Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Chris Tilton Makes Music For Games - Kinda Funny Gamescast (Patreon Exclusive Jan 2017)

Episode Date: February 26, 2017

Chris Tilton has scored some of the biggest games out there, but now, he's made his own studio and is releasing its first game. Let's find out how his career went from tape recording game sound effects to making Divide. (Released on Patreon 01.31.17) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up everybody? Welcome to your Kind of Funny Gamescast bonus episode for January 2017. I'm one of your host Greg Miller alongside Chris Tilton. Hello Greg. Hello, how are you? I'm good. Chris, you're here because you're working the video game industry. You're publishing a new game. You started your own studio.

You've done stuff for music and sound and movies and all sorts of crazy stuff. But above all, you're a friend. You're a friend I want you to know. Thank you, Greg. And I want to get into all that. But first, I need to explain a whole much of stuff. Okay. So I call it the kind of funny

Gamescast and bonus episode. If you've been too busy, ladies and gentlemen, with your lives, I understand. The idea for 2017 is we've changed the way we're doing the exclusives. Now bonus episodes of the games cast and Game Over Gregi's show. Go live on their respective patrons last Sunday of the month, as usual. Then the next month, the final Sunday, when a new exclusive or new bonus episode goes live,

it goes live for everybody. So if you're seeing this in February, at the end of February or March even, you could have had it way, way earlier, if you would have supported us on Patreon for a dollar. or more. Not that I'm giving you the hard sell. I'm just trying to explain stuff to you. Okay. Great. Hey, Chris. Hi. How are you? Good. Who are you? How do you explain yourself to somebody who's, for the first time right now, people are finding out about Chris Tilton. What do you say?

Oh, goodness. Well, if it, let's, when it comes to our game, you know, I did, I started a studio, about four years ago called Exploding Tuba. And we are making our first game. We're called, called Divide. And we're at our most, we're, we're run a pretty lean ship, you know, most we were about six, seven people. You know, we're usually about four people. So we've been working on this game a long time. And we're excited that it's finally coming out. January 31st.

January 31st. So if you're listening to this as it posts as an exclusive on the kind of funny gamescast feeds. So this is January 31st on PlayStation 4. Hell yeah. In the U.S. We will be translating soon after that to go everywhere we can. And we will also be making a PC version as well that we'll be coming out soon as soon too.

We don't have a date for that though. That's fine. Don't worry about it. Trust me. The internet doesn't care about it. They never get you on that one. Talk to me about what is Divide, because I know about it.

When you guys sent over the stuff, obviously I've been following you on Twitter and everything else like that. But when I started seeing trailers about it, I'm like, this looks like a great game. But what is it? Divide is a story-driven, character-driven, action-adventure game.

It's an isometric game, you know, the top-down view. And we wanted to make a sort of a sci-fi character-driven game that had a story and characters you cared about in a story you could get that you cared about and a world that you can get lost in and learn about. But also it was a game that had systems

and some combat and some exploration that you were actually going around doing stuff. It wasn't just about progressing the story. We wanted to do two simultaneous things where it's a game that with characters, but also it's a game that you can kind of just wander around and explore. Our lead designer, J.D. Straug

coined a good term. It's kind of like a sci-fi dungeon crawl. Okay. But it's not like a Diablo kind of thing where you're just hacking and slashing. It's a much more slow-paced exploring thing. And there is combat, but it's a lot more deliberate and, you know, things get a little bit, can get pretty hairy pretty quickly with the combat. Well, this is what I was talking about, you know, based even on the trailer and then just reading about it,

is the fact that, you know, for me, a Greg game is a story-driven game. I always talk about that. I'm story horror. That's why I play video games, right, and why I choose them over movies or TV shows when I get home. because I want to experience it that way. I want to be actively participating in the stories and unfolds. So watching, you know, even just the trailer going around, picking up documents, trying to piece together what's happening.

I'm like, yeah, okay, that sounds great. Yeah, that's exactly the kind of thing we wanted to do. We wanted a game that you could spend a lot of time playing just with the mechanics of the game itself, but also it's all going towards a story that you can get invested in, and it's not just about the mechanics. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what I want to do now is dial the clock back, way back, all right, all right? When did we first meet, Chris?

I think we first met probably one of the GDCs when you were still, when you were doing a podcast beyond. Right. And I know we did do, I don't know, we ran into each other at one point and you were doing like a going around talking to people podcast with your little recorder. And we did something, I don't remember what year this is. It was probably like 2008. It was podcast beyond when I used to do the GDC roving things. It was at Steph's bar. And you and I hung out with Tina.

And I know this because I still have the photo. And I see the photo all the time. I'll put it up here, 6-11. I have not seen that photo. He said without ever writing, taking a note. Oh, well, you'll see it now when you watch this episode. But that was the thing. And like, the reason we met up then, right, is because you were in the industry,

but you were a legit fan, right? Yeah, I posted on the IGN message boards a long, you know, a long time ago. and just, you know, I've been in the industry. I've been playing video games, you know, since I was about seven or eight. And I had been doing music for some TV and some video games at the time. I didn't know that eventually I would go to develop my own game. Sure. But, yeah, just the video game industry and where we can take video games as far as storytelling goes,

I think has tremendous potential, and there's still so much more to come, I think it's nice in the last few years that games have paid a lot more attention to crafting good stories and characters. It's been very encouraging that people are receptive to that. And I just, I know there's even farther places that we can go and I'm excited to keep exploring that. See, that's what I love about your story

is like here you are now, a founder of a studio, putting out your first game, but you, for me, were one of, before we called them, best friends, one of the first best friends. Like you were a community member. I knew you through the board, in the blogs. It wasn't like you were coming in and I met you doing a dev tour or whatever.

