Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Being Black in The Games Industry w/ Xalavier Nelson

Episode Date: May 31, 2024

It's interview time! Blessing sits down with indie dev extraordinaire Xalavier Nelson to chat about El Paso, Elsewhere, indie development, how to make a successful game, and Xalavier's empowering speech about being black in games. Run of Show - - Start - Housekeeping - TOPIC OF THE SHOW: The Xalavier Nelson interview - Defender’s Quest 2: Mists of Ruin -AD - Diversity in the Video Gaming Industr Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Yo, what's up? Welcome to Kind of Funny Gamescast for Tuesday, May 28th, 2024. I'm one of your host's Blessing, Adioia Jr. joining me is Strange Scaffolds, Zalivir Nelson Jr. Welcome to the show. Thanks so much for having me. Yeah, thanks so much for coming through. Of course, people would know you, one from being a game showdown contestant during the off season in our big six-person episode. But then also, you're one of the developers of El Paso El Paso elsewhere. And you made tons of games. in the last however many years in the industry? 14 years, if you include my time as a journalist, eight years as a deaf. Which, I got many questions about that. Because I've known of you for quite a few years now, based on what I know about you,

mainly how long you've been working on games in the industry and how many games you've worked on in the industry, I would have thought that you were way older. But I was talking... It's also the baldness. Not everyone can have your hair. I mean, listen, I appreciate it. But also, there's a bad hairline beneath all this.

But yeah, like, based on how much... much I've heard about you. I was like, oh yeah, is Oliver must have been in the industry forever. And you have been, but you're also younger. Like, if you don't mind me asking, how, like, what age did you start working in the industry? I was 12 and pretended to be an adult on the internet.

So, I don't know what it says about our industry that that worked, but I've been here ever since. That's incredible. All right, I want to get into a bunch of questions I have for you, but before we do, of course, remember that this is the kind of funny games cast. Each day we get together to talk about the biggest reviews, previews and topics in video games

live on YouTube, Twitch, and on podcast services around the globe. If you love what we do, support us with a kind of funny membership on Patreon or on YouTube to get all of our shows ad-free, watch us recording them live, and get a daily exclusive show. For a chance to be a part of the show, submit your thoughts and opinions as YouTube super chats as we

go. And if you have questions for Zalavir, of course, get them super chats in and we'll get them asked. Of course, housekeeping for you today. You've already gotten Concord and Astrobot Talk on KFPD. Up next is Game Showdown on YouTube. and on Twitch, and then following that is going to be some Fallout 76. If you're a kind of funny member, you can grab today's Gregway, and then also you can

get the kind of funny happy hour this afternoon if you're at the $25 tier. Thank you to our Patreon producers, Carl Jacobs, Fargo Brady, and Delaney Twining. Today brought to you by Shady Ray's, but we'll tell you about that later for now. Let's start with topic of the show. Zolivir, I guess first question for people who are tuning in and may not be familiar, who is Oliver Nelson Jr. So I'm a game developer

and studio head working across indie and AAA. So I've worked on almost 100 games in the past eight years and positions running from writing to production, to design and beyond. Indie to AAA, physical

games like card games and stuff like Magic the Gathering, all the way to hyper indie digital games things like El Paso elsewhere, hypnosis outlaw, skatebird, as well as giant IP like South Park and Stranger Things. So coming where I did as military brat, family had nothing, not connected to the tech industry or to any really systems of privilege at all. and having had the privilege to be able to work in the medium that I love.

But also, the knowledge that if it went bad, I didn't have a safety net kind of drove me to just work on as many things as possible and try to in a very holistic way capture. What does it mean to make a video game for the players from every single angle possible? And in the process, I think part of the reason that I end up being, such a weird and interesting story for so many people is I'm asking these questions because I'm looking at numbers from a fairly unbiased perspective. I'm like these numbers don't add up, the timelines don't add up. The way that we make games doesn't fully make sense,

especially if we're trying to just provide players the best experience possible and make game studios that survive to ship their best work. And people told me, well, that's because you don't get it. It doesn't, it doesn't, you can't do this, can't do this, that. It doesn't scale. And now I'm a lead writer at a AAA studio and doing my own studio and doing all these things and I've survived. And my unfortunate answer is maybe you're the one who's doing it wrong.

Yeah, like there's a lot of stuff you touched on there in terms of your identity within the industry and like kind of what the industry is going through. in terms of sustainability and what the numbers look like. And when I go through a bit of your portfolio, like you touched on a lot there and doing my own research, right? Like of course, you're co-lead and narrative director on Defender's Quest 2, Mist of Ruin, which is upcoming. You're BAFTA nominated, you're in Forbes 30 under 30.

You've worked on Hypno Space Outlaw. You're the studio lead of Strange Scaffold who have done what an airport for aliens currently run by dogs, which is a first person open world comedy adventure. You got Space Warlord Oregon Trading Simulator, which is an Oregon trading sim. You got witch strandings, which is a strand game. Purgatory Dungeoneer, which is a town building, rogue light RPG. We only publish that one.

You only publish that one. But then you also have El Paso Nightmare and El Paso elsewhere, one of those being a first-person horror game, then the other one being a third-person shooter, Max Payne-like game with a supernatural story and hip-hop soundtrack. You got Sunshine Shuffle, which is a narrative poker adventure featuring talking animals with criminal past and adorable outfits. You got Life Eater, which just came out, which is a horror, fantasy, kidnapping simulator. And then upcoming, you have Teenage Demon Slayer Society, which describes itself as a new kind of turn-based game and innovative character action tactics remix that transfers the vibrant gameplay of action classics like Devil May Cry into a fresh, kinetic, accessible format.

