Current Industry Landscape and Future Outlook

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Their solution has opened the door for thousands of partners with over a thousand local payment methods, from mobile money to digital wallets. The result Plers worldwide can finally pay the way they prefer With all the things to reach your players around the globe can now focus on building games instead of payment infrastucture, whether you're going global or optimizing checkout solo payments handles the complexity protection taxes, compliance, they've got all the things covered Ready to reach more players? Learn more at XSO L L A d. pro slash A O I A A S Hi, I'm Alexa Ray Korea and this is the Gameemaker's Notebook podcast. My guest today is my friend Tandanaye Ekenake, who is recently published Dosaivas and Thirsty suitors from twenty twenty three. Eca is a very well known industry figure. He served a lot of time in AAA before moving to India starting his own studio We talked a little bit about twenty twenty three's Thurirsty Sitors, but focused most of our conversation on dosa Deus, which came out this last April. I really like these two games because they are both. turn based JRPG likes, but what's really interesting is they tackle themes of generational trauma and the return and individual personal journeys and culturalism in the face of sort of these these wider oppressive Machines Now I learned a lot from this conversation. We spoke a lot about Indie deevelopment and the current landscape and kind of where he sees it all going And I have a lot to think about after talking to him. Please enjoy. Welcome to G Makerss Notbook, a podcast featuring a series of in depth one on one conversations between game makers providing a thoughtful, intimate perspective on the business and craft of interactive entertainment The Game Maker's notebook is presented by the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences a member driven organization dedicated to the recognition and advancement of interactive entertainment friend, how are you I'm doing great. Lve in the dream, making games. How about yourself? Yep, li in the dream, making games. I think I posted about this recently where sometimes whenever I start to get jaded about this line of work, I think about my twelve year old self just like beating me over the head with my old iMAac and being like, shut up, this is what you wanted. L be jaded, donon't be jaded yet. It's still fun. There's good people. There's good stuff going on Um there is, there is. There is There's also like There's some bad stuff going on too at the same timees, so yeah There is there a lot of there's a lot of bad stuff going on. but I want to talk about something good that happened to me lately, which was playing your game. Doadivas. Awesome. We have we had you on this show a while ago, twenty nineteen for Falcon Age So you've obviously done a lot since then, but for all the kids listening at home who Haven't met you yet and aren't familiar with your body of work. How did you get here? I know that you were in AAA for a while and now you own your own studio Yeah, I guess the short version, it'll be thirty years in games professionally Congrats. Ye, I think This October Yeah, I started Bethazda When I was nineteen Wow I didn't finish school. I was going to art school for like a semester and then ran out of money I self teaching myself or self teaching myself Teaching myself, let's try that again Taching myself, u Um, how to do like stuff Photoshop and three D and Um A friend of mine who was going through architecture school in the DC area. I grew up in Maryland So right around where the bestest is. and him and his professor and a couple of other friends decided to start a studio where they would do like architectural Fly throughs, and in three D instead of like back then, this is Mid nineties, you would essentially takeake a cad drawing or drawing a plan of a building and someone would pay an artist doing like acrylic drawing or watercolor drawing of what the building would look like So these guys are doing that in three D and they're like, Ohh, we should start a studio, do that as a service. So I joined up with them and then we started like they were doing architecture stuff I was doing everything else like characters and other things. So We were just doing odd jobs and I learned everything I do now, which is like ten different jobs And that one year we spent at a startup animation studio, li living out of a house and working nonstop to the point where we're sendting out VHS tapes. to like, you know, other studios and we Betheseda it was one of the places that was nearby. It was like twenty minutes. so we sent out a video just tape of like somehere work They liked it. We were super cheap and hungry and they hired us and hired us for a couple jobs to like cutscenes And then it just ended up hiring the five of us full time and that's how we got started PHS t here and u Yeah, spent five years there. then moved out to Orange County So frversion of the studio down there to Seattle U And then nine years ago started our stududio Outer loooop with two other my co founders who I used to work with Justin Ornazo at previous companies And then we released a game called Falcon Age when VR was a thing, a bigger thing Uh But we use that to make a non VR version of of Falconge as well and then then we did a couple other sort of contract work to figure out our next thing and that became our last game or previous to this current game was called Thirsty Siters U And we grew the staff. It was seven at the time and during Thursday, we grew to like fourteen And most that same team went on to make dosad divas which just came out Last month. Whenever this is going to go in April, Yeah It did. It did come out in April. What made you So you had like the fun in house job. what what was the beginning of for you the idea of, hey, I think I'd like to actually go independent. I would like to do something a little bit different Um Yeahah, I spent a long time, about twenty years, right working bigigger studios and smaller studios. And I've always And I realized this recently, it's the ADHD brain of m. I'm like I always like doing ten things at once. And Even though I was always hired for like, oh, art director or designer or producer end up doing like jobs and I always enjoy that and So as sort of The longer I went in my career, the more I enjoyed being more hands on and working with a smaller team where I could still contribute Be when I was doing like I did a couple of Matrix games on PlayStation to enter the Matrix and Pathineo back in the day. and Those are like one hundred and twenty person teams. So like I was ourt director and doing cinematics producer, so most of my time is meetings and I got tired of that. So mostly As I got later to my career, the more I wanted to do smaller intimate more hands on approach and be able to see contribution on screen from everybody on the team. and that was sort of what led to starting a studio. Most of it like I I didn't think I knew how to do that. Like I had the art and design of it. Um, and then production I was like, how do you get money? you know, and how do you fund a thing? You need to pay a salary. So U to my previous other studio that I was working at before Oer loop, it was like a twenty person indie team And I was pitching and running my smaller teams. So I kind of learned how to put together a pitch and find funding and do the negotiating. after that I did that a couple of times and I was like, o, I think I can do this. Um Yeah, it was just a confidence really. It took a long time. Some