Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - The Switch's Winning Strategy w/ Nintendo's Damon Baker - Kinda Funny Gamescast Ep. 163

Episode Date: March 26, 2018

Nintendo's Senior Manager of Publishing and Developer Relations stops by to talk about the strategy behind Nintendo's Nindies. (Released first to http://www.Patreon.com/KindaFunnyGames Supporters on 03.23.18) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up guys, welcome to the first ever, episode 163 of the Kind of Funny Games cast. As always, I'm Tim Geddy's joined by one of the coolest dudes in video games, Greg Miller. Brap, brap. We're still taking it back. Oh, I love that. And another one of the coolest dudes of video games, Jared Petty. Dokey dokey. Dokey, indeed.

And joining us for the very first time of the show, a very special guest, the senior manager of publishing and developer relations and face of the Nintendo Nindi Showcase. Nindi. David Baker. David Baker Thank you Thank you If you're the dokey dokey I'm the panic

Oh yeah Excellent Oh I love that Damon thank you very much For joining us We first met at E3 last year Yeah At a

Way back We go so far back And it was fantastic Because we were catching up And I realized that You're essentially The Geocorsi of Nintendo

Which is great Because our audience Love GeoCorsi Him coming out Supporting all the the small titles, the Indies and stuff. And, you know, seeing you do that for Nintendo has been really interesting and cool. And I was a huge fan of you when you did the first Nindi showcase video last year.

I'm blushing. Thank you very much. Because I thought it was really cool that there was kind of a face to the Nindi line and to all that stuff. And the way that it wasn't in Nintendo Direct, it's kind of its own thing. And the reason we have you here today is because there was just the latest one, the spring 2018 showcase. And we got to play a bunch of the games at GEC. Excellent. So we're going to talk about all of this.

those. But ladies and gentlemen, this is the Kind of Funny Games cast each and every week right here on YouTube.com slash Kind of Funny Games. We get together to talk about video games, all the things that we love about them. You can get the show early by going to patreon.com slash kind of funny games where there's a pre-show, a post show. You can watch live right now. Or you can get the show early every Friday. It goes live to everyone else on Monday on YouTube.com slash Kind of Funny Games. Either way you listen or watch, you can listen on podcast services around the globe, including Spotify. We appreciate it very much. Thank you guys for everything. But I want to get right into the show.

Thank you. That was my question that I wanted to get into you. As the LaCroix expert, what was your takeaway from him grabbing a peach pear? You hang that to him. So here's the problem is Cool Greg is the guy that gets all the Lachros and puts him in the fridge. We'll run in low on options right now for cold LaCroix. Gotcha. You want warm, LaCroi.

You got it. Colors of the rainbow going on. But I had to give them the offer of some of my less favorite of the flavor. So I'm sorry for that. No, it's very gracious. Just now, full disclosure, I did ask which one is your favorite. I didn't want to hog all of your favorite. And I appreciate it.

He was like trying to take the hitties. Like, you know what? I'll take whatever you don't want. And I'm like, you know, dude, I don't want it all. I'm just addicted at this point. That chivalrous. What is your favorite? Passion fruit.

There's another 600 cases coming your way. I know. Let's let's go. I just want to interject for a second. Hold on. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Kevin Coella from Kahnofluny.com.

You have a question? I just want to inform you guys that we are on purpose trying to get a mix of flavors gone so the last like six months isn't just stuff that we hate. I appreciate that. Keep feeding the apricot and peach pear and I'm good all day. Do we need a challenge of how many of these I can get through over the course of this next hour? Oh, trust me. You will lose. Whatever you do, Tim will at least double. Just naturally. And also at some point, quietly, silently get up and leave to go pay all the time. So Damien, what's your life been like the last two years with the switch? Because you used to do marketing

at Nintendo for a long time, even during the Wii time. What did you start doing that? Well, my time at Nintendo started almost 12 years ago. I started off heading up the brand licensing program. So basically anything with Mario's face on it, I was licensing that, you know, on T-shirts and toys and stuff like that. That was the lull between cereals was my era. The dark times we call them.

Yes, exactly. Before you move on from that, actually, if you don't mind, What is the most interesting place you've ever found Mario's face? We did have a line of underwear. Oh, wow. That had, you know, certain innuendos affiliated, you know, be like a coin block and it'd say, like, I'd hit that. It was very tasteful, very tasteful.

Very popular, very popular. But, yeah, there was some interesting. Can I still get those underwear? Because I would get those underwear. Yeah, I'm pretty sure I'd wear those too. We'll dig through the archives and see what we have. What small size you got. So, yeah, so I was doing that for a few years.

And then Steve Singer over at Nintendo of America took over the licensing program. Originally, I was working with Gail Tilden, who had been with the company for a really long time. She started up like Nintendo Power. She was really affiliated. with like the start of the Pokemon program over there. So speaking with her, I mean, you were mentioning Link to the Past. Oh my God. Like when I first started there, just geeking out with her over old Nintendo Power issues

and the sweepstakes and the giveaways that they used to do. And the maps that I wore out by, you know, opening and closing the Dragon Quest map over and over and over again to find out where I was supposed to go next. Yeah. So geeked out with her for ages over there. When she retired, moved over to Steve Singer's team, and they made a position for me to head up marketing for third party. They'd never really had that type of focus before.

