Why Minecraft is a genre, not a game (ft. Stampy & 4J Studios)

Our plan is never to compete with Minecraft. Absolutely not. We've spent the past sort of 10 to 15 years becoming absolutely embedded in this genre and loving it. And as game developers, we're like, okay, there's room. The question we often get is kind of why this genre when Minecraft exists. And so my kind of hope is that that will just become clear. I [music] don't think the coming tidal wave of AI enabled very quick to market mush, let's call it that, is going to last very long. [music] Hello and welcome to the game business show. Now, last month I was in Middlesborough in the UK to attend a video game conference and I interviewed a bunch of well-known video game developers and one studio that I spoke to was the developer 4J. Now, if you've not heard of 4J, this is the Dundee team behind the console editions of Minecraft. And they also made things like the Super Mario pack and the Star Wars pack for Minecraft as well. Now, today 4J is making its own game, a title

called Reforge, which is very much a rival to Minecraft, and they've even hired a very famous Minecraft YouTuber, or rather a former Minecraft YouTuber called Stampy, to help them put it together. Now, at this event in Middlesborough, they were talking about the game. In fact, they did it on stage with the developer Double 11, which is the studio behind Minecraft Dungeons. Clearly, there's no bad blood there. And I find this story really interesting. You see, Stampy, or Joseph Garrett, as is his actual name, isn't just an ambassador for Reforge. He's actually a game designer on the project. And more than that, 4J are desperate to prove that there's more to Minecraft than just one game, that it can be a genre. On top of that, the chairman of 4J, Chris Vanderl, is a well-known game leader and investor in this industry and has certain views and opinions on where the business is headed. In fact, he recently wrote a piece for the Financial Times talking about the dangers of math courses closing at UK higher education, particularly a course in Dundee. So, I

approached Chris and Joe and said, "Hey, while you're here, would you like to have a chat with the game business?" And they said, "Yes." And I think it's a brilliant little conversation where we also discuss Minecraft's role in the industry, Joe's transition from content creator to game maker, why AI doesn't work in the sandbox space, the problem with VCs in the games industry, and lots more besides. I think it's a fun chat. And here it comes. So Chris, before we start talking about, you know, Reforging 4J, um, every time I get called up to chat about GTA 6 at the moment by the BBC, one of the questions I got asked is, uh, do you know, uh, Chris Vanic? because you're a prominent Scottish game developer. Have you become like a spokesperson for uh GTA in Scotland?
Certainly. Uh in in no way officially. No. I mean, listen, in terms of uh GTA 6, I just want to see as much recognition for the fact that the world's biggest entertainment launch I expect in history
is coming from a game that was conceived in Scotland, has continued to be principally developed in Scotland, has

the most amazing talented studio in, you know, in Rockstar North leading, but across the UK and it's something we should be absolutely incredibly proud of in the UK and in Scotland especially. So, anybody that is willing to listen to me say that, I'm willing to tell them that.
I read your um your FT article, know it was around particularly around maths in schools. But you seemed a little concerned about where things happen. But I look at the UK this year, right? With GTA is obviously the top, but it fors Horizon 6. You've got Lego Batman. I wrote down here, War Dogs, How Let Loose, Silent Hill Townfall, Fable coming next year, Star Wars Galactic Racer, James Bond a little bit. So many big games being made on this island. Yeah. Right now, it doesn't feel like he's in a bad spot, but you obviously you're you're probably think looking further ahead. Yeah, I I'm looking at the talent that needs to come into this industry to sustain what we have. And you know, I think we we in the UK have created the perfect balance of technical innovation and creative innovation. You know, that's what we're amazing at. The Scandi countries are are kind of similar.
When I look at the world, I think that's where the best original amazing ideas come from. And in an industry that's a

little bit starved of of originality, you know, we need to lift our heads. You know, as AI tools become more useful to people, there's going to be lots and lots of mediocre. So things have got to stand stand out there. And I think talent on a technical and creative side is the only thing that will sustain us. And my point to the FT, which by the way seems to have worked. The maths degree that I was really challenged in Dundy that was being pulled, they've they've changed their mind. Oh, good. Uh, which is great. The point of that was we're good at all these things. Let's make sure we appreciate that and invest in it because today's great, but the future has to be even better. Of course, one of the big games coming out of the UK is Reforge. Last night you did a talk on it and you mentioned you I think you do mention it, Joe. Um there's no no community team. Is that right? Or no? No. Yeah.
Yeah. the the the the point I was making is that there is a a great community team is that [clears throat] there isn't a a filter of the community team in terms of directly talking with the community. So it's not our community

