Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Firewatch's Campo Santo (Special Guests) - Kinda Funny Gamescast Ep. 57

Episode Date: February 19, 2016

Sean and Jake from Campo Santo come by to talk about starting a studio, releasing a must-play game, and dealing with reviews. Then, the boys lament the demise of Game Trailers. (Released on Patreon 02.12.16) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up, everybody. Welcome to the first ever kind of funny games cast episode 57. I'm one of your host, Greg Miller, alongside the producer slash seducer, Nick Scarpina. Hello. Did you wander into the wrong show? Are you sure you supposed to be on this one? I got an email saying you got to be here at 1 o'clock and I was late. Over here at the Pride of Long Island, Collimori. It's good to be here with you, Greg. And then over here, ladies and gentlemen, put your hands together.

Sean and Jake from Campo Santo. Hi. Hey, Jake. Hey. You guys made Firewatch. We did. Just you two. No.

Just you two. No. We are 20, percent of the people who did that, that's about right. We're not really so good at math. We're less than 20% of Firewatch. Okay. Yeah.

But you did the heavy lifting. We did less than 20% of the heavy lifting. Tim Geddes has gone to Philadelphia to eat cheese steaks and see his girlfriend. That sounds nice. It does sound nice. That sounds like a code. I was going to say he doesn't eat more of the stakes. You sat down next to someone and opened a newspaper and without making eye contact said that sentence.

And then left and there was a dossier. I went to a water fountain and put underneath a flash drive. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, but no, he's just there, he and she sticks hanging out. Okay. And then, Nick, you're on this show. I am.

Because you played Firewatch. We all played Firewatch. Even Kevin played Firewatch. Oh, my stomach just went, flop, flop, flop. It's weird meaning people who have played Firewatch because that wasn't true for like ever. Yeah, true. And now it's been true for a minute, and it's very peculiar. It's very strange.

So, well, I was save. Let's do all the rigum roll and we'll get right into it. So, yeah, Tim not dead, but he's not here. If you didn't know, this is the kind of funny games cast, to each and every week. Three, sometimes four. best friends gather on this table to talk about video game intros and stuff.

Well, no, it's because I want to, you know, it's funny when I do it because I do my own thing. Once you perfected it, you get all the whole, funny's in the eye of the holder, I didn't find it that amusing, be honest. You never find anything amusing, though. That's your whole, that's your whole character. You're Oscar the Grouch.

That's called straight man. If you want to get the Kind of Funny Games cast early, you can head over to patreon.com slash Kind of Funny Games and support us there. Just like all these people did in the month of January. Thank you so much for your support. You go over there. You support us.

You let us live our dream. Plus, you get early access to the show's exclusive episodes and a whole bunch of different perks. If you have no bucks to toss her way, it's no big deal. Head over to YouTube.com slash Kind of Funny Games, where we post the show topic by topic, day by day, until the entire thing posts is one big MP3 in video. So now we can get right into it. Firewatch. I thought you were kind of like, like donka shang me there or something.

The way you kind of like rolled back. I feel like, Kevin, put this on the shopping list, that when we have a lot of people on the show, I do need one of them, Drew Carey, Bob Barker, mics. Oh, the tiny little lollipop. You'd love it. It's a very long, slender. I know which word it is. It looks like a really small, tiny dick.

Like slender dick. I immediately thought, that'd be really cool for the dick. Thank you. For you, for you. When I'm not using it, you can use it. Yeah. So you're talking about it. How weird is it right now?

Because we're recording, this will post on Friday for patrons. Everybody else will, you know, cheap skates later on. How weird is it? It's Wednesday. I would say, Monday on PC. Yeah. Tuesday on PS4. It came out Tuesday, Tuesday, Tuesday.

See, I don't know how Steamworks. Yeah, Steamworks, you just push the button whenever you want. You press a green button, and you go, oh. So it's been 24 hours of people playing the game.

Yeah. What's that like? Really crazy. Yeah. Yeah, really cool. I mean, it's really just overwhelming. Because we're an independent developer. We are, right now,

there's eight of us, I guess, in the office, and then a couple people elsewhere. And it's like, when you make a game at a bigger place, it feels like and everybody plays it all of a sudden and all of a sudden there's like tens and tens and tens of thousands, six figures of people

playing it. The noise sort of like hits everyone equally, so you can kind of like, it's oh, there's 200 people so we're all kind of like hit it, get it. Oh, when you're on a big team or at a big studio? It's like when you're seven, you're like, oh my God. It's like crippling. There's nowhere

for it to go. You can't diffuse it. All like the highs are really high and the lows are really low. It's like, oh, it's not running on my computer. like that stuff you're like you just take so personally but then like you get the email it's like i just finished it and hear my thoughts it's just too much it's too loud i am overstimulated that's how i feel that said there's a lot less weird bureaucracies slash sort of just ambiguity about like can we patch can we fix a thing people have found something and just being able to yeah put it out just like on especially on steam it's incredible although um we've i i've never been as like close to a steam release

is this because I'm used to working at Telltale where I used to work. And I found a really amusing thing, which is when your game is live on Steam and you want to put an update up to it, it has like a drunk test where you have to type the word Steamworks in and press Enter before you can submit the form. Nice. So it's, you know, they're looking out for you at Valve. Yeah. A lot of barely. It's two a.m. Do you really mean to be emailing Sharon right now?

You're like, I know, I don't. Steamworks. Yeah. X works when you want to text your X. Yeah. So no, it's just been really great. It doesn't feel like It's like there's no like relief moment

Because you're just the game's alive And people are playing it And you're reacting to that So I don't know when we're gonna go to the office And it's just gonna feel like a normal day again Sure But it's crazy It's been so well received

What do you know so far about numbers It's been what 28 hours I guess Since it's been released? We don't really talk about numbers Too much publicly But the game paid for itself already which is pretty cool. Not too shabby.

Yeah, so that's nice. So you can stop buying it. We're good. So now you're giving everyone the green light to go pirate. Yeah, you're fine. You're good. Oh, please don't do that.

That sucks, actually, because now I have numbers on that, actually, and that is a nightmare. It is crazy. It is crazy. How do you get numbers on that? You just go look at all the different seeds and torrent sites.

You just go look. Go try to pirate your own game, and you go like, oh, you know? You assume that those people were just never going to play it. Yeah. But it's still like,

a staggering number. Sure. Like it's a staggering double-digit percentage. There's a lot of people who are never going to buy your game, but we'll still beat it. Yeah. And like, it's, I mean, what do you do? It is what it is. You can upload their, they can upload their photos through the cracked version to firewatch

dot camera and then realize they had such a good time. They can pay for their photos to be mailed to them and get us back on the back end, which would be nice. So here's the thing. You're talking about all this crazy stuff right now. I want to dial it back and talk a little bit about where Firewatch comes from, but then also Campo Santo. Because I remember last time you came through, the first time I ever met you, not last time I guess,

but the first time I ever met you, you came into IGN, big dick swinging around. Oh, gist. Here's Walking Dead Season 1. I'm going to get interviewed by Greg Miller and, it's during judgment day when we had all these. I remember that. Yeah, that was fun. And I remember I was like, oh, man, he's got his life put together. You were like in a suit jacket and all this other stuff?

I wasn't wearing his suit jacket. And then you quit. You look like a prim and proper baby and then you quit. What was happening there behind the scenes? Because you were over there too, obviously. Were you guys just like ready for a new challenge? Yeah. I mean, mostly.

Yeah, I mean, how do you always answer this question? It's been a while since I talked about this actually because we've just been heads down on Firewatch. But I mean, I was at Telltale for about eight years and I was there not from the beginning, but I was there starting with the second bone game, which was like the third thing they put out. And I kind of felt like after shipping Walking Dead season one, I like, it wasn't actually that I wasn't enjoying my time at Telltale, but I felt like at that point I was one of the creative directors at that studio and I just wanted to be in a situation

where I was learning all the time again like the, you know, I started off, Teltail was my first job in the games industry and I started off like hired as a forum mod and community moderator and I worked up over about eight years to being a creative director which was in a... That's the path.

That's what you want to do. That is the most insane trajectory in the entire world. That's the path everyone thinks they want to do. I don't know how that happened. But the, I mean, every single thing that I did there was learning something completely new. And then I got, when Walking Dead Season 1 ended, it was like the next logical step was Walking Dead Season 2.

And it was interesting, but not nearly as interesting and not nearly as crazy as saying, this seems like an opportunity to go and try to do something where I know nothing, except maybe some parts of how a video game is made, but not the majority of them, and definitely not starting a company and doing your own thing from scratch. We know that. We know that drive. You know what I mean? That was our thing, I think, is that we had been at IGN so long and gotten to this point where it was like, well, what's next? What's the next step for us?

Yep. And when you looked outside, that's what it was. It was this room right here. This room, this table. Yeah. We're like, let's take a giant step backward. Shut it. Into my bedroom.

Spare bedroom. No, I love it. Yeah, that seems a whole about, right? Yeah. It's just like, if you get that, that itch to be like, ah, and you don't do it, then it's like well what would we you know eventually time would have got up to us really fast you know it would have been like really easy to just stay put and keep you know also you kind of get further away from products as companies grow which is hard like unless you really fight to be on them um but even then you get pulled in lots of different directions and it's just just life at every like company that is more than yeah wait until the day that you find yourself being like the executive manager of kind of funny and you're not actually on any of the shows anymore yeah That'll never happen. His ego will never allow that to happen.

A camera? Yeah. I will ruin everybody else to show. No, but that's something that's very, really interesting. Do you guys feel like you could go back to that bigger company? I don't think, I don't know. So when we were like, what, a month ago kind of finishing up the game and didn't really know anything about it?

We didn't know anything about our own game, really, and like how players would respond to it. We knew what we thought about it, but that doesn't really get you anywhere. I at least was forced to sort of think about like what if this doesn't work out like what's next sure you know so I thinking like okay like where would I go work like where like where do I who do I call and say hey can I take me now you know and that was really hard because it's like Jake was saying if we want to do something we do it and we live with the good and the bad and like there's no there's no we don't have a publisher We don't have anybody saying, hey, don't do that. And if you live in that for long enough,

especially when you're making a creative product, you kind of get accustomed to it. You know, like if we get an email from Sony or someone, and they're like, we thought, you know, not that they would do this, but like we get an email from anyone external that says, we think it'd be a good idea if you did blank. Like our first reaction is like, no, like you can't tell us what to do.

Right. So then going into a structure, is, I don't know I think that'd be really hard. At the same time, it's really fucking sky. I can't we're on this, right? Oh yeah. Whoa, Kevin, Mom's sweet. She's great. What show on? Oh, my God.

One F word later. We good? I got it out. Okay, good. I'm ready. I mean, there's present cons, right? Yeah, no, that's what I'm saying. It's really fucking scary when you're, there's no barrier to the point where we're like, okay, if this game

doesn't do well, like, do we let everybody go? Do we liquidate the office? Like, thinking about that stuff, like, it's crazy. Where it's like, oh, if I was working at a big company or I was working at a large size developer or even a mid-sized developer that had, you know, a good publishing deal.

It's someone else's problem at that point. Yeah, it's just someone else's problem. But now... I don't think I appreciated that enough as an employee, by the way. I don't think anybody can. It's impossible to. But, like, I don't think I appreciate it. There's a lot of stuff that having people

that can mitigate tech support, having PR people. Like, doing all that stuff yourself is really, interesting and also makes you go man there are people who are really good at that job you guys are on the other side of the mirror where it's the same thing for us where yeah like when we got out and was like

all right how are we going to have health care and we all just looked at Nick and I guess I'll figure it out thanks Obama I guess no thanks Obama yeah but yeah that is Jesus let's let's open that pain sorry go ahead I was on a three hour call of him yesterday

with Obama he's like look up I was like yeah well it looks like you're going to call with his care with my health care that we now have, which you can, if you can call it that, it's more like, we'll take your money and give you nothing. Let's hear some people who, these people who have their own businesses, talking about it's the healthcare.

Well, no, but that leads into the bigger thing, right? Because that is part of the fear that you take on, right? Like, all of those different departments, like we talked about, like, you don't have HR, you don't have accounting, you don't have legal, like, you might have a legal person. Oh, we got lawyers. We have lawyers. There's eight of you, seven of year lawyers.

The other one person's, like, design. Actually, only piece of advice. I would give. It's like, oh, I want to go start my own developer as well. Get a good lawyer. Step one. Like figure out who you're going to, like how you're going to work with. Sure, whatever. Doesn't matter. Get a lawyer. Get a good lawyer and just pay them and do that. And if you can't afford to do that, figure out a way to do it or don't do it. Yeah, I've realized that point as well as get a good account. Like someone who can actually take care of, you know, making sure you're not getting thousands of dollars of bills when you're not

paying things for the government and they come take all your money and lock calling up and take him away, deport them back to Canada. That would be such a bummer. The island, where are you from? What it? I'm not Canadian. I'm not Canadian. I'm not a little. I'm natural born. Are you? Yeah. I can relate to what you guys are saying in the sense that, you know,

something you said resonated with me, which is like you can never, you know, or at least in Sydney when you can never really go back. Like, once you've crossed the line to do your own thing, it's, people say that's us all the time. Like, would you ever want to go back to your old jobs? We'd ever want to, it's like, I would never want to do this. You know, because this is, it's scary. It's super scary, but it's freeing. And even though it's uncertain, we have.

all the power. Like everything that fails or succeeds is based on the five of us. So I wouldn't trade it for the world. I would never want to go back to like the corporate world ever again, you know, ever. It also feels like going back would be like it's like you live in this time now where like you can do all this. Like you guys are just doing all this. It's just working. It's going to go on the internet. Like it's just the thing, you're just doing the thing you should be doing with no extra stuff. And I think it's almost like, like, I don't know what it's like, I don't know what the metaphor is, but to not do it feels like, like really bad. It just feels like, it just feels like this maybe is a rare time, you know, like, who knows what

the landscape will be like for independent developers or like independent content creators in 10 years or in 20 years. But right now you can do it. You can do it tomorrow. You know, and that just feels like to not take that opportunity, at least for us, felt sort of like shameful. So how did the conversation begin for you guys? You're both at Tel Tale and you're finishing season one. you start laying like, well, what comes, I'm then wondering about what happens next. And you're like, me too.

I mean, I don't know. I think, like, Sean and I were housemates at that time. And we just, like, and we were, we did the Adel Thumbs podcast together. And you just always talk about weird ideas that you have. And then we sort of realized as Walking Dead was finishing up that we could maybe actually make that real. It did really help that we, um, Mishon and, uh, our friend Chris, Chris Ramah, who's also on out of Thumbs that like just in the middle of Walking Dead season one, we did the idle thumbs. a Kickstarter for Edel Thumbs and we were able to raise enough money to rent a permanent

recording studio, turn that into an actual business and like a tiny weird one, but you know, like that, that was enough to sort of make us go, oh, actually I think we could do a way more outrageous version of that and actually try to start our own company to make video games. I guess, you know, we had that taste and that coupled with Walking Dead doing well and coupled with us just always bouncing dumb ideas off each other meant that it just sort of, I don't know. Yeah, I don't really. There was no sort of like, it kind of just appeared slowly.

Like there was no like, let's go to lunch and talk about it. It was just sort of. Yeah. I didn't remember not having the idea. So like what was the, I mean, for us it was a little bit of a process too.

There was never one moment where we were like this is happening. But was there a defining moment where you were like, fuck, like, okay, we're all going to do this. Like,

this is actually going to happen. Yeah. I think a little bit. Like, I don't know how interesting this is, but I do remember that we were working and we had kind of, we're putting our toes in the water of like this idea.

And then we kind of hit up the idea of fire wash. No, just leaving. I'm just leaving. We didn't even have the name Camposanta or anything. We had nothing. And I remember and I something, a project came up at TellTale and we were brought in on it really early, which is great. And it was really, really exciting. And it was totally secret.

And I remember having to go to the first meeting with for it and going like, going like, I don't feel like I should go to this meeting. Because like my heart is like, I've already, I'm already out. So Jake and I like just got together and I was like, do you feel this way too? He's like, yeah, I feel this way too. So then it was like, well, this is the moment where we have to just go talk to people and say, hey, we actually don't know if we should go to this meeting because we think we're going to try to start our own company.