And that was in the wee days. So riding that tremendous wave at that time. So getting to work with, like, EA on the Tiger Woods program, which was awesome to get him, like, swinging a Wii remote for the first time. and you know that you could actually kind of live out that real world golf fantasy that I'm sure everybody has. But it was crazy, crazy. So got to do marketing. And along that time started working really closely with indie developers that were coming over during the Wii days,

during the DS days, then onto the 3DS, and then onto the Wii U. And that's when we started really pushing that in a bigger way because we were seeing so much excitement and new ideas and risk taking from the indie community to do new things with like the hardware that we had. So that was a ton of fun. But in the last couple of years, you know, as your crack research team has found out, I kind of transitioned into this new role. Again, kind of starting up a new team that was focused on account management. in the past it was always everybody kind of used their own connections within the third party team at Nintendo and that's how we were driving a lot of our business so I was asked to help centralize that for North America and work with major publishers but also kind of rally the troops around

the indie program and that has been a ton of fun and driving that an Indies program and it's super cheesy but it's also the community the indie developers have kind of all embrace that as a badge of honor. They all share the information. They share their experiences and there's a lot of pride in being affiliated as a Nindi these days. What a dream come true, I'm sure. I mean, everybody grows up playing Nintendo, right? Everybody wants to get their game on a Nintendo. And I think for a long time, it seemed like that was hard to do. How do you? That PlayStation Xbox, were very vocal and this is how, and like what you're doing now and not to mention the runaway success of the switch. And every story I hear of like, it sold more copies.

on the Switch than any other platform combined. Yeah, we love that. We send lots of cases of LaCroix to those people. But it's a dream come true. Because growing up playing games in general, but especially being a Nintendo fanboy, it was really fun to be able to work with these developers, and you can see it in their eyes.

It's not just talking to, you know, exploiting a system or exploiting an opportunity. These are people that grew up that playing these games and these systems has been fundamental in the development of their own careers. And it makes you, man, it's infectious. It makes you want to try that much harder to make sure that they do well on the platform. And so we've turned. Those are sirens in our world, not your car. Don't pull the car over a world time.

Yeah. If I say something wrong, then those sirens will go off. Reggie will be in the car. Punches through the wall. Was that restructuring in that team creation tied to the Switch? It was specifically in preparation for what we were anticipating with Nintendo Switch. We knew that there was going to be a warm reception, but we also knew that the Wii U was a really tough system for a lot of our third-party partners.

We had some advocacy there, but it was tough. tough to develop for, tough to have that breakthrough in terms of audience, reception, tough to actually message what it was. And from the very beginning with Nintendo Switch, we knew exactly what it was. We could explain it succinctly. We could say, yes, this is a console experience that you can take on the go. And from the very beginning there, like, it was just a much easier proposition to be able to rally the troops and get people on board with it.

So that's been fun. It's fun to see positive reception for it, for sure. What was the internal process like going from the Wiiware and DGSIware days and through Wii and into now Nindi's being such a cornerstone of the business? What was the internal process like for that? How did that narrative evolve within Nintendo? It's interesting. The evolution from each of those generations, I mean, you guys are probably familiar with Dan

Edelman. He was on board and we were working really closely with him. me, is instrumental in really creating this program from the beginning and driving it. The process, though, with Wii and with DES, is that there was a different model where Nintendo actually controlled the release dates and the pricing of all of that digital content. When we transitioned over to Wii U and to Nintendo 3DS, we opened up support for self-publishing. And we really wanted to encourage this larger development community to be able to go out there and to really dictate, you know, the way that their games should come out and give them that flexibility.

So we had to create a lot of new programs from scratch in order to allow that to happen. It's why with the Wii U and with the 3DS, we've got an open dev environment. So anybody can apply, anybody can actually develop for those systems. You just have to register and you get access to dev kits and you can plug away with it. With Nintendo Switch, we decided to go with a closed development environment, mostly because of demand. At the very beginning, we were having trouble keeping up with producing hardware, dev kits, all of that kind of stuff. Also establishing a new infrastructure around new hardware, take some time. So we decided to be more particular about the type of content that was coming in, but still relying on those relationships that we had established from the

previous generations to really build a really good foundation and a good place to start. And so far, it's been a ton of work, but, and I can't believe that it's only been a year because it feels like it's been a decade. But like in the last year, it's just been such a warm reception for that type of content coming over to the platform. Like, it's interesting to me with, you know, a huge Nintendo fan I have in my entire life. I know. It's crazy.

Who would have thought? but I am also a big fan of their marketing and specifically of the directs and how they do then I've been a fan of the directs since they first started but kind of seeing them evolve over time it's been really interesting and I feel like the Switch has been such a shift

in how Nintendo not only talks about its products but the way that things like release dates are announced or just trailers are revealed and even just having different names for Nindy Showcase versus Nintendo presentation versus Direct Mini versus Direct. Like I like that there's kind of just different like buckets that these things can be dropped into.