It was the fact that we had actually talked beforehand just through, oh, hey, we're talking about what's happening at IGN and what's video games we like and all that stuff. Yeah, and I think it was largely just because I'd been going to message boards and hanging out in things that I was interested in ever since, you know, the, I can get my hands on the internet. Back in college, like when IGN was called n64.com, I believe, is when I was when I first made it there. And eventually, you know, you just, they had the blogs, the message boards, and it was just a fun time. So now, dial me back even further. What's your first exposure to games? Oh, that would probably be like a neighbor, a next-door neighbor who had an Atari 2,600 and a Commodore 64.

Ooh, they were rich. They certainly bought their son all the game systems. I didn't get many. I think I got, like my, I got the Nintendo Entertainment System, probably like in around 1988. Okay. You know, other friends had it, and I remember just really liking it. And I think, but I think what really changes is when, when I got, for the Super Nintendo, when I got Final Fantasy 2, aka Final Fantasy 4. Yeah.

And I was, you know, I, I was playing the piano then, you know, taking regular piano lessons, and I was starting to get into soundtracks and things like that. But just when I saw not, not only was, was a Final Fantasy, a game that was just a huge huge world and story and full of characters that I could explore often at your own pace and just there's always things to discover. But just like the score itself was just something I had not heard in a game before. It was like how can this be coming? It's, you know, it wasn't, it was symphonic like and very cinematic and it was stuff that was not often done in video games because a lot of, a lot of video game music were almost like little mini pop songs. Yeah,

or just sort of play. Blips and bloops here you go. Not, but they were good, but they were not like, character themes that were helping to tell a specific story. They were more like in a Mega Man game. It's like really the music is there just to be cool, awesome music for you to play to go shooting robots and stuff too. It wasn't like there was no like commentary on Mega Man's character with the music or anything like that. So when that happens, Final Fantasy 2 slash 4 happens for you, is that the first time you really feel the hooks of video games applying to your other passion? because you're a composer by trade, right?

Like, do you discover music and that love before you ever discover video games? No, well, I mean, I discovered video games, but it was, you know, probably a few years in when Final Fantasy 2 came out. Sure. That's when I started discovering my love of video game music. I mean, even going back to like Super Mario Brothers 2,

I was just like, oh, it's so awesome that when you go into the little mirrored world with the little dark thing and it plays like the original Mario theme. Like I used to take my little tape recorder and put it up next to the speaker and record it because it was just no other way to listen to it other than to get to that part

every time. Make your own really bad rips. And I used to rent Super Nintendo games and record, like a lot of them had sound tests then and I would just record them to set tapes and just listen to them whenever, like, we'll do in other things. So then, so would you say your love of music

was your first passion? Like that's what I'm saying. Like, did you find video games first or music first? I would say I found music first because I started, my parents had a piano that no one really played and I just sort of started banging around on it and eventually I took lessons. My dad listened to a lot of classical music and Vangelis music. So, like, those were the things I sort of heard early in life. And those are still influences now.

But, you know, at the time, when I finally started to write to write music in, I don't know, my freshman year, sophomore year of high school. Yeah. You know, most of the games I was interested in were coming from Japan. So just like the idea of being a professional video game composer was not really something that seemed like that you could do or even plausible. It's like, oh, you have to live in Japan and be Japanese and work with these companies to do this. And, you know, and I also, you know, got into film soundtracks. And it was like, well, that's what I should try. I want to try and do because I just love film scores.

Now, things have branched out way since then. Oh, sure, yeah. TV scores are getting bigger and more varied. Video game scores are getting bigger and more varied. So I feel like, you know, I haven't like scored a big movie, but I don't really care because there's so many interesting things outside of that. And that's the thing, though. You scored so much cool stuff, though.

You have, I mean, yeah, okay, you haven't done a big movie, whatever. Yeah, I mean, I've worked on them for, you know, Michael Chikino, who I worked for for a number of years who just, you know, has gone on to do many big movies. And I've worked on them in some capacity or other, you know, I was his assistant for a while. So I got to be part of those big projects and those were certainly big learning experiences that certainly working on those projects helped me do this game. Sure. What are the big things you think you've worked on? When you talk about your career as composer, what jumps off the page? Well, I think a lot of, I did most of the music for

the TV show Fringe. I think a lot of people recognize that. Oh yeah. I also did the SimCity reboot music. I did almost all of the single player main story. story stuff for Assassin's Creed Unity. So see, fuck movies. You work awesome games. Yeah, and plus also I'm just, like I like movies a lot, but I love

the idea of being able to be an active participant in a you can explore a story and characters in a way that you can't in TV and movies. Sure, sure, sure. You get more time with the character. Yeah, you have more of a connection. If you could imagine, like, even a movie that you really liked, imagine if it was

a game, it wouldn't be this five minute scene that took place in this location, you'd get to explore this location and like look at all the things in the room that, you know, the set designers spend all this time, like, creating a room that you get to spend like two to five minutes in in a movie. But in a game, you get to fully explore it and really dig into, like, all of the detail that they put into those things to really fill out the world and the characters that inhabit the world and stuff. So, again, we're getting ahead of ourselves.

I'm sorry, we're still, the clock's still dialed back. Fresh when you start writing your own stuff, you, well, you can't move to Japan. you're going to go do movies, you're going to go do TV kind of thing. Yeah, I mean, I just started writing stuff on piano, and eventually I got a computer, and I could start writing, like, synthesizer stuff that had more orchestral things that, you know,

I couldn't do on just a piano by myself. And I don't know, I just sort of, I didn't have any concrete plan of what I was going to do. I just said, I love doing this, so I'm just going to pursue writing music, and I like doing it. And I wasn't, I wasn't sure, you know, if I was going to,

end up doing movies. I wanted to, but, you know, I just sort of went where things went. So that's the thing. Talk to me about that because I feel like we've done, you know, if you include up at noon and IGN, I've talked developers' ears off about how they figured it out, voice actors have figured it out. You're so interesting to come. You're a part of the industry, let alone a profession I really haven't touched and caressed like this. So when you start noticing that, like what is the first step to becoming a composer like on that level? to do that kind of thing. You know you like it.

