is so I think working from home is a model that works for certain types of products but for something like Last of Us where you're like really handcrafting every single microsecond of it and then you have all these other game systems like there's just no way you have to you they're gonna put everybody and as soon as that as soon as like Kovac goes away they're just gonna pull everyone back in or find people that can they can pull into it that are eager and all that stuff it's just it's just a vicious cycle so yeah video games is highly collaborative and creatives and people need to talk and figure stuff out yeah you can do zoom meetings and or do some sort of virtual whiteboards or whatever but we're just

not there yet for some of these disciplines and they just need to be there in the office talking with the creative director or the lead artist or the art director or whatever right they need to work together in a collaborative environment so I don't see that changing that much well it was a good try then actually promote this idea but if anything will help more like outside vendors kind of help with these studios into being open to remote working I don't know maybe virtual studios are gonna be a result of this on the rise right so I want to move on to our next topic it's kind of like a thing that I like to tease we don't have to spend too much on it GameStop counted itself as an essential business because well they're on their last lakes I really do think they pull their latitude having Regis trying to pull the [ __ ] around which is pretty much every move

that big companies do before they go bankrupt right and so I kind of want to hear you guys hot son I mean since then they actually have closed the stores because they were like yeah there was reason right kind of told yeah I think it's absolutely ridiculous Gaming essential yeah sure you could say anything that you spend your time while is essential but like there's so many ways to get games I had a friend of mine who has been working at what is this I was like like dope you know it's better than going to the dentist going to gamestop or something like that anyway they first of mine who's worked at Gamestop for a long time did I don't know if you guys knew this

but the way that they worked was like they would go into the store but customers couldn't come into the store and you had to and they would go outside of the store and give you your items right so so so it isn't actually like people could go to gamestop but so it was just so so strange yeah yeah I mean they definitely tried to off it from this right and so Ray I know you well like I've been on here a few I've been on here a few times so that will be up soon anything good about right so you already know why so did you already know my opinion right is it an essential retail hell no of course not and like there's definitely enough everybody's home right now they get Istanbul the games directly to their machines right on every platform that they that they want to play on you don't need to go into that depressing dark dungeon of sadness right you just don't need to go there right so so yeah like and of course they said that because of course they want stay open and make some money while this is going on because again

they want to suckle the soul out of life right like they just know just know this place gets a I can't stay yeah I can't say anything good about game stuff at this point it's just it just needs to go away which is slowly I am here I get your wishing which come true because I really do feel their third signal in all types of signs that they're gonna close this here o types of [ __ ] but I mean the memories have their nice it's always fun only if only you go there and play like a board games man that would that would have really turned it around or a probably have more profit Richard Richard remembers our past are of course I do I love it I I think we said we wanted to go to San Francisco to go to

that golf course where you can drink and get sales yeah we're almost yeah I kind of want to talk about this last topic so ps5 kind of went on to have their little announcement but it was disengaging within the ten minutes it was some kind of bull this is the kind of ray porn that he loves right but for the rest of us it was talking in front of green see with these fake people in the front I answer that so I don't know Richard those people no dude this is - no I didn't know no I came out dude I was at his movie - it was so fake but like they

talked about stuff that I was snoring through so I I think it's fair to at least go over to Ray right right at least can me break this down was it relevant was there anything about this interesting because they you have yet okay right look at that let me break it down let me break it let me break down two ways right first of all you have to understand that this was going to be a much bigger thing at GDC okay what is GDC for ggc's for game developers it's not for the consumers is for game developers right and so if they're gonna do a substitute event it's gonna be all about the megahertz and gigawatts Italy nonsense right and it's gonna be about SSD and and the fast loading speed and all that right it's gonna be about the technical details and we got the technical details right and the specs of the hardware which is which is cool but that's exactly the type of event this was if people went into expecting more they don't know what ggc's about period right looks like