And I also love the speed at which where it's like, we're not wasting time. Like this new showcase that just happened. Oh my God. Blank and you miss it, man. We, we race through like 14 titles and like 10 or 11 minutes. Yeah. And it's like so what what's kind of the methodology behind separating those things differently and like how in charge are you of kind of just making sure that like what goes into direct like why does Travis strikes again go here versus there? Yeah, that's a really good question. I can say that it's not any one person's decision. I mean, it's constant communication globally with our head office in Japan, NCL, and then also our European division, NOE, and just kind of putting all of our ideas together in terms of here are the cool things that we know about. These are the different messages. Some may be higher profile. Some might be things that are like under the radar, but deserve to get a bit more.

more visibility and awareness. But yeah, I mean, it's interesting because we have all of these different brands. I think what I do worry about is that everything kind of gets lumped into this very accessible idea of Nintendo Direct as a video. But there's really only technically certain number of Nintendo Directs that are ever produced because they're a different way that they're made, a different production value and different types of content that goes into it. So what I'm just really happy about is to have more and more operational.

opportunities to promote all of this content to as wide of an audience as possible. And I think the Nintendo directs really started by Nintendo seeing that we could actually control a message. We used to do the press conferences at E3 every year. But you always run the risk of there being a technical malfunction or something. The controller isn't being read right. So the game doesn't look the way it's supposed to and everybody freaks out online. Totally. There's almost like that's popping before.

Surely not. I don't know what you're talking about. But it's, you know, there's a lot of risk, especially in terms of leaks and all that kind of stuff. You know, it's having this high production value video that is come together that can be planned out in advance, that confidentiality can be ensured around it. And you can make something really special and relevant for the people tuning in. And you can reach more people around. the world, it takes a ton of work to coordinate all of those efforts. To make sure nothing goes wrong.

Yeah. But it's worthwhile. It's pretty cool. So with, from those videos from the directs or the showcases, whatever they are, there's usually the trailer videos will go up. And you know, as a frequenter of reset era and other forums, like, it's always a big deal when people like, oh my God, this YouTube videos breaking records for Nintendo or whatever. Like, do you guys look at that?

Like, do you look at how many views the YouTube videos are getting? There's a lot of analysis and competitive. comparing how different things have performed versus other. And always looking at how we can improve that or what works, what doesn't work. You know, maybe, especially with a global focus, you know, we've done a lot of experimentation in terms of what time we go live, you know, because, you know, with a time here on the West Coast in North America, you know, it has a different implication in terms of when that is going live in Europe and when that's going live in Japan.

So I think we've played around with a lot of stuff. there's a lot of experimentation. I personally am always looking at the forums and seeing reaction, even though I shouldn't be. I remember back in the day, like one of the first videos I did, I made the mistake of going on to NeoGaF right afterwards

and somebody wrote like, this guy looks like a thumb. And I'm like, the first image I had in my head was of spy kids, like the bad guys. And I'm like, oh, Oh, man.

Like, what do I got to step up. But I mean, I got to stop looking like a thump. I know, exactly. So, I mean, there can be distractions and everything. But I think the takeaway is we're always taking a look at what's going on. And I think one thing, at least in my department and on behalf of third party, I mean, we're always looking at what the fans are saying and the audience reaction,

media reaction to things. And using that as something to build towards the decisions that we're made. making for the future as well. Something all platforms, I think, are grappling with right now is discovery, with a surplus of product and new games being developed constantly, especially in the independent spaces. Curation and discovery is a challenge. And I like popping into my Switch every week and finding such a wide assortment of new games. But I wonder how Nintendo plans on dealing with discovery in the coming years, especially

when it comes to the Nindis and you're on that. Yeah, it's a really good question. I mean, it's definitely front of mind, both for an on-device experience as well as off-device. So, you know, we hope that most of our fans are going to the e-shop every single week to see what's new, but we can't rely on that either. So, yeah, I mean, there are a lot of discussions going on internally, and we're looking at how we can improve different processes, both on and off-device. But the things that we can absolutely control is the cadence of messaging that's coming out and the more videos that we can do. I mean, personally, I don't want to have to wait like every six months in order to do another big NINDI announcement. I feel like we've got so much great content coming out on a regular basis than we can be putting out, you know, different ways of making announcements, you know, a much more regular basis.

And so a lot of things are being worked on at the moment to kind of address the fact that there's so much great content coming over. We have a responsibility to help people find it. Well, what I loved about what you guys have been doing, and even I'm talking about weekly release is not just like these giant events is the fact that you're putting out such a breath of content that when it goes out, like, you know, I walked around the Nindi Showcase at a GDC this week. And it's totally one of those things at a glance. I can identify the games that speak to me, go play them and then talk about him. But then when Brian Altano from IG walks in, he sees different things and those games and goes play something different than I do. And even though every week, it seems like there's 18 games.