So then are there, is there classes? Is it your major? Is it summer camps? I don't, where do you go with that passion? What did your, when you tell your parents, this is something you want to do, do they help? Do you have to figure it all on your own? Yeah, they were very supportive when I said I wanted to be a composer. And I just, I went, I went to college and majored in music composition.

Okay. I mean, the same thing. Like, if you want to be a writer, you just, you, you, you major in writing. Sure. English or some kind of thing. And then, you know, you get a good foundation. and then you explore your interests that are outside your major on your own. And you sort of figure it out.

I mean, a lot of the, especially the video game industry, a lot of it is you just got to learn yourself and figure it out. Well, that's the thing. So you go to college, you get this. At what point, do video games come back into the picture? It's like, oh, this is actually feasible. I don't need to move to Japan to be Japanese. Well, I think by that time, because in college, that was when I discovered Michael Chakina's music because he did the music to the Medal of Honor games.

Gotcha. And I had those soundtracks and I thought they were awesome. And it was like live orchestral video game soundtracks were something I had wanted to see happen for a long time. Especially with like the Final Fantasy series, they were so symphonic, but they spent a long time before they actually got live musicians in there, which were always really important to me because I feel like live musicians bring something to the table that synthesizers do not, you know. And so. They feel out of room better, you think? Is it just, can you feel their emotion? Yes.

I think it's the equivalent of like when you hire an actor to be a voiceover, you wouldn't want to splice all the lines from the game from like samples of things that that actor has said before. You want them to come in and specifically read for this character and give his interpretation of this character. And it's the same thing with the musicians. It's like you can sample like a D, a D flat, a C over and over again. but none of those lines were when you craft like a melody or like, not even just a melody but even a

genre or a style of music, when the musicians get it like, oh, okay, I get what this is, then they all play a certain way and they play together and something comes out of it that's greater than some of the parts. Gotcha, gotcha. Like a big part of an orchestral sound comes from the fact that the musicians are all in the same room together

playing and all these sound waves are hitting each other and bouncing off each other and mixing. And like, that's the sound that gets created. And I was really cool to see, you know, Michael Jekino was one of the first people to bring, he's not the first, but he was one of the first people to bring like fully orchestral soundtracks to video games. And I, you know, it was like, okay, I got to contact this guy.

And so when I graduated, I moved out to L.A. And I became his assistant. So I knew that it was feasible. There were Americans writing music. How did the contact go? You're like, well, degree in hand, moving to L.A., knock on the door, I'm here. Like what?

Well, okay, so it was the earlier days of the Internet. and he actually had his email address in the liner notes of the soundtrack, which no longer works, so don't go trying to find it. And I just emailed him one day. Cool music dude at AOL.com. And he, you know, like a few weeks past and he got back to me and I sent some stuff to him and he listened to it. And then I came out here to, not here, but to L.A.

The coast. During my spring break to just sort of scout out apartments and stuff. And I was able to say, hey, to meet with him for lunch and just chat with him. Nice. And so basically, once I moved out here, I just sort of hung out and then he got the TV show Aalius and needed an assistant to do work. And so I was like, all right, let's go. So, I mean, a lot of the work ended up starting to be TV stuff, but he still kept doing video game soundtrack. So I got to be part of the process of creating those

things and just learning how you do it. Because, you know, I didn't, there was no, there was no literature you could read about the process of scoring a video game soundtrack because you have to work a lot with what the audio engine can do and the different kinds of transitions it can make. Things are a lot more powerful now, but it was really hard to have music that did anything but start and stop in games. So now you're talking about that and how things have changed.

Now are there those books? Are there those resources? Are there like, here's how you would score a video game or compose for a game? You know, I haven't looked into if there's actual books, but certainly there's resources online and people just talking about the process a lot more. more openly now.

Gotcha. Especially with, you know, shows like yours and stuff like that where you bring people on and just talk about, talk about video games. Well, I mean,

that's the big thing for me and why I was so excited to have you on aside from the fact that I know you're awesome and, you know, the game looks good. Don't fuck it up. Is the fact that I love the idea that there is someone out there

listening to this who has a similar thing who loves music and would love to do that but doesn't know how to do that. And that's why I like bringing people in and the fact of like, have you seen that in the years that have happened you're you getting involved in coming out here and doing all the stuff to where you are now

where is it similar to games journalism or games press media where when I was trying to do it and I was going to school for it and I in journalism classes they say what's fair magazine I say EGM and they'd laugh and I was like well that's what I want to do like now every there's so many reasons there's so many people everyone wants to do it is it a similar thing where now there are people coming out of college and wanting specifically to make video game music to be composed for that I mean I would think so I have no idea what the numbers would be but but but certainly with the explosion of indie games, you get a lot of,

you know, people in their garages who just want to make something. And it's like, well, we could make a game. And then, and then you get, you get people who,

who haven't, like, who have their own sort of perspective on it, or even, even, and I don't mean this in a bad way, like naive perspective. Like,

this is just what I think, and they have no ideas what the rules are. So they just go and make something that they think is cool. And we end up getting interesting, off the wall, I think.

New ideas, right? Yeah, yeah, okay. Yeah, I think there's resource. It is kind of like the video game press. It was just like, how do you become a video game press person? It was such a niche thing.