And that was like, that's that gut feeling of like, that would be really shitty if I went to this meeting right now. We ended up going. It was great. And like, we were, we gave them all sorts of bad ideas to sound bad. I mean, we went, but people had the knowledge already that we were planning on leaving. So we just felt like it would have been really dishonest, I guess, of us to be there as creative, creative representatives of Telltale when our heart was already in another place. And that, that was totally the turning point.

You're right. I forgot about that. That's really awesome, though, because you guys, I mean, not many people would actually listen to that voice. A lot of people would say. Listen to the voice. Always listen to the voice. Well, I mean, but it's dangerous, right? Because you guys were at a place like, you know, where either financially or technically you guys could go,

your own game, right? So, like, you can't, if you just had a college and you're like, are either of those true? I don't know. But, I mean, you had, you had an eight year. Like, I will say that much. We were definitely like, oh, I think we might get fired right now. Like, I remember being like, oh, I remember the. You know, it's like, we're going to get fired right now?

And obviously, it's like, no. Like, if you work for people who aren't crappy and we didn't, we work for good people, they'd be like, oh, well, thank you for telling me this. Yeah, that's what I was going to say. That's an awesome thing for someone to say, like, recognizing that. And then taking the step and saying, it's actually better for the company if I leave. If they can bring in someone that's super fired up about the brand

and actually wants to work on this other project. Whereas my heart's not in it. So, you know, you guys, I've only known you for approximately 30 minutes, but you don't seem to be the kind of people that would half-ass it regardless. But at the same time,

if you don't have passion for the project, the project's going to suffer to some degree, right? If you're like, oh, fuck, we've got to go to another one of those meetings for this thing that I don't really want to be doing this, then that game's going to suffer or that project's going to suffer.

So you guys, any good boss should recognize that and be like, thank you. Godspeed, let's get people in here that'll actually burn them in out oil for me. Yeah, that process was all really healthy, I think. But it was really scary. We didn't have any sort of concept of how we were going to pay for the game or ourselves until we were living on our savings accounts and doing contract work. It's really weird to do contract work for mobile game studios in San Francisco.

What would that entail? It's like making art and doing stuff or making levels. Design. We were doing just like design and a lot of creative directions and story pictures. For various San Francisco phone and social game companies. I did a couple of script revs on like games that are out now on consoles that are my name's not on. You know, like stuff like that.

You know, you get kind of called in to do stuff like that. So is the idea to leave and the idea for Firewash are they one and the same for the most part? Is it the you are, we started kicking around this game and you're like, well, we want to make that ourselves? I think we had some just sort of nebulous ideas in our head for things that we wanted to do, but it was more, let's try and do something on our own that we can come up with from scratch without, you know, like just and see what shape it will take. Yeah, it was like, we know the things that we're, what our skills are, and that's really the only thing we were ever green lighting.

We were always just like, okay, if Jane comes on board, the game is going to, like, the art and the game is going to feel and look like this way, and this is the sort of stuff we can build, and this is like this stuff that's really in her wheelhouse. So that's just what that will be part of what Firewatch is. There was never like a pitch of like this is the big idea. We didn't have to like stand in front of a publisher. I mean, and go like we did stand in front of a couple publishers.

We didn't have to go inside of a publisher and go like, this is what the game will be exactly. We just sort of kept hiring people and bringing people on. Yeah, I think we, one of the ideas that we were kicking around right when we were first starting this up was this idea of a game with the setting of a fire lookout tower. and one of the first people we talked to about it actually was Ollie Moss, and he, like, I think part of the reason that Firewatch out of sort of just the,

like, nebulous cloud of concepts jumped up so hard as a project we were really considering once we, once we started, was that Ollie got super excited about it. And, like, before, like, we went to sleep and woke up the next day, and he'd already, like, drawn a bunch of sketches for what ended up actually being the first piece of key art that we put out, but, like, months before that, like, just, and he just, he just did some like scribbly drawing of a guy in a lookout tower with trees going off into the distance and the word firewatch with the badge logo and he's like this and we're like yeah I guess that's what it is I guess that's what we were talking about and that was that's the way the whole development's been you know like because Remo comes on and we don't have a plan for like sound or music and like large chunks of the game are designed and he's like this maybe and we're like yep that is what it was good that's what it is exactly you nailed it that's exactly what we're talking about good job and that's the whole development of the game like it's going to be really exciting to make another game and it's going to be really exciting to make another game where a lot of the, like we don't have to build a team from scratch

and we can sort of explore before having to say yes. Because like when we sign the deal with panic, panic is a software developer in, you guys probably know this, but they're a software developer in Oregon. Oregon. This is their FTP client called Transmit. And they make other very, like really high quality Mac software.

Our game was funded by a Mac utility and productivity software company. Yeah. So. Okay. Awesome. We were just like, we like said this is the idea for Firewatch. It's going to be like I, you know, we did story and character stuff at Telltale. Like that's my strength. It's going to be first person.

It's going to be a mystery story probably. And probably. We all have like, we've been building stuff, but we don't really have anything yet because like we're just learning how to use unity. So we kind of. Yeah, that was the pitch really. said, well, we just want to, like, yes. Like, whatever you guys make, we want to have money behind. And we went like, well, that's cool.

So, and we had a lot of other stuff came through, like, really well with them. Like, we just had a lot of the same principles. But it also helps that I made skins for their popular MP3 player in the year 2000. I'm sure that was a big deal. That was the big deal. That locked it down. Jake's Audion skins. It was surprisingly helpful that I knew those guys from that, actually.

But, you know, now the next game, it probably, I won't be that way. It'll probably be we'll just like, we won't have to like bring an idea around as much. Depending on who you're saying that now. Yeah, I don't know though. Like we'll probably just like start working on something and it'll just be a totally different process now because we have a company and like you know it's we're already building now like a record. Right. I mean before it was you guys had worked on these games and these people had worked on these games. Now you guys have a proof again. This is what we did. This is done. But it also helps that everyone already has chairs in a desk and a computer. Yeah, that's a big help. It's not, that does not say. That is, that makes a lot of sense. There's like a server that you can check game content into, and we all have game engines that we know how you use.

Like, how many fights did you have about which microphones you were going to buy? A lot. Well, not if fights, it was six months of Greg going, can we get the mics that don't cover all of our faces? You used to have this mic that was just like this big. That was just, fuck, I don't know, because I'm not, like, none of us are audio engineers, right? So basically you, you have to go online and trust that there's a lot of people that say these are good

and everyone else uses these and let's, let's try them, you know? and then, but that could have been really bad for us because they're expensive, but it worked out because they're really good mics. So, I mean, I feel that pain of like, all that energy that goes into setting it up you guys don't have to deal with anymore, right? Now you can just sort of like...

You can evolve. We don't have to, like, create from scratch. You don't have to have, like, the big bang moment. We can just sort of like... Do you feel like that's good? You're going to lose a little bit of the edge, though, because you don't... Good.

Yeah. I'm like, I hope we lose some of the edge. The edge is hard. No, I don't think so. I mean, I have no idea, but I'm really looking forward to it. Like it was just, your edge. Well, I'm looking forward to just

the different process. I'm looking forward to like, I mean, we built Firewatch and shipped on, uh, steaming console on PS4 and set up a company and everything in like 25 months. And I'm excited to have 25 months to make a game and not do all the other stuff.

We're like, I was dumb. I have, like we hired this, uh, this guy Gabe who ended up becoming just sort of like office coordinator. like just like the glue of like the of shipping a game like he's not a producer but he does like QA and he does like this makes the company work and like I refuse to hire someone like that for the first

year plus that was so dumb I was just trying to save money and like I was like I just got to learn to do it all I got to do it all yeah and now it's weird there's like little tiny parts of the company like I'm not quite sure how that runs because Gabe's here you know and like that's a really weird feeling but for the first year and a half I refuse to have that feeling is Gabe starts coming in with nicer and nicer suits and like it's like I think Gabe is embezzling money Tesla game you have a driver

no but that's but that's but you know that that that is crazy because there's more the more you relent that control the more the more you have to be a little more strategic you can't be his hands on right we brought Kevin on and Kevin's been awesome but now we have people that do our web design for us for kind of funny.com and it's like every person you bring on has their own skill set but it also

it brings a level of anxiety where you're like fuck I don't know what they do anymore and like, I don't know if we can. Yeah, it sucks. It sucks. It fucking sucks. I hate trusting Kevin. He's a very trustworthy person. He's like, he's in the bathroom right now.

Look at us. That's why I don't trust him. You're like, yeah, we hired Kevin. That's when he gets up to we cross in front of the game. That's it though. You basically have to trust anyone you hire with anything you can think of. And when you're small. And that is a really good thing to learn.

And it feels really good when you have people. that you can trust. And I think like that's something that's like we have to keep reminding ourselves as like I've definitely been in work situations where I didn't feel trusted. And like that's the worst. It's the worst situation.

So making sure that like you bring in people who like you ultimately trust implicitly across every phase of the company is like absolutely. Is this like the only important thing? I think if you do that and they know how to make games you'll probably make a pretty good game. Yeah.

Yeah. you don't know, it might not be what you think it's going to be, but it'll be good, you know. Hey, buddy. How you doing? I'm quite well, thank you. So my question about all this is, where does the, is it you who comes up with the idea of Firewatch or is just going to be this guy watching off of fires? Yeah.

Where did that spring from? That's such a weird idea. It's great. Don't get wrong, but weird. Jake was my roommate and I said, I'm kind of hammering on this stupid idea. And by hammering an idea, I mean, it's like sitting at my computer and like, writing stuff and googling stuff and just looking just like i don't know and i said i have this idea for maybe like a puzzle game and you live in this fire lookout tower it's not a puzzle game

firewatch is not a puzzle game but that was like and jake said that's cool and then that was just one of the ideas that was on the board when we were looking at what's the sort of things we would make so it was that's like the theme and we didn't quite know what the mechanic was until like allie and nil showed up. But if we make a first person game, which is what we really wanted to do, really badly, we knew we wanted to make a first person game, then that'll be the setting.

Just because it was different than what you were doing before? I guess we both play a lot of them and like them. Yeah. I mean, like some of my favorite experiences in gaming are like compelling single player first person worlds. Like I love

Half Life Portal, Dishonored, Biocococ. You know. I even like just like really muted like and stuff like Far Cry too. Yeah. I like like stalker or like Daisy. You know, Daisy is obviously like crazy. But in the early days of Daisy it was just like really kind of boring most of the time. And I really liked that.

And I'm like, I'm not like let's make a boring first person game. But I like just the tranquility of trying to start this farm and this zombie waste. I like being out. I like just being in a space in first person. Like Half Life 2 is one of my favorite games all time. Half Life. And just like the things, all the challenges that came along with trying to tell a story. that way. We're exciting to me.

It just feels when you're in a first person game and the story is working and the environment is working, it transports you in a way that I just hadn't been when playing an adventure game since like full throttle maybe. Yeah, and I just hadn't, I was like just so hungry

to like try to do that. I think also the way that the way that you receive information as a player in a first person game where there's another person who's talking to you is always, I think is really unique to, like if you think about Glados or Alex Vance or Atlas

or Shodan or whatever, the way that your brain like processes the first person stuff coming in as well as that voice in your ear is a feeling that I just love and I think it is really unique to first person games and when we like, I think if there was any ambiguity that

Firewatch would be first person or not, which I don't think there was. It was, it was once the radio thing came in, it felt like it all really made sense because having a first person game with that voice but you could talk back and forth to them all the time and that was

the input in the game. That just did a lot of stuff that I think we were both really excited about. So then you get moving, everything's going, does it all go according to plan? Is it as easy as you want it to be? Nothing happened along the way. Yeah, breezy 25 months.

But I mean, you know what I mean? Were there moments of like, fuck are we going to make it kind of thing? I mean, I don't think we ever thought that the game was going to just like spin out and not happen, but there were places... Yeah, I never thought we wouldn't ship. There were places where we were like, this is going to take longer than we thought it was. Or like, we were putting too much effort into this part of the game, and it turns out that's not quite what the game is about in the way that we thought. Or, you know, you just keep revving on the story over and over again, like you do with anything that's story heavy, no matter what medium you're in. I think it's cool.

Yeah, accurate. Like misplaced energy, how it? happens a lot where you're like, I think this thing's more important than it is or less, like, or vice versa. And then, um, we were lucky coming from telltale and I, we were the only, we're the only people who come from telltale at Camposanto. So I feel bad for everyone else. But like, we just like shipped stuff all the time. We were just always finishing episodes. And it was always really, uh, tense. And it was always like tomorrow the game is going to look 50% better than the next. And it was just like, thank goodness. They've slowed that pace down

since you left and taken on fewer projects. I have no comment and that was really healthy because I just never built it's like having shipped a bunch of products I never felt like we weren't going to ship this one yep because I'd look at it and go like

oof we got a little ways to go but like I've been on this journey 10 times you know or whatever that said it was really different on Firewatch after working at Telltale for so long because at TelTel you do ship all the time but once the first episode whether it's even if it's a season two

but usually when it's the pilot of a new telltale series, you spend a lot of time on that. And then once that's locked in, like the track is basically laid out in front of you as far as the mechanics and as far as, like, how the presentation of the game works and you hopefully have your story lined up and you just have to sort of riff inside of that space.

Whereas with Firewatch, it's still like, it's all out there as a complete game until the very end when it goes, boop, and you're like, oh, it's done. Okay, we completed the entirety. of Firewatch as opposed to like you ship a part episode one yeah like if you ship tales from the borderlands episode one it's like you've established all the things that are going to be in tales from the borderlands basically until you get cheeky and bored and start subverting it in later episodes

but you still like there's something there to subvert um whereas yeah you know it also like it also spreads out the anxiety a little bit i think like i didn't feel like when you when you ship five episodes you have five small peaks of anxiety instead of one giant anxiety mountain you Like I wrote, you know, I write an episode or something and like, be like, ah, he wouldn't really like that one, you know, and I'll be like, I'll get him back next time. Sure. You know, it was, that was always really nice as opposed to like the feeling I have now, which is like, can we just make another game now, please? Like now? Had my one shot. And so anybody who's disappointed. Yeah. It's like, see you in 24 months.

Yeah. Yeah. If, yeah, gosh, who knows. Yeah. Yeah. But like, also, I mean, I just think we were. lucky to go through that. You know, like, I was at Telltale five and a half years. I love that bird, by the way, that's in your,

that's very, very good nature. I love that bird out there. I don't know if there's a big park over there. Someone's got the kind of funny nature pack running in the background. Yeah, yeah,

but, like, I was on, I was at Telltale for like 70% of the schedule of, like, Bioshok Infinite. You know what I mean? Like,

I could have just shipped one game and all that time. Yeah. And I feel like that would have, um, oh, great game, but I feel like it was not, It was good to ship so much.

It was really helpful. So then what has this week been like at the office? Like, is it submitted, you're ready to go? Is it chill out? Is it interviews? Is it? It's everything. Lots of PR like this.

You got to do this. Got to go out there and sell them copies. It's 1999 on Steam. It is actually everything happening at once. And it's not quite what I expected. I thought it would be like the game ships when we go, oh, okay. Next is post-launch support and PR and stuff.

but instead it was just like, as it got closer and closer, I realized that it was not like a little series of steps, but there was actually just like a huge wall of everything was stacked up at the exact same time. And with a team our size, you know, it is like, okay, the game is either almost out or it's in period or it's launched, and it's like press support, patches, community management, checking on what everyone's doing.

Also getting super stoked about the reception that's been really good and like passing reviews around and then also doing PR and doing follow up with outlets. and posting weird stuff on the Twitter feed and then yeah I'll like support and any unforeseen weird things and we sent out a build for Twitch streamers it was like just like the first hour of the game

and like we said we were going to do it so we had to do it and then we did it and it was really smart and glad we did it I think people liked it but like it doesn't run on my computer or like whatever the link doesn't work or like you sent me the wrong thing like we're doing all of that and like we're already that was really

we're already now working on a patch for the PlayStation version we're putting out updates the Steam one as, you know, when you go from no matter how many playtesters and no matter how many testers you have when the actual world plays your video game. Yeah. It's a lot of people playing. The pre-order situation. Yeah, it was great that we pre-ordered the game. We weren't thinking

we were going to do that. If you go to Steam right now, there is a sale, a lunar sale. So we were like, when we knew that was going to happen, we're like, oh, this pre-orders before the sale because, like, we don't want to, we're worried about that sale. And, um, not that it mattered, ultimately, but we were worried. So, that was it.

meant like the moment, but that just meant like the moment the game went live, we just had like tens of thousands of customers, like so many customers. We went from no customers to the people who had pre-order a game all having it at the same time. So any, it was just a weird GPU that we didn't account for or something. Now we know about it for sure. Yeah. You've hundreds of thousands of beta testers all of a sudden.