Every Thursday, I'm kind of funny games daily. I'm like, well, there's 11 Switch games. If I don't say a platform, it's only on Switch. That's happening. But since so many people are using the system and are jumping in there and are playing stuff, they're finding new games that I don't think you normally hear about. But they're finding what they like. talking about it and you're seeing it spread still to lead back to this is this is selling better than

any other platform this is outselling everything because there's still a hungry group there and since so many people are excited about it they're actually involved with it yeah it's really nice of you to say that um we're trying really hard to make sure that there's a breadth of content there's a variety of things that there really is something for everyone in there and we're also really fortunate that there's such strong word of mouth too because it's one thing i mean i could go out there and say you should play this game but who's who's going to listen to this schmuck. You know,

but if your friend tells you that you should go and play this game, you're going to trust their opinion. You're going to at least check it out. Absolutely. And it was that thing. It was you this week. I want to say in games industry,

but someone, I don't know, it's Kataku, asked you about the top 10 selling switch Indies, right? You put them up there. Oh, Steam World Dig 2, Star Doe Valley,

Camico, Celeste, Fast RMX, Golf Story, Enter the Gungeon, Overcooked, NBA Playgrounds, and Shovel Night Treasure Trove. And that's such a diverse selection

of games, right? And it's not, if you were to ask me and I started rattling off, I think I'd miss a lot of those. Like, enter the gungeon, it's awesome. And it's rad that it's got, it's fun, an audience on Switch, let alone one that big. Yeah. What's cool to me, though, was looking at this list, I can identify why I think it made the list. And a lot of it goes back to the way that it was shown off in the different showcases or things like Celeste, it is the word of mouth, Fast RMX, being there early. Golf story. We're all crazy for a little. Golf story. And that was totally from the showcase where it's like, Like it's when it's put next to other games that you've heard of like Steam World Dig 2.

Yeah. And that you're excited for like, oh, I know the quality of this game. The things around it are probably somewhere close. And I think it's interesting to see things like Kamiko that came out at a time when people are just like, I don't know what the hell this is. I haven't heard it talked about anywhere. But it's on the e-shop and I want to give something a shot. Yeah.

And I love that they're side by side with other games that may never make this top 10 list, but that are totally worth your time and that they're allowing you to go, oh, this is there next to that. What is that? Something like Blastermaster Master Zero, which. is probably never going to be a top 10 seller, but somebody put way too much TLC into, and it's just delightful. I love that game.

And it's just superb, and there's a lot of that in there. I am an old Nintendo complainer from their virtual console day, when it went for five to four to three to two a week, and I was like, no, where are my games? And I love that there really is more this, you know, we're just going to get people a chance to like lots of different things and land in their niche and be okay with that.

I am enjoying this approach. I really appreciate it. Well, thank you. I can't take credit for all of it. Just do it. Just take it. Just say it's all you. But it's been a tremendous team effort.

And it really it warms my heart to see people so receptive to it. It's really nice to see. You know, I again, as somebody that is addicted to video game forums, especially the pre-hype cycle going into directs and things and seeing everybody get excited about stuff and kind of predict what might might be there with a video game forums. hope is there and all of that. When it comes to an indie showcases, like especially the summer one last year, because GDC last year, there was the first spring one and that was even before the switch came out, where a lot of the indies were announced and that was really

exciting because there's some big ones there. But it wasn't until the summer one that we got to see like, oh, we're getting Steamworld. We're getting like a lot of these big indie games that people were hoping for. Rocket League was one of them that wasn't there yet. But then at E3, that was announced. For this indie thing, we were doing a predictions episode on, I think it was us two on games daily last week. Yeah. And I couldn't really. I'm like,

well, they kind of got a lot of the big indie games that are, are possible. And it's like, what, what is going to be that thing? And I like that we're at a point now where, yeah,

there's things like banner saga that gets announced, but it is just like, oh, there's a lot of stuff that you might, you've never heard of. No. Yeah, exactly. What's the mentality in Nintendo now in terms of,

is it about just let's get the game on the system? Or is there a focus on, we want it to be an exclusive indie or focus on, it doesn't need to be exclusive, but we want an exclusive feature or first on switch. Like, where's the priority? I have different opinions than other people do on this. I think the exclusivity message is something that's easy to rally behind.

It's easy to identify as that being a point of differentiation. So it's easy to go, hey, look, these are all exclusives or have an exclusivity window. And so we can all lump them together. I don't put as much value behind exclusivity. in terms of indie content because these guys have to make business decisions that are right for them and to strong arm them into committing to just one platform when they could be coming out on all platforms at the same time. It feels unfair. So I like the first reveal messaging and that's what I really like to get behind is if we can be the first platform announcing a title,

then automatically. People associate it with that. Exactly. Exactly. But you're not you're not putting that developer in a difficult position. So my level of priority there is more on the first reveals. And that's why you see in the Nindi showcases, there's a huge focus on this is the first time this has been announced or confirmed for Nintendo Switch. I think the thing that we can do a better job about is then closing the loop on the titles that we've previously talked about.

So every one of these Nindi showcases, it's about announcing what's new, what's coming out in the future. And we're trying to be better about these are the titles that we know are supposed to come out within the next three to six months. Sometimes that gets bumped out. It's indie development. But yeah, that's almost like a bad word at this point.

But I think, but to that point, it's also, it seems like a great opportunity for us to then go back and close the loop on something like a pocket rumble and work with chucklefish and see, you know, how do we announce when it's going to be coming out? and why people should be excited about the amount of time that it's taken to get here. So I personally want to look for more of those types of opportunities to provide more regular updates. And because when I look at the forums, the anticipation for something like an Indy showcase is awesome. But a lot of the asks are like, it's for us to close the loop. It's like, okay, we want an update on what you announced six months ago.

and we have such precious time to work with. We want to focus on those really cool reveals that maybe you didn't even know you wanted. So like a lot of people in the audience, I'm pecking away at a pretty good demo. And one day I want my finished demo and all its glory on Switch. How do I, as a dude coding in my garage,

make that happen? Yeah. So right now I mentioned we have a closed development environment, but we accept pitches. And my team and I were looking at, we actually manually go through all of the pitches that are coming through. I mean, and it could be on average, it's probably around 50 a week that we're getting. Sometimes it's much more. Sometimes it's a little bit less.

