a16z Podcast - a16z Podcast: Tech Trends Changing Gaming

Episode Date: June 4, 2015

with Justin Bailey (@justinbailey12d), Herman Narula (@hermannarula), Tim Schafer (@timoflegend) and Sonal Chokshi (@smc90) We know that the gaming industry -- in some ways like but in other ways unlike the music industry -- has been changing due to the internet and especially technologies around crowdfunding, online discovery, and direct fan interaction. But how does this affect the creative process and studio model … especially when it comes virtual reality (the ability to craft more immersive experiences); systems tech (is there a tension between content-focused games there?); and the ease with which users -- not just a few rarified developers -- can mod the games themselves? In this episode of the a16z Podcast, hosted by Sonal Chokshi, listen in on the conversation between Tim Schafer, founder and CEO of Double Fine Productions (and designer of LucasArts’ Grim Fandango); Justin Bailey, COO of Double Fine; and Herman Narula (CEO of Improbable). The views expressed here are those of the individual AH Capital Management, L.L.C. (“a16z”) personnel quoted and are not the views of a16z or its affiliates. Certain information contained in here has been obtained from third-party sources, including from portfolio companies of funds managed by a16z. While taken from sources believed to be reliable, a16z has not independently verified such information and makes no representations about the enduring accuracy of the information or its appropriateness for a given situation. This content is provided for informational purposes only, and should not be relied upon as legal, business, investment, or tax advice. You should consult your own advisers as to those matters. References to any securities or digital assets are for illustrative purposes only, and do not constitute an investment recommendation or offer to provide investment advisory services. Furthermore, this content is not directed at nor intended for use by any investors or prospective investors, and may not under any circumstances be relied upon when making a decision to invest in any fund managed by a16z. (An offering to invest in an a16z fund will be made only by the private placement memorandum, subscription agreement, and other relevant documentation of any such fund and should be read in their entirety.) Any investments or portfolio companies mentioned, referred to, or described are not representative of all investments in vehicles managed by a16z, and there can be no assurance that the investments will be profitable or that other investments made in the future will have similar characteristics or results. A list of investments made by funds managed by Andreessen Horowitz (excluding investments and certain publicly traded cryptocurrencies/ digital assets for which the issuer has not provided permission for a16z to disclose publicly) is available at https://a16z.com/investments/. Charts and graphs provided within are for informational purposes solely and should not be relied upon when making any investment decision. Past performance is not indicative of future results. The content speaks only as of the date indicated. Any projections, estimates, forecasts, targets, prospects, and/or opinions expressed in these materials are subject to change without notice and may differ or be contrary to opinions expressed by others. Please see https://a16z.com/disclosures for additional important information.

The content here is for informational purposes only, should not be taken as legal business, tax, or investment advice, or be used to evaluate any investment or security and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any A16Z fund. For more details, please see A16Z.com slash disclosures. Hi, everyone. This is Sonal. Welcome to the A6NZ podcast. I'm here today with Tim Schaefer of Double Fine Productions. Tim is a CEO and co-finder of Double Fine, which just put out Broken Age, which was a massive. massively crowdfunded game on Kickstarter. Massively crowdfunded. I like that. It was. Wasn't it like the first, actually the first million dollar game or something like that? It was like, what are the things that we had records in? We had like the most backers. Most backers. It was like fastest two million bucks.

And it was like most exciting thing that happened ever. As far as I'm concerned. Well, and the way I know you is as the inventor of Grim Van Dengo, which is aging myself, but that's what I know about you in the living space. It's really recent. We just remastered it. Okay. And I'm here with Justin, who's the chief operating officer of the CEO of Double Fine. Hello.

And I'm here with Herman Nirola, the CEO of Improbable, that full disclosure were investors in. Hi, Herman. Hello. We thought it'd be great to do a podcast on trends in gaming. So we just want to let you guys talk. And let's start off by just talking about the funding landscape, because I think that's one of the first things that comes to mind.