Going through all those games, and Kevin, if you're able to in the dock, I have all those highlighted. If you want to just grow up random trailers, all these games are super different in terms of the genre, in terms of the art style, in terms of how all the games play, right? You got simulators on here, you have shooters on here, you have action games, you have narrative games, and you're making all this with an indie scope, and you being the studio lead of Strange Scaffold,

one of the things that we've talked about a lot in the last year, in the last couple of years, in the last maybe even decade, if you want to stretch it that long in video games, is how unsustainable everything feels. And in the last year, We've seen so many layoffs. We've seen so many studio closures.

We've seen the numbers not add up for indie games and even AAA games being created on a budget that are not then able to come around and sustain the longevity of those studios. How in the world are you making these games? How in the world are you measuring the success of these games? Like, how is this all working out for you? To what I said. I mean, I didn't come from anything. My parents, God bless them, who have been so.

supportive. Their version of a honeymoon is they got married in Las Vegas. They were walking the Vegas trip, looking for change while my mom was already pregnant with me, talking about what their future might be. That's what my background is. So when I came into games, I wanted to make sure that at any moment, if I needed to find a job, I could say either had done something or was doing something. I saw the opportunities presented by things like Unreal and Unity being free and said, hey, there's this lack of gatekeepers that exists, especially with digital distribution, where you aren't trying to get on a store shelf. For $100, you can be on Steam. That's what they call the Steam direct fee. You can, for $100, you can be on Steam right next to Grand Theft.05.

And it's very unlikely. You'll sell as many copies as Grand Theft.05. But you get to be there, and only games sort of has that unique accessibility and lack of gatekeepers that gives you that opportunity and I looked at these possibilities particularly as a kid from a very lower middle class background and said that isn't there something that can be done there and I was already even you know nearly 10 years ago now hearing well you can't make a game that way uh you can't make a game that makes an impact that way you can't build a game that breaks through or that satisfies player expectations that way and looking at something like an airport family is kind of run by dogs which is clearly going for a kind of adult swim style outsider aesthetic for its whole thing,

that might be, that might seem like a valid conclusion. But then you look at games like El Paso elsewhere, like Space Warlord, like Sunshine Shuffle. And the fact that, I mean, in that list,

it didn't even include the fact that we worked on a game from Meow Wolf, which is now just living out in Houston, not Houston, grapevine, Texas, out by Dallas. we did a we made an entire full horror game in a week for DredxP that

I mean between you and me we the entire the mandate was make the best horror game that you can in one week and we were the only team to ship our game on time and on budget that made sense to me and I think for a few years now games has because of its

remarkable production capabilities, the fact that you can make a game for a certain amount of cost and have it touch the world, the fact that digital distribution and microtransactions and battle passes and all of these monetization strategies open these ways for companies to harvest more money from a single player, that's open the possibility of saying, well, if you can't make all the money with a single game, then it's not a game worth making. And it's hit indie. It's hit AAA.

I've walked into the room into just like discussions with AAA publishers because I happen to know all these people casually now. And they're just like, yeah, I don't know how you make a game that has an impact for less than a million dollars. And then vampire survivors kicks all of our asses. And those publishers then say, well, dang, we have to make something that competes. So we're going to do a big budget version of vampire survivors because clearly you can't just make something that satisfies a player. You can't just make something that has a creative vision and builds it and is fun and does its job and is over. We have to create the prestige amplified version of this if we really want to make an impact. And they lose their shirts.

We're really in a period where games has the possibility in comparison to all these other entertainment mediums like film, which is by the day seemingly struggling with the idea of what it means to make a profitable film and whether or not a profitable film is profitable enough. We have music where it can be real hard to get past those gatekeepers, Spotify, consume streamer revenue we see even in the gaming press.

A lot of amazing crews struggling to survive. It makes me really thankful for things like kind of funny who are out here really making a difference and bringing something unique and powerful to players. But yeah, I look at video games as this frontier where you can make a living and feed your family just taking care of your players and making games that

choose its priorities, have a time and budget, meet that time and budget and move on to that next game. Yeah. And the industry doesn't believe in that. So I'm seeing I am seeing the medium I love kind of dismantling itself in real time

and it breaks my heart. Yeah, it's funny. So if you're a video watcher, all the videos that Kevin has pulled up here, again, these are all strange scaffold games, right? Most, I believe most of these develop with one of the ones I mentioned being developed by a different developer, but you guys published. Yes, there was Defender's Quest 2 also.

I was the co-lead on that one, but we didn't personally build that, Although that's one of the best game stories I've ever written. I'm so excited for that game to come out. That team has survived so much to make that game. But yeah, but like most of these games, we've released 12 games in five years. I've direct, and that's not the only games I've directed either

as part of strange, while running Strange Scaffold, I directed games like Cellular Harvest, which is like a dystopian Pokemon snap-alike. I've had the chance to do a bunch of stuff. Yeah. And this is just choosing different priorities. And this is why I wanted to talk to you.

You know, I was telling you right before we went live that, you know, I wanted to, I went up to Greg when we changed our whole gamescast format to like we're doing five games cast episodes a week, which leaves us open to doing more types of content. I was like, hey, I want to interview Zaliver Nelson. And then I happened to get an email from your people that I was like, hey, Zolver Nelson is looking to do interviews. So I was like, oh, fuck yeah, this all lines up. This all works. And it's funny that already in our talk, we've gotten to a place. is where I wanted to drive to, and we, like, just stumbled on it on, like, the beginning, beginning of this conversation. But I do want to pull back both to give context of the

audience, because I'm sure the audience is aware of probably, like, El Paso elsewhere, I would think is, like, the one that the audience can already connect themselves to you, because, like, I talked a lot about it when it came out last year. But... Thank you for that again. Oh, yeah, of course, dude. Game's amazing. But I want to jump into it from, I guess, the perception of success that we're talking about, where El Paso elsewhere, how would you describe that in terms of scope and budget, but then also the success that you've seen with it? Because I don't know, I'm not looked into, I don't know if there's even like sales or stuff available for it, but I do know that it is being adapted into a movie.