teams talking to the community and relaying to the developers. The developers are on the discord and talking directly. someone gives feedback about art, often it's it's it's someone from the art team responding or if there's a design question or something, it's someone from the the design team discussing directly with the community members, you know, rather than it being filtered through a separate team and kind of kept at arms length.
Do developers like that? [laughter] Yeah, I mean obviously you could take it too far and then half of your day is is is doing that and and one of the things you have to be careful of is you know we're not designing by committee, right? Like we have the final say. We had the the vision for the game that we've been following and we're we're sticking to that vision. So it's it's really for for very direct mostly gameplay related feedback or or balancing and also just gauging what is exciting the the community. what are they actually talking about? Like we could be internally really excited about one feature and then, you know, it's

released as part of a bigger update and no one really talks about that. Everyone's really excited about something else and we're like, okay, we can put more resources into this because that's what the community is excited about. I would also add reinforce what Joe's just said. This comes from a from a place of we were doing this on Minecraft console edition, but we're very clear and careful that this is Mojang's game and IP, not not Forges. And Patty, my co-founder, who who leads development on on Reforge, he was obsessive about watching the community, listening to the community, and responding to the community, but probably not publicly because we were not the the voice of the franchise. Mojang were. Um, this time it's that as in we're lurking around and watching every comment and and encouraging everybody in the studio to do that,
but then layered on top of that is we're we've come out from behind the shadows a little bit. And that direct connection that Joe's referred to is utterly invaluable, frightening, and you have to be authentic. Joe's 100% right. We're

quite clear in we want everyone's ideas and all ideas are great ideas, but ultimately we'll make the decision. Otherwise, we'll not end up with a great game. But we genuinely are listening to you because if you pretend you're listening and then you just use it as a marketing device, you you know, you'll be stuffed very quickly. So, it's it's committed to it's very intentional the way we're doing it. And it and it's become, you know, once you get into that way of working, once the studio starts to understand that that's part of their their job is to have our community help us with the direction of the game, people start to really enjoy it.
Obviously, that whole sandbox sort of creation genre is competitive and now you've got these AI prompt based things for Meta and Google coming through. Where do you see Reforge sitting in that? People think that they want to see a party trick like I want oh in a sandbox game I want to build a Taj Mahal and I say that in natural language and suddenly the Taj Mahal's built it's game over at that point what's the point of the game you know the point of the game

is to express your creativity be inspired by other people's creativity to try yourself have these great experiences and in the games industry if people use AI tools to remove that from the gameplay experience there's nothing left. So that's not something that worries me in any way, shape, or form. I think the second thing is it's very easy to throw a prototype together and kind of test an idea out with with AI tools. The last 5% and it's the same, it's always been the same. The last 5% is what sets a game out from being utterly genius and compelling and I don't want to play that again. And I don't see AI, you know, in any way removing that piece that's there. But do you think differently, Joel?
No. Yeah. Yeah. I guess kind of add to that like no one's no one's buying a pre-built Lego set, right? It's it's it's the it's the process, it's the work, and even beyond that, obviously you can build in in creative mode, but a lot of people are just building in survival mode where they an extra step is they want to gather the the resources and get the materials in order to to build it and then it's a creation that's

truly theirs and unique. You know, they haven't asked for it. they've had the idea and it's it's a a human type of creation and it's the that process which is the the gameplay. It's not the the result.
I'm going to sound like a heathen. I think it's my age. I'd never played Minecraft for ever. My son is six now and he's he's I'm now I'm I feel like I'm a veteran. It's only been 3 months, but the amount of the amount of playing
you the first game that's that sort of follows that that particular direction in terms of that. I wouldn't want to claim that we're we're the first, but I think we are one of the first companies and developers to say this is a genre and it's a genre that Mojang effectively created.
You know, there [clears throat] were games like it. You know, Infini Minor was the inspiration for Minecraft. There's not total originality there, but they leaned in and and created this community and created this movement. Um, and it's quite unusual in that any other