Like, you couldn't really compare it fully to like a journalist at a newspaper who covers like politics or something. It was just, it was very different. Yeah. And now, and now there's, it's still very hard. I mean, it's, as you know, it's very challenging and competitive to do what you do. It's very challenging and competitive to do what you do. I do. There's a lot of people that want to write music, I'm sure. And it's hard. Well, I feel like

even when you talk about it and when I think about what we do and then I think about development, the key thing is there is like democratization, right? The fact that, well, there are a million tools now that you can get off of garage band and you can have your own YouTube channel right now. And for 99 bucks, you are an iOS developer. Like, it's that easy to jump in and get your feet wet and try to figure it all out now. Yes. But then, and that doesn't necessarily mean what you're going to make is good either. Sure, sure. It means, like, the tools are much more readily available, which is a good thing because

it means people can experiment to see if they even like doing these kinds of things. But then another thing is, I went to school and majored in composition and got a pretty solid background in music composition, and I've been working for a composer who scores lots of films, and I got to see really the nuance of, like, what it really means to score a film and what the music really needs to be doing. It's not just writing music that sounds cool. It's really dialing into character motivations.

What does this scene need from the composer and making sure you write that? Yeah, no, and that's a great point to what I was saying is the fact of the same way with us, right? When we jumped to do kind of funny, we were concerned that, well, will anyone care still work with us if we're not IGN? But what we didn't realize is that everyone knew we were taking that expertise and ethical quality with us where it wasn't going to be like we were just some weird rag tag YouTube who the hell just came up out of nowhere and does whatever the hell they want, says whatever the hell they want, doesn't think about the consequences. Whereas we've been working in the industry forever and we know how to talk to people and how to cultivate a relationship and how to be fair and how to actually come through and not like a game, but not have it be that we don't like the company or something.

Yeah, I think I think that that's a good point. It's like you didn't come into this, you came into this knowing how this industry was. works and you got a lot of experience, like you said, with just the ethics of just, you know, journalism, just general, general, you know, journalistic ethics and things like that. And also just how it works and what's appropriate, what's not appropriate and stuff. So, I mean, it feels like it would be very different if you had not, if you all had not had all this experience and just started out. And look, and that's not to discourage from people starting out. You should.

It's the only way to learn stuff is like, it almost seems like a good process would be to start out trying something, get your first. beat wet, then work for someone who has a lot of experience, learn a bunch of stuff, then go out on your own and do something. Well, I mean, that's, you know, to your point, you know, I was just doing an AMA video for the channel today where the question comes up of like, what's the advice, if we wanted to do what you want to do, and the answer is always the same, right, of you have to do it, you have to go out, this is all a muscle. I know it seems easy to think about just sitting down and talking and you film it, and it's great, but you're worried about your breaths on, in the mic, you're worrying

about stammering, you're worrying about thinking about where the conversation is going. That's all stuff you learn as you go. So you need to go out and make the mistakes, the little things, go and record things off your TV and then start trying to piece them together, added them back and forth, I imagine. Yeah, you know, the most readily available thing is just like, if there's something you're interested in, whether, a video game development, whether it's the music or design, like, pick a game you really like and just try to figure out why you like it and what works for you. And like, or, or, or, why do they make this decision, you know,

start just thinking about, thinking about, you know, all of the things you see in games, like there's often a reason why it's this way, even if it's, even if you don't think it is the right way in your mind. There was some reason why it had to be that way. Exactly, exactly.

For whatever the circumstances were. And learning about those, I think, gives you, gives you a little bit of a leg up, then just sort of going and being like, well, I just like talking in a microphone. Sure, sure. Or I just like doing this. but, you know, sorry, I'm starting to ramble here, but go ahead.

Oh, really? On a podcast, that's kind of funny. I never would have expected that at all. So then how hard is it to go in and score a video game? Because I feel like, not that I'm saying, movies are easy, obviously, but the fact of the matter is the movie looks the same to every person, so you know when to put a beat in here, you know how to do this, you know how to play with emotions, whereas, yeah, video games,

it could be that I spend 30 minutes walking around an environment and expecting everything and getting every little detail, or I spend the three minutes in there, shooting everything, finding this, and going on to the next point, you know, objective. Yeah, I mean, that's something that just happens a lot where you're like, you know, and you're sometimes asked, like, don't make the music too noticeable and then it's just boring. And then, or, you know, you experiment with a lot of things. Like, a lot of it is just experimenting.

It's like, yeah, someone can spend a half an hour here and someone can spend two minutes. Yeah. So, but you want the music to be effective in either circumstance. So it's just a lot of experimenting with just trying to see. see what works. And now that we have better ways to make audio systems that can transition to different pieces of music. Like our game

Divide has a music system where I put markers in exactly where the music is allowed to transition. If you're in the middle of this melody, it can't go on to the lower intensity or different version or next section until it gets to this point. And a lot of games do that. Like Firewatch did that. Like the opening and Firewatch, when you're

playing through the little prolog, you're You're making a section. The music is looping and you can take your time. But then when you get to a certain point, it says, okay, move on to the next section. But it waits until a musical spot that I assume Chris Remo has designated as a spot that makes sense. And so, you know, the music changes without, and it feels like it was always supposed to be done that way. Sure, sure. And those are, and tools to do that are just a lot better now than they used to be.

You bring up Chris, a friend of the show, does good work. is for video game composers, is that a small circle where you guys all do talk and interchange and exchange ideas? You know, is there a GDC for composers? There isn't.