And like, you got Lakeith Stanfield starring in this game that, you know, you developed, you are voicing, you voiced the main character in this video game. And now you got Lakeith Stainfield being about to play this character. Like, how do you get here with El Paso elsewhere? Yeah, LeCleaston. Stainfield plays me, right? That's the, and that is the, yeah, that's the, it's insane, first of all, one of my favorite actors, period.

But the story of Strange Scaffold is being told you can't do it that way. And then doing it because it makes sense and because we're trying to advocate for different things for players. So we'd walk into the room with this, you know, a really stylish Max Payne inspired thing that takes that into a new neo-noir direction with supernatural action. And people would say, well, can you level up in it?

What are the retention mechanisms? Do this? Is there a skill tree? And I was like, if there's a skill tree attached to you diving around and shooting enemies, someone has messed up, at least for this game. And people, we got turned down by publisher after publisher after publisher. They said we weren't spending enough money to make an impact.

It ended up being low six figures, all of our own money. I nearly, I didn't nearly. I burnt out really hard because we couldn't find funding for both that game as well as any of our other projects during 2023. So this was me paying the team out in my own pocket, freelance contracting nearly every hour that I was awake. to allow this thing to exist. This thing that I was told was a creative effort,

way to go champ, but not big enough to actually be big. And now it's been played by, I think we're into the hundreds of thousands now. We're definitely into the high tens of thousands. We've been played by a bunch of people. We have this film adaptation that's been announced less than, at the time of that was announced, It's been less than six months after the game's release, and people are asking why.

Yeah, how does that happen? We, I have the fortune to be represented by some amazing people at CAA for our adaptations as well as for my own work. I do like voice acting, like stuff like another crab's treasure. I think that you've also been doing more voice acting stuff these days, right? A little bit, a little bit. I see you a real night. Heck yeah. Yeah, none of my characters are being adapted.

Yeah. One day we'll get there. But the more things you make, it's kind of, I feel like it's simple math. The more things you make, the more chances you have of things getting made. People were kind of talking to us around a dog airport game back in the day. You just make more things and there's a good chance that one or more of those things will present a story or an opportunity that allows you to go into entirely new territories. And El Paso Elsewhere comes out last year. and is topping game of the year lists and getting nominated for awards,

while we're the publishers who turned us down, we're not getting recognized. And I don't take that as a matter of, you know, ah, ha, ha, we showed them all. I take it more as a matter of, guys, if we don't pay attention to stories like this that happen in games every day, or something like Lethal Company, becomes one of the biggest and best games of 2023, despite not having the job.

giant licensed IP attached, the giant battle pass and exploitative money making strategies attached. The fact that these games are coming out on what feels like a nearly weekly basis now, and we don't pay attention to those,

we say, well, those are the anomalies. If we make another live service, PVP, open world title, that's what's going to be a hit. It's going to mean that an industry that has all of the chance in the world to just continue to build the most exciting, both new and licensed worlds that players could experience at a given time

in a very reasonable way that keeps people employed is going to burn itself by the day in favor, not in favor because they, not because they aren't making money, but because they aren't making conceptually enough money. So Strange Scaffold, on your website, you have a slogan that is better, faster, cheaper, and healthier, right? Describing sort of the ethos of what you guys are going for as a studio. Is this a thing that you think, for you, again, as somebody who's worked both on the most indie level, but then you've worked in the AAA space, is this something that you think can transfer into AAA, right? Like, you're talking about the kind of things that get greenlit, the kind of things that get picked up, the kind of things that it feels like the people that have big money, feel like they have to push. Do you think that there is space when there is so much money involved to have games that are weird, different, are developed in a cheaper and healthier way that could be smaller?

Like, what's your take on that? I mean, I've got a lot of weird intellectual takes about, well, if we look at the numbers, a team of this size could have a splinter team that does this and that. I am a nerd who likes to think about how things get built and how when you change the process of how you build a thing, the final product changes. But to your exact example of does it scale, which is a thing I've been confronted with love, skepticism, and patronization about over the years. Finally, you know, 2023, I started to gain the chance to work on AAA projects. And it turns out the only things I'm asking is how do we choose the solutions that, fit our time and budget and provide the best experience for a player. And that isn't a radical crazy question.

I'm not a profit or a genius. I'm asking questions that literally any other business does to just make things in a way that makes sense. And today I was able to announce, actually, that I'm a lead writer over at Fuse Games. And that's not new. That's something that I've been doing for a while. And it was one of the most validating moments in my career because they reached, out to me and they said we know that you're a good writer but the really big reason we want to talk to you is because you ship games and being known as a guy who gets games shipped who asks those questions who has an entire personality built to just make sure that games come out and satisfy players that showed that this thing this bolder it felt I had been pushing uphill my entire career has been coming true so you're the answer to can you make strange scaffold style games at a AAA level

that I think is up in the air and remains to be proven but can the core ethos of better, faster, cheaper, and healthier work? I've already been doing it for over a year and it turns out it motherfucking scales, baby. There you go. So I want to give you the chance to talk about Defender's Quest 2, Mr. Ruin, which is what the email, the email that I got that I was like, hey, can Oliver Nelson come through