genre that's been defined in the game industry, like an FPS for example, there are dozens of FPS's [clears throat] and there's a top tier of maybe 10 and you can move from one to the other. You might be an expert at one and feel good in them.
That's not the same in the genre. And for us, it was also, you know, Minecraft is, you know, 15 plus years old in terms of its engine, its design, where it's grown. It's grown at this amazing thing. We're not trying to unseat or use up that. We're trying to say if you love Minecraft, just wait till you get your hands on this. Yeah, it's
the for the 2020s. It's super fast to build. It's so much more efficient. It'll blow your mind. I always kind of joke it's like putting a pair of slippers on that you're super comfortable with. So, you immediately get comfortable with this game, but then you go on a 100 meter track and beat Usain Bolt. You know, it's it's that kind of order of magnitude feel. And that's what we're going for. And I think with that, we we want something that for those that play Minecraft a lot, it's like, okay, I want a bit of a break from that. I'm not going to go and play some slop on something else. I want to go and

play Reforge and, you know, and invest time and build in a different way. We very very carefully chose not to do pixel art. You know, we ended up inventing our own graphics technology because of that. And we chose not to go into kind of fantasy RPG. you know, we're we're sort of sci-fi, you know, earth adjacent with a totally different vibe. So, it's giving you a choice of a totally different play environment to express the kind of gameplay skills that you've built up in games like Minecraft.
What's Joe brought to this? cuz you know I had um I had Digital Eclipse on recently talking about their game director is now was the former community manager and it's it's not the same sort of thing but I find that really fascinating that we're seeing that trend of what we might consider completely different skill sets and experiences really being applied to video games. I'm fascinated to know what what Joe's brought
fun laughter and the delight every day. That's that's that's the principal reason, do we? And nothing else. [laughter] Now, look, Joe represents an utter revolution within games for us

that we lived through. You know, we suddenly found these incredible players and members of the community who could use the game to absolutely transform players and fans experience. And they're fans of Joe's and his creator colleagues more than they're fans of 4J Studios. you know, or the game. It's kind of quite symbiotic. And we recognized when we were thinking about Reforge that we had to make a game
that really appealed to people who wanted to tell stories, you know, in the game. And we'd become great friends with Joel. You know, we've got a lot of friends in the creator community, but a relationship with Joel, Patty, and I felt was was different and pretty special. You know, he's he's got a film making storytelling sensibility that we that we absolutely loved. So he was naturally the person we wanted to reach out to to say, "Hey, we've got all these amazing ideas. Tell us if you think it works." And and Joe, we had that conversation with other people. And they'd go, "Yeah, yeah, and here's what

we think." Joel was like analytically, let me give you notes. Here's what I think. If if I was had the opportunity to influence it, these are the things I want to do. Patty and I, as soon as we got that back from him, we're like, "My god, I wonder if he would help us with this." because not only not only is Joe Joe the Joe you know who's watching Stampy,
Joe's got an amazing uh design brain that comes to life, you know, within a team. And you know, we've worked with a lot of people over the years and we recognized the talent that was there and we're just utterly delighted that it sort of unbeknownst to us, it perfectly doveetailed with Joe deciding he wanted to look for the next chapter.
Yeah. Well,
if you got out of the
Yeah. I don't know if there's anything. Okay, I guess one thing I'd say in terms of what I what I tried to to bring at least is like so obviously I was I was doing my videos in Minecraft and one of the things I was most known for or spent a lot of time doing was creating games inside of Minecraft. So I'd create mini games using the tools that were already in the the game. I was on the console edition, so I wasn't using mods. I wasn't ordering the game, but kind of