In fact, if I run into other composers, it's often a GDC. You know, composers have to kind of work in their own little cave by themselves a lot of the time. And so we don't really get out

much to like talk to each other. That's why you like message words so much. Also, also composing is very, you know, there's one composer on a project usually. Sometimes there's more. Yeah. And, you know, there's not a lot of projects necessarily. And there's a lot of people that want to write music. It's very competitive. And so sometimes, you know, I don't know, sometimes you don't want to, you kind of want to do your own thing.

Sure. Sure. Yeah. I'm assuming you want to sound different too. You want to stand out in a good way. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of great people in the video game industry as composers that have met. But it's also competitive. You know, we're often ascending and demos for the same project and one of us may get it, one of us, you know, may not, you know, so, but that's just the way it goes. I think you get over that as the longer you stay in it. Yeah. Now, that's interesting. You talk about sending in demos for different, for the same project or whatever. I've never ever thought about that. How does that work for, game X, game, I'm developer X. I'm making a game. Do I put out the demo into the composers I

trust or do you hit me up for, how's that name? I don't know. It's, you know, there's, There could be any variety of circumstances. For a big game, if they don't have someone specific in mind, you know, a lot of people, you know, if they've worked with you before and they had a good working relationship, that's going to be more incentive for them to hire you back. You know, if they don't, if they want something different, a lot of times they will go to an agency and say,

hey, we're looking for this kind of vibe. What composers do you have over there that do this kind of thing? And sometimes they will ask for stuff that you've already done. Sometimes they will ask for a demo. Like in the case of Saturday. Assassin's Creed Unity, you know, I got video footage that I got to write to and they had some we need a piece here, here, here, here. These are the kind of, we want it to be electronic with, you know, some orchestra hybrid, you know, we want the sci-fi element that's in the

Assassin's Creed games to be prevalent in the, more in the score than it has been in previous scores. And then, and they said, you know, we've listened into a lot of A, B, and C. And then I just give my interpretation of that. And if they like it, they like it, if they don't. don't they don't. You know, and then eventually, you know, you can take it personally early on, but, you know. I made this. This is my art. And, you know, and it's actually giving me a whole new perspective, do running, exploding tuba

and doing this game because suddenly your decisions aren't, aren't this is bad and this is good. It's like, this is right and this is not right for this project. It's like, it's my job to make sure that we're all on the same page of the vision and we're all achieving the vision and we're, We're all deciding what that vision's going to be, and then making sure everything we put in it goes towards that. So when we say, oh, we don't want that. It's not good. It's just that that's not right for this game.

That's not what this project is. Yeah. So, so, you know, a lot of it, so I sort of understood, I think that's kind of made me a better composer in a way because it's like, okay, I really, you know, when I started doing some other projects after I started doing this one, like I've done some work still in, you know,

I did a Saddus Creed Unity while we were starting development on this game. And just, I think working on that game, you know, I felt I was better able to try to see what they were going after and making sure that I tried to deliver that for them. Sure. So then talk to me about how exploding tube comes to be because I feel like I'm, I've dropped out. I got kind of busy the last few years. So I might have missed part of, I don't, when did you go from? Like, I'm composing. This is great to I want to start a studio. Well, it was right around when Fringe was ending its run, and the indie game scene was starting to take off. And it was like, oh, it's feasible for a small group of people to make a game and put it on a console, which was not possible for the longest time. And then I just said, well, if we're going to, you know, lead designer, J.D. Straw and I, we went to college together. He worked at Teltown, a bunch of other companies.

We all kind of had our own separate paths and careers. and we've always wanted to make a game together. And we were like, well, this is the opportunity. This is the time to do it. So let's just do it. And then we just said, all right, we'll do it. And we just didn't. Oh, is that simple?

It wasn't that simple. It's hard. But, you know, that's the thing is. You just got to do it. I guess similar to how, if you would have asked me five years ago, how you start your own company, like kind of funny, I would have no real idea either. But like, how do you go about when you see you guys shooting the shit over beers one day? And you're like, let's do it.

And then it's like, what? You file a company papers? and get an office or you work? We all work from home. We all work remotely. We had a lot of like Google hangouts or Skyping or whatever. And that's just kind of how we worked. We kept it lean every.

There was like plans maybe eventually would have office space, but everybody kept moving around. And so it was just, it was working fine to just have everybody remotely. You know, there were a couple days where it was be like, oh, you know, it would be great if we were on the same room to, we're trying to describe certain things with each other. If I just had a big whiteboard in here

and everybody was in the room, it would be great. But, you know, for the most part, it's worked fine working remotely. And you certainly can save a lot of money doing that if you want to make a project. Like people, people do that where people are in another country. I'm like, I haven't even, our animator and environment artists, I've never met them in person. Yeah. They live out in Seattle. Oh, Seattle's not even that far.

You could get there. Come on. I know. I know. I know. We're going to have to set up a meeting after we're finally done with this thing. And so then is divide the game that you had at the start? Is that what you, was it that you wanted to make a studio or is it that you wanted to make this game?

I wanted to make a game. Okay. I wanted to make a character-driven game that was a game. I didn't want to make, you know, there were people that were doing well at making. The walking simulator? Well, that, well, that, more so, I'm thinking like adventure games that were heavily story, and it was more, it was more like an interactive story. Sure.