Yeah, it's exciting. I mean, people often ask, like, what are you excited about in games and what technology, like any of these new devices? And there are a lot of, you know, new things going on. VR and stuff, but I'm always, lately I've been most excited by how things have changed as far as business goes, which sounds weird because I've always been on the creative side of things. But, you know, what happened with us in crowdfunding has allowed us to have just so much more creative control and a more natural relationship with people who we make games

for it because they're funding our games and we're directly in contact with them. They really feel like they're participating in making the game because they help fund it and they're big champions of the game and they get to see, you know, behind the curtain a little bit. So it's really changed compared to the old days where we would have to deal with a large gatekeeper, a big, large company who was just trying to avoid risk and trying to, you know, change our games creatively. Now we're much more in control of that. So I guess that's the thing going on in games. It's strange that the funding kind of revolution that's been going on has been having a huge impact on creativity. I think it's had a huge impact on the technology side

as well. For us, for example, working with game developers, we're increasingly interested in working with independent game developers, because they have such huge followings distinct from large businesses, and they have an ability, I mean, like Dean Hall, for example, who are working with, they have an ability to command a following and monetize that following in a way that previously they would have to have gone through a big publisher to do. I mean, that's profound. And I think technological innovation that makes games easier to build or quicker to build or widens the scope of what small teams can do may be quite important in the near future. Yeah, and I see a historical precedent actually being set here. If you actually

look at what happened about 40 years ago in films. You'll actually see film financing came about then, and the creators were freed from a studio framework. And it's really interesting to see what's actually happening right now with crowdfunding and other funding sources and games, because it's creating those same dynamics that, you know, led to basically a creative explosion. And how is it different from the music industry? Because a lot of people have a lot of, like, PTSD from the music industry. Like, they come out, they start, you have to have your, it almost seems like as preconditions, you have to have your own following to really do

indie games successfully? Like, is that true? Can people really become successful if they don't already have their following? I mean, that's happened right? I mean, that's how it happens a whole time. Yeah, just so a really great game can grab everyone's attention. Or sometimes just a shot of a game, like Hyperlight Drifter or something I've never seen before. I didn't know the team. Never heard of these guys. Just like, what is that? I want to see that. I want to back that. And, you know, my case, you know, having many years of experience and, you know, years to, like, generate that kind of following. Definitely helped have a really big Kickstarter. But not everyone needs to, you know, have 3.3 million right off.

the bat in their first game, right? So I think it's a great natural self-correcting method to actually build that kind of following. And yet I do think that it is a little bit of a myth that with crowdfunding, a lot of people think that if you go there, you know, with the current platforms that are in place, that organic discovery is fairly large. And we've actually found that to be quite to the contrary. And you do need to come with your community. A lot of the platforms that exist today are about organizing your community around a single funding event. The other thing is, it's interesting to note, if you're actually looking at the landscape, you know, the barriers to entry have, like, just come down, which is great, but there's actually more access to more people than ever before. And so there's, like, a new barrier that has come about, which is discovery.

And it's very hard when you're in indie, and you're very talented to get discovered these days. It almost suggests a new model for the publisher, like falling on from what you were saying. I mean, where the real role is around discovery, it's around aiding community interaction, it's around magnifying what independents like yourself are already doing for new talent, as opposed to being this kind of controlling influence that sort of swallow up the studio. I mean, I would agree. If you go back to that 40 years ago, that actually was right around the time when EA was being formed. You had Tripp Hawkins, and he went out and he found, and this actually ties in the music industry. He got the contract from the music industry and used the same practices, which basically have been

business practices established for the last 40 years in the game industry. That was the same time, by the way, that the film financing piece was happening. And so, you kind of saw the creatives in the game industry potentially being more restricted and those restrictions are falling away now where the film industry you've seen the term autore came from that time frame

and a lot of the most dominant franchises and the creatives being in control now of the studio framework really has come about from that time So walk us down a little bit more to why this really matters for people who aren't inside the gaming industry like what does it mean when you give power back

to the creators? Definitely something you should answer I mean, I think it leads to the best work And I think at the health of the industry Like you look at something like Sundance Film Festival And it's not like Sundance Appeared and crushed all the studios And destroyed Hollywood forever

It actually just enriched the whole ecosystem So, you know, you had a new place To discover up-and-coming artists Or returning artists But different kinds of movies were shown there And those people could also work in Hollywood wouldn't kind of just add new ideas to it. And the same way the indie game market,

I think, you know, might make smaller games than the AAA developers, but they're kind of going out in the direction of new genres and new ideas. Like there was no, you know, I don't think a AAA studio would have created Minecraft, for example, you know, and I don't think that followed any sort of rules that existed before it, you know. But I think when people have the ability to kind of

make these smaller, personal, more risky projects, just it opens up, it continues to grow the creativity I think always leads and then the players follow and then people with money see that well look everyone's going over there and wants to help that grow even bigger yeah I mean I think there's almost like a kind of