using them in ways they weren't meant to be used to try and stretch them as far as I could. And I always enjoyed that challenge. So, I guess one of the things that I always try to bring to the the game whenever we're looking at a new feature is that feature to be versatile and robust enough and open enough that it can be up to players interpretation for how they use it. You know, we talk about the the sandbox genre and I'm trying to put as much of the the sandbox into it. So, when we're adding a thing, we're not thinking, okay, this is the thing and it will do this. This is how it's used. It's like, oh, we're doing this thing, you know, this is an obvious use for it, but it could also be used in these other ways. and then the communities will find other ways that we haven't thought of. So that's kind of one of my primary design philosophies that I'm trying to bring to the the game.
Not to be too prescriptive on the things you put.
Yeah. I mean I can give a very direct example of one is is we wanted a way we're going to have full drivable vehicles soon. They've already been in there the engine and prototypes, but we kind of wanted a a middle step between that. So we we were kind of looking at

what's our version of something that you could put down a track and move around. We kind of had this mag left system where it's kind of this floating shell essentially and you could build these tracks and it would like stay in line with the tracks and you could make it jump and go up ramps. Obviously you can sculpt to make slopes but then also you could just make a big platform of this thing and then you could essentially make like air hockey and it would just bounce and then you've got this this weapon this bracer blast that can blast in one direction. So if you go in one direction you move in the other direction. So there's all sorts of games that you could do bouncing it around or with these different tracks. So it's one system where you know the obvious thing is oh it's for transport you can build tracks to move around your world but then there's all sorts of other different uses that you can have for it and we're going to be adding more uses to it in the future as well.
Has anything surprised you going from outside looking in to being on the inside? Uh, I mean I I guess I guess for for for me not really known like I guess pace of of development and so I have have no kind of comparisons to to that.

Um, but I don't think there's anything that's been like a oh my god I I know I mean I've always been so curious with game development. Anytime there was any any kind of behind the scenes footage or making of for games I would always just eat that up because I was always so curious. And so for for me it was kind of the the first few weeks when I was in the office and walking around and just seeing what everyone's working on their screens and being just like oh I'm allowed to see all of this like cuz normally in all those making they're blurring everything. They're blurring white and just so I I guess it's kind of for for me was just seeing oh how the cakes made. I've eaten so many cakes for I've played so many games but I've never known exactly the ingredients. How do all of these different disciplines and departments work together? So, it's I don't know if it's been a surprise, but that's been the most fascinating thing for me to to kind of see how the the process goes.
When you're making videos, was it daily you're putting out?
Yeah. Yeah. At at least one a day.
Yeah. At least one a day. And then you're making a game and it's like 5 years or whatever, right? And I know

that from Andy Robinson who runs VGC to playonic for a bit. He found that really hard to adjust to to going for I guess it's you go doing these updates all the time.
Yeah. Yeah, I think it it was harder at first because for my first few weeks it was really like what game are we making? And it was just dayong design sessions and anything's on the table and we can do all these crazy things and that was amazing. That was that was like incredible. But then it was like okay, but we need to make sure the jump feels really good first. we need to make sure the the player movement feels. So, how does the So, so then it was a really focusing down to just kind of those core building blocks of of a of a video game to make sure that the the the player movement and that basic gameplay works. And that was where I was kind of struggling and that was kind of furthest from my level of expertise. That's where I I was really mostly testing and giving feedback at that stage. But we're really at a point now where all of those first ideas that we put down in those first few months, they're all they're all getting put in the game now. And and the the iteration there is is much quicker

from the the the speed the 4J works in terms of of kind of prototyping for an idea. This is being worked from. Normally within the next few weeks, there's a prototype to to play with and it keeps getting improved. So it's the the pace has actually kind of really sped up for at least the type of things that I'm working on. Well, this I was going to ask because obviously people talk about the speed of game development or and you know co slowed things down and and the amount of people that's required to make these things now sort of slow down game development but now everyone's saying we need to move faster. The world's changing so quickly, players are moving so fast.
Um but it sounds to me like 4J has a fast loop in terms of that.
Yeah, we we'd always like it to be faster and things to appear quicker and you know we were we were talking last night, you know, we've got a new title update coming out next week for the players out there. there's going to be the first time they see it. We've already moved. We're already anticipating what's coming in the next one and you know, so you it's that thing you give yourself more feedback and you you get the things quicker. You want them even more quickly. And it's a never- ending