But we're going through those. We've got some guidelines that we're working towards and we kind of evaluate whether it's meeting those guidelines or not. And then we either say, yay, or we say, unfortunately, this opportunity isn't available for you right now, but keep posted because we do intend one day to open up that dev environment for everybody. We're just not there yet. So we ask for patients there.

Or we ask them to revise their pitch and to go a different direction or to prove something that we're looking for. For us, we're not just looking at the content. We're also looking for the aptitude of the developer and their capabilities of, reading instructions and following instructions and getting through this process with as little hand holding as possible, just because we are resource constrained with the amount of business

that's going on right now. So we look for those developers that really show that they know what they're doing or they're willing to cooperate in an efficient manner to get that through. So if all of those stars align, then we kind of check the box and we move them through and we give them access and they can access the forums and the white papers and order dev kits and on their way. Do you recommend brevity in the pitch? That helps. But also, you know, you need to convey, you know, what's good about it.

And it shouldn't be confined to just a couple of sentences or an elevator pitch. We've heard a lot of elevator pitches and we've received a lot of like full gameplay overviews and tech documents and walkthroughs that are way. more information. A yellow page is showing up on this game. Totally. So I think it's, you know, we unfortunately can't share the guidelines. We can't really share at a preferred template. It would be nice to have some sort of an awesome template that we could just say fill

all of this in and then we can evaluate it. So maybe we'll get to that one day. But right now, I mean, what we've been saying is we put a heavy emphasis on partner curation versus content curation. We've been working really hard on that over the course of this last year. So working with trusted partners, you know, indie publishers or developers that have already kind of proven themselves. And we entrust them to tell us what content is going to make sense for the platform. You know, if it's a publisher like a Raw Fury or a devolver or an adult swim, chucklefish.

So weird. Yeah. It's going to be weird and bloody and crazy. Beyond colors. Yeah, pixelated, gory. But any of these publishers, you know, they've instilled the level of trust with us. And so then if they come to us and say, hey, this game is going to be perfect on Switch, but they're not signed up yet.

Can you help get them through? Then we do acknowledge that. We're like, yep, no problem. We'll get you through. So that's also another way of, you know, getting your game through is establishing those relationships with some of those. There's so many indie publishers these days. everybody is even the major publishers are starting up their own indie labels you know so there are a lot of opportunities to work with some of those trusted partners that we have it's kind of become a meme of the

whole ones that come in a switch situation like is that uh do you see that it's a good thing or is it kind of stressful where it's like oh man like we we just don't have the capabilities to do all of this i think it depends i i think it really depends on whether it's an experience it makes sense for Nintendo Switch. Because a lot of these indie developers are making money off of the platform, then there's a rush to go to this hot new thing and try and take advantage of it. So, no, I don't think everything makes sense to come over to Nintendo Switch. But I do think that if there's an experience,

like the beauty of the platform is that if it's a console experience, this might be the first time that you can take it on the go. And if it's a mobile experience, maybe this is the first time that you can play it on a team. TV or play it with control controls. And so if it kind of bridges that gap, then there's a really cool opportunity there for that content. At the indie mix here, GDC on Monday night, you know, for if you're, it's a few dozen

different, shoulder to shoulder in there. Yeah, indie games all there set up. It's an awesome event. I love it. It's more of my favorite things. And this year, every demo I would get would end with. And we also, you know, are going to be coming to this little guy. And they bust out of this.

You want to go play the switch version with a switcher. We haven't announced yet. And it's like everyone has. their switches and their games loaded because they're also stoked. That's the coolest way. I think of, if anything, that's the most brilliant element of being able to develop on Nintendo Switch.

Yeah. Is you no longer have to bring like a PC rig or a huge 14 pound laptop with you everywhere you go at GDC. It's just like take it out of your pocket and you can show your game in the way that it's supposed to be seen. And it's... We had the messenger folks come through, right? And their whole thing was like, well, we could bring the PC and age.

Wait, do you guys have a... Switch stock there? Yeah. Oh yeah, we got that. Oh, great, perfect. Okay, great. Thank you. Yes, that's way easier. Yeah, I love that game. Oh, my God. Sabotage or... Oh, yeah. Yeah. What's the most fun you've had playing a game on Switch? The most fun I've had.

I am a sucker for any... For inclusivity. I like... I love any game where you can play with a big group of people. So, actually, some of the most fun that I've had with Switch would be like Knights with, like, Jackpucks. Oh, yeah. Oh, my God. Or, or, I've made enemies introducing people to overcooked.

Oh, yeah. But I've made a lot of friends introducing people to, like, lovers in a dangerous space time. Yep. Both of them are brilliant experiences. But it's, it's, you kind of have to read your audience as well in terms of, like, recommending a game. But, yeah, I kind of, the most fun that I have, um, with Switch in particular is

in playing multiplayer games in the same room. You mentioned golf story before. That game I was sucked in. They actually used that term, I think, in the game. I was sucked in, yeah, for like the 20 hours straight in order to get from start to finish. You know, I just loved that game and totally got immersed into that kind of RPG golf mechanic.