was about Defender's Quest 2 and you getting to talk about this game? And funny enough, before we went live, you were talking about how this is a game that is kind of a miracle project, right? It's a miracle that this thing is about to come out. What is Defender's Quest to, for people who are unaware of it, and what is the story around it? In the Flash era, Defender's Quest was a really notable Tower Defense RPG. In the early days of Steam, that Flash game made its way over, made a big impact, had a big impact, had a one of, as late as far as I'm aware, one of the first,

in its translation over to Steam, one of the first, like, big post-launch updates where not only did it come out in Steam, but then it had a DX edition that added a true ending, all sorts of new ways to play and to think about that game in that world. And shortly thereafter,

they began thinking about, talking about, even taking pre-orders for a sequel. One year became two, two years became four, 10 years go by. And they finally find a publisher who sees, hey, Defender's Quest matters, and a sequel to that world and to that style of gameplay can really do something significant. And the day they get the paperwork to sign this game, to bring it into existence, their, the person who is supposed to be their creative director gets poached. and he goes to a really great opportunity and we're really thankful for him

and for the fact that he got that but out of nowhere suddenly the day a game is about to get signed and start its journey to launch it loses its creative director which could or should destroy an indie game at this point

the remaining project lead Lars Dusei who's a really good friend of mine a really good man he reaches out to me and he says, do you know anyone who could do a thing? And then the more I looked at his needs and at the project, I didn't just go like, man, there's not really someone I could recommend who would do what you need here. That's not me. But also, I just found this deep passion for this project.

You can see from the art style, especially in the character portraits, they're doing like Tank Girl. and gorillas inspired things and mashing that with acid punk psychedelic science fantasy from the 70s. The idea of the very first lines of the game,

I'm going to pull those up real quick, are, let me go pull up the script document. Also, I do love the art style as we're looking at it right here. Yeah, it is, it's kind of like, unlike anything I had ever seen before

when I saw the first little images that they had had produced. the very first lines of the game are there is a whole unreality spilling madness from the mind of a dead king and with it the Merk rises the Merk defies gravity, alters land and body and soul and with every shift of its tide

the people of the shining lands watch their pinprick of light on the service of the world slip away. Vessels bearing the combined force of humanity launched themselves towards the threshold between the shining lands and the murk only knowing that monsters stream from the world below the shoreline. The bounty hunters of our tale have a single advantage

over the press of would-be heroes, A captain willing to die to fulfill her word, this power will damn them. The very first lines of the game tell you that the entire setting is what if there was a dead king in the mariana trench spilling out nightmares, and that is what forms the sea. Go play a tower defense game. I just said I kind of got to be a part of this. And so in the process of making this thing, a member of the team, his son went into a vegetative state from which it was likely he will never recover. We've had family deaths. We have had hospitalizations.

We've had burnouts. Our entire art team was based in Eastern Europe and Ukraine. And then a war happened just after the contract got signed. And we had the original creative director have to step away for a really great opportunity. for his family. So if you look at this project on nearly every layer, any one of these things can and has destroyed projects in the past. And I think it's a testament both to what Defender's Quest has represented as well as what we saw and the ability to take that into the future, that the game exists is coming out soon instead. It's one of my favorite stories I've ever

written. There's one character in particular called Cordelia Rend, who is a mad scientist who fires bees and is constantly like the devil on the shoulder of literally every single person who enters her ship. These characters in this world live in my head, and it's a game that exists. You can wish this on Steam now. It's going to come out soon, and it has survived immense things to get here. And I hope that players really fall in love with it, not because it doesn't have scars or because it has tries to tries to hide them, but because it says, no, much like the characters of the game and the game setting, we are more beautiful because of these scars. These scars are a part of our story, and we welcome you to see them. Interesting. That's like, first of all, a lot in there. I want to say that it's incredible, right? Just for like the way we talk about video games and how complicated the development of video games can be, let alone the things that go on behind the scenes that

we couldn't imagine in terms of technical issues, you know, mechanics not coming together, not being able to find the fun. We've heard plenty of stories about indie developers working on games and having to sell everything to afford to actually like make this thing, right? Like, video game development is so hard and you describing everything going down with Defender's Quest 2, Miss of Ruin, and like what y'all went through to get to the finish line of this game and the fact that you're here and seemingly like you're going to get to the finish line of this thing. One, incredible. But also, So is there a date announced, like if people want to check out Defenders' Quest 2, Miss of Ruin?

Is there a place that they can go if they want to learn more about it? You can go on Steam. I believe there will be announcements that way soon if they haven't been already. I'm not sure if the PPR people for the game told you anything about that. All I know is that it is coming soon. I've seen the final builds. We have locked down the story and gotten that localized, and the music is great. Speaking of music, our composer is Kevin Penkin, a man who has now composed for things like Made in Abyss and Star Wars.