challenge. You know, the there's always a balance between
perfect and good enough. And I you know, we don't want things to go out broken. We we never want things I mean that's a part of the 4G values is like technical excellence and make it you know really intuitive and simple and consumer grade. It feel it doesn't feel hacked together ever. But at the same time we've got to get it in the hands of players at times when we maybe aren't comfortable to do that because you know going back 20 or 30 years we were used to long QA cycles. you know, when you send that away to pressing or to Nintendo for manufacturer, you've got to be 100% right. Minecraft taught us differently. Minecraft taught us, and Mojang really taught us this, that actually if you go with the players, if you're open with the players and let them see, they'll forgive you. You know, they'll forgive you because they know you're trying to make a great game for them. And that's become fun. You know, that's become fun. So, yes, we want it ever quicker. Yes, I the sort of go to market side of the

business is always unbelievably impatient. Um, and Patty sort of has to try and sit in the middle and it's great because he's, you know, co-founder, co owner of the company.
He wants the same as I do in terms of let's go. But at the same time, he's the keeper of the keys for the game and the quality. And there's a point at which he's like, "No, I'm not. This isn't ready." You know, nobody's seeing it. And judging that line is is, you know, is the balance we've got to continue to find. How many people are at 4J now and what's the team size? Um
overall we're with everybody. So obviously we've grown just outside development. We've got community, we've got marketing teams, ancillary, we're touching uh just under 60 people at the moment, which still isn't huge, but it's probably more than double what we had when we were at peak Minecraft because we had one job to do then. Uh this time we've got a lot of jobs.
Yeah. And is everyone internal or do you have outsource partners? Do you work with other things? got a long-standing relationship with uh the guys at Lionbridge in in Warsaw from the

beginnings of Minecraft console. Uh and we've continued that sort of QA sort of localization, some play test. Uh we've we're experimenting with a bit of codev because again we we love the idea that we can keep a really tight team together that's coherent and cohesive and we know that just growing too big just brings enormous challenges. So, you know, we're unusual as an indie in that we develop and make sure this game is the best game it can be on console before we move to PC. So, we've been doing a bit of codev getting the game ready uh for PC.
I think I've told you this before, but uh every time people say 4J, everyone thinks Minecraft. I think the perfect Dart remaster, which I still play every year quite frequently.
Brilliant. Uh we loved that. We we love those whole day remastered uh days were absolutely brilliant. I mean, the two banjo games, we we love them on N64, you know, and it was Patty when Peter Zetterburg called us up and said, "Hey, I've moved. We did Overlord for Peter when he was at Code Masters on PS3." And

the minute he moved to Microsoft, he called up and he's like, "Hey, I'm here. What do you want to do?" And Patty immediately was like, "If you can give us the rare remasters, we'll be on board tomorrow."
I talked to Rare quite a lot and I I say the same thing and they're sick enough for me saying it. I said, "If you take that Banjo Kazouie HD remaster and the 2E1 and you maybe put nuts and bolts in there, stick it in a pack, put it on Switch 2, 4 million copies." But that's I'm convinced by it.
Sounds good to me. Sounds good to me.
Maybe not quite that much. What does success look like for Reforge?
Success to H to 4G for Reforge is people loving this game. You know, we we are in a brilliant position and that we can be patient and we are being patient. you know, we're eight or nine years developing the elements engine. You know, we're two years into the the build of of of the game now, and we're only just about
to get it over to PC, and then next year we'll put it in the hands of in a form that we'll ask people to pay for for the first time.

And we believe that if we can bring an audience to this who love this game, this game will grow. We don't need number X on day one. You know, we're we're in the fortunate position in a way that we don't have franchise targets. You know, we're not a mega sequel that's had billions spent on it or hundreds of millions spent on it. And if we don't hit a number of pre-sales, you know, we'd much rather the audience moved across. You know, the hardcore uh legacy console edition Minecraft fans of 4J Studios are around the game now. They they we hope will come in and play. They'll tell people a new generation of people that are coming to Survival Sandbox will play this and go, "Wow, this is actually something different." Um, and then for us, success is those players, that community starting to create things we never thought possible. You know, that's that's the dream for us is, you know, the next generation of of I I don't even want to say professional creators. Professional creators great, but players that start to absolutely

blow our minds. And we've had bits of that already in this in this pioneer program. uh you know when we launched circuits the sort of laserbased uh logic system in in Reforge uh almost within days uh on almost within days people were building machines way more complex than we thought we were ready to do and come out with ways to do like Rainbow Road uh style Mario type treatments and amazing stuff and that's that's success for us. That's success. What about you?
Yeah, I would second everything Chris said. I I guess one one just extra thing I'd kind of add on is just for I guess almost for for Reforge to kind of justify its existence. I think because Minecraft is so dominant in the genre and there are other there are other games kind of out there in the the genre, but because there's such one singular juggernaut for from people that kind of haven't played Reforge, you know, the question we often get is kind of why why this this genre when Minecraft exists. And so my kind of hope is that that will just become clear. And