Finnell sketched it it looks like agility to get into it I want to get into it right but no but um but the the main thing to take away from this though is like from with all the stats all the numbers and everything is like you're really pushing hard on low times and they want scene with slow times and they want to reduce they're doing some interesting things in that area right and so there's a lot a lot that I'm excited about to see what how games utilize this hardware in order to do no load screens ultra high speed streaming all this stuff right so like that's that's that's that's the news and that's what it means gamer's right the gamers is like Oh like I could just get into my game and play it right away oh that's like that is the new thing right and the hardware is also like the GPU CPU is also great right so

performance is gonna be crazy like we might actually start seeing games that actually at 4k actually running at 60 native or just running at 60 with some sort of dynamic resolution set up but there's a lot there's a lot to like about the announcement but of course was it dry and technical and absolutely boring oh yeah of course it was yeah all right so you know so I'm I want to see the games now okay so I want them to start talking about okay here's what we've actually built all this yeah it's worth noting that even with this being boring and it was a total bait and switch in my opinion it had 13 million views right and I saw an article mm-hmm measuring with the Xbox score uh where they call it Scarlett what's the next one at 1 X Xbox series X Xbox serials that only garnered 10 million so even with its boring ass presentation it beat

Xbox this launch announcement with like typical gamer exciting stuff but you're saying that hardware was worth it it was at least something that moved you yeah I'd also mind you thank you that the Xbox announced for two was very tentacle as well right these are GDC talks this is this is turned GDC where they're talking to developers making games for the system so of course developers making game services to want to know how the hell this thing works yeah right but at this level right so uh so it just makes sense right like talk about like my xbox came out was like you know constant but if he saw the digital it was the digital foundry expose right in front of you did a big article about Xbox series X and it was just like talking about mocks framerate not about fairy locked frequencies of the CPU and the GPU and what frequencies they were at talking about compute compute units and compute cores where most folks most folks that like most people that

just playing video games just want to know oh I have more compute units than this other thing has right just to say hey I have a bigger number than you without really understanding how that stuff actually works so like you know like it's it's yeah it's this this is not the real news you you want to see the game so you want to see how they perform with art alright so I'm gonna go over to Richard real quick right after acid ray this one thing so just comparing the boxes right is it pretty much the same or at what we're saying right is there anything you saw from the ps5 that you're like oh okay that's more interesting than I thought it would be I don't know I'm just a gamer I need to see the games I think like questions array first I know you're the game design yeah if you put them on paper

side by side and look at all you know honestly the hardware that they're using is very similar to each other they're all based on AMD what is it our DNA send to Architecture both of them perhaps the same cpu GPU but with custom modifications of symbol fence so I'm paper but on paper that's what series actually looks more powerful on paper right but there's a lot of things that the in the Sony talk they were talking about like I said with with a hard drive and and the frequency clocks and all this stuff that it really is gonna come down to the games right and I think I've been on here before where I said like Xbox don't really have the games right now right I'm so building raft they got whatever a [ __ ] of City is doing no honestly honestly

Microsoft has the games if you look at it from like if if game paths is their way of making money right they have the games and they're the studios for that to give people a variety of different games right sony is like now we're just gonna deliver you it's all right this every first party game is gonna be a hit hit right and throw and so it really just comes down to what those those games are yeah honestly it's because I painted a that's what I was Roxas at the end of the day is games game cell blocks right yeah right it's uh it's it true like I just I'm reading this on tech radar right now that PS 5 could potentially support backwards compatibility that's like old-school PlayStation 2 days that I'm thinking about this stuff and that sounds really cool if it can do that well the only backwards compatibility that they're talked about is ps4 games oh I don't know Microsoft

is like now we're backwards compatible to like Xbox 360 like they're like yeah ya know that uh I think they'll have a much bigger actually I haven't thought about backwards compatibility in a long time but that's really cool I think like especially now with like a lot of players like they have to like dig up games that they've like a played like a long time ago because they're in quarantine now yeah buried in the garage you know so like saying that you have backwards compatibility when you have a library as big as [ __ ] you know it's like you know people don't like that stuff III definitely would appreciate that for sure it's actually interesting you you're mentioning this because I think people appreciate it but the actual people the number of people that actually use it like in practice is like for real for real is like really really small yeah right and and like you do all