Whereas then there were games and it was like the story was this kind of there just to give a little bit of context of what you were doing, but it wasn't like a full-fledged thought-out story. This is why this is happening. It's just like, right, cool, here's a reason you're killing 30 robots in this room. Here you go. Yeah, so a lot of it just came out of just like, no one's making games like that I want to see. Like, I want to see games where you can spend time exploring a world, but there's also characters that you care back and you're driving a story forward, you know, whether that's a mystery or some other thing. Yeah. And it's like we were getting

them very rarely. I think when Last of Us came out, I was like, okay, this is the kind of thing I want to see more where the story is starting to tie into the gameplay where like the desperation in what was happening in the gameplay was related to the story and the narrative and the character's motivations. It wasn't like a game where it says, well, the game, the story is about this, but the game does, is doing something totally different from, you know, they always talk about narrative dissonance and all that stuff. But so yeah, that was kind of the impetus and I was just like,

I want to make a game that's kind of doing things that people aren't really doing yet. I want to see a story-driven game that is a game with mechanics I can get involved in and master and stuff like that. How hard was it then to come up with divide and that's what this is? It was more just an organic process. It was just like I just started with a couple of just

very broad-stroked ideas. And then it was just like, well, if we're, you know, it was just, the original idea was just like, what if you spent some time in a game where it was like an adventure game, you were spending some time with your family, and then suddenly you get ripped away

into like an unfamiliar world, and you have to find your way back to them. But we actually spent a little time with the family so you could actually miss them. Yeah. And that was just, that was the very, very start of it. And it was like, okay, well, if we're going to send them to this fantastical world,

what is it going to be like? what is the connection to the world, to our familiar world. And you just start developing, you know, world building stuff. And then you start, you know,

I knew that I wanted to have some combat. I wanted it to be more methodical. I didn't want it to be going in a room and killing a bunch of guys. Because one thing I can't stand is when the hero is supposed to have some sort of heart of gold or meaningful, he's saving someone.

But meanwhile, he's murdered hundreds of people. Oh, the Nathan Drake syndrome. Yeah, I mean, 3,000 pirates had to die for me to get down there. Right.

Though Uncharted is, you know, that's a popcorn movie. I know it's Paul, it's Paul Baction, don't even wrong, but it is always the joke of like. I felt like the last of us was addressing that problem. 100%. By instead of not making you kill a bunch of people, well, let's, what kind of story would have to be tied to a game in which you are brutally killing people? In the way that that weighs on the characters. That's the thing we always talk about. Like for me, um, I always talk about where Dead Space 2, I thought was such a great and refreshing opening of all right, cool.

you're Isaac the badass from the first game and you are in a mental institution because you are completely broken based on all the horrors you just went through all the horrible things you've seen and that's where it is like the thing with Nathan versus like Joel where it's like Joel like you know when you choke somebody out in that game

when they claw at you like the camera comes in so you feel how fucked up this situation is whereas yeah Drake's just like all right Elaine let's go and I think there's a place for both those things but there's a lot of the there's a lot of the popcorn things and not enough of the dramatic, meaningful narratives in tying into gameplay.

100%. So then you talked about it. And, you know, when you started the studio, you were still doing composing, still doing your own thing outside of that. Are you still or is this full-time job now exploding to it? I mean, it is certainly full-time job, but I do, I have done other projects. Like, I've been doing a summer TV series called Zoo that's on CBS. Okay.

And we just did our second season last summer. And so, you know, that's a thing I enjoy doing and I still learn stuff. And I feel like that makes me a better composer and better at doing work on divide. You know, working with other storytellers helps me learn stuff. Of course, yeah, yeah. And it helps me learn how to be a better storyteller. And also that those kinds of works helps us keep fully independent. Like that helps us pay.

Like those jobs help pay for the studio. we don't have to go get a bunch of outside funding and then have a bunch of other people giving us deadlines and cooks in the kitchen. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, we wanted to make a game and just let, and we just sort of slowly figured out what that was and we could take our time and

reveal it when we were ready. Right, right, right, right. And here you are. So how do you feel right now, two days before it comes out? Wink, wink, wink. Oh, yeah, remember they won this post, when this post. Wink, wink, wink. I'm excited and terrified at the same time. Yeah. Because, you know, I'm excited. excited that people are going to see this thing that we've been working on for a long time.

But I'm also terrified that, you know, people are going to see this thing that we've been working on the long time. And they're either going to be, this is cool, this sucks or, yeah, whatever, you know. Yeah, yeah. It's like, you don't know necessarily know. I mean, we've gotten positive responses from whenever we've shown it. That's always promising, but you never know. And that's always the terrifying thing. It's like you're putting, you're putting your name out there.

And we worked on this thing. This thing is meaningful to us. Yeah. And then people now have a right to decide whether they think it is meaningful or not. Because, yeah, this has got to be, I mean, this is a dumb question, but it's completely different, right, than a game you've worked on with your music in it, great coming out. Right. It's like, you know, with a big game, and that's also a difference between a big game and a small game with a big game where there's hundreds of people working on it. There's no one person, like, if something wasn't working in the game, there's no like one person that was responsible for that.

It's just, you know, it just, it just happens. Whereas like on a small team, it's like we have, we all have. have a lot of control and personal investment in it. So it's almost like you can blame us if you don't like something. You're going to literally be able to walk over and like, why did you say do that in that level? And I'll probably be able to tell you, but. And you will. So I know it's soon. You're releasing this. What do you then see for exploding too? But do you want to keep doing this? Is this the future? Are you already pre pro in different ideas and stuff? Yeah. So, you know, we have, we have several ideas for like, uh, we want to,

We certainly have a follow-up for Divide planned, and I've actually been working on, like, every now and then working on the concept of that for, like, the last two years, two or three years maybe. And just sort of, it's just slowly been gestating in the background and, like, gets updated every now and then every time, you know, and as this game goes along,

that brings ideas to what that game could be. And, but we also want to do a couple little small things that are a shorter dev cycle to just, like, be able to experiment without Higgin, bunch of years. Stretch your legs, right? Yeah, just like, let's try something small

and efficient that's fun that doesn't take forever to come out. I have to imagine that was one of the things you found right in this cycle for, I mean,

because how long to even say divide's been worked on? Yeah, I mean, we first, we, we hired the first people in August of 2012. So it's been like

almost four and a half years. So it's a very long time. You know, you hear about why games take so long. It's like, they just take forever. And we thought, you know, two years and then became three and then became four.