I think it it is as as we are getting, you know, further along the the road towards our final vision. Um I think Reforges individuality and identity is kind of becoming more more clear to to kind of where the the the the differences are to to Minecraft. And so I think that was kind of another success is kind of that it can stand as as a separate pillar within the the same genre. And it's not always spoke about in kind of comparison or in conjunction with a with another game.
When we spoke last time, you sort of is it like a few days a week you work? Is that how it works on the game or you now?
It just it's Yeah, it's just flexible, is it? Yeah, it's it's Yes. Sometimes it'll be kind of a full week. Sometimes it will kind of just be the the regular meetings I'm checking in with. It it it's just it's very flexible, which kind of has worked for for both of us. I I Yeah, I mean Joe and I were talking about this over over breakfast today. You know, effectively we want the best

of Joe's design brain into this game and you know, he he brings such brilliant energy into it. And from that point of view, you know, we we we know we've got a partner in in Joel with 4G that's making an enormous difference to this game. And you know, he he very kindly says, "Oh, some days it's a little bit." Some weeks I can see the work that Joel puts in and it's more than, you know, more than a week's worth of work. You know, he's just an amazing person to work with. Um, and I think that relationship works pretty well.
Mhm.
Did you say you're working you've done you doing still bits for Minecraft on did you hear that last night?
Yeah. So, so we uh as as probably well known, you know, we pioneered uh the the sort of add-on pack on console market. you know, we developed all of those. So, things like Star Wars [clears throat] pack, all of that. Um, and one of and and those packs we still publish through the Minecraft marketplace. Um, so when big updates happen to Minecraft, we'll still do updates like that. And but spec

very specifically, uh, we created uh the Mario pack for for Switch um, and and Wii U. Uh, but now that's coming this month to Switch, too. So, we've been working intensively to get that, you know, to get that ready to go and we're delighted to support that Mojang team. It's amazing.
I'm picturing like a proper like upstart. We're going to take we're the Minecraft support team going to take on Minecraft. But there you are working on Minecraft. You were at the event last night. You were at the developer of Minecraft Dungeons 2. It seems like everyone's sort of all friends.
Absolutely. I mean I mean listen, the first people we communicated to about the elements engine and reforge what we're doing was was Microsoft. We're great friends with with so many people there. such a tight rel to compete with Minecraft. Absolutely not. We've spent, you know, the past sort of 10 to 15 years becoming absolutely embedded in this genre and

loving it. And as game developers, we're like, okay, there's room. Because let's be realistic, you know, it's not our job to compete with Minecraft. It's our job to create something brilliant for players. In addition to Minecraft, Minecraft will be here, I think, forever. Minecraft is
one of the well, the most successful game as a single release uh you know, I I believe in in history.
And I'm cheering for it for that to be the case for a long time to come. And if we stay involved in the franchise some way, we'd be delighted. So, no, we we don't see ourselves as anything other than hopefully good friends to Moa and good friends to to to Microsoft and, you know, we we have the them to thank and that amazing creative talent to thank for being here today.
And you're in the Xbox insider program, has that heard last night? That's how you do the Yeah.
Yeah. We we used the insider program as our way to build this pioneer community because we wanted to, you know, [clears throat] very much we we were interested in quality, not quantity. Um, and the minute you go PC, you know, PC