Cambrian explosion of new possibilities and ideas I mean the one thing as a gamer is a big fan of some of your games as well that I've really you know hated in the last few years has been the seamness and lack of risk around so many of the higher budget productions that are out there. I mean, still deeply entertaining and fun, but the interesting thing about this industry is you don't really grow out of it. You know, the average age is what, like 36 now

of a gamer. So these are the same eyeballs. And, you know, there's something weird happening here where they want more, they want more variety. So I think there's quite a voracious appetite out there for the new plethora of perhaps less risky independent projects or more risky, creatively, less risky financially now, and they're going to be available. I'm curious also on your thoughts, Tim, on whether you feel that the mobile user base, the kind of new generation gamers, who maybe were never part of the last 20 years of gaming history, are they going to be fundamentally different in what they want from the current, like, more insular gaming community? Or are they going to be the same?

I mean, I hope so. I hope they're different in that. I think a lot of people had an idea that gamers mean a certain, it means a certain thing, just because it's been that way for a long time. And I think the new people who've been brought in the market are showing something that it kind of highlights a difference to me between games and movies. When you go to multiplex there's a movie for everybody there's like a movie your parents will go see the kids will go see this movie the teenagers we go see and there's there's um there's comedies and dramas and there's still pretty mainstream right it's not like you don't have to go to an art house to see that sort of um variety but in games the mainstream games you still have for the majority

sense like summer action blockbusters they're mostly all in that genre if you know and i think indie games kind of you know stretched out of that for sure but um just the the idea that that um that people, you know, the idea of a comedy, that's not a big common thing you see in games, like a comedy game. Exactly. And, you know, definitely not a romance. It's not a very common thing.

They exist, but they're not that common. I think that shows that when new people come in through, you know, casual gaming or mobile gaming, they don't have those same assumptions that everybody wants to play a certain type of game. And they, I think it's kind of rough sometimes for the people who are in that existing community to feel it changing and feeling like new people

are joining the club. I think it, you know, makes them kind of angry sometimes. But I think, in general, it'll just keep growing and that's healthy for everybody. Completely. And I agree. I also think it's kind of a gateway drug. I think that people playing Clash of Clans today,

even Clash of Clans, is more sophisticated than mobile experiences that came before. I mean, I remember Snake. I don't know if anyone else does back in the day. When they want more, what do they do? And we had a very interesting little anecdotal story.

A lot of people had previously played mobile games. One of the requirements was to download the game from Steam in order to interact with it. These weren't like hardcore gamers. Just the click process in Steam was utterly alien to them. I mean, these are people that have used the iPhone store, right?

So they were really used to a very slick experience and they were instantly like thrown by trying to interact with this game. It was like an alien world to them, you know, like people who used to Amazon or iTunes. So there's a sort of adolescence to some of the non-creative parts of the industry which needs to evolve

if those people are to be brought into the fold. What are some of the other changes besides mobile that are changing the gaming landscape for you guys as creators and producers of games? I think that diversity of people trying new things is changing a lot. people realizing that it's okay to have narrative in games again.

I think for years, when I first started playing, it was like text adventures. I love playing these games that would tell you, you're in the middle of a field, there's a white house to the north. You know, these texts events, and you type in, go north. And we made adventure games all through the 90s that were all about, like, you know, pirates and bikers and tentacles and all sorts of stories. And I think then within the gaming community, there was a feeling of like, we should do these, you know,

nonscripted things that are just systemic based, where you make your own story by finding these emergent-type behaviors and kind of scripted stories were kind of had kind of a bad rap for a while. And I think things like The Last of Us and Home Alone and games have come out where story is so strong and people are realizing that you can have both, you can have both emergent things happening in games. You can have games across the whole spectrum of really scripted story-based things to really just emergent-type Minecraft things.