He came back because when he first worked on Defenders Quest 1 over 10 years ago now, he was a starting composer. He had not done anything. And I think it's a testament again to like this studio and how it treats people and what it's tried to build that he came back from Star Wars to say, okay, yeah, I'll do the soundtrack. again. That's awesome. That is incredible. Yeah, if you're watching live right now, Erdy Cooper looks like they just posted a link to the Steam page. If you're listening, you can go on Steam, look up Defender's Quest to Miss of Ruin and you'll have it there if you want to wishlisted or do anything and check out the trailer. I have a lot more I want to talk to you about Zalavir. But before we do, I want to tell people about patreon.com slash kind of funny and YouTube.com

slash kind of funny games where you can go and get the kind of funny membership, which allows you to get shows ad free. And speaking of ads, let us. to tell you about our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by Shady Rays, an independent sunglasses brand that has over 300,000 five-star reviews. They are on a mission to match affordability with durability, making top-quality shades accessible to everyone. They have tons of styles and colors to pick from,

so finding the perfect polarized shades is a breeze. If you want an upgrade, we recommend their premium color rush lenses. Crafted with rare earth materials, these lenses bring high-imbing. packed color to life, elevating reds, blues, and greens. Here at Kind of Funny, we all love wearing our Shady Rays, whether it is Tim looking dope doing his Pokemon GoWox, Snowmike Mike, rocking the snow goggles,

or Joey just looking fantastic in her tangle-free shades. If your shades go M-I-A or take a hit, don't sweat it, they've got lost and broken protection, so you're covered from day one. And if you don't love your shades, exchange them or return them for free within 30 days. Exclusively for y'all, Shady Rays is giving out their best deal of this. the season. Head to Shadyrays.com and use code KF20 for $20 off each pair of polarized sunglasses. Try for yourself shades rated five stars by over 300,000 people. Again, that is shady rays.com

and use code KF20 for $20 off polarized sunglasses. And we're back and I love that. We had the Toss logo up. Um, is Alivir. So again, I've known, I've known you for a while. I've known of you for quite a bit, right? One of the things recently that I've seen, of you that I really appreciated. And again, this is another one where I'm like, I really got to sit down and talk to this guy. It was a video that went up during GDC where you're accepting the Black and Gaming indie developer award. Kevin has it pulled up here.

You have it in a tweet if people want to like go and search the full thing. But in this award, you're accepting the Black and Gaming indie developer award. And there's quotes from your speech that resonated with a lot of people online, but it resonated with me for sure, right? Like I quote tweeted, it talked about it, all this stuff, right? It goes like this. Quote, the games industry uses black music because it acknowledges that we connect with the world.

Yet, when it comes to funding black owned games, there's sudden silence. When black creatives come to the table with the full force of their creative vision and expertise apparent, they are glad handed to death and told how important and valuable their work is, while resources and visibility are placed elsewhere.

And then you go on to say, I want to urge my people the disproportionate talented 2% of the industry to flee the city that starves you, which I think is a very powerful way to put it. But I want to follow up on that and dig into that a little bit more because, you know, one of the things that I always found drove me to one thing to get into the games industry, especially on the media side, was being super into watching games media, watching games YouTube, listening to podcasts, listening to podcasts beyond Giant Bomb, all these different things. things, but feeling a lack of a voice as far as like people who are black, people, people

of color in general, seeing a lack of diversity, right? Seeing the space dominated by a lot of similar types of voices, that was one of the big things that made me go, oh, I want to get in there. Like, I want to be able to talk about video games. I want to be, I want to be part of the representation and push for that representation. Oliver, for you, somebody who's been in the industry since, what, would you say, was it 12? Yes. Like, what have, what have, what you seen, what has been your experience regarding that? How would you describe the current state of, I guess, diversity currently in the video games industry?

I think we're in an interesting space where a lot of it, you can see it even upsetting fan bases because of how it's being handled and overall treated, where there is a lot of discussion around it. it seems to be a thing that is ostensibly cared about, but the way in which it's gone about is driven by an environment of fear rather than celebration. And what I mean by that is a lot of rooms I've been in, they say, how do we build a black character the right way, rather than how do we make a dope character who is black?

And you can see and sometimes feel this in the final product as far as the stories that get told. The same quote unquote safe haircut that gets used over and over again, the killmonger. It's a joke in black game development communities because there is a seeming fear of being seen as non-diverse, but there is that fear does not motivate an action of saying, what does it mean to actually tell a different story? A story where our character's perspective in a meaningful and interesting way, as you've seen, things like Gosa Sushima, behind you right now. I think at least that's Gosa Tsushima.

It is. That character's ethnicity, background, everything impacts the way they see the world. That's a way you build a good character. And when you have women, when you have black people or queer people in games, often so much of that conversation gets dominated by how to do it the right way or how we did it the right way, that it strangles out the ability for that voice to be saying something. new and to just be a great voice that players can connect with. So I would say the current state of diversity is,

it is, one, not seen as a vector of profitability, which is a dang shame. We've got a lot of stories, even going back to the history of games, where Knights of the Republic, the Canon player character, was supposed to be a black woman. That got shot down hard. and ended up being revised and recond through future installments of the series. The idea that black, the idea that of a variety of vectors and marginalization are not a vector of making money,

their way of getting good press has impacted the stories that get told and the types of people that get brought into the room to tell those stories and how much influence they have to make sure those stories are told well in a way that means. that the players experiencing something new, bold, exciting, like any other story. That's problem number one. I'd say problem number two is that, yeah, we have a lot of those stories happening in rooms where creatives from their backgrounds don't actually have a leading ability. You'll have on a, you know, all-queer game, a writing team entirely of like cis dudes, and a consultant. And the consultant's in there for six hours

to make sure that a slur doesn't get used. But day to day to day, the people inside that room don't have the perspective to even necessarily make the jokes that result in that character and that world feeling real and lived in. I think representation across all mediums right now is a mess

because we are told, and that's what the speech was. about was that they tell creators and audience that it's so important while out of the other side of their mouth not just giving people a platform to do their dope stuff. A blessing led video game is going to look fundamentally different than a game made by anyone else because of who you are and the pressure that would be on you to make a black blessing led video game or a yeah to like to even put you in that position at all or to now even put you there at all is immense I mean so to that like one of my questions here would be do you feel like there's a level of the world rests on your shoulders with that because you are one of the more prominent is not maybe the most prominent black video game developer at least that I know that I can think of off the top of my head right and like for me as somebody who you know I'm one of the few