people do it earlier. Maybe I should have done it earlier, fail early and Learned some lessons, but like yeah, I didn't think I didn't start until I was forty so Hey, it wasn't u what is it? Ver was no, not Vera Wang who is Some designer didn't start designing and didn't become like the big designer until she was like in her fifties or something. So whenever I feel like I'm late Berwin. Yeah, whenever I feel I'm late, I'm like,h, but ferwin. her way. Yeah because I think she was As she was going to a wedding, she couldn't find a dress. she ended up making her own and then that like her friends wanted him and she start, yeah making them for for herself and her friends And now a lot more friends, I guess. That is how it happens. You what are the ten jobs that you do Uh, now u Let's see Uh running the studio. so that's like operations Payroll. Uh kind of HR duties checking in on doing one on ones. Creative Director So usually I'll project ideas and we'll pitch to the team. we'll develop them over time Uh design both systems and Gameplay moment to moment, stuff, narrative part of the narrative team So there's for doos I was myself Sunny, u one of our I mean, everybody does multiple things. so she does production work and design work and also narrative work and then Hassan who's our main writer on So three of us were the narrative team And then I do lighting, I still do art, I do allR UI work Um Do all our trailers some marketing, other things, and of course some PR stuff. So yeah I don't know how many jobs that was, but it was a bunch So it's definitely more than ten. doing PR and dev sounds like possible tangle of insanity because that's quite a bit Yeah, but it's like it's at certain times, right? Like show certain shows or events post release, pre release kind of things. and then we work with Doose is self published. It was funded through the the folks that make among us on their Oer slloth fund and So we have external teams to help us out The Dv team is fourteen of us at the height of it And then we used a company called Pop Agenda that helped us for sort of marketing and planning PR beats and things like that. So theres there's definitely help in that category. notot doing all of it myself it is too much. But is it is nice to be able to jump into at least for me, like switch gears if I'm stuck on a design problem or Story problem just to be able to focus on something else and that always I'm sure it's same for you, right? Like, when you're trying to solve problem, if you can just relax and not focus on it, end up really figuring out a good Yeah, it's like going for a walk or whatever Some people do that in the shower, I guess. Not go for walks but like goo for walk in the shower Do you feel like I've had a lot of conversations with folks in indypace about how you kind of do you do have to wear all those hats. It's not like people that come from AAA into Iie or the other way, there's always this shock of like, wow, AAA were super hyper specialized and you have like you know, you they would prefer you to not be public facing and like prefer you to not like be out there, but then when you get to these smaller teams, it's an opportunity, but it's also like you have to be able to kind of be all of those things when how what is As someone who's been doing this for a while, like what is your best advice for juggling all of that? Like how do you juggle all of that Um, the sort of I guess the reason it's like, why don't you just hire somebody? It's mostly because budget and some of these are like part time jobs and it's like, Wh's the most knowledgeable all the project usually in the team, it's in the team itself. So it's like it's really, I mean, we do have external help, but it's I think I do a lot of jobs badly or not at the best level, but that is I talked to a lot of other Iies and they're always the same thing. It's like, yeah of necessity, but it's also why I have Iie stududio. so we can be more hands on on the various aspects of development It's not ideal Um But it's also like how you kind of can stay Um I mean,, yeah, there's certain usually for us, it's just When do we round our money plan of production around that, right? So The more people you hire, the shorter of that come so being able to you know, being uncomfortable at times switching jobs is fine for the trade off of having development time we need to kind of figure out what a project But there are defitely times where, you know I would bring people in as needed, but like tyypically Um As we're figuring out what the next project is, it might not be the right people for that and things like that. we try to keep it as tight as possible Yeah. you stay you you can be nimble Whereas sort of yeah Yeah, and our projects, this one took two years start to finish, which is pretty fast. even for us and then And we have we also prototype stuff all the time. Like we are trying to always kind of stay ahead of trying to figure out the next thing for ourselves and pitching I will say I am doing less things now because one of our producers, my other producer, myself and Sonny We hired her out of shared while she was still in school in Toronto. Hard is a prodce like production assistant and She also does design work and now she's like, There's a point on a team where There' like the one person you go to that is like the keeper of all knowledge or or, you know, departments, right That was me for a while. Now it's her and I told her that like months ago I'm like hey, suunn You are the keeper of knowledge now, like that is a pretty big deal. like She's been she's been with us since She was twenty when she started. so it was the beginning of Thursday, so it's like five years now W. I love Yeah. It's really proud of her. And so I'm like, I'm like oh I can I now I can like Try to do less jobs so she can break on some more responsibilities, yeah. Yeah You focus on the fun stuff. let's talk about doSadDivas. So you said working on it for two years, what was the like kernel of the idea that kicked off what became The game. Yeah, so Thirsty suitors, we started that in twenty twenty January. Wow. It's funny. Yeah I mean, we had a we had that kicking around a while. I think we spent like four or five months trying to figure out what the game was and then twenty twenty two while we're in the production of that I used to keep all like game ideas and Google Doc and that just really didn't work as well for me. So when we switched to Mira, which is like a giant digital whiteboard isn't linear? It could be I can like structure things and the way my scattered brain works. So I have a mirrorboard of like oitch OilG is like oututer loop games, right? So all of our projects are called OLG one, OLG two, OilG three Because if you ever name something, I'm sure as you have and you end up changing it, it sucks though. Yeah just project names or code names. So I have allG pitches board that I just throw ideas into or someone anyone throws ideas into that we during production We like, oh, this feature is really cool What if we did that? but as a separate game or something, you know? We always trying to be kind of pragmatic about ourroach like The tools we're building, you know, and the people that have specific abilities. I always think about sort of new ideas based on what we can do and what' what people like to do and U I think it's like around twenty twenty two. I had I just I don't know where I can't remember exactly where, but it was like I wrote down Two aunties in a mck U and I just like that just like tickle my brain. I'm like, oh, that sounds interesting. I wrote it down And usually with the