It was brilliant. So, you know, SteamWorld Dig 2 as well. start to finish. I had to binge it like Netflix just to get all the way through to the end. I'm playing Night in the Woods at the moment as well and kind of binging on that as well. But yeah, I think in terms of fun

yeah, it's definitely playing with other people. Yeah. Yeah. I love that you said Jackbox. Yeah. Absolutely. It's a wonderful combination of accessibility in a couple of unique ways. Accessibility can mean a lot. But the idea that anybody on appropriate devices can jump in, anybody that's familiar with games or not so familiar with games can jump in. It is, like you said, inclusive.

And that's wonderful. You can do it almost anywhere. You can do it over a Skype chat. You can do it at a party. And it's lovely. Yeah. That's really cool. I appreciate that.

We were definitely, like, cheeks hurt from laughing over the course of that night. It was awesome. So with the Switch being region free, does that affect indie games in any major way? Yeah, because it's still region specific for digital content. You still have to log into like a regional e-shop in order to access it. But it does allow for a lot more flexibility of access. The fact that we can do a single ROM submission, we do a global ROM instead of you having to submit your game to three different regions in order to get it through is a huge time saver. for developers.

So that's really convenient. But in terms of the access, yeah, it's been, I think that it's an area that we wanna expand on as well. I think we are working on, you know, how do we, or at least evaluating whether we can expand the E-Shops, Nintendo E-Shops into other regions as well. But right now we see a lot of people kind of diving into it. The cool thing is that,

For the most part, the European and the North American releases are pretty much synced up. It's not like back in the day where there was like a huge six-month gap between when a physical cartridge actually made its way or got localized over into other regions. So that's a lot of faster process. And what's really cool is that Japan is really being a lot more proactive about embracing indie content. And our teams over there are really trying to bring over as much indie content as possible and digital-only content because that's still kind of a newer market over in that region. So it's exciting to see them kind of jumping on board. And a lot of our developers over here localizing and being able to distribute in Japan for the very first time.

That's pretty cool. How's the split between physical and digital growing? Because you did a presentation in GDC a couple days ago I saw that I thought was interesting. Yeah, it's amazing. It's so geeky that I would appreciate this. But Nintendo has always been known as like, okay, you buy physical cartridges and you collect them, you hang on to them. But with Nintendo Switch, I mean, definitely on the third party side, then our digital business is actually greater than the package goods business, which is what all of the major publishers are saying as well. You see the financial updates from EA, Take 2, Ubisoft.

But that's the everybody is basically saying, yeah, our digital sales are greater than package. And that is awesome to see that reflected on Nintendo Switch as well. It means that we share a similar audience, which you would never really expect. Yeah, that was the other cool thing during the presentation you did was you had the slides of like the Nintendo demographic and how you're taught about how it would be the kids that are playing for the first time or the adults that grew up with Nintendo. Right. But then you showed Karen. The woman from the original Nintendo Switch commercial bringing the switch to the party and you're joking. It's like, yeah, I mean, dude bros and people at parties are now the demo for Nintendo as well.

I mean, I thought she was an asshole back in the day. And now how many times have you been out at a party or an event and you're like, it's the commercial. The commercial has really come to life. It happens to me all the time. A couple days ago eating dinner at a restaurant. I look over and I'm like, I can't believe this is actually. I was like, they're playing Mario Kart right now. Yeah.

And they're the cool person. How did that happen? I am going to be caring for Halloween. We're already working on the costume. No, but I mean, like, that's the thing about when we're talking about how the switch works and where it excels and all the stuff. It is the fact that it goes with me anywhere I go. And I buy everything digital.

You know, I bought the biggest memory card I could. So now there's just dozens of games on my switch for whatever mood you're in or like when I'm getting ready for a flight going to the e-shop. I mean, like, I've heard about this and I heard about that and I'll do that and buy a whole bunch of different stuff you just have there as this like smorgasbord when you get there. Yeah. So you know with this gold rush that we keep talking about of everybody trying to get on the switch and like the switch version sells better than everywhere else combined and all that, you know, as as pundits, we sit here and we're like that's going to end eventually.

What are your guys thoughts on that? Like do you have not? But I mean, do you is there conversations happening to try to like maintain a way to keep that going? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. We want to keep that one. momentum going. And a lot of it has to do with, you know, can we add even more ways of promoting that great content and marketing it and creating visibility for that great content? You know, first year, really proud of the quality, the caliber of content that came through on Nintendo E-shop. We have to keep that going. But then you add to that catalog, you know, that doesn't go away. that's still there and you still want people to know about, you know, the best sellers and

the best experiences that are on the platform. But you have to find ways of adding to that as well. So, you know, I hope that people don't use it or expect that just because they release the title on Nintendo Switch and automatically it's going to sell better than anything. Yeah, it's a lot more than that. You know, they got a, especially this day and age with indie development, you have to put as much time into the marketing and the promotion of it as you do on the development side. And that's tricky. But when we find the things that we're passionate about and that we believe in, then we try and lend a

helping hand there as well. And hopefully we can keep finding more opportunities to do that. Cool. Looking at the top 10 from last year of the selling games, was there any of those that you surprised at how well it did? It's hard because I saw all those sales numbers on a regular basis. So it wasn't like a real big surprise. I mean, I was really happy to see so many of those titles because all of them I thought were deserving. I even spent a lot of time with NBA playgrounds. I'm not going to lie. But like all of those titles were great and they were all unique experiences and they were all cool.