black dudes who, like, I guess is on camera in the video games industry, like, I, you know, I can, I can count on one hand, like it's me, Austin Walker, um, maybe Akeem and IGN. And then like I had to like start to really think about it. I know like there's a couple more out there, but it's hard to think. Um, you know, there's a level of, all right, like, if I bring up race at the wrong time, even if it's relevant to me, there is an audience out there that's not there for that that's going to get really mad, right? But then if I am doing a blessing, show, right? Like, there's a level of people want me to talk about race, right, in a way that is, oh yeah, like, this is your moment. Give us the black hair episode. And I'm glad of, I'm glad

about like the reception of it. I'm glad about like that that was able to, you know, move people and connect with people and all that stuff, right? But I feel like, you know, I play your games. I play El Paso elsewhere. I look at the list of games that you make. And none of them are necessarily about the black experience. This is the blackest video game ever. Even though there are elements of like El Paso else else were having a hip hop soundtrack that I believe, did you rap on that? Was that you? Which is fucking incredible, right? But like, that's the stuff that I look at. And I, you know, I think there's this balance of you, at least me wanting to be that person that is willing to speak on that stuff and is willing to try and move

things forward. And again, be the person that I wanted to be a decade ago when I started to listening to podcasts and being like, damn, we need more diversity. I want to get in there and push that. But then on the other hand, wanting to have the same freedom that white colleagues may have, right? Or like, I'm sure for you, like, looking at the other people in the industry and being able to make something goofy or creative or original or whatever it is without having to make something that is necessarily wholly black.

Do you understand what I'm saying? I mean, we're talking about, to first address the part about pieces of audience getting it's that I think there is, it looks at that in a charitable way. I understand that perspective because they are seeing it as a matter of substitution. Instead of just focusing on telling a good story, the argument goes,

there's all this like seemingly time, effort and money being put into like suddenly shoving a lot of diversity into there. And that does, that perspective comes without knowledge of the creative process, often this is not, often good versions of that story are not getting told, right? There's a lot of people in the room who are getting discounted and not being brought in at all, but also just because a black person as a protagonist of a story does not mean that a white person has been replaced. So we've got that to confront, but I think also to the very direct thing that you were talking about,

the pressure of, well, if you're going to be here, you have to be the most black person who's ever existed. You can't just be a person. You have to be a standard bearer. Whenever people tell me about, like, the types of influencers or influencer campaigns they'd like to run, they talk about you, to be honest. I've heard your name,

Randy about in game development circles or in discussions about game marketing because it's like you. And as you said, like maybe two other guys and then it gets and then the list gets weeded. So I think

to be honest this is part of why I got out of journalism because do I still feel that pressure in game development? Yes. Have I been literally paid less than colleagues because my I was not seen as valuable or my directorial voice was not seen as valuable? Yes.

But the thing that got me out of journalism at the end of the day was I wanted to tell really great stories and have them be informed by my perspective and to use it where it was relevant. I think the vast majority of diverse talent, that's what they want. And then I had done just a couple of articles about blackness that really popped off. And then everyone just wanted me to write to find some new way to talk about blackness or even worse, they wanted me to find the talk about blackness in the exact same way.

sorry, for a new topic. So I would just be repeating myself. I wasn't doing anything interesting and creative. I was just being like, black thing. And being put in that box and having the ability to over in games, you know, as I said, for $1,000 or less, be able to make a weird game where you get threatened by a boombox with a gun on a desert island where you're hallucinating your objects as having voices.

This is in a game that we made called Mr. Bucket told me to. uh it's cast away but what if wilson wanted you to die uh i was like yeah i'm gonna go do that instead so i think the space that where we're seeing representation pop off right now and result result in amazing uh experiences for audiences as well as freedom for the creators is when they just get just get to genuinely follow the stories that are most meaningful to them uh when they are not forced to be a standard bearer but are allowed to be a simply creative and compelling individual. And this is why right after El Paso elsewhere, where I'm rapping and playing a black protagonist that's now getting portrayed by Lakeith Stanfield, Life Eater, the game that released immediately afterwards, I'm voicing the twink that you keep in your basement.

I'm the second main character of that game, and he's a white guy. And it's because my statement of intent is you can't put me in a box, or at least you do so at your own peril, because I think players deserve more. And I certainly would love to express more than you typically get being put in the position of being the most, the loudest black voice in the room and only that. So going back to your quote during that speech during GDC in the Black and Gaming Awards, right? Like you talking about, you know, when black creatives come to the table with the full force of their creative vision and expertise parent, they're glad handed to death and told how important they are while work and visibility is placed elsewhere. And then also you mentioning that, you know, when it comes to funding black own games, there's a sudden silence. I guess two part question one. What are your experiences or have you had experiences with that exact scenario of like trying to push your thing, trying to push your game, but feeling like you are like your thing is getting passed along because you.

you know, you don't have the same kind of notoriety as white colleagues, but then second part of that is how do we change that? Or have we seen changes to that, right? How we move that goal post forward? So we have seen changes. I think there is a, well, I know that even 10, 15 years ago, someone like me couldn't necessarily exist. We wouldn't have the lack of gatekeepers and the resources that exist now

to talk about those things, to bring those things to life. as a creator or to talk about them in a media context. The weird dichotomy I found, I'd be interested to see if you found this as well, is that when I'm attached to a project, people instantly feel a lot more excited about it or feel that it's safer because, as we talked about earlier, it's like,

oh, that guy ships games. But when I come in by myself, then it's a lot harder to get my games funded, typically. So very first major thing I directed, it was literally a few months apart from each other. I went into a room with two white co-founders, and I had the most notoriety of anyone there. And it was the first and only time that I'm aware of that this platformer publisher has taken a pitch in a meeting, And in that meeting, decided to fund the game. I delivered that pitch.