ideas, I'd spend about a year J just kind of noodling at it going back at it. If I'm like stuck on a problem, I'll go back to the pitchboard and like, oh what is what is What is two aunties in a mech mei? what is What is this world? there's mix and why there's two of them? And how doess that work? And then just kind of Youually start with gathering a lot of reference images of a pinterest which is more AI images now, but it's still usable. But Pinterest is like my go to Um Yeah, I just then I'll just keep writing. And usually I think about sort of game ideas as trailer moments or log lines first Mhm. Logline like a I'm I know you know what it is, but like to the audience, logline is like the elevator pitch The equivalent of the Steam page is short description. And I kind of think about a pitch as like, can I get this across in two sentences, two or three sentences ' I have to pitch it. so I had to think about it in kind of pitch terms too. and Um So I just write a bunch of notes I typically kind of pick different people on the team and run the idea by because ideas are so fragile in the beginning that I'm not exactly sure what it is yet. So I like to kind of get some ideas from other folks And usually the first person I'll talk to is Vija, who's our concept artist So all so the visual styling of both Dosaivas and Thursuters, that's all him. He's just really, really brilliant Illustrator, concept artists, but concept artists are also They solve narrative problems, right? Like when you're designing a character, they have to think about so many things. and references and style and fashion and sensibilities and personalities. So like he's a fun person to talk to about like, you know, I'm pitching I'm thking about an idea. what do you think? then He'll be like, Oh, I really like this artist that does this kind of style or this kind of mood and we'll start kind of fill it out, filling out this littleittle tin of mirrorbard Uh, And we're just throwing in ideas of notes, little posted notes and And that's how it grew. So yeah, I started with T Aantis in a mech. I think that was the sort of the genesis of it. I love that. Were you just like watching an anime or I do watch a lot of animes, but I might have I might have been watching Which for Mercury, which is amazing. Hang Yeah at the time. I can't remember, N to look back. I could probably check the history on the mirrorboard and see when it was originally posted. Um, Yeah And then there's also, yeah, I also have like two other ideas. I usually pitch with like three ideas when we go out to like a dice or something and ye that was one of the ideas at the time And we just kept developing it and I wanted to do another sort of turn based combat GRPG like game with all the stuff we're building for Thurirsty and Um And then idea of having sort of characters, the mech being a character and then the two sisters. I was like, oh, it's a party partarty based AirPG Thirsty was like a solo character, you know, versus one or many Yeah. So just kind of finding those you know, mechanical matches to the narrative too is always the That's fun, fun stuff So there's the endos that are return based I gott to ask, like I know turnurn based is making a comeback now which everyone is kind of pointing at Ehibition thirty three and being like, oh, it made turn based cool again, even though there were a lot of people making turn based games while that game was still in development and coming out For you, why if we're thinking back to like if you started Thursday in twenty twenty That was kind of in the era where everyone was like, oh, turn like nobody wants to play turn basase. Final fantasy had the big ones had abandoned it for a while They were all moving towards towards action. So why choose to do a JRPG esqu turn based combat. likeike what to you makes that specific encounter mechanic compelling that other encounter mechanics just can't really Yeah, and I'll speak to Thirsty and also to doso too. For Thirsty it was Um sort of the game is about fighting your excess and resolveving conflict through Yeah these sort of surreal arguments that are displayed as battles. Yes And I know you're familiar with it. I love it. I love it so much And so when we were prototyping it, we tried a bunch of different approaches to it. A shared health bar two icons on the health bar meeting or not meeting, rejecting and accepting kind of finishes. So It was initially like almost like like a street fighter kind of a fighter a fight and game paradigm with like these health bars and things like that. And Uh, the more we, you know, we defefinitely wanted to kind of lean more narrative with it. So Turn based combat made made a real ike me. felt like the right thing because we wanted the dialogue and sort of battle with words as along with these actions that you're doing Um for pacing and If it was real time, you can't Typically a real time it's like, there's aut scen There's a battle There's a pause. there's a cutcene there's a batt Um And it just That didn't feel like the right tone or the right mechanical tone for the thing the tone the story tone we're going after. so Making a turn base gave us these options of like you know, these dialogue choices and feedback as well as sort of the battle movements you can do for that particular game and We really liked that approach and it carried over to DoSA We changed a bunch of it for dose of it the principles of sort of wanting to tell stories within the battle um paradigm was the thing that drew me to Termbase and also just U I don't typically look at trends and stuff. So ye as a smaller scale game, I'm like, okay, we could probably get away with doing this kind of thing or I might have replayed thousandousand year door, which is one of my favorite in the series or term based combat games, but like I don't know if Sea of Stars had been out by then Maybe it came out later, I don't know. But it's definitely a Thousand year door kind of inspired because I really lik their There's like a real u playfulness to the combat system in that and that's really like the tone we were going after too. I know there's serious moments and thirsty, but you know, you're you're you're hitting somebody with horny moves, right? Yeah Yeah. it could work visually Yeah. So yeah, it's more like finding the right mechanics or Mchanical paradigm for the sort of the pacing we wanted, and that's how it came to be How do you when you are going through the development process and you know, you're trying to, you mentioned it earlier, fail faster, learn from it. How do you how do you know when something like isn't right isn't working. Like what are those tells for you that it's time to kind of move on and try something else It's really hard when you're in the middle of it or when you're like No, we just need to add this one feature and it'll be better So it's really hard, it's hard to take a sort of a a broad view of it. so we We try to get it up and running with enough sort of Uh Gameplay that doesn't feel broken or missing enough feedback, audio, visual feedback, and then willll play test with some external Deaf friends just to see if they're seeing the same thing we're seeing or if they're missing things or how's the pacing of it? So we do a lot of early play tests And it's great for the whole team to kind of see that and What we're always trying to do is close the gap of what we think the player will how they will react and what they will react to versus actual and the more we play test uh, the We try to make predictions, the better our predictions, I think become over time. Sometimes they're completely wrong. Most