Actually, I met with Cyanics this morning and they're a little bit hurt. They were like, I thought, you know, I saw them. a list of indie titles and it's like dude indies is like a self-declared term i'm not going to assume that anybody is an indie because some people get offended by that some of the bigger publishers are are like you know they're definitely independent but um you know maybe they don't want to self-identify as being indie um so we don't we try not to assume on any of that but geez rocket league has killed it this year as well so um yeah we don't want to leave anybody out um um Cry me a river.

I know. Get out of here, Jeremy. Dunham. You're fine. Who coined the turn Nindi? There was a person on Twitter that actually came up with the term. I can't remember his name. But when I saw it, I was like, I really want to use this.

And so I reached out to him to get permission. And he was like, okay, that's cool. And I saved the tweet. He's just like, never forget my name, though. I always reference me my name when you talk about this story. Oh, I feel terrible. But I have it all saved and everything just for records. But yeah, I mean, I think that it was a great opportunity,

especially during the Wii U days, for that community to kind of all rally around each other and support each other. I mean, we used to participate in the Indycade show over in Culver City every year, which is a great, great show. And like a few years ago, I mean, we had this awesome indie presence there. And those developers still stay in touch. I mean, they're all like this super tight bond because they were one of the first groups of Nindis

that we kind of banded together and that we promoted them as a group. And it's really cool to see those relationships, you know, build over time. and stay true. It's so important in this industry. It's all about sharing, you know, and sharing those ideas and that experience. And I'm glad that we've got that sense of community with Nintendo as well. And it's definitely still going. Being at the demos a couple days ago, playing through all the new Nindis that were announced, like there is definitely a sense of camaraderie between all the different devs and especially this like contingent of Montreal people. where it's like, there's a U.S.

and step up. It's cool. It's cool to see them kind of like band together and support each other's games. And me and Kev, we're playing a demo of one of the games. And people like, if you like this,

you got to go over there and play this other one. And it's like, it's cool where it is this, this idea of, yeah, maybe not everything's for everyone. But there's definitely a couple things there for you.

What do you most excited for of the games that we, that you announced this week? They're all my babies. I'm not going to choose just one. I'll answer for you. Legacy, luminous, all right? Brand new, though, at the gate, you got to go with Garage. Thank you, everybody.

It's been a good game. Both those games are brilliant. The trans vibration stuff and luminous. When I went over there and they were like, all right, I'm like, I'm going to get you. All right, yeah, all right. Yeah, of course. Putting them underneath my legs. Yeah.

It was funny. I mean, just even if you weren't there at the booth every so often, you'd hear this, ooh. Yeah. Okay. So if you're not, if you're not familiar. I remember when like when they were, uh, res was coming out for PSVR and they were showing the res suit that it had all the trans vibrate. Exactly.

It's all wearing being goons. When I sat down to do the luminous demo this time around, I'm a huge luminous thing. They were like, all right, cool. They gave me a belt that had two extra joycons in the sides. They gave me two extra joicons to put in my pockets. And then they gave me two extra ones to put underneath my legs while I sat down. That way with the beat and the music and it would go and it was like, it's, I'm like, I can see me doing this.

As a huge luminous dork, I'm going to do this one. When I lived in Japan, I had a couple of chances to buy the original res trans vibrator, but it was always used. And it came with a little like washable vibrator condom, and I just couldn't bring myself to purchase it. I kind of regret that. Yeah. I'm super stoked about the messenger. That's the game. We did a let's play that if you're watching live, it's not live yet, but tomorrow it'll be live on Friday.

Friday, it's going live to everybody. You can watch it. I'm absolutely in love with the game. It's so cool. It's a Ninja Guidein-esque game. It's 8-bit, and then it turns 16-bit, and you have to solve platforms that way. The art style changes, the music changes. I cannot believe how cool that looks.

Full of disclosure, my wife is doing brand and PR stuff for it. Yeah. Brian Altano yesterday tweeted, he's like, this is going to be the shovel night of this year. And I'm like, oh, that's such a good way to put this. I think that there's so much love, care, humor put into it. I had a blast playing it for the 30 minutes I did. Another one that me and Kev played was just shapes and beats. Oh yeah?

It's a rhythm schmop. Have you seen this? No. I feel like you're right up your alley as well. What is this called? It's called just shapes and beats. Okay. It's what the game is, just some shapes and some beats.

All right. And you can play up to four players and you're these little shapes flying around, Schmup style, but it's all like the things are attacking you. It's all based on rhythm. Oh, oh, yeah. And it's really, really cool. Kevin was so bad at it. It blew my mind.

Kevin. You're out there representing kind of funny. No, no, no. For a set, I was like, I'm not going to play this. And then the dev, very nice guy, it was like, come on. I was like, honestly, I don't want to play this. I'm really bad of rhythm games.

And Tim's like, yeah, he's really bad. I really wanted to play because, of course, right up my alley. Of course. Me and Kevin waiting in line to play. No one will judge. I wasn't waiting in line to play. I was waiting in line. You're next to me.