Exactly. I mean, it's not that they're, it's not their customers. Yeah. They're customers. Like they're like we have like every customer. gets like contact. So, you know, no matter how few support tickets you get, you definitely feel it because it's people.

And also we just don't have the apparatus, right? Like, we don't have like a support team down the street. It's like yesterday morning before we hit the button, it's like, is everyone know how to use the software that we're using to do support? To answer support tickets? And it's like, oh, yes, good. We are now becoming a different company for the next month or whatever.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we're basically a PR and tech support company, even though... We were the people who were making the game up until Tuesday morning. And then we're secretly still fixing the game also. Yeah, and then we'll go back to being, you know, you're always these like different companies. You're sort of... One day we'll go to being professional people who sleep.

Oh, that'll be so cool. And don't do a lot. And then we're going to go back to making a video game. Sure. But we're not there yet. Okay. So you caught us right in the heart of like of the madness. I probably won't remember this.

It's good that it'll be on the internet because I can go watch it. That's like I just like this is not working. It's just funny to me to hear, you know, even though you guys are making games, we don't obviously make games. have those talent of technical skills, but... Or any skill. But the parallels of just finding a business, learning something from a big company that you had a lot of love for, which is where we learn too,

but also getting away from that, that big corporate world and taking what you learn from it and applying it to your own new experience, but never wanting to go back to that old world, even though this new world might in many ways be harder. It seems like it's, it's, I don't know, I think the parallels are quite, to be honest with. I'm really enjoying that this podcast is

somehow become like small business theater and it's not where I was expecting this to go. That's what I like the way I thought right. It's really great. I feel so much better. I'm like way more relaxed now. I get just like talking about all this stuff than I was just like no. No, no. Our audience is great and loves the story behind how a game or a company came to be and ours included. You know what I mean? And I feel like I know from talking to Mitch like this IGN spoiler cast right will be for final watches on another level in terms of like I don't want to do that because I want people to know about the game rather than that school. I appreciate it. This is awesome. Like I'm really, I'm very happy right now.

I'm glad. Yeah. Where's puppy go? I locked, I had a Kevin Lockham up. It's a billion degrees in here and I was just sweating balls. Oh, because you just had like a heater on top of me. You should, if you want to go to the next topic, you should do the third topic next. I think because it makes more sense.

Here's what I was thinking. What if I, so here's, I was going to audible, but I was going to audible to number four where we could all talk about Firewatch with the guys who made Firewatch, including the readers. Sure. And then we'll go to topic three. Okay. So here's what we're doing. Oh, we're coming up on Reader Mail. Yes.

Well, we're going right. So topic two right now, which is if you ever watch the games cast, is normally the final topic where we kick it to you the readers. But I posted over on kindof funny.com slash forums that you guys were coming through, post questions there. And I figure, as again, I want you to know, this is incredibly rare where all of kind of funny played your game. Usually it's like this comes around and Colin and I'll both play it or Tim and I'll play it or Nickel play, Zeno Blade Chronicles for 15 minutes on a less play.

Yeah, see, I'm not the biggest gamer, but when I saw this and they kind of explained like what, like a rough concept of what it is. I want to sit down with this. Because I mean, I don't like experiences in games where it's like 60 hours where you have to basically give up a part of your life to play this. Come to the right. Come to the right place. No, but that's part of the reason why I enjoy the game is because I was like, oh. See, for me, I come from more of a film background.

I come from more of production background as far as like live action and now animated for some ungodly reason. We decided to do that. So for me to be able to sit down and actually play something that felt like I was in the middle of like an indie movie was really cool for me. I don't know if that was an intentional thing for you guys to do or if that's just me bringing my own stuff. to it. No, I mean, I think that's valid, yeah. I mean, I don't think we literally would put it in those terms, but it's definitely a game that's intended to be played in a few

settings and has really deliberate pacing. It is really story heavy. Don't get me, I play it. It would be like five hours to get through, but I just played through all the whole thing because I was immersed. I think like we, I mean, you know this, having played the game, so we can just talk openly by the game, I don't want to spoil anything. Well, yeah, can you talk about, whatever you're about to say, can you talk about without spoiling it? Yeah, yeah,

then I would say, yeah, we're going to keep, this is our section where we talk about the game, but we'll keep it, spoiler-free. Okay, cool. And if we're going to get crazy, we'll say something. Okay, cool. Kevin's like, I like this idea. Can we take a second to look at Kevin's leisure post today? Just the chillest man on earth.

What did you do to your hand? Do you punch something? Who did you punch? What was his name? What did he say to Paula? If somebody makes a cat call your girlfriend, you strike me as the kind of Wolverine who would tear him apart,

and I like that about you. What the fuck did you do to your hand? We'll talk about that later. Keep moving. His hand is definitely one. dude. Like when you fought a fucking, be like a Leonardo

Caprio from the Revenant right now. Yeah. I'm sorry. Sorry, now I'm drawing attention to it. What was I saying? You know, so the thing is about

games like this. Like this is a game about the, it's really character-focused. And we wanted to make something that was really character-focused, but inside of a plot that was actually happening to you,

not like, what is the story of this space? Not that that's bad. We just wanted to make sure. You used the voice like it's bad. I heard myself do and I'm like I wish I had that one back I'm a pretentious asshole

I'm a fucking dickhead so what we decided to do fuck the thing is what's the vision of Firewatch Shine there's not a lot of games there's just not a lot of stuff like this

like there's just not a lot of stuff that like when we're talking about inspirations we can talk about a lot of like mechanical inspirations and how to build the game inspirations but I'm like what's it going to feel like we find ourselves talking about moments in movies a lot. So I think sometimes

that comes through and making the game feel... It's often moments in movies or moments in games that are absolutely not adventure games. And then... Yeah, yeah. And then they combine into an adventure game. Yeah. So, I don't know if you want to share, but what were

some of the inspirations for you guys? Not necessarily one to one, but like, there's a lot of moments that, like, emotions that this game evoked to me that I was like, oh, this is kind of like, I don't want to fill anything in your bright. But, like, you know, it reminded me a lot of, like, that, that sort of moment in every action game where you're through the thick of it and you get, you kind of come out into the vista and you're like, oh, wait, I get to just sort of relax for a second. And this is something intriguing. Also called my favorite part of every game.

Yeah. That's what was cool to me was I was like, oh, wait, this is not going to necessarily. I don't want to spoil too much for people. But I'm like, I don't get the sense that this is going to be a game where I'm going to have to deal with a lot of quick time events. You can't dual wield in this game. Yeah. And I liked that. I was like, oh, it instantly kind of put me at ease.

I was like, oh, wait, okay. This has got a different sense of pacing to this. This is not about action. This is more cerebral. This is more like about being in this world and really kind of understanding what it means to be isolated and kind of feel lonely and kind of feel like you're in your own space. Yeah, totally. Sorry, I'm going to cut you off. No, no, no.

So we wanted to hit that without being boring. We wanted to hit that without being like dull or we didn't want the game to also. feel aware of that itself. You know, like, I think sometimes if you're making a first person walk around story game, and... I like that better than walking simulator.

First person walk around story game. Well, walking, it's not a walking simulator. Walking is just like, can get, you know, he gets sweaty and you get, you get kind of like... Hold on a bus. It's been determined to simulate all that. The ultimate walking simulator is quop, for sure. That is, quop is the ultimate walking simulator. So people, that's a misnomer when people talk about first person story games.

QWO. P. Everyone knows quop. Everyone loves quop. If you're a gamer, you know quop. Anyone should play quop. Fun for the whole family. Yeah, we didn't...

Where's I guess? Oh, move. I was talking about inspirations. Yeah, what are we were? Inspirations for this. Things we would talk about include Francis Ford Coppola's the conversation. Finch, like,

Fincher thrillers, like Zodiac, not so much seven. But, yeah, I just watched Zodiac again. since it came out in theaters. Yeah. That's funny. That's,

yeah. Early on, when we were trying to explain to people what the game would be like as sort of the feeling of being alone and not knowing what's going on, we talked about moon a lot. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. That's a really good. That's the, that's Duncan Jones, right? Yeah. Duncan Jones, yeah. And I mean, so, in some ways,

you can use like Jack Nicholson's arc in the Shining. Yeah. Although he's got his family there. And it's like, it's sort of just, it's more like, yeah, but the stories of people

who find themselves off in the middle of nowhere and then strange things happen. And then when it comes to Henry and Delilah's relationship, there's also some stuff that we talked about. Yeah, I ended up pulling or just sort of to get myself in the mode of like, I got to write character stuff now. I would look at like the Linklater movies like before Sunrise and all those.

Like those aren't movies that are going to like, like the gaming audience and before sunrise is not like a match made in heaven. So like you always have to know that because you have to know who you're writing for. but there'd be times when I would think to myself I love those movies and I've seen them dozens of times and I'm never bored and what I don't remember what they talk about sometimes Those movies are also like the canonical text

for the relationship that you know is fleeting but tell yourself isn't and is inevitably going to end So I just go watch that and just like be with those characters for a while and go like oh yeah that's what that feels like and I wouldn't so much pull out it was never like pull out the technique like how long are these conversations like what are the sort of things they're talking about.

You just stopwatch? You know, it was never like that. It was just literally. I get bored at a minute and a half, so I'll stop it before. I get sort of like, I forget what it feels like to experience it. So I have to go experience it. And then like, when I very cognizantly feel something, I just go like, okay, remember that feeling. And then when I go work, I'm just like, okay, make that happen again.

But now I don't have the movie. I have this blank page. That's kind of how I work. That's awesome. That's awesome. That's a perfect sort of reference point for. dead. That's how I worked on like, I sat in my room and

I knew what the ending was going to be because we talked about it forever. And I went just like start feeling like that. And it was just like my whole body starts changing and I literally like I can make myself do it. And I'm like, all right, fucking start working because this isn't going to last forever. That's insane. Yeah, it's like that.

Colin. What do you want to know by FireWarch? I'm kind of curious. I mean, I have questions that are deeper that are going to spoil the game. So I don't know that I should really be asking them to be honest. Do you want to move into spoiler territory? We can enter a spoiler zone. Yeah, let's enter a spoiler zone. A spoil zone.

Are we going to be in spoilers zone the rest of the show, you think? Maybe, I don't know. We're just going to be in spoil zone the rest of the thing. That's what I'm saying. All gloves are off now. Everybody take off your shoes, your underwear, let's get in here. Everything's coming off. Yeah, gloves are off.

All articles of clothing are off. Actually, everything's off except the gloves. Really good. Gloves and socks only. Can I take my socks off? All right, Colin. So the, I don't know if you guys watch. our video review or like our review discussion of it.

I watched part of it but it came out a little bit close to the game coming out and I had to sort of turn it off. Well, so I don't know that's fine. I didn't want to be, I didn't want to be like too redundant on it what I was saying in it. And I didn't speak until very late in it anyway. Because I like I wanted to take in similar to today what everyone else was saying first. But what was. One of the. I didn't feel like the story had a huge payoff at the end.

And that was one of the things that I think is feedback from some people or whatever in terms of the relationship with Henry and Delilah. Was there any intent to let you. meet her because it seemed like the ending of the game to me seemed empty without having a resolution with my relationship with her. It seemed like that's all I cared about almost was was her. It wasn't even about my wife so you had to, you felt like you had to see her for the relationship to feel like it had

meaning? Well, I felt like, I felt like, I felt like, I felt like, that, even though you see... Did you ask her to stay? I did. Okay. And you were super, super bummed when she wasn't there, and when we didn't have her in the... You can... Oh, well, my expectation, I'm sorry, my expectation was that she was, like, my expectation was that she, regardless of the decision made, was that she was going to, the payoff was somehow going to be, like, because of the emptiness of the world, even though you see the two girls at the lake, you see the helicopter pilot or whatever and all that you're like, you don't really see anyone. So I was expecting that like there was going to be

something about her at the end. I mean, was there a consideration that, that to some people, that might have been the huge payoff because actually everything else in the game to me was totally ancillary and not important. You know, like. So I felt, what I, it was really hard. Because when I knew the constraint wasn't, I mean, it would have been hard to do for sure, but the constraint wasn't there because our animator James Benson is amazing.

He was the only animator on Ori in the Blind Forest. So this guy is a boss, you know? So I knew that like if we needed to go that route, we just had to schedule around it. And we were going to cut other stuff and she was going to be in the game. And then I remember making Jake and Chris Rimo

like consider it. I remember. we're going to be like, let's think about this. And then every single time we were doing it, it was, we were doing it for the reason you're describing. It's like, well, people are going to want to see her. And I went, yeah, but then what does she say? And like, why is she still there?

What does she have to offer, Henry? And like the chair slowly turns around and Delilah goes, it was I. Delilah the whole time. Like, yeah, I know. At that point, it's... At that point, that's like, Delilah turns around

and she has to just be the old smoking lady from Team Fortress. Yeah, or something. Well, the thing is, I mean, she can probably be other things. No, no. She's just the administrator.

Yeah. But, no, it's like, it's... So the scene where she leaves where she, like, okay, I'll stay. I was writing that,

and I went like, there's no fucking way she stays. Like, This woman has been out here for 15 years because she is not the person who stays. Like, she gets overwhelmed or feels a thing and just disappears. Like,

that is what she, that is who she is. Like, I just spent a thousand pages writing this character and that is definitely who she is. So how can I give her to the player in like physical form? I'm like, is she dead? How would she have died?

that's a weird twist you know I'm like do you see her for a minute and then she walks away and gets on a helicopter without you like then why would the helicopter pilot leave like that's weird that's fucked up you know so you just start

walking your way through the scene you try to feel the moment in every I mean it's such a cop-out answer and you probably if you didn't like the ending you probably don't like this answer so I'm sorry but it just every scene that I wrote or thought about where you would meet her

just felt so dishonest and so like fake. It just felt so fake. Yeah, I think earlier on in the story, like I mean, over the course of developing the story, I would have to rewrite the story from scratch, I guess is what I'm trying to say. Delilah, when it was just when the story existed as like plot beats as like index cards up on a board,

Delilah being in the tower came in and out of the story, in and out as we were figuring out what the heck it means. But as Sean said, the more she became a character as we started writing and as sort of we figured out what was her past life like, is her relationship with Henry, why the hell is she actually out in this job? What is her relationship with like the good wins and how does that affect her? And it just like, it, it, the idea that she would be there for like, it just kind of boiled away over time. And I was kind of

hoping like the disappointment of her not being there would map to what Henry would feel like. Like, all this dude wants is to like feel better. That's like all he fucking wants. He's had such life has sucked for the past 10 years and he just wants to feel better he took the job to feel better he just wants to feel better and he has no tools to do it but then delilah made him feel better and like when she can't make you feel better anymore and it sucks and it's disappointing it's like yeah like that's who this like that's the point you know like yeah well that's what i that's what i was you know like when i when i immediately finished the game last week i remember talking to greg it was late at night i was like we talked a little bit about it but we didn't want to talk too much about it to

spoil the video we were going to do but i was like i left disappointed because Because even though there, like, his, nothing else in my mind was relevant, like, in the way going through the story, like the time, the upsetting, anything, like his wife. Because I was like, I was so fixated by this relationship. But then the more I thought about it and thinking about it now, the, the emotion that the game evokes in me is sadness and disappointment, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Because when I beat Journey, I was hysterically crying. And I didn't even know why. Like, but like, and that's not a positive. That's not a positive thing.

So, like, when I guess what I'm wondering is like, and I'm not saying that necessarily in a negative way where it's like, not every game needs to uplift or give you what you want. And maybe it was like my own baggage of my own expectations. I think it's valid though. I mean, I'm not criticizing your reading of the game. Oh, no, no, no. I understand that. What I'm saying is like the, like the whole arc with the boy and the dad or whatever.