times're completely wrong, but like Um instead of like myself saying, no, no, I think we should do it this way. Let's just playtest it and see what people say. and because I'm around all the time How do you How do you go I love asking this question. I feel like all of us have to kill our darlings or let something go at one point or another, but how do how do you do that becausecause I'm also lead producer and lead cit the curnt director, I switch hats constantly. so I'm like, okay, this week There are no ns. We're just going go Explore prototype next week? All knows. Okay. Yeah. so I've gotten used to contact switching like that, but I'll try to give it. u, sometim Mostly becausecause I also see like how much money we have left That is that is very motivating That was very motivating. So there's so there's two, there's two ECas. There's your there's there's your creative director and your producer. two w all the time. Yeah The two worldolves and they are both game developers. That's really funny U I to talk It's not a healthy it's healthys a healthy balance, but yeah It's not, but, you know, we we we're here because we like it, but No. Yeah U I want to I'm something that I really enjoyed about doSA was the food, the kind of everything was themed around, you know, food and feeding people and, you know, you have the the way that the flavors instead of having like elements, like that's how you can get through them and kind of the way that the way that the people respond to you with like their individual like recipes and things that they're looking for and then you have to hunt the ingredients and make it for them and stuff like that It's How When it making a game about food, like when you We're starting with that. How did you map that out U I had a conversation recently with Jason Wishnoff, who made people of note, who said that because game design and music a little have some commonality, which is math Like the design kind of wrote itself almost. but for food, I'm really curious like how you approached that as a theme Yeah, so early on I'm also making a game bu food and we're play testing, we're constantly hungry all the time. we cannot play test before lunch. We gotta stop But J's illustrations are so good. The food looks like they are Um, So early on on DSA, we knew I knew I wanted to have both these sisters be chefs and like, what does that mean? And then we had a like We actually had three sisters initially, we can get in that later, but like Um they had a falling out and it's like a game about reconciliation, but like I was like, o because there's chefs you know, we want to think about sort of, I was like, o, flavor profiles and sort of the five flavors, you know, like maybe that's our base for our elements because Thursday was about moods and feelings and if we're making a game about two chefs I think flavor profiles and flavor could be the base for it and So having Not quite a rock paper scissors at all because we're not you're not trying to find the weakness of the flavor. It's like just the matching types and F types felt like enough of the scale of the game we make to be able to have weaknesses in attacks and abilities around that Now, I mean, all this is iteration. So like it's very basic and rough initially And then as we sort of develop, we find more ways to connect the theme better with the mechanical aspects of it. So Flare was a starting point, but then U stuff like when you break their shield, the shield is a plate and when you break the plate, they're stuffed Um which is, you know, they're out for a number around. So kind of tying in food that way. That just came later. So all that stuff kind of comes through and we're finding we're trying to find connections to food as much as possible to the course of it And then also that the The battle system is sort of a third of the game. So there's the battle, there's the cooking and then there's sort of the exploration Um I read every comment, which is terrible, but also Um, It's, you know, I'm It's I've been doing it long enough. it's fine now, but like So like the feedback for Thirsty was like, oh, this these systems felt Uh You know, I felt like there's always one only one way to get through an encounter kind of thing. So We're like, okay, let's take the system and kind of remove the quick time event element of it. U and back to sort of Mario pap Mario MarioPG, the timing elements, we wanted to try to Get those back in. And then also, um, aspects of, um boost and the shield system that're like from Octopath are really like that could that could introduce some interesting strategy. So we kind of like take took these systems and try to make them work and U I mean, mechanics aren't devoid of I mean, there's baggage to every mechanic you put in. So it's like trying to find the right balance of how much do we take from this to system How is the player going to react to this? Are they going to just think about this other game So there's always just tons of iteration to building out a system that works for our needs But Um trying to get cooking, you know, okay the idea that you're running around this a little mech that's also like a food truck mech. that also came in later And then like delivering food as a way of of being able to run around and do that and getting ingredients or get taken orders by honking that also came in later. And those are things that are like, ah duh, like obviously, yes. you have a food truck We kind of want to make like, oh, the ice cream man com through a neighborhood, you know, like, honking the horn, but So all these things just are very mechanical in the beginning and then we're just trying to find ways for them to talk together. So beinging able to cook anywhere was also a thing that came in later. Again, kind of tying the exploration, taking order, go to a cook go to your the prep realm, we call it to go cooking come right back and do delivery and then run to the vendor ingredients or Um, certain ingredients are behind in battle. So like again, tying all these systems together, that just that just We didn't have that figured out In the first year, we're just, you know, just trying to find ways to get things to I feel like one game instead of three different games, which at Parts and Thurirsty felt like different games. U So yeah, that's like always a goal. like How do we make make these things that we're building feel like they belong together thematically And then For me personally, with every game, how do we try to get more player expression while still doing a narrative focus game. The Game Maker's sketchbook, a celebration of artistry and interactive entertainment, is back with official game art selections for its fifth annual showcase. The selected artwork includes games like Pragmata, Kingdom come deelliverance too. Absalom, Borderlands four, and many more You can preorder the high quality prints through the IM eight bit store until june twenty fifth. Every purchase directly supports nonprofit initiatives led by Day of the Devs and the AIAS Foundation View the winners and secure your prints at gamemakersketchbook. com The Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences is excited to announce our upcoming DIC Athens confonerence, hosted at the Athens Marriott Hotel on september twenty first to twenty third This three day executive retreat will provide attendees with a one of a kind experience, featuring unforgettable networking events and thought provoking programming about the business and craft of games. Earlybird pricing ends on august third. Game Makers's notebook listeners can use the code Dice Athens one eighty seven for