play test early, you're going to get problems with people not having the right hardware, does it work on my card, compatibility issues, all those extraneous stuff. Whereas, if we're on Xbox Series S and X, we have two defined hardware platforms. Microsoft have done an amazing job through ID Xbox and the insider program and creating a platform where we can manage that new community as it comes in. Um, and that's been that's been great. I you know, now we're getting at the stage where PC is just around the corner, you know, and we now feel with two years of development of the game and what we learn from Insider, we can open that audience up a bit more.
Well, when the game's out, um, Joe, you're going to be back on YouTube doing daily uh, [laughter]
the daily videos is a is a thing of my past. I I think Yeah, I'm I'm enjoying being being this side of the the curtain. Um I want to talk about questions. I did want to know cuz I've got you Chris here. You're an investor and you you're

on various boards and things like that. I ask this question every year. I get from different people. I get answers that don't always make me happy. But how is the finance world sort of viewing video games sort of in 2026?
I I think the investment market is definitely looking for things that are close to revenue generating revenue. And when they look at the big whale investments like an anthropic and how quickly its revenue means the fastest growing revenue of any company in history. Um they're go okay where can we find that in games? Um and there are clearly places in the games industry around mobile you know user acquisition around server mod where that I would call the flash to bang can be compressed. the long-term patience that it needs to create new IP and new games isn't really compatible with with the traditional venture model, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Um,

I I think people in the industry uh who want to create new need to think of new ways of getting their ideas out at lower cost and testing them and building them. Um but it's but the industry has changed like you we we don't have a place at the moment where there's super patient capital prepared to risk millions on on new ideas on on the back of a beer mat like we maybe were in the 1990s. Well, interesting. We had Guha and Carth Bara from Valon Studios on this week and they said between 2019 and 2023 you could, you know, throw a stone and find money uh in the games industries and but you know before then it's always been it's always been relatively difficult. But I guess now I keep hearing the same things which is problem with games is that you don't know until towards the end of game development if the game is going to be a hit or or not. Well, if you if you look at um most of the games that have broken through as new IP in the past three or four years,
I don't think any of them were testing well on KPIs

until they were until, you know, people knew they were successful. So, there's leap of faiths everywhere. you know, War Dogs obviously famously uh you know, amazing job from the team and and Team 17 in bringing that to market, but that was dumped by Tencent, you know, six months ago. Six months ago,
I think we'll see a change because the only outcome for large scale publishing uh entities at the moment is to do things based on previous success. And we've seen those waves time and time again. And after those waves kind of crash a bit, people start to say, well, how can we see new IP coming through? What can we do? And the difference this time round is it's so democratized almost to a ridiculous extent in terms of digital distribution because it creates the other problem. There's such, you know, there are amazing games in a sea of not amazing games and how how how do you find them? So, so these challenges need to be solved for and I don't think the coming tidal wave of of

AI enabled, very quick to market mush, let's call it that, um is is going to last very long because nobody's going to find games. Nobody's going to play games.
I've told this story on my show, but I've got a um cousin about 2 years ago and it was Christmas and he'd show me a game they'd made and I was blown away. I said, "Oh, it's like wipe out." And he's like 12. He looked at me and went like, "What?" And I was amazed and he'd himself, but everything else had been AI, you know, he obviously AI assets and AI logos. He wasn't. But here's the thing. He was just making something. Yeah. He was just doing it for the joy of creation, which I guess is part of the joy of reforge and Minecraft and all those sort of things. Chris, actually what that brings through, and I'd love to hear Joe's view on this, is Joe earlier in this interview prefaced, you know, what he was about as a as a creator and building these, you know, almost playground games that he wanted to see in Minecraft, but he talked them through and he, you know, he sort of machinima style or puppet style kind of

made the rules, but the rules [clears throat] weren't built into the game. I think one of the dreams for Reforge is that that rather than userenerated content, which a phrase I don't really like, I want playergenerated content. I want your cousin to be able to realize a wipeout idea game inside Reforge without having to resort to AI, without her having to resort to a line of code, resorting to the thing that we want to stimulate most, which is imagination. And that's what Reforge promises for me. that player generated content future where everyone can create and then find ways to share it. Not necessarily all about Roblox style, how much money can I make off the next player, but I just want to share it with you because I've made it.
And if well, you know, like in music, if you write that demo and it's amazing, you know, then somebody helps you make that into a massive hit and you've got the originality is yours. But that's the dream. Do you I mean, I don't know if you see that dream as well and think we'll get there.
Yeah. No, absolutely. when discussing we we discuss internally a lot about mini games and we're going to make our our