I was like, this is fine, but like, really I only care about these two. And so, and I'm wondering actually if that's relevant, if that was actually a relevant thing to other players. Because I feel like when I talk about it a little bit, especially with the five of us, I felt like I was the only one that actually felt that way. You know, so it was like maybe it was my own, it was like my own just read of the game.

Yeah, I mean, that's the thing, right? That's the sort of fun of fiction is that, you know, like it just hits you, you have different needs as a human being. You have a different emotional need every moment about what you're going to pick up on and what you're going to leave behind because, like, you have to function that way.

Otherwise you just explode. and it's peculiar. I think it's interesting to watch people's responses to Firewatch because it, I mean, okay, I'm going to say a thing that is dumb. Firewatch is a video game. But because,

and because of that, you have a different relationship than you do with a film that you watch or a book that you read. But like obviously from the very beginning of Firewatch, our goal was... Are you stealing from the prize pack of Collin of God Live?

We have plenty of few spears. It's shirts and hats. I didn't mean to interrupt it. I just realized it's so cold in here. It's really not cold in here. We, you know, from the beginning where with the text-based intro that's in the second person saying, you do this, you feel that, you react to this way. We're trying very much to have this very specific character of Henry and then having you

who are obviously not Henry and in most cases I imagine have not a lot of direct things in common, but try to get you as the player and Henry sort of enmeshed and in the same emotional space and as the relationship builds, we want you to feel like you have investment in that. And as the weird mystery builds for you to sort of fall into this paranoia hole, the same way that Henry does where you're like, what is happening, I don't know what's going on.

Who's you talking to you on the room? And I think what I am seeing that is interesting to me is watching, I think some of people's disappointment or feeling of sadness or frustration or whatever, people who don't have a universally positive response to the ending, is that that in meshing happens. and then when Henry gets fucking bummed that Delilah's not there

it actually breaks for some people and it's been fascinating to just to watch that response and to watch people come to grips with like why am I feeling the thing that I'm feeling and I don't know how to relate or how to say that that is a how successful or unsuccessful

we were or the game was or how valid or invalid people's responses are or whatever but it's been really just actually fascinating to me to watch the way that people are going through that experience. Yeah. No, Adam Mott over on kind of funny.com

slash forums posted on the thing. He said, some people are upset with the abrupt nature of the ending. Personally, I found it gave some sort of open weightfulness. That greatly added to my enjoyment. Due to this, I was able to make my own assumptions regarding what happens when the game ends. Instead of making a quote unquote canonical ending, you have allowed every player to come up with their own personal conclusions

based on the Henry you made. And that's what I kept talking about in our review, right? It's the fact that I feel like, first off, It's crazy that we all wanted to play this game. We all did and then we could all sit down and talk about it, let alone the fact that we all came away with something different. And like, you know, because when we do all play Metal Gear or whatever, right?

And like, sure, we're talking about mechanics, this, that, and the other. But we don't sit there and have a 40-minute conversation where it's like, no, you don't understand. That's not true. Usually it's 40 minutes of me asking you what the hell happened in America. Well, here's what's going on. I'm like, don't run in and shoot everything. Sneak in.

You're like, that's not how I do it. No, it's not how. She breath through her skin. You feel ashamed. It makes sense. You feel ashamed. But no, here it was, you know, the fact of like, my Henry, right? This ownership over it, right?

Of like, well, you know, Colin was hung up and I was like, but for my Henry, like, Delilah wasn't the real thing. You know what I mean? Like, I kept going back to the fact of like there's that scene right. I don't know, I forget what day it is now. But, you know, you come to at the desk or whatever and the wedding ring's on the table. And like, I stood up and I was like, nope. And I picked up the wedding ring and I put it on, right?

Like, that's still who I am. Man, the first, the, that wedding ring showed up like in the last few months. But the first thing that I, like, it was an. I think that we'd wanted in the game for a lot than when it finally shut up. My first play-through for it, I picked it up, opened the desk drawer, threw it in and closed the desk drawer,

and I was surprised that that actually, one, I was surprised that that worked and really happy as the person making the game. But two, I was also just like, oh my God, I just picked up my wedding ring and threw it in the desk drawer then got up and walked away. Yeah, it was, yeah.

But you put on the wedding ring, though. Those are the things that we discovered. He was still with Jules in that respect. That's nice. An accidental detail that did not happen on purpose, But when the animation, when you get up into the helicopter and Henry grabs it, he looks down at his hand, it means that we always show the wedding ring right at the end of the game. Not on purpose. But don't tell me that.

That's genius. Oh, whatever. Spoiler cast. Deliberate. It was part of the original vision of Firewatch is you will see a man's hand and his wedding ring will be on it or off. That's how you pitched it. Yeah, that was it. Maybe it's in a forest preserve, but I have this scene in my hand.

He might be inside the Hunger Games. Who's to say? That's some of my favorite stuff that we discovered about the game, though. like there's a bunch of stuff we put into the game that we was just sort of like well we have to do this because we said decided we were gonna and then there's stuff that we discovered like that where oh like it's so production light to just take the wedding ring off of henry and put it on the table and turn it into a pickup and just let people use all the systems we have to let let people like do stuff and someone I kind of want to do more of that someone definitely on our team carried the wedding ring all the way down to the bottom of the cave through it at brian good when instead we're married now. You should consider that person's some psychiatric. That's the canonical Firewatch play through by the way. And then

take a picture. Don't even get me started on the photos. That was the weirdest fucking thing of like oh right, vista, vista, vista, and then it was like oh shit, they're trying to pin me this murder on me. I'm going to capture everything. Dead body evidence in this room. Nobody's fucking getting me. Poor film played backward. Let me ask you guys this. Did you have a sense

that the ending might be slightly polarizing? for people because you're sort of not I knew I like it. You're writing a tragedy basically. Yeah. Is it though? I mean, I don't know. Like what does Henry Go do now? I mean, that's the problem though. Like you've written and that was that was a thing that I, that was one of the reasons why I liked the game so much was because it left me with that emotional impact of like, fuck, like everything's in life necessarily isn't going to be okay. Like I know it's going to deal with this.

And that was why. Everyone you love is going to die. Yeah. Yeah. I think you could also argue that there are like, I mean, I'm sorry. I think you can argue that Henry going out and having that experience might have given him a relative sense of the actual level of shit that exists out in the world and he can go home and maybe have a better relative sense of what his life is. Maybe. I mean, maybe not. I'm not saying that's what's the case.

If you're willing to entertain that as a question, like you buy the game, you play it, and you get to the end, and then you go like, what would I do next? And that lets you, then you sort of entertain the ideas of like, well, if I was in this situation or, if I just was. I would want to go home so bad to the life that I had before I found a dead child in a cave.

So you're going home to the point of us. I'm really happy about that. I love that. I love walking out of a movie. There's something that I know and understand back home if that was the subject of it. See that my thing was like I left

profoundly sad, right? Because I put the wedding ring on because that's still who I am and this a lot of things are flashing the pan. But even at the end when she's like when I told her to wait and she didn't wait and I'm like, I'm angry. And then she explains.

I'm like, I understand. And she's like, you know, what happens next? whatever, I was like, I'm not going, I'm not going to Australia. You know what I mean? I'm staying here. I'm going to try to live my life. You should come visit kind of thing. And it's just like that, like, I'm just, you know, doing the, I play these games.

I try to be the knee-jerk reaction, but it's like I'm still connected to her, but to me, my wife is still dead and I'm still trying to overcome that. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. This isn't aside. It sucks to like, I guess, give ourselves. I don't know. I don't mean to be self-congratulatory, but the read between, uh, rich and sissy.

I think they're going to be self-congratiatory, but then instead, congratulate the voice actors. Right, we'll congratulate them. But like to the game itself. Who wrote those fucking words? Am I right? Unclear. The read when she said, he says, maybe you could come to Boulder.

Like the amount of honesty that is in their performances, I was like the happiest person on earth. Because it was just the words were simple. Like I just wrote the most simple sentences I could think of. And they communicated everything about. what was going to happen next in their relationship with their tone. She's like, yeah, maybe. And you hear Henry, and you hear Henry just be like, yeah. And he says it just that like kind of cut off like back of the throat.

Yeah. And I'm just like, fuck. I was just like so. Like it's so like amazed by their skills as actors in that moment. I remember being like, all right. Well, I like that. Jumping from the end of the game to the beginning of the game, I want to compliment you on that.

We touched on it. Yeah. The, your prologue or whatever you want to call. your intro, right? Because I didn't see that coming. And then I thought it was so pretty. We didn't tell anyone about that really deliberately. We kept showing people day one and sort of everyone kept calling at the beginning of the game.

And we were very happy that no one knew that was in there. Nick DeMarco over on kindoffoney.com slash forum says, I really like the game's beginning, exclamation point. Yeah. It was emotional and gave the game a strong start. What made you guys decide to make it primarily? First, Nick, I like how you talk when you write letters. He's very, he's very enthusiastic about your game.

Yeah. what made us what was it the end before we yeah what made you want to make the beginning primarily text based oh um

I made it at the very like in October of like or September of 2013 like when we were just kicking around ideas to communicate to people

yeah it was before Christmas because we started in 2014 oh yeah yeah so it was and it was to communicate to like Jane and Jake just everyone just the team

Who is Henry? And it was basically that, except it was, you know... You were just really into... Like, you had just kind of gotten into Twine and you really ended like prototyping stuff in Twine. And then we said, well, maybe we'll... We got it. At the end of it, you finish it and go like,

okay, I know how to begin now. I know how the game starts. I know how to talk to Delilah. Yeah, that was actually the first rev of that, that opening Twine prototype was sort of actually the thing that I think really helped set the trajectory of the tone of the game. Before that it was kind of abstract mechanics,

setting. We knew there was a lookout tower. We knew your guy named... Henry and teens and there were some teens some rowdy teens raughty and teens um but that really that really helped the team sort of get centered around that and then I think what if we just opened the game with that actually that came up a little bit later yeah a bit later because you were trying to solve the problem okay we all know this stuff and when we're building the game and we're writing the story and actually like

laying out the levels and the dialogue we have the knowledge of having played this this this silly text adventure. How do we give that to the player? How do we package up that little knowledge thing? How do we let you establish a relationship with Delilah without it feeling like whenever you start getting flirty, we're like going, oh, gotcha, but you're playing as a married guy and you didn't know it because suddenly he says, my wife.

And you're like, fuck, I didn't know I was playing as a guy. Or had a wife? His hand comes up with the wedding ring and you're like, I'm a dirt bag. Yeah. Yeah, so we really wanted players to feel like they had knowledge and a little bit of ownership over who Henry was before they even go into the lookout tower so that when they talk to Delilah for the first time, they're like, what would this guy do? And what would I do as this guy or how can I help him out or however the hell, an individual player has a relationship with Henry? We wanted them to feel like from the moment they opened the door to the tower, they knew who they were and why the heck they were there. instead of trying to play that stuff off as like weird reveal backstory stuff.

For me it was, I mean, it's what you're doing. It's not only established Henry as a baseline established my Henry. You know what I mean? Also, it ended up being a cool kind of narrative character creator, which was really cool. Exactly. And I loved the point where there were, you know, there are no choices where I just have to select whatever's on screen, right? Like outcomes.

Exactly. This is like this happens. This is his life. But then, yeah, getting to make the different things. Because I always talk about it, you know, my Henry, I imagine being a hairy crane kind guy from Madman, right? Of like, upstanding dude, right? Trying to make the right

called and da-da-da-da. He's just, got this bad hand. But then I'm- Harry Crane kind of turns into a dick. I know, but I'm talking about early Harry Crane. Yeah,

it's a good Harry Crane. But I'm talking to like, trying to play with this really letcherous, but ultra-powerful sleaze. I know. I know you mean. Yeah, that's right.

Early, early crane. Probably a lot of, worth a lot of money. Nothing happened back there. Nothing. Nothing. But when I'm talking to,

I think I was talking to Mitch or maybe even one of the guys here right about how they made different choices right and how it's like Jesus, Colin. He fixed it. That was the sound of everything getting better. About how if you go this other way, right, and you, because like, you know, are you going to put her in a home or are you going to take care of her? I put her at home, right?

I'm trying to make the responsible choices no matter how hard they are on me, right? And then I'm talking to somebody, well, you know, if you, you know, keep her at home, it goes to hell, you sneak out, you get a DUI, and I'm like, I can see that, that, you know, other side of the coin of Henry. Because, like, meeting him when he's drunk in the bar, I feel. feel like that could have gone two ways, right? Of like, does he have an alcohol problem? I mean, my Henry's always this blue collar worker, right?

He doesn't have a career. He has jobs he takes on. But he's a good guy. He's trying to make everything go. I think, I mean, that was important to, like, illustrate just in terms of the booze thing. Like, you know, you can, like, self-medicate without being, like, an addict. And I think that was something that was really important to, like, show in the game. Or to show in the character.

It's just, like, who he was to me. like if you don't in my he was blue collar he grew up in you know middle america he grew up in colorado um i guess technically i had a backstory he wasn't quite from colorado but you know small towns um and when like you don't end in an era like the set he you know the game takes place in 89 so he's like there in the 70s and early 80s and he just doesn't have like you don't have tools to like deal with your emotional shit and a lot of people don't like a lot of people it's like I had a fucking hard day and so I tied one on on a Thursday sure maybe I shouldn't have done that but like I felt better when I did it and I think that's just all part of like like the exploration of like the

game is about a lot of that stuff um and that's mostly just because I was thinking about it you know like just the stuff that was like floating around in my head at least at the time but I wanted to be really clear that like Henry isn't an alcoholic but that doesn't mean you don't like but he's a quiet when he kind of bottoms out there it's it's part of the picture though yeah yeah you know like he gets his DUI but like and I know people who are not alcoholics of DUI yes they're fucking dumbies are just like made a mistake you know and I just wanted to make be really clear about that I think I'm happy where it landed but yeah Troy writes into the question hi Troy Baker no maybe you know what I'll text them after and find out first

I just want to say I truly enjoyed this game. Great job to you and your team. Thank you, Troy. Throughout playing the game, you keep finding books. I kept trying to figure out if the book titles meant something. So, do the books you find during the game have any meaning or relation to the story? Thank you for a great story. And I look forward to the next title.

I'll say, Campo Santo releases. First answer, no. But second answer, sort of. I loved when I found the gone home book. And I was like, all right, this is happening of the gone home universe. I'm such a fucking loser. I love this. You're secretly being co-exerced.

published by Steve Gainer. False. I mean, a ton of the books out there, there's a couple exceptions, but a lot of them are really deliberately sort of pop boilery, page Turner, thriller, mystery type stories, which I think is partly because that's the genre of especially the middle of the game, but also because I think that's the kind of books that people bring out into the middle

of nowhere. You just bring a bunch of cheesy paperbacks. Sure. The reason there are 10 crime novels with people, pun names and negative space weird illustrations. It's because Ollie Moss works on our game and he kept drawing them. He would write a pun title and draw

he would create a pun title. He was like, I wanted to do a series of 10 books by this author Richard Sturgeon. Oh he's like by Dick Sturgeon and Chris was like Absolutely no, Chris pitched Dick Sturgeon and I shut it down. Oh, you're the one of each guy. That is too much. Dick Sturgeon is too far. Richard. Richard Sturgeon, okay?

Fine. So he would write, he would draw one and come up with a name for it. and then I would sit down and go, well, what is the story of this novel? And then I had to like basically write this author, like Richard Sturgeon's career arc.

Over those 10 crime books? Over 10 crime books. He like is at the top of his game. And then he's sort of got like the, the Tom, he's got like the clear and present danger one that like ends up being a movie. And then he just sort of like

finally wraps up his life's work and stops writing novels. And that was just world building. That stuff's just like world building. But there's no like, there's no clues to the mystery. If you put all 10 books on your bookshelf, which is almost possible, it is very hard,

a secret door unlocks. No, it doesn't. No, nothing happens. It wouldn't be fucking cool if it did. Yeah, it'd be fucking awesome. The tower sinks into the mountain. Yeah. Into NORAD.