an exclusive ten percent discount Register now before tickets sellout at dice Europe. org What was the when you were putting the narrative together Obviously your big thematics are how capitalism ruins goodood things and there's the and the kind of corporateization of sustenance and then you have the layer of how capitalism and like big corporations can often use and just suck the life out of personal personal and cultural like traditions.. So that but where did the the story of you have the Chantes in a mag and kind of like the little sister who's like gone corporate. Like where did that story come from Um Where does whereere do any ideas come from? I don't know. No it started actually we had this idea of like Okay, let's if there's two aunties in a meac, what does the world look like? And I was like, oh, it's like Maybe in the near future, or not near future, but future. Earth. currently after some great war and there was like a We had three sisters. and One stayed behind during the sort of war conflict and two fled to another place and it was like yearsars later, they're trying to reconnect And they sur run a restaurant called dosivus and that was always the case. so that's sort of like Dosity was also the first name I wrote down for the project and Hmm. Uh meant to be Yeah. And I was like, oh, okay, so the story is going to be about these two sisters going back to their town along the way, rebuilding a cookbook and recipes when they meet up with their third sister and the mech had three seats. It was like two of them were filled and the third one was empty But we had a cat named Chutney that was like the your sister's cat Well Chutney got cut during development of for R Chinney But but the story there was that onnce you go back and you know, where your sister was, she had already passed. So it was like a very sad kind of thing. So we're like, okay, let's just, I don't know. it just it didn't it didn't quite work various reasons for us and can really see the structure of it So end reworking. I don't know, I'm really drawn to family drama in both games, I guess, So actually not three ofor games Um, And I think part of that is also growing up with a very big family. know I immigrated to the US. when I was eight from Sri Lanka in the Maryland area and I have like seventy to eighty relatives that all also are within ten miles we're within ten miles of each other when we first came over in the eighties and nineties. So every weekend, it's like everybody's getting together at my uncle's house or someone's house Big family, lots of drama, but lots of fun and lots of food and lots of celebration. So Um But it's also I grew up in a family, you know, a household where There'd be yelling and then next morning, would just pretended nothing happened and moved on. It's like a mutuality, Yes. Yeah. It's not I was like, oh, that's just the way you resolve conflict, right? J don't talk about it. It moves on. Um Yeah But It's not healthy. It's not really healthy. So I think for me, a lot of this is sort of Figuring things out later in life and seeing have my wife and her mom They are very tight and they talk about everything. and conflict resolution is like There's no yelling Oh my God. I was like, Ohh wait, there's other ways. And as we had kid, you know, I have two kids, we have two boys. they're almost twenty one and eighteen now, right? So like I realize after having kids too, I'm like, oh, I'm like reverting to the way my parents handle things with us and I don't want to kind of repeat that pattern. kind of getting into therapy and examining that. I think a lot of that also came into sort of the themes and games. Yeah and exploring that with the sort of the cultural aspects too and I also find it's J'ust just unique to us, either. There's Um There's definitely other families that Don't resolve conflicts th the right way. and So I don't know, I kind of think about sort of the specificities universal is the thing we really literally kind of told herselves a lot during Thirstday and And family drama just felt interesting as a thing to explore here about these two sisters or a third sister. So the younger sister came into play ame me to came me to play came into the story early on, but then how they were related, what the situation was just kind of changed a lot through development. haaving her been the big daddy Um, I had another pitch for a game that was The sister was the Baddy and I think I just took that on to bverse and and it felt Right. And then for the sort of the main characters, food was a uniting thing for the for For the younger sister, the antagonist food was a thing that felt like got in the way of her family. So like that felt like an interesting conflict explorer She felt like, o, everyone's so focused on food and mex, though like, I'm not getting any attention, kind of kind of thing I feelt left out So it's like for her a way to control everything taken over the family business and Turning to empire was like her way of U some kind of resolve but not quite, but like, you know, her way of getting back or feeling like some kind of feeling important, I guess. And those kind of those kind of child feelings is interesting how much How much of those sort of childlike feelings stay with you if you don't deal with them as I'm discovering through years of therapy and yeah A lot of it's like, oh, it goes back to childhood or it goes back to this traumatic event and you're holding onto these old feelings rationally like that's just silly, but like emotionally, your body has that memory and you hold onto it. So I find that sort of story within that context? is it really interesting Yeah, I identify very deeply with generational trauma stories. I came from a large Italian family. so the word sorry does not exist. like you just You just do what you're going to do and you move on and nobody says anything about it. So I empathize with that Four. There's not a ton. like I feel like I've seen a lot of games coming out in the last I don't know, maybe just ten years. and maybe it's because our generation is the generation going to therapy and kind of unpacking all of these things. but seeing games where core themes are generational trauma What do you think What about games as an interactive medium makes it good space to explore these particular kinds of stories I think comoming back to sort of what is a game and what is an indie game? And I don't really care what the answer is, but I think there's we there's there's been enough time and enough themes explored where I feel like I'll take consonsume, for example. that kind of blew me away, right? Like. Very specific a game that I even though like I'm not Jenny or that experience, I can identify with that experience with that parent, with that mom with the feelings you had in high school, like all that stuff is like relatable and I think it's great. We're at a place where I think the tools and access to game development is easier than it was even ten years ago Um It is much harder to get noticed. So I think folks that are using it as a way to explore our themes that they care about is happening now. So I feel like as an art form we're sort of stretching the idea of what it means to make what a game Capital G game is And I think that happens with every media. I mean, in books and film and TV and in games and I love, I love that there's I mean, you know, a recently something like mix tape that was like, is it a game or is it not a game kind of thing? And I'm like,s, it is such an amazing piece of work Just enjoy it. Don't have to put a definition on it. I know it's just human nature for us to