And now they're doing a story-based version of Minecraft. So it's like everywhere in between, it's just basically a safe. I think it's safe to explore the whole spectrum now, which I think is a positive step. I mean, our passion, like full disclosure, is in building massive emergent online experiences, right? And it's funny that you mentioned that, you know, it's okay to tell stories again. I think going even further, I think people who play online games in those communities, they want to tell stories and be part of stories. You know, there can be a very same equality to online experiences. You know, you play something like Grim Fandango and you go on an emotional journey, right?

you don't with a game where all the content is static. So how to bring the teeming mass of online gamers to the same kind of emotional experiences that they get from really good single-payer experiences is a really hard challenge too. And I think the focus on VR and graphics, I don't know how you feel about this, but I think that graphics are not

the be-all and end-all of gaming experience. I think there's more fundamental components to engagement that I wish people would explore more, which aren't as flashy as just increasing pixel density. I mean, it's why people like Tim and others are so enduring in their ability to produce great games. There must be something fundamental that crosses medium, that crosses audience, which, you know, needs to be explored.

Yeah, and I think it was what Tim was talking about, too, is the story side of things. And one thing I think it's interesting that's going to happen here is you have, you know, we talk about mobile, but VR, which you're just alluding to. And what that does to the gaming landscape, which I'm really excited about, because a lot of the same things that actually worked

and the same techniques with Hollywood films and these big blockbuster games, they just don't translate over to the VR experience, which I think potentially you'll see a spotlight on things like narrative and exploration, which do translate to that medium. And I think it's something interesting to hear what Thames take on it is.

I think it's interesting because I guess beyond story and gameplay, all these things to me are part of this toolkit to do one thing, which is the thing I like to do most in games, which is just pull someone into a world. Just pull something until they forget they're sitting on the couch or wherever they are and they're just in this world. The characters feel real to them. The problems of the world become their problems and the beauty of the world.

They feel like they're just transported into it. They never want to leave. I mean, they want them to leave and go have dinner and stuff like that. But they miss it. You know, I feeling when you're playing a really great game and you're at school or work and you're just, I can't wait to go back to that world and so fun. Because I feel like there is something really positive about just going to a fantasy world and getting lost in that.

It's like a mental transformation. And I think, you know, VR just has a lot of potential, obviously, for making you feel like you're in another place, but you were physically in another place. You're really, really there. And there's a lot of potential for that, for sure. And it's kind of interesting, too, because you're talking about, like, the gateway drug, right? Yeah. Well, I mean, is VR, like, the farthest you can get away from the gateway drug? Because you're strapping someone on your head.

See, that's really, really interesting. I completely agree. I think deepening the experience in other ways is important. But I think that the fundamental threshold is, those things are all periphery, they're very important, but the fundamental threshold is, am I engaged with what I'm interacting with? Am I emotionally, personally, mentally engaged? And that boils down to, in my view, it's just my opinion, on what that content is and what the fundamentals of that experience are. And I think when people try and paper that over with better graphics or with something superficially more immersive,

they can't fix that flaw. And that, I think, to really explore what will work in your mediums requires exactly what you guys are talking about, way more experimentation, which isn't done enabled by better funding models and more people trying new things. And you're right, the old stuff won't work. Even in online, like, look at Daisy. I mean, that was what the hell was that, right? That was a whole new experience. That's another thing I just love with the business side. So a little bit of a tangent here. But if you went to Steam, which you talked about earlier now, so Daisy is probably one of those properties that performed really well on Steam. It's a little inaccessible to most people.

But if you went on to that place to buy it, you actually saw the description. That was on all caps that look like lawyer speak, which is basically do not buy this game. Like, it's buggy, it's not finished, it's unpolished, like, don't get involved. So they did incredibly well in the steam sale. No, they didn't actually, they weren't even on sale. It's got a really strange word of mouth. There's something that's never happened in the history of the steam sale, which is it was the holiday side. It was like the Christmas sale.

And for the wholesale, they stayed the number one spot. Yeah, this is what he was telling us. I mean, like, so working with him now, and like one of the interesting points about that game is what was it that kept people there? Like, the Armour engine, you know, he'd be the first to say was not, wouldn't have been necessarily a first choice. Like, you know, and the development methodology of the game and the, and kind of from a bug and development perspective, it was a challenging project to do.

But it was unbelievably engaging, right? Yeah, and there's something really cool there, which is, which I'm still trying to figure out from just a business side of, like, opportunities and stuff. But if you look at Dota, it was basically a mod as well, which became League of Legends. And you look at, you know, this from Arma, and it's like, day Z. It's like this mod community that grabs something and makes it something bigger. It's really interesting.