Yeah. Was there ever a moment where you played around with something that was a little less grounded in reality for the A story? Did you ever think like lost smoke monster at some point? That's a good question. I feel like we had to have done it.

If there was, it was, like a day talking with Ollie way early on before anything happened, but I don't know if we got super far to it. I mean, I'm sure there was like, oh, guys, I think we have to have a crazy twist and then it's going, eh, and dick it around and then going, no, no. Because I feel like that's, like that was sort of

set up a little bit with the research camp and all that stuff. You walk in, you're like, what the fuck is happening? I mean, I'm not opposed to that. You know, I think it so if Firewatch was going to be like a series, like if it was going to be a Firewatch 2, I think. Where is this going to go, what is this?

It's time to go back. You know what I mean? There was way more to that research site. Something fucking crazy could have happened. Yeah. You know. But like it would have had to have been three games. Because like we get to the third hour of the game and we're like, well, we know we have

enough money to make another half of a firewatch. So like the bonkers thing can't be something that can't be wrapped up in an hour. I think, but that's not the reason we were deciding that or anything. No, but I think a firewatch. was a movie, we'd probably have a little bit less of it in there, but a Firewatch was a TV series and you'd have to expand it out so that Henry was like spying on Dr. Simmons University researcher for three days out in the woods when he grows a huge beard or something. I would love that.

Oh, God. We have to just pat that shit out. Yeah. It's probably better that you don't have the show there. Yeah, yeah. I don't know. How many more clipboards can I find that stuff on them? I know we had talked a little bit about, yeah, there is a study of like this is a

a psychological test what would that be like early you know that was like two years ago we're like maybe it is a game where you actually are oh yeah we had we had like a talk about like I know at one point Ollie did like different versions of the firewatch badge that had different images inside them and it was like

a little more of a lost type of thing where like the burned out look at tower that you find like was this the previous version of my weird psychological study but like I mean that was just like it got floated to about that level and then just fell back below the surface of ideas again and it just kind of felt outrageous

It was like, okay. And you know what? Like the characters are believable. Like the characters aren't, not that the characters in Lost aren't believable, but their genre characters. Chargers and Lost are not believable. You know what I mean, though?

Like, there's genre. I'm the best surgeon ever. Exactly. I'm an amazing, I don't know. I'm on this. I'm like, I watched the shit out of Lost. So I'm not going to say. I watched a looking felon on Earth.

I mean, that was that that was a problem with Lost, right? Is that Lost went off the rails. It had it had it was too long It went too many seasons and They had to keep that supernatural element going and eventually you're just like what the fuck is happening I think lost actual problem is that they liked all of their own characters too much So they had to instead of turning them bad they had to invent like god tier of bad guys and that made me really The others said

Yeah I liked that other stuff but then there was like a force of evil who was like a transdimensional deity that shot like lost spoilers Don't pull the plug out of the well of lights. What the fuck is happening? It felt like they did that because they just couldn't make the actual character of Locke a bad guy. But whatever. They should have just started Game of Thrones and just killing everyone right around season three. One fundamental question I have about the game. About Lost.

Topic three, lost. Let's talk about Paulo and what's her face. Oh man. Pablo Lise. But why Wyoming and why 1980s? Because that was the one thing that, like the, the, one, like the, Wyoming city is awesome. I mean, the middle of the country is great. A lot of great beauty and natural, natural beauty.

The Wyoming answer is really easy, right? Yeah, like, I grew up there. Nels grew up there. I was like, yeah, let's just start there. Yeah, I mean, I think the reason that the lookout tower is, I mean, I'm going to just talk for you. But I think the reason that a fire lookout tower out in the middle of Wyoming was a compelling image is because you hiked out in the middle of Wyoming with your dad and saw them as a kid. Like, that's right. You know, yeah.

I saw one. Yeah. there's one like up where the Beartooth Mountains it's like God I can just barely like see it in my brain I don't even know if it's active but it's just like a big tower on a hill and I'm ever being like those are a thing that's really cool I want to go in there I'm not allowed like the cheesiest dumb version of it for me like I grew up in a small town with a river and it has a drawbridge

and it has a house attached but you just look at it and go that is a weird structure and a guy lives in there and his job is to do that and that's way less cool than the uh than the fire lookout tower version but you look at that and you just think someone is spending a good part of a year just sitting up in that weird room. Sure. Yeah. And then in regards to the year, it was, the year, I mean,

there's two things. There's like the reason where we look at a place and we go, what is the most interesting time of that space? And a year after the Yellowstone fires of 88 felt like a really interesting time. So it's like, that's a check box for 89. And then...

Plus you can read into how emotionally distraught Henry is that he's blowing. off Ghostbusters 2 releasing in the summer of 89. Well, that's actually the core conflict inside of Henry. He's like, man, I saw the trailer and I thought that it was about the Titanic shrung up, but it was about a painting. That's what he finds out when he

goes home, that it was about a fucking painting. He's like, who is this Vigo asshole? God! Why life sucks! I thought it was about the Statue of Liberty versus the Titanic. That's what I thought as a kid when I saw it. I remember being so psyched and then I thought it was still kind of cool. I didn't know that Ghostbusters 2. Fuck Ghostbusters 2.

Fuck Ghostbusters 2. was there any consideration of the tech like the technical like the tech yeah yeah it's pretty cell phone he doesn't have a sat phone

like if you're also this job is like mostly done by satellites this game is a webcam right now yeah yeah and our watch is literally

it's a logitech webcam and it's also really nice it's really nice to know it is it makes sense it makes sense this is what this is what being a fire lookout

looks like now just sitting in repose they can't see that guy they know they know what that guy looks like great scene Kevin it's also

really nice to know that Firewatch takes place in an era that when the story ends and they go back home, Henry's not going to get a friend request from Delilah on Facebook. Yeah. That's a good. That was one of the things that was like... Although man, it's interesting to think about what Henry... Henry, who is still alive in 2012, gets a

Facebook friend request from Delilah. He's like 60. He's like 68. He's definitely Facebook. He's your Facebook dad and... Oh man. Where he posts a status update that says Delilah and he's like, I meant to search for her. Delilah, lookout towers. There's your school right there. Oh my gosh.

It's just like his... Her story inspired desktop simulator, but yeah, you're just... Henry, Facebook, Sado. Oh, man. That is funny. That is one of the things I thought about was not necessarily Facebook was just that because of the time and place. They would never necessarily ever find each other again.

Yeah, he didn't have a number. That's why the finality hurt me so much. Yeah, that's part of the impact for me too, is I was like, fuck, wait, this is literally, this is the last time I would talk to you. She's gone. That sucks. Like, I'm never...

You know she's not coming to visit you. she's not that kind of girl unfortunately sucks it was very it was fuck you it was depressing but every two and a half years somebody completes a video game

and then says fuck you to my face and uh that's kind of the career arc I've been on so I apologize to the FU it's no no it's fine it's fine my inbox is full of them

so don't worry there's more than I would like yes I have two questions around up this segment one for me one from a fan Mine is going to be based on the 28 hours you've had, and we're doing reviews on its own thing a little bit about it. But are you looking at any of the commentary and going like,

damn, I wish I had done this differently. I wish I had done that. Because for me, I finished my first playthrough and I was like, that was powerful and I'm depressed. I was like, wait, so Ned made that tower and that came. And then I had to talk to Mitch, and he's like, no, no, my third playthrough, I found a deer. And I was like, oh.

There is actually, there is one thing that I do kind of wish that people, that we have been a little more clear on. I'm also like to step back before I say this, I'm really, I am super pleased with the game that we shipped, but I do wish that a few more people would have inside of the game itself a clearer understanding, specifically of Ned Goodwin's relationship to the university research site, because that is, I think, the number one, like plot, stupid plot sticking point. And there are answers inside of the game that do untangle all those things, but I think people go to the university research site, they see the clipboard and then they find net and they're like,

why is this guy up in this stupid guy's a little mud hut? If he has that tent full of state of the art research equipment. And the answer is just he'd been pilfering supplies from there. And then he went and planted that evidence just basically to completely get you and Delilah off of flashlight cave guy, cave, weird, anything related to anything else. And it was a fixation play, I think that then didn't quite work out. Yeah. And there is, I mean, just straight up, spoiler, whatever. But we've been spoiled.

Yeah, you can see like in the, in his hideout, you can find like the, he's got some notes that he left for himself about what to do with the research site. He's got sort of like his layout and like how he breaks in and how he gets out. And then you can also hike up a totally different way in the later days and find a dead elk that's wearing the same tracking collar that you found at the research site. And Henry's like, maybe that is an actual research site. It's got a serial number on it that matches up to the clipboard of tracked subjects in the research side. And you can talk to a lot about just, oh, maybe those guys were actually just doing exactly what they said they were going to do. And then they just sort of go, and then Henry's like, maybe they could have been doing it. And then it's just like, missing that conversation.

But also, like when you write that, when you write at these like an, like a mystery where there's like, like, to complete the game, you can do a very minimal number of things. You sort of like walk this line of being of like, you don't want to just like force it. You don't want to force it. You don't have the parlor room. Like, let me explain everything to you. So you walk this line. And I think we weren't awful at it, but we got better at it over time.

And I think, yeah, if I was going to like try to remake decisions, I would just have the skills that I have now about where to like air on the side of. Honestly, from a level design standpoint, I've thought about this a little. I haven't actually talked to anyone about this very much. But I did a lot of the world layout in Firewatch, like the gray boxing. And a thing that we did, especially earlier on, but then you know you sort of carve in these paths and they're what the world becomes is there's often one or one and a half ways that you can get to someplace early game and then there's little pockets of hidden stuff off to the sides and I think if I was doing this from scratch if we were like for some bad reason making a firewatch too literally I think that the way that I would probably built the world is there whenever you're sitting out to someplace I would try to put players on a path that would lead them to a really clear sorry to a really clear fork you act like you knew how to pod.

I was getting all relaxed. I would try to lead players to a really clear fork in the road and have it be clear to them that either way will take them to where they're trying to go and then just put different stuff on those two different trails. So like someone who walks this way, they're always going to find that elk. This person's always going to find the burned out lookout tower.

But no, you can't go to the place and see both unless you deliberately backtrack and try to be a completionist. And I think, you know, that was a big takeaway that I learned, but we had to, we learned it by just making the world. That's how it works. Yeah. And also that's why. a lot harder because you've got to build two

paths. You're just a few people. We could have done it. So what you're saying is Firewatch 2 is going to be like an 80s action film. Exactly right. Firewatch 2 starts immediately where Firewatch 1 leaves off,

but the other guy in the helicopter just hands you a machine gun. Yes. It's like Metal Gear. The mini gun comes over the side. He's like, kill him all. Dude, we joked so many times about how Firewatch was going to have the end of predator,

and it secretly does have the end of predator. It does have the end of the predator. What just happened to me? I went through the craziest experience in my life and then a helicopter comes and picks you up and you're like, I don't know what to make of anything by, cut to black. But I do think, yeah, Predator. It's funny.

Yeah. Our number one film of inspiration you asked earlier, Predator. Final question for this topic. Weird thing out in the woods. Comes from GameOn Parker over at kindofuny.com slash forums. He says, I'm very into Firewatch and looking forward to playing it. However.

Yes. Don't listen to this. However. You're not hearing the answer to this. I wish there were more trophies for the game, including the platinum trophy. Oh, man. It's the kind of funny question. Why is the trophy list so short and what exactly led to the game not having more trophies?

Amon Parker hits the nail in the head. Your trophy list sucks, dick. Damn. Here's a fun fact. Let's talk PlayStation trophy format and certification requirements. Let's do it. This is my favorite topic. We are officially categorized as a small game by Sony, which means no plat.

Sure. Done. 20 bucks, six hour, four six hour game? Not going to have one unless we begged and we did not. So you're telling me the people who ported Taco Master iOS begged for a plat. I'm gonna tell you fucking Taco Master has a platinum trophy. You know what? I bet that they did. I bet that they did because you know what? Why do you care about Taco Master?

Because it's a platinum trophy. Why do you care about Firewatch? Probably not because it's a platinum trophy. Because you all fucking played it, we didn't have a platinum. Oh, no, seriously, if you want to have a platinum trophy on the PlayStation, you have to have a ton of other trophies at different tiers. We just stacked all the points into the chapter stops because we're all, we're still in a small and so much. We're still in a spoiler zone, right? What we did not want was someone who carried a weird object that had a trophy tie-in down the cave because that would be funny or interesting.

No. And on their first place, they find Brad Goodwin's corpse, and then they get a fucking trophy toast, and then they get two other ones because of just weird cats. Like, we, we, toast is Xbox-Lang. Oh, it's not, you get toasted on achievements. I forget what a trophy's called. A pop, a ping.

A trophy ping. Yeah. Here's a question for you. You are like, I'm with you. I mean, I'm joking around about it. I figured when I'm playing, you said in a tweet, what conversation with me and another fan, like it'll make sense when you play.

the game and that totally was the thing of like when I found the boombox I didn't want to carry it around all that. We would back and forth on that so much too about just like it was like. Of course you did. Really, really, really, really contentious. I'm happy with where it landed, but I also know what some people care about now. You know, so maybe we can make it. We can make all of us happy next time somehow.

Yeah, I think probably. I have to think about it. I got to change something just general achievement stock because you've been when everyone's like, Can't wait to hear what Greg thinks about this. And it's like, okay, he knows what's up with achievements. So on Xbox, you know that when an achievement pop-up happens, it's called a toast? I didn't know that. Shit.

Okay, because we're trying to figure out, is it called a toast because it's like a cheers to you? I would think so. Or is it called a toast because a thing pops up like toast coming out of a toaster. Because I think that on operating systems, the stupid shit that comes up from the corner of your task bar, I think Microsoft might call those toasts too. Bad time. But it might be because the guy comes up and says Toasty. And he didn't, the original toast.

Yeah, the original achievement. know. The original achievement is that. We can get you the answer. Yeah, I'm curious. Before you leave today, we'll get you the answer. Sadly, these people are high enough on the Microsoft food chain. We shouldn't call them live on this show. Do not call someone live to ask what's the meaning of toast. It's here to actually do it whatever today. All of that would have been nice to get a broad strobeer for picking up all those goddamn beer cans. Because I did. I picked them all up. I did too. There was some

anal retent that part of my brand is like, I have to clean the forest. I can't leave these these irresponsible kids. That was not in the game until we did our first round of big playtesting and people are like, I'm a forest ranger, why am I, why I should be able to clean up all these cans? And then we're like, what do we do with these cans? And then we're like, maybe they show up in your garbage can on the next day. Maybe they just get erased. You make a necklace.

Maybe when you look down, there's a physics on a lab or alarm system. That's what I'm thinking too. You can talk to Delilah when the power goes out by like stringing the cans between your fucking towers. It's time to move on to the third topic. That also means it's time to say goodbye to Sean Van. I know. I have to go. I could only afford to pay them for two topics. Thank you for coming. Dude, I love it here, man.

I never want to leave. This sucks. You should come back more. I feel really conflicted about having to get up right now. Oh, yeah, he's going to have to get up. It's like getting off the... When I get up, I'm going to go use the bathroom. Okay, we're just going to take a quick break, and we'll come back with topic three.

All right, topic number three. Where's Sean? No, how much we hate Sean Van. No, no, no. What I want to talk about is reviews. It's one of those where Colin and I wrote reviews. video reviews forever. Nick edited video reviews, made video reviews happen. You review things now here with, like Firewatch. I do. And now your game, Firewatch, came out. This week.

What is this? I don't know what it's like to be on the other side of waiting for, like you so you knew the review embargo was Monday, I assume. Yeah, because we told people when it was. Exactly. Yeah, you're a small team. It's easier for you to set those up. Yeah. And so then what? Do you just sit there? Like, are you wanting to read all of them? Are you to read none of them? How are you going to handle it? Is everybody together? Are you alone? Well, well, I mean, I actually don't know what a lot of other teams do because we picked our whole press schedule because like we said way earlier where there's not a lot of us. Sure. So we decided to give people review copies a week in advance and we knew that this game wasn't very long.