box things in a way that we understand, but like Um I think it's the maturity of the industry U and artists that are coming into it that aren't traditional A coming through traditional systems or traditional studios or traditional paths? that makes it that, you know, they're bringing their own influence to it. When you say traditional systems, you mean like into the AAA pipeline or like from the school. like I studied I study this in school. I got a job straight out of college doing the thing That kind of thing. Yeah, like or coming through QA or coming through Aple A yeah. I said I'm I'm not sure if there was ever traditional because I feel like everyone I talked in games came through in a different way. Yeah. Yeah. I crawled in through the dog door from media like Yeah, well I knew you Yeah. Yeah a thousand million million years ago. But we all kind of we all kind of end up here because I think I think that you know, we are all, we are all storytellers in our own way. And I think, you know, there is no one way in and especially now where there's like AA or Borros right now and you know, there are a lot of a lot more students now than I think there were ten years ago, like just looking at GDC this year, loads of the folks that I encountered coming up to me were like, I'm a student. This is my first GDC. or I'm graduating this year. I'm graduating next year. And it's like, wow, like all these colloeges find or have these robust programs where you can learn very specific game design things and I'm sure the stories they will be telling once they get to You know, our age will be about something completely different I think maybe it's just the maturity of also just People putting themselves out there in social media and all the platforms, like kind of seeing That's okay to do this or it's f, you know, like Yeah It's a lot more sort of I won't say like a personal brand or anything, but like You can find someone to relate to online, I think and no matter what there's just a lot of communities and a lot more folks kind of talking about themselves that mayaybe makes it more comfortable to be able to do that. Yeah. And that's kind of reflected in, you know, type of movies we're getting Um O just on digital platforms. and same for games. like where, you know, it wasn't too long ago where we couldn't release a game without a publisher or, you know, a physical copy. And now physical copies are just like, a nice to have. And I think that's also same with like, you know, the streamers or any of the sort of online stores for games as well, just making it easier to get to to an audience or finding an audience another another narrative narrative element that I kind of have seen It's it's I don't want to say it's like part of your guy's secret sauce, but I think it is like a really cool story starting point. Both Thirsty suitors and Dosadivas begin with kind of like a return, right? It's I'm returning. I have I have grown elsewhere in one direction and now I'm coming here and the person I am has to reconcile with kind of what've I left behind similar to the generational trauma story. like thoseose are there there are like with Jala and with, you know, Salmon Amani, it's very Like that's also very personal. Yes, you have like the family drama, but then you kind of have this internal drama as well with your main characters. How do you go about building builduilding those kinds of stories that are compelling and that you know, have that meaning and that weight to it without it just kind of being like hokey or window dressing. Like how do you begin when you have something so deep as generational trauma also on your plate How do you do that in like a thoughtful way? Um I't I didn't think about that was our Scret sauce. I actually didn't think about I guess I never really actively about as a coming back story, but it certainly is, right? Like Um, Yeah, u the reuniting and aspect of it It just kind of let itself to be a way for it so that the player can understand the journey with the character. Andaybe that' that's how we came up with it because it's always like yeah Um, Yeah. I mean, show don't tell kind of thing. So it's like, hey, if The player knows as much as Amani does as she's coming back. So it's that felt like the right way to do it. but also revisiting There's also like a for me, same at Thurirsty ando so there's like always this nice surprise of these two characters that knew each other from the past and how they talk to each other can be you know, that's that is a tricky line of like Remember that time we did this And you know, like that happens in shows too, which feels really hokey. Yeah. Like how do we do that in a way that feels Okay, they don't know each other. They're just doing this for the for the player. That's always that was always bou. I'm not sure' , you know, completely successful at points, but like, I don't know, it feels like a fun challenge to try to player to understand what's happening, but also kind of you know, reveal things as we go I don't know, it's hard You don't have a good answer Um let's we start off real dumb and stupid with it like They're going to be they're I say this and I'll say this and this happens. Now I'm sad. now I'm happy. Like we'll just like type in R in the most basic ass, basic Uh Dialogue just to get it up and Yeah Um Yeah. I mean our approach is really outline in a mirror, moment to moment, what we want to happen and then before we start writing, which is like, okay Sad moment, happappy moment. okay, conflict. and then just type in literally that into ink. Ink is what we used for both Thursday and and u Um, doSa that goes into our in our unity, you know engine, but like And then we'll just play test it and just run from moment to moment and see how it feels. and then what do we need? and then just iterate. We know we'll get there. It's just like I guess it's after doing Thursday. We're like, oh we have faith we'll get there Let's figure out sort of like the rough structure of this scene or this level And then Uh we spent a lot of time in the first hour of the game Figuring out production needs, narrative,, animation like That we know we know the first hour first half an hour hour is going to be our demo. We did that with Thursday. We really like how that worked out. but also That also allows us to figure out all the problems this game's going to have that we need to So for How big is a level? How many characters are there Um, What are we trying to say in this first hour? And that first hour I went through so many iterations and we loosely have the other sort of the rest of the game outlined roughly, but we don't know exactly what beat's going to hit where But we use that sort of that first U, because this game is like these three towns that you revisit And so each town has a certain scale certain things happen Each town is like almost like a episode of of a series, right? L There's some kind of introduction, some conflict, some resolve And then that kind of sets up the the next chapter and that's how sort of the beat map of Thursday one two. It's like It's like hour by hour kind of roughly. we know we're gonna like It's slowly going to kind of ramp up, but if there's there's like a nice. paste to it And that's the hope and We just we just have faith that we'll figure it out. It's a matter of time or we will run out of money. So, you know But like Um, Yeah, it's it's just I'm not really there's no I don't there's no magic answer to this but it's like We think we know what we want to get to We'll start really rough and just put something down because it's like something is better than