I agree totally. I mean, we started, I don't know what you feel about this, but we started this sort of radical paradigm internally, which is we think for now, like all the development teams experimenting with us, they're all modding versions of code bases that made up earlier games built on improbable. So our whole tech is based around the idea that there's not really any difference

between a game developer and a modder. They're both manipulating a shared code base that they can keep adding to. So you get these really strange variations of products that are in development that just kind of spin out in our team. Everyone's always game jamming and riffing on what's being done.

Well, it's also like they can actually take a chance. Yeah, exactly. Because it's so easy to build something. And they're not tied to a commercial model and it's like it's not the same publishing model where it's like they can't take risks. They have to sit there and plug the same franchise. They have to do proven mechanics.

And the expectations are different too. If Ubisoft to come out and release Day Z and like, here it is, people would have treated them, I think, differently. Yeah, completely. But it is like, it shows how, I mean, modding is a great example of putting tools in the hands of a lot of people and shows how, you know, the next great idea, it's really hard to ensure that it's in the right place,

like in your company. It's like it might be out in the wild somewhere and whoever, you know, made the right mod to that game and all of a sudden created a new genre like they did with them. Completely. Defends a defense of the agent. And the core risk of, you know, imagine that game. You die and you're permanently dead. And when you meet people, you know, there's this choice.

I mean, you see people streaming reaction shots of experiences. have had in the game. These are real experiences. I mean, they created things in the players that they wanted to talk about. Completely. Which I think is how things get promoted these days. It's just everyone talking about it. There used to be called watercoolers, but I think it's obviously just YouTube streams.

Exactly. I mean, it left an effect on you, and it was an effect that was yours and unique. I remember I was one of those bad people that, I want to confess, that I played Daisy and I... Force-fed rotten meat to people. It's not quite like that. I mean, I was actually helped by this nice group of people, and I just decided their stuff looked really shiny, and, you know, the game is quite laborious, so I brutally murdered them with a shovel, right? And it was, however, it was, I thought it would just be a game and like, who cares, right? But at the end of that experience, you actually felt awful, like, absolutely awful.

There are these people that are like, why we helped you? Like, why have you done this? And I'm like, I don't know. I'm sorry. I don't know. You don't get that, you know, in an experience which is cookie clutter or where, you know, the player engagement in that core your choices are not being valued, you know. It sounds really bad, but I feel like that's one of the valuable things about games that people don't talk about a lot, which is experimenting with morality and behavior, like little kids do. Like, you're playing games, and you know, you do something mean to someone, and then you're like, I didn't like how that felt.

I felt weird when they asked me why I did that, you know, like, yeah, I bet. You know, like, you know, I think it's really great that kids play these games and they role play emotional situations or moral situations, and they test out how it feels to misbehave or be bad or be the bad guy. and they kind of make a choice that they liked it or they didn't like it I don't know if he'd be more likely to steal someone's food in the future No believe me I mean after seeing what a shovel murder really looks like

I'm often for life it's not going to be any of those So let's talk a little bit more about this element of moral and ethical components to gaming I think that's actually really interesting and we should pull on that thread a little bit more Moral choices any choice right

The question is are they authentic choices You know most games don't I mean many games don't give people authentic choices The ones that are authentic are the ones that they want They give this really obvious choice of like, you found a puppy, do you kill it? Or do you harvest it for its blood, or do you raise it? So it becomes the king of all puppies.

Yeah, and one choice is always like, this is definitely better, like, you know, in every way. And, oh, by the way, please click this button here, yeah. But I think, yeah, it's not about the games preaching a certain moral tone to the players. It's about if you provide that kind of either sandbox or a structured experience, you can let them play. Like I was saying little kids, when they play cops and robbers or any sort of, like, pretend role playing the kids do. um is them exploring you know what is it like for me to be a powerful character or a weaker character or just someone in a certain situation i can't be in real life and then what would i do if i was that if i if i if i was invisible or could fly like what would i use it for good and let me try

using it for bad and like you it's it's great that kids can try out these things like i have a daughter and she's she just turned seven and sometimes i hear her being mean to her dolls and i used to be like, are you crazy? Are you going to be like an evil villain? And I can tell that she is just like exploring things that are hard to do in real life. Like you don't want to actually be mean to people or, you know, but she's interested

in the range of, you know, what happens if you try these things. And I think when kids play with dolls that they figure out through role playing what it feels like and they get this kind of emotional practice and I think all sorts of play does this including video games. And video games can just do it in a way that is really interesting. It has a whole