You know, it's, and the scope of the game kind of grows and shrinks and grows until you finally find this is what the game should be. And it takes a long time to discover that, especially when you're just starting from the ground up. And that's got to be the thing, right? I would imagine being a composer for so long and now, okay, we're going to go start our studio and make our own game, do all these different things. You suddenly get in there, you're like, I never thought about how X had to happen or how this went to, like, you know what I mean?

I would imagine your next game, whether it's small or even the same size, would be a smoother process because now you know what a timeline is supposed to look like and what the journey is supposed to look like in some respect. Yeah, we're, you know, I can definitely tell you we're very excited to take all of our lessons learned to the next project. Yeah. What do you think your biggest takeaway was? What was your biggest lesson from your switch over here? Oh, God, but there's just so many. A lot of it is just technical things. Like now we understand how this works and how this didn't work and it took us a while to find like, you know, when you start out, you think it's going to be this way and then this system evolves into something else, but you started out with

these things. And so you're just kind of shoehorning things on top of things. It's like, okay, if we had to start over, we would do it this way and this would make all this other stuff more efficient. And a lot of it is just about, it just, a lot of things just take up on us, unnecessary amount of time. And it's just that, that's a lot of what it is. It's about saving time a lot of the time. But, you know, it's also about figuring out problems. I mean, storytelling is figuring out problems, making games is figuring out problems. Like, you have an idea in your head, and you're like, okay, well, how do we earn this?

Okay, well, we have to have this character, have this trait, or this has to happen. In order for this, for us to feel like we deserve this, some of other things have to happen. Okay, well, how do we go about accomplishing these things? How do we go about accomplishing these things in a game and what you're playing? Sure. And which you can kind of control the pacing. Like these are all really challenging things to go where in a movie, the director and the editors can set the pacing exactly how they want it. Whereas in a game, you can't really, you got to let the player set his own pacing a lot of the time.

Wow. It sounds very complicated. It is. It hurt my head and break my heart as I watch beta testers fly through things and whatever. So is that, for you then, when you're finishing up the game, do you, are you inviting friends and family into play it? And then that's how you go? How is this going? and then you make system changes or story beats changes from there?

Yeah, a lot of it is us playing and then friends that we have over. You know, it's good to get someone who hasn't been in the project, just have a fresh pair of eyes on it. I think one of the biggest things was when we went to PSX earlier this year and had demos that people coming up and just playing it for the first time. Yeah. You know, we, it was almost like that was our most valuable QA testing because we got to see like little things like, oh, we got to fix that, that, that.

And then also just to see how when people, what people picked up on what they did not pick up on. It's harder when you're when you're an indie studio because it's like you don't have the resources to pay a big QA team to give you a bunch of QA. You just have to kind of, you know, all everyone working on our game has been in the industry a long time and has shipped several games. So you just kind of got to rely on your past experience to just be like, just try to be critical of it, try to separate yourself and just be like, all right, what is working, what's not working? You know, the goal is just to make this as good as we can make it. and it's eventually you get over the, like, criticizing your own work.

You're like, yeah, that sucks. Let's not do that, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You just kind of got to get over that. Take the lumps and keep going, right? Yeah. Yeah. Big question about divide.

Does it have a platinum trophy? It does not. God damn. It's a small scope game. You should have leaned on them. My name is Mayo. That's all you got ever say. You know, I didn't want to, like, this is our first game.

You don't want to burn the bridges and piss off places you just get. I didn't want to, like, can you let us have a platinum trophy? We certainly could have thought of them. of stuff to go to the platinum trophy. I know people like them. But, you know, maybe we'll get to do that for future project. You know, it's hard to say what the rules are because it's like, like you Firewatch, they're pretty, that was a pretty game, the game that had, you know, telltale veterans.

Yeah. It had a good pedigree of people who were working on it. They didn't get a platinum trophy. Sure. So I don't even know, like, what is the smallest game that has a platinum trophy, you know? I mean, my name is Mayo. It's just tapping. Taco Master has one.

Really? Yeah. Doesn't Ab's animals have one? And that's like just two seconds. It's like five minutes you get a platinum trophy, I think, for that one. But I don't think Sony would be very happy about that. The thing about Sony is, and this is, you can tell every indie developer. They're asleep at the wheel in the business. Because from what I understand it goes like this.

Here's my game. All right, cool. Here's back. It doesn't get a platinum trophy. Oh, that sucks. All right. When it would just be no, put a platinum trophy. And they go, all right.

I think it's just, you got to push on them. Maybe I didn't push on them hard. Sorry for those looking forward to a platinum. It's fine. We just joke around about it, but I got to ask the question. But I mean, you think, Kajima got it with Ground Zero, so you're fine. I mean, he didn't get one either.