nothing. and for me as a sort of project leader careve director. I'm always like, I'm going to always make a decision. It might not be the right one, but I don't want to kind of not make a decision because that's what kills projects and Yeah. You know, So we'll just go down this path and and we're going to change real fast if it's not the right path That's okay. Well cut stuff. I have no No problems with that So we just like make decisions P test it look through as a team because we do weekly show and tells So we start Monday, we have our meetings Thursday is our last day of the week Um We do four days a week And then so Thursday afternoon is like, show and tell. let's just play through the build and see what we think and make notes and then come back Monday fresh and then Iterate Yeah, we just have we just built a bunch of tools to let us kind of iterate real fast and That's our goal is to get it. Does this thing have legs? Let's get it into the game as soon as possible. becausecause it's not it's not Like we don't do a lot of design docs. We'll do like design like a one pager overview of sort of the systems or the section and we do like narrative beats. rough outlines, but we'll get it in. and then before we start really, really writing, Um, Yeah, because that's like once you start building the sets and building the characters and doing animation work And you got to go to go to VO sessions, like that's all locked in, right? So don't we don't all lock in too early as much as possible So you so in in kind of designing like game and narrative happened at the same time, you weren't like, here's my script. Like this is what we want to do for this game. That's a little It reminds me a lot of the approach of devised theatater. Hm. where you kind of makes you kind of like you do one chunk and then you kind of let the improv take you where you where you're going in my conversation with Remy and Pinky from Sunset Visitor about a thousandousand Times Resist. That's how they wrote a thousand timimes resist. It was chapter one, done, chapter two. And like they never really, they didn't look too far ahead. They kind of let the story Gide them where they were going through that game That's really, that's really fascinating becauseuse it's I think I think it was too thirsty. I'm just like At some point, We know the characters really well, we know the world We're just gonna let the game tell us where it want to go. Yeah. ye. And that's a That's I think it takes that takes a long at least for me, it took a long time to kind of get to that sort of confidence or faith level of where it's like I'm not going to control every aspect of it. I'm going to like kind of see we'll throw something in. we'll play test. How do we feel? Oh, that felt really cool. Let's go more in that, you know kind of letting the keepeing enough chaos for the game to figure itself out or kind of point us in the right direction That's the thing. There's like a thousand decisions that get made every day in a game, right? Like There's no right right direction. There's just like, oh, this feels good right now. this feels good or this fits the needs. or this feels like the character would do this or This feels really surprising player wouldn't expect the character to that. And that that's interesting We should go there, you know, Um Yeah Yeah, I like the theater approach. I think that's I just I didn't know that's what it was called, but like that's the way we've been kind of approaching it too Yes, I'm going to double check that it's called Dvised Theater right now while I'm sitting here Yes Yes, it is called devised Theater. And it's when you like they didn't they didn't have a You know, full script for the game yet. they were like, o, it's feeling like this, it's feeling like that. And I mean It resulted in something, you know, really, really beautiful. Yeah. Thousand times resesist got a lot of got a lot of accolades It's amazing Yeah, but that I feel like I feel like perhaps at least thinking about My experience in AAA, like it's very hard to to do that. And you were talking about,, we're not going to over doocument anything. I feel like it's like, oh, we have to document everything. everything has to be locked in. and This has to like be this, and it kind of doesn't leave a lot of room for breathing and iterating. So Istand I like that approach. Yeah. Yeah, but it's. hundredundreds of thousands of people work waiting to like give us marching orders, right? We need to go in a direction and make sure you have figured out. So I understand that aspect I think that's why like At least for film, It's usually a small crew for years, like a Pixar, you know PorScript or Animatic will have go over three, four years. And like they'll make the movie twenty times before they actually start production because it's like, A team of fifteen, twenty versus the team of four hundred, like the costs are once you start like building the sets and M models. it's just so it's locked in. It's really, really hard to change. Yeah. But it's It's we can do it at this scale because we're there's like one per discipline and There's enough things for people to work on. They're not really waiting for us to figure the game out so much So I do like that flexibility. I mean Kind of had an outline, I knew how we want to end the game justust in know how exactly And it definitely and it changed, right? Like even There was stuff we were going to do with theani later, but like We're like, oh, that doesn't it doesn't really fit for what we have anymore or it doesn't really It's not really needated It feels too much or you know, whatever. So it would just We kind of we kind of know that that's where we're going to go and we have to earn it and And that took a long time too, but like keeping it Yeah, again, letting the game tellell us where wants to go you also have like a really another thing, a really tight game. Like Thirsty was really tight, like I think I spent maybe like fifteen hours. are in it and dosa is I think I hit maybe like twelve, like you know, we always talk about, you know, we're all at all of these events looking at each other going, Oh my God, I can't play another forty hour RPG or I can't have another eighty hour RPG. I can't have another And I do think that we do want these like these smaller tighter experiences are really quite joyful and I think allow you to do more. So when you are making these games? Are you conscious of like, I want this experience to last this long or be about deep when you're kind of plotting all of that out For sure. for Thirsty, Thirsty was definitely I think I've told you this too. I called it a baby Yakuza. L I really enjoyed like the first like a Dragon. It was the only one I finished But I'm like, man, this is This is great. like I want to make a smaller version of something like this. And a persona, people on the team have play persona, but I've never finished one because it's just like it's just it's so long for me. So long. I know and nothing against persona' just not like I don't, I can't keep focus enough to finish that game, get through it. And I've tried multiple tim I think but I'm not opposed to long games. I spent three hundred and fifty hours in animal Crossing during pandemics. That's different though. That's different. That's different U or Breath of the Wild or u u Yeah, I mean, they're a handful. there's like one of those a year for me, maybe, but like most of the time I like smaller games For Thursday, I was definitely wanted at least six hours or eight hours And then through development, I'm like, oh shit, are we gonna to hit that? Th then I'm like