this work all this blood to blood sweat and tears to get the emulation or whatever stuff to work and then like nobody uses it right you don't mean and but then of course of nature it's a major selling point when you want to sell the console right because everybody's like oh yeah yeah you have to be backwards compatible and then the five people that really care about it everybody else's has their old consoles still hooked up or they just play games on that right so it's kind of yeah I think it has a long-term investment like the same way that DVDs kind of kind of left you know in a streaming world for for movies kind of just have that huge library of inventory right I see once they have those $10 description up and ready from both x-box and PS 5 that's gonna be a huge selling point to be able to play ps2 games on your phone or whatever right so I think it's definitely worth less than for them to do it now but I think it's right for the PS 5 people to actually buy the console

they're not gonna really mess with that as much but the subscription service is gonna be huge just having thousands of games available for 10 bucks a month man all my that is a dream game guys oh yeah imagine game pass and then you add project X cloud but that's Microsoft's strategy right they building why do you play their games everywhere right first and uh and that's gonna be swimming interesting yeah yeah I mean it's a very interesting year and where we're at the hour mark but I also want to have your guys final thoughts right I'm very surprised that they're going forward with these consoles at the end year will there be people still having jobs to buy these things like is that a saying that we're going through the economic downturn and then people will have enough like $500 I'm guessing right to kind of sell out to buy these consoles I'm very delayed this I'll say this I

think all these things all these things are coming out at the end of the year right so Christmas right I think like you know everybody's hoping that this will be over long before Christmas Yeah right so that's that's that's what everybody's thinking is this what everybody's hopes and dreams are because if it is going on much longer like yeah it'll be real bad I think it has to happen right yeah I am I think that what in the optimistic case and I want to be optimistic because I've got kids and you don't and all that stuff no no I like them having home but instead I'm talking to you no just kidding yeah yeah I want to believe that will be the cove in 19 before the end of the year for sure I think if we do I think what will happen is you know the global economy will kick back up slowly though

I mean the damage is done there's not a lot of people have lost jobs unemployment rate is ridiculous right now across the globe but when things stabilize I think people will want to start buying stuff again and I don't know like how that compares to a normal economy when you have these announcements and you have all the conferences to build up the hype but I do think there's gonna be you know once the coast is clear like a lot of people are just gonna come out of their homes and just want to party and do things and live life like they like they used to you know and so end of the year is a pretty good time they always a good time because a Christmas and the holidays and all so we'll see yeah I'm hoping mm-hmm yeah well for everybody out there that is going through this we are at home with you and if at China is any type of sign of hope you know it seems like they are in a

better position after like four months or so so it seems to be gonna take us through the summer like at everybody kind of am guessing right now so uh by that time well we'll save enough money to get a ps5 I guess that's the probably cost price as much oh yeah yeah because that's the thing if she didn't talk about this like there was no mention of press right and uh and yeah yeah I'm interested to see how much these things will actually cost as well can it really cost more than five hundred dollars there's no way I don't think people will accept more than five hundred wait I don't understand phones are so goddamn expensive that likes a man it's a mindset yeah it's crazy but like what it really is folks don't actually buy

their phones reality right yeah yes I have either phone for a hundred bucks and or in their plan for three years right yeah with the constantly yeah you got a drop you got a drop that money right now all you're gonna drop all of it right now yeah yeah that's the Raymond you do lay wait you can produce some layaway or huh constant layaway oh I'm looking forward more and more to hearing about their project X cloud there there's Sony subscription model I think that is the future a great a great way I am enjoying at least my no cap internet right now because of the kovat so that is one perks which also means that they never really needed to kind of cap data capless at all which kind of makes them even shittier just making us go through through all that but in the meantime I want to thank you guys

Raymond Ray Graham you can find his Twitter at I'm gonna have your handles next time so hope they don't have to memorize this where can they find you right at water s how do I see it yeah it's water us and it's W a da RA SS all right I think you ready for coming on and of course Ritchie you know where they can find you on Twitter yes and they'll find me at twitter at missing underscore tooltip all right well I'll promise you I'm gonna tap into my apartment and get you guys Twitter handles up for next time so they don't have to memorize it but we do have listeners out there so we do have to repeat anyways so that that concludes this this month's round table I want to thank you guys again again you know we're here every month kind of just rounding news join us any point live or through the comments section and hit these guys up in your Twitter handle if you have take offense to anything that ray or

Richard says go ahead and talk to them to Rick what's you know all our topics and we always have fun here so I want to thank you guys and you guys next week [Music] [Music]