And that seemed like a long time. But I don't know what a long time is for someone to review a game. But who it was a long time for was us. Sure. Because we had a game sitting out in the middle of nowhere that people. were playing and then man Twitter exists and if you're a game developer you follow games journalists and then they post like cheeky stuff I'm playing redacted and da da da da da da da that's like I know what you're playing because I just gave you the code and you wrote back saying thanks um but

I don't know I'm a person who reads most every review I'm I also the same way that I read as many forum threads about a game as I can find and I know that there are a lot of people for whom that is absolutely not what they can do because it makes them go crazy to read people write about their own game, but I was never really a games writer, although I like, I freelance covered E3 for one site one time, but a lot of my friends are games writers, and I also just, the reason that I have a job in games is because I was obsessed with reading whatever, IGN64 and like, and Shack News and blues and news and that kind of like I read all that stuff. You're a student in the game.

And I was on game forums all the time and I ran some fan sites and stuff. So like it doesn't seeing what people are saying about the game from the perspective of either critics or fans doesn't, doesn't like freak me out. I really like it. But it's, I think when I start reading that stuff, my brain like slightly switches and rolls back in time to being a person reading them as a participant in that community. Okay. But then there's also the voice in my brain going, why don't they like it? Why do they like it? But, like, it's, I don't know.

I don't know what answer you want. No, you're giving the answer. What are you want me to say? I'll say it. I'll do it. You guys are a small team, and so, and you know, you've been in a big studio, so you know how it works. A lot of big developers, big publishers will mock review their games and pay a lot of money to do that.

Did you guys? Not only big ones. A lot of teams do that. Right. I was going to say, did you guys, because mock reviews do cost money. And if you guys are on a shoestring budget or more of a shoe string budget, you might not have paid for one. So did you guys do that? It wasn't an issue of money.

I just think we didn't want to do it. It's not really like, I actually have never had a mock review written about a game that I've worked on, at least not one that I've seen. Like, for all I know when I was at Telltale, they were doing that and then not telling the team, but I don't think so. You don't think so?

But I also don't know what to do with a mock review because I think, like, you know, everyone talks about playtesting the hell out of your games, and we do too, and you obviously should. But the feedback that you get from a playtester is going to be very different than the feedback that you get from a person who's actually playing your game, which is going to be different than the feedback you get from another game developer who plays it

or to a journalist that you show a preview to. And I've always imagined at least that when you ask someone to write a mock review, you're going to get a different review than if they were writing the real review. And then because just, you know, when you're playtesting a game, not only do you know that you're playing an unreleased game, but very often the developer has asked you for feedback or they're sitting in the room. So you're sitting there and you're thinking to yourself, like we had playtesters say, oh, I was interested in that thing over.

there but I knew that what you guys wanted me to talk about was this and that this was the focus. I was the focus is whatever you want to do. But you, um, so this is me talking myself into a crazy hole, but I've always wondered with mock reviews. If you, if you can assume more or less that someone's mindset is going to be slightly different because they are saying, oh, I was asked to write this mock review, you're going to get a slightly different thing than you would get in a real review. Then you can't assess it the same way you'd assess a real review.

and then I don't know what's the value of it. I don't know what the value of it is or at least you would have to admit that the value is different than a real review. I guess I asked that just because was there an expectation

of what people would like and wouldn't like in your right? For instance the game like didn't run very well on PS4 like you guys knew that that was going to be an issue right? Um, we, we weren't sure how actually honestly I don't know what we

we, with PS4 performance it did not come up as much on the team as it did until right before the game came out. I think we, we honestly did not know how this game would be received. We hoped that, because it was, like, we knew the art. Like, I don't know.

As a person who did not have a whole lot to do with the art of the game, I've always, like, I'm obsessed with it. Like, I'll play the game and just take screenshots and post them and email them out to the team because I just like, okay, that's fine. The acting is fine, whatever. Like, you know. This is all fine, but this rock formation is dope. You just, you just don't know.

And I mean, I sort of had, we hope. that the game would be received well, but we didn't know what specific things people would have wouldn't like. Like, as we talked about earlier, we thought that the ending would potentially, people would have thoughts about it, people would have thoughts about all sorts of things, but you just never know where the sort of consensus is going to fall or where specific reviewers are going to land. And it's been really nice that the reception of this game has been as, it's been as well-received

as it has been. But it's not like we had any idea what the, what the, what they, the actual score would be your metacritic would not at it we didn't know what our metacritic would be yeah so were you or the I what metacritic what you want you want to you hit the medic critic Metacritic is is whatever it's whatever no no sorry that's I don't I don't have well-formed enough thoughts on medic critic to say anything useful about okay critic I just don't like the idea of Metacritic no well medic critic wouldn't exist if people didn't want it to exist there's a market for it right yeah I mean

I'm bummed that there are still large teams that have bonus structures based on Metacritic. Sure. But whatever. I can't be a person who like says bad things about Metacritic but then looks up the rotten tomatoes of every movie I'm going to see. Right. Exactly. Whatever.

But it's, I guess it's just complicated. Is it more, is your distaste? Because this kind of feeds into the review topic. You're saying I have distaste of me. Sir. Well, we have, I mean, when I worked at IG for a long time, we would put review scores on things. And I was actually a huge advocate for getting rid of your review scores for many years.

I think they're useless. They're totally arbitrary based on sliding scales. They're not arbitrary within game spots or IGNs or whatever's scale itself. But a seven at game spot seems to actually be way higher than a 7 at like Eurogamer, which is like a really hard review. And so if these numbers don't sync up properly, then the Metacritic score itself blows up. And that's why I never believed them to begin with. But do you do you have a, do you have a problem with an amalgamation of, opinions being to boil down to that one number

or do would you prefer it to like me? I always want people to just read the text because you can get out of it whatever you want based on how I feel about I don't have to boil it down to this digit. I would like that but I don't think anyone's going to I mean I think no matter what people just scroll down to the end I think and

like I feel like I'm I'm talking about things that I have not thought about in a long time and I feel bad for having an opinion about them because I'm just going to say dumb garbage. You live your life. You're a developer. You're fine. Don't worry. See, look at it's, now you know

how we feel. Because we always talk about why didn't this happen in this game? Why isn't this mechanic there? We don't fucking know. We have opinions though. We got a sack full of opinions, Colin. I mean, I kind of just know the way that I behave and I'm a person who will, like, I will sit down and read game reviews for games that I'm really interested in or for writers that I follow.

But also, if I'm in a position where I'm just thinking about buying a game, I will honestly still just go and read the last two paragraphs of an unscored review and then scroll back up to the top if I thought that there was an interesting conclusion and then read through the entire thing, or, you know, like I'll say, oh, I wonder why they thought that. And or I just won't and I'll just

won't read the review and then I'll feel bad about myself because I know that writers wrote them. You clicked on the page so somebody got paid no matter what. That's bleak. Now who's bleak? Metacritic can exist forever but maybe this industry is bleak. Time you knew that.

It's the next topic. You're listener supported. I know. We're great. We're fine. I have to imagine it's hard that right because you spend roughly, what did you say, 24 months, 25 months on the game?

And you guys are a small team I can't imagine that you were getting in at like 10 o'clock and leaving at 5 o'clock every day, right? We actually had a pretty good production schedule for most of this game. There were some time, like, as we got closer and closer to the end, obviously, the hours and stress go up. But like we tried very hard to live normal lives for the majority of Firewatch. But anyway, that aside, what you were going to say. Well, no, I was going to say, I have to imagine this is the same with any process like that, any film or movie that a whole creative team works on. And specifically, you guys are really like, you know, in a movie, there's always the director of the writer or the producers that are kind of like shepherding the project.

forward and then the big support staff comes on and then they leave but you're still left with that sort of like onus of you put all that time and effort into something and then to have to relinquish the control to a group of people out there who are really only like you know whose job is just to play it and give their opinion on it must be like fucking nerve-racking for you I mean we have people who are critical of the stuff we do when we when we create other stuff outside of the reviews and things we do and those opinions are always you know we always read those opinions and try to sort through like what we can learn from them and I think you guys do too but yeah at the same time there's got to be a party that's like fuck like this is people love this or don't like this or like what

the like it's got to be in a range of just crazy emotions for you i don't actually know because i don't i can't speak for other people but for me i just like i look forward to it because i really want to know what the heck people think and yeah obviously there are things that you can't go back and change or you'll read something and go oh you know whatever but um I just kind of like it. Yeah? I don't know. Yeah?

Why would, you know, I mean, you're making a thing for the purpose, at least, I can't speak for everyone, but I mean, when we were making Firewatch, we were making it so that people could play it. Right. And when people play it, they're going to have an opinion about it. And my hope is that what they have are interesting opinions, whether it's positive or negative, I at least want someone to say something interesting. and like it's totally fascinating like the point of making it is to give it to people

and then in return I get to consume all of their thoughts about it and I mean the ones that the ones that are the least interesting are the ones where people just get mad about the frame rate or the graphics which makes me feel like a butthole because that stuff is super important sure and obviously that's also the stuff that you can fix materially like we can if there's a frame rate hitch we can work on a patch that fixes the frame rate and that is good information to know and it's good for people

who are buying the game to know about but the things that like Tom Chick wrote a review of our game that was not very high score at quarter to three but it was one of the most interesting reviews of Firewatch out there because he just talked like

he used Firewatch to talk about what he thinks games should or shouldn't be or like how Firewatch's success as a video game and what it's trying to do in regards like and what that means about what you should or shouldn't even bite off in a game. And it was really interesting. Or like there was a review up on Eurogamer that was pretty positive, but like had some,

it was a mixed to positive review. And it talked about the way some of the story structure in the game worked. They talked about the way that the map system worked. And it was, it was just, it was really fascinating here. Someone else deconstruct the work that you did. And that's, but see, that's the interesting thing about you guys. And I wonder if it's, you know, in terms of. for you, especially since you're here, you know, giving us your opinions.

If it's, you know, the reviews, good, bad, or otherwise aren't affecting you so much because I feel like you're in this interesting spot where Firewatch, you know, is a video game. This is like when Steve was here talking about, when doing like the gone home cast with me, right? Where I'm like, are you offended by walking similarly? He's like, no, but it's like, it also boils it down in a way that isn't like, I don't know why people feel that way, right? As we expand this definition of games, right? You guys are a storytelling experience. And that was the thing of like, I think it was Tim and I talking about it where he's like,

I was going through and it's a mix of emotions. And then it's also like, he was upset that he couldn't run with his map and compass out and stuff. And then he'd get lost. And I was like, I felt I went on that roller coaster with it where I was like originally like, this is fucking stupid. Why is it like that? And then it came around. I'm like,

but this is how it would be if I really was in the woods? And then is that what they're going for? And then like, how do I go? You know what I mean? Is that like how this all breaks down? And like, yeah, I'm not running around and there's not a white dotted line on this. You know, I'm not like doing some holographic thing. So I see the path I'm supposed to take to get over to the tower.

like that's... You don't know that if you hold X and B a little wisp trail shows you where the next... Slaves just flowering through. It skips a day. Yeah, just a radial feel goes up and it goes and you're just done.

Oh, good game credits. That's what I wanted. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I mean, I feel like that's the thing is like some of the choices. You're making so many different choices in an artistic way, if that makes sense. I think there's games like Call of Duty

that have a story, but we always talk about. Call of Duty is mechanic-based, right? Shooting feels good. How do I use this new weapon? What do I do there? Whereas you guys are like, mechanics are basic and then you want to run off and do this thing with the story. Yeah, I'm not going to let you say that we're making something that's from a more art standpoint

than someone else. It's too late. I don't know. You're more art. I don't know. Kevin put it on the board. Gross. I mean, I don't know if I agree.

I don't know if I agree with that motivation either. But I also don't know. My brand is destroyed. Yeah, it's been a long week for. But you understand what I'm saying, right? I mean, rather than pull it towards gameplay mechanic-wise is more towards story. But like the flip set of that argument is you guys, it was okay for you to do it bad because it meant something, which is, that's... I don't think, no, I wouldn't say the mechanics necessarily are bad though, but there is an emphasis on like, those mechanics are deliberate.

They're like, the map is deliberate. They're like, the map is deliberate. The, they're having to stop and look at where you're at and figure out where you are and orient yourself to the world is, that's a deliberate. Yeah, but that's also in far cry too. That's in like an open world immersed, like, like one of the most hard. core immersive sim games ever. That's why we ripped off the map from and the waiver server. But, you know, but yeah, it's fair.

I mean, we wanted to do stuff. Sure, but that's a different feeling that players are going to give. I mean, the reason, like, for instance. Like, there's a compass constantly there or, like, there is a path being drawn, you know? Not in Far Cry, too. You just have a map in your hand and a compass in your hand. But whatever.

Yeah, that's true. That's why they dumped all that shit for Farcrat 3 and 4 in Primal. Oh, man. What if you killed a bunch of weird animals and turned it into a wallet for your money? It's awesome. Ah, it's dumb. I'll live my sharks game.

It's fine. Oh, yeah. You gotta play the Far Cry. Play the Fars Cry. No, I mean, for the map and the compass being a thing that shows up in first person in Firewatch was because we wanted you to feel like you're a person and you're limited by the ways that a person is limited. That's not to say that a real person couldn't transfer the map into their other hand and use the radio. That, like, was a concession that we had to make.

But it at least came from us trying to, like, the... all the climbing moves and stuff when our animator first did them, man, Henry was fucking sick at climbing rocks and like jumping over logs and stuff. And we're like, okay, take the slowest version of those that you did. And that's going to be the fast one. Now make a really slow fat guy one where he sort of like slumps his butt over it. And that's going to be the slow one. I'm like, you know, but like, it probably feels less fulfilling in the moment to jump over a log than it does when you're, whatever.

Far cry, man. when you're a crisis biosuit. Right. But that's part of the world building I think you're doing. You know what I mean? And like that's the whole thing is I have ownership over Henry throughout that game. Sure. It is a line that we have to walk between like, is that a thing that makes you feel interested in being

that character and makes you feel like that character? Or is it a thing that makes you just go, oh my God, it takes so long to climb over this log. Yeah. And anyway, that's what I think about reviews. No, I don't know. Sorry to get distracted. No, that's how the show is. Don't worry.

Everybody's enjoying this ride. Don't worry so much. Why is so hard on yourself? I don't know. Stop reviewing yourself as you do this. I'm reviewing you. I'm reviewing Colin and Kevin. Kevin's getting like a...

You're at a four right now. Four out of five. Four out of five stars. We're on the star system. 20 points go. Oh, Jesus. It also is really helpful to do a podcast every week with my friends who are also game developers

where we talk about other people's games and our thoughts about them. It makes it easier, I think, when you're doing that every week to then put a game out and have other people talk about it. Sure. is it would be pretty

bad to do that every week and then when someone else reviews your game to freak out? To freak out. Yeah. Was there... Also, hold on one more thing. Sure.

This game, as Sean said, is selling really well and it's been reviewed very well, which makes it very easy to just be like, oh, everything is fine. You know, like, whatever. I was going to ask about that. If I was in here, like, in a barrel, like, I'm ruined.

I don't know. I don't know if I'd have the same answer. They took the house last night. I think that my sentiment would be the same, but I'd probably be a little, it would be, more difficult to be quite as like lack of day.

Sure, sure, sure. As I'm being right now because the game has been really well received by a lot of people, which is great. Did you feel more investment in the reviews this time around than you did with like the Telltale stuff

because Telltale's a bigger team or like there's more episodes like we were talking about earlier? I don't know the answer to that because I haven't quite realized that the game has even shipped. Oh yeah. So I don't know.

You caught us at the time. No, that's why I like this. I like, it's interesting to be with you at 9-0. It was a lot. It was a lot easier to put the divide between the game has shipped

and the game is not shipped when I was working at a studio that had its own PR group and its own support group and its own QA team and stuff. Whereas now it feels like we're still in the process of releasing the game because to customers for whom it isn't working, we are. And, you know, so that's how it goes. Good. But one day, one day I'll come back like, you know. Big beard. With a huge beard. Yeah.

And say, I understand it all now. We'll be here on the Firewatch 2 PR tour. Oh, no. Is that, I mean, do you feel, you've made a couple comments. Whenever, you know, shall I make a jug what Firewatch 2? No, I mean, we've just, we'd never thought about what a Firewatch 2 would be. Sure. You know, I mean, I think you nailed it.