bunch of new potential. And anything that we can do do as technologists or developers to try and help people make and create more authentic choices and options in games is important right like if you're really going to rob someone there should be a reaction in the world um you know if you know there should be consequences to your actions and at least in the online game space that's i guess my main preoccupation trying to make that more possible because you did benefit by shoveling those people you got stuck and the game didn't tell you right or wrong and the game didn't be like oh you horrible no it didn't and that was but it was a real thought i probably thought about that choice in that game more than i think

any choice I've thought about in any game I've ever made since then. And it's an experience that was entirely uniquely mine. And when I went to talk to people about it, they had their own advice, but they didn't have the exact same choice, right? It was a unique moment. Yeah, that's one of those like Minecraft things, too, that came up with Minecraft. It's like that first night. You had to build a structure

and the zombies come out. And like, that was the first experience people had. It's like, well, what was that like the first night for you? Yeah, exactly. And it would have been slightly different each time, depending upon where they were. So for me, that's it. I think that the magic future is one where we can do exactly what Tim says, right, which is have a world where you're exploring authentic choices,

be the moral or otherwise. And whatever it takes to make those choices more authentic, if it's putting on a VR headset or if it's, you know, being in a simulated online world or if it's just having a really cracking good story, if you ever considered, like, a system-based game or more like online or something, you know, scope. A lot. I mean, especially after making an adventure game, I was kind of like, now I remember why I stopped making those. Those are just so hard to make. Because everything is a one-off single-use thing. You'll work for three months on something, it will take the player 10 minutes to experience. And I see the benefit of leveraging things the other ways.

So, like, you work on something for, you know, like, an hour that takes someone, like, a day to play. Yeah, it's been a big thing for us, too, like, trying to save as much time to the developers as possible. And each bit of gameplay, like, they introduce the idea of surgery and they introduce the idea of, like, electrocution. They just create loads of moments, right? Because that effort of a week of coding that is then months of potential variation.

So, yeah. Yeah, I worry about this, though, because this is one of the first. very extreme example. Well, no, no, it's the system versus content-based games. And it's like, in the consumer's minds, it's like, you know, what are we basically doing there is when you go and watch a movie, you know, you pay $12 and that's fine. But when you pay, like, and that's for a two-hour experience. But when you actually go and play a system-based game, you can play it for almost

infinity. Let's just say you took 120 hours, 160 hours. And you're like, your expectation then is there's a cost associated with the playtime. And so it almost makes these experiences content-based. game experiences, it sets them up to fail because people are like, oh, well, that should be free when it takes like a crafting of years to get it right. Completely. And there's another worse problem, which is that I think some systems games based on

can be very lazy, right? Like, you're still trying to create a fantasy. You're still trying to create something that drives and guides a developer. What I'd love is to take the crafted feeling of a proper fantasy universe or like a proper storyline experience and then combine that with completely. components around system-based experiences, but components are designed to give the game more depth and background, not to kind of pollute the core experience. You know, that's something that we'd really love to, like, explore. I also think that online games have been such a scary bug there to so many potentially fantastic developers, just because of the crazy sunk cost and other stuff.

I want to dispel that illusion and let those developers experiment with, you know, kick-ass stuff. So let's say this path continues. There's more and more emancipation for developers. There's more and more direct access to the community. and there's alternative funding channels that spring up that allow you to kind of really, you could do bigger productions, for example, but with the same kind of feel

as the things that Double Find makes right now, what do you think the gaming landscape that looks like? I mean, does it become like the music industry where you've got like Taylor Swift? How did we get from Broken Age of Taylor Swift? What was the... Is Dame Schaefer the next Taylor Swift in gaming? That's my question.

As a result of changing business production. I mean, I think it is interesting because one thing we were talking about earlier, about modders and indies and like how they get involved is the control aspect and it's like with indies and with moders you don't have that control and that's one thing i'm excited to see you know how how will happen how will evolve is with when you don't have that that old model i was talking about the music industry was all about control over the creators and like if you decouple that and now you have access to money yeah and it's without control and it's letting the creatives actually take that

money. And before it's been like, moderns don't have money, Indies don't have money. But now, you know, studios, like, I would, Tim has a label for this. Like, Triple I, is what Triple I. That's cool. These studios that exist between Indies and AAA, which

are like double fine, which, you know, have an existing consumer base. What do you say that naturally as a result of being Kickstarter originally funded and having the experience you guys did, that you represent a more efficient model of game development? Do you think your capital usage is more efficient than if you We're a studio-funded company.