We got $250,000. That game ended up getting made and being very well received. I came back in through that same door for my own project a few months later, and they offered me $100,000 less. Because I am seen as valuable, but simultaneously risky, but when I'm just by myself. Have you run into anything like that? I mean, I'm not as in those rooms as often, right? Like, for me, it is more so the thing of, I guess,

in being in games media, I can feel the thing of wanting to make content that slants a certain way, right? Like, even for me, I guess the example I'll even give would be this interview of wanting to sit down with you, talk to you, wanted to talk about Defender's Quest, wanted to talk about El Paso, but then I also wanted to talk about your award speech and, like, dive into that a little bit. already knowing that that is what I wanted the second half of this conversation to be, there's a level of, I know what the views are going to be,

I know what some of the reception is going to be, of course, the people that are fucking complaining. Don't matter. I don't care about those people. But yeah, it's a very loud minority. It's a very loud minority, right? But it is, I guess, just the thing that I have to think about and accept knowing that like, all right, cool. I know that once we get into

the subject matter, views are going to fucking dip. Because there is a majority of an audience that don't necessarily care about this part of things. So it's a thing I think about in that regard. But yeah, I've not had that same scenario, I guess, as far as like, you know, showing up and having a pitch and then coming back and then fucking the money being way less, because I'm not giving as many pitches.

But it is also a thing that I get scared about, thinking about the future of if I want to make an indie game, which honestly actually is a place I want to drive this conversation because I think about, I guess, often where I want to be 10 years from now. And one of the things that I throw around in my head is like wanting to make a game, right? Like I play games, love games, have, I think one of the switches that flipped in my head was watching the documentary about Double Fine and like, you know, seeing the creative process and being inspired and like watching Noclip docs and things, right? Being like, man, video game development seems fucking tough, but it also seems fucking red. Like I'd love to get in there and make a video game someday.

That is a part of it that scares me, right? like hearing the stories of pitches going south or even right now hearing about money drying up and people having started studios but then not knowing where to go right now in terms of the next steps and making that video game

that's the thing that scares me and one of the questions I had for you was like you know if somebody is in a place where they have they don't have the dev experience they want to make a video game what are the steps that they should take but yeah that is my that's my answer slash question back to you

I would say one of the reasons I'm here, and I'm very thankful to be here, is because I said, well, if no one's willing to support my voice, or at least my voice in the context in which I want to bring it to players, then I'm going to do it on my own. And so I believe right now, like I have a lot of students asking me what to do right now because they're about to graduate from their game design course or their game art course and they say, do I go indie? Is any money anywhere? First of all, games are still getting assigned.

Games are still getting made. It's just scary and stressful in a very visible way that was more of a undercurrent rather than a ravaging river in the past. The second thing I'd say is, yeah, if you really want to establish your creative voice, and by the way, blessing, you should totally make a video game, it's hell, but you should do it.

I want to. The thing that you can do and the thing that you maybe should do is just build the size of game that you can build yourself. You can make. With a team of people, I was able to pay people fairly and with a very intentional scope and idea of what we're coming in and building. We've built a game at Strange Scaffold for $1,000. We've had games that we've even made.

If you count unpaid time or whatever else, it ends up going a bit higher. But we've made games. I've also worked on or directed games that we have budgets even below that. And that's infinitesimal in gaming circles or terms. So you look at the money that you can set aside at the end of a month. You look at what you can personally save or fund or maybe with a few friends pooled together. And if you've got $3,000, you figure out the best game you can make for $3,000. Now a $3,000 game that tries and fails to be a $3 million game,

it's you got $3,000, you got $2,000, you got $500. How do you use asset store packs and this and that and the tools at hand to make something beautiful from that? The game that's still, I think, my favorite that I've developed to date, and airport for aliens currently run by dogs. that game is filled with stock photo dogs you go through a universe of stock photo dogs

solving their problems and finding time for the people that you love that was a launch window title for the Xbox Series X this is not what you would think would be a launch title for a launch window title for the Xbox Series X but we do something genuinely wild and surprising here and I keep even to this day seeing people buy this game and stream it And within the first half hour of the game, they have ended up crying at least once because they've had a human interaction with the dog.

And they don't see it as a stock vote anymore. They see it as a character, even though all it is is a little white text with a black outline that says, Rima Rocky. Nervous dog. Whatever, I don't even remember. Secret bear. I don't even remember most of the dog names. It's been five years. But yeah, like, this is a game that had an outsized impact,

and it's filled with gosh dang stock photos. So there is, I'm a living example that there is no ceiling to what a really unique creative voice can say or do. You just choose a limitation, and you choose to not let other people stop you, and within those limits, you do something great with a priority on the players. And I think we do live in a time where,

despite any issues in terms of representation, in terms of games funding, in terms of industry beyond fire, the one thing that is there is players. Players are there. They will honor that heart as long as you can reach them so that they can see it in the first place. And it's why I still on a daily basis, in AAA, in Indy, and in every other place I'm put,

I'm saying, how do we build this for the players because they're there and they want it. We just got to give it to him. Oliver, I'm going to let you go in a second. I do want to bring in a couple of super chats that we have here. I got two from Mario Rivera. Firstly, Mario Rivera asks El Paso Elsewhere on PSN when? Sooner than you'd think.