It picks up right where Predator left off. The fucking chain gun comes over. Firewatch 2, Predator. Yeah, no, I mean. We get back into the jungle. We honestly just don't know what the next project is. We have some ideas kicking around, but like the Firewatch 2 has never actually been seriously placed. How far off of the, I mean, like, again, you're so much in the shit right now, right?

Don't know. Q and any stuff? I mean, pre-production, all that jazz just happens eventually. We have to figure it out. Yeah. A lot of kids were asking about that because they're... They also asked about D.L.C., which I thought was funny. I'm like, I don't think Firewatch are going to get DLC.

Doesn't seem like it. The Delilah pack. There are already two collectible hats in Firewatch. We could introduce three. Okay. I don't know about the hats. Oh, they're stupid. It's just, we put them in because it was funny.

What are the hats? You can find a Korean War Veterans hat in the white supply box, like the disused old supply box next to the old burned out lookout tower next to the hawks rest and you can if you use it the putaway is a put on and then there's a first person animation I'm putting on its head on his head and then it shows up on the uh there's a hat peg next to your door it shows up for the rest of the game nice also in the parking lot uh at the very beginning of the game there's a yellow Cody Wyoming hat that you can put on and it shows up on the other peg so you can have up to two collectible hats everybody also you can you can wear them both if you

So what you need to do is find everyone who reviewed the game and ask them if they got the hats. Because if they didn't get it, that review doesn't count. That review doesn't matter. Yep. What, you blown up? I just people text me. I don't know why they want to get a hold of me. Why do you leave your phone out then?

I don't know. What do you think's going to text? That's going to text. No, I don't think she'd text if she's going to. That's the point. That's the point. I'm driving. Twist.

She texts me things that are important, though. Like, hey, can I pick you up some dinner tonight? And I want to jump on that because there's a window. Three minute window. She's at the place. It's 335. My wife's crazy. Colin, anything to say about video game reviews before I move on?

No, I think we've said it all. All right, then I want to let everybody know that this episode is brought to you by Lute Crate. Lute Crate is a monthly subscription box service for Epic Geek and Gamer items and pop culture gear. For less than $20 a month, you get four to eight items that include licensed gear, apparel, collectibles, and more. Make sure you head over to lootcrate.com. Slash KF Games and enter the code KF Games to save $3 on any new subscription. Lute Crate is more than you. just a subscription service. It's an entire community

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That was the most energetic loot crate read I have heard. Jake, I don't fuck around. As someone who has read a loot crate ad before in his life, that was tops. Top shelf Luke crate. Founds it out. Okay. I know it's been a long week for you.

I thank you for giving us time coming over here to talk about Firewatch. I love it. We have one more topic to do, but you're going to jettison because you have to do what now? What do you have to go do? I have to go home and anyone who's written in about a thing that they've had go wrong in the game, I have to respond to them very nicely. That is indie development, which I love. It's good. It's good.

Can you just copy and paste? We're working on it. Not quite. Okay. I mean, when people write it. When people write in about the same things, you can. there's like macro tools that'll say hey thanks send me your save game but whatever

you know the funest weirdest thing in tech support is if someone gets insanely stuck in a way that no one ever has before at least with the way our project is set up they can send us our save game and we can open it up in the editor fly their person to a place where they're no longer like stuck or broken and then just go to the main menu and save the game and then email it back to them that's awesome it's the most magical tech support feeling to have someone think that their game state is totally fucked and then to sit and be like just paste this over and relayed your save and we fixed everything that's gone wrong

that's really nice but that's awesome it sucks me you can't do that sure when you're like you are fucked i stole your money that's not no that's that's that's what you responded i thought dude campos santo stole your money no no money was stolen jake's been a pleasure having you thank you so much of course firewatch game the game dot com firewatch game dot com firewatch game dot com did i ever speaking of stealing the money Yeah. You liked Walking Dead Season 1. I did quite a bit.

You know how when you steal... Do you know about the... I don't know where we're going yet. Kangaroo Jack? Remember the movie Kangaroo Jack? Jerry O'Connell? I don't know. It's Jerry O'Connell.

Yeah, it is Anthony Anderson. You're nailing it. This is the stupidest Walking Dead season one dumb thing. It is my favorite garbage in that game. Sure. The poster for Kangaroo Jack is terrible. It's a kangaroo with sunglasses, like jumping out. And it says,

Kangaroo Jack, he stole the money and he's not giving it back and he's got this bright red hoodie on it, this is Brooklyn. Yeah. So in The Walking Dead season one, when you steal all the stuff from the station wagon... You get that Brooklyn sweatshirt. Yeah, that's Kangaroo Jack cosplay that Clementine is wearing. Fact. He just ruined Season 1 of Walking Dead for me.

I gave her that. She needed to be warm. Yeah, do Google Imitchurch for Kangaroo Jack poster and then do a Google Imish for Walking Dead Clementine sweatshirt. Well, thank you for ruining that for me. Oh, it's great. Jake, everybody. Firewatch.

Final topic. Yes. Game trailers is dead. Rest in peace game trailers. Sad news this week. And, you know, out of the blue, this is the thing. Game trailers closes up shop after 13 years of doing it. And I want to talk about it.

And basically the state of video game media and video game enthusiast press, however you want to do it. Because I hate to say it, but it doesn't surprise me that game trailers went away. It surprised me that it was out of the blue. Nobody saw it coming. I thought it was crazy. that you know it was uh you get four hours of notice before everybody else that's like i think what brandon tweeted about and talked about it on the neogath forum right is the fact that they came into work on monday and found out that day it's over and you know you and then they

told people four hours later or whatever but i think it goes back to the same thing we've talked about before and i know it's an analogy and you know a metaphor i guess i beat the ground all the time is how for the longest time we talked about the spectrum of game development right where there was indies there was this mid-tier t hugh stuff and then there was triple a and then the mid-tier fell out and all we were left with now is Indies and AAA, right? And I think that's what we're seeing happen with games press, games personality, right?

Where there's the independent circuit, that's us, Jim Sterling, these people who branch off, YouTube channels in general, they go off and do their own thing, have their own independent audience, maybe aren't the biggest audience in the world but are able to support the people they love. Then you have mid-tier sites, which is where I would have put game trailers, and then you have your IGNs and game spots, these pillars, right, that I think are going to weather the storm,

but I do see that, I don't think, game trailers definitely have the first.com to fold up from gaming coverage and it's not going to be the last. But I think that's what you're going to continue to see is that we're going to be left with these giant sites and then everybody else. What happened, right, is like game trailers closes up. They do a final Twitch live stream I went and watched in every comment in there is go do a Patreon, keep doing this, I'll support you, da da da, da, da, right?

And it's just similar to us, different circumstance, obviously, but like we come with our own fan, our own fans, our own group behind us that like there are people who want to see Brandon and Kyle and all the guys over there keep doing their own content. but is that, am I wrong, Colin? Is the mid-tier falling away? Is this an example of it? The mid-tier's falling away, but I'm of the mind that no one's safe. And I mean that like on either side of the spectrum.

Like, I just think that because the way you do business on the internet is just, it's just changing. Yeah. You know, Jim Sterling wrote a really thought-provoking piece on Jim Quosition about it. I didn't agree with all of it, but it was an interesting piece about the changing economics and the changing way that content is paid for and the changing way that content creators are treated. And, you know, the situation is not tenable, even for the big guys, but certainly not for the middle and not and certainly not for the smaller guys either, which I think are just going to be crunched even worse, simply because ad blocker is so prevalent. And I'm of the mind that, you know, because ads, especially over the last year or so have been introducing malware onto people's computers and are just totally not managed properly and stuff is, I'm not necessarily supporting it at using ad blocker, but I understand. why people are using it more and more because it really is like fucking with people's computers

and fucking with their operating systems. And it's not so much like just trying to dodge the man or be a douche, douchebag by like, you know, not, you know, sitting through an ad to pay for the free content you're otherwise getting. It's actually becoming destructive to the way people are using the internet. But on the other flip, the flip side of that is that this hurts the way, the traditional way that content is paid for. So you have to find other ways to pay for. There's only so many ways to pay. Like you can either do what giant bomb does, which is like, you know, subscription model with a pretty large group of people compared to our audience and then you have some free content as well but they're definitely user support they're a hybrid of user

support and like kind of what traditional means you can have like the game spots and the Eurogamerers and the IGMs and whatever that that are amalgamation and of traditional ad revenue and pre-roll and 30 second ads before your videos and sponsored content so like that or you can go towards the Jim Sterlings and us and others that do Patreon and our And we also are a hybrid because frankly, you know, to be perfectly transparent, we make a decent amount of money not on Patreon. So it's not like, so it's not like we, Patreon's not, it's not, it's the lion's share of our, our revenue, but it is not even, you just heard me read a loot crate ad, which obviously we get paid for. But like, I like being transparent with the audience. And I think they already know this is, it's certainly not even remotely all of our, all the money we make.

So, because we, it costs money to run this company. It's, we wouldn't really be able to actually do what we do with just the Patreon money. Right. but it's certainly very important. So people just need to figure out a new way to approach the way that they're doing their content and also the way that they're engaging with their readers. And I think set different kinds of expectations, which is why I think the big guys aren't necessarily just safe.

I don't necessarily think it's a matter of like the middle falling away and everyone else is safe. Like I think that ultimately people are retreating to different venues to find people that they really trust in smaller groups of, in smaller communities that resonate with them more. And we have the evidence, the proofs in the pudding. Like there are thousands and thousands of people that will pay us $5 or $10 a month because they can get a review for free from VG 247, but they really would rather hear from us. And so they're like, well, we'll just give you $5 or $10 a month to make sure you guys can do this because it's just a drop in the bucket for me. It's like, you know, $5 or $10 is not a lot of money for most people a month.

And I think that the way we consume content is just changing. So I think that the whole landscape is really radically changed. My whole thing is I think the pillars I'm talking about, your IG and your game spot, maybe one other big.com, which I can't even name what it would be. I think they're there. I don't think they're there in terms of maybe the scale and scope. You know what I mean? I think layoffs will come for those people. I think their staffs will be reduced.

I think they'll do more user generated content. But I still think that it's always going to be, oh, this new games come out. So I'm going to go to the two sites. I always go to see the general review, the mainstream review, right? I will read that and then I will go, awesome. It's a DC game, so I want to know what Greg thinks. It's a, you know, PlayStation shooter. I want to know what I mean?

Like, I think it's going to be not just that we're the only examples, but you know what I mean? Like, you're going to have this mainstream base level review of what it is, but then you want to drill down to who the experts are. And the same reason you come to me for a Batman Superman review, but not what I think of Civil War trailer. Right. Well, I think that we, I think the, you know,

we saw this play out with, you know, Jim, Jim wrote a little bit about this. How much water are you going to drink? This is like your 17th cup of water under. God forbid I'm hydrated, Colin. It's good for your colon. Thank you. I don't have colon problems. Do I, Colin?

No, you don't. Because you never worried about a thing in your life, Greg. That's where my colon problems come from. Listen to the game of Greg. No, I think you worry about your colon problems and that makes you have colon. It's ironic. It's kind of like when I get cold and I got cold. I'm after poop and then I have to poop.

But, uh, wield myself. My, like the situation, maybe you always have to poop? Is that my secret? I'm like Bruce Banner. I apologize. The Jim Sterling wrote about about this a little bit that like what happens. I mean, he didn't write this specifically,

but it's like what happens when the people that you trusted these outlets are transient? Like, sure. Do you know, we saw this play out with PSI Love You where like our podcast became number one before we even put an episode up because people liked what we did with our old show. It's not to say the new show is bad. I mean, a lot of people love it and listen to it.

That's fantastic. I wish them all the best. It's not a competition really. It's just like, it's just to say like when we said we were going to do a show. show like that. It didn't matter where we were. People came to the show. And Jim learned that when he left The Escapist and when he left The Structoid and is thriving. And others are going to learn it. My suspicion with the Game Trailers guys, a few of them anyway. I'm speaking in all candor that

I've never used game trailers. I don't know those guys. I don't use their content. So I'm not speaking from a user standpoint. I'm just speaking from I know these people's names because people talk about how much they love them. That you have to imagine that the bigger names there are going to be just fine. And I assume that that's going to be the case at other big outlets too. Like, you know, there are people working at all of the outlets that I read whatever where I wonder if they understand that they could break off and do it by themselves. And that people would follow them. And it might not be easy. And success might not be guaranteed.

Like we often talk about like the fucking fear and the odjia that I had in the months leading up to us leaving. It was like it was unfucking real. You know what I mean? Like how scary it was. Yet when I see comments, like I said earlier, people being like, man, they, you know, they really fucked up or they don't, you know, like, no, we didn't. Like, we are more financially secure than we used to be. We are happier than we used to be. We are, we have control over what we do.

And we have a small, a much smaller audience that is much more dedicated to what to us and what we do. And I wouldn't trade that for the fucking world. Everything's fine. You know what I mean? Like, and that's, and that's the, everything's great, really when you think about it. And so there's like life after that kind of stuff. But that's, that goes back to what we were talking about with the guys from. Campos Santos, which is like, you know, we would also not be in this position without having

learned from those OGs, from those big outlets or in those, in their guys case, from Telltale, in our case, from IGN, like, we just would not be in this position to have known what the fuck to even do without that experience. And so hopefully, like, new people come into those places, learn what they need to learn, either stay or leave, but use that experience to their benefit when they're gone, because that's what we've done as well. And I think we've made good content and fulfilled a niche need for a smaller audience. And that's fine. Like, I don't, I don't want kind of funny to have millions of viewers. I don't. Like, I don't because like, dude, the second. I do if they're best friends.

The second, well, they're not going to be. And that's the thing is like, and that's, and that's, and that's like when you cross like, when you cross like the paradigm and, and, and, and, and, and things get bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. And then I think you lose control. Like, I don't, I'd not say I don't want the company that grow out or become more lucrative or whatever or be better. Like, of course I do. It's just to say, like, I don't want to replicate like what has already been done. Like, I want it to be different. And, like, we've, we've, we've proven that you do not need a million people. watching content to be to make money, to be profitable, to be happy for people to be happy with the content.

It doesn't matter. It matters like, who are you connecting with and how do they support you and how do you support them and how do you entertain them? And it can literally be 100 people or 1,000 people or 500,000 people, but it does not have to be 10 million people. It is not an economy of scale. Sure, but you're bending it the wrong way. You're bending it to the old model we came from or the thing we came from. You're saying that six million people would change what kind of protocol we put out. We still do the ConnerG Live. We'd still do the shows we want. We'd still the products we believe in to serve the best friends. That's what I'm saying. For me, I'm not saying I want

a million, three million, ten million. I'm saying I want ex best friends. I want everybody who's on board with us being cool, not being a douche, fucking being down-assed motherfuckers with each other. You know what I mean? And I don't care what that is. And I don't think that necessarily if suddenly the number was seven, we wouldn't do the games cast the way we do the games cast. Right. I'm not saying the content would change, but I am saying like look at the, look at the, frankly, people

have talked about this. We can be open about it. Look at the quality of the YouTube comments as we've gotten bigger, you know, like, they've gone down. Like, look at the, like, look at the Facebook groups that I'm on all the time, like, how a lot of people complain like this has gotten too big or whatever. I'm not saying that that's necessarily wrong. All I'm saying is that, like, you don't have to look at scale as an equivalent on the graph to monetization or as an equivalent on the graph to success or security. It just doesn't work like that. You know, like it clearly does not work like that. What do you got, Nick? Yeah, no, I would say that story. I would agree with Colin, but I think there's,

when you say you don't want a million, I do want a million, but I want it to happen the right way. I don't want a million the way IGN has to deal with the 80 million views they get a month or whatever their status. Because their model is based on having to be as broad and as mainstream as humanly possible. That's just what they are. They're a resource site and that's their model. I want us to have a million of people that are basically have been pounded down and have, you know, I want to start with 10 and whittle that down to the million. But like do that the natural organic way, right? Does that make sense at all?

You're saying what I want. And you want a million of the hardest hardcore fucking people who are out there that believe in what we believe in, like what we're making and want to help support that. And I think that's that's to your point what you can do now, right? And that's the guys from game trailers. Like I'm in Collins Belt. Like I'm not really familiar with them other than by all accounts. And this is the most fascinating things. They should be bigger than IGN right now.