If you're in a studio and you have a bunch of, say you have a bunch of bands, your music studio, you know not all of them are going to be the Rolling Stones and the Rolling Stones are going to pay for all the other bands, but you cross-perilateralized so that, you know, they all kind of pay for each other, which is great for you because you've taken the risk, because you don't know which band's going to be a hit, and you've taken that risk and spread it out. And overall, you know you're going to make money because you have 100 band signed. But if you're one of those individual bands, you know you're not going to make anything.

And you're not going to keep any of your money because you're paying, even if you make a little bit of money, you're going to be paying. for all the other bands and you see these stories of occasionally a huge band getting rich and so that kind of keeps the whole system going because like somebody's getting rich like it might as like a Vegas thing could be me when I pull that lever it might be me so I feel like I feel like that is inefficient you know when you look at it from that side because you're you're just trying to deal with risk looking at it from a far enough back scale that it's not as scary I guess but in terms of one person

Like you're one band or one game developer and you're going to make one game. You cut out that middleman who's just trying to mitigate their risk of their investment and you get the money directly from the people who accept the risk in that, you know, I don't, you know, Tim's announcing a new adventure game. He hasn't given the title. He hasn't told me anything about it. I don't know if he's still got it. You don't know, who knows who's going to happen.

But I want this, I am a, you know, I'm a high value consumer that knows what they want and I'm going to put down $35 in advance. You know, I could lose it all, but I'm going to put it down because. I, either because I believe so much in that person or because I just want it to happen so bad. And they accept that risk. And I feel like it creates this really kind of like a bond that is financial, but it's also based on like kind of commitment and passion and all the right things.

I completely agree with that. And this is where I think technology is important too. Tim, for you, since you've been in the gaming industry so long, like how has that evolved for you, like the technology platforms? Like what's the biggest? I mean, you're at the heart, you're a consummate storyteller. so I feel like for you like that's the primary focus but like how is that changed?

It's funny because like at the beginning we're just starting a new project now because we ship the last one and I still go to this spiral notebook and start writing ideas down with a pen and it's like the process is exactly the same for me because it's like kind of it's more of a journey into your own mind

and trying to find ideas and but I think the biggest change besides the funding models changing is the relationship with the community and how social media has changed that so they all have access to us in a way Like when I was a kid, I didn't have any idea how I could get in contact with a guy, you know, Nolan Bushnell. Or like, you know, I love my Atari so much.

I don't know what to do with this. I can't go on Twitter and be like, Nolan? Oh, totally. But nowadays you could. You can go, people can tell me immediately, and trust me they do, whether they like or don't like the game. Like the day, the second it comes out, you'll hear from, you know, people of all the whole spectrum of how they felt about your game. And that's something you just have to really like, you know, we have a full-time community. manager to to to handle that because that could be a great powerful um part of the whole of the whole deal

and it could be very dangerous if if you don't you know treat them well and and and um be honest with them and um and pay attention to them you know sometimes you'll have the angriest person in the world right you'll meet a letter and then you'll just say oh oh i'm sorry you had that issue let me try and get that in our bug tracking system they're like i can't believe you answered they're so happy that you just listen to them so just like listening to them and interacting with them. And it is definitely a new thing compared to how it was back in the 90s. So that's the biggest change for you. Completely. And I guess now more and more, I guess, the technology side would be developers

can do something about it, even for online games, right? You can make changes. You can modify stuff. Like, there were some people on World's Drift, Bossess game. It's all about systems and physics, but then they had a really samey resource model where, like, you were actually going up to a tree or a rock and extracting resources. And people like flame them, right? They were like, you built a physics game where you're meant to interact with the world and you have this technology, like, why can't you do it? Like, a week later, They posted a video of people dynamiting rocks and blowing them up and chopping down physicalized trees. But to be able to do something about it in a week, you know, it feeds that cycle of community members who, you know, and the people, the guy who posted the thing, you know, he's like the most, you know, he's a super fan now, right?

Like he posts every week, right? Because he's like, wow, you know, I had that interaction. And this is again where I think that Taylor Swift analogy is less ridiculous, right? Like direct fan contact, direct fan responses, you know, that's something that's now possible, never was before. you guys, thank you.