Andrew Renee and Brittany from What's Good Games were playing in front of us. and I'm just watching Superuder. Kevin's back there talking shit. Every time they mess up, talking shit, then we go to sit down. Just when Andrea messes up because she's so good at rhythm games. She's famous for being good at rhythm games. We know that.

Is that what she's famous for here? She is. Appletude. Oh, yeah, she's damn good. I know she's good at it. I'm just saying. Famous for it. That's what she's famous.

That's true. All right, my apologies. Okay. I'm trying to see what else. Oh, Kevin, you played this one, Poodoo. Puda? Puda, but they're saying that it's just going to be called pose. Good. Okay, po.

P-O-D-E is what it is. And talk to people about it. No, it's okay for this. I really enjoyed it. It's a co-op if you want it to be a game where you can switch whether you're this little rock guy or this light ball, like a little star. And I think that the story is that the light

is a star that fell out of Earth and it's trying to get back up there and the rocks helping them. But they each have these little powers you can do. And it's just a fun little puzzle game. It's beautiful. It's got a fantastic style and a lot of fun. It's like a third person snipper clips style game.

Me and Kevin played. And the accessibility is a big thing there where there's a functionality where if you click in on one of the sticks, you can take control of the other one. So if you're playing with like a little kid, you don't need to. Huh? Or Tim. So there's two ways to look at it. If you play with a little kid, you can like take control of them. And the idea behind that is it's kind of like no kid wants.

to take the control, be like, oh, I'll do it for you. But when it's part of the gameplay, it makes it feel a bit more natural. But then there's the other side of when you're two grown men, you can just switch and start walking, like New Super Mario Bros. style, start walking towards a cliff and then switch characters so they keep walking. Or when you're Kevin, who just likes to play co-op puzzle games by himself, he'll just insist to do it all. I'm just flashing back to my driver's ed teacher with his brake over the other side of the car.

Oh, no, no. But yeah, it was definitely, it was cool. And like, it's that those types of unique experiences and like gameplay enhancements that I'm like, I love that there's thought being put into this. So it's like anybody can play these games and have fun with them. Yeah. I do love bomb chicken. Oh my God. Bomb chicken looks awesome.

Yeah. Do you play it? Yeah. 2D platformer where you're this fat little chicken that just lays, lays bombs. And the bombs you can stack on top of each other. The simplest control scheme of all time, you can just move and one button is bomb. There's no jump. The only way to jump is to bomb yourself up and go.

And it is so cool. You can play with one, you can play with one JoyCon, even like any button combination you want because you can use the trigger to jump and then just move with the stick. And it's super funny looking and, again, puzzle-based and fun. Kevin had a great time with it as well. It sounds great. Yeah, I liked it a lot from my demo. Oh, man.

trying to see what else I played. I mentioned it in passing, but garage I really dug. Yeah. It's like what easiest pitch would be like, it looks like hotline Miami. It's a twin stick shooter of, you're stuck in a, you wake up in a garage,

and there are zombies and there are police, and they're fighting each other, and they're also fighting you now, like both the zombies and the police, so you're just marching through, getting ammo, getting health, trying to survive and figure out what's going on in this garage.

Yeah, it looks cool. Love the art style of that one. And oh, and Travis Strikes Again was playable at this And I love looking at it because it seems to me From least the bit that we saw It's not exactly the same gameplay as the original No More Heroes No More Heroes 2

But it is a bit more of a top-down perspective That I actually think fits the story And the gameplay style a lot better So I'm very excited excited for that one And then while we were there There was the announcement that Hyper Light Drifter Nidhog 2 And Crash Lines are coming

And Nidhawk 2 Let's go Yeah, especially with the joycon shit on that. That's like a, that's a new brainer. Yeah, that's going to be good. Yeah. All right, I promise that I would get you out of here by four thirds. Shout out to West of Looney's.

Oh, dude. Symmetric, yes. I know our stick figure RPG. All right, yeah. Yeah. I played it packs a long time ago and really dug it. And then they broke my heart when they just said PC. But now it's coming to switch.

It's coming to switch. They listened. Yeah. So we got to let you go. Do you have any, any final things to say? No, this is an honor. I've been watching you guys for. ever, congratulations on all your success.

Thank you. How you guys are killing it these days. So thank you so much for thinking of me. This is really nice. Oh, please. You came back. Thank you. Absolutely.

I've slitting his DMs. That's literally all that happened. This works out. As long as it did. Damon, thank you very much. I will let you let you go. Are we good on time?

Everything good? Awesome. We did it. Good job. We did it. Yeah. Nice job, Tim. What a host.

A winner is you. There we go. Ladies and gentlemen, this has been the kind of funny games cast each and every week. We get together. about video games, all things we love about them. And thank you for loving us doing that. Patreon.com slash kind of funny games

where you can get it early. You can watch it live. You can get the pre-show, the post show, and all that stuff. What? I was looking at the tabs pool panic. I forgot about that. We didn't talk about it.

Yeah, physics-based. I saw that a day of the devs on the big movie screen. I was like, this is a trip. This is a weird ass. This is an adult swim. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Until next week.

I love you. And everybody buy luminous when it comes out. So we keep getting luminous. It's the best puzzle game of all time. Thank you.