They should be a fucking powerhouse. And for some somewhere along the way they got off tracks. They didn't get on YouTube. Right. That was their big thing. They couldn't get on YouTube. And so that's unfortunate, right? And that, and that, because, because I remember when I started at IGN, there was, it was like 2005.

And it was either 2005, 2006. I remember, you know, you knew about game trailers. They were, they were this weird business that was doing really, really well, but they didn't write anything. It was all video. And I was like, all video, that's never going to work. And then it started working really, really well. And then they got off track once YouTube hit and once, and I remember that time when we were having those discussions at IGN of like, should we reposting things to YouTube? Because there's a big audience there, but are we going to cannibalize our own traffic?

Turns out no, not really. Like there's two different audiences, people that like to use the site, people like to use you. But they couldn't, I guess, I guess that's part of the problem that they had was they weren't able to actually use the tools that are out there

and evolve quickly. And that's when, you know, when we always talk about not wanting to go back to the IGN model. It's not so much that I wouldn't want to go back and work with some of the people over there or like in general,

they're great. It's just right now we're a company of six people and we can do, we can't. Are we really? He's counting out in James. Oh, okay. I'm sorry. Well, I count Kevin as two people.

Sorry. He eats like these two. But we have, you know, two people are two years old. We're a very small company. He does have wings all over the side of his shirt. Yes, so it's like an amazing amount of tape on his socks.

Yeah. But, you know, you're nimble and you can evolve. And to your point earlier, like it is really, like, we have the capability of being diversified and how we drive revenue

into our bank account every month, right? The giant bomb, we do utilize that system. We do have, like, Patreon for all intents' purposes, is just a subscription model. People can pay for the content what they want.

And in my opinion, that is the single, like, like, awesomest thing that any content creator has at their disposal at this point, right? The game tellers guys are smart, start a Patreon, form a company, and go after it. And they will be successful because they have that broad, they have that community they've already built. They just may not realize that that community will follow them. It's maybe not brand specific and it's maybe more personality specific that we learned that, too.

We didn't know. We didn't know, like, without IGN, are we going to be anything? And it turns out people really liked you guys. They liked you guys. right and I'm sure there was a part of the audience that was like oh well fucking I'm not gonna follow it anymore because I'm diehard IGN I just this is part of my regiment every day and sucks that Colin and Greg don't write it for the site anymore but to be fair Greg stop writing like

you know seven years ago anyway um and I gross for almost the things you're running away yeah sure it's true um so I you know the dead space two review that's why the funniest joke you've made in a long time um I don't I don't get it either kind of I don't know I don't know what the joke is uh it's a long story all right well we'll talk off air on that. So it sucks.

But the other thing I will say this in the parting the parting sort of sentiment for me because I can't really speak too much to this is just that I remember those days at IGN when we walked in thinking everything was okay and the whole fucking world blew up. I remember the days when people would, we got bought twice when I was there and I saw people, a lot

of people get hired and I saw two gigantic rounds of layoffs where I walked in and like half of my friends suddenly didn't work there anymore. So if you think you're working in a place right now that is secure, you're not. You're not. Sorry, Kevin, you're fired. You are secure, though.

I mean, you're secure, Kevin. Nick's not secure. Because we can vote them out at any moment. That's true. So that's just what I'm saying is like you look and you think that that that that these companies have these, you know, like to your earlier comment of people saying, are you fucked up? You're going to go out there and like, now you got all.

Guess what, though? I could have walked in at any point in someone that I'd never met at the parent company of the company that owns my company's company. Could have been like, uh, you need a. cut you just need to cut 10% across the board and start with the people that make that have been there for a while because they're obviously dead weight and I would have been gone. That would have been it. And someone would have hopefully put up a, you know, a bit of a fight for me.

But at the end of the day, I've never, I've never seen someone like, I mean, you just have to bend to whatever the, the GM, the CEO or the or the, you know, shareholders want. You have to make the numbers make sense. And that's, that's what I'm saying is like, I want kind of funny to grow responsibly like Nick said and slowly, but it's not my whole thing where it's like, share this video with all of your friends and make sure it's like, no, don't, don't share the video with all your friends. Find that like one friend that one dude that wants to say. Yeah. Like that like is, that likes video games and tell him why you care about it and get him on board. I don't want your other friends.

Like that like we don't like, we want an audience that's like engaged and I want everyone in our audience to know like we care about you. Like we, we, we care about each and every person that supports us. We don't, it's not a numbers game to me. So it's not like, you know, know, get everyone to watch the animated series. It's like, no, the animated series doesn't even really make any sense if you don't know anything anything about it's. Like, maybe that's an introduction to someone, one of your friends that likes animation. And then they're interested in like the jokes and they watch the game over Gregi's show.

Like, I want that sort of organic, like you said, slow growth that is responsible and manageable. That way kind of funny grows by one or two people a year. And then we don't have to worry about laying off Kevin because like that's just because we're, we're going to like Kevin's going to get laid off one day. But we don't have to worry about. He's going to get fired. Not laid off. Let me put it the way. I don't worry about it.

I fantasize about the day we get to fire Kevin. I just fan, like I think, how is it going to happen? We're moving into the new studio. We've hired four people. Is it going to be like a balloon drop or it's like all the balloons spell, you're fired Kevin and then hit the ground and like, did you see it? I'll do it again? And there's another balloon drop. But do you understand what I'm saying?

It's not a matter. It's not a matter of scale. It's a matter of, it's a matter of security and like and being true to what we want to do. Like, if we had millions and millions of people watching us, I'll tell you right now, you'll never see him in another trade show ever again. You know, like that like that's like because that's like too overwhelming for me. Sure. Like that's like, that's like no. Like I like, I like these intimate experiences that we have with the audience where there's a few hundred of us and we're just and we're shaking hands and we're having a great time and stuff like that.

And it's not to say like I don't, I wouldn't love for us to have 10 million viewers. But are we really ever going to have 10 million viewers that are as fucking hardcore. Yeah. A few hundred people that, a few hundred thousand people that we have watching us right now. No. And I'd rather. thing is that I think you need to align your expectations with that. I think about saying the same thing. We have 300,000 subs right now. And if you want to boil the time, 168 or whatever, right? Let's say

they're doubling up or whatever. But they don't all come to the show. They don't all leave a comment. You know what I mean? And the other thing to your comment, too, that the YouTube comments are bad. Part of that, you just hit the nail on the head of why. You know where the YouTube comments are really good? PS, I love you, X, OXO, because I spend an hour in there talking to people. We're attentive to those people. We're not on God because it goes up at night. And we're in gamescast because it goes up at 6am. And we have a million fucking things to go. I'm just, since I have to, thanks to SoundCloud,

publish SoundCloud by hand at 9 a.m. I have to be thinking of PSI Love You at that point. So I'm able to be there and curate that. Sure. But I don't want us to lose. And I think I don't know that we're all on the same page on this. I don't know that we're all on the same page on a lot of things, which I think is actually healthy for the company because it lets, it provokes thought.

Otherwise, we have nothing to vote on. Right. And then and then we, we scatter in different directions. but at least we're able to think about the things other people say. Like, I remember it was, a good example is I remember it was intuitive for you to think that like we shouldn't use the forms for questions. Because for like our shows. And I was like, but that's so obvious. And that was like, like, and we were like on two different sides of the spectrum on that.

And that just shows like how we come to like some sort of consensus agreement. I just never want us to lose like our grassroots feel. Like no matter how big and how grand got kind of funny becomes and whether or not we're involved in forever. We sell out or like, you know, I don't mean sell out, but sell our shares, sell out of the company. Go up and be off camera. Yeah, like, and do whatever we want to do and, like, and empower other people to take over for us and whatever might happen. Like, it's always going to be this grassroots feel of working in the extra bedroom with my friends that we all took this bold fucking step together. They're all held hands and jumped off a cliff and had no idea what the fuck was going to happen.

And we all kind of believed in each other and told each other it was going to be fine, but none of us believed it was going to be fine, I don't think, including you. And you're the most positive. You had your last, you had your last minute. You know, is it going to be okay thing? Yeah, it was one question to Tim. And knowing you, knowing that you don't, like, I know that you had fear. And we all did. And there's something special about the four of us doing it together, leaving very secure jobs, making pretty good money, especially in this industry.

And it paying off. Like, that's, like, that's in every way. It paid off in every way. And, like, and that's so spectacular. So, like, you don't want to trifle and fuck with it too much. And that's like my whole, that's like my whole mentality. Yeah. It feels special.

It feels special. No, it feels special because it is special. It's not, it's not, we didn't do this to be like, let's fucking get some marketing people in here. Let's like, let's grow this. Let's buy fucking views on YouTube. Let's like get these fake Twitter followers. It's like it's all real, you know?

And that's so fucking cool. That's why we're on the same page, but we're just in different paragraphs. You're doing the normal calling thing where you're anxious about everything. Whereas I'm saying, yes, everything you're saying is correct. So if we suddenly have a million subs. tomorrow, there are a million good subs. They're not people we bought. They're not from marketing.

They're not this. My whole thing is, I want you to share the video with everyone because the video will net out on its own, who it is. 90% of people are going to jump in and be like, these guys are fucking dumb. Who's this guy that are insulting off camera? Peace. And they're not going to sit there and subscribe, just to talk shit. You know what I mean? Like, that's the way I would do it. Yeah, I think my metaphor, and this is something maybe, neither you guys are really like huge music fans, I guess,

but you can appreciate this. It's like, back in the day, before, not before the internet, but before, well, certainly before the internet, but before people were really sharing music and downloading open apps that was invented at Northeastern University. Before there was all of that,

before all of that happened, there was, you know, you can download MP3s and all that kind of stuff, but people were really sharing their music on CDs and even on cassettes and taping things off the radio. And I remember, you know, someone coming up to me with a record,

like, Corns Follow the Leader or something like that, or, um, 311's Blue album, which is how I got into 311 or whatever. And it wasn't like, you know, you didn't give it to 10 people and be like, well, everyone's got to listen to this album. It's like, no, you'll like it. And then like you hand it over to them. It's like it's like, it's that sort of like organic like grassroots feeling.

It's like how all these big bands like no doubt came up in Orange County or something like that where it's like this thing just circulates very slowly. And before you know it, you have this great foundation that doesn't crumble underneath you because you grew too fast or you grew for artificial reasons. And that's and that's the only thing I'm saying. It's that mix tape mentality. It's that like it's that sharing music or sharing the NES cartridge, the SNAS cartridge. not with everyone on the playground, but with like the two guys that really fucking loved it.

You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, I hear you. And like, so that's like my whole, my whole thing. The other people don't care. And that's fine. I hear you and agree with you,

but I think again, you're negating the internet age. If somebody's following us right now and loves our shit and wants to share it to their 18 followers, I bet their 18 followers love anime and Dead Space just as much. You know what I mean?

Like that's all I'm saying. But to go back to your earlier point, right? Like, is this, is this the new, like, is this the fat or is just the new generation of content creators, right?

Because the original topic was that game trailers is gone. What does it mean for everything? Right. Where is that middle? Right. So we're clearly not like, how do we get bigger while still staying small? I think we get bigger while still saying ourselves by doing this things, making the right choices.

Because that's the problem is like. As long as we're never pandering. You know what I mean? I don't 100% agree. I think the animated series, at least when Nick laid it out for me through the first six episodes, I was like, oh, you could be a normal person and watch this and have no who we are and enjoy it, but you're going to get more out of it if you're a fan, right? As long as we're, we're never going to do the pandering show that has no personality.

Craig and I were talking about this. Craig from Screw Attack was on Colin Agree Live today. We're talking about this, and he brought up game trailers too because he hasn't, I don't got a chance to talk to people about it, right? And it is that thing of like, you know, what is it in its personality, right? It's being yourselves. We're always going to be that. And so as long as we don't ever introduce a product that is devoid of who we are, that isn't you licking Tim's face on the beginning of a love and sex stuff and Colin and I

dicking around. Almost licking his face. No, I heard off camera you did look. I heard you edited the show and cut it right before you full on licked his face. True or false. I looked the entire side of his face. We're always going to make the content we are.

And that's the thing about it and why not to grow too fast and not to explode and not to be garbage eventually is the fact of like we're always going to be ourselves. We're always going to be ourselves. You were going to tune in and you are going to know immediately if you like this dynamic, who we are, what we're saying. Colin is not Colin will never not talk about politics Yeah

And it doesn't matter if the comments are I'm sick of hearing about this Colin's like I'm gonna talk I'm gonna be myself I'm always gonna talk about Superman You know what I mean? Like that's how this is gonna fucking be Yeah I think one of the things I really like About what we're at right now

And this is something my biggest fear is that As we get bigger We'll have to We'll sort of be forced to do the things that we necessarily aren't passionate about But I'm just this point Who's forcing us to do that then Well that's what's been awesome

So far is that we've we've had opportunities Pop up in the past where we're like, this is a good opportunity. Does anyone want to do this? And we say no. And we say no. And then we go, sorry, we have to pass, right? Whereas at an IGN, someone's job would be to figure out, okay, this is an opportunity.

How do we capitalize off this? Because that's what's going to add to the year end profits, right? Like, my job is not to make content. My job is not to actually, you know, have passion for what I'm doing. My job is a biz dev person. And I'm supposed to connect point A with point B and make money from that, right? And we take a percentage of it. And so, like, I just, I think that that, like, needing to do.

that constantly does hurt the passion or hurt the authenticity of it. But that's going to be the struggle with us, right? Is that eventually we're going to want, like, if there's a bigger project we want to do, we're going to have to leverage something to get that. And I just hope that, I actually hope we never have to do that. I hope we never have to get to a place where we feel like we need to kind of like bite off more than we can chew as far as financials are concerned. Honestly, I don't think we're going to.

As long as we stay true to what we're talking about right now, like it's one of those, let's look back at like off the wall shit we've done. even I've done, right? Cinnamon and Coast Coast Crunch selfie spoon was a paid out opportunity, which I was up front about with everybody being told them that. And the Samsung pay app for Instagram, goofy thing. The Samsung pay app thing, right? I turned

into this girl's popular on YouTube for making Tinder videos. I'll buy her a PS4 and write an obscenely long post explaining everything about PlayStation. I made it about us and our art humor, right? And the selfie spoon was because Collins always threatening to break the selfie sticks, right? And like, those are things that fit with who we are. And there's been tons of other opportunities

that have popped up and they're like what about product X this isn't we're like no like there's no way for us that doesn't fit with who we are that doesn't fit with an inside joke I can't tailor that to our audience to make them understand make some content they'd care about you know what I mean and that's where it comes down to yeah so yeah I don't I don't think we're going to get to the point where it's like we want to make a major motion picture and we're going to have to partner with product X or service Y that is garbage and we have to sit there and be like thanks everybody let's talk about blah blah you know what I mean like and if we are and it would be a product that we either like or agree or think fits well or whatever.

We're going to have some. And of course, now we're spitballing in our spare bedroom in five years. Who the hell knows? But I mean, I think when we start taking those opportunities because we're taking it for the money, that's when we get into a problem.

I like to think that in five years when we have a space, we still utilize this space for something. Like this is always where we shoot shoe hay. Like he always has to just be shot out of this room. You know what I mean? I can't wait for Shueh to come through here one day. Still hasn't been in this room.

Hasn't he? No. I thought he has. No, he's been through for other stuff. We've had a Skype home. we did it in person. When he came through for Kind of Funny Live

was just on Skype too. Oh man, I could have swore he co-hosts to the morning show at one point. No, no, you're thinking about Isha Tyler.

I should Tyler came through here. Very, very similar human beings. Similar jobs. Shut up, Kevin. That might be what I'm thinking of. I'm kidding. Boo-boo,

I love you. And just getting more. Ladies and gentlemen, this has been the first ever Kind of Funny Gamescast Episode 57. Thank you so much for joining us. It's been a long one,

but it's been a ride. I've enjoyed myself. There's been a fun show, Colin. That was right. Oh, you're such a piece of shit. This show's actually good. Who knew? Well, yeah, when there's no Tim and there's a more 100% more Nick Scarpino.

It's great. I love myself. Remember support us on Patreon, do all that stuff. But more than anything, no. It's been our pleasure to serve you.