That's, come on. Well, he didn't get one with Ground Zero's, I'm saying. Like, yeah, it's just that thing. He's got to be, I understand your point. You don't want to be one of those annoying people. I understand. You're starting this thing strong. Chris, what would you, so you've,

you got these two, you got feet and two camps here. For somebody watching right now who wants to get into making video game music, what advice do you have for them? And then same thing for somebody who wants to get into making their own game, what advice do you have for them? as far as making music for video games I think your best bet is to just work on something and just try and find indie projects that need music

when it comes to working for low pay or free you know it's good to just say the first one's free you know but if that connection make that name yeah make the connection and then if things go well then you know the second one you know charge some money for but but as far as like getting good at making music for games, like have a perspective, I'm an opinion, play a lot of games, but listen a lot of music, and even things that you don't think you'll like, because chances

are you might find something about the music that you connect with and be like, well, you know what, I could, this is an interesting little snippet of an idea. I might be able to do my own thing with that and integrate it with what I'm doing. And then that's just another thing that makes your music a little more, a bit more unique as not a real. qualifier, but, uh, well, rounded, I would think even your own library. Or it gives you a much more of its own personality. It's a little bit more you when your take like, like I didn't, you know, I had all the thing, the music I loved growing up and, and I was trying to often to either replicate that or learn or replicate it even

just for the sake of like learning how they did it. Like, you know, it's like when I listening to a John Williams score in the 90s, uh, it's almost intimidating, like, how can you possibly ever write something like that? And I'm not in this, and just on a listening level, now I've had so much experience working with the workers. Now I can hear things like, oh, I can hear the, I can hear the individual pieces and see them in my head a lot better than I could. And, but the thing is like, I feel like I'm going to always champion story in game.

So I feel like you should also watch movies, find your favorite movies and scenes and find where does music come in? What is it doing? Why do they choose here to come in in this type of music? And trying to figure out, well, what is the scene? What is the subtext of the scene? And once you understand that, you'll have more insight into why the music was made that way for whether it was the wrong decision in your opinion or the right decision. And like that's the kind of stuff I think needs to be brought to games more because a lot of games just take the, I feel like there's two approaches the games. There's games where the soundtracks are integral to the story and the characters

and there's games where the soundtracks are literally just like a playlist of songs that sound cool. And those can be fun, but those are so much less, that's so much less interesting to me. Because it's like, well then I'll just, why don't you just make an iTunes album and I'll just listen to it? Why do I need to play this game to listen

to this music? Whereas a game where a music that's written for a game that's integral to the actual story and gameplay experience, it's like well, this music was created for this purpose and it fits more like a glove. And like those are the kinds of kinds of music that I'm interested that I'm interested in. I would encourage other people to explore. I think there's a lot of people that are interested in and don't realize they're interested in, right? Because there is that thing that you're talking about when a soundtrack or

score for a game stands out, you remember it and you do talk about it. But I don't think it ever really reflects back the other way of like, well, I'm doing it because this is exceptional. This is doing something different, at least for somebody like me who's not, like, you know, musically minded like you. Whereas so many other games are, yeah, it's just the fucking Madden soundtrack beforehand, right? Where I see, I hear Lucky Boys confusion or some rapper I've never heard of him. I'm like, great. And then I just go and play and I don't think about it. Right. But that's also replicating a, you know, a sports broadcast. Well, no, no, no, I was just throwing Madden out. I mean, like that for a game that's not like

Madden, you know? No, I know. I'm not saying Madden is fine with this music. Don't you worry about Madden. All right? I'm not worried about it. All right. Good. Don't worry about about men. And then what about for somebody who's trying to make games? Well, you know, I came from a strange place to making games. I, you know, I would just, I would just encourage you to just to try and experimenting.

Make, like, make a small, like, JD tells me this all the time. You make a front end, make a game where you can start the game, play it,

and quit out to a menu and quit. And like, you need to, you need to get the startup to playing, to quitting, like get something like that. Like, don't worry about how long it needs to be because if you sit there with all your ambitions, you'll never complete anything.

And if you never complete anything, you don't really have a good idea of what it actually takes to make a game. Like, starting a game, starting an idea for a game is totally different than finishing a game. Okay. Finish a game. Finish making a game. You finish a small game. Make a tiny little puzzle game.

Just anything that involves you having to go through all the, you know, you're going to have to do all the boring stuff, like making a menu and figuring out how to save the game or the options menu or starting it and quick. like all these logistics or things you gotta, like if once you know how to do that, then you can start comfortably making things that you're more interested in. And then you can use that as your demo reel

to like get a job with a bigger company or a small company to then, you know, get more experience working with other people because, you know, this medium as well as making movies and TV is a collaborative process. And you kind of got to put your ego aside a little bit

and do what's best for the project. And that's a whole other set of skills to learn. Yeah. It's like, is coming in and trying to find where your place is and where you're going to most help the game itself be the best game it can be. You get you, it's not, you know,

it's the game's not about the composer, it's not about the designer, it's not about this, it's about all these people crafting something that players will hopefully enjoy and feel like they're spending it, they're not wasting their time. You don't want to waste anyone's time. Sure.

Chris. Yeah. I'm very proud of you. It's a weird thing to say because I'm very proud of you too, great. Thank you. Thank you. But I mean like for knowing you so long and knowing you from humble beginnings on the IGN boards, you're just like every other best friend out there. And now look at you putting out your first game. I know. That's scary. Yeah. Divide out, out, out, out, of course, on PlayStation 4 eventually on PC. Eventually, he'll figure it out.

We'll figure it out. We'll make announcements for all those things as soon as we can. You know, I know people like we've gotten a lot of people from Europe asking about the game. and I feel bad that we haven't been able to to really have the translation up front, but we're going to get to that as fast as we can so we can get it out as many places as we can. Good. So January 31st, probably out by the time you see this.

Remember, if you're seeing this at the end of February or beyond, you could have seen it earlier by supporting us on patreon.com slash kind of funny games. No big deal that you don't or do. This is one of your perks if you do it. Just a dollar more gets you, bonus episode early, and you would have known about Divide before all your friends. And then you could have been like cool,

but instead everybody's telling you about divide and you had your chance to be cool and you blew it and that's why you don't have a date to prom. I'm sorry. If you would have talked about Divide, Kathy would have gone to the prom with you. It sucks to be you, Ted.

Until next time, ladies and gentlemen, it's been our pleasure to serve you.