own mini games. Um, and we're talking about the the tools is we don't speak about like okay what can we make and then what tools we're going to add for the community. We're
planning them in in in tandem like one of the things we're we're working on internally and we have spoke about it publicly so I should be fine talking about it is we're talking about the these amplifiers which is almost like a almost like a custom game mode but you could do it within a smaller area of your world. So you could do it in survival mode. Basically, you put down this this item, you create a radius, you choose what shape you want it to be, and you can add modifiers that only affect that area. So there's obvious things like low gravity or, you know, moving faster or it could be, oh, if you're in this area, you can't hurt other players. So say if we're doing a mode, we don't want PVP, you could just basically do that as a game mode. And you can have several of these overlapping. So you can kind of, obviously, in survival, it will have gameplay benefits. You can have one that makes your crops grow quicker or one that alerts you when enemies are there, but you could also do it to kind of have these small kind of contained bubbles of a of a custom game mode. And

so our our hope because you're going to be able to activate these on and off is that these will ultimately become the the building blocks for for how players will be able to to create games inside of of Reforge. Yeah, I do think it's a wonderful thing to be able to get people to create games and I think AI can maybe they can it can help some people in terms if they don't have certain tools. I mean obviously do it inside these sort of games. It might be exciting. You're not you're not thinking about these as necessarily I I'm interested. I don't know what my question is but you mentioned it's not just like Roblox where you're just trying to make money out of these things. So how are you different I guess or how are you thinking differently? So, sorry I've taken up a lot more time.
That's okay. Chris, we we all of your questions are bringing up things that we discussed this morning for breakfast. [laughter] There's been several times our morning breakfast discussion. I didn't realize how good prep it was for this. Sorry, I'll let you all part of my plan.
[laughter]
Um, so we believe that creation in a game like Reforge should be as intuitive

as kids playing with Lego and making the game up in front of them and saying, "These are the rules and here's how we do it." But actually able to be done in a way that's then sharable and distributable. And from our perspective as 4G, we want to have growing experiences in the game that we can probably sell as extra downloads and and extra packs and things that we like. And some of those we'll do first party ourselves. Some of those uh we'll see from the community, but we'll curate that so we don't just bombard people with all sorts of stuff. Outside that we want anyone playing this game, this is our dream to be able to share their experiences with anyone they want to. And if that's onetoone in the playground, which will, you know, or at work or, you know, however they want to do it, and that's all that ever happens, that'll be the majority of cases. But we also imagine there's going to be people who end up being professional creators who, for whatever reason, we're not necessarily the right retail place for

them to uh to distribute their stuff. they can go and build their own way to to share this content and build it you know what's currently known in the world of mods in the world all of and you know private servers that's going to come to Reforge but it'll come in a way that we want to have a a certain level of influence on the kind of things and and and obviously we do that by saying here's what you can modify and here's what you can't modify but we know as Joe's just described if we give people some really cool basic tools they'll start coming out with unbelievable ideas and we want them to get out and share them as much as as much as they can.
You need to be in the game to share it. you can it can be shared in different
we've not come up with that that final and certainly we've not announced you know final plans for that but the but the dream is it's the community it's about the you know we don't want to be blockers to the community growing we want to be enablers I think that's you know however we do that um but overall

things like um you know things like constant requests for payment and you know and and upgrades that's probably that's not going to be 4G we're not We don't have an opinion yet if there are others that will work in the Reforge universe like that. But we're not trying to create a monetization platform. We're trying to create an amazing game with amazing game experiences and us in the community will work out how how that's going to be sustainable.
Well, good luck with it. Certainly ambitious and it's shaping up very nicely. So, um, thank you for your time and uh, yeah, thank you.
Cheers. Cheers.
Thank you to Chris and Stampy for joining us there. That's it for today's episode of the Game Business Show. We'll be back with more news, analysis, insight, and interviews in the days and weeks ahead. To make sure you don't miss an episode, you can sign up at the gamebus.com and you'll receive a newsletter every time we do a new edition. You can also become a paid subscriber and receive a bonus episode from us every single Monday. But that's it from us today. Until next time, thank you for tuning in.