second guessing myself and I'm like And I did this on Doza too. I'm like, o I'm like, I'll be happy with this tight six And then end up then we add too many things or we go back and I'm like, it's really hard to know, especially near the end of production 'use we didn't really know how long it was till we like got near the end we can like prop the whole thing up and place start to finish. I was like, oh, it's longer than I thought. And you know hindsight being what it is, I would go back and tighten up some areas based on the feedback to which we're doing a a big pass coming up Kind of like again, I read all the things and I'm like, oh yeah, the second half, there are moments I kind of lost sort of the themes. I felt too mechanical at times and So we're adding more dialogue and more context to the orders and things like that. And it's like quality of life fixes and Um Yeah. I think sometimes I'm like, oh no, we're not going to hit six hours Let's just like try to extend this area and that's always It's always hard to know. I don't know if you know if you're product when you're in production if like It's hard. when you're in the middle of it, Yeah Yeah, cant you can't really see the forest or the trees. Everything is just in darkness and chaos U so Here we are in twenty twenty six we, you know, alluded to at the top of this conversation, we were like some things are not good and some things are good. How do you feel now you've put, you know, two Two great games out in the last, o my God, Thirstday was twenty twenty three Ts. So in the last in three years, that's awesome that you've been able to ship two games in the last couple of years How do you see cururrent I don't want to be like state of the industry because that's not the question. But like how do you see things going likeike we've talked a lot about types of creatives and wearing many hats and and funding and like you're working with the folks at Outerloth, which I'm seeing we're seeing more of, you know, small company with small company with small company kind of working together to make something So how do you you how do you see it? How do you see where we are right now Um rightight now it's it's Yeah twenty twenty six is a little better than twenty twenty five in funding, but like it's really hard right now, even like Through the course of developing doOSA over the last two years, I saw the market change completely in the way that People are taking a lot less risks and The money people. and bet is on and this is cyclical, but right now the bet is on small teams and small projects and because it's like less risky And that by the time publisher is signing things, these teams are like two, three person or four person teams or sometimes solo des have Developed a thing and talked about it enough where there's like the wishlists enough to like It's almost like a sure nothing's a sure thing. wishlists don't guarantee success, but like The same publishers I were talking to you know a couple of years ago, they're like They're signing smaller things and they're taking what they would consider more sure bets, like whether it's it's a more known gameplay style or something that's gathered one hundred thousand, two hundred thousand, five hundred thousand wishlists So it's easier to find that like they've already found an audience They think that we'll want that game. so Um So it' definitely hard. Like hard The project we're working on now started as a kind of a way to learn Gaot and it's like it's a tiny game and we're like, oh, this is actually turning out pretty good. So we're probably going either release it on our own or start talking about it soon. Let's see if there's there's an audience for it because I'm not sure like Thirsty and Doosa were great games to make, but it hadn't find. I don't think it's really found its audience. they sellld okay, but not Great. I mean, the the reviews are fine. And the sort of the awards, accolades, all that stuff is great, but doesn't pay the bills so much either.. And I'm like super happy. like if I had to do it again, I would do it the same way. But like connecting with with such a there's so many different audiences now and we really have to be smarter about marketing a thing, like tryrying to get someone's attentions in two, three seconds. Not that the games have to be real shallow, but like the name and the high concept needs to be easier to understand. or we're seeing this in in games and film and TV and what gets to get in theaters and what doesn't Um you know somethingomething like sinners you know, u Ryan Kgler talks about multiple hooks, right? Like It is a very hard game to game film to pitch, you know Yeah a black film set in the nineteen thirty Mississippi Dlta, right? But he's like oh, there's two Mikeel would be Jordan'. That's a hook There's vampires. that's a hook spoiler U also Ryan has made amazing films. Yeah. So there's trust so that he's a hook, right? So like, Even him he wass talking about, like, I remember when that like Sener first got announced, they were just like, oh They paid him too much. hisis deal is crazy. He gets ownership, like right? All that like The things a lot of sort of I'll say white crreaters don't get you got. and then that'll change as soon as a success. and For me, it's definitely like focusing on sort of Pting the cultural aspects first is definitely hurt us in terms of finding an audience like There are people that arent that when they give it a chance They like it, but getting people to give it a chance for just even Cicking on a wish list is definitely harder That's crazy Yes crazy And it's gotten harder since twenty three. So I sort of its the state of the world, right? Like my Um So I have to be like We can do the things that are important culturally and narratively, but how we talk about it m how that how that sort of How we pitch a game to the public or on steam or to publishers is definitely I think I'm thinking a lot more about it. Yeah And like more mechanical interest or just a different hook or multiple hooks to get people's attention. So I think It's hard It's weird like, this is a reallyally like It's the best time to bet on more risky things because it's like it's a chance for things to blow up, but people tend to being a lot more conservative about it. so It's also time in the last two years or in three years used to be Developers would like pitch and not talk about a project publishers or the platforms really want it to be the one that's gets to make that announcement at the marketing beat, but now. It's roughitely flipped, like Um s are kind of reallyle sing and talk about things on their own. and then when it gets enough attention, they can either rele start on their own. At that point what you need a publisher or maybe it's for funding but like Um, There's definitely a shift in that direction too. peopleeople are kind of doing stuff on their own and trying to build their own audience, which I think is smart too regardless I'm see seeing a lot of that, a lot of Great smaller games havingt come out this year already. So from you Thankk you so much for chatting with me today. I appreciate it Oh yeah, thanks for having me So Yeah, I can't wait to see what you do next, another turn based Maybe this one's not. O, spoiler. sppoiler. It's very different for us. ye Well I'm excited, I'm excited to see you. We'll get you in a playtest so Yes,, Awesome. Thank you. Yeah Thank you for joining us for the Gay Mak's nototebook. For more information on the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, our podcasts and our other initiatives, please visit www. interactive. orgot