Oh, there you go. Cool. Nice little scoop there. But Mario Rivera also says, what does it like to voice act wrap on the soundtrack while developing a full game with El Paso Elsewhere? How did you manage that juggling act? El Paso Elsewhere designed direct. wrote, voice acted,

did some level design. I did a lot of stuff on that project, and there's also a lot of other amazingly talented people, like Romero Bonnecoz and R.J. Lake, Canis Hewdert, that all made sure that that was a thing that could be released. The thing I'd say allowed for that juggling act was one, a development process built to accommodate it.

I built from the ground up the idea of if I'm going to play a really large part in this game and in its story and embodying it, the dev timeline has to accept that. So we aren't, it's simple things like saying, okay, voice acting is not going to happen at the exact same time as rapping because you have to give yourself space to recover your voice between sessions. the second thing I'd say is amazing collaborators and producers and production priorities that allowed for that space to exist and the biggest challenge honestly was that I was a picture of my hubris is each of those things is a separate big job just like it could be a full job in itself it is a full job and each of them require their own

existential bubble of time and that's a game that took three years to build because one we learned a lot in the process of making it but also two yeah I had barely enough time to be the writer of El Paso elsewhere as well as the voice actor of James Savage

as well as the rapper on the soundtrack because by the grace of God things lined up to give me just enough time to be able to inhabit each role. It's weird and tricky and everyone should try to do it at least once. Hell yeah. Yeah, that little piece that we saw the task manager right there. That's how my brain looks some days, especially when I worked on El Paso elsewhere. Was that you that brought up or was that Kevin thing? How that task made you get there? I was opening it up. Sorry, just making sure everything's staying cool here. That's so fucking funny. There was a chat from Ben and chat. Yeah, Ben and chat says this

dudes on another level. And again, that's why I had you on because it's the fact that, you know, I am a fan of yours just from seeing, I didn't even got, there's so many things I have written on this doc that I wanted to get to that I didn't get to. One of the, one of those things are your TikToks. Like, you know, I follow you on social. I see your TikToks pop up. You do such a good job of marketing your games and whatever I see in pop up. I'm like, this man is working on another fucking game and it's a different genre and it's a weird thing. Like I am such a fan of that level of creativity, that level of variety and the kind of games you're making and the fact You and Strain Scaffold are putting out these things

that like such a quick clip. I think it's so fucking dope, let alone me loving Alpazel elsewhere as a video game and then that also getting adapted to screen. Congratulations on that. But then also, yeah, thank you so much, Zalavir for this interview and sitting down with me. Again, we got to sit down again,

either on camera or just get drinks somewhere and talk more because I have so much more I want to talk to you about. But of course, if people want to check you out, where should they follow you on Twitter? and then also, I know you want to promote Defender's Quest 2. Do you have anything else to say about that or anything else you're working on? So Defender's Quest 2 comes out soon. TM. It will be hitting PlayStation and Steam.

We're really, really excited about that game. It's survived a lot to provide a psychedelic, acid punk 70s, guerrillas. heartfelt story and tower defense RPG unlike anything I've seen or played before and I'm really excited for people to get into that. So wishlisted on Steam, keep your eyes on it.

It's going to be something really special. I'm really proud to have contributed to that. You can follow me at Ritt Nelson on Twitter, WRIT Nelson. You can also follow at Strange Scaffold and you should because the last thing, a big thing I'd say is during this summer games fest time

that's about to pop off. June 9th, actually, the PC gaming show. we are going to be doing the big unveiling of our next action game that is coming out this year. Jesus Christ. When do you fucking, when do you sleep? When do you take naps? According to Pokemon's sleep, I got seven hours and 23 minutes of sleep last night. That's pretty good, actually.

That's pretty good. I can't lie. I'm doing the work. I'm putting in the work. So keep an eye out on our socials for things like Summer Games Fest. We also have a mystery collaboration that's going to be unveiled during that time during actually Summer Games Fest proper with Jeff Keely. So

yeah, that's also a game that's going to come out very soon, like within the next two months. Hell yeah. So keep your eyes on Stras. So how many projects do you have coming out this year then? We have like including life heater. So we have Life Heater. We have El Paso Alto Alto O'S for Mobile. We have

which is also dropping up in a few months. We have our mystery collaboration, which we drops within the few months we have our next action game which actually I've already talked about the title I Am Your Beast like it's big unveiling happens at the PC gaming show that's going that's coming out you'll find out when uh it's a one-man publisher but it happens to 2024 and uh we're always putting out more games in Activision this year that's crazy yeah so it's life eater uh not counting ports because we have a couple of those this year,

but we have Life Eater, the action game, the mystery collaboration, one other mystery collaboration that I super can't talk about or I'll die, and then one of the biggest announcements of my career also happens this fall. So we've got at least four, we've got at least four launches happening this year, as well as one earth-shattering announcement.

All right. I'm looking forward to that. We'll see if anything else pops up in the next few months. Listeners, watch as you want to follow Zalavir, go check him out on Twitter or on social media at Ritt Nelson, W-R-I-T-Nelson. And again, this has been kind of funny gamescast. Each and every weekday, we get together to talk about the biggest reviews,

previews, topics, sometimes interviews, and video games live on YouTube, Twitch, and on podcast services around the globe. If you love what you do, support us with the kind of funny membership on Patreon or on YouTube to get all of our shows at. free, watch us record them live and get a daily exclusive show. Enjoy Game Showdown next right after this is going to be kind of feudy. Of course you can catch today's KFD on YouTube or on podcast services and know that until next time it's been our pleasure to serve you. Thanks for having